OK. I had a very disturbing conversation
with a preacher on Friday and it's rocked me. It took me hours
to recover in any sort of way. The conversation basically went
along the lines that God took a huge risk a long, long time
ago and the huge risk was that he actually gave free will to
mankind. Having taken that huge risk,
then there was a really big risk that a whole bunch of people
would not, of their own free will and their own decision,
choose God and they'd end up in hell. Then he said, and I
asked him, he said that God failed. God fails when people go to hell. God fails. It's just extraordinary. This fellow has been preaching
that to poor souls for so long and I pray that as Psalm 99 verse
8 says that the Lord would have mercy on people but he would
dash to pieces their witty invention. It's a grievous thing, isn't
it? Mark's Gospel over and over again just resounds with the
declaration that Jesus has true authority. He comes and he speaks
and effortlessly lepers are healed. He says a word and storms are
still. He speaks and a young girl rises
from the dead. And in some sense the culmination
of Mark's Gospel is when the centurion, a pagan at the cross
in Mark 15, 39 saw the Lord Jesus and saw him dying and said, truly
this man was the Son of God. And so in Mark Chapter 3, the
passage we're looking at today, we actually have the Lord Jesus
again showing amazing authority, effortless authority. And I'll
just read from verse 12 of Chapter 3 down to verse 19. But he sternly warned them that
they should not make him known. This was the demons. Jesus would
not have the demons proclaim who he was even though every
testimony of the demons is perfectly true. He has a better plan for
the proclamation of who he is. Verse 13, And he went up on a
mountain and called to him those he himself wanted, and they came
to him. and he appointed twelve that
they might be with him that he might send them out to preach
and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons. Simon
to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, and
John the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges,
that is, sons of thunder, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,
Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite,
and Judas Iscariot who also betrayed him, and they went into a house. And so we have in this story
just a remarkable picture of the Lord's calling his people
to himself. He wasn't going to be proclaimed
by demons. He had something far more powerful,
a group far more powerful in the eyes of men to proclaim him
and that was weak vessels, jars of clay as Paul called himself. So they're a picture, aren't
they, again of God's effectual, irresistible grace in calling
people to himself. All of God's chosen are at God's
appointed time called. Those who are called are made
willing in the day of his power and his grace. And so we must
not ever imagine, as the fellow I was chatting to the other day,
that God's work is in vain. God's works are always effectual. God Almighty never tried to do
anything. God's election is an effectual
election. Christ's atonement is an effectual
atonement. The Spirit's call is an effectual
call and God called and these men came to him. And he went
up onto a mountain. Luke's Gospel relates this story
and says that he actually spent this night in prayer. And as
we've seen in so many of these situations, the Lord Jesus actually
goes before his people and he leads his people by example.
or before the beginning of any big events, we have a picture
of the Lord Jesus in prayer, spending the whole night in prayer,
being alone with God. And often he's pictured as going
up on a mountain, away from this world, away from the cares of
this world. Mountains are places where people
have perspective, It's a place in a sense which is between heaven
and earth where God can actually deal alone with people. And as
I said last week, The wonderful thing about prayer and the wonderful
thing about being God's children is we go away quietly with Him
by ourselves and we lay our life and our cares before Him because
He sees it all anyway and He loves us and cares for His people
in ways which are beyond our imagining. So mountains were
special places for the Lord Jesus. Places of quiet were special
for the Lord Jesus. and the mountains sort of draw
us to things above this earth. Mountains are pictured in the
scriptures as being special places where God meets with his people. Abraham took the son that Simon
just spoke to us about, young Isaac, and he took him up on
a mountain. That mountain is the same mountain
and it's the same place where the Lord Jesus would go. that
same mountain where he would go and stand between heaven and
earth on behalf of his people and to reveal the glory of God
as he died that awful, awful death. And Sinai is a mountain
where God meets with people and he shows them the tremendous,
awesome, fearsome law and his holiness to his people. and he
promises mercy, he promises great mercy to his people. So mountains
are places to withdraw, mountains are places to meet with God and
to be alone. And the Lord Jesus often goes
up to a mountain to be revealed to his own and also to remind
us as we look up to the heavens that he's on his way home, back
to us. to gather us to himself. So the
Lord goes up from a mountain and he's going to return in the
same way. Isaiah 31 verse 4 says, For thus
says the Lord to me, as the lion or the young lion growls over
his prey, against which a band of shepherds is called out, and
he will not be terrified at their voice, nor disturbed at their
noise. So the Lord of hosts will come down to wage war on Mount
Zion and on its hill. And so the Lord Jesus is up on
a mountain and on that mountain he summoned those to whom he
himself, those whom he himself wanted. So, out of this crowd
that we have following the Lord Jesus, crowds of disciples and
followers, he actually chose those he wanted for himself.
And so, it's a picture of the fact that God's people are all
particularly, personally and powerfully called by God himself. All God's prophets receive a
call, all God's priests received a special call, all God's kings
especially anointed And the apostles here are shown to be summoned
by the Lord Jesus out of this large crowd and the calling of
God is always out of something and into something. And it's
a wonderful thing that in the scriptures so often God's people
are called the called. They are the called. God is faithful,
says 1 Corinthians 1.9, by whom you were called into fellowship
with of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. In 1 Corinthians 7.15
he's called us to peace. We've been called to have peace
among ourselves and with all men and we let the peace of God
rule in your hearts to which you are also called in one body. In 1 Thessalonians 4.7 God has
not called us to uncleanness but unto holiness. So the call of God is a holy
calling. The call comes from a holy purpose,
from God's purposes. The call is based on a holy principle,
the principle that justice is satisfied in the death of the
Lord Jesus. and the call has brought his
people into a holy position. We are justified and sanctified
in Christ. And the calling of God makes
his people a holy people, a holy nation, a peculiar people, a
particular people, a royal priesthood. new creatures in Christ, partakers
of the divine nature. So God has called his people
into holiness. And God in 2 Thessalonians 2.12
says that he wants his people that you would walk worthy of
God who has called you into his kingdom and glory. And so these
apostles are called As the Lord Jesus goes on the mountain and
spends the night in prayer with his Father, we have the Father
ministering to the Son and then the Son gathers his people who
will then go out and proclaim who the Lord Jesus is and what
he has done for his people. They go out to proclaim the Gospel
that people would walk worthy of God who has called you into
his kingdom and glory. So, it's a holy calling. It's the high calling of God.
It's your calling and it's a heavenly calling. And so Romans 1.6 calls
the people of God, the called among whom you also are the called
of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy chapter 1 talks about
how God has saved us and has called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works but according to His purpose and
grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
and is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus
Christ who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality
to light through the Gospel. And so these men are called to
be in communion with God that they might go out and proclaim
this Gospel. And the Gospel, according to
2 Timothy, is the means by which God's children are brought to
life and immortality. And so all of this stems from
the grace of God. The effectual call begins in
God's eternal purposes and it's a sovereign, free, underserved,
distinguishing grace. Out of this band of disciples
and out of that nation Israel where there were so many impressive
people, so many extraordinarily knowledgeable people, So many
people who seem to all the world to be very holy people and no
doubt incredibly sincere and good people like Nicodemus. God calls a particular group
of people, a special group of people that he calls to himself. And this lovely description of
these disciples is given us in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. If you
turn there for a minute, it's just wonderful. You'd wonder why. If we ever
wonder why God chose these weak men rather than the strong men
that abounded in Israel, 1 Corinthians is great encouragement to us,
isn't it? Because the foolishness in verse 25, the foolishness
of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger
than men. For you see your calling brethren
that not many wise according to the flesh not many mighty,
not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen
the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which
are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which
are despised God has chosen. Think of Levi, and the things
which are not to bring to nothing the things that are. And there
is a reason for all of this. The big reason is for two reasons,
one from a human point of view that no flesh should glory in
his presence. But of him you are in Christ
Jesus who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption that as it is written, he who
glories let him glory in the Lord. So, no flesh boasts. but all glory goes to our God. And so these apostles here are
examples of the called, those who are in Christ Jesus, Jude
the servant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, to them that
are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ
and called. They were in the Lord's hands
from all eternity. He stood as our representative
before the worlds began. He came into this world as a
shepherd to seek and to save his lost sheep and he cares for
his bride as a husband who is jealous and he continues through
his apostles to say to all people Come to me, all that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' The call of God goes
out. A general call goes out. But
there are so many in this world that are not weary and not heavy
laden. The fellow I was talking to the
other day was not wearied by his sin. He was not wearied by
the things of this life. In fact, he was a proud man. Come to me, says the Lord Jesus,
all that labour and are heavy laden. What a promise. And I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
from me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest
for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And we stand here as God's witnesses
as these apostles would do and say to people come to Christ
and he will give you rest. Take the yoke of Christ upon
you and learn from him and you will find rest for your soul.
His yoke is easy and his burden is light. And you might ask when
you think about the rest of the history of the apostles on this
earth, is this a light yoke? Was this easy? When you think
of all of what they had to go through for the next 30 years,
for John maybe another 60 years, imprisonment, banishment, ostracised
from their family, rejected by men, God says the burden is light,
packed featherweight, so light. The question is, as we saw from
last week, if you ask them in heaven right now, was the yoke
of the Lord Jesus easy, was the burden light? They would say
it was featherweight, for the glory that they now have, anything
that God's people go through in this world comes from the
hand of our God and is good for us. And so these apostles are
called by God and they come to him. When God calls, as we've
seen so often in Mark's Gospel, when the Lord Jesus speaks, he
speaks with authority and always there is just a perfect, simple
response. And they came. It seems that
our constant aim is to proclaim before men the Lordship of Jesus
Christ. until the Lord takes us home
to glory, we will be in a battle with those who openly and subtly
deny the deity of the Lord Jesus. I just want to keep saying it
as clearly as we possibly can, here and wherever we get the
opportunity, that the man Jesus of Nazareth is truly the Christ
of God. He is God in human flesh. He laid aside his evident glory
and the worship of heaven when he was born of a woman, born
under law, but he never stopped being God the Son. So, when he appoints these 12,
he actually ordains or even made them, it says. He created this
group out of a multitude and he created them that they would
be with him. their constant personal witness
to the Lord Jesus, to all of his life, with him day and night. in trials and in joys, day and
night. And so we live, as Cole said,
in an age of religious confusion with so many denominations and
so many religious movements all claiming to represent the Lord
Jesus. It's worth your while going to
the library across the road here and just looking in the religious
section with the books about Christianity. It is just a stark
reminder of the confusion of this world. Some deny the fundamentals
of the faith so often and they hate the truth that the Lord
Jesus came for his bride, died for her alone, clothed her with
the robe of his perfect righteousness, took away all of her sins that
she stands before him now spotless and blameless and beyond reproach.
He took absolute responsibility as the shepherd of his sheep
to present this spotless bride to his Father and he will never
leave nor forsake her no matter what sin comes into our lives,
no matter what Satan does, no matter what the world does. And
there is one, as we've said often, there is one common denominator
in all false teaching. It always exalts man in some
way and necessarily always diminishes the person, the worth and the
work of our triune God. And in all of these things, the
axe needs to be laid at the root of this tree. We don't weed our
gardens with a pair of nail clippers. We get out a hoe and we dig the
weeds out by the root. There is one common problem one
common root problem and there is only one solution to the problem,
being with the Lord Jesus as these people were, as these apostles
were. Not the Jesus of the imagination
of spiritual man, but the real Jesus as he's revealed in the
scriptures. So it's possible for people to
learn all sorts of things. to learn passages that would
cause them to know something of the doctrine of election,
to know something in the Bible verses about God's sovereignty,
to know about particular redemption, to know the Bible verses that
declare it to be true, to learn about irresistible grace and
God's effectual call. You can go to school and learn
biblical doctrine very, very well and still not know the Lord
Jesus. Just ask Nicodemus. Jesus says
this in John 17 3, this is eternal life that they may know you the
only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And in our
bulletins today I've put a sheet and you can add to this sheet.
It's a great sheet to start your study as we look through the
scriptures at this time of the year when the incarnation of
the Lord Jesus is spoken about and sung about all over the place.
And the challenge is that the Jesus of the scriptures is truly
God and when Jesus of the scriptures operates, he operates with the
power of Almighty God. When he loves his people, he
loves them with a power which cannot be affected by anything
in this world. When he knows his people, he
knows them infinitely. Mark's Gospel makes it abundantly
clear again and again that the Lord Jesus knows what people
are thinking. He knows absolutely everything
about us. He is God. He is God the Son. He's not just our second cousin
from Wagga. He's God. He is God and just
read some of these verses with me. Matthew 1.23 talks about
the name that he will have when he comes. You'll call his name
Emmanuel which means God with us. John begins his great Gospel. In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. Romans 1.4 talks about the Son
of God. He was declared the Son of God
with power by the resurrection from the dead according to the
Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 9 makes it really
clear, isn't it? And from whom is the Christ according
to the flesh who is over all God blessed for ever. 2 Corinthians 5.19 namely that
God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself not counting
their trespasses against them and he has committed to us the
word of reconciliation. Ephesians 1 calls us to see his
deity as he is the head of all things. Colossians says that
he is, in verse 15, the image of the invisible God. Colossians 2.9 says, For in him
the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Titus 2.13 it
says, Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of our
great God and Saviour Christ Jesus. Hebrews is a wonderful,
wonderful testimony to the Deity of our Saviour. He is the radiance
of the glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all
things by the word of his power. When he had made purification
for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty and
High, and that's what we looked at last week, that the praise
of heaven is about the redemption that was won by the Lord Jesus.
Not that he came as my friend the other day was saying. He
came, he tried his best and then he failed. He did the best he
could possibly do. He came and he died and then
he failed. He failed because there are so
many people in hell who he died for, took away their sins and
somehow by their activities they caused the Lord Jesus to be a
failure. The scriptures will not allow
us to think like that about our God. He's our great God and Saviour. Hebrews 1.8 talks about his throne. But of the Son, he says, your
throne, O God, is for ever and ever, and the righteous sceptre
is the sceptre of his kingdom. And we could multiply these verses
for hours from the scriptures. And that's the challenge, isn't
it? That we come to church to hear from God. If you hear from
me, it's going to be pretty jolly hopeless because if you hear
something from a man, then another man can come along and take it
away. We come here to read God's Word,
to hear the apostolic witness about God. about who the Lord
Jesus is and what he has done. We come here to worship the Lord
Jesus and him crucified and him risen and him reigning from heaven
and he rules all things. That is the peace that God's
people have. No matter what the circumstances,
no matter what happens in our lives, we can say God is doing
this. God is always doing it. Nothing
comes into our lives, nothing happens in this universe without
God doing it, without the Lord Jesus ordaining it, the Lord
Jesus controlling it, the Lord Jesus working it for his glory. And so these 12 men, and we'll
get to Judas in a little while, these 12 men come and they are
called to be with Jesus. We have now in Chapter 3 this
call of these people, these men, and it's not until Chapter 6
that they are sent out. So, they have a training period
as it were. They were called to be with him,
to listen to him, to learn from him, to watch him. and then they
came to be with him so that he could send them out. The word
apostle means to be sent out, and they were sent out to preach.
Those who have been with the Lord personally can speak of
him faithfully. The question in this world where
there is so much confusion is, have these men met God? Has the man I was talking to
on Friday, has he met God? My contention is that if he'd
met God, he would never ever contemplate thinking the thoughts
that he had the other day. His testimony about God is a
common testimony about God in this land. So, the question is,
have these people met the Lord Jesus? Have they been with him? So, these are sent out. So, the
power of the Gospel is a secret power. It's in the preaching
of the Lord Jesus, but it's more than that. It's in the presence
of the Lord Jesus as he takes his word and he makes it effective
in the lives of people. The power doesn't rest with men.
The Kingdom, the Church of God is built entirely independent
of this world. It's not built by might. It's
not built by power. It's not built by the strength
of men, Zechariah 4.6. He said, This is the word of
the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but
by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. We wait for God. the Holy Spirit to do his work,
the work he has promised in this world. And so in church the weapons
of our warfare are not carnal. We don't have to use the wisdom
of this world or the method of this world. They are spiritual. We do not walk in the flesh.
For though we walk in the flesh we do not walk after the flesh.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. but mighty through
God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and
every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. So we live in an age where the
Lord Jesus has promised in his word apostasy. You cannot read
this book without seeing it written on page after page, example after
example, in word and in type. just all through the scriptures,
2 Timothy 3 and 4, 2 Thessalonians, read Revelation, Jude 1, 2, 3,
John 1 and 2 Peter, it's everywhere. And if we don't see the religious
world around us in that light, we need our glasses adjusted. Humanism is built on optimism. Christianity is built on realism,
God's realism. And so for many of us it can
be very troubling as we try and witness to the glory of our God,
to those who claim to love God and then to find Him who we proclaim
rejected and us rejected along with Him. But these apostles
in the midst of that world that they were going to be sent into
which is no different from our world, have something that should
encourage us. There's a very important lesson
in the midst of the darkness and the troubles that we go often
to the mountain. We go up to a mountain. We go up and be with the Lord
Jesus. We go to him in his word and
we spend time with him. And then we come down from that
mountain, come down from that and we bring messages from God,
messages of grace from his word. Surely you can bear testimony
to the many times when a brother or sister has been in the scriptures
and found some fresh manner for your soul. It is really good
to feed on it. I find myself so often looking
and finding the negative. and it is around us all the time.
But God, please grant us the grace to feed on heavenly manna
and often to the nourishing of our souls and the encouragement
of our brothers and sisters, we go to God, we spend time with
God and then we bring manna back as these apostles did. We do
have to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered
to the saints. but we keep remembering that
our Sovereign Lord sits on a throne, a throne that is set in the heavens
and is ordered and decreed everything that comes to pass for the spiritual
good of his children. So God's children live and grow
on spiritual manner. We beg people to go to their
scriptures and deal with God in the scriptures. Read your
Bible, ask God to show you, ask God to feed you from his word.
And without the Lord lifted up, and without the Lord proclaimed,
God's children just wither away. And so these men are not only
given a proclamation of the Lord Jesus to proclaim, they just
proclaim him, they announce and they herald him. and they were
given authority to cast out demons. They have the same power in their
apostolic ministry as the Lord Jesus himself had. And these
miraculous signs that the apostles had were there to verify, as
the Lord Jesus' miraculous signs were there, they were there to
verify a message and to confirm a message. Which is why when
the message of the scriptures is complete there is no more
need for confirming miracles. That is not to say that God doesn't
do miraculous things. We know from the Psalms that
all he ever does is marvels. That's all he ever does. But
today God's children don't look for the miraculous. and the scriptures
show us abundantly clearly that those who are looking for the
miraculous will be deceived. We don't need God, after the
Lord Jesus has done all he has done, to prove himself to us
anymore. Their testimony is sealed. Their
witness is sealed. And so these men, having been
with the Lord Jesus, called up onto a mountain, been with him,
he appointed 12. And what should we expect to
find among Gospel preachers? We might find a steady, steadfast
rock of strength, faithfulness and courage like Peter, who will
sometimes be very disappointing. We might find some bold, courageous
sons of thunder like James and John, who will sometimes seek
to promote their own interests above others. We might find a
Thomas who was willing to go with Christ to Jerusalem to die
with him, who will sometimes be weak and doubtful. We might
find an occasional Bartholomew, Nathanael, in whom there is no
guile. We might find a whole lot of
Matthews, Andrews, Phillips, James and Simons, somebody or
other about whom very, very little is known, but without whom so
much would be lost. The Lord chose this particular
group of people for a special purpose. not by might, not by
strength, but by my Spirit, God working through weak things,
the weak things of this world, to shame the wise and so that
he gets the glory and not the wisdom of men or the power or
the strength of men. And so the question that remains,
of course, is why did the Lord pick Judas and put him among
the apostles? It's a question that we keep
asking all of the time. The simple answer is, of course,
is that it fulfils the purposes of God, the eternal purposes
of God. It fulfils the Old Testament
prophecies as Psalm 138 verse 2 says that you have magnified
your word above all your name. God's word, every last little
bit of it is going to be fulfilled perfectly. To bring about the
death of the Lord Jesus through the conniving, deceitful, betraying
activities of Judas in league with the Romans and in league
with the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day and to set
a stumbling block before the unbelieving. But Judas was not
something out of God's plan and purpose. He was as much a part
of God's purpose as Peter or Paul. And notice this, when Judas
was gone, no harm had been done. His betrayal of the Master and
his suicide simply made room for the Apostle to the Gentiles
to step into the place which God had precisely ordained before
the beginning of the world. So the Lord Jesus knew about
Judas. John 6, 64, 70 and 71 makes it very, very clear. Now
God's wisdom is never man's wisdom. God's ways will never be the
ways that we will think is right. And Judas was chosen to remind
and humble the disciples of the seriousness of personal faithfulness. They all thought Judas was possibly
the one saved and them the ones lost, if you read John 13. And
it's to leave a testimony for the church in all ages that it
is possible for men to be close to the company of believers,
to be a well-respected teacher, preacher and to work miracles
and then sadly spend eternity in hell, never having experienced
a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Satan in John's Gospel
could enter Judas because the Lord Jesus never did indwell
him. And so one of the great lessons
of it is, isn't it, that we actually look away from men always, look
away from the activities of men. Don't look to men, no matter
how well credentialed they are, no matter how impressive they
are in the exercise of their spiritual duties. To be saved
we must look away from ourselves, away from men and look alone
to the Lord Jesus. Many in our day, as in all ages
of the Church, cling to a refuge of lies, a righteousness stitched
together by the works of men, aided in some way by the work
of the Lord Jesus. They talk about the Lord Jesus
being important, but he requires that I add something of my will,
something of my worth, something of my work. Surely there must
be room for something I do. And they're always really saying,
look at what I have done. Surely God must accept that.
In the Church of God, as long as we're in this world, we must
find the bad mixed with the good, tares among the wheat, goats
among the sheep, unbelievers among faithful men. But God will,
as he's promised, separate the precious from the vile. We have
no ability to do so. The apostles had no ability to
do so. If a man's message is a false
Gospel, he clearly identifies himself as a false prophet. But
we dare not assume that we can read the motives of a man's heart.
So long as he preaches the true Gospel and lives uprightly, we
mustn't attempt to judge whether he is or is not God's messenger. And the test for all of us is
an objective test. Not a test of man's abilities
but the test always in the scriptures is what is this person saying
about the Lord Jesus? Does he declare the Lord Jesus
as God in human flesh? Does he declare the Lord Jesus
as coming perfectly to fulfil all of the promises of the Old
Testament? Is he the Christ of God? Has he completely put away
his people's sin? has he stitched for them a perfect
robe of righteousness. If there's anything left for
man to do then their Jesus is not the Jesus of these scriptures. That doesn't mean that God will
not move his people as he did these apostles and send them
to do extraordinary things, but at the end of the day they will
always be pointing people away from themselves and to the Lord
Jesus. And so the presence of Judas
also should remind us that our God is faithful to his word of
promise. He is faithful and he will do
it. And all of the words of the New
Testament we have about our Lord Jesus have come through these
apostles, these men, simple men, fishermen, tax collectors, zealots,
weak men, because the Gospel, the message they proclaim, the
Jesus they proclaim is the power of God, the power to save, the
power to heal, the power to comfort, the power to encourage, the power
to rebuke, the power to give rest in a sovereign substitute
saviour who is now satisfied and seated in heaven, in heaven's
glory and is on his way back to us. right now to gather us
to himself. May we be found at rest in that
true Jesus of the scriptures and not the false one that's
peddled. May the Lord cause us to be faithful. Let's pray.