Please stand as we recite the Shema together.
The Shema
Shema Israel,
Adonai elohenu-Adonai echad
Ve’ahavta et Adonai eloeikah,
B’khol levavkah,
Uve’khol naphshekah,
Uve’khol m’odekah,
Ve’ahavta I’re’aca comocha. Amen.

Hear O Israel!
The Lord is our God – the Lord Alone.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart,
With all your soul,
And with all your might,
And love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.
Thank You, Lord, for Your Life and Truth. We ask that You would accomplish everything that You intend for us in our time together as Your People. Amen. Please be seated. 
2 Sam 18:28, And Ahimaaz called and said to the king, "All is well." And he prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. And he said, "Blessed is the Lord your God, who has delivered up the men who lifted their hands against my lord the king." 
	We continue with our time in this passage with regard to the fact that The Lord is to be blessed by His people as His hand of deliverance and protection and provision and mercy and loving kindness and grace is ever in evidence. Day by day, no matter what the raging fury of the powers arrayed against us, as witnesses of His Sovereignty and might, Jehovah shows Himself greater and mightier than the vilest oppressors of His beloved children.
	Please understand that this does not mean that we will never face the violent upheaval directed against those who proclaim His honor and majesty. Rather, no matter what the trials and tribulations and persecutions of this world, The Lord is still the One Who has us well in His hands. He rules and overrules the every scheme of this age. We will most likely suffer physically, financially, violently, and mortally as did Our Lord and Savior. But we face it all knowing that whatever takes place will only prove the greater measure of His faithfulness in comforting the every ill, and welcoming us home into His loving embrace at the end of our time on this earth. 
	For this tremendous assurance of His beneficent, and wondrous, and awesome holding us firmly for all of eternity, He is to be forever blessed and honored and adored and glorified. Therefore, we continue to view the accounts of His manifold mercy in action in our reading together of those faithful and true witnesses of the Love of The Lord as detailed in the Living Word of God.
	Please open to 2 Chron 20:25-30, wherein we are encouraged in the way King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah were the recipients of the gracious working power of God. This was so evident in the salvation wrought forth against the overwhelming powers of the sons of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir. Those allied forces were so numerous that the inhabitants of Jerusalem despaired of anything other than utter devastation enveloping them. Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of the people and called unto Jehovah to prove Himself mighty for the sake of His testimony in all the earth. 
	As a result of their concern for the witness and the Name of The Lord, God intervened and the people of Jerusalem did not even have to go into battle. Through the work of God in the minds of those enemies, they turned on each other and completely destroyed one another with all the infighting and distrust and jealousy and treachery. The after-effect of this internal annihilation is detailed for us in 2 Chron 20:25-30. The people of Judah so honored God in their abundant gratitude and rejoicing in the provision of His mighty deed of salvation in their deliverance. 
	2 Chron 20:25-30, And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them, including goods, garments, and valuable things which they took for themselves, more than they could carry. And they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much. Then on the fourth day they assembled in the valley of Beracah, for there they blessed the Lord. Therefore they have named that place "The Valley of Beracah" until today. And every man of Judah and Jerusalem returned with Jehoshaphat at their head, returning to Jerusalem with joy, for the Lord had made them to rejoice over their enemies. And they came to Jerusalem with harps, lyres, and trumpets to the house of the Lord. And the dread of God was on all the kingdoms of the lands when they heard that the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. So the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God gave him rest on all sides. 
	The important thing to notice is how the people of Jerusalem returned to the city of God with joy in the Lord. They were singing the praise and the adoration and the worship of God with harps, lyres, and trumpets as they brought that rejoicing into the House of Jehovah. 
	Also of note is the aftereffect in all the nations of the lands around Judah. There was a great fear of the Lord because all the peoples knew that The God of Israel had gone forth to destroy that massive army that was seeking to annihilate the people of The God of the Hebrews. The Lord God Jehovah preserved this people because they were seeking for His name to be honored and praised and blessed in all the lands surrounding them. And God gave them peace on all sides, blessed be the Name of the Lord. 
	We now turn to the Psalmist as he recounts the fact that God is to receive the praise and the glory and the adoration as He works to make known His so great salvation upon those who are His own. Please open to the 115th Psalm and we will read it together. Herein the Psalmist declares the immense difference that is in place between the God of Israel and the idols of the nations who would try to destroy the testimony of Jehovah.
	Ps 115, Not to us, O Lord, not to us, But to Thy name give glory Because of Thy lovingkindness, because of Thy truth. Why should the nations say, "Where, now, is their God?" But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell; They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord; He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord; He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord; He is their help and their shield. The Lord has been mindful of us; He will bless us; He will bless the house of Israel; He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, The small together with the great. May the Lord give you increase, You and your children. May you be blessed of the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of the Lord; But the earth He has given to the sons of men. The dead do not praise the Lord, Nor do any who go down into silence; But as for us, we will bless the Lord From this time forth and forever. Praise the Lord! 
	This Psalm is just filled with the reality that God is to be blessed for all His wondrous working power displayed on the behalf of His beloved and set apart creation - those who believe and trust in Him. He shows Himself ever and forever mighty to save and mighty to shower His people with the every manifestation of His love and grace and mercy. He makes Himself known to those whom He has redeemed with the might and the love and the security of His Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence. For all of that and so much more, Jehovah is to be praised and reverenced and blessed with the every fiber of our beings.
	Then, In Psalm 124, there is the detailed expression of the heart of those who know the saving grace and mercy of God. Just as He rescued His nation over and over again, so does He make Himself the very Rock of our salvation. His Name is to be blessed again and again and again.
	Ps 124, "Had it not been the Lord who was on our side," Let Israel now say,  "Had it not been the Lord who was on our side, When men rose up against us;  Then they would have swallowed us alive, When their anger was kindled against us; Then the waters would have engulfed us, The stream would have swept over our soul; Then the raging waters would have swept over our soul."  Blessed be the Lord, Who has not given us to be torn by their teeth. Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper; The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. 
	We are to bless the Lord in the midst of the strife and the anguish and the hardships. Note that the Psalmist mentions the fact that the people were in such awful times of distress and torment, and yet there was that call to Bless the Lord. No matter what, in good times and in hard times, we are to bless the Lord because He is the One Who brings us through it all to His Glory and to His praise. He is Our Creator and Our Sustainer and for that He is always to be blessed by the mouths and the lives of His created ones.
	Then the Psalmist followed up with the declaration of Ps 144, verses 1-3. This is in the fact that God even so cares for such as we are on this earth. When we consider Who God is, and how miniscule we are in the grand panorama of creation, it boggles our thoughts and conceptions that He would care for such as we are before Him. He is to be blessed again and again and again.
	Ps 144:1-3, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, Who trains my hands for war, And my fingers for battle; My lovingkindness and my fortress, My stronghold and my deliverer; My shield and He in whom I take refuge; Who subdues my people under me. O Lord, what is man, that Thou dost take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that Thou dost think of him? 
	Entering into the New Testament, we have one of the greatest expressions of God’s care and keeping and working power for the sake of such as we are succinctly described by the Apostle Paul in Gal 2:20. The full breadth of creation stands firmly in the fact that God so loved the world that He sent forth His Only Begotten Son to die and then be resurrected from that death in order that humanity could come into the life that He has prepared for us.
	Gal 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. 
	In Jesus, the blessing of God and the blessing unto God were brought forth in the way of God’s so great love. He lavishes the full treasury of heaven upon those who would but believe and accept the free gift that God offered without any stipulated or demanded recompense on our behalf. It is because He so loves us that we so desire to bless Him with the lives and the hearts that want only to show forth unto others the life of Jesus Christ, Who now indwells and lives forth from us unto those who are in such need.
	Because of the blessing of salvation in Jesus, we are now made part of His family, His church on this earth. We live, by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, those lives which serve to show the difference and the reality of Who now has complete Sovereignty in our lives and in the whole of creation.
	For a while, it has been more and more impressed upon us that we do not just live for ourselves any longer, with the idea that we can do what we want because we have eternal fire insurance. That is the way that some supposed Christians teach and think about what has taken place in the receipt of Jesus’ eternal salvation. They feel they can do anything they want without any repercussion. They look at salvation as a “Get out of jail free” card that will cover the entirety of their selfish and self-centered walk on this earth.
	The truth, however, is that when we truly begin to learn how blessed we are in Christ Jesus, we do not want to do anything that would cause God other than being blessed in the testimony that we present on this earth. We are here, now, at this time, as the witness to others of the Great Love of God. We are to present, in thought and in word and in deed, the truth of unto Whom we live in fealty and honor and praise and blessing unto Him.
	Accordingly, the Lord is working in us to deal with those elements that are no longer to have any part of our expression after ourselves. Rather, we are being taught the true reality of the manifested grace and mercy of God so freely lavished upon those who will become a blessing unto Him. We are to trust and honor and obey. We are to spend time with Him in prayer and in fellowship and in worship and in the study and feasting upon His Word. We are to live unto the full pleasure of His heart being blessed because we love Him and we are so very filled with absolute gratitude for His so miraculous Love being our very life. 
	This will all come to the culmination that is expressed so vividly by the writer of the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Please open to Rev 19:1-7. This is the declaration of that which will come into fruition in the plan and the purpose of God as the whole of creation beholds the marriage of Christ with His Bride, the Church. God will receive the acclaim and the adoration and the manifested blessing as His love is shown in concert with the Sovereign Lordship of Jesus over the entirety of all that has been created. 
	Rev 19:1-7, After these things I heard, as it were, a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bond-servants on her." And a second time they said, "Hallelujah! Her smoke rises up forever and ever." And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, "Amen. Hallelujah!" And a voice came from the throne, saying, "Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great." And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude and as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready."
	In this revealed joining together of man with His Creator, the Lord will be blessed by the entire spectrum of His design and plan and purpose. The mutual blessing of humanity and Creator will fill the eons of eternity with praise and worship and adoration of The Lord Our God! So be it!
And Ahimaaz called and said to the king, "All is well." And he prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. And he said, "Blessed is the Lord your God, who has delivered up the men who lifted their hands against my lord the king." Amen.

				Larry and Pam Vacarro	 

This morning’s benediction is Ps 9:10. And those who know Thy name will put their trust in Thee; For Thou, O Lord, hast not forsaken those who seek Thee. Amen.