Hebrews chapter 9. I had to get
my brain on. Hebrews chapter 9. Okay. We are going to continue
in this argument. I know some of you are like,
man, we're going to be finished with Hebrews quick. It's going
to be quicker than if I were to just, you know, exposit it
verse by verse by verse because there are a lot of good and tasty
things that we are missing. But for the sake of getting the
understanding of Hebrews, which I think is important, we do our
midweek customary reading of. So we read, we talk, we read,
we talk, we read, we talk. And we will slow down a little
bit when we get over into chapter 10 and 11 and talk about some
Old Testament things. Up to now, we have seen that
Jesus is God. Jesus is creator. Jesus is greater
than the angels. Jesus was made lower than the
angels. Jesus was called by God, God. Jesus is worshipped by all
things. We have seen that Jesus is greater
than the law, greater than the prophets, greater than Moses,
greater than Melchizedek. He is greater than the entire
system of the law, the entire system of Judaism. For all of
these things are yet but a shadow of Him, and He has fulfilled
them all." Now you might think, why would Paul, as we know, but
we may have forgotten, why would Paul spend an entire letter continually
recapitulating this point over and over and over again? Why is it that Paul would just
not say it and be done with it? Why does he have to continually
and always repeat himself? Well, let me ask you this, when's
the last time you forgot something that you thought you knew? When
is the last time that you knew something, even in the context
of life, but let's think about spiritually. You knew the gospel,
yet because of what you were experiencing, because of your
fatigue, because of something that may have been going on in
your life, you just put it aside and it was not on your mind. Or what if after many years of
believing a certain thing that you felt was true because it
was something that you heard, someone came along and challenged
that and then scared you or put you in a position where you begin
to doubt what you did believe? How do you go back and solidify
that again through the Word of God. We have to remember that
God is sovereign in His writing of this scripture and that what
Paul has said is not superlative. It is necessary. And when we
come to a place, to a letter like Hebrews, and we look and
we see that there's not a whole lot of what we would call practical
teaching in the context of how we are to live our lives. We
realize that because of that the emphasis on the gospel then
is more important than how we live our lives. As a matter of
fact the very nature of what Paul is trying to accomplish
here is to show these Christians who are Hebrew that how they
used to live their lives in religion and obedience and subjection
to the law was contrary to the gospel of grace. And that if
someone had come, not someone, because someone had come to them
and began to frustrate them in their faith, they were considering
falling back into certain regulations, do not touch, do not taste, do
not do. as well as certain things that
they should do. Maybe circumcision like the Judaizers would do to
the Gentiles. Or maybe we should go back into
the temple. Maybe we should deal with all
of these tithes and offerings. Maybe we should come and start
doing these things again just to be safe. And you've heard
me say over and over again that the gospel that saves is given
to us by God the Spirit so that we understand very clearly what? That there is no safety net.
It is either all of Christ or it is death. It is either Christ
saved his people through his death on the cross or all of
his people are condemned. Because if there is anything,
and let me reemphasize that, anything that the creature must
do in order to meet the conditions of salvation, there is no salvation. Christ has done it all. The irony behind that truth is
that as a culture, many people who fall into the quote label
of Christian are quick to sing songs about that. Jesus paid
it all, all to him I owe. Really? You sing those words,
yet you what? Then say, but I must do more.
Have you ever sung a hymn that says, I come to you, Lord, and
I must do more. Please pick me up off of the
bathroom floor. You know, make me holy, make
me clean. Throw me in your holy washing
machine. I mean, you know, we could write hymns. We could write
Arminian hymns. We could write free will hymns.
We could write unconverted hymns. And it's funny to consider, but
is it not the same thing to sing about the grace of God and sovereignty?
The free grace of salvation? Then yet we stand with our feet
or our toe in a little safety net. We knit ourselves some nice
little manner of life to which we can look and say, oh look,
we're in the Lord Jesus. We're in the Lord Jesus. Or we
have doubt and instead of going to the cross and going to the
Word of God, we meander on over to somebody else's promise. Because what is it if it is not
the promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ? It's someone else's
promise. But whose promise is sufficient
to save? We saw that last week. We saw
in speaking, verse 13 of chapter 8, look at that. In speaking
of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete and what is
becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. This covenant. We need to understand
the idea of covenant as a promise. as a contract that has certain
conditions that must be met in order for it to be fulfilled. And we know that we know that
we know because the scripture has taught us that God has fulfilled
this covenant. Chapter 7 verse 22. This makes
Jesus the guarantor of a better promise, of a better covenant. Because the covenant of Judaism,
the covenant of the law, always pointed to Christ. And anytime
any human being came to feel secure in the practices thereof,
even though it may have given them some sweet feelings of intimacy
with the Lord, it was not life. It was not life. So, Paul then
talks about this covenant vanishing. And then in chapter 9 he is going
to explain what he means. So let's read together. I'll
read some and talk some. Now even the first covenant had
regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For
a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand
and the table and the bread of the presence. It is called the
Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was
a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden
altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all
sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna
and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the Covenant. Above it were the cherubim of
glory overshadowing the mercy seat, of these things we cannot
now speak in detail. Why? Think about that for a second. What is there to see? Now there
is some deep Old Testament theology here. There is some interesting
and very, I don't know, worshipful imagery. that we could dive into
and maybe as the weeks to come and we feel like there's a little
necessity to segue into those, we could. But for the sake of
what we want to do tonight, I want you to think about that presence.
I want you to think about that experience. That if you were
to worship today as a Jew in the tabernacle, the tent, or
even as, and that's what the point is, the tent is gone. The temple was there, but it
was soon to be gone. because its usefulness was over. And that's what Paul says. And
it's growing old and ready to vanish away. So Paul is showing
its inception at the tabernacle. But imagine this huge tent. And in one of my boxes at home
I've got this plastic model of the tabernacle. And if you walk
in, you know, it is this huge, huge wall of tarps and cloth
and everything that surrounds the area and inside you walk
in these gates and the gates are special, everything had to
be done in a special way. There was very deep significance
in all of the imagery and the type of cloth and the type of
artifacts and you walk in and you saw animals and you smelled
animals and you saw people over there slaughtering animals, pouring
their blood burning their carcasses, then taking those carcasses and
feeding it to people. You saw people praying. You saw
people over there providing their animals. Those animals are being
inspected, blowing up the chicken's butt to make sure the dove or
whatever, to make sure he's not wormy or whatever. You know, everything
had to be pure. There was specific regulations
for worship. Imagine going into that and walking
into that and telling your children not to speak and telling your
children to fall in line and everybody goes in. And then as
much as you're able, you present what you have And that's as far
as you can worship. You give your offering to the
priests who are serving at the tabernacle, at the temple, and
that's it. There's no more obedience for
you. There's no more service for you. There's no more worship
for you. Now you trust in what the priests are going to do with
what you gave them so that it may have effect for you. And then this priest takes your
animal. And then this priest blesses
your animal, and this priest kills your animal, and this priest
bleeds out your animal. And then these priests who do
that, and they burn and bleed and all of this stuff, and pray
and bless. There it is, the three Bs. Bless
and bleed and burn. And then it's buffet. Four Bs. Then they hand it over
to another priest. What do they hand over? The blood. And then some more priestly duties
happen there, some more things go on, the imagery inside the
holy place, and then there's a second curtain. And inside
that curtain is the most holy place. We know it in our vernacular
as the holy of holies. And it is known as the mercy
seat or the place where God meets man, and one time a year. The high priest, and only the
high priest, could enter in and he could pour blood. And so for
all the worshipers And all the individual sacrifices, and all
the individual prayers, and all the individual working, and all
the individual blessing, all the individual bleeding, and
the pouring, and the catching, and the burning, and all of this
stuff, the high priest somehow ended up with blood that he would
go in and pour over the ark. Imagine being in the wilderness
during the tenure of Joshua. During the tenure of Moses. During that tenure, when the
Ark of the Covenant was carried and walking into different regions
and seeing that bloody, priceless, heavy artifact, that relic and
what it signified. And the stories running from
generation to generation to generation, you realize that in the wilderness,
the Israelites were there for 40 years. I'd say over half the room is
not yet 40. So longer than your life. Our life, almost my life. These Israelites walked in the
wilderness carrying the ark. And the image of that ark represented
the presence of God's justice. And the image of that ark represented
the presence of God's mercy at the same time. Because we have
to understand that God's justice for his people is mercy. And those together are righteousness. the stories of the Israelites,
the stories of the kings, the stories that Moses would write
and provide for us to see today in the Pentateuch. The stories of Yahweh as he dealt
with his people graciously, as he executed judgment against
his enemies, as he slaughtered nations, as he crumbled unbelievers,
as he was merciful to his elect. Over and over again, the stories
of the God of the Bible continued to be carried. and the physical
image and the reminder of these things were with the Israelites. As they walked, not only did
they carry the ark, but here are the pillars of fire and smoke
for 40 years. Every morning they woke up and
there was bread to eat laying on the dirt. They could not store
it for it would not last. It would perish. And we know
the picture of that bread. It is Jesus Christ, the bread
that comes down from heaven. We understand many times where
there was no water to be had. And God would speak to Moses
and Moses would speak to the rock or strike the rock. We even
know that in the small disobedience of Moses it was his physical
demise. Well, God said to speak to the
rock and he struck it like he did the time before. He disobeyed
God and God told him he would not enter into the temporal land
of promise. He skipped the temporal and went
straight to the true. Imagine the other nations and
the other people hearing and seeing and hearing the horns
of Israel as they marched through the wilderness. And as they came
in and the representation of their God there with them by
day and by night and the manifestation of justice standing in the presence
of the ark and on the ark this bloody box made of gold. And inside that box was manna
that did not perish. Inside that box was the budded
staff of Aaron, and inside that box were the second set of tablets
containing the Decalogue. Why? Because inside that box
was everything that pointed to Christ. He is the bread of life. He is the righteousness of God,
which is the tablets. He is the great high priest,
which is the budding staff. He is the mercy seat, which is
the lid. He is the ark, which is where
God meets man. And all of those shadows are
looked at by angels, statues of the lid, these carved angels. For at the moment when Christ
was incarnate, he made himself lower than the angels. I often
think about the imagery also where Paul talks to, and Peter
mentions, especially in his first epistle, about how angels look
intently into things concerning salvation. And this was the presence of
God. So to go from that, to this. Hey, y'all, come on,
we're going to get started. Open your Bibles, let's read,
sing, we're going to sing a little bit, pray a little bit. Doesn't
that seem superficial? I mean, at least if we held up
a cup of blood or something, it'd be a little bit more spiritual.
At least if we changed our regalia, like if we had something special
to wear. You know, growing up I was taught
certain things that were necessarily etiquette during that time. Late
70s, early 80s as a child. Several of those are you never
leave the house without brushing your hair. You parted your hair. I didn't start the wild, crazy,
non-parted haircut until I was probably 13. And then I've had
the same hair style since then. But before that, You know, you
combed your hair, you parted your hair. If you were a young
boy, you parted on the side. You didn't part down the middle,
that was for men, you parted on the side. You cleaned under your
fingernails. You cut your, I cut my fingernails
every Friday. Every Friday, I cut my fingernails. Without, like clockwork. It's
just what I do, it's what I was taught to do. You never leave
the house without a belt on. Those were taught to me. Now what do you do with sweatpants?
I have no idea. I wasn't allowed to wear them. They were just
uncouth. Those were sleep pants, or if
you were going to the gym. There was no gym back in those
days either way, but you know, you always wear a belt, and you
always tuck in your shirt, and you button all the way up, unless
you're wearing a tie, not the top, but next to the top. You button your cuffs. You tuck
your shirt in, you wear a belt, and you always wear your good
shoes when you're out in public. Because men, they look at your
feet, and if your feet are trash, you're trash. I mean, these are
things that stick in my head. Now put those into a spiritual
place. Ask yourself, what if that had
become my religion? What if I were told that an honorable,
a God-honoring young man wears a belt, tucks in his shirt, parts
his hair, cuts his nails, wears good shoes, and buttons up his
collars? How hard would it have been?
Listen, when I started wearing my shirt out, it felt uncomfortable. It's like walking around barefooted,
walking around with no pants. You ever had those nightmares?
Oh, man, I'm wearing no pants. It just doesn't work. Oh, what
my great grandparents would think of the people of Walmart today.
Those little memes, people walking around in their slippers and
their pajamas and their hair colors. What if these things
were spiritual, though? What if they were tied in my
conscience? To a holiness. To a worship. Much like when you go to church,
you wear certain clothes. Much like you pass a plate. Much
like you give 10%. Much like you love the Lord your
God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And you better do it,
boy, or else. Don't lie. Don't commit adultery. Don't covet. Obey your father
and mother. How we doing so far? The list goes on. I'm not a Jew. Those things weren't
tied to my worship. But in some sense, they seem
almost identical. Except that those things had
nothing to do with pointing to Jesus, but these things do. So
when Jesus comes on the scene, why not let them go? Why not
put them in their proper place? And that's what Paul is saying.
We cannot speak to the detail of the tabernacle. As a matter of fact, no Jew really
could, except the high priest who'd been in there. Imagine that. Out of millions
of people, one person, one person had the experience of worshipping God in the place
where He was. Nobody else could go. The faith
that these worshipers had in that man was amazing. The faith
that the promise of God that what he was doing was enough
to satisfy God's judgment for another year. But that wasn't the point of
doing it at all, was it? It was to point to the truth of what
the righteousness of God is and that we are not it. That we will
not be it in our flesh. But we have become the righteousness
of God. How? Through the preparation
of our high priest who went into the holy places and sat down
at the seat of majesty. That's when verse six starts.
preparations. Having thus been made, the priests
go in regularly into the first section, performing their duties,
but only into the second does the high priest go, and only
then once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers
for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people." I've already
explained all that. I'll just get ahead of myself.
By this act, By this practice, by this worship, by this symbol,
by this picture, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the
holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section
is still standing. And I love verse 9 because it
proves me right, which is symbolic for the present age. the way into the holy places.
As long as individuals are looking for that opportunity to take
an offering for the priest to bless it, kill it, bleed it,
and for the high priest to pour it out on their behalf, there
is no opening to the true meeting with God. What does Jesus say? What does Jesus say in John's
Gospel? In chapter 2, verse 43, it says,
the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip
and said to him, follow me, commands. Now Philip was from Bethsaida,
the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said
to him, we have found him of whom Moses and the law and also
the prophets wrote. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of
Joseph. Nathanael said to him, can anything
good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said, Come and see.
Now Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, Behold,
an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit, in whom there
is no guile. Nathanael said to him, How do
you know me? And Jesus said in answer, Before Philip called
you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathanael answered,
Teacher, You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. And
Jesus responds, Because I say to you, I saw you under the fig
tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than
these. And he said to him, Truly, truly,
I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man. And then Jesus goes
into Canaan and defiles the ceremonial jars for cleansing by turning
the water into wine and they drink it for joy. We cannot have the gospel according
to Jesus Christ and the gospel according to Judaism. They are
two conflicting stories. But the true good news of Judaism
is the gospel of Jesus. Blood is the entrance into the
place where God meets man, and if it is not the blood of the
true High Priest, then He takes ours. And we don't walk out. For the elect, Jesus went in,
He walked out. We go in after Him. It's already
been said, right? Is it chapter 4? Chapter 3? Chapter 4? Verse 14, since then we have
a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the
Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do
not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we
are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw
near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find
grace to help in time of need. God appointed him. the eternal
high priest, after the order of Melchizedek, that he would
be the one who went through the fire for his people. The Holy Spirit, verse 8. The
second part of verse 9. According to this arrangement,
gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience
of the worshiper. Let's stop there for a second.
What does it mean? You heard what I just read out
of chapter four. We have confidence. What is confidence? Is confidence
tied to a lack of or is confident tied to guilt? Is confidence
tied to forgiveness? Is confidence tied to a finished
work? I mean, an unfinished work? Should be. Is it tied to forgiveness? It should be. Is it tied to guilt?
No. Confidence is not tied to anything that has to do with
something that is yet done. Even as children. Father, Son,
tomorrow, when you get home from school, I want you to rake the
driveway. Let's start. Get home from school. Friends come over. You get on
your bike. You scoot on out. You're playing baseball. Six
hours later, sun's going down. You know if you're not home when
the lights come on in the streets. You die. You don't want to die,
because it's a pretty good ball game. So you get home really
quickly, and then about a block from the street, you see your
dad raking the driveway. What do you do? You'd rather
die. So you keep on riding. And you go back to your friend's
house, hey, what are y'all having for supper? And we eat there,
and it just happened to be, oh, we forgot, I'd rather forget
and not be home than drive up while my dad's raking the driveway. I had no confidence that I would
survive that. There's nothing left for us to
rake. Matter of fact, all of this priestly
work, all of this laboring after labor, after labor, after labor
of doing the right thing over and over again, hoping and worrying
and praying and trusting, and the picture now has fulfilled
itself in Jesus Christ. So all of these arrangements
and gifts and worshiping and bleeding and breaking and all
of this stuff, none of it perfected the conscience of the worshiper.
The worshiper had to come back and do it again. And again, and
again, and again, and never was there a time where the worshiper
rested from the labor. Why did God create this picture? To show Jesus as His righteousness. It has all been fulfilled. And all those things ever did
was deal with food, don't eat this, eat that, drink, washings,
regulations for the body imposed into the time of reform, the
time of seeing the truth, the time of knowing what it all meant,
verse 11. when Christ appeared as High
Priest. And what was He a High Priest? He was High Priest of
the good things that have come. When Christ appeared as the one
who was overseeing the good things that have come, then through
the greater and more perfect tent, that's not made with hands,
that is, not of this creation. He entered once for all into
the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves,
but by means of His own blood. Think about that. Don't we know
this already? We know this! This is what I
was talking about in the very beginning. We know this already. We understand
the blood of Jesus. We got it, okay, moving on. No,
we're not moving on. Because when we move away from
the blood of Jesus, as it's written in the New Testament letters,
when we dig into Hebrews 13, for 16 weeks, we spit in the
face of Jesus. Because we're not teaching each
other the full counsel of the Word of God. The therefores are
not gospel. So we keep learning. We keep
being reminded. We keep putting our hope. Why
is it that the Lord's table is so important? Because we put
our focus on the death and the bleeding of Jesus who ushered
us into the presence of the holiness of God and called us children,
and so we are, and called us His righteousness because He
gave us His own. The blood of Jesus. The blood
of Jesus worked. Jesus worked, God worked, the
Father, the Spirit worked, His blood worked. It is finished. It is finished. What is finished? Salvation. Look, by His own blood,
thus securing an eternal redemption. An eternal redemption. What's
left to do? Nothing. For if the blood of
goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes
of a heifer sanctify, set apart for the purification of the flesh,
if this picture satisfied in that context, What did the blood
of the lamb do on the doorpost of Egypt? It spared the inhabitants. It gave them life when justice
reigned. Something died instead of them. What came into the conscience
of Adam and Eve in the garden? How were they able to come out
of hiding and stand in the presence of God naked? God killed something and covered
them with its skin. So that their shame and their
guilt no longer caused them to hide in the shadows, but they
could stand before God with nothing on, fully guilty, but clothed
through the death of another. Those pictures, those pictures,
that's two weeks in a row now. supposedly did in that imagery,
if those things did something spiritually to point to the one
who was to come, And people had confidence in the practice of
those things to some degree. Verse 14, how much more will
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works
to serve the living God? This is all I'm going to get
to tonight. Let's unpack that for a second.
If the worship over here gave some sense of confidence, it
was always temporary, wasn't it? You ever been in a false
church listening to a false gospel? Believing that your salvation
was something that you did, that you accomplished, something Jesus
offered and you took the number and you went in and you took
it out of his hand because he offered it to you. You accomplished
something and then a couple of weeks or months later something
comes up and your mind is not at ease, your life is not at
ease, temptation has come and you begin to doubt because you're
angry, you're hurt, you're frustrated, you're fearful and life is coming
undone by the seams. The covering of your shame and
your nakedness is unstitching and you are extremely fearful
of exposure and then you go into some service somewhere and you
hear something that sounds like grace and forgiveness. What does it do to you? Well, if it's the truth, it gives
you hope. That's typically not what you hear, is it? You get up that morning and you
go into the worship area that you're typically not accustomed
to being in because you know that if you just get your life
on track, if you just get back with the rituals, that it'll
help you feel better about whose you are. And that maybe God,
you don't ever say this in your mind because you're not so numb
to think. that God's going to reward you,
because you know better than that. But deep down, psychologically,
you say to yourself, I'm going to get back in church. I'm going
to start reading my Bible. I'm going to watch some wholesome
television. I'm going to listen to praise and worship music.
And that may go on for a day. It may go on for a month. It
may go on for a year or whatever. But you've never truly, ever
had a conscience that was at rest. Because we're riding good until
the tire blows out, until somebody T-bones us, until something happens
to the road and we fall off the cliff. In an emotional sense
and in a spiritual sense, that happens all the time. It's a
promise to the true elect of God that we're going to constantly
be changing tires and constantly be fixing damaged B-pillars and
doors and everything else. We're constantly going to be
falling off the cliff of life because the world hates the Christ. So, these spiritual things that are
religious in nature, they can give us some sense of hope. Just like the Pharisees, just
like the Jews of antiquity, they felt good, the families, when
they would go into these Into the tabernacle, into the temple,
there was a confidence there, not haughtiness. I'm sure it
happened, but I'm not even dealing with that yet. I'm talking about
just a general sense of peace while I'm doing the Lord's work.
I'm doing things good, and God is pleased. I know I have sinned,
but at least I'm trying. And if that can satisfy your
conscience in a false way, as a shadow, how much more can the
true blood of Jesus Christ actually wipe it clean? That's the argument. You know why it doesn't wipe
it clean for us? You know why we don't rest in that state? Because we forsake the meal of
the bread of life. We would rather As a culture,
I'm not saying us in here, but as a culture, we would rather
focus on the doing rather than the we are, the children of God. There is some doing we have to
tend to, folks. We got to put on some belts,
we got to button up our shirts, we got to part our hair, we got
to put on some good shoes, but not so that we can stand before
God. Just because it's fitting If we can bathe, let's bathe
so it can help each other out. If we can't, then we endure with
one another. We don't tie living life and functioning together
to the glory of God at all to a clean conscience before
God. That is what most people call
antinomianism. Jesus Christ himself gave himself
without blemish to God through the eternal spirit. He bled and
died to purify our conscience from dead works. What are dead
works? Don't touch, don't taste, don't do. Bring this here. Cut,
bleed, burn, bless. It's dead works. And we don't have to live in
dead works anymore. The works we do, according to
Paul in Ephesians 2, are things that God has planned before the
foundation of the world that we should walk in. And they always,
listen to this, as we've already said here in our Hebrew series,
they always relate to how we serve the Lord by serving one
another. They always relate to how we love the Lord by loving
one another. They always relate to how we
can, in our giftedness and in our unique created makeup, do
something and be something for the sake of our brothers and
sisters in Christ. And these are works that serve the living
God. And God empowers us to do them, and they are pleasing to
Him, but they are not meritorious. And when you don't do them, you're
still a child. And when you do them, your joy
is full. And that's what we're learning on Sunday morning. Don't
conflate the two. Look at the next sentence and
then we'll pray. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant
so that those who are called may receive the promised internal
inheritance. Since a death has occurred that
absolutely redeems them from the transgressions committed
under the first. And next week we will start there
and go right back to John 3. Let's pray. Father, we are so
thankful for the beauty of the cross of Christ. Lord, for the
glorious truth that you can teach us through your word, Lord, that
it is not my study or my ability or my intellect or anything,
Father, that makes any difference in the teaching of this. It is all of your word by your
spirit, Father, or it is moot. Lord, help us to grow in our
understanding of the gospel so that as we live, we have that
as the power which is yours unto salvation, not just for ourselves
to claim by faith, but Father, as a tool, as a weapon that we
may fight for our brothers and sisters, for their joy, for their
purity. for their peace of mind, for
their conscience. Lord, keep us, keep us, keep
us together in unity. Protect us from the wiles of
the enemy, that your will would be done in us, that we would
grow to the full stature of maturity, that is to the fullness of Christ,
as we help each other. In Jesus' name, amen.