It Is God Who Redeems Us, Pt. 1

Ronald Weinland

January 30, 2021

It’s amazing to me how in approaching Passover, you look at some of the sermons and what God’s been bringing us through for a year now, and looking forward to this period of time here, to me it’s exciting because there is obviously a process here of things God desires that we see in a deeper way, in a more appreciative way, if you will. The more we see things, the more we grasp things about how God functions, how He works in our lives, how He’s working in the world, and to realize how incredible it is we have all that we do, it really makes a lot more meaning, in the sense of appreciation and gratitude and thankfulness to God for what we’ve been given.

So, today we’re going to begin a follow-up to the last two-part series that was entitled Division Vs. Unity, and this new series is entitled, It Is God Who Redeems Us, and obviously, this is heading toward the Passover period.

In that last series I just mentioned about, Division Vs. Unity, we began by looking at one of the plagues that God brought on Egypt and we’re going to begin there again today. That’s in Exodus 8:22.

Now, when something is repeated like this, I don’t care whether it’s in scripture or whether it’s in sermons or whatever, there’s always a purpose in that. I hope we understand that, that it’s God’s desire to help us focus on something more fully, more completely again so that we can grow in a greater appreciation of what we have and what we’re being given by Him and by His Son.

Exodus 8:22. It says, In that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, in which My people dwell, so that no swarms will be there, so that you may know that I am the Eternal in the midst of the land. Again, whether it be on a physical plane as God was working with them or if it be on a spiritual plane as God works with us, works with the Church and helps us to begin seeing things, there are those things that God does to set us apart. But in that process, we’re able to see things and learn things that we know make us unique. We grasp and understand others can’t see this. They don’t know this and we recognize then that distinction, and then, candidly, a requirement on our part, if we really want to be a part of it, the difference that’s going to make in our lives.

He went on to say then here in verse 23—I will make (put) a difference between My people and your people. Tomorrow will be this sign. So, we are familiar with the story of the plagues and the things that took place there but focusing here on a little bit of what’s being said and being reminded again here of this particular word.

As it was mentioned in the previous series, in the King James it uses that expression, “put a division.” Some quote “make a distinction.” But the Hebrew word is what’s important here and what it means. There’s more to the word than just a difference or a distinction here. It really carries that thought, as has been mentioned earlier, the thought of redeeming, the process of being redeemed. This is one of the first accounts where God begins using this. We’re going to look at another one here that comes just a little before this.

But in this particular word there is that which God begins to reveal about a process. Again, the thought of redeeming. There is much said in the Bible about this process. Even more accurately here, again, the expression, “making a difference through redeeming.” That’s what it means. That’s the focus of it.

So again, because of this distinction and the use of this word we are going to focus more on what God has to say about this entire process of redemption, of redeeming as we continue forward here in this particular series. But we need to back up a couple of chapters to Chapter 6 I love this chapter because of what’s revealed here that I mentioned earlier on, because of this progressive revelation that God gives, has given through time, and this is another example of that on an extraordinary plane. Because this is a long time into the process from the time of Adam and Eve up through the time of Noah, Abraham, then the family, the descendants and so forth that finally ended up in Egypt and have grown into a large tribe of people, a nation of people, and what God is going to now do.

So, in Exodus 6:1 it says, Then the Eternal said to Moses… So, this is God getting Moses ready to go and do what he must do. Now will you see what I will do to Pharaoh; with a strong (mighty) hand… It’s revealing here that this is what God is doing to do, and it’s going to be by His great power that He accomplishes this.

With a strong, or as the word is used, a mighty hand he will let them go. In other words, not referring to Pharaoh’s mighty hand but to God’s mighty hand. He’s going to bring this about and this is going to happen. …he will let them go (Pharaoh will let them go), and with a strong (mighty) hand he will even drive them out of his land (force them out of his land.) In other words, there’s going to be a lot that happens to Pharaoh here that’s going to force him to do this because he’s going to resist. That’s the story here.

This is what God is revealing to Moses, “This isn’t going to be an easy thing.” It’s going to be through a process of time that through this mighty hand upon him, because of what God is getting ready to do to Egypt, that it’ll come to the point where finally Pharaoh gets to the point where he forces them out of the land. Incredible!

God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Eternal. “I am Yahweh.” I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as El Shaddai (God Almighty). Now, this to me is awesome. …but by My name Yahweh (The Eternal), I was not known to them.

Now, what a meaningful thing. We can read something like this and be moved by it—and I hope you are—because you think of all those people with whom God had been working on an individual basis, as it were, through time here. I just had mentioned about Noah, and then Abraham, and as it goes on to say here, Isaac and Jacob, and so forth, and not a one of them knew that this was Yahweh Elohim! He hadn’t revealed Himself as that. Incredible!

And yet to be given that, to be given that ability to know, to be told that, what an awesome thing, to be chosen to have that opportunity to know God’s name. You think, “Well, we all know God.” I think, no, there are names that mean more, and Yahweh means a lot more, “The Eternal.” “The Eternal One.” “The Ever-living One.” We take things for granted a lot of times, but again, it shows a closer relationship that God wants to reveal more about Himself.

And yet you think about the close relationship that God had with different ones, as an example, with Abraham. Manifested Himself in a physical way to Abraham, worked with Abraham, Melchizedek, in the form of Melchizedek, in the form of a priest as well. But again, revealing to him that this was coming from God, this was God, God’s representative. How much he knew, what he understood in that, we don’t know fully. Scriptures are written in such a way that sometimes these are difficult to know because of how they’re translated and what is being said.

But again, just the fact that it’s a progressive revelation of God revealing Himself. Because as He reveals Himself more and more, He also begins to reveal more of His plan, and that’s the awesome part, to understand that as you go along in history it becomes more and more exciting, more and more fulfilling, more and more meaningful. Yet all those individuals that we just mentioned here are all going to be resurrected in a first resurrection in God’s government. Awesome!

But what a blessing to learn more along the way, to understand more along the way, and to have the opportunities we have that sometimes it’s difficult for us to understand, to grasp how much we’ve been given. It really is. Because you’ve been given so much more than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses, and on it goes through time, so much more.

So again, He says, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai. But by My name The Eternal, I was not known to them.

I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers. I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage. So, it isn’t as though God all of a sudden was aware of this. He knew their condition all through time. He knows, as we talk about in scripture, “When a sparrow falls (a bird), falls to the ground…the number of hairs on your head…” on and on it goes.

God is keenly aware of, especially because of His plan and purpose, but again, this is a story that’s being given for others who come along to be able to focus on what God is seeing and what He wants us to see through what He reveals.

So, He says, I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage. It goes on to say then, I have remembered… Like God ever forgot? It’s a poor word, in that respect. Better, He’s saying, I am bringing to remembrance, right then to your remembrance and anyone else who reads later on, to their remembrance, to remember these things. That’s what it’s about. It’s not as though God forgot and now He’s, “Got to remember!” But that’s how people tend to read some things sometimes.

I am bringing to remembrance My covenant. So, what is He saying? Now is the time to begin fulfilling more of what He told Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That’s what He’s saying, “I am bringing to remembrance now (to yours), and to what’s going to be accomplished here, what I told them.”

Therefore, say to the children of Israel, I am Yahweh. Awesome! The Eternal. …and I will bring you from under the burdens of the Egyptians. So, we can read through this in a physical plane, but we know what this means in a spiritual one, to realize what it means to be called out of spiritual Egypt, to understand the confusion, the ways, especially of religion of that time and the ideas of different God’s and so forth, and that God’s going to bring them out of that.

That’s why I love the three expressions that are used throughout scripture to reveal all the corruption in the world. “Coming out of Babylon.” This world today is Babylon. I think of, when I read Revelation, when it talks about “Babylon, Babylon has fallen,” the country that epitomizes that the most today… It does. The system. The process. God is revealing the corruption from the top to the bottom in a way that has never been done, as it’s being done now, through the use of technology.

Now, there is another being who’s using technology as well in a very powerful way. I was thinking today about this process. He is so powerful, that being, and he uses all these things against mankind because we’re not real bright when it comes to him. We really aren’t. We are easily swayed. “The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life,” what people look to – power. People lust after these things. It’s the way of the human mind.

That’s one of the things God wants us to break very early on when we come into His Church, to get away from that kind of you-know-what. Because that’s what it is. It’s a big pile! God wants us to get away from that and not let that sway our thinking. Because we shouldn’t look toward power as though it’s something to strive for, you know, as though it’s something that makes us feel important and big or greater.

Those are the things that destroy people. I’ve seen many people in God’s Church destroyed through a lust for power and thinking that they’re becoming greater and more important than others. “We can be up here on risers and look down upon the rest.” That is sick and perverted and of Satan, not of God Almighty. Yet those things were infecting the Church well before Laodicea came full blown on the scene.

They started in a period of time with Mr. Armstrong. I think of him addressing, “How many of you…?” “I wonder if half of you…” And that was back in the late 70’s. Then by the time he died he was down to the point of saying, “I wonder if there are 10% of you,” basically, “who are Philadelphian and don’t have that Laodicean spirit.” Already! Because it was already at work.

We’ve gone through much in order to learn much. That’s what it’s about. It’s about being molded and fashioned and transformed and to be able to see and grasp and understand what God is creating and desiring to be a part of that creation.

I will bring you out from underneath the burdens of the Egyptians. So, all these things are burdens. The system of Babylon is nothing but a burden. And you want to talk about evil? It’s absolutely evil! Everything from the top to the bottom is corrupted and I am so glad that God is revealing these things to the world. Because a few years ago these things weren’t being seen by the world. Now, they don’t understand it fully but they’re seeing it, in every part of government, in every phase of society.

We can look at it and even the world is saying the same thing, “They’re going nuts!” “They’re losing their mind.” “They’re going crazy.” Well, yeah. Anyway. Because God is bringing these things out into the open. Things aren’t remaining hidden. It’s beautiful that it’s being revealed mankind cannot govern itself. It is corrupt because it’s based on lust, it’s based on greed, it’s based on selfishness. It isn’t based on love. It isn’t based on genuine care and concern for others. It just isn’t. It can’t be because we’re human. We have to be saved from that, called out of Egypt, called out of Babylon, called out of Assyria, false government.

There’s only one government that’s right and true and that comes from God and we understand that.

It goes on to say here, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. It is a burden. …and I will rescue you.

I think of a crazy thing like COVID and look at what decisions and choices are being made in governments, governments all over the world right now, and the burden that’s associated with that. People losing businesses because of burdens and things that are being forced upon them.

You can open with 25% occupancy, but you can’t have 50. You can’t have your TV on, and you can’t watch the… What is that game? Super Bowl! See, I never have cared about those things, so anyway, it doesn’t affect me. But anyway, a lot of people love different kinds of sports. I love something when it gets to a point like the Olympics and you get down to some of the final things and unique things that are going on there. So, we all have different desires. One person’s cup of tea may not be another’s.

So, it goes on to say, and I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you… Now, different word being used here. It strictly is about the word “redeem,” “to redeem.” …and I will redeem you.

Now, interesting word here because it’s literally like, and it has more usage, and we’ll mention it later on, but like redeeming a kinsman, someone close in your family who is indebted because of debt or whatever that they can’t pay off and so you go into servitude in order to pay off the debt. But you can redeem them if you want to intervene for them, so they’re not tied up for certain number of years in a contractual type of thing to pay it off themselves.

You can free them, in other words, from that. To redeem them from that burden that would otherwise be upon them that they can’t proceed with their lives and their desires and their dreams because they’ve got a huge dept to pay off. So, you can go in and pay it off. That’s called redeeming. Kind of a simplified form of this that we’re talking about here.

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments. So, there are things that God is going to do when it talks about great judgments here, about execution of judgment, in that respect, upon Egypt and how He’s going to bring them then out and the process of that. That’s what’s being talked about here.

So, there are things that God is going to do to intervene in order to free them, to bring them into a position of not being under that kind of burden, under that kind of government.

Verse 7—And I will take you as My people. Because to this point in time here they didn’t have a relationship with God. Moses was out in a wilderness, an area of the world pretty much by himself, in the sense of being worked with by God. There was that period of time that he was out there after he left Egypt, of 40 years, and finally, then, of God bringing him back to fulfill more of His plan and purpose in a process here of how He was going to indeed redeem them.

He was the only one that was being worked with, in that respect. Even though they were His people that He was working with through a lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He wasn’t intervening in their lives yet, nothing was being done until these plagues started being brought upon the Egyptians.

He said, “I’m going to take you as My people.” We understand this is when God calls us out of spiritual Egypt, when He begins to draw us out of the world. That’s why I loved the series that we’ve had at different times here of sermons that talk about a calling, God establishing Israel, all the process we’re going through here to get up to this point here now and what we have to go through in order to become God’s people, of how God has to work with us.

I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. What did we have before God started doing that to us individually, drawing us out of the world, revealing more to us so we could make choices and decision, so He could be our God? We had to choose once He began to show us the truth, do we want that?

You think, well, that’s a stupid thing to ask, do we want that? Well, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people just in the last few decades that have had that opportunity and said no. Thousands that didn’t want that opportunity, didn’t want to take the steps that it required in order to come on into and be a part of God’s Family within the Church, within the Body on a spiritual plane.

I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Eternal your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. So, it doesn’t take us very long and we begin to learn gratitude and thankfulness as we respond, if we choose to respond to God. We begin to learn the seventh day, seventh day is the Sabbath, not Sunday.

What an incredible thing to come to understand the world called Christianity doesn’t even know that. They don’t grasp that at all. They’ve done away with that with misunderstanding of things about the law and how the law is nailed to a cross and all these ideas that they have that are so contradictory to what God says. Then we begin to be freed from that.

Then we realize along the way we continually have choices to make. The Sabbath. Passover. Never heard of that. We heard of Easter. Then we learn the counterfeit of that and how shallow the idea of Easter is and how ugly it really is when you come to understand it. On and on it goes in that area.

I am the Eternal your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will even bring you into the land, which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it to you a possession. I am Yahweh, the Eternal. Awesome.

So, with us a little bit different in that sense, but on a spiritual plane we understand what these things mean, that God indeed was going to begin to work with them on a physical plane giving them a physical inheritance. But it wasn’t about the physical inheritance. It was about the spiritual one that was to come, the Israel of God, the Church of God.

When we come along, when God calls us to be His people and we make the choice that “Yes, I want to be a part,” that’s what happens when you come to baptism. “I want to be one of Yours. I want to be a part of what You’re revealing.” We make that commitment to God, “I am Yours, period. You are first.” Where we don’t do that in our lives God works with us. He works with us sometimes for decades to refine and get rid of those things that interfere with that process, interfere with that truth.

…and I will give it to you as a possession. We know what that is, and it’s not a physical thing. It goes way, way, way beyond that when it has to do with the Church, and it’s done by God’s great power.

Now, next is the account from a recent series God Establishes Israel, and we need to go back and look at this because, again, it all adds to this. It helps to create an entire picture. That’s why we’ve gone through these series that God has brought us through step-by-step and we’re able to piece them together and focus upon them more fully, to appreciate more deeply what He desires that we see more clearly, more fully, and more thankfully, candidly.

In this account of God Establishes Israel, in that particular series where David addresses the fact that he dwells in an exceedingly fine home and he had this desire to build something then for God, for the ark of the covenant to dwell in, and it was here that he expressed this particular desire to Nathan. Nathan told him to go ahead and do it, but that night God revealed to Nathan, no, you need to go back to David now and tell him these words, because there was more that God was revealing, far more about this entire thing, that He had brought David to this point in time where David had this desire, and God was going to reveal to him something far, far greater. Begin to.

David didn’t grasp it in the beginning here by any measure. He wrote Psalms later on that he may have come to see things that aren’t expressed there by him or expressed in scripture by him or of him. But again, most of it was for later on, things that Christ would begin to reveal and things that we have known in the Church since Philadelphia and on especially.

Because even the early apostles didn’t understand a lot of these things, the big picture of what all this is and how it’s accomplished.

Again here, Nathan was sent back to tell David what is stated here. We’ll spend some more time there just reviewing some of this as a part of this entire story.

2 Samuel 7:4. Now, we’re going to build up to it in time here but it’s incredible how God worked with the Israelites once He had taken them out of Egypt to begin to reveal to them this matter of redemption. He used many examples about redeeming and redemption that were done on a physical plane to lead to something much, much deeper. But God spent a lot of time with all of this so that we could learn from it, so that we could see and grasp and understand more clearly what God was doing and what His plan entailed or would entail.

2 Samuel 7:4—But that night, the word of the Eternal came to Nathan, saying, Go tell My servant David, Thus says the Eternal, Will you build a house for Me to dwell in? So again here, understanding God builds the house, God builds a temple, He’s establishing our dwelling and so forth.

Will you build a house for Me to dwell in? It’s something that only God can do because it’s on a spiritual plane. This is what He began to reveal here. But he didn’t understand this. His son didn’t understand this. Some of this understanding didn’t begin to be given until Christ spoke, and then they didn’t really grasp what he had to say at that time. Not fully. Not completely yet.

For I have not dwelt in a house since the time that I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt. What an incredible thing here, that all the way back there He began to reveal some of these things, but they weren’t given the ability to see it all yet. They had no idea, the Israelites didn’t.

And to what point in this case, when you talk about a process here that went on as far as David and so forth, David didn’t grasp and understand how they were being worked with, what God was doing in their lives. They didn’t understand the meaning of what was built out there in the wilderness and then what they carried with them for so long, when you talk about the ark of the covenant and so forth, and then, finally, even to this point in time here, David was still without great understanding.

You think, it took so long. How many hundreds and thousands of years; four thousand years before He finally came to a point where He began to reveal much more through His Son who began the fulfillment of the things He told David right here.

For I have not dwelt in a house since the time that I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt, even to this day, but have walked about in a tent and in a tabernacle. Wherever I have walked with all the children of Israel have I ever spoken of a word to anyone of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd My people Israel, saying, Why haven’t you built Me a house of cedar?

So again here, He talks about walking around in it. “I was there. I moved,” in essence, “around with Israel, where they went,” and so forth, “but I didn’t dwell; I didn’t dwell in anything that you made.” Incredible.

Now, therefore, thus shall you say to My servant David… We can read this on a physical plane and realize, no, God didn’t. But to appreciate more deeply how long God chose to reveal this entire process, that it was spiritual? We are blessed to see it, something that we tend to take for granted. We do! Because we know, and so many of us have known this for a long time, and that’s all we have known. We have known that truth since we’ve been called. Some hadn’t known those truths, all the truths involved in this process.

Now, therefore, thus shall you say to My servant David, Thus says the Eternal of hosts, I took you from the sheepfold, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel. When I read something like this I think it’s incredible how you can learn various things that are going to help you later on in life and you don’t even know it. He, candidly, had things molded and fashioned in him from doing a physical routine at a very young age, as a teenager here, and began to see that God was working in his life and with him, that he was able to do things that he knew that wasn’t normally done. People didn’t do these things – grab a lion or a bear underneath here and do them in, so to speak. Can’t imagine! Not something I’d want to do. But he did it and he had that confidence to do it. Incredible!

I have been with you wherever you have gone, again, clearly showing that it’s God who does this. God is the one. He’s with us and we’re able to accomplish and do and see the things we do only because of God. It’s not by our own ability.

Again, I can’t help but remind everyone about how it has been so often in times past. Even through Philadelphia there were so many, large numbers, not small numbers but large numbers of people who had this concept that you can take these things and prove them to yourself and that you can study into things and learn more, basically, on your own. That’s a bunch of “you know what” – feces, to put it mildly.

Because you can’t! God has to give it to you. He, first of all, worked through an apostle, Herbert Armstrong, to give these things to the Church, and then ministers could build upon the truths that He had given. Again, a matter of not giving them but a matter of building upon them to expound upon those things that were given as long as they stuck to the trunk of the tree. Some did, and many did not through time. All to learn through that process.

I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are on the earth. So again here, when you talk about David and just the fact that the king of Tyre built him a house, a lavish place in which to dwell, in which to live, because he was so moved by what he saw was happening in David’s life and how an entire nation of people was gathering together to do things. Very unique for a king to observe something like this.

Because if you know the history of Tyre, which we’ve gone into in recent time, and you look at the things that happened along the Mediterranean Sea and the commerce that was there and all the things that took place all the way around the northern part of Africa, all the way around to Spain, and you think of the battles and things that people fought and kings who fought with each other. Then here in the background, going back a little way, in this little land mass a nation is being born, physical nation. Awesome!

That’s what God is telling David, “I raised you up to be like the great, basically, great kings of the nations around you.” He knew what that meant, different ones who were around in different areas. Because when you go toward the Mediterranean there were some mighty powers at work at that time.

Verse 10—Moreover, I will appoint (set or make) a place (a standing place) for My people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell (abide) in a place of their own. So again here, so often these things can be read on a physical plane, and are, as a whole, by people. And candidly, in times past, by much in the Church on a physical plane, but the reality is it’s about a spiritual plane. We understand that. We grasp that.

…and be moved and shaken no more. Well, the only way to accomplish that is to be beyond this human life. Because the reality is there are prophesies that were fulfilled. That is why I think of the ones in Matthew 24 and different place that talk about earthquakes. We came to learn and understand that’s how it was translated and that’s how people would see it physically, but the reality is the word is about a shaking.

When you look at something happening on a massive scale that does something to people and large numbers of people and masses of people or whatever and think about the harm or the danger or the destruction that comes from an earthquake, couldn’t apply that or didn’t apply that on a spiritual plane because it’s about the Church, a massive shaking that took place.

I can’t help but think of the history of the Church starting in ’72 and then ’74 and then the late ‘70’s, early ‘80’s, and then we finally came down to the Apostasy. You talk about shakings? We’ve been through a lot. The people who have been in God’s Church since before these things took place back in the ‘70’s and on up around that period of time under Herbert Armstrong then and even on, experienced so many of these things. Incredible, what we have experienced, what we have seen. Many shakings that took place until finally there was a massive shaking.

There wasn’t a lot left when it was all said and done. Even the parts that had a part or wanted a part were shaken all over the world to where there was no cohesive organization of any kind, in that respect. Went through 3½ years like that. Incredible!

So again, things we can take for granted and not realize our history and the sacrifice that’s gone into it by God, by Christ, by those whom God has called, because we all learn no matter what period we’re called in through time.

…and I will plant them that they may dwell (abide) in a place of their own and be moved and shaken no more. That’s God’s desire to give to us, Elohim. That’s what it’s all about. Awesome! He wants to give us a part to be in His family and it’s a long journey to get there, 6,000 years to even begin the first giant phase of it. It’s taken God 6,000 years, Christ 2,000 years working with His Father to bring this to a head, to bring this to fruition.

That’s been God’s primary focus. Us. It’s just so hard sometimes for us to grasp that, how important His people are, how important His Church is.

Look at what He did to Egypt. Look at what took place. Something so massive that the entire world at that time was aware of it, of what took place, the army of Egypt destroyed, the hardships that came on an empire like that. Because Egypt was great at that particular time, massive and powerful, and yet once Pharaoh was destroyed and the entirety of his army, it was nothing, came to nothing. Incredible.

The nations around there, they knew it for decades and decades and centuries afterwards. They knew the stories of what had taken place. Incredible!

…nor shall the children of righteous oppress them anymore, as before, since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel. God takes them through a history. He takes us through history regularly because we’re not to forget. God has built upon all these things all along the way.

Just like here about this process of redeeming that God began to reveal much to the Israelites, especially when they’re in the wilderness, about the physical aspects of redeeming and laws associated with redeeming that He wanted them to learn from that, to practice so that we could learn from it on a spiritual plane later on, how important, how awesome all this was.

So again, since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel and have caused you to rest from all your enemies. Also, the Eternal tells you that He will make, in other words, of or from you a house.

Incredible, we’re a part of it. We know that. But how quickly things can be lost.

I think of Herbert Armstrong in the last couple of years of his life, began to focus very powerfully on the fact that the Church is the temple of God. Now, something we can say, “We’ve always known that.” Didn’t know that. But it wasn’t long after that when another administration came along, when God’s apostle was dead, that that was lost. It was lost to the ministry. It was lost to the Church, that God’s Church is the temple of God being spoken of in scripture.

It seems simple enough now but back then it wasn’t. It wasn’t something that was remembered nor understood. When scriptures were read about Christ coming in the flesh all that could be seen by the Church, as a whole, by the ministry at that time was that “Sure, he came in the flesh. We know that.” Well, the Protestants believe the same thing, so what’s the distinction? Because we didn’t grasp what it was about. We didn’t grasp it was about a spiritual temple. It was about Him coming into our lives, that we make up that spiritual temple.

Again, we need to know this history and understand that it’s only been recent and appreciate the sacrifice in life that God has given and gave, because God has suffered with the Church. Christ has suffered with the Church. It’s not just people that suffer, in the sense of sacrifice and the things that are given. It’s about what God has given, about the mercy and the patience and the work. Because God works and Christ works, and He works in our lives. He works tirelessly with us. Things that I can’t even begin to grasp, how He works in our lives to draw us, to work with us, to bring us along.

Because we are a handful and we continually resist Him, our Father. But we do that. It’s just a reality. Yet He doesn’t throw us away because He has a great plan for us. He sees Elohim and we don’t see it fully. But He works with us tirelessly. Thank God He doesn’t give up on us!

He’s consistent in that because He loves us. If you understand that kind of giving and that kind of sacrifice that they have given continually, then there should be a greater gratitude in life to realize and to understand more deeply the love of God. It’s because of those things you realize that love, how deep that is, how meaningful that is, and how valuable we are to God’s purpose and God’s plan.

Everything is about this. Everything is about us and yielding to this process, and those who have gone before us and those who are going to come afterward. But it’s hard for our puny selfish minds to keep that in mind all the time. It really is. That’s why we have Sabbaths, thankfully, that God can reinforce these things in us, and remind us, and take us through history and that which He has gone through with us and through peoples in times past, so that we hopefully can appreciate these things more deeply. A lot has gone before us to bring us to this point.

I think of sermons I’ve heard in times past about the pioneers. I don’t care where they came from. But anyway, the journey was never easy back then. It was hard. A lot of people died. People who went across to go out west or whatever, to take part and gain control of a land that God gave to Manasseh, and to split apart Ephraim and Manasseh in a very powerful way. All those people who went before and then highways and everything else came along, and technology, and different things, and God just blessed more and more. But a lot of people suffered a lot. We benefit from that to this day then. Look at what we have. Incredible. If they hadn’t done these things…?

Well, much more so those who have gone before us in God’s Church through time. The apostles, the ones in the first four thousand years, and then on it goes.

So again, Also, the Eternal tells you that, He will make of you or from you a house. When your days are fulfilled, and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you. So again here, within this, this entire story, but again here, He’s talking to David about something He’s going to accomplish. Again, good to be reminded of. We just went through it recently.

But again, I hope we grasp when God reinforces something, when He gives it again it’s for a great purpose. It truly is.

I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. What can you think of but what God said from the very beginning of time? It began with the chief cornerstone, His plan and purpose. Everything has been built upon His Son. That’s how He’s going to work with mankind before He’s ever created, before the angelic realm was ever created, before a spirit world was ever created. Things we can’t grasp nor comprehend, that God has this plan of what He’s going to fulfill.

All the millennia. We don’t know, we don’t grasp time like that, of how long it took to create everything that’s out there. It didn’t just happen by the snap of a finger. I’m not saying God couldn’t do that. I don’t know. But He didn’t do it that way. The angelic realm was involved in that creation of everything that was out there. How? To what extent? We don’t know. But they were involved.

Then man was created on this little bitty spot out here in the midst of it all, just a speck of dust. This planet is a speck of dust in the universe. Amazing!

He shall build a house for My name. Not a physical son. Not Solomon. But the one He’s speaking of here that’s going to build this house is about Christ. Those things weren’t given to be fully understood for a long time.

He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Solomon’s wasn’t going to be established forever. But there’s a throne that began with David and a throne was going to be established that would be over a physical people called Israel, but the greater fulfillment is on a spiritual plane of a spiritual Israel and that kingdom who came from, the individual who came from the lineage of David. Awesome!

I will be his Father, and he shall be My Son. You know, we can’t even begin to grasp the excitement God had just of revealing this portion here that long before His Son was going to come. We’re talking about a long time before His Son was to come yet. And yet, this was a part of that plan that was coming a little bit closer.

We can’t grasp things like that fully; we can try to appreciate them. And so, to grasp the mind of God as He was revealing this at the time of David when he was king because He so yearned for and longed for this plan to be fulfilled and His Son to come. Because it was going to be His Son who would be the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Anointed One to be King of His Kingdom.

I will be his Father, and he shall be My Son. For committing… It’s not “if he commits iniquity,” because that’s not a proper translation because it’s not about him committing iniquity. He never would. But what’s being said here, in essence, is For committing iniquity – not him but his purpose to be fulfilled because he was first to be Passover, not the King.

For committing iniquity, I will, as it says, chasten him with the rod of men. So, for man’s, in essence, iniquity; for our sins he is going to suffer for us. That’s what he’s telling here, a future event that would take place in time, things that are prophesied in Isaiah of how he was going to suffer to the degree that no one would be able to recognize him, he’s going to suffer so much, because of, not his sins, ours, our iniquities. Incredible. I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men.

Verse 15—My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took from Saul, again here, talking about, in essence, in the context here because of sin, as I took from Saul whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever. In that context of Christ. In the context of the one who would have that lineage.

According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.

It’s important that we strive to grasp then David’s response here as was mentioned in that particular series. We’ll read that, verse 18. Because he was moved by God’s spirit. Again, not grasping what we grasp. Not even coming close to grasping because none of that history was there.

The Messiah hadn’t come yet. The Passover hadn’t come yet. Nothing had been fulfilled yet along those lines at all. The one that they thought would come and be the king, the Messiah that the Jews were looking for at the time of Christ, and they only saw it on a physical plane as people did through time there, of someone who’s going to relieve them from physical government, not grasping God’s plan and purpose for His Kingdom at all. That wasn’t a part of what was given to them to see.

Verse 18—Then king David went in, and sat before the Eternal, and he said, Who am I, O Lord Eternal? Something to always have in our minds. “Who am I?” “What are we?” “Who are we?” Well, we should know, and but by the grace of God, the love of God, the calling of God, the mercy of God, the patience of God, and on it goes, we’re able to be here, we’re able to see what God is doing in our lives and the plan that He has that’s almost to a point of being revealed to the world. Not quite there yet, so we wait.

We wait in God’s time to have revealed to us and to the whole world when that is there, a kingdom. Something that’s going to shock and astound this world, that mankind has never believed. Only those with whom God has worked and called and opened their minds to see on a spiritual plane. Because God’s spirit has to be involved to see and understand those things.

Who am I O Lord Eternal? That’s a humble spirit. Something to pray about on a continual basis, to ask for a humble spirit, to walk humbly before God, to never allow ourselves to be raised up in pride or haughtiness or self-importance. Any inkling of those things should be so repulsive to our minds that we detest them, that we loathe them.

…and what is my house, that You have brought me this far? Again, it’s all about God and what God is doing. And yet this was a small thing in Your sight, O Lord Eternal. You have also spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come. Now, he couldn’t grasp all that, but he was grateful and excited to think that God’s going to continue on.

I mean, he’s coming to that point in time in his life, it happens to everyone, where there is no more life. And you know that, and you think about different things and family and so forth, and things that are going to go on, and you want the prosperity to be there and to think that they’re going to be able, there’s going to be a family line that’s going to continue. Because he saw what happened to Saul and his family line for disobedience. A hope and a desire that everyone would obey God and be so blessed.

He says here, You have also spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come. Is this the manner of man, O Lord Eternal? “Can this really be accomplished with mankind?” “Can something like this on this plane happen with mankind?” The reality is no, it can’t happen. It can’t happen just with human beings by themselves.

If you look at the kings and what happened, they didn’t all follow God, did they? Well, we know the Israelites didn’t. But the tribe of Judah, on a physical plane they did the best of all of them, in the sense of holding on to certain aspects when you talk about God and talk about the Sabbath and various things. But it’s all on a physical plane and perverted and distorted by the priests and so forth, and the people in time.

But kings and so forth, they went away from God, they turned away from God. They began to drift, and so forth, and God corrected them. Just like they had to go into captivity for seventy years because of the things concerning the Sabbath and the Holy Days. So, it says here, “Can such a thing,” in essence, “happen with man?”

Now, what more can David say to You? This was overwhelming. This was exciting but overwhelming. It was on the level and the plane of unbelievable. But again, gratitude there to know that this is being said and there’s a possibility that something is going to be accomplished that he could grasp he didn’t understand.

There are a lot of things we do we don’t fully grasp nor understand, but we’ve been given so much (especially in this age), we move forward. It’s by that that gives us strength and courage and focus and everything else that we have.

For You, Lord Eternal, know Your servant. For Your word’s sake, and according to Your own heart, You have done all these great things, to make Your servant know. In other words, to know and to understand that everything he had, everything I have, everything you have, everything we have God has given to us. Everything! Every thing! Everything physical and spiritual.

Therefore, You are great, O Lord Eternal, for there is none like You, nor God except You. He knew that. Something that even took us in the Church time to come to grasp and see and know and understand because God had to reveal it in His time again. Something that the apostles understood, there was one God. But that began to be lost through time, especially through the period of Thyatira and then on into Sardis especially, those things went by the wayside, even what they did have.

Slowly but surely God began to re-establish truth in the Church, over a long period of time, seventy years whatever plus. Incredible, what the Church has gone through and what it went through. I guess, some of us came along toward the end of that.

Therefore, You are great, O Lord Eternal, for there is none like You, nor God except You. What an awesome thing, 2005, never forget it. Sermon after sermon after sermon all about God and His Son, all about the truth about who God is, who His Son is, and things that we just hadn’t come to fully grasp nor understand yet because it wasn’t time. God, it wasn’t His time to give it. It was something to try but also to make a distinction in, to separate God’s Church even more so from a scattering that took place.

Therefore, you are great, O Lord Eternal, for there is none like You, nor God except you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. Who is like Your people, like Israel? And who is like the Church? Do we grasp that, how much more important the Church is than the nation of Israel ever was? God did great things with a physical nation, awesome things on the earth. But He’s going to do far mightier things through those whom He’s called, far greater things that are going to make that look so puny, so puny.

Who is like Your people, like Israel, the one nation on the earth who God went to redeem for Himself. He began a process of redeeming at that time that He wants us to grasp what we have in this process of being redeemed that is so much greater than what they were given. Theirs was solely on a physical plane. Important, needful, beautiful, awesome what God did with them at that time. But what He’s doing with us is so much greater, so much greater!

God went to redeem for Himself as a people, to make for Himself a name. Our choice to respond to that. God wants to make for Himself a great name through us and in us. How awesome is that? Far greater than something done on a physical plane, done by His spirit, by His power that’s able to live and dwell in us and we in Him.

…to make for Himself a name, and to do for Yourself great and awesome deeds for Your own land, before Your people whom You redeemed for Yourself from Egypt. Again, the Church is far greater, far more important, the spiritual Israel that’s being molded and fashioned, that’s in the womb not yet born.

…redeem for Yourself from Egypt, the nations, and their gods? For You have made Your people Israel Your very own people forever. The name, but not all of them physically at that point by any measure. But what was being shown here and what was inspired by David to say is revealing something that’s about the Church and it’s about the Kingdom of God. Because that’s what continues forever, that Israel.

…and You, Eternal, have become their God. How blessed are we that He’s our God? Now, O Eternal God (Yahweh God), the word which You have spoken concerning Your servant, and concerning his house, establish it forever. That’s what God is going to do. We have the choice then to be a part of it, and our choice, that’s why we’re here, is to be a part of that and to be thankful and to be grateful for what God is doing in us and to hopefully come to even appreciate more deeply that love, that desire He has, what He’s revealed to us, to grasp the sacrifice, what has gone before us to give us what we have now. Awesome! How blessed are we?

Then in time God began to reveal more. It’s a progressive revelation. Awesome to understand that. It’s incredible to me that God has even given us that to understand, progressive revelation, because it means so much more. It truly does. It’s taken place through time, and a progressive revelation about Him redeeming Israel.

Psalm 130. Beautiful Psalms. A lot of Psalms, a lot of things said in scripture about this. So much here. Psalm 130:1—Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Eternal. Now, going to pause right here because this word “depths,” I’m just going to read you a Psalm, another Psalm here and we’re going to continue on in Psalm 130. But I want to read to you a couple verses here.

Psalm 69:2-3. This is where this word is used again here. I want to read this to you. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing. I have come into deep waters… Now, this is the word that’s being used here, I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.

Boy, I think about the Apostasy. I think about what it says in Revelation 12 when it talks about this flood and what it did to the Church. There were those who were, then, washed up and scattered all over the place because of it, and destroyed much, 2/3 quickly on. But that which came out upon the earth, that which Satan was responsible for, which Satan was behind, which Satan became the power of accomplishing and doing.

Apostasy. All about Satan. But he used a particular man to do what he accomplished, in a very powerful way. Then I think about what happened to us. We didn’t know. Well, I take that back. We didn’t know what all this was that was happening. We didn’t realize an apostasy was taking place. We didn’t realize the flood that had come upon us. But there were things about a comparison here we could make about drowning and about trying to keep our head above water, and what are we going to hold on to? What do you grab a hold of to stay alive, to keep going? How do you do this?

And so, there is this deep water that we were in and we were. It was like a flood. It was a hideous thing to go through. This kind of expression is used when it weighs you down so much, when you’re struggling for life. If anybody has been in a situation where they have kind of struggled in water.

I remember one time some currents. I got caught in a rip tide. It was Audra, went out to help. I’m not a great swimmer. But I knew you have to go sideways with the current, and finally got down to some jetties, I guess, some rocks that were going out in the water. They had barnacles all over them and hurt for two months after that because of all the little cuts they put all over you to climb up and get out of there.

But there are accounts like that. I remember others. I was never real fond of the water when I was younger. Didn’t learn how to swim until I was eighteen. Grew up in Kansas. We didn’t have a lot of water. But when you’re in a situation like that you see life ebbing, you see the possibility of life leaving you. Because you know what it means if someone drowns and they can’t breathe anymore.

And that’s what life can be like. Life can weigh us down so much we can be under water, we can be grasping for air, striving to grab a hold of something to stay above, and there’s a lot of torment that goes with that.

We went through a lot of torment as far as the Apostasy is concerned. We truly did. It was horrible. It was horrifying. Didn’t know what was happening to us. It was like a nightmare, absolute nightmare.

Well, this is a part of what’s being said here. When you realize you’re in that kind of a situation, what do you do? You better look to God. Better look to God. Physically and spiritually God better be there no matter what the outcome.

I am weary with my crying. There was a lot of crying back there during the time of the Apostasy. Hurt, pain, suffering, friendships, the separation of friendships, destroying of friendships. Walked to God’s house side by side with hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds of people who are no longer there.

You talk about being stabbed. You talk about the feeling of being stabbed when people turn against you, when no longer have those friendships and so forth. Those things hurt. Those who went through the Apostasy know what I’m talking about. Those who didn’t, can learn from it.

I am weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail while I wait for my God. That’s beautiful, in one respect, because if our eyes are upon God and we’re going through anguish and pain and suffering, whatever it might be in this life, and our eyes stay focused on God, that’s the beautiful thing. It truly is. Because there’s where your strength and your power and your life comes from, and your salvation and your redemption, and on and on it goes.

So again here, using that word “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Eternal.” Beautiful. Beautiful verse.

Going back to Psalm 130:2—Lord, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. So, there are times in life when, candidly, we do cry out more to God than others. There are things we go through, and we tend to cry out more when we’re going through fire, when we’re going through stress, when we’re going through some difficult, horrible trial, whatever that might be, whatever it is around us in this world. We can tend to be more in tune to, in that respect, a desire to look to God, a desire to cry out to God for deliverance than other times. But it’s good to be reminded of that so that we stir up that spirit and want to be stirred up in such a spirit to seek God in putting Him first.

…hear my voice. Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If You, Eternal, should mark iniquities… Kind of a unique way that this is stated. It’s a word that means “to watch” or “to keep hold.” In other words, “to hold one’s eyes on as a watchman or a gatekeeper.”

So, it’s basically a thankfulness here that God doesn’t mark our iniquities, in the sense of how it’s being used here. He doesn’t keep His eyes on us in the sense of never forgiving, never forgetting the sins, the iniquities. He doesn’t keep count, doesn’t keep a record. That’s kind of how this is being used. It’s not a matter of marking or counting or whatever it might be. Thank God He just erases it through this process of redemption. It’s gone.

Yet as human beings sometimes we can’t go on from something we’ve repented of. You know, once you repent, it’s gone. When you’ve been called by God and being worked with by God, it’s just gone. It’s in the past. Something happens and then a person stumbles and so you’ve got to keep fighting.

That’s the key to most everything in these kinds of things. You keep fighting. You keep fighting to conquer and to overcome whatever it might be knowing that it requires God’s help and God’s favor and God’s blessing to conquer, to overcome. Those are the words being used.

O Eternal, if you should mark iniquities, O Eternal, who could stand? “Who could survive,” in other words, “if you did that.” I mean, who would be here if God did that? Thank God He doesn’t do that.

But there is forgiveness with You, that You might be feared. We’re approaching a season of the year that has to do with God redeeming us, has to do with a Passover, has to do with the very thing here we’re talking about, the ability to be forgiven of sin. Awesome. Beautiful.

There is forgiveness with You, that You might be feared. Sad more people don’t fear God in the sense of wanting to honor God, wanting to obey God, seeking God’s help in order to obey Him. We’ve had so many, so many, so many who have gone by the wayside who haven’t had that kind of mind, to fear moving away from God.

Well, that’s where pride enters in. Because it comes to a point in time where people can become weak and after a while begin to judge things and feel that they have the right to decide what is true and what isn’t true, what is right and wrong. The reality is, no, you don’t. God gave you what is right and true and you either receive it or you reject it.

You don’t have a choice to decide something else that wasn’t given to you from the beginning of your calling or at any measure along the way when truth was revealed more. No right whatsoever before God Almighty. But we’ve had thousands who have done that. Thousands in PKG who had those opportunities and gone astray. Incredible.

Verse 5—I wait for the Eternal, my soul (my life), I wait for the Eternal, and His word I do hope. It should be our great desire. What a thing to pray before God, truly.

My soul… This word “soul” here, it’s a word that just has to do with “breathing with life.” “Nephesh” is about breathing with life. You have life in you so you’re saying, basically, “my life” waits for the Eternal, in other words, another way of saying it is, “I live for the Eternal.”

That should be our life. “I live for, my life is to live for the Eternal, the life God is giving me. This breathing life is to live for Him because He gave it to me, and He’s given so much more on a spiritual plane.”

So again, my life, as it says here, I live for the Eternal more than those who watch for the morning. “Watch,” it’s the same word as “mark” used before here, “to mark, to watch for, to keep track of.”

So again here, not fully appreciating what all is being said here in the sense of an agrarian society, if that be the case. Could be many other applications of this kind of thing here but the only thing I can think of in parts of this is when you get older and you wake up too early, can’t get back to sleep. It hits most people at some time in their life, and it’s a horrible thing.

But for them, oftentimes especially, if you think about a harvest, and that was an agrarian society, and when you talk about harvest especially there is always that desire to get out there as soon as the day breaks and waiting for that moment. It’s just like a clock that goes off, and especially if you live in that kind of community, you don’t need an alarm clock. When you’re used to doing something like that, you’re ready to go as soon as the crack of dawn. Because you didn’t have lights and so forth, you had to wait for the sun for light. Anyway, physical things that are hard for us to relate to sometimes.

Verse 7—O Israel, hope in the Eternal, for with the Eternal is mercy. I hurt for people who have left, who lost all this, who never grasped this fully. What a horrible thing to not be able to have this in your life in your thinking. “O Israel, hope in the Eternal.” When you lose that hope and the human mind can deceive itself to think it can hope in something else, that they can be in more agreement with?

I think of all the scattered groups out here and especially in the beginning after the Apostasy, and people would jump around from one to the other until it was their way. God doesn’t work that way.

O Israel, hope in the Eternal, for the Eternal is mercy, and with Him is great redemption. There is the power. God has that power, and we want that, we desire that, and we should understand then, seek to appreciate the sacrifice through the ages that has gone into this, to give us what we’re getting ready to observe here pretty soon from now, Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, and on it goes.

And He shall redeem Israel from all it’s iniquities. That’s what it’s about isn’t it in a nutshell, to be redeemed from all of our iniquities? Because there is nothing you can pay – there’s no price you can pay – only God can give it and He did through His Son. That was the purpose of His Passover, His Son to come and die for us.

To appreciate that, to understand that, to understand what we are, how much we need that day by day, that we need to be forgiven of our sins regularly because there is something in our thinking, in our mind that comes out of this mouth, you know, of a word said or the way it’s said that just isn’t what it should be. It isn’t fully of God yet.

We have that in us because we’re human beings and we have this battle that goes on and we want to refine that and do better and better. And so, we catch ourselves and we go before God and repent. Thank God we can continue to do that over and over again. It’s a part of a redeeming process. We understand it’s a process, and we’re so thankful to God for it, otherwise we couldn’t be here. And He shall redeem Israel from all it’s iniquities.

Psalm 103. A Psalm of David. You know, sometimes if people are getting stuck in a rut of going through prayer life, in a sense of it begins repeating itself and there’s not a whole lot of change, sometimes it’s good to create that, to make that. Sometimes it’s good to go through a Psalm and apply it to self, moi. “How does that apply to me?” and then converse with God about it. It’s powerful. It really is.

These are inspired by God’s spirit. They’re given to human beings, to mankind, to the Church for us to reflect upon, for ourselves to see ourselves more fully. Maybe not in every verse. Maybe not in every instance. But most of the time with God’s help we’ll see those things that will help us to appreciate things about God’s plan and God’s purpose more, and especially a matter of a mirror and seeing our nature and seeing the mercy of God and things that we work through, and so forth. On and on it goes.

Those can be very powerful as a combination of prayer to help mold and fashion our thinking in our minds toward God. It’s part of the transformation, it truly is, on a spiritual plane. So, consider those things from time to time. Doesn’t have to be done all the time but from time to time it’s an awesome exercise to go ahead and do those things, to implement that as a tool, I should say, in your life to use in prayer.

So here, just knowing this was given to David, Psalm 103:1—Bless the Eternal with all my life. It says, “O my soul,” but we know what that means, “with all my life.” Now, if you say that before God, for it to be true that says an awful lot, doesn’t it? “Bless the Lord Eternal with all my life.”

For God to be one, that sure entails a lot in life, in our lives and what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And is that true? And where it isn’t true, we better come clean before God and say, “Father, forgive me. Help me to work on this. Help me to make this better. Help me to change this aspect,” whatever it might be in life.

Because I’ll guarantee you, when looking in that kind of a mirror there are certain things if we’re truthful and honest before God. God knows everything in our life, in our minds. Nothing is hidden from Him. That’s the way we should want it. That helps us then with His favor and His spirit to be able to see ourselves more clearly so we can grasp what He’s redeeming and the beauty of being able to go through that and live through that.

To recognize, again, that love. It’s just a compounding thing we just grow and grow in more and more with God’s spirit. But it only grows with God’s spirit and truthfulness before Him.

So again here, how would you pray this? “Bless the Eternal with all my life.” So, it’s just like the old cash register, ding, ding, what pops up that’s not true to that? Because there should be some things that pop up.

And all that is within me… All, everything, 100%? You can’t do it. You can’t do it, and I can’t do it. But I want to do it; we want to do it. We should strive to do it, to want this, and cry out to God. It’s like this thing going back to a man after God’s own heart, a woman after God’s own heart. It should be that desire that we have within us that comes alive with God’s help, God’s spirit.

And all that is within me, bless His holy name. We reflect, we carry the name of God! Not just the Church of God, but we are a part of the Body of Christ. We are a part of the Church, the Church of God, the Body that God lives in, the things that He revealed to David that he grasped and understood partially on a physical plane but couldn’t grasp what was going to come to pass several hundred years later in God’s own Son, of the lineage, of his own lineage, being born who would be Messiah and all the things that would take place then in his life because he was going to be Passover.

Bless the Eternal with all my life, and do not forget all His benefits. So, good point in time to stop and pause and think about that when we pray such a thing, when we say such a thing. What are all these benefits? Well, you don’t have time to go through them all in prayer! You really don’t. If you begin to look at every aspect of different things in your life and how God has worked for you from the time before you were ever called to the time when you were called and the things that have happened ever since, a lot of prayer there.

Bless the Eternal, with all my life, and do not forget all His benefits; who forgives all your iniquities. Again, this thing of redemption. All our iniquities, everything in the past gone, nothing recorded, nothing kept in counting at all, clean. Incredible.

…who heals all your diseases (your infirmities). The biggest infirmity is right in your mind. That’s what God is healing. He’s healing the mind. That’s the thing of transformation. It’s a new mind. Because the human mind is diseased on a spiritual plane. It truly is and it can’t help it. But that’s the way it was created, that’s the way it was made. But it is diseased – to destruction, to lust, to greed, to be an adversary of God.

That’s what selfishness is. It’s an adversary to God. It fights against God. What an incredible thing when He brings us into a relationship, to have that put behind us and to move forward and to begin a relationship with God our Father.

…who redeems your life from destruction. To get rid of self, to change self, to conquer self, to overcome this.

But too often in life we’re too concerned about conquering and overcoming, helping others to overcome and conquer things we see in them, things they need to address and do, and we take the light off of ourselves when we need to be putting a strong beam right in here looking in ourselves and what it is “I” need.

Because this is all you can change. They have to change themselves in their calling, in their time, whenever that is, when it’s all said and done. Not that you might not have some part or whatever, with family. Anyway, we won’t go into all that right now.

… who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness. It’s like a crown that God gives us, His loving kindness. To know we wear that, that we’re God’s…God’s, God Almighty.

To realize that whatever we go through that’s coming up, some of the stuff out there that if you look at them on a physical plane just could scare the “you know what” out of you. It’s a scary world we live in and it’s getting scarier all the time, it really is. We don’t know what’s around the corner, what’s coming next.

Things are heating up in the world, threats in nations, war is being spoken of. China rattling sabres right and left, telling their people to prepare for war, doing what they’re doing toward Taiwan, threats they’re throwing out to different parts of the world, to the UK and others about messing around with Hong Kong. Their desires for moving into the South China Sea and their power and their ability.

Amazing, today, finally, someone in the news is talking about how we finally realized that they have missiles that can strike from a long distance and destroy a ship in the South China Sea, and farther away, with incredible accuracy. The threat is there. Could destroy any carrier, many carriers and things we have at a moment’s notice. Coordinated something?

So, they’re telling their people prepare for war, their military, prepare for war. Why use that kind of language? Because they’re preparing for war and have been for a long time. We’re sitting back here twiddling our thumbs and don’t realize what’s around the bend. Incredible.

Then when it’s all said and done it primarily won’t even come from there. Well, the first part that’s going to take place here in this country. But as far as what’s going to destroy the world, it’s coming, in the sense of a third of mankind. Incredible!

So, scary things. We can’t grasp how scary that is until it starts happening. Then you’ll be scared. You will have fear. We will all have fear. You can’t help it. The world has never experienced anything like that.

But to understand this, to understand God’s plan and God’s purpose and where we are in the scheme of things, and that very soon behind all that what’s going to happen? It’s what we hold on to and we look at and we believe with all of our being. Your life, my life, our lives are in God’s hands. Beautiful thing. Where else would you want them?

If you understand this, you know what that means. …who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. That’s a kind of love that you don’t experience that in human life to the level by any measure that you can with God.

…who satisfies your mouth with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

The Eternal executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. So, He wants us to think about those things from time to time. That’s why sometimes to go through certain Psalms, it’s good. It’s good to use it in prayer. It’s good to think about those things. God wants us to remember our history, because we have 6,000 years of it that has brought us to here.

He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. The Eternal is merciful and gracious. I think of how often those things are said in the Psalms, about God’s mercy, how merciful He is and we should know that. We’re here because of God’s mercy. He didn’t deal with us according to our sins. He hasn’t. He’s blessed us to be able to be forgiven of them when we’ve been sincere and genuine and go before God and repent and seek to conquer and overcome those weaknesses, those errors, those faults in our body, in our minds.

…slow to wrath. That’s what the word is. Again, I hate the way some things are translated because it tries to picture God as being human, and He’s not, but to have human weaknesses. Because anger is a human weakness.

This is a matter of the execution of wrath. When it’s time it’s a matter of a judgment. There are times in life where God must execute judgment and cannot allow sin to continue, just as He’s going to do in a spirit world with spirit beings who have been filled with sin and cause incredible destruction for how long now?

He will do that with human beings who fail to repent of sin when they’re given that opportunity or those who have become set in that way and that execution will have to be upon them, righteously so. Not a matter of God getting all angry about it and upset about it as we do as human beings when things don’t go our way. To paint God like that is just wrong. Truly is.

It’s a matter of love. And to execute judgment, His kind of judgment as a matter of love is nigh to impossible with human life except with God’s spirit. Then we can experience it in measure.

…slow to wrath, again, in the execution of judgment, and abounding in mercy. Desiring to give mercy first. He will not always contend with us, strive with us, with human life. Because of His plan. What a beautiful thing to know and to understand.

Nor will He keep (reserve); again, it’s not “His anger.” It’s going back and referring back to this thing of the execution of judgment forever. A time of execution of wrath. He has not dealt with us according to our sins; nor punished us according to our iniquities. Thank God.

Let’s just stop there. We’ll pick this up next Sabbath in Part 2. That’ll be a good place to stop.

But again, Psalms, a great place to go to, to use, to implement them once in a while in prayer. Very powerful in helping us to appreciate more deeply the plan of God, the purpose of God, and especially in this subject of redemption and God’s mercy and God’s love. Awesome!