us anything that would give to the reading and preaching of this Word our most careful attention. By Your Holy Spirit, help us to open our hearts to this Word. To be willing to let this Word judge us and sift us and try us to see if there's any wicked way in us so we can repent of that way. and renew our obedience to your word. We pray, Holy Spirit, that as we come to this difficult passage, that you would do the work that Jesus promised you would do. And that is to lead us into all truth, to enlighten our hearts and minds, to behold wonderful things out of your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Our scripture text today is 2 Peter 1, verses 20 through 2, verse 11. But we're going to read the whole chapter 2 as well, so you can get the full impact of this chapter. So from 2 Peter 1, verse 20 through 2, verse 22, let us stand for the reading of the Word of God. But know this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies. even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter. And if he rescued Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly. from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. And especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed. Suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong, they counted a pleasure to revel in the daytime, their stains and blemishes reveling in their deceptions as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children, forsaking the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Baor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. But he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a dumb donkey, speaking with the voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by fleshly desires by sensuality those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption. For by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, a dog returns to its own vomit and a sow after washing returns to wallowing in the mire. You can be seated. Just reading that passage wears you out, doesn't it? I've never preached on it in 78 years because of the content of it. And yet it is as much the word of God as John 3, 16 or Psalm 23. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote a whole commentary on this book, 2 Peter, and I want to read to you how he began his sermon on this second chapter. He said, of all the chapters which are to be found in the entire Bible, this second chapter of the second epistle of Peter is among the most terrible for threatening, for warning, For the idea of doom and disaster and destruction, there is nowhere in the Holy Scripture itself which surpasses this particular chapter. Now the apostle here is helping these Christian people to face the future. That's why he writes like this. He's looking to the future and he's looking to their future and he prepares them for that future. If one does not believe the Bible's central message of Christ, then there is no book on earth that is more depressing than the New Testament. The War of the Prophets. Last week we looked at the last two verses of chapter one. And we saw that the Bible was written by men, godly men, godly prophets and apostles, who were driven by the wind of the Holy Spirit to write down exactly what the Holy Spirit had wanted them to write, nothing more and nothing less, and therefore incapable of error. No prophecy of Scripture, no divine revelation originated in the mind or will or opinion of man. It all originated in the mind of God. Remember, we saw what Paul said. He said, what I'm writing when I write the Scriptures, or preach when I'm under the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit takes thoughts right out of the mind of God and places them in my mind. And then the Holy Spirit takes words to express those thoughts right out of the mind of God and puts them in my mind. So that the Bible is Spirit-produced thoughts written in Spirit-produced words. And whatever it asserts to be true, therefore, is true. And if you believe those prophets If you believe that biblical revelation, you have the knowledge of God. Not just a personal experience, but a knowledge of how God thinks. We understand it on a creaturely level. What God is like, what you are in fact. how to live life in this world, what's the meaning of life, what's the origin of life. In the knowledge of God, God's power has given you everything you need for life and godliness in this world. So that all scripture is God-breathed, that the man of God might be thoroughly equipped unto every good work. But then there's another set of prophets. And they have been at war with God's prophets throughout history. And we're in the midst of that war right now. They are prophets, false teachers that God did not call, that God did not put in the ministry, that preach a gospel and a worldview that originated in their mind and not in the mind of God. and therefore are a danger to everybody in the world. Notice how the passage starts out. Verse one, but, that's why we read the first two verses of, last two verses of chapter one, because that conjunction links it. There are true prophets. There is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing as divinely revealed truth. You can have knowledge through the Bible, but, False prophets also arose among the people of the Jews, just as there will also be false teachers among you. Throughout the Old Testament, periodically false prophets would arise to contradict the true prophets and to try to lead Israel away from him. Some of the most scorching condemnation of these prophets is found in the book of Jeremiah. So if you'd turn there with me, the book of Jeremiah chapter 23, I'm just gonna read a few verses to show you that all the way back then, there were prophets that were teaching people lies. And so, here's what Isaiah says. Let's start with verse nine. As for the prophets, my heart is broken within me. All my bones tremble. I have become like a drunken man, shaken, unbalanced. Even like a man overcome with wine because of the Lord and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers, spiritual adulterers as well as physical. For the land mourns because of the curse. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course also is evil, and their might is not right, for both prophet and priest are polluted. Even in my house I have found their wickedness, declares the Lord. Therefore their way will be like slippery paths to them. They'll be driven away into the gloom and fall down in it. For I shall bring calamity upon them, the year of their punishment, declares the Lord. Moreover, among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing. They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing, the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood. And they strengthened the hands of evildoers, so that no one is turned back from his wickedness, all of them, all the prophets. have become to me like Sodom perverts, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah. Therefore thus says the Lord of Hosts concerning the prophets, Behold, I am going to feed them wormwood, and make them drink poisonous water, for from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Do not listen to the words of the prophet who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility. They speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord." So Jeremiah was just as contemptuous for these false prophets as Peter. Did you hear the contempt in the second chapter of 2 Peter? There's nothing loving or sweet or kind or tender. about what Peter said about these false prophets. Called them every name he could think of under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he thought of them with contempt because of the danger they were to the people of God. That's the way that you and I are to think of heretical teachers in this culture today. Don't anybody convince you that you should be loving and sweet and kind to these people that deny the basic concepts of Christianity. You be as contemptuous for them as Peter was for them in this second chapter. He says, just like false prophets in the old days rose up among the people, there will also, you know the most terrible words in this sentence, just as there will also be false teachers among you. It's that last prepositional phrase that is the scariest thing. You know who the biggest threat to our church is and to churches in America like ours? It's not Biden. It's not Joe Biden. He's a grasshopper. It's not Nancy Pelosi. It's not any human being. Other than false prophets and false teachers that arise within the church. It's not somebody outside the church that we should be worried about. It's preachers in the pulpit that are distorting the gospel of Jesus Christ into a pseudo gospel that can destroy the church if we're not careful. So we must be careful. We must be on our guard. And we've got to be able to distinguish right from wrong. Let me give you another quote by Martin Lloyd-Jones. The whole art of life can be summed up in the ability to discriminate between the true and the false. and then to reject the false utterly and to cleave that which alone is ultimately true. So I hope the one thing that you impress yourself with as we read this chapter, say to yourself, man, this is terrible. I've got to know how to distinguish right from wrong and truth from error and falsehood from truth and reality from falsehood. I've got to know how to tell the difference. Because if you don't, you'll be swallowed up by these false doctors, these false preachers. You will. You remember how Spurgeon defined discernment? He said, discernment is not the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It's the ability to distinguish right from almost right. And that's where you have to be. When you read a book or you hear a preacher, you've got to be quick in saying, oh yeah, I see through this guy. He's using words similar to mine, but what he's saying is nowhere near true. And some of it is near true, but it's not true. I tell people, you know what's more dangerous than a wolf? A wolf in sheep's clothing. I tell people not to read certain books and certain authors. And they say to me, but Joe, he says some really good things. And I say, well, that's because a wolf in sheep's clothing is more dangerous than a wolf. It's easier to spot if everything he says is wrong. But when he says what's true amidst what's wrong, he becomes even more dangerous to you. It's even more dangerous to read. somebody who mixes truth and error than reading somebody that's all error. Of course, you can spot that. Notice what Paul said. Turn to Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20. He's leaving the elders of the church where he'd been pastoring. And in verse 17 of Acts 20 he says, And from Elitus he sent to Ephesus, and called for the elders of the church. So he's talking to elders and he says in verse 27, For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves, elders, men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years. I did not cease to admonish each one with tears." So that's where the power to destroy the church comes from. Elders. People in places of authority in the church. And that's why you must pray for our elders because their responsibility before God is to guard you from elders or anybody else like a savage wolf that would come to destroy you and eat you up. Pray that if anybody is discerning between right and wrong and truth and error, it's our elders. Pray that they're men of courage, even if they have to stand all by themselves to protect you. from the savage wolves that are out there, and the rise from the church every now and then. You remember Jesus said that in Matthew 24. He said right before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., right before the fall of Jerusalem, he said there's going to be all kinds of false teachers and prophets. They're going to lead many astray, and they are going to be so persuasive that if it were possible, they would lead astray the very elect of God. Now that's scary. He says, I know the elect can't be torn away from God, but if it were possible, these false teachers will do it. So even people who are the elect of God can be influenced in the wrong direction and can believe the wrong things and can be led away from the truth. So don't say, well, I'm safe. I'm glad Joe's warning other people, but I'm safe. I'm the elect of God. People better than us have been led into falsehood. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be, no doubt about it, there will be, there is now false prophets among us, probably today more than ever, numerically. And I'm not talking about liberals. liberals that are critical of the Bible, we just know they're false teachers and heretics. I'm talking about people within evangelical and reformed churches, elders and other leaders in the church who are teaching things contrary to the gospel of Christ and therefore leading people astray where they ought to feel safe in a church that's evangelical. just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies." Now we're not talking about just your ordinary everyday erroneous doctrines. We're not talking about the difference between immersion and sprinkling here. We're talking about those false doctrines that strike right at the heart of Christianity and the infallibility of the scripture, the deity of Christ, the Trinity of God, the reality of hell and all the rest, the reality of miracles. These strike right at the heart of Christianity. They are destructive heresies. You know, another word for destructive is damnable heresies. It's the kind of false doctrine that can damn you to hell if you believe them. Now there's some wrong doctrines that if you don't have straight, you're not gonna go to hell if you, or you're mixed up if you use more water than you should in baptism. You're not gonna go to hell for that. But you will go to hell if you deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you will go to hell if you doubt the authority of the word of God. So these are heresies that strike right at the heart of Christianity. Notice one word. Who will secretly introduce destructive heresies. Now when a false teacher comes into a church, and I'm thinking of my seminary days, they won't walk in the room and say, hey, I am a false teacher. I teach destructive heresies, and I am here to confuse you. Every false teacher and heretic I had in seminary as a professor claimed to be orthodox, claimed to believe the truth. They're not just gonna come right out and say things. That's why you gotta know the difference between right and almost right. They're gonna use many of the same words that we use. I was trying to help a woman see the falseness of a man that was very popular on television, and his books are very popular, and she was reading them, and I was trying to keep her from reading them. She said, but he talks about Jesus. But he talks about salvation. I know, but what does he say about Jesus? What's the nature of the Jesus about whom he speaks? He's not just going to come out and let you know that he believes false things. He wants to seduce you. They secretly, without letting you know it, by using the same words that you use, one of the most influential theologians from the 20th century today was a German by the name of Karl Barth. And when he first wrote his commentary on Romans back in the earliest part of the 20th century, The evangelicals went crazy over him and say, at last, here's a German that can overturn a hundred years of German liberalism and of German criticism of the Bible. This man believes the truth. He wrote book after book after book. He talked about Jesus. He talked about predestination, talked about creation, talked about the infallibility of the Bible and all these things. I've read a bunch of them. But, it was in the early teens, 19-something. But when a man named Cornelius Van Til in 1941 wrote a book called Christianity and Barthianism, Writing the book proving there are two entirely different things. Who do you think the world hated? Karl Barth or Cornelius Van Til? Van Til they hated. I was given a book by my old professor, by a famous Scottish theologian, and in it there was a letter. My professor didn't know there was a letter in there from this Scottish theologian to him. And he said in the letter, dear Dr. Robinson, who is this up and coming young jack donkey named Bantill? So the world hated Bantill for exposing the light. He lifted the rock. And he showed that Barth was using all the same words we were using, but he was interpreting them all in terms of the atheistic philosophy of existentialism. that says that life is basically irrational and meaningless and the world has gone after him and has to this day condemned those who would condemn him. So understand that these false teachers are not dummies. And they introduce these damnable heresies in a way that they sound good. And they can send a man's soul to hell. Who secretly introduced destructive heresies? To me, this next part of the sentence is the most difficult sentence in the New Testament. to help somebody see the true meaning of. If I'm talking to somebody that's not a Calvinist, and they bring up this verse, I know I'm in trouble. Because I know they're not gonna believe what I say this means. So here's, read the whole verse. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves." Here's the difficult phrase. Even denying the master who bought them. and thus are destroyed. Now you and I know that when somebody becomes a Christian, a real Christian, and born of God, he's not gonna go to hell, right? That all those people for whom the Lord Jesus shed his precious blood to redeem to himself will be saved and not one of them will be lost. Correct? Only problem is, this verse says that these false teachers are so bad, they deny the master who bought them and will experience swift and eternal destruction upon themselves. So the Armenian will be, there's the verse that refutes Calvinism. These people denied the Lord that bought them. They denied the Lord that bought them with his own blood. And they shall experience swift and eternal destruction. Now, we as Calvinists don't want to read into a text something it doesn't say. That's the beauty about the Reformed faith. You can read the scripture and take it for what it says in its context and understand it. We don't want to read any meaning into it just because it agrees with us. So what they say this verse means is these false doctors, teachers in their life and in their teaching denied our master, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bought them with his own blood. And therefore they shall experience swift and eternal destruction. Now how would you show somebody that that verse does not say anything of the kind? All right, here's how. Destruction does mean swift and eternal. You can't water down the word destruction. These men denied the master that bought them, and therefore they will experience eternal destruction. That is true. But the word master is not the New Testament word for the Lord Jesus Christ. The word master there is the word from which we get the word despot. Jesus is called Kyrios. That's the Greek word for Master or Lord. When He is called Master or Lord, it's Kyrios. God the Father, in the Old Testament and the New, is called Despot. He's called the Master. He's called the Lord. So there's no reason to think that this is talking about Jesus. since this Greek word for master is not the word used for Lord when we refer to the Lord Jesus. It refers to God the Father. The word bought, the word bought is not the normal word in the New Testament used for Jesus purchasing us with his own blood. It's not the same word. And besides that in the New Testament, Whenever Jesus is said to purchase us, there's always some kind of prepositional phrase with it, like redeemed us by his own blood, purchased us by his death. Okay, so the word master, there is no reason to think it refers to Jesus. The word bought in this text, there's no reason to think it's talking about purchasing us with his blood. But it is a Greek word that is used for the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt by God the Father. So God bought them out of Egypt. God delivered them from Egypt, the despotes. God the Father Himself, Jehovah, bought the children of Israel out of Egypt. What was he saying? He's saying these false prophets were Jewish. And much about Judaism comes out in this text. These were Jewish people. They were rejecting the very Gospel of the Old Testament that God Himself had bought Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They denied the authority of the Word of God. They denied the authority of their own book, the Torah, the Old Testament. They denied the authority of the apostles in the New Testament. And therefore, they deserve to go to hell. So, when your friend comes and says, here's a verse that says that if you're Christian, it's possible to deny Christ and to go to hell. No, it's not. But it is possible for people who were false teachers in the church, who were Jewish, of which there were many, to deny the very authority of their own God, Jehovah, and to deny the glory of their rescue from Egypt by the mighty hand of God. Now, if you didn't understand what I just said, ask me at lunch, and we'll talk about it some more. So these people were arrogant. They were damnable in their heresies. They weren't afraid to deny either by their life or by their teaching. The Old Testament was even true about Jehovah rescuing Israel from Egypt. Now here's another word that's troublesome. I wish I had said a few. These false teachers have crept secretly into the church, introducing their destructive heresies, and many will follow their sensuality. Many, I wish I had said a few, just a handful. But there are times in the history of the church, not always, there's times in the history of the church when there's so many persuasive false teachers who introduced their damnable heresies, that there is an extremely large, or maybe even majority, following them in the evangelical church. That's the way I think about the church today, evangelical. Is many, many evangelicals, many who profess to be Bible-believing Christians, many who profess to believe that God is a trinity, follow the seductive, smooth, persuasive, damnable heresies of these arrogant false prophets. Many. In fact, some have been former friends of mine. That I have friends in the ministry that I would have told you years ago were evangelical, maybe even Reformed. But now they stand with the atheistic critical race theory and its racism and social justice and the murderous Black Lives Matter and stand with those who are seeking to burn down our country. Many, these are pastors of big churches that I would have thought to be reformed. We have pastors of great big churches to by the thousands who say the Christians must unhitch themselves from the Old Testament, from the Bible. If the only reason you believe in the resurrection is the Bible, you have a weak faith. That's the only reason I believe in the resurrection is because of the Bible. You got to unhitch yourself from the Bible is the word of God. How many preachers in our lifetime have you seen God bring down? Celebrity status, famous, teaching a lot of good things, and then years after the fact, they're exposed for their immorality. God exposes them. people in times of history, sometimes in history, many people in evangelical churches will allow themselves to be seduced by these false teachers with their damnable heresies. Notice what they say they follow about these false teachers. and many will follow their sensuality." Throughout this passage of scripture, there's two things that are brought together, heresy and immorality. Over and over and over, they're brought together. To the most famous theologians in the past hundred years, when after their death, their wives wrote their biographies, They bragged on all of the immoral relationships these two famous theologians had. So now let me ask you a question. Do people believe heresy because they're immoral? Or do people become immoral because they believe heresy? The answer is yes to both of those. Is that false teachers, heretical teachers breed immorality. One of the most famous books when I was in seminary that everybody wanted to read by a man named Joseph Fletcher was on how everything's relative. premarital sex, is it sinful? It all depends. It all depends on the situation. And so this nature of heresy that gets people to distrust the authority of the word of God and to distrust the law of God and to believe their antinomianism breeds immorality and wickedness of all kinds. Love is love, right? Love is love. So don't condemn homosexuality. Love is love. And so on. Abortion. You got to be compassionate toward this poor woman who does not want to go through the trauma of childbirth. Where's the compassion for the little baby that's being murdered? So wherever there's false teaching, false living always follows. But wherever there's immoral living and false living, false teaching always follows, to make it easier for the people to live in their apostasy. Let me read to you something else by Martin Lloyd-Jones. He said, false teaching always leads to false living. But false living always tends to produce false teaching. Why? Because the false teaching makes it easier to live the kind of life Those who believe false teaching want to live. So if you go to a church where there's a false teacher, bad company is going to corrupt your good morals, no doubt about it. But notice also if you're already corrupt and you already want to live a wicked life, you're not going to come here. You're going to go to another church somewhere where they have a heretic for the pastor. False teaching always leads to false living. And false living always leads to false teaching. And that's where we are. I mean, you've got to understand in this culture, you are a very small minority. There have been smaller minorities of faithful people in history. A few thousand years ago, there were only eight faithful people in a world population of millions. There was Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives. And that was it. And notice also that wherever there's periods of declension, Wherever the false teachers are getting the upper hand and influencing the majority of people, the fewer the true Christians, the more important the individual Christian. The fewer the true Christians, the more important and the more accountable. are individual Christians. Noah lived in the world, preached the gospel for 120 years. There were millions of people in the world before the flood. Not one person in 120 years ever submitted to Noah's preaching in faith. Not one in 120 years. What'd he do? Kept on preaching. There's a psalm that people have that they misinterpret. It says, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? As if to say, if the foundation of your country is destroyed, there's nothing you can do about it. But when you read the psalm in the light of the rest of the verses, here's what it says. If the foundations of a nation be destroyed, what can the righteous do? A lot is the answer to that question. You can obey God. You can be steadfast. You can preach the truth and distinguish between right and wrong and help people to see the difference. I've got to quit. Understand that if you are a small minority of faithful Christians that believe the true prophets in a culture where most people believe the damnable heresies of the false prophets, you are going to stand out. Noah stood out. Lot stood out. I can hardly wait to talk about him. Lot stood out. And if you're a true Christian, in this culture that's dominated by false prophets, in this war against false prophets, you're going to stand out. People are going to see you. They're going to talk about you behind your back. They're going to make fun of you. They're going to try to marginalize you. They're going to try to make you appear bigoted and racist. And if you're not standing out, if you're just lost in the shadows, if you're a Christian but nobody knows it, you ain't a Christian. You are a follower of the false prophet, not the true. So I pray that in this culture, for your sake, for the church's sake, for the truth's sake, for your children's sake, stand out. Stand up and stand out and make sure you know the difference between false prophets and true prophets. Let us pray. We thank you for this hard passage. We thank you for the way it awakens us to what life is really like and to our responsibility. We thank you for the true prophets and for the words that they wrote. And now we pray that you would help us to be faithful and courageous to stand against the false prophets, to expose their lies, and to help our friends and family see through them. We thank you for the way you care for and protect your people, your faithful people during perilous times like this. We thank you that your word says that you know how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. For Christ's sake, amen. Let us stand and confess our faith in the living God as we recite together the Apostles' Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. You may be seated. The fewer the true Christians, the more accountable and important individual Christians are. You got a lot on your shoulders because of that sentence. Too much is given, much is required. I want you to feel the heaviness of that burden. There are other times in the church in which you could go places in this country or in England or in Scotland, and the culture would make you feel at home. Churches would be packed. Families would have family worship. You'd have a lot of friends in those cultures. Now you don't. but you still have to stand firm. And you get the strength to stand firm from Christ, who strengthens me, as the Holy Spirit brings that strength into your life by the word of God and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. So when you come to this table, understand I've got a lot to do tomorrow and the rest of my life. I can't waste a minute. I don't have any strength in and of myself. Lord, give me strength. Let us pray. We do thank you for that verse that says that Christ strengthens us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for the verse that tells us that we're full of weaknesses, but the Holy Spirit overcomes those weaknesses by His strength. We thank you that you've told us that the power of the Holy Spirit has come upon us. And we are witnesses for Christ throughout the world. Now, Lord, we pray that you would use this word and this sacrament to empower us toward that end. For the sake of Christ, we pray. Amen. In the night in which Jesus was betrayed,