The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Have you ever messed up or done something you thought was unforgivable? Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we're studying Psalm 51 where David has done some pretty terrible things. He sinned against God and man, and he knows that he doesn't deserve forgiveness.

What can David's story teach us about the mercy, love, and compassion of God?

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Although David is facing the darkest moments of his life due to nothing but the consequences of his own sin, Psalm 51 opens with him crying out to God for mercy and forgiveness. How is David able to come before God? And why should God extend mercy to David? If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 51, verses 1 through 9.

Dr. James Boice: If you've had any experience at all trying to teach the Bible, you know that the best known passages are difficult to teach. Somebody who doesn't have that experience would say, it must be easy to prepare a message on John 3:16. After all, everybody knows that, or the 23rd Psalm, or maybe the Christmas story. That should be easy. Actually, the opposite is the case. The reason, of course, is that those well-known passages are well-known for a reason. They're profound, on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, everybody has talked about them so often that almost everything significant has been said. You've got to be almost a genius to make any original contribution.

Now, that's a sort of situation we come to when we come to Psalm 51. Derek Kidner says this is the fourth and surely the greatest of the penitential Psalms. That's true, but how are you going to expound a Psalm that is as great as this one? Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great prince of expositors, probably the most able expositor of his time and one of the greatest expositors of all time. He could get more out of a single verse of scripture and do it accurately and helpfully than anybody I've ever read or heard. And yet when Spurgeon came to this Psalm, he confessed that he was baffled by it.

We have his studies of the Psalms in three volumes today. Originally they were in six volumes. So, in the first great big volume, in the second half of that, in the preface, which comes therefore in the middle of the book, he talks about the experience he had when he came to this Psalm and kind of interesting the way he writes about it. He confesses that as he was working his way through the Psalms, he came to this Psalm, sat down at his desk, and he did that for weeks and got up again without ever having written a line.

Here's what he said. Spurgeon is eloquent even when he is not eloquent. And here's what he said, "It is a burning bush, burning with fire, yet not consumed. And out of it a voice seemed to cry out to me, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet." The Psalm, he said, "is very human. Its cries and sobs are of one born of woman, but it is freighted with an inspiration all divine, as if the great father were putting words into his child's mouth. Such a Psalm may be wept over, absorbed into the soul and exhaled again in devotion, but commented on? Oh, where is he who having attempted it can do anything other than blush at his defeat."

I'm going to take two weeks to talk about it. There are few things we can say about the Psalm as we begin, a few simple things. First of all, it's the first of a new series of Psalms that are by David. In the first book of the Psalter, we had a lot of Psalms by David, and thus far in the second book of the Psalms, we haven't had any Psalms by David. But this is the first of a new series. And from this point on, all of the Psalms in the second book of the Psalter into the 70s are by David except for four. Three of them aren't named, and therefore they could be by David, although there's no name given to them. And one's by Solomon.

So, this is a significant Psalm that stands at the beginning of another significant section of the Psalter. Then secondly, this has been a favorite Psalm of many well-known historical personages, especially when they were dying or facing death. In the days of Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More was executed on the scaffold. And as that well-known heroic figure of English history was led to the scaffold, that is what he recited just before the axe fell, and he was killed. He knew it totally. Lady Jane Grey, the young queen for nine days, who was executed at the age of 22, also recited that from the scaffold as she died. When Henry V was dying, he had it read to him when he lay on his deathbed.

And William Carey, the great missionary to India, when he thought he was dying, asked that this be the text of his funeral sermon. Actually, Carey survived. He lived 15 more years. But I presume that people remembered what he asked for and preached on the sermon then. Very significant Psalm, you see, when you're facing the prospect of death.

Another thing we can say is that the outline of it is very simple. There are six very easily recognizable sections. First of all, there is the opening which is the Psalmist's approach to God. It's a cry to God for help, verses one and two. Secondly, there is a confession of sin, verses three to six. Third, a cry for cleansing from the sin, from which I have gotten the title of this message, verses 7 through 9. The fourth part is a prayer for renewal within. We find that in verses 10 through 12. Verses 13 through 17 have to do with the Psalmist's testimony, having been forgiven his sin and cleansed within. He now wants to tell sinners where he found grace. And that's a long section. And finally at the very end, verses 18 and 19, there is a prayer for the blessing of God upon Jerusalem, a natural thing for King David to say.

Now, the background, as you well know, is David's great sin, his sin with Bathsheba. He committed adultery with her and then his attempts to cover that up by having her Hittite husband Uriah killed. He had Uriah sent into the forefront of the battle and then Joab, the commander of the troops, was given instructions to pull back so that when the enemy shot and fell upon the troops in the forefront of the battle, those who were there would be killed. And Uriah was killed.

Now that was the great sin. It was the blackest moment in David's life. And yet it was out of that great black moment that David found the grace of God. That, of course, is what has made this Psalm so appealing to so many people. Anybody who has any knowledge of their own heart at all knows that we have gone through times individually just like that. It may not be David's sin. We all have our own sins, but we have gone through them and to find cleansing and forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ is the discovery above all discoveries in all of our long lives. Nothing we will ever find or learn or know or experience in all our lives corresponds to this great discovery of forgiveness through Christ for our sins.

And David found that and he expressed that in wonderful language. One of the commentators calls attention to the fact that there were two sins in the Mosaic law for which there was no forgiveness. One was adultery and the other was murder. That makes it a serious matter, you see. David found that there was one way back to God. He knew what it was, and it was through the blood, and he came and he found it, and this makes this Psalm such a blessing to many people.

Now, as I say, it falls into two parts. The first three parts of that six-part outline I gave lead up to the experience of cleansing from the sin that is forgiveness. And then the second part, beginning with verse 10, has to do with the creation of a new spirit within. So David is looking for pardon in the first place and purity in the second. And he talks about the first in the first half of the Psalm and the second in the second. Now we begin with his cry for help.

He begins by approaching God. That's what we have to do and yet it's no simple approach, it's a profound one. And the more we study it, the more profound it seems. It's profound in the first place because he begins by clinging almost desperately, as it were, to the mercy of God. I say that's profound because that's the only way any of us have any hope of coming to him as sinners. And sinners we are.

All kinds of attributes of God that we can talk about. We can talk about the justice of God, but we don't dare come to God on the basis of his justice. It's his justice that will condemn us. There's no comfort there. When God comes to judge, our natural instinct is to flee from him. Like Adam and Eve did when God came to them in the garden. We don't come to God hopefully on the basis of his wisdom. He's an all-wise God. We stand in awe of his wisdom, or his power. We look at the creation and we say, what an all-wise, powerful God it must be to create an infinite and beautiful world like this, but that doesn't encourage us to come to him when we're sinners.

No more does his omniscience, or his omnipresence, or his power, certainly not his wrath. You see, the only thing that encourages us to come and the only basis upon which we can come hopefully is our belief, our conviction that God is merciful. And out of his great mercy and compassion to sinners, he has provided a way to save them for their sins.

Now we say, where do we learn that about God? You don't learn it in creation. You learn that God is all-wise in creation, perhaps, and certainly all-powerful and that he exists. And those things you don't find, however, that God is a loving, all-merciful God in creation. The only place you find that is in the scripture because that is the point at which God reveals this characteristic to us who need it so badly.

In the book of Exodus, there is a story which I am certain was known to David and which he was probably thinking about as he composed this Psalm. The people had just sinned in that great sin of making the golden calf after they had come out of Egypt, and they had all bowed down to that, breaking all of the laws that God was giving at that very moment on Mount Sinai. And there had been a judgment and a restoration. And after that has passed in the next chapter, the 33rd chapter of Exodus, Moses has a request of God. He realizes how fallible he is and how sinful he and the people are. And he's afraid if they go on like this, how are they ever going to serve the holy God? And so he prays to God, show me your glory. He wants to know God in a personal and deep way.

And God replies to Moses, he can't show him his face. He said, "No one can see my face and live." But I'll do this. I'll put you in a cleft of the rock. I'll cover you with my hand, and then I'll pass by. And so that's what God does. He passes by, and as he passes by, he says this, "I'm going to cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and as I do, I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence." And here it is. This is what God proclaimed as he passed by Moses, hidden in the cleft of the rock. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."

That's a great revelation, you see, because according to that revelation, what God is saying is my very essence, the heart of my being, is mercy. The sinner who understands that, as David certainly did because he certainly meditated on that story, it would have been known to him. The sinner who understands that comes to God on that basis, appealing to him on the basis of his mercy.

David begins this way, and he emphasizes it because he uses three different words for God's mercy or love in these verses. He talks about mercy in verse 1. "Have mercy on me, oh God." He talks about unfailing love in the second half of that verse, "according to your unfailing love." And then in the very next line, he talks about compassion. Mercy denotes God's loving assistance to the pitiful. Unfailing love points to the continuing operation of his mercy. Compassion teaches that God feels for our infirmities. That's the basis upon which you'll come.

Now the second striking thing about this opening is that over against that awareness of the mercy of God and his true nature, David puts his sin. We're going to see as we study this that this Psalm has a three-fold or triple repetition of things in parallel construction. Three words for mercy, three words for sin, three great statements in the next section, three things that he wants God to do with him in order to cleanse him from his sin. We've already had the three words for mercy, mercy, unfailing love, and compassion. Now he begins to talk about his sin and he talks about it using three terms.

The first is the word transgressions. We have there in our translation, it's the Hebrew word pasha, and it refers to crossing a forbidden boundary with the implication that if you cross a forbidden boundary, you're at war or in rebellion against the one whose boundary it is. It's going into forbidden territory. You know, I'm sure from the annals of Julius Caesar how the time came in his military career when he stood on the banks of the Rubicon, the northern portion of Italy, and he had been forbidden to cross the Rubicon and enter into the territory to the south that was ruled by the Roman Senate. As long as he was on the north side of that boundary, he was all right. He was the commander of the northern forces. He could come and go as he pleased. But once he crossed the Rubicon, he was at war with that legislative body. And you know the story, Caesar decided to cross. As he did, he cried out, "Alea iacta est!" "The die is cast!" And civil war was the result.

Now, that is the nature of our sin, to use that illustration. We have crossed the boundary of God's moral law. And that puts us at war with a holy and just God. And David understood that. He understood that he was a rebel. And so he needed mercy from a sovereign whom if he did not show mercy, would certainly crush him for his sins.

The second word he uses is iniquity. The Hebrew word for that is avon, and it means perversion. It refers to what we mean when we talk about original sin, the depravity of our nature. It's significant that a little bit later on in verse 5, this is the word for sin that he uses in the phrase, "a sinner from birth." What he's talking about is this deficiency or depravity of our nature that makes us sin. We aren't sinners because we sin, we sin because we're sinners. And that's what David is confessing.

And then there's the third word for sin. It's the Hebrew word hata, and it means falling short or missing the mark. God's righteousness is the mark that we're obliged to aim at because we're his creatures. We have to operate according to his laws in his universe. But we fall short of that. It's like shooting an arrow. It's a very word that was used for that. It's the same in the Hebrew language and also in the Greek language. That word was used for shooting at a target but falling short of it, not quite making it. Or to use a very contemporary illustration, it's like trying to kick a 56-yard field goal into the wind and missing it. That is falling short of the mark. Now we do that with God's moral law as well.

These three words, incidentally, occur again later on in the Psalm. We find them in verses 3, 4, 5, 9, and 13. And all of them refer to a personal failure on David's part. Lest we miss that, you see, at the very beginning, he talks not about transgressions in general as if to say, "Oh, Lord, we are all sinners." No. He says, "My transgressions, my iniquity, and my sin."

Now, let me say, we could spend a lot of time just talking about those two verses. That's why this Psalm is so profound. You see, those two things always go together: an awareness of God and his true nature and an awareness of ourselves and our sin. I pointed out that when the tax collector prayed his prayer and found forgiveness and justification according to the teaching of Jesus Christ in the story, it was with that kind of an awareness. He said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." Because he was aware of God, who God really was, that he knew he was a sinner. And because he knew he was a sinner, he knew he needed the mercy of Almighty God.

And that's exactly what we find here in the 51st Psalm. Is there hope for David? Yes, there's hope for David, but not because of anything in David. It's because of the nature of God himself. Now, that's the first part. I might point out, by the way, that in Psalm 32, which is the first of the penitential Psalms in the Psalter, you find those same three words for sin. There's a very close connection between those two Psalms. The 32nd Psalm seems to have been written later than this one. This one seems to have the tone of being written shortly after the transgression of the forgiveness that he found, and the 32nd Psalm is described as a maskil, and that word probably means, we're not certain about some of those Hebrew words, but it probably means instruction. And if that's the case, what David is doing there is fulfilling what he says he's going to do in verse 13 of this Psalm. He says, "After I found cleansing and a new heart, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will turn back to you." So he seems to have written Psalm 32 as a fulfillment of the vow he makes here, and that ties the two Psalms together. They can be studied together profitably.

He approaches God. The second thing he does is confess his sin. I said you have a repetition of threes in the Psalm. You've had three words for God's mercy, three words for David's sin. Now you have three strong statements about his sin. The first is this. Verse 3 can be paraphrased by saying, "I am aware of my sin. I know I'm a sinner." Somebody will say, "Isn't that self-evident? What's profound about that?" This is a Psalm of confession. If you don't know you're a sinner, you don't confess. If you're confessing, you know you're a sinner. Yes, of course, that's perfectly obvious, but our problem is exactly at that point. We really don't believe that we are sinners.

Remember Becky Pipher saying once when she was teaching here that that's our problem in dealing with other people. We approach other people as if we're righteous people. And we're afraid to make a mistake, or afraid to be known as a sinner. And so we appear as hypocrites to other people. Actually, we should simply appear before them as sinners who are saved by grace and can confess to it and do it honestly and openly. That's what David does. He speaks about it openly here. He was very much aware of his sin too because if you go to the 32nd Psalm, which I mentioned a moment ago, you'll find him speaking there of his state of mind when he was aware of his sin before he found the assurance of his forgiveness. And he said he was wasting away and groaning all the day long. And he confessed that his sin had sapped his strength as in the heat of summer. That's David's experience.

The second statement he makes in these verses is this. He says, again, if I can paraphrase, that he knows that his sin is sin. In my judgment, that is the meaning of this much discussed phrase, "Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil that's in your sight." Some people have commented upon that and have said, "How could David say such a thing, against you only have I sinned, when as a matter of fact, he had sinned against Bathsheba and certainly against her husband Uriah and even against the nation that suffered eventually as a result because of David's sin?" Some scholars say because of that verse that David couldn't have written the Psalm because it doesn't apply to that situation. They have other arguments as well, all of them fallacious in my judgment.

I think there's a very good answer to that, and as a matter of fact, you can answer it on several levels. First of all, sin by its very definition is sin against God. That's what sin is. If I do something wrong to another human being, that's an offense against humanity. If in so doing I also break the law of the state in which I live, it becomes a crime. But it's not a sin until it breaks the moral law of God. You can have actions which are crimes against the state but are not sin, and you can have actions that are sin that are not crimes against the state. But when you break the moral law of God, that is sin. That is what David is saying.

If you had said to David, "David, have you wronged Bathsheba?" he would have said, "Indeed, I did." And, "Have you committed a crime in the murder of Uriah?" "Indeed, I have done that." But you see what he had done most of all is sin against the moral law of God.

One of the commentators, Pirone, says there's also another sense in which this is sin, and it's this. All wrong done to our neighbor is wrong done to one created in the image of God. What that means is unless you bring God into the picture, it's really not a wrong, even on the human level. You see, unless God has made my neighbor and made him or her in his image, so that I deserve to respect that person because of what God has done, then, in the ultimate analysis, that neighbor deserves no more from me than an animal or an object, which I'm perfectly free to use for my pleasure or my convenience if I'm strong enough to do it.

And that, of course, is why people behave in such a bestial manner when they forget God. You push God out of the picture, and then you end up using people. You don't treat them as made in the image of God. But you see, God has made people and therefore a sin against people is a sin against God. David was aware of all of this, and here he is confessing it openly. He did it at the time of the sin, of course, because when Nathan the prophet came to him to expose his sin, although he may have been trying to cover it over earlier, he didn't do it when the thing was made known. What he said on that occasion was, "I have sinned against the Lord." And it's exactly what he says here.

Then there's the third thing. He also confesses that sin springs from his evil nature. I said earlier, this is what we mean when we're talking about the doctrine of original sin. When David says, "I have been a sinner from birth and in sin did my mother conceive me," you understand, of course, that he's not casting any blame for his sin upon his mother. Nothing in the Psalm would lead you to think that. It's quite the opposite. What he's saying here is there was never a moment in my existence that I wasn't a sinner.

And so I can't go around saying, as some people do, "I would have been all right if it wasn't just for that bad influence that came into my life," in the case of Bathsheba. "She tempted me to do it," or, "It was a weak moment because I had indigestion and I wasn't feeling up to my normal self," or something of that nature. No, David's not saying anything like that. He's saying the reason I sinned is because I'm a sinner and I've been a sinner all my life. Even before my physical birth, from the very moment of my conception, I'm a sinner. Verse 6, by the way, provides the parallel truth to this when it says, "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the innermost place."

What he's saying there, you see, is that God desires inner purity as well as outright moral conduct. And the reason David didn't have the outright moral conduct is he didn't have the inner purity. And so the Psalm deals with both: forgiveness for the former and the creation of a new heart within for the latter.

Now that brings us to the third part of this six-part outline, and this is the part with which I want to end. Here he is approaching God on the basis of his confession, to ask God to remove the guilt of his sin. And again he does it in three ways. He has three words for it. First of all, he says, "Cleanse me with hyssop," verse 7. Secondly, in the latter half of the same verse, "Wash me." And then finally, in verse 9, "Blot out all my iniquity." These verbs are repeated from verses 1 and 2.

Now, what does cleanse mean? Cleanse means to purge. It's based upon the word for sin, we've already seen it, the word hata, and translated literally, what it really means is de-sin me. David wanted to have the sins stripped away, so much so that he would stand pure in God's sight. He didn't want to have even a stain of his sin remain. The second word is wash, and that's an obvious one. It refers to the lustrations of the law. He wants to be washed as white as snow. He wants all the stain, the scarlet stain of his sin to be gone.

Later, Isaiah was going to write at the very beginning of his prophecy a promise from God, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." That's done for us by the blood of Jesus Christ, and that's a wonderful promise. That's what David wanted. He wanted to be washed as white as snow.

And then the third word is the word blot out, and it refers to removing writing from a book. Perhaps what he has in mind here is an indictment that's been written down in the book of God that David had sinned. He wants God to blot that out. And what he's praying for is the exact opposite of what Pilate said at the time of the crucifixion of Christ. Remember when he put the notice above the cross, the Jews wanted him to take that down and Pilate's reply was, "What I have written, I have written." You see, "I've written nothing's going to change that."

Here's David's sin written down in the book against him, but he wants God to blot it out. Let me give you an illustration of that. There are certain kinds of ancient Bible manuscripts that are called palimpsests. It's a technical term for a manuscript that had one text on it at one time. But then because nobody wanted the text anymore, and because the material in which it was written, usually papyrus or it could have been vellum, is valuable, costly, somebody blotted out the original writing and then if it was papyrus, they turn it sideways and then they write a new text on it. A number of Bible texts like that. And then there are later texts which if you remove the later text, you find an earlier Bible text.

What David is saying is that his sins have been written down in the book of his life, and they stand against him, and one day he will realize they were going to be read out against him at the final judgment. But he says, "What I want you to do is blot it out." And the glory of the gospel is that that is exactly what God does. God blots out those sins so they're remembered in his sight no more, and he turns the manuscript sideways and he writes over it the message of the Gospel of his grace.

You see why I said at the beginning, there's just no message like this in all the world. There is nothing so valuable as this teaching anywhere at all. No discovery that you can ever find that equals a discovery like that. Most of our discoveries last for a few minutes, perhaps for a few years. This is something that determines our destiny for all eternity. And it flows from the mercy of Almighty God.

The most important thing perhaps is this phrase, "Cleanse me with hyssop." And the reason that's important is that it indicates that this forgiveness that David longs for and finds is obtained by the payment of a price. It's the price of the shedding of blood. Hyssop was a little plant that seems to have grown in the crannies of the walls of the ancient Near East. Solomon, who were told in one place, studied all of the botany of his kingdom, did it from the great cedars of Lebanon to the hyssop that springs from the walls, a text from the Old Testament. So that gives us an idea what hyssop was like. It must have been like a brush. A little thing that had a lot of parts to it, and so you could dip it in something and then you could use it like a brush.

Now it was used in ceremonies with the shedding of blood and the sprinkling of blood for purification. The very first time we come across it in the Old Testament is at the Passover. When the Jews were being led out of Egypt. There in the 12th chapter of Exodus, this kind of instruction is given, "Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin, and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the door frame." The hyssop was used to apply the shed blood of the innocent victim that had died. And as a result of that, when the angel of death came through the land that night, the angel of death passed over the households where the innocent victim had already died. And so the firstborn among the Jews were spared. We find it again in the Old Testament when a leper had been cleansed or someone that had a serious skin infection had been cleansed. Then there was a ceremonial cleansing. And the leper would go to the priest and the priest would kill an animal and dip the blood and sprinkle it upon the leper. And we find it again in purification from somebody who had been contaminated by coming in contact with a dead body. It seems always to have been used in that way.

Now, it's picked up in the New Testament. Here's what the author of Hebrews writes. It's a significant passage. "When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves together with water, scarlet wool, and branches of hyssop. And he sprinkled the scroll and all the people, and he said, 'This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you to keep.'" In the same way, he sprinkled with blood both the Tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. And then he says, "In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness."

Now, of course, that's exactly what David understood. You say, did he see clearly the coming of Jesus Christ? He certainly looked forward to one who should come because the promise was made to him that one should come, who was of God, who would sit upon his throne and reign forever and ever. And David understood that that was a divine personage because in his response to the revelation, he said to God, "Is that in the nature of a man that can live upon the earth and reign upon a throne forever and ever?" He recognized that that had to be something supernatural of God.

But did he know when he was coming? No, I guess he didn't know. Did he know his name? No, he didn't know. But he understood the principle. He understood that without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And when David prays to God, confessing his sin as he does so eloquently and freely and honestly in the Psalm, his chief prayer is this one, "Cleanse me with hyssop," and then I will be clean. Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. That's what you and I need to do as well. Forgiveness, do we need it? Of course we do. We're all sinners. Some in greater and more open ways and some in lesser and more hidden ways, but sinners we are. And one sin, or a dozen, a million, however great, however many, however large, however small, whatever it may be. One sin alone is enough to keep us from the presence of Almighty Holy God. Forgiveness is what we need, but we're only going to find that at the place where God himself has provided that, and that is through the death of Jesus Christ and through faith in him.

Apart from the blood of Jesus Christ, there is no mercy, only judgment. But for anyone who will come on the basis of that shed blood, however great the sin may be, there is not only mercy, there is abundant mercy and a perfect and more than adequate atonement and cleansing from all our sin.

Let's pray. Our Father, we confess, as David did, that we are sinners. There's nothing he has said of himself in the Psalm that we can't say of ourselves, and perhaps many times over. We do not stand before you as righteous men and women. We come not on the basis of our righteousness, which we don't have, but clinging to your mercy and looking to the cross of Jesus, our Savior, where alone that mercy may be found. We pray, our Father, sprinkle us with his blood, cleanse us by his sacrifice, remove our sin from us as far as the east is from the west, and wash us in order that in your sight, we might be whiter than snow. And so, our Father, bring us now into your fellowship, and when we die, into your very presence, through him in whose name we pray, and pray thankfully, even the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit alliance.net.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or, ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, alliance.net.org. Over the phone at 1-800-488-1888. Or, send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.