The Whole Christ (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So, how many of you were here last week when Andrew did part one of this series?

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Oh, wow, okay. Good thing I put a lot of review material in. Alright, so, let me start at the very beginning.

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So, Andrew and I, this summer, are going to be teaching, tag team teaching, a series on a book called

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The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. Last week he did part one,

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I'm doing part two today. We're basically going to do like one or two chapters of the book each time that we teach.

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We're here next week, then we have a couple weeks off. We're kind of in and out all the way through the end of September.

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And The Whole Christ, the book, is about... The subtitle is

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Legalism, Antinomianism, I should have practiced saying that word more, and how the

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Mero Controversy matters today. How many of you have heard of the Mero Controversy?

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Only the people who were here last week, probably. Very good. Excellent. Alright, so we'll get into that in a moment.

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But really, those first two words are the big words. And those are the words that we're going to be talking about the most as we go through this book.

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Legalism and antinomianism. So let me start with some definitions of those two words.

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So legalism. What is legalism when we say it? What comes to your mind?

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People who weren't here last week. What comes to your mind when you hear the term legalism? Not everybody at once, please.

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Adding additional requirements to the law that God did not impose. Very good. Anybody else?

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Any other thoughts about legalism? Making sure that everyone else around you follows those rules like you are, alright?

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When you heard me repeat it back, you're like, oh, wait a minute. Man's attempt to get right with God on his own terms.

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As in man's own terms, right? Yep, that's right. I think the working definition that we'll go with during this class, because it's in the marrow of modern divinity, the book, is bringing some element of the law, some element of obedience into justification.

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OK, so when we talk about justification, when we talk about that moment in time, so to speak, in which we are forgiven and declared righteous by God permanently, forever, and we're adopted by him, right, and saved, that at that moment, or,

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I'm sorry, that in that, when we're talking about justification, to say that you're being legalist means that you're bringing some element of law, some element of obedience into that.

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That it's not entirely about Christ and Christ's work, but it's something about your obedience is involved in that, too.

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OK, that's legalism. Antinomianism, that's a much bigger word. Anybody who was not here last week have any idea what that one's all about?

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No? No law, that's right.

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That's what the root word, no me, is. Nomianism, that means law. And so antinomianism means no law, right?

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No law. It's rejecting any role of the law in the life of the believer entirely,

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OK? You've also heard it called free grace. In modern times, some pastors have coined the term, like, easy believism, where, all right,

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I believed, I walked the aisle, I signed the card, I prayed the prayer, whatever, so I'm good to go.

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I can now proceed to do whatever I want in my life for the rest of my life. I don't have to worry about whether or not

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Christ is lord of my life or any such nonsense like that. I can just live, and God's forgiven me, and I'm definitely,

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I got my get -out -of -jail -free card, and I am on my way to heaven, right? That's antinomianism. Now, I want to be careful here because these isms, legalism or neonomianism, if you want to use the million -dollar word, and antinomianism, these ism words, they have a tendency to become dangerous stereotypes,

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I think, in our thinking, okay? In that, I think every person, every believer or nonbeliever, anybody who's ever grappled with these theological concepts, has probably at one point in their time in thinking or another strayed into legalist thinking or antinomianist thinking because we're imperfect humans, and we're tempted to stray in those ways.

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And so rather than sort of like label people as saying that they are legalists or they are antinomianists,

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I think it's more proper to say that sometimes we think those ways, sometimes we have those behaviors, some of us more often than not.

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But let me give you an example, an analogy. When you're driving down the freeway every morning, as long as things aren't too terrible,

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I go down the mass turnpike from the Grafton exit to the Natick exit to go to work, right?

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So as I'm driving down the freeway, everyone who's going faster than me is a maniac, right?

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Have you had that experience? You're in the left lane, you're going 85, oh wait, this is being recorded, hang on, you're going an appropriate speed, and someone goes blowing by you in the right lane, right?

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And your mind, you say, or maybe out loud, that guy is a maniac. What is he doing?

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Doesn't he know how unsafe he's being, right? Meanwhile, because you're in the left lane, and that guy just blew by you, the guy in front of you is going a little bit less than the speed limit, right?

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And you're stuck behind him, and you're right up there, and you're trying your best not to tailgate and get right up on his bumper, and what thought is going through your mind now about that guy?

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He's a knucklehead. He's going slower than me. I think we all kind of get into that rut of thinking, where we say, anybody that we know who is more scrupulous about following standards or rules in their

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Christian life, we tend to start to, we're tempted to think they're being legalists. And anybody we know who doesn't, you know, who's not following some rule that we've decided is important in our own

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Christian conscience, right? And there are lots of really good reasons why we set rules in our lives, and every one of us has different designer lusts, different life history, that means that why it's important for us to follow rules are not for our own sanctification, right?

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And so we say we have this tendency, we're tempted to think that anybody who's not following that rule or rules that we follow, that they're being antinomian.

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I'm not going to get that word right this morning. To go back to the bowling analogy that Andrew started last week, right?

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We'll roll with the bowling analogies this entire time. No pun intended. You can imagine, really, that legalism is the left gutter of the bowling lane, and antinomianism is the right gutter of the bowling lane.

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You don't want to go in either gutter. Sometimes you can sort of go, it's not a spectrum necessarily, but I mean the idea is that the biblical response, the biblical way of thinking is somewhere in the middle, right?

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And that's our thesis. And that's the thesis, really, of the book The Whole Christ, and that was the thesis of the

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Merrow men. All right, so who are these Merrow men? Who are all these guys involved?

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So this Merrow controversy, for those of you who weren't here last week, is from the 17th century

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Scotland, all right? And in that time, 17th century Scotland, so we're talking the 1600s, the church in Scotland was dominated by Presbyterians, right?

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That was the dominant denomination, the Presbyterian church. And the Presbyterian church, for those of you who aren't familiar, has a bit of hierarchy to it.

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Every church still has elders who rule it in a local body, but they have synods and assemblies and so on up higher that handle things like ordaining the ministers, and they get together for meetings, and they talk about important doctrinal issues of their day and whatnot, and they discuss, and they vote, and they make recommendations to all their member churches, so on and so forth, right?

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Different flavors of Presbyterianism enforce that hierarchy more strictly or less strictly.

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So in the Scottish church, in the 1600s, there was this man named

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William Craig, and William Craig was a young preacher. He was going through ordination, and just like as you've seen here, when we've had ordination services at BBC, his local presbytery, right, his local group of ministers got together, and they put him on the hot seat, and they grilled him with a bunch of questions, okay?

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And one question that he got grilled with was something that's been now known as the

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Octorotor Creed, okay, the Octorotor Creed. And the

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Octorotor Creed was, I believe that it is not, not sound and orthodox, to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and in stating us in covenant with God, that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we have to forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, okay?

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That's the Octorotor Creed. And William Craig, in the moment, at first he signed on to that.

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He answered, yes, I agree with that statement, and then he thought about it again, and he went back a few weeks later, and he said, no,

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I don't agree with it after all. And the local Presbytery said, well, then, if you don't agree to that, you can't preach.

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And then that got escalated all the way up to the National Assembly level of Scotland, in which they overturned the local, and they said, no, that was, that Octorotor Creed is wrong, and they banned it, and they made it like anathema, and all this other kind of stuff.

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Yes? No, I just, no, no, I'm not, I'm just saying what they thought.

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I'm being, what's that? The Creed says it's not orthodox. OK? Hang on a sec.

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I'll get to where we fall on this in a minute. OK? There's so many double negatives in this that we have to parse it real slowly.

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Because it's like, they said not dot, and then somebody says, no, I don't agree with that, which adds, and then someone says, no,

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I don't agree with you not agreeing with it. So, it's very bad

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English, yeah. It's Scottish. I am

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Clan McBean, so it's OK, I'm allowed to say that. All right. OK.

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Another guy that you need to know as we're going through this lesson series is Thomas Boston. OK? That should be an easy name for you all to remember.

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Thomas Boston was a Puritan preacher, Presbyterian of the same era.

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He was a member of the National Assembly that heard the case of all this. OK?

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And the Assembly, like I said, sided with Craig in rejecting the

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Creed. And Boston, at the time, he was sort of like, in sitting in the meeting, he was like,

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I guess I'll go along with what they're saying. And then later on, he realized, no, wait, the more he thought about it, no,

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I don't agree with the Assembly. I do agree with the Creed. OK? Are we all together here?

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So, the Creed, as I said, it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.

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All right? Now, Boston and his followers, or the group of folks that joined with him, they became known as the

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Merrow Men. OK? And the Merrow Men, they came out for the

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Creed, at least in terms of the tenor of it. They were always very careful to say that they didn't like the wording. That they thought it was very poorly worded, and I think you can all agree with me.

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But in tenor, they agreed with it. All right? So let's try to simplify. All right?

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The Assembly, the Presbytery, they said that when presenting the Gospel, you should tell hearers that you need to forsake sin in order to be saved.

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OK? Let that wash over you for a second. OK? OK. The Merrow Men said that you should not tell people that.

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That instead, you should simply offer Christ to all with the promise of justification to the ungodly who believes.

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How do those sound? Should we take a poll now? Brian. Yep. Yes.

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Correct. That repent would be a biblical word. Yep. Yes. We'll go further.

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Does any unbeliever have the ability to repent of sin? Negative. Right. It is a gift of God.

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Right. I think the key term in the creed that the

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Merrow Men really stuck on, and we're going to expand on this now for all the sessions here on out, is in order to come to Christ.

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In order to come to Christ. All right? It was what they were saying is what the

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Merrow Men were arguing, which Brian is starting to get to, is that unbelievers, unregenerate, we do not have the capability to repent.

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We do not have, on our own, we do not have the capability to repent. We do not have the capability to forsake sin. It is only by God's power and regenerating work in our hearts that we even have the possibility, right, of being able to repent.

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And that our faith and our repentance is a gift from God. And so when you say, if you wanted to say that you have to do that in order to be saved, they would say you're putting a prerequisite on salvation.

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That's not biblical. So that's the Merrow Men's position.

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Now, I've said the word Merrow Men a lot here, and Merrow, and where this is coming from is there was a book that had been written 70 years prior to William Craig in this whole controversy.

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And the book's name is called The Merrow of Modern Divinity. Okay? The book was written by Edward Fisher, although it was published anonymously just by the initials

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EF, but most scholars have decided for sure that Edward Fisher was the guy who wrote it.

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And he was a barber surgeon and semi -professional theologian from London.

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And it was Edward Fisher in Merrow, interestingly enough, who first defined the

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English term legalism. It's in this book that the word legalism first appears in English, the

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English language. So when the subtitle of our book that we're going through,

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The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, when the subtitle says, Why the Merrow Controversy Still Matters, just realize that you have

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Edward Fisher and all this controversy to even thank for having this word that we toss around all the time. Okay?

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So this book, The Merrow of Modern Divinity, actually was a little bit like Pilgrim's Progress in that it was this allegory with a bunch of characters with really obvious names.

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Like there's one character named Nomista, who's supposed to be the antinomian, and there's this another character,

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Evangelista, who's the preacher, and so on and so forth. And in the allegory, he lays out the position that it is wrong to teach that you have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ.

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And it's basically the book's allegory argument is about staying in the middle between legalism and antinomianism.

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All right. How clear are we on all that? That was the review. Or the first time for all the rest of you.

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Okay? So any questions about any of that? I'm going to ask review questions now to make sure we've got this straight if people don't have questions.

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Okay. So what was the National Assembly's position? Were they for or against the creed?

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Against the creed because they were for the idea that you preach forsaking sin.

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That's right. And the Merrow men were? Yeah, right.

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They said you should offer the gospel to all. And who was the name of the leader of the

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Merrow men? Leader is kind of a strong word, but Thomas Boston. Very good. Okay?

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All right. And Edward Fisher is the man who wrote the book, The Merrow Modern Divinity. Okay. Very good.

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So let's talk about grace. And let's talk about grace in the gospel.

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Because the Merrow controversy was, at its most fundamental, a controversy about the offer of the gospel.

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Okay? About its presentation. And Ferguson asks first in his book, and we have to answer, if you're going to talk about the offer of the gospel, the presentation of the gospel, first you have to answer, what is the gospel?

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Okay? What is the gospel? Anyone? How quick can you do it?

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Good news. It is good news. Absolutely. What is it good news about? Brian? Yes.

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Substitutionary birth, life, death, resurrection. Thank you.

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In the place of sinners. Of Jesus Christ. Now, Boston stressed that Christ is to be offered to all men, everywhere, without exception or qualification.

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Okay? And why? The reason is that he argued that Jesus Christ is the gospel.

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His person himself. Turn with me to 1 John 1, please. Somebody please read 1

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John 1 verses 1 through 4. People who were here last week, this is the part where you can start participating again.

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Yep. 1 through 4. Yep. If you're not as familiar with the opening to this epistle, and you read this, what other opening does this remind you of when you read this?

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Because I'll tell you what it reminds me of. What's that? John. Right. The gospel of John. No surprise.

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It's the same author. Right from the beginning.

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That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes. Right? How does the gospel of John start?

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In the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Right? And then it goes on later on in John chapter 1.

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He talks about the light that was coming into the world. Right?

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And here we have about the life that was made manifest. But very interestingly, here in 1

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John, what's the very first word? Why is it not who?

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Who was from the beginning? Why is it not who? Jesus is a person. He's a who. Why is it that? That's right.

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Yes. The gospel perhaps more. Because here when John's emphasis compared to his gospel is that the word of life should be understood to be both of the person of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Christ.

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Both the person of Christ and the gospel of Christ. That the term, he uses the term that, the

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Greek version thereof, so that we understand it to be broader, more encompassing.

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Okay? Now, since Christ is the living incarnate word, right?

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He is the word, the logos. And the written word, right, is in some about him.

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It shouldn't surprise us really that John conflates them together in the sentence. Right?

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Because if you later on, when we hear about this is the, sorry, in verse two, the life was made manifest.

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We have seen it. We testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life. Right? And that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also.

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He's talking about a message. He's got a message for you. He's got a proclamation for you. And that proclamation is a person.

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The person of Jesus. That's what he wants to proclaim to you. Okay? And so that message is itself a person.

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The gospel is Jesus Christ. It is not the benefits.

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The good news is not only that we can be forgiven and go to heaven.

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When we do that, when we take just the benefits, we're separating the benefits of the good news from the person of the good news.

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That's right. Exactly right. That's your reaction. That's what you are. It's like in light of the good news you have just heard about the person of Jesus Christ, repent and believe.

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It's the application. Right? An application that we can only do if God regenerates us.

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Right? But that's the theological part of the application. That is not in our command as believers in sharing the gospel.

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We are not responsible for whether or not they apply it. We are simply responsible for sharing it, for proclaiming it.

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Right? We all know that. Right? I mean, it's like the farmer in the scattering of the seed.

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Of course. Right? Now, when you reflect on the person of Jesus Christ, because we've said it a bunch of times, when you reflect on the person of Jesus Christ, what comes to your mind?

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When you're trying to think of the person, right, we should start thinking about what?

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Holiness. Keep going. I like where you're heading with this. Perfect righteousness.

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Perfection. Yep. What's that? Your own unholiness.

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Your own unholiness. Yep. In relation to him. Yep. What else,

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Brian? Self -existent eternality. Yep. These are all great.

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Because of self -existence and eternality, what does that make him? God. He's God the

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Son. Right? Divinity. Right? What are we getting through here? We're going through all what? His characteristics, right?

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His attributes. Right? The good news of the gospel is that God the

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Son, the pre -existing one, the one who created all things, right, that he has humbled himself and stooped himself so low that he has come down to earth to live the perfect life that we were unable to live and die a death that he was unworthy of because we were worthy of death.

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And all of that is because he loved us before we loved him. Turn to Mark 2.

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Let's talk about how Jesus shared the gospel. Proclaim the good news. Somebody read

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Mark 2, verses 13 and 14 first, please. Okay. The call to Matthew is simply what?

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Follow me. What does Matthew do? Falls. Gets up and goes.

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Right? That's it. Now keep going.

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Verse 15. He goes to Matthew's house. Who wants to read?

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Yeah, go ahead, Gary. Keep going. Now go all the way to the end, 15 through 17, please. Can you hear the disdain of the

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Pharisees in their question? I hope you can, right? Like, it should be dripping. It's dripping with disdain.

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You know? Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

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And why were they asking that question? Why was that so offensive to them? Yeah, their whole lives were about separating themselves from those types of people or those types of actions, right?

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Their whole lives were about self -righteousness. And they couldn't even fathom the notion that if a

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Messiah was going to come, that Messiah, why would Messiah want to hang out with those people?

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Messiah should be hanging out with us, right? He should be, in their thinking, he should have as much disdain for those folks as we do, right?

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And Jesus says that as the physician, he came to heal the sick.

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He came not to call the righteous but the sinners. Now, was he saying in that that the

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Pharisees were righteous? No. He was using scare quotes. Exactly right, yeah.

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He came not to call the righteous, yeah, right, but the sinners.

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He came to call all the sinners. Who are all the sinners? Who's the sinners? All of us, right?

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All of us. Because the real answer to that is when he says, I came not to call the righteous, it's the unrighteous, no, not one.

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MacArthur has a really great illustration about this. He said, let's imagine, for the sake of argument here for a minute, that Jesus, the

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Son of God, the Savior, the Messiah, that instead of coming into the world 2 ,000 years ago, he came into the world at our time, modern day, the 2000s.

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And he comes for the same reason that he came then, which was to be a sacrifice for sin. And if indeed he had come at this time in this place to die, he would have been killed for the opposite reason that he was killed for back 2 ,000 years ago, the very opposite reason.

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Because then and there in the first century of Israel, he was rejected, he was despised, he was hated and murdered because he was not religious enough, according to them, right?

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He didn't follow all their rules, all their strict interpretations. And he equated himself with God.

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He claimed divinity. And they declared him blasphemous and they executed him, right?

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In modern time, do you think anyone would bother to execute someone for that? Right? No.

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No. He was not legalistic enough. He was not condemning enough.

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He was not tolerable. He was not intolerant, I should say. He was not intolerant enough is really what they wanted, right?

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He wasn't judgmental enough. He was subpar to this dominantly religious worldview.

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But if Jesus came into our time in our country, he would be way too holy.

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He'd be way too intolerant, far too righteous, far too demanding, far too legalistic.

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And our generation would kill him for that if they're going to execute him.

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So the very opposite, these two different perspectives, two different societies and two different times, our culture highly secular and moral, their culture highly religious and extremely moral, right?

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And this illustration reminds me again of our earlier bowling analogy that there's this biblical middle that we should be seeking here between legalism and antinomianism.

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Salvation is not for the people who think they are righteous. It is for the people who know they are not, right?

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It's for the people who know that they are not. And time again in the

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New Testament, we see that whenever someone approaches Jesus or the disciples and in their heart from their questions, they make some statement where it's very obvious that they recognize that they are sinners.

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Either they become saved or at least Jesus and the disciples make some sort of comment like you're not far from the kingdom of God, right?

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There are no conditions that need to be met in order for the gospel offer to be made.

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That's the thesis. Because if we're truly dead in our sins, then there is nothing that we are capable of doing to even prepare to be saved.

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This is the fallacy that the Merrow men were concerned about. And Boston even said in his memoirs that when he read

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The Merrow of Modern Divinity, he realized he was convicted personally. He realized that he had fallen into this fallacy, that he had started to stray towards this notion in his

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Calvinistic thinking that he needed to credential believers, right?

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The bad syllogism that he was falling for, he said, was that one, the saving grace of God in Christ is given to the elect alone.

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True or false? The saving grace of God in Christ is given to the elect alone.

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True. Good. Two, the elect are known by the forsaking of sin. True or false?

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True. So far, so good. Here's where we go sideways.

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Therefore, forsaking sin is a prerequisite for saving grace. No. Thanks for playing.

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Have a good day. Here's the consolation prize.

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You get to take home the board game version. Therefore, forsaking sin is a prerequisite for saving grace.

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Yes. Oh, no, I'm not arguing to not say repent and believe. Or neither were the Romero men either. Yes, Brian. It's the same in Acts 2, right?

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When Peter preaches at Pentecost, he goes through the whole thing about who Jesus is, right?

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And you've killed him, is what he says at the end. And what happened? Then all the people that are pricked in their heart, what do we do?

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They understand at that moment they need a savior, right? That's when they realize they need it. And then what does

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Peter say? Repent and be baptized, right? Came to call them to repentance.

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That's right. That's where you're headed towards. Yes, Andrew, go ahead. It's killing him,

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I can tell. His hand's gone like this like four times. They don't have a group name. I don't remember either, but it was a super free grace book.

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And he couldn't even finish it. He said he got partway through and he threw it away. Later on, as we go through this with more chapters, we'll get really into how each...

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If you're too far on the legalism side or too far on the antinomian side, how that was affecting their preaching and things like that.

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But just to share with you briefly, what Boston himself was feeling, what he was putting in his memoirs, is that he felt like he should not offer the gospel.

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He shouldn't proclaim the gospel unless he was proclaiming it to people that he already saw evidence. Of forsaking of sin.

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It's like a hyper -Calvinist sort of thinking. Like, well, I shouldn't even...

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Don't cast your pearls before a swine. I'm not even going to talk about the gospel to the not -elect.

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I need to see some evidence that I'm talking to the elect first. And then I'll share the gospel.

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It's just this subtle, creeping thing that eventually you get to that point. And that's what he was seeing personally in his own life, even.

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And that he was seeing really throughout this Scottish church. All right, so a few more minutes.

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Let me get through the rest here. So, the person in whom incarnation has been accomplished, and in whom atonement, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly reign are now realized, according to Augustine, is the totus

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Christus. The totus Christus, which, as you can probably guess in Latin, is the whole

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Christ, which is where the book title comes from, the whole Christ. You must first have

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Christ himself before you can partake of those benefits by him. If you think about it in lots of places, in lots of ways in the

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New Testament, we're not even really described as Christians.

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We don't have a name for our group. There's this one part, our tribe, there's this one part where it says in Acts that the believers were first called

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Christians, but it was kind of obviously a derogatory term at that point, not one that they were really embracing as their label.

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Instead, they always talk about themselves as in Christ. That's what

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Paul says over and over again, to be in Christ. We're laboring for you that you would be in Christ.

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It's in all the openings to the epistles, all the closings to the epistles. We have to have

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Christ himself before we can partake of the benefits by him. The benefits of the gospel do not exist apart from Christ.

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They are not even merely through Christ. They are in Christ. You don't go through Christ to get to the benefits.

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You are in him. The true gospel is

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Christ himself. It's not how, this is another way to think about it, it is not how can I offer these benefits when you're the preacher.

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You don't think to yourself, how can I offer the benefits of Christ's saving work?

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As the hearer, you shouldn't be thinking, how can I get these benefits into my life? As soon as you start thinking that, what's happening is now getting saved is basically you're in that get out of jail free card kind of sense.

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You're just saying, I just don't want to go to hell, so what do I have to do? It's not really that you want to be in Christ, you just don't want to be in hell.

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And so you respond in that way. And certainly people come to Christ from that.

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There are people in their life, that's their testimony, and it's just a difficult matrix to sort of enter into faith through, because then your thinking is kind of starting out on the wrong foot, and it takes a long time for you to get your thinking right probably.

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And instead it should be rather for the preacher, how do I preach Christ himself?

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And for the hearer, how do I get into Christ? The latter is what keeps Christ central.

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Pastor Mike has emphasized repeatedly in his sermons, and the epistles of the Hebrews, right?

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When we preach or testify or proclaim our faith, the central emphasis must be

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Jesus Christ, and him crucified and risen again. It is not how to overcome sin, it is not how to live the

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Christian life, give me four steps that I need to be happy, tell me all about the benefits of faith, it's the meat, not the milk from just last week.

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It is Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen again. The word marrow,

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I'm going to finish with this, the word marrow means what? You know what marrow is?

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The marrow of the bone, right? You've got to slice the bone open with a saw, and on the inside of the hard bone there's a kind of fleshy, gooey part in the middle, right?

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And biologically speaking, the marrow is from which blood cells and bone cells and all other sorts of things are developed and grow and emanate forth.

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It's the essential part of it, right? And so the word marrow in Old English means, you know, the essential part of something.

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And so for the marrow men, Christ was that marrow. He was the essential center of their preaching and their teaching, okay?

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All right, so that's all I have for this week. We're just about out of time, or we're past out of time.

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Next week, I believe, Andrew is going to talk more about the ordo salutis, because it seems like we're in a good place for that.

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We'll see what, I won't peg him on that exactly, but all right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, first off and most importantly, for sending your son to live the perfect life that we could not live, to die for us when he did not deserve it, but we did, and to rise again so that we too might have eternal life in him, that you take our sin and put it on the cross with him to pour out your wrath upon it, and that you take his righteousness and clothe us with it.

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That we, Lord, might be adopted as sons and daughters in Christ. We thank you so much for loving us when we were unlovely, for loving us when we hated you, for making this plan from eternity past and seeing it through to fruition.

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We are thankful that we can rest and know that that work that you have started, that you will finish, that we do not need to worry or fear that you will lose any one of us, but that you will bring all of us through to glory someday, those of us who have trusted in you.

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And Father, we thank you for this time where we've been able to consider the importance of theology and having proper thinking about you, about the gospel, about understanding even the finest details and how even confusion or misunderstanding about those details can lead to wrong thinking or wrong application and wrong practice in our lives.

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I pray, Lord, that you would help us to be wise and to, as we go through this very difficult topic over the next few weeks, that you would help

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Andrew and I to explain it clearly and that we would, Lord, be able, as a church body, to better practice the sharing of the gospel through it.