Right, we look at 2 Peter 3 and the last words Peter wrote. 2 Peter 3 and verse 18. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. Now, the greatest single moment in the life of any human being is the moment when he becomes a Christian. And in that moment, his whole position is radically and irreversibly altered. In that moment, his heart is renewed. In that moment, he is called and justified and united to the Lord Jesus Christ and adopted into the family of God. And the dominion of sin over him comes to an end. In that moment, his prospects for the future are completely changed. And that is true for every single Christian, without exception, for the Christian whose faith is as thin as a spider's thread. He's given new resources, given a new status, given new attitudes, given new aspirations. He is, as Paul says, even a new creation. And it is quite important for me constantly to emphasize the decisiveness and the momentousness, the radical cleavage between what he once was, the old man, and the new man now in Jesus Christ. And yet from another perspective, it's only the beginning of our soul's salvation. It's not in itself the completion of the work of redemption. It's only its initial step. And between the soul at that moment and its final redemption, there are all the struggles of the Christian pilgrimage. We move on to the New Jerusalem. We face all the perils and all the temptations and all the obligations of life and discipleship. And that's emphasized also in a number of ways in the New Testament. That moment is simply the starting pistol of a marathon. That moment is the declaration of war against our enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. That moment is the beginning of the great process, then, of our salvation. And that lies, then, at the back of Peter's mind in this text. He's reminding us that in our conversion the seed of glorification has been planted. But that plant must grow and not only that, but we must see to it that it does grow. We must nourish it and irrigate it and strengthen it in every way and weed it. And that's why we have this great directive here. You grow in grace. It's an imperative. It's addressed to the whole congregation, to everyone who reads this letter of Peter. And it emphasizes that every day there must be progress in our Christian lives. Keep on growing in grace. That's what he's saying. See to it that there's no stagnation. See to it that there's continuous progress day by day. in the great life of being a disciple, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Walk worthily of being his disciple, of naming his name. So, this evening I want to isolate these words, grow in grace, and reflect upon them for a little while. And I want us to begin by asking, then, what are the implications of this directive of the Apostle Paul? Now this word grace has more than one meaning in biblical usage. It is used most often to describe one of the most precious attributes of God, the divine pity, the undeserved compassion with which God looks upon lost men and women. God is grace. And then it refers to the energy that that pity puts forth as it touches the lives of individual believers. That compassion then that channels and hones in on in redemptive energy into the life of every new Christian. Grace is omnipotence acting redemptively. So sometimes grace is the compassion itself, the quality, the attribute of God, and sometimes grace then in the Bible is the redemptive energy. And then again, grace can be the effect of that redemptive energy, what it does in the life of the Christian on whom it settles, in whom it works. In other words, as God's pity comes in and homes in on us in its own power, there are certain tangible, visible effects upon our character. By their fruit, you will know them, Jesus says. Now it is with that that Peter is especially concerned here. Here he is saying, grow in graciousness. He's saying grow in Christ's graciousness and in Christ's knowledge. You know, we see on television the newscasters and they seem such a group of pleasant and intelligent and gracious people as they interview and as they take us through the news every day. from their upbringing, from acting ability, from whatever source they have had it, then they are very capable and winsome people. But we are not to grow in that kind of grace, the grace that comes from training, and education, and intelligence, and natural graces, but we are to grow in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whose example is for us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and is explained to us in the letters. to grow in the graciousness of the indwelling Lord Jesus Christ. says, if anyone will hear my voice and will open the door, I will come in with him and sup with him and he with me. So he is saying be controlled more and more by the grace of Jesus Christ and the knowledge of Jesus Christ that you have and that he has explained and told you about. Now graciousness means gentleness, and sweetness, and patience, and attractiveness of personality, a loveliness, a meekness, an interest in people. It means all of those things, but, oh, it does mean something much more majestic. So I want to ask, what does the Bible mean by a gracious character. What are the symptoms of becoming more and more gracious and knowledgeable as the years go by? If we are praying for God, oh God help me, I'm such a young Christian and I really need to grow in grace. What are we praying for when we want to become more gracious? And I want to remind you firstly now some of these elements. And the first thing I want to say is that growing in grace will show itself in a genuine progressive concern for the needs of other people. The second commandment, after the first to love God with all our hearts the second commandment is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves really a very important commandment and you listen to some Christians talk and they just talk about themselves in details you don't want to know about and they give the impression that they love themselves and then you were there to hear about them. And they lack a genuine concern for the people that they are with. Well, I'm saying that one of the first principle marks of Christian graciousness is an interest in other Christians. How is it with you? How are things? Can I help you? Do you have some fears and worries that you can share with me if you want to? I'm not prying. What can I do? Where are the struggles in the Christian Union? Where are the people struggling? Where are the doubts in the congregation? Do you know who's close to giving up? An interest in others. Jesus spoke of a seed, a corn of wheat, and you can put it in a bottle with other corns of wheat, and you can put it on the mantelpiece, and you can leave it there for months or years, and it won't change at all. It abides alone, Jesus says. Or you can bury it. You can have a burial service, and it dies. And then in the process, then shoots come out. It produces much fruit. And that choice faces every one of us in our lives. We're going to be secluded from everyone else. We're going to live apart and we're going to live for ourselves or we're going to die to self and me and ego. And we're going to be fruitful for other people. We're going to say no to being number one. Everything revolves around me. Come and listen to me. There's a famous story in English literature of the writer Evelyn Waugh. And when the war ended in 1946, bananas came to the country for the first time for six or seven years. Three bananas were delivered by ration to Evelyn Waugh's house. And there were the three, the two children and him sitting at the breakfast table and he peeled the first banana and he mashed it up with a fork and he ate it as the children look on. And then he did the same with the second banana, mashed it up and he ate it with a fork. And then he did the same thing with the third banana. He ate all three bananas as the children looked awestruck and angry that their father had not shared a bite of banana, Aubram Wall wrote about it. His son complained about it. That's a coarse example of utter selfishness. You can live like that, and many people do. But if you're a sinner and all your hopes have been in what somebody else did for you, how he loved you and came and sought you and found you one day somewhere on a bus like C.S. Lewis or in a garden listening to children shouting, take and read, take and read as he did with Augustine. He found you somewhere, maybe in a church or in your bedroom. and he showed you his love and gave you assurance that he'd shed his blood for you and that he was prepared to become your Lord and your Saviour and he did it in such a way that he'd humbled himself to a naked death on the cross that he poured contempt on the shame of it all and died there because he loved a wretch like you and like me. And then he calls me to live like him. Love is so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all, not to be spent on me, but to be spent on others. on this world in which we live. His grace then in my heart constrains me to look away, to give away my life and to find my life in others and in the peace and in the strength that he gives me in serving other people. Well, how is it with you? How is it? Are you growing in your concern for other people. At a mealtime, do you just tuck in or do you think of the person around you? Have they taken the potatoes or the vegetables? Do they need salt? You're looking if other people at the meal table have enough. When you go into a room, you just don't dive for the comfiest chair, but you think of other people. Can you be of help to them? When you're driving in your car, there are opportunities to let other people come in ahead of you at a roundabout and so on. And you give other people the benefit of the doubts for close calls on the road. In your family, you make choices all the time. What does your wife want? Where would she like to go? Your children, what do they want to do? You make friends and you invite them home and you think about them. In a congregation, you're concerned about other people and their needs. It's a very sad life. It is just centered on you, but it never denies itself for other people. It never begins to think, well, how's she doing? How is he doing? The Christian develops a mindset, and it's the mindset of a servant. I'm here to serve. The Christian is thoughtful and considerate and humbles himself in his desire to help other people. That's the first way we grow in graciousness. Secondly, we grow in knowledge. I want to take that in the most basic and simple positive sense, the sense of a literal mental grasp with our minds of the teaching of the Bible, Holy Scripture. And it may seem very elementary and yet it's absolutely fundamental. The first thing that the believer puts on is the belt of truth. The first thing that they must attend to in spiritual growth is progress in their grasp of truth. The first criterion in choosing a church where they worship is that they will hear the word of God preached. They will hear the gospel week by week. It's not a luxury, which some have, but it's fundamental for your life. It's all very well to talk about the perils of dead orthodoxy, and I'm sure there is such a reality as dead orthodoxy. There are people, and their only interest in truth is not in the great foundational doctrines, but it's an interest in the conundrum of theology. And let's avoid that. I met some in St. Petersburg recently and I was fearful unless in this fledgling movement they had too much influence. There are others and they are simply interested in the great controversial doctrines, the doctrines that divide brothers and sisters. And they're only interested in the doctrines that men fight about and that men disagree about. And we must really watch that spirit too. We are bound as Christians to make conscience of a growing in our grasp of this revelation, this book that God has given to us. He's taken such great pains to give us a word that we can understand. And it's our obligation then to use this revelation to soak ourselves in it. to become familiar with it, to steep ourselves, to marinate ourselves in this spirit-breathed world so that it becomes familiar to us. Every Christian should know and should know intimately and should know readily the teachings concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone of you should know about the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, two natures in one person. You should all know about the incarnation, how the Spirit of God overshadowed Mary and the child that was born to her was born by the Holy Spirit. You should know about the three states of Jesus Christ, pre-incarnate, in glory with his Father from all eternity. his state of humiliation when he came into the world for the 33 or so years he was here, and then his exaltation, his glorified state at the right hand of God. You should know about the offices of Christ, that he has three offices, that he is the great teacher, the great prophet, and also that he is the Lamb of God, who shed his blood to redeem us as our substitute and now the great high priest at the right hand of God presenting himself as the pledge for our forgiveness to almighty God and that he is also the great shepherd king who cares for us and works all things together for our good and he's brought you here tonight. this shepherd king. And you should all know the great doctrines of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. They both have prominence in the word of God and they are given an emphasis there that is so clear and you must believe them both. You can't reconcile them both but they're both taught so very clearly. You ought to know about justification. that God has created a righteousness that is human because it is the righteousness of the God-man, Jesus Christ, and he imputes that righteousness to all who believe in his Son, and God declares that believer righteous in Jesus Christ. That's the doctrine of justification. You ought to know about adoption, that those who receive him, to them he gives the right to be called the children of God. You ought to know about sanctification, what we're dealing with tonight. And these are not teachings for theologians or for some sort of elite group that are interested in theology, while others are interested in climatology or meteorology. But they're the stuff of believing meditation. They are the stuff of doxology, the hymn we learned tonight and sang. It was all about the love of God the Father for God the Son, and that he embraces us in that love too. And if we are going to be growing Christians, we're to be growing intellectually, and we're to be growing theologically. We're to be growing in the great foundational doctrines. And more than that, we are to be growing in our love for them. that we're going to be moved by them. And when we hear of the wonderful person of Jesus Christ, when we hear that God is Father and God is Son and God is Holy Spirit and this is one God, we're lost in wonder and amazement. that God is like this. We are stirred by these affirmations to gratitude and doxology. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law he meditates day and night, we're told. So we are to grow in apprehension of the truth, in our grasp of it, in our love for it, in our responsiveness to it, in our obedience to it. We're not simply to be hearers of the word on a Sunday night, but we are to be the doers of it on a Monday morning and every day. And so we've got to examine ourselves then even at a level as elementary as that. Am I growing now in my knowledge? Is there one or two books I'm working on at the present time? I'm working on Grudem. I'm reading and studying some of these books. They are for sale in our bookshop and on the Christian Union book table on a Friday night. Read them. The third thing. we must grow in our conscientiousness. That is, in our responsiveness to the encouragements and exhortations that our own consciences give to us. We have this great monitor, God's voice, commenting on our behavior and our conduct. Well, how is it then? tonight between you and your conscience. Are we infinitely particular about paying attention to the comments that these consciences make about our conduct day by day? Are we careful to educate these consciences? Because our consciences can be in darkness. We've never shone the light of God's Word on our consciences. Now, there are some Christian consciences, and they are, in the words of Thomas Boston, too pernickety. They condemn what God's Word does not condemn. We must educate that conscience. But there are other people's consciences. Well, they just let anything go. They will pass. what God's Word condemns. And they are less sensitive than they should be. They're much too broad, they're much too open. Now our conscience must stand under the scrutiny of the Word of God. It must be corrected in its evaluations by what God commends, and it must be warned by what God's Word condemns. what it commands and what it condemns. I use this illustration very often, you've heard about it, about a sundial. Now a sundial is programmed, you buy a sundial in a garden center and you fix it on a sunny day so that the shadow is exactly pointing to the correct time on the dial. It's three o'clock in the afternoon and you get it and you leave it there. now it's a bright moonlit night and you go out and there's a moon shadow of the sundial and it will give you completely the wrong reading because it's not a moondial it is a sundial the light that it operates by is the light that comes from the sun our consciences they are tuned to work in relationship to the character and the word of Almighty God. Think of the conscience of the cannibal. Think of the conscience of the SS guard in Auschwitz. His conscience is not enlightened by what God has said in his word. Well, let's presume that everyone in this congregation tonight has an enlightened conscience. What allegiance are you showing to that conscience? Are you careful to do what your conscience tells you when you are emotionally disinclined When it's a bad day, when your best friend says, how are you today? You say, it's not a good day today. Are you on those days sensitive to do what your conscience tells you to do? When you're in the depths of depression, when you are wallowing in self-pity, when you've had bad news, when you know there's a duty that you have to attend to and it's an unattractive and a wearying duty and an unwelcome duty. Do you have the maturity to stand on your emotions and in the face of our emotions and our reluctance and in the face of our aversion to attend to what God commands us to do that we are totally disinclined to do, we do it because we know it is right to do it. There is no greater peril in the Christian life than to make our emotions the touchstone of our duties, to wait for a moment of inspiration before we pray, or before we go to church, or before we read the Bible, before what we expect, what God expects from us, what God asks us to do. And we say, well, you can't expect me to love my neighbor as myself today. Time and again, we have to preach to ourselves, don't we? Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God? We say to ourselves, and we insist that although we are lying on the floor of despondency and depression, pick yourself up. and attend to what God is telling you to do. Are we conscientious in the face of our emotion disinclination? Are we conscientious in the face of tremendous obstacles that sometimes providence puts in our way? Above all, are we conscientious in little things? And that's one of the really key marks that we are growing in grace when we pay careful attention to the small details of daily life. You know how our Lord's highest commendation falls upon people who are faithful in little things. And it's at that point that Too many of us are losing the battle to be growing in graciousness. It may not seem a big deal for you that you're in through the doors of a certain church at six o'clock on a Sunday night, or that on Tuesday night at half past seven you are present in a prayer meeting. It's only a small thing. It's only a small thing to be present at certain meetings. It's only a small thing to write a letter of thanks. It's only a small thing to keep certain promises. It's only a small thing to respect the food of people in your flat that's in the refrigerator that you all share together. It's with regard to small things that we are most being tested. So we are to learn to make conscience of things like that. All right? So now growing concern for others, growing knowledge, growing conscientiousness. Fourthly, we are to grow in victory over besetting sins. It's a great reality in my life. and in the life of Christians that so often we are held temporarily for a longer period in the grip of certain spiritual abnormalities and if we are growing then it means victory over those besetting sins now the great problem is this that it's perfectly possible to be virtually completely normal in our Christian lives, in our emotions, in our affections, in our will, in our morality, everything seems to be in order except at one point. We're in the grip of one temptation. We're being dominated by one lust of the mind, lust of the flesh, We are entangled in the meshes of one particular sin. We see it in the world around us, don't we? We come across men and women who suffer from what is known as monomania. They're perfectly sane in every area of their lives except one deep flaw, one detail. And I'm saying to you, there are Christians in the same position. And I think everyone of us knows that. Everyone of us here has been at times in that one position, in the grip of one sin. It seems it's got its claws right in our hearts. And we may say to ourselves, well, this is very mysterious about this fact that I'm not growing. But is it really so mysterious? Haven't we need to ask, is the reason why I'm not maturing as a Christian because my spiritual life is diseased in one way? We can look at so many parts of our lives. We love to come to church, and we love to be here, and to sing the great hymns, and we love Christian fellowship, and there are books we have, and we're building up a little library, and we are reading, and so on. There's no sign of disease in any of those things, and we're really good in our relationships with other people. We're not bullies. and we're not domineering, and we're not demanding people. So, out of the hundred components of the Christian life, 99 of them, we can tip the boxes. And yet, there's a sickness in one part, and it's vitiating, and it's corrupting the whole. And all our resources have really got to be directed just now at the elimination of that sin, of getting victory over that particular sin. It's a matter for your conscience what it is. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular. I don't know what it is. I'm just asking you, are you familiar with such a phenomenon in your life? And if there is, what is it? Because it's going to halt or slow down your progress in growing in the graciousness of Jesus Christ or the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and your spiritual life will be out of joint. I'm afraid you simply have to deal with it. This sin that easily besets you, And we're not going to grow unless there is an elimination of that. Worldliness, prayerlessness, irritability, ego, impatience, aggressiveness, what have you. You must deal without besetting sin. So you must make progress in your concern for others. You must make progress in knowledge of the Christian faith and the teaching of the Lord Jesus, you must make progress in conscientiousness, and you must make progress in your victory over the sin that besets you. Four. Five. You must grow in evangelistic earnestness. No, young converts, they are the bridges of God. They are the bridges of God because the young convert has still got his family and his friends and his workmates and this new family of Christian brothers and sisters, he's got them both. There's a bridge because most of us by the time we've been Christians many years, you know, we're so Our friends are all Christians. Our routines are all Christians. What we do with our time, which is very limited. But the young Christian, well, the young Christian, he has a love for the God who has saved him. He's thankful for the deliverance he's had. My sins, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sins, not in part, but the whole have been nailed to the cross and remembered no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul, he sings. He is a sense of the world's needs. Oh, that the world would taste and see the riches of his grace, he says. Christ is a great Savior. And that man's got a light, he said, burning, and he's a shining light. He wants to speak a word for Christ. And the awful thing is that we who are mature are condescending to such a man. And we smile patronizingly about him. We can see the obvious marks of immaturity about the things he says and does. And of course, much of it is immature. Much of the witness is unwise, it's indiscreet, it's ineffectual. But does that justify the fact that, you know, you've been a Christian 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, and the vision of the lostness of the world, the broad road, and it's going to destruction, it's gone. A concern to say a word for Jesus Christ, it's gone. And that is a maturity that we older Christians here well need to mortify. It has come to a situation where so often it's expected that the students are the ones who will be engaged in evangelism. And they don't always have the wisdom that's needed and the equipment, the great helpers. They bring in leaders, don't they? And as we grow in graciousness and knowledge, am I, are you growing here? Is it with me as once it was in terms of evangelistic concern? Am I prepared as I used to be? to get involved in every evangelistic course. Am I prepared to support it, and to pray, and to give, and to cooperate, and to tear myself from home? and be involved in evangelistic outreach. I'm concerned to speak a word for Christ as providence provides opportunities for all of us who go to the Lord and say to Him every day, Lord, guide me and lead me and give me boldness and wisdom and love as I seek to serve you in dying Aberystwyth. Of course, there's a great deal of misplaced evangelism. in the professing church in our day, and misdirected and blind zeal. But we have no right. We have no right to stand back and tut-tut. We have no right to do that. The only right we have is to be involved in every kind of biblical evangelism. When a person is taking it on himself to do something, We say, good on you. Give him 10 pounds to buy leaflets and tracts or we pay for his petrol to go to a village. Whatever he wants to do, if he's going to do it and he's going to sacrifice and he does it with fear and trembling, we support him and we pray for him. Because if that vision is gone, it's a vision of the Christ whose knowledge and graciousness we We want to ape and follow the vision that saw our city and wept over it. And if that goes, God have mercy on our congregation. So, growth in grace implies these things, but I just highlighted these five concerns for others. and making progress in knowledge, conscientiousness, victory over sin that besets us, and evangelistic earnestness. That's enough for us, isn't it? Let's stop there. I'll just bury you all. The last thing I want to ask is how is this to be achieved? How are we Christians going to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, The first thing I have to say is it has to be a priority. You don't pick it up on the way to playing football or to watch the Welsh rugby team. It's got to be a focused matter in your life. It has to be, you know, here it is. It's Peter sums up the last words. Remember last week I told you about John's last word in his letter. And he thinks, what shall I say at the end? And he says, little children, keep yourselves from idols. And Peter has to think, what the last words? You know, we quote a person's last words, don't we? And here's Peter's last words. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing more important in the future, in your life. It's not something you find in the midst of many other duties and delights and preoccupations and concerns. Your relationship with God Well, that controls your life. It's what your life is built around. And your greatest longing is to be useful. That God can use you. That you become usable. Meat for the Master's use. And that God conforms you to the image of His Son. You have this hope that one day you're going to see Him. You're going to be like Him. That's the end of the journey. And so you prepare yourself then by growing in knowledge and in graciousness. Paul says, this one thing I do, he says, to me to live is Christ. And I've got to look at myself and I've got to say, all my years here, have they resulted in that I'm neither hot nor cold, but I'm lukewarm? about growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as my scale of values and my scale of priorities being damaged by a barren familiarity with holy things. You know it's so easy to react against extreme religionism. A person only wants to talk about religion and won't talk about anything else and there's something very unbiblical about that. but there's a far greater danger, and that is that our religious and our Christian aspirations, they are demoted, they are relegated, they become inconsequential, that we can be enthusiastic about rugby, and we can be cool about the dying love of Jesus Christ for us, that they don't control us, that they're not primary, they're secondary. I feel, at times, it's happened to me. And, oh, I don't want it. I want to be delivered from it. I want to be revived. That's the first thing. We've got to make it a priority again. We've got to restore, put first things first, and we've got a major in the majors and not these minor things that come and go. I see a slackness and a sloppiness that's come into so many areas of the professing church these days, so much compromise. You can hardly say that these churches, when I listen to Thought for the Day, when I'm unfortunate enough to hear it, does this man who has spoken, does this man say, for to me to live is Christ? is my chief end in life, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And we're facing the most hopeless future, unless that is number one in our priorities. And then let me add a second thing. If we are to grow in grace, we are to remember our religious lives will not take care of themselves. You can't simply leave your soul to nourish itself, to fend for itself, to provide for itself. You have to see for yourself that it grows. You know, oh, you're tired at the end of the day and you get into bed. You know you can't say, soul, pray for 20 minutes now while you snuggle up and go to sleep. You are soul. You are body. And you yourself have to do that. They need nutrients and cultivation. Your dog, your cat, your goldfish needs its food. Our bodies need their food. Our intellectual lives, they need some stimulation whatsoever things are true and noble and of good report. You feed your minds because what comes in is going to come out. Your body won't look after yourself. Your mind won't look after yourself. Your relationship with God, it won't look after itself, you know. There has to be deliberate concern. There has to be a progression of care and provision. Sit under the best preaching. Students go along on Friday night. Go along to the Bible studies there are. Go along to the bookshop and ask for help in buying and reading books. So, Peter says in verse 17 about the error of being led away with the error of the wicked. And they can. And I can tell you stories of people who've sat at my feet and are nowhere tonight because The world has had so much influence and power and charm. And our stammering tongues then failed to commend the glory of Jesus Christ as the purpose of life. And they became worldly. Their presuppositions and aspirations and principles, what they laugh at, what they get enthusiastic about, how they spend their weekends, how they spend their nights, how they spend their money. It's not centered on, it doesn't come from. How can I serve the kingdom of God by my life? They're tired away, he says. And then thirdly, we are to make every effort to do it. That's what the NIV says. Make every effort. Verse 14, make every effort. So we have to do that. There has to be a certain diligence. You have to put a card and prop it on your desk, put it by your computer, make every effort, or something like that for you. You have to go for the nourishing truth of the Word of God. You've got to fall in love with the Bible all over again. You've got to search it and learn to ransack it and hunger for the milk of the Word of God and to be interested in discussing it amongst yourselves and thinking about it. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord, who the Lord is. You think about that. Ah, it's the Lord who made heaven and earth. It's the Lord who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. He is now, tonight. Ah, he is. And then my shepherd, he's mine. and then what a shepherd does, how he cares and protects. You break down a verse of scripture that's before you, it's on the calendar, it's on the passage that you're reading for the day and you think about it and you meditate on the word of God. No soul will grow without food. And you break down food and you help one another. And in seeking the face of God, that I can draw closer to him, that I can be conformed more closely to the Lord Jesus, that I can appropriate him. At the beginning of the day, I see him as my prophet, priest, and king, and I give him my body again, and I ask him to be with me, and I take him with me through the day. You think of a a human child and one of the needs of every little boy and girl in this congregation is of emotional security. The certainty that mum and dad love her, love him. To have that and the pity he has when he has boys and girls in his class in school A father's left home, a mother's run away with someone else, didn't love him enough to stay with him. The insecurity of that, the effect that it's had on his education, and he wets the bed at night, and he's showing marks of emotional weakness. Well, men and women, I want to help you to have assurance of salvation. There are some of you here and you're not sure whether the Lord is your savior. I look at you and I have that sureness, but you don't have it. So let me try and help you. Do you say tonight, I don't know if Jesus is my savior, but I know that if he were my savior, I'd be safe forever and ever. Now that's a Christian. Only a Christian thinks like that. I don't know. Oh, I don't know if I'm a If Jesus died for me, I don't know if he really is my Lord and Savior, but if he were, I'd be safe forever and ever in the arms of Jesus. If you're thinking like that, only a Christian thinks in that way. And it is so important for, assurance is so important for, for you to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And again, you grow in fellowship with other Christians. There are no lone ranger Christians. There are no isolated Christians. who just choose and come and go as they see fit. If you isolate a little boy or a little girl from any companions, and he doesn't have any friends, then you know that there is going to be something desperately wrong with that little boy's maturation. He's going to suffer because of it. He can become immeasurably precocious and brilliant. He will be everything except human, everything except what a little boy or a little girl should be. And we can only grow in community as a congregation grows together, as a family grows, as there is mutual counsel. There are things that you learn in conversation with other Christians that are very valuable that you can't gain from a preacher preaching to you, but you can only gain it by sitting and listening to what other Christians say and do. You know, you've read, many of you have read Corrie ten Boom and The Hiding Place. And Corrie ten Boom talks about her family. Her father was the patriarch of this Christian family, Caleb Ten Boom. And every morning after breakfast, he read a chapter from the Old Testament, and every evening after supper, he read a chapter from the New Testament. And Caleb Ten Boom was a watch repairer, a clockmaker and a watch repairer. And so people came to him, his neighbors came to him, and travelers came. And Jews and Gentiles came, and the rich and poor came to him with advice about their watches. And he was known in the community. And they were always asked to remain for a meal. And then he would then, at the close of the meal, whoever was there, he'd get the Bible out, and he'd read a passage, and he'd pray. There was a structure so that when Hitler invaded Holland, and the Nazis set up all the death machinery and started to take away the Jews and send them to concentration camps and Corrie ten Boone and the family because they were hiding and helping Jews who were taken and they had a structure of how you did things and the structure was based on the Bible and reading the Bible together and it was there, there was a network of Christians in that area that all helped one another and cared for one another because they weren't isolated Christians. They were Christians in fellowship. They were Christians who were saints in Christ Jesus in Amsterdam. Like we are saints in Christ Jesus here in Aberystwyth. We're a network, we're a body and we care for one another and pray for one another. love one another and support and help one another. And if we're going to be growing Christians, we're going to grow together. And we need you. There's a contribution you can make that no one else can make except you. And that's true for every one of you. You are given gifts of ministry. And we are given gifts to receive that ministry from you so that the body of Christ then grows. Let's pray together. Lord, we've had a long session tonight around this crucially important subject. And oh, we pray that whatever things have been said that are convicting and helpful and true and sanctifying that you send your Holy Spirit now upon these things and upon us and make us far more mature and stronger and wiser and more patient and loving and good men and women and forgiving men and women than we've been so far. Oh, don't let us be barren or fruitless. Don't let us be stillborn. but going on, growing in the knowledge of our dear Redeemer, in whose name we pray. Amen.