WWUTT 1323 From Him Are All Things (Romans 11:33-36)

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What man thinks that he can counsel God, tell God what to do, or has a plan that's better than God's plan?

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Man is incredibly arrogant and therefore blasphemous, and yet God is gracious when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. I'm very tired as I sit down to do this devotional with you today, so this is going to be a little shorter than usual.

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We come back to that doxology right at the conclusion of Romans 11, verses 33 -36.

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The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome, O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!

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How unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable His ways!

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For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?

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For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

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To Him be glory forever. Amen. So we talked about this doxology yesterday, and by the way, a doxology is simply a short hymn of praise unto

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God, a reflection of Christian worship, and this is Paul reflecting upon what he had just stated in Romans 11, that God has a plan to save Jews and a plan to save Gentiles, and it is by faith in Jesus Christ.

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Both bodies of persons reconciled to God through the person and work of Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave, whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

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There are Jews who have become enemies of the gospel for the sake of Gentiles, that they might hear the gospel and so be saved.

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And then the salvation of the Gentiles is even to make the Jews jealous so they would turn from their sin and be saved, wanting to be included in this fellowship with God that they're seeing

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Gentiles be welcomed into by faith in the Savior, in Christ.

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And so as there's a jealousy that will stir in the Jews about this, because it's like, hey, that's our law.

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These are our prophets. That's our Savior that was supposed to come. When they see the fellowship extended to Gentiles, then out of jealousy, they will turn from their sin and want to have that fellowship with God in Christ.

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This has all been part of God's plan from the very beginning. And this is how God was going to reconcile all people to himself.

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Whenever we read statements in the Old Testament, beginning with Abraham, through you, through your offspring, will the nations be blessed.

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And then you have it even in the Psalms, the blessing that goes to the nations. When the

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Lord will say to Abraham and then later on to Israel, those who bless you,

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I will bless. Those who curse you, I will curse. Israel had this idea that salvation was going to be through people's attitude toward them.

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If people like the Jews, if they bless the Jews, if they want to have treaties with the

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Jews and give all their stuff to Israel, let Israel reign over the empire, that sort of thing, then that's how a nation will be saved.

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They give all the adulation to Israel. And then Israelites believe that they're automatically saved just because they're

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Jews. But that wasn't the plan. The plan to reconcile all people to himself was to send his son to die for sins, to be an atoning sacrifice, just as the sacrificial system painted the picture of as it was given to Israel.

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This was all a foreshadowing of the spotless lamb who was to come,

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Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And with Christ's shed blood on the cross, we have the forgiveness of sins and we receive all the benefits that are poured out by our father in heaven upon us through faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is an incredible mercy, a wonderful demonstration of the grace of God to us.

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And it is unfathomable to us that we could have come to understand it in this way if God had not shown it to us in his word.

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But even the Jews did not understand it. And as Paul said in Romans chapter 11, a partial hardening has come upon the

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Jews. There is never going to be a salvation for every Jew just because they are a

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Jew. But all the way until the end, until Christ returns, that partial hardening will remain that most

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Jews are going to go to their destruction because they did not believe the savior. But God always has a remnant that he is reserving for himself.

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That's the way we started off Romans chapter 11. And so those elect that God has chosen from the

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Jews to believe in Christ and so live demonstrate that the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then to all their offspring, those promises are irrevocable.

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God had promised he had made a covenant. He has fulfilled on those things.

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And the Jews are recipients of all of these things that God has promised in his kingdom through his son,

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Jesus Christ. And likewise, we Gentiles become partakers in these things as well.

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And it's just amazing how God has worked all these things out for our good and for his glory.

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Remember back to Romans 828 for all things work together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to his purpose. And we see that even the death of the son of God, Jesus Christ was working out for our good that we would believe in him and be forgiven our sins no longer considered enemies of God, but we are adopted as sons and daughters of God.

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May we now live as kingdom people in this world until Christ returns until we die or Christ returns, whichever comes first.

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As long as there are people on earth and Jesus has not yet returned, we must turn from sin and turn to Christ.

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So here we have verse 33 as Paul is just awestruck considering these things.

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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God left to ourselves.

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We never could have understood or fathom these things that God is doing in the world, what he has been doing over the course of redemptive history.

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If it were not that God had revealed it to prophets and now apostles showing how

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Christ is the fulfillment of all that God was working for our good and for his glory.

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Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God will never come to the end of this.

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We will be studying it for the rest of our lives and never come to the end of it. In fact, and I've heard James White talk about this as well.

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You could be studying God's redemptive plan for all eternity and you will never come to the end of all of those things that God was working out down to the minutest of details from grand schemes to the little tiny little things, how

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God was working in all of this to bring about for our salvation, his elect into his kingdom.

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It's incredible. And the riches that he has promised us in Christ, we cannot wrap our minds around it now.

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You won't even be able to understand the riches that are promised in Christ, what it means to be a fellow heir of his kingdom until you actually get to see it.

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So the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, we will be studying this the rest of our lives and amen to that.

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My friends. I love that. I have applied myself to studying a scripture that I will never fully understand as long as I remain in this body.

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That in itself is amazing to me. That in itself is a testimony to the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

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Now, of course, as I just said, in context, Paul is reflecting upon what he had just said in Romans chapter 11.

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But many a scholar has stated this, and I agree with it as well, that what we're reading here in Romans 11, 33 through 36 is not just in the context of Romans 11, but everything that Paul has been stating from Romans one up to this point, the entirety of the first 11 chapters.

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This doxology is not just thinking about the cultivated olive tree or the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles unto

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God through Christ, just in the context of Romans 11. But even everything justification by faith, sanctification through Christ, glorification, adoption, all of these things that Paul has been talking about in Romans is just flooding

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Paul's mind as he has been pondering these things and pouring out his heart to these

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Romans that they would understand it as well. And overwhelmed with praise for God, we have this doxology, which begins with just a very short summarizing exclamation.

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Oh, oh, the depth of the of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

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Inscrutable just simply means impossible to understand. And indeed, that's the case. There's something wonderfully simple about the gospel message.

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Believe and you will be saved. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Your sins are forgiven.

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You have fellowship with God and everlasting life with him in heaven. Something wonderfully simple about that message.

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But at the same time, there's also something deeply complex about that. Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

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And when you read in the book of Hebrews, it says that he entered into the holy of holies for us on our behalf.

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How did he do that? Like, what did that even look like? How, from a heavenly perspective, did

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Jesus death on the cross really pay for our sins? It's not like he died on an altar like the lamb does in the in the sacrificial system.

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So how does Jesus blood cover our sins? A lot of that is just incredibly mysterious.

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And there are intricacies about the gospel that although it's a very simple instruction for us to repent and believe, there are things about it so vastly complex, we will never come to the end of it.

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We will never be able to fully wrap our minds around it, even when it gets to even when we get to eternity, because we could spend all eternity pondering these things.

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We will certainly know better than we know now, but contemplating the majestic working of God forever.

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That is an incredible existence to think about. How inscrutable his ways, impossible to understand, but they are

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God's ways. And as we read in Isaiah 55, his ways are higher than our ways.

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His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. And what Paul quotes from here in verses 34 through 35, this is kind of a combination of two sections of scripture.

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It's Isaiah 40 verse 13, who has measured the spirit of the

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Lord or what man shows him his counsel. And also Job 41 verse 11, who has first given to me that I should repay him whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

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And so Paul is kind of taking those two passages from Isaiah 40 and Job 41 and putting them together in this in this doxology and this hymn that he is singing at the conclusion of Romans 11, overwhelmed as he considers all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

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Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?

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Who can tell God how to do things? A lot of people think that they can. A lot of people think that they're going to be able to get to heaven one of these days and be able to tell

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God off. Well, why didn't you do it this way? You should have done it like this. How incredibly arrogant of anybody to think that they can tell

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God something. The one who created all things, time, space, the entire universe, the beginning and the end, you know, beginning of time, end of time.

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Jesus is the beginning and the end. But you know what I mean? He is outside the bounds of time, whereas we are constrained by time.

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Jesus created the beginning of time and he will be there at the end of time.

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And yet we, in our puniness, think that we can answer back to God and tell him how he is supposed to do things.

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That is just the great blasphemy of the universe that a man thinks he knows better than God.

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Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Tell him how to do things or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

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In other words, folks, God owes us nothing. We have not done anything that is deserving of what

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God has given to us in Christ. It is not by your works, nor have you said any kind of magic words that tie

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God's hands and obligate him to give you anything. For example, the sinner's prayer, you know, you come before God and you say,

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Lord, I know that I am a sinner. Please forgive me of my sins. I ask

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Jesus into my heart. Let me live forever. You know, however, however you pray that prayer, however you conclude it, there are a lot of people that believe that just because they've prayed that prayer, they are going to be saved forever or a prayer like it.

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Like they were some sort of magician uttered some magic words or an incantation and automatically poof,

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I have obligated God to have to give me eternal life. And no matter what I do for the rest of my life,

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I know I'm still going to get to go to heaven. That's not how salvation works. God is not obligated to give us anything.

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We are deserving of nothing. It is not even upon God to have to love you because you're somehow inherently lovable like he can't help but love you.

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If God can't help but love you, then grace is not grace. He gives it to you because he has to.

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And it's not even unmerited favor at that point. It's favor that he gives to you because he's obligated to have to give it to you.

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But as we read back in Romans chapter three, we have all made ourselves worthless and we've done so with our sin, our rebellion against God, our going after our own way, chasing after the passions of our flesh.

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God gave us the body and the mind that we have, and we use these things to glorify ourselves instead of glorifying

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God. What we deserve for that is destruction. In the presence of a holy God, we deserve to be cast from his presence forever.

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But he has been kind and merciful to us. And by his grace, which means we don't deserve it.

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He has shown us affection and made a way for us back to him. And that is through Christ.

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His cross crosses the great divide that separates us from God.

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And we are able to step back into the presence of God and be in fellowship with him.

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When we put our faith in Jesus. No one has given anything to God that God has to give something to us.

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For from him and through him and to him are all things. So what man can give anything to God that God did not have?

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I don't have this. I wish somebody would give it to me. Boom. Here comes a guy gives him something. Ah, I will give you eternal life.

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No. From God come all things to God belong all things through him.

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All things have come into existence. So therefore, there is nothing that God lacks that we can give to him.

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He is under no obligation to show any love to us. God does not need us.

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But he shows his love to us because he's gracious. From him and through him and to him are all things.

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Therefore, God being worthy of our worship and he alone is worthy of our worship.

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To him be glory forever. Amen. May it be so.

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That declaration of of amen is to be in agreement with all that has been said.

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And as over the last few months, we've been going through the first 11 chapters of Romans.

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I hope that you likewise in agreement of all that has been taught can say amen.

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And we bring our our first portion of the study of Romans to a close.

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Part one is chapters one through 11. And then what we get to next after Paul has been laying out.

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An apologetic for justification by faith. What we will see next in Romans 12 through 16 is how this doctrine should look.

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Put into practice in the life of a Christian. And we'll talk about that when we begin

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Romans chapter 12. God willing on Monday, let us conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, how great and wonderful you are.

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How deep your wisdom and your knowledge, which we desire to ponder more tomorrow as we jump back into our study in Proverbs.

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How deep the riches you have guaranteed us in Christ, which we won't even fully understand until we step into glory with you.

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How unsearchable your judgments, how impossible to understand are your ways. And yet you have given us your spirit that we may read

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God's revealed will according to your word, the Bible. And come to at least enough of an understanding that we have salvation in Christ Jesus.

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And amen for that. All of this is the working of God in our lives. We would be nothing without it.

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For from you, through you, and to you belong all things.

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And may we being reminded of this give you our worship today. With our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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that we are unto God, our Savior. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.