The message today is entitled,
Every Whit Hole. Every Whit Hole. The word whit,
that's not a word we use very often. So I had to look it up
in the dictionary. And according to Webster in 1828,
version of the Webster Dictionary, whit means the very smallest
imaginable part. And so every whit hole means
every imaginably small part absolutely made whole. And I thought that
was such a thrilling thing that that's what
I entitled the message, every whit hole. And so we want to
read the text of scripture that actually contains those words.
So look with me at first before we begin in John five with John
chapter seven and verse 19. Jesus is addressing those who
wanted to kill him. And they wanted to kill him for
the same reason in John 7 as they did in John 5 because he
healed a man on the Sabbath day. In verse 19 of John 7, did not
Moses give you the law? And yet none of you keepeth the
law? Why go ye about to kill me? The people answered and said,
Thou hast a devil, who goeth about to kill thee? Jesus answered
and said to them, I have done one work, and you all marvel. Moses therefore gave unto you
circumcision, not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers,
and you on the Sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the Sabbath
day receives circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be
broken, are you angry at me because I have made a man every whit
whole on the Sabbath day? All right, that's where it comes
from, every whit whole. And the word whole means restored
to health in all of your members. This man in John 5 had been in
this condition for 38 years. And you can't, how can we even
conceive, really, imagine that this would happen, that this
man, 38 years, impotent, And Jesus, immediately, by speaking
to him, when he says, rise, take up your bed and walk, immediately,
every wit, whole. That's phenomenal, isn't it?
We have to pause and think about it. We read it in scripture,
and we know it's true, but we go over things so quickly that
it sometimes just needs to sink in. Here's a man lying there
at the pool of Bethesda, With all the great multitude of impotent
folk, blind, halt, and withered, and Jesus says to him, rise,
take up your bed, and walk in. Immediately, every wit whole. Every part of him was made sound
as if he had never been lame or impotent. all of his muscles
worked, his bones worked, there was no arthritis, there was no
residue of a problem. It was all done. Amazing. Can the Lord do that? Oh yeah,
He can do that. The Lord is able to do that.
And that's our hope, isn't it? That the Lord can make me one
who is long time sick and without strength, impotent. Every part
of me and the smallest imaginable part, no part left out, every
smallest imaginable part included when he says, rise, take up your
bed, and walk. And so just the miracle itself
is phenomenal. so phenomenal that we would just,
you know, if children would just be open mouth, their eyes wide
open. We've seen this guy. Look at
his hair. It's a bad head, you know. He
just doesn't look normal. He's He's skinny, scrawny, his
bones stick out, his body's twisted. He can't make his hand open up
probably. It's just all curled up from
pain. He couldn't do anything. And
Jesus says, rise, take up your bed and walk. And immediately,
without any delay, it wasn't a gradual thing, all at once
he was made completely well. And so this is given to us in
scripture for a very important reason, so that we might believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and believing Him
might have life through His name. Look at John chapter five and
verse 24 and verse 25 also. He says, verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that heareth my word, Remember, rise, take up
your bed, and walk. He that heareth my word and believeth
on him that sent me has everlasting life. Immediately, you have everlasting
life. You were dead in sins, condemned
under the wrath of God to an eternal punishment, and now you
have everlasting life, and you shall not come into condemnation. No judgment for you. But you
are passed, already passed, from death to life in believing Christ. That's immediate, isn't it? That
is amazing. Look at the next verse. Verily,
verily, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, because
this man was a prototype of this, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. Amazing. All right, so let's go back now
and pick this up beginning at verse one. I hope that as we
do so, you and I will be reminded of the glorious truth here in
the scripture of what Christ has done. The setting here is
given in the very first verse. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews. So it's all about the Jews' feasts. Jesus went up to Jerusalem, the
location, the Jews' city, Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by
the Sheep Gate, it should be, the Sheep Gate, a pool, which
is in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. Bethesda
means house of mercy, house of mercy. The pool was the pool
for healing, and it was called the House of Mercy. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God. He came into the city of Jerusalem
on earth in order to redeem those who are part of the city of Jerusalem
in heaven. The Lamb of God entered the city
of Jerusalem on earth and received in himself the stripes that our
sins deserved at the hand of wicked men, because God received
from us, wicked men, the offense against His law, and in order
to save us, God had to reconcile us by the death of His own Son. And He became the pool of healing
for every sin sick soul. So you see that in the setting
here. You also see this. In here it
says, in verse three, in these, in these five porches around
this pool called the house of mercy, in these lay a great multitude
of impotent folk of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving
of the water. Now in the Old Testament, they
observed feasts, they had a city, there was a sheep gate where
the sheep were brought into the temple, they were offered to
God, There was even a pool for healing. And the problem was,
is that it didn't do very many people any good. And the good
that it did them was only a physical healing. All the people around
this pool, and only occasionally did an angel come from heaven
to stir the pool, and only then, the first entering the pool by
their own ability, could be healed. That doesn't leave us much hope,
does it? Because I don't know if you've
ever entered a contest before. I never win those contests. Whether
it be a lottery or a bingo game or whatever it is, Easter egg
hunt, you just don't win, do you? Because we're losers, right? We're losers. And so there's
no hope for us. Under the old covenant, there
is no hope for the impotent. No hope. The feast days in the
city of Jerusalem and all the sheep brought in through that
gate did us no good. We needed a savior. One who came,
who looked upon us and said to us, do you want to be made whole? No contribution on your part.
No strength needed. The resume can be blank here.
You're an object of mercy only. Yes, I want to be made whole. Christ alone can do this. And
so it draws our attention to him who asked the question, because
obviously if he asked, then he's about to do the miracle. He accomplishes
his own work. And so this is the first observation
I want to make here. that throughout all of the Old
Testament, in the feasts and the sacrifices, the city, the
gates, the walls of Jerusalem, everything pointed to Christ
who was to come. And he is the fulfillment of
all of those things. And now he's here. And these
people see the great miracle and they grow angry at him. They're
mad at him. They want to kill him. But as
it says in Isaiah 46, he says, I have spoken it, I will also
do it. And here we see in verse 17 of
this same chapter, Jesus said, my father worketh hitherto and
I work. That's why the Jews sought to
kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but because
saying that God was his father, he made himself equal with God.
And he said, verily, verily I say to you, the son can do nothing
of himself, but what he seeth the father do. For what thing
soever he doeth, these also do the son likewise. What does the
father do? What was he doing on the Sabbath
day? You know, there's only one way to know. What is Christ doing? That's what the Father's doing.
How do we know the Father's will? How do we know the Father's work?
See the Son. See what He does. The Father
does nothing but by the Son. All that He does, He accomplishes
through the Son. His Word, Christ, the Word of
God, is the fulfillment of the Father's Word. I have spoken
it. He's the word of God, I will
also do it. God the Father has spoken unto
us in these last days in his son. And also, I would say this
at the outset, when we see these Old Testament things, the city,
the temple, the gate, the pool, the occasional stirring of the
angel, and yet the complete failure in all these multitudes of impotent
folk, we see this, that the Lord Jesus Christ Not only does he
fulfill God's word, but he accomplishes his own word when he speaks.
It's his power that accomplishes his work. That's why he says
in Isaiah 45, 22, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends
of the earth. Because in the command to look,
he also gives the look and he accomplishes our salvation. Okay, so that's the context here. The failure of the Old Testament
to accomplish one thing for the great multitude of impotent folk. And we're all blind. We cannot
see why God would have mercy on us. We're all halt. We can't
do one thing normal to spiritual life. And we're all withered. All life, all moisture in us
is dried up. There's no cause in us to be
found. No ability on our part to be
made whole. And so he says in verse five,
and a certain man was there which had an infirmity 38 years, a
long time sickness. Until the Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world, the world was under the law of God. Then the
gospel came. God held mankind under the law
because in the beginning he told Adam and Eve, don't you eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And by the law
is the knowledge of sin. They ate, therefore they died
and they were under the law. And the law, according to 2 Corinthians
3, is a killing letter. It's the ministration of death.
So all the world, all that time throughout all those thousands
of years of history until Christ was under the law. And there's
not one person at one time, at any time in all of history, who
ever kept God's law except the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what
happened then is in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. Until that time, the law was
our schoolmaster until Christ. But when Christ came, then it
was revealed from heaven openly and publicly pronounced because
Christ sent, he preached it himself and sent his apostles and his
church to bring this glorious good news into the world that
all that God requires in the law, he has fulfilled in his
son for sinners. Amazing, amazing grace. Here
is a sinner completely incapable of doing one thing of all that
God requires, and then God comes to him in the Lord Jesus Christ
and says, yes, I came to do thy will, oh God. and to finish the
work. And not only to take, to fulfill
all righteousness, but to put away our sins by the sacrifice
of himself. And in fact, that is the righteousness
which he accomplished, which is given to us as our righteousness. And so he says here in verse
five, there was a certain man there who had an infirmity 38
years, a long time without strength. And then Christ came. Verse six,
when Jesus saw him lie, that was his purpose. He came into
the world to save sinners. We just sang it. When Jesus saw
him lie and knew that he had been a long time in that case,
he said to him, will you be made whole? not asking you if you
want to do something to make yourself whole or participate
in it. Do you want the work to be done
for you, the work to be done in you? Do you want to be made
whole? And then he says in verse seven,
this pitiful experience of this poor, impotent man, he said,
Sir, I have no man. when the water is troubled to
put me into the pool, but while I am coming, another steps down
before me." What a sad sight. He couldn't get in and no one
would help him. No man, as we just read in Psalm
142, no man cared for my soul. No man would help him. No man
could. No one could actually make this
man whole. And as Brad was just reading
Psalm 142, you can hear the lamentable cry of the one so troubled. Let me read some of those verses
with you again, Psalm 142. He says, I cried to the Lord
with my voice. With my voice to the Lord did
I make my supplication. I poured out my complaint before
him. I showed before him my trouble.
That's trouble, isn't it? And he takes it to the Lord.
Don't take your trouble to your neighbor. Brethren and sisters
in Christ are sympathetic, but we really can't do anything for
you. We can pray, surely, but the
Lord himself can actually make you whole. He can take the trouble. And not only that, but as Brad
pointed out in this psalm, these are the words, the prophetic
words of Christ who spoke them in his own experience bearing
our sins. And it's his answer from God
that is our answer from God from his prayer. in answer from God
to His prayer for us. And in His justification, we're
justified. He was delivered for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. So this prayer and the answer
to it is our salvation. And our experience is that we
also feel this trouble, don't we? My sin weighs me down heavily
and what happens? Well, the accuser of the brethren
slanders me before God and says, can you possibly have anything
to do with this one dressed in filthy garments? And the Lord
says, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. Take away his filthy garments. Isn't that what the gospel is?
Christ defending the accused? And in heaven, God saying, who
can lay anything to their charge? It is God who justifies. Yay. Listen to this. Who can condemn
them? One for whom Christ died. It's
Christ that died. So this psalm. Definitely applies
here. He says, I looked on my right
hand and behold, there was no man that would know me. Refuge
failed me. No man cared for my soul. I've
been laying here, who knows how long, sick for 38 years. No one would help me. Not one
person said, the next time the water is stirred, I'm going to
get you in there. The Old Testament can't help us. Only Christ, you
see. And so he goes on, here he says,
would you, will you be made whole? I'm not asking you if you can
help. I'm not asking you to do something. Don't look within
yourself to find a reason why you can be made whole. Look to
the one who's asking you. He draws the poor man's attention
to himself. Look at me. Do you want to be
made whole? Obviously, the one speaking would
be the one who does the work. He says to him, the impotent
man, he didn't have any idea what to do. I don't know. I can't get to the pool. Everyone
gets there first. I don't have any power. Of course
you don't. That's why I'm asking you. Do
you want to be made whole? And so the gospel comes to us,
doesn't it? Oh, poor, helpless sinner. Do you want Christ to
make you whole? Yes, I do. I do, more than anything,
I want to be completely, every particle, every whit, whole. And that's what the Gospel tells
us, doesn't it? Isn't that what it says? He says in Colossians
chapter 2, in verse 9 and 10, that the fullness of the Godhead
dwells in Christ bodily, and you are complete in Him, every
whit, whole, in Him. And so the words come to us from
him. Notice the next verses here. He says in chapter, in verse
eight, Jesus said to him, rise, take up your bed and walk. Now
this man heard the words. He had no power. How am I going
to do that? How can I possibly keep that
command of the Lord Jesus Christ to rise up and take up my bed
and walk? What had to happen for him to
do that? He had to be made whole. He had to be given with the word
of Christ. Christ had to fulfill his own
command to him and give life to that man. And with the life,
faith in his word, that he would obey that word without knowing
he had the power to do it. And suddenly, looking to Christ,
hearing his word, And with that grace given to him to receive
that word, he gets up, absolutely whole, and he picks up his bed,
puts it on his shoulder. It's the Sabbath day. Amazing,
amazing. And immediately, the man was
made whole and took up his bed and walked, and on the same day
was the Sabbath. All right, verse 10, the Jews
therefore said to him that was cured, it's the Sabbath day,
you lawbreaker. Isn't that what it says? You
know what, you've been saved by Christ. You know what religion
is gonna say to you? You are an antinomian. You are a lawbreaker. You lawbreaker. And then they
hold, well, wait, who are you to say, well, look what I've
done. Look, I've got my doctrines, I've got my creeds, and I keep
them, I tend, I keep all the things the elders tell me to
do. They've examined me, I'm good to go. You, you are disgusting. You're, you're the irredeemable. Exactly. That's why Christ came,
to save those who had no strength, to save themselves, who had nothing
good to commend them to God. And then he who came to save
sinners and tells them, you've been made whole, notice he goes,
we'll see that in a minute, who tells them to rise and walk,
giving them that life, giving them that faith, completely making
them whole, they're completing him. Then the accuser of the
brethren, through the mouthpiece of religion comes to them and
said, how could you claim to be a Christian? Look at you.
You're disgusting. Yes, I am. I'm a great sinner
and nothing at all. But Jesus Christ is my all in
all, you see? That's where the completeness
is. That's where every wit is made whole, in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I am in Him, and God has
said in His word, I know it's contrary to all of my rational
thinking, but God has said that He has made Him to me wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. What else do
I need? It's all in Him. He made Him to be sin, who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's where my wholeness is,
it's in Him. And the fact that I believe Him
proves the efficacy of His blood, that the Spirit of God has given
me life. I couldn't have believed this.
I wouldn't know it. I couldn't get into the pool.
But because of His stripes, now I am healed. But the religious
world hates it. They hate Christ. They want to
say, look, if you're carrying your bed, you're a lawbreaker.
And verse 11, he answered them who accused him of being an antinomian.
He said, he that made me whole. The same said to me, take up
your bed and walk. Now, if you carry this on further,
Jesus said, I work, my father works, and I work. So not only
did the man obey the word of Christ, the one who made him
all, but Christ did the work because he is the son of God
and he only does his father's work, which clearly, therefore,
wasn't a breaking of the Sabbath, was it? They said it was a breaking
of the Sabbath. Why? Because they were men. They
were judging the law based on the judgment of men. But God
looks at it and says, no, this is actually keeping the Sabbath.
This is what the Sabbath is all about. Remember what Jesus said,
having mercy? That's keeping the Sabbath. Your donkey will fall into the
pit. You'll get him out on the Sabbath
day, but you won't help this man. There's a Samaritan there,
I mean, I'm sorry, there's a man here who went from Jericho and
he was attacked by thieves. You're not going to help him?
Because he's laying by the roadside half dead? There's a woman taking
an adultery, you're going to accuse her? Here's a man who
had no strength and you're saying, well, it had to be his fault,
therefore he's a sinner. I have nothing to do with that
man. Look at him now carrying his bed on the Sabbath day, clearly
a lawbreaker, finding fault. And God says, he stands up in
our defense, he says, no weapon that is formed against you is
going to prosper. And everyone who rises up against
you in judgment, are gonna be silenced because their righteousness
is of me, saith the Lord. Isaiah 54, verse 17. And so God
defends his own. And this is what the New Testament
fights are all about, isn't it? How could the Lord Jesus Christ
claim to be sent from God when he does these things for sinners?
Isn't that it? Why are you eating and drinking
with publicans and sinners? Well, because the righteous don't
need a doctor. It's the sick. I came to call
the sinners to repentance. His name is Jesus. He shall save
His people from their sins. If He was a prophet, He would
know what kind of woman is touching Him. Yeah, he knows. That's why he came. I have somewhat
to say to you, Simon. If there were two debtors and
one owed 50, another 500, 10 times as much, and when neither
of them had anything to pay, the creditor frankly forgave
them both, which one's gonna love the most? Well, I suppose
the one who has been forgiven the most. Exactly. That's why
this woman loves the most. If you haven't been forgiven
much, you haven't been forgiven at all. And so the gospel comes
to us and it must find us helpless as sinners and must find all
of our health in Christ whose stripes are our healing, whose
righteousness in obedience unto death is our righteousness. And
because he is our righteousness, therefore there's no one who
can lay a charge against us. God has openly justified his
people in the court of heaven to the onlooking universe, and
not one person, not the devil himself, can raise one accusation
because the Lord says, the Lord rebuked thee, O Satan. And so he goes on. He says in
verse 12, then asked they him, what man is he that said to thee,
take up thy bed and walk? They obviously are on a witch
hunt. And he that was healed wist not
who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away a multitude being
in that place. Afterward, notice verse 14, Jesus
findeth him in the temple and said to him, notice, this is
Christ speaking to his redeemed. He says, behold, thou art made
whole. Isn't that what he says? You
are absolutely justified. not a sin to your account. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin." Righteousness is a gift to you, given to you,
and on the basis of the righteousness given to you, eternal life. And
now where sin reigned unto death, grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Behold, thou art made
whole. That's the fact. And notice what
he says next. Sin no more. Lest a worse thing
come upon thee. Clearly, what had been his sickness
must have been the result of his sin. And now the Lord says,
sin no more. What do you think when you hear
those words? If you're honest, I think, I know I've thought
of that before and I thought, well, I got to get busy. I really
do. I must not have anything to do
with the Lord because He said, sin no more. And it seems like
I find that there's not a just man on earth who doeth good and
sinneth not. Ecclesiastes 720, and I'm one
of them. In fact, I'm probably the chief
of sinners. Other people have thought about
doing wrong. I've actually done wrong. Or they haven't thought
about the things I've thought about doing, and man alive, if
anyone ever knew, I definitely at the top of the list of sinners. Bottom of the heap. Yeah, if the Lord had a list
and was checking it twice, that name of mine would be right there
at the beginning. No, no. Nothing for him. Only darkness and everlasting
punishment. But here, the Lord says to this
one, you are made whole. Go and sin no more. Now, who
had spoken to him before? Who had made him whole? By the
one standing before him. Whose power made him whole? Why, his own, the Christ's power. And where did he get the faith
to even get up off of his bed and walk and pick up his bed?
Well, that came from Christ, too. And so when he hears the
words, go, sin no more, what is he going to do? Well, let's
see, having begun in the spirit, am I going to fulfill everything
else in the flesh? Galatians 3 verse 3, you foolish
Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey
the gospel? Let me read that to you in Galatians
chapter 3. This is very important to us,
isn't it? Because I don't want to sin anymore. I want to be obedient. I want
to be the Lord's. I don't want to be sent away.
He says, oh foolish Galatians chapter 3 verse 1, who hath bewitched
you that you should not obey the truth, to begin to think
that my Preservation and perfection in this thing of salvation depends
now on me having first believed that I was justified by Christ.
Now I go on in order to make it all happen in my life. That
is being duped as someone in a fog under the spell of a deceiver. Who has bewitched you that you
should not obey the truth, which is faith in Christ, before whose
eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth crucified among you.
And if Christ was crucified, it was not in vain. He accomplished
what he came to do. This only would I learn of you.
Receive you the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing
of faith. Christ said, rise, take up your
bed and walk. Bam, he rose. He heard, life,
strength, faith, all given by his word. Now, that wasn't by
your doing your part, right? No. He says, are you so foolish,
having begun in the spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?
That's the lesson here. Go and sin no more. What do we
do then? He who has begun a good work
in you shall perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus. Isn't
that what we think? Philippians 1.6. It's God who's
at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
Yeah, yeah. You are His workmanship. Not
your own. You were created in Christ Jesus. You didn't bring yourself out
of the empty nothingness of your own vain darkness. He created
you in Christ Jesus. He raised you from the dead.
And now what? You're gonna produce what was
never there before? This ability to go and sin no
more? No. And this is the new covenant.
1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 23
and 24, he says this. He says, the very God of peace
sanctify you wholly, and I pray God, your whole spirit and soul
and body, every wit. be preserved blameless under
the coming of our Lord Jesus and just in case you missed it,
faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. Now that's
where I stand. I have no hope unless God who
raised me from the dead continues to give me life in the same way
by grace alone because of Christ's righteousness alone. He tells
us in Hebrews 13, this is the new covenant in Christ's blood.
Notice Hebrews 13 and verse 20. He says, now the God of peace,
the same words we just read in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, the God
of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that
great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting
covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will,
working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through
Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. Isn't
that wonderful? And look at Jude chapter one,
or there's only one verse, one chapter in Jude. He says in Jude
chapter one, Verse 24, he says, now unto him
that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless,
without sin, before the presence of his glory, with exceeding
joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty,
dominion and power, both now and ever. Isn't that wonderful? He who has begun a good work
in you will perfect it to the end. Without me, Jesus said,
you can do nothing. And his strength is made perfect
in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9 and
10. Colossians 2, verse 6, as you
have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Go and
sin no more. It's the very command of Christ
to go and sin no more that has created in us this life in our
soul that results in this warfare constantly going on where we
cry out, oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? Right? If it weren't for him
saying that, there would be no warfare. But by his word, he
excites the warfare in order to prove himself captain and
king and sovereign and an almighty savior over our sin. So we looked
in. You know, this was what he predestinated
us to, to be conformed to the image of his son. Shall his predestinated
will fail? No, God is faithful who promised
he also will do it. And this is what the New Testament
is about. God saving his own. What an amazing
thing. If we begin by grace, we finish
by grace. If we try to finish in any other
way, then we didn't begin by grace. I love it. I love it. I tell
you, I need it. It's got to be this way for me.
Don't you know it? And you can see it, too, when
you just have to stick around a while. And this is the Father's
work. This is God the Father's work.
It is not going to fail. And He sent His Son to accomplish
it. He raises the dead. He has life
in Himself. He gives life to whom He will.
By His Word, the dead are raised up, even now, He says in verse
25 of the same chapter. All right, let's pray. Father,
thank you that you sent your Son to accomplish your work,
and by the almighty power of the Word of the Son of God, you
raise the dead, you raise the impotent, you give them life,
faith, strength, you make them every whit hole. We are complete
in you, Lord. We are justified by your righteousness. Our sins are blotted out by your
shed blood. The covenant has been made. It's
put into force. Now we receive all the benefits
of it. And yes, we receive this command too, to sin no more.
And yet we look again to you who gave it, who raised us to
life and gave us this grace of life and predestinated us to
this purpose, to accomplish your will. And so we look upon our
Savior and we trust that from glory to glory we shall be changed
into his likeness according to your word. Lord, do as you have
said. Make us all your own. Make each one here an object
of your saving grace and help us with our mouth and with our
life. to continually bear witness to the fact that the one who
made me whole told me to pick up my bed and walk. And so we
walk by faith, trusting you and having no other hope. But the
way we receive Christ the Lord is the way we live and walk in
him, by his grace, through faith in him alone. In his name we
pray. Amen.