And if you would, please turn with me and your Bibles to the book of Colossians. This morning, we're in Colossians chapter three, verses 12 through 13. If you're reading out of your pew Bibles, it's page 984. But for the sake of the context, I want to read a little bit from last week's passage. Let's actually start back in verse 9 and read down through verse 13. So Colossians chapter 3, beginning reading in verse 9, let's hear God's holy word. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." May God bless this, the reading of his word. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you and we praise you for the opportunity to gather and to worship. We thank you for the hymns you have given us to sing, by which we can exhort and encourage and challenge one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We thank you that we can come to you with boldness on the account of Christ, to confess our sins and know there is forgiveness, to confess our needs for more of your providence for our daily bread, for your presence in our lives, for your mercies to be new every morning, and know that you hear us with your perfect love and your perfect grace. As we come to the preaching of your word, Lord, we ask that you would draw us near, that you would speak to our hearts through your word, that you would hide your servant behind the cross and pour out your Holy Spirit upon this place so that all praise and honor and glory would be rendered to you. Lord, please move your servant out of the way so the glory of your truth, of your gospel, would shine forth in our hearts and be reflected by us into the lives of those around us. We pray all these things in the name of your Son, our beloved Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. One of my admittedly many character flaws is that I have this strange, reflexive response to a lot of things, which is to laugh. It's not just when something's funny. Otherwise, I'd be fine. But when I'm in pain, even, or especially when I'm surprised, my instinctual response is to laugh. I remember getting an eye exam one time, and they do that weird thing where they puff the air into your eye. And she puffed the air into my eye, and I started giggling. And the lady that was running the test said, I've never had that response in my life. This has gotten me into trouble more than once. because someone was telling me something that was very serious, sometimes even something somewhat sorrowful. But a sudden twist in the story surprised me, and I let out one of those, huh, moments, which is not the response the person's looking for as they tell you about difficult and hard things. It's something that I continue to work on, but it's challenging to change our responses to things. to change our instincts, to change our reflexes. And today, Paul is calling us to a number of virtues, what we might call dispositions of a merciful and gracious heart, which changes our reflexive responses to the people that are around us. Paul challenges us to respond in circumstances to God's grace over and above the sins and the sorrows of the world. And we want to deal with our text this morning over the course of four points. The first is putting on. The second is elect holy beloveds. The third is dispositions, and the fourth is imitations. That outline is included for you in your bulletin, as well as the verse list we're working through. But we're starting with the idea of putting on. Because over the last few passages that we've looked at, Paul has been using this metaphor of putting off who we were without Jesus in terms of our sin nature. Our sins themselves, the actions, as well as the dispositions that give rise to them, the environment of the hearts that they flow out of. Paul specifically addressed sins of lusts and covetousness, anger, and its manifestations. We don't have time to trace out in detail today, how all of this works, but there are elements of pride. That idolatry of ourselves, that idolatry of our own desires, in all of these sins that Paul has been condemning. In terms of lust and covetousness, it's considering what I want without regard to God, without regard to my fellow man. Anger is the wounded pride reacting in a variety of ways. And in those passages, we work through the aspects of how we put these things off, but also how God takes them off of us. How this work is complete in one sense and an ongoing process in another. And it's reminiscent of that phrase that Martin Luther used to use so often about simultaneously justified and sinner, right? Complete in one sense and we're a work in progress in another. And all that applies to this putting on as well, right? We put off the old man and we put on the new man. which our passage today is exploring and explaining. We are a new creation with a new heart and a new nature, and we are being renewed in the image of God, as we saw last week. 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 to 18. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God. who through Christ reconcile us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. But we must continue to put on the new man, the new woman. We must continue to put on the new self as Christians. We must put on Christ. Romans 13, 14, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. So before we get into the details of Paul's virtue list that we're given today, we need to see the overall unity and theme of this. Most of the things that we're going to be looking at are attributes of God. God is in and of himself holy, compassionate, kind, meek, long-suffering, or patient. forbearing, and forgiving. But more importantly, every one of these can be attributed to Christ, the God-man. Again, we're putting on Christ. Jesus is chosen. He is appointed by the Father to be our prophet, priest, king, sacrifice, and salvation. Jesus is holy, unique, and set apart in his roles, righteousness, and glory. Christ is beloved, beloved of the Father, right? We see God the Father speaking, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. Jesus is also the beloved bridegroom of the sinners whom he has saved. He is the beloved. Christ is compassionate and the expression of God's compassion. He is exemplary, an example for us to follow in his kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing, and forgiving. So in the many exhortations that we find in the course of Scripture to put on Christ, it means to put on the virtues of Christ. as we are united to Christ. We also see the overlap with another famous list of virtues that likewise reflect Christ. In Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 through 23, we actually find three of the same words that are in our virtue list. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now Paul gives us three attributes of the Colossian Christians at the outset. They are chosen, they are holy, they are beloved. These three things are foundational. They're the starting point for the virtues that Paul is calling them to put on. And all three of these are things that God did to them. God chose them, God made them holy, God loved them, therefore, because they are holy and chosen and beloved, they should put on all these things. And all three are tied to Christ, as Paul explores through Ephesians 1. We are chosen in Christ. We are beloved in Christ. We are holy in Christ. And these are also all historically tied to the nation of Israel. When we look at the Old Testament, And so Paul is taking these attributes of Israel and applying them to the Christian church without regard to Gentile or Jew categories. The church is elect and called out. The church is holy unto God. The church is beloved by God as the true spiritual Israel. In the Old Testament, we see God speak to Israel, right? In Leviticus 11, 44, for I am the Lord your God, consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy for I am holy. Deuteronomy 7, 6, for you are a people for his treasured possession, his beloved possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. But then Peter speaks to the church in 1 Peter 2, 9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. So the saints in Colossae are chosen, holy, and beloved. They're chosen by God. This is also tied to the concept of elect, right? By the way, it's actually the word, well, we don't need to get into that eclectic, but they are elected unto salvation. They are elected in Christ. Ephesians chapter one, verses four through six, even as he, the father, chose us in Him, in Jesus, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. And in just that one passage, without going anywhere else in the rest of the Bible, we can see this is unconditional election. Because it is from before creation, before we did anything to earn anything, it is done according to the purpose of God's will and for the praise of God's grace, unmerited favor. The saints are chosen, and they are holy. The very word saints means holy. This means set apart for a purpose, right? Like grandma's fine china that only comes out if the Queen of England comes to visit. Or when I was growing up, my dad had different, well, he still does. He has drill bits for specific things, right? These are for drilling through wood. These are drilling through stainless steel. These are drilling through aluminum, right? My dad has holy drill bits. Because they're set aside for a particular purpose. And it's important, right? If you use the wood drill bits to drill through the stainless steel, then you will ruin them. They're set apart for specific purposes. God set us apart. And we must behave accordingly. It is because God has made us holy that we must put on compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and so on. And we don't make ourselves holy by our actions, we prove that we are holy by them. Finally, in the list, they are beloved, but this is actually first in sequence, so to speak. God predestined certain sinners to be saved in the blood of Jesus Christ because he chose to love them. As we just saw from Ephesians, it was in love he predestined us. And that's what Paul is talking about in Romans 8, 29. For those whom he foreknew, those whom he foreloved, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. We are beloved of God as Christians. Not because of who we are, but because of who God is. And this is invaluable. We can't lose the love of God because we didn't earn it in the first place. And what could be better than to be the beloved of God? What a comfort it is to know that even though we don't have the script of the future, we know it is written by the God who loved us perfectly and individually from before the beginning. But this brings us into the dispositions for those elect, holy, beloved saints. What is the appropriate response to God's unmerited favor and love? They should imitate Christ, put on Christ, working from the inside out. Now notice, Paul doesn't start with the actions like give to the poor. Not that he would have been wrong to do so, but the state of the heart is where he begins. Otherwise, you wind up with people filming themselves doing their supposedly good deeds, which the internet is full of now. Look at how wonderful and gracious I am. Please like and subscribe. The old used car salesman who used rice and sawdust to disguise the symptoms of mechanical problems, to make the car sound like it was running good, rather than dealing with the real issues because it was cheaper and easier to just mask it. Christians aren't just supposed to do good things on the outside. We're supposed to do good things for the right reasons, with the right heart, for the glory of God, and out of love for that God. And we might summarize the virtues that we're going through as dispositions of mercy. Mercy comes in two different forms. Restraints and rescues. It is, on the one hand, not giving those deserved punishments and sorrows, right? We talk about mercy quite often in terms of not getting what we deserve. But in some instances, it also means rescuing someone from what they deserve in pursuit of what is best for them. Now, sometimes out of love and mercy, in grace and care for that person, we have to allow consequences to follow out. I'm not saying that everything is about rescue, but that is a concept of mercy. As you read through your Bible, when it talks about the mercy of God, sometimes it's talking about God just sparing us, and sometimes it's about God rescuing us, snatching us as a brand out of the fire. We delight in mercy that benefits us. We even like mercy that benefits others as long as it doesn't cost us. But what Paul is calling us to is a sacrificial love for our fellow man. Luke 6 36, be merciful even as your father is merciful. Paul's focus is first and foremost to do good to those who are of the household of faith. But we do want to understand this applies more broadly. These are to become a part of who we are, woven into our DNA, if you will, character traits of the new man. And the first is to have a heart of compassion or a guts of compassion. These sins of desire and covetousness that Paul described back in verse 5, we described back then as grasping sins, reaching out across the dust to take. But now he's describing a virtue of compassion that reaches out not to take, but to comfort, to give, and to embrace. Most Christians find that after God has done that first great work in their hearts, they become far more compassionate. But we still need to cultivate this. Dealing with sinners in a fallen world can quickly choke out that compassion if we don't nurture it. And we first cultivate this compassion by looking at the compassion that God had for us in sending Christ and the heart of compassion that Christ showed for the lost. Mark 6, 34, when he went to shore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. Do we have that heart of compassion? When we look out at a broken and fallen world, do we have compassion seeing them as sheep without a shepherd? We should feel that pity. Consider broken humanity that surrounds you and remember that is what you would be without grace. This is our starting points. Romans 12, 15 reminds us, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. And as McLaren said, such compassion is difficult to achieve because its healing streams are damned back by many obstructions of inattention and occupation. In other words, we're so busy and focused on other things that we don't have time for compassion. and dried up by the fierce heat of selfishness." So put on compassion. Next, put on kindness. Brown defines kindness as a readiness or an eagerness to forgive and relieve. It's the opposite of the cold malice that we looked at when we were in chapter 3, verse 8. That's a readiness and eagerness to inflict sorrow. But again, this is kindness, a disposition of grace, longing for the opportunity to love. Again, this is something we learn from God's example. Romans chapter 2 verse 4, do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? Romans 11, 22. Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you. Micah 6, 8. He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. Calvin reminds us this is something that flows out of this new nature. the regenerative work of God in our hearts when he writes, then will it appear that you are renewed by Christ when you are merciful and kind. For these are the effects and evidences of renovation. Next, we're called to put on humility. While humility is not a clear attribute of God, because God deserves all glory and worship. Right? I would say that it really is genuinely an aspect of God, but it's not something that we see activated because there's no need for an exercise of humility in God as God. But we do see it as a trait of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who humbled himself to be our Savior. He had claimed to all glory, and yet humbled himself even to the death of the cross. In our case, when we're talking with Christ, it's just a willing condescension. When we talk about humility in us, we're talking about the mortification of sinful pride. And we're talking about turning our focus away from ourselves to focus Godward and outward. Pride has a lot of disguises. It's a very elusive sin. Your other pastor refers to it as the whack-a-mole sin. Because every time you hit it in one aspect of your life it just pops up someplace else. And it wears a lot of disguises and some of them, some of the most dangerous, are actually self-pity and self-loathing. Humility is not where we sit in a dark room and hate ourselves. It's looking outward to see how we can glorify God, especially by loving our neighbor without regard to ourselves. And humility is crucial to the Christian life. As our other elder Shorty says, the three most important attributes of a Christian are humility, humility, and humility. It is a heavenly attribute, as we see in Isaiah 57, 15. For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the hearts of the contrite. This means God loves and dwells in the heart of those who are humble and repentance. Job 5 11, he sets on high those who are lowly and those who mourn are lifted to safety. And in James 4 6, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And we really best cultivate humility by honesty. All we really need for humility is a sincere, genuine look inside. It should be the most natural attribute for us as sinners saved by grace, knowing each and every one of us within ourselves, being able to say with Paul, I am the chief of sinners. All that is good in me comes from God and is worked by God in me. As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 4-7, for who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? And Dyer writes, the more God has given you, the more ought you to humble yourselves. As those branches bow most and bend lowest when they are most laden with fruit. Put on meekness or gentleness. Second Corinthians 10.1, I, Paul, myself, entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Meekness is humility under duress, under persecution. It's tied to love, peace, and long-suffering, as we'll see in the next point. If kindness is the opposite of malice, then meekness is the opposite of wrath, that outburst of anger. Moses was the Old Testament poster child for meekness. Numbers 12 verse 3, now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth, right? And if you just have a vague sense of what took place there in Exodus and the journey through the wilderness, you might remember key points where Moses didn't seem so meek. But when you go back and read that story as an adult, with grace and understanding, you go, that was a very meek man. That was a very patient man to have endured as long as he did. And his eagerness to run to God, to enter seed for the people who hurt him. But Christ exceeded Moses and martyred gentleness for us as the only righteous man to have ever left footprints in the dust of this earth, suffering silently before his persecutors for our sake. Psalm 37 verse 11. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. Of course, that's the verse that Christ quotes when he's doing the Sermon on the Mount and clarifies it's not just the land of Canaan, it's the meek shall inherit the earth. Edie writes, In other words, part of meekness And part of the key to meekness is recognizing that our difficulties, our sorrows, our trials, even when we are sinned against, are part of God's purpose, God's decree, and they're being used not only for God's glory, but for our goods. When we grumble and complain about our circumstances, we often fail to recognize we're actually grumbling against God's providence. We're claiming we know better than God in terms of how he's planned all of this out. And Dyer points out that meekness is beneficial to others, but it's even beneficial to us when it's genuine meekness flowing out of a disposition of mercy. Because as we live with humanity, with what he calls weak and wretched creatures, If we do not have that gentle meekness, we will be in a continual irritation and never have repose. It reminds us of what we see, I think it's near the end of Isaiah, where it talks about the wicked being churned up like the mud in the sea, in the waves. The last disposition of mercy is patience. or endurance or long suffering, literally means long spirited. It's really long-term humility, long-term meekness. Meekness indicates that when I'm sinned against, I do not respond in anger and wrath. Long suffering means that when they do it again, I remain meek. As Matthew Henry said, many can bear a short provocation who are weary of bearing when it grows long. We're not talking about accepting sin, we're not talking about approving sin, but we're talking about being patient in love with sinners for the sake of the gospel. With unbelievers it means being patient with them and loving even our enemies while we pray for their salvation. We must be patient because God has been patient with us. 1 Corinthians 13, 4, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogance. But how does this disposition of mercy manifest in our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ? In an imitation of Christ. Having put on and cultivated these dispositions, these heart conditions of mercy, Paul calls us to exercise mercy in two different forms, forbearing and forgiving. Bear with one another and forgive one another. Now, while we should be quick to apply the label of sin to our own thoughts, words, and deeds, Right? Because we know that we're going to have a tendency to diminish that. Well, I don't know if that was really sin. No, I need to be quick to apply that label in my own life. But I need to be slow to do that with those that are around me. As God binds us together, as the body of Christ, with those cords of his love, we tend to bump into each other. We tend to even step on each other's toes. Personalities may not quickly and easily mesh in the church. Christians can be annoying. Christians can be difficult. So strive to take no offense and to give no offense. And if you're offended, don't assume the motives of your brother or sister in Christ. Ask yourself if what has offended you is truly, properly, objectively sent. If not, forbear in love. And for the record, going and telling other people about how annoying so-and-so in the church is, going and discussing with others your annoyances, that's not forbearing. That's actually sin. And you can't demand repentance of your brother or sister in Christ if what they have done is not sin. That doesn't mean you can't go and talk with them about whatever it is that's frustrating you. In any relationship, right, this is part of how we function as human beings. There are things that my wife and I have addressed over the years, stuff that I did that annoyed her. It wasn't sinful, it wasn't inherently sinful, but it was still stuff that was a frustration for her and that I needed to genuinely fix out of love for her. And we need to bear with one another. And we need to go with whatever frustrations that we have humbly and seeking their grace towards us, understanding that that's what it is. Ephesians chapter four and verse two, walk with all humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love. But what about when there is sin? Forgive one another. The Bible treats forgiveness as a kind of letting go, a release. If someone sins against me, I must go to them meekly, humbly, kindly, and compassionately. I should go to them out of love for them and seeking reconciliation with them. Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 17 is one of the most important sets of verses for Christian life, what it means to function within the church. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. It's the model we follow for church discipline and just for personal reconciliation. This means, as we can see in the text, don't go to anyone else first. If you've been offended, don't go tell your friends. If you've been offended, go talk to the person that offended you. Go and seek them. And as we talked about last week, we need to keep this poison free from our lips as well as from our ears. Don't give anyone else an audience for their discussion and exploration of sin against them. And don't go into your conversation seeking justice. That's up to God. We are not in the business of justice. Even the elders in moving forward in a church discipline case are not in the business of justice. When we see what justice really looks like, the eternal fire and condemnation and outpouring of divine wrath, we realize quickly we're not in the business of justice and we don't really want to be in the business of justice. At least we shouldn't be desiring that. We're in the business of reconciliation. We go to someone who has sinned against us seeking reconciliation, peace, and unity with our brother or sister in Christ. Forgive them because God has forgiven you. Matthew 18, 20 to 21 to 22. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me? And I forgive him as many as seven times. Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. And Christ goes on from there to explain this parable of the servant who has been forgiven an unpayable debts, who then imprisons a fellow servant for a lesser debt. Remember that you will never forgive anyone in your life more than Christ has forgiven you. And it's a very different thing for sinners to sin against sinners than it is for us as sinners to sin against a holy and a sovereign God who has only given us good. The offense that we are forgiven is unimaginable. And Christ taught us to pray in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 12, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. I'm not a big advocate of reciting memorized prayers at too great of a frequency. I think it's easy for us to just get into a rhythm where we stop thinking about the words. But the Lord's Prayer is one that periodically we need to reintroduce into our prayer life and think through intentionally the words that we're praying. Because this is one that will make you stop when you're really thinking about what you're saying. Lord, forgive me my debts, my trespasses, my sins, my violations of your law, as I have forgiven those who have sinned against me. Is that really something I want to pray? Lord, forgive me the way you forgave them. Hold on to it until the right time comes around. seethe over it for years and years then throw it back in my face at the most opportune moment. Is that really how I want God to forgive me? Forgive us as we have forgiven those who trespass against us. What we're seeing in our text today is that we are to forgive as God has forgiven us. Forgiving the way God has forgiven us. Release it, let it go. God readily forgives us when we come to him in repentance and we should do the same. We should have kindness, a readiness and an eagerness to forgive. When somebody comes to you with their confession of sin against you, an acknowledgement that they have hurt you, Are you chomping at the bits to go, yes, I forgive you, I love you, and draw them near? Is that where our hearts are? Because that's what Paul's calling us to. Because that's what God does to us. God readily forgives us when we come to him in repentance. The same knowledge of who we are that produces humility reminds us that we never have the moral high ground in any given situation. Right? We're not the righteous one and they're the terrible one. We're both sinners meeting at the foot of the cross. God does have the moral high ground and he still forgives us. readily and easily. And he does so at the cost of himself. Because he gave his only begotten son. He came as Jesus to die for our sins. Ephesians 4.32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. That's a verse that we have to really chew on because it's easy to glaze over. What does it mean for God in Christ to forgive you? It means for God to take on flesh and live the righteousness you should have lived and then suffer all the punishment for your sin so that you can be forgiven. Forgive as Christ forgave you. Again from Edy, they are also to forgive one another as he has forgiven them fully and freely at once and forever. not insulting him who has injured them by the rigid exaction of a humiliating apology, or stinging him by a sharp and unexpected allusion to his faults, not harboring antipathy, but forgetting as well as forgiving, not indulging a secret feeling of offense and waiting for a moment of quiet retaliation. but expelling every grudge from their hearts by an honest and thorough reconciliation. If we have these dispositions of mercy, we will be quick to forgive and we will be quick to repent. Right? We need to have both. Not just an eagerness to forgive, but an eagerness to repent. To recognize that we are sinners in all of these situations as well. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience. I've had this experience going to someone with what I perceive to be an offense against me to go work it out. And by the end of the conversation, I was asking forgiveness because I'd sinned in the midst of that too. Or sometimes I was the one that sinned first and catalyzed all of these problems. And we need to have a quickness to repent. If you go out into the wilderness, right? You go hiking up in the Kaibab forest, you'll come across what we call game trails, where animals for years and years have traveled the same path and they've worn out the grass. They've hardened the ground, right? There's a clear path that you can follow out through the woods because it's been trodden for so long. We should have a well-worn path to the throne of grace. We should be well-versed and skilled in seeking forgiveness from our God. We sin every day, so we should be repenting every day. And we sin, if not in word and deed, then in heart and mind. So we should be skilled in repenting. And if we're skilled in repenting, we'll be skilled in forgiving, because it cultivates the humility that we need to forgive. But have you done this in the first place? Have you gone to God in that repentance? Have you seen your brokenness and your sinfulness and your need for a Savior? Psalm 34 verse 8 says, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. If we go to God in repentance and faith, we find forgiveness. readily, easily offered, freely offered. We find God's love and care for us. We even find that it was God who drew us there in the first place. Gave us the heart to repent. If you have not experienced that, then run to him. Run to him and find peace, find grace, find love. And if you're in Christ, keep running back. Wear out that path. Keep trusting in Jesus. Keep putting on Jesus. And find again and again, the Lord is good. Let's come before the Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you and we praise you for your grace and your mercy and your love. We ask that you would draw us in and that you would love us well as you always do. Lord, we ask that that would spill out of us and into others, that we would love as you have loved us, that we would be merciful and gracious, that we would be kind and compassionate, that we would be meek and long-suffering as you have displayed for us in Christ. Lord, help us to be more like Jesus. Help us to forbear and forgive. Lord, you have done such a beautiful and magnificent work in the saints that you have gathered here today. You've drawn us out of death and into life in a supernatural event, as glorious as Christ being raised from the dead. But Lord, we ask that you would help us to live out Christ. And if there are any here that do not know you savingly, would we ask that you would draw them to you, that you would convict them of their sin, that you would show them that they don't live up to the standard of your righteousness, that they are not holy as you are holy. They are not perfect as you are perfect. And show them Christ, grant them that saving repentance and faith that they might be saved as you saved us. We pray all these things in the name of your son, our beloved Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.