In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the kindness and patience of God towards sinners. He uses the analogy of a person falling from a building, saying that sinners may think everything is fine, but it is only because of God's kindness. The preacher quotes Romans 2:4, highlighting that God's kindness leads to repentance. He warns against using God's kindness as an excuse for more sin and self-assurance, as it will lead to storing up wrath for the day of judgment. The preacher also emphasizes that God does not change and is slow to anger, contrasting with our own changing emotions. He concludes by praising God for His unchanging grace and urging listeners to preach and witness God as He truly is.

Well, well, well. Today we want to talk about the patience and long-suffering of God. The worst sin that a preacher or a church can ever commit is to misrepresent the character of God and present a God other than the God of the Bible. And we have a tendency to go to one of two extremes. We either emphasize the love and grace of God and then we soon lose the doctrine of sin and the doctrine of hail, or else we go to the other extreme and talk about the wrath of God, the judgment of God, and we soon lose the love of God and the forgiveness of God. I want to look at two verses of Scripture this morning, or this afternoon, and these two verses both use the word long-suffering and talk about the long-suffering of God. And the amazing thing is that the one verse is talking about the long-suffering of God to the none elect, and the other is talking about the long-suffering of God to the elect. And so the thesis of our sermon today is that God is long-suffering to all men without exception. He is just as long-suffering with Pharaoh as he is with Saul of Tarsus, but he is long-suffering to some men for an entirely different reason than he is long-suffering to other men. But the point is we're supposed to preach him as he reveals himself in the Scriptures and he certainly reveals himself as a God who is patient and long-suffering with sinners and with saints. The two verses, I'll read them. You needn't look them up because we'll come back to them in a minute. It's 2 Peter 3, 9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men sound slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, and I take that to be Christians, not willing that any, that would be any of us, should perish, but that all without exception of us should come to repentance. And every Arminian knows that verse is in the Bible. He sometimes doesn't know where the reference is and you have to help him with that, but he knows the text. And so the next time somebody quotes that to you, say, well, that's an interesting verse and I believe it, but there's another verse that also talks about the long-suffering of God. Romans 9.22, what if God, willing to show his wrath and make his power known, endured with much long-suffering, same word, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. And that's not usward, that's the reprobate, the unbeliever, the Christ rejecter, he will be under the wrath of God. Now the King James translates the word long-suffering and also with the word patience. And in Hebrews chapter six, verse 12, it says that I do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience or long-suffering will inherit the kingdom of God. And here the whole idea of our perseverance in patience and long-suffering determination, no matter what the odds are, no matter what the difficulties are, that we press on, we pay any price in order to reach the gates of heaven itself. God's patience or his long-suffering is a power or ability in God that enables him to endure everything that's necessary to accomplish all that he has planned and purposed. God's long-suffering is tied up with both his sovereign power as well as his sovereign purposes. Nothing will make God act contrary to his own ultimate goal. God will never go off half-cocked. And we're to realize and bless God that this is true because this is the ground of our salvation and it's the ground of our security in Jesus Christ. And this is why Peter says we are to account or to bear in mind, to remember the long-suffering of God because it is our salvation. You aren't very long-suffering. And I would only have to talk to your wife for a few minutes and I would discover that. And if she wouldn't tell me, your kids sure will. We're not very good at patience and long-suffering. We very easily allow our emotions to control us and to have us make wrong decisions. This is very difficult for you and I to get angry or upset and frustrated and throw up our hands when the way gets tough and say, I don't need this hassle and quit. And a lot of worthwhile goals are never realized simply because we're not long-suffering. We're not patient and not so with God. God never loses his resolve. And when God purposes something, nothing, even the death of his son is not too high a price for him to pay to accomplish his purposes for his own glory. In Psalm 103, verse eight and nine, it says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abiding in love. He'll not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever. He's slow to anger, but he will let loose his anger. But when will he do that? When he gets frustrated, when he's tried everything and it's failed, when it just seems like there's nothing left to do, when the situation seems so hopeless, when he's at his wit's end? No, none of those things are true. When will God let his wrath loose when he's accomplished everything he purposed to do? And not a moment before that. And Peter tells us, and Romans tells us, that we're to praise him that he has this awesome power. And the great lesson for us as a people of God is that he's going to succeed in what he's purposed to do. And one of the things he's purposed to do is conform you to the image of Christ. And all the devils in hell and all of your own sin is not going to stop him from doing what he purposed to do, one way or the other. He will bear patiently with Pharaoh, even though he abuses his patience, until he has accomplished everything he purposed to accomplish through Pharaoh. And he will likewise put up with his elect and all of their rebellion until the day of his power, and he opens their hearts with the gospel. God doesn't change. His resolve, his purposes aren't ever frustrated. You and I are not like that. You and I establish relationships, and sometimes we're sorry we ever established them, especially if they lead to the ultimate relationship of marriage. And sometimes we say to a person, if I would have known this about you, we would have never become friends, or we would have never become husband and wife. In other words, we learn something new that makes us change our whole basis of attitude towards the other person. I don't know if you ever thought about it, but that can't happen with God. There's nothing new that God can find out about you. Every rotten, stinking thing that you ever did, wanted to do, or was afraid to do, he already knew when he chose you, so there's nothing that would ever give him a basis for changing his mind. We're not like that. Now, the awesome implication of this to the saint is, it's a great encouragement and a basis of assurance and hope. In Hosea chapter 11 verse 9, I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not enter into the city. I will not return and destroy Ephraim. Did they deserve to be destroyed? Absolutely. Could God have destroyed them in a moment? Absolutely. Why didn't he? He's too powerful. He's too great. That would have frustrated his purposes, because he had purposes of grace for Ephraim. And he says, I'm not like men. I don't change my mind. What I purpose to do, I'm willing to pay the price to accomplish it. What's that? Why does he not execute his wrath right now in an ungodly world? Well, because a lot of his elect would be lost. The only reason our Lord hasn't returned is because all of the elect is not gathered in. And our Lord will not come back until every pharaoh has come on the scene and played out his part, and every elect sheep is safe in the fold. And then, and not till then, is at the end. You and I lose our temper so easily, and we get frustrated. We allow circumstances to control how we think and act. Do you ever sit down with a teenager at the kitchen table and say, now we're going to have a rational conversation. And in about 10 minutes, somebody's pounding on the table in utter frustration, you stupid jerk, you don't have a brain in your head. And it isn't the teenager. What happened? You blew your cool. What happened? You acted like a man, not like God. So much for our long suffering. Proverbs 16, 32, better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a whole city. A man who can control his emotions and temper is greater, stronger than he who can capture a whole city. Note again the idea of the greatness of power is manifested in the ability to control oneself to reach their goal. The more one controls his emotions and anger, the greater that person is. In Malachi 3, 6, it spells this out pretty clearly. I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Do you see the stress on the therefore? I am the Lord. I change not. And because I am the Lord and because I don't change, therefore, you're not consumed. And if I wasn't like that, you would be consumed. In a moment. Again, the stress is on this idea of the ability to be slow to anger. Did the sons of Jacob deserve to be consumed? Yes. Over and over again. Why didn't God consume them? Because he had purposes of grace. He had purposes of mercy. Simply because God doesn't act like a man. He acts like God. We change with the weather. Our emotions have opened down like a thermometer, but not so with God. There's nothing out there that has any effect on God's purposes or God's actions or God's attitudes because of who he is. Every single thing that God has purposed, he will accomplish and nothing, nobody will make him change his mind. Now let's draw a couple of truths from this. First of all, God clearly reveals himself in the scriptures as this kind of a God, a patient God, a long suffering God who entreats sinners to repent and believe in Isaiah chapter 66. I have spread out my hands all the day onto a rebellious people and the stretching out of the hand, whether it's like this or whether it's like this, this is picturing God as, can I use the word pleading with sinners to repent and believe? And that's the way we're supposed to preach him. If we understand, I think correctly. However, the moment we say that we got to be careful because there's a lot of people totally misunderstand the patience and long suffering of God. This doesn't mean that some think that God is weak. He's on the sidelines and all he can do is plead with men, but that's all he can do. He can do nothing else. That's not what this means at all. And then there's some who think this means that man has a free will and God can't do anything until he gets a man to consent with his will and man's will is stronger than God's will. That's nonsense. That's not what the patience and long suffering of God is all about. There's other people who say, well, God has no hands, but your hands, no feet, but your feet. I had a friend, Pharaoh Griswold, some of you knew him. He was home for six weeks sick and every week he listened to a couple of different TV broadcasts, see what was on the air. After about the third week, he told his wife, he said, shut that off. He said, those people have a wheelchair God. And if we preach God as if he is in a wheelchair, no hands, no feet, nothing. We're not representing him correctly at all. We're misusing his patience and his long suffering. And then there's those who say, well, God's done all he can do and now all he can do is plead. I'm glad that's a lie. If you've got lost loved ones, I bet you're glad that's a lie. You don't plead with God when you pray and say, I know you've done all you can do and I hope my daughter one of these days has enough sense and wakes up to realize it. No, you don't pray like that. You plead with God to manifest his power in opening her heart with the truth of the gospel of the grace of God. Then there's others who feel like he's like Esau. Esau intended to kill his brother, wanted to kill his brother, but he just couldn't get the opportunity until his father died. He says, ah, now I have the opportunity. God's not like that. God has every opportunity anytime, any day, any place, any person to end his life and bring him into judgment. There's others feel that God is just too loving to, to punish. And they take these entreaties of God as an illustration. And if you believe that, then you pretty soon won't have any doctrine of hail or any doctrine of the punishment of sin. God chastises his people and it was pretty tough sometimes as a father. My mother had a broken pie board that she used on us. She was very educationally minded. She believed in applying the board of education to the seat of knowledge. It worked very well. We have to mention one more group that misunderstand the patience of God. That's a hyper-Calvinist. And I hate to say it, but there's probably some sitting here right now. You may even be squirming a bit. I hope you are. And these people, they deny the whole idea that God freely pleads with sinners. They somehow think that's minimizing his dignity. It is amazing to realize that the King of Kings, Lord of Lord condescends to entreat sinners. That's amazing. But he does. And these people, in order to protect God, they try to deny that there is any kind of a proclamation or a freedom of the gospel preaching to the lost. And in order to protect the sovereignty of God, they wind up butchering up the sovereignty of God as well as the proclamation of the gospel, both of them. We have to preach both sides of truth in the scriptures. And the older I get, and I'm 82, the more I see truth has two sides on almost every situation. And it certainly does in this idea of the absolute, unconditional electing grace of God, as well as the free, uninhibited gospel to whosoever will let him come. And people say to me, Mr. Riesinger, how do you get those two things together? And I look at them and say, how do you get them apart? Jesus put them together in one verse. All the Father giveth me shall come to me. That's election. No empty chairs in heaven catching cobwebs. Every person that God chose, he's going to bring, they're going to believe. That's only half of the verse. And him that cometh to me, I don't care who he is, where he is, what he is, him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. How dare you try to separate those things? How dare you preach election without preaching whosoever will let him come? And how can you preach whosoever will let him come without preaching the assurance of the doctrine of election? They're both true. John Flavel is one of my favorite Puritans. And he describes this, and I got a lot of the sermon from that sermon of his. I don't have anything original except original sin. That's the only thing. John Flavel has a great sermon on this text in Romans, and also Robert Murray McShane has a great sermon on Romans 922. God is willing to show his wrath. Both of them are well, well worth reading. And Flavel says, longsuffering is an ability or power in God not only to delay the execution of his wrath for a time towards some, but to delay it in order to show grace in the salvation of others. That's it. We have to see that God is patient and longsuffering with all men without exception. However, he holds his wrath from some who will nonetheless later on experience it, because this is part of his purpose and necessary to his overall goal. One of the things is the space and time together, his elect. But God was just as patient with Pharaoh. For this purpose have I raised thee up. And Pharaoh, with all of his faith, tears, and repentance and everything else, when is God going to judge him for the hardness of his heart and for his rebellion and his refusal to leave the people of God go? Well, he's not going to do it until God's done every miracle and taught every lesson that he purposed to teach through Pharaoh. And then, and not till then, is Pharaoh going to push the children of Israel out of Egypt with all their back pay. And then, and not till then, not a second before, is God going to drown Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea. And God will be glorified in his patience just as much with Pharaoh as he is with Saul of Tarsus. How was God's patience and long-suffering manifested in his dealings with Pharaoh? Well, all of the things that God taught, all the lessons that Israel needed to learn through those different plagues, he did. But Saul of Tarsus is also an illustration of the same truth. What a wicked man he was. God will put up with all of Saul's hatred, his persecution of Christians, his deliberate, willful rebellion against the truth until he opens his heart with the gospel. If you would have been God and you would have watched Saul of Tarsus help stone Stephen to death, you would have said and I would have said, enough is enough, election or no election, nobody's going to do that to my people. And we'd have fixed his clock. And why didn't God do that? Because he purposed to make the worst antagonist the church ever had to be the greatest preacher of the gospel the church ever had. And he wasn't going to let anything interfere with his purposes. That's what Paul hardly means when he says, and now for the rest of the story. And you read all of these things and you, and you get one side and the rest of the story is hidden in the sovereign electing purposes of God. So in both these cases, Pharaoh and Saul of Tarsus, we see an exhibition of God's awesome power to withhold his anger in order to accomplish his sovereign purposes. And we're to praise him. And we're to thank him that he is just such a God in Proverbs, the text we quoted, let me quote it again. He that slowed to anger is better than the mighty. He that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. And of course, who's the mightiest of all, well, the one who can most rule his spirit and who can totally control his spirit. God himself. We get depressed, we get moody, we get tired and we quit. God never gets depressed. He never gets moody, never gets disappointed with other people, never takes Prozac, never has a bad hair day. Not so with you and me. And one of the results of that inability in us is found in Proverbs 25, 28. And this shows the result in the life of a person who can't control his emotions. He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that's broken down and without walls. And a city where the walls are broken down and the gates are burned, they're an open prey to every single attack of any kind. And the man or the woman who can't control their emotions and they can't control their feelings, they can be carrot-sticked into anything. They can be pushed, they can be blown up just by the circumstances. And they're an easy prey. They can't cope with persecution, they can't cope with disappointment. They're an easy prey. Such a person is a constant victim of circumstances. He can be manipulated into almost anything. Not so with God. You ever hear anybody say, I know how to get his goat. You can't do that with God because he ain't got no goat. I know how to push his buttons. He ain't got no buttons to push. God did not get depressed and discouraged when Adam sinned in the garden of Eden. I'd love to hear Armenians describe the fall of Adam. They're looking over the gates of the walls of heaven and the serpent comes into the garden. Oh man, here's bad news. I hope Adam is not, oh look, wait, oh Adam, don't listen to, oh he did it. What are we going to do now? And they have a big council meeting in heaven, you know, and all these ideas. And somebody comes up with this wonderful idea, let's send Jesus. Great idea. My dear friend, that was all purposed. The lamb slain before the foundation of the world. God did not get depressed and discouraged when they persecuted and killed the prophets. Even the cross was not too high a price to pay for God to fulfill his sovereign electing purposes of grace. I love that passage in Acts 4 when all that they were gathered together, the Jews and about a whole bunch of them were gathered together. And you remember what it said? To do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. There was never a day that was choreographed to the detail as much as that day that Jesus died on the cross. There was no one event that was ever controlled with every single step and every player as much as the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That was the fulfillment of his purposes. Calvary was neither a surprise nor an event that could have been avoided. And it was not a day of defeat, it was the greatest day of victory on God's calendar. At the highest price that anybody ever paid to accomplish any purpose. You remember when Israel sinned and God was going to wipe them off the face of the earth? And Moses pleaded for their salvation. And you remember how he pleaded? What would a heathen say? Why would I say God is not powerful at all? He brought them out and he couldn't take care of them. Look at his failure. And then Moses uttered these words. I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great according as thou hast spoken saying the Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy forgiving iniquity. Show how powerful you are by forgiving them. That's good. You know it doesn't take much spiritual guts to get angry and nasty. It doesn't take any courage to hold a grudge. Alan Redpath told us a story where he had a fight with his wife at breakfast and it was pretty bad and they quit talking to each other. And during the day he really got convicted that he had provoked the argument. And he knew he had to ask his wife to forgive him. But his 11-year-old son was at the kitchen table and he knew he had to ask his wife to forgive him in front of his son. And he thought what in the world would he think of me as his father apologizing to his mother? What would he think of me as a man? And that night at the supper table he told his wife he was sorry that he provoked the argument. And he was trying to look out of the And that night when the son kneeled down beside his bed with his daddy to say his evening prayers, his son prayed and said, Lord help me grow up and be big and strong like my daddy. Especially like he was when he asked mommy to forgive him. See that takes greatness. That takes power man. I mean that takes spiritual power. Takes no spiritual power to hold a grudge, get mad, lash out and say no, no, no, that's easy. But forgiveness is powerful. By the way Moses was known as a man for his meekness. But even he got mad. I'm glad we're in safer hands than Moses. We're all safe. And you remember in the book of the Revelation those saints are waiting and even they don't have enough patience because they're saying how long do we got to wait before we see you fix their clock? Even the glorified saints. Glorified saints in heaven aren't fully sanctified. All of these things we mentioned, they're the implications of this to a believer. He's in the hands of a powerful sovereign unchanging God. And he's just as secure as the purposes of God. And his purposes and his power are tied up together. But we also need to in preaching this, we need to say a word to the people who are lost. To the people who reject Jesus Christ as their Lord and their Savior. And that's where 2 Peter chapter 3 comes in. And the moment we talk about election or sovereignty then this is the passage that everybody wants to turn to. 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9. And when we look at this chapter the first thing we ask the three questions that we're supposed to ask. Who is speaking and to whom are they speaking and what are they speaking about? And in this case when we read 2 Peter we see that Peter is speaking to believers. And the subject of his discussion is the second coming of Christ. And there are scoffers who are mocking the second coming of Christ. And they're saying where is the promise of his coming? Things just go on and on and nothing has happened. And they're ridiculing the doctrine of the second coming. Specifically as God has promised it. And Peter tells them that they are not to be concerned. Verse 8 he says, Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years of one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise. What promise is that? This isn't a promise to the lost person. This is a promise of the second coming of Christ made with the people of God. And he says the Lord is not slack concerning this promise to send his son back as some men count slackness. That's the scoffers. The us word doesn't imprude the scoffers. That's a separate situation. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but is longsuffering to us. We're not willing that any and on the end of your tongue you have the words of us. But that all, all who, all of us, all of us who have this promise. Peter's reminding them that God keeps his promise. He will send his son. But he won't send his son until his purposes are totally fulfilled. But look at Romans chapter 9 because here we have another instance of the long suffering of God. Romans chapter 9 beginning at verse 18. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth. Now you know what you do with that verse? You just bow your head and shut up. That's tough. These liberals are always tearing chapters out of the Jonah and Genesis. Man if I was going to tear a chapter out it would be Romans 9. That would be the first on my list because everything in me as a creature rebels against Romans 9. Is that right? That's why we bow our heads and worship. Thou wilt say to me why does he yet find fault? Who has resisted his will? Nay, but O man who art thou that replies against God. Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? Now that verse can have two understandings among people. And to me you have to understand what that lump is. If that lump is mankind as considered uncreated then God creates one lump to send it to hell and one lump to send it to heaven. And you have the order of the decrees in the mind of God. I'm going to have a heaven and a hell. I've got to have some people to go here so I can create some people for this purpose just to send them there. I don't think that's what it means. I think the lump of sin is mankind considered in sin. And what if God as he views the sons of Adam all in sin chooses some sinners to be saved. Not chooses some men to be created in order to send them to hell but chooses some sinners who are already on their way to hell to salvation. Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump of sin to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, and here's the text, what if God willing to show his wrath and make his power known endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? Do you see what the text is saying? What if God willing to show his wrath endured with much longsuffering? That's the exhibition of his power. His ability to withhold his wrath is an exhibition of how powerful he is. And what if God does that? Whose business is that but his? And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he hath for prepared unto glory even us, sinners that we be, Gentiles that we are, whom he hath called not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles. So he's talking about the same longsuffering of God. One of the worst things that anybody can ever do is to misuse the longsuffering of God. And you hear people, and you talk to people, well, I've made it okay so far. Sure you have. But only because of the kindness and patience of God. Anybody says that to me, I think of the story of the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building as he went past the 50th floor, he said, so far so good. That's the way the sinner is, so far so good. But it's only because of the kindness of God. In Romans 2 you have this exhortation, Romans 2 verse 4, or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you to repentance. And if you use it to lead yourself into more sin and self-assurance in sin, you're a fool of fools. That because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you're storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, for his righteous judgment will be revealed. You're like a hog being fattened for the slaughter. That's an awful thought. One of the things I don't like to preach, and I mean it, don't like to preach, is the truth that a man who goes to hell glorifies God just as much as a man who goes to heaven. And if you perish, God loses nothing. And if you go to heaven, God gains nothing. God is not the winner or the loser. It's the sinner who loses everything, or gains everything. And to use the patience and long-suffering of God as an excuse to go on in sin is to be a fool of fools. The man who goes to hell glorifies the righteousness of God, and the man who goes to heaven glorifies the righteousness of God. One glorifies the righteousness of his mercy and his love and his grace, and the other magnifies the righteousness of his wrath and his justice. And God is glorified just as much in either case. And he's patient and long-suffering just as much with the one as he is with the other. God is willing to show his wrath in his time, on his terms, for his reasons, but he will not ever be provoked in any way, shape, or form into showing his wrath in any way that will interfere with any of his purposes. He can deliberately withhold his wrath for a long time. He can do that. I can't. Neither can you. Aren't you glad you're not God? Aren't you glad I'm not God? Oh my. God was patient with Saul of Tarsus in the days of his ignorance. He put up with all that he did, and then one day opened his heart with the gospel. In 2 Peter 3.15 we read, But the day you were born, you were a sinner. I mean the day you were born, you were a sinner, and God could have cut your water off right then and right there. But he didn't. Why? He had purposes and grace. You may have had more than one close call with death. I've had two that I thought for sure I came that close to being hit with a train. Just a cold sweat. And it had an effect on me. I mean for almost a whole day. And how did we shrug it off? I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but I'm sure there are people in hell right now that lived a lot better lives than some of you did. Why are they in hell? And you're sitting here singing the hymns of thine. Some of you, I'm one of them, mocked the gospel. I mean mocked and made fun of Christians. I mean we hated them and told them so when they tried to witness the gospel to us. Why did God put up with that? Some of you, some of you dared God. I mean almost shook your fist in the face of heaven. And why didn't God say, I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you. Why didn't he? Could have, should have, but didn't and never will if you're one of the election of grace. Some of you mocked the law, ridiculed the gospel, yet you were spared. People in hell tonight, not half as wicked as some of you were. There are many in hell who never had much truth. There are people in hell tonight who never heard the gospel and you heard it day in and day out in a Christian home for 20 years. Couldn't wait for the time when you get out from under it. And why didn't God fix your clock? Think about it and rejoice. I mean think about it and praise Him that He's such a great God. Well the people we weep for are the people who have the wrath of God over their heads and never feel it. And if there are any of you here today, children of Christian parents, we weep for you and pray for you because you don't weep and pray for yourself when you ought to. Because we love you. And because we long to see you experience the grace and the mercy of God. I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the privilege of hearing the gospel. And even more important, hearing it with our hearts by the power of your Spirit. When we look back on our life before we were saved and since we've saved, we've never found a single reason that you would ever want to love us. But we've found multitudes of reasons why you should justly despise us and punish us. But you haven't and you won't. Only because of Jesus Christ, your Son, and because of His saving work on the cross, and because of your eternal, unchanging, sovereign, electing grace. And we love you and we worship you. And we praise you for being such a God as you are. Accept our thanks and our worship. And help us to preach you and to witness you as you really are. As you really reveal yourself to be. For Christ's sake. Amen. Do you want me to say thanks for the food? Or are you going to come up?