Episode Transcript
Hosea chapter 14.
Hosea chapter 14.
Man, we had such a good time in Sunday school this morning.
So grateful.
So grateful.
Let me just remind everyone this morning that we had a total of 40, I believe it was, gospel contacts for the week.
And y'all keep passing out those tracts.
We got some more black booklets in the back.
Our printer's done gone down on it, so our print shop that used to do it, he doesn't do it for us anymore.
So when Bible Bill gets back, I'm going to try to get him to get me set up with some of the folks that help him.
And hopefully we can get him printed again.
In the meantime, those sticky tracts are what we need to be handing out if possible, because it will take them to the same booklet for almost nothing.
It's just a very, very small fee, and they can read it on their phone.
In the meantime, till we get some printed up.
But, uh, Hemi Vel saw the Muslim banner that I posted.
Ain't that wonderful?
We have several of those Muslim banners that are being printed.
I think they're all printed now, and they're going to Mindanao.
And, uh, I don't know if our 50,000 Muslim booklets have made it over there yet by ship.
But hopefully they'll make it over there while Brother Bill is there, and they'll take those to Mindanao as well.
They'll bet you they'll go to Mindanao, but it'd be nice to have them, Brother Bill's there.
So be in prayer for them.
Uh, don't forget our ladies' fellowship, which is going to be November the 16th from 9 to 11 a.m.
November 16th, 9 to 11 a.m.
Come and be encouraged by the Word and have a good time of fellowship and bring a friend.
All right.
Hosea, Chapter 14, God willing, will be expounding, Verse 3, this morning.
Don't forget, after church, we're going to have our thanksgiving supper.
And, uh, boy, I think it's going to be good.
We've got a lot of good food over there.
Enjoy our fellowship and our food together.
Uh, James Johnson, you were the one of the last ones to come in.
How's the parking situation out there this morning?
Yeah, I mean, did you have any trouble finding a place to park?
No trouble.
Good.
All right.
Good deal.
So, uh, if our, uh, Genesis of Jesus folks ever start staying, then, uh, me and Brother Shephard may start having to park over here to make room in our auxiliary parking.
But, uh, man, what a wonderful time in Genesis to Jesus.
I think we'll have some believers, uh, in this class by the time we're through.
Some people come to faith in Christ, so keep praying for them.
Hosea, Chapter 14, Verse 3, the tile of the message this morning is Words of Deliverance.
Words of Deliverance.
I need some water of deliverance here.
In the previous verse, we studied in Verse 2 last week, Israel had fallen in their sands and Hosea told them to return to their God.
The problem is they had committed great sins against God.
They had forsaken God.
They had went to serve other gods.
They were worthy of God's judgment not coming into God's presence.
So they couldn't just pick up where they left off and just waltz right into God's presence and pretend like nothing ever happened.
My job requires me to wear a tie each day at work.
Some of y'all just would not do that.
I know that.
But, uh, but I've worn a tie since I was a little boy.
It doesn't bother me a bit to wear a tie.
Years ago at our courthouse, our federal courthouse, there was a man who worked there who for whatever reason that day decided he had had enough.
He was fed up working there and he decided he wanted to quit.
And instead of giving his boss two weeks notice, instead of making sure that he didn't put his coworkers in a bind by leaving them short handed, he just suddenly pulled off his tie, threw it in the trash can, and walked off the job and quit.
That's quite a departure.
I mean, that's making a statement, is it not?
It's letting people know how you feel about the people you work for and the people you work with.
Now what if that next day after that man quit, what if he just showed up for work with a tie on, all cheerful like, and pretended like nothing ever happened, pretended like he never quit at all.
He just shows up to go back to work.
Do you think they would accept him back and pretend right along with him that he never quit and did them the way he did?
No, not a chance.
The only way that they might consider taking that man back after doing what he did would be if he came to them with words, just like we looked at last week.
And he humbly told his bosses, "I want to deeply apologize for my behavior yesterday.
I'll let my emotions get the best of me, and I acted foolish and disrespectful, and if you could find in your heart, I ask that you forgive me and give me another chance, and I promise I won't ever do you like that again."
Once fellowship is broken, once one party has become offended by the other party and become the enemy of the other party, then the offending party needs to make amends before that relationship can be restored as it once was.
It's in this light that Hosea told Israel and Hosea 14.2 last week, "Take with you words, and turn to the Lord and say unto him, Take away all iniquity."
Remember what we learned last week?
That means bear all our iniquity and receive us graciously, for by grace are you saved through faith.
So will we render the calves of our lips.
So bear our sin, receive us by your grace, and we'll give you thanks and praise for it, Lord.
That's the only way we can return to you.
"Take words with you, Israel," Hosea said.
"Go to God humbly, giving him a righteous reason why he should take you back, and the only righteous reason God will take any of us back after we have parted ways with him, after men have parted ways in the Garden of Eden, is to the reconciliation that Jesus made for us at the cross.
Say to the Lord, "Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously."
And now as we continue to the next verse this morning, Hosea is building on what we learned last week.
"Lest there be any misunderstanding of what Hosea said in verse 2," he's going to elaborate in verse 3.
So he tells them, "Tell the Lord," look in your text now, "Asher shall not save us."
"Asher shall not save us."
Father, we thank you so much for your precious Word.
God, I pray you'll remove all distractions from us this morning.
Help us to live and learn and the power of Jesus' cross and is empty to him.
May all eyes be on you this morning, Lord, I pray.
As your spirit, Father, teaches your Word and breaks it down in our hearts, Lord, and gives us the understanding, Father.
We pray in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
"Asher shall not save us."
Now, Asher was a son of Shem.
Remember Ham, Sham, and Japheth?
And he appears to be the father of the Assyrian people, if you're taking notes, from whom the nation of Assyria got their name.
The name "Asher" that you're seeing here and the name "Assyria" are the same name.
It's the same exact Hebrew word.
It just depends on if the translators translated "Asher," the man, or Assyria, the nation.
It's the same word, though.
The Hebrew word translated "Asher" and "Assyria" again are the same in the Old Testament, if you'll remember, as Israel was describing the man Israel.
But sometimes it described the nation that came from Israel, right?
We still call Israel "Israel."
When we think of Israel today, we think of Israel the nation.
But Israel the nation got their name from Israel the man, right?
Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel.
And so, Hosea says, "When you return to God, you tell him, 'Asher shall not save us.'"
Now, in the previous verse last week, Israel was to take words to the Lord concerning their need for forgiveness, bear all iniquity, forgiveness.
But today in this verse, Israel is told to take to the Lord words concerning their need for deliverance.
Deliverance.
Now, forgiveness is the act of removing our sin from our person.
Deliverance, on the other hand, is the act of rescuing our soul from our enemy.
And we'll repeat it again.
For forgiveness is the act of removing our sin from our person.
Deliverance is the act of rescuing our soul from our enemy.
And both are different.
You've got to get your sin removed, but you also have to be delivered from your enemy, which is the devil and death, who holds us in bondage by our sin.
And so both are different, yet they're inseparable aspects of our salvation.
You must be forgiven.
You must be delivered.
And Hosea told Israel, "Say to God, 'Asher shall not save us.'"
"Asher shall not save us from our enemy."
Now, like today, somebody was always trying to overthrow Israel back then.
Again, Hezbollah lobbed some more bombs over into the nation of Israel this past week.
And it was the same way back then.
Someone was always trying to get Israel.
Why?
Did they have a constant enemy?
Because they represented us who have a constant enemy.
And they were surrounded by enemies.
And this, again, represents the fact that we all face, being sons of Adam, we all face a common enemy.
And we need to be saved from that enemy.
2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 3 through 4.
2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 3 through 4 says, "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
So the God of this world, that's the devil.
And he blinds the eyes of people.
Why?
Because he doesn't want them to be saved by the gospel of Jesus.
1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8 says, "Be sober, be vigilant, because you are adversary the devil."
So the devil blinds the eyes of people so they won't be saved.
He wants to keep us in bondage to sin, Satan, and death.
And then Peter calls that same devil our adversary.
He says he walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
So we all have a common ancestor.
That's Adam.
And that means we all share a common enemy, and that's the devil.
And notice that Peter said, "You're adversary the devil."
Not mine, but yours.
It doesn't matter what country you're from.
It doesn't matter what color skin you have.
We all came from Adam, and thus we all share a common enemy, the devil who seeks to destroy our soul.
What God says to Israel about their enemy, he says to us.
Israel's earthly enemy represents the greater spiritual enemy that the sons of men face.
And that enemy has ensnared us by our sin, and that sin has condemned us all to death.
Like Israel, we need to be rescued.
We need to be saved from our enemy, and Asher will not save us.
When Israel trusted in Asher, they were trusting in their fellow man to save them from their fellow enemy.
This is what we're looking at here.
Asher was Assyria.
And so when they were trusting in the nation of Assyria to protect them from their surrounding enemies, they were trusting in their fellow man to save them from their fellow enemy.
You all see where we're headed here?
But before we can be saved, we must recognize there's not a single man-made institution on earth that can save us.
There's not a single man on earth who was born of Adam that can save us from the condemnation of Adam.
We were all born into Adam's curse.
Your priest cannot save you from sin and death.
The pope cannot save you from sin and death.
Mary or some other saint cannot save you from sin and death.
No religious guru can save you from sin and death.
No earthly doctor, no lawyer, king, no nation, no man-made lodge, no church, no man-made institution, no kind of association that is made up of men can save you from sin and death.
Why?
Because they all need saving too.
A common man saving you from a common enemy, they all need saving too.
That would be like a cancer patient trusting in another cancer patient in the cancer ward to deliver them from cancer when they can't even deliver themselves.
That's like a man on death row putting his trust in another man on death row to get him off death row.
Brother Shepherd, I had this case I was working years ago, and this man that just could not keep himself out of jail was writing legal advice to another man on how to stay out of jail.
And I just marvel at who would even give this man credit and listen to this fellow, but that's the way it is.
When we trust in our fellow man, people get great comfort out of trusting in their fellow man, but Asher can't save you.
I attended a funeral once here at this church.
We loaned the church building out to a particular church that they just had too many people that they couldn't fit in their little building, and I never see anything like it.
And I won't see anything like it again because I've told them no sense.
But they had people from all these different churches get up and read proclamations.
Whereof and wherefore and whereas, and it sounded like something at the state house, reading proclamations as to how wonderful the person, this deceased person, was.
It was quite amazing.
I'd never seen anything like it.
But all the awards, all the ceremonies, all the proclamations of man mean nothing to the Lord.
The only one who can declare us righteous is God, and he does so through the righteousness of his son who died for us.
Asher will not save you.
Don't trust in any man-made association.
We learn that back in Hosea chapter 5, as well as other chapters in Hosea, that Israel had been trying to receive help from Assyria, which is Asher.
Hosea 5.13, for example, says this, "When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian," that'd be the same thing as saying to Asher, "and sent to King Jerab, yet could he not heal you nor cure you of your wound."
The only one who can heal us of sin's wound, the only one who can cure us, is the man who walked in the person of Jesus Christ and told the leper, "Be clean."
The one who told the lame man, "Rise, take up your bed, and walk."
The one who told Lazarus, "Lazarus, come forth."
That's the only one who can heal us from sin's wound, is Jesus.
He does so by being condemned in our place.
Hosea chapter 53 verse 5, but he was wounded for our transgressions.
That's how we get care of our wound, is by Jesus being wounded in our place.
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement or the punishment of our peace was upon him.
And with his stripes, that is the stripes of the whip on his back, we are healed.
That's the only way we can be healed from sin's wound.
The saddest part of the whole thing is they went to Assyria, they trusted in Assyria originally to save them.
And Assyria ended up being the ones to conquer them.
Isn't that amazing?
Now here's a conclusion we can derive from that.
If your faith is not in Christ, then what you trust to save you will ultimately destroy you.
If your faith is not in Christ, then what you're trusting to save you will ultimately destroy you.
People who trust in their good works to save them, what are they trusting in?
They're trusting in the law.
And you know what?
The very law that they trust in will be the law that condemns them in the end.
The very law that shows that they're guilty sinners.
Hosea said, "Tell God, "Asher will not save us, we're not putting our trust in any kind of man-made institution at all."
Why does he have to say that?
He's already said, "We're going to have to receive us graciously."
He already said, "You have to bear our sins."
I'll tell you while we're clarifying here, it's because religion gets all messed up in people's minds.
You ask a lot of religions.
You ask the Catholic Church.
You ask the Church of Christ.
I had a long talk with the Church of Christ person a while back, a few years back, about this very thing.
They will tell you real quick, a false church will tell you, "We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone."
You'll think, "Well, man, they believe just like I do."
But they don't.
Because they believe that being saved by grace through faith in Christ means this.
I'm going to trust God's grace.
I want to have faith in Jesus that by His grace, He will help me live a good enough life that God will accept me.
You see how backwards that is?
That's not grace.
That's God giving you a boost.
Man, I used to love it.
When I worked for my dad growing up, I don't know if you remember this, Dad, but when I worked for my dad growing up, if we went out on a wrecker call to pick a car up with our wrecker, it didn't matter what was wrong with that car.
There could have been oil leaking out of it.
It didn't matter what was wrong with that car.
You'd pull up and there would be a large percentage of the people that would say, "Well, what's wrong?"
They'd say, "Well, I don't know.
I think I need a boost."
You remember that, Daddy?
"I think I need a boost."
I'm like, "Oh my goodness.
I need a boost.
All right."
Like, if you put a boost cable, it's just going to be healed.
Jesus didn't come to give us a boost.
He came to give Himself a ransom for many.
We don't need a boost.
We need a man to take our place and do for us what we could not do.
This is why He's saying, "Asher's not going to save you."
There's a lot of churches that believe, "If you're not a member of this particular church right here, you're not going to heaven."
There's Baptists that believe, if you're not a member of their particular denomination of Baptists, you're not one of the bride of Christ.
There is no man-made institution that's going to help you get into heaven.
Asher cannot save you.
Next, Hosea says, "Till God," look back in your text, in Hosea, "We will not ride upon horses."
We will not ride upon horses.
Now see, when you come to God, because right now we're born separated from God because of our sin and Adam.
So when we return to God, when this reconciliation is made and sinful man is reconciled to God, that sinful man can't come to God riding upon horses.
What in the world does that mean?
We will not ride upon horses.
It means we won't ride horses into battle against our enemy.
Again, our common enemy is the devil.
It's sin, it's Satan, it's death, and we're not going to ride horses into battle against our enemy.
This is speaking about something to help us conquer our enemy, the devil, sin and death.
Something to give us a boost, to help us somehow overcome that by God's grace, Jesus will help us live a good enough life so God can say, "Well done, my faithful servant.
Now I'm going to take you into heaven because you've lived good enough for me.
By my grace, you live good enough for me to accept you."
You see, a mounted soldier, one on a horse, a mounted soldier, he has an advantage over his enemy in battle compared to being a foot soldier.
I'd much rather go into battle on a horse than on foot.
And so because that advantage in battle, people back then had a tendency to trust in their horses to help them defeat their enemy.
They were the ones defeating the enemy, but the horse gave them the boost.
The horse gave them that advantage, and with the horse's help, they could overcome their enemy.
But Psalm chapter 20 verse 7, Psalm 20 verse 7 says this, "Some trust in chariots," that means some trust in chariots to win the battle against the enemy, "and some in what?
Horses.
But we will remember the name of the Lord our God."
You remember in the Gospel of John, the Bible says, "He came unto his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them gave he power, to become the sons of God.
Even to them that believe on his name.
We will trust in the name of the Lord our God."
We're not going to trust in chariots.
We're not going to trust in horses.
We're going to trust in the name of God.
And so when we come to God, we're not coming riding upon horses.
We're not coming with some kind of advantage that says, "You know what?
I believe that my good standing in the community is going to give me a leg up on the other guy, and God will accept me and reject that person."
We're not coming upon horses like the Pharisees saying, "God, I thank you.
I'm not like this publican over here.
I fast.
I do this."
What's he saying?
He's quoting all the rules that he keeps and all these things.
That somehow the synagogue is going to give him a leg up, and his behavior is going to give him a leg up.
He says, "We're not going to come to God riding upon horses.
We don't defeat our enemy with a little help.
God defeats our enemy with no help from us."
When God gave the first Gospel message in the book of Genesis 3, verse 15, he said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.
You shall bruise your head.
You shall bruise his heel."
Jesus is the one that bruises the head of our enemy and sets us free.
God defeats our enemy with no help from us.
Jesus didn't come to help us defeat sin, Satan, and death.
He came to deliver us from our enemies all by himself.
Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3 says, speaking of Jesus, "being the brightness of God's glory, or his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself," you want to read that one?
"By himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high."
You're not going to help Jesus deliver you from sin.
And Jesus isn't going to help you deliver yourself from sin.
If you're going to be delivered from sin at all, then it will be by Jesus delivering you only, and by Jesus delivering you all the way.
There's a lot of people who believe God saves us by his grace.
Again, but their definition of grace is God helping us to live good enough to go to heaven.
And that's wrong.
We're all together sinners.
We're all together unacceptable to God.
We don't need a little help.
We need a Savior to take our place.
Say to God, "We'll not ride upon horses."
Because the cross is not a weapon for us to fight with.
It's a place for us to die.
We won't look to the institutions of man to save us.
No lodge, no church, no club, no departed saint, no angel, no religion can help us into heaven.
And we're not going to seek help from the horses either.
No boost so we can help ourselves.
Have you all ever seen those movies?
And I saw this the other day, in fact, in real life.
You've all ever seen those movies though where you've got some wicked person and this priest will take a cross, a little cross.
He'll hold it out.
And that, "Ahh!"
And I go back like that, like that cross.
That's not how the cross works.
Tammy and I went back home from church the other day, and the Catholic church was holding a protest against abortion.
They do it usually once a year.
And I appreciate them taking a stand against abortion.
What was so sad?
There was the priest, they were on every corner of the courthouse, and this particular corner the priest was on, he was out there holding the little rosary beads in his hand.
You know, the little cross and the little rosary beads.
And as if somehow him holding that hand would ward off evil spirits from them.
That's just a trinket, just a plastic trinket or whatever that thing's made out of.
That's not how the cross works.
We don't ride on horses.
He says, "Tell them Asher won't save us, tell them we won't ride on horses."
And then he says, "Tell them this, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, ye are our gods."
Underscore in your Bible our hands.
Now underscore our gods.
Our hands are gods.
Idolatry is when you make the work of your hands your God.
When the work of your hands becomes your God, your work becomes an idol.
You see, when the work of your hands becomes your God, your work becomes an idol.
Here's a kingdom truth for you this morning.
Anything that originates with man that's worshipped as a god is an idol.
Anything that originates with man that's worshipped as a god is an idol.
Evolution is America's idol.
You know, you look back and old riding, you'll never, when you get old enough riding, you'll never see anything about evolution.
You won't see anything like it in old riding.
It's a rather new idea, a rather new concept.
You would think the further back you go in the history of man, you realize you're getting back to the origin of man.
You would think the further back you go in history, the better those people would know where they came from.
Here we are, all these millions and millions and billions of years later, so they say, just in the past couple of centuries, or two or three centuries now, we figured it out.
It's evolution.
That's how we got here.
But before then, there was no concept of evolution.
Man created evolution, and then he gave evolution credit for creating him.
You see how that works?
It's really fascinating.
Man wants a creator.
He wants a creator really bad.
He has to have something to give credit for, his being, something to trust in that has some kind of wisdom and knowledge of how to make things run on earth.
So they say, well, evolution has gotten us better and better and better and better, and it's just going to keep getting better and better.
Man created evolution, and then he gave evolution credit for creating him.
Israel once took words with them to the work of their hands.
They would create an idol, and then they would say, you're our God.
Just like when they were coming out of Egypt in air and made a golden calf, and after they made this calf with the work of their hands, they said, "These be thy gods which brought you out of the land of Egypt."
They created the gods, and they gave them the gods the credit they created for creating them and delivering them.
It's absolutely amazing.
That's what man does.
To say this to an idol that you're our God is unbelief because Isaiah said in Isaiah 44 verse 6, listen to what God said through Isaiah, "Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts."
I love that.
There's the Father and the Son right there in Isaiah.
The Father has a Redeemer, and he's the Lord too.
He says, "I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God."
There's just no other God but me.
So to call the work of your hands a God is to call the Lord a liar.
When we trust in something other than God, whatever our faith is in becomes an idol to us because we're putting our confidence in what we made instead of the Lord who made us completely backwards.
Whatever is not God is the work of our hands, and our work will not save us.
Asher won't save us.
We don't look to the institutions of men.
Horses won't save us.
We don't seek help to help ourselves.
And the gods we create won't save us.
Only God, the God of the Bible, can deliver us.
Look back in your text now.
"For in thee the fatherless findeth mercy."
This is what you tell God.
Not Asher, not horses, no false God.
Lord only in you can the fatherless find mercy.
You see who's becoming the fatherless here?
Israel is becoming the fatherless.
They're coming to God as an orphaned child rather than independent, capable men.
That's how we have to come to God.
As orphaned children rather than independent, capable men.
How we orphan children?
We were all born from Adam, and in Adam all die.
There is no earthly father that can rescue us because they're condemned to death themselves.
God said, "From the sweat of your face you'll eat bread until you return it to the ground, for out of it you were taken, and unto it you'll return."
We're orphaned children, and we come to God as orphaned children rather than independent, capable men.
Jesus said in Matthew chapter 18 verse 3, He said, "Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Now what does that mean?
It means we don't come to God as independent, capable men.
We come to God as children.
This morning my granddaughters went out to get the mail with me.
They loved to get the cell circulars and pretend like they're shopping.
So I get the bills, give them Brother Doug, I use it to take the offerings, put them on the offering plate, any personal mail comes to me, the rest of the stuff goes in the trash, cell circulars go to the kids.
They shop.
And there were Subway sandwich coupons in there, and so I give them to them and then they get to shop for whatever sandwich they want on there.
And I said, "Do y'all ever eat Subway?"
They didn't seem to remember eating Subway.
Well, next time y'all come spend the night with grandpa, maybe I can go get you a Subway sandwich, whatever kind you want.
Now, when they go with me to get a Subway sandwich, do you know what they're going to do?
They're going to go as children.
They're going to go with no capability and no plans whatsoever to buy that sandwich.
They have no capability to buy.
They have to completely trust in me to provide that for them.
That's why Jesus said, "Unless you be converted and become like little children, you can't get out of the kingdom of heaven.
As a child, you've got to come empty-handed.
You've got to come trusting someone to provide the way."
Man, when I was a kid and I went to the doctor, it was great.
I mean, after the doctor's visit was over, that was the end of it for me, one end of it for my dad.
Man, I know what it's like now.
I think it's worse now than it was then, though.
You just keep getting a bill.
You think, "Oh, well, that's paid for now."
And the next thing I know, another bill comes for the same thing.
Who are these people?
Old dad's got to pay for all of it.
He's got to provide.
He's got to do.
Little children, they can't do that.
He says, "When you come to God, you come to Him, and you say, 'Asher can't help us.
We don't need horses.
We can't fight this battle ourselves.
We don't need help fighting the battle.
We can't fight the battle.
We're losers.'"
Tell them, "We're not going to trust any God but you."
And tell them, "We're coming to you because in you, the orphaned children have mercy."
That's how we come to God, orphaned children.
And our parents, our parents didn't pass down life to us.
They passed down death to us.
We're orphaned kids.
But God gives mercy to the orphaned children of Adam.
Spiritually speaking, that's what we are.
Our predecessors are dead in trespasses and sins.
They can't save us, but in God, we the fatherless, find mercy in God the Son.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
We thank you for your great clarification in the past two verses.
How do we come to you?
We come to you confessing that you must bear all our iniquity.
We come to you confessing, Lord, that it's by your grace alone that we're saved.
And we give you thanks for that.
In your grace, dear Lord, God is not given to us in the institutions of men, nor is it given to us by trying to give us a boost so we can help ourselves.
And your grace is not found in any other God that we could possibly make with our own hands or invent with our own imaginations.
God in you, dear Lord, God, we are saved one way.
We come to you, Lord, as orphaned children, naked in need of dress, clothed in your righteousness.
In Jesus' precious name, we thank you for the mercy you provided through him.
And I pray you'll bless the food that we're about to receive next door to the nourishment of our body.
Thank you, Lord, for your great salvation.
