A Covenant Faithfulness

Shall we pray, Gracious God, our Father, we thank you for the great privilege of worship, the great privilege of gathering together as your people, and setting our mind's attention and heart's affection on you, and praising you for who you are and for what you've done, and then anxiously awaiting those moments where you, through these ordinary means of grace, remind us of who you are and conform us to the very image of Christ. As we gather, we pray that you would do precisely, that that you would conform us to the image of your Son, that you would show us ourselves as you see us, bring us to repentance and faith, and that by the grace and power of the person and work of Christ, you would make us new. We pray all these things in His name, Amen, well. As we continue our journey through this series One Big Story, We've looked at all of these major episodes in the Old Testament narrative, these familiar stories, and tried to see how they all come together as part of the one story of redemption. As we try to read the Old Testament, and particularly Old Testament narrative with Christ at the center. This is the second to the last message in the series. We find ourselves in Daniel chapter six, looking at this very familiar story Daniel in the Lions. Den actually get to the Lions then today, but we'll be there in Daniel chapter six. And if we're going to understand this as part of that one big story of redemption, we have to put it into its historical context. We know that Daniel is part of the exiles, part of the early exile into Babylon. We know that he has been there since the time of Nebuchadnezzar, since the time of the Babylonians, and now he's there with the Medo Persian Empire. But why is he there? Why is Israel there? Understanding that helps us understand Daniel in general, and this passage in particular Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, beginning at verse ten, and if you'll remember, Jeremiah twenty nine is part of a letter that Jeremiah sends to the early exiles in Babylon, to those who were with Daniel, the thousands upon thousands who went early on before the final fall Jeremi twenty nine, beginning at verse ten. For thus says the Lord, when seventy years are completed, for Babylon. I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. Now, this promise really brings us to the Edict of King Cyrus. It doesn't mean that in seventy years they're back. It actually took nearly one hundred and fifty years for them to be back for this all to be over. Verse eleven. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. And though we love that verse and we love to claim it for ourselves, this is a verse that's very particular to the exiles in Babylon. And it's not a verse of individual promise at all. This is not a verse of This is not an individual Hello, this is not an individual promise. And you'll see that as we continue to read. Look at verse twelve. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I will restore your fortunes and gather you. Listen to this from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. So again, the promise of Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven is beautiful and attractive, but it's a promise to the exiles in Babylon, very specific promise to very specific people. And it's a corporate promise, not an individual promise. This is very important to understand. God is making a promise about what He's going to do for the people of Israel, not an individual Israelite. Why is this significant? Well, when we look at our text in Daniel chapter six, it will shed light on it. Why is Daniel and Babylon Because God is punishing his people through the exile, and he is purifying his people through the exile, and by his providence, he is going to bring out of the exile a purified people, a purified Israel. So the Book of Daniel is there to answer a couple of questions, how is God going to preserve his people? First of all, is God going to preserve his people? Really? Really do it? And secondly, how is he going to do it? They are taken by this powerful nation, they are taken to this pagan place. How are the people of God going to avoid number one, being co opted by the Babylonians and becoming a pagan people. How are they going to avoid that? How are they going to be purified? If they're already guilty of idolatry and they're going into exile because of their idolatry. How do they go into exile into an idolatrous nation but come out a purified people? How is that going to happen? But secondly, how are they not going to be destroyed? How is He going to preserve them as a people? How are they not going to be destroyed? Those are the questions if you are an Israelite during this time, whether you go in the early exile or you're there in Jerusalem thinking about what is going to happen? This is your question. How are we as a people going to get through this? How are we going to be preserved? How are we going to be purified? How on the other side of this will we be a nation? How are we ever going to have Jerusalem back? How is the Temple ever going to be restored? How is our culture ever going to be restored? And how is God going to fulfill his covenant promises if we are all marched off into Babylon and either become Babylonians or go extinct. The answer to those questions found among other places in the Book of Daniel. Daniel stands himself as a living, breathing answer to the question, because Daniel makes it in the exile and remains committed to the covenant of God, because God remains committed to his covenant with Israel. Daniel answers the question in the affirmative and he says, Number one, God can protect us from the Babylonians even in Babylon. If the Babylonians are replaced by the Meto Persian Empire. God can still protect us in the Meto Persian Empire. Why, because of his covenant faithfulness, he will protect his people and he will purify his people. How is this part of the One Big Story. It's part of the One Big story because it's part of that narrative of redemption in two ways. One we see an example of God redeeming his covenant people. But also when you look at the broader redemptive story, we look at creation and then fall. God creates Adam, and before we get out of the garden, there is a fall, and from fall we have to go to redemption. And Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen that redemption is promised. There is a promised seed who is going to come and undo what Adam has done. Because of the promised Seed, we get a people, and we get a people, and then we have Abraham, and Abraham is going to be made a great nation. They go in to Egypt, and here's the first time that God has to protect and preserve his people. They come out of Egypt miraculously. God gives them a lawgiver, and now we have a people who've been delivered and they have a law. And then he gives them the tabernacle. They have a place to worship. Eventually he gives them a king. So we have a nation with a king and with a law. We are on our way. The promised Seed is going to come. King David has the covenant renewed to him that he's always going to have a man on the throne. It is the golden Age of Israel. And then all of a sudden, king after king after king leads them astray, until finally they are exiled in Babylon. Eventually they come out. But we know that the Law is not enough. We know that a king is not enough. We know that the Messiah has to come. And so finally we get to the New Testament, after four hundred years of silence, and what is it open within Matthew a genealogy, a genealogy that reminds us that the promised Seed from Genesis three point fifteen has finally come. He is true Israel, he is pure Israel, he is perfect Israel. But he too has to go into exile. He goes into our exile, into the grave for three days, and the same question comes, can he be delivered from exile or is it over? Three days later the answer comes in the affirmative, Yes, God will deliver him from exile, from our exile. Three days later he rises from the grave and the exile is over. He delivers us from our sin. But not even that is the end of the one big story, because if you get to the Book of Revelation, eventually, in Revelation chapter eighteen, we go back to this same theme and an angel cries out, falling, falling, it's Babylon the Great, So that ultimately we real that you and I are also in exile. That you and I are also anxiously awaiting deliverance from exile into the City of Promise, the New Jerusalem. So when you see that one big story, Daniel chapter six speaks to far more than whether or not God can close the mouths of lions. Amen. Okay, it's my introduction. Shall we get to Daniel Chapter six. Daniel chapter six, covenant faithfulness. I want us to look at covenant faithfulness. And again, when I talk about covenant faithfulness, remember this is not just Daniel's covenant faithfulness, but it's God's covenant faithfulness. Because what is Daniel's covenant faithfulness? Say, Daniel's covenant faithfulness says that God is going to purify his people. Daniel is a picture of God's purified people within Babylon, within the exile. So when I say covenant faithfulness, I'm talking about God's covenant faithfulness to his people, and God's covenant and God's people's covenant faithfulness because of the covenant faithfulness of God. First of all, covenant faithfulness blesses the Kingdom of Man. Covenant faithfulness blesses the Kingdom of Man. God's faithfulness to his covenant people and God's covenant People's faithfulness to God blesses the Kingdom of Man. Look at the first four verses and Daniel chapter six. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred and twenty sat traps to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them. Three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, noticed that they're no longer using his pagan Babylonian name in this part of the narrative, to whom these sat traps should give account so that the king might suffer no loss. Then Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and sat traps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the King planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the sat traps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, But they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him. It's an amazing statement. Daniel is one of only a few characters in the entire Bible about whom no sin is recorded. Not because Daniel is sinless, the only character in the Bible about whom no sin is recorded because he's sinless is Jesus Amen. There's no sin recorded about Joseph, but Joseph wasn't a sinless man. There's no sin recorded about Daniel. Daniel wasn't a sinless man. But when we understand how the Daniel narrative fits within the context of the greater narrative, we understand why he's presented this way because he is a picture of the faithful covenant people of God that God is purifying and preserving even through the exile. He's faithful, and in his faithfulness, he is a blessing to the Kingdom of Man, because covenant faithfulness is not just a blessing to the covenant community, but covenant faithfulness is also a blessing to the Kingdom of Man. Daniel is not serving in the temple. Daniel is not even serving in Jerusalem. He is in exile, serving a king who doesn't even know God, and yet he's serving faithfully. Listen to what one commentator says, the first point to observe in this chapter is that Daniel had learned how to live as a pilgrim from the outset of his career in Babylon. Daniel was in his culture, but not of his culture. On the one hand, he didn't withdraw from Babylonian culture as far as he could in order to avoid being stained by it. On the contrary, he had now served the empire faithfully for almost seventy years. He's not a young man anymore. And if earlier on when we read about him had an eye Michel and Azariah, they were in their early twenties, and now he's probably in his late eighties early nineties, and he's still being faithful to God and faithful to the empire. He was faithful to the Babylonian Empire, now he's faithful to the meddle Persian Empire because as an exile, that's what he's been called to do. What does this say for you and me? So many times we think that covenant faithfulness is just what we do here. Your covenant faithfulness to God is only measured by your service at church. Your covenant faithfulness to God only extends as far as what you can do to advance the Kingdom of God through your work with the people of God. But Daniel screams something far different than that covenant faithfulness is not just a blessing to the Kingdom of God, it's a blessing to them, the Kingdom of Man, your employer, your employer should see you as a blessing. Amen, somebody. If you are a Christian and you go to work every day and they hate to see you coming, that's not covenant faithfulness. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. Covenant faithfulness in the life of a believer. Covenant faithfulness to our God extends beyond what we do when we gather at church. God's covenant faithfulness to us and God's covenant faithfulness expressed through us is something that is a blessing. Even to people who hate us, despise us, misuse us, and enslave us. It's a blessing. It's a blessing. We talk often at ACU about two thousand and fourteen British Council Survey where they employed, where they surveyed employers on the continent of Africa and basically asked them what it is that they're looking for in employees, what they're not finding in employees, and their level of satisfaction with employees who are coming out of the university eighteen categories listed. Fifteen of the eighteen had to do with character, not knowledge, skill, but character, and their satisfaction rate was somewhere around seventeen percent. We're just not seeing character. We can't find people to employ who have character. Listen, even employers out there in the world, they may not have the words or the categories, and they may not even want to admit it if they know what it is. But when they have to hire someone that they can trust, what they're looking for is covenant, faithfulness, godliness, righteousness, because it's not just a blessing in here, it's a blessing out there the entire empire. The king says, putting one hundred and twenty men over the whole king, imagine that one hundred and twenty men. Daniel is one of one hundred and twenty. That's a blessing and a compliment. Amen, three men oversee them. Now, Daniel is one of the three who oversees one hundred and twenty. He does so well that the king he says, I'm gonna put him over the three who are over one hundred and twenty. He's a foreigner, he's a conquered exile, and as a foreign conquered exile, the covenant faithfulness of God to him and the covenant faithfulness of Him to his God. It's so significant that even those who don't know God know a good thing when they see it. Amen. Secondly, covenant faithfulness is a fruit of true religion. It's a fruit of true religion. This is important because what a lot of people have tried to do, because people recognize this, and there are some people who very famously what they do is, you know, they'll take that There are a number of Christian business books that have been written, and what they've tried to do is they've tried to take the Biblical principles for good business and sell them to the world and basically say, hey, listen, we've extracted the good stuff. Here it is. You know, they'll take the principles of the Book of Proverbs and they'll say, here's a business book. We don't we won't even call it Christian, we won't even call it biblical, but I mean, here, here, here's a book we've we've extracted these principles out. Just do these things so that you can be a good business person. Listen to me. Covenant faithfulness is the fruit of true religion, not just the application of some principles. Amen, somebody. That's not the way the Bible was intended to be taken. It's not the way it was intended to be used. You don't look at a Daniel and say, wait a minute, Daniel believes some things and he is excelling because of these things he believed. Let me take those principles and leave his God behind so that I can use those principles to become more successful. Folks. This is the problem with neo Pentecostalism. This is the problem with the Word of Faith movement. Essentially, what they have done is they have obliterated the Gospel in the name of taking principles that can make you prosper so that your life is not given over or committed to God. Your life is given over and committed to prosperity. That's blasphemy. That's blasphemy. And in fact, I would say that that is exactly what the Third Commandment is meant to condemn. That is taking the Lord's name in vain. Just taking his name in vain includes his words and his works. I don't want you, God, but I want to extract your essence in the form of a few principles so that I can have the things that I truly worship. In other words, here's what we're saying, God, will you please move over so that I can use your truth to worship something other than you. It's like asking your wife to borrow some of her perfume so you can give it to your girlfriend. What we see here is the fruit of true religion. Notice with verse five, then these men said, we shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. Did you catch that? Did you catch that? If we want to get Daniel in trouble, then somehow we got to make it illegal for him to be godly. That's the only way we're going to get him is if you make covenant faithfulness illegal, because anything other than that, we won't get him. Because what's happening with him is the fruit of true religion. This is not false piety in Daniel. It's not even just cultural piety in Daniel. He's not christianizing the culture. He's not taking over politics and religion, politics government in the name of his religion. He wasn't even doing good deeds like feeding the poor improving the plight of the exile. He wasn't doing any of that. I mean, he may have been doing some of that, but that's not listed here. What is he doing according to verse two, he's helping King Darius mitigate his losses. He's helping King Darius mitigate his losses. I need some supervisors. There's a lot of things going on in the kingdom and a lot of people doing a lot of work in the kingdom. And the more people you have doing work in the kingdom, the more hands you have that may be taken out of the pot. So there are one hundred and twenty of you. Here's your job to make sure that the people who are doing the job that they're supposed to do in the kingdom are doing the job that they're supposed to do. Make sure that my money is being spent properly and not being abused. Keep corruption down so that I don't have losses because of corruption. And Daniel's job is to make sure that Darius, the king who defeated the king who defeated Israel, doesn't experience too many losses. Can you wrap your head around that? It's interesting, but one of the things that's sort of difficult to me as a foreigner living here is on both sides. There's some experiences that we don't share. There are some things that you guys talk about and I just don't get it. It's not part of my experience. Love. You just don't get it. And what's very interesting is do you A lot of Zambians have asked me about my last my surname, my nice, wholesome German surname, Bauchem. Why is that? Why is that? Why you're like a big old African You got a German surname? Why do you have that name? And my answer is because of slavery. That's the family who used to own my family during slavery in America. And Zambians just kind of get this glazed overlooked and all of a sudden, I go, wait, you guys didn't experience that. It's a foreign concept, but in this instance it's a helpful one. The idea that your family, your loved ones, your people are carted off to another place where they don't look like those people, they don't speak like those people. They don't understand the language, they don't understand the culture, they don't understand anything. They're gone. They miss home. They're gone. They have no rights, they have no privileges, they have no nothing. It's gone, it's gone. And now seventy years later, you're an old man who probably begins to realize you're never going to see home again. And instead of curling up in the fetal position somewhere waiting to die, you give your life to be a faithful steward in the midst of your exile. If you don't understand that, you don't understand what it means to be a Christian. Because as a Christian, I just describe your life. You are in exile. You are in Babylon. You are not home. The home that we are yearning for and looking to is a city whose builder and maker is God, and that ain't lusaka Amen. And yet as exiles, we don't live like we hate the place. We live like we love the place in God's name. That's Daniel. How did it manifest itself? Obedience to God's law? Prayer Verse ten. When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house, where he had windows in his upper chamber opened toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Document says, you can't do that. He goes and does it anyway in front of an open window, like he's always done, the direction toward Jerusalem. What does that have to do with anything? Second Chronicles, chapter six, verses thirty six to thirty nine. Very important temple, we know. Second Chronicles, chapter seven, Right, God says, if my people who are called by my name, we get that when God is speaking. But what we don't get necessarily is that he's responding to Solomon's prayer. Solomon prays to God at the dedication of the temple, and listen to this. If they sin against you, for there is no one who does not sin, and you are angry with them, and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near. Yet, if they turn their heart in the land to which they have carried, they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying we have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly. If they repent with all their mind and with all their heart, and the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive, and pray toward their land which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name. Then hear from heaven your dwelling place, their prayer and their pleas, and maintain their cause, and forgive your people who have sinned against you. That's why he prayed toward Jerusalem. That's why, and he continued to do so even after it became illegal. Why would he do that? Because God said, so, what's his goal? It's important that you put these two things together. On the one hand, he's in exile and his covenant faithfulness is a blessing to the Kingdom of Man, such a blessing that he rises through the ranks because of his faithfulness to the mutile Persian Empire. But it's faithful to them is an expression of his faithfulness to God. Now a law comes that says you can't pray to anyone but the king. But he continues to pray to his God before an open window facing toward Jerusalem. Why because his goal is not the favor of the king, but the favor of God. And God says, if I send you into exile. You pray toward this direction, and you repent, and I'll deliver you. He was not willing to trade deliverance from trouble today for the promise of deliverance from sin tomorrow. And so he prayed to God, not the King, because I'm asking God, God to deliver Israel. Yeah, but you might have to face some lions. Listen, listen, listen, listen, I'm asking God to deliver Israel. Covenant faithfulness often results in persecution. That's normal. Verses six to nine. We see what happens. They decide that there will be this decree for the next period of time. You can only pray to the king. Ken Darius signs it. These men came in agreement verse eleven and found Daniel. They knew exactly where to find him, and they found him breaking the law, the law that was written particularly for him. Verse thirteen. They answered and said, before the King, Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O King, or the injunction you've signed, but makes petition three times a day. We've seen this before. What happened to Hanna, Ia, Michelle and Azariah. They're supposed to bow down to the image, Ah King. They don't pay attention to you, and they don't bow down like you said, and they had to face the fiery furnace. Now, Daniel, a man in his late eighties, early nineties, an old man in his latter days, set up, and he's caught. Covenant faithfulness often results in persecution, and sometimes we crumble because we think that the opposite ought to be true. No, no, no, no no, no. Covenant faithfulness should get you out of persecution. Really, why Matthew five ten to twelve, Jesus says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven, blessed to you. And others revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account, Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is new the Apostle Paul two Timothy, chapter three, beginning of verse ten. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim, and like my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, which persecutions I endure. Yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Peter First Peter, Chapter two, nineteen to twenty three. For this is a gracious thing when mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it when you If when you sin, you are beaten for it and you endure. But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revit island return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued in trusting himself to Him who judges justly. Why are we surprised when covenant faithfulness results in persecution. It's what we've seen and it's what we've been promised. Heymen, Finally, covenant faithfulness doesn't always end with deliverance. That's okay. So our covenant faithfulness may lead to persecution, but then God will deliver us from it. Right. Daniel never left exile. He died there. Everyone who went as a part of that initial group that went into the early exile, every one of them, they died there. Everyone who received that letter from Jeremiah with the verse that we loved so much. I know the plans I have for you to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future. Everybody who received that promise died in exile. And yet God fulfilled the promise. Why because the promise wasn't to the individuals. The promise was to the covenant community. See, whether I am delivered from persecution or not, God is going to deliver his people. Amen. Even if those who persecute me end up taking my life, they can't take my deliverance, Amen. They can't. They can't because my deliverance is not about me oxygen. My deliverance is not about my heart beating. My deliverance is about me getting to that city that I hoped for and I longed for. That's my deliverance, that's my hope. Covenant faithfulness is not about escaping difficulty, hardship, or even death in the here and now. Jesus was faithful and committed no sin, and yet he died at Calvary for the sins of his people. The apostles followed the Lord, served him faithfulness, faithfully, and yet how did they end up beheaded? One was run through with a spear, another was beaten to death with the branches of an olla. Try another crucified upside down. That's what their faithfulness got them, all of them martyred, and not just them. Throughout the history of the Church, there are those who have been martyred. Today, there are those who are experiencing martyrdom all over the world today. Can I tell you something that most Christians don't know. More Christians were martyred for Christianity in the twenty first century than in the previous two thousand years combined. I'm sorry, in the twentieth century. We're in the twenty first the twentieth century. More martyred in the twentieth century than in the nineteen hundred years before it. We don't think about this because we don't live in places like Indonesia, where Muslims will regularly come to church services, lock the doors from the outside and set the place on fire, killing everyone in there. We don't live in the parts of the world where being converted to Christianity is a crime punishable by death. And because we live in relative ease here in this constitutionally Christian republic or where I come from, because we don't have to face those things, oftentimes our eyes are closed to them, and we don't realize that every day our brothers and sisters are losing their lives because of their faith in Christ. And here's the irony when that happens. Oftentimes we look at it and we think, oh, that calls God's covenant faithfulness into question. No it doesn't. It just confirms the covenant faithfulness of the martyr. The church father Tertullian said the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. When Justin Martyr wrote his defense his early apologetic of the Christian faith to a prominent Roman one of the things he wrote was, if you want to know that what we believe is true, watch how we die, we confirm the truth of our testimony with our death. Covenant faithfulness. Despite what we hear out there all the time, it's not a way to escape difficulty. It is a way to endure it. I've said it before, I say it again. Last time I checked, the death rate was one per person. Aymen, nobody gets out of here alive. It doesn't work that way. So why on earth? Why on earth? If that's the case? What we think that covenant faithfulness means that you get to escape what everybody else has to endure. No, covenant faithfulness means that, as you face it, you get to say yay. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me. Your rod and your staff. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemy enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever forever. The Book of Daniel is not just about God being able to shut the mouths of lions, because what good does it do if he can keep a lion from eating you? But he can't keep you out of hell. What good does it do if he can save you from the fiery furnace, but he can't save you from your sin? What good does it do if God is not faithful to his covenant people, and if he can't make his cove peaceful people faithful to him. Ah. But if that is true, if the Book of Daniel exists to tell us just that that even in exile, God is faithful, and even through exile, God will make you faithful. If that's the message of the Book of Daniel, it doesn't matter what your circumstances are. We just trust God love it. Have you come here today to trust in anything else? Have you come here today giving yourself to anything else? Have you come here today hoping that you find out some principles that you can use to go out and make yourself more healthy and wealthy and prosperous. Have you come here today hoping to appease God's wrath by your mere presence? Have you come here today hoping that somehow your being here will be enough for you to earn some favor with God. If you have, I hope you've recognized today that that's not the answer. The answer is covenant faithfulness. God's covenant faithfulness that is seen in the person and work of Christ. God's covenant faithfulness that send his son to die on a cross for sins that he hadn't committed. God's covenant faithfulness that raised him from the grave on the third Day because God was satisfied with the price that he paid on behalf of sinners. God's covenant faithfulness to all of those who come to Christ in repentance and faith. God's covenant faithfulness for all of those who, having hoped in Christ, die in Him, so that we too will rise from the exile of death and be united with Him one day in the city whose builder and maker is God, the city for which we wait, the New Jerusalem, before which the Babylon of this world pales in comparison, and before which Babylon will not be able to stand. Or They may be able to imprison us, they may be able even to enslave us, they may be able to kill us. But they cannot take away our hope, and they cannot take away our reward. Christ rose from the grave. Christ defeated Death. Christ defeated Hell, Christ defeated Satan. You tell me what can you do to me. Let's pray, Oh God, how we thank you for your goodness and for your mercy, and for your kindness, and for your covenant faithfulness. Grant by your grace that it might produce covenant faithfulness in us. Grant that, as we live as pilgrims, that our covenant faithfulness might be a blessing even to the kingdom of Man. That it might be true covenant faithfulness that is a fruit of true religion. Grant that even if our covenant faithfulness results in persecution, that we would not be dissuaded, but that we would continue to follow, so that even if there is no deliverance, we might be faithful under death, knowing that as our Savior overcame the grave, so too will we. And so we praise you, and so we thank you, and so we trust you in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.