Take your New Testament now and turn, if you would, to Romans chapter 5, Romans 5, starting at verse 1. Romans 5, chapter 1. I’ll be reading the first 11 verses. Once more, please give your full attention. This is God’s Word.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that sufferings produce endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love to us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
The word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated.
Opening Prayer for Understanding
Let’s go to the Lord once more in prayer and ask his blessing upon the preaching and reception of his word. Let’s pray. Our heavenly father, we come once again to you this morning to hear from you. We praise you that you’ve given us such a rich treasure to know what to think and how to think and that you’ve given us a sure word regarding basic truths and regarding profound truths. And we thank you and confess this is your word breathed out by you and given to us as your covenant people. And yet, Lord God, we are often so hard of hearing. And so we ask that your gracious spirit would grant us grace this day and that you would give us ears to hear and hearts that are ready and willing to believe. We pray, Lord God, that you would magnify your son in our midst and that the good news of the gospel as it is presented in him would come to us. And Lord, that we would find hope in life in believing. So we ask, Lord, grace for your people and grace for the one who speaks on your behalf, in order that your name might be magnified in all the earth. All this we pray in Christ’s name, and God’s people together said, amen. Amen.
Historical Context: The Doctrines of Grace
Well, as Ross said, this is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. A number of years ago, the 400th anniversary of the Synod of Dort meeting, and I’ll describe what that was in a minute, but it’s good to revisit basic foundational things at times like we’re going to do now. And so we’re taking a break, as you heard from Mark, for the summer series on the so-called doctrines of grace. These are truths from God’s word which speak of God’s love, his sovereignty, his power, and his grace, as well as man’s problem and the solution to that problem.
The Synod of Dort and TULIP
Our usual practice is, as most of you know, is to expound books of the Bible verse by verse, section by section. But like I said, it’s good at times to draw from God’s word in a systematic or a thematic way as well, as long as those things are grounded in God’s word. So after the recovery of the gospel in the great Protestant Reformation, there was a group that came from the church challenging the teachings of the church on some key foundational issues. And so the church, following the model of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, right, that was the first General Assembly, right, Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council. And again, this is one of the places that we derive our pattern of government from. But attempting to be faithful and consistent with and modeled after scripture, the Presbyterian Reformed churches sought to do this, sought to meet and discuss and deal with these challenges, these issues that came up. And so in 1619, the church came together, like in Acts 15, to deal with these teachings. And the result of that meeting, or synod, right, just means a meeting, was to condemn those teachings as contrary to God’s word. And that response, specifically to five challenges that were brought, was what has came to be known down in our day as the Doctrines of Grace. Technically, the answer, the response, is referred to as the Canons of Dort. Canons, just declarations or writings, and Dort is where the meeting was held. So the Synod of Dort produced the Canons of Dort, which was the response to these specific five teachings. That document, the Canons of Dort, can be found in our hymnals in the back with our confessions. But most people know this response to these challenges as the five points of Calvinism, right? Or the acronym that’s attached itself historically is TULIP, right? The acronym TULIP, right? And so that’s why I refer to the flower of grace and the petals of this flower being each one of those points.
Overview of the Five Points
Because history is important and mostly because we want to be faithful to the teaching of what God’s word says, we’re gonna look at these foundational truths again from the scriptures, what they teach regarding them. And so we want to magnify God’s mercy and his sovereignty and his love and his grace. Because these truths are born out of his word for his glory, we’ll take each one in turn in this Lord’s day and the next four, we’ll be looking at these teachings. Now as we look at these five teachings, it’s helpful for us to see that they progress logically, right? They’re connected and they stand together as a whole, but they progress logically. So let’s look briefly in summary fashion at these doctrines before we get into the first of these, the T of the tulip. We’ll summarize all of them so we kind of get a framework of what we’re talking about.
Total Depravity
Because of the sin of the first man, Adam, we are all born totally depraved sinners and under God’s wrath. We are born unable to do anything to save ourselves.
Unconditional Election
But God the Father, before the creation of the world, had already chosen to save a great multitude of sinners on the basis of his electing love. That’s the second petal of the flower, the U, unconditional election.
Limited Atonement
God the Father sent his son to redeem those he had chosen by making for them an atonement limited to them. And that’s the third pedal, limited atonement. He made atonement for those he chosen for their sins, thereby paying their debt and their place and destroying the power of sin in them.
Irresistible Grace
And then the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel, applies that work of Christ to the sinner’s heart in time, making them spiritually alive by the power of the fourth petal, the I, irresistible grace, causing them to be born again and consequently to repent and to believe in Christ, to believe on Jesus.
Perseverance of the Saints
And so that covers the first four of the five points of the tulip. It is a total depraved sinner who is helpless under the power of sin, guilty before the bar of God’s judgment. But then the great mercy of the triumphant God is set in motion wherein each of the persons of the Godhead has a part to play in a plan of redeeming sinners. God, the Father determines those who will be redeemed by unconditional election. God, the Son accomplishes redemption for whom the Father chose. And God, the Holy Spirit applies that redemption to the hearts of those that is the elect. We start out as totally depraved sinners. And through the work of our mighty, sovereign, and triune God, we become persevering saints, right? That’s the fifth petal, the P, perseverance of the saints.
The Glory of God’s Sovereign Grace
And it’s near impossible not to recognize the glory of all of this, what God’s doing in His work amongst man and accomplishing redemption for them in the complex of what that is. From to the T to the P, from sinners to saints, preserved unto glory. It’s not a sterile, clinical, academic thing. This is our lives, right? And God’s power and mercy in our lives. Of course, if salvation is indeed all of God, and in its construct and execution, it cannot be thwarted. God cannot be overcome. God is all-powerful. So those who are truly saved will remain saved, right? That’s what the key says. The true saints will persevere in faith, in love and in holiness and praise God even unto glory. Yes, the believer may fall into temptation because of the remaining sin within them because of the neglect of the means of grace that God has given. They may even fall into grievous sin, even incurring God’s displeasure. But in the end, God wins the victory in delivering and sustaining them unto the end.
Another glorious thought this Lord’s Day to reflect upon. No man stumbles and stammers. The Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit will not let his people fall away to damnation. He has paid for them. He chose them. They are his, right? They’ve been permanently changed. And so these great doctrines of grace highlight for us that the gospel is a message that is God-centered and dependent for its success on the sovereign grace of God alone. In this gospel of grace, God alone gets the credit, God alone gets the praise, for God alone has effectually acted and spoken unto salvation of sinners in Jesus Christ.
Exploring Total Depravity
So with that kind of background and summary, this morning we’ll look at that first petal in more detail of the flower of grace, the doctrines of grace, the T, total depravity. And we’ll do so through three questions that we’ll bring before the scriptures on this teaching. What is total depravity, right? First, let us define our terms, right? What is total depravity? Second, what is the will of the totally depraved man? Is that will free or is it bound? And then third, what about salvation for this totally depraved sinner?
What is Total Depravity?
Let’s start with the definition to begin. What do we mean by depravity? By depravity, we mean that human will is fundamentally sinful and evil, morally corrupt, perverted, and wicked, right? And, of course, this rubs wrong everything that we’re told for all of our lives. In all media, in all TV shows, in all songs, follow your heart, right? Even objections and challenges that are raised towards the Christian faith are based on this inaccurate anthropology, right? It’s not that I am good and I deserve anything. According to Scripture, after Adam, after the fall, all men are sinful. They have a depraved nature. They are fallen. Some have used the term, instead of total depravity, radically corrupt, right? And that’s a pretty good synonym for the term, totally depraved, radically corrupt.
Humanity’s Fallen Nature
The human nature is in the image of God and was without sin as created by God in the garden. Adam and Eve, through their sin of eating the forbidden fruit, rebelled against God, causing their human natures to be plunged into sinful depravity and all of their offspring sins. As we heard earlier, Paul in Romans says, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. And he goes on, for as by one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous. Right, again, so accepting Jesus Christ, every person conceived since Adam and Eve was, the Psalms tell us, conceived as a sinner, born a sinner.
Scriptural Evidence of Depravity
We’re born spiritually dead and we remain spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins apart from redeeming grace, right? Not wounded, not hobbling around, not nearly dead, but dead. That’s the description and testimony of Scripture, right? Not just overboard in the sea, about to go under and gasping for life and soon to perish. The testament of Scripture is not that. It’s that man is lifeless at the bottom of the ocean and they are fish food, right? No life. Jeremiah 17 tells us the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Proverbs 20 says, who can say, I have made my heart pure, I am clean from my sin. And in Mark 7, Jesus bluntly says, For from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All of these evils come from within and they defile a person. Jesus Christ didn’t teach or believe that human nature or people are basically good. Even to his closest disciples, He said in Luke 11, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more so your father. Even you, being evil, he refers to his closest disciples without batting an eye, he calls them evil. And the entire testimony of God’s word is that even though all kinds of people do many civilly righteous things outwardly, yet before a holy God, according to his standard, and under the scrutiny of his eyes, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
The Extent of Total Depravity
Man loves, we love our autonomy. We love to be a law unto ourselves. We violate God’s law and our natures are evil and corrupt and perverted and wicked. But what exactly does the modifier totally mean, right? That sounds rather harsh. That’s the testimony of scripture. What does it mean totally, like totally depraved? Well, we do not mean by that phrase, total, that this person is as bad as he can be. By total depravity, we mean that every part of man’s makeup is infected with sin and under his dominion, right? We do not mean that every man, every part of man’s makeup is as bad as it can get. Even the most wicked of men could be worse than they are. God, through his common grace, restrains and holds back the full expression of sin. There is no part of man that is unaffected by sin. He is totally affected. He is totally depraved.
Praising God for His Grace
And just as we think about the devastating reality of that, we must pause. We must pause, brothers and sisters, to give praise to God, our God of grace who loved us in Christ, to give us new natures and life in Christ and freedom from that bondage, to rescue us from that fire, to pluck us from depravity, to delight in his son. We praise God for this, given our state. And why does he do this? Why? Why did he do so for you and for me? For his own good pleasure, his word tells us, for his glory. And so praise him indeed for that salvation and that love and care.
The Will of the Totally Depraved
So that brings us to the second question. Does this man, this totally depraved man, have free will? What are the will of this man, this condition? The great reformer, Martin Luther, wrote a book called The Bondage of the Will, you may have heard of. It was aimed at a Catholic humanist scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, who had written a book defending the freedom of the will, and so Luther responds with his own book called The Bondage of the Will. Erasmus argued that the human will was free. And what he meant by that was that it was capable of doing good and capable of believing in God. And Luther was rightly horrified by this notion of a free will as laid out because it contradicted scripture’s teaching about man’s sinfulness. And it gave man grounds to credit himself with adding to his own salvation. For Luther, the idea of free will was a denial of the grace of God in the gospel.
The Bondage of the Will
And you see kind of the logical necessity of this. A totally depraved sinner does not have free will. But as Luther has argued, his will, his faculty of choice, is in bondage to his depraved nature. And you’ve heard all the illustrations, and I’ll give you one now. They’re helpful for thinking through this. We operate within our natures freely, but we’re bound by those natures. So a common illustration is if you take two buckets and you fill one with fruits and vegetables and bamboo, and you take another one and you fill it with steak and sausage, and you put them in your backyard, and then you let a lion in your backyard, from which of those buckets is that lion going to eat? It’ll be the meat, he’s a meat eater. But if you do the same thing and let a gorilla in your backyard, which was he gonna eat from? He’ll ignore the meat and go for the fruits and the vegetables. And why is that? It’s because he is bound by his nature to do so. The gorilla is not a carnivore, right? And so both eat freely, but they are bound by their nature.
And so Luther argues, Sinners left to their own sinful nature, apart from the intervention of the grace of God, would reject any offer of reconciliation with God, the God they despise and they have no interest in reconciling with. Like a hungry lion running to the meat, hungry sinners run for indulgence in the pleasures of their own sins. The idea of a sinner who seeks for God In Luther’s mind, it would be like thieves who are looking for a policeman. They’re thieves. The last thing they want to have anything to do with is a policeman.
Rejecting Free Will
And, of course, there are some who say that the bottom line as to whether or not a person comes to Christ as Lord and Savior hangs upon the freedom of their own will. But is that the case? Is that even logically possible? and think about this, brothers and sisters, is free will for you, is free will what caused you as a Christian to differ from the man who’s heard the gospel with complete indifference, right, in the places you work, with your neighbors, in your family? Do you sit here this morning to hear the word of God, to sing his praises, to pray with his saints because of your free will that allowed God to give you a new heart? while another person’s free will held God’s spirit back from working in them. Even the language is kind of cringeworthy, right? A man allowing God or a man holding back the spirit of God.
But what is the reason? What’s the reason you differ from the other person who refuses Christ while you accept him? Is the answer to that found in your own free will? No, it’s not. not according to the testimony of Scripture. For the will of man, fallen man is bound to his fallen nature. And so any decision to come to Christ, if left to him, would be a consistent, an emphatic, and an always no, no thanks, because each of us in our unsaved state are totally depraved. The mind, the motivation, the desires, the affections of all the sons of Adam are ruled by sin. Fallen man hates God. He cannot submit to God, and he cannot understand God’s ways.
Scriptural Support for a Bound Will
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, the mind of man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God. Paul says in Romans 8, the mind is hostile towards God and his law. Ephesians 4 tells us that men are darkened in their understanding. According to Christ, In John 3, men hate God and they love darkness and will not come to the light of God, lest his sinful darkness should be exposed. The fallen nature of man negatively hates God and is repulsed by God. And that same fallen nature positively loves, has a love affair with his own sin and its pleasures. Paul sums this all up in Romans 3. By quoting the Psalm, he says, as it is written, No one is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.
Scripture’s quite clear about the state of fallen man, the nature of man apart from the grace of Christ. And so either scriptures, they are wrong about man’s nature, and he still has some wiggle room, some ability towards God, or the scriptures are correct in what they say, which means that God must intervene if man’s evil nature is to be changed. Sinful, totally depraved man will never left to his own desire, bow down to God’s authority and worship him, because he is stuck in his own autonomy and sin, and he loves it. He cannot change himself, and he has no desire to do so.
That’s what the prophet said, right? Remember Jeremiah? Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to evil. The depraved, spiritually dead rebel will never love God, before whom the seraphim cry, holy, holy, holy. With a hostile and darkened mind, sinful man cannot understand, he cannot agree with, he cannot see the value in personally surrendering up the throne of his own life to God in Christ. Sinful man will not choose the God whose gospel is foolishness to his mind and whom he ruthlessly detests. He will not believe or obey God due to his bondage to sin. And so his will is not free.
In this state of bondage, Luther said, he is unable to bring his own powers to stop or change this willingness to do evil. Rather, he goes on willingly and craves evil. It’s bound to his nature. The snake bites, the lion craves meat, the sinner longs to sin. It is their nature to do so. Romans 6 tells us you are slaves of sin. And again, Jesus and John 8, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
Christ’s Miracles Reflect Spiritual Truth
We could spend a long time unpacking all that God tells us regarding these things, but we won’t do that. But think for a moment about the images we see in Scripture that graphically display man’s depravity, his total depravity, regarding his inability to respond to God because of the bondage of his will to sin. And we see this so powerfully, and we’ve seen it as we’ve been going through Mark, strikingly, We see it in Jesus opening the eyes of the blind and cleansing the leper and raising the dead to respond to his command and healing the lifeless limbs of the lame and in opening deaf ears so that they can hear him speak. And all these physical miracles of Christ inform us of man’s sinful spiritual impotence and bondage to sin. Sinners cannot live or see or hear or move towards Christ apart from his grace delivering them from that bondage of their own inky black hearts and the inky black darkness of this world and their own leprous natures.
Salvation for the Totally Depraved
Now, if you’re visiting with us this morning, you might be thinking, man, this guy’s a downer. What did I step into? And I have indeed painted a bleak picture of mankind’s fallen state into its bondage to sin. And I’ve done so because that’s what God’s word does. The Bible pulls no punches in hammering home this truth that we are helpless and powerless in our condition, this fallen man of totally depraved sinners. And I wanna remind you, when we look at these things, and it’s definitely anemic in the culture and in other groups out there, the degree to which you lessen the condition of man in this state, is the extent to which you will lessen God’s great power in redemption of man, right? If it’s not this dire, if it’s not this severe, the work of Christ and the salvation of man is diminished, you see that. God worked to save man greatly from a great fall. And so God gets all of the glory, right?
God’s Sovereign Intervention
And so that brings us to the third and final question this morning. This totally depraved man, what did it mean? And what about the will? And now what about salvation for the depraved sinner? How can a totally depraved sinner be saved at all? Can he be saved? And the answer to this question is that God himself must act and speak to give them life, to change their nature, right? And as we’ve heard a lot, as I’ve said a lot, when God speaks, things happen, right? Throughout scripture, we see it. God speaks and things happen. God in his grace most powerfully saved the one who neither wants to be saved or can be saved. The sinner is totally depraved and bondage to his sins. He is in shackles, he is dead inside and rotting.
And can man in that state respond to the call of the gospel to repent and believe? To think that a man in this state would respond to the gospel from his own will would be like speaking to a deaf man, explaining with passion the truths of the faith. You cannot hear a single syllable that you’re saying, despite your passion, despite your zeal, despite the volume of words coming from you. Or it’d be like showing the colors of the gospel to a blind man. Would the blind man be able to see the blackness of his own robe of unrighteousness, or the dazzling perfect whiteness of Christ’s robe, or the crimson blood of Jesus poured out on the cross? It would all have no effect because he is blind and he cannot see. or a dead man, right? A dead man cannot be shaken alive so that they will accept Jesus. Any more than a lame person will jump out of the way if someone tells them a car is coming. They don’t have the ability to do so.
And so if God will not violate, yes, conquer, overcome their will, their will is in iron chains, you see. And if God cannot overcome that, then everything is vanity. For no one will heed the message to come to Christ in that state. But we know, thanks be to God, sinners can be saved. Sinners are saved. And this is the glorious, wonderful thing about it all, dear Christian. because God in his grace and eternity passed out of the mere good pleasure of his will, chose a company of people out of the multitudes of the lost to be saved. And he set his love upon them.
The Work of the Triune God
And by the sovereign grace of the Father in unconditional election, a totally depraved sinner can be saved and is saved by Jesus Christ coming to the world to pour out his blood, his own blood of the new covenant on the cross. The many who the Father chose will indeed matter-of-factly be saved. Christ came to die for the host of people whom the Father chose. Before the foundation of the world, we read, Christ paid their debt as a substitute. They will never have to pay it. Christ paid it all. They will go free. They must go free, or God would be unjust.
And think about this. Remember the angel at Christ’s birth, he said, You shall call his name Jesus, meaning Savior, for it is he who will save his people from their sins. Right. I remember the words of Father John the Baptist after he’s made mute. His lips are open. And the first thing he says is praises. He praises God for accomplishing redemption through Christ. He came intentionally to pay the price for his people. His atonement was limited to those the father chose. He actually redeemed those whom the father had given him in eternity.
And think about this, if this is not the case, if this is not the logical outworking and the glorious truth of the Godhead, the persons of the Godhead are in conflict with one another. We cannot have one person of the Godhead, the Son, dying for someone whom the Father hasn’t chosen, or the Father choosing some for whom the Father does not die, or the Holy Spirit not applying all of those redeemed by the blood of Christ in time. It’s contrary to who God is. It’s contrary to the nature of God and contrary to his word. He actually redeemed those whom the Father had given him in eternity. We know this cannot be the case, this conflict. The persons of the Godhead are not at cross purposes with one another, but work in complete and beautiful, glorious harmony with one another.
The Role of the Holy Spirit
And so a totally depraved sinner can be saved. For the Son of God became man and knelt his sins to the cross. And praise God, brothers and sisters, that the Holy Spirit can and does sovereignly give life to these dead sinners in time to you and to me. sinners whom we all once were, is the spirit who can sovereignly take out our heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh that repents and believes and walks in newness of life according to God’s law. Who loves God’s law, hates his sin. It is the spirit who gives, right? Scripture says, the hearing ear to the deaf and the seeing eye to the blind. The Holy Spirit transforms fallen natures by a powerful work of washing and regeneration and renewing. By the Spirit, lame sinners in bondage and darkness find themselves freely running to Christ and basking in his glorious light. They’ve been given new natures. They’ve been changed. They’ve been made new. It’s because this Holy Spirit has done this. And that’s an awesome and wonderful thing.
A Call to the Unsaved
We must understand the magnitude of man’s problem before we understand the exponentially gloriously more heights of God’s salvation and rescue from that problem. And so, do you realize what this means? It’s that if you’re not saved, if you’re still walking in your sins, it means what? It means you too can be saved. You too can be saved. It doesn’t matter, like we often think this, but it doesn’t matter how bad you think you are, how dirty or wicked you think you have been. Why is that? Because God is the one who saves by his grace. Not you, not your own efforts, or your righteousness. It is God. God saves through sovereign grace, and God cannot be stopped. He saves the weak, the broken, those who cry out to him from their bondage, having been given new hearts.
What a wonderful promise that we have in Romans that God gives us. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, shall be saved. If you’re not saved even this morning, I implore you, call upon the name of Christ to save you. He can do so. He is the God of grace. Call upon him today. Salvation is totally of our sovereign triune God. Man is hopeless, helpless, dead, and deserving eternal judgment. God’s just wrath. But praise God, he’s seen fit to save objects of his marvelous mercy according to his own will. He still brings the dead to life. and gives them new natures that flee to Christ like a moth to the flame. Flee to him, even now, flee to him afresh for the first time and again and again and again for life and assurance and the delight that will enable you to rejoice through your own sufferings.
Implications of Sovereign Grace
And then one last thing about the truth of God’s sovereignty and the power, his sovereignty, his power and his grace. a right understanding of this gospel of sovereign grace, humbles man and exalts God in his grace. Humbles man, and that has consequences. Remember, we began by referencing what should be the desire of all of our hearts, and that is to be as consistent and faithful to God’s word as possible. Remember at the end of Job, his friends are getting hammered because they have not spoken of me what is right. We don’t wanna do that. these doctrines of grace, the whole complex, that God is the one who does these things, and therefore he gets all the credit and the glory and all the rest.
And it also means that our attempts to win the lost does not hang on our own intelligence or impressiveness or cleverness. Neither are we obsessed with finding new church fads or fetishes to tantalize or to attract the flesh to get people in and to make a decision for Jesus. You see how wrongheaded that is if we understand how God works? Rather, we trust God to work through His means that He’s given in His Word, to work through His means to open blind eyes and to raise the dead when His Spirit empowers our witness to the gospel of His grace. And this is an exceedingly freeing truth, dear Christian.
So as you go from this place, as we depart from this meeting the Lord on the mountain, the spiritual Zion, go back into the world, may you reflect upon the glorious God of the doctrines of grace, his power and his might and his love and his promise. Let us praise our triune God. who can raise the dead, who can open blind eyes and cleanse the leper and take out the heart of stone to bring a sinner to repentance towards God and a living faith in Jesus Christ. He still raises people from the dead, right? I know this because he raised me from the dead. He opened my blind eyes, just like he did for so many of you. Knowing who we are, As we go, be who you are, right? Your new creation, united to Jesus, living for him in all that you do. To God be the praise of his sovereign grace and deed, amen.
Closing Prayer
Let’s pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do praise you for the way that you work and for your wonder and love and your so great mercy and your work amongst your people. Lord, we long for you and for a closer walk with Christ our Savior. May we find our life there. May we see who we really are and what is really promised to us and not despair, but rejoice, seeing that you’re going to bring honor and glory to your name and that you’re going to fill your kingdom from every tribe under heaven. Lord God, we pray that as your word goes out, that you would feed your people here and around the world. Father, we pray for the various places that we live and the various institutions or the government in place at this time, Lord, we pray that Christian faithfulness and boldness in the face and threats of the truth, Lord, that we would be faithful, right, in all the corruption and the destructing trends that we see. We pray, Lord, for those who suffer in our midst. We ask that you would encourage us. We ask that you would grant the comfort of your spirit and the peace that transcends all understanding through that suffering. Lord, we pray for all of us, married or single, young or old, help us to have fat hearts filled with your love, so caring and loving each other that the outside world would see and wonder and be captivated by your people and their peculiarity. Use us in our lives, our mouths and our living to witness to your glory. Help us to see who we are and help us to be that as we live our lives out and as we sojourn through this land. We thank you that you fed us afresh this day with Christ, the bread of heaven. As we’ve heard your word to us, may we see that it is our life and our sustenance, even in the midst of famine. Lord, we praise you and thank you that we can come before your throne with all these things. We ask them all in the name of Christ, amen.