Colossians chapter one, I wanna
bring a message called peace, or peace with God from God, as
it says in the bulletin, which is why we read through Ephesians
two there, Colossians chapter one. I'm turning and I'm trying
to think at the same time, so it doesn't work well for me. Peace with God. Excuse me. I'm gonna read the
first two verses here. And then I also wanna read in
chapter three with you. But first, let's read these first
two verses. It says here, Paul, an apostle, someone sent of Jesus
Christ. And not just anyone sent, but
there were only 12 apostles. There were only 12 apostles. If you look in the book of Revelation,
it talks about that. We might wonder, how many were
there? There were 12, and Paul was one. but he was an apostle
of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and he sends the greeting
to the Colossians with Timothy, our brother. He addresses the
people in Colossae, which he had never met, but he's writing
to them because of his love for them and his prayers for them
and his ministry that God had given him to them. And this is
the way he addresses them in verse two. He says, to the saints,
those made holy, those sanctified ones, and faithful, those who
believe on Christ, brethren, made brethren by the work of
Christ, by the will of God, brethren in Christ, we can talk and talk
about that and we will someday, which are at Colossae, grace
be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. And last week, we've been looking
at this particular verse, verse two, for more than one or two
weeks now. The saints, the faithful, the
brethren in Christ at Colossae, and he says this to them. Now
realize this. This is a group of people who
were not part of that land called Israel. They were far away from
any relationship to God by their national heritage. They were,
what we read about in Ephesians 2, they were far off aliens from
the Commonwealth of Israel. And they were without hope and
without God in the world. And to these people, by the Lord
Jesus Christ, through the Apostle Paul, he sends this message to
the saints. Obviously, saints by God's doing,
as we looked at this throughout scripture. Saints means those
made holy, set apart to God by God, made holy by his act because
he chose them to be his. He made them his because he sanctified
them. He made them holy by the blood
of his own son, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
he made them holy in calling them by his spirit and giving
them faith, which is the next word, faithful. They don't trust
themselves. They look to Christ alone. They
don't look to their own selves. for God to receive them. They
don't consider what they've done. They don't promote what they've
done. They don't present to God anything about themselves. In
fact, they seek to find refuge and hide in Christ alone in faith. And so these are called faithful
brethren. All those who believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ are brethren. They're children of God, made
so by God himself. They're in Christ, which means
that they are members of his body, joined to him in union,
so that all he is, he is for them to God, and all he is as
God, he is from God to them in Christ. They have everything.
They're at Colossae and he says, grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a message from
God. A message from God our Father and from our great God and Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. One God, God the Father, God
the Son, God the Holy Spirit in three persons. And he is our
Father. And he speaks to us, he says,
grace to you and peace. You who believe on Christ, you
who have nothing in yourselves, but by God's grace are given
this great gift to see and look to Christ for everything. For
everything God requires of you. Everything you have failed to
do by your own sin. Everything God requires and you
didn't do because of your own sinfulness. Looking to Christ,
God says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, if you take that verse,
that verse really is a summary of everything in this book of
Colossians. It's announcing here the whole subject matter of the
book of Colossians. And that's why we spent a lot
of time on this. We don't often take a single word and preach
a whole message on it, but these words merit that, don't they?
Grace to you. Last week, we looked at grace,
and I wanna just remind you of some of the things we talked
about grace, because it's God's doing. Think of grace as not
you, but what God has done. This is the way we're saved.
Salvation is not a cooperative effort. God doesn't find something
to work with and then build on that. He finds the emptiness,
the darkness, and the void of an empty and ruined sinner. And he raises that sinful person
in their souls from death to life, starting with nothing but
ruin and death. That's grace, as we sang in these
last three songs, grace greater than our sin. So God's grace
is about what God does, not what we do. And in fact, this is emphatic
in scripture. God says this in a way that is
undeniably clear. He says it this way, it's not
of works. Sometimes we need the negative
emphasized in order to understand the positive. He says it's not
of works, not of works. You're saved by grace, he says
in Ephesians 2 verse 8. You've been saved by grace through
faith and that, that faith not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God. There's something very fundamental
about grace. Grace comes to us as a gift. A gift that finds no reason in
the one receiving the gift. All of the reason comes from
God. And it's a gift. You don't do
anything to receive. You're passive. You are not only
inactive, you're opposed to God. You're hostile to Him. And that's
why last week when we defined grace from scripture, we found
out that grace is actually God bringing good, our salvation
by Christ, out of our evil. It's not just starting from a
small amount of merit, it's starting from a demerit. Right. Okay, thanks. I'll fix that.
Let me take a step and fix that because otherwise I won't hear. There's a trick to this to get
these batteries out. I don't have any fingernails.
So I'll probably wreck these rechargeable batteries that belong
to the organization we rent from. Success. My face is probably
red. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine.
It will stop. I have these super, super rechargeable
batteries and I'm going to put them in there. They won't fail,
we hope. All right. Thanks for pointing
that out, Brad. Back in there, turn it on. So the first thing we learn about
grace is that it's a gift. And the thing about a gift is
this. There's a very fundamental principle here. If something is given to you,
you don't earn it. But if you earn something, then
it's not given to you because it's a reward. It's payback. You can't have it both ways.
you can't earn and it also be a gift. It's either a gift or
you earned it. And this is God's grace. When God says it's a gift, it
seems like it's understating the truth, but that's the way
God speaks. He doesn't have to overstate
using hyperbole. He says, you're saved by grace,
through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of
God, not of works, lest any man should boast." There's a reason
why grace must be given to us. Because we can't produce what
God requires. We can't fulfill it. We can't
meet it. The requirement is too high.
We're sinful. We're not interested. We're opposed
to God in our minds and by our wicked works. And grace always,
therefore, comes to those who are sinners, who have offended
God. And we looked at that last week.
Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Grace always
comes where sin abounds, where sin is the one thing that is
found, sin and death. And grace comes that way. So
it's always from God, it has to be. It comes to us in our
wickedness, in our hostility, in our minds, by our works. And
until we see this, we can't know grace. We can't know God. But
when we, as sinners, see what God has done in Christ, then
we know God. We know Him in truth. And this
is the amazing thing about grace. Let me take you to just a couple
of scriptures to underscore this. Look at Galatians chapter 5 and
listen to these words, even if you don't turn there. He says, In Galatians 5, stand fast therefore
in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage. He's talking about
trying to earn salvation by our own obedience. trying to remove
our sins by whatever means we think we can, by bringing some
kind of a sacrifice, either our own sorrow and tears, or thinking
that we can change our ways in order to make ourselves right
with God, or we can commit to doing right and surrender all
and sell all we have and become this super isolated, ascetic
person. Those things are actually an
affront. An affront. an offense to God. And so he says, stand fast in
the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Be not entangled
again with a yoke of bondage. That's slavery, to think that
you can earn from God. It's slavery, it's hostility. Verse two, behold, I, Paul, say
to you that if you be circumcised, which was a symbol of doing something
in order to make yourself pleasing to God, obedience to the law. If you be circumcised, Christ
shall profit you nothing. If you depend on what you've
done, Christ profits you nothing. It's not your sincerity that
saves you. For years, I lived under that
bondage. And I didn't even know I was in it. And I was constantly
like you. We were all born with a mindset
that somehow in our natural selves we can make God happy. And so
we, you know, someone sets before us a threshold. Meet this and
you'll make, you'll be fine with God. And so we try. And if we're
honest, we fail. But we are so blind in our self-confidence
that we try again. And sometimes we become despondent
and that despondency can lead to ruin. Or we continue striving
and we keep flogging the log, as they say. And so that's bondage. But when the gospel comes to
us, it finds us there in that blindness, striving in order
to please God. And he says, yet if you do that,
Christ profits you nothing. Jesus told the Pharisees this.
He says, if you were blind, then you would have no sin. See, blind. I can't see. Okay, now you have
no sin. But if you say, we see, then
your sin remains. Do you see the difference? One
is this realization of what God sees us as in truth, sinful and
helpless. And so he says in verse three,
I testify again to every man that is circumcised, he's a debtor
to do the whole law. If you start to come to God by
the smallest thing, then you have taken on the obligation
to fulfill the entire contract because you're living by that
contract called the law, the covenant. And verse four, Christ
is become of no effect, no benefit to you, whosoever of you are
justified by the law, you are fallen from grace. You see, all you have to do to
fall from grace is to add something to grace by what you bring, by
what you do, by thinking this is somehow going to set things
right. I screwed up again. I can't believe it. I got to
get myself out of this. The doldrums here. I got to fix
things. I got to make my peace with God. You see, that very
thought reveals this arrogance that you think you can do, you
can meet God's holiness. It shows you that you think low
thoughts of God and high thoughts of yourself. But thousands of
years, God set forth his law and he says, here it is. Do this
and live. And if you fail in one point
at one time, then you've broken the whole law and you die. That's it. And every person from
the womb is beating the air, as it were, with their fist,
trying to get at this level of acceptance by their own doings
and strivings. That's called works. That's called
reward for performance accomplished at work. When I was employed, As an engineer, we had these
performance evaluations. What have you accomplished this
year? It was all about works, wasn't it? And it's okay, because
I was getting paid. So, hey, you earn it, right? You get paid. Of course, I never
felt like I really earned it, but that's another story. The
point is, it was already a system of working and earning and getting
paid for that. That is not salvation. We don't
come to God with what we are. We don't come with what we've
done. We don't come to God with the hopes of getting better,
or promises of getting better, or sorrow for past failures and
aggravated sins, or sorrows for repeated sins. Those things will
not do with God. There's only one thing that will
do. Christ has made us free, you see. It's what God thinks
of his son. That's the way he accepts sinners.
So look at Romans chapter 11, the same thing. It's not of works. This is something that we almost
have to be beat up around the head and shoulders with all the
time because we fall so easily into this thinking, even after
we've believed on Christ, that we have to be brought back. Remember,
remember the cross. And so in Romans 11, he says
this in verse 5, even so at this present time also, there is a
remnant, a very small leftover portion according to the election
of grace, God deciding, God choosing, God making it happen. According
to the election of grace, which eliminates all possibility of
man claiming some contribution. He says in verse 6, and if by
grace, notice, then it is no more of works. Otherwise, grace
is no more grace. You see, it's like you can't
have it both ways. You're either, this is a mutually
exclusive principle. You either receive from God based
on the work of Christ alone. freely, by His sovereign will,
by His work, when you were blind and dead in sins, or you earn
it. And if you earn it, then you
receive justice from God. And believe me, you will not
stand in the day of judgment. But if by grace, then you stand
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe me, by God's word, God
receives you in Christ, for Christ's sake, as His own Son. And that's the difference between
grace and works. Works is constantly striving,
always falling short, always offending God in the arrogance
of this attitude that His holiness is low enough that I can meet
the threshold, and my own arrogance that I can actually perform what
God requires of me when I'm nothing but a sinner. And so we, you
know, in this attitude of works, what do we do? Well, we look
at this person over here. They just don't measure up like
I do. Or look what I've done, you know, or the opposite. Oh,
woe is me. I can't be accepted by God because
I can't live up to the standard. You're right. You can't be when
you've got that attitude. The only way you can come is
by the way God made what he did in his son. And so that's what
grace is. And so last week we looked at in Genesis 45. If you want to turn there, I
want to read this one text to you from there. In Genesis 45
where Joseph finally comes to his brothers who had turned him
over and sold him. They got some payment for their
brother to make him a slave to his enemies, the Ishmaelites
and then the Egyptians. And he suffered. He was in prison.
He was served another man as a slave and then he was put in
prison. And yet God had a purpose of grace where he was going to
actually use Joseph's suffering And the death they intended to
bring on him to actually save those same brothers. Save their
lives and save their families. And this is a picture of God's
grace bringing good, God's good, eternal salvation by Christ whom
we by our sins crucified. All right, so in Genesis 45,
Joseph then makes himself known to his brothers as the Lord Jesus
Christ, makes himself known and makes God known in his truth
and grace. When he says in verse four of
Genesis 45, Joseph said to his brethren, come near, I pray you.
And they came near and he said. I'm Joseph, your brother, whom
you sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be not grieved
nor angry with yourselves that you sold me hither, for God did
send me before you to preserve life. That's grace. For these
two years hath the famine been in the land, and yet there are
five years in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve
you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great
deliverance. So now it was not you that sent
me hither, but God. That's grace, isn't it? All of
my sin. All of my sin, and what am I
to do with it? I can do nothing with it. Well
then, what hope do I have? In yourself, no hope. But this
is where the gospel comes. The hope of salvation. The accomplishment
of it. didn't come from you and it doesn't
depend on you. It comes from God alone and is
given to you on the ground, the foundation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And when Joseph made himself
known to his brothers that God arranged this in order to save
their lives, their own sin, which brought about the salvation God
designed, they couldn't understand it. They couldn't believe it.
But look, look further here. And so he says, Reading down,
he says, verse 12, Behold, your eyes see the eyes of my brother
Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaks to you, and you shall
tell my father of all my glory. In Egypt, you see, the Lord Jesus
Christ, when he by himself had purged our sins in his death
on the cross, was exalted and seated at the right hand of God
in all of his glory in order to bring the people he died to
save to glory and save them from their sins. That is grace. And
so he goes on. Tell my father of all my glory
in verse 14. Notice what Joseph did next.
And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept. And Benjamin wept upon his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren
and he wept upon them. And after that, his brethren
talked to him. You see, first he reveals the
grace of God. Then he shows his grace to them
in his love for them. And he shows them by kissing
them and weeping on them. that he was at peace with them.
You see? From grace comes peace. Grace provides what is required
to be at peace. If someone offends you in your
own experience in life, what is your reaction to that? We're
going back to Colossians now. What is your reaction when someone
offends you? Well, I don't know about you,
but I do know how my mind works. When I'm offended by someone,
I hold a grudge. I think, how dare they? And then
I think, even after maybe some time has passed, I know that
person's character. I gotta be cautious of them.
And I'm going to be on the lookout for them because I know what
they're like. They're always going to do something like that
again. And so I not only have this memory
of the problem, that offense that they offended me by, but
I also have this guarded approach to them thinking, ah, they're
going to screw up again. And that's the way we deal with
one another, isn't it? We hold things against one another
because of offenses. Now, what happens, though, is
if you've done something like this, and someone has offended
you, then they have to come to you to try to remove that offense. In fact, they might ask you,
what can I do to make up for the wrong that I've done against
you? Maybe they damaged your property. Maybe they damaged
your reputation. People are always taking someone
else to court. over claims of damaging their
reputation, and there's compensations made. So the person who's been
offended stipulates what's required to remove the offense. That's
the point I'm making here. How can this offense be removed? Well, I don't know. We'll have
to ask the person who was offended. Now, the fact of the matter is,
is we offended God in Romans chapter four. It says this at
the very last verse of Romans chapter four, he says. He was delivered, Christ was
delivered for our offenses, offenses to God, our offenses to God. In Psalm, let me just read quickly
some verses to you from scripture about our offenses to God. In Psalm chapter five, God says,
he says, thou art not a God that has pleasure in wickedness. Neither
shall evil dwell with thee. There's not gonna be any evil
with God. No one who is evil will be with God. The foolish
shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Well, that pretty much excludes
everybody, doesn't it? Yes, it does. And then in Psalm
7, for example, in verse 11, God judges the righteous, and
God is angry with the wicked every day. The wicked, God is
angry. He hates all workers of iniquity. And then in Jeremiah, he says
this, Jeremiah 17, notice how it's worded. He says in verse
nine of Jeremiah 17, the heart, the heart of man, is deceitful
above all things. Everything else laid beside the
heart of man, man's heart is more deceitful. And above everything
else, you could describe him Deceit is in his heart. The heart
of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. God is angry with the wicked
every day. He hates all workers of iniquity. It's desperately
wicked. Do you see the offense? Do you
see the offense? Who's been offended here? David
said in Psalm 51, against thee, thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in thy sight. When he had committed adultery
with Bathsheba and murdered her husband and then covered it up
as if he was righteous, parading around like he was blessed of
God for all the time until God himself came and exposed his
sin. He said, it was against you. And you only, because God's
law, transgression is defined as breaking God's law. The wickedness
of our heart, the deceitfulness of our heart and of our words
and of our ways are an offense to God. And then he tells us
that the wages of that is death. So then where can this come from
when we read in Colossians one and verse two, grace to you and
peace? Peace, because the one offended
now is the one who stipulates what's required in order to remove
the offense. How can peace possibly be established? What did God require? Well, what
he required, we wouldn't give. What he required, we couldn't
give. He did have a requirement for
peace, but it was way higher than anyone could give, except
God himself. God himself, God himself had
to answer the requirement to remove the offense. He had to
answer his own holiness. But as God, how could he answer
that? Because it required death. Well, God had to take on our
nature. We sinned as humans. As man, we would die like men. And God had to take our nature
so that as both God and man. He could go to God to find out
what God required to remove our offense, and then he could fulfill
it as God in all of the wisdom and holiness that God requires.
And as man, he could take our sin and bear that sin as his
own sin and suffer the penalty of God's wrath and justice against
our sin in order to remove the offense by God's own requirement. Look at 2 Corinthians. 2nd Corinthians
chapter 5. He says in 2nd Corinthians chapter
5, in verse 18, all things are of God. They're all things are of God
ultimately, but especially in this matter of salvation, nothing
is of us. All things are of God, 2nd Corinthians
5.18. who has reconciled us. To reconcile us is to make peace. We were friends, but our sins
became an offense and separated us. He says in scripture that
your sins have separated between you and your God. Our sins separated
us and we had to be reconciled. We couldn't do it. But God did
it. He says all things are of God
who has reconciled us to himself. So you see, who did the reconciling?
Who did the peacemaking? Who removed the offense? God
did. And this is how he did it. By
Jesus Christ. So he did this. God did it by
Jesus Christ. We didn't contribute. We didn't
participate it. We did nothing to receive it.
He gave it to us. He proclaimed it. He published
this peace to us. And that's what he does in the
next part. He's given to us the ministry of reconciliation. The
proclamation of this peace made by God in Christ. And here it
is again expounded to wit that God was in Christ. God in all of his fullness was
in Christ. Reconciling the world to himself,
not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed unto
us the word of reconciliation. He didn't impute their trespasses
to them because he imputed them to Christ. Which then, therefore,
defines the scope of the word, world, here. Because God did
impute the sins of some to them. They die for their sins. But
those to whom he imputed their sins to Christ do not die for
their sins because they were laid on Christ. And that's the
world of God's elect, from Jews, from Gentiles, the world God
saved. And then he says, so he says,
God was in Christ reconciling these, the world, to himself,
not imputing their trespasses to them. He didn't charge them. He didn't require. the compensation
to his law from them, he didn't charge them with the guilt of
their offenses, though they committed them. How? How did he do that
then? He says in verse 21, for he hath
made him, Christ, to be sin for us. who knew no sin, Christ knew
no sin, that we, by this transaction, God, laying our sins on Christ,
this is the way, this is the compensation God required for
our offenses against Him in order to be reconciled to us. He took
our sins from us, He lifted them from us, He laid them on His
Son, Christ bore them as His own, and then He endured the
penalty God's just wrath required for our sins, And then satisfaction
to God was made for our offenses in the blood, the death of his
son. And that's what removed the offense. He was delivered
for our offenses and he was raised again for our justification. God declaring us righteous. And this is the way peace is
made. This is the way peace is made. Reconciliation. Look at
Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five, look at
this. This is peace from God. This is peace with God, because
peace with God has to come from God. It has to be made by God. And so he says in Romans five,
verse nine. much more than being now justified
by his blood, by Christ's blood, having been shed on account of
our sins, laid on him, bearing them as his own, suffering what
God required for satisfaction to his justice, to answer his
law, to fulfill the obedience of his law and righteousness,
being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through him. Listen to this now, verse 10.
For if when we were enemies, We were reconciled to God by
the death of His Son. This was not something you were
even participating in. This was outside of your own
personal experience. God did this in Christ. The only factors in the equation
are what God did. What Christ did and what God
thinks of that, that's the way the scales of justice are balanced. That's the way righteousness
is established. That's the way everlasting life
is given on the basis of that everlasting righteousness in
the blood of God's Son. And if God, when we were enemies,
reconciled us to Himself by the death of His Son, that's what
He's saying here. And much more. Having been saved,
having been made, having been reconciled, having been put at
peace with God, we shall be saved by his life. Now turn back to
Colossians with me. I want you to look at chapter
three. I'm gonna read this verse to you in Colossians chapter
three in verse 15. He says this, this whole book
of Colossians is about these things. And so in later, chapter
three, he says this, let the peace of God, what's the peace
of God? The peace that God made in the
death of his son. It's the peace God established
with sinners who had offended him. by removing their offense,
in order that on the grounds of this justice, exalted and
magnified to the highest possible level in the death of his son,
and the righteousness of God fully fulfilled to everlasting
ages in the death of his son, God displays all of his perfections
to the highest possible extent. That's peace. That's the peace
of God. the removal of all of our sins,
the clothing of Christ's perfect righteousness, making us holy
in God's perfect, his sight of his perfect holiness, accepted
in the presence of God in all of his glory with no compromise
to his justice, but actually the exaltation of his justice. He says that peace. He says,
let the peace of God, the peace God enjoys because of the death
of Christ, the peace we enjoy through faith in Christ's blood,
let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Because when you
have offended God, you know what you do? Everybody else becomes
an offense to you because you carry this guilt, the weight
of this, I haven't, I'm not pleasing to God, God is angry with me
and therefore I'm angry with God. I can't satisfy him, he's
too strict, too austere. No, you can't. That's clear. Your whole mind and everything
you do is opposed to him. You have a hostile mind towards
God, you're haters of God. And yet God, in his great grace
and mercy, laid upon Christ the sins of his people, imputed their
sins to him, and received from him full satisfaction. That's
the peace of God. Know it. Let this rule in your
hearts. Don't let this attitude of this
unconscious grudge against God rule in your hearts. You come
to God. who has made peace in the blood
of his son, you come to him with a free access, full access, the
door Christ is open, the way to glory, the way to the father
has been made by the blood of his son. And now we access it
through faith in his blood. And at the end of our life, you
know what? The door of heaven will be wide open still, and
we'll be welcomed with the highest possible delight Not in what
we did, but in what Christ has done. We won't boast of ourselves. We won't call for recognition
for our life. We will preach one thing, Christ
and Him crucified, because that's the glory of God. So he says,
let that rule in your hearts. Let this peace of God rule in
your hearts to the which also you are called in one body and
be ye thankful. It's all done. It's all complete. Look at chapter two, one more
verse. We'll get to this later in our study. In him, verse nine,
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That means
in the body of Christ the man, God dwells in all of his fullness. He is God. There's nothing that
God is that he isn't. And you are complete in him. You're complete in him. It doesn't
say now be complete in him. It doesn't say that, does it?
He says this to those Colossians who were alienated from the life
of God, strangers from the covenants of promise without God, without
hope in the world. And the gospel came to them.
God preached peace to them who were far off. Peace made in the
blood of his son with God. All sin removed, all righteousness
required, freely given. Perfection established forever
in the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. Come to God by
Jesus Christ. The way is open by faith. Let
this peace of God rule in your hearts. And when the peace of
God rules in our hearts, then we have peace with one another.
I may not please you, but I am pleasing to God in Christ. I
don't have to strive. I don't have to strive to retain
something in this world. I have all things in Christ.
I don't have to worry about the troubles of life because in the
Lord Jesus Christ, everything is working together for my good
and God's glory. And though I feel very agitated
if I can't sleep at night, or if I don't have food, or the
other day I couldn't drink water or eat food for eight hours,
I told Denise, man, I'm very fragile. Just a few hours without
food and water, I suddenly feel like I'm going to die. how dependent
we are moment by moment on God providing for us. But all those
things, even this life itself in this world, this is just a
sojourn. This is just a temporary thing.
To live is Christ, to die is gain. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
that sends to us by the Lord Jesus Christ from your throne
on high, grace and peace, peace with God, made in the blood of
your only begotten Son, grace given freely, without reason
found in us or looked for in us, but found in the goodness
of God. A grace that doesn't change,
a grace that requires nothing from us, but provides all things
because we couldn't give it and because God's holiness is too
high and his grace is too good. Thank you, Lord, that you have
super fulfilled all that you required in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that we can say even now,
even in the darkness of our minds, and the unrest, and the anxieties,
and falling short, and all of the unbelief, when we see and
look upon Christ, and we hear from Your Word, we are complete
in Him. We can rest, we can rest in Him. What delight! Help us Lord, we
want to be with you and see you in your glory, but we realize
that walking by faith now is the way you've chosen to glorify
yourself and your son. In his name we pray, amen.