The Whole Christ (part 12)

so today is part twelve of the whole christ part twelve of a book with only eleven chapters so we are uh...

doing great yeah and uh... i have six pages of notes this morning and so pastor steve being very encouraging to me said that there's no chance they'll finish today uh...

so we'll probably do this again next week but we'll see how far we get the whole christ uh...

legalism antinomianism and gospel assurance why the merrill controversy still matters by sinclair ferguson and today uh...

it is the end one way or the other either today just this week or today and next week uh...

and so it's final exam time so everyone please take out a piece of paper we're gonna ask some questions we won't do final exams but uh...

we are going to take one last jet tour through this book and uh...

hit back on some of those points that we went over quite a bit uh... through all of these chapters and talk a little bit more uh...

just to help hopefully help crystallize these things in your thinking uh...

and that you can take away from this uh... what andrew and i hope has been a very uh...

edifying experience lesson for all of you so legalism antinomianism and gospel assurance so let's remember our definitions we did a lot of definitions and a lot of analogies over these twelve to thirteen parts legalism who wants to give us our legalism definition kirstie perfect bringing obedience to the law into salvation and justification some element of that into justin into uh...

our justification any any taint any hint of it uh...

any hint of works makes it legalistic it's not just the entire you know it's not dogmatic strand so to speak of legalism would be that it's entirely works based but even just bringing in a hint of the of some necessary amount of your participation strikes of legalism and then antinomianism anybody else definition antinomianism not recognizing any law right there's no behavioral requirements of the redeemed christian there's no role for the law in our lives none whatsoever okay that's antinomianism are they opposites who remembers our lessons from this time are that our legalism antinomianism opposites yes uh...

yes no both ends of a spectrum so we had that what was our favorite analogy all this time bowling because andrews a bowler our favorite analogy was the bowling analogy and we called legalism the right gutter right and antinomianism the left gutter but you remember there is at least one week where i pointed out why that that analogy wasn't so great because they're not polar opposites they're not even opposites on an end of the spectrum in fact what is the opposite of both of them grace and in fact we saw that they have they've surprisingly that both legalism antinomianism have a common route a common cause and that cause is a misunderstanding of grace and is a separation of what two things remember that it was whenever our thinking in our thinking we started separating the law from that's from the character of christ that we separate the law from the law giver that whenever that separation happens in our brain that's the that's the start of either legalism or antinomianism and the marrow controversy that we talked about quite a bit it really for this book and for these lessons is just a frame story for being able to talk about these issues but the marrow controversy uh...

was named for this book from the seventeen hundreds called the marrow of modern divinity written by edward fisher it erupted in the church of scotland where the scottish presbytery had this position that when presenting the gospel you need to tell here is that they need to forsake sin to be saved to the point even where you should not preach the gospel who do not show any remorse or any sign of repentance that it's a waste of time that they had kind of breached into this hyper calvinistic thinking if people were not showing any evidences of being drawn by god that there was no point in preaching to them or witnessing to them and the marrow men's position was that you should offer christ to all with the promise of justification to the ungodly who believes freely and without qualification and uh...

thus the controversy here was that the marrow men were accusing the presbytery of legalism and the presbytery was accusing the marrow men as they call themselves uh...

of antinomianism and uh... and that's where we got onto the the bowling lane of theology but now why did we study this why spend uh...

twelve weeks or thirteen weeks going through this controversy what is this crazy obscure argument from seventeen hundred scotland have to do uh...

with us i mean wasn't this just some kind of internal denominational squabble between some scottish presbyterians what does it matter there are two important takeaways for us moderns ferguson uh...

in the conclusion to the whole christ he reveals that uh... his original title for the book one that the publisher rejected obviously because it's called the whole christ but his original title for the book was called marrow for modern divines marrow for modern divines i think ferguson is a man born out of time that he he should have been a a puritan he writes like a puritan he sounds like a puritan it's it's really amazing and he wanted to even title his book like a puritan because marrow for modern divines if that does not sound like something that could have been the title straight from thomas boston or john owen i don't know and divines if you're not familiar with the term that was originally a puritan term that was used as a synonym for clergy but it didn't always just mean clergy sometimes it also could be used as another name for theologians okay so either you know divines if you say modern divines you mean modern clergy modern theologians uh...

but i'm going to appropriate a title for another ligonier fellow who you might have heard of r .c.

sprawl and say that everyone's a theologian and so in that sense what this controversy matters to is all of us it matters to all of us this marrow is for us it lies at the very heart of the gospel and so as i said i want you to remember these two very important very key takeaways from the entire series okay here we go this is the summary twelve weeks you could have skipped everything and just come to this one uh...

if this is your first time welcome uh... two key takeaways one you will struggle to share and proclaim the gospel if you do not have a clear understanding of grace and number two you will struggle to be assured of your own salvation if you do not have a clear understanding of grace you will struggle to share and proclaim the gospel and you will struggle to be assured of your own salvation if you do not have a clear understanding of grace

Now thankfully you can kill two birds with one stone here because the prescription for both is obvious no grace no the gospel and that's why the book is titled the whole

Christ because we argued it at least one point that Christ is the gospel the whole

Christ is the gospel we talked a lot about separation right and we just mentioned it earlier that when we separate the work of Christ from the person of Christ we got into this very fundamental broken theology because instead of how do

I preach Christ it became how do I offer the benefits of Christ Christ became like this ends to a means right he's the the get out of hell free card or making your best life now right it's a very slippery and quick slope down to Joel Osteen from here and we very wrongly start thinking

God loves you because Christ died for you remember yeah and in fact it's completely the opposite Christ died for you because God loves you and then to explore the root not just of legalism but also like I said of antinomian ism we looked at this error of separating the law from the lawgiver and what really is going on there is that you're focusing too much on the rules who remembers the very first sin in the at the fall the very first sin

Eve what was Eve's main problem what was her mistake what was surrounding her everything good right she's in paradise we don't call it paradise for nothing it was paradise

God has surrounded her with blessings and instead when she gets into this conversation with a serpent she gets this tunnel vision where she's only thinking about one thing and that one thing is a rule right and it's a rule that she comes to realize she doesn't like and suddenly

God looks only like he's an ogre like he's a rule maker like he's a dictator who cold -heartedly demands unreasonable conformity someone who's only gonna think well of her if she obeys and crush her if she does not right

God becomes ogre God or he becomes he whose favor must be earned he's only gonna like me if I follow his rules that's what she started to think even though she's literally surrounded by all the evidence that that is not the case but she gets that tunnel vision because she has separated the law from the lawgiver she doesn't even realize anymore the motivation the character behind the giving of that law in the first place and so what does that sound like what does that sound like to us what do we do how do we do that in in our modern thinking what's what does that sound like in our own heads when we when we separate the law from the lawgiver when we think of God as only whose favor must be earned even as believers yeah it's legalism but I mean you think about like what what are the what does legalism sound like in your head hopelessness

I can never do it I keep trying and I can never

I keep failing right and you just get beaten down and hopeless over it there's just that sin that I can never conquer there's that temptation that just keeps coming and coming and coming and coming and coming hammering on me right what else what do we start to think about God how does our relationship feel like to us with him punisher yeah right

Charlie yeah and mechanistic yep right yes

I I will do a in order to get blessing be right and if I don't if I'm not experiencing blessing be right now it must be because I forgot to do a or didn't do a well enough for right and we talked about things like you know

I'm having a bad day I must have not read my Bible this morning kind of thing like or we would say like if only

I had done better with my devotions if only I had prayed more about this before I went off on this trip or down this road right yeah yes yes removes the personhood of God and turns him just into fate yep yep or that Greek myth of like the sword of Damocles right where he's just literally just like this just waiting for us to mess up go ahead give me an excuse to crush you right like that's that's what we start to think of of God and in fact it's completely the opposite our

God is not looking for an excuse to crush you he's looking for an excuse to save you completely the opposite and we realize that when you get into that thinking then there's two reactions and one reaction is legalism where we say

I am scared of this ogre God and I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna work really hard to earn his favor and that's the reaction that the

Pharisees of course our most famous legalists got into right or you get into the antinomian reaction which is

I refuse to obey this ogre God and I will do my own thing and go my own way right but they're both they both have that same root okay everybody

I mean any other thoughts about that I think that's the most surprising thing to me having before before I read this book

I would have said that the two of them legalism and antinomian are opposites of each other right that they're that there's on the highway of life that I'm going at one speed and the legalists are there the guys who are going really slow in the left lane and the antinomians are the guys who are barreling down the highway in the breakdown lane right but in fact they both have the same root the same root they're not opposites at all and so here's where we have our first of our key takeaways which is that Thomas Boston and the

Merrow men they had examined themselves and they found the wrong view of God inside themselves they realized that they had a streak going of legalism that their preaching had gotten cold they looked around and they saw it pervasive in the whole

Church of Scotland it had tainted their preaching there was this preaching of penance they realized even subtly that they were preaching penance instead of repentance they looked at the lost and and maybe sort of subconsciously unconsciously they started to think that it was a waste of time to preach the gospel to someone who wasn't already showing signs of repentance

Andrew spent several weeks talking about the ordo salutis right the order of salvation and the key thing that we came down at was what comes first repentance or faith anybody remember what comes first repentance or faith in the order of salvation anybody here for that one besides Andrew but grace grace

Bob punts neither grace faith yeah it is grace to you're right it has to be faith because true repentance can only take place in the context of true faith anything else is legalism right if you're not repenting in faith if you're not repenting be in the motivation of faith powered by faith then it's it's not true repentance now in practical speaking right like so so so if you want to get really you know in the in the down -detailed definitions in theology and you have to map it out in this order salutis you have to put faith before repentance but practically speaking how does it really work in our lives more often than not they're basically what simultaneous it's why we can say things like repent and believe right because they're basically simultaneous in the life of a believer that as soon as we have faith that repentance immediately is evident it's immediately starting to work in our hearts and that really shouldn't surprise us because if you're if your heart is suddenly quickened and your eyes are suddenly opened to the truth and the things of God then of course you're gonna immediately like every as soon as you turn over one stone and see some sin in your life you're immediately go ah it's gonna disgust you it's gonna you know drive you towards wanting to be more

Christlike and every other stone you turn over just over and over and over again right and that's that's the process of sanctification the process of repentance so when we don't do that when we instead say you know that again with that sort of legalistic streak and we go like well there's really no point in talking to that guy about Christ I mean he's way far gone right that's that's the trap that we fall into and we put qualifications on the gospel we if we read

Matthew 22 which is the parable of the wedding feast we said that we we ought to get a little uncomfortable when we read it right verse 10 both the bad and the good are compelled to come in not just the good not just the ones who are you know at least outwardly conforming or grew up in a religious family or are clearly you know maybe they've been living a really messed up life but they are clearly broken now and they clearly are looking or seeking you know whatever kind of thing right no the bad and the good they're compelled to come in do we ever look down on another person because of their sin like basically implying that we've merited more grace than they have do we ever assume that our devotion to the

Lord is the reason for God's acceptance of us yep do we ever assume that we are accepted because of a decision we made or because of our years of commitment in service yep we do do we ever treat with contempt some kind of embarrassing breach of etiquette someone comes into church service and they've never been to our service before and at the end of the special music they clap right or or you know that there's do we ever treat with contempt like some kind of outward show of sorrow that someone has over their sin rather we must freely offer

Christ to all with no qualifications it is repent and believe like I said but they're functionally simultaneous never ever ever ever ever ever ever should someone get the idea from us that if they that I'm sorry that get the idea from us that they have to clean up their life first before God will accept them or before God will save them it is indeed come as you are once you're here that's what we're getting at the antinomianism right but it really is truly come as you are it really is come to Christ today today look to him and be saved if this sounds a little too much like free grace and this one is my favorite quote with maybe from the whole series from Martin Lloyd -Jones right this free grace of God and salvation is always exposed to the charge of antinomianism if you do not make people say things like that sometimes if you are not misunderstood and slanderously reported from the standpoint of antinomianism it is because you do not believe the gospel truly and you do not preach it truly and you remember that we looked at Romans six and seven and we realized that even

Paul at some point was accused of being a little too free grace and his preaching and so we said if we're ever accused of that we're in pretty good company right and so that's we have arrived at antinomianism and the role of the law in the lives of believers what's our role or I'm sorry what what is the role anybody remember the phrase that I used

I know Dave remembers what's the phrase what's the role of the law in our in our life you remember it's it's not what's that a tutor yep yep it's the schoolmaster yep that's another good one it's it's the rule of life

I think was the way that the Puritans put it right that love is not a replacement for the law right

Jesus himself said if you love me you will keep my commandments right

I mean that that alone right there pretty much blows away any arguments for antinomianism that Ferguson calls the commandments the law the railroad tracks right on which the

Christian life should run remember that the railroad tracks what do the railroad tracks do for the train they got you how to keep it on track yeah they guide it right can the train decide where it's going no right it only goes where the tracks go what happens if it decides to not go where the tracks go it's yeah it's it's it's a disaster right that's the train disaster when you go off the tracks it's a lot of work to clean up and in the same way that's so so the law in our lives is our train tracks now also another thought here do the train tracks make the train move no right what makes the train move yeah the locomotive right the engine the steam the coal the diesel whatever's powering it okay that makes the train move and so it is true in our lives as Christian law in our

Christian lives what was the engine do you remember what powers us what ought to be powering us motivating us forward the

Holy Spirit which you who's he what's he doing in our lives the L word love love for Christ right like love for Christ love for our neighbor those are the things that ought to compel us motivate us that's what moves our engine forward but the law as the rails on our train track that's what keeps us going in the right direction right so that's what we call when we said that the law is like a rule for our lives a guide for our lives we can go completely off the rails we can think that if the need to follow the law is abolished and that you can't sin in your life right that how then it's so easy then at that point to look down your nose at others who aren't as elite or as extra chosen as you are all right it's really easy to start to see sins and other people even if you commit the same ones you get the sort of blind spot and it's an abolishment of the idea that God expects holiness in the form of repentance and contrition the psalmist says oh how

I love your law right and the

New Testament believers supposed to say mm -hmm no law yucky right no yes

Charlie yeah I think so I think so you remember we talked a lot about strands right and we said that there's dogmatic strands and exegetical strands to both legalism and antinomian ism and then we said that the last one the most dangerous one is the experimental strand and I think that's what you're describing right now right where we don't raise our hand and sign up and say oh no the law has no no purpose in my life right no role in my life but we very easily fall into these traps of like you're saying of excess of saying well this is the way

I am right and God made me this way so it's just what that's how

I'm gonna be yes yeah I mean Paul he says that you know that he never wants to let his liberty become a stumbling block to others right so I think you know

Charlie what you're saying it's hard and at some level it has to be your own your own conscience your own dealings with the

Holy Spirit as to where you have to draw your own minds right and I do think it changes even depending on your current role like your current time and season in life you know as a dad even there are things that I do or I'm sorry that I don't do now because I'm a dad that you know probably before I was a dad

I didn't think was really a problem an issue but I don't do them now simply just because I want to be like as that example to my kids to keep them as far away from the edge of the pool as possible right of falling into the pool of sin so to speak right so I want to I'm gonna walk three feet over from the edge so that they also will walk three feet over from the edge and if if they wander a little bit over they still won't fall into the pool right and then

I'm not being a stumbling block to them yeah it's hard it's hard but we did say that it was not legalism for Jesus to do everything that his father commanded him right it's not legalism for Jesus to do everything his father commanded him which means it can't be legalism for us to do that either like way too often we say that someone who quote -unquote follows all the rules we just we kind of look at him askance and we're gonna be an illegalist and it's really very interesting to note that in Jesus's day what did the

Pharisees accuse Jesus of being a legalist no what did they accuse him of being an antinomian

Jesus you let your disciples pick grain from the field on a Sabbath day Jesus you healed on a

Sabbath day right you eat and drink with with the vilest the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sinners right he was not legalist enough for them and now in our modern day right the it's not

Jesus himself but this artificial picture of Jesus that people have invented right where Jesus is everyone's friend and everything we it's the other way around right that the quote -unquote like they say that the what the

Jesus in the Bible he's not the true Jesus we're searching for the real Jesus because the Jesus has presented in the

Bible is to what for them legalists how dare he say that he's the only way right and this brought us in the past two weeks to assurance which is our the second key takeaway that I said right that if you that if you don't have a clear understanding of grace you're gonna have you're gonna struggle to effectively proclaim the gospel and if you don't have a clear understanding of grace you're gonna struggle with your own assurance and the transition was really abrupt at first because we've been looking at most everything with legalism and antinomian ism through that lens of gospel preaching for the first eight or nine weeks but the marrow controversy itself progressed to the issue of assurance precisely because it has everything to do with those experimental strands of legalism and antinomian ism right that for us as believers when we're dealing with them legalism and antinomian ism it's far more about our assurance than it is about our salvation right we're pretty clear on that we are saved by grace alone by faith alone and and and almost all of us you know that that we we we freely accept and rejoice in that fact that we hadn't we couldn't do anything ourselves and praise the

Lord that he did everything for us and he saved us right we rejoice in that and then we turn around and we say and now that I'm saved

I better take care of it myself right we set up rules for ourselves so that if we follow them we're sure that God loves us we're looking for the security or defensively kind of reflexively when we fail to follow the rules that we once thought were the deal -breakers right we like set them up for ourselves at first and then after so long maybe something happens and we break one of those rules then then we throw out all the rules because we're like oh no

I broke one of my my deal -breaker rules and if I so I I'm gonna abandon my previous position of trying to make

God love me and now I'm just gonna be like it doesn't matter it doesn't matter nothing matters at all I'm good I don't have to follow any rules everything's good right and the sort of very defensive sort of way it's like an ointment to our scorched conscience right don't worry you're still saved even though you don't ever do the right thing everyone's and the

Mero controversy had entered this phase of arguing over whether or not assurance was the essence of saving faith and by essence of saving faith what the

Puritans meant was that you could not be saved if you were not assured okay and this is actually probably where the controversy started to flame out because the two sides realized they were on the same side on this which is that they they both thought that it was not the essence of faith that it was entirely possible and in fact common for people who struggle with assurance and for many true believers there is however an assurance of Christ okay do you remember that does anybody remember what

I meant and Andrew meant when we talked about assurance of Christ as opposed to the assurance of salvation what when you have faith to believe what are you believing in let's just believe right mark right that Christ actually accomplished everything right like you are in order to believe in the first place in order to have faith you are you are believing in an object right the object of your faith is

Christ his work right that is that so you have the assurance as some baseline that Christ accomplished and that his work is finished right the assurance of salvation is where you say not just that Christ died for sinners but Christ died for me right like that's the sort of where self where assurance of salvation where it becomes

I should say assurance of salvation faith requires some level

Calvin said of full and fixed certainty and so what that means is that even that when we are true believers that even in our worst moments of weakest faith we can say things like the father who came to Jesus who he said

Lord I believe help my unbelief right

I believe that's the floor help my unbelief still not sure

Peter denied knowing Christ three times but he was still restored on the basis of his love as feeble as that love was towards Jesus and sometimes for some of us who struggle with assurance this is my own personal experience that God has to take you to a very very weak point in order to show you that at that lowest point of despair you're still clinging to him that you don't even know how to pray you're in such pain or in such mental torture or whatever else depression and you don't even know how to pray and that the best you can squeak out is

ABBA father right that the one thing you cling to is still

God the Westminster confession defines activity of faith as accepting receiving and resting on Christ alone for justification sanctification and eternal life and those three verbs we said they constitute the direct act of assurance of Christ that that we don't accept receive or rest on someone that we think is untrustworthy so that's the direct act the direct act of faith says

Christ as we just said Mark said Christ is able to save right the assurance of salvation the reflex act the object is not

Christ but self it's I am someone who has been saved through faith in Christ we drifted that works -based sanctification that we have to work up the belief somehow

Andrew coined the term last week sola bootstrap you right that it's up to us to better ourselves in Christ if we're not busy enough if we're not praying enough if we're not pure enough that maybe

God loves us a little bit less right and so if we don't keep on believing then maybe we're lost but it's up to us in some fashion we search the scriptures for the promises of God about salvation but we always find a clause or a phrase that disqualifies us

I know that if we put enough people together in a build enough Christian believers and together in a building that what

I'm about to talk about is going to be the experience of at least someone and I wouldn't be surprised if it's most everyone where we ask at some point in our life what if I didn't do it right what if I didn't have enough faith when

I called on the name of the Lord to save me what if I had some mental reservation that day what if there was some sin that was in my heart that I was covering and I wasn't ready to let it go and so the

Lord didn't hear my prayer assurance is a really complex thing because it lies at the intersection of spiritual and mental all right whether or not we think we are saved is in fact irrelevant if God has saved us we are saved but when we have persistent doubts about our salvation it's often because we have we have trouble making important decisions in general right there are people who are just predisposed to this by their own their own temperament that if you're someone who delays and stalls on any kind of big decision for the longest time and then the only time reason you finally make the decision is because like you're out of time and it now is the last chance boy

I got a pick you know I coming down that highway and either I'm gonna go east or west and here comes the on -ramp and I don't know okay right and why why do they do that it why do

I do that it's it's because you want to make sure you're right you're really afraid of being wrong it's this form of perfectionism of pride we laser focus on areas that matter most to us areas that if we're honest with ourselves are the areas that we base our own self -worth on it's it's the areas that are crucial for our image and our security okay maybe our yard is a total mess but you know we've not based our you know so perfectionist it's not that everything about their life is perfect you know the yard might be a total mess they might be late to arriving at everything or whatever but there's like one area or some key areas where they say like this is what's really important to me and if these aren't perfect if these aren't great then

I'm a failure I'm not worthy I'm not lovable right and then and and all the things come up about where they as soon as you think that then you go why would

God love me and you then that assurance is lost perfectionists fall into the quest for perfect assurance when we look at the promises of God we see loopholes instead of promises we the thoughts get filled with self -centeredness what if what if what if what if I didn't pray correctly what if I committed the unpardonable sin what if the peace

I've experienced is only some illusion of the devil right or we get into the if only if only

I could know for sure I meant it when I asked God to save me if only

I didn't have such wicked blasphemous thoughts sometimes if only God would just speak to me somehow

I remember you folks remember this is a long time ago now

I guess early 2000s the whole left behind series books yeah they were okay at first and they got weird but I just I don't remember all the details but I remember there was this one point in the progression of the story that it was around the time that the mark of the beast thing was happening and that the people you know the unbelievers they were lined up and they were getting the mark of the beast and it was a tattoo that they were getting tattooed on their wrist or whatever and at the same time they the authors they took this verse from Revelation about the angels going out and sealing the hundred and forty four thousand and they took that verse and what they said in the novel was how that looked like was that like this sort of hologram this this this like one of those mind's eye things when you stare at it and you go cross -eyed a little bit then you see it that this sort of hologram image of a cross appeared on all the believers foreheads and that only the believers could see it okay and it was like the anti mark of the beast right and I was a really young Christian when

I read this book and I remember thinking it's like man if only that would be great how great would that be if I that I could look in the mirror and I'd see it and go yes all sex whoo -hoo right that'd be perfect assurance

God would have told me for sure yep thumbs up this right and and and what it is is that perfectionist that we get focused on possibilities instead of certainties our security and our assurance it's it's not what we know and what we have done all right assurance is based on what

God has said and what God has done Christian assurance is not self -assurance it's not self -confidence it is the reverse confidence in our

Father trust in Christ as our Savior joy in the spirit as the spirit of sonship the seal of grace the earnest of our inheritance as sons and daughters of God so Ferguson says so I'm almost done so I'm gonna go a little bit over for the sake of finishing today

I'll let Ferguson have the last word and read to you the end of the book this is the conclusion of the whole matter that the marrow controversy is a diagnostic test you know those

I should set the content you know those medical tests where you go in and they have to inject you with something right like it's like a dye or some like kind of radioactive fluid and or that you have to drink some stuff and then when they when they put you in the imaging machine right that stuff lights up right and so it's really easy makes it much easier to see whatever internal structures or things are going wrong inside you right so this is what

Ferguson's comparing it to that the marrow emphasis on the grace of God and on the

God of grace who in Christ is the gospel functions like this it injects a gospel dye into our spiritual heart arteries and reveals whether there has been any degree of gospel hardening it causes us to reflect on and wrestle with key theological and pastoral issues and thus leads us to a deeper appreciation of the nature of the gospel and how to live in it preach it and apply it for Thomas Boston and the

Merrow men it bathed their hearts in a new sense of God's graciousness in Christ the result was that their preaching became an expression of Christ's preaching we who serve

Christ and his people must first see him more clearly love him more dearly and follow him more nearly the whole

Christ let's pray Heavenly Father I thank you so much for this time that we've been able to have these many weeks over the summer and fall to look at this controversy thank you

Lord for dr. Ferguson's work in the research and everything that he did into putting together this book and the skill of the talent and the wisdom you gave him as he wrote it that we could be blessed by it as we looked at it together in this class

Lord I pray that you would give all of us a clear understanding of grace we have seen the dangers when we when that understanding is cloudy

Lord we fall into that experimental practical strands of legalism and antinomianism in our lives truly daily

Lord help us to see it more plainly and clearly in our lives that we can root it out to stop and to turn the other way and to focus on grace focus on your son

Lord and may our lives be colored by that but we might have the aroma of grace in our lives

Lord I pray that if there are any here or in our church even these past few weeks and Pastor Mike last week with preaching about assurance if there's those who are struggling with it who are true believers

Lord I pray that you would give them the blessing of assurance help them Lord to stop their self -centeredness but rather to turn and look to you to remember that just as they looked to you for salvation they can look to you for assurance they can look to you for security

Lord may you be a great comfort to them encourage them embrace them

Lord and therefore there are any who are falsely assured who've been here for some short time or a long time they think that by being here and hearing the gospel by being a part of this fellowship that that makes them saved

Lord I pray that you would break them of that false hope that they would come to a true and saving knowledge of your son