Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 37 from your Gospel Hymns spiral hymn
book, number 37. Let's all stand together. My soul the throne of grace in
every time of need. There's mercy for the needy one
who Jesus' name shall be. And sinful wretch, I will approach
the throne. I'll lean upon Christ's mighty
arm, And lead His blood on me. The precious blood of Christ
has opened up the way by which I can draw near to God and to
my Father. Though Satan tempts my heart
to sin, I'll call upon my God. And if I call, he'll lift me
up and cleanse me in the blood. God will hear my groans and cries
of grief. Nothing can keep me from His
throne, but my own unbelief. ? Come help me to approach your
throne ? ? And there spread out my case ? Please be seated. We're going to be looking at
the passage of scripture from Hebrews chapter four in a few
minutes during the message. It's a great hymn. We have confidence
in coming before the throne of grace, knowing that our Lord
has provided everything that we need. I'd like to read a passage out
of Hebrews chapter 8, if you'd like to open your Bibles with
me to Hebrews 8. And this is a conclusion to everything
that the Lord has told us in Hebrews chapter seven concerning
Christ as our high priest. And so in Hebrews chapter eight,
now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum. We have such a high priest, which
is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which
the Lord pitched and not man. For every high priest was ordained
to offer gifts and sacrifices. Wherefore, it is of necessity
that this man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth,
He should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer
gifts according to the law, who serve unto the example and shadow
of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he
was about to make up the tabernacle. For see, saith he, that thou
makest all things according to the pattern showed to thee in
the mount." What the Lord is telling us is that the earthly
priesthood and the earthly tabernacle were shadows of the true priesthood
and the true tabernacle which is in heaven. But now hath he,
the Lord Jesus Christ, obtained a more excellent ministry by
how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant which was
established upon better promises. The promises that this covenant
is established on are those promises that the father made to his son
in the covenant of grace to give him a bride, the son made to
his father to redeem that bride, and the Holy Spirit made to the
Father and to the Son to regenerate those whom the Father had chosen
and whom the Lord Jesus had redeemed. That's the best promise. That's
a promise that cannot be changed. And that's where we have our
hope, better promises. I told Hugo today that we would
pray for him Hugo has very low platelets right now, and he has
nosebleeds that he can't stop. And so they've given him something
for that. But I told him that we would
remember him in prayer. Also, Dee Parks in Tennessee goes to Chris Cunningham's
church. Most of you, I think, know Dee.
has asked his family and his wife and his kids and all the
brethren to pray that the Lord would take him home quickly.
He's very, very frail. And so I want us to pray for D. Let's pray together. our Heavenly
Father. We thank you that we have a priest,
a high priest, a priest that is seated at the
right hand of the Majesty on high, one who ever lives to make
intercession for us, one who was successful in sprinkling
his blood on the mercy seat as a covering for our sin. Lord, you said here, I will meet
with thee. Lord, we come before your throne
of grace, thanking you for thy dear son, thanking you for his
accomplished work, thanking you for those precious promises that
cannot be changed. and looking in faith, Lord, for
we know that it is impossible for you to lie and that you are
faithful to your word and to your people. And so, Lord, we
pray tonight that you'd be pleased to meet with us and bless us
with your spirit and cause us to to see the glory of Christ
and to rest the hope of our salvation on him. Forgive us, Lord, of
our sin and increase our faith and our love. Lord, we pray for
you go when we ask for your hand of healing to be upon him. We pray that you would enable
him to recover his strength and and return him to fellowship
here and worship with us. Father, we thank you for the
testimony that you have given to D. We thank you for the hope
that you've put in his heart, for the dying grace that you've
given him. And Lord, we pray that you would
continue to show he and Christie and the family, your mercies
and your tender, loving kindness and care, Lord, that you would
send your angels and usher him into glory. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. Number 58 from the Hardback Tymnal,
number 58. Let's all stand together. ? Jesus the Lamb ? With sweetness fills my breast
But sweeter are thy face to see And in thy presence rest Your
voice can sing, your heart can frame O say does that star-spangled
banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the
brave? Ohhhh. Please be seated. The Lord told Abraham, I am thy
shield. And I am thine great exceeding
great reward. The Lord himself. Let's open our Bibles together
to first Peter chapter two, first Peter chapter two. And we were
looking at verse nine, last Wednesday night on how it is the Lord sees
his church and his people and how important it is for us to
believe what God says about us, about those whom he has redeemed. And the first cause of their
redemption is that out of love he chose a particular people. And he calls us a chosen generation. Had he not chosen us, we never
would have chosen him. And so that's how the Lord sees
us. And we rejoice that the Lord
has made us to differ. The second thing he tells us
about the church is that she is a royal priesthood, a royal
priesthood. Now, a priest is one who offers
sacrifices, as we just read, of the Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews
chapter 8 as our great high priest who offered himself as a sacrifice
to God. a redeeming sacrifice to satisfy
God's requirements for righteousness and for justice. And here the Lord says that you
also are a nation of priests. Notice in this verse that you
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
peculiar or purchased people, that you should show forth the
praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. So the Lord tells us why he chose
us, why he's made us to be a kingdom of royal priests, why he's anointed
us. and made us holy in Christ and
why he's purchased us that we should show forth the praises
of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now,
I have in the margin of my Bible a note telling me that this word
translated in our English Bible praises is more often translated
virtue. virtue, moral uprightness, moral
righteousness. Yes, we praise him, but we praise
him because of his righteousness, because of his moral uprightness,
because of his virtue. Now, in the Old Testament, only
a priest could approach God. We have the story of King Uzziah,
who was a good king up until the time that he thought that
he could come into the presence of God and usurp the authority
of a priest. And he went into the temple to
make sacrifice without a priest. And the Lord smote him with leprosy,
and that's He died in shame as a result of that. Only the priest
could offer up sacrifices unto God. And if any man wanted to
make an offering to the Lord, he had to make it through that
priest. And the priesthood was made up
of the Levites. and only those who were of the
tribe of Levi could serve in the priesthood. And so when our
Lord is telling us what we are in Christ as a royal priesthood,
he's taking us back to that Old Testament type and showing us
that this is the fulfillment of everything that was typified
in the Old Testament priesthood and that we are Levites in that
regard. The Levites served in the tabernacle. They prepared the sacrifices. They brought the sacrifices to
the altar. They killed the sacrifices. The
high priest, of course, went in once a year on the Day of
Atonement to the Holies of Holies, and he made that blood sacrifice
on the mercy seat. And all of these things are pictures
of the position and the privilege and the blessing that God has
given to his New Testament church to be a kingdom of priests. a royal priesthood, a group of priests who serve
God. That's what we do. And so we bring these sacrifices
to the Lord. Now, turn with me to Psalm 51. The
Lord tells us what sacrifice it is that he's pleased with. What is it that God requires of our sacrifice
to be acceptable in the sight? David had spent the better part
of a year trying to cover up his crime and his sin. And I
suspect that during that time he had gone to the temple and
offered many sacrifices through the priest in an attempt to atone
for his sin and cover up the shame and guilt that surely the
Holy Spirit was convicting him of. And now the prophet Nathan
has come to him, and Nathan has said to him, thou art the man,
David. And God spoke to David, and David
was convicted. And as a result of that, the
scripture says, look at the beginning, the small print at the beginning
of the Psalms, you understand is part of the text that's inspired
just as much as the text. And so to the chief musicians,
so David writes this as a hymn and he gives it to the chief
musician to be sung in congregational singing. And it's such an exposure,
all this attempt that he made to hide his sin and to cover
up for his sin. Now, not only has he confessed
it to the Lord, but he's written a hymn about it. And they're
singing it publicly in worship. Not to shame David, but that
every one of God's children might identify with the same guilt
and the same hope of forgiveness that David had. You remember
what Nathan said when David said, I have sinned against the Lord.
Nathan said, yes, you have. And the Lord has put away your
sin. And so David writes Psalm 51. Look what he says. To the
chief musician, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came
unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba. I want you to notice after he
confesses and laments for his sin, notice what he says in verse
16. David comes to the realization
that all of the attempts and all the sacrifices and all the
offerings that he had attempted to make in order to in order
to salve his conscience and cover up his sin were not sufficient. He was just as much, he was just
as guilty now as he ever was. And so he says in verse 16, for
thou desirest not sacrifice else I would give it. Thou delightest
not in burnt offerings. Surely David had learned that
by experience. that all the things that he had
done in order to try to atone for his sins were useless. He realizes now God never accepted
any of them. The sacrifices of God, this is
the sacrifice that God's pleased with. The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt
not despise. Now there's a little word in
the beginning of this verse I want you to take notice of. He does
not say the sacrifices that I give to God are a broken spirit and
a contrite heart. He says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and contrite
heart. Here's the truth, brethren. You
know, this idea that, well, if I can just lament enough, if
I can just be sorry enough, if I can repent enough, if I can
wallow in the shame of my sin and guilt enough, somehow, no,
those are sacrifices that God's not pleased with. Surely there
is a level of conviction and shame and guilt and sorrow that
the Holy Spirit gives to the hearts of His people over their
sin, but none of that would be sufficient. None of it would
be sufficient to cover our sins. And so David says the sacrifices
of God, we come to God for a broken spirit and contrite heart. not with a broken spirit and
contrite heart. Let me say that again. We come to God for a broken spirit
and contrite heart, not with a broken spirit and contrite
heart. It's not our broken spirit and contrite heart that somehow
moves the heart of God to be merciful to us. We come to him
with with a broken heart. Now, what is that? Something's
broken, it means it doesn't work. If your arm is broken, you can't
labor. If your leg's broken, you can't
walk. If you've got a tool that's broken,
you can't work with it. Something that's broken doesn't
work. And so, we come to God with a
heart that doesn't sorrow as it ought to sorrow ever. It doesn't
love as it ought to love ever. It can't produce a righteousness
that will be acceptable to God ever. It's broken. When we come to
God for a broken heart, he shows us our inability to atone for
our sins. He shows us that every thought
and imagination of the heart is only wicked and not continually.
He shows us that our hearts are desperately wicked, deceitful,
no man can know it. He shows us what Paul said in
Romans chapter three. God uses the analogy of looking
down our throat. He said, when I look down your
throat, I see an open sepulcher. I see your heart. Men say, well,
he's got a good heart. No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. God says when he looks down our
throat, he sees an open sepulcher. He sees nothing but death in
our heart. So when we come to God, not with
a broken spirit and contrite heart, but for a broken spirit
and contrite heart, the Lord shows us how our hearts and our
spirit can never satisfy the demands of God for the atonement
of our sin and leaves us with no place to go other than the
Lord Jesus Christ. Whose heart was perfect? Whose
spirit was without guile? So David says, sacrifices and
offerings thou wouldest not. A broken spirit, a spirit that
doesn't work, a contrite heart, a heart that's dead. Thou will
not despise that because that is the sacrifice of God. That's the sacrifice that God
gives in the new birth. And and he continues to give
that after after he after he births us by his spirit into
the family of God and makes us a royal priesthood. This this
sacrifices that we offer to him as priest. is that we keep coming
to him, confessing, Lord, my sorrow is not sufficient. My
love falls so far short. My offerings cannot measure up. I'm in need of Christ to stand
in my stead. I'm in need of him to put his
blood on the mercy seat. And that sacrifice God's pleased
with. He's pleased with his son and
the sacrifice that his son made. And so David had to learn that
all of these attempts that he was making, all these vain, frail
attempts to cover up his sin were not pleasing to God. The
only sacrifice that's pleasing to the Lord is the sacrifice
that his son made when he took his blood into the heavens and
put it on that mercy seat, not one that was made with hands.
And God said, When I see the blood, I'll pass by you. This
is my beloved son in him. I'm well pleased here. He him. Brethren, this is what a broken
spirit and contrite heart is. It's standing before God and
taking sides with God against yourself and saying, Lord, I
can't be broken sufficiently. You've caused me to see that
my sin is all my fault. And my sin is what caused Christ
to do what he did on Calvary's cross. He bore my sins in his
body. My sins is what caused him to
suffer the full wrath and justice of God. And for that, Lord, I
bear the responsibility of my sin, but I can't. You know, David
said in Psalm 38, he said, I will be sorry for my sins. And he's
speaking prophetically of Christ, isn't he? So this thought that well if
I can just have a if I can have a sufficient broken spirit if
I can have a sufficient contrite heart if I can if I can feel
enough shame and guilt and sorrow for my sin that somehow that'll
be a sacrifice that God will be pleased with and that he will
not deny that's that's not that's you see the self-righteousness
in that don't you you see the The efforts that we've made to
do that, and we're doing exactly what David did when we do that.
We're trying to atone for our own sins. Lord, my heart doesn't
work. I need Christ. I need the sacrifice
that he made. And so when God makes us to be
a royal priesthood, Go back with me to our text now. That you
should show forth the virtue. The word praises there is the
word virtue. That you should show forth the
virtue, the righteousness, the acceptance that God the Son has
before the Father. That's what we, when we preach
the gospel, that's what we're saying. We're saying that Christ
is everything in salvation, that we can't add to or take away
from what he's done, that no amount of brokenness or sorrow
on our part is going to add anything to his virtue. We show forth, what is a priest? A priest is one who brings offerings
to God. And and so the offering that
we bring to God. Is the confession. That our spirits
broken in our hearts are contrite and and we've got to have the
virtue of Christ to go before us and to atone for our sins. And that's what we show forth.
When we worship, when we pray. When we come before the throne
of grace, when we witness, we are showing forth the virtue
of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light. That's what priests do. There's
a whole kingdom of them. Turn with me to the book of Hosea,
Hosea chapter 14. Little prophets, right after
Daniel, I think, is Hosea. Look at Hosea chapter 14. Verse one. Oh, Israel. All those that are in Christ
that God has redeemed and changed their names. from Jacob, the
supplanter, to Israel. O Israel, return unto the Lord
thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. You remember
the Bible describes our problem in three ways, transgression,
iniquity, and sin. Transgression is the violation
of God's law and iniquity is that which we attempt to bring
before God that doesn't equal up to what God requires and how
oftentimes we We have thoughts of self-atonement. We have thoughts
of trying to, you know, if I just repent sufficiently or if I have
sufficient faith or sufficient sorrow, sufficient brokenness.
No. No, that's iniquity. It falls short. And so the Lord says, O Israel,
return unto the Lord, return to Christ, who is thy God, for
thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words and turn
to the Lord saying to him, take away all iniquity and receive
us graciously. So will we render the calves
of our lips. So here's our sacrifices. Royal
priesthood, the priest of God, the Levites who serve in the
tabernacle, Worshipping God and making sacrifices that are acceptable
to him. What do we do? Take with you
words. What are the words that we're
to take? Well, we take God's word and we confess that our
hearts are broken and that Christ is all in salvation and he is
our testimony. He's our confession. So I love
this phrase, the calves of your lips. In the Old Testament, calves
were sacrificed. And the Lord is now referring
to the things that we say as the calves of our lips. And look at the next verse, verse
three. And if you look up the word asher,
That was a bordering nation of Israel and they were tempted
to look to Asher to help them to defeat whether it be the Syrians
or whether it be the Egyptians. They thought they could bring
Asher in. The word Asher translated means steps. Steps. The Lord said when you build
an altar don't put steps on it. You know those altars they have
down in Mexico. They made sacrifices on the pinnacle
of the altar and they made steps going up and they would, you
know, bleed and sacrifice themselves going up the steps. You know,
how pagan that is. And yet, in our hearts, do we
not do the same thing? Oh, if I can just go through
the right steps. If I can just, you know, somehow
feel the right the right feelings and do the right things that
somehow I can convince God. No, we bring the calves of our
lips and the Lord says, Asher shall not save us. No amount
of steps. When the Lord said you built
an altar, don't put steps on it because here's what he said.
When you go up those steps, all you're going to do is expose
your nakedness. The people on the ground are
gonna be able to see up your skirt. Now you're gonna expose
your nakedness going up the steps. And the Lord's using that to
say, if you try to be saved by Asher, by making steps to God,
you're just exposing your own nakedness before God. We will not ride upon horses.
The strength of horses is not gonna save us. Neither will we
say any more to the works of our hands. You are our gods for
in thee, the fatherless find mercy. Now a fatherless child
in Israel was destitute, completely dependent upon someone to have
mercy upon them. And the Lord is likening us to
the fatherless. Lord, Asher can help us, horses
can help us, the works of our hands can help us, our sorrow
can help us, the sincerity of our hearts. Our hearts are broken.
They don't work like they should. What are we going to do? We're
going to bring the calves of our lips. We're going to look to Christ
and he's going to provide everything necessary to atone for our sins. Everything. So now the Lord is likening us
to these priests. We're going to give to the Lord
Jesus Christ all the glory for our salvation. God's pleased with. Amen? That
God's pleased with. He's pleased with Christ. He's
pleased with what he did. Now, doctrinally speaking, from
our text, back to our text in 1 Peter chapter 2, this is what we would refer to
as the priesthood of the believer. Hebrews chapter four, let's turn
there real quick. Hebrews chapter four, verse 14. Seeing then, that we have a great high priest
that is passed into the heavens. Jesus, the son of God, let us
hold fast our profession. What is our profession? It's
the cast of our lips. It's giving to Christ all the
glory for our salvation. It's looking to him for all the
hope of our atonement. It's resting our salvation in
his glorious person and his accomplished work. It's confessing to God
that my heart's broken. It doesn't work. I can't provide
anything that will be sufficient to atone for my sins. Everything
that I attempt to do ends up being iniquity. And all of my
steps and my works and my hands and my horses and everything,
it's all in vain. So Christ is my confession. He is my profession. Look at
verse 15. For we have not a high priest
which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin." Now the scripture says there's
pleasure in sin for a season. The reason why we do things we
ought not to do is because they're pleasurable. There's pleasure
in sin for a season but in the end it leads to death. So when the Lord says that he
was tempted in all ways that we are, what does that mean? Yet he was without sin. What is it about sin that bothers
us? The act of sin itself might be
pleasurable. But in the end, that sin leads
to death. The thing that bothers us about our sin is the separation
that it causes between us and God. Your sin has separated you
from your God. And it's the shame that comes
with that sin and that separation. Is that not the part of sin that
really bothers us? Not the act of sinning. But what
comes in death as a spiritual death as a result of that sin
is shame and separation. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
knew like you and I have never known it. We get over our shame
and separation pretty quick, don't we? And we can go back
to our sin pretty quick. The Lord Jesus Christ experienced
shame and separation to its infinite degree, bearing all the sins
of all of his people in his body upon that tree, and having the
shame of sin like you and I have never experienced it, and having
separation from the Father for the first time in all of eternity
and that separation being complete and him suffering the pains of
hell and all that that means, I don't know. But I know this,
that the little taste of separation that I have and the little taste
of shame that I have as a result of my sin, he tasted it to its
infinite degree. So when God says he was tempted
in all ways that we are, he's not talking about we sin in our
temptations. He's not saying that the Lord
went through this world having to resist temptation the way
we resist temptation. He's saying that the Lord Jesus
Christ knew sin to the depths that you and I have never known
it. and yet he himself was without
sin. God made him sin who knew no sin that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him." Oh, he understands the shame,
the separation, that we experience as a result of our sin? Oh, child
of God, flee to your high priest. He knows what that is. He knows
what that is. We have not a high priest who
is unable to sympathize with the weaknesses of our infirmities,
but was tempted in all ways that we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly It doesn't mean to come with
some sort of arrogant spirit. It means that
we come confident. We come confident in Christ that
all that God required, he provided. We come knowing that Asher can't
save us. Our sorrow can't save us. Our
hearts are broken in the sense that they don't work as they
ought. And we look to Christ alone. And in Him we're confident. We're confident that God's pleased
with Him. We're confident that He was successful
in atoning for our sins. We're confident that He knows
our frame and he remembers that we're made of dust and he loves
us. So we come before the throne
of grace boldly that we may obtain mercy and find help in our time
of need. That's how we come. That's the
priesthood of the believer. Now, you know that in every religion
of the world, priestcraft is practiced. Whether it be the
rabbi in Judaism, or the imam in Islam, or the priest in Catholicism,
or the elder in Reformed Calvinism. Every form of religion sets up
a man as a priest. And to get to God, you gotta
go through him. And to get God's blessings, you've got to go through
Him. And to get God's approval and to make sacrifices for your
sins, you've got to go through Him. You've got to confess your
sins to Him. And you've got to somehow earn
His favor in order to approach God. That's exactly what the
Lord's saying. You are a royal priesthood. In Revelation chapter 3, the
Lord speaks of the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. And if you do
some study on that, you'll find that there are a lot of men that
have speculated as to what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans was.
And most of that came from speculations that came in the second century. The early writers, you know,
thought, well, they knew what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans
was. And they say, well, one says it was this, another says
it was that. But here's what we believe. You
interpret the Bible by the Bible. And there's nothing in the Bible
that tells us what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans is. Nothing. So the only way to have any understanding
as to what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans is is to interpret
the word Nicolaitan. And the word Nicolaitan means
victor or master over the people. And I believe just looking simply
at God's word and forgetting all that other extra biblical
stuff that's been written about the doctrine of the Nicolaitans
that what the Lord says he hates is clergy laity, is priestcraft,
is setting up men, because it's so prevalent in religion, in
man-made religion. It's prevalent in every form
of man-made religion. And what the Lord's saying to
you and me is, you don't need a man to give to God. God has
made you a royal priesthood. You come into the very presence
of God based on the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ alone
for all of your salvation. Come boldly. Come confidently. God has made you to be a kingdom
of priests. Now, years ago we were part of
a of a religious organization that so stressed the priesthood
of believers that they erred on the other side. And basically everybody in the
church was a self-sufficient rebel. who would not take instructions
from anyone. They saw no need for a pastor.
They saw no need for an under shepherd. They saw no need for
a council or instructions. I'm my own priest. And so I can
approach God, I don't need you. That's the other side of the
abuse of the priesthood of the believer. And so understanding
that men will abuse the truth one way or the other, This is
what the Lord has said. You are a priest with one high
priest and you come before the throne of grace with confidence
that he has provided everything that God requires and you don't
need a man to approach God. Doesn't mean that you don't need
a man to instruct you or to preach to you or to, the Lord says,
obey those who have rule over you. There are positions of authority,
aren't there, in the church, just like anything else, and
those things are necessary. And there's obligations put on
those who are in positions of authority as to not abuse that
authority, but you understand that. But it does mean, very clearly,
If a man requires you to do something for him or through him in order
for you to get to God, that's a lie. You are a royal
priesthood to show forth the virtue of him who called you
out of darkness into his marvelous light. Oh, what a glorious high
priest we have and what a glorious role, I guess we could say, the
Lord has given us in Christ to be able to come
before the Lord. Royal, royal priesthood. You know, in closing, this is
a reference back to the Old Testament priesthood. And only the Levites
could be a priest. Moses was a Levite and Aaron
was a Levite. And only the descendants of Levi,
the son of Jacob, could be priests. And in the book of Numbers, when
the Lord instructed all the tribes to be numbered, the Levites weren't
numbered. They weren't to be numbered.
No one knows the number of the Levites. God knows. The other thing about the Levites
is they weren't given any property in Israel. They were scattered
all over Israel so that everywhere you went there would be a priest. And the Lord has scattered us
throughout the world. And this world is not our home. We don't put down roots in this
world like the rest of the world does. And so in that regard, we're
like the Levites. And the six cities of refuge?
that the Lord had given in Israel for the one who had committed manslaughter,
could flee to, to escape the avenger of blood, that's being
you. We've slaughtered the Son of
God and he's provided us a city of refuge. Those cities of refuge
were Levitical cities. Those were Levites that lived
in those cities. The Lord say unto his church,
you are a royal priesthood to show forth the virtue of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, to
approach the throne of grace with boldness, not looking to
Asher, not looking to your sorrow, your repentance, your faith,
your works, but looking to Christ alone. for all of your acceptance
before God and giving to him all the glory and all the praise
for your salvation. A royal priesthood. That's who
God says we are. In Christ, it's who we are. It's who we are. Tom? 168? 168. Sorry, 186. 186 in the hard back temple,
186. The church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is his new creation. I've lost her and loved her. With his own blood he watered,
and for her rightly died. He lept from every nation, yet
won for all the earth. And to God all she blesses, with
every praise and due. It's the consummation of peace
for men. ? The three in one ? ? An hystic
sweet communion ? ? With those whose rest is gone ? ? O happy
ones and holy ? ? Forgive us grace that we have sinned ?