You're listening to the teaching ministry of Harvest Fellowship Church in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. You can find out more about us on the web at www.harvestfellowshipchurch.org. We pray that through our teaching, we may present everyone mature in Christ. Please take your Bibles and stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Our New Testament reading today, sermon text is taken from Titus, Titus chapter 3. Titus chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. Hear now the word of the Lord. Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. May God richly bless the reading of his word. You may be seated. Well, we've reached the home stretch now of Titus as we're now definitively into chapter three. Perhaps we'll finish the book next week. I haven't quite made up my mind. I wasn't able to make up my mind because I'm just so excited about today's passage. I don't know if you have a favorite passage in the Bible, but if I don't have one, this is definitely one of them. And perhaps as we go through it, if you haven't studied it closely before, perhaps it'll become one of your favorite passages as well. But let's ask God to illuminate our hearts, to take the living words of the text, but to actually implant them upon our hearts this morning. Father in heaven, we bow before you. We are such needy creatures, O Lord, and you kindly beckon us each Lord's Day to come and to gather in your presence, to pour forth through the work of your Spirit such wonderful help to our hearts and even to our souls. So we pray, Lord, now that as we look to your word, that our hearts will be kindled afresh as we consider what we were before Christ and all that you have done. We pray, Lord, that you will do the illuminating work and the transforming work as well. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus, amen. In the late 19th century, There was a ship called the USS Plymouth. So this was a wooden, what was called, sloop of war. In this great ship, it gained notoriety, but it didn't gain notoriety for a good reason. It gained notoriety for something that no ship's crew ever wanted to face, and that was yellow fever. Time and time again, yellow fever outbreaks would ravage the crew of this ship, spreading like wildfire, of course, because the ship had tight quarters. The sailors became intensely sick. One after another, they had fevers, chills, and all the unmistakable signs of this deadly disease. Time and time again, they tried to clean the ship, to purify the ship, to fumigate its decks and bring it back into service, but no matter what they did, this deadly disease persisted. It almost seemed as if the ship itself was cursed, a vessel carrying death wherever it went. You can imagine that morale was not very good on such a ship. Morale plummeted and the Navy realized that no amount of effort would be able to regenerate or to restore the Plymouth from its deadly condition. The cost of keeping her afloat was just simply too great. And so in an act of desperation but also a decisive type of act, the Navy towed the Plymouth out to sea And there, far away from the port, far away from the threat of infecting anyone else, they scuttled the ship, they sank this formidable ship into the ocean depths. The once-proud vessel that was now a symbol of death and despair was lost beneath the waves, and its story served as a cautionary tale to others of hopelessness and destruction. What a haunting image to have in our minds, a ship that is so plagued by corruption that the only hope was its destruction. So I'd like you to keep that story in the back of your mind as we now look to Titus 3 verses 3 through 7. It's here in these verses that we see, first of all, we'll see the dreadful plight of man in his estranged condition from God. But those verses that follow is a dramatic following. It's Paul's song of salvation. It's a marvelous declaration of God's saving grace. And so as we reflect on God's loving kindness and saving us, we'll see, I hope we'll see, why such mercy ought to make us eternally grateful. And so, for the sermon today, for these verses here, I've broken it into three separate parts. God's mercy that saw us in the first verse, God's grace that saved us in the next three verses, And then in that final verse, God's righteousness that secures us. Another way to look at it would be like this, what we once were, what God has done, and what we have become. But let's look first then to this first verse, under God's mercy that saw us. Now Paul writes here in verse three, he says, for we ourselves were once foolish. Disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. Imagine having that carved into your tombstone as the description of your life. But notice that first word, therefore. for is sort of an explanation. And he's saying, so he's talking about from verses one and two, but he's going to give some more background information. And we're going to come back to the full application of those first two verses with these verses today, next week. But he says the grounds for those first two verses are something that we need to better understand about ourselves. And so he says, we ourselves. That's an emphatic we. We! Who's he talking about? Himself? Titus? The Cretan Christians? And by extension, all Christians, all followers of Christ. He says, we were. And so he's going to talk about a condition that was in the past no longer true in the present. And we're going to see here in this verse here there's going to be a bit of a logical progression as he talks about these vices that describe us. And we're going to see first a thinking vice then a behavioral vice and then a thinking vice and then a behavioral vice. But he says we used to be foolish. He's talking about the spiritual condition of anyone before they have encountered the grace of Christ. He says we were once unbelievers, foolish. He says we had no understanding. We were senseless. You could even call this, and it sounds harsh but it's true, but spiritual stupidity. Spiritual stupidity because there is an unwillingness by that person in their unconverted state to use their mental faculties to understand God in his ways. Remember what the fool says? The fool says in his heart, he says, there is no God. Now how does that practically manifest itself? It's living your life as if God doesn't exist. That doesn't make God not exist, no, but you're living very foolishly. You're living your life as if what you have just stated to the skies is true. And that foolishness, that living under a lie in your mind, what does it lead to? It leads to disobedience. Disobedience, a failure to obey God. I don't want to obey his ways. I don't want to follow his rules. So I reject them. This is why Moses, he speaks to the people in Numbers 20 and he says, here now you rebels. These are people who hated God. In Zechariah 7 you see that expression about people who had diamond hard hearts calloused against God, I will not submit, I will disobey. And because the person is foolish, because the person is disobedient, then what does that lead to? It leads to another thinking vice. Now they can be even more easily led astray. They can be even more easily misled, deluded. And who's doing that? It's that spiritual evil forces that exist in this world. Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood. He says there is a spiritual warfare that goes on. And so from that evil heart of unbelief they are being deceived by those forces and perhaps even by that old serpent himself, Satan, the Prince of Darkness. And all that leads to this reality that the person is enslaved, shackled. Shackled to what? Bound to what? Well, he says various, or we could use the word diverse, passions. This is, you remember that man that Jesus goes, he's that demon-possessed man, and he says, what is your name? And they said, we are legion. That's the picture there. Human shackles couldn't hold that man down, but he was shackled by the oppression of demonic possession. And so he says here, slaves to various passions, desires that God forbids, in an inordinate craving lust. In Numbers 11, 4, we read of that type of feeling on the inside. It says, now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And you could say, oh, well, they were just hungry for something different than manna. Now these were rock hard disobedient hearts and when you read further in Numbers 11, the ones who craved in such a way were destroyed by God. See the same thing in Romans 1. Romans 1, the whole second half of the chapter describes the haters of God and it says, therefore God gave them up. He pushed them over toward, if you're going to reject my ways, I'm going to give you even more so. to the lusts of your hearts. And so there's passions and there's pleasures. The pleasures and we could even say the sensualities of life. Or we even see in Luke chapter eight where Jesus is talking about the sower. He says that those things choke away faith. The people who desire the pleasures of life. And so Paul says this is who we were. We were foolish. We were disobedient. We were led astray. We were slaves. And he says we were wasting away. Here it says passing our days but we could say wasting away in malice. Now malice we often think of anger but we could easily have translated this as just the word wickedness. Wickedness. We're wishing evil on others, wishing evil upon others. But it's not just that we are wishing evil on others, but we also, he says, we were filled with envy. We had an evil eye, a negative attitude towards, for those who are around us, I resent you because you seem to be in a better position than me, and I don't like that. I wish I had what you have. I wish good had not happened to you. You see that, remember, with Cain. Cain sees that Abel receives God's acceptance. He's envious. Korah, in the desert, he sees that Moses has been placed in charge and he's envious. Why can't I be in charge? In Proverbs 14, 30, we see a tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. So Paul says we were wasting away in malice and envy. He says we were hated by others and hating one another. We wished harm upon other people. It's this vicious circle of hatred. You hate me and I hate you and it just gets worse and worse and worse. came to a head pretty quickly early in the Bible in Genesis chapter 6 verse 5. It says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great, great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is the condition that Paul is talking about that used to be the case with believers. the condition of the deepest and the darkest pit of everlasting despair in which God saw us. That's how God beheld us. That's the condition that we were in and he had already eternally purposed to be gracious to us. So you think of that ship that I mentioned, the USS Plymouth. That was us. That was us consumed with the yellow fever of sin, ready to be towed out to the ocean and destroyed, sent down to the everlasting pit fire of hell. And that's where we must go in our minds. We must go in our minds to see the depths of despair and depravity and sinfulness of our hearts before we can ever begin to grasp the heights of God's love for us. We have to. And so then we're going to move past of this hard hitting confronting verse because that's how God in his mercy saw us. But he didn't leave us there. And so we see God's grace then that saved us. In verse four, Paul says, but, but, that's a word that should make you smile, but, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, And so when Paul here, when he says, but when, he's letting you know something unexpected is about to happen, or you're about to be reminded of something that was not the logical progression that should have happened next. And he says, the goodness, the loving kindness. That word kindness, that word loving kindness there, it actually has the sense of philanthropy in it. But this is an unusual affectionate concern for or interest in mankind. But it's not just anyone's philanthropy. It's not just anyone's goodness and loving kindness. He says, this is the loving kindness of God, our Savior. And he's referring here specifically to the Father. Often when we think of Savior, we think of the Son, but here he's thinking of the Father and the way that he displayed his concern for mankind. How did he do that? He did it through his display of loving-kindness, Jesus the Christ. That's how he did it. And so Paul says this display of God's loving-kindness, it appeared in 2 Timothy 1. We see Paul saying the same thing essentially in one of his other pastoral letters to Timothy. He says, God saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Jesus Christ before the ages began and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And we talked about this appearance at the end of chapter two, but now Paul makes this understanding of the appearance all the more explicit, all the more exact and precise. This was an appearing that had been hidden. Adam and Eve didn't know when the Redeemer would appear, So now we see God's redemptive purpose happening at the exact time that he had purposed. And so we see God's loving kindness, first of all, we see it appearing in history through the incarnation of the Son, but also secondly through the gospel experience as salvation or grace comes to the heart of sinners. And Paul goes on to say in verse 5, he saved us Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Paul could not have been more emphatic about this. God's loving kindness showed up. And by the way, you had nothing to do with it. He said, it's not because we did anything that made us lovable. We didn't do anything that contributed to our salvation. We've done nothing. The only thing we've done is sinned. In Isaiah 64, Isaiah captures that. He says, we have all become like one who is unclean. All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind take us away. Paul says, I've got to remind you, you need to remember that your salvation did not come because of anything that you did. And we saw that in the Old Testament reading this morning in Deuteronomy chapter 9. I don't know if your Bible had a subtitle, but it may have said something like not because of your works or not because of your righteousness. And there's that same picture. where Moses tells the people, you're going into the land, and it wasn't because you've been disobedient, holy, righteous people, the Lord is doing this, and he's doing it completely in and of himself. So Paul says it had nothing to do with you, nothing with anything that you had in your hands, he says, but according to or because of God's own mercy, This intrinsic quality that is within him, his undeserved love upon people, his compassion that is expressed in Christ. I mentioned this last week in a different context but this is what David does with Mephibosheth. David becomes king. What did kings typically do? They killed all the relatives of the previous king to make sure that they couldn't come and steal the kingship back. And Mephibosheth would have been able to do nothing about it because he himself was a cripple. Did he have anything to offer David? No. And what does David do? And this is a picture of what God was going to do. But David says, come here. I know you don't have anything to offer. I don't want you to come, and you're not going to just hang out with the servants. You're going to sit at my table. You're going to be like a son to me. What a wonderful picture. And so we see that God saves sinners, he gives them all of his own goodness, not because they're good, because they're not. Not because they deserved it, because they don't. Not because they were lovable, they weren't. God loved sinners and cared for them because of his own character and his own virtue. And then Paul says, he saved us. This is the same people from the previous verse. In verse three we just read all those horrible things. He saved us. We should ask at times just very simple questions, from what? Someone might say, you might ask somebody, are you saved? And they're like, from what? And we should ask that. From what? What did he save us from? He saved us from that helpless condition of facing eternal wrath, eternal judgment. He saved us from what we deserved. And this salvation was a one-time action by God through the work of Christ, but it's also a salvation that we experience in time and space. So the work is done at the cross, but there still is that individual experience where each person comes into an encounter with God and his saving grace. We could ask as well, how does this salvation come about? How do such desperately wicked people suddenly now look up and see God for who he is? No longer disobeying him, no longer rejecting him. How do they recognize and believe in his kindness to them? Who is the one who comes along and instead of destroying them he removes and heals that deadly yellow fever of their soul? And Paul says it's the Holy Spirit. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. It's the third person of the triune God who does this work. And Paul says, how does he do it? He does it through a washing of regeneration and renewal. Now washing here, when we think of washing, we often in our minds think of what we just experienced a few weeks ago, is the baptism of physical baptism in waters. But here I think Paul is more focused not on what of baptism that represents it, but rather that inward spiritual cleansing, the baptism of the soul, so to speak. or the baptism of the entire being. And he gives two words here, regeneration and renewal. And they're very similar words with a lot of overlap. But you could think of regeneration as spiritual rebirth. Remember what Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be, as a passive recipient, you must be born again. So there's the spiritual rebirth, it's the new beginning for the believer whereas they go from spiritual death now suddenly to spiritual life. But there's also this process of renewal. So the nature is also recreated so to speak. a recreated nature as that which was destroyed by sin, and that happened with Adam and Eve and all of their posterity, that which was destroyed by nature is now being restored. And so there's this process then of the Holy Spirit where the person is transformed unto God, no longer hating God, no longer disobedient to God. And this comes about through the work of the Holy Spirit. We see this, the great picture of this in Ezekiel 36, where Ezekiel prophesied, I, this is God, Yahweh speaking, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. There's that washing, that internal washing. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit, Holy Spirit, within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. And all you got to do then is flip to chapter 37 and you see a great picture of that. Remember the valley of the dry bones, the dead people. And he says, Son of man, can these bones live? And he says, you know, Lord. And they are given life through the spirit the same way that Adam was given life when God created him. And so Paul says that he saved us and he gave us the washing of regeneration and renewal through the Holy Spirit whom, Paul says in verse 6, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Now when you think of poured out, It's not taking like a glass of water and just pouring it out on the ground. It's not a little pitcher of water. This is as if you were standing under Niagara Falls. This is just being poured out upon you, lavished upon you. And who was it that was poured out? He says it was the Spirit. When he says whom he poured out, that's the Spirit. In Isaiah 44.3, There was the promise of that, I will pour out my spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. Now when you think about, as you read through the Bible, when you see the phrase is poured out, poured out, poured out, most of the time it's not in the context of what we're talking about. It's usually I will pour out my wrath. Ezekiel 7, 8 is just one example of that. I will soon pour out my wrath upon you. And you can find many examples of that. So we could say, in a sense, that this is a reversal of fortunes. We expected to have wrath poured out upon us. We expected and we deserve to be pulled out to the ocean and sunk like that ship. But this is God's amazing reversal of fortunes that comes from His mercy. and he does it richly, abundantly. In Romans 10, 12, which we quote quite often, Paul says, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is Lord of all bestowing his riches upon all who call on him. What does the Christian richly receive? Well, first of all, he receives God himself. He receives God himself, the very presence of God within him, but also then a rich supply of spiritual graces or gifts. And those only come through Jesus Christ, our Savior, which we had talked about as we studied Acts. It is not until the Son completes His work, which includes returning to the heavens, ascending to the heavens, and then His coronation, His enthronement. And it is only as the enthroned King of Jesus Christ, our Savior, that He sends His Holy Spirit upon His people. God, our Savior's love and kindness, it comes through Jesus. God's mercy, it streams through Jesus. Salvation is in and of itself through Jesus. The grace that is communicated to us in regeneration and renewal, it comes out of Jesus's fullness. The Spirit is given forth by Jesus. Every supply of grace comes from Jesus's hands. Everything that is wrought in us that is well pleasing in the sight of God is through Jesus. But there's a second component to our salvation. In addition to the inward work there's something else that the sinner needs. And so thirdly then we'll look in this last verse at God's righteousness that secures us. Verse seven we see that final phrase or line here from Paul's song, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Why does God pour out the spirit? Why does he do that inward renewal? He says, so that. That's telling us that there is a divine purpose here. So that. Being justified. Having been or become pronounced righteous. Think of that courtroom scene. Person is in there and they are accused of murder. Now in one sense you can look at it as if, as when that verdict comes down to that person and they say not guilty, what does that mean? That simply just means that they didn't do that crime but they're allowed to leave the courtroom. It doesn't say anything about them being a good person. Maybe they're a horrible person who just didn't commit that murder. And so we think of justification. It isn't just a not guilty declaration, but it's a much greater declaration. And it's that this person is perfectly righteous. That God has esteemed them, declared them to be righteous. And that was all the while as they stood there with this sign hanging around their neck that said guilty. So what then is justification? Justification is this judicial act of God in which he declares that sinner, that person who has embraced his grace, that he declares them to be righteous. How does he do that? He does that on the basis of the righteousness of the Son, the righteousness of Jesus Christ that is imputed, or we could say, given to the sinner. And he says, because of that, all the claims of the law have been satisfied for this sinner. What are the claims of the law? It says, be perfect. That's what the law says. And no human can meet those claims. But Jesus, through his work, through his perfect life then, his righteousness, it's given to the sinner. And so that sinner then, who stands in God's courtroom of justice, They're not just said, okay, you're allowed to leave the courtroom. It's far more than that. It's not just that they avoided jail or execution, but instead it's the opposite. They put the fine robe around them. They are celebrated by God himself. And that's why when the prodigal son returns home, what does he want to do? He says, I would just like to be a servant. I'll work on the outside. What does the father say? He says, no way. We're going to celebrate. You are the celebrated son. And it's not because of anything that you did. You were horrible. It was the father's mercy, the father's loving kindness that he lavished upon him in grace. And so we must see then that although the person is transformed on the inside, in order to be presented before God and holiness, they need something, and that is the righteousness of Christ. And so that's what makes justification distinguishably different than regeneration. And guess what? You need both. And they also happen simultaneously. Two simultaneous acts, not by you, but by God himself. And Paul says that, that it comes by his grace, by God's favor, that this is the cause of your justification. Romans 3, 23 and 24, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, which is Titus 3.3 in a nutshell, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And so what is the gift that God gives? He gives this instrument to the person and it's called faith. How do you believe? It's through faith that is given to you. Paul says the result then is that we might become heirs. We might become beneficiaries. We might become inheritors So it was that our sentence of death, think of that ship, had a sentence of death. It was doomed to be destroyed. That's what we had. We had a sentence of death before God and it was voluntarily accepted by Jesus who died in our place. He died in our place. He took what we deserved. He took what we should have gotten and his perfect righteousness was given to us. It's that wedding garment that's given to us. as God's presence, his very presence, was irreversibly poured into our hearts. And so that gives us a vested share or inheritance, we could say, with the king of kings. And that gives us the hope of eternal life. We have an earnest expectation of the promised guarantee of life without end. And so how do we inherit eternal life? We inherit eternal life through Christ's death. Christ's death purchased our inheritance, and then his wonderful resurrection is what guarantees the fulfillment of such an inheritance. So believer, I would love to tell you this morning that there are some things through these verses that you can know. And what is it that you can know? It's that you can know that in that final judgment, as you stand before the Lord himself, that it's the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on your behalf, that it will be presented as the irrefutable evidence that you have been saved. The perfect righteousness of Christ will be the undeniable proof that you have also been justified by God himself. And upon the presentation of those things, you will hear those wonderful words from the king himself. Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Could there be a more delightful thing to be spoken to you? This is your eternal destiny. The work of rebirth and renewal that God has done in your heart if you are a follower of Christ, it's a glimpse of that new creation of where he will make all things new. It's the sneak peek, so to say. And so with the conclusion of those words in verse 7, Paul's song is over. We could say it's complete. And I just want to get that very first phrase of verse 8 where he says, the saying is trustworthy. The song is trustworthy. This is a true, a sure, a reliable message. And we could even ask ourselves, what is this measure of God's loving kindness to us? How could we possibly measure it? We could try, but we'll try to measure it in statements that we still can't fully comprehend. But firstly, that God has given himself. God has given himself. And he gave himself through the giving of the only son. I'll be saying that today. Here is love, vast as an ocean, loving kindness as the flood, when the prince of life, our ransom, shed for us his precious blood. So God has given himself. And then what really brings a smile to my heart, God has done everything himself. He's given himself and he's done everything himself. And so knowing these things, we always should ask ourselves is, how do you respond? How should you respond? Well, the first group of people I'd like to address with that are those people who haven't experienced this yet. We call them unbelievers. It's possible that you could be sitting here this morning and you may find yourself that, hey, I think I'm still in verse three. I've never experienced this loving kindness of God, the grace that is found in Jesus Christ. And if that's you this morning, and perhaps, you know, I look to my right, I look to my left, front and back, and I see a lot of young people here this morning. And young people, a lot of them have been churched their whole lives, heard the gospel so many times, perhaps seen great faith demonstrated by parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. But this is a personal, unique, individual experience. That scenario of where you stand before the Lord, that's an individual scenario. You don't stand there as a family, you stand before the Lord yourself. So if you've never trusted in the goodness of God, if you've never beheld Christ in this way, if you've never turned from your sin with your mind changed to see that Jesus Christ is your Savior, today's the day. Today is the day. Behold, now is the day of salvation. You don't have to stay in verse three. The grace of God has appeared through Jesus Christ. Will you receive it? Will you believe it? Well, to believers, how should you respond? And I'll give you several things. One, a greater love for God. You're never gonna be dragged out to the ocean and sunk and destroyed. That can't happen. So love for God. Confidence. What's the confidence in? God's done it. I didn't have to and I couldn't even if I had to. So I have confidence in what God has done. Humility. It goes right with that confidence. Why am I going to be humble? Why are you going to be humble? Because you've done nothing and you received something you didn't deserve. And that produces joy in God. It produces praise about God, thanksgiving to God, gratitude because of God. And finally, we should have hearts of compassion for those who still live in Titus 3 verse 3. and that compassion should motivate us to take the loving kindness of God to them. And so whatever you encounter this week, believer, whatever things come upon you, whatever trials, whatever tribulations, whatever afflictions, despite all of those things, you can sing yet again in your heart God's song of salvation. And you can be, because of that promise of eternal life, you can be eternally grateful to the God who has saved you. You can be. You can be eternally grateful to the God who has saved you because he's given you this sure hope of eternal life. I pray that those words from Paul this morning delight your heart and carry you through this week. Let's give praise to God through prayer. Father in heaven, we bow before you this morning. Your graciousness, your kindness, your love, it overwhelms our hearts. We can't possibly imagine such a love. We were so evil, so hateful, so loathing, so rebellious, so wicked. And that's the condition that you saw us in, having already purposed to save such rebellious sinners. Lord, we thank you for such a marvelous display of love, for such a pouring out of the Spirit, for such a search and hope that comes through our justification. We pray Lord that this thought will carry us through this week. I pray, Lord, that your grace will continue to be ministered to our very hearts throughout this week, Lord, and let us have that compassion for those who are still lost, those still stricken with the yellow fever of sin. We pray these things, giving praise to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, the great three-in-one, the agent of our salvation. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.