My Witness Is in Heaven


Sermon by David Strain on April 8, 2018 Job 15-17

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Now if you would please go ahead and take a Bible in your hands and turn with me to the book of Job. We have been working through the book of Job on Sunday evenings. It’s a book about one man’s dreadful suffering and God’s remarkable sustaining grace. And tonight, we are looking at Job chapters 15 through 17. We won’t read all of that. We’re not going to discuss every verse that we find here. We’re working somewhat in summary just to try and get a sense of the big picture of the teaching of the book of Job. And the way Job is put together is in a series of conversations between Job and three friends – Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. And we’ve heard from all three of them and we’ve heard Job’s reply. And now, it’s round two, as Eliphaz has his second swing at Job to try and help Job to see what he considers to be sense. Although as we’ve discovered, as each of Job’s three friends begin to engage with Job in his dreadful suffering, they only seem to make things worse. Instead of a word of comfort, they come with a word of accusation and denunciation. As it were, they are twisting the knife in the heart of the hero of the book.

 

It’s well known, isn’t it, that you can’t make a perpetual motion machine. Since the 12th century, people have been trying and failing. The laws of physics simply will not allow a perpetual motion machine. If you think you’ve made one and you try to take out a patent from the US patent office, they simply will not give you a patent without a full working model demonstrating that it is in fact what it says it is. You never will be able to make a perpetual motion machine. Sometimes, however, we forget that we are not perpetual motion machines either. Don’t we? Particularly in the middle of suffering and hardship and trial; when we are hurting and it doesn’t seem to go away. Things are long and hard and sore. We run out of steam, don’t we? We run out of steam. We find ourselves empty and burning out. Entropy sets in.

 

Before we start to read a larger section of Job and get into its message, I want you to see something remarkable about Job. He is suffering in perhaps the most profound way imaginable. He has lost all his children; ten children are gone. They’re dead. He’s lost his livelihood. His wife has deserted him. He’s covered in open sores. He’s in perpetual pain himself – emotional and physical. And yet, look at chapter 17 at verse 7 on page 428 in the church Bibles. Chapter 17 at verse 7. “My eye has grown” – this is Job’s confession in his suffering – “My eye has grown dim from vexation and all my members are like a shadow. The upright are appalled at this and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.” So things are bad for Job. He’s cried his eyes dry and sore. He’s spent and broken. And yet, verse 9, “Yet the righteous holds to his way. And he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.” Job has been protesting against the accusations of his so-called friends that he is innocent of any particular offense they might accuse him of that would merit the dreadful suffering he now endures. And he resolves to hold to his integrity and not to back down, to stay the course. Isn’t that remarkable? In the depths of his pain, he perseveres.

 

And so as we turn to this portion of the book of Job, our question is, given that none of us are perpetual motion machines, given that we all run out of steam, given that Job does too, “How is he able to persevere? Where does he find the resources when the wounding words of his friends slam into him again and again? Where does he find the resources to keep going in his faithfulness and trusting God and maintaining his integrity?” That’s our question, because we need to know for ourselves, don’t we? We need to know for ourselves before we’re led down into the dark valley, before the trials come, we need to know, “Where will the resources be found so that we might persevere and cling to the Lord and be faithful?”

 

Well, we’re going to read only a little portion of Job 15 through 17. We’ll look at Eliphaz, the first of Job’s three friends’ accusation, but we are going to consider the message of these three chapters. So if you’ll open your Bibles to page 426 and keep them open, because I want you to work with me as we refer to the text of Scripture as we go along. Before we read, however, let me invite you to pray with me once again as we seek the help of the Lord to understand His holy Word. Let’s pray.

 

O Lord, we confess that our understanding is limited by our creatureliness and distorted by our love of sin and self. And so, we badly need Your help. Pour out the Holy Spirit to illuminate our darkened understanding that we may indeed behold marvelous things out of Your Law. Please, speak and give us ears to hear, that we, like Job, even in our own worst trials, might be enabled to persevere in faith and trust, clinging to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Savior of sinners. For we ask all this in His name, amen.

 

Let’s read Job chapter 15 together. This is the Word of Almighty God:

 

“Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:

 

Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he argue in unprofitable talk, or in words with which he can do no good? But you are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God. For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; your own lips testify against you.

 

Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us? Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father. Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you? Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth? What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water!

I will show you; hear me, and what I have seen I will declare (what wise men have told, without hiding it from their fathers, to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them). The wicked man writhes in pain all his days, through all the years that are laid up for the ruthless. Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him. He does not believe that he will return out of darkness, and he is marked for the sword. He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand; distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle. Because he has stretched out his hand against God and defies the Almighty, running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield; because he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat upon his waist and has lived in desolate cities, in houses that none should inhabit, which were ready to become heaps of ruins; he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the earth; he will not depart from darkness; the flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart. Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his payment. It will be paid in full before his time, and his branch will not be green. He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his blossom like the olive tree. For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery. They conceive trouble and give birth to evil, and their womb prepares deceit.”

 

Amen, and we thank God that He has spoken in His holy Word.

 

As we have read through the book of Job together, we have been confronted with the nature of Job's trials, his loss, and his grief. We need to keep those in our minds, especially as the book unfolds. We ought never to overlook his physical pains – his illness, his acute suffering in his body. But the major attention of the book, as we get into these central chapters, focuses on suffering that in Job's case are increasingly spiritual and psychological. As we've begun to see over our weeks in this book together, the primary instrument of inflicting such suffering upon Job has been his three friends. And as we've just read, Eliphaz is principal among them. All three have spoken their distortions into Job's life, and now chapter 15, as we've seen Eliphaz, starts all over again to pump his vitriol and his poison into Job's mind, causing him renewed distress. There are few things more wounding, that take us longer to recover from, than the wounds of our friends. When those closest to us say wounding things, those wounds cut deeper than those of others. They're more painful. They take longer to heal. That's what's happening to Job here.

 

Eliphaz Accusation

Let’s just, for a moment, take a look at the way Eliphaz is afflicting Job, just so we understand the extremity of Job’s suffering with some clarity. In chapter 15:1-6, we have Eliphaz, in effect, telling Job he is an insufferable windbag. Don’t we? Verse 2, “Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind?” Far worse than that, he says Job’s speech is guided by sin. Verse 5, “Iniquity teaches your mouth. Your own words condemn you and not I. Your own lips testify against you.” It is pride that makes Job reject the counsel of his friends, at least according to Eliphaz. Verses 7 through 13, “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us?” Eliphaz has really taken the gloves off. Hasn’t he? He’s completely convinced that Job is a guilty sinner and he is absolutely determined that Job should see it his way. He wants to help Job see just how wretched Job really is.

 

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again – with friends like these, who needs enemies! And since he’s already failed once to convince Job that he is a guilty sinner by reason, now here, in verses 17 through 35, he sets out to attempt to scare Job. You see that in verse 20, for example. Look at verse 20. “The wicked man writhes with pain all his days. Your suffering is because you are a wicked man, and there will be no end of it, Job, until you come to recognize it’s all your fault!” Verses 29 and 30, “He will not be rich. His wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the earth. He will not depart from darkness. The flame will dry up his shoots and by the breath of his mouth he will depart.” Or, verse 34, “The company of the godless is barren and fire consumes the tent of bribery. Your life, Job, is going to be a living hell, and quite frankly, you deserve every minute of it!” That’s Eliphaz.

 

Job’s Response

Well, Job really is going through already a kind of living hell, but it's his so-called friends who are his tormentors, stoking its flames. And so remember our question. Now that you see just how dreadful Job’s suffering is, remember his physical pains, remember his grief and loss, and now this from Eliphaz. This pain, this spiteful speech, this denunciatory tone. And so now remember our question, “How is it that Job still clings to his integrity? How is it that he perseveres through this and not just give up?” “The righteous,” he says, “will hold to his way.” In the middle of this, how do you do that, Job?

 

A God-Centered Mind

Well, there are three things that I want us to see by way of answer in chapters 16 and 17 as Job begins to respond to Eliphaz. Let’s look at chapter 16 and 17 together. The first thing I want you to see that is part of the secret to Job’s perseverance is that Job is a God-centered thinker. Job is a God-centered thinker. If we are going to learn from Job the secret of perseverance in trials, this is where it needs to start, with a God-centered mind. So Job begins, chapter 16, with a brief and bitter rebuke of his friends, verses 1 through 5, and he characterizes his sufferings; he sums them up for us in verses 6 through 14. Chapter 16:6-14, you see his summary of his predicament. Notice carefully the central motif in his characterization of all that’s happening to him. Verse 7, “But now, God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company and he has shriveled me up.” Or, look at verse 9. “He has torn me in his wrath and hated me. He has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.” Who is Job talking about? Who, according to Job is his adversary? Verse 11, “God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but he broke me apart. He also has taken me by my neck and dashed me to pieces.”

 

Job’s Perspective

So according to Job, this is Job's perspective on what is happening to him, according to Job, God is his adversary. God is the one who has come up against him. And in that conclusion, he is simultaneously both wrong and right. On the one hand, Job has gotten God quite wrong. Listen to the way one commentator puts it. "Here, Job comes close," he says, "to reconstructing the scene of the heavenly council of the prologue" – chapters 1 and 2. "But he turns it inside out. He identifies God as his enemy rather than his advocate. At this crucial point, he is tested to the ultimate. From his perspective, he's led to wonder if the God in whom he trusted is not really his Satan." You remember chapters 1 and 2? God sits in heavenly counsel with His angels and He is challenged by the Satan, the adversary, to permit this attack against Job. And Job here, seems almost to reconstruct that scene, only he omits the role of Satan altogether and he blends it with the role of God.

 

Distortion of God’s Character

Now as we’ve seen, Job’s three friends, his so-called friends, they all distort the character of God in their own way. They make God into a kind of mechanical force of justice that automatically reacts to sin, either with physical suffering or to righteousness with temporal blessing; in a sort of one-to-one mechanical way. So that if you’re suffering, it’s because you’re bad. And if you’re enjoying blessing, it’s because you are good. That was the distortion of Job’s friends. But here, we discover that Job also distorts God’s character, but in the other direction, the opposite direction. He’s not some mechanical, abstract force of cosmic justice. No, Job knows He is the sovereign Lord, the great King. God, he knows, really is in control. But for Job, that can only mean that God has done this to him. It is God’s fault that he is suffering. And so on the one hand, Job is quite wrong in his thinking about God’s role. In verse 9, he sees God as his adversary, not his advocate.

 

Turns to God

And yet, for all of that, as his three friends point to Job’s conduct and their own so-called wisdom, even so, in the middle of all of it, even as he thinks God Himself has turned His back upon him, Job still turns to God with his distress. Do you see that in the passage? He’s looking heavenward. He may well misunderstand God’s ways, but he knows God is the Lord, nevertheless. And ultimately, he must plead his cause before Him. He has not given up altogether on the idea of heavenly justice. God’s grip on his life is such, even when he doesn’t understand what in the world is going on – “Why is God treating me like this?” – God’s grip upon him is such that Job still turns to God in his confusion and sorrow and in his pain.

 

God is the frame of reference for his life and his struggle and his sorrows. And that relentless God-centeredness in Job’s thinking, I find, to be a deeply searching thing. I don’t know about you, but when I hurt, I am the center of my attention. All my thoughts are about me! I am the victim. I want attention. I want affirmation. I want reassurance. I want my ego stroked. I want to be made to feel better. When I hurt, I fill my whole horizon. But do you see, God has so come to penetrate Job’s whole way of thinking about everything that he just can’t seem to operate without referring his case to Him. God stands at the center of Job’s thinking. And what’s so wonderful about that isn’t the sight it affords of Job’s remarkable discipled thought-life. It’s not that we are to admire Job for somehow trusting God in the midst of the dreadful confusion and pain of it all. That’s not the point. What’s really remarkable and wonderful here is the discovery Job’s God-centeredness makes for us of the tenacity of the grace of God at work in his life. It’s not that Job has somehow managed to cling to God and that’s why he can’t stop turning to Him. It is, rather, that no matter how deeply he has descended into the darkness of his sufferings, God has never let him go. God has never let him go. Job can’t escape the grip of His grace. Even if, at times, it seems like he really wants to.

 

 

God Will Never Let You Go

Here’s the lesson. Brothers and sisters, however low you may sink in suffering or in sorrow in the days to come, however low you may sink, if you are a Christian, the truth is, you live in the grip of omnipotent grace and whether you feel it or not, whether you want it or not, God will never let you go. He will never let you go. The apostle Peter wrote about that, didn’t he? 1 Peter 1:5, writing to a group of suffering Christians. They’re being persecuted. He said they were “being grieved by various kinds of trials” – suffering, hurting, grieving. They’re going through the mill. And yet he says to them in the midst of the furnace of affliction, “You are being kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.” You are being kept.

 

The story is told of A.W. Pink. Some of you, I know, will have read his books with profit. He was living, at one point in his life, on the Isle of Lewis off the northwest coast of Scotland. And every day, he’d walk down to the harbor to buy some fresh fish for his suffer. Now, Pink was a famously curmudgeonly gentleman. And one day, a brave soul who recognized him, mustered the courage to call out in greeting. And so, asking after his welfare in typical Scottish idiom, the man asked, “How are you keeping today, Mr. Pink?” And true to form, Pink did not look round at the man, he did not even break stride, but marching determinately onward, he gruffly replied, “Not keeping, being kept!” Here’s a real curmudgeon for you. He can even turn a word of pastoral encouragement into some sort of growling rebuke! “Not keeping, being kept!” But it’s right on, isn’t it? That is the truth of every child of God. It’s not that we are keeping ourselves. No, we are being kept. We are being kept.

 

That's part of what's happening in Job's life and experience. Though he does not really know it, though he misunderstands what's happening, though he misconstrues the stance of God towards him, thinks God is his adversary, not his advocate, nevertheless, through it all, he was being kept. And so his heart still finds a way to turn to him rather than to run from him. I wonder if it may not one day become important for some of us here tonight to know when our trials come that what really matters most is not our grip upon God, how strong we are, but the unbreakable grip of God upon us. “He who began a good work in you,” Paul says, Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion unto the day of Christ Jesus.” He won’t stop. He will never wash His hands of you. He has ahold of you and He will never let you go. That’s why Job is still somehow, miraculously God-centered in this abyss of pain and suffering. Not because he has a firm grasp of God. No, no, but because God has a firm grasp of him.

 

A Prayerful Man

And then the second thing I want you to see that is part of the secret of Job’s perseverance that we need to be part of our resources in response to trial that we also may persevere. He is a God-centered man in this thinking but he is also a prayerful man. We’ve already hinted at this. He is a man of prayer. So what you find in the opening five verses of chapter 17, if you’ll look there, it’s a prayer. Verses 1 and 2, Job pours out his suffering to God. Do you see that? Verses 1 and 2 of chapter 17, “My spirit is broken,” he says. “My days are extinct. The graveyard is ready for me.” Here he is now, at rock bottom, and yet isn’t this fascinating – verses 2 through 5 – these whimpering cries turn very quickly, don’t they, to bold prayers for vindication. Job very quickly moves from pouring out his suffering to pleading his own cause before the Lord. He goes on the offensive in his prayers.

Enter Into Judgment

Now, I need to admit that the Hebrew of verse 2 is really complicated and the translators and the scholars land in different places about how best to render it, but in general they all agree what’s going on in Job’s prayer as a whole here is that he’s calling upon the Lord to enter into judgment in a legal capacity against his so-called friends for being mockers. Notice the legal language he uses. Verse 3, with this talk of a “pledge.” It’s a reference to a legal dispute in which one party needed to put up some form of security, financial security, to ensure his reliability or guarantee his integrity. And remember, though, Job has nothing. Everything has been taken from him. He has no security to put down as a way of saying, “This is how strongly I feel about my integrity and my position. I will guarantee it by some deposit that I will pay.” He has nothing; no security. He’s lost everything. So notice what he does. He asks God Himself to provide a pledge. “Lay down a pledge for me with you. Who is there who will put up security for me?” That’s amazing language. God, earlier on, Job has said, “God is the one who is afflicting me. God is my adversary.” Now he says, “O God, put down a pledge in support of my integrity.” He asks the Lord to act for him.

 

Expression of Confidence

And then notice verse 4. Here’s an expression of confidence in God in His just judgment to answer Job’s prayers. “Since you’ve closed their hearts to understanding,” meaning his three friends, “therefore, you will not let them triumph. You will not let them triumph.” What a mess of contradiction poor Job is. Which, by the way, is an enormous comfort to me. I don’t know about you. Since I find my own heart a mass of similar contraction and confusion more often than not, especially when things are stressful or suffering comes. One minute Job is full of despair, God is unjust, God is my enemy, my adversary. Then he turns to prayer. And in response to the assaults of his friends, his weak faith sort of suddenly blazes forth in confidence again as he presses his case at the bar of heaven’s justice. A believing heart, you see, can sink awfully low sometimes, even despair of salvation sometimes. But given the right circumstances, the right stimuli, it still finds itself acting instinctively in unselfconscious confidence in the Lord.

 

One of the great examples of that for me in the history of the church comes from the life of John Duncan. John “Rabbi” Duncan as he was known in his own day and generation. He was the Professor of Hebrew in New College in Edinburgh in the 19th century. And he was a famous melancholic, renowned for his perpetual lack of assurance, wondering if Jesus really had saved him after all. A minister friend of his bumped into him on the street in Edinburgh and immediately identifying the situation from Duncan’s downcast expression and knowing a little bit about Duncan’s case, this minister friend resolved to come at the problem obliquely rather than directly. Instead of calling him directly to believe the Gospel and stir up his faith and sort of get over it, he told a story of a woman that he knew that had begun to doubt that Jesus really could save her after all. And as he told the story, immediately Duncan’s head came up and his eyes began to blaze and he said, “What? Doubt my Savior?”

 

True Faith Clings to Jesus

You see, you see, true faith, even when it is burning awfully low, in the right circumstances still clings to Jesus. Faith can sometimes be immersed in sorrow, and yet in God's good ordering of things, real faith is never destroyed and can roar back to life to take hold of His promises and act in confidence on His goodness. And the supreme expression of faith is prayer. It’s what faith does. It cries to God. That’s what Job does as he trusts it. Job’s faith has burned awfully low, left smoldering weakly, almost ready to be snuffed out. And yet, when he begins to pray, starts to catch fire once again. Let me ask you, “Do you pray? Are you men and women of prayer?” There’s no way to stay faithful in trial if faith is not given voice and you’re not taking hold of the promises of God in prayer. Persevering prayer is what we need. Are you downcast? Go to God in prayer. You can turn to Him with your cries. You can go to Him with, “Why?” You can go to Him with, “I don’t understand!” But go to Him and you’ll find faith beginning to reignite and be renewed.

 

A Gospel Man

He’s a God-centered man. He’s a prayerful man. Lastly and quickly, he’s also a Gospel man. If we’re going to weather the storm of trial, friends, we need to be Gospel-centered. We need to know there is one who works on our behalf. You see, the great issue here is not that Job clung to God in his thinking, that he was a right-thinking theologian. That’s not the issue. That’s not the lesson. It’s not even that Job was a man of tenacious prayer, though good theology and faithfulness in prayer – please let me commend them to you; we need them – but that’s not the lesson. It is, rather, that Job found a witness who might plead his cause in the courts of heaven. Eliphaz often mischaracterizes the solution but he gets the problem right in chapter 15, verses 14 through 16. “What is man that he can be pure? Or he who is born of woman that he can be righteous? God puts no trust in his holy ones. The heavens are not pure in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt? A man who drinks injustice like water.” Eliphaz does not understand the character of God but he seems to grasp some of the reality of the plight of man. It’s what the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 1. That we are prone always to distort the truth, “exchange the truth of God for a lie.” Or Romans chapter 3, “There is no one righteous, not even one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We are in big trouble.

 

Sinners in Need of Saving

You see, the deepest issue for Job isn’t just that he’s suffering. The deepest issue for every one of us is that we are sinners who need saving. And somehow, despite the sufferings that are crashing down upon Job, he manages to see through his sorrows to find the answer for this most deep of all problems. Look at chapter 16, verses 19 through 21. Chapter 16:19-21, “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven and he who testifies for me is on high. My friends scorn me, my eyes pour out tears to God that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor.” Eliphaz gets at the bad news, but Job has somehow struck upon the good news. Here’s what to do with our deepest heart problem. Here’s what to do with your sin. There is, Job says, an intercessor, who will plead our cause. A witness in heaven to take up our case. There is one who pleads for us like a son of man pleads with his neighbor. None of Job’s friends would take up his case but Job makes his appeal heavenward and finds there one who will take up his cause.

 

The Advocate

Well who is He? What’s His name? We know, don’t we? We have an advocate with the Father. We have an advocate with the Father. One who pleads our cause. One who ever lives to make intercession for us. Jesus Christ, the righteous. “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.” He pleads the cause of sinners. Satan, not God, Satan is our adversary. But we have one mightier than he, who prays for us at God’s right hand. He is the witness for the defense. Our advocate. Our sin is real. Mine is; yours is. We are guilty, but Jesus was condemned for our forgiveness and God’s justice was satisfied in His death that you and I might live. And now, He pleads our cause. Now He pleads our cause. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, there is someone who has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust, having Himself walked in our place. A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. There is no sorrow that can overtake you that He cannot comprehend, no loss you can endure He does not know. No pain to etch itself into your body or your mind or your heart or your life that did not already etch itself into His at Calvary. He was despised and rejected of men, as one from whom men hid their faces. We considered Him stricken by God and afflicted. It pleased the Lord to crush Him. The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. And now, He ever lives to make intercession for us. He pleads your cause! He fathoms the depth of your need. Knows the limits of your endurance.

Yes, Satan may have desired at times to sift you like wheat, but He has prayed for you. In the end, the great ground of our confidence, when we walk through the valley of the shadow, is not our God-centered theology, though that will prove a great help to us. It’s not our diligence in prayer, though sometimes it seems as though all we have is prayer that is left to us to pour out our cries heavenward. Our confidence is not in either of those things, is it? Where must our confidence lie? “Our confidence, our only confidence in life and in death must be that I am not my own, but that I belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from all the power of the devil, who also preserves me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my heavenly Father. Indeed, now all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.” Heidelberg Catechism answer 1; a marvelous summary of where your only confidence, your only hope may be found.

 

Are you trusting in Christ? Is He your only comfort in life and in death? Do not, do not descend into the valley of the shadow without having your confidence and your comfort and your hope in life and in death, anchored securely there – the only unmovable Rock – the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s pray together.

 

Father, we bow before You and we pray that You would help us cling to Jesus, our perfect heavenly advocate who pleads our cause, whatever trials may come. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

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