Zechariah 4, 6, Not by might nor by
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord
of hosts.
Now, I have spoken about the need for
a quickening and a reformation, sometimes called revival,
though there could be no revival until there
has been a reformation.
And I have talked about it as imperative
for Protestantism.
And then I have also said that it
is imperative for us evangelicals, who are of
the gospel church type, free church, the undenominational,
a church such as this one.
Now, I want to come a little bit
closer and talk about us.
And in order to do it, I want
to begin with a text which so perfectly
expresses the way I feel about Avenue Road
Church that I might have readmit to you
about you.
Turn to Philippians 1, please.
And let us notice here what the man
of God in the Holy Spirit said about
a certain church in Asia Minor, but because
God wrote it and it's inspired, has a
multitude of applications to a multitude of situations.
So here we go, Philippians 1, verse 3,
and the following.
I thank my God upon every remembrance of
you.
Let me say to you, my dear people,
that no preacher can do his congregation any
good unless he can thank God for them,
unless he is able to see what good
there is and be very thankful and have
his heart filled with gratitude to God on
every remembrance of his people.
Verse 4.
Always in every prayer of mine for you
all, making requests with joy for your fellowship
in the gospel from the first day until
now, be confident of this very thing, that
he, God, which hath begun a good work
in you, will perfect it until the day
of Christ.
Even as it is proper for me to
think this of you all, because I have
you in my heart, inasmuch as both in
my bond," now, he was in jail and
I am not, so that doesn't apply there.
And in defense and confirmation of the gospel,
and it does apply there, you are all
partakers of my grace.
For God is my record, how greatly I
long after you all, in the mercies of
Jesus Christ.
And this I pray, and this I pray,
that your love may abound yet more and
more in knowledge and in all judgment, that
ye may learn to approve the things that
are excellent.
There ought to be a sermon preached on
that text, that you approve the things that
are excellent, that you have a spirit of
discernment so that you will know what is
excellent and of God and what isn't, and
that you may be sincere and without offense
until the day of Christ, being filled with
the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus
Christ unto the glory and praise of God.
Now, if you knew what I was praying
for you, this would just about cover it.
And I want tonight to come to you
with some ideas and lay before you what
I'd like to see take place here.
And while I haven't any hesitation to pray,
about praying that it will take place, nor
preaching in order that it might, I long
for you in the tender mercies of Christ
that this church may be a healthy and
fruitful vine.
We used to have cherry trees on our
farm in Pennsylvania, and while I say vine,
certainly the illustration covers it all.
They used to be attacked by little parasites
of some sort, and they would get into
the little branches and pierce the bark, and
then it would exude a gum.
Then the branch would get a knot on
it and bend.
And all over the trees were those little
bent places with a gummy knot, which was
the result of a worm that ate in
the tree.
And the result would be, after 2 or
3 years, those cherry trees would not bloom.
And if they did, the bloom dropped early
and the cherries did not come to fruition.
Or if they did, they would only be
red on one side.
Have you seen them, cherries on one side
but not on the other side?
Flat and undeveloped on the other side.
Now, my father, if he had been interested,
he wasn't much interested in fruit.
He was interested in cattle and horses and
grain, but not much in the fruit.
My father had known how he could have
got to those trees before they got in
that wretched condition, and by their proper spray
or other treatment, he could have saved them,
gotten rid of the worms and the bugs
and saved the trees.
And in saving the trees, he saved the
fruit.
He didn't.
I believe that a pastor who will be
content with a vineyard, now back to the
original figure, with a vineyard that is not
at its best, is not a good husbandman.
And it is my prayer and I long
in Christ that we may be a healthy
and fruitful vineyard, and that we may be
an honor to the well-beloved, who is
Jesus Christ the Lord.
That he might go before the Father and
say, These are mine, for whom I pray,
and they have heard the word and have
believed on me, that these are they, and
that we might fit into that 17th chapter
of John, high priestly prayer, and be a
church after Christ's own heart, that in us
he may see the travail of his soul
and be satisfied.
In order for us to be a vineyard
like that, there must be a basic purity.
That is, each one must have a great
purity of heart.
I believe in the validity of no emotional
experiences that do not rest upon great purity
of heart.
No one can impress me, nor intimidate me,
nor interest me in any kind of spiritual
manipulations, if it were raising the dead.
If his heart is not pure and his
life right, sound righteousness in conduct must be
at the root of all valid spiritual experience.
I am afraid of that new wave of
religion that has come, that started in the
States and is spreading around a sort of
esoteric affair of the soul, of the mind,
and there are strange phenomena that attend it.
I am afraid of anything that does not
require great purity of heart on the part
of the individual and great and sound righteousness
of conduct in his life.
Then I long after you in the tender
mercies of Christ that among us there may
be, let me name them for you, a
beautiful simplicity.
I am weary of the artificialities of religion
and the complexities of religion.
I would like to see a great simplicity.
Our Lord Jesus was one of the simplest
men that ever lived, one of the most
utterly simple.
You couldn't involve him in anything formal.
He said what he had to say as
and as naturally as a bird sings on
the bough of a morning.
That's what I'd like to see restored to
the churches, and why not to this church,
the opposite of all that is artificial and
complex.
Then a new and radiant Christian love.
What do I mean by Christian love?
Everybody is talking about it, but what do
we mean by Christian love?
I want to see a restoration of a
radiant Christian love where it will be impossible
to find anyone who will speak unkindly about
another or to another, where it will be
impossible to find anyone who will speak uncharitably
about another or unkindly to another.
Do you hear me?
This is carefully thought out and carefully prayed
through.
I'm not wasting words, and I'm saying that
I would like to see us brought into
a place where there would be a beautiful
and radiant Christian love where you won't be
able to find anybody that will speak unkindly
to another Christian brother or speak uncharitably about
another Christian brother.
The devil would have a spasm, he would
be so chagrined, I think that he would
sulk in his self-made hell for years
if there should be a group of Christians
met together in this last worn-out, dying
period of the Christian dispensation, a people who
would be so loving that you couldn't get
them to speak unkindly and you couldn't get
them to speak uncharitably.
Then I long after you in the bowels
of Christ that we might be a church
where our gathering would be marked by a
feeling of humble reverence.
I am disappointed that we come to church
without a sense of God, a feeling of
humble reverence.
There are heathen and there are false religions
and there are strange religious cults and Christian
cults.
They think they have God in a box
someplace, and when they approach that box they
feel a sense of awe.
Now of course you and I want to
be saved from all paganism and all false
cultism, but also we would like, I would
like, and I think I'm right in this,
I would like to see a company of
people who were so sure that God was
with them, not in a box or in
a biscuit, but with them, God was with
them in their midst, and that Jesus Christ
was truly among them to a point where
they would have a sense of humble reverence
when they gathered together, and where there would
also be an air of joyous informality.
The great English preacher who was pastor for
so many years of the Westminster Chapel in
London, where Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones now is,
E.
Campbell Morgan, left his church and went down
to Wales, where the Welsh revival was going
on under Evan Roberts earlier in this century.
He stayed there a while, and he soaked
up the glory of it so that when
he came back, I read the sermon he
preached to his congregation when he came back
from the Welsh revival.
It was as near scolding as that great
preacher ever did.
He said to them, your singing is joyless,
your demeanor is joyless, you don't have the
lift and the joy that I saw in
Wales.
And he urged them that they might get
into a place where that sense of joyous
informality might be upon them.
Then I long after you in the tender
mercies of Christ that this communion may be
a place where each esteems others better than
himself.
And as a result of that, everyone is
willing to serve, but nobody is jockeying for
position.
I suppose that there isn't anything quite so
bitterly humorous as ambition in the Church of
Christ, politics, a desire to have position and
place in the Church of Jesus.
It would be as though a man who
was on a lifeboat being saved from certain
salty death in the ocean depths, that man
should become ambitious to be captain of the
little boat that is on its way to
save those on board.
It is as though a man were to
enter a disaster area where an earthquake had
hit and people were dying, and would fight
for a high position there.
My brethren, the Church of Christ is no
place for the ambitious, and it's no place
for the lazy.
So I'd like to see our Christian communion
be a place, I say, where each one
esteems the other better than himself.
For that reason, nobody pushes and nobody jockeys
for position, but on the other hand, nobody
refuses to serve.
And where there is childlike candor in all
things, utter childlike candor.
You know why I love children so much?
They are unbelievably beautiful candors.
They look at you and say the most
utterly simple things.
If they were just a little older, they'd
blush, as they used to say in the
old love stories, to the roots of their
hair.
But they are utterly and completely candid.
I like to talk with them, I like
to have them come up and chat with
me, because they are bound and sure before
they leave to tell me things.
If you don't want it told, don't let
the little ones come upstairs, because they just
tell me anything.
And utter candor.
They haven't anything to hide at all, nothing.
And I believe that with the limitations proper
to our adult years, that we ought to
be at a place where spiritually we should
be so candid that there would be no
duplicity and no dishonesty and no duplicity.
Look at that word a little bit.
Let's, as they say at the board meetings
of the big companies, let's kick it around
a little.
That word duplicity, now look at it.
What does it mean?
Well, you've heard of a duplex.
I don't know whether you use that word
here.
Do you use duplex for houses here?
That means there are two of them.
Now, a duplex is a dwelling where there
is more than one dwelling, there are two
dwellings.
And duplicity is the same thing, it means
two, two-fold.
And there are those Judas Iscariot, for instance,
he was duplicity incarnated.
He was so slick that even the disciples
didn't know which one was Judas, that is,
they didn't know which one was the traitor.
They said, Lord, is it I?
Lord, is it I?
And Jesus said, there's the man, when he
dips in the dish, you'll know him.
He had to actually tell them.
This son of perdition had lived with Jesus
and his twelve disciples, his eleven disciples, for
three years and had fooled them so completely
that they didn't know which one was the
traitor when the showdown came.
They had to have a little sign to
indicate, there was the slickest piece of duplicity
that I know anything about.
Two faces he had, and he could change
faces with the occasion, and was so slick
in the change that nobody caught on that
it was two faces.
He had two faces, and he showed one
to Jesus and his disciples, and the other
to the enemies of Jesus.
Now, that's duplicity.
I say that in this Christian communion, we
ought to be, all of us to be,
a people without duplicity.
Each one of us have only one face.
Now, I know this place here for cracks,
but I'm too serious tonight to think about
that.
I know that some of us had two
faces, would use the other one, I've heard
all that.
But I also know that if you have
more than one face with which to present
to the public, something is desperately wrong, and
one of your faces is going to face
an awful judgment of God one of these
days.
So I say, without duplicity and without dishonesty
and without hypocrisy.
Now, what is hypocrisy?
That's variously pronounced, but I'll use my good
American pronunciation, hypocrisy.
What is it?
Well, hypocrisy is an old Greek word that
they used for actors on the stage.
Somebody who pretended to be what he was
not.
He wasn't Joe, but he pretended to be
Joe.
So he put on a mask of some
sort and strutted around the stage.
They do it now, you know, they put
you up before on the theater or on
the TV stage and they glue whiskers on
you and put this and that on you,
and you're somebody you're not.
Now, a hypocrite is an actor.
He's somebody who is playing a part that
isn't key.
And then where the presence of Christ is
as the fragrance of myrrh and aloes.
And when you become accustomed to the smell
of these garments, you'll be spoiled for anything
less than that.
If we never smell the myrrh and aloes
out of the ivory palaces, we may get
along a lifetime and not miss it.
But one beautiful whiff of the fragrance of
these garments and we'll never be satisfied anymore
with anything less.
My wife and I, before we were married,
we attended a church, an alliance church in
the city of Akron, Ohio.
And we sang some of the songs we
sang here tonight, incidentally, brother.
And there was something there on that church.
There was a sense of the fragrance of
God.
The great big organ voice, Dr. Jerome preached
there in those days.
And they had some sweet Christian brethren, some
wonderful men of God and women.
And there was a fragrance on that place.
And I have never forgotten it.
And I have, remember, you know they tell
us that our youth meetings, there is where
we learn.
Brethren, that isn't where we learn.
That's where the youth learn.
But the older people ought to have on
them the fragrance of Jesus' garments so the
youth could come to them.
I look back on those days.
I was 19, 20, and 21 for those
three years that I spent in that church.
And I do not remember getting any help
from others of my age.
But oh, how I remember getting help that's
with me to this day from the older
Saints whose garments were redolent of the myrrh
and aloes and cashew out of the ivory
palaces.
And I believe that this should be present
here at all times.
And I believe that in this communion there
should be answers to prayer, that answers to
prayer should be common and miracles not be
uncommon.
I am not a miracle preacher.
I have been in churches where they announce
miracle meetings.
If you look in the Saturday paper, you
will see that occasionally somebody will hit town
and he will announce, come out and see
some miracles.
That kind of performing I don't care for.
I went one time to a Bible conference,
my wife and myself and the little girl
arrived, just after the supper hour when the
meeting was taking up hours to begin the
next day.
And they had announced that they were having
miracle night that night.
And the only miracle that took place was
that a fellow fell out of a boat
and drowned.
It's all a miracle I saw around the
place.
That was no miracle, but that's the only
thing exciting that happened.
No miracles at all.
You can't get miracles as you can get
chemical reactions.
You can't get a miracle as you can
get a wonderful action on the stage by
a magician.
God doesn't sell himself into the hands of
the religious magician.
You can't get miracles that way.
I don't believe in that kind of miracle.
I believe in the kind of miracles that
God gives to his people who live so
close to him that answers to prayer are
common, and these miracles are not uncommon.
John Wesley never allured himself to preach miracles
once in his life, but the miracles that
followed John Wesley's ministry were unbelievable, even to
one instance where he had to make an
engagement and his horse fell lame and couldn't
travel.
He got on his knees beside his horse
and prayed for healing and got back up
and rode without the horse's limping to where
he was going.
He didn't publicize that and say, We'll have
a big tent here and advertise it.
He just did it.
God did those things for him.
And he said about Spurgeon that while he
didn't preach healing, he had more people delivered
in answer to his prayers than any doctor
in the City of London.
That's what I'm talking about, and there's no
reason why these things should not be true
here at Avenue Road.
Now, in the light of the scripture and
in the light of the judgment seat of
Christ, which we all must face, the behemoth
that our primate brethren and friends talk about,
and in the light of eternity, is what
I'm asking unreasonable?
Is the description I've given unreasonable?
Is this portrait of a true church an
unreasonable portrait?
Is it undesirable that we should have this
kind of church?
Is it impossible that we should have this
kind of church?
Is this an unscriptural picture that I have
presented?
Let me sketch it again.
A healthy, fruitful vineyard that will bring honor
to the well-beloved, even Christ.
A church after Christ's own heart where he
can look at the travail of his soul
and be satisfied.
A people among whom there is a beautiful
simplicity and a radiant Christian love, where it
will be impossible to find gossips or talebears.
Where there is a feeling of humble reverence
and an air of joyous informality, for each
one will esteem the other better than himself,
and where everyone is willing to serve but
no one jockeys to serve.
Where there is a childlike tender and without
duplicity or dishonesty, for the presence of Christ
is felt until it can be felt, and
where the fragrance of his garments can be
smelled by his beloved.
And where prayers are answered so regularly that
we think nothing of it.
It is common because God is God and
we are his people, and where, when it
is necessary, miracles will not be uncommon.
Is that in the light of scripture and
in the light of the coming judgment and
in the light of eternity?
Or is this an unreasonable thing to expect
of the church?
Is this an undesirable thing?
Is there something better?
If there is something better, you name it!
If there is something better, what is it?
Is this impossible?
Oh, my brother, is anything impossible with God?
Is anything impossible where the Lord Jesus Christ
is?
Is this unscriptural?
No.
The only thing that is unscriptural about it
is that it isn't up to the standard
of scripture yet.
The scripture standards are still higher.
If you answer me no, it's not unreasonable,
brother Tozer.
It's not undesirable, it's not impossible.
If you answer no, then you say yes,
because what you are saying is that you
believe in this.
All right, if we believe in this and
we'd like to become the church that could
have and begin this reformation, this change toward
the better, this recapturing of the ancient power
of God in the souls of men, then
there must be a radical psychological break with
the prevailing religious mood.
Now, hear me on this.
Right here I, of course, will not take
everybody with me, but I hope I'll take
the majority.
But there must be a radical psychological break
with the prevailing religious mood.
Now, why do I say that?
Because in the churches, in the churches, the
religious mood, the prevailing religious mood, I'm going
to describe it for you.
I've told you by a careful description of
what a church ought to be.
Now I'm going to describe churches as they
are, with beautiful exceptions, of course, for there
are poor saints almost in all the churches,
a few here and there.
But the prevailing religious mood is self-centered
instead of world-centered, that is, mission-centered,
instead of soul-winning-centered, and instead of
being outgoing, the average church is self-centered,
and the average church is self-satisfied.
We make our reports and we spend pages
telling what wonderful good boys we've been and
what nice girls.
Self-satisfaction seems to be upon us all.
And then worldliness of spirit.
The average church, the prevailing mood in the
average church is worldliness, there's no question about
it, and the carnality of heart.
Paul said, Dear Colonel, and I can't speak
to you, he told the Corinthian church, he
said, I'd like to come and preach deep
things to you, but you're too colonel.
And then the prevailing mood of the average
church is to be Christian in name and
in practice to be un-Christian.
This is the terrible thing, the thing I
can't understand.
When we were down in Miami at the
council last May, they asked me to come
over to the newspaper, and I went and
they gave me a little interview and asked
me a few questions.
And among other things they said, Do you
think, Mr. Sorger, that you're preaching, writing, helping
things any of you?
Do you think it's doing any good among
the churches?
And I said, I don't know whether it
is or not, but I said, Our trouble
is not that we refuse to believe right
doctrines, but that we refuse to practice them.
And so we have the peculiar contradiction of
believing the right thing and living the wrong
way.
This strange anomaly within the church everywhere.
And then the lovers of pleasure more than
lovers of God.
Now, if you don't like what I'm saying,
I want to ask you, think about the
company you run with.
What do they talk about most?
God and the love of God, or other
things?
You decide that.
You preach your own sermon there.
And that will not endure sound doctrine and
have itching ears.
I hesitated whether I ought to bring this
up or not, but I thought I would
anyhow, because they don't martyr you here, they
just don't come.
But I thought that I'd tell you about
this.
You know where Paul said in the last
days men should have itching ears, Christians should
have itching ears?
They didn't like sound doctrine, but they were
Christians.
They called themselves Christians, but their ears were
itchy.
Well, now a commentator that I read some
years back explained this.
And he said that in Paul's day, the
pig, the swine, had a disease called the
itching ear.
What they called it in Greek, I never
found out.
But the symptom was that their ears got
inflamed and itched terribly.
And the only way they could get relief
from these inflamed ears was to go to
a pile of rock and rub their ears
earnestly and vigorously on the rock, and that
scratched it for the time.
Paul saw that and smiled a sad smile
and said, I'm running into Christians here and
there like that, and in the latter days
they'll be like that.
They will love pleasure more than God, will
not endure sound doctrine, but they will have
itching ears so that they will be so
eager for something else besides the sound doctrine
and holy ways that they'll pile up teachers
everywhere and rub their ears for dear life.
Now, I think that's the most dramatic and
colorful illustration, and I don't put it past
the man of God, Paul, because he was
nobody's disciple.
And I don't put it past him at
all, that a lot of the Christian so
-called, they have to have piles of rock
to rub their ears on, and they will
not endure sound doctrine.
I think that's the description of the church,
Protestantism and even Evangelicalism.
Now, in the light of the New Testament
predictions, and in the light of the New
Testament teachings, and in the light of New
Testament standards, is what I just said about
the prevailing religious mood unfair?
Is what I've just said about the prevailing
religious mood untrue?
Is what I've said about the prevailing religious
mood uncharitable?
Is it extreme?
I don't think it is, but I only
ask you to do one thing, look around
you, and look in your own heart, and
see which of these pictures describes the churches
you know.
Is it the church of healthy, fruitful vine
that honors Jesus Christ and gives him the
seeds that travail of his own heart, where
there is in its membership great purity of
heart and great righteousness of conduct?
Is it a place where there's a beautiful
simplicity and a radiant Christian love that won't
criticize?
Where there's feeling of humble reverence and an
air of informal joy, for joy is in
formality, where each esteems other in humility better
than himself, where everyone is willing to serve
but there are no bellwethers seeking the head
of the flock, where there's childlike tender without
duplicity and without hypocrisy, where the presence of
Christ is like a fragrance on the garments
of the priest, where prayers are answered until
it's common to have them answered, and where
miracles and wonders are not uncommon?
I say, is this, does this describe what
we know as Protestantism and Evangelicalism, or does
this describe it?
Very much self-centered and quite satisfied, quite
worldly in spirit and carnal in heart, jealousy
and fleshliness and anger and getting miffed at
people and little baby malice in our hearts?
Does that describe the average church?
Where we're Christian in name but in practice
we're a long way from being Christian yet,
lovers of pleasure but not too deeply in
love with God, where there is not too
much love of real sound doctrine but where
it has to be mixed with something to
scratch our itching ears in order to make
it palatable, if you'll excuse my mixed-up
figures there.
Now I say, which is it?
You look around and then look in your
own heart and see.
Well, and if then we must have a
radical psychological break with the prevailing religious mood,
then we must not imitate other churches and
not even other alliance churches.
We must not copy them, we must not
follow religious trends, we must create religious trends.
Are you hearing me?
That God has called us here not to
meekly follow and weakly and stupidly follow religious
trends but to boldly and courageously establish religious
trends.
And if there's any following to do, let
others do the following.
If you'll listen to me and if you'll
go along with me and you'll obey God
as I ask you to do, there'll be
a day when the churches of Toronto will
say they didn't imitate us but we must
imitate them.
They weren't following us but we want to
know what do you have that we haven't
got and how can we get it.
That's happened, that's happened.
We must set a new trend and we
must create a new image of Christ in
Toronto.
We must.
It's taken me three years to find out
the state of affairs in this city and
I have told you and I repeat that
I thank God for you upon every remembrance
of you, always in every prayer of mine
making requests with joy for your fellowship in
the gospel and being confident that what he
has begun and he will finish.
Because I have you in my heart and
how greatly I long that your love may
abound yet more and more in knowledge and
in judgment and if he may approve the
things that are excellent being filled with the
fruit of righteousness by Jesus Christ under the
glory and praise of God.
Now that's revival ladies and gentlemen.
We can decide whether we want to hear
this and whether we want to obey this
and do something about this or whether we
want something else but I have every reason
to believe that you're not a wild vine
but that you're a true vine and that
God is going to do something for us.
That we are not going weekly and weekly
to follow and accept the radical psychological prevailing
religious mood but we're going to break with
it and instead of imitating the churches that
are on their way to die we're going
to let them imitate us if there's any
imitation to do and we're not following the
trends but we're going to get on our
knees before the scriptures and establish things and
to do this we'll require that each one
of us forgive everybody else.
Now I don't know anybody's mad at anybody
in this church but I know human beings
well enough to know there probably is are
some and never get off the ground until
until we forgive each other until we clean
up.
God won't bless dirty people even if they
take a bath twice a day and have
all the modern cosmetics and are as fastidiously
as well groomed as the prince of Wales
still there's such a thing as inwardly being
unclean.
They've got to clean up and they've got
to quit secret sins secret sins, a hidden
sin.
You can smile and smile and have secret
sins, pray and pray and have secret sins,
lead a department of the church and have
secret sins, sing and have secret sins and
I'm not charging anybody.
I'm saying Lord is it I but I'm
only saying what we must be doing we
must be right in our home.
You're only spiritual as you are at home
not as you are in church and in
your work.
Your spirituality is not known or will not
be known before God by how spiritual you
are when you're in the company of other
Christians but when you're at your work and
with your neighbors and in your school.
You can't be a Christian at home you'll
not be a very good Christian at church
so of course you can pass for one.
You can't be a Christian in your business
you'll not be a very good Christian anywhere
else.
You can't be a Christian to your neighbor
over next door both directions and across the
street and up the alley you won't be
a very good Christian at church.
Well I want you to close this service
with me as Brother McNally leads us in
singing a song that's a prayer.
I want you to sing it all and
I want you to sing it prayerfully.
I carefully thought this out so that we'd
know I know just what we want to
do and I want you to pray this
prayer.
I don't know if you know it or
not it's an old Alliance hymn.
It goes way back to the days of
Dr. Simpson.
Not written by him but thought to before
the public by him.
I want you to what number is it?
239.
I want you to sing it.
I want you to stand.
I want you to sing it with the
utmost reverence and meaning and make it your
prayer.
Your prayer.
Breathe upon us Lord from heaven.
Fill us with the Holy Ghost.
Promise of the Father given.
Send us now of Pentecost.
Written by Captain R.
Kelso Cogger of the Salvation Army.
Warm personal friend of Dr. A.
B.
Simpson who helped him to found the Alliance
in those early days.
I want you to sing reverently and prayerfully
this whole song.