In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. He sets up walls and ramparts for security. Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter. The one that remains faithful, the steadfast of mind. You will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever. For in God the Lord we have an everlasting rock. For he has brought low those who dwell on high, the unassailable city. He lays it low. He lays it low to the ground. He casts it to the dust. The foot will trample it. The feet of the afflicted, the steps of the helpless. The way of the righteous is smooth. The upright one make the path. of the righteous level. Indeed, while following the way of your judgments, O Lord, we have waited for you eagerly. Your name, even your memory, is the desire of our souls. At night my soul longs for you. Indeed, my spirit within me seeks you diligently. For when the earth experiences your judgments, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Though the wicked is shown favor, he does not learn righteousness. He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness and does not perceive the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, yet they do not see it. They see your zeal for the people and are put to shame. Indeed, fire will devour your enemies. Lord, you will establish peace for us, since you have also performed for us all our works. O Lord our God, other masters besides you have ruled us. But through you alone we confess your name. The dead will not live. The departed spirits will not rise. Therefore, you have punished and destroyed them, and you have wiped out all remembrance of them. You have increased the nation, O Lord. You have increased the nation. You are glorified. You have extended all the borders of the land. O Lord, they sought you in distress. They could only whisper a prayer. Your chastening was upon them. As the pregnant woman approaches the time to give birth, she writhes and cries out in her labor pains. Thus we were before you, O Lord. We were pregnant, we writhed in labor, we gave birth as it seems only to wind. We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth, nor were inhabitants of the world born. Your dead will live, their corpses will rise. You will lie in dust, awake and shout for joy, for your due is the due of the dawn, and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits. Come, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you. Hide for a little while until indignation runs its course. For behold, the Lord is about to come out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will reveal her bloodshed and will no longer cover her slain. In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, with his fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan, the twisted serpent, and he will kill the dragon who lives in the sea. In that day a vineyard of wine, sing of it. I, the Lord, am its keeper. I water it every moment, so that no one will damage it. I guard it night and day. I have no wrath. Should someone give me briars and thorns in battle, then I would step on them, and I would burn them completely. Or let him rely on my protection. Let him make peace with me. Let him make peace with me. In the days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will blossom and sprout, and they will fill the whole world with fruit. Like the striking of him who has struck them as he struck them, or like the daughter of his slain, have they been slain? You contended with them by banishing them, by driving them away. With his fierce wind he has expelled them on the day of the east wind. Therefore through this Jacob's iniquity will be forgiven, and this will be the full price of the pardoning of his sin, when he makes all the altar stones like pulverized chalk stones, when azurim and incense altars will not stand. For the fortified city is isolated, a homestead forlorn and forsaken like the desert. There the calf will graze, and there it will lie down and feed on its branches. When its limbs are dry, they are broken off. Women come and make fire with them, for they are not a people of discernment. Therefore their Maker will not have compassion on them, and their Creator will not be gracious to them. In that day the Lord will start his threshing from the flowing stream of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt, and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel. It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Well, that's quite a section of scripture to look at if we're going to look at Isaiah 25, 26, and 27 today. But I think that I've tried to do it in a manageable way. So before we start, let's pray. Heavenly Father, We come before you this morning first of all thanking you that we can come. Praising you that you've brought us to yourself. Acknowledging the fact that you are God and there is no other. Knowing that we come before you who alone can save. So Lord we pray that you would take your word And this morning, as it appears to be a hard, crusted over piece of bread, we pray that you would break it open for us. And we pray, like little children, you would take the soft part of the bread out and put it in our mouths so that we might be nourished and fed by it. Lord, we pray that you would strengthen us by our time in it. And we pray that you would form Christ more and more in us because of it. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, after our last family vacation, I learned something about my family. And I learned it from the cameras that we took. When you, for instance, look at the pictures that I took, they're fairly typical. They're posed shots of people beside landmarks or they're shots attempting to capture some sort of eye-catching scenery. You might describe them in a word as typical. And then I looked at the shots that my son took with his camera, and they showed our vacation from an entirely different perspective. There were shots of the hotel hallways and lobbies. And there was the road leading from our hotel to the main road. And then there was the picture of the bank that we passed every morning as we went out the same way. And then there were the road signs telling us which way we were supposed to go. It was an entirely different perspective, but it was an insightful perspective and a perspective that made me think that if I didn't have those details captured on his camera, there were aspects of the vacation that I would have entirely forgot, I would have missed. Now when I read these chapters, that's what I think of. But what we have here in this text is definitely not a family vacation. In chapters 24 through 27, the prophet is really taking us by the hand and he's leading us into the future. He wants us to see the apocalypse. Now, what might you expect from going to the apocalypse? Well, you might expect pictures of battles and carnage. suffering, just to name a few images that you might expect to see on the camera of the Prophet, and all that is true. There are some disturbing images here, pictures that may rattle us a bit. And those, I want you to know, have to be seen. We have to see those kinds of pictures. And as disturbing as they are, we have to take a good long look at them. It is, after all, an apocalyptic vision. But I want you to know something. Here's the comforting thing that we find in the Prophet's camera. And that is that those aren't the only pictures that we find. We don't simply find disturbing pictures of the apocalypse. We find pictures that are a lot more comforting. Surprising shots. Shots we might not expect. Shots that actually minister to our hearts. And they remind us that a merciful God is even behind the apocalypse that is about to unfold before our eyes. And the prophet wants us to know, because God wants us to know, that these shots are for us. They're for us. And if I could summarize those images, I'd do it like this. They express amidst the terrible apocalypse the keeping power of God. And it seems to me that the New Testament writers captured some of this. And I want to give you just one example. I want you to consider some of the opening lines of 1 Peter 1. Listen to what he says, and it will remind you as we go through these chapters, it will remind you of the chapters themselves. Listen to what Peter says. He says that Jesus Christ obtained for us an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith. And if you were to ask me what summarizes chapters 24 through 27, I would say that verse summarizes at least the encouraging shots pretty nicely. Pretty nicely. And so they express the keeping power of God. So I want us to look at the images of these chapters. And when we do, we'll have a good idea of what God is communicating to us. So let's look at God's pictures and the prophet's camera from the apocalypse. And the first thing I want us to notice is this. There is a picture of war there. a picture of war, a picture of battle. Now because it's an apocalypse, the destruction of the evildoer is sprinkled throughout these passages, these chapters. But there's one image in particular that I want us to focus on, and it's an image of victory. Now you might quibble with me about why I chose this passage and not another, because there are some other good pictures about God's victory over the evildoer. But this one serves a couple of purposes. It helps us to reach back into some of the texts that we've looked at already. This image conveys victory and a little more. But it's also an image that takes a little bit of explanation. You're probably wondering what image are you talking about? I'm talking about the one in chapter 25 and verse 10. The prophet says that on that day, when salvation is full and final, Moab will be trodden down. Moab will be trodden down. Now that's a bit perplexing, isn't it? It's a bit perplexing because we wonder how in the world can Moab be at the apocalypse? I mean, this is, after all, an 8th century BC nation. What are they doing at the end of time? What's going to happen? Is there going to be a quadrant of Jordan that reforms into the nation of Moab, and so they're going to make their appearance at the end? Is that what's going to happen? It's a bit puzzling, isn't it? But it's only puzzling until we understand that in the communication of prophecy, God made use of the prophet's current historical situation in order to foretell the future, in albeit shadowy images. Why? So that the prophet could to some degree understand and even explain the prophecy to his 8th century hearers. And this is understandable then on the basis that the past and the present are organically connected by a God who knows them both simultaneously and can therefore communicate truths about the future using familiar things in the life and in the times of the Prophet himself. And so that's how Moab can be in the apocalypse. It's almost in this sense that God, who knows the end from the beginning, takes Moab and pulls it up into the future in order to help the prophet understand some things about the future without complicating it beyond his understanding. That's how the future can be understood by the prophet. Now here's another question. That's the how question, but here's another one. Why is it there? Why is Moab there? Why did God use this nation to forecast something about the future apocalypse? Well, he did it in order to depict, for the 8th century church, the downfall of unbelieving nations in the future. That's why he did it. He did it so that 8th century believers, the 8th century church, could understand something about the downfall of unbelieving nations. In verse 10, the hand of the Lord, notice this, rests on the mountain that belongs to Him. His mountain. His hand rests upon it. Now, notice what else. His foot rests upon Moab. That is, His foot rests upon his enemies. It's a beautiful picture, a striking picture. His hand upon his people, his foot upon the neck of his enemies, the Moabites. Now, that's an incredible picture, isn't it? A picture of not only war, but defeat, the defeat of the Lord's enemies. The Lord has his mighty hand stretched out in blessing and his foot on the neck of Moab. Now, that's the picture. But the picture has a little bit more for us. I told you that this picture expresses war and God's victory, but it expresses a little more for us. There's more to it. God tells us why he chose Moab to foretell the downfall of unbelieving nations. And it's not an unfamiliar reason, is it? Look at verse 11. The Lord will lay low his what? Pride. Now, that's not the first time that we've seen the pride of Moab, is it? If you were to go back to chapter 16, you would remember that Moab was described as a nation that was prideful, that had an incredible, excessive amount of pride. And you remember that Moab cried out for Moab. And here we find the same. Moab was for Moab. But their pride wasn't simply narcissism. Like all pride, pride is coupled with conceit. And they had an undue self-interest. They had an inflated view of their own abilities. And that latter aspect comes out in the next picture. And so at this point, an image is given to help us see just how prideful Moab is. And remember, it's not just Moab. Moab is being pulled from the 8th century to help us see something about unbelieving nations. Moab is here compared... Now this is a disturbing image. This is one of those disturbing images that I told you about. Moab is here compared to straw that is trodden down into a watery manure pile. That's a disturbing image. I want you to imagine it. I don't know if you can imagine it or not, but one of the images that comes to mind for me is the mess, is the wasteful manure-mixtured mess that a milk house has after the second or third or fourth shift of cows leaves. Now you try to clean it out in between shifts. But there's mess that remains, and by the time the last ship comes through, there's a bunch to clean out. And it's soupy, and it's brown, and it's not a very pleasant mixture. And don't be offended by that, because it's in the Scriptures. And the Lord doesn't simply have His foot on Moab. He is pressing them down into the watery manure mixture. Now, if that's the picture, and if that's where you're at as a Moabite, what do you do? What do you do? I mean, you know what we call that? We call that hitting the bottom of the barrel. What do you do if you're a Moabite who's reached the bottom of that barrel? Well, you'd think you'd say, I've reached the bottom. Lord, I've been brought low. It's time for me to repent. Lord, I'm crying out to you. Is that what we say? Well, that's what we would hope we would say. But that's not what Moab says. No. What do they do? They spread out their hands and they're ready to swim in it. That's what the text says. Believing that they're strong enough, clever enough, Moab says, okay, it's time to start swimming. Moab, despite the fact that they've been pressed into the manure pile, believes that they are able to prevail over their circumstances. Conquer their environment. Moab, and this is the striking thing, Moab is pictured as this lone person. who's able to overcome by their own power, manage the details of their own life, and that, I want you to know my friends, that is the epitome of pride. That's the epitome of pride. Now, it seems to me that our mistake is to think that a prideful person is someone who is only marked out as prideful by what comes out of their mouth. And it's true. That's very true. We might discover that someone has a little bit of a struggle with pride by what comes out of their mouth. But you know what? I want you to know something. Pride, what characterizes a prideful person is not necessarily what comes out of their mouth. Pride is something that comes out of the heart. And a man doesn't have to say anything that is customarily seen as prideful to be prideful. I want you to know something, my friends. I want to talk very candidly with you at this point. I've watched professing believers and unbelievers alike get caught up in the same or similar sins as one another. And do you want to know the thing that characterizes both of them, whether they're a professing believer or an unbeliever? You want to know the thing that characterizes them both? Here it is. They both believe that they can swim in the manure pile. They both believe that they can make it on their own. They both believe that the situation isn't bad enough for them and that they are able to overcome it. Now why is that so bad? Why is that so bad? You know, we're Americans living in an affluent place. We're used to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps kind of thinking, why is that so bad? I'll tell you why it's so bad when it comes to getting pressed into the manure pile of sin, pride. I'll tell you why it's so bad. It's so bad because it's a fundamental denial of the gospel. I want you to know, my friends, sin will, it will, it will drive, you know, what we have pictured here of this driving into the manure power and then Moab saying, you know what, I'm going to swim through it, I'm okay. What we have here is sin driving you into secrecy and what it does is it whispers to you and it says, you know what, don't worry about it, you can handle this. You can handle this, you can overcome this. Just swim. Just stretch your arms out and swim, brother. And you know, then once you've taken your first sip, it will tell you this, it will say, you can handle it. You can handle it. You can handle anything that comes your way. Look at you, you're swimming through the manure! You can do it! Or that same boy says this, you can kick this anytime you want. You just keep swimming. You can pull yourself out of this manure pile anytime you want. You just don't want to do it right now. You just keep going. And you know, this first picture tells us that the rebellious nation, it tells us this, it tells us that rebellious men and women who think a lot of themselves and a lot about themselves, God will eventually put them under His foot. Now, I don't know about you, but that is a disturbing picture. And when we take the imagery seriously, I don't know how it can't be disturbing. And the reason I've selected this picture to talk about is because it has a way of taking the general and making it very specific and penetrating right through our very heart. It has a way of speaking to us. Well, that's the first picture. But remember, not all pictures are that troubling. In fact, some are very comforting. Like the next one. The next picture is of a banquet. The next picture is of a banquet. And it, too, is in chapter 25. And it's a lavish banquet. Literally, do you know what this is? This feast is literally a feast of fat things. You can imagine a feast of that. Glasses of aged wine. Cuts of choice meat on a platter. Literally, do you know what that says? Literally, the fat pieces. The fat pieces are on the table. Decorated richly. Royal. This is beautiful. Beautiful image. That's the image. Now, I want you to know, with that image in mind, there are some powerful things that come out. Three things that I'd like to share with you. Three things that I'd like to share with you that are very powerful about this picture of the banquet. First, is this, the first is one that may not immediately catch your attention. God tells the people that the fat portions are for them. You say, big deal, this is a feast God prepared for us, of course they're for us. Why is that important? Why is that important? Well, in order to know why that's important, what we have to do is we have to open the door to our Old Testament biblical imagination, and we have to reach back into the storehouse, we have to reach back into the treasury of the Old Testament. And when you do, you'll remember, you'll have that aha moment, and you'll go, oh yes, that's Leviticus 3. Leviticus 3 talks about a peace offering or a fellowship offering. You can call it either thing. And the distinctive feature about the fellowship meal was this. In the fellowship offering, only the fat portions and the blood are burned. Now what's the significance of that? The fat portions are reserved for God alone. In fact, if you look at Leviticus 3, you'll notice that as you go through, as you tick off the verses, you'll say, the fat is to be pulled off of this, and the fat is to be pulled off of that, and the fat is to be pulled off of this. And when you get to verse 16, this is what it says. It says, remember, all the fat is the Lord's. All the fat is the Lord's. The choiced portions are the Lord's. And here in Isaiah, you have the Lord saying to his people, take what is mine and make it yours. It's yours. There's a sense in which, I don't want to press this imagery too far, but there's a sense in which that full and final consummation of all things, that union with Christ that is being pictured here, is God saying, look, take what's mine, because it's now yours, as you're united to me and my Son. Oh, don't you want to linger there? I mean, don't you want... You want to linger there. Well, linger there at home, because we have to go a little further. There are two more features that I want you to notice. Notice who's invited to this feast. It's verse 7. We find it's people from all nations. This isn't just Israel. These are people from all nations coming to this feast. And that immediately sparks Revelation 7 to mind, doesn't it? There will be people standing around the throne from all tribes, nations, peoples, languages, and tongues. That's what's being pictured here. But that leads to a third observation. I want you to notice something. These guests are wearing a veil, aren't they? And it's only in light of verse 8. It says the nations wear a veil. But these guests coming in have got this veil over their head. And it's only in light of verse 8 that we can understand the veil of verse 7. The veil is a reference to the shroud of death. And the point is this. Before these people can enjoy the feast of fellowship with God, before these people can enjoy what is God's, the curse of death's dark veil must be dealt with. Now, listen to me. Let's not mince words. Let's not play games with interpretation. Let me just ask you this. What other meaning can this have but Jesus Christ's death and resurrection? What other meaning can it have? Listen to what Paul says. And listen for our text in 1 Corinthians 15. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Our text says that God will swallow up death. How's he going to do that? In Jesus Christ. The answer is in 1 Corinthians 15. The answer is in Jesus Christ. It's through Christ's victory that men and women and boys and girls might be set free, that the veil of death might be lifted, and they will enjoy the fat things at the Lord's table. They will enjoy the Lord's things at the Lord's table. Now notice what the text says. It says, It says this, and this is just beautiful. You just want to linger in these kinds of texts. It says, the Lord will wipe tears away from all faces. The text could have just as easily said, God will remove all the sorrow that comes from death, but he doesn't do that. This is one of those texts that ministers to the heart. He speaks to our heart. He gives us the image of a father tenderly kneeling down to a child, and you know those big bubble tears that are on a child, and then he just takes his hand and he wipes them away. And you know, that's such a powerful image that in the revelation of John, it's picked up twice. It's used in chapter 7, I believe, and then it's used at the end of Revelation. He'll wipe away every tear from our eyes. Who among us has no tears? You know, maybe I was thinking about this this past week, maybe it's because of you that you've not experienced the loss of anyone near and dear to you just yet, or at least you can't think of having had that experience, but I want you to know it's coming. Because you can't live in this world and not experience death. It's coming. And you're going to need this imagery. You may say, I can't even relate to this imagery yet. You're going to need this imagery. It's a beautiful picture. Now, there is another image from the apocalypse that I want us to notice. And it's the imagery of the doors, of the gates. It's the imagery of the doors, of gates. And that's found in chapter 26. There we find this strong city. And the voice calls out from the gates to open the gates that the righteous may enter in. Now, at this point we need to stop and reflect for just a minute. We need to stop. Because we know that God alone is righteous. And by contrast, the Bible tells us that we're sinful men and women and boys and girls. We fall short of the glory of God. Isaiah tells us, he's going to tell us later, he's going to say to us, he's going to say, all your best works are as filthy rags. Why? Because even our best works are filled with mixed motives, less than pure motives. And you know, we don't need the Bible to tell us that, do we? We know those little white lies, or those lustful looks, or the resentment, or the anger that we carry around. All of those things remind us of the fact that we're less than perfect, less than what God would have us to be. And so to suggest that we could enter into the gates of the Lord that are open for the righteous is to fall into the pride of Moab. And you know, so here are these, there's this picture of these gates standing open, and the voice says, all the righteous may enter in, and we're going... I guess that excludes us. And you know, that's not what we see in the text. The answer is in the text. The answer is in verse 3. And it says this, the same voice, the steadfast of mind, you will keep in perfect peace because He trusts in you. And then this admonition, trust in the Lord forever. The same idea is expressed in Chapter 25 when the faithful say, behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited. You know, the answer is this. Trust in the Lord and in the righteousness that He provides for us. He is the one who clothes us in righteousness. And you know what? You don't have to wait to go to the Old Testament to see that kind of imagery. You can see it in the prophet, in Zechariah chapter 3. Remember that beautiful passage where we're standing there in our dirty turban, in our dirty robes, and the accuser is accusing us, and God says, take off those dirty clothes and put a new robe on that man. Put a clean robe on him. A robe washed. Washed in what? Washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. trust in the righteousness that God provides. And you say to me, well, what does the gate imagery have to do with all this trusting and waiting? I want you to notice the latter part of the text. And the chapter started with a voice calling the gates to be opened. And verse 20 is calling the people who've entered in to shut their doors behind them. What's the point? The point is this. God is keeping us, isn't he? Verse 3, put the emphasis on the keeping power of God. The prophet says this, listen to it again, the steadfast of mind, you, God, will keep in perfect peace because He trusts in you. In other words, God keeps those who put their trust in Him, those who wait upon Him, and we see the same thing in the early verses of chapter 27. There the Lord says, in that day, a vineyard of wine, sing of it. I, the Lord, am its keeper. That's a wonderful image. And you know, the question that I have for you before we move on to the next shot is this. Have you trusted in the Lord? Have you trusted in the Lord? Are you waiting for Him alone to save you? And that's an important question. You need to ponder and contemplate that. But we need to go on to the next image. The image is of the vineyard. Now, when the Lord paints this image for us, you think of something, don't you? And you think of something because it's not just an image, it's not just a picture, it's actually a song. It's actually a song, and you know, when you think about it, you can go a couple of different ways with it. You can go, wow, this is so beautiful, because God's people, all the way back in chapter 24, are singing to Him, and now God is singing to them. And you go, wow, that's an awesome thing. But then your mind stretches a little bit further, and you say, where have I seen this before? This is so familiar to me. And you know where you've seen it before. You say, oh, there was another Vineyard song in chapter 5. And here's the striking thing about this. They're both short songs. And when you take them and you lay them side by side, something begins to emerge as we get to the end of these apocalyptic chapters. We begin to realize that there is a total reversal going on here. Let me mention some of these things as we compare the Vineyard Song of Chapter 5 with this Vineyard Song. In Chapter 5, the vineyard produced no fruit. But this vineyard is fruitful. No rain fell in chapter 5, but God waters this vineyard every moment. In chapter 5, that vineyard, there's no wall. Remember, it's been removed. It was vulnerable to attack. But this vineyard is guarded by the Lord day and night. In chapter 5, there were briars and thorns that were allowed to take over the vineyard. But here, what? Briars and thorns are trampled underfoot and they're burned completely. In chapter 5, the vineyard was overrun, but here it spreads out. It's not the world that comes crushing into the vineyard and trampling down the vineyard. Here the vineyard grows out into the world. It spreads out. It's a complete reversal. But I want you to notice what it was that brought this reversal about. If you look at verse 7 and following, you'll notice that the way God treated the Assyrians and the Moabites was not the way that He treated His people. God treats His children differently than He treats the world. And though His people were unfaithful, the Lord measured out a punishment for them that would not destroy them, but that would purify them. Now, here's the important thing I want you to notice about this. This is, again, points up the keeping power of God. God is the one who keeps us. He has purchased us, and He's the one who's going to purify us. And so what does He do? He measures out His punishment so that it will accomplish, not their destruction, but their purification. And so what does He do? He exiles the vineyard. Why? In order to work repentance in them. And that's what you see in the text. That's what you see in the text. Let me put it another way. God punished them that they might turn from their sins to Him. And you know, that's what a loving parent does to a child, isn't it? The parent measures out the discipline that the child deserves, not to destroy them, but to change them and to shape them. And that's what Hebrews 12 tells us. Discipline's not fun, but it does shape us. And God is forming Christ in us, in His people. And you know, the text doesn't stop there. The text tells us the result of this discipline that's measured out so carefully by the keeping hand of God. It says this, God will eventually, and this is again, this is a beautiful picture. God will gather his people one by one. Isn't that like a shepherd? Reminds you of the shepherd who's lost his sheep and he leaves 99 in order to go get the one. And here he gathers them one by one. And then when he gathers them, the next image is this. They'll worship him. They'll finally put their eyes in the right place. They'll put it on Him. And my friends, that leads to the final question I want to ask you. Where are your eyes this morning? If you're turned away from Him, you can't possibly be looking at Him. And therefore, if that's the case, you need to repent. You need to turn from your sin. You need to turn to Him and then set your eyes fully upon Jesus Christ, who enables you to come to that glorious banquet and sup with the Lord Himself. My friends, that's the focus of the text. People need to turn from whatever it is they're looking at and turn to their God who saves them. Father in heaven, thank you for the day that you've given, for the time to be in your word, for the images that it brings to us. We pray that as we consider these images and the text that you would, Lord, shape us, that you would form Christ in us. And Lord, we pray that as you do that, our eyes would be firmly fixed upon him more and more, that we would falter less and less, and help us to run the race with endurance. And Lord, we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.