1689 London Baptist Confession (part 29)

Father, thank you for yet another day to gather together, to worship you, to be reminded of all that you have done for us.

And even as we look to this confession of faith and what it says about saving faith, about repentance, about how you save absolutely from beginning to end.

Lord, I pray that you would bless us, that you would strengthen us, that you would encourage us, that you would even challenge us.

In Jesus' name, we pray. All right, so we're talking about saving faith and we're gonna wrap that up and then talk about repentance.

But when you started talking about false faith, that is faith that is professed but not possessed.

And toward that end, I want us to turn to Luke 8.

Luke 8, and we're gonna see this morning, to begin with, three characteristics of false faith, three characteristics of false faith.

And the first characteristic is shallow and superficial conviction and commitment.

In other words, faith that is an inch deep and not very wide.

Luke 8, and I'm gonna start reading in verse four. And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him,

Jesus, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed.

And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot. And the birds of the air devoured it.

And some fell on the rock and as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture.

And some fell among the thorns or fell among thorns and the thorns grew up with it and choked it.

And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundred fold. And he said these things, or as he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others, they are in parables.

So that seeing they may not see and hearing that they may not understand that's from Isaiah, just talking about the hardening ministry that Jesus would have.

Verse 11, now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard.

Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved.

And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no roots.

Listen, they believe for a while and in a time of testing fall away.

And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature.

As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.

No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand so that those who enter may see the light.

So there are people who hear the word who appear to evidence salvation, right?

It says here, they believe for a while and in a time of testing fall away.

So there are people who make shallow and superficial convictions and commitments.

Anybody ever seen anything like that where somebody seems like they're a Christian and then they just kind of fade away?

If you've been around for a while, you probably have. I mean, I remember even as an unbeliever, right?

I was a Mormon in the army and there were my first duty station. There was one guy,

I remember his name, his last name Westcott and Mr. Westcott, I think he was a specialist.

He would go around, he was always evangelizing, very genial fellow. I don't remember what his specific convictions were, but he seemed very nice and very genuine and he probably was a

Christian. Well, eventually PFC Smith became his disciple and started doing the same things.

And PFC Smith did this for a while and then one day he just went off the deep end and went the other way.

In fact, I found him in the barracks drunk one day and I said to him, I said, what happened? And he goes, oh, you know,

I tried it for a while but it just didn't take. So I mean, there are people who just kind of walk away and that's the idea that Waldron's trying to give here.

They make that profession, but they don't live it out. So that's the superficial faith.

The second element of false faith would be this, a desire to pick and choose which commands to obey.

And not just pick and choose which commands to obey, but with a conscience that fully approves of picking and choosing.

And this is something we see a lot of today, right? Churches that will teach that maybe homosexual marriage is okay, or it's okay to live together before you get married or whatever, because the

Bible is 2000 years old. Interesting, this is just a sidelight. I posted this on Facebook that they found this chunk of Leviticus and it was actually this burned manuscript and they were able using technology to examine a burned document and see that it's exactly the same.

It's 2000 years old. It's exactly the same as the Leviticus we have today. Of course it was in Hebrew, but the same text.

So I thought that was interesting. The word of God hasn't changed even though people want it to change.

People who are in habitual sin, they still curse like drunken sailors all the time and they have no sorrow over sin.

And these kinds of evidences show that maybe they never believed.

So it's not a question of believing in a saving fashion and then falling away. It's a matter of making a profession, but never really being saved.

The third evidence of false faith is this, a lack of spiritual fruit or good works.

Why would that be an indication? And how can you measure that by the way? How do you measure if somebody has no fruits in their life?

You put them on the scale and see if they have fruit or not, right? How do you figure that out?

How do you figure out if somebody is measuring fruit or providing fruits, producing fruits, spiritual fruit in their life?

How do you do that? Okay, you listen to what they say.

You watch what they're doing. You just kind of perch on their shoulder. Becky's gonna volunteer.

Go around. Is there a way I guess is better,

Erickson? Okay, ultimately you can't do that, right?

I mean, if somebody may give negative fruits, right? They may, there may be a lot of evidence.

You know, if you're gonna sit in judgment of them, there may be a lot of evidence against them. But the issue is this, we can't measure it.

I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson yesterday talking about fruits and who produces the fruit? God, I mean,

I'm just gonna say God. And the reason I'm just gonna say God is because if you listen to John chapter 15 as I was listening to it yesterday, it's

Jesus. Jesus is the true vine, right? And you can say the Holy Spirit produces fruit, that's true. You know, and I'm sure

I could find a section that says the Father produces the good works that you do. So it is our triune

God who ultimately produces the fruit. So what does that tell us about a lack of spiritual fruit? And by the way, you can't measure it in somebody else.

You can measure it in your own life, right? Exam yourself, see if you're in the faith, see if you pass the test.

And what is the test? Well, one of the tests would be, is there evidence of spiritual fruit in my life?

And you can say, well, there isn't enough, so I'm gonna try harder. Well, that's not the measurement. The measurement is if there is any spiritual fruit in your life, because if there is, then

God is at work in you to produce it, because you don't produce fruit on your own.

You know, what do we call it in Galatians 5? Somebody just referred to, you know, the

Holy Spirit producing fruit. Well, we call it the fruit of the Spirit, because He is at work in you.

We don't say, you know, it's the fruit of your efforts. It's the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So somebody who has a false faith, a spurious faith, a faith that does not save, will give these, or will generally have these things true of them, that they'll have a shallow, superficial conviction, desire to pick and choose what commands to be, and a lack of spiritual fruit.

Questions or thoughts about false professions or false faith? If none, then we're gonna go on to repentance.

Okay. Chapter 14 of the confession is of repentance unto life and salvation.

And this section, I mean, there are a lot of sections that have caused me to, like, think about things more deeply and to challenge myself, and I think this is one of them.

Let me read the opening paragraph of the confession. It says, such of the elect as are converted, listen to this language, at riper years.

What does that mean? It means when you old, right? The elderly.

Like, I kind of think I was saved it in my riper years, my 30s,

I was old. Having sometime lived in the state of nature, and therein served divers, diverse, lusts and pleasures,

God in their effectual calling, giveth them repentance unto life. And I'm gonna read that part again.

God in their effectual calling, giveth them repentance unto life. This saving repentance is an evangelical grace, whereby a person being by the

Holy Spirit made sensible the manifold evils of his sin, doth by faith in Christ, humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it, and self -abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace, with a purpose and endeavor, by supplies of the

Spirit, to walk before God and to all well -pleasing in all things.

I mean, just that part there. You know, is this how you repent? Listen to that. Humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it, of sin, and self -abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace.

It's what I think of when I think of, I can't measure a person's heart, right?

We were just talking about that. What I can say is that there are people that you interact with, when they say that they're sorry for something, or they say they've repented of something, and again, this is hard, but sometimes

I go, okay, do I really think this person had a David, you know,

Nathan to David moment? You are the man, you know, where David is just undone, where, you know, you feel like you want to excuse yourself and go write, you know,

Psalm 51 a hundred times or something like that. And frequently,

I don't think people get that far because they don't think rightly about their sins. Let's turn to Titus chapter three.

Let me put it this way, or let me frame it a different way before we get to these verses. Is it possible to be too guilty, too focused on your sins?

Is it possible to think too much on the wickedness that you've done and to just beat yourself up for it too much?

Yes, okay, because, you know, ultimately, what do we want? You know, like the

Psalmist, we want to be restored to what? The joy of our salvation, right?

We want to be, we want to just think, you know, God has forgiven me and I'm in right relationship with him.

And that's the picture. We want to be in a place of joy and of peace and harmony with our creator.

So I think that's possible, but I think it's also possible to think too lightly of our sins, to not consider them as grievous as they are.

Let's look at Titus three verses one to five. And would somebody read that please? Titus three verses one to five.

Yeah, go ahead, Corey. Thank you. Now, ask yourself this for a moment. What does this passage have to do with repentance?

That word isn't there anywhere, Gary, okay?

And so I would, going along with you, I would say that this kind of shows that ultimately we have a change of perspective about our own efforts, our own righteousness, and a change of mindset about Christ, right?

And if we look at this in verse, oh,

I was reading the confession. No wonder I was confused. If we look at it in verse three, we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions, pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

This is who you were, thus says the Holy Spirit. Verse four, again, you almost want to insert a word here, and the word

I want to insert there is God, but God. And so it is there, but, and then there's an intervening phrase, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our

Savior appeared, He saved us. So this is a transformation. This is a change.

And so we no longer think the way that we did. We are washed, we're regenerated, we're renewed.

And ultimately this has to do with sanctification, renewal of the Holy Spirit. And I just thought, well, okay, repentance really isn't in there.

But the concept of repentance is there because there's a complete change of mindset.

That's what the word means, right? Metanoia, to change one's mind about. So what

I once believed, I not only don't believe, but I believe exactly the opposite. I used to believe that it was okay to live however

I wanted. I used to believe it was okay to hate whoever I wanted, to think however I wanted, and now

I don't. Now I want to conform my thoughts and my actions to what

God's word says. Van Dixhorn says this. He says, repentance is a gospel grace because repentance involves believing something about ourselves and something about Christ that we no longer think the same way we did about him.

He goes on to say, every Christian knows that true repentance involves a serious consideration of our own sin.

As we look on Christ, the one who is pierced for our transgressions, we begin to see the full measure of our sin.

What does he mean by that? When you read through Isaiah chapter 53, what do you think?

The suffering servant, when you see things like, read things like, it pleased the father to crush him.

He was pierced through for our transgressions. These kind of things. What do you think, Gary?

Amazing grace, right? Okay. Magnitude of what our sin did to Christ.

And that's a great point. If that's what it took to pay for my sin, my sin's a lot worse than what

I even think it is, right? Than how I view it and how I understand it.

Charlie? My sins are antithetical to God at his essence. He is in essence, holy.

I violate his holiness. And he doesn't just go, no big deal. Dust yourself off,

Steve. Try better tomorrow. He punished Jesus for my sins and only a fully, only

Christ being fully man and fully God could withstand it in terms of mortal, a mere mortal.

I mean, when we think about this is the punishment that awaits those who don't bow the knee to Christ, it ought to give us a certain amount of focus on those around us and their need for Christ.

Let's look at Luke 24 and this is a longer passage.

So I'm going to read it. But I just thought this is, we were there, I think last week talking about the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the risen

Jesus appears to them and talks with them and reveals himself to them.

And I want to pick it up in verse 31, Luke 24 verses 31 to 47.

And their eyes, talking about the disciples and their eyes were opened and they recognized him, Jesus.

And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures.

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the 11, the 11 remaining disciples,

Judas is gone, and those who were with them gathered together saying, the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon.

Then they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

And they were talking about the, as they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace to you.

But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, why are you troubled?

And why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet that it is

I myself, touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, have you anything here to eat?

They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them, these are my words, which are that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the

Psalms might be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the

Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. And that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

And I read all of that to just focus on the end here. Verse 47, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

Now to me, we think about the great commission, right? The great commission is so that we might go and make disciples and we tend to think of that as preaching the gospel, which it is.

But look what he says there, that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

So some questions, is repentance a prerequisite that is to say a requirement for salvation?

Do you have to repent in order to be saved? Yes. Okay, which comes first?

Salvation or repentance? What's that? Yeah, it's really ultimately is simultaneous because when you think about it, can somebody repent and not be saved?

No. Can somebody be saved and not repent? No. So therefore our faith and repentance synonyms?

No. I'm gonna give you an answer, no. No. Yeah, it's pretty, well, can you have one without the other?

And the answer is no. Van Dixon puts it this way, he says, faith focuses on Christ and his grace.

Repentance focuses on God and his law. In other words, in light of the holiness of God, repentance says,

I'm undone, I'm unworthy. I need to have a change of mindset.

But they can't be the same because the Bible never asserts that we are justified by repentance. It does assert that we are justified by faith.

So therefore faith and repentance cannot be the same thing. Waldron says this, he says, repentance and faith are so intimately connected that one cannot exist without the other.

You cannot repent unless you believe. You cannot believe unless you repent. All true faith is repentance and all true repentance is believing.

There is no temporal or logical priority assigned to faith or repentance. In other words, one can't precede the other.

And there's no kind of, which is more important, faith or repentance?

The answer is yes. Repentance is a mark of saving faith.

A person who says they believe but hasn't repented of their sins, in other words, hasn't changed their mind about their sinfulness, then they're not saved.

Both must be stressed, repentance and faith. Paul, in Acts 20, you don't need to turn there,

I'll read it. When he's talking about, he's talking to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, and he says, how

I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house, in other words, in private, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance, faith. Both must be, must accompany one another.

Again, Van Dixhorn says this, repentance contemplates our sin and the cost of our sin to the

Savior. Since we're focused on repentance. Now, is there a repentance that does not save?

Seems kind of tricky since we're saying repentance is absolutely necessary for salvation and faith is absolutely necessary for salvation.

You can't repent without having faith and you can't have faith without repenting. And then we say, well, wait a minute, there's a repentance that does not save.

How do we know that? Because it's in the Bible. Second Corinthians, let's look at Second Corinthians chapter seven, verses eight to 10.

And if somebody would read that. Second Corinthians chapter seven, verses eight to 10.

I need a hand. I need a volunteer. Somebody who's willing to throw themselves into the breach. Yes, thank you,

Mark. Okay, so a worldly sorrow, a worldly repentance produces death and it doesn't mean temporary death.

This is talking about eternal death, talking about hell. Because there's a certain sense, when you catch a child, it's pretty easy to catch the younger they are, pretty easy to catch a child lying to you, right?

And when they eventually confess that, there's usually a genuine brokenness unless you have a really hard kid.

And I'm not saying that one is salvific and the other one isn't. What I am saying is there's a certain tenderness when they really know they're busted, right?

As opposed to a kid, maybe later on, having dealt with a few juveniles in my day, who just, and I'm not talking about my own kids, who just kind of look at you and like, yeah,

I did it. Yeah, I'm sorry. Let's get on with the booking process kind of thing. There are different elements of sorrow or different depths of sorrow, different depths of regrets and repentance.

But when the Holy Spirit is at work in a person, when he convicts them, when he grants them repentance, there's a different depth to it, a different, well, there's a genuineness to it.

And Dick's one says this, he says, sinners may seek into great depths of sorrow for sin, but we need to understand that remorse is not the same as repentance.

In other words, it's not just enough to say, and to be genuine, I'm sorry. There's a difference between I'm sorry

I got caught and I'm sorry I ever did it. I wish I'd never done it.

I'm ashamed that I did it. I stand convicted before God. And that's the ultimate difference between a godly sorrow, a sorrow that leads to salvation, and one that doesn't is it has to have

God in view. It has to be one that says, okay, before the holy and righteous

God, I have sinned and against him alone, I have sinned. Other thoughts on that?

Repentance, godly repentance, Charlie. And that's a great point. Ultimately repentance is about not just about the act itself but about the motivations, the origin of it, which is in our sinful hearts.

So yeah, good point. In Luke 23, or 9 .23, when he says,

MacArthur says it's a refusal to even associate with who you used to be, that's repentance.

That just shows, okay, I don't even wanna think about who did this. I wanna be just distanced from that person.

In fact, that goes right along with what Van Dixhorn says here, he says true repentance involves not only seeing the dangers of hell, but also the filthiness and repulsiveness of the sins that are committed.

Says we must never forget that sin is a dirty affair because it is absolutely contrary to the holy nature of God.

Sin is not only dirty, but it is also personal. Every sin is a personal offense against God himself.

And we sometimes, we lose sight of that. We think I sinned against John or I sinned against Pradeep or I sinned against my wife, right?

And we don't think that foremost, before all of it, and this helps in a number of respects, and I'll get to the other one in a second.

But foremost, we've sinned against God. We profess to love him, and yet we don't do what he says to do.

I mean, it's like in any relationship, when you say you love somebody, and then you do worse than disrespect them, you do exactly the opposite of what love would be.

And that's what sin is. Sin is, well, let's back up a second.

The root cause of sin is, we can argue about this later, unbelief, right?

When the disciples said, we believe, Lord, help our unbelief, what they were really saying is, we don't believe like we should.

We believe you, but we don't believe as we should. Well, what does that lead to? Not believing as we should, leads to sin.

So God has purchased us. He, in the person of Jesus Christ, has saved us, paid the price for our sin, and in response, we sin.

So that's part of it, that we're actually doing the opposite of what we should be doing.

And let me see where the rest of it was I was going to say. So it's a personal offense against him.

In fact, I was listening, again, I was listening to Astell as Johnson. He said, you know what, if God didn't love those who hate him, he'd have nobody who loves him.

If you think about that, that's true, right? Because we were haters of God, and yet he set his affection upon us, and then transformed us that we might love him.

But when we sin, we're acting basically in hatred against him. And that's hard to think of, but there needs to be repentance because of that.

Repentance is changing our mind, yes, but it can also be, well, let's put it this way.

When you do something, when you sin, you're not thinking, well, you might be thinking this, but you do it anyway.

Your hatred of sin is gone for the moment. Your love of God is gone for the moment, and you do what you wanna do because of momentary unbelief, we could call it.

So repentance then is to say, to look back on what we've done, and to hate it, and to have what?

The same mindset as God does. In 1 John, John writes that if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us.

Well, what does it mean to confess, to agree with God, to think the same thing as God does about our sin?

So therefore, if we think about repentance, it's changing our mind about our sin and saying, you know what, what

I used to think was okay or seemed momentarily pleasing to me, I now hate.

Let's look at Psalm 119. This is gonna be so brief,

I hate to, I almost feel guilty having you turn there, but I want you to turn there because this is such a good verse.

Psalm 119, verse 128, and it's pretty unusual to get into triple digits on two consecutive numbers in the

Bible, but there you go. Psalm 119, verse 128, and would somebody read that please?

Yes, go ahead, Scott. I hate every false way.

And when you're in real repentant mode, what do you think? You're thinking, you're looking at your past deeds exactly as God does, and you think,

I hate every false way. I hate every sin

I've ever committed against you. I can't believe I ever did that. That's that whole, you know, disassociating yourself with who you used to be.

It's shock and revulsion at the things that you've done. It's not, man,

I wish I hadn't done that. That was a real, that was really stupid. I hate every false way.

But true repentance, not only sorrows for sin, not only is repulsed by the sins that he or she commits, but also sees a savior.

And Dick Sorn writes this, he says, as we consider what God thinks of sin, we must also consider his mercy to sinners.

We were made to be with God, to enjoy fellowship with him. We want to be in a situation where we are no longer put to shame when we consider our creator's commands.

What does that sound like? We no longer want to be put to shame when we consider our creator's commands.

Not to be ashamed, right? I mean, ultimately, in my mind, that just creates a picture going back to the

Garden of Eden, a state of innocence. You know, they were naked and they were not ashamed.

So ultimately, if we think about it rightly, our goal in repentance should be not to think, okay,

I'm good now, but just like I've confessed, I've made, you know,

I hate my sin as God hates my sin. And yet I recognize that Jesus paid for my sin.

And in light of his payment and accepting that payment and understanding that it makes me right in the sight of God, I'm justified in the sight of God, that I'm no longer ashamed.

Now, I don't know how long we maintain that sort of sense of it's good to be clean, it's good to be right.

You know, I'm thankful to be justified and right in the sight of God, but how, you know,

I don't know how long any of us stay in that kind of sense of,

I don't even know what I want to call it, spiritual equilibrium, you know, where everything's right. Probably not very long.

It's probably not very long before we're thinking things that we ought not to think or doing things that we ought not to do or saying things that we ought not to say.

He goes on to say that, and this is important, and we'll close here, repentance is not meritorious.

Now, that should be, you know, duh. Repentance is not meritorious. Nothing that we do is meritorious, but there have been periods of time where the church taught that repentance of a form was meritorious.

He says, God does not forgive us because he considers our repentance a deed that reserves reward.

Very good. Good job repenting. Thank you for telling me you're sorry. I go on to say that penance, what's penance?

Why don't we talk about penance? Or do we talk about penance?

Gary. Okay, so it's when you go to the priest or whatever and you go to the confession booth and he says, okay, in light of your murder, say 10

Our Fathers and five Hail Marys, and go on and try not to assassinate anybody this week.

We think about the story of Martin Luther, crawling up these steps in Rome and crawling across glass and all these things.

That's what penance was. So penance really, or even if it's Hail Marys and Our Fathers what it ultimately is, is the sinner paying the price for his own sins by performing supposedly righteous deeds before God, doing things that whether it's going and visiting relics that supposedly have, which

I never understand. Go see this relic here because it'll get you X number of years out of purgatory.

What does that even mean? I mean, that sounds like just idolatry.

Go see this item, it will benefit you. But penance cannot do anything.

I mean, ultimately the only penance that ever meant anything was what the Lord Jesus Christ did because he actually did it for other people and was capable of doing it.

But even true repentance while it is commanded does not impress

God. Well, why not? Why doesn't it impress God? Why doesn't he ever say, good job,

Steve, great job repenting? Because he gave it to me.

You know, in 2 Timothy chapter two, when we read that it is God who grants repentance.

It's not something, you know, do I decide to do it? Well, humanly speaking, yes, I do. But the

Bible says that God grants it, God causes it. It's God, the Holy Spirit at work in me who convicts me of my need to repent.

Yeah, going on in the confession. Let's just kind of wrap this up here. The confession says, whereas there is none that doeth good, doth good and sinneth not.

And the best of men may through the power and deceitfulness of their corruption dwelling in them with the prevalence of temptation fall into great sins and provocations.

God hath in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided that believers so sinning and falling be renewed through repentance unto salvation.

What does that mean that when you repent, you're saved again? No, it means that even the best of Christians, the best, in quotation marks, sin.

And they need to repent. Why? Because it demonstrates that they're saved. In Luke 22,

Jesus is talking to the disciples and he's not yet been arrested.

And he says, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

That's the whole picture of repentance. Jesus didn't pray that he wouldn't sin, just that his faith would not fail.

That ultimately he would be struck when the cock crowed, that he would recognize that he'd done exactly what

Jesus said and that he would repent. And when you have turned again, that as I say, when you've repented, when you've stopped your reliance upon yourself and your own spiritual strength and have turned to me, then strengthen your brothers.

Well, we need to close. Father, it is incredible to think that the

Lord Jesus Christ would suffer for our sins, that he would die for us after living a perfect and righteous life, obeying you fully, and then be raised on the third day.

And that's incredible to think that you would grant us saving faith, that you would grant us repentance.

Father, that salvation is all of you. Nevertheless, you give us the grace to see how you are working in our lives.

Father, we praise you for that. We thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit in us, that we may examine ourselves and determine whether or not we're in the faith, that we can see the

Holy Spirit producing fruit, fruit that we cannot and need not measure, but is there nevertheless, that we might be encouraged by it to know that you have saved us, that you have called us, that you are at work in us to do and to work your own good pleasure.