Deuteronomy chapter 6, beginning at verse 1, this is God's Word. All of these are God's words. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all the statutes and his command, all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life. and that your days may be long. Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, and when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care. lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear, Him you shall serve, and by His name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you, for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God. lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and He destroy you from off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. as you tested him at Massa. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised. When your son asks you, in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God has commanded you, then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us up out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us. Now let's turn to Matthew chapter 4. And this passage follows the baptism of our Lord after the majestic announcement from heaven. that Jesus is beloved by His Father. Right after the Spirit descended on Jesus in power, the Holy Spirit led Jesus to be tempted or to be tested in the wilderness. Matthew chapter 4, beginning at verse 1. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command His angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him. And behold, angels came and were ministering to him. This is God's word. Let us come to God now in prayer. Let us pray. Our gracious God, our Father, we come to you this morning and we thank you for giving us your word. a writing that is holy and set apart from all other writings. We praise You for this library of books that bears Your signature on every line. It is here that we find our own true story. It is in Your book that we meet You, our Creator, You, the architect and builder of all things. And hard as it is to read, it is in these holy pages that You shed light on the darkness that has overcome every fallen human heart. How grateful we are then, Father, that from the record of Genesis to the prophecy of Malachi, from the gospel of Matthew to the revelation of John, that we find in this book first a plan and then a history of our salvation. In fact, here we find the Savior Himself. We meet Abraham and Aaron, Samuel and Jehoshaphat, Solomon and Jeremiah, and each of these is a gift to us, presented in your holy word, but always pointing to something later, something better. You gave the patriarchs, and yet in reading their history, we do not find in them the spouse for which we yearn. You presented the priests, but they could never offer the presence that we long for, or the one sacrifice that we need. You provided judges, but they proved unjust rulers, who are only a shadow of the king who must subdue us, rule over us, and protect us from all his and our enemies. Next you sent the gift of wise men, the greatest of whom fell into the very foolishness against which he warned. And last came the prophets, but they could not persuade your people to turn from their sins. All of this you gave by inspiration to warn us in this life and to direct us to faith. And yet what makes us love this book most of all is that it's here that you show us Jesus, the effective prophet who calls us to repentance, the teacher who astonishes us with his insight, the bringer of the kingdom and the judge of all the world. It's here that we learn of a God coming among us, a high priest who offers himself for us. And so as we praise you for the New Testament and the Old this morning, we also ask that you would teach us, by your Holy Spirit, to ever praise you for your Son until the day when we will feast with Him and with every saved sinner at the wedding feast of the Lamb, in whose name we pray as we ask for a blessing on your word now. Amen. Well, the passage that we've read is one of the most puzzling that we'll ever find in the Gospels, certainly in the Gospel of Matthew. Satan boldly confronts the Son of God about God's provision in verses 1 to 4 when he tempts Jesus to take the easy way out of hardship. Then he asks Jesus to try on presumption in verses 5 to 7, when he dares Jesus to live carelessly and presume on God's graciousness. His final idea is the ultimate perversion of priorities in verses 8 to 11, when Satan madly suggests that Jesus could have complete dominion in a moment if only the Creator would bow before the creature. Now these strange otherworldly encounters between God the Son and Satan, a corrupt angel, raise questions which we will not even begin to get to this morning. Indeed, one of the benefits of being a visiting preacher is that I can choose really difficult passages and then know that your pastor has to deal with all the hard questions that come afterwards. Nonetheless, there's just so much to learn from this account. In fact, in reading about the testing of God's Son, Jesus, there's almost no limit to the number of lessons that we can learn. I don't want to say there's a moral to the story. There's a thousand morals to this history. The 19th century bishop, J.C. Ryle, if I can quote a bishop in a Presbyterian church, mentioned some of these. First, he says, what a real and mighty enemy we have in the devil. He's not afraid to assault even the Lord Jesus himself. People speak of demons and devils lightly today. He's presented as a kind of cartoon character. In truth, he is a serious enemy, and Jesus treats him as such in this passage. And that's because in the second place, if Satan is this bold with Christ, we should know that he will be even more bold with Christians. Are you ever tempted to entertain unloving thoughts about others? Do you have trouble putting away dark desires that discourage you? Do you have shameful memories that keep coming back? Well, there's a reason for that. We have an enemy, and he is often tempting us to sin or trying to convince us that we cannot avoid sin. He's spreading lies, and we must know in advance how to deal with his temptations, especially the kind that we face frequently. Ryle says, there's no enemy worse than an enemy who's never seen and never dies. Let us remember every day that if we would be saved, we must not only crucify the flesh and overcome the world, but also resist the devil. Third, and it's so obvious that none of you can miss it, but so important that I need to say it anyway, the whole purpose of Satan's temptations are to get us to sin against God. The business of temptation is very personal for Satan. He hates God. He wants all things to work out for the harm of those who love God. And so he's always trying to get us to sin against God. He tempts us to deny sin, to ignore sin, to excuse sin, to try and manage our sin. But above all else, he wants us to commit sin. This is what makes sin so serious. This is why Satan rejoices to see us when we argue in our kitchens or our dorm rooms, when we're selfish in the way we drive our cars, when we're careless in minding what we see on our computers, or when we're thoughtless in the friendships that we form. It's because he wants us to sin that we need to band together as Christians, being honest with one another, praying for each other, so that together we will resist Satan and not be led into temptation. Fourth, we should remember in our temptations that the one in whom we trust and in whose name we always pray knows what it's like to be tempted. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us, perhaps reflecting on this very passage, that Jesus was tempted in all things like we are. Jesus can identify with us. He understands us. We can pour out our hearts, even in our most shameful temptations, in our deepest weaknesses. We can confess to him our struggles. He has fought against sin. He knows how to overcome it. He knows what we need. Now, I wish you all just had a copy of J.C. Ryle's expository thoughts on the gospel, because I could save time this morning. I would just say, volume one, page 27, and you'd go home and read it. But because I'm not confident of that, I want to quote him again as he considers how the testing of Jesus is intended to help Christians who are tested, too. He says this. Are they ever tempted by Satan to distrust God's care and goodness? Let me put it in the first person. So was Jesus. Are we ever tempted to presume on God's mercy and to run into danger without warrant? So also was Jesus. Are we ever tempted to commit one great private sin for the sake of some great seeming advantage? So also was Jesus. Are we ever tempted to listen to some misapplication of scripture? as an excuse for doing wrong, so also was Jesus. He is just the Savior that attempted people require. Fifth, we should remember from this passage that there's a difference between being tempted and falling to temptation. Jesus was tempted, but it didn't make Him guilty to be tempted. Jesus was tempted, but the temptation itself did not make Him a sinner. He did not sin, indeed could not sin. Your pastor can explain that too. That He did not sin is seen everywhere, and it's stated in Hebrews. That He could not sin we know because He is not only man, but the God-man, and God cannot sin. His struggle against temptation not only did succeed, it had to succeed. Now a lot can be said on that topic, and I refer you again to Pastor Schrock, but the point that I'm making here is that there's an importance in this distinction between being tempted and falling to temptation. Let me try and illustrate as best as I can what I'm talking about. There was a season when I traveled weekly from Washington, D.C. to, where did I go? New York, New York City's Penn Station. Each week, or I guess beginning in the first week, I learned by hard experience that one hallway in Union Station is filled with images that Satan could use to tempt me to sin. So I needed to choose another route through the station to my platform. Again, when I walked up a set of stairs each week in New York's Penn Station, I learned after my first unfortunate time up the steps that there's a magazine rack at the top of the stairs and its placement meant that I needed to look to the left when I got near the top of the stairs instead of looking to the right. Now, each time I was able to take one route rather than the other, to look left instead of looking right. The Holy Spirit was helping me to overcome a real temptation. Praise God, when Satan tempts us, we don't always fall to that temptation. I do fall to temptation too often, but not always. God often helps us as we cry out to him and look for that way out of temptation that he promises to every believer. Now, here's my point. Satan is horribly clever. He not only tempts us, but he also tries to make us feel dirty, to feel guilty, simply because we know there is a temptation, simply because we face a temptation. Why are those sites even a temptation? Wouldn't a better Christian not even be bothered by those kinds of things? Whether you look or don't look, you're a weak Christian and you know it. You may be forgiven, but you're still a failure. You see, Satan tries to convince us of such things. He tempts us to think this way whether or not we have fallen to temptation. Am I making any sense to you? I saw one head nod, that's all I need. The very fact that we sense, that we feel this reality, the very fact that we know it's there is enough for our old enemy to make us try to feel hopeless. He tries to convict us of sins we haven't committed as if we've already done it. But you see, the life of our Lord shows us that there must be a distinction between facing a temptation, knowing its power, but still resisting it. With God's assistance, we can sometimes do what Jesus always did. Just because we're tempted doesn't mean we've lost. So let us not live in Satan's shadow when we can bask in the full sunshine of our Father's face. Well, a few moments ago I mentioned it's not enough to say there's a moral to the story because there are so many morals to the story, so many lessons for us to learn. But it's also not enough for us to say there's a moral to the story because there's an incredible backdrop to the story that we need to stand back and appreciate this morning. Because as God designed this passage, This mysterious moment in history remains one of the most important connections between the Old Testament and the New. Let me try to explain that briefly. If you know the first gospel well, you'll remember that the infant Jesus was rushed to Egypt for a time to escape the clutches of King Herod. Matthew also explained, back in chapter 2, that this was a fulfillment of the prophecy in Hosea. Just as God's chosen son, Israel, came up out of Egypt, so too God's son, Jesus, would come up out of Egypt. Now Jesus coming up out of Egypt in Matthew chapter two sets the stage for Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew chapter four. Not only is Jesus like Israel and going down to and coming up from Israel, he's also like Israel, or coming up from Egypt, he's also like Israel in that he was tested in the wilderness. You see, Jesus was reliving the life of Israel in a compacted or compressed form. We once had a visitor to our home who had a huge pile of socks that they needed to fit into a tiny car. And so my wife loaned them those vacuum bags. You stuff lots of things in it, and then you attach the hose, you turn on the machine, and everything sort of shrinks down and gets really compact. I admit that's not a great illustration, but what I'm trying to say is this. In a somewhat similar way, all the key moments in Israel's history get shrunk down and compacted into the life of our Lord's own history. And if you read the Old Testament regularly, and you know what is written there, you'll spot the parallel lines running through these Old and New Testament events. The Israelites were in the wilderness. Jesus was in the wilderness. They spent 40 years there. Jesus spent 40 days there. They were tempted by hunger. Jesus would have been tempted by an even more intense hunger. You can see now these wilderness scenes kind of belong together. Piecing these Old and New Testament events together is a bit like finding an old painting in your attic and discovering that it was supposed to be a pair to the one that's hanging up in your dining room. They go together. And yet when you put the two scenes beside each other, you begin not only to see the similarities, but also some contrasts. The Israelites wanted God to give them food in the rocky desert. They almost demanded a miracle. Jesus was asked to turn stones to bread, but he refused. He would face a hunger like the Israelites, but not complain, not demand a miracle, not even work a miracle in his own power. Israel was tested, and they failed. Sometimes they complained. Sometimes they did as they pleased and assumed that God would help them anyways. Sometimes they demanded more now because they cared more about the immediate concerns of this world than about the promises of what was to come. Jesus was tested and he resisted. He was tempted as Israel was, yet without sin, without complaint, without compromise. But if you know your Bible well, you'll know that epic temptations come in sets of three, not in pairs of two. There's still yet another picture, this one at the very back of the attic, if you will. Only when we've set that third picture with the other two have we fully assembled the work of the master. What makes the third frame fit with the other two is not similarity of scene, it's continuity in characters. You may have already noticed that in the wilderness temptation of Jesus, I hope you've noticed, that Satan is there in the foreground. In the wilderness temptation of Israel, we know that he's there, but we don't see him. But there's another temptation to consider, the first in human history. The scene is different, but once again, Satan is there, front and center, with the first Adam and his wife. In a garden, the first Adam and his wife were confronted by a temptation regarding provision, encouraged to think that God wasn't taking as good a care of them as he could, seeing that he was withholding from them something that was just so appetizing. In that temptation, they were encouraged by Satan's presumption, assuming that they could do the opposite of what God commanded and still come out okay. Ultimately, they gave themselves over to perversion. I don't think that's too strong of a word. It might not be strong enough. They listened to the truth that God had spoken, being mangled into a lie, and then chose to follow the creature rather than the creator. They put Satan's word before God's. They made themselves the real authorities in their life as they adjudicated what they were going to do, as they chose their own way. And when Adam whom one of the gospels calls God's Son, chose to twist the will of His Father in heaven, He sinned, and the world was plunged into sin with Him. I mentioned that it's not enough to simply point out that there's lessons to be learned because there are connections to see. But the most important reason why we need to move beyond the moral of the story is that there's a rich gospel in this history. In reading about the testing of God's son, Jesus, and then reflecting back on the testing of God's son, Israel, and God's son, Adam, there's a message which we must not miss. And we can see it if we quickly take these historic temptations in their proper order. Adam was a representative man. And when our first parents failed their test, a kind of virus was unleashed. on all of humanity that no one could escape. We're all corrupted. Left to ourselves, we all crash. After that, we only see failure repeated. Israel replicates Adam's failures. And eventually, as Adam was exiled from the garden, they are exiled from the land of Canaan. It seems that testing, failure, exile, and disappointment are the only things, the only patterns that we'll see. Until, in the opening pages of the New Testament, we see another wilderness, another appearance of Satan, another test ordered by God. And here, where every mere mortal has failed, we see one who succeeds. And of course, that's just the beginning. The Pew Bible here, and I suppose your Bibles, have the heading, The Temptation of Jesus, as if this were the only time that Satan assailed our Lord. But unlike the temptation of Adam, and very much like the temptation of Israel in the wilderness, for most of the rest of Christ's life, Satan recedes into the background, but we see the devil's handiwork everywhere. The whole of Christ's life is one characterized by conflict and adversity and false accusation and rejection, each one the signature of Satan himself. And what are Christians to learn from this? Well, of course, Christians are to see in Christ's resistance to Satan an example for themselves. As one author has put it, Christians must not go for a temporal kingdom, which Jesus refused. They must not grab fulfillment now, which Jesus declined. And they must not compromise with Satan, which Jesus rejected. They are to use the spirit sword in the ongoing battle against the forces of evil. But even more, you see, even more than seeing Jesus as an example, we must see him in this passage as our substitute, because all that he did, he did in our place and for our sakes. He came to face temptation as the last Adam. He came as a new representative who would live and obey and resist temptation where we have not and often cannot seem to do so. And as our substitute, he was earning for us a righteousness that we could never acquire for ourselves. He fought compromise so that His steadfastness His kingdom perspective could be imputed to us. He resisted easy prestige and privilege so that his proper perspective could be imputed to us. He turned to God for his provision so that his confidence could be ascribed to us when we worry. He carefully avoided presuming on his father's kindness so that his wisdom and holiness can be counted ours when we are foolish and careless. He despised the perverted twisting of priorities that put satanic suggestion at the same level as divine revelation. He resisted Satan so that all who trust in Christ will be completely and permanently forgiven for every time that we have given into the flesh and the world and the devil. He has been supplying that right. He was supplying the righteousness that comes to all justified sinners who are united to Christ in faith. There's good news, you see, in Christ resisting Satan and trampling the serpent underfoot. As I look back over these 11 verses with you, It seems that supernatural events are the most notable features of the chapter. I mean, where else do we encounter Satan at one end of the passage and angels at the other? Where else does the most sinful of all creatures guide the sinless creator God from place to place? Where else do we read of a mountain where Jesus can see the whole world? Or a conversation on some protrusion of the temple in which priests and people mill about underneath, unaware of the drama going on overhead? And yet, the most remarkable feature of this chapter may be the thing that appears most natural, Jesus quoting scripture. I mean, what could be more normal than that? He's Jesus, right? But when you think about it, isn't it astounding that after every assault, Jesus directs the devil to places like the book of Deuteronomy? It's amazing because as Matthew Henry's commentary notes, Jesus himself is the eternal word and could have produced the mind of God without recourse, without reference to the writings of Moses. And yet Christ here wants to make a point that each one of us needs to absorb. Who better than Jesus who not only knew scripture, but understood its power and authority. Who better than the incarnate word of God to commend to us the written word of God? We sometimes don't take the Bible seriously enough. But it was enough for Jesus, you see, that it is written. There was no other argument needed for him. Is there something more profound, something more learned, something more clever that we need for ourselves? Christianity's cultured despisers think that it's absurd for us to be guided by reading this old book. But you see, it was an old book already when Jesus was walking on the earth. And yet he quoted the Bible as if the scriptures, properly applied, are a sufficient guide for every twist and turn in the most difficult of situations. I say properly applied, because Satan can use scripture too, can't he? But he twists what is written. He takes a book that comes from God and tries to use it against God. So the scriptures need to be understood well and used well. This is the time of year when we remember, because it's Reformation Day coming up, we remember that scripture became one of the battlegrounds at the time of the Reformation. The sufficiency and necessity of scripture became one of the battle cries of the Reformers. Those who opposed the Protestant Reformation were divided, and we can see this at the great Counter-Reformation Council of Trent, a gathering of the Roman Catholic Church. Of those willing to vote on the subject at the council, 33 of the members thought that scripture and the unanimous tradition of the Church are equal in authority. Eleven of those members of the Council who voted thought that they were similar but not equal in authority. Only three men thought that the Council should require only that traditions be shown respect, but that the Scripture be held in the highest authority. It's significant by way of contrast that the first Protestant confession, the Augsburg Confession, had already shown that there was no unanimous tradition in the church. The confession takes time to point that out. There's disagreement in the tradition of the church. In fact, the whole history of the Protestant Church, seen in hundreds of confessions and catechisms produced by Lutheran and Reformed alike, witness to the power and the usefulness of scripture and calls churches to be reformed according to the scriptures. These confessions occasionally cite important authors in the history of the Church. Protestant writers would do so often, but they understood that only Scripture bears the marks of necessity, sufficiency, ultimate authority, and clarity in all matters. regarding salvation. Ultimately, the relevance, usefulness, truthfulness, and persuasiveness of any other book about God and the way of salvation must be gauged by this book. But here I'm pointing to important authors in Protestant traditions, aren't I? Much more important to us this morning is that the Bible speaks this way about itself. It speaks eloquently of itself. The psalmist says once and again that God's word is a light. The book of Proverbs teaches us that the word of God is intended to give us certainty. The epistle to the Romans tells us that the scriptures are intended for our comfort. And 2 Timothy 3 tells us that Scripture is good for everything. Throughout the Scriptures, we're given any number of reasons why we should hold it dearly and trust it fully. But I want you to see this morning, as I close, that in Matthew 4, we are especially directed to Scripture as an aid in the fight against temptations to sin. In refuting Satan with Scripture, we find an example for every Christian to follow. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, people tried to fight Satan's evil with incantations and exorcisms. Martin Luther began to see that as a problem. Now, Martin Luther didn't get spiritual warfare altogether correct. He thought, for example, that Satan was entirely to be blamed for his digestive problems, which were significant. Arguably, a different diet would have done just as well for Luther. But Satan does tempt God's people, and Luther learned to respond to those temptations with the truths of Scripture. But why look at Luther? Look at Jesus. As John Calvin, another great Protestant Reformer, once said, in this passage, Christ uses Scripture as His shield. Those who voluntarily throw away that armor deserve to be strangled by Satan, into whose hands they give themselves up unarmed. They tended to be quite graphic in the 16th century. Well, I mentioned that we need to know how to deal with the devil. The way we deal with him is to know Scripture and to know how, like Jesus, to use it. It's because the Bible is such an effective weapon that Satan wants us to read it very little, to trust it even less. He wants us to be uncomfortable with the Bible and what it says. He wants us to try and airbrush the influence of the Bible out of our lives. He reminds us that the Bible's offensive and irrelevant to our unbelieving friends. He wants us to set it aside because he knows that Bible reading and good biblical teaching is the life-giving power of God and the most powerful weapon of the Spirit in the Christian life. And one of the most important things that the Bible has to say to us about about the fight is that Jesus has already dealt the death blow. He reigns. He is victor over Satan. There came a point in World War II, and historians argue about when exactly this was, but a lot of them will put it partway through 1942, when Hitler was fighting on too many fronts. Too many of his supply chains had been ruptured. And they knew, the Allies thought, that he could no longer win. Well, that's what we see in the New Testament, already beginning in Matthew 4. Whoever believes this, whoever sees this, is free. And of course, for us, it's much more certain than it ever was for the Allies. We fight on as those who know the victory is won by Jesus. Well, I said at one point, that in order to understand Matthew, we need to have not one but three pictures in mind. But as I think aloud with you this morning about Christ's victory, there are other sites that come to mind. We've spent this half hour looking at only one wall in a gallery, but if we step back and look around, you'll see other scenes that the Holy Spirit has assembled in his special exhibit of saving revelation. Look with me at the end of Christ's ministry. There we see another temptation. Scripture presents before our eyes a scene from the Garden of Gethsemane with our Savior, dreading the cup of wrath which he was about to drink down to its dregs. We see him again, hanging on his cross, a spiritual wilderness of sorts, where he was more alone than ever before, with the crowds around him, testing him. But thankfully, even that does not offer the full panorama. For after a dark portrait of a tomb, we see a scene of dazzling glory, of angels blinded by guards of a grave that was suddenly empty. And there's more. There's a long scene that begins at Pentecost and stretches the full length of the gallery. And in that scene, you'll see apostles and preachers. You see the praying men and women and children of the Middle Ages. You see the great reformers. And if you look closely, you'll see insignificant people like you and me, all of us called to resist temptation, all of us called to be part of a missionary society that shows the kingdoms of the world God's glory. In short, all of us called to live by what is written. And at the end, there is a final scene. There we see Satan bound and banished. never to tempt again. There we see the Son of God with angels around Him and the world falling down before Him. There we see the Church of Christ brought into glory. There we will glimpse the elect from every nation, joining with those whose rest is won, finally doing to perfection what we have always only partly done. There we will worship the Lord our God, and Him only will we serve. It's a glorious sight. It's almost too good to be true. So how do we know that it is? Because it is written. Let us pray. Father, equip us, we pray, to fight temptation by trusting in the Savior who has overcome all. Teach us to know the Scriptures, to use wisely what is written for our defense and for the glory of your name and kingdom. We ask this, and then we are emboldened to ask even more. In spite of our weakness and the weakness of others whom we love, we pray that your word would continue to increase, that the number of disciples would be multiplied greatly everywhere, and that many who have struggles like our own would become obedient to the faith. We pray that you would fill us with your grace and power so that no one would be able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which we speak. And in all of this, May Your name be lifted high above us as we ourselves recede into the crowd of Your worshipers. In Jesus' name we ask this, amen.