Jesus Loves Little Babies, a new fully illustrated children's book teaching God's heart for pre-born children by Sarah Fenn. available at www.godloveswomen.com. That is www.godloveswomen.com. Oh Holy Father, your beloved Son, the Lord Jesus, warned the people and said, for only a little while longer you have the light and then it will be taken from you. And there were those who believed in him, but among the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they did not believe because it was written, oh Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed and also make their eyes blind and their ears heavy lest they see and hear and turn and be healed. Oh, sovereign Father, it is your good pleasure to hide the glory of Jesus Christ from the wise and the learned and to reveal these things to little babes. Yes, Father, this is your good pleasure. And as your weak, frail, weeping little Lambs, we cry out to you this morning and pray, please open our eyes and open our ears so that we can see and hear these things about your holy glory and concerning the holiness of your son, Jesus Christ. We pray in the holy name of Jesus. Amen. This Lord's day, the book of the prophet Isaiah chapter six, verses one through three, this is the word of the Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim, each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. thus far the reading of God's holy word and we tremble joyfully at it. God is infinitely holy. He is not simply holy, but rather holy, holy, holy. Therefore he will not suffer the holiness of his name to be trampled upon by sinful men. When Nadav and Abihu, the priests, the sons of Aaron brought strange fire into the tabernacle of the Lord and thus defiled the worship of the Lord in his holy tabernacle. Fire. went out from the presence of the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord. And then as an explanation of this fierce judgment against Aaron's sons, the Lord spoke through Moses to Aaron saying in Leviticus chapter 10, verse three, by those who come near to me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified. The Lord God is infinitely holy. This is why he says first to Moses and then to Joshua, upon appearing to them, take your sandals off your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground. The holiness of God demands that even his best servants fear him with a great holy fear. God's holy presence comes against the wicked like a fire and burns like a flame, devouring the thorns and briars in one day. It causes the mountains to melt like wax and it shakes the wilderness. The word of God's holiness summons the people to tremble and summons the earth to quake, saying in Psalm 99 5, exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool. He is holy. The Lord of the heavenly hosts is infinitely holy. He shall be exalted in judgment and his holiness shall be hallowed in righteousness. And therefore those who call good evil and evil good, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter shall be as stubble devoured by the fire and as chaff consumed by the flame. The anger of the Lord shall be aroused against his people with his mighty hand of judgment stretched out against them, causing the hills to shake and leaving the carcasses of the slain as refuse in the midst of the streets. And still the anger of the Lord will be upon the wicked. It will remain upon the wicked and his hand will remain stretched out against them in hell. The wicked will find that the dreadful anger of the Lord against them expressed in terrifying judgments of wrath will never be abated. And yet the holiness of God is also overflowing with grace towards his elect. God, who is the Holy One, is gracious and compassionate towards those who are broken and afflicted, who are cut to the heart with repentance, and so who tremble at His word. Isaiah 57, 15, for thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with Him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Therefore it is the holiness of God that secures for us the hope of redemption. Since God is holy, he shall keep his people Israel from profaning his holy name any longer. And so he shall roar like a lion And his son shall come trembling from the distant places to which they were scattered. And he will bring them to his holy mountain where death shall be abolished and sinners shall neither hurt nor destroy on that holy mountain. What would it be like to see inside of the heavenly sanctuary of God? How would the church around the globe be transformed if her pastors and members could see truly into the heavenly abode of God? Even if only dimly, as if seeing something brilliantly bright on the other side of a smoke-filled room. Not all have eyes to see. Most people claim to see, but they do not actually see. They have eyes but are never seen and ears but are never hearing. Yet we pray for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes through obedient submission to his will so that we might see the holiness of God this day, even if only dimly. Isaiah 6, 1 through 4, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood Seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. And one cried to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out. And the house was filled with smoke. When Isaiah sees the Lord, he describes the Lord as sitting on a throne and he says, high and lifted up. And this description of the Lord as high and lifted up is one of royalty and also one of exclusive divinity. God as King of Kings is so majestic in both His royalty and in His exclusive divinity that He alone can be described as high and lifted up. What is more, this state of God being high and lifted up is simultaneously terrifying and redeeming. in the book of Isaiah. For this phrase, high and lifted up, when employed by the prophet in chapter 33 of Isaiah, is a terrifying one. While the same phrase, when used in chapter 52, becomes a redeeming one. First then, here it is in chapter 33, Isaiah 33, 10. Now I will rise, says the Lord, I will be high. Now I will lift myself up. How so? Isaiah 33, 14. The sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness has seized the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? And this is terrifying. For unrepentant sinners, when God is high and lifted up, this can only mean a devouring fire and everlasting burnings. The exaltation of God is simultaneously the condemnation of unbelievers. Yet the same phrase, high and lifted up, becomes quite redemptive, redeeming. by the time we reach chapter 52 of the book of Isaiah. For there in chapter 52, it applies to God's suffering Christ. Isaiah 52, 13, behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be high and lifted up. This is Christ, high and lifted up and be very exalted. Again, how so? Well, this time the exaltation of God is quite redemptive. And yet it is only redemptive unto salvation for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, Isaiah 52, 15. So he shall sprinkle, that is with his blood. Many nations, kings shall shut their mouths at him. For what has not been told them, they shall see. And what they had not heard, they shall consider. It is only with a deep fear of God then that we dare to enter into the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah. And as we enter, we become aware that we are not peering into Solomon's temple, which was a mere replica of heavenly things. To be sure, Solomon's temple was an exquisite model of God's heavenly temple. But now we are looking into God's heavenly temple itself. The language of Isaiah 6, 1 through 4 is temple language. We find the word temple in verse 1, right after a reference to the train of God's robe. And this reminds us of the train of the robe of the high priest, as described in the book of Exodus. And then there is more temple language in verse 2, since we find seraphs in verse 2. And these remind us of the two cherubim carved of olive wood and overlaid with gold that were placed over the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple. Yet now in Isaiah chapter 6, we are no longer dealing with wooden angels, but now real ones. We have left the earthly replica behind and have been given a glimpse into the real heavenly temple of God. If this is not terrifying enough, Isaiah says that he actually sees the Lord of the seraphim himself. When Isaiah sees him, the prophet notices that the Lord is filling time and space with his glory. And so in verse one, the train of his robe fills the temple. In verse three, the whole earth is filled with his glory. And in verse four, the temple is filled with smoke. God is holy, holy, holy, and his glory fills, fills, fills. This introduces us to the paradox of seeing and not seeing. In Isaiah chapter six, Isaiah sees God, and yet he does not see God fully. He notices that the whole earth is filled with God's glory. But the temple is so filled with the train of God's robe and with the smoke coming from his altar that the prophet can only partially see God. Therefore, God is both revealed and hidden. The earth is full of His glory, but His temple is filled with smoke. If we have afflicted, humble, repentant, trembling hearts, we can see God through eyes of faith, but only partially. We cannot, in Isaiah 6, see God fully. The full sight of God will have to wait for heaven. And yet Isaiah does, in part, see God. What then does this sight of God do to a mere human being? If the prophet who is from the dust is allowed to glimpse inside of the heavenly abode of God, what shall happen? In Isaiah six, an earthquake happens. The doorposts and thresholds of God's heavenly temple shake or tremble. The verb to shake or to tremble is frightening here, for it takes us back to the sighting of God that happened at Mount Sinai under Moses. When God appeared to Israel atop Mount Sinai, the people were the ones who shook and they trembled. Exodus 20, 18, now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet and the mountains smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. It is not, however, only the Israelites as a whole, who for the most part were unbelieving, who trembled at the sight of God. Instead, even the prophet Daniel, a very righteous man, was caused to tremble. when he saw the pre-incarnate Christ in a vision. Daniel 10, five through six, I lifted my eyes and looked and behold, a certain man clothed in linen whose waist was girded with the gold of Uphaz. His body was like barrel, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in color. and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. And then verse 10 of Daniel 10, suddenly a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my knees and on the palms of my hands. Yet there is even more, for in Holy Scripture, even the saints of God in heaven, those who have been made perfect and have no sin in heaven, who worship before the heavenly throne day and night, are said to be those who tremble before the holiness of God. Revelation 4, 6 through 10, before the throne was a sea of glass like crystal. And in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion. The second living creature like a calf. The third living creature had a face like a man. And the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within, and they do not rest day or night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down. That is, they tremble and fall before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever and cast their crowns before the throne. What then shall we say of today's popular Bible teachers who know not how to tremble rightly at the true holiness of God? They may be expert showmen, knowing how to orchestrate a popular modish worship performance for the itching ears and sensual palates of the cultural church clientele. But in their self-praising, self-promoting minds, they have not an inkling as to the everlasting danger in which they are putting their own souls by refusing to expound upon the fear of God from their pulpits. They may employ the Bible in their teaching, but they employ it wrongly, since their preaching lacks the true power of the Holy Spirit, such that it is impotent to cause even a cricket to tremble, much less a single human soul. They may give off an air of authority saying, thus says the Lord, but they speak things which the Lord himself has not spoken. They may sign off on a statement of true Christian doctrine, and so prove themselves in their own eyes to be doctrinal standard bearers, but by their man-centered, sin-flattering expositions of that doctrine, they prove themselves before God to be heretics in application. Who was it, pray tell, who first allowed for this pollution of God's holy temple, the church? Who was it who brought an unholy version of grace, a filthy version of love, and a prostituted version of the forgiveness of sins into the temple of Christ church? Who was it who excised the holiness of God from the spiritual altar of the cross? Who dared to bring the strange fire of worldly philosophies and carnal lusts into the sanctuary of the gospel? The contemporary church has not sufficiently trembled in fear before the holiness of God. Consequently, we now have scores and even hundreds of Christian schools that promote the teaching of the universe being billions of years old. And a vast majority of Christian seminaries that promote the use of contraception within the holy institution of Christian marriage. And an outbreak of Christian pastors who reason psychologically rather than biblically. And yet hardly anybody sees these things as constituting a great perversion of the church. Why? They are blind to the perversion because they are blind to the true holiness of the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. This is dangerous. It is quite dangerous for the Prophet Isaiah to peer into the Holy Throne Room of God. Also, it is very dangerous for us to read this chapter, Isaiah chapter 6, if we read it with unbelief in our hearts. Nothing is safe here. The holiness of God indicts our sinful souls. No man is safe here unless he will repent. The light of God's holiness has shone upon us, and now our filthiness before God is exposed. Therefore, unless we become like the prophet who rushes into tear-soaked repentance, we are in the gravest of dangers. Isaiah 6, 5-7, So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar And he touched my mouth with it and said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin purged." Again, Isaiah sees God. This time in verse five, he says, I have seen the King. To see God is to see the King. And this is not the King of Judah. This king is not King Uzziah, nor noble Jotham, nor wicked Ahaz, who will follow him. This king is God himself. Isaiah sees him and the sight of him undoes him. Woe to me, the prophet cries out. Judgment falls upon him, even him. Isaiah may be a man of faith and more righteous than any other in all of Israel. But in the light of an infinitely holy God, He calls down the woe of judgment upon Himself. This woe of judgment is a severe one. Isaiah 3, 9 through 11, the look on their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom. They do not hide it, woe to their soul. for they have brought evil upon themselves. Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hand shall be given him." To be sure, the prophet Isaiah is not like these wicked people who parade their sin like Sodom. And yet still, when he sees God, He realizes that he himself deserves this woeful judgment. That is why he says in Isaiah 6, 5, I am undone. Later on, he will say of Moab, Moab is laid waste and undone. Because in the night of Kier of Moab, because in the night Kier of Moab is laid waste and undone. But now he himself, the prophet, has seen God, and so he himself is undone, like a city invaded and leveled in a night. In the light of God's holiness, Isaiah has become all too aware of his own uncleanness. In particular, for some reason, he has become aware that his lips are extremely unclean. Isaiah 6, 5, so I said, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And Isaiah 6, 7, and he touched my mouth with it and said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin purged. Why is Isaiah so aware of the uncleanness of his lips? And why must the burning coal from God's altar be applied to his lips? Well, certainly as a prophet, Isaiah speaks for God. And therefore, before he speaks for God, his lips must first be made clean. However, there's something even deeper here. For later on, Isaiah will preach a verse that the Lord Jesus in turn will make famous. Condemning the hypocrisy of the Israelites, Isaiah will preach the 13th verse of his 29th chapter, speaking for God. And he will say, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 29, 13, therefore the Lord said, in as much as these people draw near with their mouths, and honor me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from me and their fear toward me as taught by the commandment of men. The lips of God are perfectly holy. However, the lips of wicked Israel are unclean and so condemn them. Isaiah 59, three through four, for your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue has muttered perversity. No one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth. They twist in empty words, I'm sorry, they trust in empty words and speak lies. They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. The Lord Jesus, of course, gets right to the heart of the matter concerning unclean mouths and unclean lips. God hates unclean lips, says the Lord Jesus, because they are merely the outward polluted fountain of an inward polluted spring of the heart. Unclean lips are produced by unclean hearts. Matthew 12, 34, brood of vipers. How can you being evil speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The prophet Isaiah then lives among a people of unclean lips and he himself finds himself to have unclean lips. And therefore, before he can take up his prophetic mission, his lips. must be cleansed. So one of the angels himself, huge and terrifying, uses tongs to take a glowing coal from God's altar and touches that coal to Isaiah's lips. Then he says to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, 7, see, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. The gospel is that God is infinitely holy. That is the gospel. God's holiness is the gospel. The gospel is also that whenever we get a partial glimpse of God's holiness, we must tremble, cry out, woe to me, and drench the feet of our Lord Jesus with our sincere tears of repentance. That too is the gospel. Yet the gospel is also the glad tidings that despite the vast uncleanness of our hearts, our wretched and filthy condition can be atoned for. There is an altar of blood and fire that atones for the sins of those who believe. Atonement, no doubt, is a word that takes us back to Leviticus chapter 16 and the day of atonement. In the law, blood must be brought into the Holy of Holies once a year in order to atone for the sins of the people. However, the word atonement, which means to provide a blood smearing or a blood covering over sins, is also a bit mysterious in the Old Testament. Daniel 9, 24. 70 weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. And the mystery, of course, is how so? Daniel 9.26 says, and after the 62 weeks, Messiah shall be cut off but not for himself. Who is the Messiah who in Daniel shall be slain so that sin can be atoned for? This remains a mystery until Jesus of Nazareth is lifted up on the cross. His blood alone can make atonement for our sins. Without the cross of Jesus, there is no atonement for sins. Our lips then must be purified. After we catch a glimpse of God in his infinite holiness, we become aware and keenly so of the uncleanness of our lips. Our lips are unclean because our hearts are unclean. Many of our thoughts about God are sinful. Much of our speech about God is unclean. We claim to be a priesthood of believers speaking to people about God and speaking to God about people. But our speech is filthy. Our prayers are unclean. Our worship songs are tainted. And so what then shall we do? There is only one altar of purification. The cross of Jesus Christ is the heavenly altar of God. There are, figuratively speaking, glowing coals at the foot of the cross. When God sees the cross from heaven, he sees the blood-soaked sacrifice of his beloved son. And then he commands his angels to take one of the glowing coals that surround the foot of the cross and to touch our lips with the coal. Christian speech about God needs to be purified. I fear that too many of the Christian books that we publish, the Christian sermons that we preach, and the Christian discourse that we share at the Bible study table are unclean. We worship God in the local church with unclean lips. We need to beg God to purify our speech about Him, else we continue to take His holy name in vain. And then we speak to the unbelievers. And we say, oh, unbelieving listener, do not be a hearer only of this word. For if you only hear it, but do not obey it, your sin never shall be atoned for. If you are not yet converted to Christ, then your lips are still unclean. You may speak with flattering lips and others may eat up your flatteries and reward them with hearty approbations. But if you are not born of the Holy Spirit, all of your discourse is unclean, is filthy before God. This is true because your heart is unclean. You are not a good person, loving God and loving others with good intentions. Instead, you live in constant rejection of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over your soul. And so all of the intentions of your heart have been wicked all of the time. Since you have not glorified God in your heart, the fullness of its inner territories is unclean. Your heart is not healthy as your friends would judge it to be, but rather it is sick and full of putrefying sores, exposed in the light of God's holiness. Your whole life has been vile, flowing with condemnable lusts and deserving the fierce outpouring of God's wrath against it. Yet there is hope for you, O broken sinner. You cannot atone for your own sins. They have been committed. They are done and cannot be undone. You cannot pardon your own crimes. They are already committed and you are already condemned. Yet there is an altar of atonement to which you are invited to appeal and by which you are assured of the appeals success. Namely, the cross of Christ is the heavenly altar from which may be taken your own burning coal of atonement. The blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God is able to atone for even your sins. By that blood, your heart can be made clean. By faith in the Son of God, the Lamb slain for your sins, your heart can be cleansed, can be made new in the promised Holy Spirit so that your mouth can be made for the first time to sing praises unto God in a clean and holy and righteous manner. Lastly, then there is the mission. After Isaiah's lips have been cleansed by the glowing coal, God gives him the mission. Isaiah 6, 8, also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me. Is this a missionary verse? Well, two things must be kept in mind here. First, Isaiah is not sent to a foreign overseas people group. His mission is to preach to his own people, the Israelites. Second, in regard to Isaiah as a missionary, most people would call the prophet Isaiah a huge, gigantic failure. In his mission, he does not convert most of the nation of Israel to Christ. Rather, he proclaims the glory of God to Israel, and as a result of his preaching, he is both rejected and murdered by Israel. He dies a martyr. If this is missionary work, then it is daunting work indeed. For here is Isaiah's mission, Isaiah 6, 9 through 10. And he said, go and tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull. and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed." Isaiah must preach to a people who are ever seeing, but never really seeing. Isaiah sees God, at least gets a glimpse of God's infinitely holy throne room in heaven. but the people to whom he is called will not see God. They will not see God because their eyes are closed, sealed over as with plaster. They cannot see God because they will not see God. Their hearts are hardened just like the hardened hearts of Israel in the wilderness. What is it then? Does God harden Israel's heart? Or does Israel harden her own heart? This is an explosive question to be sure. For Augustine, Luther, and Calvin would answer it their own erring way. And it has become quite popular in our generation for conservative Christians to follow them, even divisively so, down that erring way. Yet the earliest church fathers from the earliest times, even the times of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, exposed the God dishonoring novelty of Augustine's teachings on the bondage of the human will by their own expositions of the freedom of the human will in the process of salvation. Isaiah's message is not that God is purposefully keeping Israel blind apart from any will of her own, since Israel has no freedom of the will remaining with which to repent and turn to God, but rather, that He is judging her in wrath by giving her over to her own willful blindness. He is handing her over to her own willful blindness. That is, whenever we see the Word of God set before us, we can never walk away from it unchanged. Either we will repent of our own volition, but always aided by the glorious work of the Holy Spirit, and believe God's word, and so see Christ Jesus in it, or else we willfully will reject God's word, disbelieve it, and become even blinder than we were before. God knows in advance that Israel will not believe Isaiah's message, and so he uses his prophet the great prophet Isaiah, to thrust them into an ever increasing blindness. This then is not a pleasant prophetic assignment. Isaiah's calling is to proclaim the gospel to his own people, knowing in advance that they will close their eyes, shut their ears, and gnash their teeth at him. Thus Isaiah very logically cries out, Lord, How long? And here is the difficult answer from God. Isaiah 6, 11 through 12. Then I said, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. The mission of Isaiah is one of judgment. If he executes his mission faithfully, the result will not be a mega church on every block of the city. Rather, the result will be ruined cities, burned to the ground, and forsaken peoples taken as captives into exile. If Isaiah is faithful to his calling, the fruit of that faithfulness will be the desolation of wayward Israel. He is called to preach judgment. How many ministers of the gospel today are willing to be ministers of the gospel who are called by God to preach judgment against their own rebellious people? Ah, but the Lord of judgment is also the Lord of mercy. And in the end, for the elect of God, mercy shall triumph over judgment. Isaiah 6, 13, but yet a tenth will be in it and will return and be for consuming as a terebinth tree or as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump. The tree shall be cut down in judgment, but the stump shall remain. A fire will consume the forest But after the fire, the seedlings will sprout. There is, says God, a holy seed, a remnant that will survive this vast fiery judgment. And what or who is this seed? We are the seed. We are the seed of Christ. The holy seed promised to Christ. The fruit of his sufferings. but only a 10th, a stump, a remnant shall remain. Oh, dear Christian, are you a lonely pilgrim? Has the Lord of the heavenly hosts given you a glimpse of his infinite holiness? And then if you discovered that many people around you hate it, whenever you speak to them in all love and sincerity about this thrice holy God. Like Elijah, do you ever feel all alone? Has the judgment of God so fallen upon the fattened, hard-hearted evangelical church that you are disheartened in your search for Christians who are not at least somewhat deaf or partially blind to the God of Isaiah 6? If you feel lonely in the current compromised church, remember that there is always a holy seed. Christ and his true offspring are that holy seed and there is a remnant. There are at least 7,000 or even 70 times 7,000 still around you. Although you cannot see them, you are not alone. Listen then to the voices of the remnant, cheering you on in your sufferings for the gospel. Listen to the voice of Isaiah the prophet, who was rejected and martyred, saying to you, you are not alone. Listen too to the voice of James, the brother of John, who was killed by Herod's cruel sword. Listen to his voice. and to the voices of the multitudes from the history of the church who have been slain for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus, saying to you, you are part of a holy seed. You are not alone. Listen most of all to the voice of the risen Lord Jesus, speaking to you from the midst of the throne of heaven, surrounded by the seraphim and saying to you, behold, I am with you always, even until the very end of the age. And thus when we reach the end of the fight and so finish the race and thus have kept the faith, we shall be greeted by the joyful trumpet blasts of the welcoming angels of heaven and surrounded by a vast multitude of saints, which no one can count, all greeting us in the love of the King of Heaven. And so we shall not be alone at all, but shall be with the Lord forever and shall fall down before Him. and worship Him in the glory of the splendor of His infinite holiness, time everlasting, joy undiminishing, holiness perfected, world without end. Amen. So as we now close and come to the Lord's table this morning, we come this morning to the table of the infinitely holy Son of God. Before we come, here is the doxology. Praise be to God, our Father, who is holy, holy, holy. Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, who has provided the sacrifice of atonement for the utter uncleanness of our sins. And praise be to the Holy Spirit, who has made us the seed of Christ, a remnant reserved for his own glory. Amen.