Before we read, there was one announcement I should have made earlier, and that is that Garrett Boverhoff has been admitted to Spectrum Health downtown with flu symptoms. Remember him and his family, also his wife, in our prayers. We read the word of God in 1 Peter 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace unto you, and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, Because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested these last times for you, who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. This is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you." We read God's word this far. Find instruction this morning in Lord's Day 8 of our Heidelberg Catechism. How are these articles divided? Into three parts. The first is of God the Father and our creation. The second of God the Son and our redemption. third of God, the Holy Ghost, and our sanctification. Since there is but one only divine essence, why speakest thou of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Because God hath so revealed himself in his word that these three distinct persons are the one only true and eternal God. The Christian believes many things, as we pointed out last week. And in the Apostles' Creed, which we now begin to consider, a number of different statements of faith are made. Expressions and phrases that you and I hold to be true. But, the Christian faith centers in God. And therefore the question is, not just what is God, What is our God like? Who is He? And what do we believe about Him? It's necessary that we ask these questions and give them an answer. We live in a day and age in which many Christians would say, yes, I believe in God. Yes, I believe in Jehovah as the only God. But if you start asking them, well, what do you believe about Him? Then the answer might be, well, I don't get into all this doctrinal stuff. The child of God today, you and I, have to remember that to believe in Jehovah is to know Him and is to know about Him. A young man and a young woman are dating. They want to get to know not just about each other, but they want to get to know each other. I mean, get to know each other more personally. Get to know how each other thinks and why each other is the way he or she is. It is a selfish man who says, I don't care what my girlfriend or my wife likes. I don't care to know her intimately and to understand the way she thinks and why she thinks she does. I just want her to remember to make steak for me on such a day and a certain pie for me on such a day. That's a man who's seeking only himself and isn't concerned to know the object of his love. God created you and me and recreated us in Christ to know Him and to love Him. And therefore, as we strive to get to know Him better, we must know doctrines about Him. And our Heidelberg Catechism leads us to do that, as it brings us this morning to consider the doctrine of the Trinity. Above all else, this doctrine is what makes God unique. It's what makes him God, but it's also what makes him God and a unique being in distinction from every other thing that is. God is three persons in one being. And as we approach this doctrine this morning, we do so again with two questions in mind. First being, what must I know to grow in my faith in this God? and the second being, how will that faith show itself in my life? Call your attention to this under the theme, Believing in the Triune God. Notice first that he is one divine being. Second, three distinct persons. And finally, only Covenantal God. God is one. We mean two things by that. We mean, first, that there is only one God. And we mean, secondly, that this one God is one simple being. Internally, He is one. So numerically, He is one, and then internally, He is one. Let's focus on the numeric part first a moment. The triune God is one only. that means that there is one only God. Christians do not believe in two gods or we must not let anyone tell us that our faith in a triune God actually leads us to believe in three gods. There is one only true God. The Old Testament, we find evidence of that as we read in Genesis 1 verse 1 that God created the heavens and the earth. There must be but one God if God created the heavens and the earth. Moses reminded us this morning in Deuteronomy 6 verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. The Apostle to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8 makes the point that although society around the Corinthian church regarded many gods and idols, yet the Christian knows there is but one God. And Paul said to Timothy, for there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. The scriptures throughout teach that there is one God. This is significant for my faith and my life. First of all, for my faith, the understanding that there is but one only God distinguishes Christianity from all other religions and particularly from those religions which are pluralistic or which speak of the existence of many gods. Paganism does that. The Greek paganistic religions believed in many gods or believed the existence of many gods. And the society in which we live is really paganistic and pluralistic Also, as men try to find their happiness and their joy in many things and in many people and in many experiences, turning away from the one only true God as the source of all joy and happiness. That means that as you and I come to remind ourselves this morning of the existence of one only God, it becomes personal for us. It requires us now to examine our lives and see whether we have been living in accordance with this confession, or whether we have ourselves been looking for and turning to others as gods, though not finding from them what only the true God can give. Furthermore, this is necessary for our faith in that we are reminded that if there is one God, there is only one revelation of this one God. Now, we saw on Lord's Day 6 that that revelation takes various forms, but it all centers in the Word of God, the Word incarnate Jesus Christ, and the Word written, the Scriptures. We therefore do not need to go all over searching and looking and wondering if we know all about Him that we need to know for faith and for life. We can be confident that because there is one God, He has made Himself known in His Word and Revelation. But now the confession that there is one God shows itself in our life in a very obvious and yet simple way. I say simple. The way of which I speak is the way of worship and praise. The Apostle himself says as he begins the chapter, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he does that reminding the church and reminding saints that we are to worship and to praise this one God. What makes that simple, if that's the best word to use now, is the fact that when I know there is only one God, I can concentrate all my praise and worship on Him. And I do not need to, as do the pagans and the pluralists, be trying to serve this God today and run over to serve that God tomorrow, and in the meantime be sure that I haven't been offending that God, which makes my life one of uncertainty, of doubt, of fear that somewhere there is a God who is not happy with me and who will visit me with His punishment or displeasure. When Peter leads us to say, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, pointing to the fact that there is but one God, remind you and me that our worship can focus on that one only God. All my safety, all my care, in all of my needs and troubles, I can go to one only God. In a sense, beloved, this makes our life, our worship, the worship aspect of our life, more simple. This one God who's one numerically is also one essentially or internally. And I'm going to speak of his being a simple being, by which we mean that though he has many attributes, he does not have many parts. This comes up in Lord's Day 8 appropriately, even though the Lord's Day doesn't speak of the attributes of God, but it comes up here because the Lord's Day, in setting forth the doctrine of the Trinity, is speaking of the essence of God, the being of God. And Jehovah makes known in the Scriptures that as part of his being, he has many attributes. They are of two sorts. Those, on the one hand, which he possesses fully and does not share with us, we call them incommunicable attributes, and they include His being infinite, His being everlasting from everlasting and to everlasting, His being independent so that He doesn't depend on any other being for what He does or for His existence, His being immutable and unchanging. The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2 refers to a number of the attributes of Jehovah. And we see that he refers specifically to the incommunicable attribute of Jehovah being everlasting. In verse 23, we are born again of corruptible seed by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. Not certainly an explicit statement that Jehovah is everlasting. There are other scriptures that do that. but an implied statement that if the word of God abides forever, God himself does. Then there are communicable attributes, by which we mean attributes that he shares with us. We're using the word communicable and incommunicable with reference to God and his attributes now, the way we might with a disease. I don't compare God to a disease. The point of comparison I'm making is in the use of the word communicable and incommunicable. A communicable disease, one we might share with another. An incommunicable disease, one we cannot share with another. And so the attributes of God, his communicable attributes are those which He shares with us, which He works in His people by His Holy Spirit. As He gives us new life, regenerates us, and causes us to live as His children, He gives us these attributes so that we can reflect that we are His children. No, He doesn't give us these attributes so fully that we have them as much as God does or as fully as God. And yet it's evident that we are sharing in the being, not the being, but in the graces and in the attributes of God himself. We have in mind, for instance, the attributes of love, of mercy, of which the apostle speaks in verse 3, of peace and longsuffering, of omniscience, power, of which he speaks in verse 5, of grace and of holiness, which he speaks in verse 15. Jehovah is one God now, and the fact that though he has many attributes, he does not have many parts. You and I can be a human even without our gallbladder or our appendix. We could lose an arm or a leg and still be a human. That's because we are complex individuals. We're made up of various parts. But Jehovah is one. He's one in himself. He's one in his being, in essence, such that all of these different attributes must exist together at the same time in the one Jehovah God. There are a couple of Bible passages that, by implication, point us in this direction. One is Matthew 19, verse 17. There is none good but one that is God. God is good. First John 4, verse 8, which doesn't just tell us that God loves, we know that He loves, but that God is Love. Verses like this point us to the fact that the attributes of Jehovah are all one in him and we don't know Jehovah rightly unless we know him in all of his attributes. This becomes important also for our faith and life. For faith helps us guard against one of the errors that creep up in Reformed circles, did historically creep up in Reformed circles, the error of Arminianism, in which a separation is made between the mercy of God and the justice of God. But we notice that in Lord's Day 4. It helps us explain the unity of God. And as we proceed presently to see that in this one God there are three distinct persons, helps us explain that the unity of God is the unity of three persons in will and in action. That is, Jehovah God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As each person thinks and wills, he does so in conformity and in harmony with the one being of Jehovah God. And then this bears on our prayer life and our worship life again. We pray to and worship one only God, though Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One only God as the glorious God, transcendent, different from every creature. But this one being is three in person. We come now to the threeness of God and explain that those three persons are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the teaching of Lord's Day Eight. And it's according to the three different persons and their works. Answer 24 tells us that the Apostles' Creed is divided. Let me explain in a moment the distinction, the difference between a being and a person. Because as regards His being, God is one. And as regards His persons, He is three. We need to be clear that those are two different concepts. A being is a thing that is. You can only be one being. As soon as you are two beings, you don't speak of you. You can't speak of yourself as a single thing. Two are not one. God is one being, one existence, but a person is a thing which thinks and wills and says, I. Let me try to explain that point by referring to the fact that you and I are human beings. And as human beings, each one of us is one being, one thing that exists. And in our being and through our being works one person. I think, I am speaking right now, you are listening right now, that your person working through your being. In other words, a person and a being are two different realities so that Although we say God is three persons in one being and you say I can't fathom that It is beyond our comprehension Yet we are not contradicting ourselves We're not saying that God is one being and three beings That he cannot be or that he is one person and three persons that cannot be true but our God is three persons and in one being. And at this point, if you were to say, but that's beyond me, I can't fathom that, and therefore I'm not interested in knowing more of this doctrine of the Trinity, then the response must be, but is this not exactly what makes our God, God? Is it not this doctrine that shows you and me that this God is not a figment of man's imagination? Every idle God is a product of the mind of man. There is no man yet who dreamed up or invented in his mind a God who is three persons in one being. The very fact that Jehovah is, and that He has made Himself known to us as such, and that we as creatures cannot fathom and comprehend this in all its fullness, shows that He is the true God, and that we are but creatures. Or let me put it this way. If you have a God that you can fully comprehend, that he is not the true God. He is not the glorious creator of heaven and earth from everlasting and to everlasting. If a human, fallen mortal human, has a God of which he conceives in his mind that he fully comprehends, then it's a God that a human has invented. Jehovah reveals himself to betray you. Since there is but one only divine essence, why speakest thou of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Because God has so revealed himself in his word. So let's turn to his word and see some of the passages in which Jehovah has made himself known as being three in person. I love the way the Belgic Confession And Article 9 teaches this point by saying, first of all, there are some passages that don't teach the threeness of Jehovah explicitly, but you can't understand those passages apart from realizing God is triune, and most of those appear in the Old Testament. We have Genesis 1, verse 26, where Jehovah says, make man in our image. Some scholars ask the question, is Jehovah speaking to the angels here? But that's absurd. Jehovah's not saying to the angels, let's together make a man in our image. It is Jehovah God and He alone who made man, and yet He uses the plural, though He is but one only divine being and he does the same in Genesis 3 verse 22 when after man fell the Lord God said behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil a hint of the Trinity there's a second hint of the Trinity in Genesis 1 and it comes out again in Psalm 33 verse 6 we sang from Psalter number 85 and I pointed it out earlier God created, the one only true God created, but in Genesis 1 verse 2 already you read of the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, and God created all things by His Word. His Word, which we read later in Hebrews, is none other than, and John tells us also in John 1, is none other than the Christ, a hint of the Trinity. Isaiah 48 Verse 16, Come ye near unto me, hear ye this. I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. From the time that it was there am I. And so the question is, who is this I? Is this the triune Jehovah God? Listen. And now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me. So the speaker distinguishes between himself and the Lord God and His Spirit. Who is the speaker? It is the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ and he is speaking of himself in distinction from God not that he's not God but in distinction from the being of God and the Spirit of God a hint of the Trinity another in Micah 5 verse 2 yet out of thee Bethlehem Ephrata shall he come forth unto me whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting if this is Jesus Christ and he is himself God as to his person then how can Jehovah distinguish him from Jehovah except that Jehovah is try you and so also in other of the prophets of the Old Testament now what in the Old Testament was not explicit but was hinted at that there is a plurality of persons in the Godhead passages in the New Testament make even more clear. We begin in Matthew 3 verse 16 with the baptism of Jesus Christ. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water. And, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. We have the second person of the Trinity in the incarnate form Jesus Christ. We have the third person of the Trinity in the form of a dove lighting on Him and then a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. The three persons of the Trinity represented there. The baptism formula requires Christian pastors to baptize in the name or into the name one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, three persons. The Apostolic Benediction from 2 Corinthians 13 pronounces the blessing of Jehovah on the church, but it's a blessing that comes in the form of the love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And in other passages, also in the New Testament, the Trinity the one Godhead is made clear now we come to first Peter 1 because we read first Peter 1 this morning first Peter 1 is not a classic text and proving the doctrine of the Trinity but in the chapter it becomes evident that Jehovah is try you first of all already in verse 2 and 3 Peter writes to those who are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." And he underscores there what we'll come to a little more in just a moment, and what answer 24 of the Catechism underscores. These three persons all play a role in your and in my salvation. The way in which God saves in bringing sinners into covenant fellowship with Himself presupposes He is triune. Sanctification of the Spirit, sprinkling of the blood of Christ, or redemption and elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Later on, Peter in the chapter makes clear that Jesus Christ spoke in the Old Testament through the Spirit, which was in the prophets. So we have, in these and other ways in scripture, an evidence that Jehovah God, one in being, is three in person. By setting forth the doctrine of the Trinity from the scriptures, we've not now distinguished Christianity only from paganism and pluralism, but even more importantly, we have distinguished Christianity from the other two main religions of the world today Judaism and Islam. Islam which does not claim Jehovah to be the one only true God and which marks the doctrine of the Trinity and Judaism which says of Jehovah he is the only true God but denies that the Messiah Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. Now, having set forth that there are three persons in the Trinity, let's demonstrate that these three persons are truly distinct persons. Because there are some who will say, well, I can reconcile this discussion, this talk in the Bible of a father, of a son, and of the Holy Spirit by saying it this way. Really, there's one person, but he showed himself in three different ways. In the Old Testament, he showed himself to be God the Father. Then when Jesus Christ came in the flesh, he showed himself to be God the Son. And now we live in the age of the Spirit. He shows himself to be God the Holy Spirit. One person who just manifests himself in three different ways. Against that idea, a heresy that has arisen, in the early New Testament church, we will demonstrate that each are truly distinct individuals. First, we do that by referring to their names, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. If they were one person, then it would be odd, indeed, unexplainable for them at the one time to take the name father and at another time to take the name son. I am a son of my father and I am a father of my son. That can be true but then my son and my father cannot be one and the same person. And so here the fact that God makes himself known as father and as son itself demonstrates that we are speaking of distinct The properties of each person show that they are distinct. I'm going to merely point this out and not dwell at length on it. But we know of the Father that He begets the Son. He gives the Son existence. That presupposes that Father and Son are distinct persons. And we know of the Son that He is begotten of the Father, presupposing again that He and the Father are distinct persons. And then we read of them both that the Holy Spirit proceeds from them, that the breath of God that unites them together goes forth from each. The Spirit is distinct from Father and Son. But coming back to 1 Peter 1 verse 2 and to answer 24 of the Catechism, another way in which it's evident that we really have three distinct persons are in the works that they do. Now, let's not leave the impression that the triune God looks at all the works that need to be done in creating the world and saving his church, and he divides them up. You do this, you do that, and you do that. In that sense, Jehovah is not a God who assigns or designates different tasks to different persons of the Trinity. The triune God saves. But the triune God saves, first of all, by creating the world. in order to prepare the stage on which salvation and redemption will take place. God created the world. And emphasis is given in the scripture to God the Father giving the world existence. Who is it that died on the cross for our salvation but God the Son in the human flesh? And who is it who now fills our hearts and renews and transforms us but God through the Holy Spirit the works of the three different persons demonstrate that they are distinct and now you might still say I Don't dismiss. This is unimportant because I do believe I must know the true God but What Or why does it matter And the answer to that question we find in emphasizing that this God, one in being and three in person, is the only covenantal God. Jehovah is inherently a covenantal God. To say that is to say that he is a God who has fellowship interaction there is life in him and within that life there is activity and that activity takes the form of persons living together in covenantal harmony and unity that's our God to understand that will set the stage for an understanding the uniquely Christian view of salvation namely covenant fellowship between us and God but why is it that this Jehovah God creates covenant fellowship even desires covenant fellowship outside himself it's because in himself he enjoys and did enjoy from all eternity and will enjoy to all eternity covenant fellowship use of the names Father and Son, to refer to the first two persons of the Trinity, underscore that Jehovah is, by virtue of his very being, a family God. Why is family so important? Well, it's important for social order. That's true. It's the foundation of society. But why, from a spiritual viewpoint, And why does the Christian understand family to be important? And why does the Christian understand the family of God, fellow believers, to be important? It's because God is a family God in His very being. Therefore, as a family God, He loves. I'm going to explain that in a moment by referring especially to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. The word spirit means breath. When properly understood, the Holy Spirit is the breath of the Father towards the Son, and of the Son towards the Father, because this breath, this Spirit, proceeds from Father to Son, and then from Son to Father. And that breath is a holy breath, a breath, in other words, by which the two, Father and Son, are united together in loving fellowship. by which the two are committed to each other and show that they are devoted to each other in a bond of love. This is our God, a covenant God within himself. It's exactly because he is a covenant God within himself and in his very being that he conceived of the idea of creating a world, creating humans, and creating those humans in Adam in fellowship with him. And then once Adam and we in Adam fell of redeeming elect humanity so that we could enjoy again fellowship with him. This sets the basis in the pattern for our life. It's in this way particularly then that The doctrine of the Trinity, which is an object of our faith, becomes also a foundation for living. Apostle Peter not only praised and worshiped this true God, a point that we've already noticed, but he also demonstrates in this chapter a couple of other points that are relevant for us at the moment. The first is that the knowledge of a triune God helps me have a right perspective in suffering. He speaks to the saints in the midst of their sufferings and reminds them in verses 4 through 7 that Jehovah has prepared for them a heavenly inheritance and that though that heavenly inheritance waits, we don't enjoy it yet, We are preserved with a view to it and it is kept preserved for us by the power of God. And now you and I must understand that until we get there we are in a time of temptation and of trial of faith. Yet it is exactly this Father who has created us, whose love for us is an unending love, who has prepared for us a house, and our confidence in Him that can enable us to endure those sufferings. Because we know that this Father has demonstrated His love for us in Jesus Christ. And that by His Holy Spirit, this Father even lives in us. We are not with Him in heaven, but He is with us in our hearts and in our souls. Later on, Peter calls the saints to Love one another. Verse 22. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently. What is love? It's somebody seeking the highest good of the other. And it's somebody seeking the highest good of the other, also to promote a relationship, a living together with one another. The Christian view of love, the biblical view of love, and the command that comes in the Ten Commandments, as summarized in the two tables of the law, to love God and to love one another, comes to us who know the love of God. within himself who understand that as a triune God the three persons love each other and live with each other in perfect love and you and I are called now in our life to manifest that love also. So the doctrine of the Trinity is practical. It explains some points of faith like how can I be saved by a mediator who is God in the flesh, truly God, truly man, and yet serving a God who is in heaven? And how can it be saved by the work of the Spirit poured out in Pentecost when God the Father and God the Son are in heaven? But it also becomes this understanding of the Trinity, the pattern to which I look when I ask, How now must I live? The apostle underscored that the understanding of the being of God can be a pattern for us when he said in verses 15 and 16, as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. What is our family life like? What characterizes it? How do we relate to each other? How do we speak to each other? What kind of tone do we let our children have one toward another? And what kind of tone do we, as parents, have toward each other? Let it all flow out of an understanding that Jehovah God, as the triune God, a God of love, seeks and delights in fellowship. And therefore, let our life in our own Family be a life that seeks and promotes Fellowship builds up and does not tear down in this way. We show that we are children of our father in heaven when we do that in our family life and Learn there how to do it then we show ourselves ready to do it also in the Church of Jesus Christ What is it that unites us? It's not just an intellectual outward agreement that there is one only God and He's triune and we will serve Him. It's the fact that this triune God lives in us so that we have the power to love and to serve one another. When we understand that, then we're eager to hear at the end of worship service that reminder of the doctrine of the Trinity, but a reminder not only, a reminder that we are blessed by the three persons of the Trinity. As we'll hear again in a little while, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Our Father which art in heaven, we only begin to understand Thee. But by acknowledging that we only begin, we acknowledge how glorious and transcendent Thou art and how creaturely and small and sinful we are. But we thank thee for having a God and knowing a God who is beyond our comprehension. By this we are sure that thou art the only true God. And we pray that the three persons of the Trinity working on behalf of our salvation, we might now be empowered and motivated to live a covenant family life, such as the life that thou dost have within thyself. for Jesus' sake, Amen.