Psalm 4 • The God Who Hears
Listen to the audio version of this sermon with the player below:
Sermon Notes
Transcript
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you look in your Bibles at Psalm four? As we begin now our annual summer Psalms, even though the weather is not cooperating, we're gonna start our summer psalm series. We love the Psalms because, The Lord does not forbid his writers to write about any aspect of our experience. In this ancient Hebrew Hyn book, we discover our deepest and most profound emotions on display in all ever varieties, our joys, our fears, our anxieties, our anger.
All the Lord gives his writers permission to express real people, real world, real hope. That's why we love them. Let's stand and we'll look at Psalm four, honoring God's word together. Answer me when I call, oh God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.
Oh, amen. How long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Sah. And just a quick reminder, the Cahs are musical notation and the end of a thought, virtually and amen planted within the Psalms Verse three. But know that the Lord has set apart the Godly for himself.
The Lord hears when I called him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent. Sah, offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us. Oh Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound in peace.
I will both lie down and sleep for you alone. Oh Lord. Make me dwell in safety. Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you allow us to dwell in safety. And yet we confess it does not always seem that way. And if a Psalmist could say that, we can Thank you for allowing it for the creatures of your hand to approach the creator and say, help us make sense of this because you do. We worship you and welcome your word again this day.
Grant that it might grant us peace, we pray, sah. In Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.
The writer, Patrick Morley, gives us this short biography. He says, when my dad turned six, he went to work. He went to work with his older brother. They rose every morning at 3:00 AM. To deliver milk, and then after that worked a paper route. But despite the hard work, he never heard his father say, I love you, son.
I am proud of you. When my dad became a man, he had to decide if he would repeat or break that cycle. He wanted to break the cycle, but fathering was unexampled to him. So our family joined a church to get some moral and religious instruction for the family. I suppose that's what my dad thought. It meant to be a good Christian, but he was still left to guess at what it meant to be a good father.
So after a while of church, Pressures. My dad burned out. He quit church. Soon after that, I quit high school. In the middle of my senior year, my brother followed in my footsteps and eventually he died of a heroin overdose. My other brothers have had a variety of employment, substance and marriage issues too.
My dad never saw it coming. If he could have seen around the bend, I'm sure he would've done things differently if he was still alive. I, I know he would say, I take full responsibility and I respect that. Every man does need to take responsibility for his life. And yet what the brief biography of Patrick Morley makes plain is taking responsibility may not be the real core issue.
After all, almost all of us at some point are willing to man up and say, if my kids struggle, they come by it. Honestly, they got it from me at least in some dimension. We recognize that we're not perfect. We will acknowledge the struggles. We will acknowledge that we have things that have made life difficult for ourselves as well as our families.
And yet, even as we acknowledge all of that, the difficulty many of us face even in the moment is not taking responsibility after the fact, but asking for God's help in the midst of the mess. To at the moment begin to say, I need some help. God, will you enter my life? Will you help me to deal with the things that I am struggling with?
Somehow the, the fear that we would show weakness, that acknowledging the need for help is going to diminish us in some way, keeps us from the things that are so obvious to others and ourselves. When we look back, we keep saying, no, no need for help. No need for God, no need for crutch. It's under control. I can do this myself.
I got this. Why do we do that? Because somehow we believe the expression of need is the confession of weakness. And over and over again, we know that what men in particular struggle with the most is anybody seeing us as weak. But if there's anything that this Psalm does, it's allowing a hero of the Bible, David, the one who wrote it, to say, it's okay to ask God for help even in the midst of the mess.
Not not just down the road somewhere, but even in the midst of the mess. Being willing to say, I need my God to help. And that is not diminishing us, that is actually expressing what it means to be a man or woman of faith. What, what is the Psalm teaching us when we're in the midst of the mess? When the distress is so intense?
What are we being given permission to do first? Simply to desire God's presence in our lives. I mean, the opening words are so clear. Answer me when I call, oh God, of my righteousness, the inverse one, be gracious to me and hear my prayer. It's, it's okay to want God involved in our lives. And as obvious as that may seem, it is not obvious in ancient times or often in our own times.
After all, ancient hearts were not so different than our hearts today. Often if you were in the Hebrew culture, if you were struggling, if you were in a mess, then the conclusion of others and often of the person themselves was God's getting me. The reason I'm struggling, the reason for this mess is, is somehow I am sinful, wrong, weak, and God is punishing.
God is expressing his displeasure. And really the only explanation in the ancient Hebrew world for personal disaster or struggle or distress was God's getting you. And so you don't want God close. You want some distance. You wanna placate him somehow put a fence between you and God. And yet what David is doing is saying, I actually desire him.
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Why would we want such a God? Because he's declared himself as one who is righteous. Did you catch it? Just the very first words answer me when I call, oh God, of my. Righteousness. We need the words. He is the God of our righteousness. I don't stand before God expecting his goodness because I've been good enough, because I've qualified or I've measured up.
No, it's not my righteousness that allows me to call out to God. It is his righteousness. It's the gospel in, in. Nutshell essence in the Old Testament, that God over and over again taught his people not to approach him on the basis of their righteousness, but his, and ultimately, we would understand the goodness and the grace of that in the New Testament where Christ would come, he would suffer and die for our sins and his righteousness as he took away our sin would become ours.
The great transfer. Our sin for his righteousness, his righteousness for our sin, so that we could say with the apostle, I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. I have his identity and the life that I live now in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God. Who loved me and gave himself for me.
It's, it's his righteousness that allows me to approach him. And I don't simply trust his righteousness. I approach him because I trust his record right in the middle of verse one. Lord, you have given me relief when I was in distress. Why should I trust God? Because I'm trusting his righteousness, not mine, and, and because he's got some record of goodness in my life.
We don't know precisely. When David wrote this psalm, was it after Goliath in which God had helped him defeat the giant, or was it after Saul the king that became, in essence, his father in the palace began to hunt him down in the desert like a dog. Yeah, David was delivered. Did he look back and say, God, you have given me relief, or was it even later than that?
When Absalom, the son of David's heart, betrayed him, turned on him and tried to kill his own father in order to have the kingdom? Did David look back across all of him and say, God, when the worst things were happening, when I had no help, somehow you rescued me. My heart is still hurting, but God, I recognize you were the one that gave me relief.
Because he recognizes God's righteousness and God's record, he recognizes it's okay to call out to God. I want to hear his voice, not simply because I want God's voice in my life, because I want the other voices to stop. He doesn't just want God to hear, he wants the shame to end. The words of verse two hurt us if we hear them in the context of our own lives.
Amen. How long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lives? I was once esteemed and now I am embarrassed. And, and the people who are making my life difficult are, are men of rank. We don't see it so much in our English translations, but those opening words of the verse, oh man, are our men of record, men of rank, men of esteem.
Listen, if a, if a crazy person calls you crazy, no problem. But if the credible people call you crazy, now I'm worried. And not only are the credible people shaming him, They are doing it with vain words and lying, and as he hears it all, he is simply saying, Lord, I need your presence to drown these voices in my life.
We have to recognize as believers in this world that shame is not just something people do to us or we do to ourselves. It is the weapon of Satan. Of the evil one to drive us away from hope in God to say, I'm ashamed, I cannot go to him. So I have to turn from God or to make us hide from friends that we actually need to support us or to actually make us lose hope.
So the very gifts and graces God has put into our lives we don't want to use anymore. Her shame is what Satan himself uses to drive us from the purposes and the goodness of God's heart because we are denying them to our own heart as the shame fills our ears and we cannot hear the words, stop. David says, Lord, hear me, but let me stop hearing those voices.
How does shame work? Charles Featherstone and the rather remarkable biography from Jihad to Jesus talks about the path of a California teen from the suburbs to Middle East Muslim Jihad as a Muslim warrior. He describes how it happened, how the voices of shame began to motivate him 'cause he couldn't turn him off.
He says, due to my father's military career, we moved a lot. We settled in Southern California. It was not home. I had been on the receiving end of my father's violence for years, and I learned both to fear and to hate him and school. Was no more safe. I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly, not just by my classmates, but by a fifth grade teacher.
There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone and increasingly angry. The residual shame, he said, created in him a God hunger, somebody who had receive him beyond the hurts and the shame of this world. And he found that God in Islam where he learned of a God who cared for men, who had express their anger in courage, it all made sense to him, he said.
As he was getting rid of the shame until he was walking the streets of Manhattan on nine 11, and then he wrote what filled his heart in the chaos and terror. As I looked up at the burning twin towers and watched people tumble to their deaths, life changing words came to me. Words, replacing the long repeated voices of anger and shame.
The words now inside my head, my love is all that matters. And this is not who I am. The words of Sunday school teachers from a church that his parents had long ago abandoned. Yeah, but still the words of Christ coming into his heart, coming into his mind. I am love and I love you, and this is not evidence of who I am.
And suddenly everything began to change as the voice of Christ's love and his provision began to drown the voices of shame. But of course, for all of us, the question is how does that happen? How do we actually turn down the volume of the shame in order to turn up the message of grace that we also desperately need?
Because everything else is vying for the volume control. We recognize in our lives that we will turn to success or sex or accomplishment or beating somebody up. Something to give us esteem or value. And the voices that keep echoing that drive us are the abuse that we have received or given
the careers that ended short or badly. The friends who abandoned us, the families who have said things to us that we never imagined they would ever say to us. Those voices keep coming, keep coming, keep coming. And the shame that we sow long to silence has to be silence, but it can only be done in the grace of God.
God, hear my prayer, God work in my life, and God is simply giving us permission to make that prayer. That we can't approach him, that he's willing to listen. And as we do so we recognize what the Psalmist is saying is that we begin to claim the reality of who God is, even in the distress, even in the mess.
The things that I'm gonna say for the next few minutes, I'm going to acknowledge to you, are the deep minds of faith that this is not on the surface of, of, of just saccharine Christianity, of sentimentalism. This is, this is deep down stuff as we are trying to find, trying to find the reality of God in our lives by claiming who he really is and what he has really done.
If it's that kind of God that we are seeking, then we claim him even in the distress, first of all. By trusting his hedge about us. Verse three, right at the beginning. But know that the Lord has set apart the Godly for himself. He has set apart his own. He has intention for them. That is e eternal and good, but, but I confess, and you do too, that there is enough in a broken and fallen world that would make us question that at times.
That there truly is a set apartness of God's people for his eternal purpose. That there was a hedge about us when Ka and I were in England two weeks ago, and. In a retreat center, a conference center that was in the rural parts of London. We had opportunities just to take some hikes and we, we went through the fields where there are those, you know, those noteworthy hedges in the European fields.
The, the hedges, remember in the battle for Normandy, even kept the ally tanks from being able to make progress because, 'cause the hedges were so thick and so dense. They hadn't just been planted 10 years before or 20 years before. Those French hedgerows had been planted by the Romans 2000 years before, so that even tanks could not penetrate them.
But, but what if the hedges about us had not been planted 20 years ago, or 2000 years ago, but before the foundations of the world were laid? Remember the word said, Jeremiah, I have loved you with an everlasting love, with loving kindness. I have called you. I have set you apart. And that that understanding of God's love, setting apart for eternal purpose with eternal ways is reminding us of the importance of believing in the hedge that accomplishes two things.
It keeps us from going out into danger as well as keeping danger coming into us. The notion of a hedge about us keeping us from going out into eternal danger is expressed so poignantly in the book of Hosea. Do you remember Hosea the minor prophet whom God said, I want you to take as your wife, a prostitute to show how great is not only the righteousness but the forgiveness of God.
And then after Hosea took Gomer as his wife, she continued to go in adultery after other men. And God said to Hosea, take her back despite her repeated adulteries for such is the love of God for Israel. I want you, my spokesman to show truly how great is my love. But right in that same chapter, there is an amazing promise of what God would begin to do in Gomer, the prostitute wife's life.
God says in verse six, I will hedge her up. I will hedge her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them, and she shall seek them. But not find them. It is the blessed, difficult experience of virtually everyone who's been a Christian for any length of time.
That we recognize there are those moments in our lives when we have planned, when we have headed toward the evil, the wrong, the temptation. And we knew it was there and we made the plan for it. And through miraculous means, whether the, the time changed or the traffic changed or, or the opportunity changed, that God put a hedge around us so that we could not get to the very sin that we were pursuing.
It's, it's part of God's plan. And we say, no, there's certain things in my life I did. I know, but. But God is looking for eternal things and for that which has eternal consequence in our lives, he has put a hedge about his people so that we can go, go out into that danger. That would create eternal consequences.
But the hedge operates the other way too, from eternal danger, not entering our lives. You know, the words of the psalmist, the Lord is my refuge and my. Fortress by a deep commitment of faith. We believe that nothing enters our lives, but that God intends to work it for good. All things work together for good to them that love God, and are called according to His purposes.
When I believe that. I have lots of questions at times. Lord, did really nothing come into my life, but such as you intended for my eternal good. And when we begin to say, no, there's been some awful things in my life. But listen, if you are still here, if you are here today hearing me, there has been a hedge about you, or you would not be here, the truck, the car, the disaster, the disease, the vi, it would've already got you.
If you are here, you look back and say, I don't understand all that's come in, but I have profound and deep faith that God has been good to me and that there is a hedge about me. And because I believe there is a hedge about me, barring me from the worst of eternal consequence and keeping the worst of eternal things from coming into my life, I begin to trust his hearing.
I mean, that's what's actually being expressed at the end of verse three. Not only has the Lord set the Godly apart, the Lord hears when I call to him now that that's a matter of faith too. Because when you're in the church, if you're receiving good instruction, you know that simply because we ask God for something does not mean he provides that very thing.
I'm not, eternally wise, I don't, I don't know what's right in every phase and aspect of my life. I still offer my desires to God, but, but he knows far better than I what should happen. So the options of his response are, yes, no, not yet. Or exceedingly abundantly above all that you would ask or even think as God is working all things together for good, he is working the intricacies and the complexities of the universe for the good of his people and the good of you.
I, I believe because there's a hedge about me. God hears me and in hearing me, he is working for my eternal good. He is working for my spiritual security, and I receive that with, with humility. I, I trust the hedge. I trust his hearing. And for that reason, verse four stands before us. Be angry and do not sin.
Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and, and be silent. I'm glad the verse is there. Be angry and do not sin. Like there are things in our lives that are worth being angry at. This doesn't make sense. How could a good person, how could a daughter, how could a son, how, how could somebody like my coworkers so good have, have this difficulty, this struggle, this earthquake in their lives and, and to have a, just cause for saying, I don't understand this.
But in the, in the wonderful way in which scripture works, some of your bibles will say this in the footnotes. That word for anger is just the word for trembling, tremble. And, and some translations actually translated as, as worship or reverence. I, whatever it is, I'm trembling before it and, and yet I'm not cursing God.
He's put a hedge about me. I believe that. I believe he hears me. And so there is a humble silence as I ponder upon my bed, the greatness of God, the goodness of God. Even in the light of these circumstances, do I even pray like Jesus Lord, here is my prayer, yet not my will, but your will be done. I, I receive with humility what a sovereign and gracious God brings into my life.
And I do that because I trust your hearing even though there's something in my heart that resists, that trembles that may even be angry. I'm seeking to trust you through this. And the reason we do that is we trust his hand. Verse five, offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. We, we trust first that he's made a way for us, offer right sacrifices.
I, I wish the translation had been just a little different than our svs. Offer righteous sacrifices. It's the sodic, which is the word for righteousness, the same attribution that was given to God earlier in the, in the same psalm. Offer righteous sacrifices, not, not do it right so that God will love you now, but rather offer that which God has given you to make you righteous before him.
It's, it's the Old Testament Pat, reminding us without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. But God has shown us how to make sacrifice. He has shown us what Christ would ultimately do in our behalf, offer to God the reality that you believe he's made a way. And because you believe that God has made a way for your righteousness, not by your own hand, by his righteousness, not only do you trust that he's made a way you trust the one whose name that you know and has been demonstrated to you, offer verse five rights, sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.
In most of your Bibles, the word Lord, there has all the letters capitalized, L O R D. Every letter capitalized, which is the English translation of the Hebrew Yahweh, reminding us the same Lord that is made a way by sacrifice that would culminate in the work of his son. That same Lord is Yahweh, the Lord Almighty.
He is sovereign. And Savior. He is creator and caregiver. He is warrior and shepherd. He is all those things together. And because I believe it, because I believe he is sovereign and caress because I believe he is warrior in my behalf and shepherd for my soul. I trust him. I turn to him, I turn to his hand, trust his hand is at work, that there is a hedge about me, that he hears me, and that his hand is at work in my behalf.
And I claim those truths even in the midst of the crisis, even in the distress. As I'm calling out to God, I claim the reality of who you are, the one who puts a hedge about me for eternal purposes, the one who hears my prayer and whose hand is at work in my behalf. And if that is the case, If I have approached God that way, what, what ultimately become the consequences.
I begin to look for his light in my life. Even in the dark hours, even in the worst nightly storm. I, I begin to look for his light to shine because that's my privilege as a believer. That light is expressed in verse six. There are many who say, who will show us some good. Lift up the light of your face upon us.
Oh Lord. There are lows who look at our lives, that look at their lives and say, where is God if this is going on? But the right, the claim, a believer is to say, Lord, show me your face. Show me the light. Show me what you are still doing. Let me perceive that there is something greater than myself at work here.
It's what happened to Stephen, of course, when he was being stoned for the profession of his faith, and even in the stoning, he had the heavens opened before him, and he saw the son of God sitting beside God in his glory. I. Lord, show me your face. This is awful. But if you show me your face through it, I continue to believe that the hedge is about me and that you're hearing that you're working for eternal purposes.
It's what the psalmist is praying for. Does it still happen, or was it just Stephen Long ago? O Charles Featherstone again, the one who wrote about from Jihad to Jesus. Talks about what happened after nine 11 and hearing that echoing voice of a Sunday school teacher in his head talking about Jesus of love, who was not going to be exemplified in the terror of nine 11.
He said, what happened after that was a cataclysm in my life. Everything that I pursued now seemed worthless. It was the kind of force that struck Paul blind on the road to Damascus. One day I said to my girlfriend, I think we should find a church. And a pleased little smile came across her face and her eyes sparkled the way they always do when she finally gets her way.
What if we people of faith believed that the smile on her face was reflecting the smile of God? That, that his face was being seen in, in, in all the turmoil and all the abuse and all the hurt. That that what was marking the work of God was not the circumstances but the destination that God was saying. I am working toward an eternal end and, and we, people of faith have to remember that over and over again, that God's goodness is not marked by the circumstances, but by the destination.
He is working eternal purposes in a complex broken world with complex broken people who, who would not necessarily listen or hear or respond were it not for the crises that come, that call for us to look for a Christ. I need a redeemer. I need somebody some way out of this mess. We of course, recognize that so often the things that come into our lives that, that we believe are the terrible circumstances that, that create the, the detours and the distractions from our destination are so often not detours or distractions to God at all, but the means by way She is taking us on the scenic tour and we begin to see things in our lives and even through our hurts that we would never have understood.
About the magnitude and the majesty and the intimacy of the care of God. Is it not often in your darkest moments that God seems closest that you have to call out to him, that there is no other way to go? And in that moment the reality of God becomes so intense that you say, thank God for the scenic tour, by which I would not have understood you or seen you or even treasured you.
Had this path not been put before me. We need to look for the light outside the circumstances, but we also need to look for the light inside to actually begin to see the darkness through the light that God has put inside of us as well. Verse seven, Lord, you have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.
Paul, speaking of his adversaries, is saying their silos are full. My heart is full, and if my heart is full, if I have the knowledge of this God who puts the hedge about me, who listens to me, who has eternal purposes in play, even in the hard stuff, even in the mess that I have made, if I believe in that kind of God, then I begin to see the darkness through the light that comes from inside of me.
And that light from the inside is the joy that changes everything we see, everything we experience. How does that happen? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1933 tried to explain to the people of his church why the nation with with full support and commendation was turning to Hitler. How was that happening? How could they not see everything they needed to see?
He said in a sermon, imagine there is a boat at high seas fighting the waves. The storm wind is blowing harder. By the minute the sailors strength is failing, and then he is gripped by another presence in the boat. No one has been there before, but now there is another presence in the boat. What is it? Who is it?
Someone is in the boat who grabs him, never there before. Suddenly the sailor can't see the wind, can't fight the waves. He's totally distracted by the presence that's in the boat. Finally, he shrieks out. Who are you? And the voice responds. I am I. Fear
and there is no hope because fear is in the boat. We understand. We understand how we can be in life circumstance, and when fear grabs us, we cannot think or do anything but focus upon the fear it's got us. But what if? What if it were not Fear? What if you could replace that, that eclipsing emotion of fear with another emotion like joy.
What if joy grabbed you and begin to eclipse everything else? The, the winds are still blowing, the waves are still crashing over the mouth, but, but joy has grabbed you. You say, well, that's not likely to happen. It will, if Jesus is in the boat. And that's what we're being told. Not just that Jesus is in the boat, but his Holy Spirit is in us
that indwelling us is the very spirit of God. So that in the circumstances which are physical and external, we have the ability to perceive them from the realities of God's word and the eternal perspective of a sovereign savior, shepherd King. He's in the boat with me. And because Jesus is in the boat with me, and I perceive the reality of it because his spirit is in me telling me the truth of this word, convincing, the reality of the hedge, convincing me the reality that he hears that he's working all things together for good, that is a profound effect upon me.
And that effect is verse eight in peace. I will both lie down. And sleep for you alone. Oh Lord. Make me dwell in safety if, if the joy is in me so that I begin to perceive the world in, in all of its brokenness and hurt and darkness through the lens of that joy. What's the consequence? We can sleep. And sleep is not just permitted.
Do you recognize it's being instructed here that it is actually an act of worship? I. I will both lie down and sleep for you alone. Oh Lord. Make me dwell in safety that, that my sleep is an acknowledgement of the greatness of my God who is near. I don't remember doing this in 40 years of preaching, but I have a, a command for you.
You need to sleep. And, and I remember saying that in a sermon, even though some of you are pretty good at it during the sermon, but.
What if it weren't just something that we're privileged to do? What? What if it's actually part of our worship to say on my bed at night with all my turmoil and tossing and wrestling and anxiety, that part of my affirmation of the goodness and the greatness of my God is that I go to sleep. He's got this.
My sovereign savior, warrior shepherd, he's got this so I can sleep. And that's, that's actually affirming him in our, in our family, after years of our children struggling to have children, and now we have babies in our lives again. So we're remembering things about babies. One of the things we're remembering about babies is that there are times that the slightest tiptoe will wake them up.
Just, just getting out of your chair to leave the room will creak in such a way they wake up, you know, they're they super sensitive hearing sometimes. But there are other times when the family has gathered and is laughing and raucous and loud, and a baby in its mother's arms, just sleeps through it all.
I'm safe. Something in them says I'm in my mother's arms and I can sleep through this because I am held so well tightly and safely. What our God does, it gives us permission to approach him, to ask him, and then to sleep on it. May God give you sleep as an act of worship. The sovereign savior, warrior King, he's got it.
You can sleep. Sleep to honor him. Father, would you bring rest to our hearts, sweetness to our lives? Not just because of what happens outside of us, but what you have done inside of us. You have given us the light of your countenance by which to see the world. In all the hard and difficult things that are surely here in this broken world in which we live at a time that you are claiming eternal souls for yourself.
So help us to perceive the reality of who you are. And Father, even this day, if there's someone here who San, I don't know that piece, would you even in this prayer, help them to say, but I need a God who would be my righteousness? I. I don't wanna stand before God based on what I do, but I wanna trust what Jesus did.
He took the penalty that I deserved. God turned the wrath away and put a hedge about me, help me to believe it and trust it, that I might sleep in perfect peace because my soul has rested in Jesus. Do this, we pray. In Jesus name.
Thank you for watching. These resources are made available by those who want the ministry of the gospel and the goodness of God's grace to be known and heard by many others. If you would also like to help support this ministry, then I invite you to go to bryanchapell.com where there are means for you to support what we do as well as see many more resources that are available to students, to pastors, to people like you all over the world.