This morning we're going to talk about the Spirit of the Law versus, the letter of the law versus the Spirit of the Law. And this is a, there are some things about this I think is a timely is timely to... it's always timely, because it's God's Word, so there's not a time when it's not really timely, I guess. But in our culture today, I think it's very timely. So, now there's... I want to contrast a little bit here between man's law and God's law. Man's law, or our civil laws, the laws that govern our culture, There are times when man's law, our laws and regulations that we have, as a culture, they are, there is the idea of the spirit of the law and the letter of the law that would be, that you lose the spirit of the law by adhering to the letter of the law. I'll give you an example, a couple examples. The first example is one in the town that I grew up in and there was a man, I think I may have mentioned this story before, but there was a man who had a small farm and at the time the deer population in Leavenworth County was had exploded. And in the past, the conservation department had relied on hunters to take care of that. But as time went on, there wasn't that many hunters and there was a lot more deer. This deer began to destroy this man's property, the crops he was planting. and even would destroy his equipment because he would have issues where he would actually pick up their skeletal remains and things like that. They started getting the whole blue tongue disease and dying. And so this man started shooting him on his property and he shot him. And we're talking, I'm not talking about there was a few deer. We're not talking about that. We're talking about there was hundreds of deer. Hundreds of deer. I know some of you like seeing them, and you think, oh, they're so pretty and everything out there. I can assure you, after you've seen 100 or 200 of them in one scene, you're not, you get tired of seeing them. But they were destroying his crops, and they were causing lots of, and so he started, he got out of the conservation department over several years, tried to get them to do something about it. They wouldn't do anything about it. And he started shooting them. He piled them up behind his barn and the conservation department caught wind of it and they went out and they checked and he had like 80 some deer piled up, dead deer out piled up behind a barn. Well, they arrested him for poaching and they were going to give him all kinds of fines. They assessed all kinds of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines. Now, the laws that he violated were laws to keep people from poaching deer. They were not laws that were meant to let an out-of-control wildlife population destroy your property. And thankfully, through level heads and attorneys, this man got off. The conservation department was completely out of line. Now, there were some of the sheriff's deputies, and the sheriff himself was not out of line. He thought it was ridiculous and that. But anyway, you can see the conflict there in man's law between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Now, just recently, United States Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has a new book out, and the title of the book is overruled the human toll of too much law." This, I'll read you this short little article here from the, where did I get this from, New York Times someplace. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in Overruled, The Human Toll of Too Much Law, throws the book at the law, telling the story of what he sees as a nation at risk from an explosion of new laws. Gorsuch, who was nominated to the high court by former President Donald Trump and took to the bench in 2017, wrote in his new book that law in America has swallowed up ordinary people, though he said it's done so with the best of intentions. I've been a judge for about 18 years, Gorsuch said in an interview with the Supreme Court, and I just saw so many cases where ordinary Americans, decent, hardworking Americans, were just trying to make their way in life. They weren't trying to hurt anybody, and yet they were caught up in the legal system in ways they couldn't hardly affect. Gorsuch said in his book, and in his, his is a book of stories about the cases he and others have seen from fishermen in Florida to monks in Louisiana and a magician in Missouri. Their experience in a world where law has really exploded just in our lifetimes, Gorsuch said. The stories are emblematic of a world in which we just have so much law, Gorsuch said. He noted that federal crimes, now this is interesting, this is true, I would assume that He would be telling the truth. He would have researched this. He noted that federal crimes have nearly doubled in his lifetime, saying nobody knows how many federal crimes there are because it would take years just to read them. I suppose that'd be like the IRS book, right? We have more people serving life sentences today than we had serving any sentence in 1970, or thereabouts, he added. So that's the world that we live in. The Justice posted that a lack of trust in a polarized political environment where some view the other party as evil has made Americans unable to speak to one another and listen more. Blah, blah, blah, it goes on. But the point is, and he's making, and I believe it to be true, I believe it is a problem, is that there's all these laws. Our culture is buried in a quagmire of laws and regulations. I regularly correspond with people from California And it is like a completely different world than what you're used to living in Missouri, especially me living in the middle of nowhere in Missouri. But this quagmire of laws and regulations, they often overlap, and they even run contrary to one another. property rights, there's personal property, I'll give you an example of things that I know, personal property, people that have a lot of, I have several friends that have a lot of cars, they buy cars and trucks and they take parts from one, and they basically have a personal salvage yard. Well that's fine, but in reality, they're supposed to be paying personal property tax on every one of those vehicles. which would absolutely break them by the law. Now, you can get a salvage yard license, which they won't hardly, which the state of Kansas will not hardly issue anymore. But for the most part, that just gets overlooked. It's just personal stuff. Nobody really does anything about it. They're personal things. But I have known of instances where somebody decides they want to use that property for something else, and they go after them. They try to use those laws to get them off of their property. My own experience in working in quarries and the spectacular government agency known as MSHAW, which is the Mining Safety and Health Administration, will admit to you, and they have to my face many times, that they don't even know, they don't even have a definition of many of the violations that they cite. But MSHA is a federal agency, and when they come on mine property, Whatever they say is the law. It doesn't make any difference. And they can shut you down. They can call in the marshals, and they can shut down a mine operation within a few hours. And yet, the regulations that the companies are trying to follow are totally fluid. One day they're this, the next day they're that. Me, myself, as a contractor, I have a contractor ID. And there is no way that I could possibly legally enter a mine site in my service truck with my own tools. It's literally just a matter of whether or not the inspector decides to have me take out everything in my truck and go through it or not. Literally, I'm five foot two. I buy a 20-pound sledgehammer. Has anybody here ever swung a 20-pound sledgehammer? Do you know what it's like? Do you know what it's like as a five-foot-two guy to swing a sledgehammer that's 42 inches tall with a 20-pound head on the end of it? So what do I do? I cut the handles off so they fit me, right? Just like I assume if you golf, you have golf clubs that fit you. You know, if I'm swinging a 20-pound sledgehammer, I use that, right? The second I cut that handle, it's a violation of MSHAW. So what am I going to do? Stand up on top of a conveyor, swing a 42 inch long one and fall off of it? Or am I going to cut the handle down and where I can handle it? It's just, there's so many, I could go on for days about the regulations. Again, they're so fluid, there's no way, and I feel for the company that one of the companies that I do work for, they have a complete department. I can't imagine the millions of dollars they spend a year trying to be in compliance and it can literally change from inspector to inspector. Now, again, I'm contrasting this against God's law and how Man's laws are so impotent, at the least, in trying to achieve. If any of you are familiar with this Chevron deference case that went before the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court said, these agencies cannot just make their own laws. It's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out over the next several years. And it has very, very wide implications of things that go on day to day in this country. Now, let's shift gears if we can. I'm going to come back to that, but let's shift gears. We're going to talk about, let's focus on God's law and this idea of the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, or the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. All erroneous systems of belief share in common the fact that several props or ideas are necessary to support them. The fact that the belief system is false necessarily implies that one or more of the props or the ideas are false. But the mere presence of an array of props gives the appearance and the impression that the belief system has much evidence to support it. One of the props that is marshaled to support the concept known as situationalism, or situationism, is the notion that a legitimate distinction may be made between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. It is argued that sometimes it is necessary, even mandatory, to violate the letter of the law in order to act in harmony with the spirit of the law. According to this line of thinking, those who insist that obedience to God's law is always required, without exception, are quote, hung up on the letter of the law instead of being led by the spirit of the law. Of course, this kind of thinking naturally breeds and nurtures a relaxed attitude towards obedience. It militates against a desire to be precise and careful in conformity to the Bible teaching. One individual explained how his feelings of devotion to Jesus made him feel that as long as he maintained a close sense of nearness to Jesus, he did not have to fret over nitpicky things like whether to attend church, whether to tithe, whether to be honest at work, those sort of things. Another person avowed she did not sweat the small stuff since she was living her life in recognition of God's grace and felt certain that Jesus would cut her some slack. The small stuff that she referred to included things like whether God would approve of unscriptural divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, adultery, minor things, right? The small stuff. The primary passage in the New Testament that is marshaled in in an effort to support this whole idea of spirit versus the letter, the antithesis is Paul's remarks to the church in Corinth. So let's turn in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 4. Read verses 4 through 18. And we have such trust through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death written and engraved on stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For the ministry of condemnation had glory For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because the glory that excels. For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious. Therefore, since we have such a hope, great boldness of speech, unlike Moses who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded, for until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament because the veil is taken away in Christ." But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." I have a very hard time reading that passage and not commenting here and saying, I encourage you to look very closely at the end of verse 17, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Now, you need to understand what liberty means here in God's Word, and I would encourage you all to make a study of that. Two phrases typically are taken from the context and use as proof text to support a notion contrary to the whole of the chapter. not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life." Verse 6, and, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Verse 17, these phrases are set forth as proof that Christians ought not to be too meticulous in conforming strictly to New Testament directives. Those who make such a presumption assume the letter refers to the commandments of God, the written statements of Scripture that specify and regulate human behavior. They also assume that spirit refers to one's attitude or feelings. Hence, if the individual feels devoted, concerned, and sincere, he or she is deemed in the line of what the spirit of the law. On the other hand, if the individual who appears inflexible and rigid or overly concerned with strict obedience is perceived to lack compassion and sensitivity, and too concerned with the letter of the law." Incredibly, if one would take time to study God's Word, and refrain from mishandling its intended meaning, which were encouraged to do in Acts 17, 11, 2 Corinthians 4, 2, 1 Timothy 4, 13, 2 Timothy 2, 15, one would see that neither Paul nor any other inspired writer agreed with such thinking. In a biblical dealing with his apostolic ministry, Paul crafted a beautiful allegory, what has been called the most perfect antithesis to be found in the whole Bible. By arranging the contrasting phrase of the antithesis into two columns, looking at it in two different categories, one is able to grasp Paul's intended meaning. First, if we contrast somewhat between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, in verse 6, we are ministers of the New Covenant. In verse 6 we have the Old Covenant which is referred to of the letter. In verse 6 we have of the Spirit concerning of the New Covenant. The Old Covenant, the letter kills in verse 6. The New Covenant, the Spirit gives life, verse 6. Ministry of death in verse 7, the Old Covenant. The ministry of the Spirit, verse 8. Written or engraved in stones in verse 7, in the Old Covenant. The ministry of condemnation, verse 9, the Old Covenant. The ministry of righteousness, the New Covenant, verse 9. It's glorious, the Old Covenant, glorious, verses 7 and 9. Much more glorious, verses 8 and 9, the New Covenant. The Old Covenant passing away, verse 7. The New Covenant remains, verse 11. The Old Covenant, the veil of Moses' face, verse 13. The New Covenant, great boldness of speech, verse 12. The veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, verse 14. The veil taken away, the New Covenant, verse 14. The veil lies on their heart, the Old Covenant, verse 15. The veil taken away when heart turned to the Lord, verse 16. It should be immediately evident to the unbiased observer that the two legs of the antithesis are the New Covenant in contrast with the Old Covenant. Precisely the same meaning is conveyed by the same terminology in Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter 2, verses 29 and chapter 7 and verse 6. THE OLD TESTAMENT LEGAL SYSTEM, THOUGH AN EXCELLENT SYSTEM FOR WHAT GOD HAD IN MIND, HE SAYS SO IN ROMANS CHAPTER 7 AND VERSE 12. IN FACT, LET'S JUST... LET'S JUST TURN OVER THERE TO ROMANS 7 AND READ IT. ROMANS 7 AND VERSE 12. THEREFORE THE LAW IS HOLY, THE COMMANDMENT HOLY, and good. The system that God had in mind was unable to provide the ultimate forgiveness for the violations of the law. In that sense, kills. It took Jesus dying on the cross to make life possible. When one recognizes the meaning in context, it becomes apparent that these verses have nothing to do with the alleged spirit versus letter of contention. In fact, the Bible nowhere make such a thing. Like all liberal thinking, one must refrain from thinking too much about it if one does not wish to see the absurdity and the nonsensical nature of it. The spirit versus the letter contrast is, to use a very intellectual term, gobbledygook, that is better felt than told. It makes no sense. Now I want you to, I'm going to use a Example, and I just pulled this, I just completely pulled this story, pulled this article. I have no background with this whatsoever. This came from some website. The Spirit of the Meaning of the Law versus the Difference. Crosswalk, this came off of Crosswalks, one of the Crosswalk websites. This is an article by Clarence L. Haynes. I've never heard of him before. This is what he says. The Spirit of the Law versus the Letter of the Law, that is the question. Forgive me for my poor attempt at Shakespeare. There's a stark difference between following the Letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law. These differences are critical and need to be addressed because they will impact your relationship with God and how you engage other people. I'm going to do my best to help you understand the difference between these two things and hopefully you will walk in the freedom and life God has given you. So, he asks a few questions. What does it mean to follow the Letter of the Law? And he says that I think you can see that the following law is not easy and can be overwhelming. To top it off, mixing your sinful nature in this plan basically is useless, or to say it a little plainer, it ain't gonna happen. When you add these things up, you see why the law kills, because you can't live up to its standard requirements, which is true. That's what always happens with people. They take some truth and they mix it in, but I'm just gonna get to the meat of it here and get down to reading you some quotes here. So he summarizes this and he says, how can we live, how can we live the spirit of the law in our everyday life? This is his summary, his conclusion. I always believe that whatever truth you learn in scripture have no real impact on your life until you apply them. Let's do this with truth. There are three simple ways you can be certain you're living by the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Two of them Jesus already mentioned. The first one he says, you love God first. If we learn anything from what Jesus said, it is loving God is the most important thing. If you truly love God, that will impact your obedience, your worship, your prayer, how you treat others. This will make the spirit of the law alive in your heart. Second is to love people. The reason Jesus said to love people is that this affects how you deal with them. Think of all the ways the Bible describes love and the things it does, patience, kindness, not keeping a record of wrongs, the list goes on and on. Having the love of people carries with it the spirit of the law, as Jesus said. Third, depend on the Holy Spirit to help you. I would agree with that, but how does the Holy Spirit help you? How does the Holy Spirit help you? The Holy Spirit helps you by you read God's Word and you understand it through God's Spirit. That's not what Clarence Haynes is talking about. Clarence Haynes goes on to say, the letter of the law is really about you doing everything. The spirit of the law is about God doing everything through you. If you want to embody the spirit of the law, then allow the Holy Spirit more room to work both in you and through you. As you do this, you will find is able to love God and love people better. This will keep you continuing the spirit of the law, not falling in the trap of their law. Now, final thoughts, he says. You could take some of that, you could give him the benefit of the doubt in some of these things. I think you will agree, this is reading from him, I think you will agree that life is far less complicated, much more enjoyable when you live by the spirit of the law. And then he says, Don't be bound trying to live by the letter of the law, but live in the freedom that God has given you. In other words, and then to summarize, I'm going to summarize this one paragraph here. He basically says that you just be led by whatever you feel like in the situations. So if you feel you need to love this person, so you don't want to condemn them, you don't want to point their sin out, you need to find something that you could say to them that would be loving. You wouldn't want to point their sin out and tell them how that they're standing on the edge of an abyss, getting ready to fall off. You might say, sure is a lovely dress you have on. I don't know. But his is one that is, his, and I didn't do it much justice reading it, but his is one that, his idea here is situational. This is what we would consider to be situational ethics. That's what it would be. You look at the situation, there's not some strict code of ethics that you follow. You follow the love that you have in your heart. And the ultimate is the love that you show to the other person. And the most loving thing you can do to them is preach the gospel to them, right? It's to point out their helpless condition. It's to point out that they're in jeopardy in their sin. It's not to go along with it and coddle them and make them feel better. That's exactly the opposite. Now, back to our study, back to our looking here. Indeed, redefining the biblical expression, spirit of the law and the letter law, enables the situationist or situationalism to promote his agenda under the cloak of Bible backing. In other words, That's what he gets in the Bible, right? If one wishes to use the expression the spirit of the law to refer to a proper attitude and the letter of the law to refer to compliance with the explicit dictates of Scripture, it certainly is true that a person can distort or disregard the spirit of the law while following carefully the letter of the law. A person may engage in external IN SOME KIND OF EXTERNAL COMPLIANCE WITHOUT A HEARTFELT, GENUINE LOVE FOR GOD AND HIS WILL, BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REPRESENT FAITHFULLY THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW WHILE ACTING OUT OF THE HARMONY WITH THE SPECIFIC DETAILS OF THE LAW. WHEN JESUS SAID IN JOHN 14, 15, IF YOU LOVE ME, YOU WILL KEEP MY COMMANDS, He pointed, he pinpointed the fact that love for Him includes obedience. It is possible to obey and not to love, but it is not possible to love and not obey. One may have good intentions in one's religious pursuits, but if those religious actions are contrary to God's specified will, the activity is then unacceptable to God. The situations claim that sincerity and feelings of love legitimize whatever action love takes. It is in direct contradiction of the Bible teaching. The fact of the matter is that God always has required that people approach Him in truth. That is, according to the divine directives that He revealed to man. The only worship that has ever been acceptable to God has been worship which has been undertaken with one, a proper attitude, Frame of mind, disposition and conducive to spirituality. And two, faithfulness to the specific items that God pinpointed as the proper external acts to be performed. Jesus made this clear in His encounter with the Samaritan woman. Turn to John Chapter 4. John Chapter 4 and verse 23. Jesus speaking here, speaking to the woman. But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him, God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." God never has accepted one without the other. He has always required both. He has always required two facets of His response to His will, the two facets required response, the right action with the right attitude. Notice here this chart. You can't notice it because it's in front of me. I'll read it to you. John 4, verse 24. The attitude is spirit. The action is truth. Joshua 24 verse 14, the attitude of sincerity, the action is truth. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 13, the attitude is to fear God, the action is keep His commands. Acts 10 verse 35, fear Him is the attitude, work righteousness is the action. James 2, 17, the attitude is faith, the action is works. 1 John 3, 18, the attitude is word and tongue, the action is deed and truth. Deuteronomy 10, verses 12 through 13, is to fear and to love in your heart, the action is to walk in His ways. And Romans 1, verse 9, the attitude is with my spirit, the action is in the gospel. To emphasize one dimension of obedience over the other is to hamper one's acceptance by God. Bible history is complete with instances of those who possessed one without the other and thus were unacceptable to God. The Pharisees in Matthew 23, verse 3, Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, verses 2 through 4, The people in Amos' day, Amos 5, 21 through 24, they engaged in the external forms but were unacceptable because of their insincerity. Paul in Acts 22, verse 3, and 23, verse 1. Cornelius, Acts 10, 1 through 2. And probably the one that stands out to me the most is Uzzah in 2 Samuel, verses 6 and 6. All demonstrated genuine motives, but were unacceptable to God because of their failure to observe them in the right forms. Let's just turn to 2 Samuel. Let's turn to 2 Samuel. I want to read that. 2 Samuel, verse 6. So here they are, they're all excited, they're bringing the ark to Jerusalem, right? They're walking along, 2 Samuel 6, chapter 6 verse 6, and when they came to Nachan's threshing floor, Uzzah put his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was roused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error, and he died there by the ark of God. And David became angry because of the Lord's outbreak against Uzzah, and he called the name of the place Perez Uzzah to this day. David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, How can the ark of the Lord come to me? So David would not move the ark of the Lord with him to the city of David, but David took it aside to the house of Obed-Eden the Gittite. The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Eden the Gittite three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-Eden and all his household." So here we go, they're moving the ark, right? And Uzuz is not supposed to touch it. But it starts to fall, what does he do? He reaches and he touches it, and God strikes him dead. Why? Because that was God's command, exactly what it was. What was God teaching? The important thing is, what was God teaching through all of that? Think for the moment many people in Biblical history who failed to approach God in truth, that is they approached God but did so without sufficient attention to complying with the details and the guidelines that God articulated. Adam and Eve regardless of the condition of their attitude were condemned by God for the external acts of eating the forbidden fruit. Likewise Nadab and Abihu Leviticus 10 verses 1-3, the Sabbath breaker in Numbers 15 and 32-36, Moses Numbers 20 verses 11-12, Achan Joshua 7, Saul 1 Samuel 13 and 1 Samuel 15, Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Corinthians 15, King Uzziah 2nd Chronicles 26 and Ezra's contemporaries in Ezra 10 all experienced the displeasure of God for their deviation from God's directions. God has not changed His insistence upon man's loving obedience to His instructions. If He did, Christ's work would be useless. John 14, 15, 15-14, 1 John 5, 3. The Old Testament was written, among other reasons, in order for Christians to learn from examples of these who departed from God's ways, Romans 15, 4, and 1 Corinthians 10, 11. The New Testament faith, the kind of faith that Christians must possess if they wish to be pleasing and acceptable to God, is obedient trust, trust that conforms to God's will, Hebrews 11 and James 2. The psalmist understood that God's truth consisted of God's written words. Psalm 119 verse 30 and 43, 142, 151, and 160. So did Jesus when He said, Thy word is truth, and declared that the basis of judgment would be in the words that He spoke in John 17, verse 17, and John 12, verses 47 and 48. Worshiping God in truth is equivalent to doing truth, which entails deeds or external actions which are prescribed by God. When Jesus taught the way of God in truth in Matthew 22, verse 16, He related information that accurately represented God's will. When the Colossians heard the word of truth of the gospel, they heard the specific tenets, the doctrines, the requirements, and the teachings to which they had to conform their lives. Situationalism, antinomianism, and liberalism share in common their mutual aversion to law-keeping. Christians must not fall prey to these sinister ways that attempt to soften and obscure the clear call from God to render obedience to His directives. All He seeks from people is conformity to His laws and hearts full of love, full of sincerity, earnesty, and love." Now, again, one takeaway you get from this is if that was true, if God could wink at sin, look away from it, the work of Christ would have been in vain. We become conformed, we're working to become conformed to the image of His Son. We're not gonna do that perfect, but we should be maintaining, we should be striving to do that. That's what we do. Now, one of the dangers that we have, and we experience it here, and I'm sure it's experienced in every church, all of God's churches that are meeting today, is that you have those who come and they sit and they hear. And your tendency is to think, that's great, they're in church. But over and over and over again, and the Scriptures are clear, that you're piling up more and more condemnation. The Bible's clear that today is the day of salvation, today is the day The Lord is calling you. Today is the day. Now is the time. None of us here have any idea what's going to happen in the next five minutes. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to call upon the name of the Lord, to take the Lord's righteousness that He offers, the veil of righteousness that He has that you can put on, and you have the assurance of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know... I wouldn't even know how to emphasize that. I don't think that the mind, the unregenerate mind can even begin to process. The regenerate mind can only fall down on its knees and thank God for the goodness and the grace and the mercy that he's given to us. Let's close with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this time to gather together. I pray that you would help us to see the cohesion of everything in your word that works together to show us the glory that is in Christ Jesus, that we can see when we look upon Him, when we look to the things that are written, we see His work, we see the requirements, we see the work that Christ did, we see the propitiation, we see the sacrifice, we see the satisfactory work. Father, we pray that you would, today, that you would remove whatever chains that it is that binds those here that are hearing from your word today, that have heard for years even, over and over, the gospel being preached. I pray that today, that those chains would be broken. and that they would fall down on their knees and recognize the great work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, even his love for the Father that can extend, that extends to his people. We thank you, Lord, for the great blessing it is to be called yours. We ask that you would help us to understand these things. We ask all this in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.