In the sermon 'Warnings to a Self-Deceived Nation,' Peter Allison delivers a message based on Amos chapter 6, highlighting the prophet Amos's warnings to Israel about their self-deception and the consequences of their actions. The sermon discusses the characteristics of a self-deceived nation, which include believing falsehoods about their standing with God and ignoring His warnings. Amos uses historical examples of powerful nations that fell due to their arrogance and misplaced trust in government and military might, such as Canah, Hamath, and Gath. The dangers of idle luxury and self-centeredness are also emphasized, with woe pronounced on those who prioritize personal comfort over righteousness and justice. The sermon calls for repentance and a return to God’s ways, stressing that true security comes from trusting in the Lord, not in worldly powers. Despite the grim warnings, there is a message of hope in seeking God’s mercy and salvation.

Please turn to Amos chapter 6. Hear God's word beginning at verse 1. One. Woe to you who are at ease in Zion and trust in Mount Samaria, notable persons in the chief nation to whom the house of Israel comes. Go over to Canah and see and from there go to Hema, the great.

Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory? Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, who cause the seat of violence to come near, who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on your couches, eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David, who drink wine from bowls, and Anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Therefore, they shall now go captive as the first of the captives.

And those who recline at banquets shall be removed. The Lord God has sworn by himself. The Lord God of hosts says, I abhor the pride of Jacob and hate his palaces, therefore I will deliver up the city and all that is in it. Then it shall come to pass that if ten men remain in one house, they shall die. And when a relative of the dead with one who will burn the bodies, picks up the bodies to take them out of the house, he will say to one inside the house, are there any more with you?

Then someone will say, none. And he will say, hold your tongue, for we dare not mention the name of the Lord. For behold, the Lord gives a command, He will break the great house into bits and the little house into pieces. Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there with oxen?

Yet you have turned justice into gall and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood you who rejoice over low the bar Who say have we not taken our name for ourselves by our own strength? But behold I will raise up a nation against you Oh house of Israel says the Lord God of hosts and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the valley of the Arabah. Jehovah is near, and all his commandments are truth. Heavenly Father, your word is truth and you have called us and instructed us to live by every word that proceeds from your mouth. May you enable us to hear this morning, to understand.

May we see more of you as you have revealed yourself in the scriptures. May, Lord, we, like all who see you, recognize that you are the Holy God and that we are a sinful people. And pray that, Lord, your salvation May be made known this morning and that you would sanctify my sinful lips to speak the truth through Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, these two chapters that we've been looking at in Amos chapter 5 and 6 here today are really one continuing message.

Amos is continuing his warnings and woes to the self-deceived nation of Israel. See, as we saw last week, the self-deceived holds a belief which he dreads and cannot face up to and so he wishes it were otherwise since it brings some unpleasant truth before him. The self-deceived we say was characterized by these three characteristics that the one who is self-deceived is responsible for causing himself to believe falsely. And he truly does believe falsely. He holds, secondly, an erroneous belief about his beliefs.

It's an erroneous belief that he has led himself into, but it is nevertheless an erroneous belief. And he gets to that point by hiding the truth about himself that makes himself uncomfortable and by his hiding his hiding of that belief from himself. You see, the self-deceive we saw goes through this deliberate process of rationalization until he not only succeeds in replacing the uncomfortable truth with one he'd rather believe, but he also persuades himself that he never deliberately engaged in any process to deceive himself. And so over time he becomes completely unaware of both the true and uncomfortable belief about himself, but he also becomes unaware of the fact that he hid that belief. Self-deceived nation.

They were deceived about the day of the Lord. They were deceived about their worship, thinking it to be pleasing, thinking it to be something the Lord delighted in, thinking that they were in a good standing before the Lord, not deceived. The Lord despised their worship. They were deceived about the day of the Lord thinking it wanting it to come and And not recognizing that they were the ones under judgment And so Amos here in this chapter continues his sermon. It's a sermon about the wrath of God.

It's not a pleasant message. It's not one anyone wants to bring. But it is the word of God. Because remember the gospel begins with the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. It doesn't end there, praise the Lord, but it begins there.

Woe, So there are a series of woes here. There's a number of about eight different woes. The first one is woe to you who are at ease in Zion. Now, as we've seen many times, Amos speaks with very colorful rhetoric. He is rather entertaining to listen to if his message wasn't so serious and sobering.

His speech is very colorful, in a good way. It's graphic. He has some very captivating analogies and metaphors. Woe to those who are at ease in Zion. You can just imagine somebody in a garden tub, in a bubble bath, or somebody who is sitting on their lounge under a fan with their favorite beverage and their book or whatever they love to do, completely at ease.

At ease in Zion. That's the city of David. This is a reference to Jerusalem usually. It was an impregnable city set up on a great mountain. It was a city that many believed would never be captured because it was so, not only because it was so impregnable, not only because it was so strongly fortified and difficult to attack, but they believed that God would never let it go.

Because this was where the temple of God was. This is where the Lord dwelt in the Old Testament. His Shekinah glory was there. And these people thought, God would never allow this to be taken. They forgot the lesson that they learned in the days of the judges battling the Philistines.

Yes, God allowed His ark to be captured. It didn't diminish the glory of the ark. It rather demolished the pagan gods that it came before. But they saw things like Psalm 125, Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. Or Psalm 87, the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

Or Psalm 69, for God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah that they may dwell there and possess it. And they read these things and they saw this city and they thought nothing could take it. And so they were quite comfortable spending their time in leisure activity because they believed God would never let His house be ruined, or the people who cared for it. And so, they simply ignored all of the warnings. They didn't believe the calamities that are described very precisely and exactingly in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 about what God would do if His covenant people failed to keep His commandments and broke His covenant.

There are some terrifying things there. We don't have time to read them this morning, but they are some of the most terrifying words in all of Scripture. They describe what happens. What God would do, God's judgment on His covenant-breaking people, they just didn't believe those things. They had deceived themselves into thinking those dire warnings, which involve cannibalism of people's own children, that those dire warnings didn't apply to them and they really didn't have to be worried and so they are at ease at ease and woe to those who trust in government to solve their problems.

The Mount who trust in Samaria, they rely on Mount Samaria. They trust in it. Samaria is the capital of the Northern Kingdom, just like Zion is the capital of the Southern Kingdom. And Jeroboam, who was king of Israel, was a king in Samaria for 41 years Kings tells us. And he restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the Arabah.

Now remember those words, that's what's in 2 Kings 14, the entrance of Hamath to the sea of Arabah. Do you remember we just read those two words in our, in our, well that's a description of the extent of the land of Israel. And Jeroboam restored territory and made Israel great, almost like it had been under the days of Solomon. Now, the writer, King tells us that he didn't do this by his own ingenuity. He wasn't because Jeroboam was such a wonderful person.

King tells us that this happened by the word of God's prophet Jonah, the one that he sent to Nineveh. Jonah had a word and it was by it was it was this restoration of Israel under Jeroboam which is contemporary with with Amos here was according to the word that God had spoken through Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath-Hefer. Why? Because the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was bitter and that there was no helper. And so the Lord saved Israel under Jeroboam in his grace.

And these people were living in a time of relative prosperity as we've said before. Their country had been enlarged, there was seemingly economic affluence, they had many things, and they just presumed upon this mercy from God that God was pleased with them and that's why he was pouring out these blessings on them they were deceived. Kings closes its count of Jeroboam by saying that the rest of Jeroboam and all that he did, how he made war and how he recaptured for Israel from Damascus and Hamath what had belonged to Judah, they're written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings. But this is where this is the period that Amos is living and preaching in. These people are living in this prosperity.

His reign was one of the most illustrious reigns in the northern kingdom, which was not a not a faithful kingdom. There were no righteous kings at all in the north. He was a fourth in the line from Jehu, the king that God raised up to destroy the line of Ahab. A, he had made Israel somewhat of a military power in that particular region at that time. And so Amos is saying, woe to you who trust in this government.

Woe to you who trust in this government to be your security. You're trusting in a broken wreath. And he illustrates the folly of trusting in the government to solve a nation's problems by alluding to three great kingdoms that each would have exceeded possibly Israel's greatest glory, the northern kingdom's greatest glory. There is Kalna is the first one that's mentioned. That's one of four cities that was founded by Nimrod.

The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, Erek, Akkad, and Kelna in the land of Shinar. This was a city that at the time was along the Euphrates River. And it's about 60 miles south or southeast of Babylon where Nebuchadnezzar reigned. It's mentioned as one of the cities with which Tyre carried on its trade, so it's an economically prosperous city. And it was finally taken, captured, and destroyed by one of the Assyrian kings and Amos is alluding to it he say look at this great city this great nation this city-state founded by Nimrod in the land of Shinar, a prosperous economic powerhouse that traded with the greatest cities, economic cities in the world.

It's gone. It's destroyed. Their government couldn't save them. He then mentions Hamath. He calls it Hamath the Great.

And Hamath would have been well known to the Israelites. It was the capital of one of the kingdoms in upper Syria. It was the northern boundary of the land of Palestine. It's mentioned in numbers as being the northern boundary. It was at the foot of Mount Hermon and it was somewhere near Damascus.

This was actually one of the cities that Assyria brought people, when they conquered Israel later on in this century, and They carted off all the Israelites into captivity, into slavery, which Amos mentions as being dragged away by hooks in their nose. The Syrians brought people from other nations in to Samaria. They became the Sumerians that are spoken of in the New Testament. And one of the cities that Assyria brought people in from was this Hamath. The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, from Cuthah, from Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharveim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and they dwelt in it. And so Hamath would have been another large and powerful capital. And he's saying, what about them? They were conquered by Assyria. And just like the Israelites were going to be carted off, people from there were carted off.

It was alluded to by Rab Sheka in his infamous blasphemous diatribe against God in Isaiah 36. He mentioned it as being a defeated has-been city. He said to the Jerusalem inhabitants, where is the god of Hamath and Arpad? Where is the god of the Sepharveim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

He was pointing to them because they had been defeated before him. And Amos is pointing to them, saying, you know, you're really, you're not even as good as these nations. Why are you trusting in Samaria? See this was God giving Samaria, this parent prosperity under Jeroboam was God giving them an opportunity to repent, an opportunity to turn to Him. Israel's constant rebellion since the days of Jeroboam, the first Jeroboam, warranted divine judgment.

They're breaking God's covenant, they're false worship, the idols they'd set up in Dan and Bethel and Gilgal. But God, you see, in His amazing grace was waiting. He was giving them an opportunity to repent. He was showing kindness to them, these people who really deserved his judgment. Remember this is after the days of Ahab, when Ahab led Israel in all sorts of demonic worship.

See, God is merciful. See, God is merciful. And even when judgment finally does come to Israel, God still preserves a remnant. Amos also referred to Gath. You're probably more familiar to many of us because that's where Goliath came from.

See, we are in many ways very similar to these people today. We have a tendency to want to trust in government to solve our problems. Trust in Mount Samaria. We have a problem. We call up the civil magistrate and we think he can come and make it right.

In some ways these people were like, you know, the little toddler who skins his knee and runs to mama because he thinks she can make it right. Well, she can comfort him, but she can't heal his knee. And these leaders in Samaria can't ultimately save the nation. Can't ultimately save the nation. Woe to those who trust in the military might of the United States to protect them.

Nations that offer human sacrifices as ours does, nations that mock the living God and defy his laws should expect to be ravaged, even by nations that are more wicked than us. That's what the Israelites learned in the days of Habakkuk when God sent his judgment through Nebuchadnezzar who was a nation, a king more wicked than Judah. But God said, the just live by faith. God used this wicked king for his purposes in the lives in the nation of Judah. And we have a tendency to think of our military as an undefeated military.

That's how I grew up. That's how I think much of the world used to think of the American military as the greatest power in the world. That's what all of our pundits talk about, the media. And yet, it's just not so. It's not so and it's becoming strikingly obvious that this is not so.

Thirty years ago, a newspaper writer, some of you may know him, he was well known, he's retired now, he wrote a little article for the one of the papers I was in near DC at the time so it could have been the Washington Post or one of those papers. And it was entitled Nightmare Pizza Nightmare at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And it's a It's a well-written piece of satire. But in this satire, he envisions a cabinet meeting of a new president. And the president asks his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are we ready, prepared to go to war?

And the chief of staff responds something to the extent of his aid camp. Something to the extent of, well the military is 36% homosexual and 29% special needs and autistic and death and 10% senile and blind and post-menopausal and he goes on and on and on with all these different categories of military, of their military and then he says, but really these are only token compliance with the law, the law, you know, we need to get to full compliance, you know, and so there's more discussion like this. It's really a funny article. And 30 years ago it was satire. But today that's the reality.

And so it ends by saying, so the president says, so we can't go to war? And he's correct and said, no, it's not that we can't go to war it's that we shouldn't. 30 years later what's in the news? The military is recruiting people who don't know what gender they are and who have had self-mutilating surgery. How well are they going to be able to fight?

It's a folly, woe to those who trust in our military might to protect us as a nation. That's Amos's message to the people in Samaria. Yes, Jeroboam had conquered many nations or he had taken back territory, but woe to those who trusted in his military might. Woe to those who scoff at an imminent collapse in verse 3. Woe to you who put off the day of doom.

Those who put off the day of the Lord make no preparation for it. One of the most significant ways that people put off the day of doom, or the day of the Lord, is to refuse to acknowledge that anything's really wrong. Or if they do acknowledge that something's wrong, they make no effort to change, either themselves or their city. They don't repent and they don't amend their ways. They don't ask, what would the Lord have us to do differently?

Why are we under the Lord's judgment? There is no sorrow over the many sins of the day. There's no seeking to learn the right ways, the Lord's ways, to understand where they've been self-perceived. There's no seeking of the truth, the truth that maybe they were never taught. There's no seeking of it so that they can begin to walk in it.

Woe to those who scoff at an eminent collapse. Woe to those who put far off the day of doom. Woe to those who encourage and instigate violence." In verse 3b. Cause, Amos says, the seed of anger or violence to come near. You see, civil magistrates who fail to bring God's wrath on those who do evil promote violence.

They bring the seed of violence near. And the cities in our land today that have brought the seat of violence near, they have ceased to, in some cases, they've ceased to prosecute these crimes. They've ceased to carry out their function as a civil magistrate to bring God's wrath on those who do evil. That's why God ordained them. Civil government was ordained after the flood so that God would never have to destroy the world again.

And its purpose is to restrain sin by bringing God's wrath on those who do evil. But civil magistrates who fail to do this deliberately bring the seed of violence near these cities where this has happened. Violence has surged, murders and carjackings and theft. Stores are closing in cities because They can't remain open with all the theft and unprosecuted violence. People, criminals that do get shot trying to steal result in protests.

Not over the crime that's going on, but over the people that are seeking to restrain it. That's upside down. Violence comes near when civil magistrates fail in their responsibility. But violence can also be brought near in entertainment. The gladiatorial fights of Rome are the epitome of violent entertainment.

People want more and more violence, not on themselves. They want to be able to watch it on other people. And what you watch in video games and in movies desensitizes you to the reality. So that when you see somebody suffering that same violence that you've watched in a movie right in front of you, well, it's just another movie and Nobody lifts a finger as people are beaten and killed. And so in so many ways, the seed of violence is caused to come near.

And I would submit that this is exactly what we are observing with the return of more and more violent, not only games of combat, but sports, violence in, violence sports in fighting. More and more Desensitization through pain and suffering of people. Woe to those who live in idle luxury. They lie on beds of ivory, they stretch out on their couches, they eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall. The word that's translated ivory is literally a tooth.

It's a tooth. And it literally signifies the tooth of an animal, especially those projecting tusks from an elephant that are prized as a source of ivory. The skilled workmen of Hiram, king of Tyre, fashioned a great throne of ivory for Solomon and they overlaid it with pure gold. Ahab had apparently built a house of ivory, King's tells us, that when he died, the rest of the acts and all that he did in that ivory house that he had built and the cities that he built they were written about in the chronicles. Ivory is not something that you would normally think of building a house out of.

You know, you can't attach things, screw things into it. So this is really speaking probably of homes that were paneled or inlaid with ivory. This specifically talks about beds of ivories. So nobody would want to sleep on ivory probably, but you might want a bed that's decorated in a beautiful way with an inlay with ivory. You know, it's not wrong to have these kinds of luxuries, to have an ivory inlaid bed.

It's not wrong to enjoy a couch and to sleep on it. It's not wrong to eat lambs from your flock. But these are people who are living in idle luxury. It's wrong to make these things the goal of one's life, that that's what you live for. That to acquire the most luxurious things for your house, to acquire time to just lay about in idleness.

It's one thing to rest when you've been working and it's nice to have a very nice couch to do it on, but it's another thing to just rest because you aren't working and have no inclination to work. That's idle luxury. The name says woe. Woe to those who lie in idol luxury. The Lord can and does bless his people who seek first his kingdom and its righteousness.

And he can bless with amazing objects of beauty and luxury and glory. You see, these aren't the things that we seek after and work for. This is not where we pin our hopes, how much time we can spend in idleness, and how many artifacts we can collect. You know, there is a house down in Houston in the wealthy section and I've noticed it some time a number of years ago it was on the realtor site and for sale and so they have pictures of it. And it's an incredible house.

It would rival any house in the world for magnificence and glory and beauty in terms of art. Interestingly, much of the art I think is demonic, but It's in this house. It's an incredibly splendid house. I would, and they have this price tag on it, but you know what? It's still for sale years and years later.

Whoever collected all of this stuff has never been able to enjoy it. It's sitting, the house is sitting for sale, apparently idle. That's a picture of the way these Israelites were living in Samaria. But also woe to those who seek idle entertainment. Now singing is a very good thing.

We're even commanded to sing. We sing praise to the Lord. And we can sing of the great and mighty acts of God, and we should sing while we work. We should sing with instruments. That's commanded in Scripture as well, to praise the Lord on an instrument of ten strings, on an organ, on harps, on other instruments.

We don't sing songs of merriment while the house is burning down. This is speaking of people who are unconcerned about the state of their country, the state of their church, and the state of their own heart. And they sing idly, sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments and invent for themselves musical instruments. These are people who are totally unconcerned. They're totally deceived about what's happening around them.

And they are singing in idleness. They're not singing to praise the Lord. They're not singing to make known His works. They're not singing because of the joy of the Lord within them. That's a beautiful thing to see.

It's a really beautiful thing. I have a video and I think I've shown it to a number of you of a Samoan firefighting force coming out of the mountains in California singing a song of praise to God in Samoan and it's beautiful. It's really wonderful because they're singing in parts, they're singing in perfect rhythm and it's beautiful. But that's not what this is talking about. This is talking about idol singing.

Indolence. Woe to those who drink alcohol to excess. Amos's words are drink wine from bowls. Wine is meant to be sipped from cups not guzzled from bowls. So this is another aspect that's obvious.

Drinking alcohol to excess. And woe to those who only care for themselves. Verse 6, they anoint themselves with the best ointment but are completely unconcerned about the state of others. They will have to have the best medical care. They have to have the best attention, the best ointments, the best medicines, the best devices, and they could care less about anybody else.

Amos specifically says, woe, woe to you. It has specific reference here to, Amos makes specific reference here to an incident in Joseph's life. Remember when Joseph's father, Jacob, sent him to inquire about how his brothers were making out it and taking care of the flocks and he had the trouble finding them, but at last he's finding them and as he's approaching them, Genesis says, when Joseph had come to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, that coat of many colors that his father had given to him as a sign of his favor. They were jealous of that coat. They stripped it from him.

They took him and cast him into the pit. This pit was empty, there was no water in it. And then what did they do? Well, their own very blood brother is sitting suffering or sitting in a pit without food and without water, they sit down and they eat a meal. And then they lift their eyes and look and there's a company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh on their way going down to Egypt.

And so they say, well, what profit is there in killing him? That's what they were going to do. Why don't we sell him into slavery and then we'll get enriched by it. That is what Amos points to as a classic example of people who think first and only of themselves and how they can profit at the expense even of their own family. And think nothing of selling Joseph into slavery.

That's what Amos is saying here. They anoint themselves with the best avoidance but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. And so God proclaims his sentence on such selfishness. If they want to be first and look out only for number one and ignore everybody else, then God said, well, then they can go first into captivity. They can be the first to have a hook put in their nose and dragged away like a dumb animal.

God essentially says, okay, you want to be first? You will be first. They shall go now captive as the first of the captives, and those who recline at banquets shall be removed. God declares that his judgment is certain. The Lord God has sworn by himself.

God had extended mercy. God had graciously restored the fortunes of this nation under Jeroboam. God had given them wealth, great wealth. They abused that privilege by turning justice into gall, wormwood. And so God says, no more, No longer.

God swears by himself. Yes, God swears. Some people may be surprised at that, but did you know that We are commanded to swear only by God's name and only in very important matters. We are not to swear by anything other than God's name. We are commanded to swear by God's name, but it is only in matters of importance by those who are authorized to swear oaths.

Because oaths pertain to things of great importance like legal matters, where somebody is to be convicted, where their life is at stake, then we are to swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. And so when God swears, when God speaks we need to take notice. But when God swears, we need to take triple notice. We need to take tenfold notice, because it's very important. God's Word is important.

But when God swears, That's very important. And God swears by himself because he can swear by none greater. And we find in the scriptures that God swears at the entrance and the exit of the covenant. When God made a promise to Abraham, when he established that covenant with Abraham, when he brought Abraham into a covenant relationship with him, God, he swore by himself because he could swear by none greater. For men indeed swear by the greater and an oath of confirmation is for them the end of all dispute.

And so when God swears he swears by himself because There is none greater and it is the end of the matter. And we find that God swears when he brings people in and when he removes them from the covenant. In Psalm 95, and it's quoted two times in Hebrews, we read that God swears in His wrath, they shall not enter My rest. This is the excommunication of covenant breakers from the covenant. This is the removal of people from the book of life, from the record.

God swears and God is swearing Amos says that God has sworn The Lord of hosts has said I abhor the pride of Jacob I hate his palaces those ivory palaces those ivory houses those ivory beds those couches that they love to lie on, the bowls that they guzzled wine from. God said, I hate that. I despise them and therefore I will deliver up the city and all that is in it." And he did. The wrath of God ought to be a terrifying thing. It is a terrifying thing to fall, for sinners to fall into the hands of an angry God.

Amos' message doesn't end there. And I'd like to just, as we close, bring that message from Psalm 32, where David says, don't be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding. Don't be self-deceived. Don't be those for whom words have no meaning, who are insensitive under God's pronouncements, who are insensitive to God's actions and his displays of his judgment around us. But God said, rather, I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you will go.

I will guide you with my eye. Do not be like the horse or the mule which have no understanding, which must be harnessed by bit and bridle, else they will not come near to you. Many Sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord mercy shall surround him. Who trusts in the Lord for his security, not in the armies and the impregnable defenses in the cities, but he who trusts in the Lord mercy shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy, while you who are upright in heart." Why?

Because there is forgiveness. For this cause, David says earlier, I will confess my transgression, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found. And now, as Paul said, now, behold, now is the day of salvation. Behold now is the day of grace.

That's it, in the day, in the acceptable time, I have heard you, and in the day of salvation, I have helped you. Behold, now is the acceptable time, and now is the day of salvation. Let's pray. Of salvation. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that in your wrath you remember your covenant and that you delight in mercy and that you may be found by those by all those who seek you. Lord we ask that you would deliver us from any self-deception in our own heart, where we are like in some way to these Israelites. For we know that we are. We know, Lord, that we are sinners and prone to wander, prone to care only for ourselves, prone to forget, to be forgetful of others, prone, Lord, to trust in the security of human power and horses and chariots and armies. And armies.

Paying a mere lip service to fewer words that our help is in your name and horses And horses are of no benefit when you move in judgment. The Lord, where we have been at ease in Zion, where we have lived in idle luxury, we ask your mercy. We ask, Father, that this example may be heeded and that you may use it for good in us and in our land, in our culture. Lord, may we be a voice of truth, unashamed of your commandments, unashamed of your law, unashamed of your gospel, that is foolishness to men, but it is the power of salvation to all who believe. Father, we thank you that you do not retain your anger forever because you do delight in mercy.

And it is your mercy that we seek this morning through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.