Well, let's continue our worship in prayer then. Father, I pray that even just in this brief consideration so far this morning that you have gathered up our hearts and our minds. It is so easy for us in the routines of life, the stresses of life, the preoccupations of the day, the things that would capture our attention, sometimes needfully. So many things move our hearts and minds away from what Paul referred to as the simplicity of devotion to Christ. And I pray, Father, that in all of the needfulness of life, in work, and parenting, and life, and homes, and all of the things that rightly take our time, that even in those things that we would be worshipers, that the lives that we live in the moments, in the circumstances, that all of that would reflect the simplicity of devotion to the Lord Jesus. For it's truly in abiding in our hearts and our minds in Him. It's truly by focusing on Him, being like that tree planted by the streams of water, the person who meditates on your revealed truth day by day. To the psalmist, it was the Torah, but the Torah has become yes and amen and Jesus our Lord. And as those who meditate on Him, we find ourselves established. We find ourselves with leaves that don't wither. We find ourselves bearing fruit and season and prospering in all we do. Perhaps not prospering in the way that we would hope, perhaps not prospering in the way that the world tells us is prosperity, but flourishing and thriving in the peace and the rest that are found in you. And so, Father, may we be truly witnesses in this world of the Messiah, the life that has come in him. May we be testifiers to the Lord Jesus, who is the King over all the earth. And as we come again to consider the climax of his work, the climax of his testimony that came in this thing that we call atonement, I pray that you will Teach each of us that you will, again, gather up our thoughts, gather up our hearts, focus our understanding, and enable us to grow in a true and a living and a fruitful knowledge of the living God in Christ by the Spirit. We ask these things in his name and for his sake, amen. As I mentioned when we got started, my hope is that we're going to start bringing some of these themes together that we've seen as we spent so much time moving through the Old Testament and developing a theology of the kingdom. And then we come to the Gospels and we see Jesus beginning to herald that kingdom. Remember the way Mark began. Jesus began going through the towns of Galilee and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom is at hand. repent and believe the good news, the good news that the kingdom is at hand. And that's the kingdom that, again, the scriptures have developed from the very beginning. That's the kingdom that has to be our understanding as we think about the person of Christ and how this kingdom was to be proclaimed and inaugurated, how it was to be established, what it means to be a part of that kingdom. So Jesus' life and ministry was focused on manifesting and proclaiming, making known that kingdom to the sons of Israel. That kingdom that the scriptures has presented. And again, as we've seen, that kingdom speaks to God's intent for his creation. Really, it's the summing up of everything in the Messiah such that God becomes all in all. That's what the kingdom of God is about. It's not about an Israelite-centric, Jerusalem-based millennial kingdom. It's not about some kind of spiritual thing of a collection of people off in heaven for eternity. It's about God realizing his designs for his creation. What we saw introduced at the very beginning in Genesis 1 and 2, a God who creates a creation to be a sanctuary that he will inhabit and be present in and interactive with through the image that he puts in the center of the sanctuary. The image bearer who is to be image son. The one in whom God carries out his own wise, loving, flourishing lordship in the world. The knowledge of God covering the earth as the waters cover the seas in and through the human creature who is that image and likeness. That's what the kingdom is all about, and that's the kingdom that Jesus came heralding. We saw that incarnation sits at the center of that, in that in a very profound way, it's not just that incarnation brought forth a man named Jesus who could now speak about these things and testify of them through his words, through his works. but even the incarnation itself is the substantial embodiment of the truth of the kingdom. If the kingdom is what we're talking about, God becoming one, intimately one with his creation in and through the human creature, we see that substantially realized in Jesus himself in this thing called incarnation. So the incarnation not just facilitated the message of the kingdom, Jesus himself actually embodied the truth of the kingdom. He was the living, walking embodiment of the things that he was proclaiming. So incarnation, as I've said so many times, really is the central idea that we have to get right, even as we put together this thing of the kingdom and how it's to be realized in the world, and what it means in terms of the human race, what it means for us even in terms of our relationship with Jesus himself. So as I say in the notes here, and just kind of as a summary statement, through incarnation, Creator and creation would attain their eternal destinies. God had ordained a destiny for himself. We may not often think of it, but God has his own eschatology. God has his own destiny towards which he had purposed himself. And incarnation is the way in which we see that destiny being realized. God's intent to create a creature through whom he would become actually a part of his creation everlastingly. The way in which he would become one with his creation was in and through a creature whose own life and likeness he would take up to himself everlastingly. So even when we think about things like the immutability of God, we have to think of it in terms of this trajectory and destiny that God appointed for himself. The incarnation was a radical change in the Godhead and one that would endure forever. But yet God can still remain immutable in the sense that all of that was in accordance with his eternal design, his eternal purpose, even his own character, even who he is. So incarnation was the way in which substantially creator and creature both attain their eternal destinies. That was the kingdom that Jesus was manifesting. That was what he was getting at in the things he was saying and doing. But as we've seen, ultimately Jesus didn't just come into the world to talk about something called the kingdom of God and put it on hold for some future time whenever that might happen to be. He had come to inaugurate that kingdom. the kingdom of God is at hand. And that's where this issue of atonement starts coming into the picture. And that's why last time I wanted to just set aside the whole thing of the cross and forget that for a moment and talk about this biblical concept of atonement, what it really is about, because that's the lens through which we have to interpret Christ's own atoning work, this thing that we would call the cross. And what I want to do today as we move from a general theology of atonement to how that pertains to Jesus is to deal with atonement in a way that perhaps we haven't thought about before, but hopefully we've laid the foundation for last week and can get our arms around today, which is the relationship between atonement and incarnation. Often we think of, okay, incarnation was the way in which we could get this sinless human being coming into the world so that he could go at the end of his life and do this thing called atonement. We want to kind of push this thing of atonement out to the cross and say incarnation was just the way in which we could get there. But actually what I hope to establish today is that Incarnation, just as the Incarnation was the substantial embodiment of the kingdom of God, and when we understand what the kingdom of God is about, we can also say when we understand what Atonement is, as we considered it last week, that Incarnation is also the substantial fulfillment or achievement of Atonement. incarnation itself was the substantial achievement of atonement. That's what I hope to show today. So I say in the notes, when atonement is rightly understood in relational and kingdom terms, and that's what we did last week, it becomes evident that it is the essence of God's atoning work in his Son, even as it was the essential embodiment of the kingdom itself. the kingdom that atonement was to enable and usher in. If atonement is the way in which the kingdom would be inaugurated, both of those things have their substantial essence, essential reality in this thing we call incarnation. and hopefully we'll even see why it's important. This isn't just a matter of, okay, these are interesting theological thoughts. They have a very significant practical importance to us as believers as well. So we start with the premise that incarnation is the kingdom in its essence. Why? Because the kingdom of God was about God becoming one with his creation. God becoming all in all through summing up everything in the heavens and the earth. Heavens and earth as the two categories of creation, right? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The heavens doesn't just refer to space and the sky above us, but heaven is ultimately this realm that God inhabits but in relation to his creation. Heaven, in that sense, is a created thing. Before there was anything, there was God. There wasn't heaven, a place that he inhabited. He just is, right? So the heavens and the earth are a created thing, and God's intent, if you will, in this thing called the Kingdom of God is to bring heaven and earth together. The imagery of Revelation 21. A new heavens and a new earth that consists, or in a visionary way, looks like the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to the earth. Now the dwelling of God is with men. That's what this is all about. The bringing together of God and his creation in a perfect, exhaustive intimacy with human beings at the center. I in you, you in me. Incarnation is the way in which that became substantially realized. In Christ, we see God becoming one with his creation. But that oneness with the creation in incarnation, God and man specifically becoming one, what was ontologically realized, and by ontology I mean in the nature of a thing, the being of a thing. The incarnation was the being of God becoming one with the being of man. But that ontological union has to be lived out, it has to be fleshed out, it has to be experientially worked out, or it's actually falsified. So my point is that what we see in the life of Jesus is, as we've seen even in this series, the work of incarnation. The life of Jesus was the work of incarnation. It was Jesus living out, moment by moment, day by day, the truth of incarnation, that he and the Father were one. So the phenomenon of incarnation that began when, by the Spirit, the man Jesus is conceived by the Spirit in the womb of Mary, that reality now has to be experientially lived out, and that's what the life of Christ was all about. And that will be important in terms of understanding this issue of atonement and why we trace it back to incarnation as opposed to just the end point, the cross itself. So God's intent then was that his incarnate son should be his true image son. Image son meaning man of the Spirit. It wasn't just, hey, I'm God and I'm man. I'm fully God and I'm fully divine, you know, fully God and fully man, fully divine, fully human. Okay, let's get on with it and go to the cross. The whole life of Jesus was fleshing that out, working that out, demonstrating that. Realizing it in himself unto the end that it would be realized for the human race as well. So Jesus was obliged to live out his, incarnation in his moment-by-moment human life. Not just in order to truthfully testify to it, although that is the case, but to fulfill that. Incarnation itself needed to be fulfilled in the working out practically of the union of God and man. The incarnate son should become true image son, and as image son a new Adam, the beginning of a new humanity. Okay, well what does all this have to do with Atonement, and specifically the claim that I've made that the substance of Atonement is incarnation? Atonement didn't have its substance in the cross. It had its substance in incarnation. How can I say that? I mean, again, that's something that people don't often think about. And in fact, they might even deny because we say, well, wait a minute. Atonement has to do with reconciling the relationship between a holy righteous God and sinful people. Atonement is about reconciling alienation, enmity. It has to do with sinful fallen human beings and a righteous God. Well, Jesus was the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. How can we tie this back to his life and even incarnation itself? Well, the answer lies in the fact that this is the marrow of what I want us to see today, and it may not be new to some of us. It might be new to some of us. The answer to that question lies in the fact that the incarnate Son was born into and fully inhabited, fully participated in the Adamic human existence that characterizes every human being. Why is that important? Because often we take this thing of incarnation and we want to make Jesus be some other kind of human being than we are. A divine human hybrid. He's not really like us. And the early Christological controversies in the church often wrestled with those questions. Is he a man like us? Is he a God fully like the God of heaven? How can he be a man like us? and be sinless? How can he be a man like us and be in this different category of relationship with God? Is he a quasi-human, unique, one-off individual? I've heard people say the reason that Jesus' blood was atoning is that it was God's blood. It was divine blood. It wasn't human blood. It was divine blood. That's why it was atoning. Well, those are ideas that are all grounded in this premise that Jesus was not what we are. He's something different than we are. And that's why I wanted us to read Hebrews 2. Because at the center of the argument of Hebrews 2 is that Jesus is just like us. Just like us. So he wasn't some sort of a divine-human hybrid or a quasi-human person, a one-off. He was a son of Adam in the same way that every human is. Think again. We've looked at Luke's genealogy, traced from Mary all the way back to Adam through a line of human beings. And I'll get to why that's important, even given the Catholics wanting to exempt Mary from original sin. Well, you'd have to exempt the whole human line back to Adam. He was a son of Adam in the same way that every human is. He fully shared in the Adamic nature, and by that I mean the fallen nature, the nature that is alienated from God, and that really is the key to understanding atonement. in relation to him, not just in terms of the cross, although including the cross, but all the way through his incarnation, through his entire life. As I say, that assertion seems controversial, even heretical, to some people. Throughout Church history, there's been kind of just an assumption, at least in certain traditions and through certain periods, that Jesus wasn't just like us. In fact, it's impossible that he could be a son of Adam as we are and be the spotless, sinless son of God. The whole point of incarnation, people argue, is that he's not like us. He's a different sort of person. But it's that apparent contradiction that's precisely the point. It was only by fully sharing in our Adamic humanness that Jesus could actually heal by contradicting it, condemning it, and crucifying it in himself. That's the perspective of the entire New Testament, and it really does, I think, reach its concentrated focal point in Hebrews, particularly in chapter 2, and that's why I wanted to read that. But here's what Thomas Torrance says. This is a very brief excerpt, but this is in his volume on incarnation. He says, one thing should be abundantly clear, and I would say even necessarily clear. If we don't get this, we really don't understand atonement. that if Jesus the Messiah did not assume our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, then our fallen humanity is untouched by his work. For the unassumed is the unredeemed, as Gregory Nazianzus, an early church father, put it. If the word of God did not really come into our fallen existence, if the Son of God did not actually come where we are and join himself to us and arrange himself with us where we are in sin and under judgment, how could it be said that Christ really took our place, took our cause upon himself in order to redeem us? So as much as it seems like a high view of Christ to exempt him from our lot, to make him something different than us, to make him something that is other than our Adamic way of being human, it seems like a lofty thing to exempt him in that way. We're actually robbing him of the very person that he is and the very work that he came to do. We can't really understand this thing of atonement, even as it implicates substitution and those sorts of concepts. So we have to begin with that understanding that Jesus was a full sharer in our Adamic humanness. And an easy way to show it, as I mentioned in the notes, is just the fact of Jesus' mortality. The fact that he could die, be put to death, he could die on a cross, shows us that he was a son of Adam as we are. It's not just that death, you know, death coming in Genesis 3, that that death is all about mortality. It's not. Mortality is really kind of a symptom or an offshoot of the death, which is the fundamental alienating of man from God. Man died when he lost the truth of himself, when he began to define and understand himself and execute his existence independent of the God who is the definition of who he is. Man, once he's cut off from the truth of himself, which he's cut off from when he's cut off from God, he dies to himself. He ceases to be truly man. But one outflow of that, or one consequence of that, was this thing that we call mortality. The perishing of our bodies, the perishing of our humanness. And Jesus was subject to that. He was subject to all the influences, all the pressures of human existence in a fallen world, but without yielding to them. This is what the Hebrews writer means when he says, He was tempted in every way as we are, but without sin. At every point, in every way, to every extent, at all times, Jesus opposed and withstood the fallen humanness into which he was conceived. This is what we call the active obedience of Christ. In some theological traditions they talk about his active obedience, his passive obedience, the cross being the passive obedience, his life his obedience, and often it's conceived in terms of Jesus kept the commandments, Jesus was obedient to the law, his active obedience. But really his active obedience is his life of true, authentic, faithful sonship. And that authentic sonship looked like a constant contradiction of and opposition towards the fallen sonship, the Adamic sonship into which he was born. That was the sense in which he's tempted in every way as we are. He was born into our lot, but at every point he was confronting and withstanding that by being a faithful son. So the event of incarnation involved the true and absolute union of God and man, but God and Adamic man. Yes, Jesus had no human father. Yes, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but he had a fully human mother. And I mentioned this Catholic doctrine of immaculate conception. We often apply that to Jesus. It's not about Jesus. It's about Mary. The doctrine of immaculate conception says that Mary was conceived without original sin. That's how we can explain the fact that she had a human offspring who was free of original sin, free of the taint of sin, free of Adamic humanness. she was conceived in a sinless state, and she died in that same state. So she was a one-off unique individual. But as I say, when you look at Luke's genealogy, which traces Jesus' human descent from Mary, it says supposed to be a son of Joseph, but really a son of Mary, all the way back to Adam, you'd have to apply immaculate conception pretty much all the way back down the line, or you're picking just the last person off the list. There's no scriptural support for that idea. In fact, you have the scripture everywhere emphasizing indirectly, if not directly, that Jesus is a human being in the same way that we are, exactly the same as we are. The fruit of Mary's womb was himself a son of Adam, just as all of Mary's ancestors were, just as Mary herself was. So the incarnation achieved the being-to-being, the ontological union of God and Adamic man. And if that's the case, if incarnation is the bringing together of God and alienated man, Adamic man, that very phenomenon of incarnation is itself atoning. We talked about how the principle of atonement is to reconcile alienation. That's what it's about. It's not about punishment in the first instance. It's not about retribution. It's not vengeance. Atonement brings propitiation. We saw that in Hebrews 2. What's propitiation? The making of peace between two parties that are at odds with one another. propitiation is about God. That was the way in which he kept Israel, the covenant son, at peace with him. God maintained the relationship of father and son with Israel through the system of atonement that brought propitiation. It was the way in which father and son could stay in a relationship of peace and reconciled goodness, reconciled integrity. When you had a constant threat to it, you had constant alienation and violation and distance and separation that was being achieved by Israel's waywardness. God was holding it together through this thing called atonement. Atonement is a relational thing, and it's about bringing together two estranged parties. If that's what atonement is, where do we see that happening in its substance in the scriptures in relation to the Messiah? Well, it had happened, we saw, all the way from the priesthood forward, right? This idea of atonement. But its actualization, the truth, the true reality of it, comes with incarnation. In the very womb of Mary, the minute that Jesus is conceived, you have the bringing together and intimate being-to-being union of God and alienated humanity. That's why it's important to understand that he was a son of Adam as we are. And from the point of that conception of Jesus, when he's born and the totality of his life, he was living out the reality of incarnation, which is the reality that by it, God was pulling back to himself and taking up into himself alienated humanity in order to heal it. That was what was happening in the man, the incarnate son, Christ Jesus. And throughout his life, Jesus is proving that out. He's working it out in the actual practice. This healing of broken, alienated humanity in himself that has its substantial realization in the Incarnation is now being fleshed out through the life that he's living. Atonement has its essence in Incarnation, but now Atonement is being fleshed out and worked out and actually realized, actualized through the life of Jesus. just as the principle of incarnation is worked out in Jesus' own life. Incarnation was about an imaged son. So it's not just enough to conceive Jesus in the womb of Mary. He's got to live out that incarnational life, the intimacy of God and man that is the intimacy of father and son. So that atoning principle, God pulling back to himself and healing alienated humanity, in this thing called incarnation, he's now actualizing that in a true way so that what was testified through in Mary's womb becomes realized in the actual life and practice of the human being Jesus of Nazareth. And as we saw from the vantage point of the scriptures themselves, the way they view this idea of incarnation and the working out of this reconciliation of God and Adamic humanity, they see it in terms of Israel's covenant God and Father taking up Israel's life and lot as his unfaithful estranged son in order to heal the relational covenantal breach that has occurred between God and Israel and secure Israel's faithfulness as son for the sake of its election and calling in the world. Remember when we talked about incarnation as such, we said it's not about this idea of persons and natures and subsistences and how does God get stuck together with man. The scripture understands it as this is the way in which the God of Israel returns to heal his people. Incarnation is about Yahweh returning to Zion in order to take up Israel's cause as himself becoming the servant Israelite through whom Israel will become Israel indeed. That's the way the scripture understands this idea of incarnation. So it was the essential fulfillment of the Lord's promise to return to Zion and heal and restore his covenant people through a faithful Israelite servant. But that healing of Israel was for the sake of the world, right? So it wasn't just about Israel. And that incarnational phenomenon, that joining of deity and humanity in Mary's womb, now, as I said, is fully accomplished in the living out of Jesus' own life as the incarnate son. So incarnation brought God and man together. Jesus' life of sonship healed the divine human relationship and made it be what God intended it to be all along. The incarnate son is to be image son. So what we call Jesus' active obedience was just the life of true sonship. It was living out the incarnational reality of I in you and you in me. So atonement, which pertains to creator-creature reconciliation, was foundationally realized in the union of God and Adamic man, fallen man, in incarnation. But that incarnational reconciliation was unto, it was the foundation for, it anticipated the complete reconciliation of God and man in an unbroken relationship of perfect communion and intimacy between Jesus and the Living God as Father and Son. Okay, well all that has to do with the person of Jesus. All that has to do with his own life. All of that Atonement idea has to do with, in a sense, his own Adamic humanity, right? His own Adamic humanness. and that being healed in relation to his Father. The life that Jesus lived just pertained to him particularly. That's where now we come to this issue of the cross. Why the cross? My point is this. If Atonement has its essential substance in the Incarnation itself, and if the reality of Incarnation or the reality of Atonement is actualized through Jesus' life of faithful sonship, that's the way in which, in principle, Adamic humanness is healed in relation to God. All that has to do with just Jesus himself. But it doesn't just have to do with Jesus himself. God's intent was that that truth of atonement, of reconciliation, would be not just human but cosmic. That's where the cross comes in. That's where we're going to go next time. Why the cross if Jesus dealt with all this himself? Why the cross if atonement is in his own incarnation, in his own faithful life? Well, because atonement needed to be universalized. That was the whole point, right? We talked about even incarnation itself doesn't just end with Jesus. We're not sons of God in the way that he is, but yet the goal of God is incarnational universalized, right? Incarnation universalized in the sense of a human race in which the incarnate one has his fullness. A human race that is made up of people who are partakers in the divine nature, right? the absolute intimate union of God and man, that incarnational reality realized for the whole human race. The atonement associated with Calvary only consummated what began in Mary's womb and was worked out through the totality of Jesus' life, culminating with the cross. So Calvary universalized the divine human atonement and reconciliation that existed in Jesus himself and his relationship with his father, so that it extended beyond this one son of Adam to all of his offspring in the entire alienated and exiled creation. So from the one hand, when we talk about just this objective reality of atonement, atonement as God reconciling himself to his essential creation or his estranged creation, that has its essential fulfillment, the objective reality of atonement has its essential fulfillment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He embodied in himself the reality of atonement through incarnation worked out in the context of a perfect father-son relationship. But God's goal was universal atonement, meaning cosmic reconciliation. Atonement is about reconciliation. Once again, we see already from Genesis 3 that human alienation brought creational alienation. Human alienation brought a curse on the whole creation. And so the healing of human beings has to ultimately look to God's design for the whole creation because human beings aren't significant in themselves. They're significant in terms of the role that they play in God's relationship with his wider creation. So it wasn't even sufficient, and this is where we come to even the significance of the cross. It wasn't sufficient simply to reconcile the human race to himself. The cross is bigger than that, and we often want to limit the cross to a handful of people who are the elect, who get to go to heaven. But when we understand again even the nature of incarnation, the nature of atonement, we're left with no option but universal atonement. Now we may have to rethink that. People hear universal atonement and they think, oh, everybody's going to heaven. that's not what universal atonement really speaks to. But God's intent was truly universal atonement, not just the human race, but the universe, the creation itself. It wouldn't be sufficient and it would actually be pointless for God to simply renew man, the human race, and leave the creation untouched because man could not fulfill his identity and vocation. How can man be said to be renewed if he's not fulfilling his created function, which is to be image lord over the works of God's hands, right? The whole creation has to be restored. So human reconciliation and renewal demanded that the creation also be reconciled and perfected according to its design. And as we read, I think, last time, Paul says that in the cross of Christ, God has reconciled to himself all things in the creation, things in the heavens, things in the earth, having made peace, propitiation through the blood of his cross. And we've struggled with that because, again, we want to limit the atonement of Christ to just the few that get saved, however many we think that is. And so we say, oh yeah, when he reconciled all things in the heavens, he's just saying all kinds of people, not just poor people, not just rich people, not just black people, not just white people, but all kinds of people. But that's not what Paul's saying. He's talking about a cosmic work. The cross was a cosmic work. the curse had come on all things through the failure of one man, the renewal of all things would come through the triumph, through the faithful sonship of one man, a new Adam. That's the theology of the New Testament. So God's intent was to sum up all things in his Son and that meant reconciling all creation to himself unto the goal of the creation's everlasting shalom and Shabbat, those creational realities that come into the picture in Genesis 1. We're going full circle back to the very beginning and the creation account, that the creation would be one with its creator, flourishing in his life, love, wisdom, and nurturing care in and through the human image bearer. And we can talk and we will talk about some of the practical aspects of viewing Christ in this way as taking up our Adamic humanness. But just as even a thinking point before I pray, I've heard this many times and maybe you have too, that people will say, God doesn't know what I'm going through. He doesn't know how hard my life is. Okay, yeah, well Jesus was a man, but he wasn't a man like me. He kind of floated above the fray. He didn't know how hard life is. He didn't know all the things that I struggle with. He didn't know my difficulties. He was a sinless guy. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. He lived this floating above the fray kind of life. God can't possibly know what I'm going through. And the whole point of Hebrews in this section that we read, and certainly a central theme in Hebrews, as he's writing to a people who are really suffering tremendously, he's saying, your God understands. Christ himself understands. He's not just that he can look down and he's omniscient and he sees what you're going through. He actually entered into your travail. He took up your travail. He healed your travail by bearing it in himself. You think he doesn't understand it? He took it up. And not just your travail, but the Adamic travail of a fallen race. Each of us have distinct travail in our life, right? There's a common lot that human beings have, a common lot of suffering and difficulty. But each of our lots are somewhat different in the way in which they work themselves out. And all of that was gathered up and taken up in the son of man who bore it. And as we'll see next time, confronted, contradicted, condemned, and ultimately crucified it by the time we come to Calvary. That should give us great encouragement when we're struggling, when we're wrestling, and we're saying, God, do you even understand? Do you hear? Do you sympathize? Do you get it? We just see this sovereign, detached, you know, guy sitting on a throne holding a scepter off there in some distant place. And we see he has no idea what I'm enduring moment by moment. But he lived it. He healed it from within. And that's a profound thing. And we lose that when we make Jesus a detached, sinless guy off there to the side who never experienced what we go through. So it's something for us to meditate on and think about, even as we consider our own relationship, and our walk, and this dynamic of sonship, and even wrestling with God in the struggles that we have. But let me at this point then close us in prayer, and then we'll conclude with this last song. Father, it may be that none of this is unfamiliar to us. And if that's the case, I rejoice to know that. But whether familiar or unfamiliar, these are things that need to be constantly at the center of our meditation and contemplation. If the man who is blessed, if the man who finds fruitfulness and stability, settledness, security in his life, if that person is the one who meditates on your revealed truth day and night, That revealed truth, that word, has become yes and amen in Jesus our Lord. He is the one in whom we see all that you are, all that you have purposed, all that you intend, all of what your creation is, all of what you created it to be. And at the center of that, who our God is in relation to man, the image bearer. All of that we see actualized and given its living, visible, tangible truth in Jesus our Lord. And it's in this way of viewing Jesus, when we can meditate on him and this marvelous mystery of incarnation and atonement that have come in him, when we can meditate on those truths day and night, then we will be like a tree planted by the streams of water. that is constantly sustained, constantly nourished, steadfast, unmoved, flourishing, never withering, bearing our fruit in season, and finding ourselves prospering in all of the circumstances of life. Even when it seems that we are beaten down into the dust, we are still flourishing. Father, but the only way that we will find that place, the only way that we will find that kind of life, the only way that we will live in that way is when we are people who are living upon the Lord Jesus in this way. So make us to be a meditative, studying, contemplating people in this way. As I pray so often, help us to be Christians indeed, Christ people, Messiah people. people who bear the life and the likeness and live according to the truth as it is in Jesus our Lord. So I pray father that you will take the things that we've considered today and you will enable us by your spirit to chew on them and to ruminate on them and to meditate on them deeply. Work them deeply into our hearts and minds and let them have a transforming effect. Let them be at the very center of this truth that we are renewed or transformed by the renewing of our minds. We pray that your spirit will do this work even as we know that he is the one who perfects the life and likeness of Christ in us. Help us to be yielded to his mind, yielded to his power, yielded to his leading. And in all the things, Father, that distract us, that deviate our walk, all of the things that would come against us, that would drive us down, that would discourage us, that would cause us to find ourselves despairing, even as we saw in Psalm 80, may we trust and know what you have accomplished in your son, what we are a part of. And Father, keep our hearts and minds settled on you, settled in this place. May we be stewards even of this ministry to one another, to be encouragers of the downhearted in this way. So bless us in these things. I pray for each one here that you will indeed do a work through them in their hearts and minds. Grow us up through them in Christ our Lord. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.