We'll have two readings from the word of God today. The first is Psalm 142. And then our main text will be in Hebrews chapter 13. Psalm 142. Let's first pray and ask the Lord for his blessing on his word. Father, it is humbling as we sing the Psalms. and especially Psalm 107 today, that reminds us of our fallen condition in Adam and how we sin each day in thought and word and deed. And if you were just in bringing that justice to us, we would be left in prison. We would suffer the eternal torments of hell. And yet for your son's glory and for our eternal good in him, You've rescued us from what our sins deserve, from our sins themselves, and brought us into your marvelous light to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us by grace. Make for our minds and hearts to tremble at your word this day, to recognize the free and sovereign grace that we've been shown in your son, And help us, Lord, in considering this and ourselves, your word, to look at others in such a way that would be pleasing to you in the topic that we study today. Bless your word as it's read and preached. Make for us to go on in grace in the favor of the Lord, walking in your ways with fullness of heart. In this we ask in Christ's name and for his sake, amen. Psalm 142 is the title of the psalm says, a maskill or a psalm of instruction of David when he was in the cave, a prayer. And you can read about that in 1 Samuel 22 and 24. That's the history of it. So David is writing in the setting of a cave in which he was hiding. I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord, I make supplication with my voice to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him. I declare my trouble before him. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my path. In the way where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see, for there is no one who regards me. There is no escape for me. No one cares for my soul. I cried out to you, O Lord. I said, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low. Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me. Bring my soul out of prison so that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me. And then in the New Testament, Paul's letter to the Hebrews chapter 13, reading verses one through three. Paul is at this section of the letter after he's shown how Christ is supreme over all things in the Old Testament, how they're fulfilled in him. He's getting now to applications of the faith and how we are to walk as believers in Christ. Chapter 13, let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. For by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body. And that's our reading for today. Our focus is verse three. We've been considering topics that God emphasizes in the Bible for us to remember. Yes, the papers to file for the appropriate time are important. Yes, the appointments to keep this week are as important. And yes, some of the many other things to remember. Please, as best you can, remember those things of common everyday life. But the Bible explicitly tells us to remember these things. Our creator, Jesus Christ, His words, Lot's wife, the Sabbath day, and the former days of a Christian profession when we encountered opposition for it as Christ's disciples. We've seen these already in this preaching series of things to remember. And another topic is what we're considering today. As it says in Hebrews 13, verse 3, remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you are also in the body. So remember the prisoners and remember those who are ill-treated. We might easily and readily remember those who are like us. We might easily remember those who believe what we do religiously or politically or in terms of hobbies or common interests that we have. It's easier to remember such people when we have things in common. But the implication of Paul's words here is that prisoners are easily forgotten or neglected by those who are free. And those who are ill-treated are easily forgotten or neglected by those whom others like and accept. And so again, there is the tendency to forget or neglect certain things. And as believers in Jesus Christ, we are to remember the prisoners and those ill-treated. It's easy and convenient to remember our best friend. the neighbor who agrees with us on everything, the people who do things for you. But it's not easy to remember those who are in different places than ourselves. There is the expression, out of sight, out of mind. And those people that are in prison are often out of sight from us. And those that are ill-treated maybe those that we would be disinclined to remember. But Paul calls our attention to these sorts of people. Do not forget them. Do not overlook them. Don't turn an indifferent or blind eye toward them. Don't be careless about, don't neglect them, don't forget them, the prisoner and the ill-treated. So we want to look at these and what Paul further sets forth about them. The first one, if you're taking notes, as you see, is about the prisoner. And we want to see, first off, who they are. Who are prisoners? Now, when I say prisoner, of what do you think? You probably think of somebody in jail. You probably think of a man who's behind bars with his hands clenching on those bars as he looks through them. Maybe he's sad. Maybe he's mad. Maybe you see the bars in the front of your mind's eye and the prisoner is in the back and maybe he's napping on his little, probably uncomfortable bed. Maybe he's doing other things with some measure of awkwardness and shame in his prison cell. And you're interested perhaps at his orange pajamas that he's wearing there in his cell. We have a mental picture, basically, of the prisoner. But just who is the prisoner? What is the prisoner? A prisoner is a criminal. He's somebody who has broken the law. He is a lawbreaker. He may be a thief because he stole, he might be a murderer because he killed, he might be a drunk and therefore has harmed either himself or something about the public, but he has been removed from society. And infringing on the rights of others to their injury, he has had his own rights removed as a just punishment. He is restricted. Prisoners generally are true criminals and lawbreakers to an extent that the public society and their safety being endangered makes for the person to be put in prison. And so they are imprisoned so that their evil and their wrongdoing is not a harm to others. Some prisoners justly imprisoned, as we learned from Psalm 107, can be changed. The prison system doesn't generally rehabilitate anybody. And that's because it doesn't deal with the inside, the heart of a person. We hear a lot about criminal reform and the prison system being overhauled and such things as that. Well, there may be some points in which there are valid applications of that, but generally not, because the issue is the heart inside the criminal that is occasioning him then, driving him by his sinful heart to commit wrongful acts. And nothing on the outside will change that or reform that. Many criminals have vowed to reform, and they've done well for a while if they've been released, but oftentimes they're back in the cell. And that's because the heart, which is sinful, is not changed. Psalm 107, again, there were prisoners in misery and chains because they rebelled against the word of God. He brought them out of darkness in the shadow of death and broke their bonds apart. Apart from the grace of God and the gospel, prisoners remain unchanged. And so we give thanks that God has given access for whatever prison ministry to minister to prisoners so that they can hear the gospel, they can repent of sin, they can know the grace and the full and free forgiveness of Jesus Christ to even the greatest of sinners. And they can be changed. And if they're allowed out once again, they can do good. And even if they are sentenced such that they never get out, they can still be a changed and forgiven man or woman inside the prison cell. And so it's an interesting thing as we think about prisoners to see the gospel inside the prison. But there's another kind of prisoner of whom Paul is here speaking. It's the prisoner wrongly and unjustly imprisoned for the sake of the gospel. It's Christian people, it's believers, it's those who are out publicly taking a stand for the gospel, calling others to believe on Jesus Christ, or simply living godly and upright lives as Christian people, and they, opposed by unbelief and evil scheming against God, since they can't get at Jesus Christ, They'll get at those who bear His image. And so they were thrown in prison. They were unjustly, wrongly imprisoned for the sake of Christ. Yes, you can be a prisoner without being a criminal, just as you can be a criminal without being in prison. And so here Paul is dealing with the unjustly imprisoned Christian. The Bible says much about such prisoners. There have been a lot of believing prisoners in the course of Bible history. Maybe you remember Joseph. His first prison was in a pit and his brothers betrayed him. Then he was sold off by the Ishmaelites into Egypt. And things went well for him for a while, and the Lord blessed him and raised him up to a position of great influence and respect. And then because of a false accusation, a righteous man by Potiphar's wife, because of the lie, was schemed against and put into prison. And so even though there may be unjustly imprisoned people today. We go back to Joseph and we see that it's really nothing new. He was put in prison, and then the Lord indeed brought him out. Prophets have been in prison. We read of David here in the cave. Well, there was Daniel in the lion's den, covered. There was Jeremiah, who was also thrown into the pit. And it was Evad Melek who rescued him and sought a godly release. There were the apostles Peter and John, as we read as the gospel is being preached in the book of Acts, that the religious leaders hate this message of the good news about Jesus Christ. And so they lay their hands on Peter and John, throw them into jail. Acts 4, Acts 5, the same thing. Herod in Acts 12 saw that it pleased the Jews to kill James. So what does he do? He goes on to throw Peter into prison. Paul and Silas in Acts 16 and Philippi were thrown into prison. Paul was later bound in Jerusalem in Acts 21 after appealing before the Jewish religious leaders. He then appeared before the Roman officials of Felix and Festus and ultimately was placed under house arrest for a couple years. And then as we would read later in 2 Timothy, sometime after that, he was imprisoned and probably died under the regime of Nero Caesar. Even the godly have been placed in prison unjustly, though without criminal behavior. And so it's interesting then that as you read the Bible, you'd find in the Psalms references, many of them, about prisoners. You say, why would those be in the Psalms? Aren't the Psalms to be happy songs for worshiping God? Yes, and prisoners who are there unjustly imprisoned for the sake of Christ. need to have the comfort of God in those very songs to lift their spirits. And so Psalm 68, he leads out the prisoners to prosperity. Only the rebellious dwell in a parched land. Psalm 69, the Lord does not despise his who are prisoners. Psalm 102, he looked down from his holy height to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set free those who were doomed to die, that men may tell of the name of the Lord in Zion. Psalm 146, as we sang today, the Lord sets prisoners free. It's not only the Psalms, but Isaiah. In forecasting the era of the gospel, said, I have called you in righteousness to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness from the prison. God commissioned Isaiah to preach this message of what Jesus would do in his ministry. And so therefore, Psalm 61, which was fulfilled in Luke 4, Jesus says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. Spiritually, those who were imprisoned, shackled, chained because of their own bondage to sin, Jesus Christ would set them free. So this is some of who the prisoners are. They are prisoners in a physical sense for criminal behavior. But as Paul's saying, these are Christians who are unjustly imprisoned, and those who, though in prison, are actually free. So as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians, you're free, even if you're a slave. And if you're a Christian, even though you're a slave, you are free. The same principle works for these whom Paul is speaking of. These are the prisoners. that he's speaking of, those imprisoned for the sake of the gospel. But how do you remember them? This is who they are. How do you remember them? Paul, you've commanded us to remember the prisoner. How do we do that? What's involved in remembering the prisoner? Well, he gives us the clue in the same statement at verse three, as though in prison with them. Remember them as though in prison with them. Remember Paul wrote to the Colossians and he said, remember my imprisonment. He didn't say, remember that I'm in prison. Remember my imprisonment. You'll read about 2 Timothy of Onesiphorus. You've heard about him before. In a book, you'll hear about him again. But Onesiphorus went to visit Paul in prison. It says he searched for him, and when he found me, he refreshed me in my chains. He wasn't ashamed of the chains. Now, you think about Onesiphorus and what was involved. Well, he led his time to leave his family. He went and had to search for Paul. Where is he? Which prison? Which cell? Got to get around red tape. Have to deal with evil people. Have to deal with scary figures. I have to deal with the odor and the stench of the prison. I have to sit with Paul. I have to, if I can, go into the prison. And I've got to sit on a grimy floor. And I've got to endure people that haven't washed, people that are not cared for. Maybe there are other people and not just Paul. I have to remember Paul in his imprisonment as though in prison with them. You see, for Anesophorus, he actually went to Paul. Paul is here calling us to remember the prisoner. It pertains to whatever tends to the good of that prisoner. Whatever may help the prisoner, there's fondness and shared feelings when you remember. Whatever is remembered is known. It's something that's familiar. It's something that's loved. And so at a bare minimum, Paul is saying, remember them. Don't lose your affection. Still think about them. Many other ways have an attachment with these people. He uses the word that God often uses of remembering his people. In Psalm 103, he remembers that we are but dust. The Lord knows everything about your frailty, your humanity, your pains, your troubles, your flesh. He remembers that all you are is dust. a small pile of dust in the end. The Lord remembers that. Well, that's a statement of affection, of endearment. Paul is saying, remember the prisoner. Yes, he remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes without return. Our lives are but a breath, how quickly they go. In the way that the Lord remembers us, we are to remember the prisoner. What does remembering the prisoner involve? It involves of, what, six of them here, I guess? Compassion. It involves compassion. Remember David in the song. He looks to the right, no one's there for him. Paul would say to Onesiphorus and Timothy, in my first defense, no one stood with me. all by my little old lonesome. Nobody stood with me. I was alone. It's not fun to be alone. We have to have compassion on those who are imprisoned. The psalmist said, I looked for sympathy, but there was none. Psalm 69, that's of Christ at the cross. Again, Psalm 69, the Lord does not despise His prisoners. There must be compassion because the Lord has it. Paul would say back at chapter 10, verse 34, you showed sympathy to the prisoners. You showed sympathy. Your heart was tugged. It was pulled for the plight of these people. But then here's his other one that it's not merely sympathy, it's empathy. Remember them. as though in prison with them. Good way to remember the prisoner is to consider the cell and all the setting in which he is. There must be compassion. We use this statement of what it must be like to be in his shoes. Well, that's what Paul is conveying when it comes to remember the prisoners. I wonder what it's like to sit in his cell. That's how we should think. There must be compassion. There must be a second point of providing practical needs. Again, in this day and age, we could see Anesiphorus not anticipating to be met with a prisoner having his own hygiene sink, toilet, shower, toothpaste, comb, soap, change of clothes, anything. Onesiphorus didn't assume, well, they'll have those supplies when I get to the Roman prison. They need practical needs met. And so when Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, have Mark come. Mark, who was once a man that abandoned Paul, he's now useful for ministry. Oh, and when you come, bring the cloak. Cloak, yes, the cloak, because he wanted Timothy to come before winter. I can't imagine they would hand out blankets at the Roman prison. When you come, bring the cloak. And when you come, bring the parchments. I need something to read. Maybe they were parchments he had already written on. Maybe they were blank parchments and Paul wanted something to write on. Maybe it was the way he was going to write New Testament letters or others. Maybe it was for Luke who was with him to write when Paul was just so tired and weary that he couldn't. We don't know, but there are practical needs that prisoners need. A third one is prayer. You remember the prisoner by praying. Acts 12, remember that when Peter was in prison, prayer for him was being made fervently by the church of God. Many gathered together and were praying. It's easier to pray for prisoners. Clearly we can do that, even if we don't have access to bring practical means. And so when we hear of people that are our brothers and sisters that are in prison, they're unjustly treated, they're persecuted for the sake of the gospel, we can and we should pray. It's good to be informed of these things. Another one is to visit them. Again, to Onesiphorus, as Jesus himself said, this is what a true disciple looks like. When I was in prison, you came to me, Jesus said. Well, when did we ever do that, Lord? We don't remember visiting you in prison. Well, whenever you visited the least of these, my brothers in prison, you visited me. And so again, we're seeing our brothers and sisters as if the Lord himself. We can visit prisoners if we have access to them. We may have to search, we may have to go through hurdles, we may need to go beyond our own fears, our own slothfulness, our own shame being associated with visiting a prison, but prisoners should be visited. We should seek their lawful release as another one. Remember when Lot was taken, what did Abraham do? Called out as, standing soldiers and went after Lot to rescue him. That's what Evah did to Jeremiah when he was put in the pit, Jeremiah 38. He went and pleaded his cause before the king. And so prisoners need to have defense. those who will come alongside to advocate for themselves for a lawful release. And of course, when they are released, prisoners need to be welcomed again. They need to be brought back to the fold of, as David said, the righteous will surround me when I'm released. And we see that with Psalm 142. You will have dealt bountifully with me. That's what Peter knew when he went to Mary's house in Acts 12, when the angel let him out of prison, you remember. He ended up at Mary's house where they were praying fervently for him. And of course, Rhoda, when she recognized his voice, did the big oops and left him outside and came back in. They said, you're crazy. And then finally they went out and they saw that it was Peter. And you can't imagine just a sort of, oh, hey, Peter, it's good to see you this morning. We were inside praying. If you don't mind, we're just going to go back in and keep praying for you. No, there would have been joy and thankfulness and glad reception of Peter. And so these prisoners, for the Lord's sake, need to be welcomed and God needs to be thanked. when they're released. So there are some particular points as to how to remember the prisoner as though in prison with him. But remember, Paul is writing of innocent Christian prisoners. He's not calling us to have this wide prison ministry toward all people such that we should start beating ourselves up if we're not going down to the prison every week to go witness to everybody. There can be some dangers about that. Paul is not saying that direction. He's writing to the church you remember, not individual ones. And so however it is for the church, a congregation, to care for those who in this particular time had people that were unjustly imprisoned, remember the prisoners. Remember your brothers and sisters as if you yourself were in that cell. Basically, we are to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. How long do we remember them? Until they're free. Until they're out. And when they're out, pouring on them, how glad that they're out. And the Lord has shown the strength of His name. Remember the prisoners. But also there's the second group of the ill-treated. Remember those who are ill-treated. Who are these ill-treated? Just as we thought for the prisoner, who are they? Who are these ill-treated? They are literally those who have evil. They are those who have calamity. Sometimes in the Greek, the apostle can just put a couple words together. And here it's people who have evil. It's not those who are evil, but they have it. It's done toward them. They have this stuff like dirt on a garment that has put on them by other people. Just as the prisoner was wrongly imprisoned, so these are treated with evil, though they themselves were not evil, nor did evil. but they have it upon them. These are those you could translate it as being harassed. These are those, as it's used in the Old Testament oftentimes, of afflicted. They're not merely people that are mistreated. Because you can be mistreated and somebody just didn't mean evil about it. They didn't see that you were there, or they didn't hear you talk to them, and so they didn't reply. And so they weren't meaningfully being rude to you, they just didn't hear you. That's being mistreated in a simple way. These are being ill-treated. It's unjust that they were treated this way. This is the same word that Paul used back at Hebrews 11 in verse 37. Listen to what this says. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated. So the people that were ill-treated were in some way sawn in two. The ill-treated here were those who were put to death. They were stoned. as well as having to go in sheepskin and goatskin. These are the people that were taken advantage of, that were cruelly afflicted unjustly. These are the people that are persecuted. Maybe they are abused. They are violently harassed by people. They are treated with evil. They have evil, not their own, but other people's dumped on them. Remember the ill-treated. I wonder if you could recognize somebody who's ill-treated today. Could you recognize a brother or sister who's ill-treated? They'd at least be the brunt of bad jokes or ridicule. or scoffing, or the topic of gossip at work. They might be those who are slandered by other people. Maybe it's the talk of the neighborhood. Maybe it's somebody who online has taken a stand for Christ in the gospel, and yet they have tractor-trailer dump truck loads put on them of slander. Christians are ill-treated. And there are many ways that you could think of people as brothers and sisters that are ill-treated, but this is who they are. It just isn't what they deserve, we might say. They're a reputable person. They love people. They do good works. They're quiet. They work with their hands. They'd never harm a fly, step on an ant, or any such thing as the world would look at it. And yet, they're ill-treated. Why is that? Well, it's like the prisoner. They love Jesus Christ. They stand for the truth. And the world will not endure these things. It exposes their own darkness. And so they not only mistreat, but they ill-treat God's people. So why should we remember them? Well, again, Paul is given something of the reason here. Remember the ill-treated, since you yourselves are also in the body. This is what's known as a parallelism. There's an A line of verse three for the prisoner. Remember the prisoner as though in his prison cell. And then there's the B line, which is similar. And the ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body. How do we do that? Well, we take this phrase, since you yourselves also are in the body, and we can draw it out a little bit to fill out the picture. It means as if in his own body. You could understand it that way. Again, what is it like to walk in his shoes? Consider your feet in his shoes. I wonder what it's like to walk in his path. Well, what is it like to be that person? You could sit and say, well, if that were me, I could imagine such and such. Well, what is it like to be ill-treated? Think of the person and then think on yourself. How would you respond? How would you feel? What would you pray for? How would you respond if you were ill-treated? So think of and remember this ill-treated brother or sister as if in his own body. Remember, Paul would refer to such things in his case of the brand marks of Jesus in his body. What it must be like to be flogged by a legal system when you've done nothing wrong. Wonder how my body would endure that. And even with the limit being legally set at 39 lashes, I wonder what it's like after three of them. And he had to endure 39 of them. Remember the ill-treated as if in the body, since you also are in the body. You have a body. You can imagine what it would be like to be punched or flogged or whipped. Also, you could think of it as since we are humans too. Remember the ill-treated since you also are as if you also are in the body. You're a human too. You have common feelings, sympathies, concerns. You can sympathize. Maybe there's a situation in which you can empathize. And so Paul is really saying to remember these. You really need to put yourself in relation to the other person, and that will lead you to fulfill it. But another way you could understand this, since you yourselves are also in the body, is since you are a member of Christ's body, So the body is not his or her body. It's not your body, you're a human too, but it's the body of Christ, the church. You're a member of the church. Are you not mistreated? Well, the scripture says that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And so there must be some touch point. that you could say, I know what he's going through. I've been there myself, and if I haven't, I can imagine the grief he must be feeling and going through. You're a member of the church of Jesus Christ. You're bound together by spiritual bonds, and they're tighter, they're thicker than blood and water. We're members of Christ's body. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, 26. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Another phrase, we're all in this together. Whether it's joy or suffering, we're all in this together. Paul's reminding us that just because we are members of Jesus' body, Since you yourselves also are in the church, remember the ill-treated, remember them. How would you like it? How would you feel about it? What would your mind and your attitude be? It's a special encouragement in Isaiah 63. that Isaiah preached of God's relation to Israel, in all their affliction, he was afflicted. Just enter into the depths of that. Now, God is not a God who has passions and parts. He doesn't have emotional impulses up and down like you and I do, in and out, upside down, topsy-turvy. But it does say, that God who remembers that we are but dust in all their affliction, he was afflicted. God has a feeling sense of care and compassion to his own. Of course he does. He sent his son And this one is a great high priest who sympathizes with us in all of our weakness. And so he, enduring these things in his own human body, is one who can come to the aid and the consolation of the ill-treated with loud groaning and with tears. He himself called out to his God and Father. The way we remember the ill-treated and the prisoner is out of clear sight of Jesus Christ in the gospel. He saw us in our sin and misery. He took on human flesh since you are also in the body. And in that body, he also defended us. He even laid down his life under the cruel ravages of sin and ill-treatment. He died and He saved us entirely to the glory of God and His safekeeping. There is in Jesus Christ one who can remember the prisoner, one who will remember the ill-treated. And so then you know how this is. You know how this goes if you're a Christian, if you're a member of His body. You can sympathize with even some of his sufferings. And as Paul would say that those afflictions and sufferings are being filled up in the measure of the body of Christ in terms of what the church is experiencing as the body of Christ. How many prisoners and ill-treated exist? it would be good to start paying attention to those that we hear. Little bulletins that may come in the church mail, or little things that you read online that come into your email inbox, or comments that come throughout the denominational resources that are passed around, or other Christians that you know, neighbors that you know and you talk with, remember the prisoners and the ill-treated. You may have some challenge to know them here. Times may be changing. We may be more easily able to recognize and hear of prisoners and ill-treated in upstate New York. But here and abroad, however they come in, make it your practice then to take note of these people. Send them to me so that we can pray for them more publicly, so that we can fulfill what Paul calls us to here, remember the prisoner and the ill-treated. To sum it up, meet misery with mercy. Meet misery with mercy. And we can do that by all sorts of expressions that God willing He'll open our attention to in the days going forward. We've seen then the prisoner and the ill-treated, who they are and how and why we remember them, We've seen how it all makes sense and it goes together. We now go and remember the prisoner and the ill-treated, since that's what Jesus has done in the gospel. And this is what we face ourselves following him. Let's fulfill the law of Christ and let's pray. Our Father and our God, we recognize that evil exists in the world. We're reminded that Christ has overcome it all, and our faith overcomes the world since it's in Him. But we know for a time that you're allowing evil not to reign, but to remain, and you will fully and finally judge it all. You've already shown that you mean that in sending your Son and punishing Him as the sacrifice for our sins, our rebellion, that we as prisoners, rightly so, ill-treated under the justice of God, not because it's evil treatment, but it's just treatment. And Lord, as we would suffer that outside of Christ, how awful that would be. But we look to Christ thankful that there's a sacrifice for our sins, and there's a ready helper to us in all of our persecutions. Lord, help us to remember, to serve, to pray for, to encourage those who are prisoners and ill-treated. And as we may enter these experiences ourselves as a congregation or as a body of believers or personally, help us, Lord, to fulfill this responsibility with compassion and love and perseverance and not reviling a retaliation, but suffering the great honor of being Christian people whose faith is so valuable that we endure the evil treatment of a sinful world. Give us strength and help as we seek to do these very things. Bless us, O Lord, in all that we've heard as we ask in Christ's name, amen.