You want to turn in your Bibles
to 1 Peter 1, and then also hold your finger there, and we're
going to read the book of Jude together as part of our sermon
today. I've entitled today's message,
Kept by the Power of God Unto Salvation, which is just simply
the words from 1 Peter 1 5. Let's ask the Lord to be with
us. Gracious Father and our only Savior, we ask that you would
speak to us. If you do not speak to us, as
the psalmist has said, we will be in silence. We will be left
to ourselves and we will have no hope, no salvation, no blessing,
and receive only what we deserve. But if you speak from your word,
if you give life to us, by your spirit pointing us to the Lord
Jesus Christ as all of our salvation, then we can live. And only then
can we have this grace of faith to see him. And we pray, Lord,
that you would do that for our salvation, for our blessing,
that we might be enabled today to worship you. In Jesus' name
we pray, amen. In first Peter, I want to remind
you that we're looking at the great things that God has done.
Remember that we took that verse of scripture from Numbers 23,
23. What hath God wrought? What has
God done? And we're using that to guide
us to see that the book of First Peter is telling us, first and
foremost, what God has done. And it's from that that the rest
of the book opens up to encourage the believers in Christ in the
sufferings they experience in this world, to endure all kinds
of sufferings. And so the book of 1 Peter was
written to those who are strangers that were scattered throughout
these different regions listed in verse 1. And He immediately
calls them what they were by God's act from eternity, the
elect of God. That they were the elect of God
according to the foreknowledge of God, His eternal love to them,
towards them, in the Lord Jesus Christ. That He chose them in
Christ. This was why they were so blessed.
Because God the Father Himself loved them and chose them in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Not for what they were in themselves.
but for what He would give to them, what He would receive from
Christ for them, and how He would bless them in Christ alone. And
then he said that they were even sanctified, set apart by the
Spirit of God to the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a blessing that was.
We couldn't in any way know that our salvation was in Christ unless
the Spirit of God acted upon us and operated in us to give
us this life and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he
directs us in everything to Christ. And this is the way we have confidence
before Him is that He draws us to and points us to and directs
us to Him, even in our lowest frame of mind, in our weakness,
in the great sufferings that every Christian experiences in
this world. Sufferings of mind, suffering
of body, afflictions from within, afflictions from without. And
this is the lot we have in this life. Now, we're not delivered
immediately to go into glory. We're left in this world to live
upon the truth God has revealed to us from his word made known
in our hearts and giving us faith in Christ. And that work of God
in us brings glory to his grace. And so we see that in verses
one and two. And then in verse three, we saw
that we as believers in Christ return all blessing and honor
to our God and Father because he has so made us his sons by
the Lord Jesus Christ. We're begotten again, we're born
of God, we're created in Christ Jesus, raised from the dead,
not simply created out of nothing, but raised as it were, created
from the dead again in Christ. And we're birthed, we're birthed
according to God the Father's eternal purpose that He had predestinated
us to the adoption of His children. And that's in verse three. And
so we bless God our Father. We call Him our Father. We trust
Him as our Father. We recognize His eternal love
for us in Christ. And that His eternal love for
us in Christ is that same love that we rely on now in Christ
to deliver us through the present sufferings of this world and
this life, so that we're not discouraged through it all, but
we have this great hope. It's a living hope. That's what
he says in verse 3. And this is by Jesus Christ,
who was raised from the dead. And then we saw in verse 4 that
because we are born of God the Father, that we're born to an
inheritance. Because we're His, we're children
of God, then we have an inheritance which is God's inheritance to
His children. How can you measure that? How
can you comprehend? How can you even begin to fathom? what belongs to God the Father,
and therefore is given to His children. We are heirs of God. We are joint heirs with Christ,
all obviously by God's grace. Who can earn one thing from God? And yet He has given us His Son,
His Spirit, and an eternal inheritance, everlasting life, to know Him
as He truly is in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the eternal inheritance. And it's an inheritance we have
now because God has said it is ours in Christ. And yet we have
to experience it in the future. And that future day is waiting. It's waiting for us. And that
inheritance is reserved for us in heaven. No one can touch it. It's in heaven. Out of reach
of men, out of reach of devils, it's in heaven. And Jesus told
his disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. If I had not
come to go and prepare this place for you, I would have told you,
but I've come now and I'm telling you now that I'm going to prepare
a place for you, which he did when he went to the cross and
he prepared for us this inheritance and he gave it to us by his spirit
through the gospel because he earned it for us in his redeeming
work by his blood. And then we come to verse five.
Now consider this verse in light of Peter's experience in his
own life. He says in verse 5, who, excuse
me, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,
ready to be revealed in the last time. The who are kept are those
who have been talked about here, the elect of God, those sanctified
by the Spirit, brought to see by God's grace the obedience
of Christ in his blood for them. that this was their salvation
and that God birthed them by His Spirit because that was the
evidence of the new birth. They would see Christ and trust
Christ and that they would know their inheritance in Him. And
now he says, these he's been talking about, loved by God the
Father, loved by Christ, and loved by the Spirit of God and
made holy in the blood of Christ, made holy in the new birth, partakers
of the divine nature, he says here, these ones are kept by
the power of God through faith unto salvation that's ready to
be revealed in the last time. kept by the power of God. We
were saved by the power of God. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation. And all those who have been brought
to Christ see Christ as the wisdom and power of God in their salvation. We preach Christ and him crucified,
the wisdom of God and the power of God to all who believe. And
now we see here that not only is our salvation by the power
of God, and nothing less than the power of God is required
to save us from our sins. Nothing less than the almighty,
infinite, limitless, immeasurable power of God is required to save
us from our sins. Nothing less. The almighty power
of God to raise us from the dead, the power of God that overcame
Satan and his kingdom, the power of God even more that brought
into reconciliation his justice and his mercy, his truth and
his righteousness, and the overflowing abundance of his grace towards
sinners who deserved his wrath. That's the power of God. He did
that in his son. And that power of God by which
we are saved, that same power is required to keep us. It's
required to keep us. We do not keep ourselves. We
cannot keep ourselves. We're kept by the power of God.
And whenever God's power is required, then nothing less than God's
power will do. So we're kept by the power of
God. And this keeping of God is a certainty. It's not an uncertainty. God doesn't start and then abandon
a work. That's what we do. That's too
hard. I can't finish it, so we stop. Or it was more complicated. I didn't understand how complicated
it would be, and so we stop. Or I lost interest in it, and
so we stop. or I got distracted by things
of higher priority, so we stop. There's many things we do in
life where we begin and never finish. And you look at that
and you think, what kind of a person am I to be so unstable as to
start things and never finish them? But that's the nature of
men. And some men plan big things
and accomplish big things. The Lord Himself has planned
something, the salvation of His people, and He will not stop
until He has completed it to the very end. He will bring everything. Not one thing of all He has determined
to do will be unfulfilled. Not even the smallest part will
be diminished. in what Christ has done. All
will be brought to perfect fulfillment, and it will be by the power of
God. And since it is the power of God, who can stop him? Who
can keep him from his work? No one, especially not those
who are the objects of his salvation, the man who swims out into the
ocean and is drawn out away from the shore by the powerful currents
of the ocean and is exhausted and is drowning. And then the
lifeguard comes and saves him. He has no strength to save himself.
He's lost all power. And so he is the object of saving
help. And so God's salvation comes
to us. We have no power to save ourselves.
He didn't look for power from us. He's not going to look for
power from us in order to keep us safe. It all comes from Him. Therefore, all the glory goes
to Him. If there was something left for
us to do, then some part of God's glory would be ascribed to us.
But all glory has to go to Christ. Therefore, all power comes from
Him. All merit, all work, all worth,
everything comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the
point of the gospel. It's all of grace. None of it
is dependent upon our work. The fruit of God's saving grace
is to produce faith in us, and the fruit of it is to produce
the fruits of the Spirit. That's God's work. We are His
workmanship. Never lose sight of that. And
so we're kept by the power of God. And this keeping by the
power of God is through faith. through faith unto salvation.
You see, God has designed our salvation in every way so that
two things are certain. Number one, our salvation is
certain. And number two, God will get
all the glory. Therefore it has to be all of
grace, because if it were of works of any part, then something
in our salvation would depend on us. But because God will not
have our salvation depend on us, because we would obviously
fail, we started out as failures, Secondly, because God will have
all the glory. Only He deserves it. And so all
of the people of God are so thankful to know that God has designed
our salvation so that it will be all of grace, and we're happy
to give Him glory for it all, therefore. We take so much comfort
in knowing that, don't you? Day by day, you find yourself
under the burden of the conscious awareness of your own sins and
failures and your helplessness and you look back in the past
and you see, I haven't lived up to what I should be and you
look forward in the future and you know that you're going to
fail again. You know that your whole life is constantly falling
short of the mark, even the mark that you set up for yourselves,
let alone the mark that is described what we ought to be. And then
you suddenly realize the life I've never lived and I cannot
live was lived for me by Christ. And then we take great comfort
in knowing, oh, I see. It's all because I couldn't do
it. I wouldn't do it. And the Lord
himself had to do it himself. He had to live the life for me
that I couldn't live, die the death I couldn't die, and to
give to God what I could never give. And that's what faith does. Faith empties itself of everything
and abandons all hope in itself and finds all of its hope in
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we're saved through
faith, because faith redirects all virtue away from itself and
finds its virtue in Christ. All power is in God. It's in
the Lord Jesus Christ on the throne. And therefore, what does
faith do? Knowing that all power comes
from God, Faith applies itself and pleads with God for this
grace that He has in His will determined to give us. And faith
comes to God empty-handed, utterly dependent, relying on what God
promised to do. And we say with David, Lord,
do as you have said. And that's our only hope, speak
the word only. And we're utterly dependent upon
that and that's what faith is. It's utter dependence on God
to do what God determined and promised to do and has accomplished
in his son. And will give to us by his spirit,
this constant dependence upon him. But I want to take you to
now the future, I mean another apostle in the book of Jude.
And look with me in the book of Jude. Peter knew he could
not keep himself. He had experienced failure publicly. All of the other disciples had
witnessed his failure. He had denied the Lord Jesus
Christ. And now, having been recovered
by Christ from that fall, Having realized that his only preservation
and being kept by God would be by the power of the Lord Jesus
Christ, he speaks to us and says in 1 Peter 1, verse 5, we're
kept by the power of God. I know as believers, these strangers
scattered throughout these places, throughout Pontius, Galatia,
Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Asia, that you're going to be kept
by the power of God, because he who began the work will complete
it. It's his power, it's not yours.
And Peter, as one who had fallen and known his own failures, and
having been brought back by Christ to himself, he understood what
it meant. Jesus even told him, he says,
Peter, Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat,
but I have entered a counter plea even before he came with
that desire, a counter plea. And he says, and my plea was
that your faith fail not. Now, when you are recovered,
Strengthen your brethren. Remember? That's what Jesus told
Peter. When you have been recovered,
then strengthen your brethren. That's why Peter wrote, 1 Peter
1, verse 5, we're kept by the power of God. He directs us to
the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who has all power and does all
of the work in our salvation. But let's look at this, because
there was another apostle whose name was Jude. His name is used in the New Testament.
He's called Judas, but not Judas Iscariot. He writes these words
in this book, in the book of Jude. Let's just read the whole
book. It says in verse 1, Jude, the
servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to them that are, notice,
sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ,
and called." Notice the order, too. God the Father did this. He set us apart. How? He preserved
us in Jesus Christ, and then He called us. He set us apart
from eternity. He gave us to Christ. He preserved us in Christ, and
then He called us. He called us by the gospel. To
these, Jude says. Mercy unto you, and peace and
love be multiplied. Never shrink back or apologize
for telling God's people that God has loved them from everlasting
ages, and His love cannot fail, and nothing can separate them
from His love. If He gave His Son for us, if
Christ gave Himself for us, then we know the love of God, don't
we? We have known and believed the
love that God has for us. But God's love is specific. God's
love is particular. God's love is saving. God's love
will not fail. Therefore we know that those
who are in heaven were loved from the beginning. And so he
speaks to them. God amplifies and draws attention
to and magnifies his love for his people. There's no reason
we should apologize for that. Even though in the world people
are told everyone, God loves everyone and Jesus died for everyone,
but that cannot be because God's love cannot fail. He's not going
to lose those he loves. His justice won't prevail against
His love. No, His love will find a way
to magnify His law and justice in order that He might have them
and have them in a holy, perfect, pure love. And so He speaks to
them about His mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you
that God the Father has set apart from the foundations of the world,
giving you to Christ, and therefore preserving you in Christ Jesus. Preserving you in Christ Jesus,
keeping you, that's what this is about. It's being kept, being
kept from falling. And this is the way Jude opens
this book. Notice, he calls them beloved,
those loved of God. Beloved, when I gave all diligence
to write unto you of the common salvation, This salvation that
we have is common to all of God's people, not just Jews, but to
those for whom Christ died. It was needful for me to write
unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend
for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. God
delivered the gospel to his people. It was delivered to them and
it was put into the hands of his people by his spirit. The
Lord Jesus Christ delivered it. And he's not going to let that
fall. He's not going to let that gospel fail. And he tells them,
you be diligent, earnestly contend for the faith, the truth, the
objective truth that you believe. earnestly contend for it, because
it was delivered by God through Christ to all the saints." He
says, now he draws back and he considers those who have not
the gospel and were not preserved in Jesus Christ. And he warns
us, he warns us. There's warnings here. And then
he's going to follow up the warnings with how we are kept. Notice
in verse 4, he begins the warnings. For there are certain men crept
in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation,
ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and
denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. They take
the doctrine of our salvation by God's grace alone and Christ
alone, and what do they do? They say, well, that doctrine
leads to lasciviousness and licentiousness. You hold to the grace of God
because you want to sin against God more and more. And so they
accuse them of lasciviousness. Or they themselves take it and
pervert it to their own presumptive use in order to make ruin of
themselves in abusing this grace of God. But he says, I will therefore,
verse 5, put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, how
that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt,
afterward destroyed them that believed not. Now, these men
who presume to be able to treat the grace of God as some light
thing and turn it into an advantage for their lusts or to accuse
others of misusing it for their own lusts and turn it into saying
that God's grace leads to lawlessness, he says no. He says, remember
those who were brought out of Egypt and then through the Red
Sea, and later they were destroyed because they believed not? Remember
them? They were apostates. And verse
six, he says, and the angels, which kept not their first estate,
but left their own habitation, he has reserved in everlasting
chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. There
were angels that fell from heaven, They were able to commit sin
because God had not created them immutable. God alone is immutable. He alone is without sin and cannot
be tempted by sin. But the angels were taken away. We're not sure how. It doesn't
explain it in detail. It gives us a summation of it.
They were not preserved in Christ Jesus. Therefore, they fell by
their own wickedness. They are reserved in everlasting
chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day. And
so we have the unbelieving Israelites. the apostate angels, and now
we see the apostates in Sodom and Gomorrah. He says in verse
7, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in
like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going
after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering
the vengeance of eternal fire. Some people will deny that there
is an everlasting punishment. The Bible does not deny it. The
Bible affirms it. The vengeance of eternal fire
for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now these are all held up to
us to show us what? That we need to be kept. We need
to be preserved. How will this happen? Verse 8. Likewise, also these filthy dreamers
defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil, he
disputed about the body of Moses. He durst not bring against him
a railing accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke thee. He was
going to raise up, well, I won't get into that. I'll reserve that
for another time to talk about those verses. I think it's commonly misunderstood,
but I will reserve some other time to talk about that. But
these speak evil of those things which they know not. But what
they know naturally as brute beast, in those things they corrupt
themselves. Things they know naturally, they
corrupt themselves. Woe unto them. Notice the judgment
pronounced by the apostle through the Lord Jesus Christ, the judge
of all the earth. He says, woe unto them. They
have gone in the way of Cain. What was the way of Cain? It
was to bring his own sacrifice and to despise the Lamb of God.
And they have ran greedily after the heir of Balaam. What did
he do? Well, he went after a reward
to curse God's people. Balaam, for reward, perished
in the gainsaying of Korah. We didn't know that until it
was revealed here that Balaam died with the company of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram. And verse 12, these, these, meaning
the unbelieving, the apostates among you, These are spots in
your feast of charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves
without fear, clouds without water, carried about of winds,
trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead, plucked up
by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own
shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness and
darkness forever. And now he's gonna turn back,
turn back to addressing the saints and what God has done. He says,
Enoch, also the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these things,
saying, behold, the Lord cometh with 10,000 of his saints to
execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly
among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly
committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners
have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers,
walking after their own lust, and their mouth speaketh great
swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because
of advantage. This is typical of all that we
are by nature, in pride, in our hypocrisy, using our works to
show a comparison between others, like the Pharisee in Luke chapter
18, seeking an advantage by what we are in ourselves. Now he's
gonna turn and speak in tender tones to the gospel and to those
who believe it. He says, but beloved, remember
ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our
Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers
in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lust.
These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit,
but you, beloved, Building up yourselves on your most holy
faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. What does this mean? Building
up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.
What is our most holy faith? Isn't it the substance of the
gospel? Isn't it Jesus Christ crucified,
risen, reigning, saving His people by Himself, by God's grace, and
we as the objects of that grace and tender mercy of God? Isn't
it that He came and He saw us and He saved us and told us what
He did in the gospel? This is our most holy faith.
We do not trust in what we can do. We trust Christ who saved
us from our sins. The one who made the atonement
on that day. Verse 21, keep yourselves in
the love of God. Abide in Christ. That's where
his love is. Looking for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ until eternal life. We look for him. We don't
look for another. We don't seek after the things
of this world. And on some, of some, have compassion, making
a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of
the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. Now, considering
All of these who went apostate, the unbelieving Israelites in
the land of the wilderness, the angels that fell and kept not
their first estate, Sodom and Gomorrah, Balaam, Judas, whoever
they were, considering them, now he directs us to him that
is able to keep you from falling. You see the result of the gospel?
It takes our eyes away from our own self-ruin, our own sinful
corruptions, the wretched man that we are, and it says, now
unto him, unto him, look away, call on him who alone can save
you, and hold fast to him, keep yourselves in the love of God.
You see, you don't keep yourselves, but you direct your gaze. The
object of your faith remains, has always been since the Lord
saved you, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Do not leave Him. Unto Him, notice, that is able. The power of God, He is nowhere
in scripture does it say God is unable. God is declared to
His people as able to save us from our sins. He is able to
save us and to keep you from falling. You consider all these
and what is your natural reaction? That's where I would be. That's
where I will be unless the Lord saves me. And what do we do then? He says, now unto Him that is
able to keep you from falling. And notice, not only to keep
you from falling, which means to fall from faith, and to apostatize
and to deny Christ, and to seek salvation from another, and to
not cry to Him when our sins overwhelm us, but to look to
some other help, our own strength, or to abandon all hope and to
plunge ourselves into despair. No, God gives us this grace,
he upholds us in this grace of faith to continue to look to
Christ. Are you gonna leave? No, where
else would I go? You have the words of eternal
life. And so we look to him who is able to keep us looking to
Christ, to keep us from falling, and to present you, notice, The
Lord Jesus Christ is going to present His church to Himself. How? To present you faultless. Not like, I just barely made
it. No. The work was His. It's a perfect work. Unto Him
who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless. Where? In the presence of His
glory. Not one part of God's perfections
are disappointed in His work. Look at it. It's perfect. It's
wonderful. God has done it. Did you do that?
No. Christ alone. You see? It has
to be all Him. unto him who is able to keep
you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence
of his glory." Publicly, he's not going to hide. He's not going
to do this in a corner. No. all of the universe look
on while God in Christ brings his people into his presence
in all of his glory, his holy, unblemished, untainted, no fault. And he says, look at them, faultless,
just like determined, preserved in Christ before the foundation
of the world. Nothing has been able to diminish
one thing of all that he did for them. And notice the next
part, with exceeding joy. Jesus Christ will have ultimate
joy when he presents his church to himself. These who in themselves
were ungodly, without strength, sinners, he says, when we were
yet without strength, Christ died for us. If when we were
enemies, God reconciled us to himself by the death of his son,
how much more now shall he save us by his life? Christ who died,
rose, and reigns, and intercedes for his people, nothing can keep
them from who has already obtained the victory. He's going to give
them the victory, give them the eternal inheritance, save them
to the uttermost by his endless, almighty, all-powerful life. He's faithful to preserve and
keep and present his own to himself. And now he says, he breaks out
in praise to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty. You see God's glory? The majesty
of the Lord Jesus Christ that he would save sinners in all
of the perfections of his holiness. And he says, to him be glory
and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. You
see this? We're kept by the power of God
unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Rommel was
talking about that in God's order, His perfect time. There's a time
appointed, and He's going to make known His work of salvation,
and it will be stupendous beyond belief. Amazing grace, see the
loving kindness of God toward an unworthy people, a loving
kindness that went so far as to give His Son for them and
to raise them up with His Son and to bless them with this faultless
standing in the presence of His glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a blemish shall be found
there. And now turn with me to Isaiah. In the book of Isaiah,
I want to bring your attention to this verse. He says in Isaiah chapter 25,
I'm going to read the first nine
verses. He says in Isaiah 25, O Lord, Thou art my God. I will exalt
Thee. I will praise Thy name. For Thou
hast done wonderful things. Thy counsels of old are faithfulness
and truth. For Thou hast made of a city
an heap, of a defense city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no
city. It shall never be built. Therefore
shall the strong people glorify Thee. He's talking about the
ruin of the enemies of God's people. And then he talks about
them. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city
of the terrible nation shall fear thee, for thou has been
a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress,
a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast
of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. Thou shalt
bring down the noise of strangers as the heat in a dry place, even
the heat with the shadow of a cloud, the branch of the terrible ones
shall be brought low. And in this mountain shall the
Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast
of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines
on the lees well refined. and he will destroy in this mountain
the face of the covering cast over all people and the veil
that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces and
the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the
earth for the Lord has spoken it and it shall be said in that
day, lo. This is our God. We have waited
for him and he will save us. This is the Lord. We have waited
for him. We will be glad and rejoice in
his salvation. A salvation ready to be revealed
in the last day. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you for the eternal love, the preserving grace, that you have
given to us in putting us in the Lord Jesus, choosing us in
Him, making us holy and without fault and blameless in Him. He
did not fail. He accomplished all and is now
seated at the right hand of the Father, having already obtained
the full victory, having received the full honor that is deserved
by Him alone. We could never do one part of
any of this. Christ did it all. And we look
to him. You've given us this truth in
the gospel and directed us to him, to look to him alone, who
is the author and finisher and upholder and the perfecter of
our faith. And we pray, Lord, that as you
have purpose to do, you would fulfill it. You would glorify
your son and give us this grace to honor him with all that we
are, our whole being, because he has saved us from our sins
and redeemed us with his precious blood and brought us to glory
with his eternal inheritance to know the living God in Jesus
Christ, our Lord and Savior. In his name we pray, amen.