My Goal is God Himself, Part 1

something a little bit different. I want to affirm a few things before we go there. So, do we as a church believe that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work, 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17. Yes or no? Yes.

And do we believe that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, 2 Peter 1.20-21. Yes.

And do we believe that whatever was written in early times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope, Romans 15.4. And do we believe that God’s word is truth, John 17, 17? Do we affirm Paul’s example to the Ephesian church in expository preaching, not shrinking from declaring the whole counsel of God, Acts 20, 27? Yes or no? All right, let’s turn in our Bibles today to Hosea chapter two and remember those truths as we’re reading our texts. So please turn with me to Hosea chapter two, and we’ll read verses one through seven today. Hosea 2, 1 through 7.

Say to your brother’s Ami and to your sister’s Ruhama, contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. And let her put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, where I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, make her like desert land and slay her with thirst. Also, I will have no compassion on her children because they are children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. Therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them. And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, I will go back to my first husband, for it was far better for me then than now.

Let’s pray. Lord, we lift this text up to you. And know, Lord, that apart from your grace now too, your grace of illumination in our lives as believers, Lord, we won’t learn anything. It won’t be applied to our hearts. And so, Lord, please aid our study of your scripture today. We pray that we wouldn’t be distracted. by this text, but rather that we’d be focused on the meaning, and that, Lord, that you would grow all of us. And for those who don’t know you, Lord, that they would see you for who you are and their need for you.

It’s in your name we pray these things. Amen. Frances Brooke was a daughter of an English pastor born in 1870. She had a great desire for missions, but because of health constraints was held back. In 1896, she penned the following words in a hymn. My goal is God himself, not joy, nor peace, nor even blessing, but himself, my God.

What makes these words particularly beautiful is that they articulate a firm conviction that God himself is enough, being a genuine love for God. You see, in this world, there are only two different kinds of loves. One is transactional and selfish, and one is gracious and selfless. One is a love for oneself, and the other is a true love for God and others.

You see, the natural man doesn’t understand the second. It makes no sense to him. It seems an impossibility, because apart from God’s grace, it absolutely is. Christian love, when rooted in the gospel, is something that this world can never offer. Genuine and authentic love for a brother or sister? No way. Love for one’s enemies? Definitely not. An authentic and true selfless love for one’s spouse? Nope. Or even one’s love toward God? Impossible. One can never truly love apart from the transforming power of the sovereign grace of God.

This Christian love is offensive and unexplainable to the natural man because it confronts his transactional nature. Man’s transactional nature has an overly high view of self that seeks to justify one’s own actions, lessening their faults and overestimating their strengths in order to think that they deserve something, in this case, certain expectations of love. Even the world’s view of love, good deeds in the sight of this world, are motivated in some sort of this transactional love and are filthy rags in God’s sight. And knowing that the world has this view of transactional love, the inverse is true as well. If one wrongs someone in a transactional relationship, then the natural result is some sort of retribution. One could find a plethora of examples online of sort of getting back at cheating in relationships. Some that I found, this certainly is not an exhaustive list, but some really funny ones on the internet.

I saw someone was planning putting glitter in one’s car, dumping a can of tuna underneath the driver’s seat of their car, putting ants in their clothing drawers. If they share Netflix accounts, renaming their account as Cheater. Exposing their unfaithfulness at a birthday party or a gender reveal. I also saw putting candy in a shower head, so whenever they take a shower just being sticky. Putting weed killer with a confrontational message on their lawn. Lots of ideas and this resonates with the world.

Hollywood has even picked up on this theme, retribution for infidelity. Inspiring everything from dramas to rom-coms. Some, out of sinful anger, seeking to hurt the violator of the marriage covenant, commit adultery to try and get back. Some even have sought retribution to the point of death and murder. Many of you might remember the story of Barry Morphew from Colorado Springs.

He was charged with the murder of his wife in 2020 for her adulterous affair, and that made national headlines. These are several outlets for this sinful anger. which have been amplified through the unparalleled pain of marital unfaithfulness. You see, there’s no greater pain of betrayal than marital unfaithfulness because it’s the most vulnerable relationship. Perhaps the most painful question the spouse wronged is tempted to ask, am I not enough?

God in this text shames Israel for their unfaithfulness because he is certainly more than enough. And rather than being retributive, However, God responds to the unfaithfulness of Israel in our passage today with the future plan in hope of restoration. Now we need to consider, first of all, who Hosea is. Hosea is an eighth century prophet, sent primarily to the northern kingdom of Israel, and he is commanded to marry an unfaithful wife, to serve as a metaphor, as Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.

And you might ask, what does this text today have to do with us? And it has everything to do with us, because it confronts our natural transactional nature that this world has to offer. with the gracious love of God that the world certainly does not have to offer. And while not despising God’s gifts and recognizing them as such and still being grateful for them, we must still seek to make God himself our goal. A love for God himself is the antidote for idolatrous transactional love, the same kind of idolatrous transactional love that Israel is being condemned for in our passage today. You might ask, well then how do we grow in this love? And it’s not some sort of just emoting more, just wanting to through our own strength and effort. This love is covenantal and grounded in choice and not dependent upon momentary emotion.

It can only be grown by beholding God in Christ and God transforming us through that process. And so today I wanna show you three things from this text that should grow your love for God himself, so that as we behold God in his attributes, listed in this text, that we would make himself our goal.

First is found in verses one and two, and we see that God is perfectly patient. God is perfectly patient. Say to your brother’s Ami and to your sister’s Ruhama, contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. And let her put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.

The context here is that God has been patient with Israel and is giving her a warning before bringing about his discipline and judgment. If we understand here, this is not, the patience here is just so amazing when you consider Israel’s history, right?

Go all the way back to the book of Genesis, the beginning of the nation of Israel. God calls Abram, Genesis chapter 12, gives him the Abrahamic covenant, land, seed, and blessing, that he would make a great nation out of Abraham. And Abraham was anything but perfect, and yet God was still patient with him, still faithful. God reaffirmed that covenant with Isaac and Jacob, being patient and faithful with them as well.

Then skip forward to the Exodus when Israel is delivered by God’s faithfulness, working through Moses as their deliverer out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery. And as after all the 10 plagues come and as Israel goes through the Red Sea, and God closes the Red Sea on the Egyptian army, and Israel walks by the shore, seeing the dead corpses of Egyptian soldiers. They are shortly after brought to Sinai, where God tells them that they are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation to Him, special because God is patient. And yet, 40 days after Moses goes up to Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, what happens? Israel resorts back to idolatry, unfaithfulness to the very God who just delivered them from Egyptian bondage and slavery.

But God, even through that, is patient, working through the intercession of Moses, and was patient with Israel as they went through the wilderness wanderings and all of their sinful complaining. God was patient with them. God was patient through the sin of Peor. God was patient in the conquest as well when Israel went to go conquer the land and they were commanded to clear the peoples out of the land and were unfaithful in that. God was still patient with them. When eventually they resorted to the idolatry of the nations, which is why they were called to drive them out. God was still patient with Israel, raising up judges in the time of the judges to deliver his people from the oppression of foreigners.

God was patient, even when Israel had become worse than the nations around them, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes and there was no king in Israel. God was patient during the time of the kings, through Samuel, through Saul, certainly through Saul, through David, who wasn’t without his faults, through Solomon and his wicked and foolish son Rehoboam and Jeroboam, who split the kingdom north and south, Israel and Judah. Israel, the northern kingdom, did not have one righteous king in all of their history, and yet God was still patient with them. Judah didn’t have many either, but God was still patient with them as well. To the point where Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom Israel, put up two golden calves because it was politically inconvenient to let people go down to Jerusalem to worship. God was patient.

And after more time passes, this is exactly where we are finding ourselves today, is that God is giving Israel yet another warning. God is so patient. These names here in verse one, Ami and Ruhamah, are very similar to the names of Hosea’s children. Ami means my people and Ruhamah means she has obtained compassion. And it shows that God still has a plan for Israel. Even though exile is imminent, it’s coming, God still has a plan for Israel. The language here with contending with your mother is sort of like an intervention as we know it today. God is using this as a warning. And I think, how do we apply this to ourselves today?

I think we as believers can recognize God has been so patient with us as well, even in the New Testament church context. We think of God saving us and how Christ died for us even when we were his enemies. That when we were spiritually dead, God raised us to life, to spiritual life. Even in our own lives, even though God had already planned our salvation, that there was that time where we hadn’t followed Christ and God was still patient. Rather than smiting us in the moment for just one sin, deserving of infinite punishment, being an act of infinite treason against an infinitely holy God, God was patient. And God is still patient with us, isn’t he? The fight against sin continues, if we’re all honest with ourselves. It’s a battle. And yes, now we can say no to sin by God’s grace. We’re no longer slaves to sin.

And yet, even though we still sin and still are unfaithful to God, God is so patient with us, so kind, giving us so many blessings. And if you today are here as an unbeliever, know this too, that even though you aren’t willing to admit it, God has been perfectly patient with you as well.

In fact, it is His mercy and patience that you presume upon on a daily basis. The very breath that you use to utter blasphemies to His name has been supplied to you by Him. And the very one who determines whether any of us make it home today after church is Him. Repent and believe, and yet God is so kind in calling you to repent through Christ. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and he will not refuse anyone who comes to him. He will never cast them out. Repent and believe. So what we first see here, God’s attributes, is that God is perfectly patient, and this should grow our love for God himself. Second in our text is that God is perfectly just. God is perfectly just. Let’s read verses three through five again.

Where I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, make her like desert land and slay her with thirst. Also, I will have no compassion on her children because they are children of harlotry. Or, their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

In other words, if Israel does not repent after God has been so patient, they will most certainly be judged. Now, this nakedness here is meant something different in a cultural context than our context today. It’s more about shame and humiliation, not so much about indecency. Think Genesis 3, right? They were naked and unashamed, and after they sinned, they realized they were naked and were ashamed.

The words here, wilderness and the threats of desert land and thirst, all demonstrate that Yahweh, the Lord, the true and the living God, is the one who brings agricultural success and fertility to the land. You see what happened in Baal worship and Ashtoreth and Dagon is they would debase themselves. They would offer so many sacrifices to hope in a transactional relationship that maybe they would have agricultural success or that maybe they would have fertility, be able to have children.

But God is faithful. God had established the Mosaic Covenant and God’s way was different. God’s way was different. His was a gracious love, not transactional like the Baals. The Mosaic Covenant specifically was the promise that God made with Israel as a nation, right? We see in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, that if Israel was to obey corporately as a nation, they would be blessed for their obedience. And if they disobeyed, they would be cursed for their disobedience. This is important to remember because God had promised that the land would go through famine if they disobeyed. And so once again, God is just being faithful to his word.

A section of this text that really troublesome is about not having compassion on her children in verse four. because they’re children of harlotry. And I think an easy way to sort of understand this, and it’s not problematic at all, is that both the children and the mother in this metaphor here represent sinful Israel. If we look back in chapter one, right, children are named Lo-Ruhamah. She has not obtained compassion. Lo-Ami, not my people.

This is not teaching generational curses, as is dogmatically taught in some areas of the modern day charismatic movement. Now, during my time in the charismatic movement, I knew a really sweet girl who was a good friend of mine, and she was troubled with this idea of generational curses. A spiritual mentor had told her through some sort of subjective intuition, not through objective genealogical record, not through God’s word, but had told her through this intuition that she had demonic strongholds on her life, taking control of her because she had ancestors who were in the KKK, some way, some how. as if that was interfering with her life individually. The Bible does not teach anything about such generational curses.

It’s like the idea that the sins of the father will be visited upon the son. In fact, actually, this idea comes from theater. Euripides, the Greek in 5th century BC, wrote in one of his works, the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. Horace, the Roman poet, said, guiltless, you will pay for your ancestor’s failure in one of his works, but perhaps the most popular one that some of us might recognize as Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, where Lancelot says the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children. There are some passages of scripture as well that people commonly misinterpret to mean such things.

It hasn’t emerged in a vacuum. One of them is found in Exodus 34, where through the reaffirmation of the Mosaic covenant, reading verses six through seven. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet, he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, and this is the key, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. Moses also recites this as well in a prayer to God in Numbers 14 in his intercession for Israel in the midst of their disobedience.

But both of these refer to Israel corporately, not to individuals like is taught in modern generational curse dogma in the charismatic movement. both pertain to the Mosaic Covenant and were fulfilled in the time of the judges and in the exile as well. Think about it. Israel was promised blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. If Israel disobeyed, they would expect what? Blessings or curses? Curses, right?

Which demonstrated through the exile, through before the exile, through the oppression of foreigners in the time of the judges, which meant that generations of people would be under that foreign oppression. In fact, it’s very clear that not only within the New Covenant, but also within the Mosaic Covenant, that the sins of the fathers did not affect people individually. Jeremiah 31, talking about the New Covenant, God says, but everyone will die for his own iniquity. Ezekiel 18, God says, behold, all souls are mine. The soul of the father, as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul who sins will die. and later in chapter 18, the person who sins will die.

As we continue looking through this text, one of the most difficult aspects of interpreting Hosea is determining which aspects are exclusively of God in Israel, Hosea and Gomer, or of both. But it seems here that the referent primarily is the people of Israel, focused corporately.

Now, who are the lovers in verse five that Israel has been unfaithful to God with? These are very likely Canaanite deities, such as Baal and Asherah, and political alliances as well with countries like Egypt or Assyria, as we’ll see later in the book. Rather than trusting God for provision in areas of agricultural success and fertility or political stability, and protection, they trusted the nations and they trusted idols. We see in 2 Kings that Israel, the northern kingdom’s King Menahem, paid tribute to Assyria, forcing the people to do so as well. And what eventually led to their exile was that a later king, Hosea, not to be confused with Hosea, there’s an H in there, then tried to secretly pay tribute to Egypt, but Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, found out about it and invaded the land, bringing Israel into exile, the northern kingdom, before the southern kingdom, Judah, after a three-year siege.

Notice here, too, the first-person pronouns. For she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool, my flax, my oil, my drink. This is self-focused and characteristic of transactional love, not true biblical love. And this is illustrated very well in our day with marriage.

Christian marriage is night and day different than non-Christian marriage. Christian marriage is rooted in Christ’s selfless love for the church. Non-Christian marriage is based upon situational convenience, temporary feeling, and motivated by feelings of selfishness. Non-Christian marriage asks, what’s in this for me? Whereas Christian marriage should ask, how may I serve them?

Real love is grounded in covenantal commitment and choice, not transaction. Give and take is not the love that comes from God, and it’s not what God expects of his people. You see, the unregenerate man, pre-saved, is transactional. And you see the idols, because of this, and man creates idols, those idols that they then worship are created in their own image and are transactional as well. And because of this, the only kind of love that unbelievers can enjoy is that which is certainly in differing degrees, but still is transactional.

I’ve heard recently that some people have replaced their wedding vows from till death do us part to till love do us part. In other words, what does till love do us part mean? Well, it’s whenever you fail me to measure up to what I selfishly want in this transaction, I may leave if I please. And this is highly problematic because people will fail you, even your spouse. Resist their urge to look at your spouse right now. Christian love and commitment is in sickness or in health. Not till love do us part. For the people themselves, loving the person for they themselves, not what they can offer. It’s a really sad thing to see that Israel had shrunk to this transactional relationship I remember an R.C. Sproul anecdote, and please forgive me, all my fellow R.C. Sproul fans, if I get this wrong.

I’m probably getting it wrong, but one time, he described an occasion where he was teaching a college class, and a newly engaged couple came into the class, and you know how it is, the girl’s recently engaged, she’s showing off the rock to all her classmates, and the good old Dr. Sproul went up to her, with the guy there, and said, well, why do you, if you don’t mind me asking, that’s really great, why do you love him? And I think her first answer was something along the lines of, well, he’s really handsome. And Sproul was like, well, I mean, I know plenty of other male students in this class that are pretty handsome.

Want to consider them, give them a shot? Well, no, no, no. He’s really athletic and strong. Well, I mean, hey, some of these guys are on the football team and the baseball team. I think they’re pretty stronger or might be stronger than him. You want to consider them? Well, no. Well, he’s really smart.

Sproul’s like, well, I have the exam scores and I could show you how some people have gotten higher grades than these guys. You know, is that why you love him? And finally she was fed up and tired and angry. And she said, well, I love him because he’s him. And Sproul in that moment was like, that’s right. That’s why you love him for he himself.

You see, even though this isn’t a one-for-one with Hosea and Gomer in God’s relationship with Israel, as well as his relationship with the church, it still is so important because if we aren’t careful, we can fall into that trap of the world’s view of love, transactional.

Humans will fail, and because of this, love, in order to be true and long-lasting, must be a covenantal choice rather than dependent upon circumstances or feeling. I think too, just even thinking as I walked out of my house to come here today, I love my dogs and I love to think that they really love me, but their relationship is so transactional.

I try to get them in the dog run to get them to go out. And I would think I’d get myself a dentist stick or some meat or cheese or something like that and bring them out and they’d be so obedient. They look like they love me very much. But if I don’t bring that, they couldn’t care less if I died. I would like to think that they really do love me, but that’s transactional. And if we’re not careful, we can love the gifts more than the gift giver. And we can love certain things about people, what they can do for us rather than they themselves. We see that’s Israel’s wrong perspective.

And God is certainly just in his judgment, in his discipline. God already promised that there would be curses for disobedience. And because he’s just, he must punish sin. Nothing is swept under the rug. It demonstrates his righteousness, his immutability that he never changes.

And we know this as believers in a very sweet way because God was both just and the justifier in our lives. Our sin was paid for on the cross by Christ. All sin will be punished ultimately either on Christ or on ourselves for all eternity. And so if you are an unbeliever here today to know this, if you hate God’s justice, know that on the final day, there will be no question that God’s justice is just. There’s no excuse. So in our desire to grow in a love for God himself, we’ve already seen God’s perfect patience. We’ve seen God’s perfect justice as well in this text. But thirdly, God is perfectly good. God is perfectly good. And we see this in verses six through seven. And I will not make a six-seven joke, you youngsters in the room.

We read, therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them. Then she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.

What’s amazing about this, in knowing the full context of Hosea, is that God’s discipline is for their ultimate good. Like we talked about earlier, this isn’t retributive so much as it is his goodness. Since God is faithful to his promises, even the discipline that God would bring is an attempt to remove those things that have tempted them into idolatry. Though the language sounds here like enclosing an unfaithful wife inside the house so she cannot go into the streets to pursue harlotry, building a wall against her so she cannot find her paths, verse six, verse six, I hedge up her way with thorns, it seems as well to indicate trade routes or military alliances. Israel was to depend on God for his provision in both areas of agricultural resources as well as military protection. And this leads me to conclude that in verse seven, these lovers that are condemned are both religious, as mentioned earlier, and political, both being idolatrous and a rejection of God.

But what’s really sad here, and this really ties into the main theme of loving God for he himself, is that her repentance in verse seven seems quite pragmatic and selfish, only characteristic of the surface. The return is not to God for he himself, and who he is, not because of the love grounded in the choice of the Mosaic Covenant, but as one commentator said, only hedging one’s bets or a quick fix. It’s sort of a worldly sorrow rather than a godly sorrow, if you will. We see the difference between these two types of loves in the examples of Job and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, as well as King Ahab, right?

We think of Job, after Job lost all his possessions and lost his family, what did he say? He said, the Lord gave, the Lord took away, blessed be the name of the Lord, right? God loved, or Job loved God for he himself. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, our God will deliver us. We won’t bow to that statue, but even if not, we won’t bow. We love God for he himself, regardless of the blessings or circumstances.

But King Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, had a service repentance after being threatened with his life. that he would die and that every one of the male descendants of his would be cut off. He repented in a way, but it was only a service repentance.

And in a similar way, even though initially Israel would only come with a service level return, we have hope that one day they’re promised to be changed. And one day they will come wholeheartedly. And as we see the rest of this chapter, the end of the first chapter, we know that God’s plans are greater than just this exile for Israel. Back then, only the offended party could restore the covenant relationship, not the violator of the covenant. And God is going to restore this with Israel. As believers, we can apply from this that God’s discipline, even in our lives, is for our good. He disciplines who he loves, right? All things in our life are working for the ultimate good, right?

God is good and does good, even those times when he brings trials in our lives, to draw away the focus from the blessings, the gifts, and to the gift giver. But we as believers can love God’s gifts and temporarily, practically speaking, neglect the giver if we’re not careful. God will discipline us as believers if we remain in this state, to bring us back to himself like he promises to do to Israel here as a nation. One of the reasons for trials in our lives is that it grows our assurance, and this should be a blessing, That God loves us and he cares so much about our relationship with him that he’s not willing to leave these blessings that will only leave a surface level love for him, but cares more about the depth and the genuine quality of this relationship. And an important question for all of us to ask today is, am I following God for he himself or only the gifts he offers? You see, all of us experience trials and trials can be for various reasons. We know one of them is to grow our assurance that we love God for he himself.

Sometimes it can be for discipline, even that’s for our own good. But as Charles Spurgeon said, and thanks, mom, for fighting this on social media, be thankful for the thorns and thistles which keep you from being in love with this world and becoming an idolater. If we fall in love with this world, we will fall into idolatry. And though it isn’t with the Baals and the Astaroth, though it isn’t with Egypt and Assyria, We can fall in love with this world, with our circumstances, with the blessings that God gives, and God sometimes takes those away to remind us that he himself is enough.

Our goal should be God himself. So we see here, as we desire to grow in our relationship with God himself, that God is perfectly patient, not only with Israel, but with us as well. We see that God is perfectly just in his discipline, and this should grow our love for God himself, And we also see that God is perfectly good. No matter what our circumstances may seem, no matter how we feel in the moment, because we are grounded in who God is, we know that he is faithful and that we can trust him and we can seek to repent of this transactional love that this world seeks to offer. The final question that we should all ask ourselves is why are we following God? And when we ask this, we need to make sure that we’re following God for he himself, rather than falling into the idolatry of transactional love and the idolatry of loving the gifts more than the gift giver.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for your gracious love, the love that this world cannot offer. We know, Lord, that apart from your grace, we wouldn’t know this love, that your love is so great, Lord, greater than our own sin. greater than our own spiritual deadness, bringing a resurrecting power, making us alive in Christ. Lord, it all demonstrates your love. And we pray, Lord, that in light of this, that we would love you for you yourself. Lord, even as believers, we can fall into times where we love your blessings more than we love you in the moment and fall into temporary idolatry of loving the gifts more than the gift giver. And we pray, Lord, that in these times of trial that we may face or times of blessing, that we would continually make you our focus, that we would behold you and that you would transform us more and more like yourself to make us more holy so that we might honor you with our lives and that we might more better love you for you yourself.

We love you, Lord, and we thank you for your word that no text of scripture is too difficult. Because it’s in your word, Lord. It is truth. And in some way, somehow, it always can apply something to our lives. We love you and we praise you. It’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.