This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Places in Scripture. It's also
one of those controversial areas of Scripture because there are
some textual variants that we won't go through tonight, but
maybe the week after next we'll probably talk about. But it's
controversial because people take it out of context most passionately. I mean, let's think about this
in verse 28 for a minute. Listen 28 to the end. Follow
along with me in your scripture. It says, and we know that for
those who love God, all things work together for good, for those
who are called according to his purpose. For those whom He foreknew,
He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order
that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those
whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called,
He also justified. And those whom He justified,
He also glorified. We call that the golden chain
in that little place there where it says those he predestined,
he called, etc. Paul also deals with this text
in a way that puts it in the light of past tense, as if these
things are so certain they're already done, though we know
that not everyone has been called yet. We know that not everyone
has been set apart yet in that sense that we understand being
set apart at the end. We know that everyone has not
been glorified yet, but it is a certain thing because salvation
is certain. It's not an opportunity, as I
say often. It's not a possibility. It's
not highly probable. It is absolutely guaranteed.
Salvation is something that cannot be skewed, lost, or deterred. Salvation is all of grace and
all of God, all in Christ alone. And so one of the reasons, other
than textual variance, this can become problematic is several
years ago, I remember when we had a lot of, I don't even like
to use the word persecution, absolute hatred by some of the
local brethren in this area. And I say brethren lightly. I
remember this text being brought up in a conversation amongst
of about 10 of us, and two of them scowling, and one of them
actually saying, oh, that's y'all's text. That's y'all's text. That's your magic verse or something
like that. I'm not quoting him exactly because
I tried to put that out of my mind. And upon inquiry, he goes
on to say, well, that's the key verse that Calvinists like to
use to prove their point. You're just taking it out of
context. And further discussion, he elaborated something this
way, that God causes all things to work together for good for
those who love Him. And so that the onus there is
that those who love Him get the right to have all things worked
out for good. And that when things didn't work
out for good the way we thought they should, it's because we
didn't love God enough. ignoring the rest of the entirety
of the text of Romans 8, specifically Romans 1 through 8, and the remaining
verses. And then from that conversation
went another conversation, and another conversation, and another
conversation, to the point that in a room of 10 to 11 people,
we had four or five different variations of how to apply this
text in the life of the church. So disastrous was that, that
it caused me, I mean, just a spiritual grief. that people would not
submit to the reality that this is something that God is doing.
The Spirit helps us in our weakness, and He prays according to the
will of God. And then in verse 28, it says,
and we know. And we know. Because of this,
we know that those who love God, all things work together for
good for those who are called according to His purpose. So,
let's think about that for a moment. Why is it so difficult for so
many people who confess to be in the faith, in Christ, born
again, saved by the preciousness of the blood and the finished
work of Christ on the cross, can hear a passage of Scripture
like this and completely obliterate the meaning? Well, it's because
of something we know as presuppositions. Presuppositions is when we come
to the table of reading or understanding something, and we read into what
we have previously thought or considered, ignoring what is
obviously in front of us. So that we would isogeet, that
means that we would read into the text a meaning that's not
there based on what we presuppose. And so people who presuppose
a humanistic gospel, though there is no such thing, a gospel that
would say that man is responsible for his own salvation, he must
accept some type of work that's been finished on his behalf.
He must do some type of action. He must be contrite. He must
have some love for God that is not alien, but that is intrinsic. Those who say that, they are
supposing then God cannot be sovereign. So the reason things
work out for good in their mind is because the people for whom
God works have done good for God. We'll find that that's not
only ridiculous in the context of scripture, it's ridiculous
in the context of these sentences right here. For the next two
weeks, I'll be in this golden chain, and we'll talk more in
depth about each portion of this and what it means for us as believers
as we continue. So, this for, and we know that
for those who love God, all things work together for good. and then
the clarifier, for those who are called according to His purpose.
So there we see that those who love God are the ones called
according to His purpose. They're one and the same. Those
who are called according to the purpose are those who love God.
It's not causative that you love God and therefore now He'll call
you for His purpose. It's actually the opposite. God
has called those whom He loves for His purpose and in doing
so, we love Him. He grants repentance that we
might see Him and grants us the gift of faith that we might believe
in Him. But it is not even that faith
that seals us and saves us. We talk about saving faith a
lot, but it's not even the depth and the width and the height
of our faith. Where have we ever seen that taught? We've never
seen any of the apostles or even Jesus, we've never seen them
say, oh, how great your faith must be. I want you to have a
faith that is so wide or so deep or so rich or so strong. As a
matter of fact, the only time we see faith being mentioned
in a measurable way is Jesus saying, you have little faith.
You have little faith. And then He expounds and says,
you only have to have the faith of a mustard seed. Because faith
alone, in Christ alone, is all faith. No matter how strong or
how weak it is, is all faith in nothing but Christ. So if
we have all faith, all of Christ, then we have faith in Christ. But it's not that faith that
pushes God to save. As a matter of fact, saving faith
is better understood as God's gift to those whom He has justified
in Christ. Those for whom Christ died, God
has given them to the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as He wishes,
regenerates them, births them anew, and then grants them faith
that they believe in the fact that they are indeed justified
at the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. So in other words,
I did not come to know that I was justified because of what I've
done, but I came to believe in the fact that I've been justified
because of what Christ has done for me. Why is that important? Because if we do not keep the
gospel, if we do not take, as a matter of fact, I believe all
of Romans 8 is summarized starting in verse 28 to the end. This
is a summary. There is now, therefore, no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because God, we know God causes,
what? For those who love God, God causes
all things to work together for good. for those who are called
according to His purpose. So we need to keep this in mind.
This is not a secondary thing that Paul is now teaching. As
a matter of fact, Paul doesn't teach this doctrine now, this
doctrine now, this doctrine now, this doctrine. Paul is arguing
for the doctrine of grace, for the teaching of the gospel throughout
the whole of this letter. And it was one letter moving
one thought after another for the sake of the Christians in
Rome, both Jew and Gentile Christians. And we need to keep that in mind
because if we are not careful, we too can fall into thinking
that this portion of this letter was written to give us a theological
standard by which we understand the order of salvation. As we
know in theological terms, the Ordo Salutis. You'll hear that. They're talking about Romans
8. Verses 29, 30, and 31. The order of salvation. Now, is there an order of salvation?
We'll look at that next week. But there is. There is an order
in which God does bring about salvation. But that's not really
something that Paul is trying to express here. He's trying
to show the absolute majestic and divine work of God through
Jesus Christ God the Son, by the power of God the Holy Spirit,
through the will and the decree of God the Father, through which
God brings His people to Himself, through which He has justified
His elect alone, and only the elect will be justified and are
justified. And so, because we need to keep
this in mind, I want to take and sort of peel this text back
in its context. First and foremost tonight, I
want us to look at what we do know. Verse 28. We know that
for those who love God, all things work together for good. All things
work together for good. Now, we've seen that already
in Romans 1. We've seen that already in Romans
2. We've seen Romans 3, that God has put forth Christ's propitiation. So think about the badness, if
we can use that term, the wickedness, the gloominess, the distraughtness
of the days of Christ and the arrest and the trials of Christ
and the crucifixion of Christ. How horrifying were those days
for the disciples of Christ? They were horrible. They were
disastrous. They were macabre. They were
lonely. I can't imagine the spiritual
war that was going on in the minds of these people that Jesus,
their King, their Lord, their Master, their Messiah had died. and just the fear that set in
them. But we've already learned through Paul's teaching in this
letter that God put forth Christ. So where the world at large would
look at the things that happened to Jesus, those who loved Him
would say, oh, how horrid. Those who hated Him would say,
yes, we got rid of Him. But this text here would tell
us that this was for good. God caused these things to work. God put forth Christ as propitiation. God was pleased to crush His
Son. And so, we don't need to lose
heart because we've already seen the example of what Paul is holding
fast to the gospel of grace. But what about beyond that? Are
there other opportunities where we could look as believers, as
Grace Truth Church? Are there other places that we
can look at as we read this and say, well, how is God working
all things together for good for me? What about this circumstance? What about this problem? What
about this pain? How is it working for good? Well,
because God promised it. But this is not something new
just in the first century. This is not something new just
in the second generation of apostles like Paul. This is something
that had been going on since the beginning of time. I mean,
how horrible is the first couple? What about their short but powerful
experience in the garden, walking with the Son of God? How they
walked in unity in the flesh with God Himself and yet then
fell some hours later. to bring all of humanity under
the wrath of God dead spiritually in order that they might die
eternally physically. But God took that which was bad,
evil, and used it for good. It was for that purpose that
God created the world. It was for the purpose that man
would fall, that he would be the redeemer of his people through
the death of his son. And so in these things we can
go all the way back to the very first day of creation, the very,
well the first season of creation, the day six of creation and say,
in this day, in this moment, God caused all things to work
together for good. for those who love Him, Adam
and Eve." People say, well, Adam and Eve didn't love God. They
did, but they could not love Him with all their heart, mind,
soul, and strength, especially with the devil, the enemy of
God. Lucifer, an angel himself, had fallen and been cast to earth
in order that he might tempt humanity, in order that he might
bring about the fall of man, so that God would see the praise
of His glorious grace in the Beloved throughout all generations
forever, as Paul says in Ephesians 3. So here, even the very first
evil thing was used for good. Then God gave Adam and Eve sons,
Cain and then Abel. And then Cain, because he hated
his brother, because his brother's works were righteous, struck
his brother with a rock and killed him and buried his corpse. Many
times does the New Testament allude to the blood of Abel crying
out for vengeance. looking back to the days of the
prophets. But even then, God did use that for good. We see Abram, we see Noah, we
see Jonah, and the list goes on and on. Moses, everywhere
you look, there was sin, there was terror, there was suffering,
there was imprisonment, there was death always knocking on
the door of God's people. But the Bible has promised, God
Himself has promised that all these things would work for good
for those who love Him and for those who are called according
to His purpose. Despite what we can see in the natural sense
of our mind and in the obvious sense of our eyes and the senses
of our soul, It is for our good. And in that promise, God has
always made good. So when people say that God is
good all the time, maybe we could even go to that and say, give
us some examples and we can show them example after example after
example where calamity was warranted by the sovereign hand of God
for the sake of His people and their joy in Him as Redeemer. So in this, we as those who are
God's chosen, we groan and we mourn and we long for the day
of redemption. So does all of creation as we
moan together. And then in the same way, the
Spirit groans for us and intercedes on our behalf. And we are able
to stand under this because we know that these things work together
by God for good. That's why Paul is saying this.
And it seems obvious, but is it obvious and is it easy to
apply in our lives? I consider just the calamity
that's befallen us in the last few years. How many deaths have
we had? How many tragedies have we had?
How many marital issues have come into our congregation? How
many issues of discipline have we had to deal with? And yet,
all things for good. How about personal problems?
Look at the other believers that we know in life. What Christian
do you know that's absolutely rich and never has a problem,
never gets sick, never has had an issue of suffering, never
has had any persecution? What Christian do you know who
labors to follow in the steps of Christ, who labors to be intimate
with the church of Christ, who labors to hold fast to the Word
of God, yet never fails in any of it. Nobody. I don't know any
true believer who could give that testimony at all. Yet I
have been told just today that God has been so good to a particular
person, He boasted in this way, I believe in this and he explains
something to me. I won't say it because they'll
know I'm talking about him. But then they go on and say, and
that's why I continue to do what I think probably isn't necessarily
biblical because I'm being rewarded by God for doing so. Right over the top of my head
there. I had to think about that for a little while. So from the traditions
of man come unbiblical teachings, doctrines, that teach something
about God that's improper, so it's a false theology. But yet
because that prescription works in this man's life, he continues
to practice it even though I've taught him directly for years
that it's false. to which I am going to reply
next week when I see him again, the only time where God has promised
prosperity, I mean the Bible shows anyone promised prosperity
in a material sense, is when Satan took Jesus the Christ and
told him to bow down and he would give him the world. Let's be
careful what God we're feeding and what God we're sacrificing
to, because it is mostly the God of the flesh if it is not
the God of the Bible. God promises suffering for the
people of the cross. God promises calamity will come. And God promises that He will
cause it all to work together for good. What does that look
like even? I'll tell you what it looks like.
When things are awesome, God causes it to work together for
good. When things are death, God causes
it to work together for good. What does good mean? I think
that's where the definition gets cloudy. Some people say, well,
it's not good that my mother-in-law passed away. Yes, it is. Not
only is it good, it's absolutely good for her. Is it good for
me? No, not whatsoever. None. It's
not in my flesh. But yet, by the cause of my father
and his promise here, it is good. And one day we will see the outcome
of it. It's already been good to mourn
as a family, to mourn as a church, to mourn with those who are lost,
to preach the gospel. to encourage one another in the
faith. What else will God do through loss? What else will
God do through suffering? What will be the ultimate end
of all of this is that God will be praised through it all. He
will be the one who receives all the glory and all the honor
and all the praise and all the worth forever and ever. And so
for that, we can surely rejoice. In that, we can surely rejoice. Even though it's difficult, even
though we don't know how we might rejoice, we know that God will
cause it all to work together for good. That clarifier that
I talked about there in the latter part of verse 28, for those who
are called according to His purpose. For His purpose. When you think
about those being called for the purpose of God, I mean, what's
the first thing that comes to mind? Is it Paul? Well, Paul was called for the
purpose of God. What was Paul's life like? Paul had it made. Paul was so powerful and so influential
and so trusted that they sought his approval to stone Stephen
when it was a capital crime for a Jew to execute someone. And
they did it anyway. Paul had it made. He was probably
the most beloved Pharisee of the day. He was the guy that
was going to restore. People probably even thought
he was Messiah. He would restore Israel to its
rightful place, to its rightful glory. Yet Paul counted all that
as loss, counted all that as nothing, as garbage, as manure
in the countless gain of knowing Christ as Savior, as Lord, as
King, as hope. So God called Paul according
to his purpose. It wasn't to be a Pharisee, a
righteous leader, a great teacher. It was to be a servant, a slave
unto death, taking up his own cross one day and even being
executed by the taking of his head. Look at that. So God called
Paul for his own purpose. How in the world does the world
that we live in look at Paul's life and say that it was good?
He was shipwrecked. He was left for dead. He was
stoned. All sorts of things taking place in his life that the average
person would never consider good. I mean, most of the time people
have an ache in their back or their toenails hurt. They say
life is horrible. Most of the time people don't
have a lot of money at the end of the week. They say life is horrible.
Much less being persecuted and hated just because you have been
made alive by Christ. Paul. What about those called
according to His purpose? Like the other apostles. What
about Jesus? Jesus was called according to
the purpose of God, and He also is God. So that's an easy one
there. We can see that. But what about
all the other martyrs of the world that we discussed on Sunday?
And then last Wednesday? What about people throughout
all of antiquity? Those who aren't written in the
Bible? What about you? Are you called to the purpose
of God? I remember early in my youth going to a conference one
time and somebody asking the question, what purpose do you
have in life? What is your purpose? And I remember
being in my early 20s, if not 21 or so, falling into the eyeline
of the purpose-driven church ideas and thinking, oh, this
is why the church exists. This is what the church is supposed
to do. This is how the church is supposed to act. And it was
very easy and palatable to the natural business-minded person,
the person who had the ability to organize and administrate. But it wasn't biblical. And the
purpose of God for your life is not found through a spiritual
gift inventory. It's not found through any type
of training. It's not found in any of those
things. The purpose of God is found right
here. God calls all of the elect for
His purpose. And what is the purpose of God
for us? What is it? Abigail, do you know
what the purpose of God is? Okay, then pay close attention,
because I'm about to tell you. The purpose of God for the elect
is that we are predestined to be in the image of Christ. We are predestined to be called.
We are predestined to be sanctified. We are predestined to be glorified. It is a determined thing that
God has decreed and it shall come to pass. So that is the
primary purpose of we, the church of Christ. That we would give
praise to Him for His glorious grace. That we would be known
as those who herald the praises of our God and King. That we
would understand the richness and the depth of His mercy. And
that we would give Him glory forever and ever and ever. That
is our purpose. God's purpose for you, beloved,
is that He sent His Son to the cross to die in your place. That Jesus stepped out of glory
so that He could become a mere man and obey in our place. That is this double imputation.
We get the imputation of Christ's righteousness. That means it's
His righteousness, not ours, for our account. And He gets
our guilt. He has not committed a sin. He
is counted guilty as a sinner and He's crushed for us. This
is the purpose of God for you. This is an amazing purpose. But
in our day, people would rather have a great name, and great
fame, and great wealth, and great knowledge, and great friendships. In our day, even in the name
of so-called Christianity, there are more people who seek self-glory
in their ability to stir, in their ability to cause strife,
in their ability to just be heard, than they ever will ever. do
for the sake of God's glory. Paul would say to the Corinthians
in 1 Corinthians 1 that God uses the nothings of the world to
bring to nothing the things that are. The Pharisees and the Sadducees
were concerned about self-glory. And Jesus called them the sons
of Satan. And I believe in like manner
there are a lot of people who, like the parable of the seed,
have a little bit of a root, and it rises up, and they have
a whole lot of zeal, and they may even can articulate a gospel
for a season, but all they want is glory. And one day God will
allow the sun to scorch them out, and they may well be reprobate. And that is also another purpose.
The reprobate for the life of the church, it is the reprobate.
It is the pharaohs of the world that God uses to bring judgment.
It is the Babylonians. It is the enemies of God that
think they have the opportunity when given the chance to stir
and to crush and to destroy and to distract the people of God.
And it's so easy for us as God's people to say, wow, we're really
in a mess, we're in trouble, these enemies of ours, these
enemies of God, oh God, where are you? God is directing their
hand to be His rod of correction as we saw in the prophets of
the Old Testament. But then in turn and in time, He would bring
His hand of wrath upon them. and save His remnant out from
among them. Friends, that is just a small
picture and a three-point way of outlining just in general
how we are called according to the purpose of God. We are called
to suffer according to the purpose of God. We are called to be dependent
upon God according to the purpose of God. We are called to recognize
that there is no righteousness in ourselves according to the
purpose of God. We're supposed to see that in
the best of days, in the most mightiest of preaching, that
we're nothing. We're nothing without the Holy
Spirit of God and His Word, and His providence, and His decrees,
and His power going out through us. So that we would not be counted
as mighty in the kingdom, but that we would be last, so that
in turn, we would be first. We are called according to His
purpose. And God, as we'll see in Romans
9, I'll give us a little peek over there, in Romans 9, just
a page or so away, the argument that Paul gives as he closes
out this chapter 8, ends in what? Therefore, if God can be for
us, then who can be against us? Because if I kept going, I mean,
how much more depressing can it be? We can give list after
list after list after list of things that are not being done
the way they're supposed to be done and obedience is not happening,
is it? And we can become overwhelmed
by the depression of thinking, will this ever be better? When
we should be overcome by the promise that this darkness will
pass and that this This evil that we see often is not for
our destruction, but is for our glory. And that this suffering
is preparing us to receive the promise of glory. And that one
day, because of all that God has done, we will understand
and comprehend with all the saints the absolute perfection of the
love of God for us. And that nothing, this is how
he closes it, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing.
But that's what the world sees, isn't it? I'm suffering, God
must not love me. No, God loves me, so therefore
I suffer. What does a good father do? There's
not a day that goes by that my children don't ask to go to the
store and buy junk. Can we go to Parker's? Can we
buy a 5,000 calorie soda? Can we have a piece of candy?
Can we eat a donut? Can we do whatever? No, why not? No, no, no, it's not good for
you. And to my children, as they're
small and they get a little older and they realize this, but as
they're small, they think I'm the biggest killjoy in the world,
that I'm never fun. Matter of fact, Abigail told
me today, Daddy, you always say no, you always say no. And what she doesn't understand
is that I say no for her good. God gives us what we are desperately
in need of, not what we think we want. If God were to bring
to us all the luxuries of this fallen, dead, and evil world,
then where would our focus be? It wouldn't be upon Him. So the
greatest delight of the saint is the Son of God. who suffered
and died and rose again and has promised us to take us where
He is, to bring us to life, to bring our lives, our bodies back
to life. And for that, we wait. And so Paul then continues in
verse 29. I'll read this and expound on it a few minutes.
The word for there in verse 29 is an expansion. God has called all things to
work together. We know that those who love God,
all things work together for good. Those who are called according
to His purpose. 4. Let's expand this some more. This is how it looks for you,
church. This is how it looks for us. For those whom He foreknew. Those whom He knew before. Those
whom He loved before. They were. These are we. We are the ones who He foreknew. God foreknew us. And so in that same knowledge,
everything that God has done, you've heard me say many times
through the years that God's love is eternal. And because
God has an attribute that, and all of His attributes are equally
shared amongst each other, we systematize God in a way that
we try to separate God in parts, that it's impossible, but we
can't talk about Him if we don't separate these things in parts.
But God is immutable. He's unchanging. So God does
not begin to love something He has not always loved. And God does not begin to hate
something He has not always hated. So before God, before James Tippins
was, God knew me. And before James was, God loved
me. And that is true of all of you
who are the saints. That is true of all of you for whom Christ
has died. That is true for all of you and of all of you who
have been made alive by the Spirit. God has loved you with an everlasting
love, therefore He gave you to His Son who died on the cross,
therefore you are predestined to be conformed to the image
of the Son. Those who are not conformed to
the image of the Son in glory are the reprobate who are destroyed. I'm going to clarify that as
the weeks come. It may be a little more than two or three there. God has known us. This term,
this idea It just presses this idea of the love of God never
being taken from us, always being with us, even when we were what? What does Paul say? Enemies.
Christ died for us. Why? Because of His love for us. Paul
would tell the Ephesians that God, because of the great love
with which He loved us, made us alive in Christ. And then
he says, by grace you have been saved. You've been saved by the
mercy of God through the finished work of Jesus Christ. This is
the gospel of grace. There is no other gospel. And this is because God has foreknown
us. He has forever loved us. He has
forever predestined us. I have to say this again because
it begs to be repeated. People often argue with me, then
how in the world are we supposed to share the gospel with a lost
and dying world with that type of theological truth? And it's simple. The gospel is
clearly all humanity is guilty before God as sinners and deserve
eternal death. but God in His mercy, before
the foundations of the world, purposed in His creation to send
Jesus, the Eternal Son of God, who is God, to the earth, born
in the likeness of men, taking on the literal flesh of humanity,
and obeying where His people could not, so that He would be
the just and the justifier of all His people because He
had forbeared their sins and forgiven them. Jesus Christ on the cross paid
the penalty of all the sins of all the elect of all of history. Therefore, there is no condemnation. This is because of the love of
God. This is the absolute promise. We are suffering right now but
Christ isn't. Christ suffered, He died, He
rose to life, and now He's glorified. We're still suffering. We died
with Christ. We may even die in the flesh,
but we have the promise of glory. We have the promise of eternal
life. We have the promise, how can God raise a corrupt human
being who is a sinner to life because they're no longer guilty
and justice has been served. Jesus, the Christ, is our righteousness. So, we can rejoice in that. We will
be conformed to the image of the Son of God, in order that
He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Next week, I want
to continue there. But before we leave, let me just
give you a parting thought. And those whom He predestined,
He also called. Remember, those whom He predestined
to glorify, to raise to life, to make righteous, He called. He called them. What is this
calling? Well, we've already seen it.
And we know, verse 28, for those who love God, all things work
together for good. That is, those who are called
according to His purpose. I've already told you the answer.
What is the purpose of God for His elect? Salvation in Christ
Jesus. You will not be lost, beloved.
None of the sheep of Christ will be lost. None of them will be
lost. Not one person for whom Christ
died will suffer in hell. Not one drop of blood that Christ
shed will fail to be applied to the elect. Jesus Christ has
saved His people from their sins. He came to seek us and to save
us. And that's exactly what He's
done. And so in this calling, this is the effectual call. And
that's what we'll pick up next week, that there is only one
call, and that call always saves. Let's pray. Lord, I thank You
for sustaining my voice tonight. I thank You, Lord, for Your mercy
just in the teaching and the hearing of Your Word. Lord, I
pray that as we continue in this text, it would be a benefit to
us, that we would be joyful and anxious in a good way, we anticipate,
that's a better word, help us to anticipate this reality, this
truth. As we long to be with each other
and we also long to be with you, help us to see that you have
called us to this great salvation through Christ Jesus alone. Lord,
help me explain this in such a way that even though it's not
necessary for me, to teach. Lord, Your Spirit does illuminate.
Lord, give me the clarity to be able to explain it rightly. And we love You because You have
loved us, and we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
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