God Disciplines His Children Part 2

I turn with you once again, please, to Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews chapter 12. We continue in our study of this wonderful book this evening.

Let's ask the Lord to bless our time together. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, as we consider your graciousness as our

Heavenly Father, may we hear your word, may you by your spirit challenge us to consider this exhortation, to take it very seriously.

Lord, live in light of it in this coming week. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. As we work with this passage this morning, we were struck once again with the seriousness of our topic and certainly its relevance in our lives today.

We know that the author has laid a foundation theologically for us to understand how we can have peace with God.

We understand that our salvation is all of grace. We recognize the perfection of the work of Christ.

But just as we had in Romans, or as we will really see as we're working through Romans, once Paul lays the theological foundation, there is then that wonderful balance of application.

The foundation is laid, what God has done is explained. The reality of God's sovereignty, the perfection of His grace,

His power, that's all laid out for us. But then we're not just left to go, well, great, let's just sit around and talk theology the rest of our lives.

Instead, we recognize that theology has to have an application. There is nothing more degrading to sound theology than those who tout it, but never live it.

Those who speak often of it, but it never touches their lives. There's little more that can be more reprehensible, little more that can degrade true theology than for people to speak of it, but then not live in light of it.

And the Word will not allow us to do this. As soon as the theology is laid, then from that point on you have application.

This then is how you should live. And so we've seen the exhortation that is taking place here in chapter 12, that we are to look unto

Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And once again we will read this section beginning at verse 4 and try to finish it up this evening.

You have not yet resisted the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons.

My sons, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the

Lord loves, He disciplines and He scourges every son He receives. It is for discipline that you endure.

For God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the

Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as seemed best to them. But He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share

His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

This morning we worked through verse 8, and we noted the very strong words of verse 8, that if you are without discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

The reason for this is given in the middle of the verse, of which all have become partakers.

In other words, there is not one special class of Christians that God calls to sort of a higher plane of existence, and therefore

He disciplines them and He trains them, and then there's the other Christians that have signed up for a little lower level of things, and so they don't really have to worry about all this holiness stuff.

Now you might say, that's silly, no one would ever say that. I wish.

I have been struck, especially in working through this 12th chapter, with the utter absurdity of what

I believe, and some people might think me to be just a terrible, mean, horrible, nasty person.

Believe it or not, there are people who think that of me out there in the world. There really are. If you look at Google, you shouldn't look at Google.

Don't Google my name, it's a terrible thing, but I actually think this is a heresy.

I think it's a false gospel, and yet it has infected large portions of evangelicalism.

There are those people in this valley this evening, at large theological institutions and large churches, who are teaching that you become a

Christian simply by acknowledging certain facts about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and if you add the idea that you need to repent of your sins, they say you're a false teacher.

They say you're adding to the gospel of grace. Repentance, that's for a special group of people. That's for people who want to become disciples and sort of go all the way.

But you don't have to do that. You can just be a lower level Christian, and just sort of not worry about that repentance stuff.

I mean, it's good to do, you know. I mean, if you really want to go there, but it's not necessary. Well, needless to say, there is certainly no writer of the

New Testament that had any concept of this repentanceless idea of the gospel.

The very first word that the Lord Jesus' mouth in his preaching was, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And even in the gospel of John, where the emphasis is upon belief, even there it is

God's sovereign work to conform us to the image of Christ, to draw us unto Jesus, and we can see that that includes repentance from sin and holiness of life.

But certainly when we come to this text, we are told that all have become partakers of this discipline.

There is no son that God receives that he does not discipline, and that is based in the consistency of his character.

While we as earthly fathers may become tired, or we as earthly fathers may do more diligence to an older child than a younger child, or a younger child than an older child, or whatever the situation might be, no, none of those character flaws exist with God the

Father. And every son that he receives will receive discipline.

Then the example is given in verse 9, Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them.

Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? And so the analogy is given.

We recognize, and again, I know that there are those exceptions where a father is killed at war, or a father does not do what he is supposed to do and abandons the family, and all of these things, but he is appealing to a general experience of mankind that in general we have earthly fathers, and they were expected in that culture, and expected in this culture up until recently, to discipline their children, to raise their children in such a way that they would become responsible adults, and newsflash, in the olden days, it was normally before 30.

That has sort of changed in our modern day, but back then, I remember when

I was growing up, I don't remember when this was communicated to me. In fact, I asked my dad once,

I said, did we ever have a conversation? He said, no, no, no, I don't remember anything like that. I pretty much had the idea that once I turned 18,

I better be ready to go. I better be ready to do my thing and take care of myself.

It's not that my parents were just going to kick me out the door or something, but once you became an adult, you needed to start acting like one, and taking account of yourself, and taking care of yourself, and things like that.

That's sort of what I tried to do. That's one of the reasons I was married at 19. I figured, well, let's get on with this adulthood stuff.

Now at 51, I've got a grandchild, and I can actually get down on the floor and everything else, and I don't have to use a walker and everything.

It's a really good thing. Anyway, be it as it may, that was a side sermon that we don't need to remember too much about.

The fact of the matter is, that in the olden days, and even in our own understanding, we had earthly fathers, they disciplined us, and we showed them respect.

Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of Spirits and live? That phrase, the Father of Spirits, people have read all sorts of wild and weird stuff into that, and our

Mormon friends think that means that God has spiritual offspring, and stuff like that. Obviously, the contrast is, the

Father of our physical bodies, our natural fathers, and now we're talking about the spiritual father, the

Father of Spirits, and the idea is that we should be subject to the

Father of Spirits. Now, when we question God's discipline, when we question the severity, the regularity of His discipline of us in our lives, we in essence are saying,

I don't really have trust, that you are a trustworthy

Father of Spirits. You're being too hard on me. You're being too harsh on me.

The reality is, He probably knows us better than we know ourselves, and if we need the constant repetition of the same lesson, it may be because we keep forgetting that same lesson.

The fact of the matter is, we can trust God, and the tendency that we all have, is we look around us, and we look at somebody else at church, and you go, well, it seems like that person is really going through as much as I am.

I mean, I just keep writing the same thing, and this happened this week, and that happened this week, and boy, the Lord is just really disciplining me, but I don't know that I see it in that other person's life.

And we compare ourselves to other people. Nowhere in here are we supposed to be looking at other people. Nowhere in this text is it said, well, look to your brothers and sisters, compare the discipline they're experiencing.

No, there's nothing like that at all. It's all the relationship we have with our

Heavenly Father, and the trust and the subjection that we are to have, and that is a trusting subjection.

It is the subjection that any child should have in trusting that parent, trusting that they have their best in mind.

And while there are times we may be able to question our own earthly parents in having had our best in mind, or because of ignorance or sin, not having had our best in mind, that is never a shadow that should cross the mind of the believing son or daughter of God.

Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father's Spirit and live?

That little and live part just sort of goes past us a little bit.

It shouldn't. We're talking here about how we can truly have life. Isn't it amazing that the world around us looks at us and says, you folks, you're letting life pass you by.

I mean, it's Sunday night. It's a beautiful day outside. Josh and I are driving down here, and this truck passed us, and they're dragging one of those four -wheel,

I don't know, that thing looks like it could have bounced on its head sideways and everything out there in the desert, and they wouldn't have cared one way or the other.

But it was one of those dune buggy, four -wheel, dune rider things. And they were obviously coming back from having spent the whole day out there just doing their thing.

And I'm sure they'd probably look at us and go, man, what did you do today? You went to church?

And you studied the Bible? And you sang hymns? Wow, we had a grand old time.

We really, really did. You're letting life pass you by. And the reality is, when you're subject to the

Father's spirits, what is it that He is doing in us? When He disciplines us, is

He taking life away from us? What did Jesus say? I'm come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

You see, the discipline of God makes us more what

God made us to be in the first place. When we are conformed to the image of Christ, we are really walking in being made in the image of God, and we experience life on a level that the world around us cannot even begin to experience.

And everybody knows this. The lost know this. I mean, how many movies have been made about people who make it big, and they get all the stuff, and they've got all the constant amusement and worldly goods, and they become empty as a result.

Because life is not found in the abundance of one's possessions. They become empty.

They may have health. They may have everything that the body might desire, and they are empty.

They can't live. Because they've cut themselves off from the source of life. And folks, never lose sight of one thing.

As we become more and more marginalized for standing on the Word of God, especially what the

Word of God teaches about how God has made us, and how men and women are to relate to one another, especially as we stand for the truth that there is such a thing as a husband and such a thing as a wife, and if you look at two people and can't tell which is which, that ain't a marriage, and it never will be.

If we stand for that, we are going to be marginalized. We are going to experience the persecution of the world around us.

But never lose sight of one reality. That lifestyle, that worldview, kills.

It does not give life. Not only cannot it create life, it destroys life.

It destroys life. And so, when you stand for that, the amazing thing is people say,

Haters! Haters! Haters! You're the one showing hatred toward life. You're cutting yourselves off from life.

When you subject yourself to the Father of Spirits, when you recognize who you are and who

God is, that's the only way to have true life. And we show ourselves completely foolish when we question

God's ways and substitute our own ways, and in cutting ourselves off from Him, seeking to live, we die.

That is the great foolishness of the fallen world. And so, we have the example, earthly fathers, heavenly fathers, for they, our earthly fathers, disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them.

That may not have seemed very short to you, but when you think about it, even over the course of your entire life, it was a relatively short period of time.

They disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good.

Now, what seemed best to them may have been godly and right and righteous if we were fortunate enough to have a father like that, but He disciplines us for our good, and He knows what our good is far more in depth than any of us even know.

I mean, we may be absolutely convinced that doing this or obtaining this position or something like that would be absolutely our best.

That's my good. He may know that that would actually end up in our misery and destruction.

He knows what is good for us, and so He disciplines us for our good.

You can always have the absolute assurance that the discipline of God in your life is not capricious.

God is not just sitting up there going, well, I'm just, you know, these are my children.

I'm going to let them just live their lives and they can just run amok in the world, but these over here, they're my stepchildren.

I'm just going to whip them good. You don't have that kind of capricious nature in God.

Instead, God has a purpose. This is again where we see the unity and consistency of the

Christian faith. It all fits together. God's sovereign purpose is to glorify

Himself. He glorifies Himself for the salvation of an elect people. And what does

He do with those elect people? What does Titus chapter 2 say? That grace teaches us to deny ungodliness.

And that it's God's purpose that He create a holy people zealous for good deeds.

And so how does that happen? Well, He wants to make us more like Christ. He wants to form

His image within us or hear in an amazing short little statement in verse 10, so that we might participate in, share in His holiness.

Now, we've been reading through Leviticus.

And now we're in Numbers. And there's more than once when

I stand up here or Brother Jim stands up here, I'll bet you he'll tell you.

We look at that passage ahead of time and we sort of turn the page and go, I wonder if it's going to be one of those texts.

I wonder if I'm going to have to be talking about leprous spots. Because there's some tough texts.

Actually, some of the tougher ones are in Judges. But there's some tough stuff we're going to be sledding through.

There's no two ways about it. And sometimes the thought crosses my mind, you know, we have visitors.

Are they going to get nervous that that's actually the text for preaching tonight? You know, they're going to sit out there and go, oh great, they're going to be preaching about leprosy this evening.

That's wonderful. That's exactly what I came. And they'll be gone before we even get a chance to start preaching.

But we still preach through it. We still preach through it because we believe it's all the Word of God.

And what did we see in Leviticus? We saw the holiness code.

And tonight we read about the Nazarites. I didn't see that coming. I wasn't trying to put it into the sermon or something like that.

But setting oneself apart to make a vow to God, to separate oneself from certain activities, the eating of any of the fruit of the vine, things like that, as a special sign of one's devotion to one's

God. Holiness. Well, one thing hopefully we've gotten by now, and if we haven't, we've still got plenty more reading to do, is that God says you shall be holy for I am holy.

My people are to reflect my nature. My people are to reflect my nature.

You're to be like me. Well, we look at the history of Israel and we go, hmm, whatever.

You think of some of those Israelite kings and you think of some of the things that happened and you go, not a lot of holiness there.

But we do see some. That's one of the great things about the New Covenant. That's one of the big differences.

Old and New Covenant. They shall all know me. Not everybody under that Old Covenant really knew the

Lord. And when you place those laws and those restraints upon someone who's actually not regenerated, oh boy, that heart can really rebel.

Explode out into all sorts of evil. But you see, now we're in the

New Covenant. Now we have a covenant established in the blood of Christ. Now we have the perfection that comes from the work of Christ.

And now the way is open for us to enter into the very presence of God. And here we're told that in the everyday discipline of His sons and daughters,

God disciplines us for our good. And what is that good? So that we may share

His holiness. We may participate in His holiness.

That is an amazing statement. I mean, that's the kind of statement my

Muslim friends would bristle at. That's way too personal. This God is getting way too involved in the stuff

He's created. Too much. Too close. That's why they don't accept the Incarnation.

That we may share His holiness. I mean, we have that other text.

Peter, for example, mentions partaking of the divine nature and its holiness that is said in the book of Isaiah.

God is many things. He's merciful and He's kind and He's gracious and compassionate.

But when the angels circle the throne, what do they say? Thrice. Three times.

Holy. Holy. Holy. This marks Him off in a special way.

And yet, it's His purpose in His work within our lives in sanctifying us.

We know what sanctification is. Setting apart is holy. That we may share in His holiness.

Once again, when we think about our priorities, when we think about what things should capture our hearts and our minds and make us excited.

Things that we want to experience in this life. Where does partaking of God's holiness?

Where is that on our list? It is so easy for the things of the world to come in and to capture such high positions when in reality, if we really were to think about it, we would recognize.

Be pleasing to Him. Partake in the divine nature. Share God's holiness.

These are privileges, because when we think of who we are, when we look in the

Scriptures and we see the description, for example, of men when the judgment of God falls instead of repenting, instead of worshiping

God, instead of seeking His holiness, what do they do? They call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them to hide them from God's holiness.

When we think of that reaction and we are called to partake in His holiness, that is a radical change.

A radical change. I think of Luther. And I think of how the holiness of God so repels him because he knew his sin and the sacraments of Rome could never ever bring him the peace that he knew he wanted to have with God.

Because it never brought about real perfection. It did not perfect those for whom those sacraments were performed.

And that's what forced him to come to understand the truth of justification by faith.

It was right there, but his traditions had kept him from seeing it. So that we may share

His holiness. And do you see the connection between these two verses?

You submit the Father of spirits. You're subject to Him. You will live.

What does it mean to live? So we may share His holiness. The world cannot begin to understand this.

The world cannot begin to desire this. When the world through its religions has tried to mimic this with its monasteries and its sacramentalism, it has always become a gross caricature.

But for those who are united with Christ, how can it be any other way?

He who demonstrated the very holiness of God, if we are united with Him, how can it be anything other than this?

How can we have any other conclusion than that we must share in His holiness?

If we become more like Christ, what's that going to mean? I would encourage you to consider this week what does it mean for me to share in the very holiness of God?

What would that look like in this world? It certainly shines a lot of light on the prevalent attitudes of many people in evangelicalism where the idea is let's look more and more like the world.

Let's act more and more like the world. Let's speak more and more like the world. Especially when it is a world that is so plainly intent upon rejecting every form of godliness that it can possibly even identify.

The writer goes on to say, all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful.

Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

The author is not living in a fantasy world. The author undoubtedly himself has experienced these truths and recognizes that at the moment of discipline it doesn't seem to be joyful but sorrowful.

We all, any believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, can look back over your life and you think about those dark times.

You think about those trials and tribulations. You think about the things that you have gone through at the time.

You were forced to the position of saying, God, if you don't deliver me, if you don't give me the grace, if you don't give me the strength,

I will not make it through. I cannot do this alone. Where those around you could not understand, could not enter into the depth of your pain.

You think about those times and you can understand, yes, for the moment it doesn't seem to be joyful.

It seems to be very much filled with sorrow. And yes, as we look back over the history of God's people, every single one of those men and women down through the ages that have made an impact whose names we might even remember to this day can testify of the truthfulness of that statement.

They experienced that kind of dark and difficult time.

If Pastor Fry is ever successful in the campaign he's been waging for a number of decades now to have

Pilgrim's Progress canonized amongst Reformed Baptists, then we will have many illustrations in that text that bear this out because when you think about what the author himself experienced, it's pretty easy to see why.

Pilgrim has a pretty tough road. He goes through a lot before he gets to the

Celestial City. But you see, that's because every

Christian knows that there is a reason why the

Psalter speaks of the valley of the shadow of death and those difficult places that we must walk and the darkness and the tribulation and the heartache that is the experience of the child of God.

That's why it is such a tragedy that there's so many people trotting around this globe preaching a message that says believe in Jesus and everything will be a better rose.

You'll never have any more trials and tribulations. All you've got to do is name it and claim it will be all yours.

And oh, the disappointment that flows into the lives of those deceived by such false teaching.

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. But if you know, if you are convinced, if you have faith based upon the

Word of God, that you know the character of your God, you know the character of your

Heavenly Father, and you know that what has been said before is true, that He's disciplining you for the good, that He has a purpose, that you might participate in His holiness if you are convinced of those things.

And the ultimate conviction of that is to be found in the fact that God has proven the truthfulness of all this in Jesus Christ.

Remember, the first part of this chapter is look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Once you have that kind of assurance, the character of the Father, and we have that assurance because we have seen the perfect revelation of the

Father. Remember how Hebrews started? Who is the perfect representation of His person?

The Son. That's how we know. How we have absolute confidence in the character of God.

Once we have that, then we can always, even in the midst of sorrow, recognize the rest of the verse to be true.

Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Yet to those who have been trained by it, there's that concept of discipline once again. It's not that I go through one real deep valley and I find

God to be true. And then the rest of my journey is going to be on the mountaintop.

And my experience is, once you get to the mountaintop, there's only one place to go. Ever experience that?

You get to the top, you find yourself back down the valley again. You wonder, how

I got here? Well, that's because if you're progressing, there's going to be another mountaintop over there.

You can't just stay in one place. Peter found that out, remember? Mount Transfiguration. It's great for us to be here,

Lord! No, Peter, we've got to come down off the mountain. No reason to build a...

Let's build a tabernacle up here. Let's just have fun. This is great. God the

Father is here. I'd like to talk with Moses and Elijah some. Let's just stay up here. No. Got to go back down the valley.

There's things to do. You see, if we have that conviction, then we can be trained by that discipline.

And we know in the midst of it that it's going to continue.

And there's going to be more of it. It's going to be different. It may even become sharper.

And the truly sanctified person, the person who truly has come to understand

God's purposes in his or her life, is not the person who's constantly going, Oh, Lord, please stop.

But it's the person who's saying, Lord, sharpen your discipline. Make it ever more effective in my life.

Now, it's been a long time since I've used the illustration. So given how bad my memory is getting,

I'll go ahead and use it for you, too, in the hopes that yours is as bad as mine. Stole this from my dad, who probably stole it from somebody else.

But it's an awesome illustration. And it fits here very, very well. The illustration is of the goldsmith.

And as you know, when they dig gold out of the ground or find it in the stream bed or wherever else it might be, it's not pure.

It's mixed with other things. And so it's not as bright and beautiful and consistent and reflective as gold can be.

And so the process is, you place the gold into the crucible and you start the fire.

And you melt that precious metal. And what happens is, the impurities, the imperfections, are lighter than the gold is.

And so what happens? As it becomes liquefied, then those lighter elements come to the top.

And so what the goldsmith would do in the olden days, and I know they do it all with computers and everything else these days, but let me have my old -style illustration, if you would.

They would just basically scrape off those impurities from the top.

And that's what we experience. In fact, this is the very illustration used in scripture, is it not? Gold refined by fire.

But the illustration, I think, has neat application because once you take off that first level of impurities, you don't stop there because there are some more.

And the only way to get to the next level of impurities is do what? Heat the fire even hotter.

Heat the fire even hotter. And so the next level comes up. And so the more pure you want the gold, the hotter the fire has to keep getting.

And you see the application. For most of us, it's turn the temperature down!

Give me a vacation! Well, it all depends on what we want.

If what we want is our comfort, then that's what we're going to pray for. But if we want the peaceful fruit of righteousness, which if you look at each one of these verses, peaceful fruit of righteousness, share in His holiness, live.

Life, holiness, peaceful fruit of righteousness. If our heart is set upon those things, then we will want to go through the process that yields those things, that brings us those things.

The world's not going to hand those things to us. The world can't. It's not in its possession. Now, the illustration then concludes by asking the question, how does the goldsmith know when the gold is pure?

He knows the gold is pure when he can see his own reflection in the gold.

The impurities have been removed and the reflection of the goldsmith can be seen.

Beautiful illustration. And it speaks to us, speaks to me anyway, of how often my first thought is, turn down the temperature.

Stop the process. Whereas I know in my scripturally informed mind that should not be my prayer.

That should not be my desire. Do I want the peaceful fruit of righteousness?

Do I want to share in His holiness? Do I want to experience life?

Then I must recognize that God's process of discipline is absolutely central.

How central is it? Well, notice verse 14. We haven't gotten there yet.

But just notice verse 14. "...Pursue peace with all men and the sanctification..."

That's the same root of holiness. "...without which no one will see the

Lord." Now, the reason that that sub -biblical heresy exists in so many churches today that says, we need to defend salvation by faith alone so you don't need to repent.

That's work salvation. The reason that exists is because of the other sub -biblical belief called

Arminianism. You say, whoa, you just lost me. Think about it for just a moment. The Christian faith is a balanced, unified whole.

And I submit to you the only way that you can balance what the

Bible says about God's utter freedom, the freedom of salvation, faith alone.

There is nothing I can do to save myself. I cannot earn anything from God. The only way you can balance that with the drumbeat of holiness.

Pursue holiness. You shall be holy as I am holy. The sanctification without which no one will see the

Lord. The only way you can hold them together is to recognize that God's purpose is to sanctify, redeem a particular people for His own possession.

He is at work within them. It's His Spirit that is at work within them. It's His purpose to conform them to the image of Christ.

It's His purpose that they participate in His holiness. That the triune God is accomplishing

His purpose. That's what holds it all together. And once you throw that out, once you say, no,

God's doing the best He can, you only have two choices.

You've now lost the middle unified road. You're either going to fall off into the antinomianism, quote -unquote free grace, which is really cheap grace, no repentance, only super -Christians ever do anything about holiness stuff.

Or you'd leap off into the legalism of so much of man's religions, where I pull myself up by my bootstraps.

God's done everything He can. Now it's up to me. It's sort of hard if you say, well, you know, here's the divine election.

God's voting for you. The devil voted against you. Now you've got the tie -breaking vote. You know, if you have that kind of an idea of election, you don't have a meaningful basis for creating a doctrine of how you live the

Christian life. Because God doesn't have a real purpose. He's working out within His people.

You see, theology matters. It all comes together.

And we can preach with just as much seriousness and fervor that without sanctification, without holiness, no one will see the

Lord because it is only the Lord that can provide us with the holiness that will avail before Him in the first place.

And so these words, you may experience this week the discipline of the

Lord in various ways. It may be a difficult trial. It may be the daily kind of discipline that the

Lord brings into our life. But whatever that discipline is that you experience, how you view it and understand it will make all the difference in whether you learn from it and become more holy as a result.

Are you convinced of the character of God? Are you convinced of His purposes in your life?

If you are, then you will experience His holiness. You'll experience

His discipline. And you'll be joyful because you'll know He's treating you as His child.

Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank

You for the beautiful balance of Your truth and Your Word.

We thank You that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. But we thank You that it does not then leave us alone, but calls us to holiness and sanctification, to experience

Your discipline, Your life. Lord, may we never become complacent because we know of Your grace.

May that always drive us to seek to be pleasing to You and to strive against Him. All to Your honor and glory.

If there be any here this evening, Lord, simply do not understand.

In whose life You have not brought about that repentance and faith, Lord, may You reveal Jesus Christ to them.

If there be any here who have been trusting in their religious works, Lord, that they would see that nothing can avail before You except the perfect holiness of Christ.

If there be any who have been playing a game of religion, may You break that down, draw them to Yourself, grant them repentance.