Please turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. We've been here before a few years ago, but the passage is a good summary of what is in question and answer 29 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Ephesians chapter 2, the text will be verses 1-10, we will read to the end of the chapter. Here's a word of the Lord from the pen of the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus. And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Wherefore, remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace. And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you which were far off and to them that were nigh. But through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. May the Lord add His blessing to the hearing and understanding of His Word this evening. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for this passage that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus that reminds us of the graciousness of grace, that reminds us of the kindness of redemption, And we thank you for the Westminster divines who have helped us along with our understanding of scripture and have allowed us to gain a broader picture of what is taught in your word. And so we pray that you would be with us this evening as we look into this question and answer 29 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and as we see the biblical foundation of the question and answer that we find in the Bible. We pray all this in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. Beloved, with last week's question, that is question and answer 28, we began to think about the application of Christ and the benefits of His redemption to us. There is no greater reality to reflect upon save the glory of God. Don't want to overlook the glory of God. And of course God is glorified in the redemption of the elect. This is a wondrous message that the church is called to proclaim both to ourselves over and over again and to a lost and dying world. So we are both to tell it to ourselves anew, afresh, and to those who have not heard it before. And we see in the unfolding of the drama of redemption, beloved, the reality that the work of redemption, the work of salvation, is in fact the work of all three persons of the Godhead, working in harmony with one another. As the early church fathers used to put it, the external works of the triune God are undivided. That is not to say that each person of the Trinity doesn't have a unique role or function. It's simply to say that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are not at odds with one another, as we have on occasion noted in the past. And so the Westminster divines begin to get at this by asking the question, 29, how does the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ? To which they answer, the Spirit applyeth to us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in us and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling. And with that in mind, I'd like to look at this subject under the following four headings. The Holy Spirit applies Christ's redemption to us. The Holy Spirit works faith in us. The Holy Spirit unites us to Christ. And then finally, the Holy Spirit effectually calls us. Let's go back and consider the first point. If you would just briefly turn with me to 1 Timothy 3.16. We'll just briefly remind ourselves of that verse. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory. So we have there an early creed or confession as it outlines the whole of Christ's person and work. And we need to remember that we don't separate the person in the work. It's not as if we can benefit from the work of redemption without being tied to the benefactor. We cannot and we ought not to separate Christ from His benefits. This is an ongoing temptation for the church that we sometimes desire to have the benefits of salvation without being united to Christ. In other words, we want the satisfaction, we want the joy, I suppose we want the sense of fulfillment that comes with being united to Christ by faith, but we don't want the Lord who comes with it. Sometimes we want to have a sugar daddy who does not have any authority over us or does not have any demands or make any demands. You see, Christ is Lord and Savior. You may remember back some, almost 30 years now, the so-called lordship controversy that occurred actually in the dispensational camp, spilling over to a certain extent within our own circles. And this was related to that. You see, beloved, we enjoy and are spiritually nourished by Christ's work of redemption because we are united to Him. Now sometimes we detach the benefits of redemption from the one who has bought our redemption, not on purpose, but through neglect, through not thinking about these things, as if one could be saved without having a savior. Again, you may think this is impossible, but it does happen that people talk about the experience of redemption, and they fail to meditate upon the One who has brought redemption. It happens. I've seen it. You see, beloved, we have the blessings of redemption because we have Him. That is, we have Christ. Philip Melanchthon, who was Martin Luther's designated successor, in the Lutheran Reformation said, to know Christ is to know his benefits. And that's true. I would say to know his benefits is to know Christ. We have the blessings of redemption because we have the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and we ought never to separate the blessings and benefits of redemption from Him. Another way to put this is to say that the benefits of redemption are in Christ before the Spirit applies them to us. If you think of Christ as our mediator, as our representative, The benefits of redemption are in Him before they are in us. Now, they are in Him in an analogous way, not in an identical way. For instance, Christ is God's Son by nature. That's who He is. And we are God's sons by grace through adoption. You can see that there is an analogy, but not an identity. Christ was justified or vindicated by the Spirit in His resurrection. That's what we just read in 1 Timothy 3.16. That is, the curse that was placed upon Him was lifted. And so in Him, we are justified by His righteousness. We could not be justified if we were not united to Him. Perhaps you've heard or read yourself from Calvin's Institutes where he talks about the fact that Christ has done wonderful things, wondrous things in bringing about redemption, but if we view it from a distance and we are not united to Him by faith, it will be of no value to us. That is true. As a student at Westminster Seminary, I think that passage in the Institutes was driven home on many occasions. Christ was sanctified by the Spirit for His work as our Redeemer and was raised from the dead by the Spirit, says Paul in Romans chapter 6, and by being united to Him, we too are raised with Him by the Spirit so that we too might walk in newness of life. So you see that the key to experiencing all the benefits of redemption is to be joined to the Lord Jesus Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And we saw that in Ephesians 2, when you see at verse 5, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." Notice that we're not quickened on our own. We're quickened together with Christ. By grace, you're saved. That's kind of a joyous explanation, a shout, so to speak, an interjection that Paul makes. He's overwhelmed by the graciousness of redemption. "...and hath raised us up together That is, Jesus is raised, therefore those who are united to Him are raised as well. And made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So we think about the Son of God after the resurrection and after the 40 days of ascending to the Father's right hand, but how often do we think about the fact that we're there with Him? Spiritually, we are there with Him. We're not talking about something that's far off in the future, however far off that might be. We're talking about something that's true now. Spiritually, we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ, so that our death and then eventually our resurrection is merely the culmination of what is already true in principle for us. We are united to Christ in His ascension. And we are with Him in the heavenly places. And that's why Paul says all the blessings that we have, we have because of Christ's presence in the heavenly places. If you go back to chapter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. That's not merely saying that the blessings come from heavenly places. We are with Christ in heavenly places. And this is why it's important to remember that we cannot separate the benefits of redemption, that is the justification, adoption, sanctification, regeneration, glorification. These things are all tied intimately to our relationship with the Lord. Beloved, do you love the Christ of our doctrine? Do you love Him? Do you love Jesus? Or do you love the doctrine and fail to meditate upon Jesus? It would almost seem impossible for you to love the doctrine without loving Christ. But the truth of the matter is Satan is a very devious character and it is possible to affirm the doctrine and yet fail to love the Lord of the doctrine. You need to have the doctrine, okay? So we need to be very careful that we don't fall into the error of the Pietists, which was to dismiss the doctrine. We need to have the doctrine. For how can you love Christ, of whom you know nothing? Okay? That simple. Do you seek to grow ever closer to Jesus in your daily walk with Him? Well, what does that mean, to grow closer? Well, you know, you hear it from my lips all the time about being conformed to the image of Christ. That's another way of saying that. Do you seek to obey His commandments more and more? That's another way of talking about growing closer. Is it your desire, is it your delight to obey Christ? After all, He said, if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Does it give you joy to suffer for His sake? Okay, you're now getting a little too close there, Jeff. You're shaving a little too close to the skin at that point. It's a question that needs to be asked. It's asked throughout the Bible. It's asked throughout the New Testament. Of course, Hebrews 11 is an account of the saints who have gone before, especially in the Old Testament, who suffered for the sake of the kingdom. The Christian life, beloved, which the Spirit of Christ works out in our lives and which we are called to wholeheartedly embrace ought to mirror the life of Christ. The Christian life mirrors the life of Christ. Well, what do we mean by that? Suffering unto glory. Suffering unto glory. That's what that means. We are implanted into Christ. That's another expression for union. We are implanted into Christ in whom the Spirit dwells. You see, so the Spirit dwells, indwells our Savior before He indwells us. Remember, the promise of the Father, which the New Testament talks about, is a promise that the Spirit will be given to the Son for His obedient work culminating in His death on the cross. And the Spirit is given to Him, and because our Lord is not selfish, He gives the Spirit to us as His people. We are, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to be Christ followers. Now that's the popular expression among some, or it has been the popular expression among some young people. Our German brothers and sisters have an expression called Nachfolge, which means to follow after. And it's, in some German Christian circles, it's a big deal to talk about nachfolge, the following after Christ. It doesn't mean that we're chasing Him, not being united to Him, but being united to Him, we therefore follow in His footsteps. Beloved, don't you want to follow your Lord wherever He takes you? Or does that make you nervous? wherever He takes you. Remember that Christ is in you by faith, and He is, as the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 127, the hope of glory. Beloved, this Jesus is yours, and you are His. Jesus is yours, and you are His, and we are called to live out of that reality. So the Holy Spirit applies to us the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And that brings us to our second point. The Holy Spirit works faith in us. And if we go back to verse 8 of chapter 2 of Ephesians, we're reminded of this. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. If we were left to ourselves, beloved, we would never put our faith in Christ. I have a gentleman at the church in Ringo's who's not a member of the church, but he comes to the Wednesday night Bible study, and this is one of those things I'm trying to get him to grasp. He knows it, but not as fully as I think he could. the idea that we would never trust in the Lord were it not for the prior work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. You see, without the work of the Holy Spirit, we would be forever left in our self-imposed, dark, dank cell of sin. Scripture tells us that we are dead in our sins, not just a little under the weather, not just a little sick, but dead. This is why it takes the Lord calling us from the grave of sin to awaken us to new life. as we saw in John chapter 11, and why it is that we are veritable dry bones lying on the desert floor until the Spirit rushes over us and blows into our spiritual nostrils the breath of life. And yes, I'm purposely blending Ezekiel 37 and Genesis 1 and 2, because they go together. We cannot create life in ourselves. Only God is self-sustaining. We are dependent upon God for our natural life, our biological life, and we are more so dependent upon God for our spiritual life. So here's the thing. Grace goes before our response. Grace goes before our response. Now, grace is simply a shorthand way of saying God's kindly and merciful activity in our hearts and minds. Now, historically, of course, it's true that the work of Christ has already occurred 2,000 years or so before us, chronologically. But even for the Old Testament saint who came before the Lord Jesus in His earthly ministry, grace had to come before the response to grace. You see, the Holy Spirit hovers over and blows through our hearts and minds and sweetly recreates us. Now, typically the Calvinist is accused of believing that God forces us to believe, and I suppose that would be, that is not a good way of describing it, because we're not forced against our will, our will is changed, so that we are now able to operate in the way that God intended us to operate, the way that he created us to operate, the way that he fashioned us to operate. Whereas we used to hate and despise God and his word, or at the very least were apathetic the Spirit now awakens us and enables us to see God as the delightful and glorious person for who He actually is. It's not as if the work of the Holy Spirit makes God attractive. God is attractive, but in our sinful nature, we react to that, and we reject and we are repelled by it. But now because of the glorious grace and the glorious work of the Holy Spirit, we see God for who He actually is, and the Spirit molds us so that we delight in God's Word and we seek to do God's will. It doesn't mean this side of the new heavens and the new earth that we are perfect in this delight, that we do it as fully and as sincerely and as promptly as we ought to, to echo the motto of John Calvin, But we are doing it. We have the seed of faith planted in our hearts. Beloved, as you look back on your life, know that before you ever indicated any interest in Christ and His redemptive benefits, God was at work within you. Before you ever, ever showed any interest the Holy Spirit had been secretly at work in your life. Beloved, you need the work of Christ for you and the work of the Spirit of Christ in you. Now, it is the Holy Spirit who works faith in us so that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I guess it would be helpful just briefly to consider what faith is before we move on. We've talked about this before, that faith involves the three elements of knowledge, assent, and trust. And all of these are the result of the work of God. We hear the Word of God proclaimed, and so we come to know its message. That's the knowledge that we have. And we have to have that, because the work of the Holy Spirit is not blind, it is not empty. The Holy Spirit is acting upon the message of the Gospel, the Word of God that has been proclaimed. And that is the normal way that God works. That's not to say that God can't work outside the normal way, but He is the one who has prescribed the normal way, and so we recognize that. Normally people hear the Word of God proclaimed, and the Holy Spirit working in the person causes them to Believe. We find ourselves believing the message of God's Word, particularly that Christ was given for us. So that's the assent part. So there's knowledge and assent. And then finally, we go to Jesus Christ and trust in His life, death, and resurrection that it was for us and for our salvation. That's the trust part. We forsake any and all attempts at self-salvation, and we cast ourselves on the mercy of God in Christ. Beloved, is that your story? Is that your story? Does it matter whether you were born into the church or you've come into the church later in life? That at some point, You realize that you love the Lord Jesus Christ and that you trusted in Him to save you from your sins and to save you from the wrath of God. We do not exercise faith in Christ and then subsequently receive the Spirit. It is the Spirit who makes it possible for you to trust in Christ. Anyone who thinks otherwise is self-deceived. Remember, Jeremiah, and we'll get to the chapter soon in chapter 17, says that the heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? Well, the Lord knows it, and He knows it's desperately wicked. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for you to trust in Christ. Thank the Lord that Christ died for your sins before you ever were or knew the gospel, And thank Him that the Spirit enabled you to believe and enables you to continue to trust in Christ. See, the ministry of the Holy Spirit isn't a one-off job. When the Holy Spirit comes and begins to work in your life, He's there to stay. He's there to dwell. He's there to live. And He is the presence of Christ to us. And that brings us to our third point, the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ. You may be thinking, didn't we already cover this in point one? Yes, we did. But now I would like us to think about our union from our side of the equation, if I may put it that way. It is very true that our salvation is localized in Christ. I bet you've never heard that before. Our salvation is localized in Christ. You know what a locale is. It's a place. What again I'm stressing is that your salvation is tied to how you in fact are tied to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit unites us to Christ in His life, death, and resurrection, ascension, and cession. All those things that are true about Christ benefit us, are a blessing to us. Paul tells us that every spiritual blessing that we experience is experienced in Christ, and that we are even seated with Christ in the heavenly realms now, which I noted earlier from Ephesians 1, verse 3. How does that fact, the fact that we are united to Christ by faith, and in fact, are so united to Him that we are seated with Him in the heavenly realm spiritually, how does that affect your dreary work day? You know, at that point in time, say about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when your mind is fuzzy. I know my mind gets fuzzy around 3 o'clock. When I worked at the Alliance, that's what we used to call three o'clock the fuzzy hour. How does this fact impinge upon your less than exciting studies in school? Or your exciting studies, for that matter? Does this add value to your life as you balance your checkbook? If you think these things aren't related, you need to rethink these things. Does this reality interfere with your love life? It should. Doesn't Paul have something to say about the problem of being united to a prostitute is that you're uniting Christ to the prostitute as well. Now take the principle there and apply it to all romantic interests. Whoever you fall in love with and marry, You bring Jesus with you into that relationship. Does sitting in the heavenlies with Christ right now mean anything to you as you drift along through life? It ought to. Specifically, the fact that we have been and are united to Christ by Spirit-produced faith means that justification, adoption, sanctification, joy in the Holy Spirit, peace of conscience, and growth in grace are ours now and forevermore. Now and forevermore, these things are ours, not because we deserve them, but because God in His grace has provided them to us. Now, the opposite holds for all those who do not trust in Christ as Messiah. We are desolate without Christ, without hope and without God in this world or the next. We are declared guilty. We are spiritual orphans. We are corrupt and growing worse by the minute. Whatever joy or excitement or pleasure we experience, these things are fleeting. All good things they say, you know, must come to an end. We are haunted by all our wretched sins and the sinful inclination that gnaws away at our insides." So don't gloss over that statement so quickly. We are gnawed from the inside out by the sins we commit and the sinful inclination. That is, inclinations that lead us to sin are themselves sinful. Inclinations or desires that lead us to sin are in themselves sinful. And I'm not talking about external temptations, I'm talking about the hook that the external temptation grabs a hold on, the velcro, if you will, the internal velcro that a temptation can latch on to, that inclination is itself sinful. So, in the debates about homosexuality and, say, homosexual marriage, when someone says to you that the acts of homosexuality are wrong but not the desire That is wrong. The desire to commit homosexual acts is itself sinful. And the same would be true for all kinds of sins. That's just one example. That's one where in the conversation that's going on in the broader church, they're trying to split the issue. They're trying to say that the external acts that we perform may be sinful, but not the desire to perform them. It doesn't work that way. We suffer from spiritual ulcers. We have no peace, or if we do, it is very short-lived or very constrained or cramped. We are destined for eternal destruction. It's that simple and that complicated at one and the same time. Are you in Christ or are you in Adam? And if you are in Adam, that means you are turned in on yourself. You are bent, twisted. If I use the language of the Bible, you are a pitiable spiritual corpse with rotten sores all over your body. That's from Isaiah chapter 1. They're not making that up. They don't have a fevered imagination. Well, I might have a fevered imagination, but not in this particular instance. And I only use that language to make us aware of the Bible's description of our state outside of Christ. But beloved, salvation is near at hand. Indeed now, Paul says, is the day of salvation. Repent of your sin and turn to God in Christ through the Spirit. Repent! There is a word we don't like, or that makes us nervous. What does that mean? Well, it simply means to turn from our sin, to reject it, to be repulsed by it, to be saddened by it, to turn to God in Christ. So that is what repentance is. Now, repentance is not to be divorced from faith. Faith and repentance go together. And the best Reformed theologians recognize that. And so they say it's two sides of one coin. John Murray is one of those who has very clearly articulated in Redemption Accomplished and Applied that the two go together and it is usually a fruitless effort to try to say which comes first. All of us are born children of wrath, but by God's grace, the Holy Spirit comes in and regenerates us so that we believe on Jesus. Believe it. It's the truth. Now, that's not to say that a baby cannot be regenerate from the womb. So maybe what I should say is we are all conceived in sin. Because it's possible, like John the Baptist, to be born, by the time you're born, to be regenerate. So I want to make that clarification. That brings us to our fourth and final point. The Holy Spirit effectually calls us. And we see that, do we not, in the vision of the valley in Ezekiel, that the valley of dry bones, those bones will just stay on the valley floor until the Holy Spirit is summoned by the prophet Ezekiel. And the Spirit comes and brings those bones to life. And they start to rattle. and they rise up and then they're covered with sinews and muscle and flesh and eventually the Spirit comes again and they're filled with life. The picture that scripture paints of us outside of Christ is dismal. That picture of the bones in the valley being bleached by the sun is not a particularly pleasing picture except for the fact that we have the subsequent picture of the revival of those bones. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, period. Two things regarding this are true. And we need to recognize that these two things are true, equally true, and they reinforce one another. You may think they contradict one another, but they do not, in fact, do so. You cannot turn to Christ by yourself and you are commanded to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Okay, there are some brothers and sisters who have the notion that ought implies can. In other words, the command implies the idea that you can fulfill the command, and that's actually not true. There's nowhere in the Bible where that is ever stated, because it overlooks the self-imposed exile of the Garden of Eden. Is God playing games with us as he's sitting up in heaven laughing at us sinful creatures? Watching us wreathe in agony because of our sin? Or watching us as we fool ourselves with the opium of self-sovereignty? Are we trapped in the fog of self-deceit? Well yes, we are trapped in the fog of self-deceit and we are overwhelmed by the opium of self-sovereignty, including Karl Marx. Yes, you had to know that I was taking shot at Karl Marx with that statement. While Scripture does tell us that God sits in the heaven laughing at the foolishness of arrogant sinners, and the Psalms are filled with such language, God extends grace to whomever He wills, and by this grace we do come to faith in Christ. In other words, God does not save by half measures, beloved. Not by half measures. What God begins in us, He will bring to its glorious conclusion. Which brings to mind my younger days when I had first come to faith in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts. We had a lovely couple in my mom and dad's congregation who lived just about a block from us. And I remember the first time I got inside the house came home later the day and I said to my mom and dad, and I said, interesting thing there, that house, it looks like, and I won't say his name, not that you'd know him, but look, they're home, it looks like it's been under construction forever. And they started laughing and they said, well yes, it's been under construction forever. At that point, Harold and his wife had been married 50 years. It was back in the 80s and for 40 of those years that house had been under construction and not complete. Now you see, God is not like my friend, starting something and never finishing it. He is in fact one who completes the job that he begins. Christ saves to the uttermost those who come to Him in faith. The Holy Spirit does not play a hit-or-miss game with us. He is not playing a spiritual version of Russian roulette. God may allow us, His saints, to experience hard trials and tribulations, but He does not abandon us. Jesus does not say to us, come to me some of you who are weary and heavy laden. He says, all who are weary and heavy laden, come to me. The Holy Spirit sweetly and secretly works in us to draw us to Christ to the extreme delight and satisfaction of the Father, not to mention the angels who we are told delight and rejoice every time a sinner comes to repentance. Conversely, we find our highest delight and satisfaction in God, and He takes great delight and satisfaction in us. This is so not because of anything inherent or native to us, but because when He looks at us, He sees His Son, and He sees the Spirit. Aren't you tired of seeking satisfaction where it cannot be found? Find your satisfaction and delight in Christ Jesus and in the Father and in the Holy Spirit. This delight and satisfaction is fully guaranteed. It will not fade or wear out like your favorite clothing. It will not fall apart like your body. It will not rust out like your car. It will not become obsolete like the computer that you bought yesterday. Nor will it fade away like a beautiful sunset into the dark. The Holy Spirit infallibly and inexorably and everlastingly applies to us Christ and the blessings of His redemption. Beloved, you may lose your grip on Christ, but Christ will never lose His hold on you. He will never lose His hold on you. You may lose sight of the cross and the empty tomb, but the Christ of the cross and the empty tomb always and everywhere has His caring eyes set on you. So in conclusion, we note this. The Holy Spirit applies Christ and His benefits to us. And by His grace, we are Christ's forever. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for the question and answer of the Shorter Catechism, which has allowed us to survey Your Word. We thank You for the message of grace that's found in Ephesians 2. We pray that, as we always do, we pray that we would be allowed and encouraged to meditate upon this truth and to walk in light of it. We pray all these things in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.