Synoptic Gospels

Alright, we are in John chapter 14. If you haven't been with us, we are sort of in a multi-generational gospel study. And we've come to the point where we have stepped out and gone into John to bring John along, cover John's stuff, so that we're not just skipping out on that.

So I guess when we get done with this, we'll be able to say we just did an entire gospel study and then go do something else. I've had a lot of people that have been whispering a certain topic in my ear from many, many moons ago that they would like to possibly revisit church history at some point in the future.

But we will see about that. That's really, given the speed at which we're going, not something that needs to be decided on any time over the next couple of years. Yeah, right, yeah, it'll take about as long.

Anyway, it'll be a part of church history by the time we get around to church history. So we're in John chapter 14, part of the reason being that I take so much time with those little asides. And we were supposed to, actually last week Mr. Callahan was supposed to speak.

I'm awful glad that he was planning on speaking last week. That was only a week ago, that's amazing. It's funny how you forget things that are really unpleasant as quickly as you possibly can. But we started looking at John chapter 14.

And we had seen Jesus' promise in light of his warning, in essence, his prophetic word that he was going away. And obviously the disciples are troubled by this. And that begins chapter 14. Do not let your heart be troubled.

Believe in God, believe also in me. We had seen that this is a section that I think needs to be put in your list of texts that simply don't fit into an interpretation of the Gospel of John that does not teach the deity of Christ.

The Deity of Christ in John 14

There are so many these days. Speaking of church history, one of the concerns when the printing press was invented was that this was going to be a great boondoggle because it will allow heretics to spread their ideas.

Well, it did. It also allowed godly men to spread their ideas. And, of course, one man Pharisee might be another person's orthodoxy. Obviously, it was the Roman church that primarily was concerned about it and pointed to the Reformation, pointed to the printing of books by Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin as primary evidence of this.

Well, at least when you had books, they sort of developed somewhat of a control mechanism in the sense that, yeah, anybody can publish a book, but it took a lot of work. It took a lot of effort. And if you wanted to distribute it far and wide, it would require you to get a publisher to actually think that what you're saying is worthwhile, so on and so forth.

That is certainly no longer the case. Have any of you seen the State Farm or Farmers? It's one of the big insurance companies. This guy is sitting there, and he's using an app to map out an accident or something.

And this lady walks up and says, I didn't think they had apps. Where did you hear that? On the Internet. Do you believe everything you hear on the Internet? And she says, well, you're not allowed to put anything that's not true on the Internet.

And then this goofy-looking doofus comes walking up. Oh, here's a guy I met online. He's a French model. And he walks up and goes, bonjour. And the guy's just like, okay. And it's a wonderful example of how really, really, really, really naive people can be as to what appears on the Internet as if there is somehow a rule someplace that says you can only put true statements on the Internet.

That is certainly one of the most humorous statements. Unfortunately, there are people who live their lives by it. And certainly when it comes to the issue of theology, yes, the Internet has been a tremendous blessing along those lines.

I mean, I've been able to communicate with people literally around the world. I remember we started doing videos on the subject of Islam and putting them on our website. All of a sudden, you can track where you're getting hits from.

And the nation of Indonesia began to light up with people hitting our website and stuff. And it's like, I wouldn't have ever had that opportunity. So, obviously, there's positive stuff. But, oh, my, is there a huge amount of negative stuff out there and a tremendous amount of falsehood.

And many believers will contact us. They'll call the dividing line and stuff like that. Well, I heard someone say such and so. And in many instances, sometimes the assertions are so absurd, it would have been difficult to ever see them in print, at least in mainstream materials.

But now, thanks to the Internet, there just aren't any filters. There are no theological filters. And it has allowed, and there's also a certain level of anonymity that comes with the net. There are some people who will say things and do things behind a keyboard that they would never do in the presence of another human being and never say in the presence of another human being.

I have certainly found that to be the case. I've said many times, if I believed one-tenth of what I could find out about myself via Google, I would hate myself. And there are people who just will say and do amazing things.

And my experience is, if I face them, either in person, which is rare enough, but even just responding on the net, my, the number of cowards that live in the Internet. It is truly an amazing thing. So, there are many people out there.

I was thinking of one particularly aggressive anti-Trinitarian. That's, you know, I just think about this particular man's amazing distortions of the Gospel of John. And what they normally do is they'll focus on key texts.

You know, he has this, you just would not believe what he does with John 20 -28. I mean, you have to read page after page and just concentrate to try to figure out how in the world you're getting around what Thomas says to the Lord in John 20 -28.

My Lord and my God. I mean, you know, hello? It's just so straightforward. But they will focus upon those key texts, but you almost never hear them doing what we're doing. You almost never hear them doing what we're doing, going verse by verse.

And I think it's important to note that I told this, I must have told this story at some point in time over the past two decades. But I had started corresponding with one of Jehovah's Witnesses, a fellow that was really known for being able to attack the deity of Christ.

I mean, he started calling me. This was years ago. I mean, this was 80s somewhere. And he started calling me. And one day, just out of the blue, I said to him, Are you in Christ? And this is a guy who prided himself on the speed with which he could respond to this, respond to that.

And he just got quiet on the phone. I said, What do you mean? He said, Are you in Christ? I mean, the phrase occurs 10 times in the first 13 verses of Ephesians chapter 1. It's vitally, Are you in Christ?

And you can just tell how flustered he was. And finally, he just simply said, That's not important. Let's get back to something that's important. See, that was outside the realm. When you find someone who has real claims to have real expertise, seems to have real expertise in just a narrow range of things, find out if they actually know the whole counsel of God.

If they know, you know, I encounter folks all the time that are real, they're just Greek experts, man. They just, they know the Greek up one side and down the other. When you're talking about certain passages on the Trinity.

But get them into just someplace else, and they're lost. Because they don't ever deal with those texts. They don't actually translate Greek regularly or read the text or something like that. They know those particular ones.

They've done a bunch of research on those things. But if you aren't reading elsewhere in the New Testament, how can you know that what they're talking about in this area, as far as the Greek language, is true?

Because you actually can't read the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense. So, be aware of the fact that there are many out there. They'll go after the Gospel of John especially, because obviously the Gospel of John contains some of the key texts on the deity of Christ, who Jesus Christ is.

And of course, our world today does not want a divine Jesus. They want a Jesus who is ignorant. They want a Jesus who is dead and gone. They don't want a returning Jesus. And they certainly don't want a Jesus who actually is our creator.

Because if he's our creator, well, then all that stuff that they ignore in what Jesus said now becomes really important. You know, bring my enemies before me and slay them and so on and so forth. We don't really want to deal with that kind of stuff.

They want a much lesser Jesus than the Jesus of Orthodox Christianity. And of course, what they've done is they've dug a trench between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. Who was this guy? I've forgotten the name.

Mike Wicona debated a guy recently who calls himself a Christian and says he believes in the Trinity, the deity of Christ. The sad thing is he probably knows the language of the doctrine of the Trinity better than most evangelical Christians do.

But he does not believe for a second that the historical Jesus believed himself to be divine or was divine or anything like that. There is a wall between what happened in history and this guy's faith.

Now, you and I sit there and go, but that doesn't make a lick of sense. Yeah, but there are people who live their lives that way. He specifically, openly says, I am a postmodernist. I have different realms of thought.

And I am comfortable with the contradictions that exist. And that's fine. And all is wonderful. And it's just, if I had a chalkboard, I would, you know, remember that? It used to be for older folks, we all go like this.

And younger folks going, what? You know, what? It doesn't communicate. But the older folks, nails on a chalkboard. Why does it make all of us do that? Isn't that weird? And the young people are going, what are these people talking about?

I have no earthly idea. Forks on a plate? No, there is nothing like nails on a chalkboard. Yes, I have. I go to restaurants. I hear forks on plates. It doesn't bother me. Nails on chalkboard, yes, that's horrible.

Anyways, how did we get on to that? Anyways, it's just bad stuff. That completely threw me right off my track. Yeah, the gap. Yeah, it does just drive me insane to listen to people like that speaking.

But they're out there, and unfortunately they have websites too. So let's get back to this. This is a text that these folks could never fit into a harmonious view of Jesus. And the reason I'm emphasizing this is this.

I have to deal with so many false teachings. I mean, it's like people sit around all day long, stressing their brains to come up with some new way of twisting the truth. It's amazing the amount of energy that is invested.

And the more of these things I see, the more I am brought back to the simple truth that the mechanism by which God has communicated his truth to us in Scripture demands that we allow all of Scripture to speak to us.

That doesn't mean that we just turn all of Scripture into a theological textbook and we ignore the fact that there are sections of poetry and there are sections of history and there's didactic and there's apocalyptic.

I'm not talking about that. God has used all sorts of different kinds of literature in the Bible, that's true. There's no question about that. But what I don't see false teachers doing is seeking to bring together the entirety of the testimony of the Scriptures.

They will pick and choose. They will ignore, diminish, set aside. But the reality is that they will not look at the entirety of what the text of Scripture has to say. In fact, in much of modern theology, that is considered a fool's errand.

In much of modern theology, trying to harmonize, bring together, listen to as a whole is a fool's errand. It has, I think, been rightly described. I think that this helps me and it will help you. If the illustration doesn't help you, then ignore it.

But have you ever listened to... Well, I love Beethoven, for example. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, they're all different and in beautiful ways. So I have playlists in my iTunes of the various symphonies and so on and so forth.

But if you were just to listen to one instrument in a Beethoven symphony, it wouldn't make a lick of sense. It wouldn't even be pretty. Certain instruments, it would just start, stop, start, stop, little thing here, little thing there.

You'd have no earthly idea what in the world is going on. But it is a vitally important part of the whole symphony. The amazing thing about these men's minds, you think of Beethoven and Bach and people like that, is that they could hear those sub-themes in the grand theme.

They could weave them together in such amazing ways. And what I've seen in studying Scripture is those themes that are woven throughout Scripture, it's beautiful to see them as they appear. A single thread, it's found in the Torah.

It's found in the Pentateuch, in the writings of Moses. And then it has a different hue in the historical books. And then it's found with another hue in poetry and another hue in prophecy. And then it comes in the New Testament, the Gospels, and it has another shine to it.

It goes all the way through the Scriptures. And people who don't hear the Scriptures as a symphony, as a whole, aren't going to see those things. I mean, modern theology, modern seminary education, first comes the Bible.

Not with an ear to hear the symphony, but with a chainsaw to cut it into pieces because they've been convinced that the only way to really know what it means is to hack it into pieces, then examine just each little part by itself.

Now, I'm not saying that it's not important. I mean, I've spent many, many, many hours in my life looking very closely at Romans 4 -8. Romans 4 -7, it says, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will impute sin.

There's a syntactical category there with the subjunctive that comes out of the Greek septuagint. There's questions as to how it relates to time and all the rest of the stuff. Okay, that's looking under the microscope at something.

And it seems like there's such an emphasis on that, and I'm not saying that's wrong. I think it's proper to do. But there's such an emphasis on that, that the idea of the symphony, the overarching, harmonious, beautiful revelation, you're not even allowed to bring that in, in the large portion of theological education today, because what does that require you to believe?

That all of it is theanousos, that all of it is God breathed, that all of it comes under God's divine guidance and direction. And you're just not allowed to believe that as a starting point anymore. And so, all of this, I wasn't planning on doing this, but it just reminded me, just in the reviewing of that first verse, believe in God, believe also in me, I just sort of go by that and say, just remember, this is not the type of thing that a mere prophet would say, this is not the type of thing that a mere man would say.

When you see it in the context of the book of John, it makes perfect sense. But if you were to encounter that without that context, how could you even begin to understand what he was saying? And would it not strike you as rather blasphemous that a person would make a statement like this?

But once you have it in its context, then that note on the violin, because of what the woodwinds are doing, and because of what the percussion is doing at the same time, and because of what the cello is doing at the same time, it all fits.

If you take it out, it doesn't seem to make much sense. I guess the practical application for us is what that should call us to do is, first of all, it tells us the wisdom of how we do things around here.

We teach and preach through entire books. We don't just hop, skip, and jump and get to choose what we want. We have to go through the tough stuff as well as the easy stuff. And believe me, going through Romans, there's some tough stuff, and I'm sure that there are times a pastor probably wished he could have just moved on to greener pastors, but you've got to deal with them.

And certainly going through Jeremiah, that's the case, and so on and so forth. So that's important. But for us as individuals, if we want to hear the symphony, we've got to know the whole score. And that once again emphasizes the need for regular personal exposure to the entirety of the Word of God.

And yes, that means regular reading and study, but it also means, of course, going deeper than that, the memorization of Scripture, whatever you can do to become more and more familiar with the entirety of the divine revelation, the more fully you're going to be able to hear the beauty of that piece of music.

You know, there's one piece of music that I literally have memorized, and I think I could recognize any of the subparts, and it's Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Anybody know Scheherazade? Okay. Incredible piece of music.

And why do I know it so well? Because when I was a kid, for some reason my parents had an LP of it and let us kids play it, and we would just play it over and over and over again. It was exposure, exposure, exposure.

When it comes on, even now, I'll find myself anticipating the next portion fully, not just the melody, but everything, because it is just so much a part of my memory. I've just heard it so many times.

Were that the whole of the Word of God were that familiar to all of us? You know, we really, you know, think about how long you've known the Lord, and yet how many portions, for all of us, myself included, how many portions of the Word of God are only familiar to us?

I mean, is it really that big of a thing for us to at least be familiar with the major topics of each of the prophets? You know, I mean, when you think of how some people treat secular stuff that will have no eternal value to them whatsoever, no one inside and out, backwards and forwards, people who know certain movies, they know every line in those movies, and so on and so forth, and yet we believe what we have has been God-breathed, and it's so easy to be torn away from its study and to have it set aside.

Just a word of exhortation for all of us there. So, we started chapter 14, and as I said, verse 1, important. Then we talked about my Father's house, many dwelling places. We talked about the fact that it's rooms, and that individualistic concept of, I get my own mansion, and that way everybody's going to get to leave me alone.

No, it doesn't work that way. And Jesus' promise is that he goes to prepare a place for us. And then we have the promise of verse 3. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself where I am, that you may be also.

And there have been many times that I have spoken with Jehovah's Witnesses. I think I mentioned to you two weeks ago that some Witnesses were out and about on Christmas Day, and so I stopped and talked with them.

We didn't have some big, long, deep theological conversation, but we did talk, and if you're familiar with them, you know that they believe that there is a special group of 144 ,000 individuals who are what's called the anointed class.

Or, what is anointed in Greek? You all know. I wouldn't ask you if you didn't know. What's anointed in Hebrew? Come on, you all are being chickens. Messiah. So, anointed in Greek is Christos. So, the anointed class is literally the Messiah or the Christ class, and Jesus is one of the 144 ,000 in their perspective.

And these people, when they die, they are resurrected as spirit creatures, and they rule and reign with Jesus under Jehovah up in heaven. They're the only ones who go to heaven. Heaven does not need to be a big place when you only have 144 ,000 that are going to be there.

I mean, Glendale is bigger than that. But then the rest of Jehovah's Witnesses, all the rest of those folks, they are what's called the great crowd. And they surround the throne, but they don't go to heaven.

They live in paradise on earth. And so, the 99 .99 chance the Jehovah's Witness staying at your door, especially if they're under about 70, does not claim to be the anointed class. They believe they're going to live forever in paradise on earth, and they do not believe that verses like this have anything to do with them.

They don't believe that, in fact, a large portion of the New Testament has nothing, is not for them. The only benefit they get is by reading those texts, and then as they have fellowship with the anointed class, they get some of the benefits of that.

But those words aren't for them. It's a sad thing. The Watchtower of Society is a, the only way to describe it is a sad religion. It really is. When you think about these folks, the effort they put in, they put a lot of us to shame.

They're out there in this cold right now, going door to door, probably knocking on our door, too. Well, not my house. I've got a big X on there. My maps do not go here. But every few years, they check on that.

I forget how many years it is. It may change from congregation to congregation. But every few years, they check to see if you're still there, and then run away, run away. And so, I have to go find them.

They're not going to come visit me anymore. But anyways, they're out there, and all they're given is they might get partial justification. Literally, some people in the great crowd are partially justified, partially pregnant.

That does not make a lick of sense. It's just you are or you're not. It doesn't, you know, there's no middle ground there. And, you know, live forever in a paradise on Earth. That sounds great, except that they leave open the possibility that if evil is ever found in any of them, they'll immediately be wiped out.

So, I mean, talk about the doctrine of eternal insecurity. It is work's salvation for eternity. It's horrific. It really is. And I've been in congregations and posed witnesses. I've attended their studies and stuff.

We don't sing it either, but for different reasons. But you just never expect them to break out into a chorus of, there's joy, joy, joy. You know, I mean, it's just, there's joy, joy, joy. You know, it's just, they're just not happy people.

It's a shame. But anyway, you feel sorry for them, and you think about how much of the New Testament, everything that we've been going through in Romans, not for them. Not for them. It's somebody else.

Imagine if you like looking at what's been written to somebody else, but it's not for you. That's ugly. So, in those conversations with them, they sometimes like to argue about heaven and hell, and they really like to get into hell and Hades and the grave, because they believe in soul sleep in the sense that, well, they don't even believe in soul sleep.

They don't believe that there is a spiritual nature to man. So, the spirit is just the breath of life. When you die, you cease to exist. It's not that you have a soul that sleeps or is unconscious. You don't have a soul in the first place.

And the really scary thing is, if I was Jehovah's Witness, this would bug me more than almost anything else, is when you die, you cease to exist, and then resurrection is God recreating you based upon his perfect memory of who you were.

Now, think about that for just a moment. Some of you are looking at me like, really? Yeah. It's God recreating you based upon his perfect memory of who you are. But that means there is no line. I mean, if this is me, okay?

I'm born, and I live, and I die, and then there's who knows how long here, and then I'm recreated here, and who knows how long I exist, because if evil is found in me, I'll get wiped out, blah, blah, blah.

Is that really me? It seems like science fiction, you know? It's just sort of a copy. It's a reproduction. It's not really me. I mean, I guess my memories or something are put in there, but that's not really me there.

And that would just really bug me a lot, that that's what I would be taught, that I was supposed to believe, but that's where I come from. So it's just, I don't know if that helps you to maybe be a little more encouraged to take some time to try to talk to those folks.

I mean, if you're not prepared to, you don't do it. But, man, they need to know that there are Christians who know their Bibles and can defend their faith. Every person I've ever met who left the Watchtower Society and became a Christian.

I know, unfortunately, a lot of people who leave the Watchtower Society because they get burned out, but they don't become anything else because they're convinced everybody else is wrong too. But the ones I know who have left and become Christians, at some point in time, somebody rocked their world.

Somebody stood up. Somebody knew their Bible and showed them things that they had never seen before. And that's really, really important. So when we get into these arguments, one of the ways I've short-circuited, because they like to argue about heaven and hell and where you're going and intermediate states and all the rest of that stuff.

Here's how I've short-circuited that, having given you a ten-minute summary of Jehovah's Witness beliefs all of a sudden. I go, remember what Jesus said in John 14? If I go to a prayer place for you, I'll come again and receive you to myself.

But where I am there, you may be also. I said, you can argue all you want about the GPS location of heaven, if there is such a thing as a GPS location of heaven. But one thing is very clear that for a Christian, to be in heaven is to be with Jesus.

And you can argue about location, time, leading captivity, captive. You can go into all that stuff if you want. But for a Christian, heaven is being with Jesus. And my question for you is, why have you settled for something less than that?

Well, what's worse is, I guess I should have mentioned, I know we've covered these things decades ago, and a couple of you weren't here decades ago. Actually, only a couple of you were here decades ago.

There's Brick, and then there's Mr. Callahan, and a few others. But we've got Codex Ricotonia, so it probably still has the notes from the last time I spoke on Jehovah's Witnesses in it somewhere. But I think one of the reasons maybe that Jehovah's Witnesses don't necessarily find that to be as strong an argument as you and I do, is because they believe that Jesus is Michael the Archangel.

So, Michael the Archangel, I don't know, I'm sure he's a good guy, but I've never had any really super strong, passionate feelings about Michael the Archangel. And given that they don't believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and his resurrection was actually not a resurrection, he was recreated as a spirit being.

Same thing, Michael's created, Michael ceases to exist, Jesus comes into existence, Jesus ceases to exist, Michael's recreated in heaven, and that's who's in heaven now is Michael, as a spirit creature.

So again, there's no connection in the line there at all. Yes, sir? Yes? About Jesus? Prophecy? The term fundamentalist would actually apply to most of us, in the sense that... Okay, I understand, I understand.

But not so much the fact that they believe in future prophecy, but their teaching on these particular issues is very, very different than what you'd find in any quote-unquote fundamentalist church. And of course there's all sorts of different kinds of folks who call themselves fundamentalists.

I would be a fundamentalist historically. But I'm saying, historically, the term fundamentalism came from a series of books that were put out defending such things as the inerrancy of Scripture, the miraculous nature of the life of Christ, so on and so forth.

So there are certainly some interesting folks out there as far as their views of prophecy is concerned. But be that as it may, I think it's important to realize that, you know, given what Jehovah's Witnesses believe about that, that may be one of the reasons why where I am, there you may be also, is not quite as strong an attraction for them.

What is, you know, Michael the Archangel, really, literally? Yeah, that's where they're coming from. But for us, obviously, that's extremely important. I think that the fundamental bedrock assertion that we need to make is that, no matter where else you come down in regards to the exact location of the intermediate state and so on and so forth, Paul, when he said, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain, or I'm torn between these two things, to continue on with you, which is more needful, or to depart and be with Christ, it seems very clear to me that he is reflecting the same teaching that you find here in Jesus' own words.

That the disciple who experiences, by the Spirit, union and fellowship with Christ now, that disciple would find it to be an abhorrent idea that at death, that relationship is going to be shattered for some period of time, even if I don't experience what that period of time is, only to be re-established at some point in the future.

I just have a really hard time thinking that that's what Paul was communicating, or that's what Jesus meant us to understand, especially in this context, because in this context, what is it that Jesus is correcting?

Let not your hearts be troubled. Why? I'm going away. Where I'm going, you cannot now come, but you will. Jesus is saying this relationship, as he's going to promise, is going to continue on by the presence of the Spirit in their lives, and that then they are themselves going to be restored into the very presence of Christ.

It seems very clear to me that that is a great promise that one holds on to as one exits this world. Not an idea of, okay, I'm now going into nothingness for a period of time, it may be a very lengthy period of time, before I'm then going to be in the presence of my Lord.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So, having not even gotten back to where we were last time, we just go back over all these things. At that point, we have, and you know the way where I am going, and Thomas' response is, Lord, we do not know where you're going.

How do we know the way? And finally, it gets us back in the last three minutes to where we were before, which is how you go backwards in your study of the Gospels, is to spend so much time in preliminaries that you never get back to where you were.

I don't think I've ever done that before. Because we were supposed to be in John 14. Oh, you think I have? You have to check? Okay. Yes. We're going backwards anyway, it doesn't matter. The picture that you will see in their study books, because remember, when you study with witnesses, you don't really study the Bible, you study their books.

The picture that you will see with the witnesses is of a scale, you know, the scales of justice type thing. And on the one hand, you have Adam. And on the other hand, you have Jesus. They actually translate the Greek term antelutron as corresponding ransom.

So, what Jesus does is he undoes what Adam did, so that we're back in even point. So, he takes care of Adam's transgression. It's very similar to a phrase from the Mormons, from one of the apostles by the name of LeGrand Richards.

He said, Jesus deals with Adam's transgression, leaving us responsible for our own. So, it gets you back to the moral neutral point. And now, go, go, go. To which we all go, yeah, right, okay. But that's, yeah, that's how it works.

And it wasn't a cross, make sure. He was crucified, but he was nailed to a torture stake. And a Jehovah's Witness will stand on your doorstep in the cold forever to argue that Jesus was nailed to a torture stake with his hands above his head, not with a cross being.

I mean, they will just stand there forever to argue with you on that. Well, that comes from Latin anyhow. It's stauro in Greek. So, they'd have you at that point. But for me, the issue is I wonder why John said the prince of the nails, plural, in his hands, plural.

That's the problem. If it was one nail through both hands, you wouldn't have the word nails. So, that's sort of the issue there. Anyhow, I apologize for not having done anything today. But I didn't. And we'll pick up with John 14, 6, which we actually started before.

And we'll actually try to progress past it next time around. But hopefully there was something there of usefulness to you anyways. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this day. And we do thank you for your word and the promise that heaven is where Jesus is, and that is where we desire to be.

He is our life and our all. And we are so thankful that you have opened our hearts and our minds to see him and to desire to be with him. You've changed our very being. You have released us from the slavery to sin and caused us to desire to be servants of Christ.

May he be glorified in the hour that follows. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.