The Fear of the Lord | Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
Brian Hedges | September 20, 2026
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to Ecclesiastes 5, as we continue in our series through this wonderful and often-misunderstood book of wisdom literature in the Old Testament, the book of Ecclesiastes.
While you’re turning there, let me just go pop culture with you for a few minutes. I have been a great lover of the Superman movies from the time I was about four years old and I saw the very first Superman film that hit the theaters, Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie. Over the years, there have been many iterations of the Superman character. In that 1978 Richard Donner film you really have a sense of the goodness of Superman. This is the gold standard for superhero movies, of course. And it’s a film that emphasizes the goodness of this character, Superman. Christopher Reeve, of course, was Superman for that generation.
Then, about ten or twelve years ago, you had another iteration; you had Zack Snyder’s version of Superman in Man of Steel. You can tell just by the poster how different this version of Superman is. This is a Superman who is more other-worldly, and Zack Snyder really wanted to tell a Superman story that was something like a first-contact story. How would people on earth respond if they realized for the first time that there was an alien among them? Snyder kind of leans into the mythology of Superman as almost a god among men, and it’s a story that has a much different tone and feel.
Then, most recently, just about a year ago, or maybe it was earlier this year, you had this version of Superman, James Gunn’s Superman. James Gunn gives you the punk rock Superman. This is Superman that anybody can relate to; this is Superman who has a dog. When you first encounter Superman in this movie, he’s already hurt, he’s already bleeding. This is a very human Superman. The crowds kind of like this movie; the real Superman fans not as much.
These are different iterations of the same character, and I think what’s interesting is that it all depends on the director who’s telling the story and the kinds of things the director wants to emphasize about this character from the modern American mythology of Superman. Each iteration kind of reinvents the character and emphasizes one particular aspect.
Now, I just begin in this way because I think that people do much the same thing with God. There are different versions, different iterations of people’s perceptions of God in the world. There are some people who want to emphasize the goodness of God, and of course Scripture speaks of God’s goodness; while others emphasize the greatness and the transcendence of God. There are some people who want to emphasize the humanity of Jesus and how Jesus is relatable to us, and yet it’s so easy for us to miss some aspects of who God really is. The God of Scripture cannot be tamed. The God that we encounter in the Bible cannot be reduced to one category, cannot be reduced to our understanding or our modern sensibilities. Of course the Scriptures tell us that God is love, and yes, he is; but the same Scriptures also tell us that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all,” and that this God is a consuming fire who must be worshiped with reverence and with awe.
There was a writer and essayist a number of years named Annie Dillard. I don’t think she was a Christian, but she was reflecting on nature and just a variety of things, and she said in an essay something like this:
“I don’t find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have any idea of the power that they so blithely invoke? What happens if God shows up?”
She said we are like kids who are playing with chemistry sets, with TNT, with dynamite, and things could explode at any moment. She said, “Instead of ladies wearing straw hats to church, we should all be wearing crash helmets in case the real God, the God who created all things, in case that God shows up on Sunday morning.”
Who is this God that we worship, and what should be our attitude and our perspective and our approach to this God?
Believe it or not, the book of Ecclesiastes speaks to exactly that in Ecclesiastes 5, where we have one of the themes that runs through this book, the theme of the fear of the Lord. We’ve already encountered this theme briefly in Ecclesiastes 3:14, but today in Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 the author of this book speaks to those who approach the house of God in worship. This was probably the Old Testament temple.
The author here speaks with a sort of caution about how people are to approach God in worship. I think the governing theme of these verses really is the fear of the Lord, as you can see in verse 7.
Let’s read this passage, Ecclesiastes 5:1-7. Hear what the author says about how we should worship God. He says,
“Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.
“When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.”
“God is the one you must fear.” This is God’s word, and we need to seek to understand what it is that Qoheleth—the Preacher, the philosopher—is saying to us about the fear of the Lord and about how we should worship this God.
I want to approach it by looking at three things—briefly:
1. Definition (try to define what the fear of the Lord is)
2. Instruction (which you have in this passage)
3. Cultivation (how do we cultivate the fear of the Lord in our hearts and lives?)
1. The Fear of the Lord: Definition
“God is the one you must fear,” verse 7. Of course, the phrase “the fear of the Lord” is a common phrase in wisdom literature. Many of you will recognize the phrase from the book of Proverbs, which says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
The fear of the Lord has been called the principle of wisdom. It’s a theme that runs through wisdom literature, it’s a theme that runs through, really, all of Scripture, both Old Testament and New. But what is it? What does it mean to fear God, to fear the Lord?
We have to remember that there is a good kind of fear and a bad kind of fear when it comes to our relationship with God. You have this all the way back in Exodus 20. This is when the Israelites received the Law from Yahweh at Mount Sinai, and in Exodus 20:20 we read these words: “Moses said to the people, ’Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.’” Isn’t that interesting? “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”
There’s a bad kind of fear—“Do not fear”—and there is a good kind of fear. It’s the same Hebrew word, but there are two different connotations to this word. There is a kind of fear of God that the Scripture warns us against. We are not to be terrified of God, we are not to have such a dread of God that we shrink back from him; and yet we are commanded to fear the Lord, and Moses himself says that “God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” There is a tormenting fear that comes from guilt and from a desire to run away from God, but there is also a kind of trusting fear of God, a loving fear of God, the fear of awe and reverence before the greatness and the goodness of God.
I think we could define the fear of the Lord like this: The fear of the Lord is loving reverence for God, grounded in the sense of his transcendent goodness. Loving reverence for God—there’s awe before the Lord that is joined with love and joy and delight. Loving reverence for God, and it’s grounded in the sense of his transcendent goodness. God is great, and he’s also good. God is holy, and he’s also gracious. God is just, but he’s also merciful. It’s that full sense of the character of God that helps us have this loving reverence for God. God is in heaven, you are on earth, therefore fear the Lord.
Sometimes our hymns get it best. Many of you will know these words by heart:
“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder [we heard it this morning, didn’t we?],
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:
“Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,
How great thou art! How great thou art!”
It’s that sense of awe before God that wells up in our hearts when we actually stop and remember who he really is—this God who is the creator of all things; this thunder that feels so big to us is nothing to God. God is the creator of thousands upon thousands of worlds, a universe, and it’s just like a speck in the palm of his infinite hands. There’s this sense of the awe of God. That’s where the fear of the Lord is.
And this is the beginning of wisdom, it is the principle of wisdom. Wisdom starts here. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the fear of the Lord is a theme that runs through. You have it in chapter 3, you have it here in chapter 5, you have it again in chapter 8, and then you have it at the end in chapter 12…I think one other place as well.
Let me just read the last two verses of this book, because this is what Qoheleth is driving at throughout. He says, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
He said, “We’ve looked at everything, and here’s my conclusion: fear God and keep his commandments. Remember that God is the judge.”
Bobby Jamieson in his wonderful book on Ecclesiastes—I recommend it to you; I’ve been reading it in the course of this series—Bobby Jamieson puts it like this. I think this is very helpful. It’s a very helpful picture for us. He says,
“Throughout Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth takes the world in his hands, tosses it into a pan on medium-low heat, and lets it simmer. As the fire heats the pan and the pan heats the world and the world itself begins to melt, representatives from every realm of potential significance or satisfaction dissolve in the heat. Work, knowledge, pleasure, wealth, power, each reaches the boiling point, turns into vapor, and gets sucked into the exhaust fan. Through twelve tortuous chapters, Qoheleth has subjected the world itself to a reductio ad absurdum. After all the hevel has steamed up before his eyes, what’s left in the pan is a single solid: Fear God and keep his commandments.”
That’s what Ecclesiastes wants us to get. The conclusion of the matter is this: Life is a breath, life is a vapor; it’s all going up in smoke. The one thing that matters—the most important thing of all—is to fear the Lord. When it’s all melted down, life is a breath and the fear of the Lord is the one thing that remains.
So, brothers and sisters, the fear of the Lord means that we are to keep the consciousness of this before our hearts at all times; to remember that we are creatures, that he is the creator; that we are sinners, he is the judge; that we are transient, but he is eternal; that we are subject to the changes of time, but he is sovereign over time; that we are mere breath, but he is the one who always is, he always has been, he always will be. God is the one who simply is, and we live our lives before the face of this God. And it is this eternal God—this creator God, this sovereign God, the God who is the judge of all men—it is this God that we approach when we come to worship. The fear of the Lord.
2. The Fear of the Lord: Instruction
Therefore, this author here in chapter 5 gives us instruction for worship. He tells us how to come before the Lord. Now, of course, he’s speaking to the Old Testament Jewish believer, but what he says applies to us in our context in the New Testament today, and so we turn now to look at these instructions.
He speaks of those who come to the house of God, and there are in total about five imperatives that run through these seven verses, but I think we can summarize what he says under three basic categories. These are three attitudes or three frames of heart that we should have when we come before the Lord in worship, all of which are governed by this overarching theme of reverence and awe for God. So let’s look at these. This is how to approach God in worship.
(1) Number one, attentiveness. Attentiveness. Look at verse 1. “Guard your steps when you go into the house of God. To draw near to listen [underline that] is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.”
“To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools.” And of course, the Hebrew word for “listen” is a word that always carries the connotation of both hearing and obeying.
It might remind us of Samuel’s word to King Saul, “To obey is better than sacrifice.” That’s what this passage is saying.
It’s calling us to draw near to the Lord with a heart to listen and to obey. And he says this is better than offering the sacrifice of fools. The word “fool,” of course, is a moral category. This is not so much speaking of someone’s intelligence as it is of their basic posture towards God. It is, in the words of Derek Kidner, one’s chosen outlook rather than his mental equipment.
The sacrifice of fools would be someone who is coming to worship when their hearts are actually far from God, when they are actually not intent on obedience to God. They want to perform a religious ritual, but they have no desire in encountering God himself. It’s a sacrifice of fools. They are just going through the motions or they are flippantly coming before God but without any intent to hear God, to listen to God.
What this passage is telling us is we should draw near to God in order to listen to God. This is attentiveness to God, or you might say intention and attention—intention to actually hear from God, and then attention as we listen to what God says.
I think practically, brothers and sisters, this just means that there should be some preparation in our hearts before we gather for public worship. Do you prepare your heart before you gather for public worship? Did you spend any time in prayer yesterday or this morning before coming to worship God this morning? Did you come with a desire to actually hear what God would say to you through his word? Or is coming to church just kind of one more thing that you do, it’s not much more serious than going to a football game or going to a movie or going out to dinner with friends?
You see, we can become too casual and trivial in our approach to God. This passage calls us to be serious. It doesn’t mean a somberness; it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be joy. Of course there should be joy in our worship. But it does mean we take God seriously. We take him seriously and we prepare our hearts. We come before the Lord with an attentiveness to him, drawing near to God.
(2) Second thing this passage commends is a kind of restraint, restraint in our worship. Look at verses 2-3. “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth.” Okay, there it is again, the transcendence of God; that governs this passage. “God is in heaven, you are on earth; therefore, let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business and a fool’s voice with many words.”
That’s kind of a confusing verse. The New English Translation puts it like this—I think this is clarifying—“Just as dreams come when there are many cares, so the rash vow of a fool occurs when there are many words.”
You know how when you’ve just got so many things on your mind and you finally fall asleep and your sleep is restless and fitful and you have dreams that reflect your subconscious? In the same way, the author seems to be saying here that when fools come before the Lord, there are a lot of words, but they’re not actually thinking about what they’re saying, and so he’s calling us to a kind of restraint in our worship.
Now listen, almost nobody says this today. The Bible says it, but we tend to emphasize other things. We have to have a balance of everything the Scripture says. This does not mean that we should not speak to God with confidence. The Scriptures call us to approach the throne of grace with boldness because of our great high priest, Jesus Christ. But it does mean that there should be nothing flippant or trivial in our approach to God. Listen, Jesus is not a bobblehead on your dashboard; Jesus is the Lord of glory.
He’s the Lord of glory, and we must think of him as such, we must think of him as he really is. He is the creator God, manifest in the flesh, who has given himself for us. Do we have confidence? Yes, yes, confidence; but not triviality, not flippancy, not “Jesus is my buddy.” It’s not that. There should be, instead, a humility before him, and therefore reverence and awe and a kind of restraint. “Let your words be few.” That’s what the author says here: “Let your words be few.”
Or, as another writer of wisdom literature puts it, James, in James 1, “[Everyone should] be slow to speak and quick to listen…receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
(3) Attentiveness, restraint, and then one more thing: integrity, verses 4-6. This is where you have the language about vows. A vow in the Old Testament would be a promise that someone made to dedicate something to God—maybe it was an offering, maybe it was some kind of a sacrifice, maybe it was some kind of giving—they were making some kind of a personal commitment to God to do something or to give something. Listen to what Qoheleth says. Verse 4,
“When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow.”
The fool here seems to be someone who makes commitments flippantly and doesn’t follow through. Verse 5:
“It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?”
So once again, there just seems here to be a kind of caution in the way we approach God, that we do not make commitments to God flippantly or without a seriousness of intention to fulfill what we have promised. There should be an integrity, a wholeness in our life—not one thing in church and another thing at home, not one thing in our prayers and another thing as soon as we’re off of our knees. There should be a wholeness, an integrity. We make our commitments and we keep our commitments. We don’t make vows lightly. We keep our promises to God.
You remember the psalmist in Psalm 15 puts it like this. He says, “Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their hearts,” a few verses later, “who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change their minds.” This is the person who can approach God.
There is a kind of wholeheartedness here, an integrity of life, where we follow through on our words.
So attentiveness, restraint, integrity; but the overarching theme here is reverence for God. Verse 7: Just as there is futility in many dreams, so also in many words, therefore fear God, fear the Lord.
I think what this is saying to us, brothers and sisters, is that the most important thing in our corporate worship is our actual engagement with God and his word. It’s not the temperature of the room, it’s not the volume of the music or the quality of the music, it’s not how smooth or interesting or engaging the sermon is. It’s not how friendly everybody is! As important as all those things may be, the most important thing is our engagement with God, it’s that we actually come before the face of God and that we worship him and we hear him.
A number of years ago I read a very perceptive book, by theologian David Wells, called God in the Wasteland, and it really was a critique of modern evangelicalism, the whole market-driven approach to church that we have today. This is what David Wells said:
“It is one of the remarkable features of contemporary church life that so many are attempting to heal the church by tinkering with its structures, its services, its public face. The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is not inadequate technique, insufficient organization, or antiquated music; and those who want to squander the church’s resources bandaging these scratches will do nothing to staunch the flow of blood that is spilling from its true wounds. The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common.”
Those are pretty sobering words, and I think we could turn that into application and just say our approach to God in worship, if we fear the Lord, should be the opposite; that we do not view God’s truth as distant from us, but we rather receive God’s word as speaking directly to us. That we don’t take his grace for granted, but we recognize that by definition grace is unmerited, undeserved. We don’t deserve God’s grace, therefore we should cherish his grace, not presume upon it. That we do not discount his judgment; that we recognize that God is a God who judges sin and evil, and therefore we tremble before him. And that we do not lose our wonder of the gospel, that this God who created us and who rules over us and who is our judge is also the God who loves us, saves us, forgives us, changes us, rescues us, and brings us into relationship with himself, so that we can have a kind of childlike fear of this great God.
Love and wonder, joy that trembles, before the face of God.
3. The Fear of the Lord: Cultivation
So the question is, how do we get that? How do we get that? Because so far you probably feel just a little bit overwhelmed with the instructions, okay? “I need to think about how I’m approaching God in worship, but what about the lack of integrity in my heart in life? What about my sin? What about the fact that I so often have not lived in this way? How do I get this? How do I get the fear of the Lord? How do you cultivate it?” That’s point number three.
The answer, though it may seem counterintuitive, the answer is that it is God’s grace revealed in the gospel that actually produces the fear of the Lord. That’s actually how you get it. You get the fear of the Lord through the experience of God’s grace.
I just want to show you this in a couple of passages, and I’ll highlight two things.
(1) Number one, the promise of forgiveness and how the promise of forgiveness produces the fear of the Lord. It’s this wonderful psalm, Psalm 130, especially Psalm 130:3-4. This is a wonderful psalm to pray if you find yourself overwhelmed with the feeling of your sin, the guilt of your sin.
“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.”
Isn’t that almost surprising? “There is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared.” There is something about the experience of being overwhelmed with the guilt of your sin and then recognizing and receiving the forgiveness of God that leads to a renewed fear of the Lord, a renewed awe and worship before him.
Spurgeon put it like this:
“When a man really receives the pardon of all his sins, he is the man who fears the Lord. This is clearly the case, for pardon breeds love in the soul, and the more a man is forgiven, the more he loves. Where great sin has been blotted out, there comes to be great love. Well, is not love the very core of the true fear of God?”
Nothing is more likely to cultivate the fear of the Lord in your heart than actually dealing seriously with your sins before the throne of grace as you reflect on the magnitude of God’s mercy, displayed in the cross of Jesus Christ.
I encourage you to do this with some degree of imagination. As you come before the Lord in prayer, you think about your sins and you start recognizing that “my sin is a sin against God, it is a sin against the creator, it is a sin against the lawgiver, it is a sin against God the judge, but it’s also a sin against Christ my Savior. My sins are the nails that pierced his hands. My sin is the spear that was thrust into his side. My sin crucified Jesus on the cross, but he loved me so much that he took it lovingly, and his arms are now wide open, ready to receive me, as I come back to him. And he will restore me, he will forgive me, he will pardon me as I confess my sins and I embrace him by faith.”
There comes that sense, when you’ve dealt with your sin, where you’ve worked through the process of repentance and you’ve come to a settled assurance that, “Yes, I’m right with God again,” there comes a sense in your heart that “I found the Lord, and I don’t want to let him go,” and that’s the fear of the Lord. You don’t want to offend him, because the relationship is right and you know it’s right, because you have processed your sins by applying the gospel to your heart, and you’ve done so with your eyes on the cross.
Is it any wonder that the old spiritual says, “Were you there when they crucified the Lord? / Sometimes it causes me to tremble.” There’s a trembling kind of love and awe when we experience the forgiveness of our sins in light of the cross, and it is the fear of the Lord. That’s grace!
(2) Here’s the second thing, the second aspect of grace that leads to the fear of the Lord. It’s what we could call the renewal and the integration of the heart. The integration of the heart. We just talked about the need for integrity in worship, but what about when we don’t have integrity? Integrity is wholeheartedness; that’s what integrity is. It’s a wholeness to our heart and to our life. The problem is that so often our hearts are divided—divided between sin and righteousness, between the world and the kingdom, between love for self and love for God. Our hearts are divided.
We are divided by the distractions of our lives, and so we’re not wholehearted before the Lord. How do we get an undivided heart? The answer is in a prayer in Psalm 86:11. The prayer goes like this:
“Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.”
“Unite my heart to fear your name.” I think it means something like this: “Lord take the scattered fragments of my heart, the pieces of my heart—the piece that’s been over here in the world, a piece that’s been attached to sin, a piece that’s distracted with this concern, a piece that I’ve given to you, but not the whole thing—take the pieces of my heart, melt them down, meld them back together, make them whole again, so that I can fear you, that I can worship you, that I can love you with a whole heart.”
It’s the old spiritual discipline of recollection, where we recollect the parts of our hearts and our lives before the Lord. We gather the fragments of our hearts to the presence of God, so as to worship him with a whole heart. It’s the integration of the heart, the renewal of the heart.
The forgiveness of sins, the renewal of the heart, and did you know that these are exactly the two things that are promised in the new covenant? It’s exactly these two things. And you read it in the prophet Jeremiah when he says that “a day is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant,” and he describes that covenant. He says, “I will put my law in their hearts, I will put my fear in their hearts, and I will forgive their sins. I will give them one heart in one way, that they may fear me forever.” It’s the new covenant. The new covenant is what secures the forgiveness of our sins and the renewal of our hearts.
The new covenant, as you know, is inaugurated by the Lord Jesus Christ through his death on the cross. That’s why, when he ate that last Passover meal with his disciples, he said, “This is the new covenant in my blood. Take this cup. It’s the new covenant in my blood, shed for the forgiveness of sins.”
Brothers and sisters, this is what Jesus purchased for us on the cross: the new covenant blessings of forgiveness and renewal that lead us to a renewed fear of the Lord and awe and worship of God.
So we’ve seen definition, instruction, cultivation; and I just want to end on one final note: satisfaction. This is the conclusion.
Proverbs 14:27: “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, so that one may turn away from the snares of death.
A fountain of life. That is not a frightening image, that is an inviting image. A fountain—that satisfies. A fountain of life in contrast to the snares of death. What are the snares of death? That’s sin. It’s everything that trips us up, sin that leads to death.
But the gift of God, which is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord, that comes to those who fear the Lord. “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.” There is a satisfaction, a joy, a trembling delight, an ecstatic sense of wonder that comes in those who drink from this fountain.
F.W. Faber in an old hymn put it like this,
“Oh thou art greatly to be feared,
Thou art so prompt to bless!
The dread to miss such love as thine
Makes fear but love’s excess.
But fear is love, and love is fear,
And in and out they move.
But fear is an intenser joy
Than mere unfrightened love.
They love thee little, if at all,
Who do not fear thee much.
If love is thine attraction, Lord,
Fear is thy very touch.”
The fear of the Lord. It’s the beginning of wisdom, and it is the fountain of life. It’s the one thing that matters. Everything else in life is a vapor. The fear of the Lord; that’s what lasts.
Let’s pray.
Our great and our gracious God in heaven, we bow before you now and ask you to by your Spirit apply the truth of your word to our hearts and lives so that we might experience what we’ve learned about today, that we would know what it is to tremble before you in awe and in wonder, that we would know this ecstatic joy, this trembling love that characterizes those who actually know you. We pray, Lord, that you would help us in our worship to worship in the fear of the Lord, to remember that it’s not just the Old Testament that teaches this, but the New Testament as well; that you, as our God, are a consuming fire whom we are to worship in reverence and with godly fear. And Lord, we pray that through the application of the gospel to our hearts and lives, in both the forgiveness of our sins and the renewal of our hearts by your Holy Spirit, that we would come to worship you with a wholeheartedness that maybe has been missing.
We pray, Lord, for the graces of faith and repentance this morning, that you would give us such a heart as would turn from sin, from the snares of death, and would drink once again from the fountain of living waters.
We ask you, Lord, to draw near to us through the power of your Holy Spirit, and to do so now as we come to the Lord’s table today. Help us remember that these elements of the table are the emblems of the new covenant, secured for us in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. So draw near to us, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
