Well, it's lovely to be back here. It's lovely to be in another church that has an evening service. It's becoming rare as hen's teeth these days. And it's just, I don't know that that certainly doesn't make us any better. It probably shows we're more needy. But it is lovely to be with you and to have this opportunity to not only speak about the Word of God with you, to speak a little bit about later on, and I hope you'll stay, what God is doing in Columbia, which is the closest thing to what we read of in the book of Acts that I've ever seen and been involved with personally. And it's absolutely riveting and marvelous to see God taking away the blindness and giving an opportunity to a people whose heritage is nothing like ours, and who at last are getting something other than what Pastor Ortiz describes as the two kinds of religion here by and large, neither which have doctrine. There's the Roman church with mystery and no doctrine, and there is the hysterical Pentecostal church with hysteria and no doctrine. And along comes reformed Christianity, confessional, teaching, and church discipline and order, compassion, and transparency. And God has been pleased to use Lanell's ministry, particularly in the lives of two men who now are in cities different from where they were converted. And the work that they're doing is marvelous to know of and to see and to participate in. Mark mentioned my going down. I've been going down every year at least once since 2006. I met Leonel a number of years ago. I wanted to say these few words before I come to my sermon, because it's important in case some of you can't stay. But I met him when he came up here to be examined for ordination at the church where he spoke this morning, which is the Evangelical Congregational Church in Lancaster, Massachusetts, just up the road. And I was so impressed with how much he knew of the gospel and of the scriptures. because it was rare to find someone that knew the scriptures in this way and had a testimony such as he did of conversion out of having sought the priesthood for a time and was disillusioned with it, became married, had marital problems, and God brought into his life someone who pointed him to the scriptures and to Christ. And he was converted and was truly converted with his wife, and they zealously began to want to serve the Lord as teachers first in the jungle. And then, and we have a sense of where they are now and have been for a number of years. And so, he had been after me for years to come down there. And I was a father of kids in the house. I was on a Christian school board. I was, yes, coming to NERF meetings. I was working a job in Boston and pastoring. I didn't have time to go to Columbia. But the time finally came when I could go. And what a trip it was and what a wonderful experience every one of them has been. And it's so delightful to go where there's a hunger to be taught and a willingness to change. That's always the issue for us, isn't it? When we read the Word of God and when it's preached and we hear it, are we willing to change? That's a sign of the tenderness of heart, and I don't mean abandon the truth. I mean be changed, as the Apostle describes it, from one degree of glory to another. Because that's the process of our sanctification, is change. Moving more towards the likeness of Christ. Tonight I'm going to be reading from Philippians 3, and you're welcome to follow along if you would like to. beginning at verse 17 and reading through verse 9 of chapter 4. So Philippians chapter 3, verse 17 through chapter 4, verse 9. Before we reread, let me ask the Lord's blessing on this time together. Gracious Father, we thank you for your word and Holy Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, who enable the prophets and the apostles to write this word without error. We look to you to bless that word as we read it and seek to look into it tonight. Come and do your work, that work which makes it effectual for our good and your glory. We pray for Christ's sake. Amen. Hear the Word of God, Philippians 3.17, Brothers, become imitators of me, and keep your eye on those who walk in this way, just as you have us as a pattern. For many about whom I was saying to you, but even now weeping I repeat, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. they mind earthly things. Rather, our citizenship is in heaven, from where we indeed expect a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation and conform it to the body of his glory, according to the power that enables him to subject even all things to himself. So then, my beloved, and longed for, brothers, my joy and crown. In this way stand firm in the Lord, beloved. Euodia I beseech and Syntyche I beseech to think the same thing in the Lord. Yes, I am asking you, true yoke fellow, join in helping these women who have striven along with me for the gospel and with Clement and the rest of the fellow workers whose names are in the Book of Life. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say it. Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is near. Worry about nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. and the peace of God, which surpasses understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is genuine, whatever is serious, whatever is just, whatever is holy, whatever is lovely, whatever has a good reputation, if there is any excellence and if any praise, Think on these things. And what you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice, and the God of peace will be with you. So far the reading of God's word and he'll add his blessing to it. You know, the Christian life begins with thinking. And it continues with thinking. For a person to be converted, they have to have truth enter their ears and get into their head. And it has to do something to them, to be sure. It has to penetrate below the head. But it starts with the mind. That God is. That he is what he is. That we are what we are, creatures of his hand and marred by our own acts, representatively in Adam, and our daily thoughts and words and deeds, and so on. And we know these doctrines. They are clear to us. How should the godly think? What should they do? These are the two basic questions that Paul is dealing with all the time in his letters. And they may seem strange to us because we're very different from one another, all of us. Sometimes we're more conscious of those differences than others. Men and women, younger and older, single, married, divorced, healthy, sick, naturally bright, struggle with everything, lazy, industrious. There are all these differences, they continue. And perhaps the greatest difference, which challenges my thesis here, is we have slightly differing views about the Bible, about what it says, about what it teaches us. And how do we reconcile this? How do we deal with it? I love what Paul says earlier when he says, if in any other thing you think, if you think differently than I do on this, persevere. God will show it to you. It's so hard for us who are pastors to hear somebody differ and we think, now, they just need to get over that view. That's just not helping them. That's what I used to think. Now I know better. No, he's gracious with people. He understands that. I love this verse in this passage. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is near. Other translations, The Lord is at hand. I don't think Paul means the Lord's coming soon. I think it means Jesus Christ is close to you and he was gentle. He would not break the bruised reed. He wouldn't snuff out the smoldering wick. He's patient, kind. And we think of the apostle as this courageous, fearless, proclaimer of the truth in front of Agrippa, in front of Festus, in front of Felix, finally in front of Nero, that monster. Paul says to the Corinthians, I was terrified when I was with you. We never would have imagined this. All of this is such a comfort to us pastors. But let's look at this passage. Let's see what it has to say to us about how we should think and what we should do. There are really five paragraphs here of what I read. The first one, brothers become imitators of me and keep your eye on those who walk in this way just as you have us as a pattern for many about whom I was saying to you before and now repeat weeping, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly. Their glory is their shame. They mind earthly things." This paragraph tells us that everybody, every one of us, is a pattern. And it's a pattern either to be followed or not, in part or in whole. It's not a question of whether you should be one or you want to be one. We are. patterns, for better or worse. And this extraordinary thing that Paul begins this closing section of this marvelous, marvelous letter is he tells them to follow me, imitate me. And we are quick to say, oh, he's an apostle. He wrote letters without error. Well, Well, look what he says right after that. Did you see it? And keep your eye. That's my translation of this. You notice it's a little different translation. I'm trying to catch your attention here. Make sure you're really reading what the words say, because there's ways of saying it a little differently that'll help us. Oh, that's what that's after. Keep your eye on those who walk in this way, the way I do. Just as you have us, who's us? It's Paul and his fellow workers. It's Paul and the other apostles. That's why I'm so concerned about Syndice and Euodia in this passage. They're fellow workers. I mean, they're not pastoras. I have this joke about pastoras in South America. That means a female pastor. There are a number of them. And they're on the radio. I have about five Spanish radio stations that in trying to improve my feeble Spanish, I listen to. The content is terrible. But some of the clearest Spanish I hear is from pastoras. That is to say, I can at least understand what they're saying. Now, Paul's not saying they're pastors or elders. He's saying they are fellow workers. And they set a pattern. That's what's so disturbing. In some ways, it has been argued, the resolution of the conflict between Euodia and Syndicate was a major reason for this letter. And it may be so, because in other parts of this letter, Paul talks about thinking the same thing, doesn't he? That magnificent hymn of chapter two, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, and then he describes it. We seldom think of the context of that great Christocentric and magnificent doctrinal passage about who Jesus Christ is and what he did. But it was written to change people's minds, to get them to stop acting the way they were, self-centered, devoted to their own little life, their own ways, regardless of others, heedless of others. And Christians are not to live that way. This morning I preached on the greater importance of corporate worship to private worship and a series on the elements of worship in our service because I want us to see these are rooted in the scriptures. And I pointed out to our people as I began that the Last Judgment will be a worship service. And at that service, all throughout the earth who have ever lived, who disdain the Lord's Day, who disdain the company of the people of God, who, like today and all around us, went their own ways, enjoying God's gifts but paying no heed to Him or His people, His Word, His righteousness. They will stand before Christ. They will bow before Christ. They will bring what the psalmist called feigned worship, but they will bow down together before him and then they will be banished to privacy. Not the privacy they crave, not the solitude, not life as they want it, but the solitude that Jesus Christ describes six times in Matthew and once in Luke as a place where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. No, corporate worship will be the end of all things. And for the saints, we read of no private worship in heaven. In heaven there will finally be a city without problems, without the need of privacy, without weariness, without all of the things that corrupt and bring about the situation that the apostle describes in this first paragraph where he says, I tell you weeping, it was no joy to the apostle to know that people had departed the faith. Whenever someone walks away from the people of God or walks away from the Lord Jesus Christ, particularly if they've known these things, if they've tasted of the heavenly gift, it's terrifying to us because there's nothing else that can help them. And if they reject the only means, and have perhaps done so irrevocably, so that the Holy Spirit has been blasphemed, there is no hope for them in this life or the next. So Paul, weeping, describes these people, and in describing them he's telling you, you don't follow these people. They have a pattern, but you don't follow it. And we are inundated with patterns. You turn on the television, you're getting a pattern. You're getting somebody telling you how to live, telling you how inadequate you are because you don't have this product, you don't go to this place, you don't do this thing, you don't know this fact. It's a pattern, and it wants you to follow it. And that's the way the world is. Philip's wonderful translation of Romans 12, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. And Paul's warning them about these people who he says with tears have departed the faith. And then in the second paragraph, he contrasts this by saying that we must not and certainly ought not to think like the citizens of the world because we aren't really citizens of the world. And I'm not saying we are not citizens. We are, of course, and we have responsibility as citizens. Mark prayed for a country. We're commanded to pray for those in authority. We sin against them if we talk about them and don't pray for them. But our citizenship is in heaven. This is a temporary one, just like our life here is temporary. We are strangers in pilgrims, and strangers in pilgrims, by definition, aren't citizens. They're on their way somewhere else. And so Paul says, no, as we think about our life here and we know the trials that come to us in mind and especially in body as we age, we lose our powers, we can't think as we did before, we lose a step, and we become fearful about what's ahead. He says, no, We must think about the one who has the power to transform this body and to make it like his glorious body. Some of you know that my mother, who would have been 102 on March 11, died about 10 days before that. And I had the great privilege of being with her when she died. I don't think she knew I was there. In fact, the three days that I was with her. But I thought of her as she withered away My mother never exercised, but she walked faster than any woman I ever knew. She never dieted and didn't need to. She had a marvelous metabolism. She never talked about it. She didn't worry about the outward person. But I began to see it with her when she got to, well, about 97. That's when she started to really wither. And at the end, just a panting body. And when the last breath came at about 525 on that afternoon, I had tremendous joy. Not because mother was out of pain, because she wasn't in pain. God spared her from pain. She feared pain and dying more than anything. She wanted to die in her sleep. Well, she actually did. But because she was with Christ. And the body she will receive will be like Christ's glorious body. And that citizenship, that place, is where we are, Paul says, to put our minds. Set your affections on things above, he says to the Colossians. And he's saying the same thing. Paul says the same thing everywhere, he just says it slightly differently, so that we'll finally get it. Third paragraph is, as I say, this plea to Euodia and Syntyche. And what does this paragraph tell us? I beseech you, Sinneke, to think the same thing in the Lord. Get your minds together. So often, when we're at odds with somebody, if we're honest, it's because there's a prejudice in our mind that really doesn't have the foundation that we think it does. We built the foundation out of sand. But this superstructure of anger, bitterness, grief, or worse, self-righteousness. I'm right and they're wrong and maybe you are right. But it starts in the mind. And I want you to think the same thing, he says, in the Lord. And I'm asking you, true yoke-fellow, and we have no idea who this yoke-fellow is, sometimes in the margin, The word yoke fellow is transliterated as a name, but Paul seemed to know that whoever this was would know who he was talking about when he wrote him. Join in helping these women who have striven along with me for the gospel. It's often translated labored with me, but this is a figure Paul takes from the athletic field. He says, we're in the games. You know, he likes the metaphor of the games. He uses it a number of times. He even uses boxing. It's amazing, but he boxes himself. He says at the end of 1 Corinthians 9. Here it's, they've striven along with me. They've been in the contest. And what's sad about this is not so much for them personally, It's because the ministry that they were doing and needs to be done is affected by it. Their pattern is blurred. Their pattern is distorted. And it's affecting people. Brothers and sisters, in our marriages, in our families, in our workplace, in the Church of Christ, the way we speak, the way we act affects people. and we may not know how it affects them. That's why that magnificent prayer at the end of Psalm 19 is appropriate for all of us at any time. May the words of my mouth, and before that, the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. What a wonderful prayer. You could pray that every day. You could pray it at lunch. You could pray it at supper. Never pray it too much. that the Lord would enable us to have the thoughts that would issue in the deeds that would provide the pattern that is apostolic. Is Paul, when he tells us to follow him, when he's pleading with Euodia and Syndice, when he's talking about getting this matter straightened out, is he forgetting that we're to be conformed to the image of Christ? No, he's the one that wrote that. He's not forgetting. He wrote Romans 8. 28 and 29 and 30. It's like he wrote this. I think of Paul as the John the Baptist to Jesus in terms of our sanctification. Because our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin. He was tempted in all points as we are, but he never sinned. You teenagers, he never disobeyed his parents. He never wanted to disobey his parents. From a child. And his parents were sinners, and he was not. That is, his mother, Joseph was not his father, of course, but his earthly parents. All through those years, we see the life of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels for three short years, three and a half years. Only at age 12 do we have a hint of what he was like. And already at age 12, his absorption of the Word of God, the Hebrew Scriptures from the synagogue readings, from probably his own study when he wasn't helping at home or doing whatever he did as a child, and enabled him to sit with the Pharisees, the leaders of the temple, and astonish them at his answers to the Word of God, which he learned as a human being in his human nature. and he never sinned all those years. Yet he was tempted like we are in everything. Well, we know the Apostle Paul is a sinner. He persecuted the church. He saw himself as the chief of sinners. And so we have an empathy with Paul that we don't have yet with our Lord Jesus. One day we will be made sinless. One day we will look back upon our lives in a way that we cannot imagine now. I don't know how we could think about it without just melting away When we come to the place of glorification and we stand before Christ and all the perfection that he has earned for us, how will we be able to think of the past? Well, in that glorified body and that mind, God will enable us to receive his hand that wipes away every tear from our eyes. What a precious hope. No, when mature Christians like Euodia and Cindy Quarrell, far from being imitated or ignored, they are to be pacified, they are to be brought to peace with one another with all the efforts and means that we have individually and as a church. We want to bring them to repentance and we want to bring them to restored service in the church of Christ. That's the goal. And so what is the solution? Well, I think When he begins chapter four, he's telling you how to solve this problem. It's a context to Paul's writing. It may not seem so at times, but here's the fourth paragraph. Rejoice in the Lord always. Maybe you don't feel like rejoicing with syndicates and euodia causing a furor in the church, but I'm telling you to rejoice. Again, I will say it in case you missed it. Rejoice. Let your gentleness If you're dealing with the Odin Syndicate, there may be some fireworks, but let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is nearby. He's watching. He sympathizes with us. He understands. Worry about nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Dear Saints, I think we often sin against the Lord in this way in regard to prayer. We think of him as a man and we say, how can I go back to him with this same problem? How can I go back to him and say, Lord, I've sinned again? It's like that broken limb that breaks again so easily. The sins which so easily beset us. How can I go back? Dear Saint, to whom else will you go? Who else will hear you? Who else is infinite in patience? Who else is, as God Almighty has taken on our nature precisely to suffer for the sins that you don't want to take to Him because you're ashamed? I know this. I suspect all of you do who know your heart in some measure and measure it against the righteousness of God. Our blessed God in His three Persons is not a man. He is God. And He bids us come to Him, and come to Him, and come back to Him. And that's why Paul, all through his letters, not only talks about prayer, he prays. They're full of prayer. And if we prayed more, and thought less, when it comes to those needs, worrying about them, he says worry about nothing because he knows how you're going to think. You see, he's talking about thinking here. Worry is thinking. You don't think about worry as thinking, but of course it's thinking. You're thinking about something that makes you worry, and worry is a kind of thinking that starts to paralyze you. It can. It's a wrong kind of thinking. You're following the wrong pattern. It's what we do. And oh, how easily we do it, huh? How easily it is. Preaching to myself and all of this, I know, No, prayer is, well, I think of the apostle's example here. Think of the hours, the days, the weeks, the months he spent in prison. Whatever the nature of the prison, and it was, of course, very different. The prison in Philippi with his back in shreds with Silas at midnight was different than probably what he had in Rome. Many hours alone, and what was Paul doing during those alone hours? I can almost guarantee you what he was doing. He was doing exactly what he was doing when he was sitting in Damascus for three days and was blind. And for the first time in his life, he really was praying. And I want to know when I get to heaven, I want a rerun of those prayers. Because this Pharisee knew the Bible. He knew the Hebrew Scriptures. He gives us his pedigree. And yet, after the experience on the Damascus Road, when he heard this voice say, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, it was like lightning had struck his head and run to his feet. And as he sat three days blind, thinking on all the passages of the Old Testament that he knew so well, so that's what this was about. So that's why the Messiah had to suffer. So that's what the sacrifices were for. So that's what the tabernacle furniture and the temple furniture were about. It was about this person that I was trying to kill his disciples. That's why I could never get over that. Never! But he didn't wallow in it. He came back to this Christ who forgave him. Who loved him and gave himself for him. And he gloried in it. He gloried in his sufferings for this person. Dear saints, when you've got time on your hands and you don't know what to do, take up something novel. Pray. Praise. Give thanks. Oh, what a privilege we have to stay in the presence of the infinite God who never tires of hearing us. And it's in that context, that context, that Paul says, and the peace of God which surpasses understanding, will guard or be the custodian of your heart and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. This piece is so wonderful, and that's really the goal, isn't it? Jesus said, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives. I'm giving you my peace, it's not the world's peace, because the world doesn't really know what peace is. Because the peace Jesus gives is the same tranquility of mind that carried him, despite what he was going to face in Gethsemane and afterwards, right through to the end. That assurance that the Word of God, written centuries before, inspired by the Spirit, spoken through the prophets about him, had to be fulfilled. And that Word gave him peace because he trusted the God who had given it. And for us to have peace, for us to have that quietness of spirit, that tranquility, that powerful foundation that enables us to suffer and to go through whatever God sends upon us in this troubled life, as the Heidelberg Catechism describes it, that peace comes as we rest and stay in the presence of God. And that's prayer. The final paragraph of this passage that we're looking at. Finally brothers. Paul says finally several times in this letter, but this is the really final finally. Finally brothers. And then he lists all these words. And they're very rich words. And I'm not going to read the list again, but you can look at various translations of the way they translate the words. And there are those who feel like what Paul is saying here is that the culture around you and the people around you can provide you with something of a model because in this list of words, well, there's one word that isn't used anywhere else in the New Testament, There is another word that's used rarely. And even the word excellence, if there be any excellence, is the only place Paul ever uses that word. And it only shows up in 1 Peter and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, interestingly enough, it's used to translate the word praise. But then he says, if there's anything excellent, and if there's anything of praise, or as it's often translated, worthy of praise. So it looks like Paul's saying, praise, praise. And he doesn't mind repeating either. He just repeated to rejoice, and I'm saying it again, rejoice. And remember, Paul was a Jew. As a Jew, we knew the standards of Hebrew poetry, which was to say something and then say it again, slightly differently. or to say something and say it's opposite, so that you get it. Because God, in inspiring his prophets to write, gave them the material in a way that was most calculated for it to stay in our dull heads. So what's Paul saying in this paragraph? I don't think he's saying anything of the sort. He's not telling us suddenly, you've started with Christ, let's be completed by looking at the culture. No, that's inconceivable to Paul, the Pharisee, and now the apostle of Jesus Christ. He's the one who wrote that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. God is the source of everything good. Everything commendable is behind what Paul's saying here. Ephesians 5.1 says it just on dead center. Beloved, be imitators of God as dear children. We are to be imitators of God. And that stands to reason, because we are made in His image. And that image is being restored by the power of the indwelling God, the Holy Spirit, to make us like Himself. And so this list of words, this list of things that we are to think, are all to be found in Christ and in the gospel and in the fruit of the gospel and particularly what Paul is saying here and I think summing up is what he said as we began our passage in verse 17 of chapter 3. Be imitators of me and of those who have us as a pattern. Those are fellow workers. I don't know about you but I have more heroes that I wish to follow who are dead than alive. That's why it's good to read books by the Puritans. And it's good to read biography. When Lena was at our house on Friday night with our folks, we had a wonderful discussion about the woman who did so much pioneer work in the Colombian jungles beginning in 1944 when converted through a Bible study of some street preachers. She left her job in the New York Times and went to the jungles of Columbia. And there she stayed until just before her death. And I was thinking of David Livingston, who today is often thought of as a pioneer, a geographer, even a businessman. But David Livingston's goal pricked in heart as he was by the horrors of what he saw of the slave trade, was to bring the gospel indeed, but also to provide, if possible, a means of transportation intercontinentally in Africa in order to introduce work that would produce money that would somehow rival the lucrative nature of the slave trade. David Livingston died on his knees in his tent in the Congo. And the natives, his fellow workers, cut out his heart and buried it there because they said his heart is in Africa. And they carried his body 3,000 miles to the coast and it was brought back and is now buried in Westminster Abbey in London. He is someone to follow. There's a pattern. And there's so many others. And folks, Paul ends by saying, doesn't he, as if we had any doubt that these qualities he's talking about are found in Christ and found in the godly, he says, and what you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do it. How are you to think? You're to think as those who follow our pattern live. See the qualities in their lives. See the gospel lived out. See the reality of it in their prayer life, in their gentleness, in their willingness to change, repent, to be whatever God wants them to be and to do. And then what you've heard from me, what you've seen in me, what you've received from me and learned, do it. No, the simple answer is, How are we to think? We're all to think the same. Oh, but how boring, you say. I don't want to think like so-and-so. Shame on you. You want to think like Paul tells you to think. And the more you think like Paul tells you to think, the more you'll think alike, the more you'll love each other, the more the fruit of the Spirit will be manifest, and then you will act in the same way, and you will create a pattern and a pattern that increasingly will look more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is our goal, folks. 1 John 3 tells us that we don't know yet what we will be like, but we do know this. When Jesus Christ appears, we will be like Him because we'll see Him as He is. That's the goal. That's the goal. So may the Lord enable us to guard how we think, saturate our minds with the words and meditation on the Word of God and the God of the Word, to be men and women, young people of prayer, seeking the Lord's face, and that we would be fearless in the way we live the Christian life, knowing we are a pattern. And may it be for good in God's glory. Let's pray. Precious Father, your word is a lamp unto our feet, a light to our path. It is our life, as Moses told Israel. It is our life. And you, dear Lord Jesus Christ, are the living word. You've come into the world to show us that word lived out to perfection. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to see that the Christian life is not something we add on to ourselves. If we are Christians, it is our life. We don't have any other life. We shouldn't want any other life. And we should glory in you. And oh, Father, if there are those here tonight who are strangers still to this life, they don't think of you this way. And their pattern is not something that they know people should follow. because they don't love you, they don't know you as Lord and Savior, and you're not their God. We pray for them tonight that they would surrender to you. You would grant them a broken and a contrite heart and faith that you will change them and make them followers of the Apostle and followers of you, dear Savior. But Lord, for all of us who do know you, by your grace, by your sheer mercy, we pray that there will be upon us a new sense of our responsibility to think and act at all times, every moment of every day, in a way that will be pleasing to you. And Lord, we're weak. We are sinners. We fail. Doubt. We leave off the means of grace. We don't come to you as we should. There's so many other things, Lord, in those transgressions when we do things we should not do. But, O Father, draw us back to Yourself. Drive us back to Yourself. Help us to see there's no other place of refuge than at the cross of Jesus Christ. And that there is a welcome. Welcome sinners. Come. May no one here, Lord, May no one here turn away from you tonight. May we, with a whole new sense, turn and face the cross and rejoice in the hope that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, bring glory to you. Thank you for this church. Pray your blessing upon Mark, the elders, the deacons, all of the people here. Encourage them. Strengthen them. Build them up. And may they, Lord, be a pattern and a shining light in this area as was already prayed for the glory of Your name, dear Lord Jesus Christ. We pray for Your sake. Amen.