New Life

Good morning. Again, it's Reformation Sunday. We're going to be considering some things about the Reformation, but we're mainly looking to God's Word because that's what the Reformers, well, that's what they told us to do. More importantly, that's what God has called us to do. As I think about the Protestant Reformation, it does go back to Martin Luther, October 31st, 1517. He enailed 95 theses in protest against the selling of indulgences. But as we think about that bigger movement, that bigger movement that we're part of, I really want us to focus on the five solas. They really summarize what we believe as Protestants. The first is scripture alone. This is God's word. It has a unique authority that stands alone. Yes, we look to those who came before us in traditions, but they're never authoritative in themselves. They're only helpful as they agree with what God has said. Faith alone. This is good news. We don't have to work to be saved. We have to agree with God. We have to trust Him. Grace alone. It is by God's good work and His gift towards us that we're saved. In Christ alone. He is the one mediator. He is the one who's died on the cross for us. He is the one who's risen again. He's the right hand of the Father. He is the one we trust. He is the grace of God towards us. And then finally, for God's glory alone. Not ours, not our favorite team, not our country, not anything else other than God. It is for God's glory alone that we live and that we've been saved. Let me try to summarize really the fruit of the Reformation for us. The fruit of the Reformation is that the church comes back to being the place where sinners boldly come as sinners. Right, everywhere else you go in this world, you're supposed to try to present yourself as better than you are. You're supposed to try to make yourself look good with the different works. Even at the doctor this week, I had a physical. I went in boasting, I lost some weight, doc. Look what I did, and I left with a good report. I presented myself as best I possibly could. But here at the church, it's a place where you get to come and confess sin. We don't come trying to look as good as we possibly can. We come saying, I'm just bad. These are the things I've thought this week. These are the things I've said this week. These are the things I've done this week. And I come before you, Almighty God, not a priest, and I confess them. I confess that in Christ Jesus, I've done these things and I ask you for forgiveness. And Christ says, I forgive you. The beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, is that you can confess your sins, and you can have peace with God, because He forgives you. Because Christ, all the punishment that we deserve because of those sins, He took it upon Himself. And all the righteousness that He had built up with His perfect life, He gives to us. That's what makes us Christians. We, as sinners, proclaim Christ, we get to know Christ, and therefore we are declared His children. This morning we're gonna be thinking about many of those soul laws, but we're walking through the text. Or in Ephesians chapter two, verse one through 10, and there's two main parts to this passage. Verses one to three, well that talks about the power of our sin that condemns us. What we contribute to salvation is verses one to three. We're the people who need saved. Verses four to 10 is all that God does for us. Look at that great transition that separates what we do and what God does. Verse four, but God, he changes where we're headed. He changes who we were becoming by his grace. The thesis this morning is simple. We were dead in our sin, but God made us alive. That's our message from Ephesians this morning. We were dead in our sin, but God made us alive. And as we think about those solas, I want you to look at verse eight. If you're a child and you're looking for that one sentence, that one verse I'm gonna write down this morning and ask my parents about later, it's verse eight. For by grace you have been saved through faith. For by grace you have been saved through faith. If you're taking notes, our sermon's gonna have four points. First, our sin corrupts us. Our sin corrupts us. Secondly, our sin condemns us. Our sin condemns us. Third, our God gives us life. And then God gives us purpose. Let's look at our first point. Our sin corrupts us. Look at what Paul says about who we were in our trespasses and sins. We were dead. So we kind of have to start here. This is a very important starting place. What does it mean to be dead? When you think of someone who's dead, what do you think about? Is it somebody who's on the ocean and they're flailing, crying out, help me, help me, I'm drowning? Or is it somebody who is sunk down to the bottom of the ocean, no more breath, no more blood movement, no more nerve activity, dead? Paul is telling us we are spiritually dead. There's no activity. There's no activity. We're sunk down in the midst of our sin. That is what sin causes. God warned us of this from the very beginning. Sin brings death. We like to pretend that sin isn't as bad as it really is. We like to pretend that we're not as bad as we are. We like to live in the fairy tales that there's maybe a mostly dead. You know, after you've been bitten by a rodent of unusual size, you go to Miracle Max and he gives you a pill and then all of a sudden you're alive again. That's a fairy tale. The truth of what God has said and who we are is we're dead. Really dead. We don't have the power to help ourselves. We need help, in other words. Now let's look at how he describes this death further. And you were dead in the trespasses and your sins. We were dead, this is important to remember, in the very beginning, God created us with his own breath into our lungs. The God of life created us to live, but we brought death in our sin, and we explain further. Verse two, in which you once walked. Walking is a way of living. There's a proactivity to it, right? It's something we actively do. We were walking in our death. How? Following the course of this world, following of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Well, the course of this world, that's a reference oftentimes just for that rebellion of God's created order. And we see the leader of that rebellion, the prince of the power of the air. That's a reference to Satan, I believe. We are active followers of the rebellion that Satan has led. This points us to something we rarely think about, and many of us are probably going to doubt. There is a larger cosmic battle that we are mostly unaware of, and that we are participating in, and that's the scary part. following the pattern of Satan in his rebellion against God. Now, Satan was one of God's most beautiful and powerful creatures. He was a great and powerful angel that decided he did not want to take his status as a creature of God. He wanted to overthrow God. And what he did in his rebellion was he attacked God's most precious beloved creature on earth, and that is us. If you go back to Genesis 3, the way we proactively began participating in His rebellion is by believing His laws. What Satan wants us to do to participate in that rebellion is really just one simple thing. Question if God is good. That's where the rebellion all came from. Really, God told you you can't have that one thing? Is He really good if He's not gonna give you that one thing? And think about it in your own life right now. How easy is it for us who've fallen into that temptation? Well, God would do that. Well, is God good if he would do that? Well, he hasn't given me this. Is God really good? This is how Satan lures us into that participation, even if unknowingly entering into that rebellion. When we start questioning if God is good, we are participating in the rebellion of Satan. Most of us, not most of us, most eventually fall into a denial of God and His truth. Agnostics. If you're an agnostic, you're questioning, well, is God really good? If God is really good, can He exist? And what would these things be? We're questioning God on a moral ground. Or maybe there's an intellectual issue. Can God really make Himself known in the midst of all the false gods out there? How can I really know that one God to exist and to trust? And atheists, they're just more confident agnostics. I used to think agnostics were cowardly atheists. I've changed on that. I think atheists are just more overly confident agnostics. I appreciate someone who really asks the kind of questions an agnostic asks. When I was thinking about atheists, there's a story of an atheist. He's walking in the forest. All of a sudden, he comes across a bear. That bear comes to attack him, and the atheist runs as fast as he can. The bear overcomes him, gets over top of him. The claw is over, he's coming down, and the atheist cries out, oh God! God, in that moment, hears this atheist cry out to him, so he stops time. He opens the clouds. The bear's claw is just over him, but God stopped everything. God says, did you just call on me? Do you believe in me now? The atheist contemplates. No, that would be hypocritical. I'm an atheist. I'm not going to believe in you, God. Okay, so you don't want to become a Christian right now as a bear's about to come down upon you. No, I don't think I'm a Christian. That'd be hypocritical, but God would do me one thing. Would you make this bear a Christian? God says, as you wish. Clouds go back, bear's paws coming down, and at that moment, the bear, time begins, he stops, puts his hand together, Oh God, thank you for this food you've given us today. See, as we think about that atheist, humorously, and we think about that atheist, see, all of life is fun until there's something wrong. And then we want to look up and ask God, where are you? What are you doing? Can you help me? Satan likes to lure us into this comfortable coma of life where we don't think about God. It's like the white witch luring in Edmund, just take this Turkish delight and tell me about your brothers and come to my castle and I'll help you and then give you everything you want. He lures us in all the time, lying, knowing that we're destroyed. So what does it mean for us today? We cannot forget that there's an enemy prowling, seeking to conquer us, seeking to crush us. And that one question that's always gonna be nagging, is God really good? I just got that health diagnosis. Is God really good? I just had this relationship trouble. Is God really good? I just got those grades or I didn't get the promotion. Is God really good? It's from that point you stop. You look to his word where his truth is found and you realize that God has not spared anything good for his people. He did not withhold even his own son so that we can always, absolutely, with great confidence, know God is good. So one way in which we rebel against God, one way in which we're dead in our trespasses, we walk following the pattern of Satan questioning God. But the second, I think, is actually much more real and harder for anyone to deny, verse 3. Again, he's speaking of past tense for Christians, but this is true of all people at all times, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. What Paul is saying here in verse three is that there's something internally wrong with all of us. We all have sinful desires. Now let me be very clear. Not every desire is sinful because God created us with good desires. But even those good desires we've twisted and corrupted. But we do know there are thoughts that we have and desires that we've entertained that we know are sick and sinful and gross because we don't want to tell people about them. We know there's something wrong inside. See, we believe this lie that when there's a sinful desire, there's a passion within, there's that longing. We believe the lie, we're supposed to satisfy it. The way to respond to any desire or passion is to pursue it, as if every itch needs scratching, as if every impulse needs following, as if every thought needs entertained. This is what our heart says. This is what our culture teaches us. Satisfy that desire. Jesus says something very different. What comes from within you, that's what corrupts you. Well, what comes from within us, that's what condemns us. What comes from within us is our sin, our hearts are twisted. Jesus says the way to be satisfied is to be forgiven and healed and free of those things. This is the real sad deception. Sin says that desire, that's just natural. You need to entertain it. You need to pursue it. And when you do that, you'll find more freedom. You'll find your eyes will be opened in ways that you couldn't dream of. But sin, it's always enslaving and it's never satisfying. Think about it for a moment. I would love to know if there's an example that I cannot think of, but has anyone ever had a lust, anger, or envy fully satisfied? Has anyone ever experienced lust, anger, or envy, and just walked away after pursuing it and said, wow, that was great, I'm satisfied? No, every time you pursue a sinful desire, one of those three, I'll just focus there, it always leaves you thirsty. It's like trying to quench your thirst from salt water, from the ocean. It's not satisfying. Let's just focus on anger for a moment. That anger works on our sense of justice. That we have some kind of bar that says, somebody can't do this kind of wrong. It works on our sense of being wronged. Anger finds some satisfaction in saying, whatever I'm upset about, if I can just find somebody else to blame, I'll feel better. If I can just take my animosity, my dissatisfaction, my discontentment on somebody else, then I'll feel better. That festers and it grows and it's never satisfying. Have you ever had that moment where you let your anger out vocally, verbally? And then when the words come off your mouth, you realize, I sound so harsh and petty. I let that fester until I let that out of my mouth. Anger never ceases. It's never satisfied. It grows and grows until it's murder and hatred and bitterness. No, the only way for anger to stop is to look to Christ and say, forgive me for the anger. Forgive me for my contribution. And God, I'm going to trust you as a just God who has all forgiveness and all wrath according to your wisdom that you're going to settle this. I don't have to. That's how you put off anger. Regarding coveting and envy, I love just bold honesty. A former GM executive described advertising as this, the organized creation of dissatisfaction. Advertising is the organized creation of dissatisfaction. Think about that while you're watching commercials. Go watch TV that has commercials still if you don't. And just think about how they're always saying, we've come up with a new product. It'll make you happier than you've ever been before. It'll finally satisfy you. Until they come up with a new product, and then they say, that'll finally satisfy you. The organized creation of dissatisfaction, that's just recognizing we're not satisfied. And they're gonna make money off of that. Really, all I've said, Luther says in one sentence, as Luther's poems say, to do, The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it. The remedy for your sinful desires is not satisfying them. It's extinguishing them. The entirety of Ephesians 4, the second half of chapter 4, is focused on that. Putting off sin, putting on Christ. There is one other response to having a desire and fulfilling it. And some people will say, I need more. And some people will say, what have I done? There's an overwhelming of guilt. And let me tell you that that guilt is good, as long as you don't stay in that guilt. Because when God leads you to guilt for things you have done, that is you having the opportunity to say, Christ, I look to you, I confess my sin, I want forgiveness. That is a good place to be, to be freed from the guilt, free from the enslavement, that is a place to embrace the gospel. Our second point, really focus on the last half of verse three. Our sin corrupts us, we follow in the pattern of Satan, in questioning if God is good, we follow our own sinful desires, and therefore, we are condemned. And we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. It's universal. This applies to everyone at some time. Being a child of wrath is who we are when we are dead in our sins. And it's the natural progression. We enter into rebellion, we follow our desires, God's wrath is upon us. God being a just God must judge us according to our works. We're gonna be held accountable. Well, when we get to see God face to face after death, there's not some magical scale that somehow is going to outweigh what we think are our good deeds over against our bad. It's as if we think we're gonna walk in and say, hey God, you know, All the stuff you gave me, I never thanked you for it, but sometimes I gave some to other people who weren't thankful, so they would thank me. Or God, I never consented in rebellion with another person, I never entered a rebellious act with another person without them consenting first. We think that sin is just this level. I was a good person, I helped people, I never hurt anybody, so we think. You know, our sin, as we read from Psalm 51 and we sang earlier, our sin is first and foremost against God, a rebellion. This past year, we here in Virginia and across the United States, we're kind of taken back with the solar eclipse. And I remember the thing that everyone kept talking about and that I was scared to death of, and thankfully somebody gave me some goggles to look at it, but you can't look at it with your eye, without protection. You'll burn your retinas by looking at the sun directly, even though covered in the eclipse state. It was a big deal and it's pretty amazing. You can't even look at the sun that God created without burning your retinas, but somehow we think we're gonna walk into the presence of a holy and just God and say, hey, I did some random acts of kindness. Surely you're happy with me. He's a holy and just God. He created that Son that we can't even look at, and we think we're going to walk into His presence with all our filth, with all our works, with all our rebellion, and not pay the penalty. We need protection. We need protection when we're going into the presence of God, and that is who Christ is. When we go to the presence of God in our guilt and He is just, Christ says, Father, I died for their sin. I have covered their iniquity with my blood. They're mine. All mankind are sinful. That is universal. We need help. It does not come from the inside. That's where the sinful desires come from. We need help from the outside. So let's look at what that is. Verse 4. Where will our help come from? These are the two best, these are two of the best words in scripture. But God. We were dead, we were following Satan, we were only living according to our desires, we were by nature children of wrath, but God. Now let's just do some fun English grammar stuff like everybody loves to do. Let's pretend we can replace the word but with the word and. Or even better, therefore. Okay, let's take the word but out and let's put the word therefore in as if God is going to continue on with our actions. How should it read? We'd rebelled against him. We've only followed our desires. We're children of wrath. Therefore, God brought his righteous judgment upon us and ended it. That's how it could read. But that's not how it reads. But God shows a change. But God shows that he is interfering. He's intervening. You see, God created man. For life. God did not create us for the kind of life we're living in verses one to three. He created us to live life with Him. He changes the story. Now I want you to think about all the stories that we write as human beings. Typically, if there's a problem, if there's somebody who does a crime, the offender, they go and they have vengeance, and how do they have vengeance? They come and they crush that person. It's a and, therefore kind of story, right? Rarely do we see the kind of story where somebody is wronged and then they go and they die in the place of the person who wronged them. But this is the way God brings victory. He doesn't bring victory through crushing. He brings victory through healing. But God, and I want you to see that Paul gets carried away with some phrases here. But God, drop all the way down to the halfway through verse five, he made us alive. We were dead, but God made us alive. We were dead, but God made us alive. What caused him to make us live again? What caused God to give us life? Look at verse four. Being rich, in mercy because of the great love which he loved us. Why did God make us alive again? Because of the great love with which he loved us. This is love. God, the father, like a parent. So picture a parent, front yard, busy street. The child starts running away from the parent towards ongoing traffic as fast as they can. What does the parent do? You're up and you scoop that child. You stop them in their tracks. That's what but God is. God comes while we're running head fast into hell and into judgment, and he himself comes and he scoops us up because of love. And we need to really think about what love is with the next verse, even when we were dead in our trespasses. Okay, now this is gonna inform what it means that God loves us with great love. It didn't say God loved us because we were so lovely, did it? No, it said God loved us with great love even while we were dead. God loves us even while we are unlovely. If we have to clean ourselves up enough to be loved by God, he's never gonna love us. This is the beauty of the gospel. God loves the unlovely. God loves the sinner, even while they're the sinner. And He gives them life. Love is not dependent upon the loveliness of the object. Anyone who only loves that which they find lovely is mastered by their passions. And that love is just gonna change and flicker and move about. Whatever you find most attractive that particular day, you're just gonna put your love on that. It's a love that's tossed to and fro with the different desires. Now let me make this very clear. Love is a promise. Love is a promise. I am with you, I am towards you, I am for you, I will never leave you or forsake you. That's love. That's how God defines love and we should too. Can you imagine a spouse? I love you but I'm leaving you. You can't say that. You can't say, I love, but I'm breaking the covenant. I love, but I'm no longer gonna keep my promise. I love, but I'm going to be in somebody else's bed tonight. You can't say that. God says, when I love you, I'll never leave you. I love you, and if anybody didn't know how lovely you were, it's good news. God loves us, even when we're unlovely. God loves us especially when we're unlovely, because we are. So how does He give life? The God who gives life, He gives it because He loves us and has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with how powerful His love is. Even when we're dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ. If you've been with us the last two weeks, we keep going back to Ephesians 1. Blessed be our Heavenly Father who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. That in Christ is central to what we're going to be studying for these last three sermons. Our union with Christ gives us all the spiritual blessings, especially being made alive. We are made alive together with Christ. We're given His life. In Christ is really shorthand for covenant. It's a promise that God made. Christ will die for your sin. He will give you his righteousness. He will take your guilt. He will give you life and forgiveness. This is why God is just and justifier. Every sin will be judged and punished. The only way our sins will be not judged and punished on us is if Jesus Christ is judged and punished on our behalf. This is why we, with the Reformers, declare in Christ alone. It is only together with Christ that we can be saved. He is the only mediator. Together with Christ. The only way you can be saved is by calling upon His name, the only name that can bring salvation. As we continue, let's look into verse five. Paul kind of just blurts out all of a sudden. It's there and it even stands out in our text. By grace you've been saved. As he's walking through this very logical declaration of what God has done, why he did it, how he did it. By grace you've been saved. It's not your works. It's not how lovely you are. It's a pure gift. It is God giving to us, not just any gift. It's God giving us himself. The father sending down his son to become like us in every way yet without sin so that he could die for us as sinners. So he could rise again to give us new life. So he could give us the Holy Spirit that would seal us in that great inheritance. By grace, you've been saved. Let's continue verse six. He made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places. This is pretty incredible. We're made alive together in Christ and he is there in that position next to the Father. He has that high position in the heavenly places where the heavenly blessings come from. That's where we now get to enjoy Him. That's very high and exalted language, but that's why He alone is our Savior. We don't need another mediator. It is in Christ alone. Verse seven introduces another line of reasoning. Verse seven, so that, there's purpose. Why did God do this? Well, we know it caused Him to do it, His own love, but what was His purpose? So that. God made us alive so that, and listen to this, folks. Let's just, everybody, draw back in. Why did God make us alive? This is really exciting news. So that in the coming ages, God might show off. God might help us see. God might demonstrate to us the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. God did this for us so that we might see forever who he is and what he's done. Now let's back up a minute and say God didn't have to do this. God did not have to say but God, God could have said therefore God. God, He could have, before the foundation of the world, instead of choosing us, He could have said, you know what? I see how bad it's going to be. I see how wicked these humans are going to be before I create them. Therefore, I'm not going to create them. And God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit would be perfect forever and eternity. And that's it. Or God could have seen how wicked and horrible we were gonna be, that the real problem of evil, and He could have said, you know what, I'm gonna create him, and then I'm gonna smite him. And I'm going to let everyone know forever what a just judge I am. That would have been good and right. He could have just brought judgment, and that would have brought Him glory. But God wanted something different. God wanted us to forever see how rich in grace and kindness He is towards us. He wanted us to forever rejoice in His kindness, in His giving, in His love. That's why he still created. That's why he washed his fault. That's why he made promises. That's why he kept those promises. That's why Christ suffered. So that we could forever see and rejoice in a loving God who's kind. He's kind. That's what we should be practicing right now. How are we going to practice right now how we will be forever rejoicing in the riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus? We see here, Paul gives a summary statement. Again, this is the one sentence, children, ask your parents about it. For by grace you've been saved through faith. Here we declare, it is by grace alone. It is by, through faith alone. Our call is to believe that God has given us all we need. Now, faith isn't this. Faith is not simply saying, all right, I acknowledge Jesus Christ came, he died and rose again. I intellectually assent to those truths. That's not saving faith. That's mere intellectual assent. Saving faith has to go back to chapter two, verse one. I hear and I believe I'm a sinner. I've rebelled against God and I deserve justice. I deserve judgment. Faith, saving faith, it begins by realizing I've got an internal problem that I cannot resolve. No matter how good I try to make myself, I keep messing things up and making them worse. I know I messed up. I know I need help and I can't help myself. I need to look outside. Saving faith looks outside for help and it cries out to God, thank you for sending your son to forgive me. Thank you for sending him to die in my place to heal me. Thank you for rising him again from the dead to give me a new life. Saving faith has to acknowledge we're the problem and God is the solution. And the number one thing that keeps us from acknowledging that is our pride. We still think we can do it on our own. Saving faith says I am hopeless without Christ. But in Christ I'm alive. Apart from Christ, I'm in a curse and I'm guilty. But in Christ, I'm forgiven and I'm free. What we contribute to salvation is the sin that is saved from. What we regain in salvation is to know forever the riches of His grace and kindness. Look at what he says further. We've sung of this already. And this is not your own doing. You didn't do anything. It's a gift of God. It's not a result of work so that no one may boast. There's two things that I'm certain we're not gonna hear in heaven. God's not gonna say I'm sorry. He's never anything wrong. He is perfect. He's righteous. God has not done anything wrong. We may hold things against him, but God is perfect. He does what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is always good. There's something else we're not gonna hear in heaven. No human being is going to tell God, you're welcome. What have we done? We're not gonna say God, you're welcome for believing in him. You're welcome for taking all the good gifts you've given and using some of them for something somewhere. No, the only thing we say to God, thank you. It's not our words. There's nothing we boast of or else we would say you're welcome. We say thank you. We boast of His kindness. We boast of His glory. We boast of His grace. This should be our posture now. Our final and fourth point, God gives us purpose. This is pretty amazing, we think about it. We were called to work in the garden. We messed all that up. God saved us from all the things we messed up, and then He puts us back to work. Verse 10. We are His workmanship. The word for workmanship is actually the word we get poem from. We are the work of God. He has written down who we are now. He's the creator of something new and beautiful in Christ. This is what He has done. It is the work of God who has made us this new living creature. Where is workmanship? Created in Christ, reborn, born again in Christ Jesus. For what? For good works. Notice the good works do not come before the salvation. They come after. It is not of your own doing. It is a gift of God. But once God has given you this new life, He then calls you to good works. We are now to walk in those good works. Let's go back to verse 2 of chapter 2. You were once walking in the dead, trespasses, and sins. Look how it wants to end. We now have good works which we should walk in. By faith, it changes how we live. But by faith we're saved and then it changes how we live. We do not change who we are to be saved, we change how we walk because we've been saved. If you're not a Christian this morning, I wanna conclude, by faith today you can be saved. But by my faith in Christ, his death for your sin, him taking your penalty, him rising again to give you a new life, believing that you need help and looking to Christ to be that help. Call on him. Repeat, confess, and believe. If you're a Christian, we need to meditate upon what God has done for us and what he calls us to. We don't keep walking in death when we've been given such great life. We don't keep walking in the sins that brought death when we've been given such a wonderful life. Where now is workmanship. Where we're supposed to get to work. Not because it's going to add to our salvation or cause us salvation. No, it helps us enjoy salvation. Work is obeying the law of Christ. Work is serving Christ and worshiping Him and serving others. Christian, we're not saved by our works. We're saved by grace so that we might be part of God's great work. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for this Word, where You have changed our direction. You've changed the way we've walked. You've changed who we were. We thank You that in Christ we are no longer dead. We're made alive. I pray that no one would leave this room, this day, without coming to that place of recognizing I'm a sinner in need of a Savior and calling upon Jesus Christ for that salvation. And I pray for those of us who already know it. Lord, help us to be faithful in that good work, to rejoice always in the riches of grace and your kindness that you have towards us. Be about your work for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.