I'd like to say thanks very much to John and to the session and to Marla and the family for inviting me and for the hospitality I've had over here. Last time I was in Charleston, John and I ran the half marathon together, which gives me very happy memories actually, though I believe not quite so happy for John if you chat to him afterwards. Harry mentioned last night that he quite likes the liturgical calendar. I'm not such a liturgical calendar man myself. The first time I preached through the so-called Christmas season at my church in Amber in Pennsylvania, I simply carried on preaching through the book that I was preaching through anyway. And the Sunday just before Christmas, I think it was Christmas Eve or the day before Christmas Eve, the text I preached on was this, Judges 3.31. And after him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad. And he also saved Israel. I think I'm the only person in history who's ever preached an Advent sermon on that text. And while I can't remember exactly what I said, I do remember that I did culminate in Christ. That the sermon, even though it was taken from an apparently random point in the Old Testament, yet pointed towards the great salvation that we have in Christ. My elders took me aside after that and told me that from then on I was going to have to preach Advent series in December, and as a man under authority I've done that under some protest, but I'm obedient to my elders on that. But I tell that anecdote first of all because it has a certain silliness to it, but also because it is a reminder to us that at the Christmas season there is a danger that we can isolate the birth of Christ from his life as a whole. And more than that, that we can isolate the birth of Christ and the coming of Christ from the sweep of biblical history as a whole. And what happens when we do that? Well, there are many things that happen when we do that, but perhaps one of the most significant is we end up with a domesticated Christ and a domesticated God. I think there is a reason why our friends and neighbors are often very comfortable putting out nativity scenes in their garden at this time of year, and yet not thinking about God for any of the other weeks in the year. And that is because if you just extract the story of Christ's birth from the great sweep of biblical history, you end up with a sentimentalized view of Christ and a domesticated view of God. And that's why our text this morning, though it's a very brief text, I think is wonderful because in the space of just a few words, it reminds us that Christ's birth, life, and death cannot be separated from the great sweep of biblical history that begins in Genesis 1 and ends in Revelation 22. So the text for us this morning, the text that John has given me, is Galatians 4. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law. And it's hard to read that text without continuing, I think, to verse 5. So, though I don't intend to read, to preach on verse 5, the verse, of course, continues to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. That text places the coming of Christ into the grand cosmic sweep of history in a way that is wonderful and profound. And there are just three things this morning that I want to draw out from this text. I think it's perhaps appropriate in an Episcopalian church to have a three-point sermon. Not able to get all the points starting with the same letter, but these are the three points. I want us to reflect upon what it means for God to be sovereign over time. I want to reflect on what it means for salvation to be an act of the Trinitarian God. and I want to reflect upon what it means for salvation to be an act of the incarnate God. All three of those things can perhaps seem abstract quite often when we address them, particularly the Trinity. Many Christians, I think, struggle with, well, we believe in the Trinity, but of what practical benefit is that? All three of those things, I think, are true, profoundly true, and should have an immediate impact upon the way we think and we live as Christians here and now. So the first thing I want to look at is God's sovereignty over time. What does that mean? Well, there's that wonderful little beginning of the text there, but when the fullness of time had come, God is sovereign over time and he acts to address human needs, but he does so at the time that he chooses. God is sovereign over time and acts to address human needs, but does so at the time he so chooses. One of the little noted things, I think, about society, particularly over the last few hundred years, is the fact that human beings have an increasing mastery over time. I grew up in a very rural part of England and in some ways there are still vestiges in the area where I grew up of what we might call a pre-modern world. Time where I grew up is to some extent measured by the seasons of the year. My father was a CPA, a childhood accountant, but almost all of his clients were farmers. And farmers have lives that are measured out, regulated by the seasons of the year. For most of us, of course, that doesn't really apply anymore. We're not dependent upon the seasons for our work. We're not dependent upon the seasons for how we live our lives. Technology, the advent of air conditioning, central heating, electric light, all of these things have made us more and more masters over what we do and when we do it. And I think one of the cultural impacts of that is that it has made us impatient. We've become increasingly impatient. in the way we live our lives. It's not just technology that's done it, of course. We could think of easy credit, credit cards. My grandfather used to boast that he'd never been in debt a day in his life. He was a pretty poor guy, but he'd never been in debt a day of his life, so he had to save for anything he had. He had to save in advance and get it. We don't have to do that anymore. Time is not something that we use to save up for things. If anything, it's that which we use to pay for that which we already have. There are other ways we attempt mastery of time as well. Think of plastic surgery. Nobody, of course, has plastic surgery, or unless you're on the run from the law, you may do this, I guess, but nobody typically has plastic surgery to make themselves look older. People have plastic surgery to make themselves look younger. It's part of the cult of youth that we have. And they're all witnesses, I think, to our attempts to master time. Technology, easy credit, plastic surgery, the cult of youth, they're all witnesses to our attempts to master time. And it has an effect on the way we think even as Christians. But what this text tells us is this, time is rooted ultimately in God's wisdom, not ours. It does not matter how impatient we become, time is rooted in God's decision, not our decisions. Think of it, I hadn't asked John to set up the order of worship today with Genesis 2 and 3 being read, but they're a perfect text in some ways as background for the first point I want to make. There is an awful long time between Genesis 2 and 3 and Galatians, the events of Galatians 4-4. There is a lot of time. One of the lessons I think of scripture is this, we see only a fraction of the divine rationale for how and why the world is as it is, and why events unfold as they do. Just think. Think of the human suffering, the human suffering that takes place between Genesis 3 and Christ's birth in the stable in Jerusalem. Think of Cain and Abel. Think of the suffering of the people of Israel in Egypt. Think of the many individual tragedies that the Old Testament tells us about. The tragedy of Jonathan, son of Saul. The tragedy of Naboth, the innocent owner of the vineyard that Ahab decides he wants. Think of the many prophets who suffered and were martyred. Look at the piety of the Old Testament. Look at the Psalms. Turn with me to Psalm 13 and just get a little taste of what the Psalmist is going through there. There are other Psalms you could look at. Psalm 88 would be another good one to reflect upon. But look at Psalm 13. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and of sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? That is a quintessential Old Testament psalm. The psalmist there is suffering in their life and in their hearts and crying out to God, a God who appears not to be listening. A God who appears to be tarrying far too long in coming to help them. And there can be a temptation, I think, as we read these, to think, well, God does not care. God is not in control. And yet the Old Testament also tells us that God does see and God knows these things. When the Egyptians are turning the screws on the Israelites at the start of Exodus, we read that God saw and God knew. God saw the agony of people, his people, and he knew the agony of his people. And it raises in our human mind, so why didn't he act there and then to save them? And the answer comes back, we don't know. The Book of Job is perhaps the great statement of this. The Book of Job tells us what? It tells us, we just don't know. 99% of the rationale for why God acts and when he chooses to do so. But we know that God sees the agony of his people. And it impacts him right there in Genesis 3 verse 10. Isn't that an amazing verse? After the striking down of Abel and the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. That is passionate language that is used there. As the Lord looks at what has been done, the blood of Abel cries to him from the ground. And yet it is a long time. between Genesis 3 and Galatians 4, 4. Why does God take such a long time? Well, first of all, we don't know in any ultimate sense. We can see, I think, the narrowing purpose of God in history. We see his choice of Abraham. Then we see him choose Isaac and not Ishmael. We see him choose Israel and not Esau. We see him guide his people through the exodus. We see him bringing them into the promised land. We see him casting them out into exile again. And we see him bringing a fragment, a remnant back to the promised land. Until finally, we see the focus of the line in Judah. And we see the focus of God's electing purposes coming to settle upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of Mary. We see the how, if you like, of God's plan. but we do not see the why of it. And yet this is surely a glorious verse because it tells us that even though we do not see the why, yet there is a why in the fullness of time. The scripture tells us that Christ comes at just the right and appropriate moment. All of the human agony that had accumulated before the coming of Christ is important and we should not gloss over it. And yet we would be wrong to conclude from that that God does not care. This brings me then to my first practical application. If God is sovereign over time and if things are done at the right time rather than necessarily the time at which we might desire they happen, what does it do? Well, I think there are a number of practical applications here. First of all, I think this underlines the importance of God's immutability. Only our confidence that God does not change can give us the confidence that God's promises do not change. Though we live after the coming of Christ, we still live in an era where human beings are subject, subject to the curse of the fall. Even in very simple ways. How many people here are 90% or 100% happy with their jobs? And say to people, if you're 70% happy with your job, that's a really good job. We live with the curse even in our work lives. If we live long enough, we lose loved ones. If we live long enough, we come to appreciate the declining weakness of our own bodies. I gave John a master class in that in the half marathon just the other year that he realized that he was no longer the powerhouse that he had once been. Losing to a much older man, I have to say, quite humiliating. But life has a tragic quality to it. And there might be a temptation for us in the midst of the tragedy to despair. And yet this text tells us in the fullness of time, God is sovereign over time. God does not change, his promises do not change as he act to deliver in Christ, Christ's first coming, so he will deliver his people at Christ's second coming. The blood of Abel still cries out to the Lord from the ground. And there will come a day when justice is not only done for Abel, when justice is seen to be done for Abel. And that should give us, first of all, confidence in our daily walk as Christians. Secondly, related to that, I think we need to understand that it is not our felt needs which shape God's actions. Our mastery of time, our easy credit, every message from every commercial you ever watch tells you that you are the center of the universe. I want to say this morning, God does not have a special plan for your life. Now I need to qualify that a little bit. Certainly God knows each of us individually. He numbers the very hairs of our heads. But what I am saying is, you are not the meaning of history. your personal cares and concerns and agonies. The Lord sees them, they cry out to the Lord. But he has a bigger plan. He has a bigger plan. That means he will not change his plan because of the inconveniences and the difficulties that you face. God has a special plan for Christ and the church. And that is the important plan that he has. It is not our felt needs which shape God's actions. When we cry out to God and ask Him to act, God will act in a way that reflects His understanding that everything needs to be done in the fullness of time and not as an immediate response to our immediate felt needs. And that, I think, is good news. It should give us confidence. I am far more confident that history is guided by the nature of God. than I would be if I thought it was guided by the nature of what I think I need at this particular moment in time. In the long run, it may be painful, but ultimately, it will be true and wise that all things are done according to God's plan. And that's why I would, again, I'm like a one-string banjo sometimes on this. I think it's why the Psalms are so important. The Psalms do two things. They remind us that it is okay to lament before God. And they remind us that God is ultimately in control and all will be well. Secondly, salvation is an act of the Trinitarian God. There are various ways, wrong ways, that we conceive of the action of God in Christ. Some people Some people think of salvation as well. What you have is, you know, human beings, they've really crossed God the Father. When Adam fell in the garden and all of the subsequent disaster that flowed out of that, man, we've really crossed God the Father and He's absolutely furious with us. And what we have is the Son, a friendlier, Person in the Godhead a more likable person who comes to earth and does this great work and then uses it in a way to Strong-arm his father to be gracious towards us It's amazing how often when you chat, even to Christians who've been Christians for many years, something of that idea comes through. Well, God the Father's really furious with us. The Son is well disposed towards us, and He builds up all this great merit through His work on earth, and He uses that to twist His Father's spiritual arm, if you like, to be favorable towards us. This text puts that to death. Puts that idea to death. Why? Because it's God the Father who sends the Son. In the fullness of time, God sent. God the Father is the one who set the whole operation up, we might say. This is not maverick or rogue action on the part of the Son. God the Father has sent his Son. It is a distinct revelation of the incarnation of the very heart and disposition of God himself. So that's one wrong way of conceiving of salvation. Other people have, throughout history, some people have suggested, well, what really happens is, you know, God the Father becomes God the Son, does this great work, and then becomes God the Spirit who works in our hearts. I had an example of that in class when I first started teaching at Westminster. I was teaching the early church class on the Trinity, and a student put up his hand and said, I think all this Trinity stuff is nonsense. I just preached on Sunday that God the Father came down and died on the cross at Calvary. And I said to him, well, if you preach that, you preach heresy. I've told this anecdote many times before. I went home that night and I said to my two sons, okay, boys, how many gods are there? And they said, there is but one God. And I said, how many persons does this one God exist? And I always remember they hesitated to answer that. They looked at each other. as if there was some kind of trick coming. Because to them, the answer was so obvious, they were thinking, well, what is going on here? They looked at each other, and then they said, almost with a question mark at the end, in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? And I said, congratulations, boys, you have a better understanding of the doctrine of God than some students at Westminster Seminary. This text is a glimpse into the inner being of God. God the Father sends his Son. God is not undifferentiated one, he is three. You'll see in the text that Harry read last night, you'll remember the Holy Spirit comes upon the Virgin Mary and she conceives. Salvation rightly conceived of is a work of all of the persons of the Trinity working in perfect harmony. The Father sends the Son. The son willingly accepts the task that his father has set before him. There is no tension between them. The son is in no way disobeying his father. The son is in no way forced to go by the father. The inner being of God desires to see this salvation wrought, and so the father sends the son, and the son accedes and obeys the father. Philippians 2, he humbles himself. in his obedience even to death on a cross. And what does the Spirit do? Well, again, sometimes even good reformed people have an inadequate view of what the Spirit does. We think, well, the Father sets up salvation, the Son accomplishes it, and the Spirit applies it. There's a lot of truth in that, but it isn't the whole truth. The Spirit is intimately involved in the work of the Son. When the time had fully come and the Son is baptized, the Father acknowledges from heaven, the Spirit descends upon Him in the shape of a dove, and what are we told in the Gospel of Mark? The Spirit hurls Him into the wilderness. The Spirit actively drives Christ out into the wilderness. Even Christ's own incarnate life, as He makes His way to the cross, is a life lived in dependence upon the Spirit. The whole of salvation is an act of the Trinitarian God. When the time would fully come and God sends his Son, what is that? It is a great revelation of two things, that God is mysteriously three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that these three are intimately involved in salvation from its conception to its consummation. How does this have practical implications. What difference does it make if you believe the Trinity? Well, the most obvious difference it makes is you make sense of the Bible in a way that you couldn't do otherwise. But what are the immediate practical payoffs of this? Well, I would say above all, surely it's in our prayer life. You pray differently if you believe in a Trinitarian God. You can pray with real confidence. The Bible teaches us that we are united to Christ by the Spirit and by faith. And to be united to Christ is to enjoy that communion that Christ himself enjoys with his Father. United to Christ, what does Christ say? He says, I no longer, I call you friends. We are brought into a relation of intimacy with God. We are adopted, as the text goes on to tell us, as children of the Most High God. If we have a Trinitarian faith, we have a rich understanding of how we immediately relate to the Lord God. Secondly, I think it gives our prayer life confidence. Why does it give us confidence? Because we do not pray in a raw form to God as Father. We pray through Christ. It is only as those in Christ that we pray to God as Father. I'll talk about this in just a second. I think this is where the humanity of Christ becomes important. We pray to God the Father through Christ. Christ takes our prayers and he perfects them. Now just think, if you have a model of salvation, if your imagination is gripped by that first model of salvation I talked about where God the Father is essentially not convinced about salvation. And God the Son is continually trying to persuade him by presenting his work before God the Father that God the Father should listen and be propitious and gracious towards the people of God. You can have no confidence. You can have no confidence praying at that point. You can never be sure that God the Father will listen to your prayer and answer it according to his wisdom. But if God the Father and God the Son are one If God the Father's will and God the Son's will are perfectly aligned because of their common identity as God, then we know that that which the Son asks for is simply that which the Father desires to give Him. How powerful is that prayer? How powerful is the prayer of the Son who is in complete harmony with His Father? And how powerful do our prayers become then? when we pray them in and through Christ to God as our Father. If that isn't practical, if that isn't a practical implication of the doctrine of the Trinity, I really don't know what is. There can be nothing more practical than that. When we come to God our Father in prayer, we don't have to cajole God into being propitious towards us. We can have full confidence that God will hear our prayers because they are presented to him through Christ. And there is nothing that God the Father desires more than to hear the prayers of his son and to ask him and to grant him what he asks for. Does it mean that your prayers are always going to be answered? No. Go back and read the Psalms. There are cries of agony. There is a long wait. There is a long wait between Genesis 3 and Galatians 4. And there is a long wait between Galatians 4 and Revelation 22. A long and painful wait. But we can be confident that our prayers, as Christ takes them up and perfects them and presents them before his father, will be answered in a way that transcends our wildest imaginations. I love the last, everybody focuses on the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism, what is your only hope? But the last question is beautiful too, what does this little word amen mean? It is more certain that God hears my prayers. than I am that I desire what I ask from in the first place. There is a certainty to prayer that is guaranteed by the fact that God is Trinitarian in his very being. And that brings me to my final point. We see here in this text we get a window into the beauty and the power of the incarnation. Christ is fully God but also fully human. Christ is truly born of a woman. I mentioned this yesterday, it was said of Martin Luther that he was mesmerized by the fact of the Incarnation. He could never get over the idea of the Incarnation. Those of you who perhaps have visited Lutheran churches will know that Lutheran churches have a very different aesthetic to typical Reformed churches. Lutheran churches can often look very Catholic, but often crucifixes around. It's a famous painting of Luther pointing, he's in the pulpit, and he's pointing with a finger to a crucifix hanging on the wall. And it's a symbolic presentation. What did Luther do when he preached? He pointed to the incarnate Christ. And Lutheran churches are full of representations of the incarnate Christ. And if we set aside our discussions about the second commandment for a moment, Lutherans do that very intentionally. Because Luther could never get over how small God had made himself in the incarnation. And crucifixes were a powerful physical representation to him of that fact. I think we allow ourselves often to gloss very quickly over what the incarnation is. The one who creates enters creation. Read Colossians. Christ is head of creation. He's the one who creates all things. And yet there he is, as Wesley puts it, our God, contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. Luther could never get over that, and I would suggest that we should never be able to get over it either. To use the provocative words of Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish theologian, he called the incarnation the great divine joke. What did he mean by that? He was not being irreverent. What he meant was, it's so totally unexpected, such a complete reversal. Who would have thought that God himself would become human, that God himself would become weak in the person of his son? We're told here, of course, that he comes not just incarnate. Christ doesn't just come and take flesh because it's a fun thing to do. Far from it. He comes under the law. Christ as a human being has the same kind of status that we have before God. Christ's human nature is not something that is plastic that he can just reinvent. Christ comes under authority. Christ comes with particular specific tasks laid upon him by the Lord. Christ comes, as Paul tells us, as the second and final Adam. Why does Christ have to take human nature? Because Adam was human. And Adam fell. And therefore it is in our flesh that the problem exists. Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15. Some people of course will say, well that was Paul. Paul's overstating it. Look at the Gospels. The Gospels don't have anything about Christ as the second Adam. Absolute rubbish. Read the Gospel of Luke. Read the Gospel of Luke with a decent commentary, and you will see the amount of Adam language that is applied to Luke. Ever wondered why Matthew takes his genealogy back to Abraham? Well, he does that because he has a particular emphasis upon Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes. But Luke takes the genealogy back to Adam. And he does so, of course, When? Just after Christ has been driven into the wilderness by the Spirit and tempted by the devil. The serpent comes and tempts Christ. He resists successfully and then we're told what? He's the descendant of Adam. Christ takes flesh because he is the great second Adam and just, I don't want to go into this at this particular moment, but this is why debates about the historical nature of Adam are so important. Galatians 4.4 rests upon the historical individuality, identity of Adam as the one who represents humanity to God. Christ comes as the second Adam to represent God to us. He's God manifest in the flesh. We get glimpses into the heart of God as we see Christ walking around Galilee, healing the sick and raising the dead, weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. We get glimpses into who God is in himself. And Christ also comes gloriously to represent us to Christ. practical application of this. What is the practical application? Well again, confidence in prayer. We are not represented before God by one who does not know what it is to be human or to live in a bleak world marred by sin. Christ as incarnate not only feels the weight of temptation when it comes to him through Satan himself in the wilderness, But at various points in his life, he confronts the hard reality of sin, even to the point of making him weep outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus. A God is a God who knows, humanly speaking, what it is to lose a friend. Because he stood outside the tomb of a friend and seen the havoc that sin has reaped upon this world. Trivial anecdote, my niece, very attractive young lady, she's now in the Royal Navy. She will never listen to this sermon, so I can use an example without catching it later on from her. But before she joined the Navy, she worked in a dog kennel. And one day, she's giving the dog back to a man who's come in with his young son, who's about the same age. And they go out to their car, and then two minutes later, the father returns. And you know what he's gonna do. He asks my niece if she'll go out on a date with his son. His son said, Dad, I like the look of that girl. can you go and ask her if she'll go out on a date with me?" And my niece gives the... I was really proud of her, she gives the answer, she said, I'm not going to date anybody who hasn't got the backbone to ask me himself. That was a great answer. But I, you know, what young man doesn't sympathize with the young guy in that situation? It's always easier, isn't it, to get somebody else to ask the hard question and take the rejection for you. We understand, we instinctively understand what it is to have a mediator who knows what it's like to be us, and can go and present our case to the one who holds power. Prayer life. The fact that Christ is incarnate should turbocharge our prayer life. Meditating upon the significance of Christ's humanity should be powerful to us. Hebrews 4.14 says this, Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Harry made an amazing point, did he not, last night in his sermon, when he said, every other religion teaches that you've got to do something. You've got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps in order to be acceptable by God. That is a profound truth. But I would also say, related to that, there's another thing that makes Christianity so superlative and so supreme. among world religions, that is, we are the only religion who has a mediator who knows what it's like to be us and stands before his father in heaven and asks his father to grant him only that which the father desires to grant him in the first place. It was Luther's great breakthrough, it wasn't, how can I stand before a gracious, how can I stand before a righteous God? Well, the answer to Luther is, you cannot. That's the bad news. But the good news is that there is one who stands there for you. in your common humanity. So, this text then is incredibly rich and incredibly practical. What does it teach us? It teaches us that time is done according to God's time, not ours. We should not allow the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as we experience them, to be the starting point for understanding how God operates and what his plan is. There was a lot of agony in the Old Testament, but God still sent Christ. There is a lot of agony in the church age, but Christ will come again. And that should give us confidence as we go through life. And life is, once you get past the age of 25, 30, life is the law of diminishing returns, isn't it? You lose friends, you get weaker. Illnesses don't go away as quickly. Life becomes increasingly painful, not less painful. So time in God's hand should give us confidence. Secondly, this text points us to that most profound of Christian ministries, the Trinity. And yet if we're honest, many of us think, well, what practical use is the Trinity? It seems very abstract. Sometimes we use language that seems rather removed from real life. Yet it's very important, the Trinity, because on the basis of the Trinity, we know that salvation is the uniform act of all three persons of the Godhead, and the Son and the Spirit desire to accomplish only that which the Father desires to see accomplished. That should not only reinforce our confidence in God's control of time, but as I say, it should reinforce our confidence in prayer as well. And then thirdly, this text points towards the incarnation. What I've said in the first two points was not glorious enough. Here we have That crowning point. Christ is a human being. A far superior father to Adam, one would have to say, who even now sits and intercedes for us. Even now, salvation is an ongoing act of the Trinitarian God. We are united to Christ by the Spirit. Christ intercedes for us here and now. And God the Father hears him and answers him. Praise God for the glory of the incarnation, for the glory of the gospel upon which we are focused this Christmas. Let us pray. O Lord God, we come before you knowing that our own prayers are fallen and fallible, knowing, Lord, that in many ways we grieve the Spirit in our thoughts and our words and our deeds, and yet knowing, Lord, that while you have not simply passed over those things, you have dealt with them on the cross of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You do not allow them to stand in the way of you hearing your son's intercession on our behalf. Lord, we thank you for his work for us in the past and his work for us here and now. We thank you, Lord, that it is your delight to hear his prayers on our behalf and to answer them. And we pray, oh God, that you would keep us safe in this veil of tears until that day when your son comes again, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will stand before you and see you in all of your glory for all eternity. For we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.