Turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Jude. Continue our study of this little book of Jude, picking up where we left off in verse 11. And I'll read verses 11 through 13. Woe to them For they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, and they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted. wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. Let's pray together. Father, we ask that what we know not, you would teach us. That what we have not, you would give us. And that what we are not, you would make us in accordance with your word and by the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. I am an admirer of the Puritans and you may not be totally familiar with who the Puritans are. They started as an English group of separatists They rejected the state church of England. And we're talking about, this is, we're talking about the 1600s, 1700s. They were conservative in their theology, conservative in their stances on things. You probably hear the term Puritan and think of it as a, well, hopefully you don't think of it this way, but our culture uses the term right as a, as a put down. What are you? Some kind of Puritan? So, so strict, so holier than thou? It comes from, of the Puritans who wrote many great books and preached and were pastors. It spread into America as well. Some Puritan names that you might know that you just didn't know were Puritans would be John Owen, who wrote a lot of great books. Richard Baxter, who wrote a number of great works as well. And perhaps most famous of them to you is John Bunyan. John Bunyan wrote pilgrim's progress and was a Puritan. And in America, there's a number of men we could point to, but maybe a one that you might know who he is by name is Jonathan Edwards, was a Puritan. He was a pastor in the New England area. He is considered not just by the church, but by the culture one of the great American thinkers of all time. In fact, he served briefly as president of Princeton University before it was what it became. It was a divinity school and Jonathan Edwards served there as president. But I was thinking about the Puritans because while there is much value, I think, in still reading the Puritans today, You, as modern readers, we need to be a little bit forewarned if we're gonna dip our toes into the waters of the Puritans, because they write differently than we are used to in our culture. If your usual diet of reading is on modern books, which is a good thing too, modern books are more straight to the point, right? They're usually pretty streamlined in what their message is, right? And I'm not talking about novels per se, but just the Christian living books that we read on a regular basis. They're a little more simple and they address things in a straightforward fashion. The Puritans didn't write quite that way. They were people who liked to approach the subject from lots of different angles. So they might write many chapters on just one verse of scripture. They might have a whole book that's just on one little section that to us would feel tedious if we're not forewarned. For instance, there's a book, I'm not remembering the title, but it's about the armor of God, right? I mentioned it in my, the armor of God in my prayer. It's about that section of scripture. It's by a man named William Gurnall, and it's upwards of 1500 pages on just the armor of God and what it means and what its significance is. And, uh, it's, it's pretty common, even for me, when I read the Puritans that, uh, about halfway through the book, I think, I think I've read this already, uh, because they seem to be repeating themselves. Uh, the, the Puritans were also big on application. Uh, they like to teach you doctrine and then apply it in very specific, very rudimentary ways. And I hope you can hear in that, there's a lot of value to that. But for us as readers, it can be a little bit exhausting, how exhaustive they try to be in their books. And I was contemplating this because as we come to this next section here of Jude, we might be thinking, haven't we heard this before? I think the Puritans came by their style, honestly, by mimicking some of the style of the scriptures. that not just Jude, but even if you go back and read some of the Old Testament prophets, you will quickly realize, I think Isaiah is just saying the same thing in a different way. And you'd be right. That was a common way to write. It's a common way to address issues. And Jude seems to be doing the same thing because he has spent all of his time almost talking about these false teachers. And he's not done. He's going to continue to hammer home his point. that these false teachers deserve God's judgment and punishment. But in these three verses that we come to, if we're not reading carefully, we could just sort of, well, this is more of the same. But if we look a little closer, he's actually giving us a little bit more color to what he's been saying so far. So far, the picture has been kind of black and white. It's kind of a sketch. But I think in these verses, He goes to some lengths to color in for us what the false teachers are doing and why it is so dangerous. So I want us to think through this passage this morning under the three headings I've given you in the bulletin. If you're a note taker or like to follow along, I have three sets of three, three types, three dangers, and then three results. So three sets of three. Three is a good number, so that's why I did it. And Jude is fond of threes, if you haven't noticed, so I thought I'd take from him and use threes. So let's think through this with just those three headings. Three types first, and it's worth mentioning what I mean by a type. A type is the way Jude is going to use it here, is he gives you three types, cane, Balaam and Korah, right? Those are the three types he's saying. And what he means by that is Cain is a type. Cain is, yes, he's a person, it was real, but people have continued in the path of Cain. And that's how he's correlating this to the false teachers. Same with Balaam, same with Korah. So he's holding up these three examples as types. And he's trying to be a little bit more specific in the correlation he's making between them than perhaps he was in earlier sections. But yet again, Jude goes to the well of the Old Testament to give us types that typify, if you would, the false teachers. And the first one, as I said, is Cain. So they walked in the way of Cain. They walk in the way of Cain. Now let's just remind ourselves Cain, was the son of Adam and Eve right after they fell and were exiled from the Garden of Eden. And Cain and Abel, we're told, present their offerings to God and God accepts Abel's sacrifice and does not accept Cain's. Cain, in light of that rejection from God, becomes jealous of Abel. He rises up against him and murders his brother. And as a result, God exiles Cain even further, and Cain charts a course of wickedness that we know people who have followed that path as well if we look closely. In fact, it leads even in Genesis to the description of a man like Lamech who sings songs about his violence and his abuse, who is proud of his wickedness, and he is in the line and the path of Cain. Now, I don't think that Jude is trying to say that these false teachers are murderers, but that they are, in like manner, walking in a way of wickedness, violence, deceit, and evil, like Cain. That is the path that they have chosen. That is the way they are going. And just note here, the verb that he uses is walked. And I want you, I just want you to see that in these three types, the verb intensifies as we go along. So they walk in the way of Cain, but then he says, they've abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error. They've abandoned themselves. There's the verb abandoned. It's a little more intense than walked, right? They've abandoned themselves in Balaam's error. And now again, we have to remind ourselves, well, who is Balaam and what is his error? Well, Balaam, if you recall, we read about him in Numbers 22 through 24. Balaam is approached by the Moabites to come and pronounce a curse of judgment on Israel. And they promise him money in exchange for this evil. And Balaam agrees. Balaam agrees to do this. But the Lord rebukes Balaam and even uses, as you probably remember, uses his own donkey to speak the words of the Lord to Balaam to curb his intentions. But the Old Testament and the New always view Balaam as a negative example. Balaam doesn't end up taking, carrying out his plot, but only because the Lord restrained him. Balaam was willing to sell out his own integrity and morals for the gain of money, to lead Israel into sin and to pronounce a curse upon them. That is Balaam's error. He was greedy. He was greedy. And he's, and Jude is saying these false teachers are just like him. They, they teach what they know will draw a crowd that will make money. They, they don't have any regard for the truth. only what will line their pockets and benefit them. They've abandoned themselves. They've abandoned themselves. They've turned on their own integrity and morals. They are not men to be trusted because they are greedy. So they walked in the path of Cain. They've abandoned themselves to the error of Balaam. And then the last type is Korah, where Jude says they perished in Korah's rebellion. They perished in Korah's rebellion. And we read about the story of Korah and the rebellion in the book of Numbers as well, chapter 16. If you wanna go back and revisit some of these stories, that will be a good exercise for you this afternoon to revisit them. But the CliffsNotes version of Korah's rebellion is they decided, who are Moses and Aaron to have authority over us? We can do better than them. We've been wandering in the wilderness at their leadership. We'll take over and we'll tell God what's right and we'll do it our way. And as Korah and his group of rebels make that clear, the Lord, there's a bit of a standoff between Moses and Aaron and the faithful and Korah and the rebellion. And the Lord makes clear whose side he's on by opening up the earth and swallowing up Korah and all his rebels. Doesn't get any clearer than that. And it's why Jude says they perished in Korah's rebellion, right? There's no coming back from that kind of outright rebellion against God and his chosen one, Moses and Aaron. There is no coming back from outright rejection and continual hardness of heart towards Jesus and the salvation that he brings. It leads only to perishing. It's interesting enough that he uses Korah last and not in the middle. Chronologically, Korah should be second, right? Cain would be first, as he is, then Korah, and then Balaam. But I think to underscore the severity of the rebellion of Korah and the rebellion of the false teachers. He puts it last and allows for those verbs. As I said, they walked, they abandoned, and now they've perished. They've perished in their way. And it is a reminder to us, it's a reminder to us that the road to judgment and the road to hell is not one paved with lots of warning signs. It is a slow, gradual descent. That one little string of the path can lead down further and further. to where eventually you will abandon all your principles and integrity and in the end perish in your rebellion. And I want us to notice also, I skipped over the first phrase of verse 11. This is a bit of a change in tone for Jude here. So far he's been describing the false teachers and he's been telling us that they are designated for condemnation, that they, will be punished, right? He says here at the end of our passage, they're reserved for judgment, but here he pronounces judgment on them. He says, woe to them, woe to them. Jude's picking up the Old Testament prophets language of pronouncing judgment on Israel or on Israel's enemies, woe to them. And it's a word and a phrase that Jesus uses in his ministry as well, that when the Pharisees are so stuck in their ways, Jesus pronounces woes upon the Pharisees if they will not heed his wisdom. And Jude picks it up here. He's pronouncing judgment on these false teachers. So our three types, as I said, they walked in the way of Cain, they abandoned themselves in the error of Balaam, and they perished in the rebellion of Korah. Now we can move on to the three dangers, the three dangers. The first one is that they are hidden reefs. They are hidden reefs is how Jude describes them. And some of your Bibles may say they are blemishes or blots or stains. And I think that the translation here in the ESV that I'm reading, the hidden reefs is the more accurate one. There is good reason why some have chosen to translate this as blemishes. There is a parallel passage to this in Second Peter. Second Peter 2. Second Peter 2.13, he says, they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. So even the context of 2 Peter seems similar to Jude here. And it has led some to think that that is a better translation, that Jude is saying the same thing that Peter is. I'm not convinced of that. One reason is that the Greek word here is actually a bit different. If we're careful reading our Greek, it is different. It changes the meaning of the word. And I think Jude has something different in mind to teach us by calling them hidden reefs. at your love feasts. So now it begs the question, well, what is a hidden reef and what is a love feast? That sounds odd to me. Well, let's take them in reverse order. Let's talk about love feasts. In actual fact, a love feast is something that we are doing even today. We took the Lord's supper together and we will share in a meal together afterwards. And that is essentially what they did and that they just called them love feasts. I think for some obvious reasons that we don't use the term love feast, that would be a little odd, probably a little off-putting to some visitors as well. What does that mean? So we call them fellowship meals. I think that's wise. But the practice is pretty much the same. They would either take the Lord's Supper and then have a meal together or they would have a meal together and then at the end take the Lord's Supper. It could vary depending on region or day or time. That's essentially all it is. They're just having a meal together and they're taking the Lord's supper together. So now Jude calls them hidden reefs at these love feasts. What is a hidden reef? Well, if we think about being on a boat, coming back to shore, best practice, I'm no sailor, but best practice when you're coming back to shore, right, is to go nice and slow, nice and easy, not be too, you know, not be doing this, right, with your boat. You want to just back it in or pull it in real slow because you never know what's under the waves, right? You never know what could be hiding right underneath there. It could be a big reef that if you're coming in full speed to come onto the shore, you'll hit that reef and it'll just rip your boat right apart. It's a danger right under the surface that a good sailor knows I'm either going to use today, right? I'm sure we have instruments that can detect those things and they can find the best place to go. But even without the instruments, they know I've got to go nice and slow. Be very careful when I'm docking my boat. I don't want to hit one of these hidden reefs, this big chunk of rock that could shipwreck me. And that's what Jude calls them. They are these hidden little chunks of rock. What does that mean? Well, it seems to me, he's saying, they eat with you. They take the Lord's supper with you. They may even have convinced you that they are just like you, but they are a hidden danger to you. Now, do you see how that's a different teaching than that there are blots and blemishes? That's a stain. Now, both things are true, right? But they're both true. But Jude has something else in view here. Peter seems to be addressing they're a stain on your fellowship, which is true, but a stain sticks out, right? If I had a big stain on my shirt, you all would probably be looking at it going, why does he have a big stain on his shirt? Doesn't he do his laundry? It stands out, but a hidden reef just hides there right underneath the waves and it can do great damage. That's who these people are. They've blended in with you. They've made you think you're safe and you eat with them and you take the Lord's supper with them, but they are not like you. Their lives are revealing that they are walking in the way of Cain. They are rebellious like Korah. They are greedy for gain. And if you're not careful, you can shipwreck your soul. Second danger, is connected to this one, they are shameless. They are shameless. He says, they feast with you in verse 12 without fear. They feast with you without fear. Now that means that they know exactly what they're doing. They know the treachery that they are. They know that they're lying in wait. to snag you like a hidden reef, and yet they don't care. They don't fear the authority of the church to call them out. They don't even fear the authority of God to judge and punish them. They are completely without guilt or shame or fear of any rebuke or reprisal. I hope that stirs in you a thought of, is that possible? to be so hardened and so cold that I wouldn't have a sting of pain or guilt or fear at my own disobedience. And the unfortunate truth is that it is very real. It is a very real possibility to so often harden your heart against God and His will, to so often pursue your own desires and will that the Lord will then hand you over to your own desires and will. Paul writes about that in Romans 1. The intentions of men's heart was so evil and they were so bent on their own pleasure that the Lord just handed them over to it. Or we could think about Pharaoh. That time and time again, the Lord through Moses and Aaron comes to him and says, let my people go. And Exodus records for us that Pharaoh hardened his heart time and time again. Then one of the last times that Moses comes to Pharaoh, the scriptures say God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh hardened his heart so many times that the Lord said, no, you will be hardened all the more. We even read this morning in 1 Samuel, how Saul had been rejected by God and had been sent a troubling spirit from God to make him upset and paranoid and jealous of David. May it be a warning to us that our sin is not something that is small. God is not one to be mocked or to be tested or to be trifled with, but one to be feared and obeyed. And that traveling too far down the path of disobedience and unrepentance and hardness of heart may lead you to being handed over to your own sin and devices. Let me speak a word of hope to you. If that description of a seared conscience fills you with a sense of dread and fear and guilt and pain, then it does not describe you. If hearing the fact that it is possible to be so hardened that God hands you over to yourself fills you with a sense of shame and fear and a desire to repent, then it doesn't describe you. Your conscience isn't seared. There is still hope for you in the Lord Jesus. There is still repentance and forgiveness to be found. So take that to heart this morning. The third danger is he calls them shepherds feeding themselves. shepherds feeding themselves. Seems to indicate that these false teachers have found their way into some sort of authority place. They are teaching something, they are leading in some way, and Jude calls them selfish, right? They are shepherds feeding themselves. And I find it hard to believe that Jude would be writing this and not thinking about the passage in Ezekiel 34. Ezekiel 34, God is pronouncing judgment upon the shepherds. And by shepherds, just to be clear, He's not talking about the people who keep the sheep. He's talking about the leaders of Israel. He's talking about the religious leaders, the priests, the people who are supposed to be caring for the lost and the sheep and the flock. And He's pronouncing judgment on them in Ezekiel 34. He says, all shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with wool. You slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened. The sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up. The strayed you have not brought back. The lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them." So they were scattered. and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill, my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search for them. Therefore, you shepherds hear the word of the Lord. As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. I judge you. I hold you in judgment, God says. Jude must've been thinking about that passage when he wrote this phrase. There are shepherds that feed themselves. They are selfish. They only care about what is good for them. They only care about what they want. They only care about what will be their preference. There is a word of warning in this phrase for me. It is not my job as your shepherd to do the things that I think are right in my own wisdom. It is not my job to make this church in my image. It is certainly not my role to teach you the things that I think are important, or the things that I value or cherish, if they in any way differ from the things that the Lord cherishes and deems true and trustworthy. And you may be thinking, well, we know that, and you know that, pastor, don't be too hard on yourself. Woe to me. if I think that I am above the temptation that has drug down so many men better, more gifted, more qualified than me, who have been driven away from the path into self-seeking things, who have been driven by relevance and numbers and pride rather than faithfulness to God's word and caring for his sheep. Woe to me if I think I could not be tempted in the same way. And so I hope and pray that you are praying for me. I know that you are, but I hope you never think that I have ever outgrown my need for your prayers, that I would be a faithful under shepherd of God for you. Lastly, we can think of the three results, three results. He calls them firstly unproductive, unproductive. And he uses imagery here to make his point. He calls them waterless clouds swept along by winds. These are the clouds that maybe in the middle of the day, you're out working in your field and you look up and you see clouds coming in and you go, ooh, looks like rain's coming. We need it. Ground is dry. They look like rain. And then you get back to work and 30 minutes later or so, you're thinking, boy, it should have started raining by now. Those clouds came in. You look up and the clouds are gone. They never gave you any rain. The winds changed and the clouds just moved along. They promised something life giving and good and then never delivered. They're unproductive. That's what the false teachers are like. They seem like they're going to give you something good. They seem like they could refresh you. They seem like this is a good thing that we need. And yet they will be just driven along by the wind. They will never deliver what they promise. Jude also compares them to fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead and uprooted. Trees that you have expected fruit from all spring and summer, and they've never borne any fruit. And now it's late autumn, and the time for fruit bearing is over, and the tree has still not borne any fruit. That's what the false teachers are like. They look healthy. They look like they could produce fruit. They look like they should. And you're there daily with your basket, waiting to pick that fruit off the tree. And day after day, they disappoint you. They never bear any fruit. And again, Jude must have been thinking about the words of Jesus. Towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, you will know the false prophets by their fruit. For every good tree bears good fruit, and bad trees bear bad fruit, and a good tree can't bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can't bear good fruit, and every tree that bears bad fruit or does not produce fruit, my father will uproot and throw into the fire. You will know the false prophets by their fruit." So they are unproductive. Secondly, they are Unreliable. They're like wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame. The Bible often presents the sea as a place of unpredictability. That the wave can just come and go as they please, right? There's no way of charting a right course on the sea. Anything can happen. It's unpredictable. It's unreliable. The waves can be wild. And all they ultimately do is just kick up mud and mire. And that is the way Isaiah describes the wicked as waves of the sea that kick up mud and mire. And Jude is borrowing there here from Isaiah, it seems to me. They're unreliable. And then he says, he calls them wandering stars, wandering stars. And everything I read points to the fact that stars should be thought of as planets. And that in the first century, Planets were thought of as very unpredictable, right? That they, they could see sometimes a planetary movement, but they couldn't make any sense of it. That it didn't seem like it could predict where it was coming from or where it was going. They had no formula for figuring those things out. And so planets were thought of as wandering. We don't know where it's going or where it's coming from. And that's what the false prophets are like. They're totally unreliable. We can't know where they're coming from or where they're going because they're so self-serving. And the last result then, as Jude has made clear to us all along, he reemphasizes here. He says, these people are the ones for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. Now he's echoing the words that he said about the fallen angels that we read last week. that they were reserved for utter darkness and the gloom of utter darkness. And he echoes it here. Their judgment is sure. They will be punished for their wickedness and their evil. They will be held to account for the ways that they have posed so many dangers to the church. And let me just say to you that that is something we should rejoice in. As much as we might recoil about rejoicing in someone's judgment, the wicked deserve punishment and God receives glory for punishing them. And so it should fill us with a sense of hope that God is true to his word to punish the unrighteous and the wicked and that God will receive glory for the way that he punishes those who deserve his punishment. But it also should not lead us to think vindictively. It shouldn't lead us to vengeance. It shouldn't lead us to holding personal grudges because we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that apart from Christ, we all stand condemned. We all have the gloom of utter darkness awaiting us apart from Jesus. We can all look back on our lives and remember time before our faith in the Lord, how we felt the sting of the knowledge of our punishment coming. And maybe you're here this morning and you've never considered the fact that you are a sinner. You've never considered the fact that you have walked in a path of Cain that you have been greedy, that you have been self-serving. Maybe you thought you've trusted in Jesus, but even this morning you feel the pull of, maybe I'm a hidden reef causing division and destruction. Maybe I'm a selfish shepherd. How can I be delivered from this judgment? We remember that passage we read from Ezekiel 34, where the Lord pronounces so much judgment on the shepherds. You know how he turns it around? The Lord says through Ezekiel, I, I myself will be their shepherd. I will feed my sheep. I will bring back the straying ones. I will give strength to the weak. I will bind up the wounds of the injured. I will seek out the lost ones. I'm going to do it. And the only way to do it, the only way to do it is for someone without sin of their own to atone for to come and die in the place of sinners like you and me. And the Lord in his divine forbearance and his divine wisdom planned from the beginning to send his son, Jesus. Born of a virgin to live the life that we could not. Perfectly obedient in every thought of his mind. and every intention of his heart, and every movement of his body and every fiber of his being, he was perfect. We can't even imagine that. I can't even imagine going a day without having a thought that was sinful. And Jesus did it. And he says of himself, I am the shepherd. I'm the one that promised from long ago in Ezekiel, I am God, come to be the shepherd of his people. And the way that a shepherd proves his worth, Jesus says, as he lays down his life for the sheep. He, as we sometimes sing, interposed his precious blood for us. That by his wounds, we would be healed. That by his death, we would have life. that by him taking on our sin and guilt and punishment, we would have freedom and be reconciled to God as we ought to be from the beginning. All is required of us is to repent, turn from our wickedness, stray off of the path of Cain, leave our selfish desires and confess them to the Lord in repentance and faith that Jesus is who he said he was. fully God and fully man, perfect in righteousness, the Lamb of God slain for sinners. And if we will repent and believe in Him, then we have fullness of joy and life and health and happiness in Him. Amen. If you have not experienced that, today is the day to put your faith in the Lord Jesus. Today is the day to take stock of the fact that the punishment of God is real. That he will not just sweep your sin under the rug, but he will punish it either in Christ or in you. And if you're here this morning and you have experienced the joy of God's salvation, and you hear these words and you think, well, I must be on my guard. I pray that that's our response. that we hear these woes to the wicked, and we say, Lord, would you bring your judgment on the wicked? That we could pray with honest hearts, Lord, would you bring right judgment upon them? Lord, if it's in your will, would you show mercy to them and bring them back onto the right path, that they may be beacons of your gospel truth? Lord, strengthen us as your body, as your ambassadors. to be people who contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, as Jude has been pushing them. That's the whole goal, right? Jude has been telling them, you need to be standing firm for the gospel because these men, these teachers, they're coming amongst you and they're blending right in. And if you're not careful, you will shipwreck your souls. So be bold, be firm, put on the armor of God, fight the fight, right? Contend. We must beg the question of ourselves, the hymn that we're about to sing. Am I a soldier of the cross? A follower of the lamb? Should I fear to own his cause or blush to speak his name? Isaac Watts concludes his hymn that we're about to sing with the phrase, sure, I must fight if I would reign. We must fight. We must contend. We must be soldiers of Christ. Let's stand together, or let's pray together first. Father, thank you for your word. I thank you that it has power that I do not. That any of my wisdom or learning or understanding, Lord, I pray whatever has been said here has been clear by your spirit. Lord, anything that's been said that is unhelpful or unfruitful, would you ban it from our hearts and our minds? Or would you root us in the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ? That though we were once condemned sinners, by faith in the Lord Jesus, we have the hope of eternal life. The promise of a right relationship with you for eternity. And the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. to live lives of obedience, fueled by grace, marked by humility, and I pray boldness, boldness for the truth of the gospel, that we would contend for it. Lord, we ask you would transform us into the likeness of your son, Jesus, all the more, as we see the day drawing near for him, and may our hearts long for him to come. Come Lord Jesus, we pray. And we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.