2 Corinthians 6 And we will read the whole chapter, chapter 6, and we'll continue into verse 1 of chapter 7. And the text this morning is verses 14 through 18 of chapter 6, which we will not re-read. We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain, For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored thee. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Giving no offense in anything that the ministry be not blamed, but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live, as chastened and not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things. O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straightened in us, but ye are straightened in your own bowels. Now, for a recompense in the same, I speak as unto my children. Be ye also enlarged. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols, for ye are the temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, And ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Thus far the reading of God's holy and inspired word. The text this morning is verses 14 through 18. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the exhortation that the Apostle gives to the Church of Corinth with these verses was an exhortation, a command that fit so well the Church of Corinth and her circumstances. And when you consider not only the city of Corinth, but when you consider the composition of the Church of Corinth, then it becomes clear how appropriate, how necessary was this command for that church. In the first place, consider the city of Corinth. The city of Corinth was a huge city at that time, major city of the Greek and Roman world. It was a harbor city situated nicely between two main bodies of water. There's harbors, all kinds of traffic, all kinds of commerce, all kinds of business. And you can imagine with a city like that, well just think of major harbor town, big cities today. You can imagine the kind of vice and the kind of iniquity that that city was full of back in those days. It was pagan, it was immoral. The city was wholly given over to idolatry. Temples and images and statues everywhere. And not only that, the city was was immoral, full of fornication. It gained a reputation for its immorality. And that fornication itself was wrapped up with the very religion of the city, giving it license, countenancing that kind of immorality. So that's the city now in which is this young church of Corinth. And the church, these were new Gentile converts. These were people who used to live in all of that darkness and all of that filth, but whom God had called out of darkness into His marvelous light. They were new Christians. They had been so familiar with all of that godlessness, and now here they are, new Christians with a new life, the faith, a new calling in the world. And you can imagine how those temptations with which they had indulged themselves in the past, were always pressuring them, their old friends, say, coming to knock on their door to try to get them to join in with the iniquity. So there you have it. There you have the Church of Corinth, young church in a godless city. And now, again, consider the text. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Do not touch the unclean thing. Be ye separate. Come out from among them. So appropriate. And yet the text is just as relevant for the church today as well. Just as relevant for Calvary Protestant Reformed Church. And that's the wonder of scripture. That this text, which was given under inspiration in a certain historical situation, is just as relevant for the church of all ages and for us today. It's the same world in which we live. The world has not gotten any better. Same lawlessness, the same iniquity, just under different forms. We might not have brothels all over the city as it was back then, and yet the same kind of lusts and ungodliness prevails today. A man only needs to bring his phone out of his pocket. And when you consider ourselves as well, We have that same flesh against which the Corinthians struggled. That flesh which is inclined, wants to join in with the world, wants to touch the unclean thing, wants to yoke itself to ungodliness. And from those two considerations, the world and ourselves, we see how relevant this text is. And so let's consider this text under the theme, the command not to be unequally yoked. Noticing in the first place, the command Noticing in the second place the reason that stands behind the command, and noticing in the third place the motivation. What's going to move you and me to obedience to the command that the Apostle gives in the text? What's the drive for us Christians now? In the first place, the command. And before we get to the command itself, we have to understand the reality that stands behind this command, and that's the reality of the antithesis. Now that's a word we're likely all familiar with, we've heard it before, we've been catechized, the antithesis. Let's hear it now as though it were the first time. What is the antithesis? If someone were to ask you, what does that mean, what would you say? Well, one way to look at it is that the antithesis is the spiritual separation that exists between the believer and the unbeliever. The spiritual separation that exists between the church and the world, between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. And now it's not only a separation, some kind of neutral separation, but as we'll see later, the antithesis even has to do with an enmity, a hostility, a warfare, spiritual enmity that exists between the church and the world. And the text, in verses 14 through 16, with all of those questions that the apostle asks, all of those questions bring out the utter, stark, radical differences that exist between the believer and the unbeliever, between the church and the world. And so now consider those differences. The first question. What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And so there you see the difference, the separation, the enmity between believer and unbeliever. They have a different relation in respect to God's law. The believer is characterized with righteousness. And that's true on the one hand with regard to justification. God counts the believer perfectly righteous for Jesus' sake, perfectly obedient to God's law. And that word righteousness also applies to sanctification as well. Because the Spirit working in our hearts so works that the believer goes forth desiring to keep God's law. The believer, having been saved by grace, redeemed by the blood of Jesus, loves God's law as that rule of thankfulness and gratitude for him and his life. And that's our confession. Oh, how I love thy law. We desire to keep it. We strive to keep God's law. But the text characterizes the unbeliever and the world, spiritually speaking, with the word lawlessness. unrighteousness or lawlessness. No regard for the true keeping of God's law. And now there might be a form of godliness, a form of obedience to God's law. You don't have murders taking place on the street every weekend here in Northwest Iowa. And yet at the same time, There's no heartfelt keeping of God's law on the part of the world and on the part of the unbeliever. But even today, you see lawlessness working itself out in more and more obscene, more and more stark ways. Think about abortion. Think about how manifest How great a manifestation of lawlessness is something like that, where the state tolerates the murder of children. It's the lawlessness of the world. Think about the unrighteousness and the lawlessness with regard to marriage. Divorce and remarriage as though it were but a light thing. Man having wife after wife, and when he gets sick of one moving on to the next, it's the lawlessness of the world, the unrighteousness that characterizes the unbeliever. In the second place, believer and unbeliever have a fundamentally different relation to God's truth. And that comes out from the second question in verse 14. What communion has light with darkness? And those ideas of light and darkness in Scripture, spiritually, those ideas have to do with the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God's truth. The text characterizes the believer with the word light. Because for him, God has opened his eyes to know him, the one true and living God. God has given us as believers the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. A knowledge and a love of God's truth as it's given us in His Word. But the text characterizes the unbeliever with the word darkness. That's the spiritual state of the unbeliever. Apart from Christ, apart from the grace of God, walking and delighting in the darkness. Think about God's truth. Think about how the world esteems the truth of God. What does the world think of God's Word and all the truths revealed therein? The world hates it. In fact, the world delights to do everything they can to destroy it. Think about the truth of creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And now what does the world do with that? The world scoffs at it. The world laughs at it. The world mocks the Christian who confesses it, tramples upon that truth, and tries to foist in the place of Genesis 1 the theory of evolution and all of the millions and billions of years that go along with that. In the third place, the believer and the unbeliever have a fundamentally different relation to God's Son, Jesus Christ. And that comes out from the first question of verse 15, what concord or what symphony, what harmony is there between Christ and Belial? And finally, the believer and the unbeliever have a fundamentally different relation to God Himself. And that's really the The final, the finale of all of the questions that begin the text. All of the questions, one after another, as it were, drive at the highest and the greatest point of difference. And it has to do with God Himself. What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? So the church now, the believer is characterized as the temple of God because in him, God dwells by His Spirit. God makes His abode in our hearts by His Spirit. And we worship the one true and living God, but the text characterizes the world and the unbeliever with idolatry. Because the unbeliever will not give God His due. God reveals Himself in creation, reveals his Godhead, his power, and that he ought to be worshipped. But the unbeliever, the world holds that knowledge under, represses that knowledge, does everything they can to put it down, and instead of worshipping the one true God, worships the idol. And now that matter of idolatry was so apparent to the Corinthians. Just walking down the street, you would have seen idolatry everywhere. But then today, we don't have that so much. We don't have statues made of gold and silver. And yet there too, idolatry, it's not as though that has decreased at all. Natural man will not worship God, but will go after, seek after, glorify and worship and give himself to that which is not God. So those are the differences now, those radical fundamental differences between church and world. That's the antithesis spelled out in black and white for us. Now this antithesis is a spiritual separation that God establishes. And that's important. In the first place, that it's a spiritual separation. In other words, it's not a physical thing. It may manifest itself, in physical ways, but in its essence, it's not physical. Now, what does that mean? How does that work itself out? Well, one of the implications of this, namely that the antithesis is not physical in essence, one of the implications is that the fundamental difference among men, the fundamental dividing line that cuts through the human race, It's not a matter of race. It's not a matter of gender. It's not a matter of nationality. It's not a matter of social status, economic status. That's not what cuts through the human race. Now those differences certainly have occasioned so much conflict, so much disagreement and all of that. But what cuts through the human race the most? And it's the antithesis. The spiritual separation that God establishes. The spiritual separation that exists in our heart, that exists between the church and the world. And so what that means is that the calling of the church in the world is not to try to leave the world. That was the charge that was thrown against the Protestant Reformed Churches from the very beginning. You guys are trying to escape the world. You guys are Anabaptists, they said. And our spiritual forefathers said, no, not at all. That's not the calling of the church in the world, to try to leave, to try to escape the world. Rather, the calling of the church is to be in the world, We live, we move, we have our being, we do business, we work, all of those things in the world, but we're not of the world. That is, we don't have our identity with the world and with the darkness. We don't have our source in that anymore. We are a peculiar people, called out of all of that, separate, wherefore come out from among them. And lastly, the antithesis, fundamental spiritual separation, spiritual in essence, is established by God Himself. You and I do not make the antithesis. We do not bring it into being. It is there. It exists by virtue of the work of grace that God has done in our hearts. And we're called to live according to it. Now this truth that God establishes the antithesis, is taught already in the early chapters of Genesis. God said to the serpent, I will establish enmity between thy seed and her seed. And that enmity, beginning already in the garden, is that antithesis, that spiritual hostility that has coursed through the human race until the present day. how that antithesis stood out to the church of Corinth. I imagine not a day could have gone by in the life of a member of that church without the antithesis being so clear and so sharp before them. A man of that church probably could hardly leave his house before the antithesis met him in the face. This spiritual separation that God had done to him, taking him out of the darkness, the idolatry, the immorality all around him. Imagine the sneers. Imagine the mockery that some of those members must have experienced. They went to work and they probably heard their friends talking, talking dark things, ungodly things. Maybe those same friends asked this Christian from the Church of Corinth to join them. And he says, no, I'm not about that anymore. I'm a new person in Jesus Christ. I'm done with that. I'm done with that life. All the sneers, the mockery, the ridicule that those Christians must have experienced. And now let us ask ourselves the same question. Is the antithesis sharp to us? Do we experience that? Or as we live and move and work in the world, is it as though there's hardly a difference about us? so that the world doesn't think there's anything different with us, in contrast with themselves. It ought to stand out. And that's always a task we can ask ourselves. As we conduct ourselves in this life, and as we as a church live in the world, does the antithesis stand out to us? In light of that antithesis, In light of the separation, in light of the enmity, do we have the command of the text, be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. And that command is essentially repeated in different language in verse 17, wherefore come out from among them. And then finally, be ye separate. Now we can wrap all of those commands together because they're essentially one command. Now, how about that language, be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers? What does that mean? Well, it does not mean this. That command is not, have no contact with unbelievers, or have no contact with the world. That's not the idea. And the proof of that, pretty striking proof, is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians 5, starting at verse 9. So the point that we're going to establish here is that the antithesis and the calling of the text does not mean have no contact with unbelievers. So 1 Corinthians 5, verse 9 we read, I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such and one know not to eat." Paul says to the Church of Corinth there, In an earlier letter, I told you not to keep company with fornicators. Now in 1 Corinthians, he follows up on that command and he clarifies it. And he says, I did not mean this, that you need to completely shut off all contact with any fornicator anywhere, anytime, or idolater or extortioner, because then you'd have to leave the world. Paul clarifies and he says, when I wrote that command, I was talking about them in the church. Someone in the church who was called a fornicator or an extortioner or a railer, etc. With such in one know not to eat. And so you see there that Paul is sensitive to that fact. He says, I don't mean try to leave the world and shut off contact with all unbelievers. So that's not the idea. of 2 Corinthians 6. And that makes sense when you consider this text that we're treating in light of the many other passages in the New Testament that tell us to be a light in the world. The passages in 1 Peter, for instance, which exhort upon us to show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. All of those talks that will have us to witness of Jesus Christ in the world. Obviously, you can't be a witness, you can't be a light in the world if you try to leave the world. You can't be a witness to unbelievers if you try to avoid all contact with unbelievers. So that's not the idea of the talks. But we may not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And that's different. Now that idea being not unequally yoked with unbelievers, the apostle is drawing from an obscure law in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 22, verse 10, which says, Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together. So an Israelite in the Old Testament was not allowed to throw the same yoke on an ox and a donkey, to plow a field with them yoked together. That was forbidden. And so the apostle now draws from that and he gives that Old Testament command its New Testament spiritual significance. And he applies it right here to this matter of the antithesis and to this matter of fellowship. A Christian may not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. What does that mean? Well, a Christian may not join with unbelievers in any sinful practice or any sinful thing. The Apostle says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness in another place. But then it means more. The text here in 2 Corinthians forbids any kind of joining together of believer and unbeliever, such that what ends up happening is the believer sets aside his own yoke, sets aside his own Christian standards, muzzles his own confession of the truth and of the name of Jesus Christ, kind of puts behind his back his own holy life which he is called to walk, and throws on himself the yoke of the world and the yoke of the unbeliever. Any kind of joining of Christian and unbeliever between church and world that results in the church setting aside her standards, or your standards as a Christian, and taking upon yourself the standards of darkness, and the standards of the unbeliever. That's forbidden. Finally, generally speaking, the text forbids fellowship between believer and unbeliever, between church and world. Now that line is hard for us at times. That line there, when contact with and speaking with morphs into fellowship with. But fellowship always has the idea of that shared interest, something shared there. But now tell me what things in those questions that the apostle asks have any part together. The text forbids fellowship between believers and unbelievers. Not contact with, not witnessing with, not working with. The text does not forbid loving the unbeliever with a desire to do him good and to be a means to bring him out of darkness into light. But fellowship is on the foreground here. Now this has tremendous implications for us as we live in this world. This text governs friendship. With whom do we make friends? Who are our friends? What group of people do we hang out with? And can we say with the psalmist that I am a companion of all them that fear thee and of them that keep thy precepts. Are those our friends? They were the friends of the psalmist in accordance with the antithesis. This text has to do with who we date and whom we marry. And now, when a believer finds himself or herself married to an unbeliever, which was not uncommon in the times of the early church, that's different. The apostle makes very clear in another place that when the believer finds himself married with an unbeliever, his calling or her calling is not to leave the marriage, but to remain married. with other things explaining that in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. But for a single Christian, to date, to seek to date, to want to marry an unbeliever, would be pursuing an unequal yoke of the highest order. And the idea should be unthinkable in light of what the Apostle says in 2 Corinthians chapter 6. This command extends so broadly. Because it may be that we don't yoke ourselves physically, in person, with believers or with the world. It may be, say, that we do not frequent the movie theaters or throw our lot in with the world at the bars, etc. But what about on the screen? What about on a television screen at home? What about on the computer screen? What about on the smartphone? Is that where we throw our lot in with the world? Is that where we throw upon ourselves the unequal yoke? Is that where we indulge ourselves in the filth of the world and touch the unclean thing? It may happen there as well. And so just from those things, those few things, we get a sense of how encompassing, how much this command embraces with respect to our lives as Christians. Now, what's the reason? What's the reason that stands behind the command? If you were to ask the Apostle Paul, why? Why be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers? Well, in the first place, This is the reason. This kind of unequal yoking, this kind of fellowship between believer and unbeliever, church and world, in principle, it's impossible. And you can't do it. That's the force of all of those questions. All of those questions that the Apostle asks are rhetorical questions. And what that means is that the answers to those questions are so obvious, He does not even need to say it. It's so obvious. What's the answer that shouts, that screams out at us as we read these questions? What fellowship, tell me, the Apostle says, is there between righteousness and unrighteousness? What communion, tell me, Church of Corinth, Calvary Protestant Reformed Church, is there between light and darkness? And all of those questions. And the answer is, there is no communion. There is no fellowship. There is no concord. There is no agreement. And so you see the force of that. Now, if it's impossible to bring these two together, Try to bring light and darkness together at the same place at the same time. It's like mixing oil and water. If it's impossible to bring all of those things together, then we may ask, well, why do we need this command? And we need this command because according to the flesh, we try to make this agreement. We try to establish that communion, that joining together, that yoking. And when we try, to have our cake and eat it too? When we try to keep on ourselves the Christian yoke of faith and holiness, and try to hold on with the other hand to the world and the ungodliness, what ends up happening when you try to have both? What doesn't happen is that you make the world any better, or that the unbeliever will willingly throw upon himself the yoke of the Christian. But what happens is that we as Christians end up laying aside our yoke and our standards, our confession of the faith, our holiness of life, and we throw upon ourselves the standards of the unbeliever of the world. And that's a yoke that does not belong to us. It's foreign to us. That's the literal idea of that word unequally yoked. It's a yoke that does not belong on our shoulders. But the main reason that stands behind this command is the covenant. That's why be ye not unequally yoked. That's why come out from among them, because of the covenant. And you see that in the text as well. All of those promises in verses 16-18, which the Apostle cites. He's drawing promise after promise out of the Old Testament and applying them to His point. All of those promises are covenant promises which God gives to His people. And all those promises stand behind the command. And then you notice that word, wherefore, that begins verse 17. On account of the realities of these promises, and on account of the reality of the covenant, therefore, come out from among them and be ye separate. You see, God has joined us to Himself. God has yoked us to Himself. God has drawn us into His communion. And God has sworn over us in His love that we shall be His people. Therefore, do not try to have your communion in the world. Do not turn away from God your husband in an attempt to marry with the world. From all eternity, God set His love upon us. And God said, this people will be My people. I will buy them. I will marry them. I will make them Mine now and forever. And God, in the realization of that covenant, in the bringing of it about, sends His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Even to the death of the cross. Because by nature, we are the unbeliever. We are they who walk in darkness. We are the rebels who shook our fist at God in the garden and who add so many sins to that one sin, each of which deserves eternal banishment from the presence of God, but in God's love for us. And according to the strength of that oath which He swore that we would be His, buys us back, redeems us by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, gives us His only begotten to be ours forever and ever, so that we might walk with Him and talk with Him and dwell with Him and have fellowship with Him, world without end. And God not only sends His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world, but Jesus, having risen and ascended, takes up His abode in our hearts by His Spirit to realize the intimacy of God's covenant with us. Therefore be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. Imagine that. A husband who married a wife showed that wife so much love and tenderness, spoke to her so many promises, did whatever it took so that that wife who say was on death row would be His. And then for that wife one day to turn her back on her husband, to walk back into the mire from which her husband bought her. It's unthinkable. And now for us as God's people, to whom God has done so much, and to whom God has spoken such promises, covenant promises, for us now to turn our backs on Him, and to throw our lot in with the world, and to revel in the unclean thing. It's the height of ingratitude. And it is offensive to God. We hear every Sunday morning in the law For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." Now, one of the ways to understand that is in light of the jealousy of a good husband. The husband is so jealous over his wife in a good way. He will not tolerate, he will not suffer other lovers to come into the picture. Well, the Lord our God is a jealous God. And what he says, or the Geneva Catechism explains that this way, for he cannot bear an equal or an associate. For as he has given himself to us out of his infinite goodness, so he would have us to be wholly his. And that's the positive of the antithesis. Covenant. They are, as it were, two sides of the same coin. Our calling as Christians, our antithetical calling, does not stop at, do not do this, do not do that. Do not touch this thing. Do not have fellowship with that person. That's not even the main thing of our calling as Christians. But all of the negative here, the be ye not unequally yoked, the come out from among them, the be ye separate, all of that serves this. That we cleave unto our God and love Him. and worship Him, and delight in Him, and enjoy Him now and forever. Covenant communion with God. That's the positive. Now, what's the motivation for us? What moves us to obedience to this command? What's the drive for us as Christians? Well, we can say some things negatively. Living in fellowship with unbelievers is spiritually destructive. Living in fellowship with the world, indulging in the pleasures of the world, is spiritually destructive. You see that with Solomon. He yoked himself unequally with so many heathen women. And then that lamentable verse in the scriptures which said that the heart of Solomon was not perfect with the Lord his God. And the principle is that we begin to be like those with whom we fellowship. So think about the music that we listen to, think about the things that we do, we begin to be like those with whom we fellowship. But secondly, touching the unclean thing is spiritually corrupting. And that is drawn right from the Old Testament principle. When an Israelite touched something that was unclean Levitically, that Israelite contracted Levitical uncleanness, became defiled, needed to be cleansed and washed. And there's a New Testament spiritual reality there, that when we touch the unclean thing, we corrupt ourselves, we paint our minds, we defile ourselves. The third place, negatively, if we forsake the path of the antithesis and run after the world and throw our lot in with the world, God will not give us to enjoy His fellowship. And that's the marriage principle that is taught in James 4, for instance. Whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Will a husband give his spouse to enjoy his community if that spouse presently is running after other lovers? But the negative will never do it. The negative things, the consequences, they never form that motive for obedience, which spurs the Christian on as nothing else. And if you only leave it at the negative, if you do that, then this. It may have a semblance of prompting the believer to do what he should. But that's not the motive that God is pleased with in our hearts. It's the positive. the motivation for us not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, the motivation for us to come out from among them and to be separate, is covenant again. And all of the promises of the covenant that God gives us in 2 Corinthians 6. See, how do we relate those promises in 2 Corinthians with the command? What's the relationship? And the relationship is not conditional. So that God says, all of these things can be yours on condition of this. Or only if you do this, will all of these things be yours. It's not the idea here. The Apostle does not say in verse 16, if you do these things, you will be the temple of the living God. He says, you are the temple of the living God. And in chapter 7, verse 1, he doesn't say, these promises can be yours if, but he says, having these promises, dearly beloved. And it's those promises and all of the reality of those promises which God gives to us, which moves us to forsake the world, to crucify the flesh, to put away that which offends God, and to cleave unto Him. It's this wonder of grace. That God calls us His sons and daughters and swears to us, I will be your Father forever. You will be My sons and daughters forever. I will receive you forever. All of the certainty that comes out of those wills, I will, I will, I will. And the Christian beholding these things, wondering at them, delighted in them, He says, how shall I now yoke myself with the world? How shall I now turn this thing on the TV or listen to this kind of music, if this is what God has done for me, so that I may call Him my Father? That's the motive. Gratitude and thankfulness to God our Father, to whom be glory both now and forever. Amen. Our Father, which art in Heaven, impress these promises upon our hearts, that we might believe them, that we might live according to them, that we might cleave unto Thee, our Friend and our Sovereign in Heaven, and give ourselves unto Thee with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Forgive our sins that we have committed even in this past hour, and keep them far from us in this day. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.