Good morning, everyone. All right, we're going to begin
2 Peter today. We finished 1 Peter, so we'll
be in 2 Peter now. So take your Bibles and go to
chapter 1, and we'll be looking at the first four verses. 2 Peter
chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. Now, this epistle is written
in most of your Bibles, it's probably written as the second
epistle general of Peter, and that's because he didn't necessarily
articulate or specify who he was addressing this to, but if
you look in chapter three, verse one, he writes, this second epistle,
beloved, I now write unto you in both which I stir up your
pure minds by way of remembrance. And that tells us, all right,
well this is written to the same people that he wrote the first
epistle to. And that we can see in 1 Peter
1.1, which says that it's to the strangers scattered throughout
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father. So this letter too, we
know is written to strangers. right, because the children of
light are strangers to the children of darkness in this world and
it's written to strangers scattered because we've been taught and
sent of God into a world that hates those that are loved of
God and these are, it's written to the elect, the elect of God
the Father so that we understand We who hope and believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, that we are the children of grace and promise. And because we're the children
of grace and promise, the children of the flesh hate and persecute
us for the hope that we have in the Lord, because the Lord
is kind and merciful and gracious to us. And we see that even in
many places in the scriptures where Ishmael persecuted Isaac,
for example. If you're a stranger and if you've
been taught of the Lord and shown your need of Christ and that
he's your hope, then you, brethren, this letter is addressed to you. It comes to you as a help and
an encouragement to the brethren here in the Lord. So this morning,
what we'll see, at least in the beginning of this letter, is
that we are the children of our God. We who are the children
of God are the children of grace, are the children of grace. And
our title is Grace Given, Grace Given. And we'll have three divisions.
We'll see Faith Given, then Grace Given, and then the Promises
Given. All right, so let's look at that
2 Peter 1.1. 2 Peter 1.1, he writes, Simon Peter, a servant
and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like
precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and
our Savior, Jesus Christ. And the margin says, of our God
and Savior, Jesus Christ. So Peter wasn't even putting
a distinction between the Godhead of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Now, one of the first things that you notice here in this
letter is that it's written to those who have obtained like
precious faith. And the fact that we've obtained
it, that means that we don't have it naturally. We don't have
it according to the flesh. So this spiritual faith is a
gift of God. It's not a product of your flesh
or my flesh, but it's a spiritual gift. Turn over to Ephesians
2.8. Ephesians 2.8. And this is a scripture that's
familiar to many of us. And we'll look at a couple of
scriptures here in Ephesians. So I want you to turn there.
Ephesians 2.8 and it says, for by grace are you saved through
faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. All right. So it's a gift. Faith is a gift of God to his
people. As Paul wrote in another part
of the scriptures in Thessalonians, he said, for all men have not
faith. So this faith, which is spiritual,
is a gift of God, and not everybody receives it. Not everybody has
it. It's not given to everybody.
So faith is obtained through our God and Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who himself is the righteousness of his people
through his death and his resurrection. And so the Lord gives gifts. He gives these gifts to his people
to teach us and to bring us to himself. He's giving us these
gifts. So if you look in Ephesians 4,
Ephesians 4 in verse 8, we'll start there. We see that these
gifts are obtained for us by the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
He says in verse 8, wherefore he saith, when he ascended up
on high, right, when he rose from the grave, He led captivity
captive and gave gifts unto men. And then in verse 11, he gives
a sample of those gifts. That is, he gave some apostles
and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.
And then he tells us in verse 12 three reasons why he gave
us these gifts. And this is just a sample of
some of the gifts that he gives us. In verse 12, it says, for
the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ. Verse 13, till we
all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ. So our Lord is giving us these
gifts until we fully grow up, till the whole church grows up
into a full grown man. And that means, what that means
for us is that when all the Lord's people are finally gathered into
the church, the man will be fully grown. The body of Christ will
have reached maturity and then will bring us home to be with
himself. Once the final child of God is called in and bears
the fruit that they're to bear, the Lord will bring us home to
himself as we'll see in the next hour. when we look at it. And
so we see that as a whole, but also as individual parts, the
Lord's going to bless us and give us gifts that we need to
have. What he sees fit and what is
necessary, he gives us those things so that as individual
members of his body, we'll receive the gifts of the Lord. And it
says in verse 14 that we Henceforth be no more children tossed to
and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the
slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive."
So that's what Paul wrote. And the reason why I went to
Ephesians 4 here is because that's what Peter's writing to us in
the second epistle. He's talking about false teachers.
So the first epistle, it was to comfort us and to strengthen
us because of the afflictions and the sufferings and the trials
that we go through. He's preparing us to understand
This is the will of the Lord for you. He's given this to you.
And now in this second epistle, we'll see in large measure, among
other truths, but we'll see that that he's strengthening us and
preparing us to know there's going to be false teachers. There's
going to be A lot of lies and heresies rising up even in the
midst of the churches, right? And what Paul said concerning
that is that there must be also heresies among you that they
which are approved may be made manifest among you. So the Lord
clearly hasn't, it's not his will to remove afflictions and
sorrows and troubles from us. And he's not removing the false
teachers, but he's allowing these things to come and it's all teaching
us. And we don't have to be weirded
out or confused by this because you look back through all the
scriptures and it's always been that way. We've looked at that
a few times. It's always been that way that there was persecutions. There's always been lies and
false teachers around. And, you know, I know As a younger
man, when I would think on these things, it would really bother
me that there were so many denominations and so many variations of what
people believed in it and it hurt and I didn't understand
why it was that way. But we see it right here when
the apostles themselves are still alive, these things were so. So it's not like it's anything
new. Nothing's changed. The Lord has always had it this
way. It's always been this way, even
right from the very beginning, foundations of the body of Christ
there when Christ came. So he's preparing us for this
and he's teaching us and settling us down to know these things
must be so. This is the will of the Lord.
We're going to go through, we're going to face these things. And
then we understand from this first verse that our righteousness,
again, our righteousness is not our own righteousness. It's not
a product of this flesh, but our righteousness is the righteousness
of Jesus Christ. It's given to us through the
righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, so that
he blesses us and establishes us in this gospel to know it's
not by my works, it's not by my works of righteousness that
I'm saved, but the Lord Jesus Christ was sent of God into this
world to do for me what I cannot do for myself. We fell in at
him. He's shown us over and over and
over throughout the scriptures from the Old Testament how that
no matter how good it is for us, whether in the garden or
whether in Israel and having the law, it's never enough for
man. Man always shows himself that
he's a sinner. We see it now with Christ having
come and done what he's done, there's still all these heresies
and all this people looking back to the law and finding their
comfort in the law and all these other false teachings. So no
matter what the Lord does, he shows us in so many ways that
no matter what I do for the flesh, it doesn't profit you, it doesn't
save you, it can't save you. He's showing us that over and
over and over again. So Christ came into the world
and He is the righteousness of His people. He fulfilled all
righteousness, He came in the flesh, though not of the corrupt
seed of Adam, but was born of a woman and conceived in her
by the Holy Ghost coming upon her, so that He Himself has a
body like we have, And yet he does not sin. He did not sin.
He didn't commit any sin. He only heard and did that which
the Father gave him to do. What the Father had him speak,
that's what he spoke. And Christ went about doing good
in healing many, many of their diseases and forgiving them of
their sins and iniquities. And then to do that though, he
bore the sin of his people in his own body and went up there
as the sacrificial lamb, as the lamb of God, bearing the sin
of his people, bearing his people in his own body, and there on
the cross laid down his life before the Father so that he
bore the penalty that was our due. He bore the payment that
we were to pay, but because we could never pay it, we never
would have entered into the inheritance of God. We never would have paid
it off. So Christ did the whole work and did for us what we couldn't
do for ourselves, that he shed his blood as payment to put away
our sins and to redeem us unto himself as his inheritance so
that we might enjoy and know him and be glad in Him. So this
is all part of the gifts and the grace and the mercy that
God is pouring out upon us because of what our Savior accomplished
for us. And then the Apostle Peter in our text says of this
faith that it's like precious faith. Like precious faith. And
what that means, that word like means that it's the same. It's
the same as the Apostles had. It's the same as every believer
had Before us that that's come before us and that will come
after us. It's like precious faith the same precious faith
There's one faith, right? There's there's one body one
spirit even as you're called and one hope of your calling
one Lord one faith one baptism one God and father of all who
is above all and through all and in you all so It's the same
faith. Now, it's not to the same degree.
We don't all have an abundance of faith at all times. And some
of us have a little more faith to trust and to be settled and
not upset by things the way others maybe are in the body. But it's
the same faith. And a good way to understand
that is that it's the same source, right? We all have this faith
from the one God. and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
It's the same object. We're all looking to the same
Savior. And third, it's the same result. It doesn't matter whether you
have a faith the size of a mustard seed or as large as a mountain.
It doesn't matter. It's the same light, precious
faith that is given to us. So same source, same object,
same result, eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it
just differs in degrees according to what the Lord's purpose is
to do with each of us in his kingdom, in his body. It says
in Ephesians 4-7, but unto every one of us is given grace according
to the measure of the gift of Christ. So it's as he pleases
to dole it out and to give it out to each of us for how he's
going to use us. And then we see it's precious
faith. It's precious faith so that we
understand this is not everybody has this faith and we see that. He's teaching us how rare it
is because As we go through these sufferings, as we get exposed
to various false teachings and lies throughout our lives, we
see how the outward body of Christ, not the true body of Christ,
but that outward church universal, if you will, how many just are
whittled away, how many just fall away and don't believe the
truth and are still looking to the works of their flesh and
they're not resting in Christ, so that you see, why me, Lord? Why did you show me the truth
so that my hope and my confidence and my faith is fixed in the
true and living Savior, the successful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who fully saved me and satisfied everything? Why did you save
me. I don't deserve it. I'm no better than anybody else.
In fact, I know I'm worse than everybody I know. I know that
I'm the least of all men and the worst of all sinners. Why
me? And we see this is a precious
faith that he should be so merciful and gracious to reveal me and
keep me. Because you know in our flesh we try often to not
believe and to get ourselves out. We try to convince ourselves,
maybe I'm just crazy, maybe this is all nonsense, but the Lord
keeps us and he teaches us and he shows us and reveals to us
over and over again, I'm the Lord and you're mine and nothing's
going to take you away from me. So it's precious faith. He shows us it's precious So
Peter writes there in verse one, to them that I've obtained like
precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and
our Savior, Jesus Christ. All right, now we look at grace
given. We've seen faith given, now we see grace given. Verse
two, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge
of God and of Jesus our Lord. Now, in almost every epistle
that we have of the apostles, they almost always write this.
Almost always. You can see their desire and
their prayer for the church is that the Lord would pour out
upon them grace and peace. Grace and peace. And that's because
every heaven-born child of God receives the blessings of grace
and peace. So that even though we don't
deserve this, The Lord shows us mercy and grace and kindness. And though we've done nothing
to make peace between us and God, yet he sent his son. so
that in Christ we have peace with God. So outside of Christ,
there's no grace and there's no peace. In Christ, where he
puts his people, there's grace and peace. That's where the Lord
meets with us in our Savior, Jesus Christ. So we don't ever
grow beyond Christ. We don't ever go outside of Christ.
We don't ever want to be found outside of Christ. We want to
stay right here. in the bosom of our Savior. We
want to stay right with the Lord Jesus Christ because that's where
God meets with us. That's where He's gracious and
kind and patient and merciful and shows us and convinces us
in our heart we have peace with Almighty God. Just think about
that. We're coming up on the holiday seasons now and that's
what the angels declared. Peace on earth, good will toward
men. That's what the Lord showed When
He sent the Son, He was establishing peace for His people. So it's
a blessing to know that we have this in Christ. And because of
this grace and peace that He shows us, our heavenly birth
is assured, right? It's assured. Everything that
is necessary and needful for our salvation, it's a guarantee. There's no failing it. The Lord's
not gonna fail to give us a heavenly birth, a spiritual birth, into
his kingdom. He's going to bring us to hear
the gospel. He's going to cause our ears
to have a, he's going to give us a spiritual ear to hear what
he's saying, a spiritual eye to see the Lord Jesus Christ
and to hear his voice and to believe him and to trust him.
He's going to do all that for us. There's no possibility that
it won't happen. John 6, 37, our Lord said, all
that the Father giveth to me will come to me, and him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." And Paul went on to
say to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, and 18, he said, Therefore,
if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have
passed away, behold, all things are become new. And all things
are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself, by Jesus Christ
and have given to us the ministry of reconciliation. So that's
what we're here declaring is that God is reconciled to his
people. He's reconciling us to himself
and all who hear, all who are given a willing heart, all who
are shown that they're sinners, all who are shown that they can't
save themselves but see the sufficiency in the Lord Jesus Christ, he
says come, come to the fountain, come to the Come to the fountain
of blood and be plunged in beneath the flow of blood and just trust
in Him and just rest in Him because He promises forgiveness to all
those who look to the Lord Jesus Christ. All those who see in
Him their salvation. They trust Him. They don't know,
they can't explain it, they just know I don't, there's no other
way of salvation but in the Lord Jesus Christ who you've provided.
So he encourages us to come to him. And our reconciliation is
because of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a part from our works, both
for or against. It's apart from our works. We
can't add to it, and we can't take away from it. It's apart
from us. He said that Paul wrote to Titus in 3 verses 4 through
7, but after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward
man appeared. You see, God's always the initiator.
God's always the one doing everything for his people. After that, after
Christ appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have
done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. We see that work
of the Spirit giving us life and washing us in the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ, purging us from our sins, delivering
us from that darkness and that corruption and the evil in our
heart. He delivers us from that which
he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that
being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according
to the hope of eternal life. So you see there again, we are
made heirs. We're the happy passive recipients
of his grace and mercy. And now he gives us a heart,
right? He gives us a desire and a hunger and a thirsting. So
when I say passive, it doesn't mean that we don't care and we
don't come to hear the truth, but he brings us because he works
that hope in us and he works that hunger and that need in
us so that we continue to come and stay upon him and we gather
with the sheep where the Lord's people are. Now the apostle expresses
a desire for grace and peace to be multiplied to us. Now grace and peace, they're
infinite in Christ. There's no end to the grace and
the peace that the Lord shows us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But what we do see and what we do know is that we grow in the
manifestations that we see of them, right? We don't know all
things in the beginning. We know Christ, which is everything
that we need to know, but as He grows us through various afflictions
and trials, as He shows us the weakness of our own flesh, as
He brings us low through seasons of humbling and being laid low,
and then He raises us up and exalts us in His Son, Jesus Christ,
we begin to see that the Lord is everything, and our understanding
of His love, our understanding of His patience, our understanding
of everything he's accomplished for us, that grows. We come into
a greater understanding of that, and that's what he's saying by
these things. He desires these things to be
multiplied unto us, that we would just continue to grow up into
Christ our Savior. just seeing what the Lord has
done for us. It's like what he wrote in 1
Peter chapter 2 verses 1 and 2. In the beginning he says,
wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies
and envies and all evil speakings. When we looked at that, back
when we were looking at 1 Peter, we saw how that's the natural
works of the flesh. That's what the flesh turns back
to. Just deceitful workings and having
hatred or malice, speaking with hypocrisy to others, envying
others, and evil speakings. Those are works of the flesh.
And Peter was saying, don't turn back to what the flesh naturally
wants to do and how the flesh solves and resolves things in
its own mind. That's what the flesh does. That's
not the spirit of Christ working in you that teaches you how to
interact with one another. But rather, we lay those things
aside. And then he says, as newborn
babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow
thereby. So we don't want to continue
or stagnate or stay still. where we were, we want to continue
to grow in the Lord because he shows us these blessed things
and he uses us, makes us more and more useful as we mature
and grow in his kingdom. He's using each of us to various
degrees, right? Some 30, some 60, some 100 fold. And it's all the Lord's, as he
wills to do it. And we see this being worked
out, he said in Matthew 5, 6, he said, blessed are they which
do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." So
we're being filled with these things of the Lord and growing
up into Him. And then we see in the third
verse, 2 Peter 1.3, we see again here how it's affirmed to us
once again that it's all of grace. Verse three, according as His
divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto
life and godliness. through the knowledge of him
that hath called us to glory and virtue." And the margin says,
by glory and virtue, so that that glory and that virtue is
the Lord's, whereby he's calling us by his power, the salvation
that he's earned for his people to give them these things. And
as you know, I quote this I think I quote this from this verse
almost every single time we meet together, at least once a week,
but it's according as his divine power given to us all things
that pertain unto life and Godliness. Everything necessary, it's his
divine power working it in us, working it in our hearts. So
he's teaching us, you know, as he grows us, he teaches us to
bear fruit. He teaches us how to bear fruit
and gives us a desire to bear fruit. And you do bear fruit. Even though we don't often see
it, we don't think about some of the things that we're doing,
but we are bearing fruit. And you brethren are bearing
fruit. I see it, I know it, and I thank
the Lord for it. But he works these things in
us. As it says in Titus 3.8, this is a faithful saying, and
these things I will that thou affirm constantly. that they
which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.
These things are good and profitable unto men. And then he said to
Titus in 3.14, And let ours also learn to maintain good works
for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful. And the Lord,
he works that. He works that in us as he's giving
you that desire first just to hear the gospel he's giving you
that that hunger and that thirst for righteousness and he and
he brings you here and and just being here is such a a blessing
to to each of us you know to me to see you and and to yourselves
because you're hearing the word and the lord's watering that
word and he's fertilizing that word and he's giving you bread
so that you grow and are nourished in in the new man, which he's
created in us. So don't ever underestimate those
things. And when you bear fruit to the
Lord, you probably won't even know it. Because usually once
we know it, we're pretty high on ourselves. And we're kind
of being kind of braggy in our own mind, even if we're not saying
it to somebody else. But usually we don't even know
when we've borne fruit to the Lord. We think, I'm just a wretch. And we're usually pretty down
and not too high on ourselves. The Lord, he does amazingly in
the midst of these things. That's why when we are before
him in that day, we'll say, when, Lord, when do we ever do these
things? When do we see you hungering and thirsting and give you food
to drink and a glass of water? When were you in jail and did
we go and visit you? Or when were you sick and did
we go and visit you? and take care of you. So we don't
even know those things usually, how the Lord uses us to minister
to one another and minister in his kingdom and help his people. So he says, it's according as
his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto
life and godliness. Everything necessary the Lord
does for us, and I'll just read an example of several verses.
It says in Philippians 1.6, being confident of this very thing,
that he which hath begun a good work in you shall perform it,
or will perform it, until the day of Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5.24, faithful
is he that calleth you who also will do it. Isaiah 26.12, Lord,
thou wilt ordain peace for us for thou also hast wrought all
our works in us. The Lord does that. And then,
of course, Ephesians 2 Tim, for we are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them. So it's all the Lord. He's gonna
work this out. He's gonna go, I mean, you can
fight against it like Jonah did, you know, when he went the opposite
way. But the Lord has a way of bringing us back and having us
do those works which he's ordained for us to do. We can make it
as difficult as we want, and usually we do, but the Lord teaches
us all through that. It's all working to his glory
and praise and honor. And it's all done through the
knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue, or called
us by His glory and virtue. Now, notice further what He works
in us as He's growing us in Christ. It says in other places, like
in 1 Corinthians 1.30, It says, but of Him are ye in
Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. The Lord makes Christ all things
to us. He shows us that He is everything
and He makes Him all these things to us. In Colossians 1.12, Paul
wrote, giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in life. He's made
us. He's given us everything so that
we are now the partakers of the inheritance of the saints. Not
because of anything we did, not because we deserve it, but because
of Christ, because he did it, he earned it, he bought us for
his, he satisfied everything of the Lord. And then it says,
for in him, in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, and ye are complete in him which is the head of all
principality and power. So because we are complete in
the Lord Jesus Christ, we look and trust that his spirit shall
work in us and do those works. that He must do in His people. And just as He's given us life
and light to see, by bringing us out of the darkness, by bringing
us out of our bondage and dead works, we see how Christ has
made everything to us. And we rest and trust in Him
and grow more confident and more secure in our Lord and our Savior,
knowing that He does everything well. And then our third point,
promises given. Look at verse 4, 2 Peter 1-4. It says, whereby are given unto
us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might
be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust. Now in the previous points,
we saw how God gives us all things necessary for life and godliness.
It's all given to us, and they all came by the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ, by him doing this for us. He gave us all these
things. And because these are necessary to live before God
who is holy, because we ourselves in our flesh are not holy, so
we have to be made holy by Christ. we understand that we've received
all these blessings and all these gifts in Christ His Son. And
that's why we worship the Lord. That's why we sing praises of
Christ our Savior and why we rejoice in Him and why when you
see it, when the Lord comes upon you in a special way, you get
so excited and so happy and so full of joy because you see,
Lord, you've done this. I can't believe you've done this
for me. Thank you, Lord. We don't always
feel that way, but the Lord as a way of bringing that on us.
And so we rejoice in him and we praise his name and glorify
him. And then this verse here, it
further highlights for us that what he says, whereby are given
unto us exceeding great and precious promises. And that promise really
is summed up as Christ in you, the hope of glory. That we have
the promise that God dwells with us by His Son, by His Spirit
dwelling in our hearts, by giving us life now and giving us a hope
in Him and an assurance in Him. not looking to ourselves. When
we look to ourselves, we don't have assurance, but we keep looking
to Him and it's His power directing us away from self to see what
He's done for us. And these promises contain our
forgiveness, our sanctification, right, that He set us apart from
self, that we have union with Christ and that we have eternal
life in the Lord Jesus Christ and that He's accomplished all
this for us and He's bearing us in his own body, and so that
he did all that work of salvation for sinners like you and me,
to put away our sin, to make us righteous before holy God.
And Paul went on to say, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which
I now live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and gave himself for me. So we see that we grow
and understand, wow, that's more than I ever thought. And he did
all this for me. So in summary, Peter begins the
second epistle by putting us in remembrance here to know whose
we are and what we're saved, how he saved us, how he made
us, the righteousness of God in Christ, how that He is our
righteousness, and how He's not looking to us for anything, and
how the faith that we have, He's given that to us. The grace that
we have, He's given that to us. All these promises that were
made to us are made to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it
says, for all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him,
Amen, unto the glory of God by us. All these effects, all these
teachings are worked in us by the Lord. We see the effects
of them and we rejoice in what he's done for us because it's
a sure hope and it's founded upon the unshakable riches that
are in Christ, not founded upon this weakling who can be shaken
and terrified and afraid, but it's founded upon Christ who
is everything to us. So I pray the Lord will just
rejoice our hearts to hear him, to see him, to be thankful for
what he's done for us in his son, Jesus Christ. All right,
let's pray and then we'll be dismissed for a few minutes.
Our gracious Lord, we thank you for the unspeakable gift that
you've given to us in your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to
Remember how you've given everything necessary for our life and godliness,
for our salvation. It's all given to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Keep us in Him, settle us in
Christ our Savior, and help us, Lord, to grow in the knowledge
and the grace of our Savior Jesus Christ. And Lord, that we would
be fruitful by your power and be fruitful unto you, unto your
praise and glory in your kingdom, and to be a help to our brethren.
We pray this in Jesus' name, our Lord and Savior. Amen.