Turn with me to the book of Ephesians. We're gonna wind up in chapter two. Just about finished with chapter two. Ephesians chapter two. Really just gonna look at that 20th verse this morning. But let's, Begin in verse 13 and read down through 22 and we'll get started. Set us a little context and bring to remembrance the last few weeks. Verse 13, Ephesians chapter two. Paul says to these Ephesians, believers, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances so that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and he preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near For through him, we both have access to one spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you are also being built together, into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Let's go to the Word and Prayer. Our gracious Heavenly Fathers, we come to you this morning, we do so with hearts on fire for truth from your Scriptures. Father, it's this truth and this passage that gives us life. We desire it because it tells us of who you are. And knowing more fully who you are, we know the goodness and the mercy by which with you've treated us in your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, I just pray that as we open this passage of text this morning and just spend really just moments here, that you bless the heart of your saints, that you speak directly to them, that you fill them with your truth, give them your hope, help them to know your son Jesus Christ and the work that he's done on their behalf, even more so specifically. Use your Holy Spirit to speak directly to them, overcome my simple words. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. So we're in this passage and Paul is still putting together this fact that runs right down through the middle of this passage that God only sees the lost and the saved, those condemned and those going to heaven to be with him throughout eternity. Those in his presence and those who are separated. He doesn't break this down into skin color, into ethnic barriers or racial barriers. He just says there's people of God and there's people that are condemned by God, the saved and the lost. And in that, he tells us this beautiful, glorious truth that those who are together as people of Christ, it doesn't matter what their skin color is. It doesn't matter what their ethnic background is. It doesn't matter their social status. It doesn't matter any of those things. What matters is that they've been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. that they've been saved by the gospel. And then we come to this last portion that we're gonna work on today. We talked last week about the citizen saints that Paul spoke of that were being built up, being members of the household of God. But today I specifically wanna look at that building. He says in verse 20 that we're built on the foundations of the apostles and prophets. What does he mean by that? That's what I wanna get at this morning. Christ Jesus being the cornerstone of that building. So let's look at that for a little while this morning. Let's unravel that a little bit. And to do so, let's go backwards in the text to the Old Testament. The book of Exodus. Moses, you know who Moses is. He had the ministry of leading the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and through the wilderness and up into the edge of the promised land. And when they had left Egypt, all the plagues had taken place, all the mighty works and wonders of God had taken place, they go out and they cross the Red Sea on dry ground, they look back and they see God swallow up all their enemies behind them, and they travel for about 70 days, or three new moons, scripture tells us, in chapter 19 of the book of Exodus, and they finally come to Mount Sinai, and it is there where they meet God. It's at Mount Sinai where God met Moses to give his people his law. The law would do many things for the Israelites. The law revealed God to them. The law revealed his perfect character and righteousness. The law revealed to his holiness. The law revealed what he expected of them, what he told them to do and what he commanded them to follow. The law taught them how to live with one another and with God. The law brought them together as the people of God and it set them apart, really, from all other nations. The law set them apart for the express purpose of being God's people. And ultimately, this giving of the law and this being God's people was their true identity. No different than ours today is that we are identified as God's people, God's building, and God's work. And you might have read through this portion of scripture and kind of scratched your head a little bit. I mean, if you're a Bible reader and you haven't given this part of it much thought or you haven't had any context put with it, you might not understand what you're reading as you go through this passage. It can be quite mundane in through this section because What God was giving Moses was explicit instructions regarding the building of the tabernacle, the building of the temple. Not only the building of the temple itself, but the building of the furniture, the building of the altar, the building of the Holy of Holies, where God's presence would reside with the people. And this temple was a place where they could approach God and worship him. And like I said, if you read through this passage, or these passages in the book of Exodus, you might scratch your head a little bit. But Jesus' promise is good to us today. He said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. That means that even these passages of Scripture, and I'm gonna begin reading here, I think in about chapter 25 this morning, of the book of Exodus. Chapter 25, verse 10, we're gonna start there. Every word that God gives us in his word, even the Old Testament, the part that some people think have kind of been superseded by the New Testament. Every word is truth. Every word to the Christian is sustenance. Every word to the Christian is life. It's for the Christian soul. It's to tell us who God is and why he's done these things so that we can more rightly worship him. So these directions were given to Moses and they were written down and followed because God is a God of order. And God prescribes that we approach him orderly. He gives us the exact pattern by which he's to be worshiped. So what God ends up giving Moses here we could describe in the building of the temple and why this is so important. I could clear it up, I believe, in just one word, and that is detail. God is a God of detail and of minute detail. All these things are important. God gives Moses the instruction for the temple, for the utensils of the temple, for the furniture of the temple. Even God gave the instructions to Moses for the priestly garments that the priest would wear in the temple right down to the hem and the decorations on the hem of those priestly garments. But the detail's not so much in what God gave Moses to build, these utensils, furniture, but the detail came in how God told Moses to build these things. Everything that God told Moses to build gave him exact descriptions and details of the way God wanted it. Let's just read some of this. Begin in verse 10. This is about the Ark of the Covenant. You shall make an ark of acacia wood, two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. You shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and outside you shall overlay it, and you shall make on it moldings of gold all around it. You cast four rings of gold for it, put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings and on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by the poles. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark. They shall not be taken from it. You see the detail in that? Jump over to the table for bread. He tells in specific detail, Moses, what to do and how to make this. You shall make a table of acacia wood. Verse 23, two cubits shall be its length. a cubit and a breadth, a cubit and a half of its height. You shall overlay it with pure gold. Jump down to verse 31, the golden lampstand. You make a golden lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand shall be made of hammered work, its base, its stem, its cups, its calyxes and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. And there shall be six branches going out of its sides, three branches of the lampstand out of one side of it and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side. He goes on and on in great detail about the tabernacle and about everything in there. He doesn't just say, let's build a table, it should be yay big and about this tall and just put it there in the temple. He doesn't say, build an altar and it should look about like this and you guys use your best judgment. God gives exacting details on how he is to be approached, how he is to be worshiped. And God gives these details to Moses. They weren't just parameters and saying work around it. But these details are significant, why? Because every living creature and everything is created for the glory of God and to give glory to God in the worship of God. Everything is. There's not one minor detail in God's providential plan for you, beloved, or for his church. God specifically regulates how we are to worship him and approach him in worship. If you turn around and look just on the overhang there, you'll see Psalms 156. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. You find that time and time again in the Psalms, that everything will bring God glory. There's not one minor detail that God's left out. Now the theological term for this is the regulative principle. And if you'd been part of our six week study before we changed our worship service order, you would have went through this in detail with us and you would understand. What that group came to know is that we can know exactly how to approach God. We can know exactly what he blesses in worship. He has given us explicit instructions in his word and in Christ we can enjoin in that fellowship and worship with the saints in heaven and the saints all over the world. The church Catholic, the church Invisible, everyone that's worshiping at this very time through the power and the work of the Holy Spirit, even those saints in heaven at this time. And you remember saying that, don't you? That those that have gone before us that are there at the throne of God are even indeed enjoining in that worship at this very time. Simultaneously, we gather together as we come before the Lord in the way that he has detailed. And I would tell you just as a side trail, and I'm not gonna chase too far this morning, And I believe this is why so many churches are weak and weary and have no power, is because they portend to bring in man's details into their worship service and to their worship of God and to their church. And God will not bless that. Remember in the Old Testament, so much of the Old Testament sets forth a service and a singing through biblical worship that happen, and then a shout A shout, and then down came the walls of Jericho. You remember how they started that battle? It was not with fighting. It was with a worship service. They walked around that city once a day for how many days, right? Six days, and on the seventh day, they walked around that city seven times, and at the end of the seventh time, there was a shout, and down came the wall of Jericho. Joshua five and six, chapters five and six, if you wanna read more about that. But God inhabits the praises of his people. God is pleased to work through our praises, and he is most pleased to work in our praises when we approach him in the details that he's asked us to. It says that in Psalms 22 three, you, yet you, O God, are holy, enthroned on the praises of your people Israel. So God is pleased to work in and through the praises of his people. Now that's not just for the Old Testament saints. I don't know that we are gonna go marching around some cities, but I suspect that if we did, and we called to the Lord to bless that, and we shouted out the gospel as we went around, I bet the Lord would work in that. Maybe we should try that sometime. Who's with me on that, right? We'll go do that because the Lord will be faithful to bless us because the New Testament agrees with the Old Testament and that God details how we should approach him. In the New Testament, nothing changes. We have these detailed commands from the Old Testament, the regular principle as we said, but it follows through. Jesus gives us just one significant understanding of how that truth encapsulates the entirety of worship for the New Testament. It is in the exchange that Jesus had with the woman at the well in John chapter four. You might wanna turn there. We're gonna read just a little bit of that. John chapter four, you know the story about the woman at the well. He told us those famous words. He had approached her. She knew he was special. She knew that the two shouldn't be talking that day together, and I marvel that this woman has no name, yet she is the first one to meet the Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah at the end of this passage. But she had come down to the point, Jesus had spoke to her about the living water, the living water where she would never thirst again. And she came down to the point where her sin was about to be confronted. And Jesus says, you go and call your husband. And she said, I have no husband. And Jesus said, you are right. She was honest with Jesus. She confessed. And Jesus called out her sin. And as he did, she said this to Jesus. We begin in verse 19. Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our father worshiped on this mountain. You see, the passage is central to worship. It is worship whenever we confess our sins to Christ. It's worship that she wanted to do properly. She understood more than we knew that she did until we read the last of this passage, because she understood that Messiah was coming. Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our father worshiped on this mountain, but you said that in Jerusalem is a place where people ought to worship. And Jesus answers her honest inquiry about her purpose and her heart by telling her that what worship truly is. You see it there in verse 21. Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. And Jesus is just saying what is revealed to Moses, that the children of Israel had the oracles of God, the law was given to them there on Sinai, that the children of Israel had had the law all those years up until now, but something was getting ready to change, something very serious was getting ready to change. This law, this regulative principle would go out to all peoples. The church age would begin with his death and resurrection, and people from all nations would worship God, no longer just in Jerusalem, no longer just on the hill, but all over the world at the same place and the same time through the work of the Holy Spirit. And in truth, they would worship God. He goes on there in verse 23 and he says, the hour is coming and is now here. When the true worshipers, and I want you to underline that, that's what we're after. When we come to church on Sunday, when we live our lives, when we go about our business, we wanna be true worshipers of God. We wanna know what it means to truly worship God. He says the hour is coming and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. There's that word again, truth. For the Father is seeking this kind of person, such people to worship him. What Jesus is revealing that the whole world would soon have the truth of what it means to rightly worship God and receive blessings of Messiah of salvation and of the Holy Spirit Jesus goes on further there in verse 24. He said, God is spirit, and those who worship him must, they must worship him in spirit and truth. And this reveals the focus of our passage today, this truth. Truth is the necessity to rightly worship God. If you wanna worship rightly, you need truth. And we need truth from God, not man. to worship rightly, to be his people, his Old Testament people, Israel, in the new form called the church, to be his people, the church, to be his son's bride, the church. Individually, in our own personal life, we are the church, but corporately together, the church, the bride of Christ. Therefore, we must know God, know this detail, because that is in God's word. It was given to Moses. Jesus says it's given to us in the word of truth. And we know that it is set forth in the word of truth on how to approach God or we will ultimately suffer death. We will ultimately suffer death. And that's what Paul is writing about in this passage today. You see it there in Ephesians 2 verse 20. He's saying that the citizens and saints and the members of the household of God are being built, being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets in Christ Jesus. And what he's saying is that God is making the two one through the blood of Christ. But the church age has begun and the church and the two becoming one, they're being built up, they're continuing to be built up to be a holy temple as you go on there in verse 22, to be a holy temple of the Lord. And it's in that holy temple, it's in that building that God requires us to know the detail of how he's doing that, truth. We need the truth of what God is saying, the truth of what God is building. It's truth that brings unity, and it's unity that brings harmony among a people, and it's truth and unity that leads to harmony that showcases the church among all other people groups in the land. Paul's writing here in this passage, and we've said it forth this week, each week, these Ephesians were once alienated from the things of God, from Christ, from the truth, from this detail of worship. Most importantly, they were alienated from Christ, and life and the covenant blessings of Israel. Thus Paul says they were hopeless and without God. You see it there in this passage. But then in Christ, the dividing wall of hostility is broken down. No longer were they lost without Christ or without truth. They now had a passage to the things of God. They now understood the details of God. No longer were they separated from God, but they had peace. And he was making the two one. They had peace, they were once hostile factions, but were now one new man. And this one new man, these citizen saints, as we called them last week, were members of the household of God. And Paul says, very specifically, Paul says we're being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone of this building. Oh, glory. What is Paul's intention here this morning and what is he teaching us about the position of these Ephesians believers? He said they were lost and hopeless and now they're being built on the prophets and the apostles. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is being built on the written word of God and the living word of God. Ultimately that's what Paul's saying. The apostles and prophets represent the written word of God, and Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, represents the living word of God, and those two agree. The truth that Paul is teaching is the witness of all that has gone before. All that we read from Moses, what God had given him on Sinai about the building of the temple, and we read from John about the worshiping in truth must be true for the foundation to be built to worship God. The apostle is teaching us that to be fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God that we must be built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. That means we must be engaged with the truth of the written word. What is that foundation? What did these men do that made them the foundation upon which Christ, upon which the church of God is built? What did they do? wrote the scriptures and taught the scriptures. Moses indeed was the prophet that wrote the scriptures that we read earlier. The words that he received directly from the mouth of God on Mount Sinai, he penned those words and wrote and taught the truth of God, how God was to be approached, how God was to be worshiped, how to make the things of God. Truth, because truth is unity and unity is harmony, but what is truth? That's the question that I wanna get to this morning. What is truth? If we need the truth of what the apostles and the prophets gave, we need the truth of who God is. What is that truth? What is truth? And you might remember, we talked about this some on Wednesday night, but you might remember that Pilate asked that very question before he pronounced sentence on Jesus. I mean, he was struggling with the truth because he knew Jesus was innocent of all the charges. And he knew that Jesus was the king of the Jews, yet here were the Jews wanting to crucify their king. He was quite confused about all these things, and he'd been troubled by his wife and in a dream. So he proposed this question, this question that is central to man, it's central still today, and it will be central until God splits the sky and comes back. What is truth? What is truth? Can you answer that question this morning? If somebody asks you what is truth, could you answer that question this morning? And there's great difficulty with which the world struggles all around us this morning with what truth truly is. Truth is unity. We cannot be a people of God without unity, thus we cannot be a people of God without truth. That's part of what he's building into us. That's part of why the foundation is what it is, the apostles and the prophets. Truth brings unity and when two people groups have a great different version of truth, they can no longer be in fellowship one with the other. If you say that your truth allows you to have my wife, I won't ever agree with you on that. If you say that your truth allows you to agree with two men marrying, we can't agree on that either. If you say your truth allows for abortions, we will never agree. If your truth says that Jesus is not God, again, we cannot agree. There will be no harmony and nor peace short of that truth coming to each of us. And I think this describes our world so specifically. Everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. This is what creates the disunity. This is what creates the chaos. So what is truth, right? What is truth? We must establish what truth is, or how can we ever know how to worship God in spirit and truth? I'll give you John MacArthur's definition of truth, because I think it would be hard for any of us just to stand up and give the very definition of truth. But scripture tells us specifically, and as we go through this, you'll hear it, Phenomenologically, we understand it, but to describe it as something different. He says this, truth is that which is consistent with the mind, with the will, with the character, glory, and being of God. In other words, truth is the self-expression of God. Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God. It is the self-expression of God. I'll sum that up by saying that truth is knowing who God is by how he has revealed himself. Truth is knowing who God is by how he has revealed himself. You see, we can't make our own God. That's where a lot of churches go wrong. They make a God that allows for homosexual marriage. They make a God that somehow suffers through and allows abortion. They make a God that is willingly who they want him to be, that is not the God with wrath. He is not the God who would ever send anybody to hell. They make a false God. They make an idol because they're not revealing the God of the Bible, the God of truth, and we must understand who this God is so that we can be built into the foundation of the church itself to rightly worship him. So I ask you this morning, where did God reveal himself? Where did God reveal himself? There's two places, the written word and the living word. But who wrote that written word? It was the apostles and the prophets, the selfsame apostles and prophets who is the foundation upon which the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is being built. It's that word that builds us up into the church. It is through that prophetic word, even from Moses, 2 Peter 1, 18 through 21 says this, we ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on that holy mountain, that's Sinai. They were there that day. And we have this prophetic word that has been fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention. It's like a lamp that's shining into a dark place. Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's Onan's interpretation. See, there's a lot of people that say the Bible can be interpreted multiple ways. That's how they get women pastors. That's how they get homosexual marriage. That's how they get all these things that gives them the freedom to sin. As they say it can be interpreted several different ways, but that's not what this passage is saying. Throughout scripture, we know that that, we've gotta get to the truth by understanding the text, and we've gotta understand the text by understanding the original language as the Hebrew and the Greek, and we have to, before all of that, have the Holy Spirit that leads us to all truth, so that we know the truth of who God is and reveals himself to be. Peter goes on to write, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, none. Not one jot, not one tittle, it all came from God. as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 17, 17, to God in his prayer there in the Garden of Eden, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Psalms 119, 160, the sum of your words is truth. The sum of your words is truth and every one of your righteous rules will endure forever. It's the living and the abiding word of God since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable seed. That is the seed and work of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God through the living and abiding Word of God, he goes on to say. None of those words will ever fall to the ground, 1 Samuel 3, 19. Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but this truth, my words will not pass away, including himself as with the Word of God. I am a creator. My love for engineering and design have never left me. And God is the creator of all that's ever been created, all that is true, good, and beautiful. Everything that I've ever designed and made in my life has been made from things that God made from nothing. All truth is God's truth. All truth comes from the revelation of who God is and from knowing who God is. All we can do at best is to reverse engineer, is to look at the things God made. By the way, that's what the word biology means. It's a logical rational study of bios or life. All of our science, all of it is studying something the creator, the God of heaven, the God of the universe created. All truth is his truth. Out of nothing came everything. Everything that God created is true. All of our disciplines are the study of that which God has created. Bios, logos, biology is the compound word, is the logical rational study of bios or human life. The modern English word science is related to the Latin word sentia, the ancient Greek word for epistome or knowledge. We know what we know because we're looking at what God has revealed in his creation and through his word, and we rightly know it by justifying it in his word. Only in his word. All we can do is understand what God has done. He has created everything, and to understand truth, As I said earlier, reverse engineer his creation. And anyone with any sense will soon understand that if we start taking apart and looking at things that God has made, if we go far enough back in that process, we'll come in every extent to God. If you try to define truth by anything that man has made, it ends in chaos. Truth can only be defined and who God is and what God has done. God's word accomplishes everything, Isaiah says. So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purposed it and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. And this is what the foundation is built on, the revelation of God through the apostles and prophets. You, beloved, are being built up in the word of God, in the truth of God, for the truth of who he is. But there's a second proposition here that Paul is giving us in verse 20. Do you see it there? You're built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Okay, the apostles and prophets are the written word of God, but Christ Jesus is the living, incarnated, living word of God. They both agree. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the written word reveals. and it reveals God as the living word. The written word of God is the living word of God. Paul writes these truths to the believers at Colossae in Colossians 3, 15 and 16. He says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. That's the word of Christ. is being compared to the word of God in all of scripture. They're one and the same. The written word of God that we have from the prophets and the apostles and the apostles' teaching is the same as the living word of God. It came to reveal more truly who God was. Jesus said it himself in John chapter 12, verse 49. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak. Jesus didn't freelance when he came, but yet he gave us what God had given him. He is God. The written word of God is truth and the living word of God. He is truth. John 14, six, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father except through me. There's your worship right there. There's how we approach the father. It begins with Christ, it begins in his blood. It's your salvation, but it is through Jesus, the living word, the true word. By his grace, we can approach the throne boldly. All of the church, all of the foundation of the church and the building has one guiding principle, and it is the living word of God. It is Christ Jesus, the cornerstone of that building. He is the one by whom all others are measured. The cornerstone you see is laid down, and all of the other stones are laid in proportion to the head of the corner, the cornerstone, Jesus Christ. He is the one that is perfect, and he is the one that is making the rest of the foundation perfect. The rest of the building is gonna be perfected because it is all measured and began and set upon the cornerstone, which is Christ Jesus. He is the set and the head of the whole structure. All of the building blocks of the church of God find their course, their direction, their trueness, their nature, their work, and their fitness in him and in him alone. All of it, the whole of the construction is measured against Jesus. Jesus is the plumb line. His perfections secure the structure. His perfections mark each building block in the structure. No one, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is in Jesus Christ. You know, one of the things about Jesus's words, he spoke every one of them openly to everybody, they've been recorded. And do you understand that for 2,000 years, men have tried to prove him wrong? And he's never been proven wrong. Every word that God spoke through Jesus and every word that Jesus spoke while he was here during his 32 years of ministry, every word of it's been looked at, been taken apart, been trying to prove not true, but every word of it was true and every word of it will come true. It is verified by the truth of God. It is verified by the work of the Holy Spirit's in our hearts and none of it, none of his words, none of God's words will fall to the ground and below it, you're being built on that truth and worshiping God on that self saying truth. And I would invite you this morning to know that you can build your life on this foundation. You can build your whole life. You can build your life. You can build your family's life. You can build your life on this foundation that is the cornerstone Jesus Christ. He and he alone is true. He will not leave you nor forsake you. You can escape this world's charms and trappings by his words. I beg of you, if you've never turned your life over to him, to trust him this morning. Trust in him and trust him alone, for he alone is truth, he is God. If you have sins this morning, I beg of you to throw your sins at the foot of his cross and receive the forgiveness that only he can give. To repent and be reconciled to God, to be washed in his blood and worship God in spirit and truth, to build your life around his truth. Come to the Savior, he is gentle, he is meek, He is mild. He is full of mercy and rich in grace. Come to this living word and be saved. Build your life on this stone, on this rock, this precious cornerstone, and your building will withstand every storm, even the storm of death. Gracious Heavenly Fathers, we come to a close this morning. You're building us on your truth. Men can only access you by that truth and through that truth. And that truth came to live among us as we celebrate the incarnation this time of year, as we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus, your son, born of the Virgin Mary, come to live, to be tested with every sin that we've been tested with, and to be found sinless. perfect righteousness to give on our behalf, to pay the penalty for our sins. He is the head of the corner. Father, my prayer is that everyone listening this morning have built their life on this rock, that they've let go of worldly desires Put away worldly temptations. Nothing else in this life matters until we're right with you. Nothing else in this life makes sense until we know you and know your truth. Father, my prayer is that everyone here and everyone within the sound of my voice that may be watching online this morning see Jesus as the cornerstone of work you're doing to build us into a holy temple so that you can dwell in us, so that you can get glory from us. Work in their hearts this day, Father. Help them to understand the spirit of truth so that they can boldly approach your throne. and find grace and forgiveness for their sins. In Jesus' name, amen.