Good afternoon. I trust that you all saw in that passage much language of intimacy as Jesus is speaking with his disciples in some of his last time on earth with them. And as we go through some scriptures today. I hope that the Holy Spirit himself is the one who has to reveal these things to you. Even as Jesus said, the Holy Spirit's the one who comes and indwells. He's the one who leads and guides into all truth. My attempt will be to get out of the way enough so that he can do his work. The title, The Infinite Intimacy of the Triune God, I hope that doesn't throw you too much. It has language in there that some might go, well, that's theological. And you might ask yourself this question, why are we talking about the attributes of God? Of course, it's often good to reply to a question with a question. The question I think we need to ask ourselves is why are we here today? And I think most of us would answer with this, we are here to worship the living, the triune God. That's why we're here. We even consider this sermon as part of the worship service. This is not just a lecture. It is not just intended as a teaching, a place where we're gonna get information and grow. This is actually a time where We're praying and asking that God convicts us in such a way that we see him more beautiful, more glorious for who he is, that we are brought to a sense of awe. We could, if we were maybe a more expressive church, fall down on our faces before him. But at least in our souls, we pray that that happens. We're talking about meeting with the living God. meeting our maker in a much more pleasant way today. What does it mean to worship? Sometimes I find even opening a dictionary can help because we have this tendency to become dead. We have this tendency to become probably like milk warmed over with a skin on it towards certain words. And it's really our responsibility, brethren, to look at our hearts, look at our souls, and be able to ask ourselves, am I loving God today? And this isn't just then a list of 10 ways am I loving God that we would measure up. It's actually knowing, and sometimes we deceive ourselves. Is there a fire in my heart for God? Is there really a love for God? Have I lost that first love? And there's various means we may employ to rekindle that. Obviously, opening his word is major one, prayer, asking for help, asking for grace. Sometimes there's even means like opening a dictionary to trigger your mind because God created us to be thinkers also and have minds. And sometimes we've got to stir that up. So the word worship, here are some synonyms for it. We're here to revere. to be in awe of, to respect, to admire, to esteem and honor, to adore. Now there's one that starts to bring out more of a love, to appreciate, to cherish, to prize, to treasure. Our Lord is not just truth. He's not just some truth that we evaluate. He's much more than that to us. He's a treasure. to extol, which means to praise enthusiastically, to look up to, to love. Okay, what are some things about love that we could think of? You may not think of in the Lord, with the Lord these ways you really, we really should. To think fondly of, to be very keen on, To be partial to, now I mention some of these phrases because they sit in our mind in certain ways and they might trigger something in our heart. But do they trigger towards God? To be partial to, we should be partial, more than partial to God, correct? But to have a tenderness for. have a tenderness for, to trust, to place confidence in, to glorify, magnify, and humbly obey the Lord our God. That's this outcome then that comes from many of those words at the start where they're describing emotions, they're describing thoughts, they're describing things that may not come out into a tangible result. Some people just want to see the results. And that's not bad, we need to look at the fruits. But the fruits then come out of that worship, come out of all that proper meditation of seeing where we are, who he is. And then we humbly obey with the right motives. How often, how often do we obey with impure motives for wrong reasons? How often do we feel estranged from our Father, from the whole family of the Trinity? And how often is our response, I'm going to do some things? I mean, I wish it wasn't so. I wish our hearts were not so dark that we felt we have to earn God's favor in some way of our own. But I think as often we become very honest with God, and that's only through him helping us, we have to see that it's very hard for us to sing that hymn, nothing in my hands I bring, only to thy cross I cling. As I often know, we have good works in our back pocket if we need them. We're just innately geared to protecting ourselves in some way. And there's a good reason. Our God is a holy God. Our God is a terrible God. Our God is a consuming fire. Our God can be a very scary, being to come into his presence. We don't want to minimize that as happens in from many pulpits today or many churches, to bring God down into some way that he is all too familiar. But we don't want to put him at a distance either, and I think that is so easy, so prevalent. It's actually more comfortable to us to have God at a distance, whatever that distance is. Now from the greater we can make it, even though we might not even admit it to ourselves, we feel safer. That distance could be the law, it could be certain rules, certain ways that we do the Christian life, certain ways that we do church. We cling to those. But are we forsaking the living God? Where are we with our relationship, our intimate relationship with God? Are we on speaking terms? with him really. Has he said something to offend us? Probably. Jesus said, blessed are those who are not offended in me. We got to overcome it. We're not reading the Bible correctly if we're not shocked at times and stunned and even offended. But we know the Syrophoenician woman wasn't that offended. when Jesus spoke to her very plainly about the order of things. And we need to be able to hear what the Lord says to us. You know, as we look at Psalm 139, I want you to think about how the psalmist writes about God. And he writes about these two attributes. He writes about this infiniteness, this greatness, this grandness of God. But then he also writes about the intimacy of God right there together. Who else? Who is like unto the Lord our God? Who else could create and control and hold this whole universe together by the word of his power and yet be intimate with absolutely every creature? and that relationship that he decides to have and wants to have with this creation, let alone the holding together of all the inanimate and other objects. Who is like unto the Lord our God? In Psalm 139, David writes, O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising. Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassed my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Whether shall I go from Thy spirit, or whether shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou has possessed my reins, thou has covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are they works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them, if I should count them. They are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I'm still with thee." I'm going to pause there. There's a couple more verses to the psalm, but can you see the infinite and yet the intimacy of God captured in these wonderful poetic verses? But this is not just a poetic description that we should somehow relegate it off as if it's not the truth, the very Word of God, that it is because God took this and had it written down for us and anointed it for us. In verses 7, 8, and 9, we see what some theologians will call the ubiquity of our triune God. That means He's everywhere, all the time, omnipresent, He's pervasive, just one aspect of His infiniteness. Psalmist says, whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the outermost parts of the sea. And I trust that many of you are very familiar with these verses. But this may astound you what he says in verse eight. If he makes his bed in hell, is God in hell? There's a badly mistaken concept that's prevalent today that hell is an absolute separation from God. That God is not there. It's a place of outer, utter darkness. You're isolated in a solitary confinement forever and ever. And while I don't want to take away from aspects of that imagery because there is a powerful aspect of isolation, that's not the whole story. That's not all that Scripture tells us. Well, where does that teaching come from? Well, if we want to try to find it in Scripture, some would quote 2 Thessalonians 1.9. When the Lord Jesus, I'll give a little bit of context in that verse starting in verse eight. When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, see that's verse seven, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe. I think it's an incorrect deduction or hermeneutic that will lead you to believe that God is not in hell and you are totally isolated. Now there are some translations that even use the word separation. from the presence of the Lord, or away from the presence of the Lord. But we have to look at the greater context of this verse. This verse is embedded in a passage describing the glorious presence of our Lord Jesus Christ who should be glorified in his saints and admired in all them that believe. This is talking about a glory of people worshiping and loving God when he returns, our Lord Jesus Christ loving him. Surely the wicked will be separated from that. They do not participate in the worship and glorification of Lord Jesus Christ as these verses are saying. So that makes perfect sense. But don't stretch this, don't get some false notion that God is not in hell. How would the lake of fire burn forever if our triune God is not there sustaining it? Are we gonna give attributes to a lake of fire or hell that are attributes that belong to God alone? Let's not give God's attributes to anything other than him. This is our great service we can do as a church, to rightly divide the word of truth to, not that God needs our protection per se, but to hold forth the word of life accurately. And that's good for our own souls. He that strays when we don't study the word and know what it's saying, we do damage to our own souls. Now scripture gives us various vivid pictures of the judgment of the wicked. And these include that great loss, that isolation from the benevolent goodness of God. But they also include great intense anger with God. The wicked are gnashing their teeth as God has judged them. They are believing in their whole depth and being that he is wrong. He is unfair. It's sad, it's very sad. I say that on the verge of weeping because it's a vain, futile, it's the most vain, futile state you could be left in, that you're angry with God forever and ever with no redemption. And that's something we need to pray about too because one of the reasons why If we look deep in our souls, we are angry with God. I know I had an incident the other day that I realized what was at the core of it, what was at the core of my anger with someone in a situation was actually my anger with God and with the providence of God and how things had unfolded. And that's hard for us to admit. It's hard for us to admit. But we know great saints. We know Martin Luther said he was angry with God every day. I mean, you say, well, that's Martin Luther. You read about him. But I think many of us have to own up. We have to own up that we're not loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's for sure. We're missing the mark. We're falling short of our calling But it's worse than that. It's worse than that. At times we're really at odds. And we need to confess our sins. So let's return our thoughts to God. Because ultimately, even though we confess our sins, He's the only hope. He's the only one who can redeem us and bring us out of this pit. It's really being in a circular whirlpool if we think about ourselves. So only go in one direction. But if we turn and we look at God, his perfections, and then what his word says, because he addresses us. Oh, it's so wonderful. So in a very true sense, there's an infinite number of ways that our God is infinite. For those of you who are not mathematically inclined, I'm sorry, kind of like infinity times infinity, but what does that mean? It just means a lot. We'll keep it simple that way. But let's be clear about one thing. He is not his creation. Maintaining the creator-creation distinction is vitally important as we talk about the glorious nature and the truth of God. So, how's that addressed? Well, fortunately there's men in church history that have addressed this point, and it's great at times to reference them, and a great, highly admired Puritan preacher named John Owen, wrote this. He said, in respect of place, God is immense and indistant to all things and places. He's absent from nothing, no place, contained in none, present to all, and in his infinite essence and being, exerting his power variously in any or all places as he pleases. revealing and manifesting his glory, more or less, as it seemeth good to him." Now, there's a lot in that statement. You can just meditate on these things for a while, for sure. But the simple explanation is we don't bring God into our existence, our physical existence, as if he's somewhere. He has no location. He has no place. And why I'm bringing that up is because when we put God at a distance, maybe you start to make the connection of how unreal that is. Where are you trying to relegate him? Is he up in heaven holding court somewhere and dispatches angels? He's got a great surveillance system. He knows what's going on up there. That's an improper view. That's a very improper view of God. Now he transcends his creation is what John Owen saying, many others would describe this the same way. He's so immense that he's fully everywhere at all times. He is not distanced from anything because he has no location. He exercises his almighty power when and where he pleases. according to, if I can say it this way, his immutably good will. Never does anything wrong, that's never going to change. It's immutable good will, revealing and manifesting his glory more or less. Now we get a little confused because we see the revealing, we see the manifesting, and there's some glory here, there's some anointing here in ways that we realize it. But that's not God rising and lowering and adjusting and moving around. No, it's how he's choosing to reveal and manifest. But he is above and transcending time and space. We see, if we return in Psalm 139 to the opening verses, we see this infiniteness related to our intimacy. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting, my an uprising. Thou understandest my thoughts. Goes on to say, there's not a word in my tongue, but you know it all together. This is telling us in a beautifully painted picture that God misses no details. He knows absolutely everything. Now we could think of the omniscience of God, another one of his perfections. But I don't really want to go that way anymore in this sermon because what we do sometimes with those words is we manage one way or another to make God very distant because he is higher than us and these are attributes of God that we can't attain to And it's good to have those in mind so that we're in awe and reverence and worship and in that right posture. But then our hope is in what he says about what he's done to be intimate with us. So God in one sense is already fully intimate. He knows everything. There's no greater intimacy. We don't know the exact thoughts of someone else. I'd say often we don't even know our own thoughts very well. You know, a word of advice when you get in those arguments with somebody like, I said, and you said, and I remember, I know exactly what I was thinking, some of those things. I may be showing my age a little bit, but just back down. Maybe you don't actually remember exactly what you were even thinking, let alone what you said. And I think we would all agree that often those arguments are not fueled by this sense of truth, that we really wanna just get truth out on the table, even though that's what we're saying. It's probably more fueled by pride. Now in marriage and close relationships, sometimes we can predict the disposition. of someone, the general nature of their thoughts. That's intimacy. That is getting to know one another. But that takes time to develop. That's a really neat thing that God has given us in this life with one another as human beings. But I think we can all admit we don't know as God knows. He knows our own thoughts even before we think them. He knows our prayers before we ask them. In Matthew 6, 8, Jesus told us, your father knows what you need before you ask him. And it's not just because he has a big surveillance system and he's looking out and watching patterns. No, he's not at a distance. We have to struggle to get that out of our mind because Satan loves for you to think that God is at a distance. He loves to build up the barriers between you and God any way he can. And if it's condemning you as the biggest hypocrite in the world, or puffing you up to think you're a super saint, whatever way he can get you does not see things correctly. Because your good works, if you're getting puffed up, is an offense to God. If you want to grieve the Holy Spirit, just start pounding on your chest and taking credit for things that you should not take credit for. No, God, we need to see and understand through faith, the word of faith, and this is the proper word of faith, it's talking about by scripture that he is not very far from any one of us, as Romans puts it that way, that we're seeing and experiencing him through faith. Now, in our scripture reading in John, The brother Tim read John 14 we saw in verse 17 Jesus telling us clearly the Holy Spirit would be in us. In verse 20 Christ says I will be dwelling in you and in verse 23 he says the father and the son will be making their home in the believer. I just can't think of anything more. awesome and fascinating. Do I understand it exactly? No. But it's the Word of God, so it trumps my understanding. And my duty is to labor to believe this, to ask for grace, ask for help. In Hebrews 4.16, we're exhorted to come boldly before his throne. So this picture of a throne is not bad. God does have a throne, and we're given these pictures in scripture of a throne room, and that communicates to us his holiness. But in Hebrews 4.16, it's not because that's supposed to be at such a great distance, or that we cannot approach it, because he says, let us come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. That's how we are to come to the throne. Now thinking of, how we behave when we see ourselves, there's verses right before that says we are naked and bare before the Lord, that's embarrassing maybe, maybe we want to run, we want to hide as Adam and Eve did. It made me think of Sarah's laugh in Genesis 18. I hope you're familiar with the verses. The celestial visitors come to Abraham, and Sarah's in the tent, and the Lord says, you will have a child a year from now, and this is Genesis 18, and it says, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, after I wax old, shall I have pleasure? My Lord being also old, but it says the Lord heard and knew. The Lord heard and knew. I don't think it's because she laughed so loud that he heard and he overheard. I think because the way it says within herself. But the Lord knew, he knew the exact thoughts and when he even told and said that, wherefore did Sarah laugh? How did Sarah respond? Did she fall down in worship and awe and reverence? Almost like the woman at the well saying, this is a man, he's told me everything. No, Sarah denied it. She took the way most of us take in many, many circumstances. Now, we could try to grant her some benefit of the doubt and say, well, maybe she forgot, or maybe she was aging, because actually she was probably much older than many of us. But no, the scripture actually doesn't allow us to do that in this case. It says, for she was afraid. She was afraid. This is the reason why we do a lot of things. were afraid. She did not respond properly. She did not respond with a humble awe and a sense of wonder at this holy God who knew her thoughts. Now there's a reason that, and spoke about this just a little earlier, that it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. There are pictures in scripture for us that should terrify us. that we will not come to God except in the proper way. It is not that we can just have intimacy in any random way. There's many types of intimacy preached today, even from pulpits, that unfortunately neglect the cross, neglect the atonement, neglect the proper way that we have an intimate relationship with God. That's not what we're talking about here today, but our response should not be to create a distance or create many rules or some kind of measurement system other than, are we trusting in Christ and Christ alone? Are we coming before him? naked, nothing in my hand I bring, only to thy cross I cling. And even as we approach, are we, even in that first step, very dependent on the Lord, and we know it. We're even going to approach, and I've got to confess, we don't always approach boldly, and I don't always approach boldly, because I know who I am. And I don't want to presume upon the grace of God in a way that I'm just going to, okay, and we could just confess our sins and confess our Lord and Savior in some way and just get it done and run towards the throne. No, I know myself too well. that this has to be a real experience, that Christ alone even is responsible and helping. He's interceding and praying for us even now. The Holy Spirit is in us interceding and praying. Are we tuned in? Are we yielding? Are we humbling ourselves even now? And then we start to approach the throne even more and see more of our sin. I'm sure most of you have experienced that. You get closer to God, we see more of our sin. What, are you going to stop and run the other way? And we do, and maybe that's all we get then. But if we press closer, if we come closer, if we want to be sanctified more for his glory, if we want our hearts purified, how close do we get? We're exhorted to come boldly before the throne, to that throne of grace by Christ and Christ alone. Now, the verse is right leading up to that. It says, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Turning and running or hiding isn't really getting you anywhere. We're very familiar with Adam and Eve. Now we've talked a lot about mental nakedness and I think as we move towards wrapping up, I think just because it's very concrete and maybe we'll relate to it, the Bible also speaks about physical nakedness. In a case of Adam and Eve, they knew they were naked after they fell. They felt ashamed, they felt guilty, tried to cover themselves with the fig leaves. Now earlier, the Bible's clear, they were naked, they were not ashamed before their fall into sin. Now we know young toddlers and babies and no, they're not necessarily ashamed to be naked, but that's not because they're sinless, it's because they don't know any better. I think as we grow older, We develop a shame. Now unfortunately our culture today, and of course there's many cultures in history, have revolted against this and don't have such a shame towards the nakedness when they should. And they promote nakedness or forms of it to sell merchandise, you know, just to pick one example, which is in itself shameful. So we see more clearly that nakedness and shame are associated in this life. As humans, we're the creatures who clothe ourselves, many times to go to great extents to see how good we can look. As one salesman was telling me the other day, 65% of everything is how we look. Well, we don't want to live that way, definitely not when we come to the house of God. Well, where else do we see shame and nakedness? In the Nazi death camps, not too long ago in our history, really, when you consider the history of the world, people were stripped naked. It was displaying a disregard for their human dignity. Now, we know we're all sinners, but this was a tremendous disrespect But see, when God tells us that we appear naked before him, he's got a process in mind. He's got some steps in mind of what should occur. Yes, we should feel shame and guilt. We are sinners, we have remaining sin. We come to the realization, though, that this is just the beginning of the gospel story. And the note that all true, holy, genuine intimacy leads us to a godly humility is what comes to bear here, that we confess our sins, we trust in Christ's perfect work, we're clothed with Christ's righteousness, so then we come closer If we come to that bold, we come boldly before the throne of grace, we've abandoned our own works. If you read more of Hebrews 4, it's talking about that earlier on, ceasing from our own works. You know, have you ever thought about if you don't abandon your works, your own works in this way, you are insulting the grace of God? Do you ever think about it in the language that it deserves? You're slapping God in the face, you're spitting in the atonement. It's horrible when we bring our own righteousness before God. And this is a sin we have to be very careful of in the church. We can easily look off to many other people and many other things when we see what's wrong with the world. In fact, in the early 1900s, The Times of London posed the question to several prominent authors of the day, and they asked for people to write in essays for these authors, and what's wrong with the world? What's wrong with the world today? And it's said that G.K. Chesterton, who was one of those prominent authors at that time, was recognized, and they wrote to him. He responded with the shortest essay. And I'll read you it in its entirety. He said, dear sir, this opening address, I am, period. And he signed it. Yours, G.K. Chesterton. Brethren, I don't think we often come to this. I think when we think of what's wrong with the world today, we can really get going. And I'm sure we could push a few buttons and we know how we go off. And many of those things are true. I don't want to minimize the horribleness of sin in the world and how grieving it is. It's not the point. But the point is, frequently and often, we're somehow not in that circle. It's all about them. And if you never see yourselves, if you can't relate to what G.K. Chesterton wrote here, what's wrong with the world today, I am. In the real sense, the present sense. Now Jesus could say I am in a grand sense. And he's not what's wrong. But when we say I am, we are part of the problem. And if you can't relate to that at all, please read some things about what the Bible says about pride. So what does it mean to confess our sins? Often, you don't have to come to such a full realization, though it's helpful, and I think occasionally we desperately need it. Often a simple, genuine, heartfelt contrition is all that's necessary. Maybe it's all that we have time in that moment. We're busy, there's things going on. Our heart is convicted, we realize. That's the moment, that's the moment to pray. That's the moment we can have, whether it's a thought prayer, whatever it is, that's the moment we can ask for mercy. It's important to keep short accounts, as you've heard from this pulpit many times. That's the time. Don't say, OK, I'll make a list, and tonight we'll get caught up. First of all, that list could grow. You may not have that moment, and that greatest realization is in that moment of time. It's actually in that moment of time when things are probably the freshest. Your mind may be the most aware when you're convicted by the Spirit in action. But often that could be in a circumstance that you cannot go and weep. So it starts with that, contrition. But I also believe there's some very healthy times that the Lord will bring into our lives. These are sweet times that the Holy Spirit works in us, this greater contrition. I think many of us are familiar with imprecatory psalms. They're the psalms that that fancy name is getting given to where your judgment is being called down by the psalmist upon the wicked. God's wrath poured out on the wicked. There is a justice in that, a holy justice. It's perfectly holy and righteous. But I know I've been challenged to think about Could I pray that Psalm against my own wickedness? Could I have that same zeal, that same passion for righteousness against my own sin? And I'll say to you, it's very liberating. It's very liberating to allow the Holy Spirit to do this. We're not generally masochists by nature. Now, we can get into certain self works, like Martin Luther was before he was converted, and we can still do even after we're converted, but that never really sets you free. But no, this is a type of contrition where the Holy Spirit helps you to see your wickedness for how great it is, and I just mention those Psalms as an aid. might help you if you're having trouble wondering or seeing. And I don't want you to just make it up and say, oh, that's me. I mean, no one really would want you to do that. That's not real. do have to ask for this because it's very liberating because the more sin you confess and the more Christ carries it away and the more it's cast away into the sea of forgetfulness and he says I will remember it no more. It's a wonderful experience. I believe then we can come to the throne room that day that's ahead of us, where both great and small are judged, and we won't be worried about a big video that's going to be played with every last thing. As some would allude to, that I don't believe is true for the Christian who is forgiven. Because if God says, I will remember no more, I find that incongruous. Because he's glorified in justifying the ungodly and doing so righteously. And he's given us a means. Oh brethren, may we avail ourselves of this means. There is a balm in Gilead, as we heard last week. This is divine forgiveness full of grace. So let me close with just alluding to the picture of nakedness one more time. That nakedness in God's design, once you confess your sin and you're coming close to God, You're coming into a holy, righteous, intimate relationship. And we see this in marriage in his design today. That nakedness is designed to bring forth life. Do we respond appropriately? Will we approach our holy triune God? allow him to do his work in us, that he might bring forth the life that he wants to bring, whereby he'll be glorified. We will not be glorified because we have lost everything and counted it all but lost. But he will be exalted by resurrecting us, by bringing us back from the dead to live a life for him. Be intimate with God. This is his ultimate desire for you. The best life you can ever have is through an intimate relationship with the triune God. Let's pray. Father, we've heard many words today. We've heard your word. spoken from the pulpit, quoted. We pray whatever part of this message, and especially your word that you want to use to convert us, to get into our souls and our minds and our hearts and our wills, wherever it needs to go to have free course, that we might receive that engrafted word that's able to save our souls, a very present saving, active saving. Lord, we want to glorify you. You must be everything and we are nothing. Help us, help us, by your grace, to see this more clearly. Use this today for your glory. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.