Please turn with me in your Bibles. Our sermon text this morning is found in Philippians chapter 3. And we come in our consecutive exposition of Philippians 3 to verses 10 and 11, which dovetail well with the themes which are being set before us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper this morning. And so we'll be staying on course in the book that we've been engaged in, and looking for the light that God would cast in our hearts and minds about the death and atonement of the Lord Jesus from these words. Let's consider together verses 10 and 11, and we'll read from verse 9. We should really read from verse 7. But what things were gained to me, those things I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." This morning we are celebrating the Lord's Supper. We also refer to as communion. And in this ordinance, the sacrament of the supper, we have the death of the Lord Jesus Christ set forth splendidly, beautifully in its application to our souls. Here in the passage before us, lying open in our laps, we too have something of the death as well as the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ set forth before us. When you think about the Lord's Supper, you should be thinking in terms of nourishment. Why did God make physical food? He provided physical food in order to impart to our bodies energy and strength and nourishment and nutrients and all that is necessary for the health of our body. God is wise. He gives us what we need. And so why did He give us the Lord's Supper? He gave it for the nourishment of our souls. God is wise. We must affirm that when the Lord appoints something, that there is wisdom in it and there is a divine purpose in it. And He has appointed it for our spiritual strengthening. Because in the Supper, we have communion with Christ Himself. One thinks of 1 John 1 verse 3, in which it says, "...and that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ." This is true of the whole Christian life. Our life is characterized by communion, by fellowship with the Triune God. From the moment that we are born again, from the moment that the Holy Spirit brings us into new life, Forever, through all of eternity, our life is defined by communion and fellowship with the Triune God. And that is seen in a very crystallized and in a very specific and poignant way in the Lord's Supper, where our sanctification is being strengthened through fellowship and communion with Him. The Lord's Supper is not a converting ordinance. You know, we don't have people off the street who have no knowledge of the gospel coming to the table in order to be converted. The preached Word is a converting ordinance. Ordinance that the Lord uses under the Holy Spirit. The foolishness of preaching for the salvation of sinners. The table is for the sanctification of God's people, for their sustenance, for their continuance, for their perseverance. Well, here is the Apostle Paul, and he is like a good soldier, like a spiritual warrior. He has entered into the fray. He's engaged in combat against serious error. He's tangling and overcoming the Judaizers who want to say, Jesus is great, but something else is needed. Circumcision, the keeping of the law, other ordinances must be added for a perfect package. Paul is breaking that apart, grinding it to pieces, stamping on top of it and saying, no sir, that is absolutely wrong. It is Jesus alone. And so he contradicts them. He wrestles with, in the previous verse, verse 9, this sense that we all have of accountability to a holy God and of the guilt that we bear within our own bosom. We are accountable to God and we are guilty. And that places us in a predicament. How is it that we can be right with God? How can we be accepted by God? And so we looked last time at verse 9 at the doctrine of justification. We are accepted by God and before God only through the righteousness of Christ. That alien righteousness which is Received only by faith, not by works. And so, what is Paul doing? He's saying it's Jesus only that gives you acceptance and a right standing before God. It is not your righteousness, not anything in you. It is Christ's righteousness. that is credited to your account. But it's not just justification. He's going on here. You don't just begin with Christ at the beginning of your Christian pilgrimage and with this glorious work of this act of justification. But he says, Christ is the answer to your sanctification as well. It is Christ that is needed for your sanctification. It is knowing Him and it is communing with Him all life long. When you have faith that God gives you, that faith unites your soul to Jesus. You're brought into union with Christ. From that moment you are brought to know Him truly, savingly, really, for the first time. And a result of that union is sustained fellowship. Let's look together at verses 10 and 11. Three things under this whole theme of knowing Christ, that I may know Him. First of all, Christ's person. Our fellowship or communion begins with the desire to know Christ's person. He says in the opening words of verse 10, that I may know Him. You know, children often have an insatiable curiosity. They're not content to know that when you take the kettle full of water and put it on the stove and turn on the stove, that it will boil. That's not good enough. They want to know why. Why does the water boil? How does the heat make the water boil? Or they want to know not just the name of our state, but where did we get the words South Carolina? Why do we call our state that thing? Think about history and they say, why exactly was Francis Scott Key at Fort McHenry in the battle during the war of 1812? What exactly was happening there? Or they hear an Arabic say, an Arabic person say to another Arabic person, As-salamu alaykum. And they say, what does that mean? They're not content to just hear the words. They want to know what are they saying to each other. There's this insatiable curiosity which fuels lifelong education. Here is the Apostle Paul, and he is saying, I have an insatiable thirst to know more of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not content to just know this or that. I want to know why. I want to know more. I want to plummet the depths of all there is to know for and why. Because I have not only been saved by Christ, but I have been saved for Christ. And therefore, there is joy. The joy of knowing Him. Now, we noted two sermons ago about how this theme, the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, comes out. We saw it in Moses. You see it over and over in the Psalms in David. We saw it elsewhere. In Jeremiah, for example, we see Jesus saying it in John 17. Paul here. John later. This is a dominant theme. This crave. This craving that is within the soul of the Christian to know the Lord. to worship Him, to enter into fellowship with Him. Here is the Apostle Paul, not only a mature Christian, perhaps the greatest living Christian at the time. A man of extraordinary depth. He has been a Christian for over 25 years when he's writing the words lying in our lap. And he says, listen to me, my passion is to drill down. To drill down and down and down. further and further into the knowledge of Christ Jesus. I've got to know more of who this Christ is. The picture that maybe comes to mind is this. Picture yourself reaching with all of your strength something that is just barely outside of your reach. Maybe there's a shelf in front of your washer and dryer. And there's a rag up there. And you stretch. And all of the ligaments and tendons and muscles are being stretched to their fullest extent. You're on the very tip of your toes, trying to reach to grab a hold of that rag. That's the picture we have of the Apostle Paul here. That's Paul. He's reaching. He's stretching everything within him, yearning to go upward, to get more of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you see, when we talk about knowing a person, there are different degrees, different complexity in knowing a person in contrast, for example, to knowing a mathematical equation. We know them both. I mean, there's this, we're not talking about different types of knowledge. We're talking about complexity. We're talking about degrees. You better know that there's a difference if you're married between knowing a person and knowing a mathematical equation. Paul here uses the word gnosko, that I may know him. There's two words in the Greek, primarily, that maybe will help elucidate this point. There is, on the one hand, the word that's being used, gnosko, and then, on the other hand, there's the word oida. And the latter refers to kind of a factual knowledge, whereas the former word, the word used here, that I may know him, refers to a personal knowledge. It's referring to an intimate knowledge. In fact, when you look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word Yadah is translated with this word. And so, go to the Old Testament and it says, Adam knew Eve. Cain is conceived. It's the word no, you remember it. A husband knows his wife. It's talking about a personal, a intimate knowledge. That's the word that is being employed here. You can think children of honey. If you were old enough to understand it, you could read an academic paper that described the chemical composition of honey, that described the effect of honey on our blood sugar. levels. You could learn about all the nutrients that are in it. You could learn about all the ways in which the bees, you know, produce this honey and so on. You could read and read and read all of that without ever having taken a spoon, stuck it in a honey jar and then put it in your mouth. And you will know a great deal, far more than I know about honey, but you'll never have tasted it. The question is, have you ever tasted the stuff? You know, when I'm hungry, I don't just wanna know theoretically about the food on my plate. I wanna know that food. I wanna know that dish by consuming it. I wanna be able to tell you what it tastes like, not just what it looks like. He says here, that I may know him, and he's speaking about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a difference between knowing about Christ and knowing Christ. There are pagan, unbelieving, liberal scholars who spend all of their life studying the New Testament text and who never believe a single word of it. who can tell you all sorts of things about the historic Jesus and about all that is described regarding Him, and who have never known, savingly, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was a scholar extraordinaire, and he never knew the Lord's Anointed, the Lord's Messiah. He is saying here, that I may know Him. Not just know about Him, like you and I know about President Obama, but to actually know Him. to enter into this personal relationship, time spent. In order to know a person and not just know about them, you have to spend time with them. You have to know their mind, how they think. You have to have heard them and seen them. You have to understand their personality and have experience with them. Paul is saying, I want to know the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what enables the Christian, when looking at God's dealings with us in His providence, to be able to say, looking back over a week or a day or an incident or a year, and saying, it's just like the Lord to have done that. What are we saying when we say that? It's a good thing to say. It is just like the Lord. It's just what you would expect of the Lord for Him to have done thus and such. We're saying what we've learned about Him in His Word, what we've learned about Him believingly, savingly, what we've seen Him do in our life and in the world, has given us a depth of understanding Him, which enables us to anticipate, or at least recognize after the fact, His hand. Paul is saying that I may know Him. I want to know His person. I want to know His Word, this Book. I want to know His works. I want to know His titles. I want to know all of His transforming influences. I want to know everything I can know about Him. In fact, Paul is so keen on this point that he says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was deliberate. in a concentrated determination, I was absolutely committed to knowing more of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We go from saying Christ is merciful to being able to say, I cried out to the Lord Jesus Christ and I received mercy from His hand. You know, we can say, well, the Lord delivers from temptation, and there are people who try to get deliverance from temptation through all sorts of carnal, unbelieving means. They think that if they go through some, you know, system that some pagan psychologist has set up, they'll get delivered from temptation. They realize, having tried it, it doesn't work. But then the Christian can say, no, he has actually delivered me from temptation. And the Lord not only forgives guilt, I tried to work and work and work and work and obey and obey and keep the law and keep the law and the guilt stuck fast. And there was no deliverance. And I came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit changed my heart, gave me faith, gave me eyes. and took away and forgave the guilt of my sin. This is why the Psalms teach us to sing, taste and see that the Lord is good. Or for us to be able to say to others, come and see what the Lord has done for my soul. Christ fully satisfies the soul. And Paul has discovered that it's true. He says, I'm discontent with anything else. We have at times been sinking. We found ourselves sinking in our afflictions. And it's in those afflictions that the Lord has come to us and saved us. He's upheld us, sustained us, comforted us, strengthened us. In the flesh? You've got to be kidding me. Sanctification by the arm of our own strength? Paul says, no way. Sanctification without Christ is like Samson without hair. It's powerless. Is this what you want to know? Is this who you want to know? I mean, children, you say, well, I want to know more about this sport. I want to get better at it. Or I want to know more about this subject. I want to go into this occupation. I want to know more about this hobby or that thing. Do you want to know chiefly and are you determined at whatever pains it costs you to know chiefly the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? We live in a generation of profound doctrinal shallowness. As shallow as a cookie sheet, my grandpa would say. It's the nature of the church. There is no appetite, and therefore there is no feasting. There is no digging, digging, digging, and therefore there is an absence of delighting, delighting, delighting. It is uncovering, growing, striving, stretching, learning more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ that intensifies our delight, our joy in Him. My friends, I don't care how far you are advanced in your sanctification. We are at the beginning of what there is to know about the Lord Jesus. We are at the beginning. There is limitless wealth to be found in Christ. And as I have said dozens and dozens of times before, eternity cannot exhaust. We will forever be digging and delighting. in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. And we will, of course, in heaven with greater perfection, been craving and saying, that I may know Him. That I may know Him. Christian, there's comfort here for you. Do not, I mean, you hear the exhortation, but please hear the consolation. There's comfort for you here. Because you are growing. You say, well, how do you know? I want you to compare what you know about the Lord Jesus Christ this morning with what you knew about the Lord Jesus Christ five years ago or ten years ago. If you're a Christian and you're reading your Bible and you're engaging in family worship and you're studying and you're sitting under the preaching of God's Word, If you're a Christian, those things have not passed entirely unimproved. None of us have profited to the degree that we should, but they have not passed unimproved. You know more about God, you know more about Christ now than you did five years ago. The sermons and the Lord's dealings with you in life experience, both your study and God's providential dealings have led you forward. There have been advances. That ought to console you. That ought to comfort you. You ought to be able to say, it's true. You know, think of all the things that have happened to me in the last five years, good, bad, and otherwise, and how God has used them to grow me. Think of all the things. You know, for some of you, there's been, what, 150 sermons a year. I'm not a mathematician, but that makes 300 for two years. That makes 600, 750 in five years. 750 sermons. That's a lot of sermons. 365 days spent in God's Book. There ought to be comfort for you in that. I hope you will receive the comfort that there is to be found. First of all, knowing Christ's person. Secondly, knowing Christ's powerful resurrection. Secondly, Christ's powerful resurrection and the power of His resurrection. Now, the resurrection is a historical fact. It's not a metaphor, it's not a picture, it's not a story. It is a fact that came in fulfillment of prophecy and was witnessed by over 500 people. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that unique event, was a display of supernatural, miraculous, divine power. but it is not limited to the past. The apostle Paul says, he is speaking present tense that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, which is to say the Christian knows something of that resurrection power right now. in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been crucified with Him. We have died with Him. We have been buried with Him. We have been raised with Him. We know something now through union with Christ of this resurrection power. You experience it for the first time when you are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 2 verse 1, And you hath He quickened, or made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sin. Christ's resurrection power brought you, who were spiritually dead, to life. You were brought alive. It's a resurrection power. But that is not only the experience of regeneration, the application of resurrection power to our souls, but it is our experience in sanctification. And there are lots of places we could show this. Look at just one, Ephesians 1, verses 19 and 20. And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places." In our sanctification, we have an experience of Christ's resurrection power. The power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work and continues to be at work in us to make us more like Jesus. Christ broke the power of sin in His death and resurrection. And He continues to shatter the power of sin in our own lives. He's conquered it, just as He's conquered death and hell. The ability to mortify sin. Children, mortify means kill. To see sin killed in the soul only comes about. through having been crucified with Christ. Having the experience of growing in righteousness, in grace, only comes about through the application of resurrection power. Mortification and vivification, both killing and making alive, all of it is through Christ. Your sanctification, the ability to be sanctified, is not found within you. You don't have those native natural resources left to yourself. It is through Christ. Where do you get the power to refuse lust? Where do you get the power to reject your self-centered obsession? Where are you given the ability to turn from pride and to be clothed with humility? Where is the power to love your brethren when they are the least lovable? Where is the power that fuels a passion for the worship of God who loves every one of His commandments? What empowers us to say your commandments are not burdensome? They are not burdensome to us. We love every one of them as light and life, the law of God. That power is found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit to your soul. You see, nothing teaches us the death to sin and growing in likeness to Jesus like the Lord's Supper. In fact, it's one of the most blessed ways that this ordinance is brought home to our souls. Christ crucified, dead, buried and raised is set before us in the Supper. And one of the most blessed ways in which the Lord uses it to our soul is in this very arena. As we gaze upon and as we receive by faith and as we feed upon all that Christ has done, as we are taking to ourself all that He's appropriated, all that He's gained in His death and resurrection, it is for the strengthening and nourishing of our souls to see sin put under our feet. The righteousness of Christ perfected in us more and more. But it's also His resurrection power is a pattern for us as well. You see that in Romans 8. Verse 11, for example. And you see it again here in Philippians 3. If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. He's saying Christ's resurrection power is at work in me now. I want to know more of it. But He's also saying Christ's resurrection is a pattern. He was raised. I'll be raised. More and more of Christ's resurrection power is applied to us now. But there's a culmination. There's a capstone. And it comes at our actual resurrection, when our soul and our body are raised and renovated, where the desire of the entire cosmos, the whole universe, the whole earth, craving and desiring and longing and waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. There, we have the complete likeness to Christ at the end. There, the resurrection power of Christ is displayed in the complete salvation of our entire being. And we are then exalted with Christ. This is what we need, my friends, and this is what God provides in His grace. Having gifts without grace. Having the outward trappings without Christ is like a drowning man having a large bag of gold. It'll just sink into the bottom faster. We need Christ. We need grace. And there's hope here, isn't there? We look at ourselves and we see sin, we see weakness, we see shortcomings. We struggle with sin. And we get our tails kicked sometimes. And we slip and we fall. Paul says, I want to know Christ and His person and I want to know the power of His resurrection. Divine power at work in me at present to kill my sins. That's what I want to know. I want to know it. I want to experience it. We're connected with the Lord Jesus Christ in union with Him. And we go from thinking about Him, remembering Him, to relishing Him, to delighting in Him, to boasting in Him. Psalm 63 is full of this sort of theme. The end result of the fellowship and communion that we have with Jesus right now, the end result of that is the anticipation of our physical bodily resurrection, when we will have salvation in its fullest and final form. That's the end result. We enter into fellowship and communion now. We partake of the resurrection power now, all in anticipation of a full and final salvation. In other words, we have something of heaven on earth right now in knowing Christ, in communion and fellowship with Christ, in union with Christ, in the resurrection power of Christ. We have a sip, a taste of heaven on earth now. But we will have perfect joy there. Thirdly, there is Christ's painful suffering, knowing Christ's painful sufferings. The text goes on, "...and the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death." Maybe sometimes I assume you're too much like me, because I'll say things like, well, the first question that probably comes to your mind like mine. Sometimes it's the case, sometimes it's not the case. But the thing that I note when I read through this passage is, isn't there a problem here? He's reversed the order. Something's out of place. It should be sufferings, death, resurrection. Why does He say resurrection, sufferings, death? It seems to be out of order. Well, if you've understood what I just said in our second point, then you'll recognize readily, we need resurrection power in order to enter into fellowship in His sufferings. We have to live in Christ, the risen Savior. And that enables us, or that leads us to sharing in His sufferings. You think, yeah, no problem. I'm going to have fellowship with His sufferings. Apart from His resurrection power at work in you? That's a death wish. He says fellowship with His sufferings. This is not popular. This is not why the earthlings go to church. You know, the average Joe Blow does not want to go to church and say, you have fellowship with sufferings of the Savior. It's not palatable, not desirable. And what does this mean, fellowship? We think of fellowship and we think of food. Fellowship equals food. I think for the children, that's probably especially the case. If we're going to have fellowship, it means we're going to eat. Right? And there's nothing wrong with that because we are enjoying fellowship with one another over breaking bread and eating with one another. But you should not limit it to that. Fellowship is giving and receiving. Fellowship or communion, the same two words for the same sort of thing, mean giving and receiving. And so we fellowship with one another when there's giving and receiving, and prayer for one another, and speech, exhortation, comfort, rebuke, all of that's fellowship. And sharing our possessions, like at a meal, food, that's fellowship. All of those things and more could be included. So we have fellowship with the Lord Jesus. The Lord's Supper is communion with Christ. There's a giving and receiving. We are coming to Him exercising faith. He is coming to us. We're receiving from Him. He's coming to us and providing spiritual food, enabling us to feed by faith on Christ to the nourishment of our souls. Now, you have the idea of fellowship. He says, fellowship in Christ's sufferings. You're going to enter in and participate and share in suffering. Not what most of us want to hear. Being made conformable to His death. Not what most of us want to hear. But you know, this is part of the Lord's Supper, even. This idea of fellowship with the sufferings, being made conformable unto His death. Think with me for just a second. It says conformable unto His death. The cause of Christ's death was? Sin. The cause of Christ's death was sin. The means of His death was suffering. These are the two things that are being highlighted here. To be conformable to Christ's death respects both sin and suffering. He died for our sin. Okay, how are we conformable unto His death then? Because we can't die for our sin without going into hell. And there, rather than being conformed to His likeness, the reprobate are eternally getting further and further away from, uglier and uglier, worse and worse, as they descend into the torments of the abyss. So what does it mean to be conformable unto His death? He died for sin. And as we saw in Romans 6, verse 5 and following, we die unto sin. were made conformable unto His death. He died for sin. We die, by His grace, unto sin. Paul says in Romans 6, the old man has been crucified with Him. The body of sin has been killed by Him. And therefore, and thereby, we are conformable unto His death. This comes out in 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 1 and 2 as well. And so we come to the supper with thankful remembrance. We come with joy, with love, with happiness, with thankfulness, remembering. Jesus died for sin. Jesus killed and conquered and subdued sin so that we brought into union with him can see that sin destroyed within us. But then he says, fellowship in his suffering. Well, Jesus suffered for us. We suffer with Him. And that takes place at a number of levels. We are called upon as God's people to suffer with Him. John Owen says in speaking to this sort of thing, he says, we suffer with Him in at least four different ways. These are John Owen's four things. We suffer for Christ. You see that in 1 Peter 4. In fact, let's look at it. 1 Peter 4, verses 15 and 16. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a busybody in other men's matters. Suffering for suffering's sake is worthless. He says, yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. So we suffer for Christ, not for our own stupidity. Secondly, we suffer in the strength of Christ. We can only do it. We need Christ. You think you're going to fellowship with his sufferings without him? It's in his strength. Thirdly, in imitation of Christ, Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me. Not just take up your cross. That would be of no avail. It has to include following him. We have to be following him, fellowshipping with him, communion with him. Take up your cross and follow me. And then fourthly, we suffer to the glory of Christ. It is unto the glory of Christ. So here we are. We're brought into union with Christ. And we are brought to see the Christian is taught, you have been taught previously, and I am teaching you now, God is teaching you from His Word, that suffering is the norm for every true Christian. Not the exception. Not something that is remotely possible. It is the norm. It is the bread and butter. It is part of the staple of the Christian life. 2 Timothy 3, verse 12, "'Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.'" You see the same thing. We've referenced Romans 8 a couple times. You can add one more. Verses 16-18. You see this point. It's the norm for the Christian. In fact, Paul's already said it in Philippians 1, verse 29, "'For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake. It's given to you. This is something that the Lord has provided for you, to suffer for Him. And here's the rub. Here's, in many ways, the sweet spot. Some of the most profound fellowship that you will ever have with Christ and some of the most breathtaking vistas that you will ever see in your knowledge of Christ. Both are found in suffering. The Lord has designed it in His wisdom. You are going, Christian, to have fellowship with me in suffering. and some of the most profound fellowship to be had with me, and some of the sweetest, deepest knowledge of me is to be held in that context itself. The point is this, you cannot skip this step. You cannot skip the place of suffering and hope to have your crave for the knowledge of Christ satisfied. you will always be a truncated person. It's impossible. I mean, it would be theoretical to speak of it at all because, in fact, it is impossible. Every Christian has to go down by one path or another, down into the valley of humiliation to find fellowship with the Savior. Here's the question I have for you. Is that suffering... Listen to me, please. Is that suffering worth knowing Jesus? Is that suffering worth knowing Jesus? For many of us, we could not honestly say it in the moment, but by God's grace, we are enabled and led to eventually say, we would not trade it for anything in the world. You see, the cross comes and then the crown. The Lord's Supper, we see Christ crucified before our eyes, a broken body and shed blood. all of which is powerful instruction about real fellowship with Jesus. And all of the fruit, the mortification of sin, the growth in grace, the Lord in the supper comes with a bounty of grace to lavish upon us, to strengthen us, to grow us up and mature us by seeing Him and knowing Him, by receiving Him by faith and feeding upon Him. and by being thereby enabled to make strides in advance in the grace that He's given to us. We behold Christ by faith and we are changed into His likeness. May the Lord put this prayer in our heart as well as our mouth. that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. May God bless it to our hearing. Amen.