So as we come to Romans chapter
15, and we reflect upon the comfort that is to be found in the scriptures,
I trust that we will indeed be able to draw some of that consolation
and hope that the apostle is here writing about. He says in
verse four, There seems to be a lot of hopelessness in people's
attitudes at the moment, resignation to the troubles that they face.
But as believers, we believe that there is that comfort to
be had in Christ. that hope that we have on his
promises and we ought to be ready and able to speak about those
things. So let's think about Romans chapter
15 verses 1 to 7 and by way of introduction I just wanted to
draw your attention to the fact that there is a great contrariness,
a great disagreement between the wisdom of the world and the
wisdom of God. They are in disagreement, essentially. The ways of the world contradict
the ways of our Saviour. and the world's suppositions
and the world's assumptions, they contradict and disagree
with the revelation that we have in Scripture of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The wisdom of men and the wisdom
of this world says that power and wealth and popularity are
to be desired. And as a society, we praise and
we admire success and invariably we despise weakness and failure. We tend to follow those that
are confident, those that are daring, those that challenge
the establishment, and we tend to disregard the poor and the
meek and the weak. But the Bible doesn't do that.
And therein lies that disagreement and contrariness between the
principles of Scripture and the principles that rule in this
world and in our age. Because the Bible says, and I'm
quoting here from Ecclesiastes 9, verse 11, the race is not
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. And our Saviour said in his own
Sermon on the Mount that blessed are the poor in spirit and that
the meek shall inherit the earth. Now I know that those sayings
are in some respects essentially spiritual, but I don't think
we can deny that there is a practical aspect to them also. And that's
the point about the way in which the apostle is bringing his letter
his epistle to the Romans to a conclusion. He has gone through
a lot of doctrine. He has spoken about the basis
of our justification. He's reminded us that we are
essentially corrupt and sinners before a holy God, and yet there
is a righteousness which flows from God to sinners by the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he has explained something
of the means, the way by which sinners can come to that realisation
that there is no longer any condemnation towards them from God because
of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and that we are justified
by the righteousness of God as he is pleased to apply it to
us. in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle has spoken
about these theological principles, this doctrinal truth, and then
as he has approached the end of his letter, he has used these
truths, both to the comfort of the hearts of the people of God,
to the establishment of the Church in the truths of Scripture, and
also to apply certain ways of acting. We talk about the applications
of the doctrine which make a difference in the way we think and in the
way we act, the way we speak to one another, the way we deal
with one another. And so the apostle is bringing
these practical or applicatory passages now at the end of his
epistle to our attention, telling us in a few words how we are
to live in the light of these truths that he has so ably presented
to us at the instigation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he says in the opening verse
of Romans chapter 15, those that are strong, we then that are
strong, ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. We've not to please
ourself, but we are to bear the infirmities of the weak. That is the weakened faith principally,
the weakened faith who, as he has been speaking about them
in chapter 14, have peculiarities that because of their weaknesses,
because of their lack of insight and understanding, their lack
of teaching, their fears and their anxieties, their history,
their heritage, the traditions that they have been brought up
with, the peculiarities that attach to them individually,
are to be regarded as weak. And the apostle has been clear
and he said, we have to receive those who are weak in the faith.
We have to accommodate them, we have to help them and we are
to support and nourish and encourage them. We are to bear with their
foolishness because their mistakes arise from weakness. Weakness in their understanding,
weakness in their heart, weakness in their knowledge of the truth.
These individuals are weak in the faith. They're not subversive
to the gospel. They're not opposed to the gospel. They're not opposed to its fundamental
doctrines. And so in the lack of opposition,
they're not to be treated as if they are wicked, but they
are to be recognized and acknowledged. because of their weakness. They're
not to be treated as wicked and separated from, but they are
to be treated as weak, brethren, and they are to be received. And that's a lovely distinction
that the apostle is making here in this passage, in these applicatory
passages. You see, religion Judges people. Religion says if you don't do
it our way, then we're going to separate from you. We're going
to alienate you. We're going to come down hard
and heavy upon you. We're going to condemn and criticise. and maybe even at some point
we will separate from you and have no more to do with you.
We will exclude you if you don't do things in the way that we
say. And this is what religion does.
It judges people, but the gospel doesn't judge. The gospel gives
grace. And if we have received the Gospel,
we have received God's grace, and that reception of grace inspires
grace. It causes us to be gracious. And that's the principle that
the Apostle is here establishing. He's saying that since you have
known something of the grace of God in your own hearts, in
your own souls, so be gracious. to those weaker brethren. Bear ye, bear with them, bear
their troubles, bear their problems. He says to the Galatians on a
similar theme and in a similar vein, bear one another's burdens
and so fulfill the law of Christ. That bearing of each other's
needs, bearing of each other's burdens, sympathy for one another. And he goes on to say in the
opening of this passage that we're not to be self-pleasers,
but we have to work to please our neighbour. It's a nice little phrase there,
that we are not to please ourselves, but rather work to please others. And while in the first instance
undoubtedly that has reference to church members, that we are
to esteem one another better than ourselves, we are to comfort
and encourage, we are to admonish and we are to help and support
one another, I think perhaps it would be rather limiting if
we simply said that we were only looking at church members with
this in mind. But Is there not a challenge
here to us also that we might seek to please our neighbours,
seek to please our family, seek to please those that we come
into contact with for the sake of Christ? That we might be not
pleasers of ourselves, not always thinking about ourselves, not
always endeavouring to satisfy our own desires, but carry with
us in our minds, in our hearts, in our sensitivities, in our
appreciation of what is going on around about us, this desire
to do good to others also, to treat others as we would be treated. and maybe the challenge that
we have in there could be picked up and thought about. As far
as our neighbours are concerned, we've been thinking about some
of the troubles that people are facing at the moment with these
various concerns about the coronavirus and what it might inflict upon
them and the concerns that they have. So maybe we should take
this opportunity to think to ourselves, I wonder if it would
be possible for us not to be always pleasing ourselves, but
to seek to please our neighbour. And this week, have one thoughtful
act that will please our neighbour. seeking nothing in return, just
a simple act of kindness, a simple act to care for their needs,
aimed at pleasing them, aimed at giving them some pleasure
about the way in which they have been treated and the way in which
their needs have been thought about and considered by us. I'll
leave that with you as a little open-ended thought as to whether
there might be something that you could do or imaginatively
provide for a neighbour that would please them this week. I admire the Apostle Paul's desire
in his writings, always to bring us back to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's eager. It's so evident in
his writings that he is eager to bring his readers back to
the Lord Jesus Christ and to show them something of Christ
and the work of Christ in the way in which he applies the examples
that he uses for our own edification and for our own admonition. He
uses examples and then he'll say something like, now let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ. And he uses the Lord
Jesus Christ and the sentiments of Christ and the attitude of
Christ and the motivation that Christ himself felt in order
to motivate his church and his people, to motivate you and me.
So for another example, he says in Ephesians chapter five, speaking
about husbands and wives, he says, husbands, love your wives. that would have been adequate,
that would have been suitable, that would have been an appropriate
thing for the apostle to say. But then he lays upon that simple
statement a weightiness which speaks to us of the transcendent
love of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. And he says, husbands
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave
himself for it. And so what is just an easy little
statement, a simple little statement, suddenly takes on to itself a
profound, deep and significant meaning. Because we have to think
about these things, not merely in the way in which the world
might think about it, but in the way Christ thought about
it. And the Apostle Paul is always eager to bring Christ into our
thinking in these ways in which we live and act and the things
that we do. Again, in Colossians chapter
three is another example. He says in verse 13, forbear
one another, forbearing one another, be patient with one another,
be careful for one another and forgiving one another. If any
man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so
also do ye. And we think, yes, it's a good
principle for us to forbear and forgive one another. but then
he adds to it, as Christ forgave you. And we see the profoundness
and the import of the way in which we are to live. It takes
us into a depth and a motivation which is altogether much more
significant. And as I say, I admire, I love
the way the apostle does this so frequently because In a sense,
he could pull rank. He could say, I'm an apostle,
and in some sort of authoritarian way, impose upon us a certain
obligation, but he doesn't do that. He doesn't say, do this
because I say to do it. Do this because I say so. And
certainly, he doesn't take the believer back to the law and
impose upon us some set of rules. He simply says, this is how we
should live because this is how Christ lived. This is what we
should do because this is Christ's example to us. If the Lord Jesus
Christ didn't please himself, If the Lord Jesus Christ didn't
seek his own, but rather sacrificed in order to help others, then
that's a good pattern for us too. If the Lord Jesus Christ
didn't please himself, but loved his neighbour, cared for his
neighbour, sought to please those around about him, how much more
ought we to follow that example? We then that are strong ought
to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his
neighbor for his good to edification. Because then he says in verse
three, for even Christ pleased not himself. So this is the pattern
that we have. He shows us how we should live,
and he shows us the way in which the Lord Jesus Christ lives. did that and he himself didn't
please himself but rather sought to please others around about
him. And we could simply read these
verses and we would say, you know, there's good advice here,
there's a fine principle at work here, at play, there's good truth
to be had in here and we could accept and adopt these principles
on simply this basis. But as I was thinking about this,
I realised that the wealth of these few verses here at the
beginning of chapter 15 of Romans, it doesn't stop there. It's almost
amazing to see how able and how equipped the apostle was in just
a few verses, in just a few sentences, to bring great truths and great
blessing to bear for the church. And we must be thankful to Paul
for this. And undoubtedly, he was a man
that was taught of the Lord, he was taught of God, he was
prepared in his understanding of the Old Testament scriptures
to an extent. But we must thank the Holy Spirit
for bringing layers of blessing to us. Layer upon layer of blessing
for the souls of his people. And I'm going to endeavour to
touch upon one or two of those in what's left of my time this
evening. But I'm also very aware that
undoubtedly there's much more than I can see in these verses. The Apostle has shown us in these
opening verses how the Lord Jesus Christ is our pattern. He is
our example, our great exemplar, if you like. But the Scripture
support that the Apostle Paul has used in verse 3 opens up
another whole study in itself. The example that he says, he
says, The apostle uses this example, he's drawn it from Psalm 69, and like we were talking
about a little bit earlier, where he says, husbands, love your
wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. There's
a profundity comes into that, there's a depth and a meaning
comes into that simple statement just because of the as, comparison
that the apostle set before us. Christ loved the church and gave
himself for it. Forgive one another, forbear
with one another. If you've got a quarrel with
someone, forgive them because Christ has forgiven you. So be prepared to forgive as
also you have been forgiven. And that same Power is here in
this phrase as well. The reproaches of them that reproached
thee fell on me. Let us not seek to please ourselves,
but to please our neighbour, to please others, because Christ
sought not to please himself, but said, the reproaches of them
that reproached thee fell on me. Now, just before I go there
and think about that little phrase in verse 3, I want to move on
a little bit to verse 4 and note another application, if I may,
because this is really like a Russian doll. Do you remember the Russian
dolls that you used to get? Matryoshovka, I think, or Babushka
dolls, they may be called. These little dolls that were
made of wood and fitted one inside another so that you opened up
the doll and there was another inside. and surprised to see
it, you would take it out and open it up and lo and behold,
there's another one inside and then another inside that. And that's what the apostle has
given us here. It's like a little Russian doll.
There's blessings within blessings within blessings within blessings. And he says to us, these things
are written, the things that have been written. So he's saying,
look, the example of the Lord Jesus Christ was that he pleased
not himself, because the reproaches of them, it is written, the reproaches
of them that reproach thee fell on me. For whatsoever things
were written, he says in verse four a fourth time, were written
for our learning. So he's drawing these things
to our attention that we may realise that these things are
written for our learning. These things have been given
to us. They've been purposely given
to us that we might learn from them. And this learning is the
purpose of the apostle giving us these examples. They're not
simply recorded as a story, not simply recorded as history, although
there is a history in it and there is a narrative there and
there's lots of different genres of literature bound up in those
Old Testament scriptures, but it's not simply for interest
value or historical value that these things are written. It's
not even as a foundation to explain the coming of the Lord Jesus,
because then we would say, yes, that's important, but in a sense,
it becomes redundant after the Lord Jesus Christ has come. But no, the Old Testament Scriptures
have an ongoing relevancy for us. We are to learn from them. There is an education in these
Old Testament Scriptures, just as there is in the New. Now, he is specifically talking
about this Psalm 69 that I referred to. Once again, the reproaches
of them that reproached thee fell on me. But it's... Not only that verse he's speaking
about, it's all of Scripture. And this is something that I
endeavour to stress frequently, and I hope you grasp, that we
are to learn this. These passages speak of Christ. They all speak of Christ. The
whole of the Old Testament Scriptures are given to us that we might
learn from them. He says, whatsoever things were
written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through
patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. These passages
all speak of Christ. And how are we to discover Christ
in them? How are we to find Christ in
these passages? How do we know? Well, we are
to study them. We are to study them patiently. He says, through patience, that
we through patience, We are to study these things, we are to
reflect upon them. We are to meditate upon these
things because they are speaking to us of Christ. So the battles
that were fought. the personal histories that we're
given, the biographies, the character studies, the individuals and
the national movements of Israel and the nations around about
them, the entrance into captivity and the liberation from captivity,
all of these great stories from the scriptures, all of these
things that were written aforetime, whatsoever they might be, were
written for our learning. and patiently we are to study
them. And that also has to do with
submitting to the preaching of the gospel. We are to, in our
submission to the scriptures and submission to preaching,
we are to discover the comfort that is in the scriptures. We
are to derive hope from these scriptures. We are to obtain
consolation from these scriptures. Now I dare say that there's no
practising believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's no professor
that would doubt that there is comfort and hope and consolation
in the Old Testament scriptures. But I fear that sadly there are
few who gain the degree or the extent of the comfort and the
hope and the consolation that they should from these Old Testament
scriptures because they don't see Christ in them. They don't
see Christ in all the scriptures. And that is to their loss. If they're looking for comfort,
they will be comfortless to the extent that they don't find Christ.
If they're looking for hope, they will be hopeless to the
extent that they don't find Christ. And if they're looking for consolation
in the face of their trials and their difficulties, Are they
going to find consolation in a battle between Israel and Egypt,
or Israel and Amalek, or in some character study of one of the
Old Testament saints that will be particularly relevant and
applicable to their situation hundreds, maybe thousands of
years later? Yes, if they see Christ in it. And that's the whole point of
what the Apostle is saying here. These examples that the Apostles
draw from the Old Testament is to show us Christ. Why is it that some people don't
get this comfort, hope, and consolation that the apostle is here speaking
of in verse four when they read the scriptures? Well, it's blindness. It's a myopia that is upon them
because of their nature, because of their flesh, and we can see
that because we can see that it is a gift in verse 5. It is a Holy Spirit gift of discerning
to be able to see Christ in all the scriptures. He says, now
the God of patience and consolation grant you This God of patience,
this God of consolation, this God who gives the comfort and
the hope and the consolation and the patience and the forbearing,
the God who provides these qualities and characteristics using the
Old Testament scriptures as our rubric, as our tutor, as our
lesson to see Christ in them. May he grant you this. It's a
prayer that the Apostle Paul is making. And he is saying,
may you be like-minded. May you understand that these
things are after the example of Christ. And that's the, if
you see in your margin there, if you've got a margin Bible,
you'll see that while it says according to Christ Jesus, it's
after the example of Christ as Christ. lived, so emulate him. As Christ lived, as we see Christ
in these Old Testament scriptures, so see and emulate his examples
to us, which is exactly what the Apostle Paul has done in
this passage. So what of the example then?
And now I'm going back on myself. I'm going back to verse three
to think about this particular phrase that he uses. The reproaches
of them that reproached thee fell on me. What is it that he
is saying? What is it that he means here?
He is citing that little phrase from Psalm 69. And I almost thought
to go back and read the whole Psalm through. I thought to myself,
well, since people don't have to drive home tonight, they can
spend a few extra minutes reading Psalm 69 but I've decided not
to do that and I'm going to rather leave it to you to read Psalm
69 through for yourselves. It's not so very long but it's
full of references and imagery that can only apply to the Lord
Jesus Christ. It is used by the Lord himself
in his own ministry. He refers to it. It is used by the apostles frequently
to register and recognise that the psalmist in Psalm 69 wasn't
speaking about himself. David isn't speaking about David
in Psalm 69. David is speaking about Christ.
And he is showing us in that example that it is not that David
is saying, the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell
on me, David, but as the apostle clearly shows us here, that it
was Christ who pleased not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches
of them that reproached thee fell on me, the reproaches of
them that reproached thee fell on Christ. And that's how we
begin to unpack the significance of this example that the apostle
is using here. The psalm speaks of the Lord.
And if we read it all, just try it. Take the challenge again. I'm full of challenges tonight.
I'm giving you another challenge. I challenged you to find somebody,
a neighbour, to please this week. Well, now I'm challenging you,
maybe before you go to sleep tonight or in the morning if
you have a morning reading, read Psalm 69 and see how many references
you can find in there to the Lord Jesus Christ and just see
how many the Holy Spirit provokes in your thinking as to how it
parallels the life and the ministry and the words of the Saviour.
The word reproach means to condemn and it means to criticise or
to blame or to disapprove of something that has been done. And the reproaches that are being
spoken about here are those that have been heaped upon God. Now,
one of the examples, one of the times in which this particular
verse, this psalm in general, in this particular verse is quoted
is in John 2 and in verse 17. You can look at it at your leisure.
But in John 2, 17, we're told that the disciples remembered
on an incident that transpired in the life of Christ, this verse. And they realized that this verse
was speaking about the Savior. The incident was when the Lord
went into the temple. At the beginning of his ministry,
he went into the temple and he saw there all the tables that
were set up. of the money changers and those
that were selling animals for sacrifice and they had made the
court of the temple into basically a house of merchandise. They
had polluted the temple and the Lord was angry. The Lord Jesus, he was zealous
and he turned over their tables and he sent them scurrying, he
sent them fleeing out of the temple precincts and he spoke
about the temple having been polluted by their disregard for
God. And the disciples realised that
in that moment, He was fulfilling Psalm 69 and expressly fulfilling
this ninth verse of Psalm 69. And what it shows us there is
that Christ, in seeing these money changers acting in this reproachful way,
were not simply ignorant of the fact that they shouldn't have
been doing what they were doing in the temple, but they were
actually rebelling against God. They were criticizing God. They
were saying that God was blameworthy. They were disapproving of the
fact that God had set up this temple as a place where his presence
would dwell And they were saying, well, God, you shouldn't have
done that. We insist on bringing our industry. We insist on bringing our business.
We insist on bringing our commerce into this place that you have
set apart for yourself. You are worthy of reproach because
of the restrictions that you have placed upon us. And the
Lord Jesus Christ felt that reproach personally, and he was motivated
in his zealous reaction to chase them out of the temple. And that's one way in which we
can understand this applying to the Lord Jesus Christ. But
then, back to the little babushka doll, it turns around and you
discover that there's another one in there. Because not only
is the Lord Jesus Christ saying that he felt personally the reproach
of the Jews against God and against his temple, which he definitely
did, and his actions showed that, but of course we understand that
the temple itself was a picture It was a picture of the church.
It was a picture of God's people, not a physical building, not
made of rocks and stones and all the ornate architecture that
the craftsmen of the Jews could apply to this building. They treasured it. They valued
it. They thought that it was an immovable
and eternal edifice. But the reality is that they
should have been realising that it was the church that was eternal. It was the church that God dwelt
in and dwelt amongst. The temple was only ever really
just a picture of the church as a body of believers. And so when Christ turned over
the tables of the money changers, his zeal wasn't just for the
bricks and the mortar. That would be to view his zeal
in a very narrow way. But it was for the church that
his zeal was being expressed. It was his passion for the church
that caused him to act in the way that he did. caused him to
act in the way that he did for their salvation. So as the Lord
demonstrated zeal for the temple, so we see behind that that there
was a passion, there was a zeal for the salvation of his church,
for the deliverance of his church out of this world and out of
the tawdryness and the dirtiness of this world's systems, its
commerce and its temptations and its society and all that
that fleshiness entails. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
the world for the deliverance and the defence of his church
and his people. It's the church that is God's
anointed. And when the scriptures say to
us, woe betide those who lay a hand upon the anointed of the
Lord, that's what we're being told. We're being told that Don't
do any harm to my anointing. Don't do any harm to my church. And if the world attempts to
lay hands upon the church, they will find that they have to answer
to our God. Vengeance is mine, I will repay,
saith the Lord. Back to the Russian dolls again,
because I think Even when we look at this reproach in the
lovely way of Christ defending his church, I think we fall short
of the fullness of what we have in this picture because perhaps
the most precious way, at least the most precious way that I
can discern for the purposes of this evening's sermon, is
to look upon those reproaches not as the world's, or let me
say this, not as the Jews' failure to deal properly with
God or his temple, or even as the world's failure to deal properly
with the church, but rather to see these reproaches as my reproach
against God, your reproach against God. Because surely it was us,
it was in our rebellion, it was in our lawlessness that we broke
and impugned and dismissed and challenged and despised God's
rule. It's the things that we have
done, the things that his people have done that have reproached
God. We have said, we will not have
this man to rule over us. We have said, I will have my
way. We have, like Isaiah says, gone
astray. All we like sheep have gone astray.
It's our sin against the holy God. It's our iniquity that is
in view here. That's the reproach that was
laid against God. That's the dismissal of God's
rule, dismissal of his claims, dismissal of his character. That
is in view in this matter and what the apostle is saying to
us here. So there is a question, if we are guilty before God of
reproaching him, impugning him, challenging his rule and despising
him, will those sins be held against us? They should be. It merits that they ought to
be. Will they be held against us?
And the answer to that, the gospel answer to it, is no, they will
not be held against us. In mercy. Isaiah says again in
verse six of chapter 53, Do you see what that little phrase there
in verse three is now telling us? the reproaches of them that reproached
thee. fell on me. This is the Lord
Jesus Christ saying the reproaches that the elect laid at the feet
of God, the rebellion that they expressed, the going astray,
the dismissal of his rule and his right, that reproach was
not laid upon them as it justly ought to have been, as the law
demanded it should have been. As Satan, our accuser, says rightly
should be, but rather it was laid upon our substitute. It was laid upon the Lord Jesus
Christ. These reproaches fell on Christ. And in this way, we see that
the Lord Jesus Christ truly bore the infirmities of the weak. He bore our sins when we were
weak. He bore our sins in his own body. In this way, he bore our griefs
and carried our sorrows. We reproached God. We reproached
his holiness. And Christ says, It wasn't them. It was me. These are my sins. These are my reproaches. I'm
responsible. I will bear the blame. I will
carry the penalty. This little verse is speaking
about substitutionary atonement. It is speaking about the Lord
Jesus Christ taking the sins of His people and making them
His very own. And that's the heart of the Gospel.
That's the message of Good News to sinners. That we who have
reproached God, we who have dismissed Him, we who have lived all our
lives careless and thoughtless about His holiness and His rule
and His reign and His majesty and His power and His glory,
and deserve to be dealt with accordingly. See in Christ, one
who carries those reproaches in himself and paid the price
for them. Substituting himself in our place,
carrying our sins on our behalf. And that's where the power of
Paul's example in drawing upon that little phrase from Psalm
69 takes all its significance. We see here that it's an example
to us regarding the motives by which we are to live. Let what
motivated Christ, his love for his church, his grace towards
a guilty people, the mercy that he demonstrated in going to the
cross for us, that we might go free, the tenderness that he
had for those that he loved, his bride, for the poor, for
the weak, for the helpless, Let us find that attitude characterising
our attitude as well. This is what Paul is referring
to when he said in chapter 13 that we are to put on Christ. He says in the last verse of
chapter 13, put ye on the Lord Jesus. Put ye on the Lord Jesus. Live as Christ lived. Live under
the same things that motivated our Saviour. And look again at
verse 7 there in the passage, in chapter 15. Wherefore, what
Paul is saying is, wherefore live as he lived, live as Christ
lived, as Christ received you, as Christ bore your sins, as
Christ took your reproaches upon himself, so receive ye one another,
as Christ also received us to the glory of God. as we bear
the infirmities of each other, as we support and encourage each
other, the weak, as we receive them not to judgment, but with
compassion, we do to and for others as Christ has done for
us. And thereby, we who once reproached
God who once reproached God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, having seen our sins laid upon Christ. Now, instead
of reproaching God, glorify God, glorify the Father's name. as
we honour and emulate the Saviour who has done so much for us.
I trust these thoughts and these verses, few as they were tonight
from Romans chapter 15, will be a blessing and an encouragement
to us. Whatsoever things were written
aforetime were written for our learning. that we through patience
and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. So let us just
continue and read verse five and six as our benediction after
which our service will be over this evening. Now the God of
patience and consolation grant you to be like minded one toward
another. According to Christ Jesus, that
ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you once again for
coming and meeting together with us this evening. Thank you for
joining with us in our midweek service in this way and in this
medium. It's good to see you and we trust
that the Lord will bless these words and encourage them to our
heart. We'll be back on here Sunday
morning, 10.30. Do join us and trust that the Lord will be pleased
to grant as many as possible the opportunity to share fellowship
together in this means. Thank you very much. We're about
to end the stream now.