So today I want to cover John
chapter 14, verse 6. And the title of my sermon is
simply from that one text of scripture that Christ is the
way, the truth, and the life. We read last week the first three
verses of John 14. Let me just go ahead and read
through those. He says, let not your heart be
troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. And so we
see here the command, the exhortation of the Lord, teaching us to not
be troubled and giving us the basis for that, how we will not
be troubled. We believe in God, believe also
in me. In my father's house are many
mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. So he assures his people that
their home is the house of his father. that He is with them
in that house, they are His brethren, they are in His Father's house.
If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place
for you. So He's going to go, the Lord
Jesus, He's going to go to the cross and do everything necessary
for us to be with the Father in His house as our home. And
if I go and prepare a place for you, which it really is since
I go, I will come again, here's his promise, and receive you
to myself. He's going to take his people
to himself as a husband takes his bride, that where I am there
you may be also in his father's house, in his home, as our home
with him, with the Lord Jesus Christ. And these words were
spoken to those troubled disciples. They were troubled for many reasons,
and I suppose that this was the most troubling time in their
entire lives. But in verse 4 he says, and whither
I go, you know, and the way you know. Thomas said, Lord, we know
not whither thou goest. How can we know the way? And
Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. no man
cometh unto the Father but by me. And that's where I want to
focus our attention today. Now, there's a lot that can be
said about this. I suppose, as I mentioned in
the bulletin, that there's really no end to what we could say from
this verse. And that's surprising because
the Lord is about to go back to heaven. He's going to leave
his disciples when he goes to the cross. They cannot go to
the cross with him. They cannot go into death or
to the grave with him. But he will see them again when
he rises again from the dead. But then they won't see him when
he goes again to his father. And so they were troubled by
these things that he had said to them. They didn't understand
them. So the Lord Jesus Christ gives them this instruction,
this comfort. This morning as we were here,
Denise said something to me and I said, isn't it interesting
how sometimes someone will instruct us in things that we didn't really
need to know, but the Lord never does that. Whatever He says,
we need that instruction. It's precisely what we need. And it's spoken in a way that
is exactly in the way that we need it said. So here, the Lord
Jesus is about to go to death, he's about to leave his disciples,
and his disciples are troubled in their heart to a degree that
perhaps is greater than ever. And maybe they were more troubled
after he died, when they saw him on the cross and all that
they saw there. That was coming. So he is anticipating
that greatest of all trouble. And he therefore, as the master
now, knowing their hearts, knowing what they needed, and knowing
what was true, he says these few words here. There's actually
nine words in both the English and in the Greek. And in these
few words, He gives them something that's memorable because it's
so few and easy to be repeated. Also, and so it's memorable throughout
all that would come upon them. The Spirit of God would bring
it to their memory and they would so cherish these words. But not
only is it memorable, but it is the summation of all of the
truth of all of scripture in just nine simple words. Now that in itself is astounding. It's remarkable that the Lord
Jesus Christ would know his people and know precisely what they
need in their greatest hour of need. And so we should stand
in awe at how tenderly and expertly He knows us, knows our need,
and meets our need, and directs us to the one thing we must know
in this life, and for all eternity, that Jesus Christ is the way
and the truth and the life. And by saying that, He really
encompasses everything and leaves nothing out. Now, One of the
things that we do as we live in this world, and maybe you
can understand and appreciate these words of the Lord better
by considering this, one of the things that we do is we take
in our surroundings through our senses, don't we? I like to go
to the ocean. I like to hear it. I like the
smell of it. I like the feel of it. I like
the sound of it. I just like to look at the immensity
of it. I like to consider how deep it
is and how large it is. I like the forest. I like the
smell of trees in the forest and the earth. I like these things
because they appeal to my senses. I find them to be very beautiful,
peaceful, joyful. And so I take these things in,
and I notice their loveliness. I notice the peace and the joy
that I receive physically from those things. It changes your
attitude about things. It kind of pushes back the complexities
of life or the stresses of life. And so you enter into that through
this experience of creation. And if you were to describe this
to someone, you would talk about those things that you take in
through your senses, your vision, what you see, what you smell,
what you feel and touch, and what you hear. All the things
that you can take in and the emotions that result from that.
So much so that what we do is we focus on these attributes,
these properties, these qualities of that experience. Okay, so
then we begin to think about the beauty of the sky and the
fluffy clouds and the fresh spray of the salty sea in our face
or whatever it is and the way that the waves crash and curl
and form the foam and everything about that. It's very delightful,
isn't it? Now when we think about the Lord
Jesus Christ, it's often, or when we think about the truth,
it's often the problem that we get diverted from the facts,
the truth of the way things really are. So then we begin to think
about qualities and attributes and properties of God as distinct
from God or isolated or separate from Him, Himself. And so we
will say things like God is just and we imagine, though we may
not say this out loud or even think it, that there's a standard
by which God is measured, and we find that he conforms to that
notion, our notion, of justice, or being fair, and therefore
we find him to be more endearing to us because he is just. But
this is a mistake, because justice is not a quality of God. God is just. Justice is the way
God thinks. In other words, we could say
this, that there is no definition of justice apart from God. And we can do this with every
perfection of God. When we think about Christ's
humility, as we've been looking at the last several weeks, we
talked about his humility. We're amazed, aren't we? But
this is not just a quality that stands out here apart from him,
but Christ is humility, or humility is Christ himself. So that the
beauty, the loveliness, the pleasantness of all the things that we can
take in through our senses are meant to direct us, not even
to creation itself, but to the creator, you see. So that the
giver is always much greater than the gift, the builder much
greater than the house, the creator is much greater than creation,
the savior greater than the mere work that he did. All of it is
bound up in the person, you see. And that, I think, helps us to
begin to appreciate what the Lord Jesus said in these words
here. When Jesus told Thomas, who was
known for his doubting, and he said to him, I am the way, and
the truth, and the life. When Thomas asked, well, we don't
know the way. We certainly don't know how.
We don't know where you're going. We certainly don't know the way.
Yes, I am the way. And it was such a radical, it
seems, and yet not radical, a radical reset of Thomas's and all of
the 11, and even our thinking, that it teaches us to not think
of things, but to think of Christ. and to note and to admire Him
in what we see, the different properties, the qualities, the
attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, He is humble, therefore
we admire Him. Yes, He stooped in grace, therefore
we admire Him who is gracious. And we don't think of these things
as man-made measures. references that we can compare
him to. He cannot be compared to anything. Everything must be compared to
him. And yet it always will fall so
far short. And an example of this is when
King Solomon prayed, he said, the heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain thee. And he was amazed because will
God indeed dwell with men on the earth and in this temple
which I have made? No, the heaven and the heaven
of heavens cannot contain thee. God's immensity is beyond all
comprehension. Even the angels who have not
fallen cannot comprehend God. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
God. And so when He speaks of these
things, He's talking about things that are beyond all of the limits
of our comprehension, all of the limits of measure. Even in
space, men in their attempts cannot measure the dimensions
of space which is just created. how much greater than the Lord
who not only fills heaven and earth, but the heaven of heavens
cannot contain thee. And these things are given to
us as little children so that we would understand that the
dimensions of God, the dimensions of God in all of his attributes
are not things that are conglomerated together in a composition to
make God. But this is God. And we understand
Him through understanding these notions of God that He has taught
to us. And when we get it down and draw
the string tight to really understand it, we have to say this, the
Lord Jesus Christ is all. He's all in all that God is. And so that's the first introduction
to this, I think, that helps me begin to see that not to focus
on those visible things, those qualities in singularity, but
on the person who embodies each of them in perfection, in the
infiniteness of all that they are. And of course these things
boggle our minds, but it's meant to cause us to appreciate the
fact that with the Lord Jesus Christ is going to comfort his
troubled, his hearts, the hearts of his troubled disciples, that
he tells them, I am the way. I am the truth and I am the life. If you have me, if you know me,
If you look to me, then you are in the way. You have the truth
and you live. You have the life of Christ.
So that's the first thing I want you to see, is that these attributes
are not attributes in and of themselves to be admired or used
as standards, but Christ himself is all that he is as God. And that's all that we can say.
And the second thing here is that I want you to see is that
if we were to take what I just said and put it into scripture,
or rather, if we were to take scripture and apply it to these
thoughts, that what we would have to say is this, in summary,
is that all that God is, he is to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing that God is
that he is not to his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians 2.9 says, dwells in him bodily. That's what it means. It means
that if the fullness there, all the fullness means that the overflowing,
you cannot add to anything more than what is described here as
the fullness of the Godhead. There's nothing more than is
spoken when you say the fullness of the Godhead. That is in Christ. And all that God is, All that
God is, He is to us in Christ. Can you imagine that? That God
would so make Himself a God to His people, that all that He
is, He would be to them. For them, and to them, and do
so in Christ. Not in a tree, not in a paper
confession of faith. in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ, not in any one aspect of the truth that we understand,
but in Christ himself. And so that's the first thing
I want you to see. And the second thing is this,
that the Lord Jesus is not God only, but he is man. And as man,
He is holy and harmless and undefiled and perfect in every way that
God, that He could be. He's the perfect man. And so
that all that Christ is, as God, in human nature, He is to us,
to God, for us, as our mediator. So the one who is God and man
is perfectly suited so adapted to us in our own nature, and
so perfectly God, that He can go to God in all of the wisdom
of God, and all of the need of our human nature, and He can
take us with Him when He goes to God, and so that He is the
way. He's the truth from God, he's
the truth about God's purpose for us, to God. When the Lord
Jesus Christ is spoken of in scripture, there are so many
names given to him. At the top of the list, at the
head of the list, we would find in the A section, he is our advocate. And our advocate pleads effectively. His pleas are heard. And what does he plea? He pleads
God's cause. He pleads what is important to
God. As God. But as man. Because he pleads for us. And
so all that God is, He is to us in Christ. And all that Christ
is, He is to God for us. And I love the think about that,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes our guilty, helpless,
sinful condition, and He pleads God's eternal counsels and everlasting
love, and His provision, and His justice and righteousness,
and His grace and His wisdom. and His mercy, and He pleads
all of that on our behalf, and His advocacy and its intercession
is precisely what resonates in the heart of God, because He
is God, and He is man, and all the fullness of the Godhead dwells
in Him. So when we read these words, we need to see that this
is the all-sufficiency of God to us in Christ, and the all-sufficiency
of Christ to God for us. What a wonder that that is, that
He is the perfect man, our surety, and our mediator, our redeemer
from every part of it. And the other thing I want you
to see here in these words of the Lord Jesus Christ, is that
when he says this to his disciples, they no doubt had come from the
background of the Old Testament law and the prophets and the
Psalms. And they carried with them this
outward notion of religion, and the Pharisees were intent, they
were constantly harping on this, of this outward notion of religious
and the outward forms and the ceremonies and the things that
we need to do and the things that we are in comparison to
others and all of these things. And the Lord Jesus so expertly
addresses them in the context of this misunderstanding at best,
but worse, this Antichrist false religion, and he cuts through
that expertly with the light of God's truth, and he reveals
in what he says to them the summation of all of God's purposes, and
all of God's promises, and all the laws, and the shadows, and
the types, and the sacrifices, and the prophets, and the Psalms,
in Himself, when He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Everything that is contained
in the volume of the book, from first to last, is in Me. And it's fulfilled in Me. And I've done this and I am this
to you from God and to you towards God. He offered himself to God
for our sins, for us. And that's amazing, isn't it?
So all of the summation of scripture is contained in these few words,
and it's all in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then one more thing
I want to point out here to you as well, is that in these words,
the Lord Jesus, when he says, I am the way, the truth, and
the life, he addresses us as his disciples to know that as
you came first to the Lord through me, that having come first to
God through me, clinging to Christ as my substitute, my sacrifice,
my surety, my righteousness, everything, that even now He
is not only the way by which you first came, but you will
never go beyond Him. He's the truth. in the way, and
when you have reached the final pinnacle of all of the revelation
of God and all the operations of God working in you through
the providence of life and through the wilderness of this world
and the weakness of your flesh, that you will come to this to
see that it all culminates in and finds its fulfillment in
the Lord Jesus, who is not only the way and the truth, but my
life. I have no life, but His life.
Christ is our life. So He is from first to last.
the way, the truth, and the life in all of our walk. In the beginnings
of God's grace to us, He's the way. In the middle, and in the
continuance of it, He's the truth upon which we live and feed.
And He's the life, it's His life in us that enables us to know
Him as the way, and to live upon Him as the truth, and to find
His life to be the satisfaction of all of our longings and desires. So now you see these things,
you see the ultimate, this is the ultimate, isn't it? And this
helps to pare away, to cut away, to remove all of the dross of
false religion. Because what we do when we come
to the Lord is we find that we carry this baggage. of all of
our thoughts before. And we need to be separated from
that. And the Lord brings us along
and he sets before us the cross. He sets before us his person
as God and man. He sets before us his offices
as Redeemer, as surety, as the Christ of God, the prophet, our
priest, and our king. He's everything to us. And so
he says these things before us in order to direct us to Christ
Himself. To cling to Christ Himself, to
trust Him, to come to Him, to look nowhere beyond Him. To take
His words as the totality of all the truth that we need. and
his work to be the completion and the fulfillment of all that
God requires of us. That he performed what we could
never perform in all that God requires. And like Abraham, when
he speaks of Abraham in Romans chapter 4, if you want to turn
there, you can. Romans chapter 4, Abraham, it
says of Abraham in Romans 4, the greatest, I think one of
the greatest summaries of faith, the meaning of faith in scripture. He says, in Romans chapter 4
and verse 20, Abraham staggered not at the promise of God through
unbelief. but was strong in faith, giving
glory to God. Not only did faith cause him
to ascribe to God all of the merit and the honor and strength
and grace in his salvation, But in believing, in ascribing this
to God, this was the manner in which God is honored and glorified
in the hearts of His people. So that faith gives God all the
glory, and it is through the means of God-given faith that
we glorify God, that we honor Him. And how does he do that? Well, remember God's promise
to Abraham was that in you, in thee, and in thy seed, meaning
Christ, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And the
explanation of that given in scripture is that as God counted
Abraham righteous in Christ, That so God's promise would be
fulfilled, the one he made to Abraham in Christ. And that Christ
would justify his people by his righteousness. And this is what
God spoke to Abraham, this was his promise. And notice what
it says here in Romans chapter 4 and verse 20, 21. Abraham being
fully persuaded. that what He had promised, Christ
and Him crucified, and justification by Him, and all of our salvation,
everything in Him alone, and in all of its sufficiency, being
fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also
to perform. There was nothing of Abraham
in his persuasion. You see how faith in Christ,
this all summation, this summation of what Christ said to his disciples,
directs us away from ourselves, away from the baggage that we
carry to the Lord Jesus Christ. People will say, we're justified
by faith. And they'll leave it at that.
And I want to stand up and say, no, we are not justified because
of our faith, nor is our faith righteousness by which God justifies
us. Expositors. have taken the words
of Romans and have said, well, God justifies us through faith
instead of keeping the law. So he looks at our faith and
justifies us instead of our law keeping because we couldn't keep
the law. So we need something lower that
we can meet and faith will be that thing. That is such heresy. There's nothing in faith that's
righteousness. Faith, by its very definition,
divests itself. It empties itself of all claims
to merit or worth because it looks away to Christ. So that
is part of what Jesus is saying by these words, I am the way,
I am the truth, I am the life, to his disciples, is he not only
gives them the comfort that we need in a memorable way, that
would bring into summation all of the meaning of scripture,
and that this means that He is God, very God, and all that God
is to us, He is in Christ, and all that He is as God in Christ,
He is to God for us, and all the perfections that He is in
His nature, and yet He says these things to us to cut away, to
direct us to faith in Himself. so that we would trust him. So
when we come to God in our prayers, what do we say then? Lord, hear
him. Hear him. Isn't that it? I have
no answer. Lord Jesus, be my answer. Answer for me. In Psalm 35 in
verse 3 it says, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. You see, that's what it's getting
at here. I am the way, I am the truth,
I am the life. He's saying in this, I am your
salvation. And this is said explicitly in
Isaiah chapter 12. You want to turn there. This
is such a powerful statement of scripture. In Isaiah chapter
12, so much so that we should have at least one of these verses
committed to our memory. He says in Isaiah 12 verse 1,
In that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee, I will praise
thee. I used to try to drum it up,
but now it comes. It's like a bubbling fountain,
I will praise thee. Though thou wast angry with me,
thine anger is turned away. and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation."
You see the equivalence, this bidirectional equivalence here. You can't say salvation is this
thing over here and God is over there and Christ is here. No.
Christ is my salvation. God is my salvation. I will trust
and not be afraid. That's the result. The troubled
heart melts away for the Lord Jehovah. is my strength and my
song, he also is become my salvation. Is this not John 14 6? I am the
way, I am the truth, I am the life. God is become my salvation. You couldn't take any of these
things, the way, the truth and life and apply them to anyone.
But he who is God in man, the Lord Jesus Christ, to do so would
be blasphemy. These are things that belong
rightly only unto God, and unto God in Christ. And so, we have
these things spoken to us here. It's not our faith, it's Christ,
the one we believe. It's not our assimilation of
doctrine, it's Christ who is the truth. The one we know, and
therefore we know the truth. Now, it doesn't mean that there
are not words and concepts and precepts that are not given to
us because someone would say, well, it's just Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus. But then you have to ask, which
Jesus are you talking about? So that's why when we say that
Christ is all, we also mean that we hang on everything He said,
because He said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
Those are His words. He explains to us All of Scripture. It's His explanation of it. His
revelation of it to us. Enlightening us by this truth
which directs us to look to Christ only. So His Gospel has to be
given to us. I know, sometimes I'm concerned
about people when they say things like they latch on to a specific
aspect of salvation and they make that the defining test of
whether a person is a Christian or not. And for example, election. Now you have to believe in election.
I believe I'm one of God's elect. I mean, I didn't know about election.
Now I believe in election. I believe I'm one of God's elect.
So much so that if God didn't elect me, then I can't be saved,
which is true. And all of God's elect are saved,
which is also true. But then they just fixate on
that. And so that they missed the message of Christ. I am the
way, I am the truth, I am the life. Paul said, I have determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Yes, God chose us to salvation
in Christ, but He doesn't set up election as an abstract that
we latch on to and use it to measure whether or not a person
is a Christian or not. The only evidence that we're
God's elect is that we cling to Christ alone as the way, the
truth, and the life, Him and Him crucified. Not whether or
not we believe in election. That's not the litmus test. And another, when I first heard
the gospel, I didn't understand election. And yet I trusted Christ. Is election important? Absolutely.
It removes from us all boasting. It makes our salvation sure because
it's eternal and God chose us in Christ. We preach election. but we don't make election the
object of our faith, we make Christ. That's what scripture
does. Another way this cutting of the
laser light of God's truth in these words of Christ slices
through the baggage, not only removing our confidence in our
confidence, or our assurance in our assurance, or our confidence
in our evidences, or these other things that get in the way and
we lose sight of the fact that God has to receive me in Christ
and Christ alone. And having received me in Him,
it's all sufficient. So that we cut away this fixation
on things like the means of salvation, which is faith, or the evidences
of it, which is love to Christ, to get us back to looking to
Christ alone. Okay, but one of the other ways
that this is, I myself have experienced this, is that someone would ask
a question, how can I be saved? It seems like I want to be saved. I don't know what to do. I'm
such a sinner. What should I do? What should I do? And someone
says, well, you just need to call out to God for mercy. You
need to cry to God for mercy. I've done that. Well, keep doing
it then. What else do I do? Just keep calling. Keep crying. But there's a problem with that.
That's not the gospel. You see, when the publican cried
to God, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. In those very words,
he was crying, Lord, look upon the Lord Jesus Christ for me. Because he is the propitiation
for our sins. He is the mercy of God. And so
the Lord Jesus Christ is what we need. All of our salvation
is in Him. We don't look to our crying.
We don't continually cry and wait for something to happen
to us. We look to Christ. when Nicodemus came to the Lord
Jesus with his confidence that because he was born to Abraham
and because he was knowledgeable of the Jews' religion and the
law, an expert in it in fact, that somehow he had become capable
of entering the kingdom of God. And Jesus said, unless you've
been born again, you can't see the kingdom of God and you can't
enter it. And so Nicodemus was struggling
to find, okay, well then how do I become born again? Do I
get back into my mother's womb and be born the second time?
No. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. But that which
is born of the Spirit is spirit. Oh, I see then. So I need to
get the Spirit to do something to me. So I somehow am going
to manipulate or motivate the Spirit of God to birth me as
God's child? No! The Lord Jesus said, as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. And whosoever believeth
on the Lord Jesus Christ, him lifted up on the cross shall
not perish, but have everlasting life. You see, he directs us
to Christ and him crucified. He is the object of our faith. He's the one who saves us. He
is our salvation. He is the way. He is the truth.
He is the life. He's our only plea. He must plead
for us. And we trust him to do so as
our advocate, our intercessor, our substitute, our sacrifice,
our obedience, our faith, our life. He's everything, isn't
he? In everything, Christ is all, and he is all sufficient,
in all that he is, for all that we need to save us to the uttermost. That's what he's saying here.
And yet, have we even begun, really, to understand these words? It's memorable. We can repeat
them. We have some sense of what he
means by them, that everything is in him. And yet, when we get
it all down, what we do is we take these words in our hearts,
in prayer, in all the trouble of our hearts, and we say, Lord
Jesus, you are the way, you are the truth, you are the life.
Bring me in yourself. Be all the truth that I know
and be my life. And so we come to God and we
plead Him only. And we plead that God would hear
Him for us. Hear us in Him. Isn't that what
we do? It all comes down to Him. Why
were these words so comforting to these disciples? Because they
loved Him. because they saw him. He was
their master. They wanted to be with him. Nothing
caused them more pain. And that's why I think Thomas
said, I will not believe until I thrust my hand into the nail
prints of his hands and my fist into the side where the net spear
pierced him. I just won't believe. I think
it was something to do with this feeling that he had been disappointed
that the Lord had left him. And that's why these words are
so comforting, that's why they're so effective, is because the
Lord tells Thomas and us, he says, I am the way, I am the
truth, I am the life, if you've seen me, you have seen the Father. You know the way, you know where
I'm going, because you know me, and you're in me. And this is
what God has given to us, the Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel
of His Son, all of it given to us sometimes through entire books
explaining to us the mysteries of the Old Testament, like the
book of Hebrews, or books that unfold to us and divide between
our works and Christ's works, like the book of Romans, and
showing us it's all His work. Or in Galatians, where he bats
away the anti-Christ religion of man's works and the Jews'
religion, and he says, you've received Christ through hearing
the gospel. The Spirit of God himself was
given to you because he died for you. Now, are you going to
go on and try to perfect yourself in some other way? All these
things, and yet, sometimes, in just a few short words, the Lord
ministers so much to us when he directs us to Christ alone. In Acts chapter 20 and verse
21, he says, the Apostle Paul says, repentance towards God
and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, this is, and
in Acts 26, 18, the Lord Jesus told Paul, I'm gonna send you
to the Gentiles, that they might be sanctified through faith,
which is in me. Those are the words of Christ.
And so, what a blessing it is, isn't it? People want to say,
well, you need to make a confession, you need to get baptized, you
need to do this, you need to do that. We agree. We do need to confess. We do
need to be baptized. We do need to believe on the
Lord Jesus. We do need to understand the
doctrines. But when we get it all down,
what we need and what encompasses everything is Christ and Him
crucified. Let's pray. Lord, thank you that
the Lord Jesus is our all. and that in him we have everything,
we're complete in him. What a blessed thing, what a
blessed truth, what a blessed comfort it is to us. We want
to follow, we want to be with him, we want to be where he is,
we want to hear his words, we want to see his face, we want
to know him. We want to call upon him. We
want to call upon him as long as we live. And we need you,
Lord, to say to our souls, I am thy salvation. We need you to
say it to each one of us. If you say it to everyone, but
not to me, Lord, it won't do me any good. We need you to say
it to all of us, say it to our children, say it to our families,
our friends, and say it so that it goes with us, you go with
us in our hearts, our life, so that we live by faith upon the
Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us, that we, like
Abraham, would be fully persuaded that what he promised, he's able
to perform. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.