Everlasting Kindness

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Psalms 135 and Psalms 136 this morning, particularly 136, but let's read. I'll read a few verses from 135. I'm reading from the New American Standard.

It says, Praise the Lord, praise the name of the Lord, praise Him, O servants of the Lord, you who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good. Sing praises to His name, for He is lovely.

Psalms 136 says, Give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good, for His loving kindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of gods, for His loving kindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His loving kindness is everlasting.

And to Him, who alone does great wonders, for His loving kindness is everlasting. To Him, who made the heavens with skill, for His loving kindness is everlasting. To Him, who spread out the earth upon the waters, for His loving kindness is everlasting.

To Him, who made the great lights, for His loving kindness is everlasting. The sun to rule by day, for his loving kindness is everlasting. The moon and the stars to rule by night for his loving kindness is everlasting.

Are you getting the picture? And then I read verse 10 and stop there because verse 10 is very unusual. I didn't understand this. I searched and searched for the meaning of this.

To him who smote the Egyptians in their firstborn for his loving kindness is everlasting. Now it may be obvious to you but it wasn't so obvious to me. Everlasting kindness.

Now I have a confession to make to you this morning. I stand before you guilty and I must confess that I am in debt. Heavy, heavy debt.

So far in debt I don't see how I could ever possibly get out of it. The particular debt that I'm in has to do with how far behind I am in giving God my praise and my thanksgiving for his mercies towards me. And the Lord has taken me through something lately that I've gone through at particular times before and I'm referring to the fact of getting convicted about my lack of ability to adequately and fully praise the Lord for who he is and for what he has done and continues to do for me.

And when I say I'm in debt I don't say this as a gimmick to get your attention or just as a way to introduce this message. I'm serious. I stand before you convicted and buked by the Holy Spirit and this message is born out of that conviction.

I am in debt, a debt of praise. How will I ever be able to show and to tell the Lord how grateful I am for his everlasting kindness to me. The Bible says render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

Now as far as I know I don't owe Caesar a penny. My taxes are paid. I'm glad to say I'm not in debt to Caesar or Bush or Bloomingdale's but God's another story.

Him I'll never be able to pay. You say well that's strange the way you're describing this. No it isn't.

Psalms 116 12 and 13 says what shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me. I shall lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord and yes I do lift up my cup but it seems so inadequate. One of the reasons that I'm glad that I have the ability to speak in other tongues is not only when I want to intercede before the Lord and lay out my burdens before him but also when I want to praise him and I grope for words, I grope for language.

I'm glad that I can go into another dimension and I can speak to him in a heavenly tongue and I can give praise to him and though my intellect doesn't understand it in my spirit I know that I've entered into a realm of praise unto the Lord. Hallelujah. Well I haven't even got to heaven yet and Jesus has not heard the last of our praise.

Psalms 148 2 says that praise is pleasant and it's becoming. It's becoming to us. The church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ is never more beautiful than it wears the garments of praise.

Ever have anybody say to you when you're dressed up nice and spiffy and Sunday best on you got a new outfit and they said you know that's very becoming to you. Well you see the garment of praise is very becoming to the church of Jesus Christ. Now to help us better understand why we need to praise the Lord I call your attention to Psalms 135 and 136.

They are called identical twins. In fact they might be called the twin towers of praise and thanksgiving because they rise up to glorious heights of worship. Now these two psalms represent a duet of praise and thanksgiving and they sound like two fathers trying to pay their debt of praise to the Lord and basically both psalms say the same thing but in different ways.

In 136 it says praise the Lord. 135 says praise the Lord. 136 says give thanks to the Lord.

135.3 says for the Lord is the Lord. Verse 5 for I know that the Lord is great and that our God is above all gods. In 36 it says give thanks to the God of gods.

Verse 3 give thanks to the Lord of Lords for his loving kindness is everlasting and there are many other similarities but I want to look primarily at Psalms 136 which mentions this phrase that we read over and over again. His kindness is everlasting. The King James says his mercy endureth forever and the message might be entitled that his mercy endureth forever and the terms loving kindness and mercy have the same meaning.

They can be used interchangeably and it was while reading Psalms 136 that I was moved, moved to tears as the Holy Spirit swept over me and overwhelmed me with the thoughts of the Lord's personal loving kindness to me and to my family and I realized then how much I am in debt, in debt of praise and so far behind in expressing my gratitude to God for his mercy that I'll never be able to in this lifetime ever be able to offer enough sacrifices of praise to compensate for the amount of blessings and mercies that have been stowed upon me. King James says in the first verse give, oh give thanks to the Lord for his good for his mercy endureth forever and the theme of this psalm is mercy's vast unfathomed sea. Twenty-six times the psalmist lowers his sounding line into the ocean of God's mercy and twenty-six times he finds that his line is too short.

There's no bottom here he says, he excludes. As an old gospel chorus says, wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above, deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Savior's love. God's loving kindness outshines the sun and outlives the stars and how thankful we can be for his inspired revelation of the character of God.

Ecclesiastes says mercy is as beautiful in times of trouble as rain clouds in a time of drought. Now there are several things about the enduring mercy and everlasting kindness of the Lord that is brought out. There's numbers of things but I want to bring out just several.

First of all it tells us that creation and nature shows forth the everlasting kindness of the Lord. Now I've always been intrigued and yet I didn't fully understand, I've always been intrigued by the number or the numerous times God's creative work in creation and in the natural world is mentioned in the scripture. And Psalms 135 and 136 is typical of this.

Now it might be obvious to you, you might be smarter than me, but I would read all of those never fully understanding it until the Holy Spirit opened to me as I studied this message. I don't think I ever fully understood or appreciated why the frequent references to God's creative power and the specific mention of the functions and parts of the universe. I just read over them and say amen, amen, I know that, that's fine.

But for example, Psalms 146 and 6 says who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever. Look at Psalms 147, Psalms 147 verses 7, 8, and 9. It says sing to the Lord with thanksgiving, give praises to our God on the lyre, who covers the heavens with clouds, who provides rain for the earth, who makes grass to grow on the mountains, he gives to the beast its food and to the young ravens which cry. Look at verse 16, it says he gives snow like wool, he scatters the frost like ashes, he casts forth his ice as fragments, who can stand before his cold.

He sends forth his word and melts them, he causes his wind to blow and the waters to flow. Look at chapter 148 verse 7, praise the Lord from the earth, sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, beast and all cattle creeping things and winged fowl and winged fowl. I'll stop there.

Now what I missed in reading these at various times is how the psalmist draws the relationship between God's creative work in nature and creation and his loving kindness towards his people. To examine the physical and material and natural world is to see a mighty display of God's perpetual love and kindness. And so few who read this understand it.

Let's go back over a few of the verses we just read. Psalms 146 and 6 I read to you. But look at verse 5, 146 and 6 I read, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever.

But look at verse 5, how blessed is he whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever. Now what I believe God is saying in this, he is saying I made the earth upon which you stand and see and feel and smell and can depend on for the sun to rise every morning and the stars to shine at night and the God who has a power to create what is so evident around you that functions every day without you even thinking about it, that that same God is our faithful helper. We serve a God who keeps faith forever.

Now you tell me if God does not keep faith and faithfulness, have you ever known him not to provide rain for the earth or give the beast his food or cause his wind to blow and the waters to flow? Now let's go over some of the verses I just read to you. Psalms 147. I read to you, or was it? Yes, Psalms 147, it says sing to the Lord with thanksgiving.

He provides rain for the earth, he gives to the beast his food. And then verse 10, he does not delight in the strength of the horse, he does not take pleasure in the legs of a man. The Lord favors those who fear him.

Look at verse 6, the Lord supports the afflicted and brings down the wicked to the earth. Go back verse 3, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars, he gives names to all of them.

Great is our Lord and abundant in strength, his everlasting is infinite. Look at verses 16 to 18 again. It goes over and mentions these things and then it says he declares his words to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinance to Israel.

Verse 15, he sends forth his command to the earth, his word runs very swiftly. And then in Psalms 148, it goes, I've read to you verses 7 to 10. And then it goes down to verse 13, it says, let them praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is exalted, his glory is above the earth and heaven.

He has lifted up a horn to his people. And now and also go back to Psalms 135, Psalms 135, it says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does. In heaven and in earth, in the seas and the deeps, he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain, who brings forth the wind from his treasuries.

Now listen to me, God's mercy and kindness begins, he is saying, with his creative works. We are surrounded by them. We do not worship nature or the things that God has created, but we worship him who has created all of this for our good.

And his creation, now I'm not a woodsman, I'm not an outdoors person. I remember one time I was going to buy one of these little travel trailers and to go out, you know, and go out in the parks and so forth. And a friend of mine said, what are you doing that for? He said, your idea of camping is to go to the Holiday Inn.

Well, he was right, I didn't buy that camper. But as I travel down the highway, I like to look from the view of my car and I like to see the handiwork of God. But the psalmist is saying that when you look at God's creation, his creation shows that he is a God of faithfulness, dependability, and law and order.

Psalms 19.1 says, The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. Day unto day poureth forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are their words, their voice is not heard.

And you see, the voice of God is all around us, and it is one of his loving kindness. And you know what's blowing the minds of scientists now? Because they suddenly discovered a new planet, a new galaxy, and they're all excited about it. Well, bless their heart, if they'll look a little bit further, they'll see something even more that'll blow their minds.

And it's God, I think, God's allowing them to discover something else up there, to see it operating up there, to give them another chance to see his mighty faithfulness in his creative works. No one who stands before God will ever be able to say to God, why did you not show me your mercy? God says, do you want to know what I am like? Look at creation as I made it. Psalms 135 and 136, as well as in numerous other places, we are pointed towards the natural world as a lesson in spiritual principle.

The Scripture takes us from the physical to the spiritual, and we see that the same God who brought us planet Earth as a demonstration of his loving kindness, he is saying that when you look at the dependability of the universe, he said, I'm the same God who will come down and invade your little world, and I will be just as dependable to demonstrate myself to you in your world as I do in the world that is around you. Now, verse 10 begins another thought. Look at Psalms 136 and verse 10, and then it begins to talk about Israel.

Another thought is talked about of Israel coming out of Egypt and how God cares for them, and how he loved them, and how he brought them out, and how he led them, and he protected them, and he fed them. And so here we see God going from the great expanse of the universe, and then he brings, he gives us a larger picture, and then he begins to bring it down to where we live, and he says, look what I did for Israel. Jesus said the same thing when he said, but if God so will raise the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more do so for you? Now listen to me.

If you doubt the loving kindness of the Lord, if you doubt that his mercy endureth forever, then I tell you check the record. Have you ever known it that day did not follow night? That the sun did not rule. He said the sun rules by day.

His kindness is everlasting. The great lights of heaven to rule by night. Go to the beach, if you will, and lay on the beach for 24 hours.

If the tide doesn't go out, and if it doesn't come back in, then you can come back to me and say God isn't faithful. But if it goes out and it comes back in, then I say to you, God is faithful. You want to witness of somebody, take out of the New York Times on the weather page.

It says right in the New York Times. It'll tell you sunrise 649, sunset 629. Have you ever known it that the sun said I'm tired, I want to sleep in this morning.

I think I'll get up about 10 o'clock. You want to witness to somebody, take that out of the New York Times and write over it, his mercy endureth forever. And they'll look at you and say, what are you talking about? I said, well there it is.

It says a sunrise, were you up this morning to see it? Or did you see the sunset? That's a demonstration of the faithfulness of the Lord. Now I told you folks that you've been missing all this. You've been reading all the scripture.

I know you're missing it because it's not thrilling you very much, but it's nevertheless, it's there in the scripture, hallelujah. I'm getting, I'm having a good time preaching about it. Psalms 146 verse 6, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever.

Yes, God keeps his word and his faithfulness in the way his natural creation performs, and will he do any less with you and I? Jesus said it in Matthew 6, are we not worth much more than they? Think for a moment of the orderliness, or how orderly the sun and the moon and the stars are. The way they obey the laws of God as they undertake their journeys through space. Think of the mathematical precision of their movement.

If there was no such order, what a chaotic universe it would be. We would never know for sure the length of the day or be assured of the coming season. Our lives would be in uncertainty and we would live in disorder and confusion.

The set rule of the sun and moon and stars is another proof that God's mercy endures forever, and I would hate it if the sun was able to rebel and moved a little bit closer to the earth. That would not be the loving kindness of the Lord. The world suffers because scientists and our educational system and the majority of people do not believe in a divine creation.

Belief in Darwinism or evolution blinds men to the mercy of God. Now first of all, if you think that man, if anybody thinks that man evolved from a fish or a toad or a monkey, then he's going to live a very fishy life and a very animalistic lifestyle. But worse, you're not going to know a loving, caring God who not only made the universe, but mercifully maintains it each and every single day and hour.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons man does not know the everlasting kindness of God is because he does not believe in the creation theory and account in Genesis. This is very foundational of not only understanding how the world was created, but when you examine the laws by which this world continues to function each and every single day of our lives by God's power, you cannot help but give thanks to him who alone does great wonders for his loving kindness is everlasting. You see, because God is a creator, every aspect of the universe and of man is structured by God's creative act and universal decree, and therefore it reflects his law and his order.

Man cannot escape him, nor can they shut him out. Romans 1.20 says, For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes and his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through that which has been made, so they are without excuse. The first five most important words in the Bible are these, in the beginning God created.

And men have fought against the truth of Genesis, the Genesis account of creation for centuries, and they've endorsed Darwinism for one simple reason, that if God is our creator, then I am accountable to him. Man rejects God as the one who has established the laws of the universe because he rejects God's moral laws as well. If you accept God as ruler over the physical realm, you have to accept him as ruler over your spiritual realm as well.

But the further tragedy of man's rejection of God as the architect of the universe, that it shuts him out from knowing that God is our provider, he is our protector, he is the one who maintains the world by his word, and just as he does that, he will be faithful to us, his creatures as well. Hallelujah. Now I know why the scripture makes such frequent mention of the physical creation.

It is a resounding message of God's everlasting loving-kindness. Listen to it. The earth is full of the loving-kindness of the Lord.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the Lord stand in all of him. For he spoke, and it was done.

He commanded, and it stood fast. You can trust a man like that. Hallelujah.

Nature never breaks her own laws, and you must be convinced that God will not change his character in his dealings with you. That's what it's all about. I believe that no one, no one can have a good healthy spiritual life unless they are convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt of God's mercy.

Now you may go through troubles. You may question as to why certain things happen to you, but if you believe that no matter what happens in your life the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, that his mercy come to an end, if you believe that you can withstand anything that comes into your life, any attack of the devil, anything that happens to you, you stand on that and say his mercies endureth forever. Hallelujah.

That's why Paul could say, all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. Now he didn't mean that all things are good, but he said all things work for our good. They're ultimately for our good.

God is so powerful, he's so full of mercy that he can cause anything that happens to us to so work that in the end it comes out for our good. Hallelujah. That's why his mercies endure forever.

This is the end of side one. You may now... I got to take my watch off, and it's like we often explain to you it doesn't mean anything. Next I want to show you, I want you to note verse 10.

Go back to Psalms 135 and verse 10, excuse me, 136 and verse 10. The psalmist moves from creation and the natural world to show us a difficult, what I consider a difficult to be understood loving-kindness. And this is what stopped me in my tracks.

To him who smote the Egyptians in their firstborn, for his loving-kindness is everlasting. How can it be, from the Egyptian standpoint, how can it be loving-kindness? Smiting the firstborn? Where is the mercy in this for the families of Egypt? I studied this, I came to this message, I came to a dead end. I went to bed one night not fully comprehending the relationship between judgment and mercy in this verse.

I awoke in the night with the Holy Spirit showing me another whole aspect of the Lord's loving-kindness, and my eyes watered up in tears as it was revealed to me. The next morning I tried to explain it to my wife. I have felt all excited about it, and I tried to explain it to her, and she wasn't very impressed, and I hope I do a better job with you than I did with her.

Now think of what happened the night in Egypt that verse 10 is describing. The death angel comes down, and the baby in the crib is killed. The little boy who was school age is killed.

The young man who can work in the field, the firstborn of every family is killed, taken from their family. Now if you're a Christian or Jew you know the significance of this as being the beginning of the end of Israel's bondage, but it's the linking of the death angel smiting the firstborn to God's loving-kindness that to me is still unusual. Yes, we must say that this was an act of mercy, but for who might we ask? For the children of Israel for sure we do know that that was his mercy, but was this only an act of mercy for Israel? No, this was mercy both for Israel and towards Egypt.

For one thing, God was merciful in that his judgment fell only, only on the firstborn. It could have been everyone. And this stroke of doom came only after God had demonstrated his pity and his patience and his judgments nine different times.

It was only until Moses and God had been lied to, had been played with, had been resisted by Pharaoh and his servants nine different times, only then did God say enough and he smote the firstborn. I don't know if you or I would have had such patience in that situation. You read the account of the plagues again.

Look at it from the Egyptians' viewpoint. Was it judgment when God smote the firstborn? Yes, but was there mercy as well? Yes, yes, yes, nine times yes. Can it be any clearer that in times of God's dealing with men and nations that in wrath God remembers his mercy? Now what an encouragement this ought to be to us.

Behind God's severity there is always his loving-kindness. In wrath God always has mercy as his primary object in our lives. Hebrews 12, 6 says, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.

Now there are some, there are some who attend here who do not believe really in their hearts, really down inside. They don't believe in God's judgment or the chastising of the Lord. They've been raised spiritually on a teaching or a theology of all grace and they do not believe that God would ever allow anyone to suffer as a means of obtaining grace.

Some of you went to churches where rarely if ever you heard a message on sin or ever heard warnings that if you live in sin or disobedience that God would deal in severity with you. As a mercy is always the motive of God's chastisement and his wrath. Egypt never would have had to suffer an evasion of frogs or swarms of flies or the darkness on the land.

In fact it was not until there were six plagues that it was the seventh and eighth and ninth that life was taken. First plant life and then animal life. That would came as a prior warning till before number 10 came.

And with each plague God was trying to show Pharaoh his power. He had acted in accordance, if he had acted into accordance with God's will, after any one of the plagues or at any one point God's judgments would have stopped. But Pharaoh missed the opportunity and turned God's goodness into an occasion of ever increasing resistance.

And the result was that instead of him being a sign of mercy, instead of having a hearing ear and an understanding heart, he became a warning to show all generations that a man who will not bend must be broken and that the soul may turn to poison what God intended should be for his nourishment and his enlightenment. Let it never be forgotten that we are told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and the heart of his servants, but we are also told again and again that he hardened his own heart. Now what does that mean to you? Listen, you may experience, excuse me, you may experience a chastisement, the judgment, and the severity of God's dealing in your life at this very time.

You may be going through it, but if so, you must know that what is behind it is the loving kindness of our Lord. Listen to Isaiah, this is what I was looking for, Isaiah 54. It says, for your husband is your maker, whose name is the Lord of hosts, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who called the God of all the earth.

For the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected, says the Lord. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your Redeemer.

Are you being inflicted by what you might consider a plague? If so, I tell you this morning, it's God's mercy to you. It's God's mercy trying to get your attention. If there's an error in your life or something is wrong, through his chastising, the Lord is calling you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, and he says I'll turn my face from you but for a moment, but the purpose of it is that I might draw you unto myself.

You got you got some frogs jumping up in your life? They're sent with tender loving care from the Lord. He's calling you unto himself. Maybe there's some swarms of flies all around you, little things that are bugging you.

What I want to tell you something, that's God's, that's God maybe doing that to show you a sin, an error of your life, of compromise. Maybe you're experiencing the darkness of confusion, a lack of direction in your life. It's darkness, as darkness fell upon Egypt and God may let you be in that darkness in order for you to break through to him.

Now do you recall what the last, very first plague was in Egypt? I want to talk to you about the first and last. This is what the Lord brought to my attention in the middle of the night, and when I thought about it, it just blessed me as I thought God's loving kindness. Let me read it to you, Exodus 719.

The Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over the rivers, over the streams, and over their pools, and over all their reservoirs of water, that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and vessels of stone. Now you see, blood is a type of redemption. The Lord gave a sign to Egypt.

He gave them a sign all over the land, through the blood, intending to bring Pharaoh and his people to repentance. And if a people had such a visible sign and warning, there's no people that had such a visible sign as Egypt. God filled the rivers, he filled the streams, he filled their pools.

My goodness, the housewife could go into her kitchen and pick up a vessel and look inside, and instead of it being water, it would be blood. You talk about a warning. You talk about loving kindness.

The Lord showed himself in every drop of water. And you see, that's the same thing that the Lord will do for you. You pick up this thing, you turn over this, and everywhere you go, oh, you may have trouble, you may have problems, but that's God behind it all.

It's God's loving kindness trying to warn you and show you, this is me, this is me. The Lord, you see, will do no less. What a mighty demonstration.

The very first plague should have been enough for them to say, oh my goodness, my goodness, and bow down before God, because everywhere they turned, there was a sign of God's power. And the Lord will do no less to show his love, his compassion, and his mercy to you and I. Listen to Romans 9, 22 and 23. What if God, though willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And he did so in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for his glory.

You may see it one way, what you're going through. I want you to see the other side of the coin. It's his loving kindness, hallelujah.

It's his loving kindness. There's one final lesson I want to leave with you regarding the plagues. I stated that they are evidence of the loving kindness of the Lord both to Egypt as well as to Israel, and this is further seen by understanding the number nine in its biblical meaning.

The number nine is the biblical number that denotes completion, finality, and fullness. There are nine fruit of the Spirit, there are nine gifts of the Spirit. Matthew 27, 25, it was a ninth hour that Jesus cried out, it is finished, and gave up the ghost and died.

The number ten is the biblical number for law and order and government. The Ten Commandments represent God's government and his law. It was not until God had demonstrated the fullness of his judgments did he execute the final penalty of the law upon Pharaoh.

Or looking at it another way, Pharaoh was given advantage of grace and mercy to its finality before law and order came down upon his head. And God will do no less with you and I than he did in this instance. Before number ten comes down on your head, the Lord will show himself to you nine different ways in order for you to turn to him.

Before we ever experience the finality of judgment or wrath, before we have the Supreme Court of the law carry out its executive order for our sins, before that happens the everlasting kindness of the Lord is poured out upon us. He calls and he woos and he speaks and he chastises, he does anything and everything to bring us into conformity to his will. The Lord will show you himself.

Those who are never dark in the church door have to just get up in the morning and God says, there's evidence of my loving kindness. And God will show himself to you in what he does for you and what he does to you. But you can be sure that he will never execute order number ten until the nine opportunities of his grace have also been extended to you.

That's what it means when it says in Psalms 136, he smote the firstborn in Egypt. His loving kindness endureth forever and his loving kindness is being manifested before and to you this morning as well. May you give heed to the word of the Lord.

Hallelujah. Let's stand together.