about God's Word in the context of the Reformation. This is a particularly busy season in my life with many exciting opportunities and I have to say that this is probably been the most meaningful for me, so thank you for the opportunity to be here with you. If you have a Bible, I'd invite you to turn with me to Zechariah. Zechariah is one of the minor prophets. If you get to the New Testament, hang a left. A couple lefts. Zechariah chapter 3. Before we read God's word, let us go to him in prayer. Our Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We marvel at your wonder. We marvel at your beauty. We praise you for we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are amazed afresh. That you would bid centers like us to come into your presence and to consider your word and to worship you. Lord, this is your word. And we are your people. We pray that your spirit would be a pleased to be among us. That you would help us to rightly consider your word. And that your spirit would apply it to our hearts. We don't ask this because we deserve it, Lord. But we boldly ask it because of Christ. In whose name we pray, Amen. Zechariah chapter three. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed in filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you in pure vestments. And I said, Let them put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by. And the angel of the Lord solemnly assured Joshua, thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts. And I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Here now, O Joshua, the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are assigned. Behold, I will bring my servant the branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree. Thus far, God's word. What's the Reformation really about? We've been spending this year, the better part of this year, contemplating the Reformation as this is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. And if you were to ask people what is the Reformation really about, you'd probably get a lot of different answers. Perhaps some would talk about the Solus, Solus Scriptura, Solus Gratia, and so on and so forth. People would probably talk about justification. How do we know that we're right with God? All of these things would be true. But if you were to ask a fellow reformer, John Calvin, writing around the middle of the 16th century, he would have isolated four key reasons of why we needed a reformation. He wrote this in a letter to Charles V. Political expediency was starting to threaten the Reformation and it fell to John Calvin to write a letter to Charles V about why the Reformation was necessary. In this letter he highlights four key areas. Worship, justification, sacraments, and church government. And when dealing with justification or how we are made right with God, Calvin lays out three stages of our knowledge of salvation. First, he writes, we must begin with a sense of individual wretchedness, filling us with despondency as if we were spiritually dead. That's the first stage, according to Calvin, of the knowledge of salvation. Secondly, he talks about how then we embrace Jesus Christ. That is, acknowledges Him as the only priest who reconciles us to the Father and His death as the only sacrifice by which sin is expiated, the divine justice satisfied, and a true and perfect righteousness acquired. who in fine, he goes on to say, the person does not divide the work between himself or herself and Christ, but recognizes that their salvation is by the work of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. From this stage comes the third stage of the knowledge of salvation in this letter. From this stage, Calvin writes, also he must rise to the third. When instructed in the grace of Christ and in the fruits of His death and resurrection, he rests in Him with a firm and solid confidence, feeling assured that Christ is so completely his own that he possesses in him righteousness and life. So, if you were to ask Calvin, why do we need a reformation or why did we need a reformation, one of the things he would highlight was salvation. And in that, bound up in that was this assurance, not only how can I get right with God, but how can I know that I've been made right? with God. Now, historically, the churches offered a number of answers to this question of assurance, and one has to look no further than the 16th century to find writings that affirm and even deny whether believers can even possess it. For example, writing in the middle of the 16th century, the Council of Trent, which was the Catholic Council, treated assurance as sinful presumption. They wrote, as if anyone sayeth that he will for certain of an absolute and infallible certainty have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation, let him be anathema. John Calvin, however, writing around the same time in his Institutes of Christian Religion, wrote, now we shall possess a right definition of faith. if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Now you'd be mistaken if you thought that Calvin had envisioned here an assurance that's untouched with fear and doubt. But nevertheless, he held that it was something that believers possessed by faith. In Calvin's lecture on Zechariah 2, 11 through 3, 4, he was lecturing through the books of the Bible consecutively, so he just kind of stopped, I think, when his time was up. I don't anticipate doing that. I'm going to keep going, don't worry, even if my time is up. So he broke off from 2, 11 to 3, 4. But Calvin connects the basis of our assurance to two things, two main things. The word of God and perhaps surprisingly the doctrine of predestination. The second might in fact seem a little bit surprising. The doctrine of predestination has often been maligned as undermining the motivation for missions and assurance. And these two responses to the doctrine of election can be connected on the basic level of our not knowing who the elect are. For Calvin, however, the grounds of our assurance and indeed our hope in missions flow from God's sovereignty over salvation. That is to say, when you go and share the gospel, you're not responsible for converting people. That's the work of God. And that gives you hope. When you go and you talk to someone who is so far from believing the gospel, so far from the grace of God, seeming so far outside the kingdom of God, that God can still ransom and save that soul. That's the good news of that doctrine. Now I'm sure that all of you have probably grown up studying Zechariah, memorizing it like John 3.16, but just in case you've forgotten a little bit about the context, I want to give you just a helpful contextual introduction, very short. Zechariah was writing in the post-exilic period. Now you'll recall that the kingdom of Israel had been divided during the reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. You had the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The southern kingdom, however, survived until the 6th century BC when they fell to the Babylonians during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. After about 70 years of exile, the people of God are sent back into the land. And that is the context in which Zechariah is prophesying. It's the context of returning to the land after seeing everything destroyed. Your hopes, your dreams, your entire life uprooted, And then you return back into the promised land. And Zechariah prophesies alongside Haggai. Haggai prophesies about the rebuilding of the temple and proper worship. Zechariah is the counterpart to that, focusing on the need for spiritual renewal. It's not just enough to rebuild the temple. They must worship the Lord. Alright. Now I've divided this passage into three basic headings. The accuser of the people of God. the defender of the people of God, and the promises to the people of God. The first thing we see is the accuser of the people of God in verses 1 and 2. And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?" Satan is there standing before the angel of the Lord accusing Joshua, the high priest. Or if you want it to sound more like the Hebrew, the accuser stood there accusing. Now the angel of the Lord is also present. The angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is often a theophany or an appearing of God himself. We can see this in texts like Exodus 3 where the angel of the Lord appears in the burning bush, but when he speaks to Moses he says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now, although the accuser, interestingly, is not allowed to speak, it takes no great imagination to figure out what he would be saying. Satan is seeking here to undermine the priesthood and the status of the people of Israel as the people of God, as seen in the following verses. So the battle that the Israelites were engaged in, I think this is the first thing that we can notice in this passage, the battle that the Israelites were engaged in was not merely a physical one. They had faced the Babylonians knocking at their doors in Jerusalem. They had their city razed. Their temple was destroyed and their lives were uprooted. It was a very physical reality, a very harsh physical reality, but there was a much deeper spiritual reality going on beneath all of that. There was a very real spiritual battle that they were engaged in. And the accuser here is attacking the priesthood. The people of God had sinned and deserved to go into exile. And when the people of God looked at their circumstances, the temptation would be to think that God had forsaken His plan for Israel. That God had forsaken the line of David. You no longer have a king. And the priest from Levite. Now if you think I'm just making this up, Jeremiah 33 gets at this temptation and prepares the people to face the uncertainty and despair caused by the exile. Jeremiah 33 is, he's prophesying around the time when Israel will be, Jerusalem will be destroyed. And he prepares them for this reality and assures them that God's plan for Israel will continue. That David will not cease to have a man seated upon the throne. and that there will be a priest standing before him. That if heaven and earth ceased to be, then his covenant with David and the promise to have a priest standing before him could pass away. So God assured him with his word that no matter their circumstances, God had not forsaken his promises or his people. In other words, there can be a temptation to be fooled by very dark providences. You can look at your circumstances around you and come to certain conclusions that seem very reasonable based on your circumstances, but are very wrong in light of God's purposes. And to combat this, God gives to His people His Word. Calvin says that it is the Word that gives us assurance of faith, that no matter what's going on in your life, you have a sure hope, an anchor, and it's found in God's Word. And the accusation here was based on a lie from the father of lies. What do we say about lies? The best lies have an element of truth to them, right? Think about it for a minute. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one is able to stand before the Lord. In verse 3, Joshua is standing there in filthy garments representing his iniquity and the iniquity of the people. And there is Satan accusing. The accuser is accusing. So there's an element of truth to it. There's also a lie coupled with it. Verse 2 gets at this lie. The lie seems to be that because of their sinfulness, Satan seems to be accusing them, saying, you're not the people of God. And in verse 2, he says, and the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. The Lord brings up His choice, His election of Jerusalem. We'll get back to that. The accuser has no concept of grace and mercy. But God did not leave His plan for the heavens and the earth to the successes and failures of weak and sinful man. Humanity will fail, but His eternal purposes remain sure. Now engaged in the spiritual battle, there's the accuser, there's Joshua the high priest, Zechariah is watching, but the Lord is present too. We see this in verses 2-5, the defender of the people of God. Verse 2, And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. And to him, he said, behold, I have taken away your your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. And I said, let them put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by. Now, if we were to write this out in our culture, how would it have gone? There's the accuser standing there to accuse them, and then we would have said something like, Joshua, if you just saw your potential. If you would just reach down inside, if you just knew what I, if you just saw what I see. If you would just try a little bit harder, Joshua, now you can have some assurance. That's what we would want to script it out as, right? This unlocked, hidden potential within each of us. God does something entirely different. The accuser is wanting to focus on what humanity has or has not done, but God acts in verses 2-5. God rebukes the accuser. He rebukes Satan and appeals to his choice of Jerusalem. The battle is real, but the victory belongs to the Lord. The continuation of the priesthood and God's plans for creatures do not rely on weak and sinful humanity. People of God can have certainty because of the gracious, eternal election of God. In other words, the eyes of faith must look beyond what one has or has not done to the eternal and sure purposes of God. We should not presume any goodness or frame or anything within us would cause God to defend us. Calvin says of this passage, Hence though we are unworthy that God should fight for us, yet His election is sufficient, as He proclaims war against Satan in our behalf. Let us then learn to rely on the gratuitous adoption of God, if we would boldly exult against Satan and all his assaults. It hence follows that those men who at this day obscure and seek as far as they can to extinguish the doctrine of election are enemies to the human race, for they strive their utmost to subvert every assurance of salvation." It's a little bit of colorful language, it's very forcefully put, but the idea is trying, what he's trying to get at is if you look at your circumstances when you're struggling, and you're faced with the reality of the sinfulness of your heart, if you look to yourself and want to find some sort of motivation for God to come and defend you, you're not going to find one. You're only going to be discouraged. But if you look to the sure and eternal purposes of God, and this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, then you can find hope. So the victory is achieved by God acting according to his eternal purposes. Joshua is brought before the Lord in all of his filth, in all of his sin. The imagery here of the filthy rags represents all of his sinfulness and the sinfulness, all of his sinfulness and iniquity before God. This is much like this first stage of salvation, the first stage of the knowledge of salvation that Calvin talks about where you recognize your depravity, where you recognize your sinfulness before the Lord. Now, we could probably write a biblical theology about clothing in the Bible, and I don't have time to do justice to that right now, but it's a very important theme in the Bible. We can think of Genesis chapter 3 in the garden. They were naked and unashamed in chapter 2, but in chapter 3 after the fall, they realized that they were naked and they were ashamed. They tried to cover themselves with fig leaf loincloths. then God acts for His people and covers them with garments. You can think of the priestly garments, the pure vestments they're supposed to wear, that their nakedness is not supposed to be uncovered when they go into the presence of the Lord. Or I think even more strikingly, in Revelation 4, verse 4, where it refers to the 24 elders clothed in white garments, or Revelation 7, 9, It says, after I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation from all tribes and people and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb clothed in white rose with palm branches in their hands. So Joshua is appearing in filthy rags and God takes his filthy rags away and clothes him in pure garments. God's transforming work of Joshua prefigures what we receive by faith in Jesus Christ, if you're resting and trusting in Him. This is like the second stage of the knowledge of salvation. And we don't have a priest, clothed in filthy rags, standing before the throne of God, helpless and inept. We have a high priest who donned all our filthy rags, all the rags of his people and bore them before the consuming wrath of God, forsaken, rejected, condemned to the death you deserved. But death could not hold him. He rose to life again and ascended into heaven and sat down to rule and reign and to ever intercede for his people. As Calvin says, when thinking of Satan's attempts to undermine the priesthood of Christ, how could Satan, who could not hold Jesus in hell, pull him down from heaven? Your surety, your hope, is in your great high priest. Have you ever thought about this? The God who knows everything knows that you're a sinner. He knows every single last sin that you have ever committed. Whether in your heart, whether in your actions, your mouth, God knows every single sin. And this is very convicting before a holy God. Every thought, every deed, every action, Every single sin is known by God. And Joshua, this is described with Joshua, the imagery here in the passage, is he's wearing these filthy rags. His sinfulness is being represented in his clothing. What if you had to come in here today, and I had to come in here today, with all of our sins put upon us for all the world to see? We're wearing it like garments. You're adultery. your browser history, the time you yelled at your kids, the time you were unkind to your spouse, your gluttony, your greed, your jealousy, your envy, your gossip. All of that was placarded on you, shown upon you for all the world to see. How would that feel? The deepest, darkest secrets of your heart exposed for all the world. How would you feel? I imagine not only would you be embarrassed, I imagine you'd be a little bit afraid. Because if people knew what you're really like, they wouldn't accept you. How could anyone love you the way you are? The depths of your sin. I'm not talking about the things that everyone knows. I'm talking about the deep, deep down secrets of our heart. How could anyone love us if they know that? And it is so convicting to know that God sees every sin, every single sin that you have ever committed. He knows the depth of your depravity far greater than you do. But this truth comes with a very heartening reality. When Jesus Christ cried out, it is finished, there was not a single sin that was overlooked. There's not a single sin, if you are in Christ Jesus, there's not a single sin that when you get to the Jordan and you're ready to cross over into heaven that you're going to sort of say, oh clerical error, no you can't come in because I didn't realize how wicked you are, how ugly and filthy you are. No, when Jesus Christ cried out it was finished, it was finished. Every single last struggle, every single last Sin, every single last wicked thought of your heart paid in full if you were in Christ Jesus, if you were resting and trusting Him by faith. When He cried out, it is finished, there was nothing left to pay. If you're anything like me, that's good news. And notice too that this whole imagery here gets Zechariah excited. He almost seems like he gets really bold and he says, put a turban on his head too. He's watching them transform and taking off the filthy rags and putting on the priestly vestments. And Zechariah says, put a turban on his head too. It's representative of the boldness we can have in light of the redemption we have in Christ Jesus. The people are getting a priest. The priest would continue because of God's gracious choice and His redeeming and transforming power. The prophets frequently described Israel's sin as a harlot, her adultery with other gods. But when God speaks of their redemption, how does He describe them? As a virgin. Jeremiah referred to the people of Israel as having an incurable wound. That's what their sin was like. He says, I'm going to heal them. That is the power of the gospel. So there's the accuser of the people of God, the defender of the people of God, and finally the promises to the people of God. We see them in verses 6 through 10. And the angel Lord solemnly assured Joshua, thus says the Lord of hosts, I will, if you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Hear now, O Joshua, the high priest, You and your friends who sit before you, for you are men who are a sign. Behold, I will bring my servant the branch, for behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree. The reconstruction of the temple, which was going on during the time of Zechariah's life, is in view here. And this is one of the two major themes in this passage. There's the reconstruction or the rebuilding of the temple, reinstituting worship among the people of God, and then also the forgiveness of sins. These are the two main ideas going on here. And there's this promised success with the rebuilding of the temple. And in verse 7, there is this mention, if you will be faithful, then you shall rule this priest who shall rule, a priest who will sit on the throne of God and rule. Immediately, I hope your mind is thinking about Melchizedek, the priest who was the king. And then even more so, Jesus Christ, the prophet, the priest and king, Hebrews 1, the threefold office of Christ. There's this priest promised here who is going to rule, who is going to reign. And there seems in this, in the temple, what does it symbolize? It symbolizes God dwelling with his people. It was the tabernacle in the camp. It was the temple in the land representing God's presence with his people. God dwelling with his people. And then ultimately we think of Jesus Christ tabernacling among his people in John chapter 1. And with this in verse 7 it says, thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and keep my charge. In the midst of this assurance there seems to be this call for obedience. Now if you're anything like me and you've seen the earlier performance of Joshua and the people, this makes you a little bit nervous. Are we going to lose this again? There's this call for obedience. Now, I firmly hold to the threefold use of the law, meaning that there are three main uses in which the law is used. But I think the main one that's in view here is to show us our need for a Savior. To show us our need for a Savior. It points us to the need of a high priest who is never going to let his people down. If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house. And you should be thinking, thank you, Lord, for Jesus. Man's obedience will fail. Verses eight and nine, man's obedience will fail. And so we have a need for a greater high priest. And this is mentioned in two great messianic terms from the Old Testament. There's the servant makes you think of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah chapter 53. I'll read just a little bit of this. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that the Pete that brought us peace and with his stripes we are When you hear servant in the Old Testament, if you know your Bibles, you're thinking of the servant, for whose wounds we will be healed. Then there's the branch mentioned, the branch of the Lord. In Jeremiah 23, verse 5, it says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness. in the land. And then there's the mention of this stone, and also a single stone with seven eyes. It sounds a little bit weird, right? You probably haven't seen a stone quite like that. It could be related to God watching over the building of His temple, ensuring that it will be successful. But I think it's rather related to the Spirit of God. In Revelation 5, 6, he says, and between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits that God sent out into all the earth. And then in verse nine, there is this mention of the removal of iniquity in a single day. Jesus crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in a single day, the sinfulness of his people was dealt with. In verse 7, you're promised this access, if you will walk in my ways. you'll be given the right of access. The people are getting a priest, but the priest must first be cleansed, right? Think of what Joshua just had to go through. The priest must first be cleansed. The priest must first be forgiven before he can intercede. On the Day of Atonement, he first must offer a sacrifice for himself and for his own sins, and then a sacrifice for others. But when God's servant The branch, the Lord Jesus Christ came and he offered up his life as a perfect sacrifice. The curtain was torn in two from top to bottom, the curtain that separated the most holy place, that separated the people of God from the presence of God. And it was torn in two from top to bottom. And the people of God are given access into the most holy place. You know, we talk about the regulative principle of worship, about how everything that we do, we want it to be biblical, that we sing the Bible, pray the Bible, preach the Bible, all of these things, we want them to be biblical. And that even translates into your furniture here today. That's part of the Reformation. Did you know that? When you walk in a Reformed church, you don't see an altar. An altar is a place where sacrifice is offered again and again and again. And instead of an altar, what do we have? We have a table symbolizing the communion, the fellowship we have with a living God. And then this last verse mentions that we will invite, that they will invite, everyone will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree. Now, if you're familiar with your Old Testament, then you would recognize that as similar language to Leviticus 19, that you should love your neighbor as yourself. This was the summary of the law found in Luke chapter 10. And Jesus, you know, he wants to justify himself. So he asked Jesus, well, who's my neighbor? And you find out that your neighbor is, well, everyone. And so I think that this salvation, this redemption, this reconciliation with God then flows out into a reconciliation that must take place with each other. That we are to love God because we are loved by Him, and because of that, then we love each other. Now, there are a lot of applications for this. I wanna, in closing, just give you three really quickly. First, there is the accuser. In many ways, we can reflect the accuser in our own lives, can't we? We can desire for a person to be punished for something they've done again and again and again. We can have a tendency, even if it's hidden deep within our hearts, to want to hold a mistake or a sin over a person's head. Maybe you do this with your spouse. Every time you do this, maybe you do it with your in-laws. Maybe you do it with your children. Maybe you do it with your pastor or your friends. Every time they do something a little bit different than what you want, You want to hold it over their head, not giving them true forgiveness. We can be like the accuser in that way, even after reconciliation. But perhaps the greatest accuser in your own life is yourself. Now, who among us hasn't been disheartened by and tempted to despair because of the accusations in your heart and your mind that you face? That is the difficulty when we face the reality of sin in our lives. There's an element of truth to it. We are sinners. And so we can begin to despair and assume that we are not Christians. We can begin to look at ourselves and say, sure, the Lord was gracious to me once, but now, now I've exhausted his mercy. I know that we know the better theologically, but I'm talking about what goes on in our hearts. Sure, the Bible says that you'll know them by their fruit, but we should never envision some perfect sanctification this side of glory. Secondly, we often talk about the holiness of God from Isaiah chapter 6, and I totally agree that we need to approach God with reverence and awe. But I think this passage also reminds us of the boldness, of the joy we can have in the presence of the living God. Zechariah is standing there and he says, bring out a turban. And you see this remarkable transformation. And he says, bring out a turban. He's bold in the presence of God. If we continue to wallow in our sin and focus on ourselves, And never move beyond what we have and have not done would be a misunderstanding of the gospel. And it's precisely what Satan wants you to do, to never move beyond the reality of your sin to the enjoying of God in the gospel. We can have boldness before God, not because of anything that we have done, but because of the work of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his sufficiency. And finally, we can think about the access. This is something that's true of every believer, that we have access into the presence of the living God. In Christ, we have access to the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Do you find it hard to get out of bed and go to church sometimes? Do you find it hard to get down on your knees and pray? Do you find it hard to crack open your Bible and to do family worship or to read it for yourself? Do you ever find that difficult? Have you also remembered Jesus Christ died so that you could have an opportunity to do that. And how foolish it is that we fail to take advantage of something that Christ died to give to us. So where's your assurance? Where do you find comfort before the accuser? As long as you live this side of glory, you will face the reality of sin in your life. And the world, and the flesh, and the devil will tell you countless times about the sin that is deep within your heart. The truth of your sin can make you doubt whether you're a Christian, whether God could accept you as you are, and can cause you to have countless fits of depression, and sadness, and fear. Now for some, the doctrine of predestination undermines assurance. They experience spiritual angst, asking, am I elect or not? Calvin, however, views the doctrine in an entirely different way. For Calvin, election does not lead to complacency, nor does it undermine assurance. Instead, it's a call to arms, that we can fight the good fight with confidence. This is seen in his closing prayer to the lecture I've been citing. O grant that we, being endued with thy power, may boldly fight against Satan, and never doubt but that thou wilt finally give us the victory." So how do we find assurance? By taking our eyes off ourselves and looking to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your gospel and we thank you for the