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First Chronicles chapter 16 is where we are. Two weeks ago we left off at the end of chapter 15. So let me just summarize so we can get a running start to remember where we are or if you're new to the study, so that you can learn where we are. This is a period of time in Israel's history when David is now king of Israel. He has been crowned as king over the entire country. The first seven years he was only seen as the king over the tribe of Judah. Not all of Israel accepted him, but then eventually they all did. So he's seven years into his reign now and the whole nation has now crowned him as king and has seen him as their their appointed God appointed leader. One of the first things that David does, because he has the heart of a shepherd who loves to worship the Lord. David is known by the byline in the book of Psalms to have written at least 75, that is believed that there are other psalms that he wrote that just don't have name attached to it. But he wrote at least half of the Psalms. So he's a psalmist at heart. He loves to worship the Lord. And so one of the first things he does when he becomes king of Israel is he brings the Ark of the Covenant into the city of Jerusalem. And we've talked about the Ark of the Covenant. This was the sacred object that was situated in the Holy of Holies, the center place of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was a mobile sanctuary that would eventually be replaced by the temple that would be built in Jerusalem by David's son, Solomon. But what was unique about the Ark of the Covenant is that God would his very presence would manifest between the cherubim. These are angels, angelic creatures on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, their wings are outstretched towards each other, their heads are bowed. And in Second Kings 19:15, for example, it says, O Lord, God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth, and you have made heaven and earth. And so this is a sacred object in Israel's worship and in Israel's time during the sacrificial system. And so David, knowing the Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred of all the objects that were in the tabernacle. He has it brought to Jerusalem so that worship and the presence of God can be central to to the nation. And so they transport it. You all who have been here for the story, you know that at first they transported it in a wrong way in a cart. A guy dies in the process. So they put it in the house of Obed Edom for a few months while David then begins to consider what. What they did wrong. Then they go back and get it, and they carry it in the right way where the priests hoist it up on these bars that were passed through rings on the side of the Ark of the Covenant. They hoisted it up on their shoulders, they. They delivered it to Jerusalem. And what David does is he positions the Ark of the Covenant there in Jerusalem, where he has now established this city as the headquarters, as the nation's capital. He himself has a palace there. But he wants the Ark of the Covenant to be central to the worship in Israel. And so he makes a tent for it. Now, it's not the same tabernacle that is the place of worship. He makes a temporary tent to cover it. He positions worshipers around it, priests who will protect it and guard it and be gatekeepers to the entrance of this tent. But he wants it here to again, just bring God into the center of life among the Israelites. Now, as he was transporting this, or the priests were, and he's dancing, and he's part of the worship celebration of relocating this to Jerusalem. You remember how chapter 15 ends? It's very tragic ending where David just throws off his royal robes. He's just down to this linen Ephod, which, you know, some say was probably just his underwear, but that's how he was just. Just so raptured with worship that he didn't care. He's dancing in the street, but his wife cared. And McCall looks out the window and sees her husband, and she thinks he's undignified. What kind of a king are you, you know, dancing around in your underwear? And so she's all mad and she berates him. And, well, it doesn't go well for her because it says at the end of chapter 15 that from that time on, that. Well, actually, at the end of chapter 15, the commentary is not given to us like it is in 2nd Samuel, chapter 6:23, which says, Therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. And I mentioned to you that we don't know if this was God's judgment because she did not participate in the worship. Instead, she just simply berates her husband. Or whether that is a reflection of the fact that after she says what she does, David has no more relations with her, we don't know. But it's a sad commentary nevertheless, at the end of chapter 15, so into chapter 16, now we left off with a couple principles from, from chapter 15, that there is only one king worthy of our worship, that's the Lord God Almighty. And worship should always point us to the Lord. A lot of our modern worship today, I shouldn't say a lot. Some of our modern worship today, I think is me centric instead of God centric. And we have to be reminded that true worship means our whole focus is on the Lord, our whole attention is on the Lord, our whole adoration is on the Lord, and we need to get out of the way as much as possible. And so this is what David is bringing here to the nation of Israel, this sense of just reverence and awe for the Lord and the worship of God Almighty. And when we come here to chapter 16, follow along. Verse one says, so they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. Now circle the word tabernacle. This is not the same tabernacle where all the articles were, where the priests worshiped and made sacrifice. We're going to see later here in chapter 16. I'll just point it out, verse 1639, that that tabernacle is still in Gibeon, which is a few miles away. When it says here that he made a tabernacle, it just means he made a tent. He made a small tent to cover the ark of the covenant. And it says, and then they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God. Verse 2. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord. And then he distributed to everyone of Israel, both man and woman, to everyone, a loaf of bread, a piece of meat, and a cake of raisins. Now this is where my mind goes, and this is why I wasn't a very good student in school, because I read something like this and then my mind wanders. And then I didn't hear anything else the teacher said, because I got stuck on something. And let me tell you where I got stuck here. I'm thinking, who baked all this? That's what I started thinking like. Like every single person in Israel. The Bible doesn't say how many people there is, but it's hundreds of thousands at this point. Because when you just look at the composition of the army, I mean, it's. It's hundreds of thousands just in the army. So it's probably millions here. And it says that everyone, to everyone, both man and woman, everyone got a loaf of bread, a piece of meat and a cake of raisins. So. So who's slaving away, cooking all the bread? You know, baking a bread, a cake of raisins, a piece of meat. I mean, this takes a lot. Anyway, let's get back. And he appointed some of the Levites to minister before the Ark of the Lord to commemorate, to thank and to praise the Lord God of Israel. Verse 5. Asaph the Chief. Circle that name. Asaph. You might remember that name when you read the Psalms, because Asaph wrote twelve of the Psalms that we know of that have his name attached to it. Twelve of the Psalms in the Book of Psalms were written by Asaph. He is like the chief musician. He's like the main worship leader, Asaph the chief. And next to him, Zechariah, then Gl and then Shemaramoth, Jeel, Mattathiah, Eliab, Benaiah, and Obed Edom Jael, with stringed instruments and harps. But Asaph made music with symbols, Benaiah and Jahaziel. The priests regularly blew the trumpets before the Ark of the Covenant of God. And so, you know, they're playing their instruments. This is all part of just worshiping the Lord, recognizing the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred representation of the Lord's presence. And it says in verse seven, on that day, David first delivered this psalm into the hand of Asaph and his brethren to thank the Lord. Now, I want to point out to you that when we start to read this, starting in verse eight, that you're going to find in the Psalms, that what we're reading here in 1st Chronicles 16 is identical to several Psalms in the Book of Psalms. This is a song, and David has written this, and he's given it to Asaph to lead as part of the worship and the celebration of the lord here in 1st Chronicles 16. If you want to just make notes, verse 8 through 22 is the same as Psalm 105, 1. 15. All right, so starting at verse 8, down through verse 22, it's the same as Psalm 105, one 15. So let me read. Notice verse 8. O give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him, Sing Psalms to him. Talk of all his wondrous works. Glory in his holy name. Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord. Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face evermore. Remember his marvelous works which he has done, his wonders and the judgments of his mouth. O seed of Israel, his servant, you children of Jacob, his chosen ones. I want you to pause there for just a Moment. And I want you to highlight, you can underline or in your, have your phones, just, you know, get your highlighter on it. Notice the different directives about how to worship the Lord. Just glance through this list again, starting from verse 8 through 12. Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds. Verse 9, Sing to him, talk of all his wondrous works. Verse 10, Glory in His holy name. And then Also in verse 10, Rejoice those who seek the Lord. Verse 11, Seek the Lord and his strength. Verse 12, Remember his marvelous works. So here's the point. If you're, if you're taking notes, here's the principle from chapter 16. There is more than one way to worship the Lord. In fact, David lists nine different ways that we can worship the Lord. Just in this, in these couple of verses here. Now the one we think of the most when we think of worshiping the Lord is the one in the middle. Sing to him. But that's not the only way that you can worship the Lord. That's one way. It's a wonderful way. You can sing to the Lord, but all these different directives here he says you can give thanks to the Lord, you can call upon his name, you can make known his deeds. You can sing to him. You can talk of all his wondrous works. Every time you give just thanks to the Lord, or credit to the Lord, maybe with some of your co workers you're giving praise to the Lord because you're talking of all his wondrous works. Glory in his holy name. Rejoice, seek the Lord, remember His marvelous works. These are different ways that we can worship him. Different ways where we ascribe honor and praise to our Lord. So you know, don't think of worship only as singing. And thank God because some of you can't, right? I mean, just be honest. Some of you, you know, the Bible says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. And some of you do that. You make a joyful. It's a noise, but it's joyful to the Lord, but it's not really singing. And so there's other ways that you can worship him. It doesn't have to be singing. You don't have a good singing voice. That's fine. There's eight other ways here, just in these verses. But it's not the only ways. Remember, even In Romans chapter 12, what did Paul say in Romans 12:1? He says, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and Acceptable unto the Lord, holy and pleasing unto the Lord, which is your reasonable act of worship or your reasonable service. So even the way that we live our lives to keep our bodies morally pure before the Lord, that brings worship to him. So there's different ways that we can worship him. David just gives us nine of them right there in the first few verses of this psalm. Then verse 14, he says, he is the Lord our God, his judgments are in all the earth. Now notice verse 15, because I want to highlight from verse 15 down to verse 19, it says, remember his covenant forever. The word which he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant which he made with Abraham and his oath to Isaac and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying to you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance when you were few in number, indeed very few and strangers in it. Now, please note this with me because in verse 15, 16 and 17, the word covenant appears. So three times the word covenant appears. And he's speaking here specifically about the covenant that God made with Abraham. And he says in verse 17 that he confirmed it. He made an oath. He made a covenant with Abraham, verse 16, his oath to Isaac, Isaac's the son of Abraham, and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute. So there's, there's this promise of God made to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And he says in verse 17 that this is to Israel for an everlasting covenant. Please highlight that in your Bibles. And it's the second principle tonight from chapter 16, which is that God's covenant with Israel is an everlasting covenant. Is an everlasting covenant. Now this is going to kind of piggyback on last week's discussion on anti Semitism, because I think it's important to see here what we're reading and to understand now before we can really grasp all that this is intended to communicate to us. First, I think we need a working definition of the word Covenant. It's used three times here. 15, 16 and 17. So here is an understanding of what covenant means. When the Bible talks about that God made a covenant, it is a solemn binding agreement initiated by God between himself and another individual to establish certain promises for humanity. A covenant can be either conditional, requiring human obedience, or unconditional, based on God's sovereignty alone. Unlike a mere contract, these divine covenants are based on grace, sealing relationships with either oaths and or blood. Now, when you look in your Bibles, I just want to digress a little bit and talk about covenants, because we got to understand this in order to really appreciate what is David saying here and how does this relate to even all this discussion today about the role of Israel? And is modern Israel really the same Israel as the Israel of the Bible? And so here are. First, let me just give you a quick overview. Here are six covenants in the Bible. These are. There is debate about five, six or seven. I land on six. You can do your own homework and read why some theologians say only five, some say seven. But these are the six main covenants that most agree on, as you see reflected in the Bible. The first is God's covenant with Adam. Then you have God's covenant with Noah, God's covenant with Abraham, God's covenant with Moses, God's covenant with David, and then the new covenant of Jesus. Let me just address each of these very, very briefly. And then we're going to come back to number three, because that's the covenant that's being referred to here in 1st Chronicles 6, the covenant with Abraham. But the first covenant was the covenant with Adam. When God made a covenant with Adam, the covenant was that he would bless Adam, that Adam and mankind in general should be fruitful and multiply, and that God would bless them and bless their offspring. This was a conditional covenant. They were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the condition. And we know that they ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And therefore they broke what God intended for them to receive. And yet God made this covenant with them because he wants to bless humanity. And there is always a sign. I shouldn't say always, because there's one exception in this list. There's a sign or a reminder or an indicator of the covenant that God initiates. And when we say covenant, God is always the initiator. Man is only the receiver. He's on the receiving end of this covenant. It is different from a contract. A contract is when two parties come into agreement about something and they each promise. A covenant is always in the Bible, always initiated by God. And sometimes it requires humanity to have action, or sometimes not. It's God's completely unconditional covenant. I highlighted the three that are unconditional on the list there with asterisks. The covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, and the covenant with David were unconditional. The covenant with Adam was conditional. It's like, you have to obey me and don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For in the day you Eat it. You shall surely die. But the covenant that God made with Adam was that his offspring would be blessed. And the sign of the covenant of Adam today is marriage. Marriage is a covenant. Marriage is not a contract. Marriage is not some contractual arrangement. Marriage is a covenant before God that exemplifies, that mirrors God's covenant that he made with Adam. The second covenant on the list is the covenant with Noah. What was the covenant that God made with Noah? What God promised, what he initiated, was that after the flood, God would never again destroy the world by a worldwide flood. That was his covenant he made, and that was unconditional. This was God initiating it, saying, this is my promise. I will never again destroy the whole world by a worldwide flood. And the sign of the covenant was what? It was a rainbow. And by the way, the real rainbow that God puts in the sky is seven colors, not six. Okay? The LGBT community has hijacked the rainbow, but they have six colors. They don't even have the right amount of colors. So that's fine, because God gave us the real rainbow with seven colors, okay? That's the sign of the covenant that he will never again destroy the earth by a worldwide flood. Then God makes a covenant with Abraham. We'll come back to that one. God also makes a covenant with Moses. The covenant with Moses. Moses was God's appointed judge and liberator to free Israel from slavery, swearing that they would be their God, that he would be their God, and he was asking them to worship him alone. And the sign of the covenant was the law, particularly the Ten Commandments that decalogue. The law was given as a sign of God's covenant with mankind. And it was conditional. The condition is, you break my laws, you can't expect me to bless you. So it was conditional. You obey me, you be blessed. You disobey me, you will not have my blessings. And then God makes a covenant with David. And we'll also read about that time permitting, because that's the next chapter of First Chronicles is chapter 17. We'll talk about exactly what God's covenant was with David. And then finally, the last and the culmination of all covenants is the new covenant with Jesus. Remember, look, your Bibles are divided into two sections. We call it Old Testament, New Testament. The Testament also is covenant. So when you're reading in your Bibles, you have old covenant. That's Genesis through Malachi, you have new covenant. That's Matthew to Revelation. And what was the new covenant? And by the way, it's conditional. The new covenant is God so loved the world, he gave his only son, Jesus. Whoever believes in him, see, that's the part of humanity. Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. So the conditional part is we have to come to faith in Jesus Christ in order to go to heaven, have our sins forgiven. It is freely offered to anybody. It was initiated by God. We did not deserve the sacrifice of Christ on that cross. God initiated it because he wanted to rescue humanity. But it is conditional. The condition is you have to humble yourself, receive Jesus, have your sins forgiven. The invitation is for all to come to salvation, to trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, go to heaven when you die. And that is the ultimate covenant. Now, the sign of the new covenant are really two ordinances that Jesus implemented, and they are still practiced today. The one ordinance he implemented was the Lord's Supper, or communion. Some traditions call it the Eucharist. Okay, Eucharist is just a Greek word that means thanksgiving. Remember when Jesus took the bread with his disciples at that last Passover, and he broke it. This is why we have communion here on a regular basis. And he broke it. He gave thanks. He said, this is my body which is broken for you. Take and eat in remembrance of me. And then he took the cup and he said, this cup is my blood. Of the new what? Of the new covenant, which is shed for you. Drink all of it in remembrance of me. He was establishing a new blood covenant that through his sacrifice on the cross. That's what the cup represented. His blood he would shed on the cross. Through his sacrifice on the cross, we might come to faith in Jesus Christ, have our sins forgiven, and go to heaven. The other ordinance that Jesus put in place was baptism, because he told us that this is not conditional for salvation, but baptism is an indication that you have trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior. The old life, dead and buried underwater, new life coming up out of the water, identifying with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is a sign of the new covenant. It is an indicator. It is a reflection of the new covenant. And so still today, the church, we practice communion, we practice water baptism. All of it is to be reminded of the new covenant that is found in Jesus. And there are no additional covenants necessary because Jesus Christ fulfilled all the covenants. But the one that we're focused on here, back here in verses 15 through 18, has to do with the covenant that God made to Abraham. Now this again has everything to do with the subject of last Wednesday night on anti. Semitism. Because when you deny this covenant okay. When you deny that this covenant is still enforced, still in place, it can lead to. I'm not saying everybody who doesn't believe in this covenant is a. Is an anti Semite, but it can lead to anti Semitic sentiment if you believe God's done with the Jewish people. But that's why I asked you to highlight there in verse 17. And he confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel for an everlasting covenant. Do you see that, everybody? This is an everlasting covenant. Now, what exactly is this everlasting covenant? We'll come back here to First Chronicles, but if you'll just jump back to Genesis and I'll read it with you and then we'll just talk about. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I don't want to just read this psalm that David wrote and, and just, you know, skip past it, because this is a critical discussion that people are having today. So I want you to see it with me here in Genesis, chapter 12, first three verses. This is the Lord speaking to Abraham. And this is before God changed his name from Abram to Abraham. Here in Genesis 12:1, it says, now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country. And he was living at that time in the city of Ur, which is in ancient Mesopotamia. That's Iraq. So God taps this pagan guy on the shoulder who's living in Iraq. He says, I want you to leave your country, from your family, from your father's house, and go to a land that I will show you. So please notice that land is part of this covenant. He says, and go to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth and shall be blessed. Now, he's not talking just about him alone. This is why David, in the psalm back here in 1 Chronicles 16, it talks about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He's talking about the descendants. And by the way, God also promises to Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Okay? And so God is saying about this covenant that has to do with a place and a people. You can't divorce those two. This is about a place. This is the land. And this is about a people, the Jewish people who will spring forth from the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, an ethnic people that had never existed before. That God determined and why did he determine to bring about an ethnic race of people? It's not really a race, an ethnic group of people from the seed of Abraham, because God wanted to give birth to eventually Messiah, who would be a savior for the whole world. And so for God to bring about a savior, he initiated this ethnic group of people through the seed of Abraham so that the Messiah could come for the sake of the whole world. This was God's redemptive plan. So this was the covenant. Now I want you to glance over to Genesis 15 because this is how God enforces it. In Genesis 15, most of the time, most of the time that God initiated a covenant, it had to do with blood. And that was the signature of the covenant. It always had to do with an oath, and most of the time had to do with blood. And again, God is always the initiator. He, he determines to do this. And this particular covenant is unconditional because this was not dependent upon whether Abraham was a good guy or the Israelis were good people. This was completely dependent upon the sovereign will of God that he established a people group for his purpose so that eventually Messiah could come into the whole world to save as many as would be saved. And so here in Genesis 15, this is how God does it. And this is, you know, this is a little, you know, this is Old Testament. This is a little, you know, cutting up animals. But this is what he did to seal the sign of the covenant. This is Genesis 15, I'm going to start reading at verse nine. And so he, that's God said to him, abraham, bring me a three year old heifer, a three year old female goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And then he brought all these to him and cut them in two down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other. But he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. And then he said to Abram, know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them, and they will afflict them 400 years. Now look what God is telling Abram in advance, that his descendants are going to end up in Egypt. Now this won't happen until his grandson Jacob, Jacob and his sons will end up going down to Egypt where they will multiply, they will stay 400 years, Pharaoh will enslave them eventually. And God's telling Abram. All this in advance. Keep reading. Verse 14. And also the nation whom they serve, I will judge, meaning Egypt. Afterward they shall come out with great possessions, which they did. Now, as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall return here. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, that, behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. Okay, now this is just the representation of God. He's. He is personified in these ways. A smoking oven and a burning torch passing between these pieces. So Abraham lays these, the carcasses, he cuts them in half. It's blood covenant. He lays them on two opposite sides with a path in the middle. And God personified as this smoking oven and a burning torch, he passes between these pieces. And it says there in verse 18, on the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying to your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. And then he mentions all these different tribes. Now, notice that the allotment of the land was from the river of Egypt. That's the Nile to the great river, the river Euphrates. That's the Euphrates. From the Nile to the Euphrates was God's original intent for Israel to have as land. That's about 300,000 square miles. That's from the Nile river to the Euphrates in Iraq. You know how much square miles Israel occupies today? Just 8,500 square miles. God's intention for them, 300,000 square miles. They occupy today 8,500 square miles. Most of the Arab states consume the other 300,000 square miles. The point is, whenever anybody says, just give up land for peace, it will never work. Because it's contrary to God's initial design. What Israel has now is a small fraction of what God intended. The answer is not give up more land. That's not the answer. It never brings peace. Look what happened In Gaza in 2005, Israel completely vacated that strip of Gaza. They had to send in the IDF to remove Jews from Gaza forcibly out of their homes. Who decided they wouldn't? And they were taken out of their homes. The Jews dug up cemeteries and relocated their own dead out of Gaza into their own land and said, we'll give up Gaza for peace. And what happens? Palestinian people vote in Hamas. Hamas comes in, terrorist organization, overtakes the Whole land and then tens of thousands, thousands of rockets. That's not an exaggeration. You can fact check. Beyond that, tens of thousands of rockets have been fired since 2005 when the Israelis left Gaza from Gaza. Tens of thousands of rockets have been fired into Israel. It's just been a constant barrage. Because why? Giving up land never works for peace. Not when your enemy is completely determined to annihilate you. That whole chant from the river to the sea, even though most people in American college campuses didn't know what river and what sea they were talking about, that's from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. The chant of Hamas and the chant of others who are opposed to Israel's right to self determination and existence is for the annihilation of Israel. They want them annihilated from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea. There's no negotiation with terrorists who think that you can't just give up land when that's in their charter, in Hamas charter for sure. That's what they are determined to do, to annihilate the Jewish people. But I want you to see it here in black and white that God's original intent was for Abraham's descendants to be blessed and for the land to be theirs. And so here we are today. Now go back here to first Chronicles 16, because when you see this all in its perspective, God makes this covenant with Abraham. It's an everlasting covenant. I am going to bring about a people group and I'm going to give you a place to live. And the enemy has constantly come against that. That's why we talked about it in a whole service last Sunday, last Wednesday night. Because Satan the dragon is always trying to attack Revelation 12:13, always trying to attack the woman who gave birth to the male child. It's always Satan's desire to try to exterminate the Jews. He's not been successful. But you have to ask yourself, why are there billions of ancient people belonging to ancient cultures? Billions of Chinese, billions of Indians. There should be billions of Jews. Why are there only 15 million in the whole world today? Because Satan has constantly been trying to attack what represents God's redemptive plan. See the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel. The state of Israel is a very imperfect state, just like America is. They have things that I'm completely opposed to, like abortion on demand. They have, you know, the whole transgender and same sex marriage thing has crept into Israel. Like it's crept into the United States. There's a lot of things that are socially and politically wrong with Israel, like there are things that are socially and politically wrong with the United States of America. But we have to understand what the Bible says about God hasn't forsaken them. And that's why Paul writes in Romans 11 that Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in, and then so all Israel will be saved. Romans 11:26. So when God speaks here about this everlasting covenant, what he's saying to us is, look, I'm not giving up on the Jewish people because this is an everlasting covenant and therefore we should not. And we have to really stand against this kind of talk and nonsense in our world today. Because people would have you to believe that God is done with Israel because the majority of Israelis do not believe that Jesus is Messiah. That is a true statement. But praise God. Many Jews are coming to faith in Jesus as Messiah as we speak. And so some will say, therefore, Israel has forsaken the covenant and God took all the blessings he intended for Israel and have given it now to the church. But how do you read something like everlasting covenant and make that argument? And just because Israel does not believe, Israel wasn't believing in most of your Old Testament and God was still faithful to them. And aren't you thankful that even in our times of disobedience and disbelief, God is still faithful to us because he's made a covenant with Jesus through Jesus for our sakes, for the forgiveness of sins, and in the same way that he does not abandon us, he has not abandoned Israel. The last chapter has not yet been written on the nation of Israel. That's why we are commanded in Scripture to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, to bless those who God says, I will bless those who bless you. It wasn't just for Abraham, it's to all his descendants. Because I just read to you, the covenant is for the people and for the place. And therefore we have a moral obligation as Christians to stand for Israel. Even though it's okay to disagree with policies and some of the practices of war, that doesn't make you an anti Semite. And I want to stress that some people were wigging out, emailing me, saying, like, just because I disagree with the policies, you're calling me an anti Semite. I've never called someone an anti Semite for disagreeing with the policies. Please don't call me unpatriotic because I disagree with some American policies. Right, but we still have a moral obligation to remember God has not forsaken them. And Therefore, we cannot and we must pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Well, all that had to do with covenant tonight we'll get to the rest of this psalm and chapter 17. We'll talk more about the covenant God made with David next Wednesday night. But I see our time has already escaped us, so. Time flies when you're having fun, everybody. All right, let's pray together. Lord, thank you for this time and your word tonight. And thank you for the everlasting covenant that you have made with Israel. Yes, even modern Israel is a continuation of the people that you have made covenant with. And Lord, we pray for Jews to come to faith in Jesus Christ. We pray for Muslims to come to faith in Jesus Christ. We pray for our atheist friends to come to faith in Jesus Christ. We want all to be saved because that's your heart. You want none to perish, but all to come to repentance. So Lord, thank you for your word tonight. And thank you for the covenant that you have made, not just with Israel, but Lord, the covenant that you made with us through Jesus Christ his shed blood on that cross for the forgiveness of our sins. Oh, how thankful we are that you love us, Lord, that you would die for us in order to redeem us. So thank you Lord, we give you praise and glory and honor for your sacrifice for our sins, for the covenant you've made with us, for the free gift of salvation. We just glorify your name. Be with us, Lord, as we drive home. Bring us together safely on Sunday. We give you praise tonight in Jesus name and everybody said amen and amen. God bless you everybody.