As our brother was preaching
on grace earlier on, I was thinking how much grace is necessary for
a Frenchman to put up with six weeks in America and with the Michigan sunshine. Real pleasure, it is a real pleasure.
I plan to be here, God willing, tomorrow morning with you. It's
been a pleasure to have fellowship with like-minded brethren. Also to be able to be ministered
to in the world. One thing which people don't
realize very often is that on traveling in the US or even Most
of the time in Africa and places like this, I don't get to hear
many people, just the same one. So by the end of the message,
if you're tired, just have pity on me because it's 24-7 for me. But it's been really great to
be encouraged. If you want to take on the burden of praying
for our little group in Chalon, France, we are five so far. And earlier on, most of them
are asleep, I hope, by now, but earlier on I was talking to my
wife and realized that the other preacher, with five but two preachers,
one preacher is in Almont, Michigan, the other one is, I don't know
exactly where, but on vacation too. We hadn't planned it. So
you just realize that actually the Lord has been very good,
they won't meet three, but there will be some visitors. and next
week will be the same. But just pray. It's very hard
to be such a small group. I know we can say the Lord is
enough and all this pious talk, but when you've got to get up, it is not necessary to put on
the shoes because you meet in your home and you meet with just
a few people and you've seen them the week before and the
week before and during the week. It is hard. It is hard. And you
have countless thousands of people all around who don't know their
left hand from their right hand. And we have this gospel, this
grace of God, overabundant. And do pray for us. Sometimes I find it hard to come
back from Africa, where the Lord is doing something, to godless
France, where the Lord is doing something, but we don't see it
so much. Anyway, I invite you to open
your Bible this evening and the Gospel according to Matthew chapter
16 and we will read from verse 13
to 28 or 26 Matthew 16, starting at verse
13, when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi,
he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I am the
Son of Man? So they said, Some say John the
Baptist, some Elijah, others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you
say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus
answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for
flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who
is in heaven. And I also say to you that you
are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates
of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will
be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
in heaven." Then he commanded his disciples that they should
tell no one that he was Jesus Christ. From that time, Jesus
began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem
and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and
scribes and be killed and be raised again the third day. Then
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be
it from you, Lord! This shall not happen to you.
But Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! You are an offence to me, for
you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."
And Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow
me. I will stop the reading here. In this passage there is so much,
and I want to go through the passage and see these words which
we see here, the words which are spoken. Jesus speaks, the
disciples speak and so on, and there are so many gems in this. Here Jesus is preparing an important
time, an important stage in the life of that little group of
disciples following Christ. He starts to reveal to them in
a more precise way what is going to happen to him, what he is
going to do, and also what they will be. Because the Gospel is
not something which was brought to the Jews only, the people
at the time of Christ. But the Kingdom of Heaven is
throughout the world and throughout the ages. And Christ has a work
and he will achieve it, complete, but then his church has a mission. to take that message of grace,
of salvation in Christ alone to the whole world and right
down through the ages to the last time. So Christ is revealing
and preparing these men for what's going to happen to him and what
there will be. And I insist on that. Not what
he wants them to try to do, but what They are and what they will
be. They are called and they will
preach. They will proclaim that message
throughout the whole world. Their word will bring men, women
and children from death to life and it will bring some men, women
and children to take that message into the next generation and
so on. until today and so on until the
last day when all the church will be there. And Jesus takes
his disciples aside and he asks them a sort of casual question. You know the sort of things like
sometimes you with your friends, Christian friends, and you sit
on a, I was going to say patio, but you call it a deck. Well,
not with a Michigan sun, but But you sit and you talk about
sort of things like this, what do you think about this and that,
and that's what fellowship is made of. We don't try to be over-spiritual,
we're just ourselves. And Jesus says, who do men say
that I am? This is a casual question you
would ask like this, and Jesus actually is not focusing on that
question. because he doesn't even comment
the reply from his disciples. He goes to another question which
we'll see in a minute. But what do people say that I
am? And the disciples, as you've
seen, they reply. They say, well, some people say
John the Baptist, some Elijah and so on. And it is interesting
to note that they're quite ready to say what people say. And all these men whom they mentioned
are great men of God. Great men of God. But people
around them were left in their sins. Because they knew of Moses,
they knew of Elijah, and all these people they mentioned,
and there were many besides. But these men could point to
the one who was going to be the Saviour, could point to the salvation
of God, but could not save, could not help in any way. And do you
know, this is a lesson which is so hard to learn. Today, what
do we see? We see people following people,
great men. And my friends, not just among
Armenian people. We see being developed, a sort
of spirit of priestcraft. A preacher is no better than
the word says. Whatever else he says might be
true, but it doesn't help. It is God's word written and
incarnate and preached that saves. Period. So you see, We're thankful. We honor those whom the Lord
sends out to preach. But we don't put them on a pedestal. We don't put them in the place
of Christ. We don't want to, but we do. And we've got to be careful about
ourselves. So what do many things say that
I am? This and that and the other.
But you see, all these people, even John the Baptist, were in
the Old Testament. And in the Old Testament, you
see pictures of Christ. You see prophecies. You see promises. But Christ is not in the Old
Testament. He has to come from the Virgin. He has to be in this world. He
has to be incarnated. This is a real gospel. Christ
has come. And for instance, to try to explain
a little, you have Joseph, a real saviour for his family and for
the whole region, for a vast region. But Joseph will give
birth to two children and these will become the most bitter opponents
to the Davidic line. which is the line from which
comes the Saviour. Now, Judah is the one from whom
Christ will come according to the flesh. But then if you go
to Genesis 38, you see Judah with prancing eyes along the
road and he sees that Tamar, Now is he? Is he an image of
the Saviour who is to come? Yes, further down in Genesis,
but he is not the Saviour. And you see we have the window
of, if I can use a computer term, a window of Joseph who tells
us something about Christ, and Judah, and many others, John
the Baptist, Elijah, all these great men, but Christ has to
come. He has to come. And you may know
a lot of things about theologians, about schools of thought and
so on, but it is no good until you know Christ. And Christ knows
you. And is united, unites you to
him. But Jesus goes further, he points
to the disciples, but who do you say that I am? Now you will notice something
important here. He doesn't say, who do you think
I am? Because at the moment, at the
time, they didn't think much. They were all wrapped up in themselves
and even a little later, in the presence of the Son of God, God
incarnate, they were fighting among themselves to know who
was the greatest. And you remember when John and James and the mother
came and said, Lord, can one sit on your right hand and the
other one on the left? And the others, they were all
angry with them, upset. Why? They wanted to sit in that
place. No, no, my friends. Who do you
say that I am? There is an involvement, there
is a committing, a commitment. And this is disunion, it's not
something, you know, I think Christ is this or that, I cannot
imagine that God would act like this, or Christ wouldn't certain... No! No! What do you say that
I am? Because if you say certain things
about Christ, about somebody, then you've got to act differently.
If you say, I forgive you, then you can't hold a grudge, for
instance. So what you say about Christ,
who he is, implicates the whole of your
life. And of course, we fail by nature. Who do you say that
I am? And this is where Peter, once
again, steps to the front It's interesting that he's always
labeled number one in the list of apostles. But he steps there
and he comes with this beautiful confession once again. You are
the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And we say, wow, this is
so great, this is beautiful. But you know, what we see in
the Bible is not just paper situations. They're real situations. Now,
if somebody today says, well, yeah, Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, we'll say, well, this is true. But for a Jew at
that time, this was something which was beyond any thinking. Many men in those days were saying,
I am the Christ. But they had to go into the desert
in order to gather some of their followers, and then they were
put to death somewhere or another. But here, Peter, a Jew, and we
know later that he's a devout Jew, he doesn't want to soil
himself with eating all sorts of things, like in the vision,
you remember. But Peter says, you are the Christ. Now this is something momentous. You are the one whom all our
forefathers have been waiting for. And now, I and these, we
can see you." Well, that's pretty arrogant, isn't it? And the Lord
points out that this is not something he got from his father. Have
you read this? Have you noticed that? Jesus answered and said
to him, Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, the son of Jonah.
And then he says, well, you didn't get that from your father. Peter
says you are the Christ, the sent one. And you know when God
sends somebody or does something, he doesn't do it by half. He
won't send an emissary with kind of half the plain fare. If your president or mine will
send an emissary or an ambassador, it will be according to the level
of the country to which he is sent. Well here, Christ the Saint
one comes with all that is necessary to do the work God sends him
to do. He is the perfect one. But Peter
says something else. He says, the Son of the Living
God. And in those days, for a Jew
to say the Son of the Living God did not mean what the Muslims
say that it means. It is not that God had an affair. with somebody and have a son.
No! Here is one who is sent, and
he is a man, he is God. God himself. Now a Jew, for a
Jew to say that, this is very dangerous business. Many times
Christ himself, with all the power he had, intimated that
he was God. And the Jews, what did they do?
Took stones. And in the end, they nailed him
to the cross. And this is why Jesus comes and
says, the flesh and blood didn't teach you that. What do flesh
and blood teach? They teach fear. Fear of man. Now, I can see this man is a
great prophet, but I will not say it, because if I say it,
I'm thrown out of the synagogue. You remember, John chapter 9,
the parents of the man born blind say, we don't know, we don't
know. Why? Because the Jews had already
determined that whoever said he was the Christ would be turned
out of the synagogue. That is ostracized. So it is
not flesh and blood. Flesh and blood cannot understand
that God would come in the flesh. How can a man think that? It's
not possible. But where does it come from?
But my Father who is in heaven. The good news of God is that
he came from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ in order to accomplish
salvation. This is the only salvation that
saves. And it is revealed. Revealed, we are used to this
word, revelation. What does it mean? And we don't
dig too deep for one reason, that is that the word revelation
shows us our limitation. If it is revealed, that is because
we have not been able to think it out, to invent it. We have not even been able to
understand and see it. Maybe you work with a computer
and the thing really has got a mind of its own. And you can't
see how to do this and that and it will come to the end. And
somebody explains to you, reveals it to you, this is what you've
got to do. You say, I didn't even see it. That was right there
somewhere on the screen. I didn't see it. It's revelation. It shows your inability. And it is here. Without God's
coming and God revealing His Son, there's just no hope. No hope. And I wonder if we really
believe this. We want to believe it if the
Lord has been gracious to us. We try to believe it. But most
of the time, we think we can work it out ourselves. And the
cleverer we are, the more difficult it is. because we get into the
motion, that's it, I can find out it works. No. It is revealed by the Father
in heaven. And then Christ continues there
in that passage which is so disputed, so people are afraid to look
at it. And I say, I also say to you
that you are Peter and on the rock I will build my church and
the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." Death will
not be strong enough to finish with that church. Now, what is
a rock? Is it Peter? Is it this confession? Or what? And if you have a lot
of time to waste, go to the commentaries. Now one thing is sure, is that
Christ is not making Peter a Pope. No, not at all. Although he is
speaking in the singular here. He is saying you, you, singular,
are Peter. And then he plays on the words.
Now what is it? Is it Peter? Is it the confession? Is it It cannot be just Peter,
because the Lord says, you are Peter, and on this rock, mysterious
rock, I will build my church. Now, a Pope, be he Catholic,
or Protestant, or Evangelical, or Grace Circle, what does he
do? Because one thing he tries to
do is to build his own empire. with infallibility, with all
kinds of mysterious things, with strong pronouncements and so
on. But Christ here says, I will build a church on this rock.
What is it? Well, it's compounded. It is
a confession, it is a truth of Christ which has been confessed
by Peter and which will be preached which will be proclaimed, which
will be carried right to the end of the world, right to the
end of the ages. So that Christ built on the church
in Jerusalem. When the church in Jerusalem
was very cosy, 5,000 members, you can very well take over and
it's nice, but the Lord had said to the end of the earth. So,
he brings, he blesses them with a persecution, a very violent
persecution, many dead, and they all go everywhere. Note, all
those who were persecuted went everywhere except the experts,
the preachers, the apostles. They stayed in Jerusalem. Now,
what did the people do? They went all over the place.
There were displaced people, refugees. So did they mope and
moan and try to make do with what their new situation was? No. Their great characteristic
was they went preaching the word, is in our versions. But that's
not the word. Actually it is gossiping the
gospel, passing on the gospel, everywhere. And it is, as it
was pointed yesterday, the root is the word which we have for
evangelism, for evangelizing, gossiping the gospel. And I have
this little pun when I'm in Africa, because it's much more confused
there. I said, you ladies you are not
preaching, you cannot preach. Well, some do over there, but
you cannot preach. So, are you sort of not being
able to work in that? Well, yes, because the word is
not preaching. A few verses later, the word
is used for Philip who goes to Samaria, but it is gossiping
the gospel. Do I need to continue? We can
all gossip the gospel, can't we? And it is on that rock that
Christ builds a church. He goes, he sends his word and
his Holy Spirit gets hold of this word according to the everlasting
purpose for which it has been sent. And it comes into a heart
there and it brings hatred. Another one, it brings a breaking
down, new life. according to what God has purposed. And this is how Christ built
the Church. It is not a synergy, the Apostles
or the Christians and Christ. No, no, no. He works through
the Church. He works through the ones he
sent. And can you tell me the name
of one he's not sent in the Church? No, they're all sent. and this
is why we hear what he says, and I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven. Now this is not some kind of
inquisition which is brought into being. No, no. As the word
is preached, there is a binding and there is a loosening. And
it is done. And you can't control it, I can't
control it, nobody. Those who can try to control
it, they get away from the Gospel. Don't they? Yes, they do. Because
they bind people with chains of men. And yet the Son
will make you free. This is how Christ does it. And the gates of Hades will not
prevail against it. Death will not. You have a Christian,
somebody to whom the Lord has been gracious, has regenerated,
has brought into union with himself through Christ. Now, what can
death do to that person? Promotion. Getting him rid of
any remnant of sin, which is far better. Being with Christ
without sin. If you can imagine what it is,
see me afterwards to explain. So this is Christ revealing himself,
what he's going to do. And he's going to do it by going
to the cross, what we're coming to, but also he will do it right
through the ages, through the church and the mission of the
church and the energy of the Holy Spirit who works according
to the virtue of Christ. So Jesus goes on here now and
we go to verse 21. From that time Jesus began to
show his disciples what? That he must go to Jerusalem
and literally would say, and must suffer many things from
the elders and chief priests and scribes and must be killed
and must be raised again on the third day. So you see here, it
is not a political failure. It's not Christ who somehow didn't
quite understand the script and got these leaders so upset that
in the end they nailed him to the cross. Because he knows right
from the beginning, he announces that on the third day he will
rise. Not on the fourth day. Not any old how. It's all planned. But it is interesting to see
what he says. He must go to Jerusalem. Why? Can't they put a cross anywhere? Dig a hole. You can dig a hole
anywhere as long as it's not too hard. Why has it got to be
in Jerusalem? That is where God's name is placed. Where God has placed his name.
That is where the Ark of the Covenant or the place which symbolizes
the presence of God is. That is where that great veil
is which no man can break, can tear apart. And the veil which
says that the way to God is not open. Somebody's got to go and
open it and it is in Jerusalem. This is a place where The king
was where the priest was, and this is the only place on this
earth where one who was the high priest before the most high god
was also a king, pointing to the one coming according to his
order who would be king and priest. that is not according to the
old order. That was impossible. The priest
came from one tribe, the king from another tribe. But this
is a new order. This is something, God is doing
a new thing in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem is the city of
peace. Christ dies in Jerusalem. Well, outside the the wars, of
course, but he must go to Jerusalem, because he has come for peace.
He is going to accomplish the peace of his people, the peace
of God. God is not at peace, apart from
the blood of the cross. So, he must go to Jerusalem,
and he must suffer many things. From whom? Have you noticed? the elders, the chief priests,
the scribes. And it has always been this way. And today it is this way. You
go around, you hear what is preached from the scribes, that is the
doctors, the reverends and so on. You hear what is preached. And the name of Christ suffers
so terribly. so terribly. And often we find
ourselves being so unworthy of such a great name, of such a
great saviour, that we feel that we actually make him suffer.
But he must suffer. Why? Because man, basically,
fundamentally, is a religious being. But he is separated from
God. And whatever God will send, must
suffer. and the chief priests and the
scribes will make him suffer. And he must be killed. Why? Because there is no atonement,
there is no reconciliation without death, without someone put to
death. He must be killed. Now, what
man, what human being could have invented such a system? Impossible. Impossible. But God cannot do without this
death. You see, we don't like sin. Well, we do and we don't. It
spoils our life. But somehow we've got to live
with sin, because we get up and before we actually get out of
the house, we've already been with sin. And somehow we can live with
it. But God cannot! It cannot. Sin brings his anger,
his hatred, and it burns like a devouring fire. This is the
God of the Bible. This is not today's God, little
G. So Christ must be killed. There must be this sacrifice.
There is no other way. And you know it as I know it. We try to be better, and we've
got to sacrifice a lot of things on the way. But it doesn't do
any good, because that's not enough. That's not enough. Even if we can raise the level
of our sacrifice, of our service, or whatever we put in that bag,
it's not enough. So, in order to save, Christ
must be killed. And when he goes to that cross,
and we see him on that cross, then we can rejoice when the
Holy Spirit opens our eyes and our heart. We can rejoice because
He has been killed. And there is one who is killed
and God is at peace for whoever is in that one. Whoever is in
that one. He must be killed but the Gospel
doesn't stop here. And often we do stop here. And
I'm reminded of the Greeks in Athens, they said, this fellow
Paul is weird. We hear him speak of Jesus and
the resurrection. And if you have time, just make
a little study in the Acts of the Apostles and you see how
so present is the resurrection. Because our faith, Biblical faith,
the salvation from God in Christ alone is a victorious message. There is nobody in that tomb.
He is not on the cross. He is risen. He is risen, my
friends. And he must rise again. He must be raised on the third
day. As it was said, so it must be. And so it is. He is risen again. He gave his life, yes. wonderful,
and we ponder, and we gaze on the garden, the agony in the
garden, and we say, it was so close, wasn't it, in a human
way. I mean, you hear him say, if that cup can pass away from
me, and we tend to say in our better times, no, no, because
if it passes away from him, I know where it goes. I know where it
goes, and it's a big cup. It takes a long time to drink
it. Actually, it's not even time. You see, he gives his life, oh
yes, but he has power to take it again, to take it again. Why? Because it's not possible
that death should hold him in its grips. Why? He's done the
work. It's finished. And as it can
be translated, it's perfected. There's nothing else to do. When
you've finished your work, you don't like somebody who says,
well, there's still some more to do. And yet so often we say, there's
more to do to your work, Christ. No. To add to Christ is to diminish
him. It is finished. So he's raised. I mean, the wonder is not that
he rose again. The wonder was that the nails
were able to stay in the wood. The wonder was that they were
able to tie him up and to corner him. And you remember in the
garden, when they came to fetch him, who are you seeking? Jesus
of Nazareth. I am he. And these big fellows
went backwards. He let himself be taken. But
He rose again and He is risen. He must be raised again. Otherwise,
there is no good news. There is no good news. And that's
where we come. With someone who is like us.
We've been hearing about David and we are like David. Yes. And
now we see Peter. And we are Peters, aren't we?
We can come with this beautiful confession. You are the Christ. the Son of the Living God. And
we turn to the others and say, have they really heard? And we
engineer to say it again, just in case somebody has been a bit
thinking about something else. And then Peter comes to the Lord
now, because he knows what Christ should be. Like old Naaman. Do you remember Naaman? He comes
in front of the prophet's little dwelling, whatever it was, And
the other one sends his servant and says, well you go and dip
seven times in that muddy little brook, Jordan. And the other
one says, what? There were these big rivers back
home. Why did I come all this way for that? And so on. And
he went furious. Do you remember what he said?
What Neyman said as he was going furious, going back to Damascus
unhealed? He said, I said to myself, he
will come out and he will say and he will do things over the
place. I said to myself, And Peter, he comes because he was
saying to himself some things about Christ. Christ, yes, he
will boot out the Romans out of Palestine. He will do that.
He is able to do that. He is a great, you know, God
is great. In Africa, they always say God
is great. Not realizing that this is what
the Muslims say. No. If you go to the Old Testament,
God is good. Christ is in the forest among
the trees, like an apple tree. Now the trees are majestic. I
mean, I was in Northern California not too long ago, and these trees,
they make your neck hurt. They're great. But the God of
the covenant is good. Tasty. Christ is tasty. Peter was saying some things
to himself about Christ. Christ will be great. He will
be a mighty conqueror. And he had enough scriptures
to back him up. This one who comes from Eden,
a mighty warrior, all red and yet still all in his force, in
his strength and so on. But he couldn't conceive of a
saviour who would die, who must be killed. So he comes and he's
been the mouthpiece of God And now, what is it? The mouthpiece
of Satan. This is really encouraging, my
friends. The best of us can be the worst
of us. The one who has spoken for God
can speak and act for Satan. And how many times I have been
there. And how many times I will be
there? I don't know. But you know what I'm talking
about. And if you don't know, then you need to come to Christ. And when you find that you've
said these things, oh, far be it from you, Lord, then you need
to come to Christ. or rather He will come to you.
Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. Have
you noticed how men try to get Christ away from the cross? This
is the work of the devil. The devil trembles. And religion
trembles at the cross. Hates grace and trembles at the
cross. Because at the cross is the picture
of Christ. and the victor of Christ shuts
the door of any salvation by man. Which is what we try to
do most of the time according to the flesh. But it is interesting to dwell
a little bit in what Jesus says here. He is speaking to Peter
and he addresses him as Satan. Well, it's not that Peter was
sort of possessed by the devil himself. No, but he was speaking
the words of Satan. And Jesus said, get behind. So often, my friends, we are
so bold, in a bad way, as to go before the Master. And that
is not the place to be. As soon as you're in front of
the Master, you're not a disciple no more. Do you remember when
Christ called his disciples for the work of learning and taking
the Gospel? He said, follow me. But actually
the word can be literally more translated, get behind me. Because if you're behind, you
see how the person behave, where the person goes and what the
person does, and you can do just the same. And this is what Paul
is talking about when he is writing to Timothy, that which you have
heard and seen of me, pass on to others and so on. But here
Peter has got a head of Christ, and that's not a good place,
because that's the place of Satan. Get behind me! And not only that,
but Jesus says, you are an offence to me. Now the work of the salvation
of his people is so close, so intimate to the heart of the
Saviour that to try to kind of divert him ever such a little
for the good motives Peter had. Who would like to see their leader
go to the cross? But this is an offence to the Saviour. This is probably as hard and
as painful, probably more actually, than the nails. Because actually that's flying
right in the face of the purpose of God. And Christ has come and
Christ wills, the will of God, and he rejoices in the purpose
of God. And now Peter is saying, and
Satan through him, saying, no, no, take the easier road. There
is no easier road, my friends. Such is the awfulness of our
sin. But Christ doesn't stop here,
and I will close with this. Then Jesus said to his disciples,
if anyone desires to come after me, to be my follower, to be
my imitator. Let him deny himself." And we
are reminded of that passage in Philippians chapter 2. He
laid aside his glory. He denied himself in a sense.
Let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, follow
the will of God. But take up the cross, take up
his cross. That is not a difficult job. That is not the wife's mother.
That is dying to oneself. And literally for many, many
of our brethren even today, that is dying actually physically. But you see, the head must be
killed. The head must rise again and
the body must die and the body will rise again in fullness,
the fullness of Christ. All his people will be raised
to the glory of Christ. And this is what Satan wanted
to avoid. In a sense, he wanted to avoid,
but being so devious, he had to push people to kill him. He
had to push us to kill him. And yet, He tried to turn him
away from the cross. But the cross must happen, the
church must suffer right to the end, and there is our coming
of which we know nothing of. But they must come. Then the
end, and the people will be raised. My friends, will you be with
this Christ, the Son of the Living God? the one who has the words
which give life, the one who is Lord above all, who has accomplished
salvation, the only one who has set God's justice and God's holiness
at peace, the Lord of Peace. May he be praised. Amen. Let's get a folder and go to
number 16 in the folder. Let's sing Rock of Ages and then
we'll be dismissed. We invite you to stay and we
have some food downstairs. We'll fellowship for a little
while and then we'll gather in the morning at at 10 a.m. We'll have a couple of services
in the morning. Let's stand together. Number
16 in your red folder. John, you come and lead us in
Rock of Ages.