We are in Galatians six, the very last section. I'm thinking this will be my last sermon on this, but I haven't 100 percent made up my mind. We do another one will be on the very same text from a different perspective, but we'll see this morning. I wanted to focus on one particular phrase that comes near the end there in verse 16. Very last phrase of that verse, as we think about wrapping up this letter together, one of the great theological puzzles of our time has been correctly identifying and defining Israel and the church. Now, traditionally, our fathers in the faith did not find this as much of a problem as Protestants have for the last 200 years or so. Now, what has been going on for the past 200 years ago, 200 years with this idea of Israel in the church? Well, it was the advent of a new way of reading the Bible called dispensationalism. It's the kind of the. Theological system that I was raised in in most of the churches that we grew up in now over the years, dispensationalism, which really began in the early 1800s, the guy named Darby, it has increasingly took on different forms, and thankfully, each of those forms has moved closer rather than farther away from many biblical doctrines. But one thing all dispensation was have in common is their view that Israel and the church are two completely different entities. Louis very chiefer in nineteen thirty six and one of the first to systematize dispensationalism says the dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages, God is pursuing two distinct purposes. One related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives, which is Judaism, while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives, which is Christianity. Now, twenty years later, Charles Rowery, who wrote a book called Dispensationalism Today, asked, What marks off a person as a dispensationalist? And he says, What is the absolutely indispensable part of the system? He says, A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the church distinct. That was his answer. He favorably cites Daniel Fuller, who is himself not a dispensationalist, but who kind of summarizes it by saying the basic premise of dispensationalism is two purposes of God expressed in the formation of two peoples who maintain their distinction throughout eternity. And even progressive dispensationalist, which is kind of the latest iteration of dispensationalism, which kind of was written about in the nineteen nineties. Craig Blazing writes, Traditionally, dispensationalism has always viewed the church as distinctively new dispensation in biblical history. The church finds its historical origin in the Christ event. That is, the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. And particularly in the baptism of the spirit, which Christ has bestowed equally upon believing Jews and Gentiles since that feast day of Pentecost following his ascension. Now, classic Protestants, be they Lutheran or reformed, which reform would include the Presbyterians and Anglicans and the reformed Baptists, have always disagreed with these sharp distinctions between these two groups. While we do understand that there was and continues to be an ethnic group of people called Israelites, and we even have disagreements among ourselves as to whether or not God will do anything special with them in the national group in the future, we understand that Israelites were called the church in the Old Testament. Now, when I first heard somebody tell me this, it was a brand new and completely shocking idea. No one ever told me that growing up. Now, what is the word church in Greek? Ekklesia, right? It is used over seventy-five times in the Septuagint. That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And nearly fifteen more in the Apocrypha. In other words, this is hardly a word that Jesus invented. But dispensationalists rarely seem to want to talk about this. In fact, two of the books I cited a minute ago don't even mention a single one of those references. An example of the use of this word is found in Deuteronomy 4.10 in the Greek, where God asked Israel to remember the things that happened, quote, in the day in which you stood before the Lord our God in Horeb, in the day of the ecclesia, in the day of the church. Ever heard that before? They stood before the Lord our God. Who is that that they stood before? Well, I argued earlier in chapter three in Galatians that it was Christ, the eternally existing mediator between God and angels and Moses. So the church at the foot of Sinai was Christ's church. That's why I bring that up. Who is the Lord? They stood before it was Christ. What were they called? They were called the church in the text. So it's Christ's church in the Old Testament. And this is all exactly the language he uses in Matthew 16, 18. On this rock, I will build my ecclesia, my church. Now, why in the world do I go into all of this here at the end of Galatians? It's because in the conclusion to the letter, which was written to the churches of Galatia in chapter one, verse two, Here at the very end, he calls these churches the Israel of God. In verse 16, chapter 6. Now, this expression is only found here in the New Testament, but it is theologically in line with what Paul calls the church in other places. In Galatians 3.29, he calls them children of Abraham. Or in Philippians 3.3, he calls the church the true circumcision. Or in Romans 2, 29, he calls the church true Jews. Hear all that Old Testament language? Now, getting the meaning of this phrase right is at the heart of the entire letter. It's theology of how a person is saved. It's warnings against divisions within the church. It's insistence that those of faith are children of Abraham and the conclusion that summarizes all of these points. But because people have this predisposed hang up against such beautiful continuity. They make that which is clear seem blurry, that which is obvious becomes puzzling, and they try to confuse you even here in Galatians 616 with grammatical questions that cause you to doubt the only meaning that takes the rest of the context seriously, which is that Christians are Abraham's offspring, heirs of God, according to the promises. They ironically create in misunderstanding this little phrase, the very kinds of divisions that Paul has been trying to squash between Jews and Gentiles, divisions which his opponents have been trying to recreate and which have caused so much theological and ethical division in churches, even in our day. And so this is what I'm going to kind of use to talk about the conclusion this morning. Verses eleven through eighteen of the last chapter of Galatians make up the conclusion of the letter. Now, all of the letters in the New Testament have kind of a beginning and a body and a conclusion and Galatians is no different. In some ways, this conclusion is. A lot like other conclusions in the New Testament letters, especially with regard to its blessing. But in other ways, it's not. For example, Paul doesn't ask anybody to pray for him in this conclusion. He doesn't say anything about any particular person. You remember when we went through Romans, the entire last chapter is just a list of names. Greet so-and-so, greet so-and-so, greet so-and-so. Nothing like that here at all. His greeting, in fact, is very terse. And so the differences outweigh the similarities and have caused some people to see it not so much as a pastoral conclusion, but as a piece of Greek rhetoric. And it had a specific name, we call it a conclusio. And it had three parts to it. The first part is a recapitulatio. My daughter, who is taking Latin, will love all of these Latin words. What do you think happens in that? You recapitulate the main points of the letter. Then you have an indignatio, which is arouses anger and hostility in the opponent. And then you have the can Castillo, which stimulates pity. These are all parts of a standard Greek conclusion of a letter. And basically, this is exactly what Paul's conclusion does in Galatians. Paul sums up the letter in verses twelve through fifteen. The first two of those verses are a sharp attack against his opponents. And then verse seventeen arouses pity. And all of that is what I read for the law this morning. Very interestingly, none of that is the gospel part that I read. Paul arouses pity, but isn't really asked for peace. There are some differences and take a look at them as we go through. For our sake and that of the Galatians, what this conclusion does is it reminds them and us one last time of the most important things. that we have discussed while presenting us with final mutually exclusive decision of which way we're going to go. Will we follow those who insist on confusing the law and the gospel, especially those who create legalism or return to a function of the law that never was able to save anybody? That's one choice. The other one is, will we follow Christ by faith, being content with his new new creation as it stands prior to his coming? trusting that all the apostles taught us really is true, despite what we sometimes see with our eyes. So that's the other choice. Will we return to divisions caused by the law after starting with faith in the spirit, or will we maintain the unity that's always found by the elect through faith alone? This idea of the Israel of God helps us see all of these things properly. Now, the conclusion begins with something quite unusual for Paul. He finishes the letter with his own handwriting in verse 11. Typically, Paul employed a full-time secretary. Now, whether it was always the same person or he employed different people at different times, we don't know, but at least one of them, a guy named Tertius, is forever remembered for putting himself by name at the end of Romans. Chapter sixteen, verse twenty two, he kind of just inserts himself there and now he becomes immortalized. Right here at the end of Galatians, though, Paul takes the secretary's pen and he finishes the letter himself. And it says that I write. See what I write with you with such large letters. Now, there's been a lot of speculation about why he wrote in large letters. Some people say, well, you can barely see. We have idea from earlier in Galatians that he was almost blind, so maybe he had to do it for himself. Or other people say, well, his hand was so permanently injured, badly injured in one of the things that happened to him earlier, like when he was stoned, that he couldn't help but write in such large letters. Well, that's all just kind of silly speculation, if you ask me, but probably the best reason that was given is given about a hundred years ago by a guy named J.B. Lightfoot, and he says the boldness of the handwriting answers to the force of the apostles convictions. I think about that. It makes a lot of sense, it might be like writing in all caps on Facebook. Or in boldface in an email. It would also prove that this was Paul and not some forgery because he wrote it in his own hand. Apparently, they would have known what his handwriting looked like because he'd been there earlier and they could compare it with what they had. And so somebody wanted to throw the letter away because they didn't like what it said. And I'm sure there was a couple of those guys around. They couldn't use the excuse of a forgery to do it. And today, this little verse is very important for Christian apologetics, because it confirms that this really is a letter from Paul, and even the most liberal scholars admit that that's the case. So what did Paul want them to take notice of? What was so important that he had to write it in large letters? Well, it's one final return to the main issue of the letter and a final jab at those preachers of the false gospel that he condemned at the beginning of the book. Verse twelve, it is. And imagine this being written in large letters as I'm reading this to you. One of those kind of email spams you get where the whole thing is big caps. It is those who want to make a good showing of the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Now, that would make the false teacher furious if they read it. Because Paul is judging their motives. You ever notice that? Is this wrong to do? Can we emulate Paul here? Or was this some kind of special, infallible apostolic insight that he and nobody else was given? Well, those are important questions. I don't know how many times I have heard people say, you know what I'm going to say next? Judge not, lest you be judged. taking Jesus entirely out of context. I mean, you hear this, it's like a daily mantra everywhere you go. Of course, in one of those places, Jesus actually says, make a right judgment. Nobody wants to quote that part of it. Jesus judged the Pharisees all the time because he knew what they were doing. But it doesn't take omniscience to know this. Jesus tells the disciples to make a right judgment. And Paul is following Christ's command and is making an ad hominem attack on the persons themselves. If you're going to make an argument, it's best to stay away from that kind of an argument, because it's a logical fallacy. It's attacking the person is what they're doing. And you don't base an argument upon what you perceive to be a person's motivations or character. But the conclusion here is a piece of rhetoric. It isn't an argument. Paul's already made his argument and he's returning to that argument here and he's trying to help the Galatians take it seriously. By showing what the motivations behind those false teachers really are. And when it's used properly and wisely and shrewdly, and I could add a whole other list of words there, that kind of a thing can have a very powerful effect. He says the only reason these men are trying to get these Galatians to get circumcised is because they're really only looking out for their own self-interest, because they don't want to be persecuted by unbelieving Jews who are already going after Christians. And it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Who would have been able to understand this anymore profoundly than Paul, who, as we have already seen, when he went into Galatia to the city of Lystra and started preaching at the very end of that sermon, they took a bunch of stones and they try to kill him. Because what was he doing? No, he wasn't telling the people that they had to become just like Jews, that's what he wasn't doing. The whole politically correct nonsense that loves to take Jesus out of context as much as possible is completely foreign to the Bible. Christians are, in fact, to make judgments. How else can we possibly hope to stand firm in the faith once for all entrusted to the saints if we're not allowed to say that false teaching is heresy or that false worship is reprehensible to God or that unlawful living is immoral because God's character never changes? People don't like it. And more and more, they don't like it in the church when you do this. But this is because they are being caught. And called on their own immoral activities and who wants to be told that they're wrong. Now, it's one person, it's one thing to say that a person is doing something wrong, it's another to insert reasons for why we think they might be doing it, and that's what Paul's doing. Now, I do think caution and wisdom and charity need to be exercised in dealing with this kind of a thing. We don't have on missions. We don't have apostolic authority, but at the same time, sometimes when things get really out of control and in a church or in the church judgments need to come up friends. So that immoral motivations will be considered by the people who are being led astray to the peril of their own souls. All you need to do is read Second Peter or Jude and you will quickly discover how true that is. As those two go to town on the judgments of on the motivations of the people that they have in mind. The present crisis and worship, the very idea of orthodoxy, even more basic than that, the idea of objective truth are serious enough things that those That are attacking them need to be shown for what they are. And what they're doing and why they're doing it. I don't have anybody specific in mind, and therefore I don't have any specific motivation in mind to give you. All I have is a general idea to throw out there that if the church refuses to tell it like it is from the scripture, then pretty soon there won't be a church. And right now, that's exactly what is happening around us as you sit here, like I tried to pray anchored. And others are floating down the stream right past you, not even realizing it. And yes, while God promises to always have his elect and a church, he does not promise that for any one culture. Or for any minimum size. Just because we're Americans, we're not guaranteed that God's going to keep the church here ever. He could just abandon it. There's people to this day that haven't had the church in their culture ever. Ever. So it's not some kind of a right that we have as Americans or as Western civilization or something like that. Today, there's a very real and present danger that is taking hostage the minds of young people so powerfully. That historic Christianity now looks like the only intolerable cult that must be stamped out. Make no mistake about it, we are in a battle for the very souls of a generation. Will we have the nerve to speak up, to stand firm or like these false teachers, to refuse to be persecuted for the cross of Christ? Well, that's one of the questions that the end of this letter is confronting us with, isn't it? Well, he talks about the cross. What is the cross of Christ? What does he mention that for? Well, he says they don't want to be persecuted for the cross of Christ. What is the cross? It's the ultimate form of persecution. Jesus underwent such persecution that he was put to death for raising the feathers of the religious elites, calling them on the carpet, daring to suggest that they were hypocrites. See, the problem with false teachers in Galatia or the Pharisees or people today. Running around with different gospels. Or refusing to give the gospel of Christ is that they're hypocrites. Paul says in verse thirteen, for even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they can boast in your flesh. He continues his attack and judging the motives, and at the heart of that is the idea of hypocrisy. Now, what is a hypocrite? It's somebody who says one thing and does another thing. Pretty simple definition. The hypocrisy here is that they make the Galatian Christians adhere to outward laws in order to be acceptable in the eyes of Christ hating Jews. But meanwhile, they themselves refuse to follow other laws that are just as important. For example, the whole idea of backbiting in the church, causing divisions, going against apostolic authority are just a few of the things that these guys were doing. And Jesus confronted this kind of attitude regularly with the Pharisees, calling them whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, but full of dead rotting things on the inside. He called them a brood of vipers who loved to strike at unsuspecting victims of their hypocrisy, cared about only the food that went into the body rather than the filth that came out of it. And so on. This is the necessary problem with everyone who makes you adhere to rules and regulations. To be saved or to be sanctified. Be they biblical things or things they invented to make themselves appear more holy. Nobody keeps the whole law. We've seen this over and over in this letter. And yet the idea is that if you keep one part of it somehow, the part that they like to focus on, then all will be well with your soul. You will be true Israelites. See how the term becomes so important. The Israel of God, Paul calls the church by calling them this apart from law keeping, Paul is saying that they already have everything that they're being told that they will have if they return to the law and give up faith alone. The end of verse 13 and then verse 14 are two sides of boasting on one hand in their hypocrisy, the false teachers These false teachings in making the Galatians get circumcised, then says that they'll be able to boast in the flesh. And I think that's literally by cutting off the flesh. Everyone will know that they've won the battle of theology. They beat the mighty Paul, if not with stones, then with words, arguments and ideas. They will be able to boast in what they have done, and this is what they want to do. They want to boast about how effective their teaching was, about how they've made inroads with those unbelieving Jews, and how there really can be reconciliation between Christ and not Christ. These snakes were the first to insist on an unbiblical form of ecumenism. They were kind of the first liberals, even though they were really legalistic. But there's an opposite kind of boasting that Paul engages in. It's not in ourselves, it's not in our neighbors, it's not in our victories, but it's in the cross and in persecution and in humiliation. And then the death of Christ, which is the only thing that's sufficient to save me from my sins. So verse 14, he says, far be it for me to boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Now, the cross of Christ is not a trinket that's worn around the neck to show that you're really a good Christian. It was a scandal to Jews, foolishness to Gentiles. It was a form of torture and shame and death. It was repugnant. But Paul boasts in it. He boasts in weakness, shame, humiliation. And in Christ. The cross is the only bridge that allows us to cross from our sin to God's righteousness. It's the only sacrifice that avails the forgiveness of sins. It's the only remedy to our own eternal death. It's the death of the eternal God man on the cross. So he comes over 16. Which returns to the most basic Christian messages, one commentator put it. I say 16 and 15, I said, as one commentator puts it, the gospel of Christ crucified so completely rules out any other supposed means of righteousness before God that Paul found it utterly incomprehensible for anyone who has once embraced such a gospel to ever think of supplementing it in any way for the whole before one's eyes. Christ having been crucified is to put an end to all forms of legalism. Paul then takes Christ's death as a figure of speech to say that he's been crucified to the world and the world to him. What does he mean by the world here? He refers to the things in this world that used to seem like advantages and righteousness, but which are now understood for what they are, which is obstacles. Paul isn't saying that he no longer engages the world or that he's trying to escape material existence. He's saying that no worldly thing that you can imagine, No law, no spiritual discipline, no prayer, no mantra, no meditation, no form of asceticism or hedonism, no act of the will, no thought of the mind. Nothing can make me righteous except the cross. That's what verse 15 helps us see, neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. No law, no rule, no code, no commandment can ever make a person new. They have to be created by God through the gospel of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the only instrument that receives it. Faith is not the one work that you do, the one thing that you add to a mix of ingredients. It is simply the thing that receives and accepts what God has done. Now, it talks about the new creation. You do a whole sermon on that word. Creation's a wonderful figure to represent what God does, because creation comes out of nothing. Nothing does not create itself, but God speaks the word and the thing is created. God says, let there be light and there's light. God says dry bones come to life and dry bones come to life. Creation is the act of God. It's similar to the metaphor being born again. Nicodemus was all tied up in knots. It's got to be one of the funniest stories in the Bible when you really stop and think about it. How can a person get into his mother's womb a second time? Jesus said the new birth has to come from the Holy Spirit, not from somehow going back inside your mother. All this comes back to the cross, because the cross allows God to justify a person. To bring him to life, even though they were dead in sin. This is why Paul will only boast in the cross. The cross, like the new creation, is the work of God through Christ. To God alone be the glory and the boast. You need to come to this realization before it's too late for yourself. You need to stay in that realization and not give it up. Do you believe that Christ is the only way to be saved and sanctified and brought to heaven? Or are you looking for something else? The preacher always has the task of calling you to trust in Christ, and that's what I tell you to do today. You have to trust in him alone. That's the message of this letter. Nearing the end, coming to verse 16. It's the verse that I started off with, with our first phrase. It adds what appears to be some to be an old rule of the early Christian church. And as we saw last week, it's in the same kind of a deal. It comes in a form of a chiasm. Whoever follows this rule, there will be peace. And then the chiasm is reversed. There will be mercy for the Israel of God. And so peace and mercy are parallel. And whoever follows this rule is parallel with the Israel of God. Now, the structure itself is enough to tell you who the Israel of God is. But if that's not enough for you. Then what the letter is about ought to do it for you, especially as you think about all the Jewish things, the circumcision, the laws, the Moses on Sinai and so on. Earlier in the letter, the whole issue of circumcision came up and Paul's basic point was to ask, who are the children of Israel, of Abraham? And his answer is it's not those who are circumcised in the flesh, but those who are of faith. The answer was obvious, and it was supported by the Old Testament through verse after verse after verse that he quoted, where it was always the case that true children of Abraham are those who have his faith, who share his faith. And so when he calls them the Israel of God, he's including everyone who's full of peace and mercy. He's not singling out Jewish Christians. Peace comes from a right relationship with God through faith. Mercy comes from being in that right relationship, and it goes out as a blessing to all who are of the faith of Abraham. Think about the phrase, the Israel of God, just a little bit more. Oftentimes, we're told as reformed Christians that we believe in something called replacement theology. I can tell you how often I've heard this phrase and it drives me up the wall, especially when my relatives say to. Like we somehow believe that the church replaces Israel. Now, think about this for just a minute, if Israel was the church. Then how can the church replace the church? So I prefer words like fulfillment or maybe even better would be fullness. The New Testament church is the fullness of what the Old Testament church was supposed to be. And sometimes actually was, but only in glimpses. It is full of Jews and Gentiles. There were Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament church, but not quite as much as there should have been, because they refused to go out and share their faith like they were supposed to, because they were under law. That was the way that it was done in those days. The church is full of equality. The church was full of equality back then. The church is full of priests, the church is full of priests back then. God called Israel a priesthood of the nation of priests and so on. All of this was true in the Old Testament, but it's only seen more clearly in the New Testament. It's like an infant child grown into an adult. I didn't replace myself when I turned 40 years old, I just grew into become 40 years old, right? Acorn doesn't isn't replaced by an oak tree. It grows into an oak tree. When we refuse to acknowledge that all those who walk in peace and mercy are the Israel of God. Now, here's why this matters. When we don't acknowledge it, when we get this wrong, we inadvertently or not, unintentionally or not, create divisions between Jews and Gentiles within the church while maintaining those distinctions even outside of it. This is not a good thing. It can be a serious error that can create very the very kinds of divisions that the false teachers were trying to create. Just look at how Zionism and this supposed right of Israel to exist today, no matter what they do. Or at Messianic movements that take Gentile Christians and cause them to follow kosher laws. or other kinds of Old Testament laws in order to be true Christians. Think about the kind of division that this creates in the body of Christ. But in Paul's argument, the false teachers were telling the Galatian Christians that if they got circumcised, then God would accept them fully. Now they will be the Israel of God. Paul tells them, no, friends, you are the Israel of God. if you have God's mercy and peace. Justin Martyr, who's one of the earliest church fathers we have, understood this. As he's speaking to the Jew, a guy named Trifa, who might have been one of the prominent rabbis of the day, he says, for the true spiritual Israel and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ. So it's not like, you know, I'm making this up. This has been around for a long time that the Israel of God is understood by the church as the church. And so the continuity of the argument that Paul makes in Galatians from the Old Testament helps you see and understand these last verses in the way they're intended. Don't give in to false teachers because you already have all the blessings of Israel. in their best and fullest meaning in Christ. Paul concludes the letter with just two short points. First, he says, from now on, let no one cause me trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. This is one final authoritative jab at the false teachers, and it's a not so subtle warning to the Christians in Galatia. Paul has suffered at great personal cost to himself in order to bring them this good news. He has borne a heavy burden in this letter for his friends who are on the brink of giving up the gospel altogether. He will not continue to be patient or long-suffering. If they persist in such beliefs, if they continue to attack his authority, he is confident that he's done what's required of him. He's told them the truth. Their blood is no longer on his hands. He's suffered for it. He's been counted worthy of being like Christ, and that is enough for Paul. And likewise, the church should not be overly patient with heretics who seek to destroy the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must return to a biblical orthodoxy and relearn to call a spade a spade on the essential points of the faith. As they're set forth, especially in the creeds of the church, if we can't even agree with the creeds of the church, what are the creeds? I want to talk about this for a second. What are the creeds of the church? They are the ecumenical creeds, friends, that every church in existence came and had a representative. And this is what they came out with. You can't have those anymore because the church is all fragmented. But if we can't even agree on those, And we can't even tell people that think, oh, Jesus, the Father and the Spirit, they're all just the same person. Or we say, you know. The God who created this universe, well, he had a mother and a father. And he came down and had sex with the Virgin Mary and Jesus was born from that. And we say, no, they're Christians. I mean, if we can't even get the most basic things right, And we can't even stand up as a church for those things. We're doomed. It's over. And that's where we find ourselves right now. Very concerned. I hope you're concerned about it, too. Unlike his other letters, Paul's final words are short, but they're important. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. Now, this is the prayer for the people. And in his conclusion to Galatians, Martin Luther, as you're reading through his commentary, shows a deep personal agony agony that he felt for millions who were perishing eternally because the established church and spiritually moved its headquarters from Rome to Galatia and was leading many people down the road to hell because of its teaching on legalistic righteousness. And I, too, grieve for many who are withering in churches because the law and the gospel are not preached in our day, even in the most conservative, political and ethical of our congregations. The prophet said, my people perish for lack of knowledge. Please hold the truth more dear to you than diamonds or gold. Love God for who he is and what he's really done and don't accept anything less Calvin gives a little more hope and sees it a little bit more objectively than Martin Luther, which is pretty typical. And I'll leave you with his words. Paul's prayer is not only that God may bestow upon them his grace in large measure, but that they may have a proper feeling of it in their hearts. The only then only is, is it truly enjoyed by us when it comes to our spirit? We ought, therefore, to entreat that God would prepare in our souls a habitation for his grace. Amen. Father, thank you for this letter of Galatians, difficult letter to go through, it's difficult to preach, I'm fortunate because I get to preach in front of the choir for the most part. Part of me wishes that I could preach in front of not the choir. and the people would actually hear. We would pray, Father, that you would help our church to continue to be faithful as much as we can. In sincerity and love and kindness and all of these kinds of fruit of the spirit that you. Cause us to display. But that you would also bring people to us that would be able to hear and would want to hear. I know, Lord, that there are people that are like this. I fear that many of them who are like this are so caught up in other things that they don't realize it and that it's difficult for the truth to get through anymore. And as the weeks pass along, as I talk to my friends and as I hear how things are changing in the church, not just over the course of a decade, but over the course of a Sunday to a Sunday. It makes it that much harder, Lord. We desire to be faithful to you, not out of some kind of compulsion, but because we love you for what you've done for us. We want you to be worshiped in our worship. We want you to be exalted. We want you to accept it because it's something that we know that you approve of. Thank you for the congregation here, and I would ask that Your word would go into their hearts and that it would go out of their mouths this week as they think about what they've heard and as they talk about it with one another and with other people that they come in contact with. I would ask that you would please now draw us close to yourself as we come to you in the table that you have given to us to remember what Christ has done and to feed us. And it's in Jesus name I ask. Amen.