It is good to be back with you again, and if there is any need in the congregation, any visits that need to be done, please don't be shy. We're here to help, and we're trusting that God will bless us. We thank God for your commitment to the work of God, and we're trusting that that will continue in coming days. We're turning today to John chapter 14. We'll begin reading at verse 15 of John chapter number 14. And we'll begin at the verse 15. The Lord Jesus Christ is the speaker here, and he says, if you love me, keep my commandments. I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth in the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, But ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. That day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, How is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If any man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance. Whatsoever I have said unto you, peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Amen, and we'll end our reading at the end of the verse 27. Let's just briefly unite in a word of prayer. Our Father and our God, we bless Thee for the opportunity to gather collectively as an assembly of believers around the open Word of God. We thank thee for the one who has been sent into this world, the blessed Spirit of God. And we pray, O God, in the words that we have just sung, Spirit of faith, come down. Reveal the things of God. We pray that we might see, O God, all that we need to behold as we consider, O God, this great personality, what we find within the scriptures. Come, Lord, and encourage our souls and bless our hearts. and refresh our minds and our spirits, for we offer prayer in and through their Savior's precious and worthy name. Amen and amen. 32 messages, this being the 33rd, have formed the basis of our study on God the Holy Spirit over the last year in our family worship services. We began that series of messages on the 4th of November 2018. And today, on the Second Lord's Day of this month, December 2019, we come to the concluding message in this series on God the Holy Spirit. Considering the extensive time given over to the subject matter, this assembly of saints will never be able to say that the person and the work of God the Holy Spirit was a topic that was neglected or overlooked by this preacher. I have attempted by the help of God to present to you the Bible's record concerning the third person of the Holy Trinity. And yet I fear I have only really scratched the surface as to all that the Bible has to say about God the Holy Ghost. As I thought about this closing message, I thought, how can one bring this series of messages to a satisfactory conclusion? I believe that the best way for me to do that is to summarize in one message the entire teaching contained within the previous 32 messages. Now, I'll not take as long as I did. for those messages as I preach today. Now what I am going to do, namely the repeating of things previously said, I believe has biblical warrant to it. For example, the apostle Peter, when writing his second epistle, penned these words in 2 Peter chapter 1 and the verse number 12. He said, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth." What Peter was informing his readership about was what he was about to write within his letter, the truths that he was about to express and pen were truths that were already known to these particular believers, and yet He saw it needful, he saw it to be necessary, to remind these believers of such truths again. Albert Barnes, the Bible commentator, speaking about this practice of Peter repeating truths already known, he refers, and he speaks of this within his commentary, he said these words, It is the office of the ministry not only to impart to people truths which they did not know before, but a large part of their work is to bring to recollection well-known truths to seek that they may exert the proper influence on their life. He said, amidst the cares, the business, the amusements, the temptations of the world, even true Christians are prone to forget them. And the ministers of the gospel render them an essential service, even if they should do nothing more than remind them of truths which are well understood and which they have known before. He said this, a pastor, in order to be useful, need not always aim at originality. Or deem it necessary always to present truths which have never been heard of before. Rather he renders an essential service to mankind. who reminds them of what they know, but are prone to forget, and who endeavors to impress plain and familiar truths in the heart and the conscience, for these truths are most important for man. And so today, as Peter did, I want to put you in remembrance of these things, though ye know them. For this purpose, as Peter says there in 1 Peter 1 verse 12, that ye might be established in the present truth concerning the person and the work of God the Holy Spirit. Now the first thing that we came to establish, way back there at the start of November 2018, the first thing that we came to establish from the revelation of God within the Scriptures was that God, the Holy Spirit, is not some kind of mystical it. Not some kind of mystical energy or force or influence or power. but rather God the Holy Spirit is a real person. And we establish that truth from his very nature. We find that when referred to in Scripture, many times the personal pronoun he, is used concerning the Holy Spirit. Let me direct you to just a number that we have here in John and the chapter number 14. Look at the verse 16 and 17. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him, but ye know Him. he dwelleth in with you and shall be in you. Verse 26, but the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Because God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are unmistakably persons within the Holy Godhead and within the Holy Trinity, so it is that God the Holy Spirit is a real person. And thus we find that on occasions all three persons are referred to alongside the other two persons within the Trinity, the Father and the Son. Matthew 28 verse 19, 2 Corinthians 13 and the verse 14. Father, Son and Spirit are combined, brought together in one single verse. They are persons, He is a person. We thought about the Holy Spirit. We thought about what he does, his ministry to us. We thought about how it is within his power to teach. We thought about how it's within his ability to witness and to intercede and to search and to create and to bestow gifts, things that only personalities can do. And thus it pointed us again to the personality of God the Holy Spirit. We thought about various names and titles that were given to God the Holy Spirit. More evidence pointed to the fact that He is a real person. We thought about the various manifestations of the Spirit within the Word of God. And thus we establish the truth that God the Holy Spirit is not an it, but rather that he is an he. He is a personality. And we began at that initial point that the Holy Spirit is a person for this very reason. R. A. Torrey put it like this. A frequent source of error and fantasism about the work of the Holy Spirit is the attempt to study and to understand His work without first of all coming to know Him as a person. All error and all heresy concerning God the Holy Spirit and His ministry arises or stems from the fact that the truth that He is a person has not been established. And that's why we began with the thought, the truth that He is a person. But having established that truth, we then went a little further. We established the truth that He's not only a person, but that He is a divine person. He is a divine person. And we focused our second message on the deity of God the Holy Spirit. The fact that He is co-equal, co-eternal, co-substantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit was established by the fact that divine names were attributed to Him. Divine attributes were attributed to Him. Divine works were attributed to Him. Divine worship were attributed to God the Holy Spirit. Now I remind you that the deity of the Holy Spirit is a fundamental truth, especially when it comes to the doctrine of salvation. The doctrine of salvation hinges upon the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You see, it is the Holy Spirit who regenerates the heart. It is the Holy Spirit who illuminates the mind. It is the Holy Spirit who indwells the life of the believer. If God the Holy Spirit is not God, how then can we be sure that He can do such things? How could we be sure that he could take us from our deadened state and bring us to new life in Jesus Christ? Something that only a divine person can accomplish and do within our lives. Moreover, if he is not co-equal in being and co-substantial and has a similar purpose with the Father and the Son, what guarantees do we have that even if the Spirit of God did try to do such a thing as in to bring us to salvation, that God the Father and God the Son would recognize His actions and accept His work? The divine Trinity work in harmony. And therefore, the Spirit of God must be divine if He is to save us and to be involved in our salvation from sin. In the next three messages, we came to understand that God the Holy Spirit was active during the Old Testament era. Now that conflicts with the teaching of some preachers who suggest that the Spirit of God only began a ministry in the world after the day of Pentecost. The Spirit of God only began a ministry in this world after the day of Pentecost. But we went to the Scriptures to see what the Bible has to say about the workings of the Spirit of God. And it wasn't long into God's Word that we find the presence of the Spirit of God. You'll actually find Him in the book of Genesis and the chapter number 1, and beginning there, verse 1, moved upon the face of the waters." Father, Son, and Holy Spirit involved on creation's first day. He's present. He's there. He's involved actively in the creation of order out of chaos, the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. And we find him again in Genesis chapter 1, because whenever God comes to make man, verse 26 of the chapter it says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Verse 27, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And we saw the plurality of individuals identified in that word us. Let us make man in our image. And we saw again the spirit of God involved in the creation of man. We also saw the Spirit of God convicting men of their sin, and women of their sin, prior to Noah's flood, or the worldwide flood of Noah's day. Genesis chapter 6, we have those great words. shall not always strive with man. And the Lord said, and the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man. Therefore we find that the Spirit of God was striving, convicting men and women of their sin, even in the days prior to the coming of the flood. And then we thought about Joseph, and what Pharaoh said about Joseph. He spoke about the Spirit of the God, within the man. He spoke about a man in whom the Spirit of God was residing. We made our way into the book of Exodus. And we met a man by the name of Beelzeel. You'll know that man's name. You should know him by now. This is the man that formed and was used by God for the construction of the tabernacle and the provision of its very furnishings. And we find that this man, Beelzeel, was a man who was filled by the Spirit of God, that he might be enabled to construct God's house a house for God to be worshiped in, a house in which God's presence would be evidently expressed in the shekinah glory and the cloud above the tabernacle. We find a man, a man, a finite, mortal man being infilled by the Spirit of God. And we learned from Beelzebub's infilling of the Holy Spirit that every Christian, whatever they come to do, whether that work be great or small, whether it be seen publicly or whether it's done privately, every child of God needs to be infilled by the Spirit of God. Now no mention is made of the Holy Spirit in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but mention is made three times in the book of Numbers. Three individuals are named with respect to the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Men that are infilled to perform a task appointed for them and a task assigned to them by God. And again, we learn from that, as we learn from Beazael, that again, as the child of God, whatever part in the ministry, whatever we come to do, whether in the home, whether in the workplace, whether at school, whether in a place of employment, wherever it be, wherever it is, each child of God needs to be daily infilled by the Spirit of God. I emphasized on that occasion that the equipping, the enjoyment, and the empowerment of a person that comes about by the unfilling of the Holy Spirit is not to make a person feel good about themselves, but rather it is given to make that person's service, ministry, witness effective for God. So let me ask you, since preaching the message, have you daily asked for the infilling of God the Holy Spirit. Have you prayed before going out into the world that you might be filled with the Holy Ghost? To be not drunk with wine where is access, but be filled with the Spirit. Have you took that to heart? As you go out into this God-hating world, As you went out to the conflict and to the battle, a battle for truth and righteousness, have you gone relying simply on the arm of flesh? Or have you gone in the power of God the Holy Spirit? You see, effectiveness in our witness does not come about from our well-crafted arguments. but rather effectiveness in our witness for God comes about when we know the infilling of God, the Holy Spirit. In our second and third of the Old Testament messages on the Holy Spirit, we came to find that the third person of the Holy Trinity, we find him to be active in many of the books of the Old Testament. Those books we find within the historical, the poetical, and the prophetical sections of that very Testament. And the purpose of looking at the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was to instill into our hearts and our minds the truth that God the Holy Spirit was very much active and very much present in the Old Testament era, a ministry that is going to increase, an activity that is going to increase as we come into the New Testament era. And that then brought us to four messages on the work of God the Holy Spirit within the New Testament. And the first message that we came to think about was to focus upon the Holy Spirit, His ministry, and His relationship with the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. We noticed that He was present at the conception of the Christ child. In Luke's Gospel, we read of Him, or we read of Mary, whenever Gabriel comes to speak to her, that she is going to be the mother of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Mary asks in chapter 1 of Luke, verse 34, Mary said to the angel, How shall this be seen? I know not a man. And the angel said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee. And the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore that holy thing which shall be born in thee shall be called the Son of God. And so at the very conception of Christ, the Holy Spirit is present. Then we considered his ministry through the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. We saw him present at the Savior's baptism, the dove descending. and the voice being heard from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. We thought about him being led by the Spirit into the wilderness to meet the temptations of the devil, being filled by the Spirit, he meets the enemy. And then we thought about his ministry, a ministry crafted and a ministry enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter speaks of that in Acts 10, verse 38, that by the power of the Spirit, Christ went about doing good, being filled with the Spirit. We thought about his healing ministry, we thought about his preaching ministry, and then we come And we came to the very climax of the Savior's earthly ministry. We came to the cross, and we saw the Spirit of God present there at the cross, because it was by the eternal Spirit that Christ offers Himself as a sacrifice unto the Father. And not only did we see the Spirit present at the cross, but we saw the Spirit present at the tomb. Because Peter in 1 Peter 3 verse 18 reminded us that the Son of God was quickened by the Spirit, brought to life by the Spirit of God. We then considered that the Savior having gone to heaven, we thought about the day that the Spirit of God came in great power upon the church of Jesus Christ. He thought about that great day when the New Testament fledgling church is empowered to do that which God had tasked it to do. to preach the gospel, to make known the name of Christ, to tell the nations beyond even Israel's borders itself, to go into Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth to declare the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. These fearful sins are made bold in Christ by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And then we moved right into the book of Acts. We saw the ministry of the Holy Spirit in those remaining chapters in the Acts of the Apostles. We noticed how the Spirit of God enabled the church through days of persecution. We saw how the Spirit of God directed the church to govern itself. We thought about individual members within the church that knew the infilling, the leading, the guiding of the Holy Spirit, to remember Paul wanting to go in. to Asia and the Spirit of God forbidding him, and then the Spirit of God forbidding him to go elsewhere, and then eventually opening a new sphere of service right into Macedonia, Paul is being led by the Spirit of God, advancing the cause of Jesus Christ, not by their own human skill, but by the help and the power of God the Holy Spirit. This is how the church goes forward, not by programs, not by abilities, mere human instruments, but rather men and women that are filled by the Spirit of God, bold for Christ, preaching the gospel. And that brought us to message 10. We're only at 10, message number 10. And whenever we came to the 10th message within the series, There was a change of tact, as it were, because we really moved away from thinking of the Holy Spirit in historical terms, as in what He did during the Old and the New Testament, and we started to consider Him in a more doctrinal way, more theological way. Over a period of eight messages, we started to think about the role of the Holy Spirit. and his ministry in bringing a sinner out of sin, bringing that sinner on to Jesus Christ for salvation. I mentioned that while God the Father authored redemption, while the Son of God accomplished redemption, In these messages, we came to understand that God the Holy Spirit is a person within the Godhead who applies redemption. The Father offers it, the Son accomplishes it, the Holy Spirit applies it. We thought about effectual calling, the calling out of sin. We thought about regeneration. We thought about conversion. We thought about faith. We thought about repentance. And personally speaking, I found this section within this series of messages to be both humbling and also to be encouraging. I was humbled at the thought of all that is involved and any sinner's salvation experience. How the sinner is effectually called by the Spirit of God. How the heart is regenerated and the mind enlightened by the Spirit. How the principle of new life is implanted within the dead and soul by the Holy Ghost. How the Holy Spirit convicts the sinner of their sin and convinces them to leave their sin and to fly to Christ for salvation. How the sinner is gifted the gifts of faith and repentance that enables them to embrace Jesus Christ as He is offered to them in the gospel, how humbling, how humbling to think of all that the Spirit of God does to draw me to the Christ of God. And yet how encouraging. I was encouraged as I came to appreciate to a greater extent than I had previously a truth that I no doubt had known and accepted theoretically, And yet this truth came to my soul, the truth that salvation is not within any person's power, but rather that salvation is entirely of the Lord. As Jonah said, salvation is of the Lord. If any person is to be brought to Christ, If any soul is to be regenerated, if any person is to be brought into the family of God, if any sinner is to be saved, it'll not be down to a preacher's gifts, it'll not be down to a preacher's abilities, it'll not be down to a preacher's talent, it'll not be down to a preacher's point, but it will be down entirely to the inward the indispensable, the irresistible, the imperative workings of the Spirit of God within the soul of any sinner. It's all of God, all of God. Salvation is off the Lord. And that encouraged me, and encouraged me to know that whenever I go home with empty nets, it is God that must see it. God must draw the sinner. And is that not something that should stir us up to pray? Should that not be something that would stir us to come and lay hold of God before the gospel services each Sunday night to be present at the place of prayer on a Wednesday night to seek God? that God would speak to your loved ones, that God would stir them out of their slumber, that God would bring them out and extract them out of the grave of their sin and bring them to new life in Jesus Christ. Do not please your confidence in any evangelist, in any preacher, in any Christian, entirely of God. And that's what we wanted to drive home. Having seen the role of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the sinner then, we entered a section in which we then saw and highlighted the ongoing work of God the Holy Spirit in the life of the one who comes to faith in Jesus Christ. The ongoing work within the child of God after their conversion. Because I reminded you then, When you begin to think along the lines of His present work for us and in us, we come to understand that God doesn't leave us to struggle through this life on our own, but rather He has sent one to help, one to support, one to comfort, one to sustain us, one to uphold us, one to bring us safely through to glory itself. Not that we begin in the spirit and end the Christian life in our own energy or in the flesh, but rather there's one sent to us by God to carry us through. And the matter that we first came to consider ye marvel at, was the truth that God the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within the life of every child of God. Let me remind you of a quote by Octavius Winslow. He said, the bare thought that the high and lofty one inhabiting eternity whose name is holy should dwell with man, yes, in him. That he should take him out of the fallen race of his creatures, a people, whose hearts should be renewed and sanctified as to form a dwelling place of the Holy Ghost. That this heavenly visitant should take up his abode there in all of his regenerating, sanctifying, sealing, and comforting influences. The bare thought of this, seems almost too illimitable and glorious for a poor finite mind to even grasp. He who is the Spirit of grace, He who is the Spirit of truth, He who is the spirit of holiness comes and takes up residency in our lives. And because such a one does so, the Christian's conversation and conduct, both privately and publicly, ought to be then marked by grace, because he's the spirit of grace. It ought to be marked by truth, because he's the spirit of truth. It ought to be marked by holiness. because he is the spirit of holiness. So I asked you, do these things mark your life? You claim to be a Christian You claim that the Spirit of God resides within you because that's involved in the very claim that you are Christ's one. The Spirit of God has come to be in us. We read it today, that he may abide with you forever, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. He's in us. And therefore, your claim that you are a child of God, that the Spirit of God resides within you, then what about grace? What about truth? What about holiness? Do these things mark your life? Do they mark my life? Are these things governing how we live, what we say, what we ascribe to, interactions within the family of God and outside the family of God? I tell you, this matter of the Spirit of God residing in us, dwelling within us, has very practical outworkings to it. Having been indwelt by the Spirit, we then thought about the assurance of faith, a matter that many a believer struggles with. We find that the Spirit of God witnesses to the Word of God and to the work of Christ. These are the growings of any person's assurance of faith. We're brought to the work of Christ and to the Word of God. When the believer through the witness of the Holy Spirit comes to believe and to rest upon the promises of God and to apprehend that the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross of Calvary was sufficient to put away their sins forever, then assurance is the result. They believe. They're assured. that they're in the family, the work's been done. God's Word tells me that I am a child of God and it is the Spirit to bring us to the full assurance of faith. The next thing we considered was the sealing of the Holy Spirit. It is a matter that is alluded to 2 Corinthians 1, 20-22, Ephesians 1, 13-14, Ephesians 4, verse 30. We are sealed by the Spirit of God. Do you remember what the seal represented? The seal was performed, placed upon the object for three reasons. Authentication, ownership, and security. And we reminded you then that the Spirit of God, He authenticates the work in us. He shows to us that we are part of God's family. We are owned by Him. We are sealed by the Spirit so that nothing can harm us. Thank God for that. Then we thought in message 21, we thought about God, the Holy Spirit, as our teacher and our guide. He brings us always to Christ, always to the truth. He leads us into holiness with such an omniscient, sympathetic, patient teacher and guide. Therefore, there is no reason that the child of God should ever go astray. But the unfortunate thing is that we do. because we fail to follow His guidance. We fail to follow His teaching, a teaching and a guidance and leading that is always in harmony with the guidance and the teaching that is found within the Word of God. And then we took four weeks to consider God, the Holy Spirit, and the matter of our sanctification. Remember what it is? It's a dying on to sin, mortification, a living on to righteousness, vivification or viification, while God the Father is the author of sanctification, and the Spirit, the child of God, is called upon, equipped to sanctify themselves. And such is accomplished when they use the God-given means, the Word of God, the sacraments, prayer, even sanctified providence, all employed by the Spirit and by the child of God, progressing us in holiness. And then we thought about this work of sanctification, that it is a transformative work. It makes a transformation within our lives. And did we not think about that and note that text there? 2 Corinthians 3.18, but we all with an open face beholding as in at last the glory of God are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. There is a transformative work done within our lives. Moving on from the Spirit's sanctifying work, we came to think about how the Holy Spirit comes to comfort the child of God, something that He evidently does from a title that He has given here in John chapter 14. He is known as the Comforter. He brings comfort. And how does He bring comfort? How does He bring comfort to the sorrowing, to the troubled one? to the downcast, to the perplexed child of God. Well, he accomplishes that by bringing Christ before their mind. He brings the Savior and his work for them. He brings before them the person and the glorious work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks of Christ. He testifies of Christ. And by that, he comforts and consoles the Christian in their time of need. We find that He comes to defend His people. We find that He stands by us. He strengthens us. He comes and comforts and consoles the sad and the sorrowing and the suffering and the solitary saint of God. This is His work as the comforter. And then we thought about Him as our intercessor. We took the words of Romans chapter 8, 26. Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us. Aware of our ignorance, aware of our infirmities, God has provided for us an intercessor, one who makes intercession for us. And we take fresh courage with the thought that the intercessor, he lives in us, but there's another intercessor, and he lives above us in the glory. Even Christ himself, who sitteth at the right hand of God, what a mighty defense the child of God has. The prayers of the Godhead going up on our behalf to shield us to protect us as we go out to face our great enemy from day to day. The last four messages, we thought about the Holy Spirit as our giver. We thought about the gifts that he gives, the gifts that he gives to his church. And we came to understand that although the sign gifts, and we thought of two of them, the gift of tongues, the gift of healings, although those gifts are temporary in nature and have now passed away, Yet the other gifts, giving, governments, helps, wisdom, faith, discernment, teaching, preaching, these gifts continue to be operational within the church of Christ for the church's edification. These are the things that God brought to our attention. as we thought about the work and person of God the Holy Spirit. I trust that this message has been a memory prompt to you to bring to your mind again the indispensable and the glorious work of God the Holy Spirit, the extent of which I believe only our glorified minds will come to fully appreciate what the Holy Spirit, who He is, and what He is doing for us. But while we wait for that day of glorification, may we continue to know the work of the Holy Spirit personally within our lives. And if you're not a Christian, At this day He would work wondrously within your soul and bring you to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, the glorious, the magnificent, the divine work and person of God the Holy Spirit. May we worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. in the unity of their sacred persons within the glorious Godhead. And may we know his ministry among us in a very practical and a very experimental way. May God bless his word to our hearts even this Lord's Day. Let's bow in prayer. Loving Father, our gracious God, we thank thee for the Holy Spirit, We thank you for his ministry. We rejoice, O God, in his work. Those of us who are saved, we may not be able to grasp, and none of us shall, the intricate workings and the movings and the ministry of the Spirit of God to bring us to the point of salvation. But at least, O God, we can say, like the blind man, this I know, that whereas I was blind, now I can see. Spiritually speaking, we were blind, but now we see. And yet we see only through a glass darklight. Soon, face to face, we'll dwell in the presence of the triune Godhead and eternal praise will be rendered to our God for who He is and what He has done. May the preaching of the Holy Spirit, may it be pleasing in my sight, O God, and may we experience His ministry among us in a deep and in a lasting way we pray these our prayers in and through the Savior's precious name amen and amen we're turning to