We turn in the Word of God together to John 14 and then to Psalm 146. John 14 and then Psalm 146. Let's stand together to give our attention to that Word. We'll read six verses, but the focus on verse six, the exclusivity of the mediation of Jesus Christ for sinners is set forth beautifully and gloriously by our Savior in this passage. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me and my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know." Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And then from Psalm 146. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Do not put your trust in princes nor in a son of man in whom there is no help. His spirit departs. He returns to his earth. In that very day, his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers. He relieves the fatherless and the widow. But the way of the wicked He turns upside down. The Lord shall reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Lord our God, tonight again we wait on You. knowing that you strengthen our hearts in our pilgrimage, and especially so by your word in spirit, your word preached, and your word made visible in the sacraments. Lord, there you show yourself to be our light and our salvation. You take away our fears. You're the strength of our life. And we pray that you would now send your light and truth to lead us, even as we look to you. And we pray as sinners in Jesus' name, amen. Tonight we turn to an occasional sermon, a sermon not in a series, and that is from Psalm 146. From Psalm 146, a psalm that's hard about trusting God. A psalm about trusting God. As I look around here, I know that some of you are in hard places, and maybe some of you are in hard places that aren't known. going through very hard times. And it's often in difficulty that it is hard to trust, and especially it is hard to trust God. And when it's hard to trust God, it's easy to look for help in the wrong places. What does it mean to trust someone? Again, I said a moment ago, sometimes it's very hard to trust people. To trust someone is to depend on someone, to believe their word is true. And what are you saying when you believe that someone's word is true? You believe that the words they're speaking match the affections and thoughts of their hearts, that what's being articulated is authentic, it is true. You're not being lied to. The second thing you do when you trust, is not only you trust those words, but you trust that there is some constancy in that person, that what they mean today, they're going to mean tomorrow. Sometimes we a gather for the most meaningful kinds of words and promises that we hope will always be true. Think of, for example, a wedding, when people make promises. Those are promises that are to come from the heart, and they are also promises that we depend on to be true for the long haul, for the health of a marriage. So often that trust is shattered. And when trust is shattered, what does that mean? It's often shattered. Well, for trust to be shattered, that means it was shattered by someone who was supposed to be trusted. If you're not trusting somebody, you can't have your trust broken. But once you begin to lean on somebody and trust somebody, It's dangerous in a very real sense because all of us in this room are mere mortals and sinful mortals. Sometimes it's a spouse, a parent, a friend, a teacher, more often politicians, people who break promises. Sometimes they're smaller promises and we get over it quickly. Sometimes they're what we call a breach of trust. A significant and deeply painful promise broken. One that was important and weighty, made with a magnitude that meant it should have always been kept, but it was broken. What do you do when that happens? Where should you go? Matthew Poole says about Psalm 146, he sums it up in this way, the Puritan commentator Matthew Poole, The design of this psalm is simple. It is to persuade men and women and boys and girls to trust in God and in Him alone. Now that doesn't mean that Christians at some level can't trust one another. We do put trust in each other. Go back to marriage vows and a happy marriage. There's a deep level of trust. But at our bedrock, the very deepest level of our hearts, even in the best of relationships, we need to be careful that whether it be relationships or the future of a nation, think we're in an election season, that the bedrock of our trust, the focus of our trust, the object of our trust, as Poole says, is simply this, God and Him alone. The deepest remedy for this problem in a broken world is to pivot to God, to rest in Him. John Calvin, the reformer, considered this psalm to be what he called a remedy for a certain disease disposition almost universally prevalent in the human race. Again, a similar idea to Mr. Poole long ago. He said our inclination to look for help in the wrong places. Particularly our inclination to put our trust for salvation in people and institutions rather than the God who saves. And you can do this in subtle ways. You can do this in even a relationship is generally good. You can elevate another person to a place they shouldn't be. You can put your hope in a political party or movement that is like the waves of the sea and could change tomorrow. You could put your trust in an influential leader we'll see in this psalm, and he could be dead tomorrow. And all of his plans die with him. When we do these things, we run into great spiritual danger. Great spiritual danger if the Lord is not first in our heart for trust and rest. Psalm 146 is about this principle of trusting God, trusting our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. A few things about the psalm before we get into the details. It is in a section of the Psalter called the Hallel Psalms. And you will notice them, Psalm 146 to Psalm 150 to the end of the book of Psalms are marked by a refrain. And you look at verse 1 of Psalm 46 and verse 10, it says, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. And you do the same thing for 147, 8, 9, Psalm 150. They begin and they end with this, praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise offered to God. They come at the end of five books of the Psalter. Books which, if you were to pick a theme, a good one would be the kingship in Israel. Particularly the Davidic kingship. More than David Wright in the Psalter, we got Asaph, Solomon, Moses, but it's largely about Israel's king, about the king's sufferings, about the king's enemies, about the king's triumph, and about his kingdom, about Zion, and about Jerusalem, and about the grief of being led away to captivity, about the joys of returning, about the exodus to the promised land, about a hope that even transcends the land called Palestine and the old covenant promises of Israel. about a king and a kingdom. Now if you know, Psalm 150 is the last psalm, so we're almost at the end of the book and we're in the great kingship psalms. The Psalms that go, lift our sights beyond the trials and the sorrows and the establishment of a kingdom and are filled with this theme of praise. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. There's the idea of accomplished redemption in here. There's the idea of triumph. There's the idea of a settled praise that fills the kingdom. And it envisions a certain future glory of the Vitic kingdom. As a matter of fact, if you go to the very last verse of the Psalter, It is a world in which this command goes out, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord. A universality to the kingdom of God and the praise of God is anticipated in the Psalm. If you look at Psalm 148, you have all of creation. And I said this morning when we sang the hymn, all creatures of our God and King, The idea of the entire created order praising God as it was designed to do is captured in this section. In Psalm 147, we're working our way backwards here. The tears of the faithful are wiped away from their eyes. He builds up Jerusalem, gathers out the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. There's a restorative theme at the end of this Psalter. There's a judgment accomplished theme. The judge of all the earth has spoken. He is the one, Psalm 149, who executes vengeance on the nations, punishments on the peoples, binds their kings with chains, their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the written judgment. And the saints participate in this. This honor have all the saints. The location of these praises. Praise God in His sanctuary. There are praises that are from heavenly glory and in heavenly glory, and they envision a future. If you put this whole section together, which is not completely fulfilled in the Old Covenant, only the types and shadows are evident. It's prophetic. It's looking beyond to what Jesus said when He came. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And it's centered really on the kingship of Jesus Christ. It's fulfilled ultimately in the book of Revelation The location of heaven, the judgment of God, the wiping away of tears, and the universal praises of all creation are fulfilled in the worship of heaven, looking even beyond that to the final city in chapter 21 and 22. So this is what the Halal Psalms are about. And they also serve a function in the Christian life and for the worshiping church. We have one foot here in heavenly glory, already in the old covenant. We have a prophetic sense of what's accomplished by Christ, that he is seated at the right hand of God, the judge of all the earth. We were just driving across the plains of Wyoming just a few weeks ago, and you could see, sometimes for, must have been a hundred miles, the next mountain range across the plains. And these psalms are like that. They're giving a view of the rugged and glorious, beautiful mountains of the coming and kingdom and glory of Jesus Christ. And there's something of His coming, His first coming, and then finally, the new heavens and the new earth visible in the sense of these last psalms. There's already some applications here for you. Verse 1 and verse 10, praise the Lord for these things. It's a worship psalm. And there's also something here about what worship does for the people of God. You think of Psalm 73 when the psalmist was confused, he looked out into the world, he said, all the rich and the celebrities of this world are prospering and your people are weeping. He says, then I went to the house of the Lord, I understood their end. And that worship experience was reorienting his entire vision. And this psalm does the same thing in the house of the Lord as we lift up to praise to God with this prophetic power and glory of the word that reveals the glory of Jesus Christ. Our hearts are lifted to the Lord and our convictions are shaped and reoriented concerning ultimate questions. And we understand that all things exist for God's glory. And we can confess verse two, while I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. And so that's the sense of the psalm and in its place. The particular reorientation that this worship song of the church now for millennia brings to the Christian, let's go back to the main theme in the psalm. Again, Calvin and Poole, Calvin says to present the disposition of looking for help in the wrong places, or Matthew Poole, the design of this psalm positively is to persuade you as you praise the Lord, to put your trust in Him and Him alone. Let's think about this disease disposition, then negatively, that Calvin talks about, to look for help in all the wrong places. And everything, everybody knows there's something wrong with humanity. And there is something in us that there's sort of dual fascinations that exist in the human condition. One is to know more of what's wrong and we can get completely wound up with looking into all the evil in the world. And then there's a second thing is that we want to fix it. We want the world to be a better place. And why do we? Because we have a conscience. Because the law of God is written on our hearts. Because we understand that suffering, which is real in God's present world, it's painful and that we rightly long for comfort and rescue. We're made in the image of God. Again, we have what Calvin says, the sensus divinitas, the understanding that there is a God, that there is a right and that there is a wrong. And we understand profoundly even our fallen condition that we suppress the truth and unrighteousness by nature, that there is so much wrong with this present world. And there are some things that are so deeply wrong that they won't be fixed in this present life. We will have to wait till the final ordering and justice of God at the end of history to make all wrongs right for his people. But back to this idea, because of this, the fall into sin and the suffering that ensued because of our rebellion, we own this. All of us. There's a lot of sadness in the world, a lot that you can't fix. You would never tell parents who lost a child that all is right with the world. I hope you wouldn't. A victim of sexual abuse, you wouldn't say the same things. Scorned spouse, a guilt-tormented sinner. And because of all these realities, The second thing in the human heart is to look for saviors, someone to fix it, someone to rescue. Now a fallen man doesn't want a savior from sin because he loves his sin, but he does want a savior from suffering. A Christian is different. We understand that we are called to suffer for a while, and we look for a savior from sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're willing to suffer. The Bible says that God has provided help for sinners in Jesus Christ. The human tendency is to look proudly elsewhere, and that's again to the central point of the psalm. The design of this psalm is to persuade men not to do this, but to trust in God and in Him alone. The warning in verse 3 speaks to the tendency. Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man in whom there is no help. Princes. Rulers. People that, very plainly, people who have a lot of money and social influence. The aristocracy of a culture hears the warning against the disease disposition of the human heart. To look to princes. Again, governments, powers, institutions, or people just, often people with a significant amount of money, and once you have a significant amount of money, you become an influential person. Again, the warning is this, don't do this, don't look to these people, the great and the wealthy, Calvin, have a dangerous attraction through the splendor attached to them, which suggests that we might find shelter under their patronage." That's what he writes. It's a very interesting phrase. There's nothing new under the sun. The great and the wealthy have a dangerous attraction through the splendor attached to them, suggesting that we shelter under their patronage. There could be safety here. This one person can influence a lot of people. And if I find myself under the shelter of his wings, I might find relief from my suffering. Matthew Poole, princes, these are men of great wealth and power, the greatest wealth and power, whose favor men are very prone to trust. It's disease disposition of the heart, very prone to trust. And in our age, We have a lot of them. Celebrities of all kinds and sorts, whether it's sport or music or politics. What do we call them now? Influencers. It's a very interesting name. Influencers. Single with significant media presence, now on social media, who through one person can influence a lot of other people. Do not put your trust in these people. Do not lean on them. Do not rely on them, is what the word says. That's what is to be put off. What is the reason for that? Verse 4, because it's futile. Futile. It's empty. His spirit departs. He returns to his earth and that very day his plans perish. There is no Human being on the face of the earth and all human history that isn't ultimately subject To the final last enemy which is death and when he dies everything he has is gone He has no power no influence no ability to shape world affairs. No ability to protect anybody else William the Conqueror who claimed Normandy for his own in the year 1087 He died just before He had totally triumphed over the enemy with his army How did he die? His horse stumbled, and he was injured by the iron pommel on his saddle. Within hours, his noblemen had abandoned him. His servants had stripped him of his clothes and left him naked. His jewels had been robbed, and he was left for dead. William the Conqueror. On that very day, all his plans perished. Futile, there is no help here in whom there is no salvation can be translated. Positively, the right worship of God fosters then not a clear view of the emptiness of the powers of this world and the powers of this age, but the beauty and glory of trusting in the Lord. Look at the contrast, the blessedness of trust in God. Verse five, happy. You're met really dour people. They have no peace with God. They complain about everyone around them. They doubt everybody and everything. They have no lasting true happiness. They have no eternal happiness. Here's someone who's happy. Happy is he. Who? Who has the God of Jacob for his help. Blessed. The blessedness of trusting God is contrasted here in the song. And why? whose hope is in the Lord as God. And then there's a whole list of reasons why this would be happy. First, think about His names, Lord and God, which communicate His majesty, His self-existence, His covenant faithfulness by His associations. The God of Jacob, the God who condescends to sinners and makes promises about salvation and life and eternal life. The God who has power, who made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them." I always love when Jonah gets woken up in the storm from his sleeping place, and he's asked by the sailors, who are you? And he answers, I serve the Lord who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the dry land. Just an instinctive confession. Happy is the man who has the creators of the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. His works of creation. His character of faithfulness who keeps truth forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who's a God who is a provider, who gives food to the hungry, freedom to the prisoners. And look at the drumbeat of how often here now, the Lord, Yahweh, I am who I am is mentioned. Implied, the Lord keeps truth forever. The Lord executes justice. The Lord gives food to the hungry. The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. And then we go on. Now it's explicit from now on. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts those who are bowed down. The Lord watches over the sojourners. The Lord upholds the widows and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked? He, the Lord, turns upside down. He's also the judge. and the just one. The contrast is intentional. Any mere human being in all of human history that you would look to trust for guidance, salvation, light, rescue, or glory. empty. He dies, his plans perish. The Lord, the Lord, the Lord, Creator, Redeemer, the one who speaks truth forever, the one who executes justice for the repressed, who feeds the hungry, who remembers the fatherless and the widow, the opener of the eyes of the blind. This is all saving, salvation, helping language piled up in every image, lifting up those who are bowed down, watching over the pilgrims in this world. The cumulative weight of glory here is the Lord is claiming for himself through his word, the soul ability and capacity to bring any saving light and hope to the world. And if you're suffering, your only relief will come from God. And as we all are sinners, the only forgiveness comes from God. This is a powerful, unequivocal statement that there is one way of salvation, one reliever of suffering, one provider of justice, one savior of the world, the Lord. And when you worship, You are acknowledging this fundamental reality again and again. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. In Him alone is life and salvation. No other can provide these things. This is ground for hope, verse five. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. Again, it's the reason for praise. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. While I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Why? It's obvious now. I said earlier that these Psalms are also prophetic, that the end of the Psalter is the culmination of the prophecy of the Davidic kingship. The psalm says, sit your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God as the Davidic King forever. If you go back through the list in the psalm, He's the maker of heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. He's the one who is the truth. He's the one who executes justice for the oppressed. He's the one who fed the hungry. He fed the 5,000. He fed the 4,000. He's the one who cares for the widow. He raised the son of the widow of Nain. He's the one who opens the eyes of the blind. He's the one who cares for the oppressed. He's the one who gives freedom to the prisoners, especially from the prison house of sin and rebellion by His cross and power. And think about how different He is from princess of the world. There's two things the Apostle Paul says in his letters to the church at Corinth. He says, Christ became sin for you, and Christ became poor for you. Essentially, He did that on the cross. Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor. Through His poverty, we become rich. A Prince, unlike any other Prince who has ever lived, who laid aside all of His glory, His royal, heavenly, eternal prerogatives to put His life in your place, to die your death, to give you His life and His riches forever. The cross is the seal of His love. Again, He's the one who gives the bread of life, liberty to the captives. He opens the eyes of the blind in Luke chapter 4 in the preaching in the synagogue of Capernaum. He said, this is me. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach this. This is who I am. This is what I came to do for you. This psalm has a sense of eternity in it. Look at verse 10. This Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations, the King on His throne forever. Which is also instructive for two reasons. It goes beyond the scope of the Davidic kingdom. It has an eternal future in it. But a second thing that's important, it says that the reign of this King And how do we think about the present reign of Jesus Christ? Because right now some of you have tears, some of you are suffering, some of you are in pain, some of you have had your trust broken by sinful people. There will be an eternity, a glory, a heaven where everything promised and stated about the Lord will be finally and fully, gloriously evident for the comfort and salvation of God's people forever. Sometimes people come to me and say, Peter, I want my pain to be taken away, my suffering to be taken away. Why does God do this? Well, the first question is, why did God make a world in which His Son would suffer for us in our place to take our penalty? The second thing to think about is that He will take it away. Though in this life we yet suffer, there is coming all that is promised here in the Word of God for everyone who has shed every tear and trusts the Lord Jesus Christ. There's also this, without him a fearful expectation of judgment, and Paul says, but the way of the wicked he turns upside down. Psalm 146, in summary. Turn from human saviors to the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, who alone is able to do of anyone who has ever lived in human history, unique as the God-man. Turn from all princes and place your trust wholly and completely in Him, the One who alone is the way, the truth, and the life. There's also something that's so comforting about Him. I talked about His cross. Let's go back to the description of the Prince, another way that Jesus is different. His spirit departs, He returns to the earth, and that very day His plans perish. How about Christ? He died, He returned to the earth, and then He rose again. to display the infinite glory and the extent of His plans for His people as the seal of our redemption. Giving us ultimately the Holy Spirit as the Ascended Lord and reigning over all things right now. His plans not perishing, but being executed with perfect glory and power. Some lessons for the church. And for all those who hear the word of the Lord preached, the first one is this, we're in an election season and there's just a low-hanging fruit application here. Be aware of the danger of looking to political leaders to bring the salvation that America and the world so desperately need. The changes to our country, which are living on the precipice of asking for the full brunt of the anger of God. No princes have the capacity to bring a revival of the human heart and turn sinners to God. None. Not one. In our day and age, there are a lot of people who believe that there's going to be some Savior in this world who will bring us to a better land of light and glory. Some of these people are overt. I call them the statists and the communists of this age. It's interesting. I was reading some very old writings of early OPC ministers who openly and regularly wrote against communism. And I think they were right. An atheistic and statist system of government that says man can solve his own problems Bring salvation to the world. We just have to be organized. It's not true. Put not your trust in princes. Son of man are in there, there's no help. The utopians. And I want young people to hear this. There's a lot of people in the world right now who are crying out for justice. Talking about oppression. They're not wrong to say that there's a lot of oppression and injustice in the world. There is. But the world co-opts your compassion so that you would trust the wrong people who have no interest in justice or mercy, but only would bring more suffering and pain. Be careful. There is no salvation from men or women. None. There's no help, the text says. Another way to think about this is there's no help in any human power. As a matter of fact, you could have a very close friend, your closest of friends who you maybe have legitimate reasons to trust in because you've had a long and happy friendship. Can't save you. Can't save you. Godly Prince can't bring the salvation that you need. No human power, no institution, no celebrity, no billionaires. No salvation, the text says. Powerless, the text says. Kingdoms of this world fall and crumble over time. Babel and Assyria and Egypt. As in Daniel's dream, crushed by the stone, cut without hands, the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages. Jesus knew this. He knew Psalm 146. Where did He exercise His understanding of this psalm? When He was standing before Pilate who had the power of the Roman Empire in His hands and could have let Him go. Jesus just said, My kingdom is not of this world. He didn't need Pilate's help. and he was not afraid to suffer or die. Instead, what did he say as he was on the cross? Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Two connected applications here, little children, keep yourselves from idols. The true worship of the living God requires you to repudiate secular humanism and any other system that would call you to look for help apart from the Lord. It's also comforting. The church often has gone through periods of persecution. Who knows what tomorrow will bring in America. If you look what's happening in the streets of the UK right now, it's kind of an ugly scene. A lot of unrest. Things can turn very quickly in history, very quickly. The text says, don't worry about it. No earthly power, no weapon fashioned against the church can stand. The princes of this world are limited. They are under the government of God. They serve until their term expires. And the kingdom and gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ continues on. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So we go to sleep happy. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. We go to sleep also believing that Christ is building His church. We don't get bound up in these things. Sometimes we're afraid of the abuse of power. It can be horrific. History is filled with the examples of the horror of the abuse of power. You pray, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. I mean, what can man do to you? The word says. What's the worst this present world could do to a Christian? Kill you, right? And then what happens? Heaven. Glory forever and ever and ever. And if we're not afraid to die, The last enemy. Satan, he's been conquered. Your sinful flesh. Christ has dominion. By His Word and Spirit, He helps you. There's no enemies left. We're unafraid and human power is limited. It's under the kingship of the King of kings and Lord of lords. And one more application. Don't put your trust in people. Above God. What I mean by that is the following. Your very best friends and the very closest people around you can't save you. They need the same Lord Jesus Christ. They need salvation, mercy, forgiveness. They need the Spirit of God. They are made of flesh like you. It doesn't mean you can't have close friendships and precious friendships. But what I mean is, we're not worshipping idols, any other person. There is one, his name is Christ. He saves. And if you know Him, then you are able to be quiet and happy, even in your relationships. Secure in Him, ready to show His love to your neighbor. Consider, secondly, the fleeting nature of human life and accomplishment here. Princes often live for a name and history. Why? When Alexander the Great was told that basically he conquered the known world, guess what he did? He wept. You know why? His ambitions were ended. He only wanted more. The natural human heart is this yawning gulf that will never be satisfied with all the world. And then, soon after he died, he was cremated, and then he was ashes. Nothing. We're often tempted to want to make a mark in the world. Let verse four modify the horizon of your ambitions. When his spirit departs, he returns to his earth, and that very day his plans perish. It's true for princes, it's true for you and me. It'll be over soon, very soon. Self is ambition, works of the flesh, Galatians chapter five. Be careful not to want to make a name for yourself or build a tower as the humanity did in Genesis 11. And then one more application for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, resist the temptation to look to worldly help. I said it earlier, but in another way here. It's not that God can't raise, I think about the season we're in as a nation and we're all citizens of this nation, we pray for its very best. It's not that God can't raise better leaders in his mercy than we deserve, he so often does. The leaders we have, we ought to pray good for them, for the nation. We also pray that the wicked would be removed. We can pray that leaders who are friendly to the church and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ be lifted up and elected. But we do not put our trust in princes. We pray for them and about them, but we don't trust them. Why? Verse 10, because our Lord, Jesus Christ, reigns forever. Hear this language, beautiful language for the church. Zion, the church, your God of Zion to all generations. You have him. You don't need anyone else. He'll make all wrongs right. He'll destroy the wicked. He'll wipe away your tears. Put your trust in Him. The Psalter opens with these words, and you will never be put to shame. Let's pray. Lord our God, we thank you for the glory and power of our Savior Jesus Christ, Father, your Son. We pray for the grace to look beyond this world and all of its promises of salvation that end in vanity and emptiness and nothingness and set our sights on Jesus Christ, his kingdom, glory, and power and the advance of your purposes in the world and the growth of your church and the success of your gospel and the work of your spirit. The one who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the ruler of the kings of the earth. Lord, we pray for our nation in our hard times, that you would grant to us leaders that would be favorable to your church, and Lord, even better, leaders that are subdued to you in heart and conscience. But Lord, not our will, but your will be done. And whatever you bring, oh God, we know that you reign forever. Lord, we thank you also for the promise of happy hearts. That to live like this brings blessed peace to our inward condition. To have you, the God of Jacob, the God of covenant mercy for our help. Grant to us grace to hope in you for the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. Lord, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. The blessing of the Lord from the end of the letter to the Ephesians. Peace to the brethren in love with faith from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus in sincerity. Amen.