Lake Martin Presbyterian Church June 14, 2026 Podcast

Join guest preacher Rev. Owen Hallbach for this week’s message from Amos 8, "The Worst Famine". Explore Scripture, hear thoughtful teaching, and be encouraged in your walk with Christ. For more information and resources, visit lakemartinpca.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Lake Martin Presbyterian Church Podcast. We're glad you're listening. Lake Martin Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, located near Lake Martin, Alabama. Each week we share the preaching ministry of our church and pray it encourages you in your walk with Christ. Here's this week's message.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Amen. Please be seated. I'd like to invite Owen Hallback to come up this morning. Owen is going to be preaching for us. Last night we had a wonderful missions dinner, Matthew 28 dinner at the Burke's house, and thank you all for hosting. We had a wonderful time. Owen Hallbach was one of my seminary classmates and actually one of my roommates. So after the service, if you want to hear embarrassing stories about me, you can just go talk to Owen. He's a wonderful man. He recently graduated from seminary, was ordained in the Mississippi Valley Presbytery, and is called to go to Tegusa Galpa, Honduras, with his wife Michaela and their son John Owen. And the goal is going to be to partner with the only Presbyterian church in Honduras, Sovereign Grace Presbyterian Church. It's actually that in Spanish, but I'm not going to say that. So Sovereign Grace Presbyterian Church with the goal of planting a second Presbyterian Church in a number of years. So I'd like to welcome Owen. Please come feed us with God's Word, brother. Good morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

It's a great delight to be with you all. This morning, we really were blessed by the fellowship that you all have shown us already and your warm reception and hospitality. And even though this is our first time here, we feel like we're at home at a place where we know people care and love us. So we're thankful for you all and the opportunity to share God's Word this morning. We're going to be in the book of Amos, Amos chapter 8, if you want to turn there in your copy of God's Word. Amos is a wonderfully rich and confusing book in many places. The last three chapters of Amos are centered around five different visions that the Lord shows Amos. Three of them are in chapter 7, one in chapter 8, and one in chapter 9. So the one we see here is the fourth of these visions. It's a brief vision in verses 1 through 3, simply mentioning summer fruit. But the rest of the chapter, kind of verses 4 through 14, will unpack what this vision means and what it means for the people of Israel. But before we read God's word this morning, let's go to Him again in prayer. God and our Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your word, Lord, for we know that your word does not return void. Now we know that when we come to your word, we don't just hear even the words of wise and holy men. But we hear the words of men who are carried along by the Holy Spirit of God. And so we ask, Holy Spirit, that you would help us in this this morning, that you would give us a depth of understanding, that you would use these words, use these images, these pictures, these commands. Lord, would you convict us where we need to be convicted? Or would you encourage us and comfort us where we need to be encouraged and comforted? And we ask, Lord, that you would help us to set aside all worldly distractions, that we might hear you this morning. It's in your name that we pray. Amen. Amos chapter 8, beginning in verse 1. This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what do you see? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then the Lord said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel. I will never again pass by them. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day, declares the Lord God. So many dead bodies, they are thrown everywhere. Silence. Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the epha small, and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the chaff of the wheat. The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and every one mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile and be tossed about and sink again like the Nile of Egypt? And on that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head, and I will make it like the morning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. In that day the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst. Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria, and say, As your God lives, O Dan, and as the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall and never rise again. This is the word of the Lord. So our passage today begins with this short vision about summer fruits. It's a fitting text to be preaching in June in Alabama, especially since this week has been the hottest one so far. And on our way here, we drove here on Thursday, we found out just how decrepit our car's AC really was. It was blowing nothing but hot air. And I don't know if we had any cool air. And it got so bad once we hit some traffic coming through Birmingham on our way from Jackson, we had to pull over and stop just to cool off. Baby's crying, we're all sweating, everybody's miserable. We found this little Boba tea place. We went in there and got these kind of fruit drinks. I had a blueberry smoothie. And any other time, it would have been fine. It was a good smoothie. But after baking for three hours in a car without AC, a sweet fruit smoothie absolutely hit the spot. And so in our passage this morning, we see a similar idea about timing. Summer fruit, there's a reason why it's so sought after. It's a highlight, because on a hot day there's nothing like a refreshing fruit. But instead of the time being ripe to enjoy a delectable fruit, there's a much more sinister realization for Israel. In this chapter, the realization of Israel's impending doom is palpable. Sort of Amos throughout this book has been building and building, sort of, the Lord through him is building this case against the people of Israel. And it's kind of climaxing here and in the last chapter, but the Lord's devastation, his judgment, his destruction is inevitable. We read in this chapter several phrases like, the end has come, and on that day, and behold, the days are coming to show how imminent Israel's demise really was. And so as we unpack this chapter, we'll do so under three headings. So we'll look first at summer fruit, looking at verses one through three. Second, we'll look at Sabbath feasts, considering verses four through ten. And third, we'll consider sending famine, how the Lord sends famine, verses eleven through fourteen. Let's consider, first of all, summer fruit. If you look with me at verses one and two, it says, This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what do you see? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. It's a pretty short, straightforward vision with a little bit more added on in verse 3. The thing here that Yahweh chooses to show Amos is this basket of summer fruit, which in Israel's context was likely pomegranates and grapes and figs. These fruits were some of the last things to be harvested, and they sort of meant the end of the agricultural calendar. So I first moved to Jackson, Mississippi in June of 2021. I grew up in the Midwest. I'm from Ohio originally, and nothing could have prepared me for that summer, first summer in the South. But I moved in June to start summer Hebrew classes. And the way that summer Hebrew worked is it basically was this two-month-long intensive, you're three hours a day, five days a week, and you're just cramming Hebrew, all of Hebrew, into eight weeks. It was intense. And the sort of regular class rhythm was that you'd show up, you'd do a quiz from the day before's lesson, and then kind of while everyone else was finishing up the quiz, you sort of hang out and talk and grab a coffee, and then you come back in and do the lesson for that day. And so during the break between our quiz and lesson, William Skinner and I used to go out to the fig tree on campus at RTS. And I didn't really know if we were supposed to eat the figs right off the tree, but once William handed me one and I tried it, I was hooked. There's nothing like having that fresh fruit on a hot summer day, and it sort of became my morning routine to save my breakfast for the fresh figs to have with my coffee. But here in Amos, we see something that's supposed to be sweet. We see this picture of summer fruit. It's not a horrible vision. There's nothing about this that would immediately scream judgment. We see this thing that's supposed to be sweet quickly turn sour. We read again in verses 2 and 3. The Lord said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel. I will never again pass by them. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day, declares the Lord God. So it's important to note here, as Amos is prophesying, he's prophesying against the northern kingdom of Israel, about 40 years before they're taken into exile by the Assyrians. So he's writing about 760, they get taken into exile in 722. And here, as Amos is writing against Israel, he's exposing their sins, but really he's exposing just how hollow their religious system really was. And here, by using this image of the summer fruit, he's showing that Israel, who was supposed to be God's covenant people, right? The promise to them was that they would be a kingdom of priests, holy unto the Lord. And yet instead, something that was supposed to be sweet, something that was supposed to be delightful to God, they've become something quite disgusting to the Lord, some people that he has grown to hate and despise. And he uses this harvest imagery that the Lord will come and like harvesting the summer fruit, the last of the fruit of the agricultural season. So the Lord will come and take them up in his harvest judgment. We see this sort of imagery in a lot of places, but here in Amos 8, this is the first time we see in all of Scripture that the Lord compares his coming judgment to that of a harvest, of a farmer coming to collect his crops. And it says that the Lord will never again pass by, or he will never again pass over Israel, like he had done for a number of years. Israel from the very from their very inception, the northern kingdom, when they split Israel and Judah, from the very beginning, they were disobedient to God. They had set up all these other places to worship him because they didn't want to go to Jerusalem. They didn't want to go down there and potentially reconcile with their brothers to the south. Yet the Lord, for hundreds of years, has been patient with them, hasn't wiped them out as he had every right to do. He was patient, he was patient. He passed by, he passed over them. But here, as his patience is drawing to an end, he says he will never again pass by, but this time he will pass through his people Israel and collect them up in his judgment. So that's the summer fruit vision. So let's turn now and look at our second point as we consider Israel's Sabbath feasts and why they're such an abomination to the Lord. So the rest of this chapter unpacks and kind of expands the first initial vision and explains what it means to the people of Israel. And so here in verses four through ten, there's sort of three parts where the Lord exposes Israel's sins and the sort of false comfort that they take in their rituals. So, first of all, we see a description of Israel's sins in verses four through six. A common theme in Amos, if you've ever read through it or studied it, is that Amos, the Lord through Amos calls out those who exploit the poor. Israel had grown financially wealthy, they had lots of successful military endeavors, but for all their wealth and all their success, they still took advantage of the poor. They didn't spread out the wealth like they were called to do. They didn't bring up, they didn't raise up other people in their community, but the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. We see this as the Lord says to them in verses four and five Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the epha small, and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances. It's a really interesting thing that the Lord does here. And you'll see stuff like this in the prophets that you don't see in a lot of other places. But the Lord is sort of putting words in the mouth of people, these wicked men, these greedy people, and showing how they can't wait for God's holy day to be over. Here they're heard clamoring for the end of the Sabbath day and the end of the new moon. These were two of the regular sort of sacred and holy days in Israel's religious life. The Sabbath, of course, was the last day of the week, the day that they set aside for rest and worshiping the Lord. And then the new moon was the first day of the month when they offered sacrifices to God, symbolizing that every month, every day, every hour was dedicated to the Lord. But here, as the Lord exposes these, as he puts words to things that were probably only in their hearts, he shows that these greedy people can only think about themselves, even at a time when they were meant to be focused for the worship and praise of the Lord. On these holy days set aside for the Lord, all they can think about is their greed. When will this day be over? When can I get out of church? I got other things I'd much rather be doing. That's what they're saying here. When can I get this day over with? Having to set aside a day for greed is killing me. But it's interesting, isn't it? That they still wait for the day to be over. It's interesting that they're still saying, let's wait, when will the Sabbath day be over? As if they're saying to themselves, of course we don't want to do these things on the Lord's Day. We don't want to make God angry. But man, I'm really missing my greed right now. I'm really missing my sin right now. Yet they keep this outward veneer of holiness. They want to look holy in the sight of others and in the sight of God. They want to have this day so that they can tell the Lord, look at look at what we did for you. We were faithful. Every Sabbath day we came and we offered sacrifices. Every new moon we still went, we still did the things we were supposed to do. But over and over again, and especially here, Amos exposes just how bankrupt Israel's spiritual life really was. Because it only was concerned with the outward form and the appearance of godliness. And so we see here as well that the Lord's design for his holy days, the Lord's design for the Sabbath in the new moon, isn't just to have one day where his people didn't sin. It wasn't just so that they could have do all the sin they wanted to do and then make up for it by having a good performance on the Sabbath day. We see the Lord's purpose for his commands more generally, specifically for the Sabbath day, is much richer than that. It's meant to reorient our hearts. When we come into this place, when we come and hear the word of God, it's not to make up for all the weaknesses of the week before, but it's to set us up for the week ahead, to orient our hearts towards God, to recognize that we need to hear from the Lord. We need to be cleansed from our sins. We need to be oriented once again, over and over again, to the Lord our God. It's about filling up our souls by his word and through Christian fellowship. And the second thing here is the Lord is exposing Israel's sins to something interesting. He swears an oath of remembrance. If you look with me at verse 7, it says, The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob. Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. So if the Lord is swearing an oath not to forget what you've done, probably messed up pretty bad. But what's interesting is that he swears by the pride of Jacob. Usually when the Lord swears an oath, who will he swear by? He'll swear by himself. Because there's no one holier that the Lord could swear an oath by. The pride of Jacob, it means Israel's military strength, the things that Israel relies on in place of relying on Yahweh, and yet the Lord swears by something that he hates. What does this mean? Well, as one commentator suggests, in this case, Yahweh sarcastically swears by Israel's confident self-importance. So, Israel, you think you have it all together, you think you can protect yourself from all these other enemies, you think that you don't need me. Well, just as surely as you're confident in yourself, so surely will I never forget any of your wicked deeds. Yahweh will remember every one of the sins, even those that they assumed he didn't care about. So he exposes them for their worship, their religious system that is all form and no heart. He exposes them for their own self-centeredness and self-importance. But we also see here that there's a reference to a coming day of judgment. This is really interesting. If you look with me at verses 9 and 10, it says, And on that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head, and I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. So as the Lord is continu he continues to build this case against Israel, showing their sins, showing his righteousness and his that he's able to indeed judge them. Here he stands to tell his people that there's a day coming, a specific day. Not just that there's going to be some hard moments, but there is a day, an unmistakable day, when his judgment will come. We know looking back through the Old Testament and even through history, that this day did come in 722. The kingdom of Assyria came in and they wiped out, they took the northern kingdom of Israel into exile. Indeed, the Lord in other places says, I'm raising up Assyria to do this very thing. And yet we also know that there's another day coming, a day at the end of time, as we read in 1 Thessalonians 5 2. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. So when you're reading the Old Testament prophets and they talk about this coming day, it seems like they're talking about a specific day in the next 50, 100 years. And we can map those kind of in history. But then you read the New Testament authors and they also talk about the day of the Lord. But then that's a future end of time judgment. So which is it? It's a confusing sort of dilemma. Perhaps the best explanation here of what does it mean fully when we see the day of the Lord mentioned right here is that these moments in time when the Assyrians came in, when the Babylonians came in and took Judah into exile, they're like pictures or glimpses into the same sort of judgment that awaits all of us at the end of time. And the picture that we get in these texts, and the picture that we get here, is quite grim, isn't it? The sky goes dark in the middle of the day. We see that there's weeping, there's sackcloth and balding. Some of us are starting to experience that one already. But even worse is what we read at the end of verse 10. When it says, I will make it like the morning of an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. You know why this was such a terrible thing for Israel to hear? Because the death of an only son meant what? The end of a bloodline. It meant that they were cut off. It's an apropos picture for what's happening to Israel. They're being cut off, disinherited from the promises that are theirs to possess. Okay, so day of the Lord, it's in the future at the end of time. We get pictures of it with Israel and Judah. But there's another glimpse. There's another picture we get into the day of the Lord, into the wrath that is waiting those who do not repent. And it's when the Lord Jesus hung on Calvary's Hill, wasn't it? When he hung on the cross, what did he do? He endured all the wrath of God due to us justly because of our sin. He endured all of the hell of the cross that we might only know heavenly bliss. And indeed, the suffering, it's just like what we read here. We read this in Matthew 27, 45. Now, from the sixth hour or noon, there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour. Amos talking about noonday darkness on the day of the Lord, the cross, the day of the Lord's crucifixion. The same picture. Darkness at noon. The death of an only son. The mourning of it like a bitter day. Why does this matter? Well, it's easy for us to pick a text, pick up a text like Amos. To pick up a text from the Old Testament and think, that's all for them. But when we read how the scriptures themselves are telling us the story, we see it's a lot more personal than just that. This isn't just for Israel. What the Lord warns Israel with here is what he's warning every single one of us who do not repent, who fail to trust in Christ, that exact same judgment is due for us. The wrath of God, and none can stand on that day. But when we trust in Christ, we come to the one who drank to the dregs the cup of God's wrath. It's not just that Jesus was a great example, we should all try to be like him. He did something on the cross. And you know what he did? He endured God's wrath for your sin. As he hung on the cross, bore all the weight and guilt of all of his believers' sin, all of his elect, all of their sin, all of your sin, if you trust in Christ, every single bit, every single one of your sins was placed on Christ on that day. And you know what? There is no more wrath for you. There is no more wrath waiting for you on that day because Jesus endured every bit of it. Every bit of that wrath waiting that the Lord has been storing up for all who failed to come to Him. Indeed, the Lord says over and over again, all must give an account. But you know what our account will be? Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed me white as snow. There's no more wrath for you on that day because there's no more sin in you because of what Christ has done. He has paid the penalty for every one of your sins. And there's no more wrath waiting for those who trust in him. Let's turn now to our last point and consider the Lord's decree to send famine on Israel, sending famine. So look with me at verses eleven and twelve. Says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east. They shall run to and fro and seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. But the Lord is building this case, and he's already threatened a literal famine to come upon the land of Israel. But here he's doing something different. He says, indeed, I'm sending a famine. Famine was a curse laid out in Deuteronomy. If you remember the end of Deuteronomy, there's covenant blessings, do these things, and these blessings will come to you, and then there's covenant curses. If you fail to obey, these things will come upon you. And indeed, one of the curses was a famine. But here, this isn't just a famine in the land, but a famine from hearing the words of the Lord, which in his own terms is more severe. One way that you know you've really messed up at home is when you get the silent treatment. I don't know if you've ever had that. Silence is a way of response to a relational tension when one person feels deep offense. So we might even say here that the Lord is giving Israel the silent treatment. Now, indeed, he spent long, long, long amounts of time trying to communicate to his people to draw them back. But he's at the end of his rope. He says, You will no longer hear the words of the Lord. And the imagery of this is even further drawn out. If you look at verse 13, in that day the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst. Meaning that even the young people, even the most physically capable, the people that you would think needed the least amount of help, those who were who were carrying the load physically for the society, even young men and young women are faint, will languish, will not be able to be sustained without the word of the Lord. We're reminded of Deuteronomy 8.3, which Jesus quoted on the cross. He says, Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It's not just that a famine of hearing the words of the Lord is, okay, maybe my life's a little bit better, a little bit worse, but it's the word of the Lord is what it means to have life. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, hungry for 40 days, he says, man lives by the word of God. And he displayed that, didn't he? More important than his physical food was the spiritual sustenance, turning to the word of God. And so as we consider this idea of a spiritual famine and what it means for us, I want us to consider it in two ways. First, how might we be experiencing a spiritual famine in our own lives? What do our lives look like? Where does the word of God fit into our weekly rhythms and daily schedules? What place does the word of God have in the life of our family, the life of our home, in our own personal lives? What's your spiritual diet like? Do you wake up hungry for the word? Do you make a point to be in his word, to meditate on God's word? Or do you only eat on Sunday, thinking that one day we'll somehow tide you over for six days of spiritual starvation? See, here is that these the word of God is something that we need to turn to over and over again. I love the picture of the godly man in Psalm 1. His delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. That the word of God isn't just an occasional thing, a thing that the godly man gets around to. It's not even just a chore or a duty. We're told that it's his delight. And on his law, he meditates all day. This man can't get enough of God. He can't get enough of his word. So maybe today you're here and you're in a dry season. Your heart's grown cold. It's been hard to get in God's word. It's been a struggle. You're not where you used to be. Life kind of rhythms have gotten away from you. I hope you'll consider these two things. The significance of what it means for us to be without the word. That God's word isn't just an optional add-on, a spiritual pick-me-up, you know, sort of like a cup of coffee in the morning, but it's our food. It's our sustenance, but it's also our delight. That it's something, that there's so much in God's word to nourish our souls, to sustain us in so many different ways. I think we think about reading the Bible kind of like eating vegetables. If you're like me, maybe you're not. I kind of grew up eating steamed vegetables a lot, which is by far the worst way to prepare them. I love casseroles. It's easily the best way to have vegetables, although you probably lose a lot of the nutritional value. But God's word is full of so many different things. There's the deep and rich passages like Romans and Isaiah, it's like biting into a steak. It's rich, it's nutritious. You gotta chew on it, but man, is it filling? And you've got the sweet passages of God's word, like the Psalms and the love of Christ. Seeing his love for you. That's like a sweet dessert, doesn't it? Leave just a sweet taste in your mouth. And books like Proverbs and James, like veggies, well prepared. And they're meant to aim at the health of your soul. But there's so much in God's word. Isn't there? There's so many different genres, so many different books, so many different ways for the Lord to nourish our souls. And there's so much that we can glean from his word. So that's within. How are we? What's our life look like? What is the word doing in our hearts? Secondly, what about the many people all around the world who are currently in a spiritual famine with no one to preach God's word to them? It's not just that they're practicing in some other religion or some other culture. When we understand the scripture, we see that they who do not follow Christ, who do not know his word, are wasting away and dying. The severity of what it means to be without the word is like a famine here. And it should give us compassion, shouldn't it? To the many who do not even know the name of Christ, much less his word. So what's your heart for the lost around the world? Does your heart break for them? Do you long to see the gospel go forth into many different nations? Do you pray, as Jesus said, earnestly, that more laborers might be raised up? Or are you indifferent? That's their problem. They've had a chance to follow Christ. Do you long to see many people who are suffering, who are wasting away and dying to know the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. During my first short-term trip to Honduras, the thing that struck me the most was just how great the need really was. As William said, there's only one reformed church of any variety in the whole of the country of 11 million people. But also just how simple the solution really is. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. There's no need to do anything elaborate or extraordinary. It really is opening the word, preaching the word, proclaiming the gospel, and planting churches. That people can worship God and have rich spiritual fellowship. And when we're faithful in this task, we read that Jesus will build his church. Sometimes we think we'll build his church, and Jesus hopefully will come along and help. But we read that Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. This is why the work of missions is so important and why we must get behind it because there's people who are doing good works, good humanitarian works, and benevolent people all over the world. But only the church can do this job. Only the church can help end a spiritual famine. There are people that are way more qualified than us to help deal with literal famines and difficulty growing crops and that sort of thing. And poverty alleviation. But we have good news and gospel riches for the spiritually impoverished. And there's something, and this is something that we need the church to be all in for. Because the work of missions doesn't happen without the prayerful support of each and every person. Thinking back to the apostles. From the earliest days of the church, they were always sending out people because there were people who hadn't even heard what Jesus had done. And guess what? Still today, there's billions of people all over the world who don't know what Jesus has done, who don't know his name, who don't know his word, and they're living in a spiritual famine. And there's something we can do about it. And Jesus tells us it's something very simple and straightforward. If our heart really breaks for the lost, we'll pray. We'll pray, Lord, that we'll pray earnestly that he will send more laborers into his harvest field. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for today. We thank you for your word. We pray that you would take this word and you would implant it deep in our hearts, God, that we might know that we have a Savior in heaven who has endured all the wrath of God for us. That we might know that we have the hope in your word to sustain and to feed our souls. Oh Lord, how we confess we are not in your word as much as we ought. But give us a heart for your word. Strengthen our delight through the holy things in your word. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

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