I'm going to read this evening from Second Timothy, chapter one. Second Timothy, chapter one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus to Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy and peace from God, the Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to pan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel with the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and which now has been manifested through the appearance of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. And we'll end our reading at that point. An article in the Atlantic Monthly that I read fairly recently It may have been a New Yorker, I'm not sure. The article dealt with artificial intelligence. And this has been a topic among computer types since at least the end of World War II. And the question is, at what point will we have to say of a computer, it's intelligent like humans are? Now the most famous test for this is called the Turing Test. And this is proposed by a really amazing Englishman who helped break the German code during World War II. Very important to the war effort and a brilliant man. Somewhat quirky if you ever look him up. Anyway, Turing proposed that here's our test. We put the computer on one end and the human on the other and you communicate for five minutes back and forth on keyboard. And if at the end of five minutes you can't tell whether you're talking to a human or a computer, now you have intelligence. They do that test about once a year, every two years. So far, no computer has passed. The people on the other end have been able to tell the computer from the human, although several humans have been mistaken for computers. The writer of the article asserted that this is a much too simple test. So he proposed a different test, and this is what got my attention in this article. He proposed that you build your computer and then you pose to the computer a very general question. For example, what am I here for? Tell the computer it has 70 years to answer the question, but the computer must know that as the years go by, it's going to lose more and more circuits. And then, at the end of 70 years, we're just going to pull the plug. I like that. And I like the question, what are you here for? Because that is so close to the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is man's chief end? And we assert that it is a good question, a central question, a necessary question, and that we can't figure it out on our own. And therefore, the answer given to us in the Catechism, man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, requires a follow-up question, which is question two. What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him? And those of you who have memorized the Catechism know this is one of those rare questions where the answer doesn't just begin by repeating the question, so it's more difficult to remember. But the answer begins in the right place. The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him. That phrase, Word of God, just speaks authority in the way almost no other phrase you can have does. Word of God, that just says authority. My oldest son, when he was in high school, was in a class, I think his junior year, and the question came up of homosexual behavior. And John averred that this was wrong and immoral behavior. The teacher says to him, how do you know? John, the answer was, God says so. The teacher says, has God been talking to you lately? Now, do you know what the right answer to that question is? The right answer is, yes, he has. John took it in kind of a Quaker way. And so he, at that point, fell silent. Because no inner spirit had been speaking to him on this subject, and he knew that. But the right answer is, yes, God has been speaking to me. The scriptures reveal the will of God for how we should live. You know, the fact that it's the Word of God bespeaks also its depths. There are a few books that I have read once and said I must read it again. There are a few books I've read three or four times. There's only one book I've read a passage the fiftieth time and I've said, I never noticed that. There's a depth to the scriptures and yet there's a simplicity to the scriptures that we speak it as God's word to us. As an ancient Christian wrote, we're in a lamb that may walk and an elephant swim. The fact that we assert that it's the only rule implies that it therefore is universal. This is intended for all parts of the human race, which is why Christians from the beginning have translated it into language after language in the language. So that just as the sun's glory goes over the whole earth, So will the Word of God go over the whole earth. The fact that it's the only rule implies that it is sufficient. What good is a rule that isn't sufficient if we say it's the only rule? What contradictions do we end up in? The fact that it's intended as our only rule implies that it is perspicuous. Now, if you were a bunch of high school students, I'd say, write that down, SAT work. But you're done with that unless you take the graduate record exam. So write this down. Graduate record exam word. Perspicuous. It means you can see right through it. You can understand it. It is intended to be understood. This means, as the Protestant reformers asserted, that you can confidently put the Bible into the language of the people, hand it to everybody, teach them how to read, and they can get the main idea. It's not that there aren't some difficult passages that are worthy of a lot of discussion, but anybody can take the Bible and read it, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, understand the main point of what the Scriptures say. Is there anyone I noticed this with my unbelieving friends. They with amazing. Simplicity refer to this as the Bible. All 66 books of it. They refer to it as the Bible. Written over 1500 years, they referred to it as the Bible. Why? Well, you can read it from beginning to end, and it clearly talks from beginning to end about the same God. And it clearly talks from beginning to end about the same human nature. and clearly talk to you from beginning to end about the same dilemma in which we find ourselves. We are alienated from God by our own sin and rebellion and we need God to find a way back because we won't find it ourselves. You can get that from beginning to end every part of the Scriptures. It's a Bible. It's one book. It is the book. and yet it's all these different authors all these different kinds of books and everybody gets it that it has basically a few simple central teachings. It's perspicuous. Everybody can get it. And it's necessary to realize how necessary the Word of God is. Adam needed it before the fall. You may think that it's only because of sin that we need the Word of God, but that is not true. Adam, in order to live, needed the Word of God right there in the garden. God said to him in the beginning, You may eat of any tree of the garden, but of the tree that is in the midst thereof you may not eat, because on the day that you eat thereof, dying you will die. And sin only came in when Satan persuaded our first parents that God was not to be feared, in fact, that they would not surely die, and that they could safely go ahead and disobey him. There was a lot more in his temptation that it was quite clever but that was part of it. The Bible even teaches us how to read it. I'll just mention a few things the Bible teaches about how to read it. Jesus said to his questioners one time you search the scriptures because you think in them that you have eternal life. It is they which speak of me. When we read the Word of God written, we look for the Word of God made flesh. Notice how the revelation of God is both written but also in Jesus Christ, God made flesh who dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as of the glory of the only begotten Son of God. A little while ago, my niece, Hannah, visited Philadelphia from Vancouver, and she spent most of her time with her first cousins, John and Betsy, with whom she had shared a lot of time growing up. And visiting with Betsy, Betsy suddenly said to her, as they were leaving, she says, Hannah, do you have a Bible? You see, Hannah was raised outside the church. Hannah, do you have a Bible? Hannah said, no. But she said, I'll give you one. Now, suppose you're in that situation, and then Hannah says to Betsy, OK, you're giving me this big book. What's it all about? That's the third catechism question, which is our subject this evening. The third question is, what's the Bible all about? Now, the phrasing is, what do the scriptures principally teach? And the answer is, the scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. This catechism question outlines the rest of the shorter catechism. Questions 4 to 38 deal with what we should believe concerning God and man and how we come back to him through Christ. And questions 39 to 107 deal with ethics. Let me read from a book that we don't read that often because it is so short. 2 John, no chapter headings, just verses 4 and 5. I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one that we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. There's the scripture walking in the truth and that we love one another. And there's the outline of the catechism, what man should believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. You see, the Word of God combines truth with morals, grounding the morals in truth, so the truth comes first in the Catechism. We believe and obey so that we may glorify our Father in Heaven and enjoy Him. Now, any way of life which ignores half of this is manifestly incomplete. Confucian teaching has a lot about how we should live and a lot of good advice. But there is very little teaching about the ultimate things of our nature and who God is. You can get the same thing from William Bennett in some of his books that were published a few years back. What I call a golden rule liberalism. Good stories for young people strictly about ethics. And then of course there's the opposite mistake. The antinomian, I am saved by grace. It doesn't matter how I live kind of thinking. And, you know, that was there in the ancient church, too. Paul had to remind the Galatians that God is not mocked. What a man sows, he will also reap. He writes in Galatians at the end of chapter five. Now, the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality. impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. There are three key words in the catechism answer and now I'll read. I'll say the answer and emphasize the three words. The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. I want to say something about these three words principally believe and duty principally. If you do statistics principally talks about central tendency. mean median or mode to go back to middle school mathematics central tendency principally. What is the main thing the scriptures have to teach about what to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. Now the fact that the fact that there is a principle purpose doesn't imply that there are secondary things in there also. So there are secondary things in the scripture. There are long genealogies. we just and family worship decided to actually read through First Chronicles the first twelve chapters. Some of you know what that means. We have a border staying with us. The poor guy faced with all these Hebrew names and he took his turn. There's a lot of history, especially the kingdom of Israel, but also a lot of surrounding kingdoms. There's a law that once applied Israel, but does not in its original meaning apply to us. It's been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There's information about the world God made. And all the Bible is true and deserves our belief and notice. But the mark of a mature Christian is that he can distinguish between what is central, what is secondary, and what is tertiary. He can distinguish what's most important, and what is important, and what is less important. In doing this, he follows Jesus Christ. You know, somebody once came up to Jesus and said, tell me, what's the greatest commandment? An immature Christian would answer this way. A sincere, earnest, but immature Christian would answer this way. It's all God's Word. It's all equally important. That's not what Jesus said though, is it? Jesus was able to answer the question. He said, the greatest commandment is this. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your might, and the second is like to it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus, in fact, criticized the Pharisees rather harshly for being unable to distinguish between what is principal and what is secondary. He said to them, You tithe your mint and your common and you have neglected the weightier matters of the law. Justice, mercy, kindness, goodness. Here is a mark of an immature church. When it divides itself in knots over whether women should wear hats to church or not, I see you are all guilty. I'm looking for a hat. I don't see one. Here's the mark of an immature church. When the mark of Orthodoxy becomes how many hours in a day of creation? Here is a mark of an immature church. Should you call the pastor reverend? Mr. Brother, I taught some courses back in the early 1980s at the Center for Urban Theological Studies, dealing with a lot of Baptists. And one afternoon, one of my students called up, my wife got the phone call, and I heard it was kind of funny. She said, who? Who? Oh, the guy said, I want to talk to Brother Bill. She said, who? Brother Bill. You can think of a lot of secondary and tertiary issues on which the church, showing its immaturity, has sometimes just gotten to blows over it. It's a mark of maturity when you can understand what is principal versus what is secondary. We had a fellow in our congregation for a while and we had a long email exchange. Should families observe Christmas in their homes or not? Is that permissible or not? Since I like my Christmas tree and see little harm in it, I was arguing it is permissible. We sound like good Pharisees. It is permissible for families in their own homes to celebrate Christmas. He argued the other way. Now I want to tell you what I most appreciate about this argument. Neither of us thought this was a central issue. We never came to blows over. We never argued about it. We didn't bring it into the church. We had our private discussion and we agreed. This is not a central issue of the Christian life. It's worth discussion. Now go to the word believe. I think a lot of. Children brought up in the Christian church. Often get to a certain age, maybe 18, 19, if they're slow developing, 23. And they... Some of you are listening now. Am I fast or slow developing? Aren't you? You'll wait and see what the question is. You get to a certain point and you come to this word faith or this word belief and you discover that you've always been using it this way. I believe that certain things are true. And then you suddenly notice that the Scriptures talk about faith in Jesus Christ, in the person of Jesus Christ. And you say, I've been taught wrong. I've been misled. I haven't been really faced and centered towards Jesus Christ and put my faith in this person who will save me, Jesus Christ. And I want to tell you this evening that the reason for this discovery on your part is that the Bible uses the word believe in faith in both ways. Sometimes it talks about believing that and sometimes it talks about believing in. Listen, for example, in 1 John chapter 5. I want you to listen to the prepositions in these verses I'm going to read to you. The first is a that usage. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Now listen to verse 10. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. You see, the Scriptures use it both ways, and it's logical. If I'm going to put my faith in somebody, I better believe that what he says is true. And if I believe what somebody says is true, then I have excellent reason to put my trust and confidence in that person. You see, you can't really have one meaning without the other. So when the Catechism question says, Prince, we teach what man is to believe concerning God, it really points towards we believe God, and we believe that all God has taught us is true, and we believe what he taught us is true because we believe God, and we believe God because we believe that all he taught us is true. Finally, the word duty. That is an old-fashioned English word. It has fallen out of favor. If people were today to start talking about going around and doing my duty, it would sound both archaic and somewhat lacking in heart. There's a famous usage of the word by a famous English Admiral, Lord Nelson, before the Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars, in which he signaled to all the English ships before this climactic battle, and he said, every Englishman will do his duty. Greatly praised by the Victorians made fun of in the 20th century. But what do we mean by the word duty? Well, we mean simply how we should live. and what duty God requires of men. This is how we should live. Questions 39 to 107 cover these areas. The Ten Commandments and what they mean. Both what they require and what they forbid. Repentance and faith. You know, we are commanded to repent and we are commanded to believe. The means of grace. We are told to use them. And we are told to use them in faith. Believing that through the preaching of the word through the observance of the Lord's Day, through the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism, through prayer and all the other means of grace that God has chosen to give us grace through these things. And finally, of course, the catechism ends up with instruction on prayer based on the outline of the Lord's Prayer. So there's the question. The scriptures principally teach What man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man. Now I'm going to ask you the question, and you're going to repeat it back to me. What do the scriptures principally teach? That was very good. Everybody under 22. What do the scriptures principally teach? How are faith and duty connected? How is what we believe connected to how we live? The Scriptures say that faith results in good works and that faith without works is dead. Faith results in good works and faith without works is dead. That's what the Scriptures teach. There is at least a fourfold connection between faith. Remember, faith is both faith that and faith in. There's a fourfold connection between faith and how we live. And that corporal connection is a connection of knowledge, motive, power, and relationship. Let me start with knowledge. I believe God's Word, and I know that what it teaches me about how to live and behave, that is how I should live and behave. Now, modern psychologists say that when you take your ethical norm from outside yourself, you are an immature personality. That's been a staple for quite a while in a lot of psychology. The scriptures teach that when you take the law from outside yourself from the scriptures, you correct the law already written on your hearts, but distorted by sin. And now you know how you should live. As is generally the case, I prefer the scriptures way of looking at things. than the false gold of an awful lot of what passes as psychology. Second connection. First, there's knowledge. Here's the second one, and that's relationship. We are adopted as sons and daughters when we believe in Jesus Christ. We are so much adopted into the family of God that Jesus calls us his brethren. Psalm 22, Hebrews quotes it. Do my brethren now declare he is not ashamed to call us brothers. And when we have God as our father in heaven, as do all children, we begin to act like our father. If I ask for hands or how many of you fathers have been startled at some point to see how much your children imitate you, maybe both were happy about it and not so happy about it. I'm guessing I would see everybody's hand. Or perhaps it's gone this way. Your little boy does something and your wife says to you, see that you got it from you. But, you know, God intends that people should see us and should say, ah, he got it from his father in heaven. This was true for the disciples when they were arrested there in Jerusalem shortly after the day of Pentecost. When they saw how bold Peter and John were, they took notice of them that they had been with Jesus. Jesus says that we should imitate our father in heaven as he is holy we should be holy. There's a third connection and that is my connection of motive a connection of knowledge a connection of relationship and a connection of motive. We owe everything to our father in heaven who gave his son for our salvation and in gratitude we owe him our love and our obedience. This actually is how the Ten Commandments begin. They begin with, remember that you were brought out of the land of Egypt. Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt. And then you could not free yourselves, but God freed you. And then God, thou says to you, you shall have no other gods before me. And the commandments follow. The commandments don't begin with the commandments. they can begin with a short history of why Israel owes everything it is and has to. Our father in heaven. Queen Elizabeth the first of England who reigns in the late fifteen hundreds. She was a. She was an effective ruler who knew how to be in charge. And there's a short letter that she wrote to a bishop that was not satisfying her with some of the things that he was doing. And so she wrote him a short letter that went this way. Proud Prelate, remember what you were before I made you what you are. Signed, the Queen. Now that puts it rather bluntly and harshly, doesn't it? But the Ten Commandments are, at heart, not all that different. I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I saved you. Now live this way. You were lost in sin. You had more in common with the criminals crucified with Jesus than you might like to think. They were justly condemned to death, and so are we. And Jesus came, as we read in 1 Timothy, to abolish death, so that all those who had lived their lives in fear of death should be set free. I think all the human race understands that at some level inside itself, it's appointed unto man once to die, and then the scary part, and after that the judgment. And Jesus came so that, burying our sins in his body on the tree, We are set free from the condemnation, and we are proclaimed as the sons of God with the promise that where Jesus went first through death and then into life again in the resurrection, that is where we will go. If we do not have the hope of the resurrection, we are of all men most miserable. If you do not anticipate the resurrection that Jesus did first, you should go home this evening and never come back here you are wasting your time, it is a miserable mistake. That's what Paul writes to the Corinthians. We owe all that we are and all that we have and all that we will be to Jesus Christ. How dare we say, and I'll just now live just the way I please. There is a fourth relationship between knowledge of God and man and duty. And that's a relationship of power. We should not leave power talk to the charismatic. We have a new nature in Christ and that new nature deep within us. Put there as our hearts of stone were replaced with hearts of flesh. Put there as we went from death to life. Though that new nature gives us a power to obey from the heart that was missing before. I had a, this is some years ago, couple in my congregation and husband and wife were having a series of tips and so I went out to visit them and before I went out to visit them, I got on the computer and I typed in a Bible verse, did the largest possible font I could get on one sheet and then when I got there, when I was done, I gave it to them and I said, you must put this on your refrigerator. If you do not forgive one another from the heart. You remember that as a Jesus conclusion to a little discussion of forgiveness. If you do not forgive one another from the heart. But where do we get the power to do that from the heart? That we really and truly forgive from the heart or we really and truly from the heart pray. Where do these things come from? Well, you know, if you're dead in sin, you can go through the motions, but you can't do it from the heart. But if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things have passed away, new things have come. That's why we're told every day, put off the old man and put on the new man, put off the old clothes and put on the new clothes. When I was in graduate school, I used to ride the trolley and then the subway into the University of Pennsylvania. And I used to sort of be amused at young men my age who suddenly got in a job with a big insurance corporation in the city who'd spent four years through college dressing in blue jeans and sweatshirts. I see some of that here this evening. It's okay right now. Now, working for the insurance company, it looks like me. Isn't this nice? Jacket, tie, white shirt, right? And you know, a lot of them looked ill at ease dressed like this. This is what amused me. I was in graduate school. I could still dress like a slob. And here they were, and they had to dress up and fit the clothes that were appropriate to them as they went to work. And they looked ill at ease, but that was the uniform they had to wear. You know, when we become Christians, we now put on a new way of behaving, a new way of thinking, a new way of praying, a new way of being in Jesus Christ. and we have power to do so because the Holy Spirit has given us new life and the Holy Spirit is Christ's gift to us to be our guide and friend, bringing to our mind those things that the Scriptures teach when we most need to know them so that he leads us to repentance and new life in Christ. So when the Catechism puts together what man should believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. These are things that are tightly connected in our lives. They're connected by knowledge. They're connected by relationship to our father in heaven. They're connected by power and they're connected by motive. Without God's word made flesh and without God's word written in the scriptures. We would have no true knowledge of God or of our duty. Now, people in the West, actually throughout history, have looked for alternatives to God speaking to us. There's the alternative of natural theology. That's really the first part of Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. True enough. Paul says the same thing in Romans chapter 1, true enough. But what can we learn from God's creation? Well, the Scriptures say we should learn this, that there is one God, that He is powerful beyond our imaginings, and that He is good, and that we owe Him thanks. Now that is a lot. But it is not all that we need. And many do not have the clarity of sight to see that without the aid of the spectacles of the Scriptures. There are others who simply trust in the traditions handed down to them by their fathers. But the difficulty there is that with the passing of generations, traditions become corrupt. There is the inner light folly of the Quakers of the 17th and 18th centuries that I referred to early. I'll say nothing more. Do you know the most serious alternative to the Scriptures is not natural theology or tradition or the inner light. Although a lot of newagers are kind of tense or the fuzzy version of the inner light. It's new prophets. New prophets who come along and say, well, the Bible is fine, but you need this also. Here's what you need to know about all prophets who claim to be prophets since Jesus Christ. You need to know, first of all, that Jesus Christ is God's last word to mankind. As Hebrews says, God, who at sundry times and in various manners spoke to our fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son. When Jesus was asked a question and answered as he so often did with the story, the story had to do with a man who builds a vineyard. He goes away. He wants some rent from the vineyard. He sends some servants. They don't give the servants any of the rent. They send some more servants. They kill a couple of servants. And he says, I'll send my son. Surely they will respect my son. You see, Jesus claims to be God's last and final word to humanity. We await his coming. So what do you say about all of those since then to a claim to be prophets. Do we need the Book of Mormon. Do we need Joseph Smith. Do we need the Koran. Do we need Muhammad. Do we need Son Young Moon. I forget what he wrote. You know, if you read the Book of Jude, the Book of Jude will unmask false prophets, and it will tell you what they're really about. I won't go into the history, but some of you will know enough to know some of what I'm talking about. False prophets are about three things. Power, money, and women. Judge them by their works. We do not need them. We have in Jesus Christ the full and final Word of God. How could he have more to say than what he said to us through the Word made flesh? So only the Bible binds us fully to believe and to obey. What have we been given so that we know how to glorify and enjoy God? We've been given the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments. And what do they teach us about? Well, they teach us what to believe concerning God, And they teach us what duty God requires of man. And now you know how to read the Bible. When you read the Bible, ask yourself these questions. What does it teach me about God? What does it teach me about me? What does it teach me about other people? What does it teach me about how I should live? That's called an ABCD Bible study. I don't know whether you picked up the ABCD or not. A. What does it teach me about God? B. What does it teach me about me? C. What does it teach me about other people? D. What does it teach me about how I should live? Believing God glorifies God. To want to glorify God, believe Him. Do you know how insulting it is not to be believed? I used to teach a lot of Algebra I classes. Herb mentioned calculus, but they're not all calculus classes. The calculus students actually knew to believe me. The Algebra I students, the ninth graders, they would not believe me. I would say, this is how you solve this problem, and they'd want to raise their hands and argue with me. I'd say to them, I'd say, look, I've been teaching this since 1897. They look, they look at me and they nod their heads and I say, you see, you see why you need me to teach you. They wouldn't get it. And it was kind of insulting. I said, I know how to do this. Why are you not believing me? You see, they honor and respect me by believing what I teach. And when we don't believe God and what he teaches. We are not glorifying him. I've had the unhappy experience of talking to a husband and wife who intend to divorce each other. On what grounds? Well, we just don't get along so well right now. Which, of course, the temptation of all married people to say is, yeah, well, what's new? And I find myself saying to them, God says your best possible future is to stay together and work this out. That may be an unpleasant future for a while, but it's better than all other futures. Jesus says, don't get divorces. Malachi says, God says, I hate divorce. Christian church is full of divorce. It's a Christian church honoring and glorifying God. Absolutely not. There's an amazing number of people who simply do not believe God when he says to you, I expect you to honor your wedding vows and stay married. And I'm not interested in or not compatible now. Actually, if you were going to always be compatible, there would be no point in making promises, would there? We glorify God by believing Him, and we glorify God by living as we should. Jesus says this is the wonderful consequence of living as we should. This is from the Sermon on the Mount. You'll recognize the passage, Matthew 5, verse 16. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Belief and obedience, then, made possible by the grace of Jesus Christ, bring us closer to God, our greatest and our chiefest joy. Amen. Will you turn please to Psalm 116, Selection B.