Well, this morning I would like you to turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3, we're going to be looking at verses 12 to 17 in both the morning worship and the afternoon worship as well. There are many exhortations that are given in these good verses that the Apostle Paul gives to us here and would impart the truth of them to us. But since it's Thanksgiving Day this Thursday in our nation, I thought it would be most appropriate to preach to you a couple of Thanksgiving sermons today and show you the importance of being thankful, giving thanks to God. Let's bow together in prayer before we begin. Oh, our great God, we come to show you our worship this morning, give you our worship, and to show forth your praise. We have come here to magnify your name because you have given us all things in Christ. And for this we are truly thankful. But Lord, we pray that we would be thankful in all things and thankful for all things that you give to us. And sometimes, Lord, we don't see how this is possible. And so we want to learn and grow together in our faith so that we will be a thankful people. and we will be able to thank you continually and praise you continually and exalt you in our heart. So we pray that this day would be profitable in worship to you and in instruction to our own hearts and minds. For we pray and ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Colossians chapter 3 and beginning in verse 12. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you are called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Well, the words, and be thankful, or as it is in the King James, and be ye thankful, are set in the wider context of the duties and the commands of the Lord that are given to the Apostle Paul to the saints and the faithful brethren at Colossae. He's reasoning with them. Beginning in chapter 3, verse 1, he says, If then you were raised with Christ, keep seeking those things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. So the Christian life begins with your being raised up from your spiritually dead condition, which you have been in from your birth. When you hear the gospel and you believe it, you are given life from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You are raised to newness of spiritual life. And as you continue to grow and you become more mature in your life, you are changed more into the image of Christ as you become a doer of the word and not merely a hearer who deceives themselves. Let it be remembered that once you place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are enlisting into his service, and you now have responsibilities to fulfill that you would walk in a manner which is pleasing unto the Lord. Many aspects of your duty to Christ and many aspects of your sanctification are related to how you treat other people, other Christians specifically. And so I believe that verses 15 and 17 are very crucial to the fulfillment of all the duties that are listed here. We are commanded here in these verses to be thankful and we are to give thanks in whatever we do. Whatever we go about to do, we are to give thanks to the Lord. We must remember that our God is watching us to see if we are truly thankful for all that he has given us. And we should remember this truth about our duties in relation to God that we do these duties with a right spirit. So the question that I want to ask this morning is this, how can we show God that we are truly thankful for all that He has given to us? How can we be thankful, as the text says? Beginning at verse 12, I think we can find four ways that God will know that we're truly thankful for all that He's given to us. We're going to look at two of those this morning, and then two this afternoon. Let me give them to you all now. First of all, God will know that you are thankful if you clothe yourself with graces, the graces of His Spirit. Secondly, God will know that you are thankful if you will let the peace of God rule in your heart. Third, God will know that you're thankful if you will let the Word of God dwell richly in your heart. And then fourth, God will know that you are thankful when you learn to give thanks in everything. So we want to contemplate these first two points for a few moments together, and then this afternoon we'll look at the other two. First of all, God will know that you are truly thankful when you clothe yourselves with the graces of his spirit, verses 12 to 14. Verse 12 says, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and long-suffering. Now Paul is assuming that this is how the believers at Colossae should look at themselves. They should look at themselves as the elect of God. Let me ask you, you who are believers here today, if that's how you see yourselves, or whether you're afraid of that doctrine of elections. You should not be afraid of it, as I was teaching this morning in the Sunday School. These are doctrines to be received, because they are plainly set forth in the Word of God in many places. And sometimes the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter will set them right out in front in their letters just so that we can understand that salvation is all of God's purpose and all of His grace and all of His work and all of His doing. We need to understand that. We need not to be grieved over these truths as though somehow because God is sovereign that He is cruel. It's just the opposite. He's very loving and you and I need to see that and we need to understand that. Do you see yourself as the elect of God, dear believer, because you've believed in Christ, you've come to know by faith that you have been forgiven of all of your sins. You see, God knows that you have received his Holy Spirit when you first believed. and Paul writes of the same truth to the believers in the church at Ephesus in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 he says in him that is in Christ you also trusted after you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation in whom also having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. And also 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 21 and 22, now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. A guarantee of what? A guarantee of the eternal life that He most surely will bring to us in our conversion, but also bring to us all the way through our life, and when we die and on into eternity, the Holy Spirit has been given to us as a guarantee. of that inheritance which is most surely coming to the believer. The Holy Spirit's come to live in your heart when you believe in Jesus and He Himself being there guarantees that a work of grace has begun and it will continue until the day that you die and even after that when you are someday raised from the dead at Christ's second coming. This we know that he who has begun a good work in you, Philippians 1.6, will continue it and complete it until the day perfected, until the day of Christ, Philippians 1.6. But here we find that Paul is saying that since we have received the Spirit and the grace that will build us into the image of Christ, that we will not forget our responsibility. in respect to the Spirit's work and Christ's grace. We are to clothe ourselves with the graces of the Spirit. We are to put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you. Now, dear believer, are you clothing yourself with these graces? Are you full of tender mercies towards other people, towards other believers? Do you show them kindness? Are you humble? Are you meek? Meekness is not weakness, Warren Wiersbe used to say. And the reason that he would say that is because meekness is actually a grace of strength. You need to understand that. And what is meekness? Meekness is non-self-assertiveness. Not always asserting yourself. Trying to put yourself forward continually so that people have to see you and know what you're all about. That you're willing to be meek. You're willing to be a good listener. You're willing to be patient with other people. These things are very important to God. as well as to you. These are the things that the true Christian clothes themselves with out of thankfulness to God. If you're not doing these things, you need to ask yourself whether you're really thankful for God's grace. whether you really think about the grace that God's given to you and whether you're really thankful. Let me give you an illustration here. When you get up in the morning, you put on your clothes and you choose them carefully because you not only want to put on and have a good appearance before others, but you know that clothing is also an expression of your person. So it is that clothing yourself with the graces of the Spirit is a very necessary part of your heart's getting up, waking up spiritually in the morning. You clothe yourself with these graces, and when you do this, it tells God what you think about Him. And it tells Him what you think about yourself. and about life and about other people. Let me ask you whether you are truly thankful. I want you to turn with me over to Psalm 96. Psalm 96 and we want to look at verse 7. And here in Psalm 96 we find the psalmist giving instructions on what the people of God are supposed to do during their times of public worship. And in verse seven, he says, give to the Lord, O families of the peoples, give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. O worship the Lord. in the beauty of holiness." Now the words worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness in the New American Standard read this way, worship the Lord in holy attire. They refer to what the people, especially the Levites, wore when they came to worship the Lord, what they clothed themselves with. They wore special linen garments, and those linen garments showed forth the righteousness, the righteous life to which they were called. And if they wore these special clothes in Old Covenant, Old Testament times, let us consider how special the graces of the Spirit are, dear believer, that you are supposed to clothe yourself with. you who are new covenant priests unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 15 says, therefore by our Lord Jesus continually let us offer up the sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. Now how important is it to daily clothe yourself with a thankful heart? I want you to turn over to 2 Chronicles chapter 20 with me because we want to explore this a little deeper. 2nd Chronicles chapter 20. 1st Samuel and Kings and then Chronicles, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. 2nd Chronicles chapter 20. In this chapter we find that Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, hears that a great number of their enemies from the nations of Moab and Ammon are coming against them. And in verse 2, the narration begins, Then some came and told Jehoshaphat, saying, A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea, from Syria, Edom, and they are in Hazazan-Tamar, which is in En-Gedi. And Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. So Judah gathered together to ask help from the Lord, and from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. Then the king prays, in verse 6, and he says, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God? he says. Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in your hand is there not power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you? And Jehoshaphat believes in the sovereignty of God. He believes that God rules over the nations, but he also has a real fear of what these wicked men are going to do to himself and all of his people. And so it says here, he set himself to seek the Lord. And you see, that's what you and I should do when we are afraid. of people around us when we are afraid of men. Realize that the Lord is there for you. Realize that you can seek him and find him and let the peace of God rule in your heart and be thankful that there's a God in heaven who is certainly strong enough to help you. Well, there was a prophet of the Lord that day by the name of Jehaziel, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, and he stood up in the assembly, and it says in verse 15, he said, listen all of you of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and you King Jehoshaphat, thus says the Lord to you, do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Now I hope that this is something that you realize as well. You will have spiritual struggles. You will have spiritual battles to fight, and so will we as a church. We will have them. But let us remember to let the peace of God rule in our hearts, to which we are called in one body. and be thankful. We need not be afraid, we need not be dismayed by the great multitude of the Lord's enemies and ours, which are arrayed against us. But if we will trust in the Lord, if we trust in His Word, we will know God's help, we will know His power exercised on our behalf, and we need to see We need to see that we need to deliberately do this. We need to deliberately place our trust in the Lord and consciously remember the promises of his help and set ourselves to seeking him. The battle is not ours. It's not really ours. The battle for truth and righteousness is really the Lord's. Our battle will not be against flesh and blood. It won't be against people, per se. It will be with ourselves, mostly, and our overcoming our temptations. Our temptations to be gruff. Our temptation to be impatient. Our temptation to be unkind. Perhaps our temptation to be proud and self-willed. Sometimes there will come to us the temptation not to forgive other people, and there will be the temptation to complain against other Christians, and not to remember what Christ has done in suffering for you so that you would be tender and merciful and kind and humble and meek and patient and forgiving. Your battle will be against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places. And it will be with the devil and his strategies of using unbelieving people to get them to oppose your living, our living as a church, our living out our Christian faith. That's how the devil wars. against us. That's how he wars against Christ's church. But you see, this didn't deter either Jehoshaphat or Jehaziel. Jehaziel says here in verse 17, you will not need to fight in this battle. Position yourselves, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord who is with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear, or be dismayed tomorrow go out against them for the Lord is with you and what was their response in verse 18 we're told and Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem bowed before the Lord worshiping the Lord you see this is where the main battle was for the people of God then for the people of God now. Their struggle was found in their being able to continue to trust in God and to continue to worship him, even where their enemies were many against them, and they were coming against them with great numbers of people. Now I hope that you see that this is still the main battle. for the Christian today as well. It is to be able to worship God in all circumstances of your life, to do what is right, even when it seems impossibly difficult for you to do so. You need to remember to clothe yourself With the graces of God's Holy Spirit, day by day, you need to remember to worship the Lord in all of your spiritual battles. We need to learn to bow our heads and be thankful for all that God has done for us in Christ already. and then lift up our heads and realize that He will yet do many wonderful things for us because of Jesus Christ our Lord. You see, God is going to provide for all of your spiritual needs in times of great difficulty and calamity when you worship Him and when you submit to Him. So be thankful. our verses are telling us here. In all that He brings you into, in all that He brings you through, the victory in the battle is always from Him. Do you believe that, dear Christian? It's always good for leaders in the church to lead in this holy way, being clothed with graces the graces of the Spirit. It's always good to do what Jehoshaphat did with the people. In verse 20 it says, So they rose early in the morning and went out to the wilderness of Tekoa. And that was where the battle was to be joined. And as they went out, we find Jehoshaphat, the king, he's ready for this. And what he did was he set those who were praising the Lord out in front when they went to battle. Isn't that good? That's a picture to us of what we should do when we come against our greatest calamities. We need to put praise out in front. Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. Yes, we need not only to consider it joy, but we need to praise the Lord. because that's where the battle is joined. And so they praised the Lord. It says in verse 21, when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the Lord. And those who would praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army, they were saying, singing, praise the Lord, give thanks to the Lord, as it says in the American Standard Version, for His mercy endures forever. This is the way that God had appointed to lead them to victory. He wanted them to see that He was going to fight for them that day. He wanted them to see that He could win the battle for them that day. And the grace that He wanted them to clothe themselves with was to express their thanksgiving for what He would do for them as they praised Him. Now, dear believer, do you encounter your trials in that way? Do you give thanks for God in everything? Do you put praise out in front and say, Lord, I don't understand what you're bringing me into, but I want to learn and I want to grow. So you teach me to praise you in the midst of this situation. You know, some of the martyrs that I read of back there in the days of the Reformation, they, when they were being burned at the stake, used to sing. They would be singing unto the Lord until their limbs were completely consumed by the fire. They were singing and praising the Lord. That's how the Lord led them all the way through death into heaven itself, into the very presence of Jesus. And you and I need to see that there is a strength and a power in our God which is not in ourselves, and it is found by praising Him. for his great salvation and thanking him. Thankfulness has a very real and direct relation to our winning our spiritual battles. When we clothe ourselves with tender mercies, when we show humility and kindness, when we exhibit meekness and patience toward other people, we are doing this because we are thankful for all the grace that God has shown to us. Let's say that somebody has offended you. Let's say that somebody has sinned against you, and you are tempted not to forgive them, to become embittered against them, and to hold a grudge against them in your heart. You're tempted to speak against them and to work against them in every way. But this will only lead to your dishonoring God. Do you see that? It will only lead to your not being able to love them as you are commanded to do. Listen to Leviticus 19.18. It says, You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. But according to our verses, if you will clothe your mind with these graces of the Spirit, if you'll put them on just as deliberately as you put on clothing, then you may possibly win your brother or sister back to yourself. You see, that's what God would have you to do. If you will do this, you will find that God will be pleased with your right spirit, and He will reward it. He sees that you have remembered that He has shown you mercy. He has given you grace. He has been patient, and He is being patient with you. Can you not clothe yourselves with these same graces in relation to people around you? He will see, I'm saying, that you are doing these good things out of thankfulness to him. For extending to you his free grace, he sees that you have clothed yourselves with tender mercies, kindness, humility, and meekness. He sees you being patient with other Christians around you. He will bless you. with a joyful, contented, thankful spirit. For you have forgiven those who have offended you. You have forgiven them when you had a complaint against them, because Christ once forgave you for things which were just as sinful, if not more so. as the things that they did to you. All these right attitudes, all these actions, come flowing out of your having received grace and mercy from God in relation to the whole body of your sins. Are you not thankful that God, when he forgave you, he forgives you of all your sins? He didn't just simply hold out on you and say, well, I think, you know, this one was bad enough. We're going to have to deal with this one for a while. No, God doesn't do that. If God did that, he'd have to be holding out on me a lot. But God does not do that. These graces to be able to be this way come to you because Christ suffered to purchase them for you. Do you see that? You are thankful now, and you are able to be thankful in everything because Christ suffered for that. Secondly, the second way that God will know that you're truly a thankful person is if you have his peace ruling in your heart. Verse 15, verse 15 says, let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you were called in one body and be thankful. Peace and thankfulness always go hand in hand. If you are a peacemaker, If you are a peaceable man or a peaceable woman, then you are that way because you have a great sense of thankfulness in relation to your having found peace with God through your Lord Jesus Christ. God and you were at enmity with each other before you were converted. Do you know what that means? You were hostile to him. And he was hostile to you in the sense of your sin. And this enmity, this hostility, no longer exists. Why? Because Jesus Christ died so that you would be reconciled to God, to the Holy God. Having received the reconciliation offered in the Gospel, you now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Based upon what Christ has done for you at the cross, you're not only able to have peace with God, you're able to have the peace of God. which rules in your hearts, or should be ruling in your heart. Listen to the words of our Savior in John 14, verses 25 to 27. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You see, Jesus was going to the cross, and he was going to death, and he was going to suffer. But He knew that He would be raised from the dead, and He knew that He would ascend to the Father and that He would sit at the Father's right hand until all His enemies would be made a footstool for His feet. And the Lord Jesus did not want His disciples to think that His teaching or His help to them would stop when all of these terrible things happened to Him at the cross. He wanted them to know that the Father would send them the Spirit, the Comforter, in His name. He wanted them to know, and He wants you to know, dear Christian, that it is by the Father's giving to every believer of His Spirit that each believer has peace given to them. And so then you will, dear believer, because of Christ's faithfulness, be given peace in relation to all of the various decisions that you have to make in your life. That's why people say, well, I didn't have peace about that. I didn't have God's peace about it. God was not witnessing with my spirit that I had peace about making this decision in this way. I mean, I didn't understand it all, but the Holy Spirit was working in me, and the Holy Spirit convinced me that this was not the right way to proceed. Of course, that means in conjunction with the Word of God, not just simply out of nothing and nowhere. But we need to understand these things better. You will be given joy in the midst of your trials. And most importantly, you will come to know the reality of these blessings in all of your relationships with other people. Let me ask you, dear Christian, if you have that now, do you have the peace of God ruling in your heart? You need to understand that while you're in this world, there will be many things that could cause your heart to be troubled and agitated, many things. And these could include the things that other people do, even things which other believers might say or do to you. And these things may provoke you. to respond to them and to act toward them in a sinful or a fleshly way. We're told here in verse 15 that as individuals and as the body of Christ, the answer to this is to let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which you were called in one body and be thankful. John Gill says in his commentary on the subject of peace ruling, he says the metaphor is taken from the judge in the Olympic Games, who was the umpire, the moderator, who would determine whose the victory was, and to whom the crown belonged. The apostle would have no other umpire among the saints than the peace of God. This may be said to reign in their hearts when it is the governing principle there, when it restrains their turbulent passions of anger and wrath and revenge and allays their undue heats, moderates their spirits and composes their differences. Gil is saying here that peace ruling in the heart does all these things. The text itself says that we're called to this, especially in relation to the body of Christ and other Christians. The thing that we need to ask ourselves when we feel agitated and passionate about what someone else has done to us is this, what does the peace in my heart think about this? What does the Holy Spirit who has been given to me who has given me this peace, ruling in my heart, what does he think about this? For he knows that I cannot have peace and agitation of spirit ruling in my heart at the same time. They may both be in my heart, but one of them must rule the other. Therefore, he gives a greater grace, it says in James. Listen to Isaiah 57, verses 19 and 20. I create the fruit of lips, peace, peace, to him who is far off and to him who is near, says the Lord, and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters are agitated and troubled, and they cannot rest because of their sin and the agitation of their heart. But I hope you, dear believer, have come to know that in the gospel that you are healed of the sins which produced the agitation. You have peace with God, and you have the peace of God. But as you probably know, the saints can also still become agitated and troubled by the sins of others against them, and they may be tempted to treat them to treat others in the same way that they themselves have been treated. But listen to Romans 12, 17, and 18. Repay no one evil for evil. Repay no one. Evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men. How can you live this way? It's when the peace of God rules in your heart. And the peace of God will rule in your heart when you realize that Christ Himself has given you the grace of peace by His Spirit's working in your heart. so that you might use it, that is peace, in situations just like this. And He will continue to give you that peace by which you can overcome evil with good. That is what you and I are called to do. That's why it says in Philippians 4, 6, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind through Christ Jesus. If you will let the peace of God rule in your heart, it will guard, it will garrison your heart and your mind as well. Now, this is assuming that you and I will use the means of prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Oh, dear Christian, when you pray, do you give thanks? Do you give thanks unto God? Each one of us here today should thank our God for past victories, the past victories of his perfect life and his sacrificial death. Because it is these which have brought us to the state of peace with God, and then we should also thank him for the present everyday victories that come to us by his grace through his Spirit when we clothe ourselves with these graces, that He will answer our prayers. If we will put the sins of the flesh to death, if we will wage war with our flesh by the power of the Spirit, then we will find that we really will have the peace that we need in dealing with our relationships with other people around us. We will have such great peace that we will even be able to give thanks for the people that we associate with who we think need to change and grow in their faith. A lot of times when we see people like that, we don't want to associate with them. But I'm saying if you have the peace of God, peace with God, and the peace of God, you should be able to associate with all these people who are lowly, or all these people who are troubled, or all these people who are a frustration to you. I didn't say that you'd make them your best friends. Maybe if grace changes them, you can do that. But I'm saying you should be able to associate with the lowly. If you yourself have clothed yourself with the graces of the Spirit, often it's immaturity, in other believers that is very disturbing to us. But I want you to think with me about what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 3 verse 9. For what thanks can we render to God for you, he says. For what thanks can we render to God for you? For all the joy with which we rejoice for your sake before our God, night and day, praying exceedingly that we may see your face and perfect that which is lacking in your faith. Did you see how eager Paul was to be with the saints? And surely it's a matter of great thanksgiving to be able to help one another in relation to our faith. Let me close by asking this, are you able to do this? Dear Christian, you can, by the grace of God, be thankful. Let's pray together. We thank you, our God, for the national holiday of Thanksgiving, which each year at this time reminds us of the biblical injunction that we should be thankful. and that we should always be giving thanks to you, our God, and that we should be continually clothing ourselves with the graces of your Spirit, so that we might be those who are kind and loving and understanding towards other believers, first of all, and then towards all people around us. Help us, dear Lord, to do what we need to do to change in that regard. Help us to receive this truth and to see all things coming from you, to see that we can change by the grace of Christ. to be humble and prayerful and meek and kind and thoughtful towards people around us. Give us that kind of grace, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's close our worship this morning by singing hymn number 615 together. Come, ye thankful people, come. Raise the song of harvest home. Hymn number 615. Let's stand together for this hymn. Come ye thankful people, come. Raise the song of harvest home. All is safely gathered in. Ere the winter storms begin, God our Maker doth provide For our wants to be supplied. Come to God's own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest home. All the world is God's own field, Fruit unto his praise do yield. Wheat and tares together sown, Unto joy or sorrow prone. First the blade and then the ear, Then the folk horn shall appear. Lo, a harvest grand that we, Wholesome, grain, and pure may be. For the Lord our God shall come, And shall take his harvest home from his field. In that day all offenses purge away, Give His angels charge at last, In the fire the tares to cast, But the fruitful is to store in scorner and Even so, Lord, quickly come to thy final harvest. Gather thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin. there forever purified in thy presence to abide come with all thine angels come raise the glorious harvest home amen Blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb forever and ever. Amen. You are dismissed and may the Lord go with you.