Turn in your Bibles with me if
you will to John chapter 5. I want to preface the reading that we will begin
in verse 37 with a word the Lord Jesus Christ said in verse 34. But I receive not the testimony
for man but these things I say that you might be saved. We have in the past looked at
the five witnesses that the Lord Jesus Christ brings before these
people and I want us to look at the witness that he brings
against us now, a witness that he declares of what is in the
heart of man by nature. Let's read verse 37. And the Father himself which
hath sent me hath borne witness of me. And you, ye, have neither
seen his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not
his word abiding in you. For whom he hath sent, him ye
believe not. Search the scriptures, you go
on searching the scriptures, and for in them you think you
have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. And you will not come to me that
you might have life. I receive not honor from men,
but I know you. that ye have not the love of
God in you, the love for God in you. I am come in my Father's
name, ye and ye receive me not. For if another shall come in
his own name, him ye will receive. How can you believe? which receive honour one of another,
and seek not the honour that cometh from God only. Do not think that I will accuse
you to the Father. There is one that accuses you,
even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye
would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if you believe
not his writings, how shall you believe my words? How shall you believe my words? I want us to be reminded that
the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to a people here who believe
themselves saved, who believe themselves to be citizens of
the kingdom of God. And they had evidence for it. And they had evidence from the
scriptures for it. They would have said that we
are the children of Abraham. We have a birth. Here are the
genealogies that God has preserved for these hundreds and thousands
of years. And here's my name. And I can
trace my name all the way back to the children, the tribes of
Israel. I can trace my name. Not only have I done that, but
I have an obedience. I'm obedient to the law of God. These men would have read Malachi's
God's declarations in the time of Malachi and said that those
people brought destruction on themselves and destroyed and
just Jerusalem was destroyed as God turned, took his glory
away from it and left them in the hands of the pagans and destroyed
that nation. But we're not like that. Look
at our legal obedience, look at our morality, look at our
separation from this world. We are so right in our religion
that we can stand in judgment of others. We can send our missionaries
out to this world. and we can bring them back and
make other people from pagan nations as morally upright and
as legally obedient as we are. Look at our Bible colleges, look
at our mission organisations. They judged themselves right. They judged themselves as righteous
before God. And here we have the Judge, the
Judge standing before them. And he As the Lord does in Malachi,
he sees their hearts and he doesn't require a discussion with them. He just states the truth to them
and then he leaves. He just leaves and goes back
to Galilee. And I want us to be reminded
that as the Lord spoke to those religious and upright people,
that all of us in our Father Adam naturally think that we
are righteous. The one characteristic of all
the unrighteous, the truly unrighteous in this world, is that they believe
themselves to be righteous. The one true characteristic of
all the unrighteous is they see themselves, the unrighteous always
see themselves as righteous. The righteous never see themselves
as anything but unrighteous. So as you read these allegations,
these Christ's witnesses against mankind and against religious
mankind in verse 37, they don't know God. Their natural understanding
of him are all wrong, verse 38. The Word of God doesn't have
any resonance in them. You've memorized it all and you
don't know what it's saying at all. Verse 39, you think you
have knowledge. You think that knowledge is equivalent
to salvation and your confidence. You have confidence in that.
Verse 40, you believe that by an act of your will that you
have life with God and it's maintained by your will. Verse 42, you would
say that I love God. Everybody knows that I love God.
Verse 43. Others follow you and believe
that you lead to salvation. You have many fellow travelers
on your path. Verse 44, others praise me when
they see my zeal of God and of all the things I do that bring
encouragement. Verse 45, we believe Moses and
we seek to honor Moses. Just look at what we're doing.
We love Moses. We love Moses more than our forebears
did. When you read those words, What's your natural reaction
to all of those words of the Lord Jesus Christ? I'll tell
you what my natural reaction is. It's my natural reaction
when I read the account of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Dear, oh dear, they are wicked people. I'm not like that. Here's the
Lord Jesus Christ describing the Pharisees and the lawyers
of long ago. And I just wish the religious
people now would hear it. These are words of God to us,
brothers and sisters in Christ. And if you think that the Pharisees
out there are your problem, then you haven't seen the real problem.
The real problem that I have is the Pharisee that lives in
here. The Pharisee that lives in here that wants to live with
God and live before God on the basis of my activities. But what a glorious thing and
what a mercy from the Lord that he actually allows us and causes
us and brings us to this place where we are to read these words
and to hear what he says. And there are in these verses,
as I indicated earlier, about seven accusations you might find,
more or less, but there are seven that I just want to look at very
briefly this morning and I want us to look at what they show
us about the religion of this world and show us about ourselves,
but also they are, like all of the scriptures, they are pointers
to the glorious work of the Lord Jesus Christ in taking us out
of all of these things and bringing us to himself. 1 John 5.37 And the Father himself
which has sent me has borne witness of me, and you have neither heard
his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. This religious crowd
makes claims that I know God, and I follow God, and I fellowship
with God, and God and me are friends, and the Lord Jesus Christ
saying that everything that you've learned naturally, everything
that you've learned from your religion gives you no idea of
who God is. You haven't seen his voice. You
haven't heard, you haven't seen his shape. You haven't heard
his voice. You haven't heard his voice. God confronts all of us as he
did with Saul of Tarsus. You think of Saul of Tarsus on
the Damascus Road as you go along here and think of what Saul of
Tarsus went through in that moment when he really met the Lord Jesus
Christ. The very first words that come out of his mouth are,
Who are you, Lord? I don't have a clue who you were.
If you'd asked Paul to give A PhD dissertation on the Christ from
the scriptures, you would have been absolutely amazed at all
the pictures he drew and all the verses he put together and
you would think this man really does know God. You've neither heard his voice.
We spoke about that last week. There is a voice that comes from
God that speaks with power which alone is God's voice and it's
not just the audible hearing of the words. Multitudes heard
the Lord Jesus Christ and never heard from God. Multitudes heard
God speak at Mount Sinai and like Moses they were terrified
and in a heartbeat they were worshipping a golden calf at
the foot of the mountain. There is a voice that comes and
it's a voice that we spoke about last week that is powerful and
efficacious. You haven't heard His voice at
any time. Paul on the Damascus Road acknowledged
two things instantly when he met the Lord Jesus Christ. He
was completely ignorant of who God is. He was completely ignorant
and the other thing that he was made aware of instantly was that
the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord of all and a glorious, glorious
Lord. He goes on, our Lord Jesus Christ,
before these people, having declared His deity and declared His work
of salvation in causing the dead to hear the voice of the Word
of God and have life that He alone has the ability to give. He says in verse 38, you have
not His Word abiding in you. You don't have His Word living
in you. And there's a reason for it,
isn't it? For whom he has said, him you
believe not. Him you believe not. The word
of God is Christ himself, isn't it? What a wonderful word. What a
wonderful declaration of what the Lord Jesus Christ does. He
not only brings his word to us, but he causes his word to abide
in his people. But he must start, and he does
start, with people who don't have his word abiding in them.
He must start with people who are dead. He says the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God. The problem with so many
people in religion is that they're so busy God kills before he makes
alive. God wounds before he heals. God breaks before he binds up. don't have his word abiding in
you for whom he has sent you believe not you believe not unbelief
is an active rebellion it's not a passive activity you believe
not there is Action in it, isn't it? You think of what happened
with these fellows. They went from unbelief to unbelief
to more unbelief, and the more evidence that came along, the
more active they were in their unbelief. Such as is the case
with all of Adam's children. What is it to believe on Him? You're to believe what the Father
said about Him. You're to believe that the Father
sent Him. You're to believe in that relational
triune God that's declared in the scriptures, that all that
God sent the Lord Jesus Christ to do, He finished completely
and perfectly. And what He did, He did forever.
All of His activities are eternal. And I have nowhere else to look.
for his word abiding in me i have nowhere else to look i'm relying
on him i'm relying on what he's done you don't have his word
abiding in you You don't have his word abiding
in you. And listen to what they do in
verse 39. They're searching the scriptures. He doesn't say it's not a command
to go and search the scriptures. He's describing what they're
doing. They're spending their lives searching the scriptures. For
in them you think you have eternal life. You're pouring over the
scriptures and you're reading and studying. And you're completely
ignorant of the meaning of the scriptures. Were the scriptures ever a closed
book to you? A strange book, a book of remarkable
tales, a book of remarkable histories, but a closed book. You search
the scriptures, you study the scriptures, and your obedience,
as you think your obedience to them brings you confidence that
you have eternal life. See, men think, and they still
do it today, don't they, that they can take this Word of God
and they can turn it into a rule book for living, and then they
can create rules around the rules, and they can create their own
rules that look like they're observing the rules of others,
and they think that by their activities that they have eternal
life, eternal lives in what they have done. This book is a hymn
book. This book is all about Him. Listen to what He says. They
testify of Me. They bear witness to Me. If you don't see Christ in the
Scriptures, you don't know the Scriptures at all. And it doesn't
matter how well you know them, you can know them off by heart.
These men know them off by heart. Unless you have the Gospel, and
the Gospel preached to you, and the Gospel coming to you, and
the Gospel is a person, Listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ
causes Peter to write. You're born again, verse 23 of
1 Peter 1, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible. You must be born from above.
You must be born from heaven. By the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. That's the only way of new birth,
is to hear the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because all
flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of
the grass. The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth
forever. This is an eternal word. And
this, listen to this statement, it's remarkable. This is the
word, this eternal word, this word that is a birthing word
that creates life. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. Where there is no gospel, there
is no word from God. There is no voice from God. Where
there is no gospel, people haven't heard from God. Where there is
any denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, where there's
any denial of the absolute perfections of his work, where there's any
denial of his eternal union with his people, if there's any denial
of what happened on the cross, they don't have a word from God. They'll fight over it, won't
they? They'll fight over things like inerrancy of the Scriptures
and infallibility of the Scriptures. They'll fight and they'll go
and defend it. And they'll promote and spend
their time promoting the distribution of it. God says, if they deny
the Gospel, they don't have a word from God. Is that our testimony? When the
gospel comes, when the Lord Jesus Christ is the one that is all
glorious in the scriptures and we see him from Genesis 1.1,
we see him in the beginning God and we see him in Revelation
22.21 as the Amen And we see Him in all the pictures. We see Him everywhere, but always
we see Him as glorious and sovereign and eternal and reigning and
ruling. We have a glorious gospel, brothers
and sisters, and it's a gospel I'm so thankful it's written
down in words. Because my memory is pretty hopeless
and I love being able to go back and say, that's what God says.
That's what God says. That's what God says. It's not
what man says. The Bible to me was a closed
book and I'm completely and utterly dependent upon him to reveal
it to me. Verse 40, and you will not come
to me that you might have life. You will not come to me that
you might have life. You cannot, you cannot from the
scriptures find any, any evidence anywhere for the modern doctrine
of free will. God says that people are dead.
They're ignorant. And even though the Lord Jesus
Christ is presented as the one with life, and even though in
the power of what we see in this particular chapter, he can just
go to a man who has absolutely no ability whatsoever, and he
just says, rise. He just says, rise. He says,
come. and have life in all those limbs
and muscles and sinews that weren't there. There was just life. There
was a creation. Even though that's so evident
before people, people will not come. You will not come. You
will not come to me. 38 years that man was there. Think of all the willful activity
of man in that 38 years. Do you think his parents wanted
him? Did they have a will for his healing? Did he have a will
for his healing? Those religious people walked
past him for those 38 years. Some of them in compassion had
a will for his healing, didn't they? There's so much human will
there. And the Lord Has this man painted before us as a picture
of the impotency of the human will and the emptiness of human
religion? They walked past him into their
temple and had nothing to give him whatsoever. You will not
come to me. You will not come to me. You will not come that you might
have life. Why are men lost? I want us to
be reminded of what he said in verse 34. He's saying these things
that you might be saved. Why are men lost? They will not
come. Why are men dying under the wrath
of God? You will not come. People come
and hear and they leave hearing the words of God unmoved, unhumbled,
unrepentant. And they will not come. They
will not come. See, the problem is with man and not
with God. We declare a gospel. and heavy laden and I will give
you rest. The spirit and the bride at the end of this book
say come, come to him that is a thirst, come. God, make you
thirsty. God, make you weary and heavy
laden. We've all been guilty of not
coming. Now not coming is all our own
fault, brothers and sisters. Verse 41, I'll receive not honour
from men. Here the Lord Jesus Christ stands
before these men who will have him put to death in a couple
of years time. And he says, I don't need your affirmation. I don't
need you to agree with me and I don't need your approval. He just acts as a sovereign God. And does the unbelief and the
wickedness of man distract from his glory? Not for one tiny moment
does it ever detract from his glory. He sovereignly rules over
all their wickedness. And he says in verse, John chapter
eight, he says, unless you believe that I am God, he's told them
that he is God. They will end up killing him
because of his declaration. He says, if you don't believe
that I am God, you'll die in your sins. Then he makes this
other accusation. Verse 42, but I know you. This is the omnipotent sovereign
God saying, I know you. I know you that you have not
the love for God in you, the love of God in you. He knows
us. Is that a comfort to you, that
God knows you? Through and through, the God
knows more about you than you can possibly know about yourself.
The God knows your thoughts. He knows what even lies behind
your thoughts. You can read Psalm 139. The Psalmist
loved it. He loved the fact that he couldn't
go anywhere in this creation away from the presence of God. It's a comfort to the children
of God that he knows us. But he knows these people and
he says you do not have the love of God in you. The love of God
in people is a foreign A foreign thing to human beings, isn't
it? We by nature not just don't love God, but we despise him. We despise his absolute sovereignty.
We despise his absolute holiness. We despise the fact that he reigns. He reigns. And he says we are
just grass. People talk about their love
for God. and how much God loves them and how much they love Him. God says, I know you. I was on
a flight in America some years ago with a pastor's wife and
she was flying from San Francisco back to New York to Newark and
I don't know what I was reading, I don't necessarily read Bibles
and things on planes, but I was reading something and she knew
that I was a Christian and her first words to me was, I just
love Jesus, I just love Jesus. I said, well let's talk about
him. So we opened up the scriptures and talked about him. And within
five minutes she says, I don't know anything about him at all.
I don't know whether or not he's dead. about my love for him. I don't know whether he loves
me, and I have no idea whether I love him. And I thought, well,
this is good. We've got a five-hour flight,
and at least we'll be able to start telling the truth. We'll
be able to start without the nonsense. And we spent a whole
bunch of that time talking about the Lord and just reading about
the Lord from the Scriptures. And she was so excited, she called
her pastors. Her past husband said, you've
got to come down. You've got to come down to the airport.
You can't just come to the airport and meet me outside. You've got
to come into the baggage carousel. You've got to meet this fellow.
We've got to be able to talk about these things. And I don't know
what the conversation was that transpired between she and him,
but he turned up. And if he could have, if Lux
could have killed, he would have killed me. It was just extraordinary. being so excited about what might
come out of it all. He was a street evangelist on
the streets of New York, dealing with the homeless people. At
least she was honest. May God, who says, I know you,
cause us to be honest. See, people say they love God,
and people say that God loves them because these days God loves
everyone, which is not what the Scriptures say. Everyone that I've heard go out
on the mission field in this last 20 or 30 years is going
out to show the love of God for everyone. We have not long finished the
Book of Acts. In 30 years of the history of
Acts, in 20-odd sermons in Acts, never, never once did they mention
the love of God in one of their sermons. Was the Holy Spirit
missing something or was he telling the truth? The love of God is
in Christ Jesus, brothers and sisters, and until you are in
Christ Jesus, you have no reason to believe that God loves you. The love of God is eternal, but
the love of God is a love of God that declares all of His
character all of the time. It's the love of God that declares
His sovereignty, that declares His power, declares the success
of what happened. But the love of God is in Christ
Jesus. And for those outside of Christ
Jesus, there's no reason from the Scriptures for them to run
around and tell everyone that God loves them and tell themselves
that God loves them. So why don't they come? You will
not come. You will not come. The Lord won't
receive honour. He knows what's in our hearts.
Verse 43, he says, Why don't people come? You'll receive. The Lord Jesus Christ comes in
his father's name. He comes to declare who the father
is. He comes to declare the character of God. And he says, if you've
seen me, you've seen the father, you will. If you're gonna see
the father, you'll see his glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you will receive, you will
receive people who come in their own name. There are so many multitude
evidences of this throughout history. that it barely needs
to be stated for people to see what it says. How many people
follow men? How often people come to me and
tell me that this one is a wonderful man, this one is a wonderful
preacher, and they follow them. When the Lord calls us sheep,
he's not complimenting us, he's telling us what we are. And we
do follow and he tells his people, he commands his people to test
the spirits. You're hearing from a spirit
this morning. God's command is you test. You test what he said and the
test is an easy test. What do they say about the Lord
Jesus Christ and him crucified? God's command, I'll just read
it to you quickly in 1 John chapter 4. He says, Beloved, believe
not every spirit, but try, test the spirits whether they are
of God, whether their origin is from God. There is only two
origins for those who claim to speak for God in this world.
They have an origin from God or they have an origin from someone
else. They have an origin from God or they have an origin from
Satan. There is no middle ground when
that day of resurrection that the Lord is talking about comes.
There is no middle ground. So you are to test them. Why?
Because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby
know we the Spirit of God Every spirit that confesses that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is of God. You can read an encyclopaedia
and discover that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and every
church in this world will say that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh. But to confess Jesus Christ has come into the flesh,
the word confess means to say the same. It's to say what God
says about him. is the Jesus that has come in
the flesh. If you go down to 1 John 4 verse
10, here in his love, not that we love God, but he loved us,
he has a particular love. That's what it is to confess
isn't it? He has a particular love because God sent Not that we have loved God, but
He has loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for
our sins. There is an hour and that hour
those particular people have had their sins propitiated. It
is a sin-removing sacrifice, is what that is saying. So those
who are saying that the Lord Jesus Christ died in some way
to make salvation possible for all the world because he died
for all the world's sins, are not declaring what this book
says about him. and they might say a whole lot
of nice things and they might live a whole lot of good things,
there is just one place to go, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Do they say, do they confess,
do they confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh? Has he
come from the Father? Did he exist before he came?
Did he have a covenantal agreement with his Father and the Holy
Spirit before he came? Did he come because he had a
union with his people? Did he live for them? Did he
die for them? Was he buried for them? Was he
raised for them? Does every single attribute of
God become magnified in what He did on the cross? Or did He
try and fail? Or does his blood work if you
add something of your activity to it? Is his blood effectual
because you put your faith in it? Or is your faith the evidence
that one of the sins that he took away from you was your sin
of unbelief? was one of the sins that he took
away from you, the sin of unrepentance. All the sins of all of God's
elect people were put on the Lord Jesus Christ and they are
gone. That's why the children of God
love the gospel. That's why the children of God
are loved and drawn to him to hear who he is and what he says.
Human beings will go to all sorts of religious tomfoolery all around
this world, and for the children of God there is just one simple
test. And God gives the test, and God says, you'll receive
all these other people. You'll receive them, and you'll
follow them. And God says that they're blind.
He says if they're not speaking according to this word, He says
there's no light in them. He doesn't say there's a little
bit of light. We see all sorts of light and we're astounded
at their scholarship and we're astounded at the extraordinarily
wonderful way they put words together and the powerful speech
they have. If they speak not according to this word, there's
no light in them, says God. You can read it in Isaiah chapter
8. There's no light in them. The blind, lead the blind and
both fall into the ditch. Why don't they come? Because
they've got plenty of other people to go to. The Lord's children
are shut up to Christ and we have nowhere else to go. We have
nowhere else to go. You receive me not. Verse 44,
we have to be brief, we're running out of time, I'm sorry. How can
you believe which receive honour one from another and seek not
the honour that cometh from God only? Why don't they come? They've got plenty of other places
to go to and plenty of other voices to follow. Why don't they
come? They've got plenty of people
who praise them. If you're ever in false religion, you will be
praised. You'll be praised for your zeal, you'll be praised
for your activities, you'll be praised. Guaranteed, you'll be
praised. Satan's activities in this world. to people. It's not my job to
give people peace. God has promised to give them
peace and the peace is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He is our
peace. People are seeking honour one
from another and you seek not the honour that comes from God.
So you can't believe and you won't come to him as long as
you're more concerned about what men think about you than what
God thinks. It's as simple as that. And you will find in religion
you'll always have lots of company. You'll always have a crowd that'll
join with you. Always have a crowd that'll esteem
you and tell you how wonderful you've been. Such is the heart of all of us,
isn't it? I want people to praise me, as
wicked as it is. May God protect us. How can you
believe while you're looking to men's opinion? How can you
believe while you're following men? How can you believe when
you're seeking honour? You don't seek the honour that
comes from God only. There's one place to go, brothers
and sisters. You go to God. The final accusation,
he says, do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There
is one that accuses you, even Moses, in whom you trust. For
had you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote
of me. But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe
my words? They have their Bibles, and they
have them memorized. And they don't see the Lord Jesus
Christ in them, so they don't have a clue what Moses is saying. And they've concocted their own
religion, and they have their own people and their own followings. And they don't believe Moses.
Moses will accuse them on that day. He wrote of me. See, believing him is to believe
the scriptures, to believe all that Moses said about him. And
he began in the beginning God, and he was talking about the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, let there be light
were his first words and they're the first words of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the light wasn't the sun. It was the light of the
illumination of who he is. And all of creation and all of
salvation is there pictured in that glorious description of
the Lord dealing with his people in Genesis chapter 3. And it
just goes on. Every picture is a picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ and his redemption, his redemption from
Egypt. his substitutionary sacrifice
with Isaac. on that mountain, that blood
that was shared in Egypt, and God says, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. If you don't love those words
now, I pray that you love them in the future. God says, when
I see the blood. He doesn't say, when I see your
devotion, when I see your religion, when I see all of your activities,
when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. He's still doing exactly
the same thing, my brothers and sisters in Christ. People search
the scriptures. All the righteous only ever see
themselves as unrighteous. All the righteous, all the truly
righteous stand before God and they say, I'm guilty. Here I
am, I'm guilty of all these charges. I'm guilty, like Paul on the
Damascus Road. That's where faith begins. Faith
begins with agreement with God, with confession with God. And
all, to go back to those accusations, all to see Him, agree with Him,
to him is to know that he is true, and all that he says about
himself is true, and all that he says about you is true, and
all that he says about salvation is true, and all who have seen
him have heard him speak through his word, and they have no doubt
that this is the very voice of God. A God who cannot lie. And the reason you see Him and
the reason you agree with Him is that His Word abides in the
hearts of His people. His Word takes up residence.
It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. It's not something
about which you have an opinion and other people's opinions don't
matter if Christ is in you. There's only one thing that matters
and that's Him and His glory. And the evidence that you have
seen him, the evidence that his word is abiding in him, is that
you believe him and you love him. You love him. And when you
come to the scriptures, you see that they're about Christ. And
you look for him and you find him, because he's there everywhere.
They all speak of him. And you come. God's people are
coming. And God's people never stop coming. Peter says, to whom coming? It's
a continual activity. I'm as much in need of coming
to him now as I was 20 or 30 years ago. Lord, save me. Lord,
save me. Again and again and again. We
come to him and have life. We have life with God. We love
him. We really love him because he
first loved us. We love his word because he first
loved us. And the opinions of men and the
threatenings of men and the enticements of men in this world are drowned
magnified God. Let's magnify him together. May
we go from here, just magnifying and esteeming and rejoicing in
what we have been rescued from, but especially who we've been
rescued by and who we've been rescued to. What a Redeemer we
have in the Lord Jesus Christ. What a pit that we have been
dug from. is needed for the salvation of
riches like us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for the operations of your Spirit to take the things
of the Lord Jesus Christ and to reveal them to us and to reveal
them in us. to take your words and cause
them, our Father, to be spirit in life and life in the hearts
of your people, that we might drink his blood that bread that represents his
broken body, which pictures his life, his true life in us. And this is life, Heavenly Father,
this is life eternal, that we know you who sent him and we
know him who is sent. We praise you, our Father, for
your word. We praise you for the living
word. And we pray, Heavenly Father,
that you would work in our hearts that we together might magnify
your Son by simply trusting. by simply looking to Him, by
simply loving Him and believing what He has said. Help us to
confess Him, our Father. Help us to delight in who we
confess. For we pray in Jesus' name and
for His glory. Amen.