able to close our lives for just
a bit each week, to come together and to meditate on your word,
and to hear it, and to consider it, Lord, and to rejoice because
of it. Father, you have revealed your
Son to us through the scripture, and we pray because it is what
God the Son has taught us to do. We pray and you listen because
we are found in Christ and Lord in him we are your righteousness. So as we open your word tonight,
Lord, let all the troubles and trials of our heart and spirit
and mind be put to rest and help us to be focused on that which
is eternal, that which has value far above this world. that which has things concerning
your free and sovereign grace. And so, Lord, we are thankful
that this prayer is answered already. In the name of Christ,
we give it. Amen. Hebrews chapter 10. It starts with a four, so we're
going to rewind just a tad so we can understand what it is
that Paul is trying to further explain. which is what he does
when he puts for in the sentence, or now, as a result of, or therefore. as always, is continuing to express
the necessity of a true high priest, the necessity of true
propitiation, the necessity of true justification, forgiveness,
that justice and righteousness is indeed found. And beloved,
this is the purpose for which the church remains. We are together
gathered as the called and chosen ones, as the elect of Christ,
so that we may learn and understand the work of God the Father through
God the Son, empowered by God the Holy Spirit, that we might
know Him, which is eternal life. And sadly, in our day, we have
a lot of ideas, a lot of illustrations, a lot of anecdotes. And the list
could go on and on with different ways in which people have tried
to explain the gospel. I listened to a very, he's passed
away many years now, but a very prominent evangelical pastor
that come on the radio since I was a boy. And I heard him
for just about six minutes as I was driving the other day. And curiosity, just I haven't
listened to this in a while, curiosity kept me there. And
it was very disturbing. It was disturbing because as
this man was supposedly in a particular text of scripture, he spent an
ample amount of time talking about specific stories. And he
kept on in the story, and about four minutes in, I just moved
to something else and flipped through the radio stations. And
about 10 minutes later, I came back to this, and he was on another
story, yet relative to the main idea of what he was trying to
teach. And I thought to myself, Lord, have I ever preached that
way? Have I ever said, thus saith the Lord, and then told my life?
Have I ever stood before people and considered, like maybe I'm
doing now, and shared something that's not necessarily relevant
or even useful? Sure, I have. And sometimes we think that,
well, the Bible doesn't necessarily explain itself enough, so let
me dig deeper and get a better explanation. And I guess it's
okay if the illustration amply supplies illumination. I don't mean to do alliteration
there. But if it comes to my heart that what I am about to
teach is better suited and better equipping you because of my ability
to explain it, I've misunderstood the whole purpose of the scripture
to begin with. God has spoken concerning His
Son. And now God has spoken only through
His Son. As Paul began this letter, that
is what he says. God spoke in many times and in
many ways by the prophets to our fathers. But in these last
days, He was spoken to us by His Son. So that as we look at the Old
Testament, as we look at the law, as we look at the temple,
as we look at all the ideas and the philosophies surrounding
the temporal covenants of God with His elect as shadows, it's very simply, amazingly almost
impossible not to come up with a grand vision for what God must
have meant or what God must want or what God must be trying to
do. And then to extrapolate that vision based on our just immense
imagination to the point where we can come up and establish
this grand picture of what God is all about. But God Himself says, I am speaking
through my Son alone. And there is nothing else that
we need to know but Christ. If we preach through the Psalms,
I've had conversation with several brothers over the last few weeks
about preaching the Old Testament. You know, I've done my fair share
of seeing what I could do. You can't expose it. narratives
like you do the letter of Hebrews. It's a different genre. If I
spent 10 years in Genesis, what would it do for our gospel? Isn't
it better to go into the Gospels than to go back to Genesis? Sort
of like what we do here in Hebrews. I think that's profitable. But
no matter what, if we're in the stories or the prophets or the
wisdom literature or the history of the Old Testament
writing and we're not revealing Christ through it, then we're
not teaching it. What is it that you know about
Christ? Let's go here to the Word. Paul has said in chapter 9, verse
23, let's read together, Thus it was necessary for the heavenly
copies to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered
not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of true
things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence
of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly,
as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood
not of his own, for then he would have to have suffered repeatedly
since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared
once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. And just as it is appointed for
man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ having
been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second
time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly
awaiting for him. For since the law has but a shadow
of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities,
it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered
every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, they
would not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers, having
once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness
of sins. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every
year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats
to take away sins. Christ, consequently, when He
came into the world, He said, Sacrifices and offerings you
have not desired, but a body you have prepared for Me. In
burnt offerings and in sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then
I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is
written of Me in the scroll of the book." We'll stop there.
Let's think about it for a second. I made a comment last week concerning
the ceremonial law, the judicial law, the moral law. I love how
amazing it is, how easy it is for humanity to segregate and
systematize things. We can always put a label on
things and say, okay, this is slot one and slot two, slot three,
and in doing so, we think we have it figured out, but in the
reality of it all, we don't know much at all. I argue that the law, in all
of its inclusiveness, includes the Decalogue. It has to, for
the Decalogue was the first introduction to the laws of Moses. It was
the first reality of that shadow of who is the true righteousness
of God. And the people in the wilderness could not, indeed
could not, fulfill the law that God had given Moses on the tablets
of stone. For as Paul says, it is not that
we find righteousness in the doing of the law, we find the
law as the shadow of the righteousness of God who is truly in the true
Jesus Christ. All of the precepts, all of the
ceremony, all of the worship, all of the stuff, all of the
religion that has taken place in Israel, none of it meant anything
except Christ. It all pointed to Him And Christ,
having bared the sins of His people once and for all, will
come to the earth again to save us to the uttermost. Then Paul
begins in chapter 10. For since the law has but a shadow
of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.
Now stop there. What's it saying? It can never,
by the same sacrifices, make perfect those who draw near.
We've already heard that argument, right? Two other places. Christ
makes perfect. But here, in the law, it is a
shadow. What is the shadow? All of these
things. The showbread, the Holy of Holies, the temple, the tabernacle,
the priest, the blood, the sacrifices, the burning, the praying, the
pouring, the ark, Everything in the Ark,
the Decalogue, the priesthood, Aaron himself. As a matter of
fact, if we were to be honest about Aaron, think about this. Is not what Aaron, I think we
might have talked about this last week, is not Aaron's actions,
are not Aaron's actions the pinnacle poster child of humanity when
left in the presence of God to himself? Here's Sinai, here's the tempest, and these people are horrified.
Let me ask you this. If you knew the righteousness
of God and His justice, and you heard from the heavens that if
an animal touches the mountain, he is to be crushed to death
with rocks. I want you to think about that
for a second. If an animal touches the mountain,
I want you to take rocks and I want you to bash his head open
till it dies. That was the command of God.
For you do not stand in my presence without my requirements being
met." They heard these things to the
point when Moses came down the first time, they said, I don't want to hear
another thing come off this mountain. We don't want to look at your
face. Remember that? So in their response, their spiritual
head while Moses was on the mountain was Aaron, the father of the
Levites. He is to represent where God
meets man and the mercy seat. He is to represent the actual
operational and effectual service to God. He is the father of the
ones who is to pour the blood to appease the wrath of God,
who is Jesus Christ. And Aaron's idea to overcome
the fear of the Israelites is to melt down their gold and to
form a calf out of it, to make an idol of a false god and to
bow down, worship it and celebrate. That was Aaron's idea. And that, in my opinion, depicts
the efficacy of man's religion. It depicts the efficacy of what
we can do when we're not listening to Christ. It's as good as we
can do. The problem is in our day, the
whole scope of what would be known as the Christian church
would never agree that they have built a calf of gold and they
are worshiping and drunk around it, celebrating its deity. Yet
that's what we've done. We have popes galore in every
denomination known to man under the sun. We have heads of state,
we have heads of church, we have heads of thrones, we have all
over history. If you know church history, you
know that the church and the crown have always butted heads.
And in the fear of the anger of a deity, the church typically
wins. God helped the church when an
atheist king took the throne. We saw what happened. Yet, it will always be that way,
and there is nothing different when we think in our own minds,
this is who God is, this is what He's done, this is how He's done
it, and this is where I'll stand. And we ignore the context word
after word after word of the Word of God over and over again. Yet everyone who ever has used
the Bible will stand in their own pulpits, and they'll beat
their own Bible, and they'll say, I believe every word written
in it. Well, you know what you need to believe is you need to
believe what you've read. And I've had that argument many
times in, you know, informal debates. Well, you claim orthodoxy,
you claim inerrancy, you claim that interpretation. How is your
interpretation right when their interpretation is wrong? And
the answer is simple. What the Bible says is not my
interpretation. If I read to you Robert Frost,
see here's one of these illustrations, you hear Robert Frost. If I read
Dickinson to you, you hear Dickinson. If I interpret them, it's a different
story, literally. The interpretation of scripture
is not necessary in what we know as exegesis. The very word means
out of that which leads itself. So out of the text comes the
meaning. What is it saying? Jesus is quoted
here, I think it's Psalm 40, when he says there, Christ came
to the world, verse 5 of chapter 10, sacrifices and offerings
you have not desired, but a body you prepared for me. We'll get
to it before the time's out tonight. There's no interpretation for
that. Jesus said it with his mouth. He opened his mouth and
he said it. The psalmist said it after the
utterance from the utterance of God, the Holy Spirit. And
Jesus, as he said many times, I come to do the will of the
one who sent me, the father. Not your father, he said to the
religious leaders of his day, but the father with emphasis
I use. as it is written of me in the
scroll of the book, specifically Isaiah and other prophetic places
where we see the Christ. So we don't have to interpret
that. It's literally saying what it's saying right there. It's
going from one argument to another argument to another argument.
When Jesus is teaching in John's gospel and in the synoptics,
we don't have to guess what he's saying. We hear it with our own
mouths. And when Jesus spoke in riddles
or parables, He explained it very clearly so we're never left
wondering what in the world Jesus was trying to show us. So when
it comes to interpretation, it's either exegetical, let the Bible
read itself, or isogentical. You know what? I'll tell you
what I think that I see in this text. And most of that is called
pre-textualization where I will take a verse out of an entire
letter and I will create an entire teaching based on what I like
about what I think about my imagination on that verse and then I create
it as a doctrine and then it becomes your theology and then
heresy is born. Heresy is a divided opinion.
The apostles are clear to say who and who is not to be constituted
a brother in the context of two things. One, those who teach
differently the gospel, as it's taught clearly in the context
of scripture. And two, those who refuse the
authority of the written word of God. namely the apostolic
writings of the New Testament. Because Judaizers would say,
oh, we believe the Word of God written through the prophets,
but Christ is through whom God speaks. The Father speaks through
Christ, and Christ's words are secured by the apostles, and
there is no other. So one who would say, well, I'm
not quite sure that I have to obey that, or I have to hear
that, or I have to submit to that, or I have to believe that,
or I have to come to that conclusion, or I have to act that certain
way. When you show them in the context of scripture and they
say, no, not me. We are not to consider them a
brother. Why? Because the spirit of God shows us the authority
of the scripture. And if they can't submit to the
simple things taught, then they're probably lying about their testimony
of Christ. And eventually they will add
something to it, or take something away from it, or change the very
scope of His essence, or thwart the entire revelation of the
gospel to begin with. Jesus Christ is not the shadow
He is the light. And where the light is, there
is no shadow. And the law has but a shadow
of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities. And the law in that way can never,
even by the obedience of these rituals and these duties and
these sacrifices, it can never Make perfect those who draw near. This is, I don't know how many
times now, my brain slipped. Fourth time that Paul has mentioned
drawing near to God. how Christ has gone into the
presence of God, satisfied the wrath of God with His own blood,
finished the work, and as He began the letter, sat down as
the Redeemer, and we who by faith draw near to God, we do so through
Christ. And that there is no law keeping
whatsoever that can make perfect those who draw near. As a side
note, it's not necessarily out of place. This is why we abhor the humanistic doctrine as it's
understood as progressive righteousness or better holiness or personal
goodness as evidence of your salvation and as confidence of
your salvation. We abhor it. Verse 2. For if it were to make perfect,
otherwise, it can't make perfect, otherwise, would they not have
ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been
cleaned, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? Now,
didn't we talk about that already last week and the week before?
How is it that we stand pure before? Job asked the question,
how can a man, what, stand right before God? And the answer is,
by grace. What means of mercy can God do
in order to establish His people before Him righteous? He must
kill that which is righteous, for without the shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin. It is the cost that God requires. And it is a righteous cost. It
is just. It is good. It is loving. So in the eternal love that God
the Father and the Son and the Spirit have for their elect children,
they have an eternal promise that one day the Christ would
take on humanity by the will of God the Father and that Jesus
the Son would take the sins of his people on his human body. Because if it were not Him, then
there would be no way for us to say we stand right before
God. Now we could ask the question, have I done right before God
today? Couldn't we ask that question?
Have I done right before the Lord? In the old adage of quorum
Deo and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah And those of us who are busy about our day, whether
we're working with our hands or with our head or with our
heart, either way it might be, we oftentimes just let that slip
right out of our consciousness. So that if the requirements of
what we should be doing are not being done, And our confidence
before the father is that these things have been accomplished.
When we look into the mirror of our soul, we lay down at night
cause we're so tired. And then that list of things
that we should have accomplished or that we forgot to do, or that
we have to face the next day begins to flood us. We wake up
widely and we go, wow, I've had a pretty pathetic day. I didn't
accomplish a whole lot for the Lord. I better get up. That's why asceticism was so
popular through many seasons of history. Nothing like feeling
guilty to add to my punishment, I'll just spank myself. I remember
the first time I tried that with my grandmother, who sent me many
times often to the rose tip bushes that were 300 feet tall in my
estimation as a child. And you had a rule, if it didn't
come back as big as her pinky, she walked you back there. And she called it, I'm gonna
tickle your legs, son, go get me a switch. You try that little
green tip thing a few times, but that walk back is a lot further
than it was the first time. Because she tickles your legs
all the way home. And that lane that's 30 yards
seems like four miles. But one time I thought, you know
what, I'm going to go get that good switch, and I'm going to
get a good one, and on the way home, I'm going to spank myself.
So I whacked my leg a few times, and did it like that, and it
itched and tickled, but quite not as bad as what she would
do. And I went in there and said, I've already spanked myself.
She said, well, son, you shouldn't have done that. Made me feel good for a minute.
Didn't help at all. We cannot offer ourselves, we
cannot offer our blood even. We cannot even offer our lives
in either service or death or sacrifice that would appease
God. He propitiates himself through
the blood of his son, Jesus Christ. And that alone is the cleansing
of our conscience. When you grow up in a household
that teaches you the gospel truly, you learn several things, and
there's several phrases that have always stuck in my mind
about my childhood. One is, you don't have to do
that, son. Not, don't you dare, or you cannot
do that. Because my answer was always,
yes, I can. Logically speaking, I can do
it. And if I so choose, I will do
it. The difference maker was you
don't have to. You're right. I'm the boss of
me. Another one that usually stuck
in my head was this one. You are a child of the king. You don't have to do that. You
don't have to think that. You don't have to go there. You
don't have to act that way. You don't have to be like that.
One motivates me out of honor and respect and glory and esteem
and thanksgiving and gratitude, knowing that if I do or I don't,
I'm still a child of the king. Where the other one causes me
to be fearful or worse, rebellious. It's easy to be obedient in fear
of the big problems that are obvious. I don't want to curse,
kill, adulterate, steal, or blaspheme. And all these other little hidden
secret sins, these little hidden secret, oh, just prideful things
that flood our hearts and minds of how we know that if we were
to measure ourselves against our neighbor, we'd be way up
top. You see? which is not true at
all and I've been there. It's a terrible place to live. There's no clean conscience. There's no confidence before
the Father except that I sit and rest in the finished work
of Christ that I am found through the efficacy of His blood to
be His righteousness. There is no obedience that I
can muster that would cause me not to tremble before Him in
pure fear to know that Sinai is my demise? Such holy was the law of God
on those tablets of stone, in the box that man made with hands, that if a human being touched
the box, that contained the law, they were stricken dead, even
if it meant keeping it out of the mud. So why the sacrifices? Why the
law? What good does it do? Here it
is, verse 3. In these sacrifices, there is
a reminder of sins. every year, a reminder of sins
every year for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats
to take away sins. It's impossible. So we go to
the temple, we take our perfect whatever it is we might have,
It's destroyed and sacrificed, and in that moment we know that
by God's mercy He accepts it, but we do it again the next year,
and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and
the next year, and there's never a place when we stop laboring
for righteousness that will never come. And the law is given to
show the saint that their only hope is in the fulfillment of
the law, who is Jesus Christ the righteous, who gave his blood
forever, who sacrificed himself for good, once and for all, and who, in doing so, fulfills
all the requirements of righteousness. It is impossible, aside from
Jesus Christ, to take away sins. It is impossible through any
act of obedience to take away sins. So if this is true, why
do we see so many people who are so hard-headed when it comes
to certain attitudes of obedience to certain structures of culture? And it's different. I've lived
in many different states across the country, and every little
pocket is different. There are things that are sins
here that aren't sins in Virginia, and things that are sins in Virginia
that are not sins in Florida, and things that are sins in Florida
that are not sins in Louisiana, things that are sins in Louisiana
that are not sins in Tennessee, and there's hardly anything that's
a sin in California, so it doesn't really matter. That's a joke. But there are cultural things
that are expected of certain, quote, Christians in different
parts of the world that we wouldn't bat an eye to, that some of us
would go, really? That's a sin for you. Oh, OK,
go ahead on this wiki. But yet when the Bible shows
us what is righteousness, none of us can meet it. But yet we are righteous before
the father, because Christ has paid it. Consequently, verse
five, last thing we'll talk about. When Christ came into the world,
he said, and this is just a recapitulation of what Paul has already written.
Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired. Some people
say, well, what do you mean by that? Did God not command it?
Yes, he commanded it. Why? To show that sin requires death. Not to take away sin. You ask
the average person, person, you ask the average person on the
street, person on the street. Two questions. Say, are you a
Christian? Most of them down here, absolutely.
Why do you think Jews sacrificed animals in the temple? Take away their sins. And I guess
you could ask a third question. So did God forgive them of their
sins by doing that? And most of them will say yes.
Yes, he forgave them. And they had to do it again because
they kept sinning. That's how easily Romanism jumped straight
out of Judaism. different location. That's all
it is. Same stuff. And how easily evangelicalism
jumps out of Protestantism, right out of Romanism, right out of
Judaism, it's the same stuff. You better be careful or else
we all be like that. But they'll all say, yeah, yeah,
yeah, it did. It did something. But the Bible says it didn't
do anything. The Bible says that it reminded the priests and the
people of the penalty of sin. That the wages of sin is death.
But the free gift of God, the mercy of God is eternal life
through Christ Jesus. And this is not a gift that we
are offered. This is a gift that we are given
in the death of Jesus. Because if Jesus' death was an
opportunity for your salvation, you are desperately not able
to receive it. And the Bible doesn't teach anything
of that nonsense. The scripture teaches that God
has fulfilled salvation, has finished the work of redemption,
has purchased his people, and will give them the gift of faith
to believe that Christ died for his elect and they are free from
the wrath of God. Sacrifices and offerings you
have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. I have
a sermon rant somewhere on the internet. Don't know where it's
at. Used to have a young brother that made those things for me,
put them up. Didn't ask him to, he just did. And it was one of those opportunities
that I had, it might have been Colossians 1, and I'm just talking
about who Christ is, and he is the creator, he's the God of
the heavens, he's the eternal God of the cosmos, that he created
the world and everything in it, and created generations of people
for his own purpose and his own glory, he created Mary and the
womb inside of her, and then created inside that womb his
own body, that he created a zygote inside the womb of Mary, so that
he could be birthed into the world, and he lived in the body
that he created, into the world that he created. And I think
I ran that for like four minutes one day, and it just overwhelmed
my mind to think about that amazing, mysterious truth. Knowing that all the years since
the garden, that every iteration of every generation, I shouldn't
say iteration, some people think something weird of me, never
mind. Every generation of man since creation has been taught
in some way, that to sin against God means
to die and that to be forgiven means something perfect must
die in your place. What was that perfect sacrifice? It was Jesus Christ who entered
into his human body. And he willfully, according to
John, according to Jesus and John, laid his life down, chapter
10, and he willfully took it up again. And he laid his life
down, according to John 10, as a substitute for his sheep, those
who he knows, those who know his voice. You've given me a body. You've
prepared for me a body, Father. And those sacrifices of those
other bodies. They did nothing but point to
this body. What a detail, Thomas. See my
hands. See my side. The Lord of me, the God of me,
Thomas proclaims. Because in burnt offerings and
sin offerings you have taken no pleasure, did not please you.
In verse 7, then I said, Behold, I've come to do your will, O
God, as it is written in the scroll of the book. Now say this. We have talked much about the
will of God and the purpose of God for the sending of the Christ. And we've talked much that's
already truly been established here. If we keep on reading,
what we'll see is just a recapitulation. But there's an emphasis here
that we'll talk about next week is that Jesus Christ came to
do this work and he came to do this work after the Father's
will. Look at verse 8. Let's read and
then we'll pray. When he said above, you have
neither desired nor taken pleasure and sacrifices and offerings
and burnt offerings and sin offerings because these are offered according
to the law. Then he added, behold, I will come to do your will. And so what he's saying is Jesus
is revealing what it is that the Father has wanted to do,
not show the opportunity, not be the shadow giver, but be the
truth giver, be the life giver, be the light giver. And that it was the will of God
that the Son in His death and resurrection do away with the
first in order to establish the second. And by that will, we
have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all. And I know I've already taught
that tonight, but I want to dig in a little bit deeper next week. Let's pray. Father, what a glorious
and amazing grace you've given us in Christ Jesus. Lord, I imagine that everyone
who's listening to this message, all of Grace Truth Church out
there, and those of us in here, we are labored. We are hot. We are tired. We are sick and
tired of being sick and tired. Lord, you know our ridiculousness. Father, we are grieved. We see
our flesh and the flesh of our brothers and sisters just come
at odds with itself and with each other. We forget the gospel. We forsake the unity. We establish
our own debates. And Lord, it is so easy for us
to just become overwhelmed that temptation would run us over.
Father, in this very letter, you have taught us that we should
not fear, but that you, that you will carry our burdens because
Christ has died in our place. And that father, we can come
and cry out to you and call you daddy. Because we can walk into your
righteous court from the back door, from the front door, from
the side door, jump through the window or climb down through
the ceiling, and we can sit right there on your lap. And you will never forsake us,
and you will lead us away from the temptation of our flesh. You are our ever help in our
time of need. So, Father, help us to be centered
on the gospel. Help us to be gracious in long-suffering. Keep our mouths shut about things
that are not necessary. Put away our pet projects and
our pet theology and our pet debates and stomp them into the
ground where they belong. Dust that we may exalt you, our
great father. In the name of your son, Jesus
Christ. Father, and that by your Holy
Spirit, who has been promised to us, who abides with us this
very day, teaching us, God, the Spirit, showing us these truths,
that unifies us together and seals us for the day of glory,
that we will share in your glory. For, Father, you will not destroy
that which is yours, but you will glorify it. Lord, oftentimes I feel like
we, as your people, sometimes have the attitude of the enemy
when we just want to share a little bit in the limelight. Lord, if
you just help us to be patient, we will share in the fullness
of all the light. And humbly, we desire that above all things,
as we give glory to you. And we pray these things in Christ's
name.