Good morning everybody. Let's turn in our Bibles to John
chapter 1. Now this is the day after the
priests had come and asked John who he was and why he was preaching
baptism, and this was the next day, and it says, verse 29, the
next day, John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is
he of whom I said after me, cometh a man which is preferred before
me, for he was before me, And I knew him not, but that he should
be made manifest to Israel. Therefore am I come baptizing
with water. And John bear record saying,
I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode
upon him. And I knew him not, but he that
sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, upon whom
thou shalt see the spirit descending and remaining on him, the same
is he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. And I saw. and bear
record that this is the Son of God. Again the next day, this
is the third day after the priest had come, again the next day
after John stood and two of his disciples, that is Andrew and
Peter were standing there, and looking upon Jesus as he walked,
he saith, behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard
him speak and they followed Jesus. Now this was after John had baptized
the Lord Jesus. This is after he saw the Spirit
descend upon him like a dove and remain upon him. This was
after the 40 days of temptation in the wilderness that our Lord
endured. The Lord had come back to where
John was. And John sees him coming, and John said, behold, the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Now this is
the beginning of our Lord's ministry. Our Lord is just really coming
on the scene now. And from the very beginning of
his ministry, John the Baptist declared who Christ is and why
he came. He said, behold the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sin of the world. The message John preached
was substitution. Substitution, this is the Lamb
who's gonna be sacrificed in place of sinners. He declared the message of substitution. This is the lamb by whose death
the sin of his people, his people scattered all over the world,
their sin would be taken away by this lamb dying in their place. That's the gospel. This is the
gospel in a sentence right here. In one word, one sentence, John
declares the gospel. He preached for a verdict. He
said, behold, Salvation is not in our doing. Salvation is in
a look. Salvation is beholding Christ,
believing on Christ. He preached for a verdict. Behold,
it was a command. Behold. He declared who Christ
is. Behold the Lamb of God. That's
who Christ is. He's the Lamb of God. God's Lamb. The Lamb God provided. John declared
what Christ would accomplish. He said, behold the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sin. That's what Christ, he took away
sin. And John declared who he would
do it for. He took away the sin of the world. He took away the
sin of the world. He took away sin, and everybody
for whom he died, their sin's gone. They must be called, they
must be saved, wherever they are in the world, whatever generation
they live in in the world, their sin's been removed by Christ. They must be called, they must
be saved. So that's the four points I want
to look at in this message, and here's the main point. Salvation
is beholding by faith the Lord Jesus, who is the Lamb of God,
who has taken away the sin of his people throughout the world.
Salvation is not in our doing, it's beholding, it's looking
upon Christ, believing upon Christ Jesus, who is the Lamb of God,
who died in the room instead of his people and took away our
sin. That's the gospel. Now let's
look at each word of this sentence. First of all, the gospel's a
command. Behold, behold, the gospel's
a command. The gospel's not an offer. The
reason men preach that the gospel is an offer is because that's
not offensive. You can accept or reject an offer.
The gospel's not an offer. The gospel's a command. believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. God has commanded all men everywhere
to repent. And if we don't believe on Christ,
we're disobeying the command. The gospel's a command. So John
preached for a verdict. You remember the serpent in the
wilderness. The serpents were biting them
and the Lord said, make a brazen serpent. and lift it up on a
pole. And whoever looks upon that serpent
shall live. And that's the gospel. That's
why John says, behold the lamb. If we're gonna be saved, we have
to look to Christ. And that look means casting your
care on him, beholding him, believing on him, trusting him. Salvation
is not in our doing. Salvation's not by your doing.
You can't keep the law, sinner. You're guilty when you come into
this world, and you can't keep the law, and there's no point
in you trying to do something to please God. God's not satisfied
by you and me. Believe on Christ. The salvation
that God has provided is the very opposite of doing. Faith
is the opposite of works. Faith is believing on Christ,
trusting him to present you to God thoughtless. So believe on
Christ. Now secondly, The gospel we behold,
the gospel we believe, is the Lamb of God. He is the gospel. He said, behold the Lamb of God. He's declaring who Christ is.
He is the Lamb of God. John didn't point at our Lord
Jesus and say, behold our example. Although Christ is the best example
there is. There is no better example of
how to live in this world. But that wasn't John's message.
When you listen to sermon after sermon in this world and you
hear men talking about Christ as an example, that's not offensive. That's telling you that you can
measure up to that example if you just try real hard. That's
not our message. He didn't say behold the example.
He didn't say behold a great teacher that's come to teach
us. Men everywhere, there's men who spend their whole lives as
students because men love to learn. And that wouldn't be offensive
to say here's a great teacher, although he is the greatest of
all teachers. He is the prophet of his people.
That's not our message either. The message is behold the lamb
of God who taketh away the sin of the world. The Lord Jesus
is the lamb. What was the purpose of a lamb
throughout scripture? It was a substitute. The lamb
died in place of the sinner. but the very fact God provided
a lamb and his son declares we're sinners who must be saved from
our sin. He's the lamb, he's the sacrifice,
it's his blood, it's his life in place of my life that's gonna
save me and it's gonna save you. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission. Without a life dying under the
justice of God in your place, you can't be saved. In eternity,
God the Father set him forth as the Lamb of God. Before the
world was ever made, Revelation 13.8 tells us he's the Lamb slain
before the foundation of the world or from the foundation
of the world. That's who he is. Before as yet anybody sinned,
God the Father chose His Son and His Son entered into a covenant
with the Father to be the Lamb who would die in place of God's
particular people. So that when He entered covenant,
He became the surety and the Father looked to Christ the Lamb. He never looked to His people.
He looked to the Lamb. And that's why right then when
he struck hands with God and entered covenant and became surety
for his people, he was slain right then. Because there was
no possibility he wouldn't come and do the work. He's the lamb
slain from the foundation of the world. It's what scripture
means when it tells us the works were finished from the foundation
of the world. God does nothing as an afterthought. God didn't
create man and then man sinned and God say, oh, something happened,
I gotta do something to fix this. No, God had already purposed
Christ would die for His people. That means when we sinned in
the garden, that was all according to the purpose of God. He was
already predetermined. And everything that's happened
since was already predetermined to bring forth the Lamb to show
us the glory of God in Christ the Lamb. That's why Peter said
this. In 1 Peter 1.19, he said, we're
redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, listen, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you. Before God ever made anything,
he had the lamb. He set up the lamb. The lamb
had agreed to come and lay down his life. So God did nothing
as an afterthought. God does nothing in that manner. He set Christ forth from the
beginning from before the world was made. So whenever God created
this world, from the very beginning, God has been showing us these
slaughtered lambs throughout history and throughout scripture.
He showed us lamb after lamb after lamb after lamb being slain.
And in all of those lambs, he's pointing to this lamb. John says, behold, here he is. Here's the one you've been hearing
about from the garden. Through all the Old Testament
sacrifices, this is him. This is the lamb. The lambs that
were sacrificed to animals could never take away sin. We're humans,
we're men, and blood of a bull and a goat couldn't take away
our sin. That was a picture, that was a shadow, that was a
type. Christ is. the Lamb. He is the Lamb that
all those pointed to. They all pointed to Christ. You
remember when Adam sinned in the garden, go to Genesis 3.
And Adam sinned in the garden, he plunged the whole human race
into sin because he was the head of the race. We all came from
him, so what he did, we did. And they made the fig leaves
and they covered their nakedness And you just think about what
a terrible covering that was. I mean, a fig leaf, once you
break it off the vine and make clothes out of it, in just a
little while, it's gonna wilt and shrivel up and die. You're gonna have to make another
set of clothes to cover your neck in it. That's our righteousness. We never have one that's complete. If we try to bring ourselves
to God, we have to continually be trying to do something better,
do something better, because our righteousness is not truly
righteousness. So what did God do? He stripped
them. He stripped them of their fig leaves. He called them out
of the trees. He stripped them of their fig
leaves. And Genesis 3.21 says, unto Adam also and to his wife
did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them. Wonder what kind of animal it
was. I just believe it was a lamb. I just believe it was a lamb.
But God, the first time, The first thing God did when they
had sinned against God to cover their nakedness, they've never
seen murder or bloodshed or anything die since the Lord made the world. And now because sin came in and
because they had died and were guilty before God, God shows
us a picture of Christ. God slays an innocent victim
in their place and makes coats of skins for them. And not only
did he make the coats to cover them, he didn't just make the
coats and say, now you do the rest, you cover yourself with
these coats and skins. No, God covered them. He made
the skins and he covered their nakedness with the skin. That's
a picture of Christ. Christ works the work to work
out a righteousness for his people. He's the covering, the righteousness
that covers his people. And then he comes to us and he
works the work to make you willing to believe him so that he covers
you with this covering. The night God brought the children
out of Egypt, we have another picture. Remember what God did?
He commanded them to slay a lamb. And he said, the head of the
house is to take the blood of that lamb and put it over the
doorpost. And he said, I'm going to pass through Egypt tonight
and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall be slain. And he said, but when I see the
blood over the doorpost of the houses of the children of Israel,
when I see that blood, I'll pass over your firstborn. I won't
slay them. Why? Their firstborn died in
the lamb. You see, every firstborn child
died in Egypt. The difference was that lamb
died in place of the firstborn in Israel. And that's a picture
of Christ. The reason God doesn't slay his
children is because Christ, the head of the house, applies the
blood to the doorposts of our hearts through faith. And God
says, when I see his blood, when I see Christ's blood, I pass
over you. Now, that passing over didn't
mean God just ignored our sin. No, God dealt with our sin. We
died in the Lamb. We died in the Lamb. And that's,
Christ is our Passover. That pictured Christ, the Passover. And all the sin offerings throughout
the Old Covenant, they had to bring a Lamb. On the Day of Atonement,
they had to bring a spotless Lamb. That Lamb had to be without
blemish and without spot. Christ knew no sin. And they
brought that lamb and they brought it for the children of Israel,
not for the other nations around. They brought a lamb for the nation
of Israel. Christ came and laid down his
life for God's elect people, not for everybody, for his elect,
for his true spiritual Israel. And they would put the hand on
the head of that lamb, and it pictured the sin being transferred
to the lamb, the sin of the children of Israel. And then with that
sin on the lamb, and type, and shadow, and picture, then that
lamb was slain. And that pictured Christ, who
bore the sin of his people and put it away by his death. Go
to Genesis 22, this is a really good picture right here. You see, what I'm trying to show
you is throughout history, God has been showing his son, Christ
the Lamb, and he's been doing it in all these various lambs
that he required to be offered. None of those took away sin.
Christ is the one who took away sin. But they all pointed to
Christ and on that day when John looked up and here comes the
Lord Jesus, John pointed to him and said, behold the Lamb of
God. There he is. That's the one you've
been hearing about the whole time. Now right here we have
a very good picture. God called Abraham told him to
offer up, well, first, here's what's interesting. First, God
told Abraham, he said, I'm gonna produce a son for you, a son
of a miraculous birth. Sarah was beyond childbearing,
and God produced Isaac, and God said, in this son, this son is
a true elect child of God, in this son, I'm gonna call my people. and I'm gonna bring forth Christ
Jesus the Messiah through this son. He's gonna have a son, he's
gonna have a son, on down the line, and one day my son, the
Lord Jesus, is gonna come through this family tree. And then God
told Abraham, now you slay that boy. You offer him up for a burnt
offering. You kill this child as a burnt
offering to me. Can you imagine? Abraham just
heard, this is the son through whom the Messiah is coming. And
then God says, now you slay this son. Doesn't God confuse us in
Providence a lot of times? He's teaching us don't look to
your own wisdom. Don't think you know what's best
for you or what God's doing. Best thing to do is just believe
God and wait on God and trust God, because we really don't
know what he's doing. And I can only imagine Abraham
that day, he just, in scripture say he just believed God. He
believed God was able to raise that boy from the dead. So they're
going up the mountain. Isaac's carrying the wood. Isaac
doesn't know what's taking place. He thinks they're going to offer
a burnt offering. And Isaac's carrying the wood and they have
the fire. And Isaac gets to looking around
and he realized we don't have a lamb. And look what? Abraham said, Genesis 22, seven,
Isaac spake unto Abraham, his father, said, my father? He said,
here am I, my son. He said, behold the fire and
the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham
said, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. And so they went, both of them,
together. Now in the immediate, affair that was taking place
there. Just as Abraham raised his knife to slay his son, he
looked and there was a lamb caught in a thicket. And God provided
himself a lamb. But what Abraham was saying,
what Abraham saw by faith, he saw that as a picture. I believe
he did. Christ said, Abraham saw my day.
And he saw what was taking place there. He saw God will provide
himself a lamb. And that day John the Baptist
pointed to Christ and he said, behold, this is God providing
himself a lamb. God provided the lamb by providing
his only begotten son for filthy, vile, rotten sinners. You see
the love of God in that? And not only did God provide
the lamb, that lamb is God himself. That lamb is God providing himself. Paul said to the Ephesians, he
said, you feed the church of God, which he has purchased with
his own blood. God have blood? God's a spirit. He doesn't have blood. Oh, but
the son of God, God himself came down and took human flesh. So
now he's the God man and he has blood. Now he's He's the son
of God so that everything he does will be eternal and he's
man so that he can bear sin and die and put away sin in place
of his people. So that what he did is eternal. It has eternal efficacy. It never
needs to be done again because he accomplished the work and
that's what John was saying, behold, this is that lamb. This is that lamb that's been
spoken of from the garden through all the blood that's shed throughout
history. This is it, right here. You've
heard this trite little saying, haven't you, that history, if
you look at the word, it's his story. And that's what it is. It's all Christ. God's showing
forth his son. John said, here he is. Here he
is. Now let's look at the next word. The gospel is that Christ
accomplished the work he was sent to do. The gospel we preach
is that Christ accomplished the work he was sent to do. John
declared, behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin. As eternal God and man, he bore
the sin He died under justice for the sin, and he completely
took away the sin forever. He accomplished it. You know,
the gospel itself, it means good news. That's what the word gospel
is. It's good tidings, glad tidings,
good news. If you know you're a sinner,
and you know there's nothing you can do, you don't have a
will by nature to believe the true and living God, You don't
have a will by nature to believe on Christ and trust the whole
work into his hand. You don't have a will to do that.
Now you that believe, you know that about yourself, that until
God made you willing, you didn't have a will to believe it. And
when you know you're a sinner, you know nothing you can do can
please God. Would it have been good news
if God said, now Christ did almost all of it, but now the rest is
up to you. Would that have been good news
to you? If there was any part left to
us, it would not be good news. The good news is Christ came,
the Son of God came, He took flesh, He took the sin, and He
went to the cross and He satisfied justice for His people, so that
the sin has been forever taken away, and in God's record book,
it does not exist. That is good news. That's good
news. We believe on Christ, and this
is what we believe. We believe He is the successful,
triumphant Redeemer who accomplished what He came to accomplish. He
put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That word, it says,
The lamb who taketh away the sin, it means to bear, to bear. And it means to take away. The
Lord Jesus bore the sin of his people upon himself. The Lord
laid on him the iniquity of his people. And the Lord took that
sin away. And you notice it doesn't say
sins, it says the sin. He took away the sin. The Lord
took the sin, the whole mass of sin, was taken off his people
and laid on him as one tremendous load of sin that Christ bore. Lord Jesus, our substitute, bore
the sin. He bore the transgression of
his people. Scripture says the government
was on his shoulder, and the government of God was on his
shoulder when the Lord made him to bear the sin of his people,
of all his people. He took the sin away. That scapegoat
on the Day of Atonement took the sin away into the wilderness
in type and picture. into a land not inhabited, Scripture
said, and for a year, God, in ceremony, didn't remember their
sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ took away the sin of his people so
thoroughly, so completely, that the almighty, eternal, all-knowing
God says, I remember their sin no more. You and I sometimes can't forget
our sin. It's ever before us. We see it. We understand we're sinners here.
We see it. But this is the good news. God
says, I've cast it into the depth of the sea. I've cast it behind
my back. It does not exist anymore. Now
why did that have to happen? That had to happen because God
is a holy God. and he will not clear guilty
sinners. Now, please hear this. You're sitting here today, I
don't care how young you are, the very youngest sitting here,
the very oldest sitting here, and everyone in between. We're
sinners. We've sinned against holy God.
We're gonna stand before holy God one day. And you don't want
to stand before holy God in yourself and have God judge you based
on what you have done because you will be found a sinner and
God will cast you out into outer darkness. Just dying physical
death is not the last death. There is another death. It's
being cast out into hell forever where you'll always have these
unsatisfied longings and these unsatisfied desires and it's
just this worm that never dies, scripture calls it. The only way that we could be
saved is for God to take the sin of the guilty sinner and
put it on his son so that now his son takes the place of that
guilty sinner. And the Lord pours on him justice. He pours out the full extent
of the law. He pours out the demands of the
law on Christ. And Christ died, and being an
eternal God, He satisfied that eternal death for that sinner. So that God's justice has been
honored, it's been magnified, it's been upheld. God's justice
was carried out, it was upheld. And now God can justly be merciful
and reveal to this sinner what he's done and how he's put away
his sin. And when he does that, you're
gonna believe on him. He makes you willing, when he
makes you see how guilty and vile and wretched you are and
that you have no hope of standing before God on your own. And then
he makes you see Christ bore everything you deserved and put
your sin away and has made you righteous, brought in that righteous
covering for you that's complete. Nothing has to be added. There's
nothing for the believer to do Everything's been done by Christ.
And he makes you see that, and when he does, that is how he
makes you willing. That's his power. It's the power
of his grace, the power of his love, the power of his mercy,
the power in providing the lamb who took the place of his people.
That's the power that makes his child be so willing that you
can't do anything else but believe on Christ. He doesn't give you
a choice. He doesn't say, now, you could
either believe on him or you could reject him. That's not
how God operates. He's sovereign. God operates
in power. What God does is he takes away
all your vain choices. See, all our choices are between
idol gods, that's it. If we have choices, well, I might
believe on this god or I might believe on that god or I might
believe on the other god. Those are all idols. Whichever
one you believe on, you believe in a false god. But when he brings
you to behold the lamb and what the lamb has accomplished, he
takes away your choices. You don't have any choices. Let
me give you an exercise to do at your leisure. You go home
and you read, you know, everybody quotes Joshua. where Joshua stood
up and said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
He said, you choose this day whom you'll serve, either the
idols on that side of Jordan or the idols on this side of
Jordan. Either choice you make, you're serving idols. But as
for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You go read that
text. That text begins with a quotation
open, and it's the Lord speaking. And when it gets down there where
that statement is made, the quotation has not ended. That's still the
Lord speaking. And the Lord's declaring, I will
bring my people in my house to believe on me, and they'll be
saved. Joshua didn't have power to do
that in his house. The Lord does, and he brings
his people to believe on him, and we have no choices after
that. Now, let me quickly hurry and finish here with this last
point. He tells us here that the Lord did this for the world. He did this for the world. He
took away the sin of the world. We discern who the world is by
what gives Christ the most glory. That's how you discern everything
in scripture. When I'm studying this text, if I'm not entering
into the text, my first question is, what gives Christ the most
glory? Because that's going to be the
answer. That's going to be the meaning of it. Whatever gives Christ
the most glory. It wouldn't give Christ glory
at all to say Christ did this for everybody in the world without
exception. Took away the sin. Now, it's
up to you. And everybody that believes on
him will be saved, but everybody that rejects him won't. That
makes salvation to be ultimately dependent on your choice, on
you believing on him or not. That wouldn't bring him glory.
That would say there's some people he died for, he satisfied justice
for them, and yet God turned around and poured out justice
on them a second time? That wouldn't be justice. That
wouldn't be holy. That's not what God does. When
it says the world here, it's talking about a people scattered
throughout the world. It's talking about a people scattered
through every generation. It's talking about a people for
whom Christ bore their sin. He bore the particular sin of
a particular people and put it away. So that now, nothing remains
to be done but for God to reveal to them that he's done this for
them. If you look over real quick at
John 17, I can show you this, John 17. And you look, listen
to verse one right here. These words spake Jesus and lifted
up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come, glorify
thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. Now listen, as
thou has given him power over all flesh that he should give
eternal life to as many. as thou hast given him. That's
who Christ died for, those the Father gave to him. Verse 9,
he says, I pray for them, I pray not for the world. I pray for
them, I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast
given me, for they are thine. Verse 20. Neither pray I for
these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through
their word, that they all may be one as thou, Father, art in
me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world
may believe that thou hast sent me. Christ always gets what he
asks for, always. And he's praying there, Father,
all those you've given me, I pray that they be brought to believe
on me so that the world that I died for, my elect, scattered
in every age, scattered in every place, that they may see me and
know that I really accomplished their salvation. And that's what
he does. It's a great blessing. What he's
saying here is, is John's standing there amongst Jews, and most
of us, I think all of us sitting here are Gentiles. It would have
been no blessing to us whatsoever if John would have said, behold
the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the Jews. You wouldn't
have any hope, and I wouldn't either. But John didn't say that. He said, behold the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of a people throughout this world, Jew and
Gentile, male and female, educated, uneducated, bond and free. It
doesn't matter anything about you. God chose a people freely
and gave them to his son, and his son accomplished our salvation.
And he's gonna make you see that. If you're his, he will make you
see that. Let's go over to Revelation 5, let me end this, end with
this. There's some people that our
Lord died for and he prayed that they would hear the gospel and
they would believe. And there's some of you sitting here right
now, that's happened to you, you've heard the gospel and the
Spirit of God has come forth and given you a new heart and
you believe on Christ. But there's still some that he
died for, that he put their sin away, that haven't believed on
him yet. and they must be called too. And I'll tell you what you'll
do if he today, and wouldn't it be wonderful if he did this
today, if he came and opened some, gave somebody a new heart
and opened your understanding and made you to see that he took
away your sin. I'll tell you what you'll do
if he does that. You'll do what Andrew and Peter did. They said
the two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. That's
what you'll do. Now look here, for all of us
that believe, here's where we're gonna end up one day. This is
what we're gonna do one day, right here, in glory. Revelation
5, 6, and I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne, and
of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a
lamb as it had been slain. We're gonna see this lamb one
day, brethren. Having seven horns, seven eyes, which are the seven
spirits of God sent forth into all the earth, And he came and
took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the
throne. And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and
four and 20 elders fell down before the Lamb, having every
one of them harps and golden vows full of odors, which are
the prayers of the saints. And they sung a new song, saying,
thou art worthy to take, they're singing to the Lamb now, thou
art worthy to take the book, to open the seals thereof, for
thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood. Here's
the world out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. And has made us unto our God
kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld
and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne
and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was 10,000
times 10,000 and thousands of thousands saying with a loud
voice, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and
riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as
are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying,
blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth
upon the throne, unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four
beasts said, amen. And the four and 20 elders fell
down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever. That's what
we're gonna do one of these days, brother. We're gonna see him
perfectly, we're gonna fall down before him, and we're gonna sing
for eternity, worthy is the lamb. I pray today he'd make you believe
on the lamb. Believe on the lamb. Let's stand
together and we'll be dismissed. Father, we thank you for this
word. Thank you for providing a lamb to take the place of your
people. Thankful for free, undeserved,
completed salvation. Redemption accomplished by Christ
the lamb. Lord, help us to believe on him
and know that you're working everything for the good of your
people in this world for the sake of the lamb. Help us to
understand, Lord, that you're calling out your people right
on time. You're keeping us, and you won't lose one. Make one
of your lost sheep today call out and believe on the lamb. Thank you, Lord, for this mercy
and this grace. Thank you for this day. Thank
you for these brethren standing here now. Forgive us our sins,
Father. In Christ's name we ask it, amen.