All women, including pre-born baby girls, are created in the image of God. Discover the true war on women. www.godloveswomen.com That is www.godloveswomen.com O Sovereign Lord, Oh, Lord, please do not be silent. Our God, please do not turn away your ear. Oh, Lord, please do not be quiet. When the wicked rage against your people. Oh, blessed father, you know how the nations gather together how the wicked of the earth conspire together, and they form a plot against your hidden saints, your treasured people. They rise up to destroy your church, to persecute your children. to seek to rid the earth from all the righteous and the godly. Oh Lord, we pray that you would rise up in these days which are very dark and very much like the book of Judges. Oh Lord, please come. Please come soon. And make them like the princes of Midian who fell in the day of battle. Rise up against them, O Lord, with your scorching fire and your sweeping wind. O Lord, destroy the lies of the devil. Break the bonds of the devil. that the world may know that you are the judge. You alone are the Lord God of Israel. Oh God, please come quickly. We are weak and helpless. We need you to defend us. Oh Lord, forgive our sins. For every sin of the body and every sin of the heart, the thoughts, the imaginations that grieves you and grieves your Holy Spirit, please cleanse us. Wash us, O Lord. Wash us with hyssop and make us clean. Wash us in the blood of the Lamb. O Lord, please teach us. We are your people and you are our God and we cry for you to come. Send your Holy Spirit with power again upon your hurting church, your desperate church. We wait for you. We hope in you. In Jesus' name. This is our fourth study in the condescension of Christmas If the Lord wills, we'll try to pick up the fifth part, the last part sometime in January. The gospel according to John chapter three, verses nine through 15. This is the word of the Lord. Nicodemus answered and said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen. and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the son of man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so, the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Let's fire the reading of God's holy word. God puts to shame the wise, by making their wisdom foolish. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 20. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Nicodemus is Israel's teacher. He is decorated in the flowing robes and credentials of one of Israel's most famous teachers. In Nicodemus, the Jews have found a champion of knowledge. His reputation for wisdom and knowledge goes before him, such that wherever he travels, people bow to him out of respect for his well-established authority as one of the greatest sages of their time. In Israel, wisdom is power. And so within Israel, Nicodemus is a powerful man. Yet for all this, Nicodemus does not yet know the scriptures. He is Israel's teacher teaching them the scriptures. but he himself does not yet know them. In spirit and in truth, the teacher of Israel is yet embarrassingly ignorant. His wisdom, Nicodemus' wisdom, is confounded by the wisdom of Christ. John three, nine through 10. Nicodemus answered and said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Nicodemus in time shall be born again. At the death of Jesus, he shall come with Joseph of Arimathea to take the precious body of the Lord and bind it in strips of linen with the mixed spices as the customs of the Jews is to bury. But for now, in his current unbelieving state. Nicodemus is foolishly ignorant of the scriptural teaching of the absolute necessity. Of a man being born again. Born from above. before he can see the kingdom of God. These are the things Nicodemus does not know. John 3, verse 4, Nicodemus said to Jesus, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? And so our Lord Jesus then is dismayed. John 3.10, are you the teacher of Israel? He asks him. And do not know these things. In other words, Jesus is asking Nicodemus, are you Israel's teacher? He's still yet so very ignorant on what the scriptures teach about the necessity of the new birth. For, of course, Nicodemus being the teacher of Israel ought to know, ought to know the scriptures. He ought to understand the spiritual truth that God begot. He begot Israel and fathered Israel, according to Deuteronomy 32, 18. Deuteronomy 32, 18, of the rock who begot you, you're unmindful and have forgotten the God who fathered you. Nicodemus ought to know, he also ought to know, the mysterious new birth prophecy regarding Israel found at the end of the book of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 66 verse 8, who has heard such a thing, who has seen such things, shall the earth be made to give birth? This mysterious new birth prophecy about the nation in one day? Or shall a nation be born? At once, for as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children. So it's to his shame, then, that Nicodemus remains ignorant of what Jesus means by being born, this is John 3, 5, by being born of water and the spirit in the new birth, because this is nothing other than the fulfillment of the very word of the Lord, which was spoken to Israel through the prophet Ezekiel so long ago. Ezekiel 36, 25 through 27. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you. You must be born, Jesus says, of water and of the spirit. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit born of water and of the spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit. You must be born again. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them. Does Nicodemus, the great teacher, not understand the blowing of the wind? Does Israel's teacher fail to understand that the wind blows where it wishes and that we hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes? Shall the teacher of Israel, according to John 3, 10, not know? Israel's teacher not know? But the new birth in the Holy Spirit, giving only given only through the cleansing waters of repentance and the God ordained power of faith in the divine name of Jesus Christ. Is like the wind, does he not know this? Even the breath of God that blew upon those dead sun bleached and thus very dry bones, which the prophet Ezekiel saw in the midst of the valley. in proclaiming that one must be born again, born from above in order to see the kingdom of God. Jesus is simply fulfilling the scriptures in him and his own person and through the Spirit's work, which will be accomplished in his church to the power of his name. The scriptures are fulfilled. Yet Nicodemus Israel's teacher does not know these things. O beloved church, you will do well to remember that the wisdom of this foolish world is confounded by the gospel of God, even when such worldly wisdom is embraced by men who are nevertheless born again and who are praised by men as teachers in the church. For even in the church, there are men who are so popular on account of their books and preaching conferences that individually they almost gain the title of the church's teacher. Not Israel's teacher, but even the church's teacher. Yet one such pastor believes that the earth is billions of years old. And he teaches this to his listeners being willfully ignorant of the lack of carnivorism in the first two chapters of Genesis and also wholly unable to explain how the fossil record reflects the historical fact that the waters of Noah's flood covered all of the high mountains under all of the heavens. And so being unwilling, out of his cowardly fear of man, to relate Luke's genealogy, which stretches back from Jesus. Starting with Jesus, the son of Joseph, all the way back to Adam, the son of God. Being unwilling to connect that genealogy to the true age of the earth, which is about 6000 years. He, the church's teacher, is confounded by these things. When asked, Why sharp, ugly thorns, one of the great signs of the curse, exist within the fossil record? He may attempt some vague, carefully nuanced answer. But when judged by the courts of heaven, his answer is laid bare as utter foolishness. and as the cowardly product of the fear of man. In short, it is a sign of great bewilderment and shame in the church stemming from her friendship with the world that her champion teacher does not know these things. And the same may be said of the Calvinistic view of election. Here, too, there is a man in the church called teacher. He's so popular as to be called the church's teacher. Yet when he's asked, when that teacher is asked if Matthew 5, 44 through 45 clearly speaks of God's love for all people, both the elect and the non-elect, Such that Jesus says in Matthew 5 44 through 45, but I say to you love your enemies That you may be sons of your father in heaven The teacher hesitates to answer And then when he's confronted with Ezekiel 33 11 and Which says Ezekiel 33 11 say to them as I as I live says the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked But that the wicked turn from his way and live Turn turn from your evil ways for why should you die? Oh house of Israel and when he subsequently asked to explain why the sovereign Lord who loves all people even as he hates the wicked and and does not desire that any would perish in hell but that all would come to repentance? Why that sovereign Lord does not elect all people if the power of election lies solely in His sovereign will and not at all in the free will of man? The pastor, the church's teacher, resorts to mysticism rather than the plain reading of the scriptures themselves. But in doing so and resorting to mysticism rather than the plain reading of the scriptures, he is demonstrating his actual, willful, man-fearing ignorance of these things. For even as the potter has power over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor, Did not the prophet Jeremiah describe the honorable clay in the potter's hands in Jeremiah 18 verse 8 as that which of its own free will turns from its evil? In response to the spirits beckoning but not coercing through the convicting word of God. Why then would God, the God who shows no partiality in Romans, why would that God show partiality in election, sending the multitudes to hell who in the Calvinist scheme are no less inclined in their own wills to repentance and faith than any of the elect in heaven? And so does not the Calvinist view of election maliciously attack the very character of God. by maliciously attacking the very doctrines of God's justice and God's compassion. And in response to such questions, the church's teacher, this man exalted as teacher over the church, once again attempts an academic, man-fearing answer, but only one which will be strongly rebuked by the courts of heaven. The true embarrassment that the church's teacher does not know these things Christ has come to earth as the wisdom of God and so Nicodemus must be humbled he is Israel's teacher and yet he does not know these things His wisdom is of the world, of seminaries and doctorates and elite leadership circles. While Christ himself is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Christ speaks to Nicodemus of earthly things that relate to heaven. Yet Nicodemus, who is Israel's teacher, does not know these things. So how then will he ever help to understand when Christ speaks to him of heavenly things that relate to earth? John 3, 11 through 12. Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know. See, remember, Nicodemus does not know these things, but Jesus says, we speak what we know. And bear witness to what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? Who is the we in this passage? Our Lord says, we speak what we know and bear witness to what we have seen. And you do not receive our witness. So who then is the we and the our? Well, as an aside, is it not amazing that the Apostle John, a mere fisherman, this is so amazing, writes these things and understands them, having been taught of Jesus, while Nicodemus, Israel's credentialed teacher, does not understand them. That's amazing. The fisherman understands. The man in his doctoral robes doesn't understand. Does not the deeply God-fearing car mechanic, being silver-haired and dressed in his grease-covered blue coveralls, know more doctrine about heaven than the Bible scholar in his robe and cap who feeds primarily on the wisdom of the world? Is Jesus speaking about himself and John? Does he mean John the Baptist and I, when he says, we speak what we know and bear witness to what we have seen. Well, no, this cannot be the case because Jesus says, we have seen heavenly things. The we then must be Trinitarian. Through the Son of Man, who is the Son, Both the Father and the Son speak and bear witness to heavenly things. The we is God. John 8, 14 through 18, Jesus answered and said to them, even if I bear witness to myself, my witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you do not know where I come from and where I am going. You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one, and yet if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father, we, who sent me. It is also written in your law that the witness of two men is true. I am the one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me. Moreover, in the word of Christ, not only the Father and the Son bear witness to heavenly things, but also the Spirit who is sent from the Father in order to bear witness to the Son. John 15, 26, but when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me. The Lord Jesus then is speaking to Nicodemus, of His pre-incarnate glory. The glory that He had with the Father before He came down from heaven. All other men, John the Baptist included, are not pre-existent. Their souls do not pre-exist prior to their creation by God in their mother's wombs. Yet the Son of God did pre-exist. Prior to coming down into the world, he had a pre-incarnate glory with the Father in the celestial realms of glory. John 3, 11 through 12, again, most assuredly I say to you, we speak what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? What has Jesus seen and heard to which he bears witness? Has he not seen and heard heavenly things in his glory in heaven? Was he not in heaven before he came down to earth? Does he not then speak of the glory that he had with the Father prior to becoming flesh and setting up his bodily tabernacle among us? Was he not present with the Father and working beside the Father at the very creation of the world? Did not the Son of God, as the very wisdom of God, sit at the right hand of the Father, being present beside him as a master craftsman when he marked out the foundations of the earth? Was it not the Son, along with the Father, by the agency of the Spirit, who laid the foundations of the earth, determined its measurements, stretched the line upon it, fastened its foundations, laid its cornerstone, caused the morning stars to sing together, and made the angels to shout for joy? Did not God say in Genesis 126, let us make man in our image, in our likeness During the time of the Tower of Babel was not the son seeded with the father when the father said to the son and to the spirit in Genesis 11 7 come let us Go down and they're confused their language that they may not understand one another's speech is it not the Lord Jesus himself who at the command of the father and by the power of the spirit spoke the heavens into place and caused the earth to bring forth seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees, each with their seed in them according to their kinds. Therefore has not the Lord Jesus Christ seen and heard the inapproachable light of heaven and the worship of God by all of the angelic hosts of heaven? John 17, verse five. And now, oh, Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. Oh, dear Christian, never forget that. Left to ourselves. Our we. What we have seen and heard and thus know and speak. is only earthly, whereas Christ's we, what He and the Father and the Spirit have seen and heard and thus know and speak, is very much heavenly. And therefore, if we also, little mortals that we are, desire to speak of heavenly things, we must treasure up Christ's words within us. This should be our grand endeavor in life. Namely, to employ earthly things only in order to speak of heavenly things. And so to study the wind only to speak of the spirit and to study the human body only to speak of the church as the body of Christ and to study the work of structural design and construction only to speak of the building up of the church as the very temple of Christ. But in order to train ourselves to speak of heavenly things, then we must believe. The words of Christ. A Christian whose speech is filled with heavenly things can only do so because he is in his core a heavenly minded man. But one cannot be a heavenly minded man without the precious words of Christ. And therefore, we treasure up the words of Christ in our hearts, taking every opportunity to fear them, to obey them, to proclaim their glorious nature and to allow them to reveal to us the heavenly knowledge. Without which it would be impossible. To worship the Lord Jesus. In spirit. And in truth. Christ, then, is he who condescended. He is the only one who came down from heaven, for he is the Son of Man who is in heaven. Verse 13, John 3, 13. No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. Now remember, Nicodemus should know these things. He ought to know these things. He should understand that the Old Testament prophesied that Christ would come down from heaven to dwell amongst his people. Nicodemus ought to know that. Yet Nicodemus, who is Israel's teacher, does not know these things. Instead, in God's wondrous administration, it is to us, unworthy Gentiles and former sinners, that this mystery has been revealed. For did not the scriptures of Israel prophesy that the Son of God would one day come down to us in the flesh? Did he not come down in his pre-incarnate glory to eat with Abraham and to wrestle with Jacob? Did not the cloud of his glory come down from heaven and stand at the door of Moses' tent just outside of the camp of Israel in the wilderness? Was not his pre-incarnate glory even with a sword in his hand seen by Joshua? And did he not come down from heaven and appear to Gideon under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah when Gideon was threshing wheat? And did not his glory The glory of Christ come down from heaven like a cloud and fill the temple of Solomon such that the priests were not able to enter the temple at all for a time? Was not this pre-incarnate glory of Christ seen in the midst of the fire as the fourth man in the fire in the times of the sufferings of the friends of Daniel? Was not Christ in his pre-incarnate glory seen by the prophet Zechariah? Did he not come down from heaven and appear to Zachariah in the form of a man riding on a red horse and stopping among the myrtle trees in the hollow? So Christ descended according to the scriptures. He came down from heaven in order to take up real human flesh and blood, and this was done in the Gospel according to the Scriptures. Isaiah 7, 14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. But that means the Son of God in the flesh of a human babe. And shall call his name Emmanuel and Isaiah 9 6 for unto us a child is born unto us a son That's incarnation. That's condescension is given and The government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called wonderful counselor mighty God Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And again, Micah 5, verse 2, But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. So when he comes, when he condescends, this is the ancient of days condescending. Oh, beloved brethren, The great hope that you have in the gospel is not of this present world, not of this present earth. Rather, your great hope is the hope of the ages, the very hope held by the elect of all ages to be so dear and precious that it is to be worth dying for, worth being crucified for, which is the hope that God will come down to dwell with his people. Jesus, the son of man, is he who came down from heaven in the days of Caesar Augustus. While Quirinius was governing Syria, he came down to walk and eat and teach and live among us. But Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, Doesn't understand these things and yet when he hears this he surely understands the implications the fearful grandeur of what it would mean for Jesus says that the Son of Man is he who came down from heaven and Nicodemus surely knows that the Son of Man Is the very one who was revealed in the book of the prophet Daniel to be the king of glory He at least recognizes that He knows the Son of Man Nicodemus knows that the Son of Man in the Bible is attended by 10,000 times 10,000 burning fearsome angels Nicodemus knows that a fire rushes before him Because he sits on the judgment throne of heaven And when he comes down to earth, in the Bible, he comes riding on the wings of the wind. He makes the clouds his war chariot, and thunder and lightning goes before him, such that the earth shakes and totters before him. Nicodemus knows that the rocks split open at the coming of his holy presence. And in his heavenly temple, all who see him fall down upon their faces before him and cry, glory. So how great then is the mystery of His incarnation? Shall the all-powerful Son of Man take upon Himself the fragile weakness of a little babe? Shall the God of Sinai, the God of hot wrath and blazing fire, subject himself to coldness in this world and so shiver as an infant in the flesh swaddled tightly and held softly in Mary's arms. Shall he who brought forth gushing water from the rock. Now subject himself to human thirst. So he who clothed he who clothed Solomon with riches. Now become an impoverished carpenter son from Nazareth? Will the feet that strode through the Red Sea, cutting a dry path for his people, yet without leaving footprints, now fill up the suffering sandals of the despised and rejected servant whom the Jews desire to crucify? Precious brethren in Christ, know that when Jesus as a toddler played with his hands in the dirt. The very one who formed Adam from the dust of the earth was playing in the dirt. And know also that when Mary, his mother, stood before the cross, weeping and mourning over her son's disfigured visage and earth-shaking torments on the cross, and then, through a break in her tears, looked up into the eyes of her son She knew that she was looking into the very eyes of the Lord of the heavenly hosts. In Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who is light of light and very God of very God, the Lord our God came down from heaven to dwell with us. So here then is the great hope, the blessed hope, namely that Christ Jesus shall come down from heaven again. It shall be both fearful and glorious, both tenderly sweet and powerfully terrifying all at once. For the Son of Man shall come down in the fullness of His divine wrath to expend His holy fury on all the wicked who have refused to repent of their idols, and in their wicked pride have blasphemed His name continually. And so He shall slay them with the sharp two-edged sword that proceeds from His mouth, and the birds of the heavens will feed on their flesh. But He shall gather His persecuted weeping children from the four winds of the earth and in doing so he shall still their quivering lips heal their bodily afflictions and wipe away every tear from their eyes and then he shall gather them into his arms as a shepherd gathers his lambs into his bosom and he the son of man shall dwell amongst his elect, breaking the bread of fellowship with us and sharing in the cup of joy with us. And therefore, as we still today suffer in the body, we must encourage one another as often as we have the opportunity to do so with this great hope. Our Lord Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Son of Man came down from heaven. So how great then was this condescension? How wide and long and deep and high is this condescending love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, our Lord? Well, the love of God is incomprehensibly high because it came to us, came down to us all the way from heaven. But it is also incomprehensibly deep because it shall take Jesus all the way to the cross and even into the depths of the grave itself. John 3, 14 through 15. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And whoever believes in Him, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Firmly against the Calvinist teaching on election. We hear our Lord say here, John 3, that the difference between those who perish everlastingly in hell and those who have eternal life in heaven is a matter of unbelief versus belief. Which is to say, those who perish do so because they will not believe in the Son of Man and in what He did for them by being lifted up on the cross. So the grave warning then is that the witness of Christ, this witness that has come down, is as binding as God's own Word, even His Word in the flesh, and also the power of this witness is as earth-shaking as the blood of the Son of God spattered on the cross. And therefore, when we speak to the unbeliever, we must say to the unbeliever, you are accountable to this witness. You cannot claim Calvinistically that God did not choose you. And so you are unable to believe. To the contrary, all have the freedom to believe in him. If only they will repent of their evil deeds and turn to Him, and even still, you must will to believe. If you do not believe, it is because you are not willing to believe, such that you choose not, and there I specifically use biblical language, choose not to believe. But that means that such unbelief will make you guilty of the very blood of Jesus on the day of judgment. And if you're found guilty of the blood of the Son of God, then hell shall be everlastingly furious for you indeed. So we beg you then, O unbeliever, to turn from your sins and to believe upon Him who was lifted up on the cross in order to receive the punishment of your sins in His own body as the substitutionary sacrifice for your sins. We plead with you to do it now and do not tarry a day longer. Be safe from this perverse generation this very day. Pray this very night for the Lamb of God to take away your sins, because if you tarry, then your unbelief will only harden into an unbreakable pride, and then in the end you will perish in your sins. Yet, for those who do turn away from the death of unbelief and choose life in God, who do believe upon his name, our Lord Jesus says, that they shall not perish, but have eternal life. So think then upon, you listen to these, of course, John 3.16 locates such a central verse in the gospel. Think upon the greatness of this Calvary love. I, the former chief of sinners, may be washed in the blood of the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. That is, the very foremost of sinners is now made clean by the immeasurably precious blood of the exalted Son of Man. Who can understand such condescending love that the Son of Man would offer me, the chief of sinners, the eternal life that comes by way of his innocent suffering on my behalf? Why would my Lord love me so? And if he has condescended so, should not my soul arise and with all my inmost being exalt him so. The scripture is that he condescended all the way to becoming a curse for us. As Moses lifted up the serpent of curse in the wilderness, so he was lifted up on the cross for us. We obeyed the voice of the serpent that spoke to Eve from the twisted branches of the cursed tree. But he took the serpent's curse of sin in his own body for us on the tree. His strength was dried up like a pot shirt and his tongue clung to his jaws. The congregation of the wicked encircled him. They pierced his hands and his feet. This is how far he in love, inexpressible, condescended for us. Philippians 2 verse 8 and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death. Even the death of the cross. Therefore, beloved of Christ. How high? Shall he be exalted in the kingdom of heaven? If he condescended so low. Then how high? So the angels and saints exalt him in the eternal state. For who can describe the handsome glory of this, our divine bridegroom? Who can tell of the greatness of the power of his mighty works of love on behalf of his bride, the church? In unspeakable love, he condescended to suffer for our sins. And so, in the unspeakable approval and reward of the Father, he shall be exalted to the highest height of heaven. for the father is well pleased with his son and the saints of heaven are bursting with joyful anticipation of the coming wedding feast of the lamb at which they along with us who shall join them soon shall at last praise him on earth the way he in which he's already being praised in heaven because when he comes down again The whole earth, every rock and hill and tree of the forest and blooming crocus and leaping lamb, along with every breath breathed by every one of his saints, shall exalt him with the loudest, most jubilant song of praise. And so he who condescended shall ascend to the throne of exaltation being given as it is written in Philippians 2, 9 through 11, the name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. And thus it shall be. Forever and ever. World without end. So as we close this morning and now come to the Lord's table, we come trying to know, to grasp the condescension of the cross, the exalted Son of Man coming all the way down to death on a cross. Before we come, here's the doxology. Praise be to God, our Father, who sent his son to bear witness to the very things which he has seen and heard in heaven. Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, who condescended all the way to the depths of the grave on behalf of sinners. And praise be to the Holy Spirit, who guides us into the exaltation of Christ in preparation for His coming exaltation in the kingdom of heaven. Amen.