The Lord Has Helped Us

Here I raise my Nebenezer. Hither by thy help I've come. And I hope I have a good pleasure. Surely too, arrive at home. These are words.

In the hymn, That we're going to be singing at the conclusion of our service today, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. But it is, well, it has some strange words in it for modern ears, doesn't it? What is And Ebenezer. And of course, we read about that in 1 Samuel 7, 12. this morning.

where Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer. saying, thus far has the Lord helped us. And Ebenezer actually means God has helped.

So that's the reason for the stone. What is hither? Hither, by thy help, I have come. We don't use that language very much either. And that means up to this time.

Up until this time, your help has been granted to us. And in the King James Version of 1 Samuel 7, 12, It's a very good idea. He set up the stone, called it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto. at the Lord helped us. Hitherto, of course, is related to hither, but hitherto means to this place.

to this very place. The Lord has helped us. The time in the history of Israel that we're looking at in 1 chapter 7 is the Concluding chapter of the Judges, a period of. many years in which Israel declined sadly. And God would raise up a judge to deliver them from their enemies that had come in to judge them because they had strayed from the Lord when they.

finally cried out to him for help and so for a while they would Follow the Lord, and then they would stray again back into idolatry and disobedience. And after a while, God would send another. enemy, another people from the surrounding nations to come in and to Bring chastisement upon them because of their waywardness, and then they would cry out to God, and God would raise up another judge, and so it went. Year after year, decade after decade, even century after century, until we come to the book of 1 Samuel. And there in the first chapters we read about the birth of Samuel.

That miraculous birth that came to Hannah, who had not been able to bear children, and she cried out to the Lord for a child. And promised that if God would give her a son, she would give him back to the Lord in dedication to him. And the Lord indeed answered her prayer. And a child was born, and Samuel was that child, and he was after he was. He was still young, but while he when he was old enough to leave his mother, He was brought to the tabernacle.

And delivered to the high priest, and became a servant from his earliest years, growing up there in the tabernacle. And serving the Lord, and in the passing of time, in his growth and development, as we read about in the first three chapters of 1 Samuel. He became a very godly man. He became a God-used prophet, for God spoke to him even when he was still a child. And the people of Israel knew that he was a prophet, and they listened to his words, and God used Samuel to deliver them.

from the Philistines, and to prepare them for a new era. As the era of the kings were ushered in. And Samuel was the one who anointed Saul to be the first king. and was also the one. who anointed David to be the second king of Israel.

Yeah. But as we come to 1 Samuel chapter 7, we find that Israel is at war with the Philistines once again. And because they knew they needed help, they brought the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them. Obviously, Yeah. They they weren't They weren't thinking truthfully.

They were thinking superstitiously. They recognized, of course, that the ark was that special place where God put his presence, but. Taking an object into battle is not going to help you, and taking An object into battle is not going to guarantee the presence of the Lord, and indeed, in this case, it did not do any of those things. And the ark was taken into battle and captured by the Philistines. Yeah.

So they lost it. Sacred Ark. constructed by Moses at the instructions of God. And containing the Ten Commandments of God, the very covenant which God had made with his Old Testament people of Israel. That was captured by the Philistines, and they took it with great rejoicing because, in their mind, This indicated that their gods were stronger than Israel's god.

They captured the ark that represented the God of Israel. And so they took the ark, and as you know, They took it first, I think, to Ekron and placed it in the temple of One of their chief gods, Dagon, And they got up the next morning and Dagon was on his face. before the ark of the Lord. They said, that's strange, that's never happened before. And so they set Dagon back up.

Can you imagine a God who needs people to set him up if he's going to stand? And yet they worship a God like that, but that's exactly what was going on. And so they Set Dagon back up, and they came back the next day, and he was not only on his face, but his hands and. I don't know what else had broken off in his fall. And I think they are beginning to realize that maybe.

The God of Israel had not been conquered by. The God of the Philistines, after all, that the God of Israel was, in fact, the true God. And they realized that having the ark captured in their presence was not a blessing, it was a curse. They thought they would pass him off to another Philistine city.

So off. Off the ark went to Gath. There were five chief philosophy cities and Ekron was one and Gath was one. And so they sent it off to Gath and In Gath, the people started having terrible health problems. They started developing sizable tumors.

And they were having a plague of mice, or probably rats, that were overrunning their town. And they too got the message. This is because we have the ark of God, the Ark of Israel, with us. And that's not a good thing. That's not a blessing.

It's not a sign of victory. It's a sign of difficulty and judgment of God upon us.

So they tried to pass it off to yet a third Philistine city, and the leaders of that city, as it were, stood at the at the threshold of their town and said, You ain't coming here.

So they said, what are we going to do? And they said, well, let's send it back to Israel. All right, how do we do that?

Well, let's put it on a new cart.

Well, if we send it back to Israel, how will we know that this really was God doing these things, or maybe just one of those strange coincidences that happen from time to time? And somebody said, well, take a couple of milk cows who have just delivered calves. And Hook the arc the ox cart to them. And if they abandon their calves and go straight to the land of Israel, we'll know that it was indeed the Lord, and that's what happened. Contrary to human nature, contrary or to animal nature, contrary to anything they had ever observed before.

Those milk cows Forgot all about their new calves and they made a beeline back to the land of Israel. And the ark was placed in the house of Abinadab. And his son Eleazar was commissioned to watch over that ark, and for 20 years there it was. Nobody in Israel really seemed to know what to do with it. And the Bible tells us in the passage we read earlier that Israel was lamenting.

the Lord and I think that indication is that they were Lamenting the presence of the Lord in this strange place where. Where he was in the house of an individual whose own house was being greatly blessed now by the presence of the ark. But uh The ark was really not available to all the people of Israel as it should have been. And so they recognized that something was wrong. And so Samuel said, Well, let's gather together.

At Mizpah, that's near where the ark was resting. And let's confess our sins to the Lord. There's no sense in. praying for God to to bless us and help us as long as we are practicing idolatry and other Disobedience to the commandments of God.

So come together. Get rid of all of your idols. Get rid of the images that represent Baal. Baal was the chief god of the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the other Canaanites. Get rid of Other gods that you have, Ashtaroth.

Dagon, by the way, was the chief god of the Mesopotamians, the Babylonians. And uh Baal was said to be the son of Dagon. And Baal and Dagon together were considered to be the gods of fertility. And the gods who brought rain at the proper time in their due season so that they would have. have crops.

And Samuel said, Get rid of all of these idols, whatever you may have, and confess your sins before the Lord. And let's pray to the Lord for God's help at this time. And so that's what they did. And as they gathered together in this way, coming actually to. To get right with God, knowing that they were living disobediently to Him.

The Philistines took note of the gathering and said they're gathering together to To rise up in revolution against us.

So they gathered their armies to come up against the Israelites. in this place and now they're really Really worried, the Israelites are, and they're crying out to Samuel for help. And what shall we do? And Samuel says, Well, we'll do what we should always do in a case like this. We'll pray to God.

And so they Made a sacrifice and Samuel prayed to God on their behalf. And As the Philistines came, God sent a tremendous storm, thunder like they'd never heard before, and torrential rain like they'd never seen before. And it confounded the Philistines so much. That they began to run, and the Israelites were able to chase them and to defeat them. You'll see a lot of these little ironies throughout the Bible if you look for them carefully.

Um What were the gods of Baal and Day gone. Gods of The rain. And weather? What happened to the Philistines when they came Against Israel and against Israel's God, God confounded them with rain. and tore them up with their rain, showing once again that they're God's or have no power whatsoever.

And so Israel won the victory. and began to in a series of battles that came along the way after that, but that was the first decisive battle that loosened the grip of the Philistines over the nation of Israel and eventually broke that yoke altogether. And when this victory had been secured, Samuel didn't want the people to forget where the victory came from. It certainly didn't come from their military might. They were quaking in their boots and afraid to face the Philistines.

But God doesn't need our military might. God is God, and God is omnipotent, and God can do whatever He chooses. And God won the victory in a way that had nothing to do with their strength, and their weapons, and their army, and their. their chariots. And so Samuel said, We don't want to forget what happened here this day.

And so he took a stone. And he set it up there. A stone of remembrance. And he said, This stone will be called Ebenezer. The Lord The Lord has helped us.

The Lord heard our prayer. The Lord delivered us. The Lord is the one we give credit to for this great victory. Stone of help. Thus far, Has the Lord helped us?

said Samuel. And we are going to trust him to help him on into the future. That's our text that we have taken for today, and I have exposited it rather quickly because the rest of my message today is going to be Applications, extended applications drawn from this account. in the nation of Israel. The Lord helped Israel in Samuel's day, and the Lord has helped Beacon Baptist Church.

In our day, in the last 53 years, and we need to remember. We need to, as it were, set up our stone of remembrance. and recall what God has done in helping us over these years. And two areas in particular: God helped us in our formation, and God has helped us in our development, and I'll say more about each of those. But God helped us in the formation of his church from the very beginning.

There were some principles that we held dear to even from the earliest day, The first time we met together as a church in 1973. We had a commitment to Expository preaching. And to making disciples. and to evangelism and missions. Those were three principles that we held dearly too in those days.

We believed in an expository pulpit from the very beginning. We have a a phrase that we place on some of our Items around here that say Beacon Baptist Church, where the sufficiency of the word is declared. That's just to call attention to our dependence upon the Word of God alone. Where the sufficiency of the word is declared, because before it is declared, we have to understand where the sufficiency of the word is believed. And that's more rare than we would imagine in our day, even among churches that.

Our Largely, you might say, in many respects, Bible-believing churches, but Is that a church where pastor and congregation are Fully committed To the sufficiency of the Bible, or is it the sufficiency? Is it the Bible plus? Our Are additions to what the Bible says in order to get the job done, in order to produce what we. hope to see produced.

Well, from the beginning, we committed ourselves to an expository pulpit. the people that we started with The 19 adults that were involved in the starting of the church and the pastor that they called. In 1973, who amazingly, miraculously, really is still. Still alive and well today, though hobbling on a on a sore hip. But uh still here, after fifty three years, But The Lord had prepared the people, and the Lord had prepared the pastor to have a hunger for the word and a desire for.

an expository pulpit. And what do we mean by that? Expository preaching is preaching that is drawn from. the text of scripture. topical preaching, which takes a topic And then dips into scripture here and there, maybe picking a proof text here and a proof text there to support a topic which has been basically constructed by The preacher And then the the word of God is appealed to to to uh prove and and to carry the weight of that of that topic.

Now topical preaching is not necessarily wrong. It can be done well. And I have heard it done well many times. Yeah. All of the points are truly biblical, and if all of the supporting texts are truly the best.

purely biblical. If all of the supporting texts are Are, as it were, quickly exposited in order to support what is intended by that. that uh sermon Then, topical preaching is certainly legitimate, and I do not in any wise mean to. to suggest that it's not. But it is more subject to fancy.

It allows that more. It can be very biblical, but it also can become very fanciful where. A text may be read and then departed from and never returned to by the time the message is over. And you've heard a lot of preaching like that, I'm sure, in your lifetime, and I certainly have in mine. But the Lord gave me A pastor when I was a young teenager who was an expositor.

And I thrived under that and I loved that. And then when I was in seminary, the Lord gave me a professor. who was an expert in teaching how to do expository or expositional sermons.

So I had a preacher who preached them, and the power of the word had gripped my soul on so many occasions, and I said, I want to preach like that. And then I had a professor. who taught how to do it.

So I needed both those things. A desire to do it. and instructions for how to do it. Dear old Dr. Stuart Custer, I'm sure you'll remember him.

Um I took two classes from him. One was Old Testament exposition, and the other was New Testament exposition. That's That was one semester and then the other semester. What we did all semester long, he said, Okay, this week, here's your text, and he would give us all. The same text.

And we would go to work on that text and bring him a paper with our sermon based upon that text, which he would grade. Unmercifully, Okay. And point out where our weaknesses were, and you didn't get that from the text. You imported that from the outside. That's not in the text, that's not what it says.

and he showed us how to construct sermons From the Bible, from the Old Testament, the New Testament, he gave us a variety of different styles of texts, different kinds of texts. And by the time that year was up, I was beginning to have some idea, I think, of how to construct expository sermons.

So I went out into Into ministry, I didn't know where I was going to go, where I was going to. employ these things that I had learned, but I went out with a commitment to preach in that way. to preach Expositionally from scripture and That was from the very beginning, and the people had a desire for that. And so that's what we did. We also were from the beginning a disciple-making church.

I think nearly every Bible-believing church strives to be a disciple-making church and That's not really all that difficult if you follow the biblical instructions. It's part of the Great Commission. Go into all the world and what? Make disciples of all nations. Not just make decisions of all nations, but make disciples of all nations.

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. How do you make disciples of people when they have come to faith in Christ, when they have experienced a new birth, how do they then become disciples?

Well, you teach them, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And you involve them in the work of the Lord. in a sense is what the local church is all about. To teach God's people and to engage God's people. And as God's people are taught God's word, and as God's people get active, and In various areas of the ministry, the churches have a lot of opportunities for ministry.

and areas that are suitable for Everyone, according to the gifts that God has given to him. And as people get busy and employ their gifts in active service for the Lord. They are developing. They are becoming disciples. They are and you have made disciples.

For all of these years, our church has had. an incredibly high percentage of its members. actively involved in the work of the ministry. The get danger, the biggest danger, and there are some that that are more pew-sitters than than involved, but not that many. The bigger danger, I think, in this church is getting involved in too many things.

You have to be careful because people are so eager to serve. And that's the way it's been. We don't generally have difficulty getting people to volunteer. We don't have to beg people, we desperately need people to help here, and we desperately need people to help there. No, we find we have eager people who want to get involved in the work of the Lord.

Some are just waiting for open doors. Where can I serve? What can I do?

Well, I think we can find a place for you. Bang, right there, you go. And that's the way we make disciples. That's the way God makes disciples. Teaching and active work of the local church.

And then evangelism and missions. Again, from the very beginning. On the first day we met, As a church congregation, before we'd actually organized formally into a church. On the first day we met, on the last Sunday of April in 1973, The first The first uh Proposition before we even brought a message from God's Word that morning was. I said, folks, how about if we agree to today.

that we are going to give 10% of whatever money is is given to this church to missions.

Now, we didn't have a thing. And you talk about a slender supply of money in that day. We're meeting at a public school building. We have no property, we have no building, we have no equipment. We are Broke.

Trying to start a church on On a shoestring. But we're going to give 10% of whatever the Lord gives us to missions. And everybody agreed on that. Yes, we'll do that. And we picked out very soon after that, I think, four or five missionaries, that we would start.

dividing that 10% and giving um A fifth of the 10% to each of them each month, and that's how we got started in the missions program. And then later on, as you know, we introduced the faith promise program of missions. encouraging people to give above their tithe and support to the church. to the cause of emissions and adding that to the 10%. And so for I've lost track of how long for decades now, two, three.

decades or more. By God's enabling help. This church has given A third Of its Finances to missions.

Well, if you can see it every year in the annual report. You check the annual report, and we have dispersed X number of dollars in this past year. And this percentage of them, 33, 34%, has gone. to missions. And we've never wavered in that.

That has been a principle from the founding days. God helped us in our formative years. We got started off on the right foot in those areas, thanks to God. But God has also helped us in our development along the way. We are not today what we started out to be exactly.

In some ways we are, but in other ways we're very different. And what are you talking about there?

Well, I'll address first of all historical development and then doctrinal development. But historically, when we began, if if you Wanted to put a label on this church as to what kind of church is it, the label would have been. Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. The people we started with We're very it very desirous of leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. Because of the inroads of apostasy which were looming large in those days.

There has been a change, a good change in a more positive direction. in days since then in what has been called the resurgence I don't think it has addressed all of the weaknesses and problems, but it certainly has made a change. But in those days, Every one of the Southern Baptist seminaries were dominated by liberal professors who didn't believe. The Bible was God's Word. And The publishing houses, likewise in the same category.

And There was so much apostasy in the places of of leadership that Many pastors and people began to to decide. Determined that there was not going to be any turning back, that this was just. Heading toward an eventual complete decline, like so many. of the mainline denominations have done over the years, starting out as being Bible-believing bodies. and then little by little by little becoming apostate.

And it looked like that's what was happening among the Southern Baptists.

So this group of people. Wanted to start a church that was not part of the Southern Baptist Convention, hence independent. Mm-hmm. Um And that's That's who I was too. That's the background I came from.

That was my commitment as well. We were, that's what brought us together. That's very much one of the main things that brought us together.

So We became an independent fundamental Baptist church. And in those days, in 1973, basically, what that meant was. We are committed. to Baptist distinctives. We are committed to the fundamentals of the faith.

I should have put that first. And we are committed not only to the fundamentals of the faith but to Baptist distinctives, and we are committed to. to not being a part. Of a larger denomination. We will be an independent.

Fundamental Baptist Church.

Now unfortunately Over the years The IFB label has developed into some other things that we Would not want to be I would not want to identify within this day. And one of the most prominent, at least In this area, Yes. A cultish Occultish um defense of the King James Bible as the only A legitimate Addition: The only legitimate translation of God's Word. I certainly don't have time to get into all of that now. But just to say These are Sincere brethren, They are They are our brethren.

for they they love the Lord and They are our brethren, but they are wrong. and dangerously wrong. And divisively wrong. And unfortunately wrong. And we certainly don't want to be identified with that today.

But fortunately, the Lord took us in another direction before that even became an issue. And what was that?

Well, it was The Doctrines of Grace. And I don't want to go through the whole history of that, but I certainly was not. A Calvinist and believing the doctrines of grace is another term for Calvinism. And I certainly wasn't a Calvinist when we started this church. In fact, if anything, I would have.

probably leaned more in the direction of anti Calvinism. And the people we started with were not Committed to the doctrines of grace, although it turned out as we moved in that direction that.

Some of them actually did believe the doctrines of grace. I didn't know that. And they hadn't said anything about it. But at any rate, that did turn out to be the case, happily. But I could just simply say, without again going into a long extended discussion of this, that.

God worked God wore me down on that issue. God worked in my life. until I finally surrendered. I felt a little bit like Jacob wrestling with God during the night, and God finally touching his thigh and and overcoming him and Jacob surrendered. And that's kind of the way I felt in regard to the doctrines of grace.

I don't like this, I don't want to believe this, I'm. I don't want to be identified with this, but this is what the Bible teaches. No, it can't, but it is what the Bible teaches. Look again. No, it couldn't be.

This is what the Bible teaches. Pay attention. All right, Lord. And now, of course. I'm Not only Submitted to the doctrines of grace.

I am. enthusiastic about the doctrines of grace and Would not want to not be identified as a Calvinist, would not want to not. be known as one who embraces the doctrines of grace. But that didn't come quickly, easily. or suddenly.

That took quite a while for me. And then it took an even longer time to bring the church along. It wasn't an easy journey, but it was a blessed journey. And I can tell you that today we have a congregation that is 100%. in agreement about the doctrines of grace.

And we Consider that one of the most important things about us. And what that has done is given us a label. that would be that would more accurately reflect who we are now. not independent fundamental Baptist, but Reformed Baptist. And again, there are different shades of that, and different people may.

mean different things by the use of that term. But just in general terms, that's who we are. We believe in The reformed Doctrine of Salvation: Reformed Soteriology. We do believe that that is what the Bible teaches. And we delight in it, we glory in it, we sing about it, we We preach about it, we tell others about it, we believe that.

And so that moved us in a little bit different orbit.

Well the um What should I say? The um The cultish tendencies were going on among our former orbit, and so that helped to separate us from that, and we are.

now a Reformed Baptist congregation. Rather than an independent fundamental Baptist congregation, although we still believe the fundamentals and we are still Baptist to the core. We'll defend that to the last day. And we are still independent. But We are reformed.

That's where we began, and that's where we have come. And by God's grace, I trust that's where we are going. I don't envision Any development away from that in the days to come. Just continue to strengthen that understanding of Scripture. and teach it to others.

It was a great um surprise to me when along the way and all of that early investigation. I came to realize that actually Historically, in America, the majority of early Baptists were Calvinists. No There were two strands. There were the Armenian strand and the Calvinist strand, but the majority were Calvinists. And really what's happened is it's not But That um Arminian-leaning Baptist churches have been invaded by Calvinism, as some people think is what has happened today.

It's really the other way around. Calvinist Baptist churches drifted from their historical doctrinal roots, and now they are coming back in larger and larger numbers. And All you have to do is be an honest student of history and you'll find out that is so. And one book that would be of immense help to you in that area. is one by Dr.

Tom Nettles entitled By his grace and for his glory, which is the history of Calvinism in the life of the Southern Baptist denomination. I think that's actually been reprinted with a different title now. but I first was introduced to that book under that title. And I've loaned it to many other people over the years, and it's an excellent treatment. And once you understand, Once you understand that basically, all of the men who came together before the Civil War to organize what is What became the Southern Baptist Convention, they were all Calvinists, all of them to the core, every one.

And all of the men who established The first seminary, Southern Seminary. Which first First met first uh was located in Greenville. Greenville, South Carolina. Then later moved to Louisville, Kentucky. But the men who established that seminary were all Calvinists.

And This is historical fact and and it's it's the truth. I'm sure Matt Noonan knows all this history and would affirm what I am saying at this time. Um So we're not abandoning. I remember in the early years when I was wrestling with this. And I can see I'm not gonna.

Probably have time to finish everything I'd like to say today, but Then what's new? But anyway. I remember some of my Baptist pastor friends coming to me and saying something like this.

Well, if you believe that, you're not a Baptist. You ought to just call yourself a Presbyterian. But I'm not a Presbyterian. I'm a Baptist. And I I've studied this thing back and forth, and up and down, and around and around for years.

Honest before God. Just as much as I came to the place where I was willing to become a Calvinist when I was convinced that was biblical. I am, I was, and I am willing before the Lord to become a Presbyterian if you can convince me that that's biblical. But after all these decades, I remain unconvinced. And I I'm not expecting to go in that direction at this point in my life.

But that sentiment that Baptists don't believe this is wrong. Baptists have believed this. Baptists used to believe this in majority numbers. And Baptists will be far better off if they'll get back to it. This is one of the problems with the weakness among Baptists today.

is they have left their their original Historical doctrinal foundation, and they've gone in this weaker, man-centered direction. And I began to see my role, among other things, in addition to pastoring and leading this flock, is to try to help others to find their way back. Come on, come on back to where you belong, come on back to this doctrinal position. It'll be good for you, it'll be good for your church, it'll be good for your denomination, it'll be good for everybody.

Well, because I'm not going to have time to deal with everything, I will just I had three. doctrines from our historical development from the beginning. And then three from our journey of development along the way. The doctrines of grace, I've just dealt with that. Meaningful church membership, which I'm not going to have time to deal with today.

And then exemplary finances. And We have tried. From the very beginning, to be exemplary in our church finances, To have the utmost integrity, the utmost transparency, the utmost generosity, as I've already explained, and how much we give. to missions. We have tried to learn to be anticipatory, and I mean by that is it's better to.

Uh collect and save money. Ahead of time than to have a need arise and you have to scramble to. find the money, borrow it or whatever. And in all of this, we have attempted to be exemplary in this regard. If people will pay attention to how we handle our finances as a church, And then your personal finances will go and do likewise.

It'll be good for you. You'll learn. You'll you'll prosper much more by learning how to handle your finances in a similar way. Yoo-hoo. Wake up.

Smell the coffee. and be helped in these areas.

Well, one other area that I would talk about if I had time. Is that we have come to to understand the importance of reverent worship. In our day and time, people are going in all different directions on this question of worship. We've had the worship wars. And some people have gone more i in a in a contemporary direction.

And others, like us, have, if anything, gone further back in a more historical direction.

So we sing the old hymns, but when we mean old hymns, We're not thinking primarily of Fannie Crosby hymns, though we've nothing wrong with those. We sing those occasionally. We sang one last Sunday, praise Him, praise Him, Jesus, my blessed Redeemer. But we like to go back farther than that. Isaac Watts.

John Newton. Charles Wesley.

some of these hymns that are so doctrinally rich. And so um reverent in their exaltation of God. and in leading people to worship him. And so we have chosen to go in that direction. That doesn't make us the most popular church in our area.

If your main goal is numbers and how to be a big church, then what you need. Our drums and guitars In a praise band. That draws people. But our main concern, our first concern, is what pleases the Lord, and then, secondly, what bests. grows people and develops people into the strongest worshiping doctrinally sound believers and we endeavor to do that.

And with that. I close. Because time is gone. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your goodness.

Oh, dear Lord, over these years, you have certainly helped us. Hitherto Have you, our God, helped us? And O Lord, we pray that you will continue to do so in the days to come. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Yeah, yeah.