Amen. Well, we're going to be in Psalm 34 this morning. I thought Dan was going to try to preach the whole thing, but I've chosen this psalm intentionally to really serve as a capstone of our journey together over the last six months. It's been six months. We started with our series on idolatry leading into Easter. And then we looked at beholding, disciplines for imagers. So if the problem is beholding the wrong thing, then the solution is beholding the right thing. And then we've been spending the last seven weeks together in the Psalms looking at how the Psalms lay out this reality of WE BECOME WHAT WE BEHOLD.
Before we get into the text though, I want you to ask yourself a question this morning. I want you to try to truly answer it for yourself. Not looking for church answers. Not looking for easy — this is the real stuff that this psalm is born out of. When you are afraid — I'm not asking if you get afraid. We all get afraid. When you are afraid, and I mean really afraid, the kind of fear that wakes you up at three in the morning and doesn't let you go back to sleep. That kind of fear that grips you with dread. What do you do? What do you do when you encounter that kind of fear? Where do you look? Where do your eyes go? Because your eyes go somewhere. FEAR NEVER LEAVES YOU STARING AT NOTHING. We obsess over the thing that we're afraid of. This is the problem. Far too often, our eyes become locked on that thing that's causing the fear, the problem, the challenge, the enemy, the number in the bank account that's not quite right, the marriage that's gone silent, the test results that you're waiting for. Fear grips our gaze, and we give it our attention. And when we give it our attention, it begins to own us. It doesn't dissipate the fear. It intensifies it because WE BECOME WHAT WE BEHOLD.
Psalm 34 was written out of this very reality. This is another one of the psalms where the superscription, the little description before the psalm, actually really really matters. It says:
Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.
David wrote this psalm and he's giving us the context, the life-lived context that this psalm was born out of. We actually looked at this text in 1 Samuel 21 back in October. David, the giant slayer. David, the one who was described by God as a man after God's own heart. David has been attacked and assaulted and bombarded over and over and over again by Saul. Then at the end of chapter 20, Saul — Jonathan, Saul's son, comes to him and he's like, "I've done everything I can, but he's going to kill you if you don't get out of here." And so in 1 Samuel 21, David flees. If you remember this, he goes to a priest and he lies to the priest. It's interesting. I think we'll think about this throughout the text, how often fear is connected to deception. He lies to the priest. "Oh, I'm on a mission for the king and I'm in such a hurry. My guys are waiting for me. Do you have some supplies I can take?" David had to leave in such a hurry. He had no food. He had no water. He had no weapons. And so the priest gives him some food after a little bit of a conversation. And then he's like, "Do you have any weapons?" And he goes, "Well, I've only got one weapon here." This is interesting. "I've got Goliath's sword. The sword that you took from Goliath after you did your little sling magic and lopped off his head. I've got that sword." And David's like, "All right, I'll take it." And so David takes Goliath's sword and then does the strangest thing in the story. He goes to the city of Gath. So he's trying to get away from Saul and he goes to the Philistine territory to one of their five capital cities, but he chooses to go to Gath. That's crazy because Gath is the home city of Goliath, and he's still got some pretty big brothers there. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire. Now you show up in this enemy territory, and David's got this reputation of being a mighty warrior. He's slain thousands upon thousands of Philistines, and he shows up by himself with Goliath's sword. It's troubling. This is a difficult situation. What he does in 1 Samuel 21 says this:
12 And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
So fear gripped him. The Hebrew word there, יָרֵא = yārēʾ — it's deep, intense fear, frozen in its grip. It makes me think of the deer in the headlights. It's like a deer stumbles onto the highway, sees the headlight coming, all it has to do is take a couple of steps away, but it freezes. That gripping terror, that fear that paralyzes. David, the great and valiant and mighty warrior, freezes. He's gripped by this fear. And so he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the door of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
What a tragic moment in the life of David. It's interesting. I was reading several commentaries. Some people like David so much that they've got to try to make this good, try to clean it up, like David's being shrewd, right? Look at David's shrewdness that gets him out of this situation. I think we should just call it what it is. Deception born out of fear. David acted like an animal, the king of Israel, the hero, the warrior changed his behavior. And so we get this superscription of David when he changed his behavior. This is the moment in David's life where he wrote this psalm.
Some of you pay attention. And so you're like, in 1 Samuel 21 it says Achish is the king, and in the superscription it says Abimelech is the king. And if you notice that, good on you. Abimelech is a title. Compare it to Pharaoh in Egypt, right? The Pharaoh, or king, or something like that. So Abimelech is the title. So he changed his behavior when he was before the king who happened to be named Achish.
So before we dive into this text, let's just pause for a second and think about this picture of David changing his behavior. The Hebrew word here is טַעַם = ṭaʿam, and its root meaning is actually to taste. He changed his taste. HOLD ON TO THAT. It's going to matter. He changed his palate, his judgment. It changed what he was setting himself towards and what he was portraying. It changed his direction. FEAR REWIRED HIS TASTE. That's a reflection of his faith. Fear took his eyes off of the God that had called him, that had covenant with him, that had established him, that had rescued him time after time after time again. But in this moment, fear became bigger than the image he had of God, and he takes his eyes off of God and locks his eyes onto his fears, onto his enemies, and he began to unravel. It's a perfect picture of idolatry, that WE BECOME WHAT WE BEHOLD.
See, we do this too. When we give into fear, our taste, our direction, our desires, our behavior changes. When we're afraid, we develop appetites for things that we would never entertain when we're doing well. We find ourselves longing for things and doing things that in our right mind, in our right taste, we would find abhorrent. We think it will help, but it only hurts. We think we're in control, but when we give ourself to fear, we're actually abandoning control.
This is important. David's not a coward. I don't want you to look at this psalm. I don't want you to think of 1 Samuel 21 and go, "Man, David, what a coward." He's carrying Goliath's sword into Goliath's hometown. Strange behavior, but not cowardice. David was human. Sometimes we idolize these biblical figures. He was human. And when he took his eyes off the faithfulness of God, THAT WHICH WE WERE MADE TO BEHOLD, AND PUT HIS EYES ON HIS FEARS, I think we can call that idolatry. When we do that as well, we're reduced. We're fractured. We're diminished.
I know this feeling well. Right after seminary, I got hired by a church in Portland, Oregon. I was doing singles ministry. And from a numerical standpoint, probably one of the most successful ministries that I've experienced. We went through a season of months and months and months where every single Sunday multiple people were coming to faith. We grew this ministry large and there were amazing things happening, and right in the midst of it, I entered into some relational conflict with the senior pastor of the church. I think actually the success of the ministry was a part of that. And one day I'm sitting in my office and I get a knock on the door and I'm told, "You need to clear your things out today. You're being fired." And then they told the church, "Oh, Jeremy's decided to resign." So first I'm fired unjustly and then I'm lied about, and man, I wanted to defend myself so badly. But I knew that one wrong doesn't justify another wrong. And so I kept fairly silent and had to walk through a very humiliating, humbling season. And it broke some things in me for a time. It really did. I don't like to admit that. I sat at home and thought, "Well, I'll pray and see what God has for me." But what I really did was play video games and sulk. My poor wife, God bless her. Y'all don't pray for my wife enough. You know, she'd go to work, she'd leave for work, and I'd be sitting playing a video game feeling sorry for myself. And she'd come home from work and I'm sitting in the same spot playing a video game feeling sorry for myself. And what was happening inside of me is that really a fear had entered in, like, is this what's going to happen over and over again? Am I not good enough? Like what's the — and I didn't turn to God. I took my eyes off that. Part of the problem, I had to drive past that church all the time. I'm still surrounded by people that love me and that I'd led to Jesus. And seeing them should have been a joy, but actually seeing them was like a dagger within. And just that fear that I got stuck in. I think it happens to us all.
So grateful that David wrote Psalm 34 out of that experience, because David didn't stay there, by the grace of God.
Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.
In fact, we get right into verse one and you can see something has happened to him.
1 I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
So the guy that's been at the gates pretending madness, babbling and drooling and scratching things, acting like an animal — something's happened that now he stands in the congregation of God's people and says, "I'm going to bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth." The madman babbling becomes the worship leader praising. So something transformative has happened. He continues:
2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.
There's something really cool in this verse in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word translated as "makes his boast" shares commonality with the word for David acting as a madman. They actually share the exact same consonants. It's an intentional play on words. One moment he's mad and the next minute he's boasting. And the words share the exact same consonants. The only difference is in the little vowels in between it. It's this beautiful transformative reality. His taste has been redeemed. Look where he goes immediately in verse three. He says:
3 Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
David cannot and will not keep this to himself. This rescue, this redemption, this move of grace and God upon him that has transformed him, is not some private spiritual experience. This is something that needs to be expressed. And so he calls to God's people. He calls to the community and he says, "Guys, come and let's lift up. Let's make a big deal out of God together because of what he has done and what he is doing." I talk about community a lot here because it is one of the biblical values that is most challenged in the cultural reality that we live in. If you've been raised here in the US, in the West, you've been raised on the milk of individualism, you've been trained, you've been taught, you've been discipled by the culture that it's all about you, that you are to walk and be the captain of your own destiny, and that other people are usually just a hindrance to you living out your fullest expression, or they're tools to be used so that you can live out your fullest expression. The fruit of this radicalized individualism and independence is that we're absolutely lonely and alienated. David shows us here, and I've tried to show this throughout these series, that beholding God is something that is meant to be done together, to be shared. And when you have an encounter, an experience, when you behold God as an individual, that is not something for you to hoard unto yourself, that's a gift that's been given to you to be shared, and others need to hear it, need to know.
In verse four, David begins to unpack how he was set free from fear for this kind of beautiful radical faith. He says:
4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
And look at what he delivered from. He delivered me from all my fears. Now, this doesn't mean that David's life was easy. I mean, we're going to start in three weeks walking through 2 Samuel. David's life was anything but easy. He'll express this later on in the psalm, but he says, "I was delivered from all of my fears." So let me say it this way this morning. Fear wasn't actually the problem. It was misplaced fear. The problem was where fear made him look, WHAT FEAR MADE HIM DO, and mostly what fear was doing to him. We'll see here in a moment. David was ultimately just fearing the wrong thing. And when he turned, when he looked, and in the beholding of the Lord, the chains of his fear broke and they melted away. Listen to how he says it. He says:
5 Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
In a nutshell, this is what I've been trying to preach for six weeks. This is what we're made for. "Those who look" comes from the Hebrew word נָבַט = nābaṭ, and it means to gaze, to fix your eyes intently on something and not look away. He says those that look at God like that, those who look to him are radiant. This comes from the Hebrew word נָהַר = nāhar, and it means to be lit up, to shine, to give off light. This is the mirror imagery I've been using from Genesis, that this is what we're created to be as the imago Dei, that we're created as his images. Like a mirror, when we are aligned and looking towards him, his glory manifests and we naturally reflect the glory and the light of God. Those who look at him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. No matter what's going on, no matter the other circumstance, when we are radiant from beholding God, there's no place for shame. Remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians? We've looked at this a lot:
18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
This is the glory of the gospel. This is what Jesus came to be and to show and then to do for us, to restore us to our intended existence as God's imagers. Those who behold the goodness and glory of God are made radiant. I don't think in this whole series I've used Isaiah 65, but it might be the most simple description of what I've been trying to communicate. It says this:
5a Then you shall see and be radiant;
That this is what God has promised to his people, that when we see him, when we look at him, when we look for him, when we look to him, we're transformed. We're not just set free from something, fear. We're set free for something, the transforming glory of God. Church, we are made to shine like stars in the universe. Let's continue back to Psalm 34. He says:
5 Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. 6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. 7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. 8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
David acting like a madman is not what saved him. David coming out of his madness and turning to the Lord is what rescued and redeemed him. And did you catch that in verse 5? Those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried out. This poor man. So he's got nobody with him. He's got no resources, no army. He doesn't have anything to offer God. And here's something. I don't know who needs to hear this this morning, but maybe one or two of you do. God's not looking for people that have something to offer him. He has no need in and of himself. It's not about what David had to offer God. It's all about what God had to offer David. And the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. So the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see, taste and see that the Lord is good. David calls out, "Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Taste and see." Did you catch that? That the man who changed his behavior, changed his taste, looked away from God, eventually turns back to God, and now he calls out to you, to me, to anyone who will listen. Taste him. It's the same Hebrew word, to'am, but it's now in the imperative. It's a command. It's not "you might want to think about tasting him." It's not "taste him" in the mix of a — he's looking at you and he's going, "Taste him," like a triple dog dare you. Taste him and see that he is good.
You all know that food is my love language. Oh, I forgot my illustration. It's right back there. Denny, throw it to me. Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah. Come on. Bring it for reals. Thank you. Thanks, Denny. All right, y'all know what this is, right? What does a Snickers bar do? It satisfies. That's why I had to have a Snickers. Wanda's like, "I've got a Reese's peanut butter cup." I'm like, "That's not going to do it." Snickers satisfies. But now, here's the thing. You can hold the Snickers bar. You can read the ingredients if you're brave. You can memorize the ingredients. I can describe to you what it's made of. I can describe to you the taste of it. We could spend a couple hours talking about this Snickers bar. We could dissect it. We could put it under a microscope. We could analyze the chemical composition. We could do all sorts of that. We could know all about the Snickers bar. And I ask you this, will it satisfy you? No. No. You got to eat it. You got to taste it. You got to — come on. You're asking. There you go.
It struck me as I was writing this that this entire six months can be summarized this way. Garbage in, garbage out. Good in, good out. That's what this is about. That's what this is about. There's a world of difference between knowing about God and tasting him, knowing him. I grew up knowing about God. My dad was a pastor. Didn't have many options. And I was a weird kid. I'll own that. I don't remember exactly how old I was, early elementary school. My dad had a bookcase, all these books. I walked past every day. I noticed this three-volume systematic theology by Strong. It's an old classic. I read it. I was probably eight or nine. It was interesting. It was interesting to me. I knew a lot about God. It wasn't until a decade later though that I actually tasted and knew God. You can read the Bible, you can go to church, you can hear other people describe God. It's just like reading the wrapper. At some point you got to taste. And really that's what the disciplines are designed for. The prayer, the fasting, the community, the giving, the serving, all of the disciplines that we looked at and all the other ones that we didn't look at, they're designed to help us encounter and taste the goodness of God. Not just know about him, but know him.
David calls, he commands, "Taste and see the goodness of God." Verse 9 continues. He says:
9 Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!
Do you see how I was saying earlier that fear wasn't the problem? It was just misplaced fear. David thought the king of Gath was scary. David thought Saul was scary. David thought death was scary. But he came to the realization that God is bigger than all of them combined. And that what we're called to fear is actually God himself. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 9:10 says, and David gives us a picture, verse 10:
10 The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
What an interesting picture, the young lion, the apex predator, not the old lion whose best days are behind him, the young lion, the king of the jungle, right? Says the strong, the mighty, the fierce, the dangerous in their strength, even they suffer want. But those who seek the Lord — he is the ultimate provider. See, church, you weren't made to be a lion. You weren't made to claw your provision out of a hostile world by the strength of your own teeth. That's exhausting. And in the end, even the best, it comes up empty. You were made to be filled. That's the creational truth sitting underneath this entire psalm. The truth I've been circling this whole summer. The lion trusts in its own strength and starves. The saints turn their face to God and are satisfied in a way that Snickers can only dream about.
So then he turns in verse 11. He says:
11 Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. 12 What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? 13 Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. 14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
Listen to me, David says. Learn from my experience. I'll teach you the fear of the Lord. Again, the problem isn't fear itself. It's misplaced fear. And when David says the fear of the Lord, it's not the deer-in-the-headlight dread of fearing the enemies and the world and all the stuff that's around us. It's the overwhelming peace out of reverence of knowing that you are in the presence and the sight and the grip of the one who is above it all. I was thinking about it this week. You know, when you're a little kid — for most of us probably too — your dad's just like a superhero. He's just so big and so strong. And you watch this with little kids, they love to be adventurous and to get out, but then they hit something scary, because there's a lot of scary things in this world, right? And what do they do? They turn and they run back to dad. And I think it's fair to say that they have a healthy fear of their father. There's this sense of "Daddy's bigger. Daddy's going to be able to handle this. Daddy's got me." And so when they face something that they're afraid of, they run to that which they truly fear. And that's the picture. We run to the one who is absolutely unafraid. We run to the one that is in control. We run to the one that is bigger and better.
Listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Again, remember the context. What did he just do? Lied to the priest, lied to Gath, pretended to be crazy, filled his mouth — it's like, no, no, that doesn't work. He says, "You want your life to go well, you want to walk with God, you want to experience God's blessing, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit." He knows what he's talking about. He's tasted the fruit of fear and deception and found it lacking. And he's tasted God. And he's seen how good God is. He says, "Turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it."
Verse 15, he says:
15 The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. 16 The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. 17 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
Oh, I love this verse. That's why I saved it for the end here. We spent six months thinking about what we look at, what we behold. What matters even more than what we're looking at is what God is looking at, is the one who is beholding us. When we turn to look to God, when we turn to look for God, what will we find? Some distant, distracted God that we've got to get his attention, that we've got to impress, that we've got to earn somehow, him to know — when we turn and look to God, we find that he's always and always will be looking right at us. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous. His ears are towards their cry. We don't gaze across the room at a distracted, indifferent God, hoping to catch his attention. We turn our face towards a God whose face has already turned towards ours. We don't have to try to get his attention. We've already got it. And we always have. And we've got his attention not because we're so awesome, all right? Because again, this feeds into our whole cultural narrative and into the American evangelical narrative of faith and being good. And so if I'm good enough, if I'm moral enough, if I'm righteous enough, if I serve enough, if I do enough, then God will notice me. That's not where David's coming from. He says the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near.
See, in the American evangelical context, or even worse, in the prosperity gospel context, we say the Lord is near to the successful. The Lord is near to the competent. The Lord is near to those that are doing the right thing and have it all together. But that's not David's testimony. David says, "When I was at my worst — at least up to this point, because David's got some more life to live — but when I was at my worst, when my heart was broken, when I was desperate, when I was crushed in spirit, the Lord was near. He was looking at me." Let me say it this way this morning. God's not looking for strong people. He's looking for weak people to make strong. He's not looking for whole people. He's looking for broken people that he can put back together. He's not looking for perfect people. He's looking for a people that he can make perfect. God's for you when you're at your absolute worst. And David knows what he speaks of. Some of you really need to hear that this morning. In your brokenness, in your pain, in your sin, and in your shame, God's right there with you, and he's for you, and he's waiting for you to take your eyes off those lesser things and look to him, to taste and see and be satisfied.
18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
That's really good news because the world we live in and the people we're surrounded by and the person that greets us in the mirror every morning, well, we're all very, very broken. He continues in verse 19. He says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." That's a true statement that deserves an amen, but I don't want to give it one.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. 20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.
But the Lord delivers him out of them all. Many are the afflictions. Don't you wish that was a little bit different? It's like, once I look to God, it's easy street. That's not the way of it. Jesus said it this way. In this world you will have trouble — thanks — but take heart, for I have overcome the world. Right? This truth. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord is there. There's no affliction you're going to encounter. There's no suffering. There's no shame. There's no pain. There's no brokenness that God can't meet you in it and that God's not sufficient enough to satisfy you in it. He keeps all his bones. Not one of them is broken.
21 Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. 22 The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. That word there for redeem, from the Hebrew פָּדָה = pādâ, it means to ransom. It means to pay the price. It literally means to bring the captive home. When you're enslaved to fear, when you're inchained by the fears of this world, we know and serve a God who is able to meet us in that and break those chains and make our faces radiant and ransom, redeem us and bring us home. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
I sure hope you're picking up the Christology at the end of this psalm. There's some deep messianic prophetic words coming out of David's mouth here. “He keeps all of his bones. Not one of them is broken.” David's marveling that even when he was at the gates of Gath and his life was forfeit and he was acting stupid, even then God preserved him and he didn't have a bone broken. But John looks back at this, and in John chapter 19 of the gospel he points to this verse about the crucifixion of Jesus. The Romans have perfected crucifixion to make it as painful and gruesome and violent as possible. And they liked that. But at the crucifixion of Jesus, because it's in Jerusalem and because it's right before the Sabbath, they wanted Jesus to die quickly. Usually it's drawn out over days, but the Romans had a practice for this. So when they wanted somebody to die quickly, they would break their legs. So when you're on the cross, you're actually dying by drowning as your blood fills your lungs. And so what happens when they're on the cross is they lift themselves up to breathe and to drain some of the blood until they run out of strength and then they fall down, and over and over again. This is why it goes for days, propping yourself up, gasping for breath, slumping down over and over again. But when they break your legs, you can't do that. So you just die. So John, as he's recounting the crucifixion, he says the soldiers come up and their intent is to break his legs, but they find that he's already dead. They make sure, if you remember, they pierce his side and blood and water flows, a sure and true indication that he's already died. So then John looks back and he's like, "David, you think God protected you and didn't break your bones? There's a greater David that came, and God let that out right now." The true lamb of God, like all the sacrificial lambs before him, was offered unbroken to God. And you say, "Well, God didn't seem to protect him. He still died." Yeah, that was actually the plan. He died, but God redeemed his servant from the grave. And now you and I who take refuge in him — WELL, PAUL PUTS IT THIS WAY:
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The redemption of Jesus from death becomes OUR REDEMPTION. HERE'S THE GOSPEL. WHAT GOD DOES FOR JESUS, GOD DOES for those that are in Jesus.
I started asking you this morning about your fear. Not to condemn you for being afraid, but in hopes that you might look at it and then look at God AND DECIDE WHICH ONE OF THEM DESERVES YOUR ATTENTION. Now church, let us taste and see the goodness of God. Let's look to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, trusting that the ONE WHO HAS BEGUN a good work in us will carry it on to the day of completion in the day of Jesus our Lord. Let us encourage one another. Stoke one another's faith. Call one another to look to the Lord. He is our help. He is our strength. He is our refuge, and he is the one who redeems us. Let's keep our faith centered on Jesus. Amen.
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