When God makes good of our mess

Sometimes life can be a bit of a mess. You recently I was watching someone driving down the road and uh and they were in front of me and they were kind of kind of crossing the line. They were weaving. It's a little two-lane road and uh and then they throw on their blinker and they're going to turn right and then they don't. They decide the last minute not to and then they turn on their blinker to go left and then they decide not to and then they go a little further and they sling a U-turn in the middle of the road going through the grass and off they take and speed off, you know, away from me. And I just thought in that moment like they're a bit of a mess. They're they're a mess on the road, you know, and and today I'm going to talk a little bit about a mess, but you know, a mess can manifest itself in so all sorts of ways. And I and I don't want to poke at it or make fun of it because we're all in a bit of a mess at times in our lives. And and sometimes it's a serious mess. Sometimes there's a messiness in life when say a marriage is struggling. And and it's not funny. It's not that we ridicule. We look at it and and and our hearts ache for this messiness that is going on in life. Sometimes in life uh we're distracted and we are looking to other things and life begins to feel off. It feels out of balance. And that out of balance, just like the driver on the road, we start to just kind of weave and wander. We're directionless. We're erratic. And so our lives in that same way at times. So when I talk about mess, I don't mean this great balling flame of fire. I just mean that sometimes life is out of whack. And that happens again and again in our own lives because the current of this life and this world in a very subtle way is to introduce these things into our life that distract us from the main purpose of our life from our calling and from the identity that we have in God. And so life gets to become a mess. And you know, we've been studying in this sermon series that God is at work, that God is working. And we believe that even in the messes of life, that God hasn't abandoned, that God hasn't forgotten, God's not on vacation, that even in the mess of life, God can step in and he can restore. He can renew. He can make whole. And we're seeing here that Israel right now is going to find herself. and she finds herself presently even looking last week in a little bit of a mess in a time of sorrow. And so let's take a look at this text today and see a little bit of the current state of Israel. 1st Samuel chapter 7, I'm going to be reading the whole chapter for us this morning. And it says, "And the man of Kiratharim came and took up the ark of the Lord, and they brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son Eleazar to have charge of the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kirath Jereim, a long time passed, some 20 years, and all of the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, "If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines." So the people of Israel put away the bells and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only. Then Samuel said, "Gather all Israel at Mitzvah, and I will pray to the Lord for you." So they gathered at mitzvah and they drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, "We have sinned against the Lord." And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mitzbah. Now when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mitzvah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines. And the people of Israel said to Samuel, "Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines." So Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. And Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him. And Samuel was offering up the burnt offering. The Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion and they were defeated before Israel. And the men of Israel went out from Mitzpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them as far as Bethar. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mitzpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezar. For he said, "Till now the Lord has helped us." So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel from Echron to Gath. And Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites. Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethl, Gilgal, and Mitzbah. And he judged Israel in all these places. Then he would return to Rama, for his home was there, and there also he judged Israel. And he built there an altar to the Lord. This is God's word. So today, we're really looking at how God makes good of our mess and how God makes good even of Israel's mess. Now, Israel to understand sort of maybe the background that we've been on this journey with, just to recap for a second, is that Israel has been sort of on a journey and it says here in verse two that that number one that Israel, it says, "From that day, the ark of the Lord lodged at Kiratarim, a long time passed, some 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord." And God will sometimes begin working in our lives to bring good by allowing the mess into our lives. God will allow it to happen. He will allow it to take place. And he's allowed it to take place here in the people and in the land of Israel. And if we just recap for a second the events that have led up to this moment, I think we have a few here. The first one would be that. So remember, No, we don't have them. different. Oh, I thought they were both. Oh, yeah. They were Okay. I think I had them like layered in there. Okay. It's okay. We'll go through. Let's just recount the events that led up to it. It's all good. We know the story because we've been studying it together. So, Israel was in sin. The priesthood was in sin. Everything in the country just spiritually is beginning to shake and fall apart. Eli's sons are treacherous. They're they're irreverent. They don't obey the Lord. And the people didn't rise up. People murmured, but they didn't rise up. and demand that there be spiritual reform in the nation. And so it just like Eli, the nation allows this that to persist, this sin in the house of the priesthood to continue. And it's just a reflection of the state of the nation itself. And then they go into battle with the Philistines and they lose and they decide like, oh, let's I got an idea. Let's bring the elders, the leaders of this country, bring the ark of God into battle. They think, you know, he helped it at Jericho. He made the walls fall down. Let's bring God and maybe he'll do the same thing again and give us victory in this moment. And then what we find in what we saw in previous weeks is that they really look using God like a good luck charm. They want to wield God like a weapon to accomplish their purposes instead of allowing God to bring about his purposes in the land. So this good luck charm comes and they think God will never let us lose because he will never let anything happen to his ark. And he surprises every single one of them. And in that same day, the ark of God is captured and Hoffne and Phineas and their father Eli die. In that same day, the priesthood is gone. The ark is gone. Some believe that even Shiloh later on through some of these battles might have been gone because the ark doesn't ever return to Shiloh itself. And so there might have been destruction of the tabernacle that existed in that place. Now the Philistines are celebrating. This is great. So the ark goes over to the Philistine and it kind of goes in like the Trojan horse. They get it and they think this is awesome and then it turns and all of a sudden God begins to respond and what happens? They think we got to get rid of this thing. You know, they're getting boils. He's God's terrorizing their God. He's falling apart there in the temple and things are just going really bad. The Philistines were like, "Get rid of it." You know, and so they send God back. But then God gets back in the land and all of a sudden, you know, the the the Levites take him off of the cart, take the ark of God off, the presence and the holiness of God. But then they're irreverent. It says that they looked into the ark and God strikes 70 of them dead and they're like, "Oh, we got to get rid of the ark." And so they sort of scuffle it along and then they set up a steward to oversee the ark. And so where we find ourselves in this situation right now for Israel is Israel doesn't have a priesthood. Their tabernacle seems likely gone. The ark doesn't exist in a tabernacle setting. We can only wonder what the worship of God looked like when all of this seems to be in disarray. Who and where is the high priest and what's going on? And there's sorrow and there's lament because there's a mess. And God has allowed a mess in the land of Israel. And he he allows And why does God allow a mess like that? It's to wake us up. is to show us that going our own way and doing our own thing is not going to give us the kind of life that we think we need. See, what you want isn't the thing that you always need. What you want in life sometimes what you think this will fulfill me, this will give me what I want isn't actually the thing that will fulfill you in this life. And we can wind up chasing after all sorts of things in this life to fulfill us. And we've done it in small ways. We've all been there in places where we thought this will give me what I want. Maybe it was I thought you've ever seen this. I thought this job would be all these things and then you get there and time passes and it's not. This person, this relationship, if I could just get on a date with them and maybe we could get married and life just doesn't fulfill us. I love recently Scotty Sheffler. He's a pro golfer. I don't even follow golf. But I love one of the things that he's really said because he he has identified this idol that often times crops up in our hearts and he says, "I love winning and I love winning for the fulfillment that it gives in that moment, but it doesn't fulfill the deep things of my heart." See, Scotty Sheffller's a Christian and he knows that deep down only God can fulfill some of the deep longings of his heart and no other thing out there is actually going to fulfill that. And when we turn to those things in life, when we try to use God for our good luck charm, when we kind of do our own way, when we allow irreverence into our life for sin into our life and it goes on unchecked, God says, "Go your way. Have your way. Do what you want." And when we do, often times our life begins to feel the effects of the presence of God far from us and things get out of balance and shaky. And often times we look around and sorrow sets in sadness. This is where Israel finds herself as it says in verse two is in a state of sorrow and lament. But you know sorrow doesn't always lead you back to God. You can have all kinds of sorrows. And sorrows one of the great mistakes of life is that you can take that sorrow and you can start to look at visible things around you to feel that sorrow.  Mhm. And as I've said before, there is no bottle that is deep enough. There is no amount of entertainment. There is no amount of doom scroll or anything else that is going to fill that pain, that sorrow, that loneliness, that void that is beginning to crop up in your life when the mess begins to set into our lives. And God will allow it to make us aware of it. God will allow it just as he has for Israel to make us aware of it. And so why why does God allow it? And and and what is the the the thing that he wants to bring about is is this is my second part is that God allows the mess because God wants to address the mess in our lives. He wants to address the mess in our lives. God is always the first mover. It's not us and it's not Israel here. We're going to see here as we look at the at the Israelites in verses 3 and 4. Samuel said to the house of Israel, "If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtar from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines." So the people of Israel put away the bells and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only. God wants to address the mess. He wants to get a hold of Israel and turn them back to him and not to get them to look at other things. And so we see Sorry. No, no, it's okay. we're good. we're fine. we're good. So, I just want to make sure I was in sync here. All right. So, verses three and four. So, we just read that there are three things I want you to know. Number one, first before the three points, Samuel Samuel speaks first on behalf of the Lord. Like I said, we'll go our own way in life. we'll do our own thing in this life. And the mess is in our life. And God always moves. So God addresses the mess. Now, he's going to call us to do some things in response, but I want you to know out of the grace and the love and the mercy of God, he always pursues his people. And he found us. If you were in Christ, God found you at some point in a major mess in your life, far from God, and he moved first. So, that's the first thing that I want us to understand is it's not just you address the mess. God wants to address the mess in your life. And there are three things that Samuel is going to to instruct the people to do. Number one, he says, "Turn back with all your heart." The second thing he's going to say is, "Put away your idols." And the third thing that he's going to say is serve and worship the Lord. See, you can you can turn to the Lord and do kind of a halfway repentance. You can turn to the Lord and sort of appease God. Let's make a deal with God. I'll kind of do the religious thing. I'll offer up the sacrifices to you, God. And then if I do all of these things, then then I've appeased you. Then then you do good for me. You get me out of this mess. You deliver me. But God doesn't work like that. God doesn't do deals. God wants your heart. He wants all of you. He wants 100%. He wants to be on the throne in your life. He doesn't share it. You don't have any gods before me. You You're to love me with all of your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. God wants everything. He wants all of us 100%. And I say that because that's what Christianity is so different than everything else. Because it's about a relationship. It's not about conformity, external conformity, but inward transformation. It's not about external conformity, but inward transformation in our lives. God wants to grab hold of our heart. He wants us to realize our deep need for him and his goodness and his mercy in this life. He wants us to know it's personal. One of the great beautiful ways, and we won't take a look all the way at it, but just if you know the story of the prodical son, the son that takes half of his father's inheritance and runs off and lives the way that he wants to live, does the kinds of things he wants to do. And what he discovers is what? What he wanted wasn't what he needed. And so he makes the trek back. And where do we find the father? waiting on the hill, looking, waiting, longing for his son to return. That's the kind of God that we serve. It's personal. He doesn't just want servants and people doing his will. He wants people that love him because he loves them. And as a parent, if you if you're a parent, then you then you've probably experienced this idea where you you love your children or or you can love a person. But but if you if you whether it's a children or it's a person and you extend kindness to someone and grace and love towards them and they don't notice or they kind of reject it, it just sort of falls flat. It's only when that love is reciprocated and appreciated and received and acknowledged that something about that love builds up. It's different. And with God, that's exactly what he wants. He wants us to know that he's the one that first loved us. And for us to realize his work and his grace and his mercy and all the ways that he has helped us and all the ways that he wants to help us now so that we might with our heart respond. No halfway repentance. The second thing that Samuel tells them to do is put away your idols and your gods because some reason in ancient times, and you can see that here, put away your foreign gods and the asteroth from from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only. put away your idols because something in this life for some reason and it was true for Israel back then. It was true for all peoples of the ancient near east as it is for us today is you will look to the things that are visible in your life to rescue you. There's something about the the the unseen God that that we can't we struggle to put trust and faith as our first resort. It's always our last resort. We tend to want to look to other things to give us security just as they did in ancient times. They would look to the fertility god. They would look to the crop god. They would look to the rain god. They would look to all of these things to fulfill the things that they needed to survive because they were visible. They could make a block and bow down to it and think if I appease this brick or this this totem pole, it'll give me what I need. But only God gives the deep things that we need. And God wants us to look beyond the things that we can see and with faith look at to the unseen things in life to put our trust in those things. John Calvin who was a reformer back in the 1500s he used to say the heart is an idol making factory. It's an idol making factory because constantly in life, whether we know it or not, we tend to put other things in our life either alongside God or in front of God. And we tend to trust or fear or love those things more than we do God. And it and it's not always the obvious things. It crops up. Sometimes we think, "Oh, well, it's it's money. It's sex. It's power." But you know what? Sometimes sometimes you need the love and the affirmation of other people more than you need the love of God. And that's idolatry. And so subtly. Sometimes you can fear the opinions of other people and what they may think about you more than you fear and wonder what the most high God thinks about you. And those things can begin to become that idol making factory in our life. And we can begin to bow down to those things in our life to put our trust in those things. And Israel very much here in this moment. This is a moment of of trial. What are you going to do, Israel? What are you going to trust in? You know, they're in the middle of a worship service. How are they going to respond when the Philistines attack? The third thing that I want us to see here is that he also calls them to to turn, sorry, I lost my place here. to serve and worship the Lord. God wants them to serve and to worship the Lord. And in here we see that God doesn't just want to be a God where like we appease and we give the sacrifices and we give the offerings. That's what you did with idols in ancient times. But unlike all of that, direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only. Nothing else. Only God. Don't put other idols before me. First commandment, love me. Greatest commandment. With all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. And if you'll do that, he will deliver you. He will give you salvation and deliverance. So put aside these things. And unlike the other gods, those gods just wanted you to offer the sacrifices. This God is so different. Yahweh wants your heart. He wants your devotion. He wants your life. He wants all of it. The heart and the service to him. In many ways, it's much like a king. Like a king. And this is a little bit of a flash forward to our next chapter that we're going to be looking at next week is because God right here is setting himself up saying, "I am the one that you serve and that you devote yourself to and that you look to to give you the deliverance from your enemies. I'm the one that rules over you. I'm the one that I want your devotion. And he operates in the land much like a king. Because the understanding for Israel is they don't need a king because God is king. And one of the great sins that here is that they're going to forget that reality. They're going to forget that God is the king over the people and their service is going to expire. But for this day and here, we see that the people, they bow before the Lord. They enter into a worship service. They're crying out. They're fasting. They're pouring out water before the Lord. They're serving and they're doing what Samuel's called them. They've put away their foreign gods. And so the question is is who will you serve? Will you turn with all your heart to God? Will you give him everything? And think about in our own lives, where are the ways that we get tempted where we have other little gods that that factory in our heart has produced? Where is our devotion and our service? Let me ask you a question. What good thing have you made a bad thing because you look to it for an ultimate good that only God can give? What good thing? Because there's good things in life sometimes. Have you made a bad thing because you tried to make it an ultimate good that only God can give in your life? Whether it be your trust, your allegiance, your heart, your fear, your devotion, God is king. He's the great champion. He's the one that will save you. And that's what Samuel preaches here to the people. And so, the third thing that we see here is that God answers those who call to him. He doesn't leave them hanging. But you know, one of the funny things is is that, you know, God promised to answer as we saw back in uh in chapter I mean in verse four there that that um that he will answer you if you turn to him. And what we see here is that God promises to answer, but then the Philistines attack, right? They're in the middle of a worship service. They're following God. They're doing what God has called them to do. And yet and and God has said, "I'll give you deliverance. I'll save you. I'll deliver you in this moment." And yet at the end of the day, the Philistines still attack. And the thing is that happens in life is sometimes we think that following God means a problem-free life. It's not. It's not. In fact, sometimes if you think we talk, oh, it'll be so much better when you come to God. And we have to be careful with what we mean there. Think about an Iranian who becomes a Christian. Is their life going to be better in the way that maybe we're thinking about it? It's going to be harder. It's going to be dangerous. It's going to be risky. Their life is going to be at risk. They're going to be cut off from their family. They have to hide this thing in secret often times in their lives. Now, it is better. It is good because God fulfills these deep things in our life. He is our ultimate salvation. He gives a hope and a promise that cannot be taken. That's why so many people turn to God because they're like, "That's fine. You can take my life. You can take everything from me because I've been given a promise and a salvation and a hope that cannot be taken from me. And that thing enliven them in a way that nothing else has fulfilled them before. And that's why they will turn from everything and hand it over. They sometimes understand better than we do what the hope is that is promised to us. The great hope that is promised to us. But here we see the Philistines do attack and they come and this is sort of a moment of truth for them. This is this is the moment when we can this can be the moment of triumph or the moment of tragedy in life. And you think about this in your own life. And think about this with Israel. How could Israel react in this moment when the Philistines attack? What's up, God? I mean, we're having a worship service here. You sent the Philistines like what's up with this? They could attack and accuse God. Or sometimes, as we will see in one of the kings of Israel, when things get tense, just crumble. We run. We freak out. We try to appease God. We play games, religious games with God. And we react. That's the moment of tragedy in people's lives. The moment of triumph in our life isn't to find strength in oursel. It's never going to work. But to do what Samuel said, stay the course. Call out to me. Come to me. Look to me. Serve me. And when we look to God that way and we anchor down, we double down. Say, man, whatever comes, whatever may be, I choose to serve the Lord and I'm going to anchor down in that and to wait on that because that's the thing that God calls us to do. Don't accuse God. Don't crumble. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not into your own understanding. in all your ways acknowledge him. And that's what the people of Israel here are called to do. Because it's, like I said, the moment of triumph or tragedy. And so, Israel does what they should do. They turn to God. They cry out to Samuel. Samuel, pray. Pray. Pray to God. We're looking at him. He's our God. Call out to our God. In this moment is religious reform. This awakening begins. And Israel has realized, I got no other options. And that's one of the things in life is we should understand when God has allowed the mess into our lives. And when he's begun to call to us and draw us near, that we should remember to turn and trust in him, to look to him, and to not tr like I'm out of options. There is no other hope. Whatever may come, however this shakes out, I know who my God is. I know where things are going. I know what he has promised me. And I may not be able to make sense of my current circumstances, but I know he is working good. Because that's the thing about this whole message here is that God wants to work good in the midst of our mess. He wants to work it in Israel. We're going to see him working in Israel here. And he does the same for you and I. It may not be the kind of answer that we always understood. It may not take shape in the way, but if he's done nothing else, we can look at all that he's done up to this point and remember that he has a good plan. It's in a broken world. It takes its own shape. It doesn't mean everything's always perfect, but he has ultimately promised us things that will not be taken. The deliverance and the hope will come. And in this day, that's what we begin to see because what happens? It says that they cried out to the Lord. I believe it's in uh as Samuel was offering verse 10. As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion and they were defeated before Israel. And all the men of Israel went out from mitzvah and pursued the Philistines and struck them as far as Beth Carr. So God did respond in this moment. He brought about good from what seemed like a terrible situation, but he also worked good in their lives. He's brought them from a state of lament to a state of victory. Oh man, we need that. These moments in our life, when things are a mess, when we find ourselves just offkilter, out of balance, we identify a sin or an idol in our life that we need to know that God is working good. We need to see the deliverance that he can take the pieces and make good out of all of it. And that's what he begins to do here and does here for Israel. And they've shown that even under pressure, they've trusted in the Lord. And what the great thing is that that that God works above and beyond what they could have expected. Now, it doesn't always happen in this life. I want to balance it, right? Because I could preach to you some sort of pie in the sky. Everything's going to be great if you follow God. That's not reality. But God gives you victory. And he has promised us ultimate victory. And here in Israel, we see as they trust, we see the good begin to unfold for Israel. Uh verses 13 and 14, it says, "So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistine all the days of Samuel. And the cities the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel from Echron to Gath. And Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace between Israel and the Amorites." So God has done more. He didn't just deliver them. He gave them freedom from bondage. Freedom from the Philistines. Just like God has accomplished freedom from spiritual bondage for all of his people. that when we come to God, we are rescued from death and from sin, from sorrow, from all of the things that that in bondage our lives. But he also gave peace to the people. He gave peace to the land. He gave them peace with their enemies. That word, by the way, is shalom. And that's the way that we translate in the English. But in the Hebrew, this is some one of the beautiful things about why Hebrew is so cool. It has all of these different meanings. and and that word shalom can mean wholeness, goodness. So we translate it as peace, but it's just this idea of everything beginning to operate the way that it should with goodness and with wholeness and with rightness. And God is establishing this in the land. And he establishes that shalom for his people. We lose that shalom sometimes. That's the mess. But when we trust in the Lord, we begin to gain that shalom again. And God works above and beyond what we could have expected in ways that we could not have known, making good, bringing about good for his people, establishing that peace and that shalom. And he restored the land for Israel. It says he brought about a restoration. and he can restore the pieces that are broken in people's lives. And that's why ultimately, folks, we call, we want to be a people who love the kingdom. Love the king, live the kingdom, and seek the common good. And we want to proclaim a truth to people to say, you can be free from the mess in your lives, from the bondage in your life. God can give a peace that passes all understanding. He can give a deliverance to you and he can restore things that you did not think could be brought back. He can make new. And we know that one day, no matter what happens in this life, he will bring an ultimate restoration. He will make things so new, so good. So Samuel, Samuel, this is a landmark moment in Israel's history. And so what does Samuel do? And it says that Samuel set up a stone and he named it Ebenezer. By the way, Evan is stone. Aar is help. The stone of help. And he sets it up. And it's so important in life because that stone signifies something that's it's going to stand for a long time. It wasn't probably a pebble, guys. It was a stone. It was a rock. And he sets it there. And it's not going away. It's going to be there for a long time. It's probably along the roadside somewhere. And it shows the Lord helped us. He established victory. He did something right here. He met us right here. He hurt us right here. And in our own lives, we need those stones. You need an Ebenezer in your life. You need Ebenezers in your life. You need whether it's a journal, it's in the pages in your Bible, you need to write down sometimes those moments where God met you, where you cried out and called to God and you can say, "The Lord has helped me thus far because he's helped Israel." And Israel is to remember her legacy and and God is constantly writing these Ebenezers for Israel. It wasn't just that Israel got delivered from Egypt and that he gave them the promised land that he established good for them, but just constantly in the life and the journey. Even with all of their brokenness, God establishes these moments where he meets with his people and he delivers them. And you need that in your life because there will be days, there will be times that come in your life and you will wonder and the tricks of time and life begin to play where we forget and all of a sudden we wonder, is God there? Will he make good of this mess? Does he care? Is he all powerful? All sorts of things will swirl around in your mind and you need to be able to look back at these moments where God came through. And if that's if if anything else, if anything else, he has achieved a victory in your life through Christ that cannot be taken from you. He has helped you thus far. Um, imagine with me if you will for just a second. Um, just as that stone was set up, one day an ultimate stone came. It was known as the cornerstone. and he came and he established something that he did for the people, for us that we should never forget that it's an Ebenezer in our life. Imagine it this way. Um, in the darkest hour of Israel's history, Roman oppression, spiritually, the literally the high priesthood would be under bribes. You could become a high priest. Spiritually dark. Israel is losing her identity. This is, you know, 2,000 years ago. This is the darkness that it is. And one day, a champion comes. It'd been talked about. In fact, there guy had been preaching by this river talking about one who was coming. And that champion came. And he came in a different way than we understood. And his words were of beauty. And they were of truth. And they and he and he and he he did amazing things. He laid hands on people and they were healed. He embraced people who were dirty and unclean and he loved them and people's hearts and affections just they they they cheered him. They looked to him and in the darkest of hours this light began to appear. See, if if all of life, even for our own lives, is just we eat, we drink, we're merry, and our life is a little bit shaky, and yet underneath all of that is this black abyss of meaningless and death that swallows it all up so that we are nothing. If that is the reality without God, then the reality with God is that he came and that he delivered us from that pit of meaningless, that bondage of hell, that oblivion that exists. And he called us, don't go that way. Come to me. And he established something on that cross. He became the champion, the king, and the deliverer that day for his people. He delivered us. And in our darkest of hours, in your moment of mess in your life, he appeared and he called and he drew you near and he gave you deliverance. And if nothing else in life pans out, I want you to remember that God is working good. He has worked good. And what he did that day reveals a promise to us that he will make all things right. He will heal what is broken. He will restore what is even within us that is not right. God wants to work good. He is at work here for Israel. And he has worked. That is the Ebenezer is the cross of life. His cross that he established for us. And if nothing else pans out, remember remember that he did a work and that work established something that we can never lose, can never be taken from us. Let's pray. Well Lord, we just come to you and we thank you that you have been our great stone and our great help, Lord, in all of this. We thank you that you are our Ebenezer and we can say the Lord has helped me thus far and he will be my help until the end. Until that day, Lord, I pray Lord that that reality would help us to turn with great joy to others around us and to proclaim the truth of who you are, the stone of our help working good for us all in Jesus name. Amen.