I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles at this time to Paul's letter to the Galatians, Galatians chapter 4. You're reading the first seven verses of Galatians 4 tonight, and looking at this portion of God's Word as we consider as well the Belgic Confession, Article 18, which speaks of the incarnation of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, taking on flesh. So again, reading from Galatians 4. Galatians 4, page 1,238. And then we'll read also from the Belgian Confession, Article 18, which is page 171 in your Forms and Prayers book. So page 171 in the Forms and Prayers book for Belgian Confession, Article 18. But reading first from the Word of God, Galatians chapter 4. So hear now the holy and infallible Word of our God. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. And thus ends our reading from God's Word here tonight. And again, we're looking at this in connection with Article 18 of the Belgian Confession on the Incarnation. So in Article 18, there we confess So then we confess that God fulfilled the promise which He had made to the early fathers by the mouth of His holy prophets when He sent His only and eternal Son into the world at the time set by Him. The Son took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man, truly assuming a real human nature with all its weaknesses except for sin. being conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit without male participation. And He not only assumed human nature as far as the body is concerned, but also a real human soul, in order that He might be a real human being. For since the soul had been lost as well as the body, he had to assume them both to save them both together. Therefore, we confess against the heresy of the Anabaptists who deny that Christ assumed human flesh from his mother, that he shared the very flesh and blood of children, that he is fruit of the loins of David according to the flesh. born of the seed of David according to the flesh, fruit of the womb of the Virgin Mary, born of a woman, the seed of David, the shoot from the root of Jesse, the offspring of Judah, having descended from the Jews according to the flesh, from the seed of Abraham, for he assumed Abraham's seed and was made like his brothers except for sin. In this way, He is truly our Emmanuel, that is, God with us. And this ends our reading from the Confession here tonight. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the beautiful truth we began to look at last week in our time together was that we have a God who is a seeking God. God sees us in our sin, in our misery, and He chases after us. He seeks us out. He runs to find and embrace us, even though we in our sin turn away from Him, God comes looking for us. Just like the Father in the parable of the prodigal son, God is eager to unfold us in His arms of love and mercy, to embrace us in His grace. He opens our minds to see our sin and misery. He opens our minds to see that there is grace to be found with Him. And as we turn to Him in repentance and faith, He quickly forgives and restores us in His grace. And He continually invites us, invites us to enter into the joy of His salvation. God marvelously seeks us to find and embrace us in His grace. And that was the first way in which we began to look at how God seeks us, how God chases after us. But here tonight, in Article 18, we're reminded of the chief, or the primary way in which God seeks us out. And that is by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to take on our flesh and to die for us on the cross. The chief way we see God chasing after us is in the coming of Jesus Christ. You see, if we really want to be convinced of God's willingness to save us, if we really want to be certain of God's seeking us out to free us from our sin and misery, the most important place we can look, the first place we should always look, is to Christ. Now, I know for many of you that's nothing you haven't heard before. But I would really like to stress this point for a moment, because it again has been impressed upon me that there is often great difficulty we have as God's people, as God's children, to find true assurance of salvation. I know that it is a lifelong struggle for many of us. We struggle, we so struggle to find this assurance of salvation. We are always being tossed about, you might say, by many doubts and fears and worries. Am I really saved? Am I really forgiven? Am I really God's child? We struggle so hard to find that rock solid, I know I am saved in Jesus Christ. And it can be so elusive. And part of the reason why I think that is is because we're always tempted to find that root of assurance, that ground of assurance in ourselves. And that's why we so struggle. There's so much sin in me. There's so much weakness in me. I fail so many times and so I struggle to be assured of my salvation because as I look inside my own heart and soul, I still see so much sin. But you see, the point is that the ground of our assurance, the basis of our assurance can never be found in ourselves. It always has to be in Christ. It has to be found in Jesus. And you see, that's one reason why coming again to speak and to focus upon the incarnation of Christ is so important. even for as familiar as it may be, because we see once again how all of our assurance, all of our hope, all of our confidence is to be found in Christ and knowing who He is and all that He has done. In looking at the incarnation, we see how God has fulfilled the promise of salvation. That's really what I invite us all to see here tonight, that God has fulfilled His promise of salvation in giving us, in sending to us Jesus. So as we look at that together here tonight, in consideration with the Galatians 4, I'd really like to take note of three things that Paul kind of refers to, you might say, here in verses four and five. That he first of all speaks of the fullness of time. Secondly, he speaks of the full humanity of Jesus. And then thirdly, the fully blessed Christian. So the fullness of time, the full humanity of Jesus, and the full blessedness of the Christian. So in our passage here, Paul speaks first of all of the fullness of time. He says, Now what does that mean? What does the fullness of time mean? What is that? One of the ways that people often take this language about the fullness of time is to take it as a description of, you might say, how Jesus came at the appropriate time, or that Jesus came at the suitable time. What people mean by that is really to look at the circumstances of life in Jesus' day. They'll point to the dominance, you might say, or the rule of Rome over the ancient world, and how because Rome controlled basically most of the known world at that time, there was great peace that provided safety and protection, you might say, for Jesus throughout his ministry and even for his disciples thereafter. And people will also point to the mighty Roman infrastructure, you might say. Their roads, the roads that they built and how these roads really enabled the gospel message to go forth very quickly to all the four reaches of the empire at that time. People have also pointed to how the people in Jesus' day, the general population, you might say, of Greeks and Gentiles, they had grown very tired of their old religions in the day of Christ. This was a time when they were starting to think very critically of their old religions that they inherited from their fathers. There was great dissatisfaction. with the ancient religions as Jesus came upon the scene. Philosophy as well was blooming, and yet there was great division. People weren't sure where they could find the answers, who they could turn to. There was a lot of questioning, a lot of seeking for answers. And the Jewish nation itself was also very disillusioned. They're scattered all abroad. They're very dissatisfied themselves with the way things are going. They're under this oppressive power. And there's all these fractures as well within the Jewish nation, all these different religious groups fighting and saying this and doing that. There's great general dissatisfaction. And so people point at this and they look at these things and say, see, isn't this amazing what God was doing, that God was really preparing things for the coming of Christ, this great dissatisfaction, this great peace, this great infrastructure, all these things God was making ready for Christ to come on the scene so that everybody was ready to receive this news. And it really is remarkable when you begin to look at it in those ways, to see the kind of the way in which God was preparing the world for the coming of Christ. But when Paul speaks here of the fullness of time, it isn't primarily about how this was a suitable time for Jesus to be born. that it's all about the earthly situation that Christ enters into. But instead, the idea of the fullness of time is to stress that Jesus came at the very moment God had decreed and decided. So it's not about the character of the moment, but really that this is the specific moment God Himself had chosen the fullness of His time. And to really help us understand that, I think we need to turn back to verses 1 and 2 of Galatians 4. At the beginning of this chapter, Paul is painting a picture of what life was like for ancient Israel, that they were like a son, a young boy in the house of their father. And in that world, when you were the son of your father, you were put in the care of tutors and guardians. And you went through a very specific training program. And you went through this guardianship and this tutorship so that you might be ready when you're older to finally take control of your father's estate. And Paul is saying ancient Israel was in this kind of situation where they were like a son under guardians and tutors. And so they didn't have the possessions, they didn't have the fullness of their father's estate. In fact, their life was very much similar to a slave. the father's estate might belong to them in principle, but the son, being a child, being a boy, did not possess that estate in reality. It was maybe his in principle, but not in reality. Instead, he had to wait. And the point is, he had to wait until the day the father decided, now he was a man, now he was ready, now's the time for him to gain possession, you might say. And that's the idea. That's the idea, that when God decided that this is the moment, this is the time for Christ to come into the world, it wasn't just some accident, it wasn't some idle, meaningless whim on God's part, but this was the specific time and moment that God had decided for now the fullness of His blessings and His mercy to be found and received and to be known. And really, it kind of stresses the reality of how God, ever since the garden was speaking of the joys and the privileges and the blessings to come, God gave promise after promise after promise, didn't He? And as the prophets came on the scene, God sort of fleshed out the picture more and more and more of what would one day come and what would one day be given. And you see, that night, that very night when Christ was born, was the very moment God had decided for that to take place, the very moment God had decided to bring the day of fruition and fullness and fulfillment. And you see, that's the point that Article 18 makes for us as well, that when we look at the very coming of Christ into the world, we're to see that as a specific choice of God by which He now turned a corner, if you will, and He said, now is the moment that I will fulfill my promises to you. That's the way Article 18 puts it. that God fulfilled the promise He made to the earthly fathers by the mouth of His holy prophets when He sent His Son into the world at the time set by Him. Christ came at the time God set, God had appointed, God had decided for that transition to take place from this life as a slave even, if you will, to the time where now we may have the status of sons. What's the significance of that? Well, for one thing, even as I've said, it kind of changes the way we look at the Old Testament, doesn't it? Because it emphasizes, underscores how God was, again, preparing the way and pointing our eyes forward to this specific moment where we could have the maturity and we could have the fullness brought to us. The fulfillment of all his promises, the eager anticipation might be there and now met in this very moment when Christ comes on the scene. But what that also does, I think, too, is stress the reality of the day in which we're now living. You know, it's so easy to forget that, isn't it? We look at the world around us and we think, what is going on here and what's happening, and it's terrible, and this day and age in which we live, oh, it's horrible, and I don't even want to think of what's coming next. But it's to say that the day in which we live is truly exciting, isn't it? This is a glorious day. This is an awesome day. We live during some very momentous, significant, and wonderful times. These days are awesome. And they are awesome because the fullness of time has now come. Because God sent Christ into the world, we're living in the fullness of the time. We're living in this moment where God's promises are being actualized, where they're being fulfilled, where they're being poured out upon us, his children. We live in the fullness, the fullness of the age. You see, that's what Christ has brought to us with his entrance into the world. We are really living in a very, very exciting day, brothers and sisters. These are days to be happy in, to rejoice in, because we are living in the fullness of time, when God has sent forth His Son and is now pouring out upon us promise after promise, blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace, and life. So God, through Paul, is calling us to appreciate the glory of the times in which we're now living because Christ has come into the world. So God sent his Son in the fullness of time to fulfill his promises, to make them realized for us. But the next thing Paul speaks of here in Galatians 4 is of how God accomplished that by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, and sending Him to take on the fullness of our human nature. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. And the point is that by taking on our flesh, Christ really did become fully human. He became like us. But what does it mean that Jesus was born of a woman? Kind of an interesting way of putting it, isn't it? Wouldn't we say just born? Why born of a woman? What's going on here? Well, Paul is stressing, he's underlining the genuine humanity of Jesus. And he's referring to how Christ's birth was just like our own. He was born the same way as the entire human race. You might say that there was even nothing unique about Christ's birth. Now, I know we know the story of Christ's birth, and Magi from the East, and those days, whatever decree went out from Caesar Augustus, and so forth. We know all that, and we know angels appeared, and so forth. Yes, all those things took place, but the birth of Jesus itself, the very event of his birth, was entirely normal. It was an entirely normal human birth. There was nothing unique about it. Christ was born of a woman just as we all were. Entirely natural, normal event. But as our confession also points out, this language of Christ being born of a woman also means that Christ, you might say, assumed His human flesh from His mother. That might seem a strange way of putting it, but it's just as we confess in the Nicene Creed that Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. That's very intentional language. Very intentional language to say that Jesus' human nature was derived from, taken from, the Virgin Mary. So if you looked at Jesus, Jesus would resemble Mary. Jesus had her genes. If you examine the DNA of Jesus, it would show the DNA of Mary in it. He shared some of her own physical characteristics and so forth. Now, that might seem very weird. Why do we have to say that? Why is that so significant and important? But really, it's absolutely crucial to our faith and our salvation. See, there are Christians who have in the past denied that Jesus received his humanity from Mary. They denied that Jesus truly had a human nature that was taken from Mary. They said instead that Jesus had maybe a human nature that was prepared in heaven and then simply implanted in Mary's womb so that Jesus' humanity went through her like water through a pipe, that he was in Mary but not really of Mary. But the church has said, no, he is of Mary. He's of Mary, and that's why he is our Emmanuel. He was not simply born of Mary, his human nature was of Mary. And you see, in that way, he's connected to us. If Christ didn't take his humanity from Mary, now he's of a different, entirely human race. He wouldn't be part of us. He wouldn't be connected to us. He'd be off by himself. And the point is, then we would be lost. Only because Jesus has united himself truly to us, united himself to us through Mary, can we truly have salvation. Christ's unity with us, you see, in his human nature, has been forged with us through Mary. That's why some confession like this is so significant, being born of a woman, born of Mary. He is of Mary, and in that way, his union with us is secured and ensured, and we may then have his salvation as he truly unites himself with us. That's why this confession is so important, and why we reject the heresy, it says, of the Anabaptists, because they deny that. We believe it. And it's all for our salvation. And so Paul alludes to this very fact in speaking of Christ being born of a woman. But he goes on to speak of Christ's full humanity as well in terms of being born under the law. Now what does that mean, being born under the law? Well, really, Paul is bringing to a climax the reality of Christ's full humanity. And that Christ didn't simply unite Himself to us in terms of human nature, but He also united Himself to us by, as it were, entering into our own human condition, our own condition. That He, Christ, in a sense, became like us spiritually. in the sense of allowing himself to be brought into the same situation before God's law, that he placed himself under the responsibilities and duties of the law. Even though he's the lawgiver, he comes, takes on flesh, and becomes underneath that very law so that he is subject to the law. So that means that Christ places Himself in a situation of having to obey that law perfectly. Deuteronomy 27 says, "...cursed be anyone who does not conform to the words of this law by doing them." Leviticus 18, "...you shall therefore keep My statutes and My rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. I am the Lord." See, the law says you must obey me. You must do everything I say. You must do everything I require. And Jesus, in taking on flesh, brings himself subject to that. So that he must keep the law or he will die. He must keep the law in perfection in order to obtain life and salvation. So Jesus puts himself into that situation for us. He enters into our human condition where he must obey the law of God just as much as you and I do. But it goes further than that, doesn't it? Because part of God's beautiful plan in sending his son to take on our flesh and become man is that he not only has to obey the law, but he now also puts himself in a situation where he willingly takes up the curse of the law upon himself. So we heard Good Friday, wasn't it? That Christ willingly takes up as well the penalty of breaking the law. Christ gave this law, and he obeyed it perfectly, and yet he also places himself in this situation where he takes upon himself the curse of that law, so that he dies under its judgment. He dies under its condemnation. And in that way, Christ truly enters into our human situation, doesn't he? He enters into the fullness of the reality of our life in this world. We owe God perfect obedience, and Jesus entered into that situation. We owe God death. We owe God everlasting destruction because we've sinned against Him, and Jesus puts Himself in that situation too. See, from the beginning of His entry into this world, Christ fully entered into not just our human nature, our humanity, but he truly enters into our human situation so that we who are enslaved to the law might be made free. He takes up all the duties and responsibilities of the law of God so that we can have all the promises of the law of God. See, in this way, again, Paul is stressing the full humanity of Jesus. He lived the genuine human life. He didn't simply have the genuine human physical nature, body and soul, but he lived the genuine human life. He did and he fulfilled all that God requires of humanity. And that is the awesome reality of Christ's incarnation, the Son of God who becomes fully human, the Son of God who yet enters into our human condition so there He owes God all obedience and where He takes upon Himself the curse of God's law. And the beauty of this is then, that's exactly why Christ understands us. You know, we try to remind one another of that all the time, don't we? Christ understands. Christ understands. And I think there's usually this sense in which we sort of scoff at that. How can Christ really understand? Christ was perfect. Christ is God, the Son in the flesh. How can Christ really understand? But the scriptures say this to convince us that Jesus does understand. He lived a genuine human life. He knows what it is to have to obey God's law. He knows the difficulty of obeying God's law. He knows the challenge of obeying God's law. He knows the full power of the enticements of the evil one. He knows the sorrow of betrayal. He knows the strength of our earthly desires. He understands the challenge of fully living for the glory of God, loving Him heart, soul, mind, and strength. He knows. He knows it better than you do yourself. And you see, the scriptures teach us that for our own comfort. It points us again and again and again to the full humanity of Jesus so that we might understand that's what secures our salvation. He does everything we need to do as a fully human man. And he then is our sympathetic and our compassionate high priest who truly understands all that we face, all that we have to endure, all that we struggle with, all the pains and the sorrows and the reality of human life, and he is there then to care for us, to build us up, to strengthen us, and to bless us. You know, the scriptures are not ashamed of presenting to us a fully human Christ. They're not ashamed of presenting to us God the Son in full human nature and existence. And it's not ashamed of that. It doesn't hide from that. It doesn't deny it or try to sweep it aside because it's trying to reveal to us that our salvation is found in God the Son truly taking on the likeness, the fullness of our human life and existence. and to find in that our great assurance that we then are blessed and accepted by God. And that's really where Paul ends then, isn't it? He ends by emphasizing the fullness of blessing we have in Christ exactly because He took on flesh and is fully human. He writes, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. Now again, earlier in the chapter, Paul talked there about how the Israelites, although they were, you might say, God's sons, their life was kind of like slavery. They were living under the law, they were living according to all those regulations and demands and ceremonies and so forth. Although they were like children who were the heirs of everything, they were no different than a slave, you might say, in God's house. And they were to remain that way until the time appointed by the Father, and that time was the coming of Jesus. And so with Christ's coming, a new era has been introduced, even as we heard this morning. A new age, an age of fullness, an age of fulfillment. And you see, Paul is impressing that upon us. And he's saying, don't you realize that because Christ came and because Christ took on our human nature and lived the genuine human life, don't you realize that because of that, we in Christ have now moved forward? We are in a fuller, we are in a richer position in the family of God than the Israelites were in the Old Testament. We have been brought forward. We have received that which they were anticipating. They were looking at this from afar and saying, oh, how I wish this day would come. Oh, how I wish I could have these promises fulfilled. And Paul is saying, you are in that place. You have been brought to that place, the blessings, the promises, the fullness of God's mercy and grace now being poured out upon you. You have this. It's been secured for you by Christ with His coming. And Paul is then rebuking the Galatians in that way because, as you remember, they're wanting to go back to the law. And Paul's saying, why would you ever go back to the law? Don't you realize you're traveling backwards? In a sense, Paul's saying, you know, that'd be like an adult who has their own home, their own car, their own priceless inheritance, and they say, well, you know what? I really would rather not have this, and I wanna go back to being a little child in my parents' home. You know, sometimes that appeals to us. We kind of joke. Life gets tough. There's a lot of responsibilities. We say, oh, wouldn't it be so much easier if we were kids again? You know, when you're a kid, you don't have to worry about, you know, feeding anybody. You don't have to worry about providing for anybody. You don't have to worry about a job. You don't have to worry about all these things, all these headaches that come along with being older, with having these responsibilities. And we say, oh, wouldn't it be so good to be a child again? But really, Would any of us trade our maturity and the privileges and the blessings that come from being of age? Would we trade that? Would we really trade that to go back to being a child again in our parents' homes, where we are dressed as they want us to be dressed, as they place all these rules and guidelines and regulations upon us that very tightly define all that we can do and all the places we can go? Do we really want to trade, as it were, the freedom that we have as mature adults and enter back into this childish situation where we live as slaves, as it were? And if we're really honest, we would say no. We don't want to give up these blessings of full maturity to enter into this situation of slavery again. And you see, Paul is saying that to the church. He's saying, don't you realize again that in Christ, you have come to maturity. You have come to maturity. You are now God's Son, and the inheritance is now yours, and God's estate is now yours, and you have all the rights and the privileges of a mature adult son or daughter in the house of God. He says, in Christ, you have received adoption as sons. And as you all know, when you adopt a child, they become your child. All the blessings, all the privileges of life in your home become theirs. And that's what Paul is stressing here. And think about it for a moment. Think about it for a moment. You have become God's son, and that means you have the rights of God's son. We have no rights in ourselves, but in Christ we have a right to enter the kingdom of heaven. God has a kingdom of heaven. He has the new heavens and the new earth for his children, and because of Christ, and through faith in Christ, you become God's son, and you have a right to enter into that new heavens and new earth. You have a right to live in that new heavens and the new earth. Just think about, you have a right to that. It's not just that you have this lovely little welcome from God, oh yes, you can come in, you can sit down, and you can rest here in this new land. No, you have a right to it. It is yours. Because of Christ, as it were, you deserve it. It belongs to you. It must be given to you. It's not an option. It is your right, this new heavens and new earth. That you have the rights, that you are a son of God means that you have the rights to the blessings that are found in God's house. What are the blessings of God's house? Think about it. What are the blessings that are found in God's house? In God's house there is life, everlasting life. In God's house there is peace forevermore. In God's house there is love and there is kindness. In God's house there is true and complete satisfaction where we never hunger or thirst ever again. In God's house there is joy, the joy of knowing Him and being fully known by Him. In God's house there is no darkness, no pain, no division, no disharmony. There's nothing bad, there's nothing painful, there's nothing hurtful. Scripture tells us that in Christ we have the right to rule over the heavens and the earth. We will be seated with Christ in the heavenly realms to rule over all creation. In Christ there is the right to bodily resurrection, to perfection. And you see, don't you realize because of Christ, because in Him you have received the adoption as sons, you have a right to all these things. You have a right to all these blessings. And Paul is saying, because Christ has come, and because He took on our flesh, and because He was born of a woman and born under the law, you have received adoption as sons, and you now have the right, the right to God's house, the right to His blessings. All these things are yours. And you are living in a day that that is beginning to be given to you. You are already now beginning to receive the fullness of all those blessings of God's house. And really, what more can Paul say than that? We aren't children, little children living as slaves in the house of God. We are full, mature sons in the house of God. And why would we ever go back? We have everything they were ever longing for. Because Christ has come and because he took on flesh, we have become the children of God. It's all ours and we have a right to it. And I know sometimes we're scared of that language, but you see, that's truly the case in Christ. We have a right to all these things. And that is captured for us in this very simple language, an idea that God is now our Father. Do you see how significant it is that we can call God our Father? When we say that God is our Father, we are claiming that we are His children. And we are saying that His house and His blessings are ours. They are truly ours. We say God is our Father, we are His children, and these blessings are ours. And Christ wants us to embrace that, too. Do you remember what happened after Christ rose from the grave? He met Mary Magdalene, and He talks to her, and He says to her, go to my brothers. That's new, isn't it? Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Again, the parable of the prodigal son. The son comes back and the father restores his wayward son to give him the status as son. Once again, to bring him back into this place where he has the inheritance. He has a right to the home and to the family and to its blessings. And Paul is saying, you have all that in Christ because He took on flesh, because He came into this world, lived the genuine, fully human life. And so Christ has redeemed you from the law, and you have been adopted as God's Son, and you now have the fullness of blessing. You have the fullness of God's inheritance now, today, being poured out upon you because Christ came in the fullness of time. And again, as we back up and we take a look at this, this is how you see, this is how you see that God really is chasing after us, that God really is seeking us even though we run from Him. We see it most clearly in this way in Christ who became man in order that we could be reconciled with Him and adopted as His children. You see it there and you see what assurance we can have because of that. Right, brothers and sisters? You can see what assurance we can have. The assurance of being able to say, this new heavens and new earth belongs to me by right, the right of Christ. And I will live forever in the new heavens and the new earth, because that is my right in Jesus Christ. And I will know God's love, and I will be cherished by Him forever, and I will be free of all pain and sorrow, and I will have a perfect body and soul, and I will be set free to worship God for all of eternity, because that's my right. My right in Jesus Christ. because He took on flesh and He did all that God requires of me. And He has earned in my place that right. And so as I come to Him in faith, I may know, I may know with every fiber of my being that that blessing, that life belongs to me. It is mine, and I may claim it. It is mine, and I need not doubt it. It is mine, because of Christ, God's incarnate Son. See, this doctrine of Christ's incarnation is so, so vital to our faith in our salvation. Vital to our comfort and our joy before God. It is behind all our confidence in calling upon Him as a Father. It is our confidence as we go through this earthly life and as we face those doors of death, that confidence which is able to say, this is mine. It is mine because of Christ. because the Son of God took on flesh and came in the fullness of time that I might be adopted as His Son. Our glorious Brother has done it all, united Himself with us, that we might be forever united with God, to know His favor and His blessing. And so we are again to feed upon this glorious truth, this glorious doctrine and teaching of Christ, who came fully into our human life. to win for us the right of the children of God. And so may Christ receive all our praise and glory, and may we all have great assurance of salvation in Him, our Lord and our brother. Amen. Let's pray. Oh Lord, our God, as we come before you tonight again, we come with grateful hearts at the opportunity to see Jesus, to see Christ. and to see the wonder of His humiliation in taking on our flesh, entering into our human condition, and how He was born of a woman and born under the law. He came for that very reason, to redeem us from the law and bring us the adoption as sons. O Lord, our God and Father, help us to see the beauty of Christ's coming in the fullness of time. Help us to understand the glory of what He's won for us and obtained for us and what we can now have already here today. That these blessings, as it were, are ours for the taking. That these blessings are ours for the receiving as we look to Christ in faith. And so, Father, may none of us be here with a hardened heart of unbelief. May none of us here be lost and trapped in our sins, but may we see the beauty of Christ and come to Him in faith, to come to Him in faith that we may truly be enfolded by You, our Father, loved by You, cherished by You, and receive the fullness of Your blessing. And Father, may we then, as we go into this week again, go forth in the assurance of all Your mercies and grace toward us, confident that You, Father, are giving us all good things, that we have that status in Your home of full sons, heirs of Your kingdom and Your glory. So bless us, Father, as we turn to You. Fill us with all manner of joy that we may truly praise, honor, and glorify Your name in all that we say and do. We ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.