Now our scripture this evening comes from Acts chapter 28 and verses 11 to the end of the chapter, verse 31. And let's just take care of a little housekeeping at the beginning. I seem to have something in my throat that puts me down about an octave. And I don't think I'm infectious. I'm not grippy. But just for those of you who are concerned, should I go out the back door and shake hands with him? I won't go to the back door. And you can go out freely. I'll take care of that decision for you. So that I know, as a preacher, I may make you sick, but I don't want to make you literally sick. And so if you have some concerns that way, you won't have to shake my hand. You can just leave. I will stand down here after the service for any who are reckless and courageous. Now, let's go to Acts chapter 28 and verses 11 and following. Last words from last chapters. After three months, we set sail on a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria with the twin gods as a figurehead. Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days, and from there we made a circuit and arrived at Regium. And after one day a south wind sprang up and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and three taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage, and when he came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. After three days, he called together the local leaders of the Jews, and when they had gathered, he said to them, Brothers, though I have done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. When they had examined me, they wished to set me at liberty, because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case. But because the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar, though I had no charge to bring against my nation. For this reason, therefore, I have asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. And they said to him, We have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you, but we desire to hear from you what your views are, for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against. When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him and his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul made one statement. The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, go to this people and say, you will indeed hear but never understand, you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed. Unless they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them. Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen. He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. Paul Tripp tells of a time in about 1978 when they decided to start a little Christian school, and he was the principal of it. And since they didn't have a kindergarten teacher, he was the kindergarten teacher. Well, one of the mothers of one of his students wanted to have a birthday party for her daughter at the school on one day, and so he permitted that. And his mother went all out and decorated with streamers and so on. The students that came in, apparently it was after school or something, but they came into the room, it was all decorated lavishly, there were gifts there for her daughter, and there were lovely party favors and wrapped up in some kind of cellophane affair for each one of the students. It was a delightful thing. But there was one fellow there, a boy, Johnny, who was kind of grouchy about the whole thing. He was harrumphing and harrumphing about this and that. He was showing that he was not very impressed with his party favors when the star of the show had her gifts and so on. He was becoming the center of malcontentism and so on and just kind of ruining the whole affair. And so one of the kindergarten teachers got down at his level and turned his chair apparently so he had to look at her right in the face and she said to him, Johnny, it's not your party. Now just hold that there for a minute. There's no indication at the end of the book of Acts that Paul's emperor hearing, you know, he appealed to Caesar. And there's no indication that that hearing before Caesar had come about yet. We don't even know if it had been scheduled. And yet here at the end of Acts, Luke ends his second volume, And you don't know how it turned out. What happened to Paul's hearing before Caesar? How'd that wash out? Is this just like a Friday afternoon soap opera? You know, it just kind of dribbles out and hooks you in so you have to tune in next week and it never ends. Why doesn't he decisively conclude all of this? And that's when Luke has to turn you to himself and sit down in front of you and say to you, it's not about Paul. It's about Jesus and his kingdom and his gospel. And so he ends his second volume with the Gospel of Jesus. Do you see that? The Gospel of Jesus being freely proclaimed in the administrative center of the Roman Empire. That's what he wants you to see. So Jesus' program, in one sense, has been accomplished. Now I know that Acts is very carefully put together and structured and so on, but there is a kind of a key verse in chapter 1, verse 8, when Jesus said to his apostles, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. In Acts 28, you're at the end of the earth. You're at Rome. The program has been accomplished in one sense. So, this is very deliberate on Luke's part. So, as S. G. deGrasse says, what you have in Acts 28 is that Christ puts his claim on the center of the world. And that's where Acts ends. If you go back to chapter 1 verse 1, that's so much for orientation then, right? If you go back to chapter 1 verse 1 of Acts, Luke refers to his first volume, which we call the Gospel of Luke, and he says, now Theophilus, in my first writing of all that Jesus began to do and teach, that's his description of the Gospel of Luke. All that Jesus began to do and teach. And now, in the book of Acts, what's that? Well, the book of Acts consists of what Jesus continues to do and teach through his apostles. That's the volume we're looking at here, Luke Volume 2. And he's coming now to the closing, the last words from the last chapter, and he puts certain emphases or highlights before us. I don't know what you would highlight if you were Luke and closing out your second volume, but there are certain matters here that Luke highlights, and we want to look at those. In the first place, he highlights a ubiquitous people, a ubiquitous people. verses 11 to 16. Now I wouldn't usually talk that way, use a word like ubiquitous, but it brought to my attention a number of years ago when we were living in Louisville, Kentucky, and along the side, a big broad side of the city transit bus, there was this word, ubiquitous. In huge letters, I think it said, we are ubiquitous. U-B-I-Q. U-I-T-O-U-S. Broken up dictionary style in syllables with all the diacritical marks that you find in the dictionary. Ubiquitous. You might think that the citizens of Louisville must be of some intellectual caliber to be able to swallow that kind of advertising. I don't know. But I think they mentioned somewhere on there probably what it meant. It means everywhere. We're everywhere. We're ubiquitous. Anywhere in the greater Louisville metropolitan area that you want to go or come from, you can find a city transit bus to transport you. We're ubiquitous. We're everywhere. Well, that's what Luke is underscoring here. There's a ubiquitous people. The people of Jesus seem to be everywhere. You notice that this picks up in verse 11, this last scenario of the last chapter of Acts, picks up on the island of Malta. That's where Paul and the Roman guard and his companions and so on and his sailors were deposited and their shipwrecked several months before. And so they were on the island of Malta. And they went then, when the sailing season began again, they got on an Alexandrian ship and they sailed 90 miles north of Malta to Syracuse, which is on the island of Sicily. And then they went to Regnum, 70 miles north of Syracuse, on the boot of Italy. And then, getting the wind, the favorable wind, they sailed another 180 miles to Puteoli, which was a port of Rome. Some distance from Rome, but it was a port of Rome, one of the ports of Rome. And you notice there in verse 14, there we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. You might wonder, well, what? Roman centurion, what would he say of that, and so on. These, you know, being at a port, having seven days, they wouldn't mind. And so Paul and his companions got to stay with the brothers, the Christian believers there in Puteoli. There was apparently a local fellowship there, Christians, in Puteoli. And then, and then of course, There was something else. Notice verse 15. And the brothers in Rome, when they heard about us, came as far as the forum of Appius and three taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. Now, Rome was another 130 miles from Puteoli, Overland. But the house churches in Rome, some of the believers there, knew that Paul was coming. And so some of them went as far as the Forum of Appius. That was 43 miles from Rome. Others went as far as three taverns. That was 33 miles from Rome. They went because they wanted to meet Paul and to ask for him to run. Paul was almost a celebrity of sorts. They were giving him a royal welcome. But there were brothers in Pigioli, there are brothers there in Rome who come out and make the effort to come all that distance to meet him and escort him back, and note the effect on Paul in seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. It was cause for praise to God that these believers were with him, and it encouraged and heartened him so much. That's the way it is with Christ's people. in the fellowship of Christ's people. It puts fresh heart into us. That you're a part of the people. Sometimes we don't think too much about that. But it's very important that Christ's people not be by themselves. I don't mean that you never can have any solitude or anything like that, you know that. But, well, Martin Luther made the point once in his table talk, this whole matter about being an isolated Christian. And this is what Martin Luther said, I too often suffer from severe trials and sorrows. At such times, I seek the fellowship of men. A man doesn't have control of himself when he's downcast and alone, even if he's well equipped with the knowledge of the scriptures. When I am morose, I flee above all from solitude. Don't remain alone when you are assailed. Flee solitude. Do as that monk did. When he felt tempted in his cell, said, I won't stay here. I'll run out of my cell to my brethren. That's what I do too. I'd rather go to my swineherd John or even to the pigs themselves than remain alone. There's a need to be among Christ's disciples, and it's interesting that that's what encouraged Paul. That he was not facing this alone, but here we're at Puteoli, at Rome, and coming out from Rome, Christ's people were there, standing with Him, and what an encouragement that was. Now, we don't know their stories, these believers in these communities, but they were there. Well, that seems to be the case, isn't it? No matter where we go, Christ's people are everywhere. This is found in Acts 21 verses 1-16, another passage earlier in Acts. Acts 21 talks about when Paul and his entourage were sailing to Jerusalem and they came to Tyre and Phoenicia and there were disciples there. I think they stayed with them seven days. Then they sailed to Ptolemaeus, and they found relievers there, and they stayed with them for a day. And then they gave the Caesarea. Oh, there was Philip and his four daughters who were prophetesses who received them in hospitality. There were disciples everywhere. And thank God that there are. What an encouragement that can be. Like you can find The servants of Christ, almost everywhere you go. John McCain, who was a senator from Arizona and was a presidential candidate some years back, tells of a time when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And there was an occasion that he found deeply moving was a time when he was being held in solitary, and he was caught trying to communicate, I suppose, through the wall and through code with his friend in the cell next to his. And so for his transgression, he was kept overnight in a punishment cell, tied very tightly in ropes. Now, McCain said that the guards, the gun guards especially in this North Vietnamese facility, were ones who couldn't serve in combat usually. They maybe had a physical impairment or they had a mental impairment or something, but they could serve as gun guards. And they never paid much attention to the prisoners. The prisoners never paid much attention to them. But there he was in in his punishment cell and these terribly, painfully tight ropes with which he was bound and suddenly the door opened and a young gun guard came in. He had seen him occasionally wandering around the complex He didn't say a word, he just put his fingers to his lips for McCain to keep quiet. Without smiling or even looking at me in the eye, McCain said he proceeded to loosen the ropes that bound me. After he completed his kind action without uttering a word, he left. As dawn approached, he returned to tighten the ropes again to their original tension. before he finished his watch, so that the next guard that came on would not be aware of what he had done. Now, McCain said, I occasionally saw this good Samaritan around in the prison yard and so on, but he never allowed himself a glance in my direction, never spoke to him. Until one Christmas morning when McCain said he was allowed out of his cell to stand alone in the outdoors and look up at the clear blue sky. And he said, as I was looking up in the sky, I became aware of him as he walked near me and then for a moment stood very close to me. He didn't speak or smile or look at me. He just stared at the ground in front of us and then very casually he used his foot to draw a cross in the dirt. We both stood looking at his work, McCain said, for a minute until he rubbed it out and walked away. McCain says, I was just one Christian venerating the cross with a fellow Christian on Christmas morning. He said, I saw him occasionally, but he never looked at me or attempted to speak. And then McCain says, we never worshipped together again. But I've never forgotten him. Because you see, Christ's people, well, they're ubiquitous. You never know where you'll find them, even in the North Vietnamese army. And somehow it strangely puts fresh art into you to know they're there. A ubiquitous people. Now secondly, Luke shows us a sad prophecy, a sad prophecy, verses 17 to 28. Let's try to summarize this. In true form, On Paul's ministry, he always goes to the Jew first. And when he gets in Rome, he gets the leaders of the Jews. together and he wants to present his case to them very diplomatically. He does not lay a lot of blame on the Jews in Jerusalem and so on as he reports to them, but he says that he wanted to speak to them and they said, well we've received no bad mouthing from Judea about you, we just know that this sect everywhere spoken against so we do want to hear from you so verse 23 they gave Paul a day and they came to the house where Paul was staying lightly guarded by the Roman guard and so on they came to him in greater numbers and then notice the privilege they have in verse 23 from morning till evening He expounded to them, testifying to the Kingdom of God, and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. What a privilege they had! Bible study with Paul! What must that have been like? As he tried to convince them about Jesus, imagine what that might have been like. Paul taking them to various passages, not only the Old Testament story as we might call it, but individual passages and saying, now look at this, think about this, so on. Maybe he took them to Psalm 16 and especially verse 10 where David said, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol. You will never allow your Hassi, your covenant one, to see corruption." And he might have said something like this to them. Now look, David obviously is speaking there and so on. But you know, he's not just saying the same thing in the two lines of that verse. If you look, Paul could say in all of Psalm 16, you'll notice that the poetry, the next, you know, one line doesn't, the second line doesn't repeat just what's in the first line. It always advances the thought a little bit. So what's going on when he says in the second line of verse 10, you will never allow your covenant one to see corruption, it's going beyond David's assurance of himself in the first line. It's saying something different. And then he might say, if you notice that David there in the first part of verse 10 talks about, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol. But you notice through Psalm 16 he might have said that there's always this repeated, my, my, my, which is David himself speaking. Where he talks about my lips, my delight, my chosen portion, my cup, my lot. my heart, my right hand, my whole being, my flesh, my soul. But in the last of verse 16, he says, you will want to mend your posse, your covenant one to corruption. Now, he keeps saying my, my, my, my all the way through. But in the last of verse 10, he says, your covenant one. It's likely that he's speaking of someone other than himself. It may be David's descendant, but it's distinct from David. He's speaking about, Paul would say, the resurrection of the Messiah. And he would make the same argument that Peter did on the day of Pentecost. You know, that's not talking about David, because you can take Azariah's Bible and Stuart's, and you can go back to Jerusalem, and they'll show you David's grave. David is dead and rotten. You will not allow your Holy One, your Covenant One, to see corruption. What does that mean, you would say? Pressing them to see that as a prophecy of David's descendant, Jesus. And then he might take them perhaps, you know, as Jesus did in Matthew 22 with the Pharisees, take them to Psalm 110, verse 1. Remember, Jesus said to the Pharisees, who's the Messiah, Christ? Whose son is he? And they said, oh, the son of David. Well, Jesus said, well then, I'll come in Psalm 110, the first verse. It's a psalm attributed to David. And if it's attributed to David, and if David's speaking there, when he says, Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a stool for your feet. If the Messiah, if the Christ is David's son, if he's his descendant, how come he calls him Lord? Yahweh said to my Lord, as if he's my sovereign. Not just my descendant. Now Jesus wasn't trying to deny that the Messiah was a descendant or son of David in that sense. He was trying to get the Pharisees to see that it's more complex than they realized. That he's both divine, he's my Lord, and he's also David's descendant as well. A divine human, Messiah. It's kind of hard to get to think that. How do you deal with Psalm 110.1? And I think that Paul would press that upon these Jewish hearers. I think maybe he would take them to Isaiah chapter 50 maybe in verse 10. Who among you fears Yahweh and obeys the voice of His servant who walked in darkness without any light? Isn't that interesting? You don't have to go to Isaiah 53 to see some of this. Who among you fears the agony and obeys the voice of his servant? Now the servant had just spoken in one of those servant songs in Isaiah 50. Had you noticed And Isaiah, Paul might say, places fearing Yahweh and obeying the voice of his servant on the same level, as if they're sort of equal. It seems to indicate that the servant of Yahweh there is also in the same status as Yahweh himself. seems to indicate that that servant is divine by implication. But then he says, and it won't appear in all of your translations, because I don't think they've construed the text correctly there, but in Psalm 50, in verse 10, that the following phrase should be, who walked in darkness, and it refers to that servant. So who among you fears Yahweh and obeys the voice of his servant? placing the servant almost on an equality with Yahweh himself, and then describes that servant, who walked in darkness without any light, to wintry suffering and distress. He has divine status, and yet he suffers intensely. How do you put that together, you Jews in Rome? I think Paul would have argued that. Or you can take him to Zechariah 9.9, your Palm Sunday verse, you know. Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion, etc. Your king is coming to you, righteous, in what's ESV, something like, and having salvation is he, humble, and riding on a donkey. Mmm, don't know about that. Actually, Your king comes to you righteous and having been saved. What's that mean? That means there was some situation in which this king was in distress and needed to be rescued. That's a strange description for a king, isn't it? Righteous and having been saved. He had to be rescued and then humbled up. But you would almost more likely translate that word for humble as afflicted. Afflicted. And riding on a donkey. That's a strange description of a king. If you think the king, you Jews in Rome, if you think the Messiah is just a royal figure, In his power and might he must understand, this is a king who suffered, who had to be saved from some kind of distress, who's afflicted. What a strange description. I think Paul would have taken them through texts again and again, hammering this home. to show that the Messiah is both divine and human. He's royal and he suffers. And you try to put all that together and it's there. You don't have to wait to get to the New Testament. It's there in the Old Testament text. He's trying to convince all that to say, that seems to be what he's behind. trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. That was their privilege, to hear the argumentation of the Apostle. Now you notice the division occurs in 24 and 25. Some were convinced by what he said, but others disagreed or disbelieved. And so they departed. And then Paul made an explanation in verses 25 and 27. He said, just one last word, Isaiah 6 verses 9 to 10 is still true. And you fellows are proving it today. Isaiah 6 and verses 9 to 10 were Yahweh's words to Isaiah when he began his prophetic ministry. And he basically said to Isaiah, Isaiah, you're not going to be very successful. No one's going to much listen to you. In fact, when you preach, your word is going to have a blinding, deafening, densifying effect upon the people. And I'll say, that's a sad prophecy, and it's still true today, as you fellas, who are not believing, have demonstrated. It was a kind of an unnatural response, you know, wasn't it? These were Jesus' own ethnic people. But you see, that's the sad part of it. John 1-11, he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. In one sense, unnatural. They were his own people. Sort of like the situation near the end of World War II in 1945, there were people trying to get out of Danzig. over in the eastern part of Germany and so on up on the coast and so on. And there were some ships, about half a dozen ships that were sent to evacuate some German troops from that area to take them back for the defense of Berlin. But there were also some German refugees in that area and they were stuck out on a peninsula, more damsick and so on. And they were subject to constant shelling from, I think, Soviet artillery. And they wanted to get away too and there was room, a little extra room on some of these ships that were hauling military personnel. And some of these refugees were trying to get a place on these ships. Well, there was one ship that the Goya that was sailing and the ferry was bringing out some refugees in the ship and they were clambering aboard. And one of the officers happened to see a young man and his wife with a baby, carrying a baby, and then apparently his parents, aged parents, with him on the ferry. and the young couple with the baby clambered aboard from the ferry and then the husband turned to his aged parents and instead of helping them onto the deck, he pushed them back into the ferry. He said, you're of no use anymore, you're too old. And as the ferry went back to the mainland, he stood staring stonily at his aged parents and he had rejected them. It's unnatural. It's sad. And in one sense, these are Jesus' own ethnic people, but he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. You might say, well, okay, but that's, you know, I'm a Jolly Gentile, that really doesn't affect me at all. No, it does, because the principle that shows you the unique and special danger of religious and privileged people. of people who, like Jesus, own the people of the Jews, of people like you who have a Bible, who have a gospel of worship, who have, in many cases, vital and caring Christian homes and nurture, and yet, turn a deaf ear to the Savior. All I mean to say is, don't go asking a bunch of curious questions that don't really matter that much, like, what's going to happen to those who never heard the gospel? But rather you better be asking the question, what's going to happen to you who have heard and heard and heard and you're still stiff-arming the Savior who keeps calling you? What's going to happen to you? Be a sad prophecy again. Now then, There's a ubiquitous people and there's a sad prophecy and then Luke wants us to see thirdly a big adverb, a big adverb. Look at verses 30 and 31 again. He, Paul, lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. Now the big adverb is the last word of the book of Acts, and it is in Greek an adverb, akaloutos. without hindrance, it's translated here. You can make it an English adverb with a little gerrymandering. Unhinderedly. There you've got an adverb, right? That's what it is. And so, he's trying to say, he's teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and unhinderedly, with complete boldness and freedom, forcefully and freely. Though Paul is technically a prisoner, his message and his witness had a real freedom. So here's the gospel of the kingdom and of the Lord Jesus going forth freely from the center of the world. It's as if Christ has staked out his turf. He's claiming glory, you might say. It may be meant as a prophetic picture, perhaps Luke leaves this with us, as if to say, this Word, if it is run victoriously to Rome, will run to all the nooks and crannies of the world, to Malawi and Uganda, to Latin America, to the rest of Europe, to China, to Korea, to Ukraine, etc., etc. As if this is a kind of a foretaste of what's in view. But don't miss it. Christ is being proclaimed. His gospel has free course in the center of ancient, the bastion of ancient paganism. That's a victorious picture, unhinderedly. It's a big advert. But something else here with this unhindered gospel. Something else if you notice verse 16. When we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. Lightly guarded, probably chained to this soldier loosely at the wrist and so on. But I guess F.M. Bruce says that these soldiers were once in the Praetorian Guard. About every four hours another soldier would come along, relieve the one who had just served. That's interesting. another unhindered opportunity for the gospel to another Roman soldier. So where are you from? I'm from Gaul. Oh, Gaul! Ever been in the Eastern Mediterranean? No, never served there lots happened back there. I don't mind telling you how it is I got here Paul might say you want to hear about it? Well, it's all about this Jesus of Nazareth Well, I don't know how Paul attacked it and so on but but you've got four hours with the Roman guard You can't just watch the weather channel all the time What an opportunity for an unhindered gospel Who's the real prisoner? Ah And apparently it was effective, because if you remember when Dr. Stephen Nichols was preaching from Philippians 1, 12 to 13 several weeks ago, and you do remember, I trust, as he was talking about how the gospel was known, that Paul's situation was known among the Praetorian Guard, and they knew that his imprisonment was in Christ and for Christ. He had spelled it out to these fellows. He can't help but think that there must have been some of them who became disciples of Jesus because of the required time they had to spend sitting next to Paul under house arrest. Sometimes the unhindered gospel needs to come to folks that, well, not so much extensively, but that are just far away, but near to him. Donald McGafferan was a missionary, a missionary statesman, and generated some controversy in mission circles, etc. But he was apparently in India for a while, and one day while he was walking, he said there were words from an Indian woman that changed his life. He says that one day he was walking through the mission compound after church, and he encountered an Indian woman who with her family had lived and worked at the headquarters compound for many years. So he struck up a friendly conversation with this Wendian woman, and in the course of it he asked her, how is it that you've been with Christians for all these years, yet none of you has ever become a Christian? She told him they probably would have long ago if anyone had cared. No one had ever urged her or anyone in her caste to make such a decision. Mama Gavilan said, that went through me like a knife. He was shaken that a family living on the mission compound had never been asked to take Jesus as Lord. He was working 12 hours a day as an administrator, but he began to spend one night out of every week evangelizing her family and her cast. In other words, don't look too far all the time. The person needing the unhindered gospel may be very close and near at hand. So, here is Christ, as you close Luke Volume 2, here is Christ in his gospel, putting his claim on the center of the world, and waiting till the nations become his heritage, and the ends of the earth, his possession. Let us pray. Oh Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for the fine pictures that you give us. This morning you gave us the picture of a marriage supper of the Lamb, and this evening there is the free course of the Gospel going forth. the bastion of paganism. How you give us these pictures, O Lord, that you are the victor. And even though sometimes, even in Christ, the circumstances of our lives seem to be in shambles, we nevertheless have the assurance that in you, we too will be victors. And we thank you in your name. Amen.