The name of the message is suffering
for Christ. Did you know that suffering for
Christ is a gift from God? Even for a church to go through
suffering is a gift from God. Even individually for us to go
through suffering is a gift of God. We don't think that way,
do we? Think of this, though. What happens
when we go through suffering as a body or individually? It
always draws us closer to Christ. And they're providentially arranged.
Always remember that. They come to us by providence,
according to God's sovereign will and purpose. We're gonna
see that bought out today. we'll continue our study. Lord
willing we're closed chapter one today. Lord willing. So let's
read verses 29 to 30 of Philippians chapter one, or 27,
27, and then we're gonna actually go all the way to chapter two,
verse three, so we can see the context of what's being said
here, because chapter two starts, if there be therefore, so it's
a continuation from what he's speaking about. Remember, in
the original letter, there's no chapter breaks. There's no
chapter breaks. So let's read this. Philippians
1, 27, all the way to Philippians 2, 3. Only let your conversation,
remember in the Greek that's citizenship, be as it becometh
the gospel of Christ, that whether I come and see you, or else be
absent, I may hear of your affairs, remember Epaphroditus has come,
he's the pastor at the Philippian church, that ye stand fast in
one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the
gospel, and in nothing terrified. Remember in the Greek that's
nothing at all. Nothing at all. Don't be terrified
by anything our adversaries say or the adversaries of the gospel
say. Don't ever be terrified by it. Because look at this, which is
to them an evident token of their perdition, destruction in the
Greek. My, oh, my. But to you of salvation and that
of God. See, only God's people suffer
for the cause of Christ. Isn't this amazing? Look at this. Look at this. For unto you is
given in the behalf of Christ. Look at that. What's given to
us in the behalf of Christ? Not only to believe, so faith's
a gift, but look at this. On him, but also to suffer for
his sake. Both those are given to us. Isn't that amazing? My, I didn't see that until I
started this study. I knew faith is given to us,
of course, but suffering is given to us as well. For his sake,
notice that? For his sake. Oh my. And again, all this that we go
through. It changes our whole perspective
on suffering because you realize that when we go through things,
if we're being persecuted for our faith or anything, that it's
for the cause of Christ. Isn't that amazing? It's absolutely
incredible. Having the same conflict which
you saw in me and now here to be in me. So Paul's saying, you're
suffering just like I'm suffering. Paul's in prison for what? Preaching
the gospel. He's suffering for Christ's sake.
They're being persecuted by their own countrymen, and they're being
persecuted by the Judaizers who are coming in, we'll look at
them later, who are coming in, and they're preaching a false
gospel. So they're being persecuted without,
by their own countrymen, and within, by the Judaizers. All
for the cause of Christ. All for the cause of Christ.
Look at this. Having the same conflict which
you saw in me and now here to be in me, if there be therefore
any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship
of the Spirit, if any bowels in mercy, bowels there are our
inner feelings. Fulfill ye my joy that ye be
like-minded, Having the same love, being of one accord, look
at that. We've seen that in our study in Acts. They were of one
accord, remember? So Paul's exhorting them to be
of one accord. Don't let the Judaizers divide
you. Don't let your own countrymen
divide you. Be of one accord, one spirit.
We're blessed, we have that. We're very blessed. Look at this. Let you be like mine, having
the same love, being of one accord and of one mind. Set your mind
on Christ, right? Oh my. Let nothing be done through
strife or vain glory. Vain glory there is seeking,
seeking attention, seeking, seeking, you know, well, look at me. We don't do that, do we? We serve
the Lord because we love Him. We don't serve the Lord to get
praise. We serve the Lord because of what he's done for us. Oh
my. He's so wonderful. But in lowliness
of mind, look at this, let each each esteem other better themselves. Let us esteem our brothers and sisters better
than ourselves. My. My oh my. That's wonderful, isn't it? You
know why? Because we're just a bunch of sinners. Saved by
the grace of God. My. Let's look at verse 28 again. We'll go quickly over that because
we looked at it last week. But let's just do a quick review
here. And nothing being terrified by your adversaries, which is
to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation and that
of God. So we see in verse 28 here, Paul
declares, that the believer's troubles are a manifestation
of their adversary's perdition. It's a manifestation of their
destruction. I know a young man who sat at
the table and bowed his head and prayed a prayer. And his dad and someone else
who was living at the house every night for six months to a year
just persecuted that young man. Just because he bowed his head
and prayed for his food. What was that? That was an evident
token of their perdition. Suffering for Christ's sake.
Not doing anything wrong, right? Just with Paul. Paul's preaching
the gospel. He ends up in bonds and chains. Just for preaching the gospel.
He didn't start a riot, did he? No. He's just preaching. Now
the folks got riled up, but he didn't sit out to offend them,
did he? He preached the gospel. And man was Man did not like
to hear that. Natural man doesn't like. How
do we know that? Because we were there. Did you like to hear the
gospel before the Lord saved Charlie? Did you? We didn't want
to hear nothing, did we? Travis, we didn't want to hear
nothing, did we? Keep it away from me, man. Now we love it. I was thinking about that today.
He takes rebels who didn't want to ever hear the gospel and gives
us hearing ears and hearts to love him. And now, Brother Brian,
we desire to be here, don't we? We desire to hear the gospel
preached when we didn't want nothing to do with it. That's a miracle of grace. Sister,
we've talked about that. That's a miracle of grace, isn't
it? He gives us now hearts that hunger after the gospel. Oh my, takes a rebel and says,
I want nothing to do with God, and turns him into a praiser,
or her into a praiser. Miracles still happen, right?
The miracle of regeneration. And that's all God, all Him,
beloved. Oh my. And notice in the text,
he's going to later on in the epistle, we'll see him identify
the adversaries that they're dealing with. But right now,
he just calls them adversaries. And remember, the true author
of this book, in all the books in the Bible, is the Holy Spirit
of God. But he chooses not to reveal who they are yet. They
know who he's talking about, but we don't yet. But we will
later on. Because in chapter three, he calls them dogs, evil
workers, and a concision. And when we get there, we see
that. He does not mince words with these folks. They're polluting
the gospel of God's grace. And each of those is a description
is full of importance because it denotes the character dogs,
their behavior, evil workers, their doctrine, concision, those
who seek to destroy the truth by adding to man's works. So
we know right away, those ones, those adversaries are false teachers. Perverting the one, there's only
one true gospel, isn't there? The gospel of God's free grace
in Christ, salvation by him alone, plus nothing. Plus nothing. You hear a man preaching that?
He's preaching the gospel. And I'm going to say this, I
don't care what flavor he is. DJ Ward said, you know what? He
said, I'm not gonna get labeled. Just call me a sovereign grace
man. I like that. Just call us sovereign grace
believers, right? Because we believe in God's sovereign
grace and that it saved us. And that we had absolutely nothing
to contribute to it. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. So Paul makes it clear that these
glory in the flesh, these adversaries' glory in the flesh, and he goes
on to describe the flesh by using himself as an example. We're
going to see that too as we get further. He says, I was a Benjanite,
but he says it was all dumb. It was all nothing. All that
pedigree was nothing. Because you can't be saved because
you're a Jew, or you can't be saved because you're a Gentile.
You can only be saved in Christ Jesus. Right? Some says, oh, I was born in
a church. I was always a Christian. No, you weren't. You must be
born again. You must be. You must be. We're gonna look at believer's
baptism this morning. A baby can't believe. A baby can't confess Jesus Christ
is Lord, can they? And yet millions of people baptize
babies. And they believe in what's called
baptismal regeneration, which they believe that they're born
again then, and that they're added now part of the church. There's no such hocus pocus.
That's all that is, hocus pocus. All the baby's doing is getting
wet. That's it. That's it. My oh my. Hmm. So all who, and think of
this too, all who oppose God are enemies of God. And the vast majority are easy
for us to identify, aren't we? But there's some whose scripture
says if it was possible, they'd deceive the very elect. Oh my. But they can't. Because God won't allow it to
happen. God won't allow it to happen. And they're what's called
counterfeits. And they're cleverly wicked,
beloved. Because such a counterfeit must
embrace the basic tenets of the gospel, right? They're saying,
oh, salvation's by grace alone. I've heard people say that. Salvation's
by grace alone. You have to do, you have to be
baptized to be saved. Church of Christ. You have to
attend church on Saturday to be saved. Seventh-day Adventism. You have to be a member of the
church to be saved. Roman Catholicism. My, oh my. Counterfeits, beloved. And do you know how, do you know
how banks You know what they train bank tellers on to identify
counterfeit money? Real money. Study the real, and you know
what the counterfeit is. Salvation is of the Lord, Jonah
2.9. For by grace he is saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast, Ephesians 2.8.9. It's nothing we do, is it? And
when we realize that we had nothing to do with our salvation, the
only thing we do is sin. But nothing to do with saving.
We couldn't save ourselves, we can't save no one else. Oh, we
flee right to Christ, don't we? By the Lord making us willing
in the day of his power. And the gospel, it quiets the
conscience because it answers the law. It says the law is fulfilled
by Christ. And all who trust in him, right?
All who trust in him. He's redeemed his sheep out from
under the law. It has no hold on us now. Because
everything it demanded was poured out on our king. On our king. Oh my. And the counterfeit preacher
must convince man that sins have been forgiven, but still must
be answered for by the individual. Rather than pointing men to Christ,
the sellers of the counterfeit gospel turns man's eyes to rules
and regulation and the law. My oh my. And by doing so, they awake the
conscience and bring about guilt and fear. And once the conscience
is in play, it can only point men to the law. It can only point
men to the law for better behavior, since the strength of the law
is sin, right? Scripture says. Men will be plunged, though,
who do that, into despair, the despair of human merit. And you
know what? We can't merit anything to do with salvation. We are
saved based upon Christ's merit, right? And we say, hallelujah. What a Savior is Jesus Christ,
my Lord. He's wonderful. Oh, my, oh, my. You know, sinner friend, if you're
trying to measure up to God's standards, you never will. We
realize that, who are saved sinners, don't we? We can never measure
up to what God calls for. He calls for perfection. There's
only one who was perfect, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why
we say, flee to Him. Flee to Him alone. Why? And we've seen, as we've studied
this epistle, that salvation's not a man. It's all by God. It's
all by God. So why is it that their adversaries
are an evident token that our salvation is of God? Why the
adversaries of the gospel who come against us, why is that
an evident token of our salvation? Why? Look at verse 29. Here's the answer. For unto you
it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on
him, but also to suffer for his sake. Look at that, it's given
to us. See the words it is given in
verse 29 there? They're from the word used of
God when he in free grace freely bestows upon the born again blood
washed believer, the gift of salvation. My oh my. See the words, in the
behalf of? They're a translation of the
Greek preposition used, now this was really used, of the substitutionary
aspect of our Lord's death on the cross. He died on our behalf. He's our
substitute. It also means, in the behalf
of, also means for the sake of, or in the place of. Remember what the Lord said,
marvel not if the world hate you, it hated me first. In the
world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I've overcome
the world. He proclaimed we're going to have tribulation. And
look at this, we see here, it's given unto us on the behalf of
Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer. Now,
this doesn't mean we go out, oh, I'm going to go out and look
for suffering today. I want to suffer. It doesn't
mean that. It doesn't mean that at all. It means just proclaiming
what we believe, right? That salvations of God alone
in Christ alone will cause people to go, what are you talking about? And maybe even come against you. I've had family and friends,
fellow people, we've seen it, fellow people sometimes within
the church. And you're like, what happened there? Right? We don't understand. Donny Bell told me a long time
ago, he says, Wayne, you're a soldier. And we're all soldiers, all of
us. We're soldiers. And he said,
you're a soldier. He says, you're going to be,
you're standing in the front lines. And he said, you're going
to get, you're going to get knife wounds and gunshot wounds and
spear wounds all through our suffering for Christ. And he
says, but the hardest ones are going to come from behind. And
I never knew what he talked about. I was like, what's he talking
about? It does, doesn't it? They're the ones that wound the
deepest. Because you don't expect them. You don't expect them. But it's given to us on the behalf
of Christ. Not only to believe oh to believe
to believe that jesus is the christ But also to suffer for
his sake and remember what paul said paul He got he was 39 stripes
three times or four times And he says it's just light affliction
And I think he's looking at christ And realizing that the wrath
of god fell on him for all the sins of all the elect What I go through is nothing. Think of that. Now, it's real
to us. I'm not downplaying. I'm not
trying to downplay what we go through, because it's real to
us, isn't it? I'm not doing that at all. But I'm just saying,
in light of what Christ went through, even in His life, people saying, well, He's the
devil. He's God in the flesh. He came unto His own. His own
said, I don't want nothing to do with you. Oh, my. My, oh, my. These people, the
ones he gave the law to. Here's the promised Messiah,
and they're saying, not have this man rule over me. And we
all do that by nature, don't we? We did that, didn't we, Charlie? Before the Lord saved us. Now
we're saying, Lord, rule over me, please! Take care of me,
because I'm a wandering sheep, right? That's why we need to
hear the gospel all the time, too, because we're prone to wander.
Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, Lord. Take it. And he seals it, doesn't
he? Sealed with the Holy Spirit of
promise, Ephesians chapter 1. Marked as God's property. Again,
if someone says, well, the mark of the beast, say, I'm already
marked. I'm God's property, man. I'm not worried about that silliness.
My, oh, my. my oh my and in the behalf of
for the sake of or in the place of this this it should be clear
that we cannot share in the sufferings that of the cross we can't even
we can't even we can't even imagine what our lord went through we
know he suffered for us but but the suffering there was absolutely
incredible he suffered like no other man And He did it for us. He did it to save us from our
sins. So the suffering, which Paul here refers to, is suffering
for righteousness' sake, suffering for Christ's sake. Suffering
because, see, the Philippians, they turned from idols to serve
the living God. And they were suffering for that.
And then in comes the Judaizers, and they're saying, well, you
have to be circumcised to be saved as well. And they're saying,
no, no, salvation's in Christ alone plus nothing. And they're
suffering there, too. And think of this, too. Maybe
some of the brethren being drawn away, and they're saying to our
dear brethren, you're wrong. Because they're temporarily,
remember the Galatians? Who hath bewitched you? They're
under a spell. Not a spell, literally, but under
the spell of false teaching. Right? See, but God will always
pull us back. He won't let his people get caught
up in that. I look at some of the error I
was in before, oh my goodness. He never lets you get completely
in that. He takes you out of it. So the suffering is for righteousness. Well on earth, and think of what
the Lord suffered in his humiliation while he was on this earth. My oh my. He says in Colossians
124 that he fills up that which is behind of the afflictions
of Christ in his flesh for his body's sake. So our Lord's sufferings
for righteousness sake when he endured it on this earth was
because of human antagonism. we face that same we suffer for
righteousness sake but again we don't suffer anything of what
he suffered on the cross but we we suffer from antagonism
by people saying what do you believe in that why do you believe
that my oh my and he's left the church
with a message isn't he salvation is by grace alone through christ
alone by his precious shed blood alone Plus nothing we do. No human merit. No merit, no
merit, no merit. Right? None. Only the merit of
Christ counts. That's it. We put our trust wholly
in Christ, don't we? Wholly in Christ. So the saints
suffer for righteousness sake. Not only because of the preaching
of the gospel, but all saints will suffer in this world for
Christ's sake. It's just, it brings it forth
right there. Look at verse 29 again. For unto
you it is given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on
him, but also to suffer for his sake. My, now none of us like suffering,
do we? I don't know anyone who likes suffering. I don't know, but here it is. And see the word for at the beginning
of this, This verse, for unto you is given on behalf of Christ,
that attaches it to, back to the verse before, in nothing
be terrified by your adversaries. Don't be terrified because this
is ordained of God. You see? Do you see how much
it can give us peace even when people come against us for what
we believe? When they do that, just keep
putting the gospel in front of them. Just keep putting Christ
in front of them. Norm and I were over there at
McDonald's, and I introduced him to some friends of mine over
there, and this one guy, he's pretty antagonistic. And he called
Norm and I, Norm said, boy, that's the first time I've ever been
called that I blasphemed the Holy Spirit, because we believe
in grace alone, through Christ alone. He called us false preachers. He had a couple other choice
things he called us. This is a religious man. This is a religious man. And Norm said, man, you know,
that was pretty wild. And I was talking to Drew and
Drew goes, I get pretty tired of that after a while. And I
said, well, brother Drew, I said, you know what, I look at them
and think that was me. I was there. I was in religion. I was like that. I was mean as
a rattlesnake. Someone was patient with me and
gave me the gospel and kept telling me the truth. So as long as I got breath, I'm
going to keep telling the truth. Right? They ask questions. I don't seek, go over there and
think, well, how am I going to offend them today? I don't do that.
I just go over and sit down, get my tea, talk with them. And
they go, what do you think of this, Wayne? And I just tell
them the truth from the Bible. Just keep putting it forth. That's
not the issue. Christ is the issue. What do
you think about the Lord's Supper and how it should be done? That's
not the issue. Christ is the issue. What do you think about
baptism? That's not the issue. Christ
is the issue. Right? He's the issue. Look to Him.
If we look to Him by faith, by God-given faith, everything else
won't matter. And we'll believe what the Word
says, by God's grace, right? We didn't believe what the Word
said before. Did you want anything to do with the Bible before,
Travis? Before you met Karen, or before you started going to
church? I didn't even open my Bible. Never even opened it. Just collected dust in a closet.
I'll be honest with you. And then the Lord started working
on my heart. And man, I pulled that Bible out. Right? And I'm reading it and it's,
oh, there's nothing here. I put it back in the closet,
right? And then after the Lord saves me and I'm born again,
I open that book up again and I go, Oh my goodness. You know why? Because now I know
the author. Now the author has shown me things
I've never seen before. And who's the author? The Holy
Spirit of God. And who will he point us to?
Christ in him alone. And then we read here that it's
ordained that we will suffer for his sake. My oh my. So think of this too, the suffering,
the fact that Paul said you're gonna suffer, you know, they're
already suffering a lot. And human nature, you know, they
might be terrified by that, thinking, oh my, what's next, right? But
look what the Holy Spirit has Paul pen. For unto you it is
given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, on
Christ, he's the one object of our faith, but also to suffer
for his sake. My, do you imagine the peace
that would have bought them? The peace that would have filled
their hearts? So not only is suffering a gift of God's grace,
but the act of placing one's faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
that faith is a gift from God as well. It's given to us, so
is suffering. Did you ever think that before?
I looked at this passage and I went, wow, I've never seen
that. I'll tell you, I've read this passage a lot. It just popped
out. It's right. And then, you know,
you read it and go, how didn't I see that? Now, listen to this verse along
with verse 27 in the Greek literal Bible. Listen to this. And the
reason why you should not be terrified is because to you,
the very thing that was graciously given for the sake of Christ
and in his behalf, not only believing on him, but also to be suffering
for his sake and in his behalf. Not everyone, I'm gonna say this,
I don't know how this is gonna sound, but not everyone has the
privilege of suffering for Christ. But God's people do. It changes our whole perspective
on suffering, doesn't it? For our faith. My oh my. Again, the believer doesn't seek
out suffering. None of us want to do that. In
suffering, trials and tests are given to the born-again blood-washed
believer, but their purpose is singular. Do you know they all
have a singular purpose? to draw us to Christ. They're
given by God, providentially, to draw us to Christ. That's
magnificent, isn't it? God has ordained it to be so.
Listen to this in 1 Corinthians 11 19. For there must also be
heresies among you. He's speaking about the church,
within the church. that they which are approved
me being god the god's people may be made manifest among you
so heresies will pop up in the church and cause division and
maybe even they might leave but it's to approve those who still
stay faithfully clinging to christ in his gospel faithfully Oh my. There always will be divisions.
There's always going to be factions and heresies in the church, because
Satan is always busy sowing tares among the wheat, right? We know
that. And there's tons of false preachers
out there. They're plentiful. And human
nature being weak and wicked is easily led astray. You know,
I thank God. I seriously thank God that those
who left a few years ago are still listening to Jim, because
they're hearing the gospel, right? I thank God for that. Because
there's some who leave the church and don't listen. They're just gone. My oh my. Now it still hurts even if they're
gone to listen to another preacher. It still hurts but you praise
God that they're hearing the gospel. And remember we learned
that earlier in this chapter when Paul said some preach of
contention seeking to add to my bonds and some out of love. Right? So and then Paul said
what did he say? I was listening to that today.
I was listening to Philippians today and he said I therein do rejoice.
And it just hit me. Well praise God. Praise God. Some preach out of contention,
and some preach out of love. But Christ is preached, and therein
I do rejoice. That needs to be our attitude,
right? It's wonderful. It's wonderful. It gives us peace,
too. It gives us peace. And again, remember, things do
not come forth by chance. There's no such thing as chance.
There's no such thing as luck. Right? But all these sufferings
for Christ that we go through as a believer come to us by providence. Come to us by providence. Now look at verse 30. Look at
verse 30. See the word conflict there?
It's a translation of the Greek word used of an athletic contest. An athletic contest. It speaks
of an inward struggle. Our word agony comes from that.
Our word agony comes from that. We see here that Paul uses it
to describe his own life. in the midst of his untiring
work for the Lord Jesus Christ, right? God's given him strength
and he's laboring for the Lord. Weiss' translation of this verse
is, having the same struggle which he saw in me and now here
to be in me. So this last verse, Paul reminds
the Philippians that they know what he, that he knows, what
they're going through, because he's going through it too. He's
in bonds for preaching the gospel. He's in chains for preaching
the gospel. Look at it again, having the
same conflict which he saw on me, and now here to be in me.
Turn, if you would, to Acts chapter 16. Do you know the conflicts
that the Philippians are suffering? are the same conflicts that Paul
suffered at Philippi? Listen, look at this. This is
amazing here. Acts 16 verses 16 to 24. And
it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed
with the spirit of divination met us, which bought her masters
much gain by soothsaying. In the same fall, Paul and us
and cried saying, these men are the servants of the most high
God and show unto us the way of salvation. And this did she
many days, but Paul being grieved, turned and said to the spirit,
I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
And he came out of it the same hour. And when her master saw
that the hope of their gains, oh no, we can't make money anymore.
Always comes down to money, doesn't it? Always. Hoping the gains
was gone, they sought Paul and Silas and drew them into the
marketplace and to the rulers, and bought them into the magistrates,
saying, these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city
and teach customs that are not lawful to us to receive, neither
to observe, being Romans." We're Romans! Remember, Philippi is
a Roman city. They don't know Paul's Roman.
They're going to find out later. If you continue reading this
at home, they're shaking in their boots when they find out he's
a Roman. Look at this. And the multitude rose up against
them, and the magistrates rent out their clothes and commanded
to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them,
they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safe.
And then he put them in bonds. He threw them in jail, right?
Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison
and made their feet fast in stocks. He buckled their feet up in stocks.
Now what happened as a result of Paul and Silas being imprisoned?
The man who put their feet in stocks was saved. What must I do to be saved? Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. And he was. The Lord saved him,
beloved. See how providentially that all
occurred? So Paul's saying, I know what you're going through. I
suffered the same thing at Philippi. I suffered from my countrymen
too, because he's a Roman. I suffered from our countrymen
too. So this jailer and his family became early members of the church
that met in Lydia's house. So these trials worked out for
the furtherance of the gospel, didn't they? It's amazing. Philippians 1, 2, look at Philippians
1, 2. But I would, you should understand, brethren, that these
things which happened unto me have fallen rather unto the furtherance
of the gospel. So beloved God, let us praise
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. is all born-again,
blood-washed children of the Lord Jesus Christ of all the
ages must be confident of this one thing. He that has begun
a work in us shall finish it. Shall finish it. He's going to
take us home. And we're going to be like Him.
We're being conformed to the image of the Son. My, for whom
the Lord called, them He justified. And whom He justified, them He
also glorified. So let we who are the redeemed
of the Lord keep looking at our Savior. Let us keep looking to
Him. Let's keep looking to Him, beloved,
because He's the only hope we have. Whether we're suffering
or going into trouble, in trouble, or coming out of trouble, let
us keep our eyes on our King. Because all those things were
ordained by God. And they just keep drawing us
closer to Christ, don't they? They keep us looking to Christ.
Brother Brian, can you close us in prayer?