Well, it's a pleasure to gather together and surround ourselves with God's truth. And I do appreciate Tom's prayer this morning, it really set the tone for what we have to say. I was wondering if he got a hold of my notes or something. Really, just how the Holy Spirit works, you'll see, I'm sure. But find your way to Jonah. If you're not there yet, we're in Jonah chapter one. And I want to say just for some opening words to get things rolling here, our great shepherd is so compassionate that he has promised to us that he will finish the good work that he began in us the moment of conversion. That was his promise. It is a covenant promise and you can bank on it. This specific promise is found in Philippians chapter one, Verse six, where God says to the Philippians, I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus. And that promise warms our hearts. God is dedicated to making me like his son, and he will. And he will for you as well. is such a compassionate God for doing this. He not only sought us and bought us when we were his enemies, but he died for us when we were shaking our fists in his face as we ran in the opposite direction. He changed us from the inside out. And He has not left us to ourselves in this wonderful new birth either. No, he continues to work in us and bring us along in our faith to conform us to Christ. We Christians praise God for this wonderful promise. And until we discover that the means of fulfilling his promise includes discipline and chastening and illness and dark seasons in life that linger, disabilities, literally whatever it takes to prevent us from carrying around unconfessed sin or letting us wander. as sheep are so prone to do. If a person truly belongs to Christ, he cannot fall away completely. We know this. This is the perseverance of the Holy Spirit in us. But he may wander and he may become very entangled in sin. Some call it backsliding. And there is such a thing. We lose ground in the race, so to speak. And it's like many medical conditions that are degenerative. The longer we continue in it, the worse it gets. But like so many of these medical conditions, backsliding is not irreversible. Praise God for that. In fact, our compassionate God sees to that. There is a time when he turns us around. Jonah has given testimony to this very fact in his autobiographical account of his divine call to preach salvation to Nineveh. We know it as the book of Jonah, and in verses 1 to 3, Jonah receives this call from God to arise and go to Nineveh. Instead, he arises and he sets sail for Tarshish, 2,500 miles in the opposite direction. And he begins his trajectory of backsliding. Now, Jonah chapter 1. where we look at verses 4 to 16, we track Jonah's declension. I'm using the word declension in an archaic way, as the reformers actually used it in their day. They meant by it a condition of decline. declension, a condition of decline and of moral deterioration. And we don't use it that way anymore, but I'm explaining it to you. And because it's somewhat archaic and I've explained it to you, hopefully you'll remember that. But let's not think for a moment that this passage is about that mainly. Rather, it showcases God's compassion that goes out to his runaway child and prevents him from achieving his goal. This is about Yahweh, not Jonah. And it's graphic. It's dramatic. It's frightening, in fact, even a bit hard to accept. But God's compassion knows no bounds. Jonah wrote this episode for us after the fact for our instruction. It certainly shows us the lengths to which a believer is willing to go when he puts himself under the controlling influence of sin. But it shows us all the more the lengths to which God will go to recover his own. Our compassionate God. Article three. of the fifth main point in the Canons of Dort, which is entitled God's Preservation of the Converted. It says, because of these remnants of sin dwelling in them, and also because of the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted could not remain standing in His grace if left to their own resources. But God is faithful, mercifully strengthening them in the grace once conferred on them and powerfully preserving them in it to the end. This is God's work. and he will do it. He will do it. Well then, I want to give you the main idea of this section. As I see it, the main idea is this. Our compassionate God sabotages the plans of degenerative backsliders in dramatic and graphic ways by using their environment against them and their unbelieving recruits to convict and incapacitate them for their good and for God's own glory." Now, that is a mouthful, I know. Trying to get all of that in one sentence isn't easy. Took me two days. I hope you appreciate that. Let's begin by unpacking it. Number one, our compassionate God sabotages the plans of degenerative backsliders in dramatic and graphic ways. First part of verse four starts out this way, but the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea. Now, the context clearly communicates to us that God deliberately obstructs Jonah's plans, hence my choice of sabotage. Now, let me Let me show you this from the grammar, though. You've got to see this, because this is not anything you're going to pick up, necessarily, from the English, unless you know what you're looking for. In Hebrew, it's very obvious. Verse 3 records Jonah's response to God's call, if you remember, with a series of what we call, in Hebrew, consecutive conjunctions. Consecutive conjunctions. Really, and. So we translate him here with and, and it's how the Hebrew carries along a narrative, carries along the sequence. And this sequence is unbroken in verse three. And Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and he went down to Joppa, and he found a ship that was going to Tarshish, and paid the fare, and boarded it to go down with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. Do you see that? This is a sequence of events. Very short. This is how Hebrew kind of brings us along and keeps the flow. In this verse, the consecutive conjunctions carry the flow of Jonah's degenerative backsliding. It's getting worse. He's going further down the path. Even the word down is used here quite a bit. Down to Joppa. down into the bilge of the boat. As we read it, we get the impression that Jonah is succeeding in his plan. Of course, things are going well here, until we get to verse 4, which begins with what we call a disjunctive, or contrastive conjunction, but not and. It's a contrast here. Now, you see this in the English now that you know what you're looking for. It breaks the continuity of verse 3, right? And Jonah got up, and he went down, and he found, and he paid, and he boarded, but God Jonah's plans were falling into place, going smoothly. He felt the ease of flight from his godly responsibilities. Sin often does this. It's very deceptive. Sage says in Proverbs 14, 14, one with a wayward heart will have his fill of his own ways. Jonah was having his fill, and then he ran into a divine wall. was, and Jonah was running into a divine brick wall that ruined everything for him. Also, Hebrew wants to emphasize a word in the sentence by putting it at the beginning, so God actually comes first in this clause. Literally, it says, Yahweh hurled. So God is now being emphasized. He steps in the way. He hurls a great wind. If you've ever walked through a maze at a fun park and got stuck, you have some idea of how Jonah must have felt. He's probably felt 10 times worse, but mazes are meant to frustrate as much as challenge you, right? If you make poor choices, you get nowhere fast. There are false paths that lead to dead ends. Sometimes you find them quick enough and you make the change. It's those that take a while to discover that are the worst. You make a right, you come to a fork, you take three consecutive rights after that, you come to a long straightaway. And it makes you feel confident. You're chugging along a few more rights, a few more lefts, then another straightaway. You have to be getting close to the end, you're thinking. You pick up your pace. You think you're pretty smart. You chuckle to yourself, I'm going to beat this thing. As you round the corner, the next corner, you can actually see the destination a few yards away. Then you make one last turn only to hit a dead end. And you feel defeated, sorely disappointed, frustrated that you spent all this time and energy for nothing. And Jonah had spent all his energy for nothing. The Lord's intervention is more graphic and dramatic than this, than a maze. The divine monkey wrench, if you will, that he throws into Jonah's plans is a great wind, a great wind. Our English translations got it right. They say, or some do, that God hurled a great wind at the sea. Now that's an odd thing to say. Why say it that way? Why say that God hurled a great one? Why not say God caused a storm? Some translations actually say that. But this is another literary device that Hebrew likes to use. It describes God's activities sometimes in human terms for greater emphasis. The picture is as if he grabbed a hold of a fierce wind and threw it at the sea as if to wake it up and agitate it. God is stirring things up in Jonah's environment. Now, we come to number two, and we see that our compassionate God uses this environment against backsliders. That's the second part of verse four. He uses their environment against them. And there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. As a result of the Lord's intervention, Jonah's ship, his newfound place of refuge, is about to fall apart. Jonah uses an idiom when he writes here that our English translations have missed. The literal rendering is, so the ship thought it would break up. We call that personification. The ship is given human characteristics. Why? To show that it was sensitive to the Lord's intervention, like the sea. was sensitive in becoming agitated when the Lord threw a wind at it. The point here is this, this dramatic writing, is to show that everything in Jonah's environment was sensitive to the Lord's intervention, except Jonah. Jonah was not. The sea was, the ship itself was, later the sailor will be, but not Jonah. Very indifferent. Keep that in mind as we go through. the rest of this. Beloved, God uses the environment against backsliders to bring their degenerative backsliding to a grinding halt. Remember, our compassionate God will use whatever it takes to get backsliders to change, to change course. The storm, the raging sea, the increasing weakening vessel, all of these are really expressions of God's compassion to Jonah. Do you see it as compassion? They are. If he didn't care, he would have let Jonah go on his way and eventually destroy himself. But God is compelled, you see, obligated by his own just nature to fulfill his promise to you in finishing what he began in you. He will finish it. It's his promise. That would include giving us enough rope to hang ourselves at times that he could come along and rescue us. Backsliders would not recognize, of course, God's expressions of compassion in the thick of their dissent. It's only when they have been rescued that they, with a repentant heart, can look back and they can see for themselves just how God's hand moved and saved them. Jonah obviously did, which is why he wrote his autobiographical account. Now, let's see more of God's compassion displayed through Jonah's recruits, and that would be the mariners themselves. Number three, our compassionate God uses backsliders, unbelieving recruits to convict them. But what I mean by this is, as backsliding becomes more degenerate, believers look less like Christians and more like their old unregenerate selves. And they seek refuge not in Christ, not in His Church, but in the world. and they keep company with unbelievers. And it can get this bad. Again, the sentence of Dort, Article 5, the effects of such serious sin, it says this, quote, by such monstrous sins, They greatly offend God, deserve the sentence of death, grieve the Holy Spirit, suspend the exercise of faith, severely wound the conscience, and sometimes lose the awareness of grace for a time, until after they have returned to the right way by genuine repentance, God's fatherly face again shines upon them. It can get very bad. Maybe you know this by personal experience. He finds in them a kindred spirit, you see. And he recruits them, so to speak. He hires them to take him to Tarshish to help him on his way down. But even here, the Lord can, in his sovereign goodness, use these recruits to convict the backslider. And I believe Jonah uses the sailors on this ship, I mean Jonah the writer now, he uses the sailors on the ship as a foil a foil to his own sinful actions in order to emphasize just how degenerative his condition was becoming. Now, a foil is a contrast. It's another name for contrast. People in the literary world use foil. In this account, the sailors who were skilled mariners were most likely Phoenician, and they were very superstitious, perhaps even religious in some degree in their own way. And the way they respond to their crisis is actually meant to highlight Jonah's indifference, because it was so different. You can see the contrast. In other words, their reactions are the backdrop to highlighting Jonah's indifference. So it puts him to shame, really. And God uses this to bring conviction. You know, it's quite pathetic when a Christian is outdone by the world in areas of morality and spirituality. Let me show you what I mean. And keep in mind that these examples are more proof of God's compassion to Jonah that any future people of God reading Jonah would surely see. Everything we would expect Jonah to do as a prophet, he doesn't do. But he does the opposite, acting worse than an unbeliever. I have eight examples. Backsliders don't show greater responsibility to handle their situation. Now this is in comparison to the sailors. The text makes a deliberate contrast between the fearful sailors on the one hand, who are crying out each to his God and throwing the ship's cargo over in order to lighten the ship, and Jonah on the other hand, who was fast asleep in the bilge of the ship, the very bottom of the ship. Number two, backsliders don't practice greater emphasis on interceding for others. The captain approached Jonah and said, what are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your God. Maybe this God will consider us and we won't perish. Now the captain is astounded that Jonah is indifferent to what's going on. Even an average superstitious pagan calls out to his God and intercedes on behalf of the crew, but not this guy. Through the captain's words, the Lord brings more conviction. The irony, by the way, is the captain uses the exact same formula or words that God used when he called Jonah, arise, go. Captain says, arise, go and pray to your God. Jonah would have picked up on that right away. And of course, he did because he wrote about it. Number three, backsliders don't show greater desire for the will of their god, as these pagan sailors do. These superstitious sailors had to ask Jonah to plead with his god for mercy. Pray to your god. Perhaps he will have regard for us so that we'll not perish. Jonah must have been put to shame by their request. Remember, he was a prophet of God sent to the lost Gentiles to evoke their repentance. He should have been asking them to do this. He should have been interceding on their behalf. And then we see the sailors resorting to divining, divining an outcome through the common ancient practice of casting lots. Come on, let's cast lots. Then we'll know who it is to blame for this trouble we're in. Well, apparently the way they cast their lots pointed to Jonah. Now, according to them, the gods had spoken, right? The gods directed this. This is how they divine the will of the gods. We would say no. No, there's no divining there. These means really are subject to to chance and the laws of probability. That's all. And having said that, though, we know that God had to decree the outcome anyway, right? Proverbs 16.33 says, The law is cast into the lap, but its very decision is from the Lord. So it doesn't really matter what they're going to do. God will have his way. He is sovereign. And he makes it turn out so that the lots point to Jonah. We know that the apostles themselves, if you remember, used lots when they were trying to find a replacement for Judas. And you might even wonder if lot casting is something we would use today. It's much like rolling the dice or flipping a coin. You need to keep in mind, and I don't have time to get into this, but you have to keep in mind that both candidates for the position of apostle were already qualified to become apostles. Their job was just to choose one. And so they cast the lots, and the lot fell on one of them, and that was the one that the Lord obviously had chosen in his divine decree, looking back. But it's important to understand that God's will in terms of who is qualified was already decided. Both were qualified. It was just a matter of choosing one over the other. Moving right along, number four, backsliders don't show greater loyalty to their own belief system compared to pagans. They said to him, look, tell us, tell us who's to blame for this trouble we're in. What's your business? And where are you from? What is your country? What are your people? And he answered, I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were seized by a great fear. And they said to him, what have you done? The men knew he was fleeing from the Lord's presence because Jonah told them. Now, the sailors were terrified by what they learned. And once again, Jonah, in writing this, grammatically put an emphasis on Yahweh as his God. This doesn't come through in the English. The English translation misses it. Jonah says, Yahweh, the Lord, the creator of the land and the sea, is who I worship. So he switches it around. The English puts it the other way. The sailors understood him loud and clear. Oh, Jonah's God is sovereign over the land and the sea and that their trouble is the result of his disobedience. And their response in verse 10 is yet another example of how much their actions put Jonah to shame. It says, what have you done? The Hebrew is stronger. What in the world have you done? Once again, not even the most superstitious pagans would dream of defying their gods in the way that Jonah has his. Number five, backsliders don't show greater command of their situation or the confession of sin from their neighbors. So they said to him, what should we do with you that the sea would calm down for us? But the sea was getting worse and worse. And he asked them, pick me up, hurl me into the sea so that it'll be calm. For I know that I am to blame for this great storm that is against you. The sailors wanted to take action where Jonah wanted to be left alone. They induced Jonah to confess when he should have been the one under different circumstances to induce their confession. They discover what needs to be done to please Jonah's God, since Jonah had not pleased his God. And he's honest with them, realizing that this is probably the end of the line for him. Number six, backsliders don't show greater effort to save life. This is in verse 13. Interestingly enough, they're hesitant to throw Jonah overboard. It says, nevertheless, the men rode harder to get back to dry land, but they couldn't because the sea was raging against them more and more. So the sailors wanted to preserve everyone's life on board, where Jonah didn't care whether everyone went down with the ship. Number seven, backsliders don't show greater recognition of Yahweh's sovereign hand in their trouble or for need of his deliverance. These superstitious pagans actually acknowledge Jonah's God and his sovereign power, where Jonah had been ignoring it. And in the absence of any cry for mercy and protection from Jonah, these sailors cried out, Lord, please don't let us perish on account of this man. And finally, the eighth example, backsliders don't show a great caution in relating to the true God. It must have been convicting for Jonah to see the sailors at this point relating to his God with such reverential respect. They resolved to take Jonah's advice, but not lightly. Don't charge us with innocent blood, for you, Lord, have done as you please, they say. He seemed to have a sense of accountability before the sovereign God who does as he pleases. They didn't want to be guilty of murder. In contrast, Jonah was very insensitive to grieving Yahweh, and he was not bothered at all that he had put their lives in jeopardy. A thought must have occurred to him that under different circumstances, he would not have been bothered to jeopardize his own life for the sake of these unsaved sailors who need saving." And so we see that in a degenerative backsliding, As situations go from bad to worse, God's once proud champion acts no better than unbelievers, indeed worse than the average superstitious unbeliever out there. I am reminded of the member of the Corinthian church who was sleeping with his stepmother, of which Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5.1, was a sexual immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles." You can get that bad. Backsliders may run for cover from the holiness of God, but wherever they go, they are sure to run face first into our compassionate God. who uses their very environment against them to turn them around. Now there's one more, there's more to this theme, one more point I would like to make. It's in verses 15 and 16. Our compassionate God uses the backsliders' unbelieving recruits to incapacitate him for his good, and at the same time to show compassion to these recruits for the glory of his reputation. Not only do we find that God turns Jonah's environment against him, as well as uses the pagan recruits as a foil to convict him, but now he uses these sailors in a greater way. He uses the backsliders' unbelieving recruits to incapacitate him for his good. They pick him up, and they threw Jonah into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. Like turning off a light with a flick of the switch, God turns the raging sea immediately into a glassy sea. And all is calm and quiet. As fast as it came, it went. The theme of hurling is picked up in this verse. At the beginning, you might remember, God hurled a great wind at the sea. to stop Jonah's plans. Now, he hurls Jonah through these human sailors at the sea. What Jonah thought was his refuge and ticket out of his godly responsibility became God's means to put an end to his backsliding. That's compassion. Jonah is in the very last place he thought he would be and exactly where God wanted it to be, in the sea. Number two, God shows compassion on these unbelieving recruits for the glory of his reputation. How wonderful is this? In verse 16, we see that that this is not the end of a bad situation by any means. Where Jonah had failed, the Lord saw fit to make his good reputation known to these men, albeit in a crisis. But sometimes a crisis is just what an unbeliever needs to be moved to give serious thought to the God of the Bible. We read, the men were seized by great fear of the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Now this bit of account is interesting. We have to assume that much later, after Jonah finished in Nineveh, he would have chased up with these sailors back at Joppa, you know, at a later date to get their full testimony. And we may understand their fear to be a reverential respect for the creator of the land and the sea. So how are we to understand their sacrifice to Yahweh and their sincere intention to pay Him their vow? Well, the text doesn't specifically say that these mariners were converted to Yahwism. They were superstitious men who believed in many gods. It is possible that they sacrificed to Yahweh simply out of superstition, that they should respect him and all deities. That is possible. But hear me out on this. It's also just as plausible that they were converted to Yahwism on the basis of what Jonah told them in the midst of the crisis. which would be more than what the text reports. You might remember it says Jonah told them that he was running from Yahweh, and he may have told them more. There are certain phrases that would suggest that they knew more than Jonah actually records here for us. Also, while it's not necessary for the argument of the book to see these men as converted, it certainly enhances the argument. It seems to make better sense to understand conversion of Gentile sailors in a book that is designed to cultivate Yahweh's compassion in us for the lost Gentiles, even our enemies. So having said that, I want to leave you with three applicational thoughts, only three. Number one, this this account emphasizes. Oh, I should say the emphasis of this text is God's compassion on his elect, which is all the more highlighted during backsliding episodes. Jonah can testify to to this personally. It's his own experience. God is always out for our good and will succeed in bringing it about even if we are disobedient. He will. work out his will in our lives. He said to backsliding Israel through Jeremiah the prophet, return, backsliding Israel, says the Lord. I will not cause my anger to fall on you, for I am merciful, says the Lord. I will not remain angry forever, only acknowledge your iniquity that you have transgressed against the Lord your God. Jeremiah 3, 12 and 13. And later, through the prophet Hosea, He says, I will heal Israel's backsliding. I will love them freely for my anger has turned away from them. These verses, while from an Old Testament context, highlight God's willingness to forgive and restore those who return to him and his intention to bring them back. Now with all Old Testament passages that we pull important principles from, it's important that we go to the New Testament to support them. And I think in Luke 22 we have a perfect confirmation in the words of Christ that are at the same time frightening and comforting. Jesus said to Simon, and you will know the context, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. The sobering reality is that we fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil to stay the course for the rest of our Christian lives. We will always fight. And we will fall along the way. But our great comfort is that Jesus has already prayed for us. Isn't that astounding? Do you ever remind yourself that Jesus has prayed for you? so that when you fall, you will return humbled, which is an inevitable consequence of Jesus' prayer. He expects us then to go on to minister to others. Let's never doubt the great compassion God has for our weak frames and his loyalty to us, his covenant people, to move heaven and earth to bring us back and propel us forward. George Matheson, the Scottish minister, captured the essence of this truth in his sublime hymn, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go. The first verse, O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be. Paul says in 2 Timothy 2.13, if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Number two, a corollary to this first application of thought is this one. We should never use God's compassion as an excuse to be lax in our good fight of faith. Never. We don't want to bank on the fact that God will always be compassionate to us as a reason to limp along the straight and narrow. On the contrary, God's compassion should motivate us to live out, or to live for him, rather, our gratitude for his gift of eternal life, and also to be compassionate to others, which, by the way, is a greater point that Jonah will develop later. I'm not aware of anyone in PRBC that has begun a degenerative backslide. By all appearances, I trust everyone is fighting the good fight. But appearances can be deceiving, and I don't know your heart. If I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, which I am willing to do, then we might ask, of what benefit then is this passage to us? And that's easy. It is a sobering warning not to let things get out of hand. That what happened to one of God's prophets can happen to the best of saints. The best of saints. that we cannot rest on our maturity or even years of Christian life. Sin still indwells us, and though it no longer has mastery over us, we can give in to it and enslave ourselves to it at any time and be led by the nose into gross sin. Let's not underestimate the dangers of giving into the lusts of the flesh. The caution in 2 Peter 3, 17 and 18 is so appropriate. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unscrupulous people and lose your own firm commitment, but grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. and Savior Jesus Christ, to Him be glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. And let's take every precaution to stay the course. God's use of means in the perseverance of the saints, as it says in Canons of Dort, again. I told you we'd spend a lot of time in this. And just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so God preserves, continues, and completes his work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments. Psalm 94.12. Blessed is the man whom you discipline, Lord, and whom you teach from your law so that you may grant him relief from the days of adversity. Let me hasten on to number three. There is a third applicational principle here. This passage is an encouragement to us to arise and go boldly into God's service and have compassion on others. get up and go and have compassion on others as you minister to them. Certainly, we're to have compassion on the unsaved world and proclaim the gospel to them. That's a major theme in this book that will develop later. But at this point, I might highlight more our responsibility to help others who have fallen and who are back in a backslidden state. There are plenty of instances in the New Testament where this happens, we have precedent for this. Paul says in 1st Timothy 6.10 that people have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs because of their love of money. And again, in 2nd Timothy 2.18, they have gone astray from the truth because they had a faulty interpretation of the word. Whatever motivates people to wander, we need to bring them back. Our precedent for this is James 5. Verses 19 and 20. My brothers, if anyone among you strays from the truth and someone else leads him back, let him know that whoever leads a sinner back from the error of his way will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. is our responsibility, beloved, to watch out not only for ourselves, but for each other. We should have the backs of our brothers and sisters in the faith. The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 12, verses 12 and 13. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is impaired may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. Paul would direct the Galatians in 6.1. Brothers and sisters, if a person is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, are to restore such a person in the spirit of gentleness and compassion. Jude 22 and 23, And have mercy on some who are doubting. Save others, snatch them out of the fire, and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by flesh. I will end with Paul's words from Philippians 3 verses 13 and 14 because they're so appropriate and really it's the Holy Spirit who has written these words. Brethren. I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before me. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And our Father in God, we are so grateful for your truth, for how relatable it is, how it speaks to our hearts, how it speaks to our conscience, how it convicts and how it does so painfully at times, but how it soothes, how it heals, how it brings health to our bodies and to our minds. and to our souls. Oh God, we do pray that as we go our separate ways today into this new week that you have given to us by your mercy and grace, that we would be about your work and that we would be diligent to watch ourselves Be careful about our steps, where we go, what we say, what we see, what we let into the eye gate, what we let into the ear gate, that we would guard our hearts for we know that from it flow the springs of life. And as we do, that we would be enabled and fit to be of great help to our brothers and sisters in Christ as well. Father, this is our prayer this morning, and we know that if you are so pleased to grant our prayer, that it will bring you the greatest glory, and it will benefit the Church in the greatest way. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.