Please take your copy of the scriptures and open to the gospel of Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7. Today we're going to take a section that's a little bit longer. We'll be looking at verses 12 through 20. And I believe next week we will, or the next time I preach, can't remember if that's next week or not, that I think we'll finish the Sermon on the Mount the next time I preach. Today, as I said, Matthew chapter 7, verses 12 through 20. Let's give our attention to God's Word. Jesus says, So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, For this is the law and the prophets. Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. And those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. And those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the instruction that it gives to us. Thank you for its clarity. Would you please clear away the fog of our own sin, that we might see the truth, that we might believe it, that we might obey it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. It's easy to forget sometimes that the Sermon on the Mount is one single sermon. There's so many parts of it that are deeply memorable, and we've been going through it rather slowly, that we can forget that there's a coherence and structure to the whole sermon. Right now we're at a turning point. Jesus is drawing this sermon to a close. And he's beginning to press in upon us the importance of all that he has been teaching so far. He's given us many instructions that we need to follow, but now he begins to talk about some of the obstacles, the barriers that we face in doing the right thing, and even more specifically, barriers to getting to heaven itself. If this sermon is a sermon about the Kingdom of Heaven, now he's beginning to tell us about just how difficult it is to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, the Sermon on the Mount has been primarily aimed at Jesus' own disciples. Back in chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, the start of the Sermon on the Mount, We're told that his disciples came to him and he taught them. We're specifically told this is a message he gives to his disciples. In addition, there have been many teachings along the way that really only apply to disciples. For instance, just to give a couple of examples, when he talks repeatedly about being persecuted for righteousness sake, or when he says things like, you are the light of the world, it's clear that he's speaking to his people, those who belong to the kingdom. And yet, he is teaching within the earshot, within the hearing of a broader audience. So yes, it's primarily for the disciples, but he knows that others are listening also. So let me read chapter five, verses one and two, how the sermon starts. It says, seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, So there are all these crowds around, Jesus goes up the mountain, he sits down, his disciples come to him, and he specifically speaks to the disciples, but it's with an earshot of a larger group. It seems to me that the section of the Sermon on the Mount that we are now in is aimed at both of these groups, his disciples and those around who are listening. So we might say that as Jesus teaches about the barriers of getting to heaven, he's doing this in two ways, at two levels. First, he is doing it for his disciples. He's warning his disciples about the dangers that they will meet along the way to heaven, warning them against a spirit of carelessness or against the pride of presumption, those who think that it's an easy thing to just walk into heaven. I take this in the same sort of way that I take a passage like Hebrews 3, verse 12, which says, take care, brothers, right, brothers, those who are in the church, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you away from the living God. The writer to the Hebrews speaks to brothers and says, beware of this thing in your heart that would cause you to stray from the right path. I think Jesus is doing something similar. He teaches about the difficulties of getting to heaven. Okay, so you may be my disciples. You may be trusting in me, but you still must be on guard against these kinds of tendencies in your heart. Which means that anyone who is a believer needs to listen to these words as a warning against sin, against carelessness, against straying or departing from God. But then there's the second level where he's teaching to the rest of the crowd, and he's warning them also. He's helping them to see that they've been thinking about the wrong ways of getting into heaven. They think they can get to heaven through their own work, perhaps. He wants them to know they're on the wrong path, and that they're being deceived by false prophets. So if you're not a Christian, This message is also for you. Jesus would give to you a warning that there is a way to destruction and most people are on that path. It's a severe warning. Most people, as you go through your life, most people you ever meet are on the wide path to destruction. So we have this double framework by which Jesus is teaching these things, and I hope that that will be in the back of your mind as we proceed through the lesson today. We want to look at four main points to go through the teaching here. And these will take us through the text in order. First, we're going to see the difficulty of keeping the law. So we're going to talk about three difficulties of getting into heaven. The first difficulty is the difficulty of keeping the law. The second is the difficulty of the narrow way. And third is the difficulty of false prophets. And then fourth, we want to consider the one answer to all of these difficulties. So first difficulty to getting into heaven is keeping the whole law. This begins in verse 12. It says, so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. I think that this verse is intended to be a summary of much of the teaching that Jesus has already given up to this point. It's a summary, reflecting back. It's, okay, let me try to distill this into a basic principle. Jesus says, we are to do to others what we wish that they would do to us. And then he says that to do this is the Law and the Prophets. This is a summary of what the Old Testament teaches. That's what he means by the Law and the Prophets. Now that phrase, the Law and the Prophets, perhaps reminds us of another time in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus has used that very same phrase. Back in chapter five, near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, verse 17, he had said, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And that's where Jesus began his exposition of the law. And now he comes back to it at the end. It creates these sort of bookends, this law and the prophets at the beginning and at the end of his discussion of the law. So that when we get to chapter 7, verse 12, we realize it's referring all the way back to all these things he's just been talking about. And in doing so, he lays out a principle, a principle that gets at the heart of much of the law. The Pharisees, they wanted to elaborate law upon law upon law, rule upon rule upon rule, and micromanage your life down to precise details by saying, this is exactly what must be done in each situation. But you know, by doing that, it might seem like they were trying to make the law harder, but they were actually making the law easier. And in doing so, they were actually trying to excuse themselves from doing what the law really requires. When Jesus says, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, he flatly contradicts the approach of the Pharisees. There's a profound simplicity in this, isn't there? You find yourself in a situation where you're not sure what the right thing to do is. The Pharisees want to approach it by saying, well, let's make up a law about this. And ideally, a law that's actually going to make things easier for us. Jesus says, no, no, no, no, it's not that hard. You find yourself in a situation, here's what you do. Put yourself in the other person's shoes and think, what would I want them to do to me, and then do that thing. Now here's a way of thinking that brings clarity to what is to be done. Put myself in their position, what would they want, and do that thing. Now, for all of its simplicity, it's also a revolutionizing way to think, isn't it? I suspect, if you're anything like me, most of us don't act this way. We don't tend to think this way. Perhaps we think, well, I'm going to do back to them what they've already done to me. And in my mind, they've done something bad to me, so I'm going to return evil for evil. It's the get even mentality. Well, they've wronged me, so I'm going to wrong them back. They haven't done for me what I want, so I'm not going to do for them what they want. Jesus says, no, can't think that way. OK, so maybe that's one way we approach our relationships. You may think, Pastor Micah, I'm not that bad. Here's how I live. I won't do anything to someone else that I wouldn't want them to do to me. This is the sort of do no harm approach, right? If I wouldn't want it done to me, then I won't do it to others. I wouldn't want someone to kick me, so I'm not going to kick other people. Well, OK, you shouldn't do that. That's not what Jesus says here either, is it? He doesn't say, avoid doing things that you wouldn't have done to you. He says, do to other people the thing that you wish they would do to you. He's requiring a positive action for the good of our neighbor in the same way that we would wish a positive action from our neighbor to us. Let me try to give you one small example of this. On the property line between our house and our next-door neighbors, there are some drainage pools. They require a very little bit of maintenance, some weed whacking or pulling of weeds. It's not a big deal. It's so nice when my neighbor does that work. Oh man, I love to look out and go, oh, our neighbor took care of all the weeds in the drainage pool. Jesus' command says to me, Micah, if what you wish is for your neighbor to take the initiative and clean out the drainage pool, then that's what you need to do. In fact, it becomes wrong for me to be lazy and not do it, especially if I think, well, if I leave it a little longer, I bet they'll take care of it. You see, Jesus here, he isn't even saying to me, Micah, figure out an even 50-50 split between you and your neighbor for who's going to take care of this. Do you catch that? If you would want your neighbor to do that for you, then you should do it for them. This principle guides us in how we are to relate to others. It seems to me this is basically another way of saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Right? Isn't that how we are to love our neighbor? As ourselves. It's the same principle. Think about yourself. What would you want? And then do that to others. That's how you love your neighbor. And how different would the world be if we all acted in this way towards one another? Can you imagine how different the world would be if we all acted in this way? I even just think about our marriages. How much would our marriages improve if we each, us and our spouse, took this basic principle and lived by it? How many problems in marriages would just disappear? if this one rule was followed. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. The golden rule, as it's called. Wouldn't this be a wonderful thing if everyone did this? And you know, when you think about it in that way, it kind of comes across as a message of sweetness, kindness. It paints a rosy picture for us of a better world where everyone just loves each other. Okay. We'll go ahead and try it. Really try it. And let me know how it goes. In fact, we must try it. It's a command from God, right? It's not a pretend command. It's a real command. This is what you must do. Imagine, in your head right now, imagine your day tomorrow. Think about what you have to do tomorrow, and imagine living in this way, in all of your relationships, in all of your interactions, in every single one of them, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not so easy, is it? It's starting to feel like a burden just thinking about it? Because it requires that we deny our own lusts and our selfishness, right? And who really wants to do that? Now add to it the fact that while you might be trying to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, no one else seems to be acting that way toward you. Right? Do I still have to do unto others when they're not doing unto me? You see, at first it might seem like this command gives us a rosy picture of a better world. And if everyone could do this, it really would be. But when we think more deeply about it, we find that this command is actually a barrier, a difficulty to getting to heaven. If this is what it takes to belong to the kingdom of heaven, then who can do it? If this is what God requires in our actions toward one another's, Who could possibly enter the kingdom of heaven? There is no one in this room. There is no one in this world today who could actually fulfill this command in the way that God requires. It is impossible. In fact, it brings us back to what Jesus said at the beginning of all this. When he said he hadn't come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them, he went on to say that what's needed to enter the kingdom of heaven is a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. He's told us it's a righteousness that gets down to the deepest levels of our heart. Some people like to think that the Sermon on the Mount just teaches us how to live. We can just keep all of its commandments and everything's gonna be fine. That's not quite true. One of the things that Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount is through these commands and through his explanation of the law, as he is revealing to us our deep sinfulness and our failure to keep the law. When Jesus says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, we are to take that as a command and say, yes, that is what I must do. but we are also to see it as a scathing indictment of our own lives. I have not done to others as I would have them do unto me. This is the first difficulty that we have in our passage today for getting to heaven, that God requires full obedience from the heart to his law, and we don't do it. And often we don't really even want to do it. There's our first difficulty. Now our second difficulty about getting to heaven is found in verses 13 and 14 where Jesus teaches us that the gate is narrow and the way is hard. He says, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few. Jesus says it straight out himself. It is hard, it's difficult to get into heaven. The gate is narrow, the way is difficult. He says there are few who find it. Jesus describes two gates and two paths that lead to two different eternal destinies. One is the way to life, the other is the way to destruction. And the sad truth. It's that most of the world is on the path to destruction. Because that's the easy path. In fact, the way that Jesus says this, it suggests most people aren't even aware that they are on the path to destruction. It says, though, our normal sinful inertia drags us down through the wide gate and along the easy path. You notice that he says that to go through the narrow gate, to be on the hard path, is something that must be found. Those who find it are few. You have to look for it. You have to look for it. Otherwise, you're just headed down the path to destruction. If you aren't looking for it, surely you will never find it. The path to life is hard. Why is it so hard? Why is it so difficult? There are a number of reasons. Perhaps some of it is simply our tendency to follow a crowd. Well, everyone else is going this way. I'll go that way, too. Surely, a great deal of it has to do with the way that sin clouds our minds. Because of our sin, we do not understand ourselves and God and our duty to God correctly. Martin Lloyd-Jones points out it's difficult because of what it excludes. The narrow path has no room for anything else. It excludes worldliness. It excludes the normal way of the world. It excludes living for ourselves. It's difficult also because it's not a glamorous life, and it's certainly not an easy life. It's a life that at least at times includes suffering and persecution. Jesus will teach later that This path can even bring division between friends and family. It's a hard path because it lasts our whole life. We have to be on this path all the way until we reach heaven. In fact, perhaps now we can see the connection between verse 12 about the golden rule and verses 13 and 14 about this narrow path. The Golden Rule itself is part of what makes the path to the Kingdom of Heaven so narrow, so difficult. We are sinners, and our sinfulness carries us along down the easy path. Of course, while Jesus calls it an easy path, we know it is only the easy path for now. When the path reaches its end, we will find that it is the most difficult of all paths, because it leads to only one place, and there is no escape from that place. It leads to everlasting condemnation. There's a path to judgment, to torment, to unending death. And so Jesus lays before us these two choices, the difficult path to life or the easy path to death. And he's wanting us to think, which path am I on? Which path will I choose? Will I allow myself to stay on the easy path, thinking this isn't so bad now, only to find out the terrible news later? Or will we seek? Will we try to find that narrow gate? And though it is hard, will we press our way into it so that we might be saved? This is the second difficulty of getting to heaven, that the gate is narrow, the way is hard, and few find it. And then the third difficulty is described in verses 15 through 20. Here we learn that getting to heaven is difficult because there are false prophets or false teachers that would lead us away into error. Let's read those verses again. Verse 15 through 20. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Again, I hope you get a sense of the difficulty that lies before us. Okay, we've already been told we have to keep the whole law from the heart. Then we've been told the gate is narrow and the way is hard, and to make matters worse, there are false prophets all along the way who are telling us lies to deceive us, to try to get us to stay on that wide path. We must have the ability to discern the truth from the lies. And this is difficult. Jesus says the false prophets come in sheep's clothing, meaning they have an appearance of truthfulness to them. They put on a sense that on first impression you would think, oh, this sounds good. This sounds right. This person seems like a true prophet, a true teacher. Jesus said it's only as the fruit comes out that we see that they're false. So they appear to be true. But they're not. William Perkins, the Puritan, has some helpful material on some of the common ways that false prophets make themselves look like true prophets. How is it that they clothe themselves in sheep's clothing? What are the things that they do to make themselves appear true? For one thing, he says, they make much use of scripture. I don't know if that surprises you or not. They make much use of scripture. That doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing. And surely, using scripture is not a bad thing. But false prophets use scripture, but they twist its meaning. Remember, Satan did this when he tempted Jesus, right? He quoted the Bible to him. But he twisted the meaning. That's what false prophets do. In fact, it has been a mark of most major heresies that the Church has ever faced. That heretics will claim to be standing on Scripture. They will even quote chapters and verses to support their false doctrine. But it is a twisting of Scripture. that usually comes from an unwillingness to allow the whole body of scripture to inform their interpretation of each individual text. By the way, this is why we have and love a confession of faith. because a confession of faith takes the entirety of Scripture, puts it into a summary, and becomes the lens by which we can read each passage of Scripture. Not as though the confession interprets Scripture, but we say the confession summarizes for us what the Bible as a whole teaches, and that's the lens through which we interpret Scripture. We call this, when we do hermeneutics, a study of hermeneutics, this principle is called the analogy of Scripture. You always interpret Scripture by the rest of Scripture. Or the analogy of faith, where we interpret Scripture by the body of doctrine. Heretics, on the whole, do not do this. But it's how they make themselves appear sheep by quoting Scripture. Second, Perkins says they appear to be sheep because they have some deep learning. Deep learning. They have the PhDs and they have the degrees. And please don't misunderstand me. PhDs and degrees are not a bad thing. I know there are some churches where if you've got a PhD, it's like a mark against you. No, we don't believe that at all. That's quite honest. That's a foolish way of thinking. But wolves who come in sheep's clothing are often deeply intelligent people who have spent a long time thinking about the world, philosophy, even perhaps theology, and they use the amount of time that they have spent thinking as though it becomes proof that what they say is true. You can think an awful long time about things that are wrong. A third way the wolves come in sheep's clothing is they love titles and attention, like the Pharisees, who wanted to be known as rabbi and have these appearances of greatness. Fourth, we'll just run through the rest of these quickly. Fourth, they have a false humility. It's put on for appearances only, and the longer you spend with them, you realize it's not a true humility. Fifth, they use fair speech, a sort of blessing. They're ingratiating themselves, trying to charm people. But it's all on this surface level. Sixth, they are willing to suffer for their false teaching. And they think that by their willingness to suffer, that it must mean that what they believe is true. In fact, sometimes they'll use that persecution as a manipulation tactic to get others to feel sympathy for them. I've seen this happen. I've seen those who've taken wrong stands. And when the truth is presented to them, they go into victim mode. Oh, you just don't like me. Oh, I'm so persecuted. How could you dare to contradict me? It's just what the Bible says. I'm not attacking you. I'm telling you what the Bible teaches. And they play the victim to draw sympathy. These are some of the common ways that wolves will come in sheep's clothing, give themselves an appearance of truth and righteousness. But ultimately, they lack the signs of a true prophet. They don't have the fruit. Now, there are a couple of things we could say about what they lack. For one thing, they usually lack any kind of true commission or calling from God. In our day, the commission for a teacher is only, only ever expressed through the church. Those who claim to be teachers of God's word without having been sent by a church have no right to call themselves a teacher. Romans 10, verse 15 asks the rhetorical question, how can someone preach unless they are sent? It says, you cannot preach the gospel unless a church has sent you. Or another way to say it, a preacher does not exist until that preacher has been sent by a church. So they lack the calling. The main thing, of course, is that the true prophet rightly teaches the word of God. So a true prophet, how do we know a true prophet? They have a calling from God expressed through the church. Secondly, they're rightly teaching the word of God. And thirdly, they're seeking the glory of God, not their own fame or advancement. So Jesus teaches that ultimately false prophets are revealed by their fruit, and this takes time. It is not usually immediately apparent, which means don't feel bad if you see someone and at first you think this person looks great, and then as time goes on you realize, oh, I didn't understand correctly. That's just the nature of it. But over time, a false prophet becomes known, whether by their false doctrine, by their false humility. Perhaps it's about the fruit in the church. False prophets lead to spiritually dead churches. And there are all kinds of dead churches around us today. You can drive through downtown Brunswick and see dead churches. Why? Because they had false prophets in them. So this is the third difficulty in getting to heaven. False prophets who would lead us astray. So we've seen the difficulty of keeping the whole law. We've seen the difficulty of the narrow gate and the way that is hard that leads to life. And we've seen the difficulty of false prophets. These are significant challenges. In fact, when you view these things in this light, as I've been describing it today, the Sermon on the Mount can become a rather discouraging sermon, can't it? But again, I think we are helped when we remember that the Sermon on the Mount is a unit, and we need to read these words along with the rest of it. For then we could go back to the beginning. Do you remember where it starts with the Beatitudes? The very first one? Jesus opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Why? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. the poor in spirit. They're the ones who belong to the kingdom of heaven, not those who have kept the law perfectly, not those who parade their righteousness before others, but those who understand their failures and look outside of themselves for the way into the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, as it goes on to say, belongs to those who understand their sin and mourn for their sin, those who are meek before the Lord, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. You see, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is available to us, but not by our own work. It is available to us, but not, but never by our own work, because we've already all missed that opportunity by our sin. So what is the one answer to all of the difficulties that we've considered today? I know you know the answer. And I thank God for that. It is Jesus. It is Jesus. He is the way. the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. Jesus is the way. And even more specifically, I think we can see here that Jesus as our prophet, priest, and king is the one who brings us into heaven. Think about these three difficulties we discussed. First, there's the keeping of the law. We have failed to keep the law. What overcomes our sin, our failure to keep the law? Isn't it Jesus as our high priest, who has offered the sacrifice of himself, who is the spotless lamb, who takes our place so that our sins are forgiven and we receive his righteousness? Isn't it Jesus, our great high priest, who overcomes that failure that we have to keep the law? And what is it that overcomes the difficulty of the narrow gate and the hard path to life? Isn't it Jesus, our King, who leads us in paths of righteousness, who is our shepherd, who guides us in the right way to go? Jesus, the King, overcomes the difficulty of the narrow gate and the hard way. And what overcomes the difficulty of false prophets who would deceive us? Isn't it Jesus, our prophet, who teaches us God's will, who by his word and through his spirit tells us what is right so that we can identify false teachers and know the truth? Jesus, our mediator. Our prophet, priest, and king overcomes all of these and every other obstacle that might ever appear to keep us from heaven. He himself has already ascended to heaven and even now sits at the right hand of God the Father, proof that there is a way for man to enter into the presence of God. There is a man at the right hand of the Father right now. And that's proof to us that there is a way. And he is the way. When we look to him by faith, we find that all of these difficulties are resolved in his mediatorial work. We must look to Jesus. We must trust him. That's the simple application, isn't it? To trust in Jesus every day more and more, to rest in Him as the only way to heaven. But perhaps we can be a little bit more specific. First, we must understand that we cannot do enough to earn our way to heaven. We have to understand this. It is impossible. You and I, we cannot get to heaven by being good enough or by doing enough. Now that doesn't mean we can stop trying to obey God. Just to say we can't get to heaven by obedience doesn't mean stop obeying. But if you're trying to be right with God, trying to earn heaven by being good enough, by being a good person, you will fail. In fact, you have already failed. Only Christ succeeds at this, and he's already done it. Second, brothers and sisters, follow the leading of your king. Follow the leading of your king. Whatever path he takes you on, follow him on that path. It doesn't matter how hard it is. It doesn't matter how narrow the gate is. Follow him. Follow him wherever he goes. He is the good shepherd. Trust that even when he brings us through the narrow gate and the hard path, through the valley of the shadow of death, that it is the right path, it is good for us, it leads to life. Don't doubt his goodness as he leads you, no matter how dark the valleys may seem to be, but trust him to lead you safe at home, safe to home at last. And then third, listen to the voice of Christ only. Don't listen to the voice of Christ only. Don't let any other voice come in and draw you away from him. Don't listen to the world which would pull you away. Don't listen to anyone who claims to speak for Christ but departs from the teaching of Christ. Jesus is the one who knows the will of the Father perfectly. And as God the Father himself said, this is my beloved Son, hear Him. Hear Him, listen to Him. His is the voice we must listen to. His sheep know His voice, and they follow Him. Listen to the voice of Christ only. We cannot do enough to earn our way to heaven, only Christ can do this for us. We must follow the leading of our King. We must listen to the voice of Christ only. Well, as Jesus draws closer to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he is speaking more pointedly about eternal matters. Now is the time to pay extra close attention to his words. There are two ends to this life. One is eternal blessedness, the other is eternal destruction. Trusting in Christ brings life, but every other way leads to destruction. Because there is only one other way, and it is the wide, the broad way. Many go down to their everlasting condemnation. False teachers will try to point you in the direction of that wide path. They'll try to deceive you against seeking out the narrow gate. Your own heart will want to believe the lies. You will think, I can be good enough. I can keep the law. But there is no other way, only Jesus. But anyone who cries out to Jesus, acknowledging their sin and asking for salvation, believing that Jesus is the only way, will receive everlasting life. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we cannot get ourselves to heaven. It is not possible. The obstacles against us are too great and too many. Our own sin prevents us. The way is difficult. It's not easy to find. And there are so many teaching lies. And so we ask for your Son to be our prophet, priest, and king, to show us the way, to help us along it, and to lead us home to glory. We believe He is able to do it. We pray this in His name. Amen.