I want to think it was close
to the end of chapter 3, or did I get through chapter 3? Y'all
have to tell me. I did finish 3. So let's back up and start
reading Galatians 3, maybe verse, hmm, maybe I did 4 last week
too, didn't I? I finished part 4. Yes, I did. Alright, so we're close to getting
through with this thing, aren't we? Let's read, starting in verse
8 of chapter 4, down through verse 20. Here we go. Formally,
when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by
nature are not gods. But now that you have come to
know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back
again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the
world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe
days and months and seasons and years I am afraid I may have
labored over you in vain. Brothers, I entreat you, become
as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a
bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and
though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn to
despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ. What then has become of your
blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would
have poked out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then
become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much
of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that
they may make much of them. It is always good to be made
much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with
you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish
of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. I wish I could
be present with you now and exchange my tone for I am perplexed about
you." There we are. We might get through a few more
verses. And now as I read that I thought, okay, I covered this.
I covered this a little bit last week. Let's start here. And just
as a way of review, what he has started to talk about is that
they have been adopted by God in the gospel. They are an heir.
They are no longer slaves, but yet their actions and their attitude
and their desires have put them in a place where they are subject
to slavery once again. And in verse 8, He says, formerly
when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those by nature
are not gods. Now, who are not gods? Well,
nobody is a god. Nobody is a God at all. But more
importantly, if we were to go and to look at the evidence,
even, and I think we look at Corinthians, we can see some
of the way in which Paul addressed the paganism of the Galatians.
And who is in charge of, who is in charge, if you will, who's
the father of false religion? Who's the father of unbelief? Who's the father of paganism?
It's the enemy. It's the devil. And so that's
what Paul is referring to in that as we see world's religion
and world's Christianity and the world's false gospel, we
know that it is not of God or God's messenger, but it is of
the enemy. And that these things are where
the Galatians used to be. And so what he's saying to them
is if you go to Judaism, if you go back to the laws of Israel. If you go back to Moses, if you
go back as you'll see in a minute, well maybe tonight, if you go
to Sinai, you are just the way you were. You are pagans, you
are worshipping false gods, you are worshipping demonic deities
that are not gods. I want you to think about that
for a second. In our day and age, We are not superstitious
as a whole. Matter of fact, we're fairly
intellectual. We're fairly scientific. We want to see tangible realities. We want to measure it. We want
to do sort of like I was teaching yesterday out of Hebrews. We
want to hold on to something. But faith is the assurance of
that which is not seen. The confidence of that which
is hoped for and vice versa. But these people, just like many
people today, they have gone to another gospel, and in doing
so, it is equal to paganism. It is equal to Satanism. It is
equal to any other cult in the world. And so, you've heard me
say these things for months, if not years, and I have gotten
a lot of backlash for saying such as this. However, it is
Paul's sentiment concerning the addition to the gospel. We do
not count people our brothers and sisters in the faith when
they add to the gospel and double down on that after correction.
We do not hold people as siblings in the faith, as heirs of the
promise, as the children of God, when they forsake the very grace
of God that has saved them, supposedly, by falling back into slavery. They cannot call God their father. They cannot call Him daddy. because
they do not have the spirit of adoption. They do not have the
Son's work on their behalf, and therefore they must find a different
way of measuring their assurance and measuring their lives before
the Lord. And so that's what he's saying
there. You did not know God, but you were enslaved to false
gods. And if you go back to verse 9
and 10, if you go back to the weak and worthless principles
of the world, Why would you do that? Because you're going to
become their slaves once again. You did not know God and Now
you have come to know God. Or rather, as he says there in
the first part of verse 9, He has come to know you. You have
been known by God. And that is the reason that you
should not come again back to the yoke of slavery, even though
it seems Christ-like. Even though it seems Christian.
Even though it has a flavor of God worship. It uses the same
book. He uses the same theology. It's blind theology. It's blind
doctrine. It's blind understanding of the
Word of God. Do not become a slave to them
once more. Is this what you want? And in chapter, and in verse
10, and we talked about this a little bit last week, but in verse 10,
he says, you observed days and months and seasons and years,
and I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain. You are observing
the holidays and the festivals. You are observing the practices,
not just the Ten Commandments that you can't keep, as you'll
see over in verse 21 when we get there. But you are holding
fast to some things that you didn't even understand, but by
going back to them, you have gone straight back to devil worship. We get the question a lot, or
I get the question a lot, is the God of the Jews the same
as the God of Christian faith. No, it's not. It's not the same deity. Because
though in an academic sense, first century Jewish tradition
would understand theologically from scripture things about God,
they did not know him because when he came to them, they did
not recognize him. Jesus would then say, they are
not the sons of Abraham, they are not the sons of God, but
they are the sons of the enemy. And that they worship the enemy,
not the one true God of heaven. We forget that the devil and
his work is to take the glory of God and to shine it in his
direction. The devil doesn't want to become
his own deity. He doesn't want to become his
own religion. The human condition does that
well enough. He wants to share and be worshipped
as God is worshipped. He wants to be the one who is
the savior of his people. He wants to have people for Himself
that would bow down to Him and subject themselves and their
hope and their confidence to His work. And His work, according
to Paul, is to add to the gospel of grace. It's to make decisionism and
the volition of man and the free will of man a God that is greater
than Christ. It is to take the Word of God
and to play with it and to impose upon it human traditions and
human histories. so that it would steal away the
glory that belongs to Christ. It is the enemy's purpose to
take as many people to the edge of Christ as he can get and show
them Jesus plus something. And it doesn't work that way. Verse 12, He calls them brothers. Keep in mind, beloved, that He's
not condemning these people, He's condemning those that preach
this gospel. And He's condemning those who
fall away into this gospel. He's condemning those who hold
fast to this false gospel. He's condemning those who say,
my works and my life and my obedience and all of these things work
for something, they count for something, they prove something.
The people who fall for this gospel cry antinomian, antinomian,
antinomian. They cry out. And they say time
and time and time again, something's wrong with the Christianity that
doesn't end in a transformed life. Well, that's the problem. It's
not the precepts of Christianity that transforms a life to begin
with. And a transformed life is one that doesn't work in its
flesh to find acceptance before God. That is why Paul says that
the sin of the flesh is always seeking to please the Lord in
some way so that we could have confidence in it. But it's been
crucified with Christ, so we do not live in our flesh, we
live in Christ. We do not live in any hope. We do not set any table for the
flesh. We make no place for it. We have
only Christ. So brothers, I entreat you to
become as I am. Now think about that for a second.
I love Paul and how powerful he can argue. Become as I am. Who is Paul? Let's talk about
Paul in a general sense from his lineage and his flesh. Paul
is a Jew of Jews from the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee who no
longer serves in that role. He no longer practices the religion.
He no longer holds to their traditions. He no longer believes their theology. He no longer adheres to their
idea of works. He no longer sees through the
lens of that covenant. He sees the truth. And so He
says, Become as I am, for I have become as you are. Now there's
several things to think about there. Paul is saying, you need
to be as I am, as I have become, as you are. And what is the similarity
between Paul and the pagan Galatians? They no longer serve and worship
a false god. They no longer worship a false
deity. They no longer worship a false
or believe in a false gospel that does not save. And that
is the law, that is obedience, that is transformed life, that
is all of these things that the world will teach us that we must
do and must have and must see in order to have confidence before
the Father. I have forsaken my pagan roots, Paul is saying,
just like you. Let's stay in that position together.
I have forsaken the law. Why would you become what I gave
up? I'm not going to go to worship
your false gods. Why are you going to worship
mine? You see what he's saying there? Don't do that. And then he reminds them in the
latter part of verse 12 into 13. You did me no wrong. You
did not hurt me. You know it was because of a
bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first. Now
what is this telling us? That means that somehow in the
sovereignty of God that Paul was there in the region of Galatia
and he got struck with some illness? Maybe he was arrested, maybe
he was whipped, maybe he hurt himself, maybe he bumped his head. We
don't know and there's no reason to find out what it was. We just
know that in his travels he got stayed in the region of Galatia
and in his illness he took an opportunity because he was there
to preach the gospel. And that is how God sovereignly
put him there. And in some way, as he preached
the gospel, then he says there in verse 14, my condition was
a trial to you. And of course, this is the first
part of a explanatory phrase. He says, and though my condition
was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but you
received me as an angel, as a messenger of God, as Christ Jesus. So here
we know that as Paul was sick and needed tending to, needed
medical attention, needed food and a place to stay and probably
somebody to look after him, he began to preach the gospel and
these people who were saved by the grace of God, by the power
of the Holy Spirit, with absolute certainty, had been born of God. They could not allow Paul's illness
to impose upon them in a way that would cause them grief or
frustration. Yet it was not easy to take care of someone who was
sick. It was a trial to you. That means that it cost them
something. All of a sudden here's this man disrupting their entire
lives, disrupting their entire economy, disrupting everything
that they thought they knew was hopeful Now Jesus Christ was
revealed to them in such a way that they can see and know and
absolutely have confidence that He has saved His people from
their sins and that faith was granted them by God through the
hearing of this gospel message. But it was not without trial.
It was terrible. It was costly. And I don't want to speculate
too more, but you've seen the workings of Paul and Barnabas
and others in the book of Acts. You've seen when they go there
to Ephesus, and just because of the preaching of the gospel,
the people of that area hated them. In the temple of Artemis,
Thousands of people rushed in there and began to cry out for
justice for the apostles to be arrested. Paul wants to go in
and teach them. They're trying to kill him and
he wants to go preach to them. The other brothers won't let
him but after hours, after hours of chanting, great is Artemis
of the Ephesians. It's almost like a riot. Their
leader gets there and says, you all are just about close to being
charged with rioting. What have these men done to you?
I mean, this is the welcome mat of the apostles during this era.
Because it destroyed things. Imagine being the host of the
man who did that. Where's Paul? Oh, he's sick,
laid up in John's house. You mean John, the citizen of
this place? You mean Timothy? You mean he's over there and
Lois and Eunice and those guys are taking care of him? I'm just
saying. I'm using that as an example. Imagine the trial that
it caught them. But he said, though my condition
was a trial to you, it did not scorn or despise me. You did
not scorn me. You did not despise me. You received
me as a messenger of God, as Christ. You received me as you
did Christ. You received Christ. Then he
asked a question. Because see what's in context
here. They have forsaken by the entrance of this just devilish,
demonic doctrine. They have forsaken that very
thing they're known for. What then has become of your
blessedness? What's happened to you? What's
happened to your reception? Are you not receiving me now?
Are you not receiving my word? Why do you receive me and the
Lord that I preach when I come, but now I hear that you are not
staying with Christ? You weren't like that then, what's
happened? For I testify, I find this interesting, that to you
that if possible you would have poked out your own eyes and given
them to me. I mean that's pretty good. I have been hospitable
in my life. I have allowed people to live
in my home numerous times for years and years and years. People
who were not my relatives, who were not kin to me except in
Christ. But I don't know that I've ever been at the place where
I would have poked out my eyes that they could see. But that's
how Paul saw. Of course this is hyperbole.
This is an exaggeration of terms. to show that he saw that the
heart that they had been given by the Spirit was so in love
with Paul and in love with Christ and the message of Christ that
they would have even poked out their own eyes if Paul needed
a new set of eyes. And that's where some people
say, well, maybe that's what was wrong with Paul. His ailment,
his thorn was blindness. I think that's a stretch to read
into the text, but it makes a good case. It explains his exuberant
hyperbole here. You loved me and you treated
me as Christ and you would have taken out your eyes. Then 16,
he asked, have I become your enemy? Have I become your enemy
by telling you the truth? What has happened here? Why all
of a sudden now, if I tell you that this is a lie, am I your
enemy? Because I teach you what is true.
I teach you what is true. These people who frustrate you,
these people who are doing this to you, they are your enemies.
I am not your enemy. I teach you the truth. Beloved,
it is never wrong to correct falsehood. It is never wrong
to proclaim that is an error, this is the truth, this is unbelief,
this is life, this is damnable, this is eternal. It's never wrong. And when someone thinks that
we are their enemy for correcting them in this false gospel, they
have made friends of the enemies of God and rejected the very
gospel that they say they believe. Verse 17, they make much of you. Who are they? These false teachers.
I mean, isn't that the way it goes? Lord, if I'm not supposed
to say this, I pray, but I feel compelled to use this example
perfectly. How much do we see the praise
of the glory of men in the present evangelical life that we live
in, where people love to say, look what we've done. Praise
God. Look how much we've grown. Praise God. Look at the decisions
we've seen. Praise God. Look at the money
we've made. Praise God. Look at the missions we're doing.
Praise God. And they count it and they throw it out. They want
to be known. Why do they make much of all
of that? That is what was happening in
the region of Galatia. False prophets and false gospel
preachers, they will always make much of their converts. What does he say there? But for
no good purpose. They make much of you but for
no good purpose because they want to shut you out. They want
those among you who aren't in Christ to fall for this garbage
and to make it the dominant theological position of soteriological truth
which is a lie from the devil. They want to take the lie and
make it dominant. They want to make it the norm.
They want to make it culturally and historically cemented into
the minds of many so that they can continue to praise their
humanistic, sadistic, and sick, and wicked false gospel and blame
it on God while they see you not coming to terms with this
and then they will shut you out. That you may make much of them. I see it in historically patterned
traditions like Arminianism, and Calvinism, and Reformed,
and Non-Reformed, and Presbyterian, and Anglican, and Baptist, and
Methodist. I see all these iterations, and
these traditions, and all of these historical labels, and
I see even amongst each sect, I see the same false gospel. It is, Oh, sovereignty, sovereignty,
grace, grace, grace. Yeah, but I don't think you're
saved. Look at you. That's satanic. Oh, but they praise it. Isn't
it something to think about that even in the midst of the work
of God through unconverted men to bring about the reality of
the truth of Christ that even in those things and with those
seasons that there are more unbelievers than true converts. Wow. They want to shut you out. that
you may make much of them, because if you aren't of them, then you
never were of them. How that scripture is twisted.
I'd rather be not of them than to be not of Christ. If I do
not wash you, all of you, you have no place with me, Jesus
says to Peter. And Peter didn't have to get
in the tub. He didn't have to take off his clothes. He didn't
have to turn on the water. Jesus just washed him. And that's
what the cross did for the elect of God. We need not be fearful
of telling people that Christ died for the elect of God. It
is the singular, central truth of gospel. It is always good, though, Because
they didn't want him to think, oh, nobody should make much of
us, we better tell everybody to stop talking good things about
us. No, he says it there in verse 18, it is always good to be made
much of for a good purpose. Like the Thessalonians, remember?
How he talked and he praised the Thessalonians, and when he
got to the region there outside of Thessalonica, and all the
people in that area, they began to praise the Thessalonians.
for their faith in Christ and for their love for all the saints.
The only thing they praised them for. They didn't say, wow, those
heathens straightened it up or wow, those pagans threw away
all their idols. Wow, they really cleaned up their
language. Oh my goodness, they started tithing. Wow, look, they
put on their Sunday best. No, they loved the saints and
they confessed Christ as the sovereign God of the universe
who died for His people and that they are His people. And in Him alone would they be
found, alive. It's good to be made much of
for a good purpose. And not only when I'm there bragging
about you, when I'm present with you, the latter part of 18 there.
And then in verse 19, my little children. See, these aren't lost
people. He's not talking to the lost.
He's not talking to the deceived. He's not talking to those who
have believed this false gospel. He's talking to the sheep who
are warring against it. Some of them have probably gotten
to the point where they'll just give up. What are we going to do? They're
taking the sheep away. They're running away with the
sheep. Beloved, sometimes we have to
recognize that God is sovereign when the sheep run away because
they probably are goats. And I was taught better than
that. I was raised better than that. I was raised under the
banner of having a better responsibility with that. And my soul bleeds
and hurts for people who fall away from us. And there's always this little
voice in the back of my head going, I bet if I reached out now, things
would be different. And it always bites me in the
butt. It always bites me. The worst case scenario is that
like a dog that didn't want to stay home to start with, on the
way home, he goes home with you as if he wants to be there and
then bites everybody else and leaves. The Lord is sovereign. Let the dogs roam. If they are
truly sheep, Christ will bring them home. There's a poem for
your children's book. My children, for whom I am again
in the anguish of childbirth. What's he saying there? As a
woman hurts in childbirth, I'm hurting for you. As a woman is
in anguish, in ultimate pain, terminal velocity on the pain
receptors, I am in that pain for you. And I'm going to be in that pain
until Christ is formed in you. What's that mean? I love people. I really do. And I'm able to
interact with all sorts of opinions and different ideas until they
attack. When people attack, I'm like
a sheepdog. I don't want that. And I can
get aggressive, but I try not to by the Lord's mercy. But some
people say, I want you, I'm going to keep laboring until you get
your life right. If I preach the gospel and Christ
is formed in you, that means you are His and He is yours and
you are believing He is enough. This is faith in Jesus. This
is simple faith in a simple grace. for a sovereign glory. And I'm going to keep hurting,
and I'm going to keep praying, and I'm going to keep preaching,
and I'm going to keep writing until I know that Christ has
become the center of all of you and that there is no more of
this false gospel invading you. This is what the illustration
is supposed to help us understand. We're not going to have this
be ignored until it's dead. And when it's dead, I'm content
and my child bearing pain is going to go away, my little children.
I wish, I wish I could be present with you now so that I could
change my tone, for I am very perplexed about, I'm puzzled,
I'm distraught, I'm confused, what is happening? I want to
be there and I want to change my tone, but I can't. I'm perplexed. And until you're birthed securely
in Christ and I get this report, I'm going to continue to be in
labor for you." Then he asked some questions. We got time.
He asked some questions. Tell me, you who desire to be
under the law, do you not listen to the law? Are you not reading
it? Are you not understanding it?
Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about, he might say. Let me explain
it. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave
woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was
born according to the flesh. And I'll go ahead and interact
there, because he explains in a minute, according to the law, born under
the law, accursed. The exercise of Abraham's flesh.
of Sarah's flesh, of their decision to bring about the fruitfulness
of the life of God in promise. Now look at the implications
of that. I could just kick this microphone over, fall down, break
my nose. But the son of the free woman
was born through promise, through grace, through mercy, through
life, through Christ. Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants.
I love it. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing
children for slavery, the law, the law, the law, obedience,
obedience, traditions, dates, festivals, following the rules,
living a life that's really, really awesome in front of everybody
else. She's bearing children for slavery.
She is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present
Jews. For she is in slavery with her
children. But the Jerusalem above is free.
And she is our mother. For it is written, Rejoice, O
barren one who does not bear. Break forth and cry aloud who
are not in labor. For the children of the desolate
one will be more than those of the one who has a husband. Now those who are born of the
law, of the flesh, who even in their spiritual pursuits with
great passion and zeal, they are dying because they're already
dead and they will not live and they will outnumber the ones
of promise. But now you brothers, verse 28, Like Isaac, our children of promise. You're not slaves. You're not
born under the law. You're not born in the flesh.
You're not present day Jerusalem. You people are trying to go and
become Jews, who are slaves, who are condemned, who worship
Satan. But you're like Isaac, beloved.
My little children. My brothers, my sisters. the
elect of God, the ones who have received the grace of God. Listen
to what I say. You are the children of promise.
But just as at that time He who was born according to the flesh
persecuted Him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now.
Now you'd think I'm overreacting and over-interpreting this idea
of modern day evangelicalism and Protestantism being the cult
of Satan. No, I'm not over-interpreting.
Paul says it. Is it everybody? No. We're in
that same fold, beloved. The dividing line is the gospel
that we preach and believe. And if you have circles, if you
have the gospel in a circle and then you put the gospel we preach
and the gospel somebody else might preach and it might look
exactly the same, but just the smallest shift, you know, the
Venn diagram where things intersect, we usually look at that as the
similarities and where they overlap. Well, beloved, it's not where
the gospel overlaps that's important. It's where the gospel is shoved
off the edge just a little bit. That makes the difference between
the sons of promise and the sons of slaves. That makes the difference
between life and eternal damnation. And the ones who were born according
to the flesh persecuted Him who was born according to the Spirit.
So also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and
her son For the son of a slave woman shall not inherit with
the son of the free woman." Sounds so ungodly, Genesis 21,
to hear God's Word say stuff like that. Cast out the slave
woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not
inherit with the son of the free woman. It cannot be. So brothers,
sisters, we are not children of the slave, but of the free
woman. We are the children of the free
woman. We are free in Christ. And that's the very next thing
he says. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore
in the gospel of free and sovereign grace alone. And do not submit
again to a yoke of slavery. Do not submit again. For we have
been set free in Christ. I love how Paul just relieves
us in the reading. Imagine going and being part
of this body in this time where it was turmoil and receiving
this letter and feeling the tension and then seeing the reprieve. God has sent His Spirit of His
Son into us where we cry out, Daddy. And so if we are, we are
no longer a slave but our son, and if a son in error of God,
Because remember, the slave woman is condemned. The sons of the
slave are condemned. This is the picture of reprobation.
But the elect, oh beloved, you are not like them. You are not
born into slavery. You are free. Sinai is death. Zion is freedom and life. You
are in life. Christ has set us free. So stand
in that freedom. I bring up my class a lot on
Wednesdays because it's always fresh on my mind, but something worth
saying that I'm going to deal with a little bit more this Sunday
in John 17 is the fact that when we struggle with temptation and
sin in our lives, for the true believer, it's not so much the
struggle as to how we'll stop sinning, as it is the struggle
to believe in where our assurance lies. It's the struggle not to put
ourselves under the yoke of slavery, to manipulate our lives to such
a degree that we can actually go, oh yes, I squeezed it out
of there. It's in line now. It's that struggle
for the believer. No, this doesn't help me. It
is of no benefit to me. And if it is no benefit to me,
then if it was a benefit to me, changing my life to a pattern
of some unspoken or even rigid law-keeping of any type of obedience,
if that pattern is beneficial to me, guess what? Christ isn't.
Oh, I've got them ahead of myself. That's next week's sermon in
Galatians. If you accept circumcision, Christ
will be at no advantage to you. Because if you accept circumcision,
you've got to keep all the law perfectly from the beginning,
before you were conceived. Too bad your father Adam has
failed you. So much for life. Beloved, we're
in a war. I think I said that in the very
first sermon here. I think I said that. This present evil age I'm
going to give some comparisons in closing here just for some
thought to chew on. This present evil age, if Paul
were to write this letter today, and maybe I said this eight weeks
ago, I don't know, would not be saying this present evil age
because of sexual immorality, this present evil age because
of abortion, this present evil age because of all these sadistic
and weird and crazy things that the world sees and the Christian
world sees and is just going bad. He's talking about the present
evil age of super, hyper, awesome, religious, moral people who want
the church to be slaves. That's what he's talking about.
And that's the context of this letter. That's how I know. That's
what he keeps saying. That's what he keeps talking
about. So we rejoice. We rejoice Because we are found
as a promised heir and in this we wait for the hope of righteousness
who is Jesus Christ our Savior. And so we'll stop there and let's
pray. We thank you Lord for your word again. That you are so mighty
to help us, to help us to see and to understand. And Lord I
pray, I pray for congregations around us. I pray Lord that you
would work in the hearts of your people who are among them. Father,
if there are pastors in our area who hold the Word of God every
week and they be not converted, Lord, that through the Scripture
you would bring them to faith, that they would tear down the
idols of the law, of humanism. They would tear down the idols
of the cultural mandates of what Christianity is and what eternal
life is and how it's obtained. Father, that your sheep would
just see great, great revival in the life of the church. Father, we know that even as
we pray those things, they shall be done, for it is your will
that your people would come to know the truth. I pray, Lord,
for the many sheep that may never come in their present state. The elect who may not have ever
heard the gospel, that they would hear it through our mouths, through
our lives, through our evangelism, as we and others like us throughout
this world preach and teach and share the gospel of grace. And Father, that You would help
us to be together, that You would put us in places where we could
be in better proximity with one another, that we could help grow
and prepare shepherds to go and plant in certain areas, Father,
for the sake of Your elect. Not where we think and how we
think and when we think, but Lord, when Your will has surely
come to pass. And we thank You, Lord, that
we are spared because of your great love, because of your great
mercy, that we are promised children to live forever because of Christ. We thank you for that freedom.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.