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[ Music ] ♪ No one else can hear ♪ ♪ All our sorrows ♪ ♪ It is as if no one at all ♪

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♪ No one at all ♪ ♪ Jesus was not a cross ♪ ♪ Jesus was not a cross ♪ ♪ He will rise till the day is done ♪

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♪ He will rise till the day is done ♪ ♪ And not a grave ♪ ♪ By the Lord, O holy Jesus ♪ ♪ All, all, all that I am ♪

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♪ All, all, all that I am ♪ ♪ But for you ♪ (gentle piano music) [ Music ]

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♪ There's not an hour ♪ ♪ That heals the tears ♪ ♪ Oh, no, not now ♪ ♪ Oh, no, not now ♪

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♪ Oh, that so far ♪ ♪ God is love ♪ ♪ Can't you know ♪ ♪ Oh, no, not far ♪

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♪ Oh, no, not far ♪ ♪ Jesus knows how the clouds shall rise ♪ ♪ Even not till the day is done ♪ ♪ There's not a grave like the low ♪

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♪ Holy Jesus ♪ ♪ No ♪ ♪ No ground but high ♪ ♪ No ♪

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♪ No ground but high ♪ ♪ No ♪ ♪ No ground but high ♪ (music)

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(music) [music] Hear this word recorded in Psalm 12, Psalm 6 and 7 verses. The words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times.

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Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. I should like to read another translation of this particular passage. The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure. Silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

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Do thou, O Lord, protect us, guard us ever from this generation. The subject of the message, precious promises, precious promises. Our lives are conditioned by promises. We order our lives according to the manner in which promises are made and kept.

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Some became disenchanted in connection with the recent presidential election. promises were made, some became disenchanted with the Democratic nominee because he was accused of having made too many promises to too many people, promises which they thought could not possibly be kept.

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On the other hand, there were those who were disenchanted with the Republican nominee because He was accused of not having kept the promises he made four years ago. Some politicians promise everything the people want in order to get elected and forget about the promises after their election.

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Promises are important. They are the fiber of human relationships. They bind us together. Promises are the essence of the covenant relationship

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that binds God and man together and relates us as members of his family. The meaning of life is in promise and fulfillment. Robert Frost puts it in beautiful and meaningful

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language when he says, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep. The Advent season is a season of hope.

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It's a time when we give attention to hope, particularly our social hopes and their fulfillment. The times are dark, yet there is the shining star of hope

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which penetrates the darkness. That is the faith by which we live. Psalm 12 begins with a cry of despair.

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Cry of despair. Is there any hope? Is there any reason to keep going on? Is life really worth living?

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The godly person seems hard to find. Those whom we regard as faithful often let us down. So the psalmist is down in the dumps. He suffers from depression.

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He says there is so much vanity among people. We really cannot know them by their words. People say what they think we want to hear. They are given to congratulatory comments and many, many words of praise when they really

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don't mean it. I remember some time ago a man came to see me and an outstanding leader in the city had said some things about him

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that were very complimentary and so he repeated them to me and so I sort of doubted that and so I picked up the phone and called the man and he said oh, that's just a crackpot. I did tell him those things but There's nothing to what I really said. He said is he there now?

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He had said one thing, but he really meant another. And so often people do not say what they mean and do not mean what they say. Human speech is filled with vanity, distortion, falsehood. to the psalmist's description of the human situation. They speak vanity. Everyone with

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his neighbor with flattering lips, with a double heart, do they speak flattery. Well, Well, you read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and he encourages saying many, many nice things

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because that's what people want to hear, whether they're true or not. You can win friends that way. That's the general way of life

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that is sort of recommended in order to be popular. One lady said, one young lady said that, you know, Reverend said, I know those words aren't true, those flattering words that the young man says to me,

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but I sure do like to hear them. Speech is the manner by which one makes himself known. Speech is the means of communication between persons. Speech is an essential part of human response

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to divine revelation. We may flatter each other in speech, but it will not work with God. The Lord, says the psalmist,

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will cut off all flattery and the tongue that speaks proud things. God knows he is not fooled by human speech. Many have made promises to God

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in the presence of many witnesses and failed to keep them. Would you just take a hymnal now and turn to the first part of the hymnal. Each one of you please take your hymnal

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and turn to the first part of it and you'll find there the church covenant. The church covenant. right here in the Church Covenant.

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And as we notice the preamble to the covenant here, it says, "Having been led, as we believe, by the Spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we do now in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly most

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solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another as one body in Christ. This has to do, a covenant has to do with promises that we make one to the Let's read together this next paragraph. We engage, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit to walk together in Christian love

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to strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge and holiness, to give it a place in our affections, prayers, and services above every organization of human origin, to sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrine to contribute cheerfully and regularly as God has prospered us toward its expenses for the support of a faithful and evangelical

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ministry among us, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel throughout the world in case of difference of opinion in the church, we will strive to avoid a contentious spirit and if we cannot unanimously agree, we will cheerfully recognize the right of the majority to govern. Now we'll just stop there, you can

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read the other part, but it's good that we remind ourselves of the promise that that we make to God and to one another as members of his family. Now let's consider God's promises.

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His promises are unlike human promises because so many people have made the promise that we've just read there and failed to keep the promise.

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They make it and fail to keep it. But God's promises are free from any ingredient that might be cloud their veracity. What God promises will come in fullness,

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in its entirety, in pureness and in genuineness. In other words, the psalmist says that the promises of the Lord are promises that are pure, "Silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

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purified seven times." One translation of that is that the promises of the Lord are pure like silver refined in a crucible that is on earth.

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Now when silver is taken out of the ground, There are many foreign elements with it. And the silver with all of the foreign elements, that which is not silver, that is with the silver,

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is placed in the furnace and it is heated. That furnace is made very, very hot. And in that refining process, those foreign elements, that draw switch is there,

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those foreign elements are removed and the pure silver comes forth. And the psalmist says that this refining process, as far as God is concerned,

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may occur seven times over in talking about how pure God's Word is, how pure are the promises of God, so that there is nothing whatsoever

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that is impure when it comes to what God says. Everything that he says is absolutely true. You know, much of what we say, part of it may be true, and part of it may not be true.

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We may mix a little truth with a little something else. But with God, every bit of it, everything that he says, it is pure silver without any alloy whatsoever, without any foreign element at all.

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Everything that God says is absolutely true, it's genuine. Promises of God are like that. Whenever you have a promise, There is a time when the promise is made,

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and there's a time when the promise is fulfilled. So there's a waiting period that occurs between the time the promise is made and the time the promise is fulfilled. And what is really involved here in this word of the psalmist

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is that he looks at the human situation. And he looks and he says, "Oh, what a terrible world this seems to be. "What a mess we're in."

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It seems that everybody that I know is a liar. I don't know anybody that I can depend on. All of the men I know seem to engage in flattery and vanity one to the other.

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And then he looks to God and he says, "Oh Lord, help that in this waiting period with all of the agony, with all of the afflictions, with all of the difficulties that one encounters during this waiting period, that the waiting period is just like the silver that's in the fiery furnace, that the silver is being refined, and that God in giving his promises and in

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fulfilling his promises, there is a refining process, and that one can wait and trust in the promises of God even when we are going through the fiery furnace experience because we know that God is working out His promises. It's a waiting period, a great deal of agony many times, but God makes His promise to Abraham

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And he says to Abraham, "Abraham, walk before me, and through you I will cause all of the families of the earth to be blessed." Abraham is an old man, and he's promised a son, a child of promise, through Sarah. and Sarah is barren, she's past the years of having children.

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And Abraham waits for many, many years, and he reaches almost 100 years of age, and God fulfills the promise, and this somehow illustrates that even in the agony

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and under impossible human circumstances that God perfects his promise. And God has promised a new day. God has promised a time of righteousness, a day when righteousness will fill the earth. God has promised that. There shall come

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forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots and and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. God has promised that. God has promised Israel that the day will come when righteousness will

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rule there is a better day a coming it is the day of the Lord it's the dawn of the messianic age it is a day of peace God has promised that the time will come when the world will be reconciled to God the wolf shall dwell with the lamb the leopard shall lie down with the kid the calf and the young lion and the fatling

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together, the cow and the bear shall eat together, their young ones shall lie down together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, God has promised that there will be a time of peace and the world will be reconciled to him and a little child shall lead them. God has promised a new day of peace, God has promised the rule

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righteousness in the world, the time when justice will prevail, for the time will come when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. God has promised that. One day every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight and the

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rough places plain. God has promised that. God has promised that in the last day that the last day shall be the day of the Lord when there shall be peace and there will be complete freedom upon the earth. That in the last day it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be

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established in the top of the mountains and it shall be exalted above the hills and all people shall flow unto it. Many nations shall come and say come let us go up to the Mount of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways and we will walk in his paths. God has promised that. God has

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promised the time where righteousness will rule. Oh yes, today we we are concerned about talks at Geneva. We are concerned about the arms race. We are concerned about the nuclear buildup and we are concerned about whether or not men will destroy civilization as we know it. But God has promised that the day

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will come when men shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no longer. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn of war. But every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. For the mouth of

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the Lord has spoken it and he will bring it to pass because God's promises are true. They're like the precious core of silver covered by dross that somehow as we find ourselves today with all of the afflictions that we may endure that we are experiencing that refining process and no matter what may happen I

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believe with all my heart that the entire purpose of God is being realized that God somehow is working out his divine plan in human history I believe that with all my heart for God has said it and he will achieve it and what we see in history is nothing else but the removal of the dross so his word may be

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fulfilled in completeness, in purity, in genuine veracity for God keeps his promise. For I believe with all my heart that the cry of the oppressed will be heard. I believe with all my heart that the cry of the defenseless will be answer for the Lord says I will bring happiness so that we we can be happy

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with God no matter what may be the circumstances because he says I alone bring happiness that God himself nothing else but God himself brings happiness and no matter no matter how rumble may be the situation how the rumbling confusions of our time may sound, but God says I will bring happiness on the

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earth and God is able to establish happiness in the midst of everything. That's what the Apostle is talking about when he says that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. That somehow when you have your hand in God's hand no matter what may happen in your life that God can cause

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everything to work together for good to them that love him. And so the psalmist is saying after he looks at the human situation he manifests his faith in God by saying that his promises are true they are like silver tried in the furnace. So he says in spite of everything that may be happening around

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me, I know that God's promise is the truth. Now what about you? What about you? What about your faith? As we celebrate this Advent season, it is ours to wait on God. Sometimes it seems like it's so long, such a long time of waiting to see righteousness triumph upon the earth but the Prophet says wait on the Lord wait

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on the Lord for they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint. So as you wait stand on the promises of God, stand firmly on his foundation for God's Word will be fulfilled before his word will fail he

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said heaven and earth will pass away. God's promises are like silver refined and the Crucifle seven times over for the promises of God are true they will come to pass because the Lord God himself has spoken it and he will bring it to pass.

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As we sing "Never Alone," we extend the privilege of the church. [music] Hymn number 127. [music]

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♪ God's people are in high cheer ♪ ♪ The earth above them all ♪ ♪ God helps with tears and sighs cheer ♪ ♪ With triumph in thy soul ♪

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♪ And the earth a voice of high strength ♪ ♪ In it we sing thy praise ♪ ♪ We promise till the evening ♪ ♪ Till the evening of our birth ♪

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♪ Lord, we're one of the Lord ♪ ♪ Lord, we're one of the Lord ♪ ♪ He promised never to leave me ♪ ♪ Never to leave me alone ♪

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♪ Oh, he's a good Lord ♪ ♪ Lord of all ♪ ♪ He promised never to leave me ♪ ♪ Never to be alone ♪

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♪ The world was made so holy ♪ ♪ Their face so strong and free ♪ ♪ I heard the beasts adoring ♪ ♪ The saints ascending free ♪

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♪ He stands to shield me from failure ♪ ♪ In all the things of life ♪ ♪ In wondrous wonders he leads me ♪ ♪ Never to leave me alone ♪

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♪ Oh, how I long for love ♪ ♪ Oh, never alone ♪ ♪ In love there's never to leave me ♪ ♪ Never to leave me alone ♪

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♪ Oh, never alone ♪ ♪ Oh, never alone ♪ (choral music) [Music]

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