The Great Exchange

Well, turn your Bibles, please, for Psalm number, for the reading of Psalm number 75. I'll read the entire Psalm, Psalm 75, and then we'll turn over to Psalm 116 and just read a few verses from there, verses 12 to 13.

So when you have Psalm 75, please stand for the reading of God's Word, Psalm 75. We give thanks to you, O God. We give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. At the set time that I appoint, I will judge with equity.

When the earth totters and all its inhabitants, it is I who keeps steady its pillars. I say to the boastful, do not boast, and to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with haughty neck.

For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it to its dregs.

But I will declare it forever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob, all the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up. Now turn please to Psalm 116. I'll read verses 12 to 14 from that psalm.

Psalm 116. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

God bless the reading and now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. You know the entire sweep of redemptive history can really be gathered up if we think of two gardens. And this is what I want to present to you this day is that entire sweep of redemption and we're going to bracket this history in these two gardens.

My hope today is to bring Jesus Christ to you in a way that is clear, in a way that you will see the depth of his sacrifice, the depth of the suffering that he voluntarily, he willingly endured on our behalf, on your behalf.

As you think of these two gardens that bracket all of redemptive history in the way that God willing I'll be able to bring to you, two gardens, they're untold miles, untold centuries apart. And of course these two gardens each housed a man.

So there's two men, each a representative whose progeny, whose descendants would bear the consequences of their actions in those gardens. A garden and a garden, a man and a man. Well the first of those brought a beautiful beginning to a tragic end.

And the second one brought an end to that tragedy and with that end a beautiful wondrous new beginning. Well all of you I think have guessed where we're going with most of this. The first garden can be none other than Eden.

And the second garden, Gethsemane. Eden was host to the first man, Adam, and Gethsemane to the second Adam, as Paul calls him in 1 Corinthians, he's the second Adam, but we call him Jesus. Both Adams faced a similar temptation.

One which we all face in diverse ways, at diverse times, with diverse results. The great temptation faced by both of these Adams, by Adam the first and by Adam the second who is Jesus Christ, both of them were tempted to disobey God.

To choose self-will over God's will. To choose what I want to go, what I want my priorities to be. To choose my agenda over God's will. To avoid His will. Self-will over God's will. To be my own God, to be master of my own fate and ruler over my own personal fiefdom, which boundary is me.

These two Adams, in these two gardens, this is what they faced. My goal today is for us to glory in our Savior, Jesus Christ, to appreciate Him more, to widen our view of His sacrifice for us. My hope today is that you will leave here this morning loving Him more than when you.

Came.

God willing, this will be done in this sort of a tale of twos, these pairs that I'm going to bring to you this day. Two gardens, two men who gave starkly different answers to the temptation they faced, bringing starkly different consequences because of those answers.

So we have these gardens, we have these men, and between these two endpoints of history of beginning and end of redemption, Eden, where redemption was made necessary, Gethsemane, where our redemption was secured.

Between those two, this cup I read about in the two Psalms, so often depicted by the prophets as well, but I chose those two Psalms to bring them to you. Between these two, these cups, a cup filled with God's wrath at sin, and a cup filled with salvation wrought by Jesus Christ.

So we begin at the beginning. We begin with Adam in the garden of Eden, and there in that garden, pronounced by God to be very good, when Eve was there, it was very good. The first man, that first Adam, set the course for humanity.

He set my course, he set your course. Born children of wrath, born rebels against God, born in sin and iniquity, and why?

How so?

Because of Adam, the first Adam, in that first garden, and his answer to sin. That place that was pronounced good by God. The good of that world, we have to understand, was not really moral goodness. It was good because that world was ready to provide what God intended it to provide.

You see, there was no moral goodness in the world because there was no moral badness by which to define the goodness.

Everything there was good.

Sin was possible, sin was available, bad things were able to be done, but they hadn't been.

It was good.

It was good because it was able to provide what God intended it to provide. But like Pandora's box, evil was there, but not yet unleashed. Sin was available, and where was sin available? We didn't read from Genesis, but you all know the story.

It was not the story, I should say the history, because it's true, it's factual. Sin was available, and where was it available? From that tree, from that one tree, and not the tree itself. What fruit did it have?

Probably like all the other trees, good fruit to eat. It was good to eat, even says that when Adam fell into it. So it wasn't the tree itself. It was the act of mistrust, the act of disobedience that could only be had there at that one tree.

Just a tree. Set it apart from the others in a place where God could say, that tree. Don't touch that one tree. So somehow it was separated, somehow it was distinct, and yet it was just a tree. That tree.

And that tree even had a name, the knowledge of good and evil. Other than that, it's just a tree. But it's the act of reaching out to the tree. The act of taking from that tree. The act of not trusting God that taking from that tree would not be good for them, because in the day you eat of it, you will surely die.

The Hebrew in that, where we say surely die is something like, in dying you will die, you will certainly die when you eat of it. And the fruit is like all the other trees, I think. Go to those other trees and eat, and take what God has provided.

Just stay away from that one tree. And there's our Pandora's box. There's the evil waiting to happen. There's that thing that hadn't yet been brought into the world. Just like the things that tempt us.

Just like, just stuff. It's like all the other stuff. For example, God said, do not covet that stuff that is your neighbor's.

His stuff.

What is his stuff? Your neighbor's stuff? Well, it's like your stuff. It's like your things. Just like that tree was like other ones. But God says what? To you and me, about my stuff, or your stuff, your things.

Your wife, your donkey, your farm, your house, your car, your job. What does he say? He says, eyes off. More than eyes off, heart. Get your heart away from that. And the list goes on. As the things that God gives us to provide for our needs, become the fodder for all kinds of mischief and sin.

Tree like all the other trees, with fruit like all the other fruit. God says, keep away from that one. As God tells us, keep away from your neighbor's stuff. Because in the end, it's really no different than the stuff God has provided you.

And he goes on in Genesis and says, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field. Serpents or snakes had to have been in the procession of animals that paraded before Adam when he took authority over them by naming them.

And I have no speculation as to why Satan chose that form, the form of a serpent, to bring his designs against God. Well, against God. By corrupting man, but against God. We always see that serpent portrayed.

Do you see these pictures where the serpent is wrapped around that branch? And so he's wrapped around there and the part that has his mouth is up high and speaking right to Eve. You know, as I was thinking about this, it's interesting to note that while it spoke to Eve about the tree, the Bible never says it was even on the tree.

It was on the ground.

Where was it? We don't know. But we all do know what happened. What happened was Eve was deceived. Eve was deceived and Adam ate. And because Adam ate, the first Adam ate, mankind fell. Now we have these two Adams.

And we'll just go quickly and tell you why they're both an Adam. Because they represented all who had come from them. Adam the first representing all mankind, what we call federal headship. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

But all who came after him were corrupted because of him. The Bible doesn't say we inherited deception from Eve, though we are all able to be deceived. We allow ourselves to be deceived. Too often we want to be deceived.

But it doesn't say that we inherited that from Eve. What it says is we inherited sin from Adam. Born in sin and iniquity because of Adam. By one man, death came into the world, says the Apostle Paul. So when Adam joined his wife in that seemingly innocuous act, just taking a bite of that fruit, whatever it was, he brought pollution to the temple, Eden, that he should have been guarding.

He brought knowledge only God should have. He was now one step more like his maker in that he now knew good and evil. Remember I said at the beginning, there was no moral badness in that world at that time.

It was available, but it wasn't known because there was no, excuse me, that's the other way around, no moral goodness because the badness to define it had not yet been unleashed. So he now had this knowledge that he passed on to all generations after him, the knowledge of good and evil.

And that's the first garden. That's as much as I want to say about it this morning. That's the first garden, the one in which Adam sealed our doom, your doom and my doom, all mankind, for the wages of sin is death, says the Apostle Paul.

And what God said to Adam, on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. So Adam faced temptation and he lost. Adam faced temptation and all who followed him lost. Adam faced temptation and you and I lost because of him born in sin and a corrupted, lost relationship with God.

He had been fairly warned that the only outcome of his act would be death, yet he reached out and sinned. He had lived in the very presence of God, yet he reached out and sinned. Paul says that Adam was not deceived, but Eve was.

He also says it's because of Adam's sin that we're born into sin, that we're born as sinners. Listen, you don't become a sinner when you sin. You're born a sinner. You sin because you're a sinner. We have to get that straight.

You're not born good and then become something bad when you do something bad. We're born with that propensity to do the bad and too often we voluntarily reach out and do it. And this comes to us from Adam.

Bible never discusses just how that propensity is transported from him to all of us. It simply says that it is. And I believe the Bible. I know you do. So we'll leave it at that. We can multiply the scriptures, but just Romans 5 .14, death reigned from Adam to Moses.

1 Corinthians 15 .22, for in Adam all die. For in Adam all die. Sin and death are in the world because in Edom, Adam's answer to temptation was to surrender to sin. Now he eventually died at 930 years of age.

And that sounds remarkable to us, doesn't it? He lived for almost 10 centuries. But for his times, really, it just wasn't too bad. You know, for today, if somebody died at 95, we say he lived a good long life.

Nothing too remarkable about that. 930 years, not bad for the day, but he did die, just as God said. And because of him, we die. Old age, cancer, violence, all this can explain death, but only in a discreet manner.

Only transaction by transaction. Adam's transgression explains it completely. It explains it fully. His sin explains why old age and why cancer and violence and accidents even exist, much less cause death.

For the wages of sin is death. And when did sin come into the world? By one man, by Adam, in that garden, in Edom, that place that had been good and very good once Eve was introduced into it, brought death.

So sin, what happens to sin? What happens to your sin? I don't mean born sinners. I mean those discreet acts that we do. Does it just poof and disappear somehow? Does God just shrug his shoulder? Do you ever hear one of the prophets saying in the word of God, thus says the Lord, hey, you know all that stuff about obey my commandments and all the rest of that?

All that stuff about holiness and righteousness and sin and judgment? You know what? Yeah, we're good. Nothing like that in the scripture at all. Quite the opposite. What happens to sin? Jeremiah 25, I think, gives one of the most clear explanations of it.

You needn't turn there. Let me read this to you. You can turn there if you want. I'll be in Jeremiah 25, 15. Thus the Lord God said to me, take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.

They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword I am sending among them. And it goes on in verses 17 to 20. It lists all the nations. And it says one cup filled with the sins of the nations, Jerusalem's sin and Egypt's sin and the Philistine's sin and Ammon's sin and Tyre and more.

Jerusalem's sin was not Egypt's sin and Egypt's sin was not Tyre's sin and so on. As Ezekiel says, each man, or we could say in this case, each nation dies for their own sin. But here's this cup being filled with wrath.

Here's this cup where the experience of God's fury against your sin is finally pictured for us. This is why the gardens bracket this history. Sin introduced. And what happens to the sin? They just kind of float away?

No, there's a cup. There's a cup and God's wrath for each sin is in that cup. We know that we're born children of wrath. We're born enemies of God. We're born friends of the world. By nature, sinners worthy of judgment and condemnation.

And that's by nature because we inherited Adam's nature. And there in that cup is wrath. God's wrath, his holy wrath, his wrath at sin and his wrath at our discrete sin. The acts we have done, the things we perform because of what we are by nature.

Now being sin, being born sin and actually sinning is sort of parallel to the two stages of salvation because in salvation, first there's repentance and there's a whole repentance where Jesus says, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

You might ask, repent of what?

Just repent.

Look at God as holiness. See Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God and look at yourself and just repent, just be aghast at that chasm between you. And once in Christ, once God willing gives you the faith to believe in him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repents for your sins.

Now repent of the discrete sins. So you're born a sinner, holistically, that's what you are. And then you sin discreetly. You're saved by faith in Jesus Christ, by repentance for who you are just looking to him and comparing the two and being aghast at that chasm, at that difference.

And then as a saved person, repentance for the discrete sins. We become a repentant person. We become a repentant person because as Jesus says, that's who God is seeking to bring into his kingdom. And that kingdom will accommodate only such as these, only those who have come by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you know this Lord that I'm bringing to you this morning? That I'm pulling out the pages of scripture and presenting to you Christ crucified. We haven't gotten to the crucifixion yet. But this Lord Jesus Christ, he, the one who calls us to repentance.

He, the one alone who stands between you and God. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then as John says in 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins and the assumption is we have many sins to confess continually.

You have sins to confess from yesterday you forgot about this morning. You have sins to confess today. And you'll have sins tomorrow and Tuesday and so on. We confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is our life if we've come to Jesus Christ because the nature has been changed by the spirit of God. I'm a repentant person. And so I repent as a repentant person of the individual sins that I've committed.

And likewise, the nation's nature from Jeremiah 25, the nation's nature is sin which flows into more sin. And the cup of wrath that I read about is God's remembrance of each sin, each iniquity of those nations.

Drop by drop, the cup is filled with Adam the explorer's discovery, sin. Israel's sin was injustice. Naboth was murdered for his vineyard by King Ahab, drop. Egypt enslaves and abuses a nation, drop. And that cup is not just for those nations in Jeremiah's day.

In Revelation chapter 14 and 16 and 17 and 18, there's a cup and those contents are for nations and for individuals. So we don't get to say, yeah, those Babylonians, those Assyrians, those Edomites, those Philistines, they're gonna get theirs, aren't they?

God, that cup's for them. I read to you from Psalm 75 and verse eight. For in the hand of the Lord, there's a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

That's not nations, that's you and me. That's your neighbors, your coworkers. All the wicked of the earth shall drain it to its dregs. So adultery, drop. Murder, drop. Pornography, lust, drop. Coveting, drop.

The list goes on and on and on as drop by drop. You fill your cup as I filled my cup. Jealousy and wrath and clamoring drop by drop into each cup, each sin recorded, each punishment determined, each to be experienced in all its fullness by the one who made each contribution.

Now think for a moment about God's wrath. What is going into this cup? It's the holy response to sin from an offended God. It is condemnation. It is proper wrath and is fully justified. The punishment is fully just.

Shall not the judge of the earth do what is just? Indeed, he shall do justice and only justice. There's many ideas on how this justice, this holy wrath works itself out against those who incite him to anger.

Adam when he ate, Cain when he murdered, David when he committed adultery, Judah and their idols. You and I have our own contributions. Where does all this go? It goes into this cup of wrath. And I want to hear the full description of what's in that cup.

I want you to hear this. Jeremiah 25, 17 says, so I took the cup from the Lord's hand and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it. And a long list of nations follows. Then in verse 27, then you shall say to them, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more because of the sword that I'm sending among you.

Verse 28, and if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, and let's stop for a moment. Here's that cup of wrath. I'm handing it to you as the prophet. Well, not me.

I'm picturing this for you. And you're going to look at that thing. You say, well, that looks bad. Yeah, it's bad. So each offense that I've committed against the holy God is remembered in that cup. And you're saying I have to drink it.

Yeah. Well, Jeremiah, what does it mean to drink it? Well, through all scripture, a cup is to experience the contents. That's what it means to drink it. The cup is the experience. Drink it down and experience what's in that cup.

Now, what are you going to say to that prophet? That doesn't look too good. Maybe we should go on to those Edomites. They were worse than me, right? No, this is for you. Babylon, Philistia, Judah, Israel, Ephraim.

No, I don't want it.

Who would want it?

Who would look in that cup and see the holy God's wrath at our willing sin? And in that cup is the punishment for a holy eternal God and what it would take to restore his honor for the dishonors we've committed.

You want that cup? I'm going to run away if I could. I'm not going to take it. Would you take it? Would you look in that wrath and say, this is eternal suffering in here. This is a holy God who can never be reconciled back to me because he's so holy and my sin is so atrocious and so willing.

Go somewhere else, prophet. Preach something else, preacher. And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you say to them, thus says the Lord of hosts, you must drink for behold, I begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name and shall you go unpunished?

You shall not go unpunished for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, declares the Lord of hosts. As Judah, God's people will be punished. So Peter says, is it not right that judgment starts with the people of God in the church of God with we who know Jesus Christ, we who know better and not only know better but have been given the spirit of God so we can do better.

You know, what Adam brought into the world has a consequence, which is death for it is appointed to men to die once and then the judgment, die and then drink. That's what's happening here. Drink from the cup that you helped to fill.

One or two gulps of wine are pretty easy for most of us to endure. We can have a cup of glasses of wine at dinner and enjoy them. But this is more than a few sips. This is something other than a fine wine that we would have at dinner.

This is staggering.

This is vomiting.

This is falling. This is never rise again. This is the justified punishment that Jesus spoke of when he said, fear him, that's God the Father who can destroy both body and soul in hell. And he said, you're going to go to a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

So we have a garden.

We have Eden.

We have a man, Adam. We have an answer to sin. He said, yes, yes to sin, the garden, Eden, the man, Adam, the answer, yes. I will partake. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, with that consequence for an Adam, all die.

And for all this, a cup. A cup which as much as you help to fill it, you will also help to empty it. A cup which must be emptied and drank down to its dregs. Now, praise God, thank God that it doesn't end there.

If we have a garden where sin was introduced in the world and a cup where God remembers all those sins and into that cup, he pours his wrath against each one of them, whether it be a nation or an individual, whether it be a mighty nation or a small nation, a powerful person or a no-name neighbor, whoever it is, it doesn't end there because there's another garden into which another man entered, another garden into which another Adam entered, another garden into which another man who was going to represent all his progeny also entered into.

And this man at that second garden faced a temptation very much like the first Adam, to disobey God. Of course, the Adam I speak of, the second Adam is Jesus Christ and the second garden is Gethsemane.

Eden with Adam, Gethsemane with Jesus, and between the two, the cup of God's wrath. And there, Jesus faced a temptation very much like Adam's, which was what? To disobey God, to opt for personal comfort over God's will, to consider his own needs and comfort as more important than others.

And like Adam, this man gave answer to all this. And like Adam, the consequences of his answer was distributed to his descendants. Gethsemane, Jesus Christ, and an answer and a cup. What did Jesus Christ say?

To sin, to doing something other than God's will. He said no. He said yes to God's will and no to anything that would pull him off that path. At Gethsemane, the temptation was answered. And you might say to me, the scripture doesn't say he was tempted at Gethsemane, to which I would answer, why then did he pray three times?

Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Here's this one cup with all of God's wrath, whether it's Babylon, whether it's Edom, whether it's Judah, whether it's Israel, whether it's you, whether it's me, all of it in there.

And that's the one he says. Remove this cup. Three times he prays. Why, if not temptation, if not fighting the temptation to avoid the next day's suffering, did his prayerful agonies cause him to bleed?

And with 12 legions of angels at his beck and call, yet he denied it all after suffering through the temptation. To somehow avoid it. Adam had temptation to avoid God's will. And he gave in. Jesus here praying that God's will would be other than the next day's cross.

That cup filled with all God's wrath and all the sin of all the people he would represent this second Adam. What was the great cry at Gethsemane? So different than that weak little squeal from Eden to give in.

What was Jesus' great victory cry? Not my will, but yours. Not my will, but yours. Jesus, fully God, and no less important to our faith that he was just as much fully man. Would God bleed from the intensity of prayer?

We don't confuse humanity with deity as man he pleaded with God and then he turned to his divine side. The first Adam said yes to sin. The second Adam also said yes, but not to sin. Not to sin, he said yes.

He was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. Not yes to sin, but yes to God's will. What was Jesus trying to have removed? That cup. He said, remove this cup from me. That cup of Jeremiah 25.

That cup of Psalm 75. The cup filled with God's wrath. Wrath against the sins of everyone whose redemption could be had only by their portion of that cup. That one great cup being emptied. Do you understand that your sins were in that cup?

Do you understand that if your sins were not drunk by Jesus Christ, they're left over for you? You will drain it to the dregs. Let me put it another way. It must be drained to the dregs. As God said, you will surely drink.

Drink what? This cup filled with undying worms and unquenchable flames. The cup Jesus drank to the dregs, he drank it to the dregs the next day on the cross. He refused the sour wine while he's on the cross.

The only wine he allowed to pass from his lips was the wine of that cup. That's metaphorical, of course. That wasn't a physical cup given to him, but the cup with all God's wrath was taken by him and drained to the dregs your sins and mine.

All the people he represented, blessed be our God and Savior, excuse me, our God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who chose us in him before the foundation of the world. What does that mean? That means that when Jesus said, not my will but yours and took that cup, he took my portion of that cup and your portion of that cup and all who were in him by God the Father's will and he drank that to the dregs all the sins of all the people that God gave him.

He went to the cross and drank it all down. Now, how could it be right for the only sinless man who ever lived to be treated as if he were every sinful man who ever lived? How could God break his word to Ezekiel, for example?

Ezekiel, when he said that the soul who sins shall die for his own sins, not the sins of others. Jesus never sinned. He was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. So how could it be possible?

How could it be just for God to put him on the cross and have him pay for sins he never committed? Well, God did not break his word. He kept his word to the full. One verse proves it and we won't go on past that.

2 Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus drank down my punishment for my sin because God made his sinless son to be sin itself.

God made him to be sin. And when Jesus Christ became sin, it was just for God to punish him as sin. And when Jesus Christ became sin and drank down the punishment for all the sin that he became because he was holy and blameless and without sin, all of his perfection could be applied to you and to me.

And because he was holy and perfect and blameless and righteous in every way and lived perfectly before God and no punishment was due to him. Not one molecule of that cup was put in there by him. He could drink it all down and apply all of his perfection to it.

The battle cry at Gethsemane was not my will but yours. When he finished my cup, when he drank to the dregs your portion of that cup, that's when he cried out and said it is finished. That's the great victory cry.

The battle was won the night before at Gethsemane. I would say when he said not my will but yours and put his face toward that cross finally. That was the victory cry, it is finished. In a garden the first Adam made redemption necessary when he said yes, yes to sin.

In another garden our second Adam said yes to all it would take to undo the after effects of Adam's yes. From Eden to Gethsemane the sins for which Jesus would suffer filled the cup that he would drink to the dregs and to the full.

Not one sin left behind, my sin not the part but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more because Jesus Christ bore it for me. He drank it all down. He suffered all that wrath. He took it in himself and rose victorious.

And the hymn goes on, praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul. At Gethsemane Jesus resoundingly said yes when he said not my will but yours. So from Eden when Adam brought sin and death into the world and all that sin remembered and placed in that cup drop by drop by drop all taken in by the Lord Jesus Christ for the joy set before him at the cross.

The joy set before him to redeem God's people, those who he had placed in him. Those whom God the Father before the foundation of the world determined would be redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll praise the Father for sending his Son, praise the Spirit for opening our eyes and praise the Son for his cross.

Praise God this morning. We see more of the depth of his suffering, what he endured on my behalf and on yours, God willing. And hopefully this will increase the depth and the focus of our love for him.

And may he continue to be glorified and lifted up in this place because it was he who redeemed us. It was he who drank my cup to the dregs. It's he who because of love for the Father's will and love for the people he gave him.

It's you and me as broken as we are accomplish this redemption by drinking down our cup and suffering in our place. Amen. Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, for the suffering that he endured on my behalf.

And we thank you, Father, for the redemption that we have in him that you have given us faith to believe, eyes to see, hearts to perceive, and a Spirit within us that wants to do your will to love you all the more and to become more and more like Jesus Christ.

I pray, Father, that by the power of your Spirit you would continue to accomplish this in us. In Jesus' name, Amen.