2 Samuel 21 verse 1. Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered, it is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites. So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites. The children of Israel had sworn protection to them, but Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah. Therefore David said to the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? And the Gibeonites said to him, We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house, nor shall you kill any man in Israel for us. So he said, Whatever you say, I will do for you. And they answered the king, As for the man who consumed us and plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel, let seven men of his descendants be delivered to us. and we will hang them before the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord chose. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord's oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. The king took Armani and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Ayah, whom she bore to Saul, and the five sons of Michael, the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the Mahalathite, and delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites. And they hanged them on the hill before the Lord. So they fell, all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days in the beginning of barley harvest. Now Risbe, the daughter of Aya, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from heaven. And she did not allow the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. And David was told what Rispe, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done. Then David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son, from the men of Jephesh Gilead, who had stolen them from the street of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hung them up after the Philistines had struck down Saul in Geboa. So he brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there. And they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zillah in the tomb of Kish his father. So they performed all that the king commanded and after that God heeded. the prayer for the land, amen. In 2012, actually it was 2013, I moved my family from Fort Benning, Georgia to Greenville, South Carolina to begin seminary. I had spent many good years in the army. I enjoyed being in the army. I didn't leave because I didn't like it. I left for other reasons. There was a lot of blessings It came to me benefits that I enjoyed by being a member of the Army. My wife can attest to these as well. We lived on post on the military compound and we enjoyed great security. Great safety. Everyone around us was in the military, and in fact, where we lived, we were surrounded by officers. It was very safe. Kids could just run around and play. There was no worries there. On the military compound, we, and I don't completely understand why this was the case. Had probably something to do with taxes, but everything's cheaper. The gas was cheaper. You go to the McDonald's on the post, it was cheaper. The grocery store was discounted a wee bit. We received great health care. Of course, it was paid for by the government, but as far as I was concerned, it was free. All of my family, my wife included, we received great health care. We had all these benefits to us because I was in the military. I was in the army. But of course, those benefits also implied that I had to, that I did something, that I was doing something. I had to be fit morally and physically and ethically to be in the army. I had to continue to fulfill my duty as an officer. And if I didn't, of course, I could be kicked out of the military and I wouldn't have these blessings. That's something of an example of what I believe the Holy Spirit is doing in this passage. It's not a perfect illustration, but in many cases it is. God's people, bona fide Christians. can do things where they would not receive in some sense, and I'll explain in what sense I'm talking about, they would not receive the blessings of the Lord. We have in this passage that as a theme. And tonight you may be in a place in your life where you're wondering if God is shining upon you. You may be thinking about that in regards to not just you, but your family, or perhaps our church. Is God's blessing really upon us? And of course, as is the case, we may feel bad or feel as if God is not shining upon us, and God still is with us, and it's not because of our sin. We can go through trials and afflictions, and it may not be because of sin, but it also could be. but it also could be. And that's what we have here. There's a theme in these verses on the blessing of God. Keep in mind that in this time in history for God's people, God in their covenant, the administration of the covenant of grace that they were under, God promised if they kept covenant with him, they would have blessings. And one of those would be rain. But there's a famine in the land right now. God's blessing has been removed to some extent. In verse 3 we see that emphasized by David, that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord. And this is the beginning of a new section here, chapter 21 through the end of 2 Samuel, chapter 24. You have somewhat of an appendix. Many commentators refer to these chapters as an appendix. Now children, what's an appendix? We have a book. Okay kids, you have a book, and many books may have an appendix, and there's kind of a bunch of extra pages that say a few things that are nice, but they don't really affect the whole book and the story of the book. Well, I don't actually think that's the case here. It may appear that way, but these last few chapters say a lot about David's validity as the king of Israel and Saul being a culprit and being guilty of different things. And these last few chapters really set us up well for Solomon and his reign. And we see this idea here in this chapter. And the lesson that I think the Holy Spirit would have us learn is something to do with how God's people receive the blessings of God. What do we need to do? to receive God's blessing? Do you want to know the answer to that question? Do you want to be blessed? Do you want to be blessed kids? Do you want to receive God's blessing? God bestows his blessing to those who ask it, to those who ask for it, who keep his covenant, who follow his commands, and who have a representative sacrifice. That's the lesson for us. Who does God bless? God bestows His blessing on those who ask for it, who keep His covenant, who follow His commands, and who have a representative sacrifice. Four points this evening. First, I want you to see, and most briefly, from verses one, verse one and 14, something I don't want to skip over. God bestows His blessings to those who ask for it. It's very basic. There's prayer going on here. David is praying in verse one. And God's people across the land are praying, as it's mentioned in verse 14. Notice verse one begins with, now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year, and David inquired of the Lord. Now that's an interpretation that the New King James is giving, that literal rendering that the ESV gives is David sought the face of the Lord. And that could be three different ways. That could be through the Urim, through dreams or by the prophets. And this version, the New King James is basically excluding prayer. But I believe that David was seeking the Lord in prayer. He sought the face of the Lord. We have an example of that in 2 Samuel 7 verse 18. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, Same language, before the face of the Lord. And he said, and he prays this long prayer. David is praying. He's seeking the Lord. Perhaps he did receive a message from the prophets. Perhaps he heard God speak audibly. But he did seek him in prayer. Notice verse 14, the very end. There's a reference to the land praying, as it were, the people of the land. And after that, God heeded the prayer for the land. God heeded the prayer for the land. I find it important for us to consider this. We need to keep in mind that God is a God who controls all things. He's appointed all the ends, but he's also appointed the means to those end. One of them is prayer. Second Chronicles 7 14 referring to the church. Here's a promise for you. If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways and I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." The New Testament continues this idea. James 5.16 says, confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another. that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." Now I've preached a series on prayer to you, specifically on corporate prayer. I've told you and I'll tell you again, I don't understand prayer. I don't get it. There's a sense in which I can tell you that if you don't pray, it's not going to happen. And I say that to you knowing and believing that God is all-powerful. He's not restrained by whether we pray or not. He's chosen to use our prayers. I want to point that out to you. We have in our country, I don't know the history for all this, certainly some people are praying to a wrong God, but we have a National Day of Prayer. That's a good thing. We need to recognize that there's a primary and there's secondary causes. We don't need to focus on all the secondary causes and why things happen. Well, I healed because I had a good doctor. Well, you were healed because God healed you. And that's why you should pray. The National Day of Prayer. Think about, we mentioned Las Vegas during the prayer time. Praying for them. We had a presbytery. Our presbytery called for a day of fasting. A day of fasting. That's a noble and biblical thing to do, to pray. We need to call upon the Lord and ask for his blessing that he would give, whatever it may be, a passer to Las Vegas or whatnot. We're going to be having this summer a theme on evangelism. Details to come out momentarily. We're working with some of the other churches in this city. We're gonna begin this summer, if you will, with a week of prayer. We're gonna pray that God would bless us as a church and as churches, and he would increase our number, that we would see adult baptisms. Yes, we need to go out and we need to preach the gospel and witness, and we need to pray. We need to ask God to bless us. I'm praying for one adult baptism this summer. When was the last time you saw an adult baptism? When was the last time you prayed to see an adult baptism? When was the last time I prayed to see an adult baptism? As Christians, again, we can, Focus on the secondary means, secondary causes, and forget to pray. We reminded you in the prayer time of Christian and of course, Murray. We had a great midwife, we had a great doula. My mom came up, she's had nine babies herself, gave great advice. Do that, and do those types of things. We prayed, didn't we? We were praying. I wanna remind you, Wouldn't it remind you of that? I think God, as far as I can understand, God humbles us. That's why he wants us to pray. He wants us to know it's him. He receives the glory. People come to faith, not because of the power of the preacher, not because of the faithfulness necessarily of a parent, witnessing. He wants us to pray because he's the one who gives blessings and who saves. God bestows His blessing to those who ask for it. Are you asking for it? Keep asking for it. Keep praying. Be faithful to pray. Secondly, to those who keep His covenant. We'll look at verse 1 and 2 again. Gleaning from Joshua 9 as well. I think it's a very important point for us to realize. It's different from point 3. In point 3 I'm going to talk about those who follow His commands. Very close. A little bit more nuanced. Those who keep His covenant. And here we're talking about a special covenant, a unique covenant. I'm not talking about the covenant of grace, or if you like, the covenant of works. Christ kept the covenant of works for us. Amen. Praise God that He did. But here we have a special covenant, if you will. A national covenant, actually. Look at verse 1. And the Lord answered, It is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites. So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites. The children of Israel had sworn protection to them, but Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah. We have a covenant breaker in a unique sense, in a special covenant, if you will. And because of this failure to keep covenant, there was a curse that came upon the land. Of course, I'm gonna Twist that, I'm going to show you how the opposite is true as well. But we read Joshua 9, didn't we? We learned that the Gibeonites were dwelling in the land and that Joshua, to cut to the chase, made a covenant with them and swore protection to them. They would let them live and if they violated that, wrath would come upon them as a nation. And Saul and his zeal for the house of Israel and for Judah broke this. We don't know the details. We don't know a lot about this. We just know it happened. We know that Saul sought to kill the Agibionites. And because of that, there was famine for three years. Famine for three years. I'm gonna elaborate on this for a second. Just take a moment and keep in mind something. Time does not do away with sin. Saul's dead. Saul's passed on. And God remembers his sins, doesn't he? Time doesn't take the place of repentance and confession. The text here says, in the days of David, Verse 1, there was a famine. We don't know when this happened. We've already seen that in these historical books, they don't necessarily go chronological. This did not happen. This happened sometime shortly after Saul died. Some commentators point out that in 1 Samuel 22, so going way back when David was fleeing from Saul, Saul made a comment. He said to his servants who stood about him, "'Here now, you Benjamites, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards and make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds?' And the idea is that Saul in order to reward his followers were giving vineyards and giving lands to them perhaps from the Gibeonites trying to destroy them and remove them from the land. We don't know exactly when it was. I want you to think about time though. This is why I'm kind of stressing that. If we go back to 2 Samuel 16. Absalom is on the scene. David's fleeing from Jerusalem. Several people meet David as he flees from Jerusalem. Shimei says something to him. Shimei is a Benjamite. He says, you're a bloodthirsty man. You're a rogue. The blood of Saul and his house is upon you. Why did Shimei say that? Well, it's because of what's going on in this chapter. I believe that's the case. My point is this, that time has transpired, but God has not forgotten. And if you have sinned against your spouse, sinned against a friend, perhaps you've sinned against God, just no one knows about it. Time has passed. You have no reason to believe anyone would find out. Do you still need to confess your sin? You still need to repent. See, time is good in regard to sin. In many cases because it allows us to calm down. It allows us to, maybe if we're angry we need to calm down and maybe we'll see the situation better. But time doesn't do away with sin. Also note that a different generation arises and yet it does not remove the obligation of this covenant. Saul's the one who broke the covenant. Yet his descendants are still required to keep it. Actually, Joshua was the one who made the covenant. And the children of Israel, years ago. But that obligation continued. This is important for us. This is an important aspect of our own history as covenanters. As those who had spiritual ancestors in Scotland. who demanded that the nation adhere to the covenants that their forefathers made as a nation and as a church before God. As covenanters now in America, we believe that the covenants that our forefathers have made are still binding upon us. I'm going to read our testimony. RPCN testimony chapter 22 paragraph 9 says, this is referring to covenants made of the New Testament. They are statements of responsibility arising from the application of the word of God to the times in which they are made. Such covenants have continuing validity insofar as they give true expression to the word of God for the times and situations in which believers live. So I want you to think about covenant keeping. And we have a covenant breaker here. But I want you to think about it from the other direction. How do we receive God's blessings? It's God's people. Like my illustration earlier in the army, could I just do whatever I wanted to? There's a sense in which God's people are called to do certain things to keep the requirements, the obligations of the covenant. Think about these verses here. Psalm 2510, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth as such as keep his covenant, his testimonies. Psalm 103, 17-18, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children as such as keep his covenant to those who remember his commandments to do them. Even as those in the covenant of grace. What does God require of you that you would escape his wrath and curse due to you for your sin? God requires of you faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life with diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to you the benefits of His redemption. You neglect the means of grace. Wait and see what happens. But if you don't, by God's grace, you will be blessed. Think about this in the context of other covenants. What covenants have you entered into? If you're married, you have marriage vows, don't you? Marriage vows. Loving your spouse. Thick and thin. Sickness and in health. Men, husbands, loving your wife unconditionally as Christ loved the church. These are things that you must strive to do. If you don't, then there will be ramifications for that, won't there be? Children, when you were baptized, you entered into covenant with God. You're in covenant with God. And for you to keep covenant with God, He calls upon you to trust in Him. and his son Jesus Christ. You don't want to be a covenant breaker, children. You want to keep his covenant. You want to believe in him. Think about the vows you took as members of this church. I want you to think about your vows. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about keeping covenant. Now Saul did something terrible, didn't he? He killed many people. But if you think about it, it wasn't the murder. It was the breaking of the covenant. I want you to think about that. Who were the Gibeonites? They were actually to be eradicated. God is not judging Saul and his house in Israel because Saul killed a bunch of people. It was because he broke covenant. I want you to think about that. You've made a covenant to have fellowship with one another. You said yes to this. Do you recognize your responsibility to work with others in the church, and do you promise to support and encourage them? Do you promise to support and encourage them in their service to the Lord? Fellowship. Obedience to the courts of the church, to this session, and to the presbytery. In case you should need correction in doctrine or life, do you promise to respect the authority and discipline of the church? Do you vow to do that? What are the means of grace? You said yes to this vow as a member of this congregation. You said to the end that you may grow in the Christian life. You said yes to this. Do you promise that you will diligently read the Bible, engage in private prayer, keep the Lord's day, regularly attend the worship services, observe the appointed sacraments, and give to the Lord's work as he shall prosper you? I want you to think about what vows you've taken. Are you keeping them? We're not perfect, are we? But have you thrown them off? Saul threw it off. I want you to think about keeping covenant. I'm not speaking to you in the sense of the covenant of grace. I'm gonna come back to that. Christ is the one who keeps that covenant for us, the covenant of works, I guess I should say. But there are other covenants that we end into. And when we break those covenants, We can expect, in a sense, God's blessing to turn aside from us. But if we keep them, we can expect to have his blessing. God's blessing comes to those who ask for it, to those who keep his covenant, and those who follow his commands. And I'm going to maybe cover this a little bit quicker. I wanna focus on the fourth point tonight. But this third point is different than the second point. They're connected. All of you, and of course there's not a lot of you here, I know all of you. I think every single one of you are members of the church. But whether you are a member of this congregation and have taken those covenant vows of membership or marriage vows, every single person on the face of the planet is called to obey God and His commands by right of creation. It's a little different here. And I think verses 10 through 14, we're going to come back to verse 3 through 9 and focus on the death of these men. But there's a lesson for us from the actions of David in verses 10 through 14. Verses 10 through 14. Now there's a command that we need to keep in mind when we look at these verses. Okay, Risba, the daughter of Aiah, one of the concubines of Saul is there. keeping the bones from being taken away. Some commentators say that she was there for months. They'll recite, they'll cite verse 10. The text says, Now Rizpah, the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock. And there's a way of interpreting that phrase to mean a tent. She spread a tent. She was there for a while. And David heard of this, and of course this woman's love Her motherly instincts are there, her faith. She wanted these bones buried. I'm getting to that in a second. David heard of this and in that, he heard of this and he was like, you know what, we need to take care of these bones. Now you need to know something about the law of God and a curse. Deuteronomy 21, 22 through 23, let me read this to you, this is very important. You understand my point here. The Law of Moses says, If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God has given you as an inheritance. The Law also goes on to talk about how a dead body or corpse defiles someone who touches it, and it defiles the land if it lies there on the land for too long. Now here's what's going on, and the text verses 10-14 emphasizes the bones. Bones. Bones. You need to bury these bones. There's a curse that still remains on the land. Verse 10 talks about the rain coming, being poured out from heaven due to the sacrifice. I'm going to come back to that, and that's true. The sacrifice of these men does bring God's blessing. But the Hebrew is very emphatic in verse 14. I want you to see this. There's still in some sense, I don't know in what sense, the text doesn't tell us, there's still a curse to some degree on the land because of the bones. But in verse 14 it says this, they buried the bones, not just of Saul and Jonathan, which was a token of grace that David showed in his own heart, but they buried the bones of those who had been hanged as well. Notice what the text says here. It says, so they performed all that the king commanded And after that, after that, God heeded the prayer for the land. And the Hebrew is very emphatic here. There was something, there was some other curse. Something else was not right until David had followed this law. Follow this command to take care of the bones. Take care of the bones. I want you to see that. I don't want to overlook that. Following God's commands. Doesn't bring a blessing. And you know I don't preach a prosperity gospel. You can live a very difficult life and be very faithful to God. But God's law, His commands are good. They are good. It's not because you're keeping the law that bad things came to you. It's good to obey God. It's a blessing to obey God. Psalm 1, one of the things that Psalm 1 teaches us is that the man who meditates on the law of God doesn't walk with sinners. He shall be like a tree. He should be like a tree. What does Christ say? John 10, 10, I've come that they may have life, that they may have it more abundantly. Eve, in the garden, she questioned this point here. Is it really good for me to obey God? It's one way of looking at it. One way of looking at it. You know, kids, you may think at times in your life, children, why should I obey my parents? Is it really good to obey my parents? And you may not really understand it, children, but you need to have faith and obey. Just from this principle. It's always good to keep God's commandments. Children, obey your parents and the Lord. Some Christians growing up in the church don't really understand what's the big deal about marrying an unbeliever. When this person gets along real well and we like each other and we're attracted to one another, it's coming. It's not good. It's not good. Do you believe that God's law is the path to life? It is a blessing. That God is wise and he knows what he's doing. David believed that. And so he begged God and he had faith. God bestows his blessing on those who follow his commands. Now I want to finish our time, and I realize I've already preached from some time now, but I want to focus on this, and I want you to understand this is really where the text, this fourth point, is where the text really focuses on, and that's why I want to end on it. Very important for us to see. There's a beautiful picture of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in this chapter. It's beautiful. You want to know who God blesses? God bestows his blessing on those who have a representative sacrifice. Those who have a representative sacrifice. There is a representative sacrifice for all the descendants of Saul. It's a perfect sacrifice. Seven men, seven is a perfect number. And instead of all the descendants of Saul dying, which would have been according to the law, according to the covenant, seven men died for them, a representative. Verse three through nine, for those who have representative sacrifice. Therefore, David said to the Gibeonites, verse three, what should I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? And they say, listen, I don't want silver or gold. We don't want to be released from our bondage. We want seven descendants of Saul to be killed. And this is according to the law, actually. Deuteronomy 35, 31. Moreover, you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death. This is in accordance with that idea. Now, this passage of Scripture can give us some problems. Before I really give you the problem, I'll just mention a couple of them. There's two Mephibosheths here. Verse 7, there's Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan. He's spared because of who his dad is. Keep that in mind as I keep going. There's another Mephibosheth mentioned. I wonder if the Holy Spirit's trying to tell us something about substitution, representation. There's a reference in verse 8 to Michael, the daughter of Saul and her five kids. And if you follow the footnotes in your New King James Bible, you recognize that Michael didn't have any kids. And other places in scripture say it's Merob. And I believe the idea is, there's a great Hebrew attestation for this reading. And my understanding of it is that Michael raised Merob's kids. That's how I understand that. But the real problem here is that if you're familiar with the Bible, And you've read passages of scripture like this from the law. Deuteronomy 24, 16. Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall the children be put to death for their fathers. A person shall be put to death for his own sin. How do we mirror this up with that passage of scripture? Ezekiel 18, 20. The soul who sins shall die. The Son shall not bear the guilt of the Father, nor the Father bear the guilt of the Son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." So how do we explain this? How can God, how can David agree to this and then there be rain that comes? God gives every indication that He is pleased with this. Is this biblical? I mean how do we justify this? There are so many places in Scripture where it seems as if the children are being punished for the sins of their parents. Take the second commandment, Exodus 20 verse five. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. I wanna build some tension here. For one reason I want you to believe in the scriptures. They don't contradict themselves. Lamentations 5.7, our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their iniquities. Jeremiah is speaking about the exile. We bear their iniquities. Jesus in Matthew 23, 31 through 35 talks about how the Jewish generation now living at that time, they are actually bearing the iniquities of their fathers who have killed all the prophets from a certain time until now. How do we justify? Achan, Joshua 7. Achan sins, he takes a garment, he takes some gold I think it was from Jericho. What happens to him and all his kids? They're all killed with him. The Amalekites, just all these examples. 1 Samuel 15, the Amalekites. Because of what happened generations before this, Saul was commanded by God to utterly destroy the Amalekites, infants, children. Well, I've built a lot of suspense and I want you to say something. There's a difference between an individual sin or an individual person sinning as an individual and an individual sinning as a representative. I'm gonna say that again. There's a difference between an individual and an individual sin And an individual and a representative sin. Someone who represents a church or a family. Think about the gospel for a minute. Why is it that all of you were born in sin? Because Adam sinned. Adam sinned. That's how God works. God works by way of covenant. He works by way of representation. You can not like it all or you won't. But it's true, it's how God works. Okay, Paul says in Romans 5, 12, therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned. When Adam sinned, you sinned. When Saul sinned, all of his descendants sinned in him because he's representing them. What I want you to see though is actually How God works in the gospel. He works the same way in the gospel. How can God, a holy God, forgive sinners? Because there is a representative who's perfect. Who's obeyed all those laws that you have not obeyed. Who's fulfilled the punishment of a law. Who's died a perfect sacrifice. Listen, you're just like me. You're guilty. You're guilty. But there's hope for people who are guilty. Because there is a sacrifice available for you. This is how God works. This is how God works. First Corinthians 15, 21 through 22. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." See in this passage of scripture we have a beautiful, beautiful picture of the gospel. There's a representation of Saul's descendants. Look at verse 6. Let seven men of his descendants be delivered to us. Perfect sacrifice. Seven is a perfect number. Because of them the rest of the Benjamites are spared. because of Christ's perfect life, because of his death, all those who are in, no longer in Adam, but in Christ, who are represented by Christ, are saved from their sin. Paul says something very significant in Philippians chapter three. I want to be found in him. He's speaking covenantally. He's thinking of a representative. I want to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God by faith. And the gospel to you as a sinner, as a son and as a daughter of Adam, that if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you've already died for your sin and you're perfect in Christ. That's the gospel. That's a good news. You want God's blessing. You want to be pardoned of all of your sins. You want the blessing of reconciliation with a holy God. Don't do things. Don't obey the law. Fall before the Lord Jesus Christ. Trust him. He's done it all. He is the representative. He's perfect. That's the gospel. You want God's blessing? Go to the Lord Jesus Christ. God bestows his blessing. In some sense, it's on those who ask for it. It's on those who keep his covenant, who keep his commands, who follow his commands. But God blesses those who have a representative sacrifice, who are in Christ Jesus. I want to speak to you tonight about the blessing of the Lord. I want you to think about these things. I want you to think about, as Christians, as those who are in covenant, who have Christ as their representative. I want you in another sense to realize that there are some things that you can do or not do and to lose God's blessing. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about whether or not you're praying. I want you to think about your vows. I want you to think about God's commandments. But I also want you to remember Jesus Christ. He's a perfect sacrifice, and he gives you the blessing of forgiveness and reconciliation that you cannot do anything for. Turn to Christ, trust in him. He's available for you. Children, have you turned to Christ? Do you believe in him? If you do, you will receive the blessing of forgiveness and pardon. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight to hearing this word and we thank you and we bless your name. We know that we are called by you as your people to do certain things, that you and your wisdom have chosen these things for us to do and that we receive as a grace this warning and this direction. We ask that you would help us to be praying people, take heed to your law, to take heed to our vows, And we mean it. We ask you to help us. Father, we come tonight blessing your name, for we know that in Christ eternally we are secure because of Christ, because of what he has done, because of his faithfulness, because of his perfect life, because of his willingness to die. And we bless you. Father, we pray for our children here tonight. We ask that they would know this, that they would think about Christ, that they would think about their state as Children of Adam, they would not trust in their church, they would not trust in their parents, but they would trust in Christ, that perfect sacrifice for them. Father, thank you for all your many blessings. You are a good God, we confess tonight. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.