Romans 1 8 17 Not Ashamed Of The Gospel

Romans 1:8-12 and the Gospel Produces Love for God's People

Romans, if you have your Bible in front of you, if you brought it with you today, please turn it to Romans chapter one. We'll be looking at Romans chapter one. Today, we're gonna pick up on verse number eight.

So we covered the first seven verses last week. We'll be looking at verse number eight through 17. Today's topic or today's title is Not Ashamed of the Gospel. You say, how could I possibly be ashamed of it?

We're gonna see what the apostle has to say about that today. We'll see as we get into it. Let's take a moment and pray. Our Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the blessing of the gospel.

We thank you for this time together to worship, to look to your text today, and we pray that you would bless this time. Father, may we honor you, may we learn from your text today and learn from your word, and may you bless us and be here amongst us.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. Last week, as I said, we started the book of Romans. We saw Paul's greeting to the church in Rome. The first few verses of a letter in those time, he would always see who it's from, who it's to, and a little bit of a kind of a topic statement or a thesis statement about what it's about.

We saw insight into his greeting. He specifically mentions who he is and what his calling is. We learned he talks about he's an apostle, meaning that he is called by Jesus, he is sent by Jesus. That's something nobody today can claim to be.

Nobody today has seen the risen Jesus. We see that Paul's on a mission to do the will of God. He's on a mission to be a messenger of the gospel, the message that Jesus has assigned to him. But now there's some more details about this gospel that we can talk about.

I'm gonna pick up on verse number eight. We read in verse number eight and on, it says, first, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing, I mention you.

Always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will, I may now at least at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

I'm under obligation both to the Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.

To everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. So my first point that I wanna talk about today, my first point is that the gospel produces love for God's people.

The gospel produces love for God's people. This is a side effect of the gospel. If we are followers of Jesus, if we follow him, if we've embraced the gospel, if we know the gospel, we should, it should create love in us for others.

And look at who's writing this. Take a second and we think about who's writing this. Remember who's writing this? This is the Apostle Paul. If you remember who Paul was, he was also known as Saul in his previous life, a previous career, if you will.

This was a guy who hated Christianity. He hated Christians with a passion, was actively trying to destroy the church before Jesus confronted him and he came to faith in Christ. Jesus changed him from the inside out.

God replaced his heart of stone with a heart that loved God and loved others. We see that in his writings. But now look what he has to say about a group of Christians that are living in Rome. Verse number eight says, I thank God for you, for your faith.

Specifically he says, first I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. So he's saying, first of all, they had faith and he praises God for that.

Did you know that faith itself is a gift from God? We believe, we believe in him, we have faith in him because God gives it to us. We don't have that faith in and of our natural selves. But he thanks God for their faith.

He thanks that people had heard of them, that this church in Rome, it was making noise and it was a big deal. People had heard of them and they were hearing about them. We read on in verse number nine, it says, for God is my witness whom I serve with the Spirit and the Gospel of the Son that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. Folks, I'll tell you what, if there's something that a pastor dreams about, if there's something that a pastor loves to see, it's this.

He loves to hear that the people he cares about are growing in their faith. I dream about that. I just wanna see people here grow into maturity and be mature Christians. I thank God for those that already are.

And that is my prayer for everybody in this church, that they would continue to grow in the faith. Paul says that he's been praying for them nonstop. That's what he's praying for. He wants to see them grow in love and in knowledge of Jesus.

And that's what a mature Christian should do. That's what we should do for each other is we should be praying for each other. I would say as pastor, I envy your prayers. I ask that you pray for me. And I ask that you continue every day, pray for me, that I'm living a life that would glorify God and that I'm not gonna be some kind of hypocrite standing up here telling you what a Christian is when I'm not living that faith.

I pray that you would pray for me that I would continue to grow in my faith. And Paul says he wants them to know God more. He says they will encourage him. Think about that. The apostle Paul is saying, I want to come to Rome to see you so you can encourage me.

This is the apostle. This is the guy that wrote half the New Testament. And he says, I want to be encouraged by you. I want to encourage you and I want you to build each other up. Folks, we need each other.

I often say this to people that say, I don't need to go to church. I don't need to be in church on Sunday. I'll just watch it on TV. You're missing the point. Church is not just about consuming a show on TV.

We need each other. We need to encourage and build each other up. Other people need you. Other people need you. So it's good that you're here because you are needed and you are blessing other people by being here.

You are blessing other people by just by being here and greeting them when you see them and saying hi and showing that you care. But Paul is saying you encourage each other. And as faith increases, it produces this love for one another and a desire to know each other in Jesus.

When we love God, when we love others, it's natural we're gonna pray for them. It's natural as we develop that friendship that we're just gonna, we're gonna wanna see each other do well. We're gonna wanna pray for each other and ask God to bless them.

When we love God, we're gonna desire to grow closer to him and to see others grow closer to him as well. When we love God, we're gonna desire to see other people's faith deepen. When we love God, we're gonna desire to spend time with him, with them as well.

A spiritually mature Christian is someone that wants to spend time with God and other believers. A spiritually mature Christian never says, I don't need God's people. And it's in the context of Christian fellowship that we do grow closer to God.

God wants to use the church to build each other up. That's why it's so important that we're here in church every single week, whenever we can. And yeah, I know, sometimes people miss church and that's okay.

If you have a reason to be gone from church, it's understandable. But just sleeping in is not a good reason. That's why it's so important that we be involved in church and we're involved in things like Bible studies and Sunday school and small groups and fellowship groups.

That's why it's so important that we gather together for prayer. We have a prayer meeting on Thursday night. Everybody know that. Seven o 'clock downstairs, prayer meeting at seven o 'clock. But if you're not currently involved in anything outside of Sunday morning, you really are missing out.

You really are. I don't mean this to shame you. I'm just saying you're missing out and others need you as well. You're never going to grow as much as a believer as you will when you gather with other Christians to study God's word, to pray, to do ministry.

And that's why we meet at other times besides Sunday. God gave us a church and he intends to use the church as his primary means of helping people grow to maturity. If we ignore his desire to see us become mature Christians, we're missing something.

So number one, you know, that means that we should do the things that result in growth. I saw an interesting thing on Facebook this past week. I don't know if you guys can read this. The text is maybe a little small.

I'll be happy to provide a screenshot for you later if you'd like. But pastors were asked, there was a poll conducted and pastors were asked, how do you think you're doing in the area of discipleship?

Meaning teaching people to follow Christ, teaching people about Christ, teaching people how to be a Christian. Number one of the five points says pastors have a big satisfaction with discipleship in their churches.

In other words, across the nation, most pastors are, yeah, I think we're doing okay. I think we're doing all right. To be honest, we don't always know what that means by discipleship. We don't, unfortunately there's not a 10 steps program laid out in the Bible.

Do this, this, this, and this, and this. Pastors say we think we're doing okay. We think we're doing all right. But number two is if discipleship were a test, they say churchgoers would get a D plus. They might be being a little harder on the churchgoers than they are on themselves by looking at that, but we go on and it says that few churchgoers read the Bible every day.

That's just a common fact. You've got millions of people in this country go to church every single week, but unfortunately they just don't crack a Bible Monday through Saturday. The majority of churchgoers in this country, the only time they open up a Bible is Sunday morning, if then.

That's just a fact. We read on and it says few churchgoers build relationships for the purpose of evangelism. Have you ever purposely set out to try to get to know somebody with the understanding that, boy, the reason I'm intentionally trying to make a friend is because I want them to know Christ?

May sound a little self-centered or underhanded, but that's what we're called to do. We're called to take the gospel, to share it with other people. That means we may have to get out of our comfort zones and actually talk to people that we would not normally talk to.

That means that, well, by golly, yeah, I've never actually spoken to that guy that lives three houses down, but maybe I should. Maybe I should go talk to him. Maybe I should try to establish a relationship with that person or the cashier at the grocery store.

Maybe I've never really said anything other than, yes, thank you, I'll pay with the cash and no, I don't want my receipt. We may have never said that, but we should be trying to make friends with those around us and share our lives with them.

But number five, churchgoers face doubts in their faith, just the way it is. I understand it. Everybody has doubts. Even pastors, sometimes we have doubts about something. We have doubts in what's going on.

That's okay, that's natural. That's why we need to spend time in church. That's why we need to spend time in God's word. It's normal to question, but that's why we need each other too, to encourage each other and to lift each other up.

As a pastor, I know we need to improve on these things. I know there's room to get better on these things. As a pastor, I can't force a person to grow. As much as I'd like to be able to just push a button or do a program or do something in order to make everybody around me grow into maturity and be a mature Christian, I can't force anybody to get more mature.

I remember 30 years ago as a fairly new Christian, as a fairly young Christian, about 30 years ago, I heard a pastor say something to this effect. I heard him say that it's up to me, it's up to me to make sure I'm growing spiritually as a Christian.

And to be honest, at the time, I was a little bit offended. I thought, what in the world are you doing, pastor? That's your job, isn't it? I mean, that's what he gets paid for. His job is to disciple us, to make us grow.

His job is to make the church grow and to make our faith deeper. But no, folks, I cannot make you grow. It really isn't something I can do. I pray for you, I hope you do. I pray to God to deepen your faith.

I try to encourage you, I want to see everybody grow. But there's that old phrase, I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make him drink. Don't mean to call anybody a horse. But in the same way, I can teach you what the Bible says, I can teach you what it means to be a Christian, but if you don't wanna grow as a believer, there's nothing I can do.

We need to take responsibility for ourselves. When we strive to grow closer to God through studying his word, through fellowship with other believers, through encouraging other believers, through praying for other believers, we grow closer to him.

That's what the gospel does. It creates a love in us for others. It gives us a desire to grow deeper and closer to him, to know him more. But we need to spend time in his word. We need to spend time in church.

We need to spend time around others. But number two, the gospel creates a burden to reach others. The gospel creates a burden to reach others. By burden, I mean a desire. The gospel creates a desire, it creates an overwhelming need to reach others.

I remember the first weekend, the very weekend I came to Christ, I was a 20-year-old kid. I had wandered into a church a few weeks earlier. It was a group of kids about my age. They had a group, a whole class made up of kids just about my age.

And they were going to Worlds of Fun. So I went along with them. I thought, well, golly gee, I'm gonna go on roller coasters. Had a blast. Had a blast. I spent the weekend with this great group of young kids.

They showed me what it was like or what it was to be a believer in Jesus. And what it did was make me wanna join them. I realized I'm missing something. I don't have that faith. Sure, I've been reading the Bible for a few years and I can quote you Bible verses, but I realized I didn't have that relationship with Christ.

On that Sunday morning, when we were getting ready to come back to Omaha, on that Sunday morning, we had a chapel service in the basement of a Best Western Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. And about 11 a .m., I remember I came to Christ.

I found out later, this is pretty cool. I found out later, the next week when I was in church, that right around 11 a .m., the church back home was praying for us. Isn't that cool? The very moment when they were praying for us is the moment when I said, I want to follow Jesus.

After that, I had a love for my fellow believers. I just remember I had this amazing burden, this need, this desire to want to share Jesus with everybody. I had a love for my unsaved families and friends, and I had a desire to go and tell everybody I knew about Jesus.

I wanted nothing more than to see my entire family come to know Jesus, my sisters, my parents, all of my friends. To be honest, I think I drove them crazy. I think they were frustrated. They didn't want to be around me for a little while after that, but I wanted them to know Jesus.

And now 30 years later, they're thinking, wow, he's still going strong. They thought it was just a phase I was going through, but that's a product of the faith in our Lord. That's the product of a faith in our Lord.

He gives us a desire to reach other people, to love other people. And in this love for other people, we just want them to know Jesus. Look how the apostle phrased it in verse number 13. He says, I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as the rest of the Gentiles.

I'm under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. I already talked about how I just wanted to see all my friends, all my family, everybody I knew come to know Jesus.

Does that describe you? Has that ever described you in the past? Was there a time maybe you don't feel strongly about that now? Does that describe you? Something that's common in the heart of a Christian is that he or she should want to see others come to know Jesus.

We should want to see those around us that don't know Jesus come to see Him. Paul here calls it an obligation. He says, I'm obligated. That's a pretty strong word. It means he had this need, he had this desire, and he couldn't get away from it.

He just, he had to see, he had to share Jesus with those. And it's interesting, it wasn't just those that he knew personally. It wasn't just those that he ran into personally. This was a guy that was seeking to go and find people he didn't know.

He went on missionary journeys to places to go find people that he didn't know. It wasn't just those that were like him. It wasn't just those he had things in common with or were close to him. I mean, I think it's human nature.

It's easy to love those that are just like us, right? But it's harder to love those that rub us wrong. It really is. It's harder to love those that are a little rough around the edges. It's hard to love those that we don't have a lot in common with.

And I don't think that was any different in the first century. I don't think it was any different for Paul. Paul was a Jewish man that had come to faith in Christ. He came to faith in Christ, believed in Jesus.

By golly, you'd think all he'd want to do is go and spend time with his friends. Historically, the Jews did not play well with other people groups. They didn't play well with Gentiles. They didn't get along.

They called them dogs. And Paul is intentionally seeking them out to go and share Jesus with them because God had told him to go. And he mentions the Gentiles here. Specifically, he mentions two different groups here.

He talks about the Greeks and the barbarians. So Gentiles, that's easy. That's just simply non-Jewish folks. Both of these groups here that he talks about, the Greeks and the barbarians, they're both Gentiles.

Both of those groups are non-Jews. And he divides them into two groups there. And the first one is the Greeks. Well, the Greeks are those that are kind of under Roman culture. Greece inhabited that area before Rome, and so they spoke Greek.

Greece was before the Roman Empire, and it kind of grew into the Roman Empire. And so they spoke Greek. They were Greek by culture. They were Greek by heritage. And there were a lot of people in that region that spoke Greek.

But then in the Greek culture, they valued wisdom. They valued intellect. That's just what the culture valued. They valued philosophy. They would sit around, and they valued talking about wisdom. Everybody else was considered ignorant and uneducated.

If you could not speak Greek, and you weren't part of that culture, you just weren't educated. You weren't part of them. And as the Roman Empire is expanding, and it's heading east, they got so far, and then they never could really fully conquer Germany and those tribes.

And they moved into the British Islands for a bit, but they never could quite conquer all of it. And those cultures that were on the outside, those non-Greek speaking cultures, they were the barbarians.

They were the uncivilized ones. They were the ones that couldn't speak the language. And barbarians was kind of a play on their language. So Paul is saying, no, I want to come to Rome. I want to get encouragement from you, and then I'm going to take off, and I'm going to keep going west.

And he was planning on going to Spain, and to Gaul, and to Germany, and so on. And he was going to go to them to preach Jesus. Folks, the gospel needs to be preached to everybody. The Jews, Gentiles, and the like.

To even those that may be different than us. Even those that maybe are undesirable. Even those that are off in the wilderness, and the unsettled, and the unconquered lands. Even those we may not want to talk to.

Verse 15, he says, so I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome. Paul says he was eager to preach the gospel to them. It's interesting. These folks were already believers. And you see what he says here?

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome. He's writing this letter to them, and he says, hey, I'm eager to come preach the gospel to them. Say, well, they're Christians, right? Why has he got to come and preach the gospel to a bunch of Christians?

Why does he have to go and preach the gospel to them? Didn't they know it? Didn't they know the gospel? But he says, I want to come and preach it to you. Did you know that even if you know, Jesus already, and it's good to hear it again?

Really is. It's funny. We're like sheep. We tend to be a little forgetful at times. We got to keep hearing that message. You know, tell me the story. Tell me the story. Keep telling me the story, pastor.

We need to be reminded again and again and again, lest we forget about it. We need to be encouraged. And in that way, he's eager to preach the gospel to those in Rome, just the same. Because he knows they need to be encouraged.

They need to be reminded. Imagine if that was our attitude in our everyday lives regarding people we encounter, regarding ourselves and reminding ourselves, and we continue to preach the gospel to ourselves.

But we also are eager to preach the gospel to those that, well, maybe they already go to church, but do they really understand the gospel? Do they need to hear it again? Are you eager to reach your friends?

Are you eager to preach the gospel to your family, to your neighbors, your coworkers? How you feel about that idea says a lot about your faith. We're called to proclaim Jesus to everyone we encounter.

A mature Christian is one who has a desire to see the gospel advance. Maybe that's not your gift. I get that. Not everybody is that outgoing person that can just walk up and sell ice to an Eskimo. Not everybody is that good at being extroverted and outspoken.

But a mature Christian is somebody who wants to see others come to faith. A mature Christian is one who wants to see the name of Jesus proclaimed to those who are near and far. And we not only should see it as something we should be doing, but God gives us that desire to do it.

The Gospel as God's Power to Save Sinners

But number three, I'm going up to point number three, is that the gospel is God's power to save sinners. The gospel is God's power to save sinners. That's what we see in verse number 16 and 17 here. It says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Entire books can be and have been written about this very verse. This is what the gospel is all about.

The gospel, meaning that God became man, Jesus Christ, God became man. He was born as a baby. He grew up. He died on the cross. He was punished on my behalf. He was buried and he remained in the tomb for three days and then he rose again.

That's the gospel and that's what it means that my sins were forgiven when I trusted in him. That gospel means that I'm not on the hook for my sins. That gospel means that Jesus took care of it. He was punished once and for all.

My sin is gone as far as the east is from the west. It's gone. That gospel is the key to our peaceful relationship with God and it's because of Jesus that we're on good terms with him. It's the only way that we can be on good terms with Jesus.

We're never going to be good enough to satisfy the wrath of God. Without Jesus, we do fully deserve the wrath of God. That's not a popular idea, but the gospel is key in all of that and sometimes, truth be told, we do find ourselves a little bit ashamed of the gospel, don't we?

Sometimes it's not fun to talk about the gospel. This is one of those churchy topics. It's something that we talk about on Sunday morning. We're not going to go talk about that on Tuesday, are we? Sometimes we get laughed at if we're that Bible thumper, if we're that Jesus guy, if we're that guy that just wants to talk about Jesus.

Sometimes talking about the gospel means our friends don't want to be around us. It's interesting, the very thing that defines us, or should define us as a person, as people, is oftentimes the very thing that we tend to shy away from.

But it's easy to understand why if you think about it. In our culture today, we all want to believe that God is loving. We all want to believe that he is just, or few of us want to believe that he's just and he's going to punish all sin.

If you go to a funeral today, chances are you're going to hear the pastor talk about, how loving God is. And he just wants to love us. You're probably not going to hear that God wants to punish sin. Most polls today show that while people believe in heaven, a much, much smaller, get this, a much, much smaller believe in hell.

Much smaller number. Much smaller number even believe in Satan than they do in heaven. But we read here that the apostle Paul is not ashamed of the gospel. And the gospel, literally the word means good news.

He's not ashamed of the good news. It's not some human invention. It's not something the apostle thought up on his own. It's not a self-improvement program. Oftentimes you'll hear people going to church because they just want to be a better person.

That's not the gospel. The gospel is Jesus dying on the cross for us. And by default, it's going to make us a better person through the Holy Spirit. But it's the gospel is the power of God to take the sinful human being and give them a new heart to change us from the inside out.

We go from being sinners to being children of God, precious and just and right in his eyes. Then we come to this last verse here, number 17. And we're talking just about that. But you may recognize who this person is.

You may not. I mentioned, I remember one time I was teaching a Sunday school class in a church that we're in in Omaha. And I mentioned Martin Luther. This person, I think they thought I was talking about Martin Luther King.

It's not Martin Luther King Jr. This is not Martin Luther King Jr. This is Martin Luther. Martin Luther was an Augustinian Catholic monk in the 16th century. He taught theology. He studied and taught theology at the university in Wittenberg.

And he was studying the book of Romans. Came to this verse here, 17. And he was supposed to be teaching this book to other seminarians. As I said, at this point, he's a Roman Catholic. He believed, he taught that through the Catholic sacraments, one is forgiven for sins.

They're made holy in God's eyes. Now, I want to be as accurate as I possibly can here. It's only respectful. If I can help it, I'm never going to misrepresent another religion or another church's teaching.

So I want to be as respectful and clear as possible. But under Roman Catholic teaching, which Luther taught, there was the idea that, well, at baptism, the baby would be washed clean. That's why they baptize an infant.

The baby is washed clean of original sin. And then that baby is right in the eyes of God. And once that original sin is dealt with, well, then it's up to the individual to remain pure and holy. When they do sin, they go to a priest to absolve them of that sin.

That priest forgives them, absolves them, and then they're clean. And if one dies with a sin on their conscience, that's when the problem happens. If they die with a sin that they haven't confessed to a priest to be forgiven about.

There's two different kinds of sin. There's a mortal sin. If one dies with a mortal sin on their conscience, meaning that they've done something, these are some of the really bad ones. If you've done one of those sins, then you go straight to hell.

If you have not been absolved of that sin by a priest. Then there's this other one called a venial sin. Venial sin, it's a sin, but it's maybe not quite as bad as one of those other ones, like murder or, you know, a number of other sins.

If you commit a venial sin, maybe you've lied, maybe you've stolen, maybe you've hated somebody. A venial sin, according to their teaching, that's why you go to purgatory. And if you've ever wondered why purgatory, well, that's what purgatory is, is it purges the sinful desire and the sin from us.

So it's a place where that is purged. So in that system, think about this. You can never truly know if you're saved. You can never truly know if you're going to go to heaven. Because if I go to be absolved of my sins today, and I'm not going to go again until next week, what happens if I commit a mortal sin on Wednesday?

I'm supposed to live three days without being forgiven for that sin? If I die, I could go to hell. And the person, you were never truly forgiven, or never truly assured of salvation under that system.

But these two verses here say something different. Verse number 16 says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation. To everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Martin Luther came upon this last verse here, and he says, wait a second, wait a second.

It's the power of God to forgive. It's not me. And the righteous will live by faith. It's truly the work of God. The idea that we must cooperate with God in any way to be saved is, it's just, that's not right.

Because it's all God that does it. Or if it's up to us to live righteously, or it's up to us to do anything that takes anything away from these two verses, that's wrong. The gospel is the power of God.

It's not me. It's not you. It's no one but God. It's the power of God. The gospel is the power of God only to save. And when God saves us, when we are declared righteous, then we live by that faith. We live by that faith.

We can rest in that faith. The book of Hebrews in chapter 4 says that Jesus is our Sabbath. He is our rest. We can rest in him. We don't have to fear being rejected. We don't have to fear being of condemnation.

We don't have to fear of his wrath. We get to live in faith that he is good and that he has redeemed us. So that's the good news, folks. That's the good news that through God we are saved. We are forgiven.

We are given peace. And that's good. So my closing thought as we go out from here is, through the gospel, we are to love one another. We are to desire to be the instruments of God to reach the lost. And we live in faith of the God who saves.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your gospel. We thank you that you saved us through the gospel. We thank you that by trusting in Jesus, we have forgiveness. We pray that we would love one another, that we would encourage one another, that we would lift each other up, and we would have a desire to see others grow and a desire to see that don't know you come to you.

We pray also, Father, that we would live in faith, we would rest in the goodness of Jesus, and that we would trust in you, and that we would have peace and faith in you alone for forgiveness. And now, Father, we pray to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. And Tammy is going to come up, and we have one final.