Good evening. All right, we're
going to be in Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah chapter 9. And we're just going to be looking
at verses 7 through 12. We may only make it to verse
8, but we may make it up there to verse 12. So Isaiah 9, 7 is
where we'll begin. But let me just say by way of
introduction that Christ is the blessing of God to his people. And what that means is, without
Christ, we have no fellowship with God. Without Christ, we
have no light whereby we comprehend or understand the things of God
and the things of truth and how to worship him in spirit and
in truth. And without Christ, we wouldn't
even have faith to believe anything that God says. because faith
is a gift. It's a spiritual gift of God
given to his people by the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 1-3, I usually
cycle through different verses, but these verses are very clear
to us in explaining this truth that apart from Christ, we have
nothing in God. We have no spiritual fellowship
with God. It says, Ephesians 1-3, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. So all of our history, all the
history of mankind throughout the history of the world stands
in light of the cross. In light of the cross. Without
the cross, we wouldn't even continue in our existence. We'd have no
fellowship with God, and were it not for his salvation in which
Christ willingly suffered and died for his people to put away
their sins and to make us the righteousness of God, to be able
to stand before God in righteousness and holiness so that he doesn't
destroy us completely, It's all because of the cross. Had he
not done that, the Lord would have just wrapped everything
up in Adam, we all would have perished in Adam, because we
all sinned in him, and we all would have just been cast into
hell, separated from God for all eternity. Now tonight, what
I want us to see, that's the gospel, the gospel is that we
ourselves are sinners, Christ came and redeemed us, purchasing
us with his own blood, and has made us alive unto God by giving
us the spirit that regenerates us, gives us life to know the
Lord God, to have fellowship with him. That's the gospel.
Now, what I want us to look at tonight is several passages,
and taking a high-level view of several passages using this
This passage here is our text in Isaiah 9, but I want us to
see that Christ establishes salvation. He establishes salvation for
his people. That word goes forth, taking
root in the hearts of his people. He's gathering them together,
bringing them out, giving them repentance from dead works, religion,
to turn to the living God and believe him. And this word goes
out and it tears down the vain, false religion of man. It brings these things down.
And the people of God are encouraged and they rejoice in the Lord's
salvation. But the wicked hear it and they're
not moved. The strongholds are torn down
and all that's brought to waste. The Lord brings up various judgments
on the land, on the people. They don't hear it. They don't
see it. They refuse to acknowledge what the Lord is saying, that
what they're doing, their works are wicked. And anything that's
destroyed, they just go right back to building it up again.
They just go back and say, oh, well that's torn down, no matter.
We'll do it even with more flesh. We'll do it even more wickedly
in building these things up and refusing the Lord. And this pattern
goes on throughout history. These are some of the scriptures
we'll look at, and we're not going to get to everything, but we
see it here in this little passage of Isaiah, and man goes right
back to it, and what happens is it all eventually comes to
an end, a judgment, an end of that dispensation, if you will,
an end of that age, and just saying, enough's enough, it gets
destroyed, and the wicked are overthrown, and they're destroyed,
but always, the beautiful thing, what we see is that the Lord's
kingdom is always established in the hearts of his people.
They're always brought in. The Kingdom of the Lord is always
increased and established in the hearts of His people. And
it grows because the Lord brings in more people over the course
of this history, over time. and it's never overthrown, because
Christ's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Our Lord said to Peter,
He said, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, this confession
of the gospel that you just made, Peter, when you said, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God, when you confessed that
and all that that entails, that he's Christ, meaning we're sinners,
we can't work our own righteousness, there's no law that can provide
a righteousness for us, that's why you came. You are the Son
of God, God manifest in the flesh, come to put away the sin of wicked
men, of your people, that we might be righteous before you.
Upon that gospel confession, Christ said, I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Christ being the gospel confession, Christ being the very gospel
and good news that we believe. So only God can reveal that to
a sinner, and his kingdom is everlasting. It's everlasting
and shall never be overcome by the gates of hell. They're never
going to overcome that. And that's what we see in the passage. When
you're looking at those scriptures that are considered end times
scriptures, they're relevant for us today. They're relevant
for us just as they've been relevant for the church throughout all
the ages because we see this pattern of the evil one trying
to overthrow the Lord and destroy his people, but the Lord always
preserving the people, always preserving the seed, and establishing
the heart, the gospel in the hearts of his people, because
it's an everlasting kingdom. It can't be overthrown. And that's
our title, The Everlasting Kingdom of Christ. The Everlasting Kingdom
of Christ. And if we get through it all,
we'll look first at the salvation and the gospel that the Lord
establishes, that he sends forth in Christ. We'll look at the
wicked works that are destroyed and rebuilt by wicked man. We'll
look at the judgment and the end. And then the saints possess
the kingdom forever. All right, so Christ wrought
this salvation work for his people. You know, when we live our lives,
In this world, we live our lives, we have our jobs, we have our
families, the things we like, the things we don't like, and
we go about this life doing these various things that we have to
do. Some we have to do, some we just
like to do. A lot of times when we do these
things we get to thinking that that's what this life is all
about. We get so fixated and focused
on just our daily tasks and chores. our jobs and whatnot, and we
focus on that and we forget that we know the Lord. We're children
of the Most High God and he's called us to this light, to know
him and to rejoice in him. And so we're to remember that
this life isn't the end purpose for our existence. There's no
YOLO with the children of God. You only live once, nonsense.
There's nothing like that. We live unto the Lord. Whether
we live or die, it's to the Lord. And so we remember what we've
been called out of, what we've been called from. Paul writing
to the Ephesians saying in Ephesians 2.1, We were all dead in trespasses
and in sins. We were all dead in trespasses
and in sins doing those things that made us fit, having earned
for us an eternity in hell separated from God and his kingdom and
his people. And for which things, Paul said,
sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. So the Lord delivered us out
of that, and for his sons and daughters, he provided a son,
as we saw earlier in this text, for unto us, for our sakes, a
child is born. for our sakes, to provide for
us salvation, to provide for us a haven of rest, to provide
for us a refuge, a child was born and a son, the Son of God
given. come in the flesh to do for us
what we could not do for ourselves, so that He is the perfect sacrifice
for us. He came forth sinless to be that
sacrifice, accepted of God on behalf of His people, so that
the Father now receives us to Himself before His throne. He put away our sins. As we read
in 1 John 4, 10, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that
He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation, the means
of forgiveness for our sins. He's the one who was provided
to do this work for us. The enemy of our souls, the accuser
of the brethren, he hates God. He hates the people of God. He hates the means of forgiveness
that God has provided for his people. And so he ever lives
in seeking to destroy that, to corrupt that which God has made,
to destroy the seed of woman, to destroy the kingdom of God,
because he hates what God has made, and he hates all people,
even those that serve him and do his bidding. It says in Revelation
12, 12, listen to this, And we see this attack, this
wrath against the seed, the church, over and over and over throughout
history. Back there in Genesis 4.8, it
says, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. But
God, we see, always provides. He always provides for that seed. And we read a little while later
in Genesis 4, 25 and 26, and Adam knew his wife again, and
she bare a son and called his name Seth. For God, said she,
hath appointed me another seed, right? Because that was the promise
that according to the seed of woman, the Savior would come,
the Christ would come to make right and to deliver and to bring
home that which was lost in the fall. He's given me another seed
instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there
was born a son, and he called his name Enos. Then began men
to call upon the name of the Lord." So the Lord's always providing
for the church. We see it again with Joseph,
right? He was beloved of the Father,
the most loved of the Father, and his brethren hated him and
despised him for it, and they were going to kill him, but they
moved to sell him into slavery, and yet it was all according
to the purpose of the Lord to provide for them. For when Jacob,
their father, died, they thought, surely Joseph's going to kill
us now, and they came before him pleading for their lives,
and Joseph had no intention of doing them harm, Again, they're
the seed as well. And so he had no intention of
doing them harm. And he said, but as for you, he thought evil
against me, because that's what our wicked hearts think. But
God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day to
save much people a lot. And then some years later, we
read, now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not
Joseph. And he didn't know that the Lord
had used Joseph to provide not only for the Israelites, but
even for the Egyptians. And so he was angry, and he heard
of a deliverer would come out of Israel and deliver them, and
so he slew all the male children when they were being born, but
the Lord purposed to save Moses, and Pharaoh ended up raising
him and taking care of the very deliverer that would deliver
them out of the hand. of Pharaoh. And then even when
Christ himself was born, Herod sought to destroy the child.
It says in Matthew 2.3, when Herod the king had heard these
things, that is, the king of the Jews had been born from the
wise men, he was troubled, and all of Jerusalem with him. They
were troubled to hear that Christ, the king of the Jews, the Savior,
the seed of woman, was born. so that the wise men were warned
to go another way, so that they didn't tell Herod where he was.
And then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men,
became exceedingly angry and sent forth and slew all the children
that were born in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof, all the
little villages and towns around it, from two years old and under,
according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the
wise men. But the Lord had already come
to Joseph in a dream and told him, take Mary and the child
and get down to Egypt because there's gonna come an affliction
on the people. And so he escaped away being
delivered from the destruction on them. And then, of course,
we see this pattern and you see how it's always, something seems
like it's coming to destroy that, but the Lord always destroys
instead the works of the devil, brings them to nothing, and always
the kingdom is established and goes on and continues over and
over throughout history and the church is blessed. And we see
it especially in Acts 2, 22 through 24, with the cross, where Peter said,
Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man
approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs,
which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also
know, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge
of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and
slain. so that we understand that the
reason God didn't come and appear for His Son and take Him down
from the cross was for the very salvation of the people. For
had He come down from the cross, no atonement would have been
made, and we'd still be in our sins, guilty of the wickedness
that we've done. So the Lord provided for us. He sent the Son for that very
purpose, for our good and for our deliverance and our benefit,
that we might be brought into the kingdom of light out of this
kingdom of darkness that hates God and hates his people and
hates his deliverance for the people. So in Christ, we are
reconciled to God. Now, because Christ has made
atonement for his people, this kingdom shall continue to be
established and go forth. And that's what we see in our
text here, Isaiah 9, 7, where it says, of the increase, Isaiah
9, 7, of the increase of his government, speaking of that
child, that son, the mighty God, the increase of his government
and peace, there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David,
and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with
judgment and with justice from here forward, even forever, the
zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." Now I'll put a
marker there and go over to Daniel 7. And I think we're going to
come back to Daniel 7 as well, so I'll put a marker there. But
in Daniel 7 verse 9 and 10, Daniel has a vision. And in that vision, this is what he sees and what
he writes of. He says, Daniel 7, 9. That would be after Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Lamentations, and Ezekiel. Right after Ezekiel is Daniel.
He said, I beheld till the thrones, those earthly thrones, those
dominions of men, whereby they rule, till those thrones were
cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit. He sits in that
heavenly throne. that glorious throne whose garment
was white as snow and the hair of his head like the pure wool
his throne was like the fiery flame in his wheels as burning
fire and a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him
that's referring to the seven spirits of god which is in christ
as you could see it in revelation but It says, thousand thousands
ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood
before him. The judgment was set, and the
books were opened. So this is judgment. Everything's
being judged right here at this time in this great judgment.
And what you'll notice in a moment is that it all rests on the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is This is judgment occurring
at the cross. This is at the time of the cross
when all things are set and established of what is and what is not. So,
judgment was made and Christ faithfully, at that time on the
cross, he faithfully accomplished the salvation of his people.
It's eternally secure. What Christ has opened, cannot
be shut, and what He shut cannot be opened. It was done and settled
right there on the cross. For God hath made Him, Christ,
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. The works are finished there
in Christ. Our sins are put away. We are
now justified and by grace, apart from our works. And anything
we do or don't do, by grace the Lord forgives us and receives
us to himself, covered in the blood, made righteous, made white
and acceptable and pleasing to God, all through the blood of
the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul writes of this in Romans
3, in Romans 3, 24 through 26, you can hop over there, we'll
come back to Daniel a bit later, but he said, you know I was talking
to a guy I worked with in my last employer, and he was a Muslim,
and he was a pretty devout Muslim, and we were speaking, and we
both spoke of grace, that God shows grace to his people. They understood grace, but the
difference with the Muslim God is that God shows grace but doesn't
punish sin. No one's punished in that sin.
It's just God being gracious to you, to this person, but not
being gracious to this person. So that sin isn't dealt with. And that's not a just God. The
God of the scriptures is a just God and sin must be punished. And when sin is dealt with, then
God And He can be gracious without offending His holiness and His
justice. And that's what we see here,
what Paul writes of in Romans 3.24, being justified freely
by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation, a means of forgiveness through
faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission
of sins that are past through the forbearance of God. So what
that's saying is, all the people who came before the cross and
sinned against God, but were brought to repentance by the
love and the mercy and the grace of God, they were waiting, they
were looking unto the cross when Christ would come and do that
work of salvation, and God forbear with it, so that when we read
of the accuser of the brethren, standing there before the throne
of God saying, Lord, you need to deal with this. You need to
deal with them. You're holy. Kill them. Slay them. Throw them
in the hell. Destroy this race. What are you
waiting for? What are you waiting for? Well,
God was forbearing with his sins and the iniquity of the people
until Christ should come, because he knew Christ would put away
the sins of his people. He would be accepted and pleasing
with God, a pleasing sacrifice, powerful and sufficient to save
his people to the uttermost. And to declare, I say at this
time, verse 26, Romans 3, 26, his righteousness, that he might
be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
That's why God is and can be gracious to us, all because of
Christ. It's because of what Christ has
done for us. That's how God is just in putting
his own son to death in the place of his people, making him the
sacrifice and the surety for us. So those who hear and believe
this, they're no longer condemned. That judgment's been settled.
They're either condemned or not condemned. As it says in John
3, 18 and 19, he that believeth on him is not condemned. It's
already, it's done, the works are done. But he that believeth
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation,
that light, Christ, is coming to the world, and men love darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil. So that we see,
we're always reminded and see, that man left to himself. He
is dead, he's condemned, he will not, he refuses to believe the
light that God has provided, the salvation he's provided.
He wants to do it himself, he just doesn't believe, he won't
hear it. But we who do hear it and do believe and do receive
what God has provided in his Son, we know that's all the grace
and mercy of God because we were sinners dead in trespasses and
sins and would never have believed and received that truth at all.
All right, now turn over to Revelation 5. Revelation 5. This is just
a few of the scriptures, but as we look here in this passage,
we'll probably see a few more of them. Revelation 5, 1 and
2. Revelation 4 is dealing with
that view that Daniel had, where he saw the Ancient of Days sitting
on the throne. That's covered in Revelation 4. Revelation 5
now is after Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension
up to the throne. This is now what we see here
in Revelation 5, when he ascends up to the Father and is glorified
with his Father. All right, so it says in Revelation
5, verses 1 and 2, Now we know this is Christ. We're not going
to read it all, but it's Christ. He's the one who is worthy. There
was no man, no one was found worthy until Christ came and did his
work. He's the one worthy to take that book because the kingdom
is given to him. It's delivered to him. He has
all dominion and authority now to open that book, to fulfill
and establish the will of God on the earth for the people,
to establish his kingdom. He has now the authority to do
it. And that's what he says in his
word. And it says, verse 6, 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, having
seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God
sent forth into all the earth. Because those seven horns and
seven eyes, which are the seven spirits, the lamb had that. That's
because in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily
in Him. He is. And if you read earlier
in Daniel 7 at your own time, or you might come back to it
at a later time when we keep going through Isaiah, but you
know those beasts and they have those horns and you see the mimicry
of the Antichrist of what the Father has in heaven. All those
those beasts and everything, the Antichrist, the beast and
the dragon, it's all mimicking, trying to mimic as closely as
it can that which is true and holy and precious before the
Father in heaven. They rise up out of the sea and
before the throne is a crystal sea and before the Lord. You
see all this imagery that tries to mimic the true and living
God, but it falls short. It always falls short. So, all
right, and then verse 7, Revelation 5, 7. 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
twenty elders fell down. jump down to verse 9, and they
sung a new song saying thou art worthy to take the book and open
the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed us to
God by thy blood 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 right so he's made us kings and priests
and we now reign on the earth, that is, we dwell and live and
move and have our being in the kingdom of light, in the kingdom
of our Savior, Jesus Christ, which is ever expanding, ever
growing, and shall continue forever and ever, because it has an everlasting
dominion. All right, now hopefully you
kept your place in Daniel 7, because we'll go back there to
Daniel 7 now. And we see this. I just want
you to see how that's what these end-time scriptures, what they're
speaking of, it always has relevance to the Church of God. And it
says in Daniel 7.13, I saw in the night visions, and behold,
one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and
He ascended up to the Father in the clouds. He came to the
Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. and there
was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people
nations and languages should serve him his dominion is an
everlasting dominion which shall not pass away in his kingdom
that which shall not be destroyed And because that's so of Christ,
it's so of his people. Look down in Daniel 7 verse 18.
And we see that language repeated even in Psalm 37. If you look
in your bulletin from last week and what I put in there this week, you
see that this kingdom is established in the earth for ever, forever. That is, in that
which God has created, it's lasting, it's forever, it shall not end. Christ's kingdom shall never
And so Christ accomplished this work that the Father sent him
to do, and he was raised from the dead, given his kingdom,
and the saints now possess that kingdom because of Christ, because
of what he's done, and it's never gonna be overcome. All right,
so, and that's what we read there in Isaiah 9, 7, where it says,
of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no
end. upon the throne of David and
upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from here forward even forever the zeal of the
Lord of hosts will perform this so we see this increase spoken
of here you know that this time we continue to see that increase
where the people are continuing to be saved and brought in to
the kingdom and so this repetition by the evil one His dominion
is always destroyed. It's always dismantled. His works
are destroyed in the hearts of his people. They're delivered
out of that kingdom of darkness, brought into the kingdom of light.
And when the Lord has enough at that time or that dispensation
for whatever is going on there, the Lord destroys it. But the
kingdom of the Lord continues. Because here we are today, 2,000
years later, and we believe and preach the gospel by Christ,
the salvation of the Lord by Christ, His works, not man's
works. We're not talking about what
man has to do to get himself saved, but what Christ has done
already in accomplishing the salvation of His people. So it
hasn't been overthrown. It hasn't been buried out and
snuffed out and trampled on and destroyed. The Lord sustained
that because it's an everlasting dominion. It's an everlasting
kingdom. The increase of His government
of peace, there shall be No end. So we see this repeated attempt
to destroy and this repeated victory of Christ. And so it was everything leading
up. You can see it in the Old Testament,
like the passage we're looking at here, although I don't think
we're going to get through it all tonight. But you see it leading up to
the cross. And then you see, looking back
to the cross, how it's all the history, where things were you know, the church had very
scary moments. Well, let me just keep going
there. So the Lord now has has established his kingdom, and
it says in Isaiah 9.8, and this is probably the last verse we
get to, in Isaiah 9.8 it says, the Lord sent a word into Jacob,
and it lighted upon Israel. So that the Lord now, as he's
bringing in his people, and he's establishing his local churches,
and he's feeding them with Christ, feeding them with the gospel,
the true gospel of Christ, They're now declaring and preaching that
word, like a city set on a hill, and I think it says later in
Revelation that they'll all flow, the nations will flow into the
kingdom, flow up the hill, contrary to nature, they will flow up
to the kingdom of the Lord, because he brings them in, and he gives
us this very ministry, that he gives his kingdom his people
on earth this ministry to preach and declare this saying all things
are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation that's our
ministry to preach the reconciliation between God and men in the man
Christ Jesus in the one whom he sent to do that very reconciliation
to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath given unto
us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors
for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you
in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. Why will you die and
perish in your sins, looking to your own vain, worthless works,
which God isn't pleased with, is not impressed with, he's provided
that salvation in his son. To look to your own works is
to refuse God, call him a liar and say, the blood of Christ
is a worthless thing, it has no profit for me. But to look
to Christ and to be done with your works is to give God all
the glory and the praise and the honor that's due to his glorious
and wonderful name. And that's what we rejoicing. So the Lord does that, and he
conquers our hearts, enabling us to hear that word, to believe
it, to hear what's being said, because we have life in the new
man, in that seed, which can't be destroyed, though the evil
one tries, can't be destroyed, and in that new man, that seed
of Christ, who gives us life in him, that's where we believe
and worship God and bring forth fruit in the Spirit. I'll stop there, but what we'll
see as we go on, you know, into verses 9 and 10 and see where
man just, that gospel tears down the works of man. And man just
says, we're going to build the right back up. We're going to
build with hewn stones. You take away our bricks, we're
just going to bring up our tools on it and really make a beautiful
temple whereby we worship a false god of our own imagination. And
the Lord says, all right, you keep doing that. And you see
it there in Jerusalem, A.D. 70, the gospel was established
in the hearts of his people. The people refused to hear Christ.
The Lord brought all those things, wars and rumors of wars, famines,
pestilences, and they wouldn't hear it until eventually Jerusalem
was surrounded. Well, they persecuted first,
the apostles and the believers. They persecuted them, put them
to death. They wouldn't hear, and so the Lord destroyed them.
an end. It's brought it to an end. That's
done. That's just what you see over
there is just political, national Israel. Not that it would surprise
me if they did make a temple, but that's not worshiping the
Lord through Christ by doing sacrifices of animals. That's
just going to be another sign of impending judgment. The Lord,
you see that pattern, so don't be discouraged. Whatever we go
through, and I say this a lot, but whatever we see in our day,
remember, the Lord's kingdom's not going to be completely, utterly
stamped out and destroyed. He will, it's always for the
profit. There may be some that shed their
blood and give up their lives for it, but it's always for the
profit and the good of the Lord's people and calling them out bringing
them under the righteous robe, the righteous blood of Christ.
So it's an everlasting kingdom. So be encouraged and rejoice
in his salvation. All right, let's pray. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for this word, that you, Father,
have provided salvation that cannot be destroyed, that cannot
be undone. And you have put us in the kingdom
of your Son, whereby it shall never fail. that shall never
come to an end. It's an everlasting kingdom,
an everlasting dominion. Lord, we thank you for this and
pray that, Lord, you would be pleased by your will, Lord, that
you'd be pleased to use this body here in this dark corner
of the world. Lord, that you would be pleased
to call out your sheep. Lord, make us faithful in this
word of reconciliation, make us faithful to carry out this
ministry of reconciliation, to preach and declare salvation
through your son, to lift him up, to hold him up before men,
knowing that he will draw all men unto himself. Lord, help
us to be faithful to worship you and to serve you in this
ministry which you've given to the church. We pray this In Jesus'
name, our Lord and our Savior, that you will be glorified. Amen.