Address—Bruce Conrad
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Good afternoon. Let's start our meeting this afternoon with the first hymn in the book, hymn #1.
Thinking particularly of that second, the words in the second stanza. Faith two that trusts the blood through grace. From that same love we gain.
As sweetly as it suits our case, the gift had been in vain. Have it upon my heart this afternoon to speak about the work of God.
God's work.
And uh, hopefully at first the take up.
His great work through his son on Calvary's cross, the work of Atonement, and then to follow on his present work with you and me.
And so if someone could start him #1 please.
As the Lord's help blessing.
Lord Jesus, we thank Thee for our great love to us shown out.
On Calvary's cross we'll now disallow thyself to be taken by the wicked hands, to be crucified and slain. Shed thy precious blood.
We thank thee that we can rejoice.
In what thou hast done.
That victor's cry. It is finished.
And we love to look up by faith through the open heavens, and to see thee there, seated upon thy Father's throne.
Ground already with glory and honour.
Soon to come and take thy rightful place in this world.
But in the meantime, we are humbled as we think of what thou art doing now that was called out of Jew and Gentile, a people for thy name, and we find ourselves part of that wonderful company, Lord Jesus.
To be members of Thy body through faith in thyself and in Thy finished work, we thank the blessed Savior. And now, as we open Thy word for a few minutes, we look to Thee that Thou art helped to organize.
The thoughts of the speaker that we might have before us from Thy precious word, that which would be for our help and encouragement, we ask it, Lord Jesus, and thy worthy and precious name, Amen.
Well, I sense that our brother Bill had the.
Thought that he'd better get right after it and we're so programmed to one hour that, uh, that uh.
We can, uh, misjudge our time. And I'm one of the worst offenders.
Uh, not to worry though, I would know when standards in this room I always try to finish on time.
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Umm.
But no, I was, I was my first experience as ministering the word of God. It wasn't. There wasn't any clocks really. So.
We went on for a while until we all got tired and we had a sense it was done. So, so I had to be, uh, rehabilitated, uh, as I got a little older and keep it to 60 minutes. And now you guys are raising the bar. We're gonna do 45 here and that should be fine. It should be fine because the subject, part of the subject I had in my heart was I was gonna go through Hebrews 12.
And so we've already gone through Hebrews 12, so there should be no problem here.
Getting through so we'll see how the Lord directs, but just to start with the Scripture in Psalm 8 just I'm not going to take up Psalm 8, but just.
As a point of.
Overarching Consideration. Psalm 8.
Let's just start with verse three, when I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers.
The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.
And crowned him with glory and honor.
This question What is man comes up is quoted in different places in the scripture, as many of you know.
I like to think of it here. What is man? As if the psalmist is asking the question rhetorically, I'll tell you what man is. Man is the one in whom the entire Council of God is going to be centered for all eternity, the man Christ Jesus.
I've appreciated a brother pointed out to me, you know, we often talk about the councils and purposes of God and her brother pointed out to me, it's not councils when it comes to God, it's council. It's singular. So being the kind of person I am, I got out my old fashioned Strong's Concordance and I worked down through every verse and, and he's right, I could not find any place that referred to God.
Councils in the plural.
All his eggs, so to speak, are in one basket, therein that man Christ Jesus, who was with him throughout all eternity, as a son with Father daily his delight.
And as you and I.
Know in our whole eternity now is tied with the fact that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him, that we might be in Him, that we might possess eternal life which we possess even now.
But it says here, when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, and thy stars, which thou hast ordained.
The heavens.
The work of his fingers. Not even his whole hand. The work of his fingers.
The work of atonement we know will be memorialized, it seems to me like throughout eternity, with his hands graven on his hands.
And so when we think of the work of God, we think of the work that is already accomplished.
And the Word of God calls that the gospel concerning his Son.
And in business, sometimes they say, well, you should have a like an elevator speech. So if you're in an elevator and there's a potential quiet there, you should be able to tell them between the lobby and such and such a floor, everything that your business is about.
God is way better at that than men are. And he starts in the book of Romans and he says the gospel concerning his Son, it's all about him.
And, you know, there's an aspect of the gospel which I came to appreciate pretty early in my Christian life because there was a steady stream of.
Of brothers from the gathering in Montreal and Ottawa that used to flow down through Maine where I lived, out into the tent work to the gospel work. And they would come through our little tiny meeting there and we got a lot of really good teaching and we got a lot of good gospel teaching.
They came into our meeting and then they didn't preach the gospel so much as they taught it. And I think that's something, uh, brothers that we need to rekindle today. Don't, if you're picked to take up the gospel, don't feel that you have to preach the gospel as if you were preaching to a bunch of lost people out on the street when it's your dad and your mom and your uncle and your sister and, and brethren that have known you since you were a baby.
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But it's so edifying and so profitable.
We could never exhaust even to take up the various aspects of the truth of the gospel of the grace of God. It was prophesied of by the prophets down through the ages, but now it's been manifest in these last days for you and me. The gospel concerns his Son and just to not take too long if we turn.
First Peter chapter 3 in one verse.
We have several aspects of the Gospel.
Of the work of God that He accomplished through His Son.
On Calvary's cross.
1St through first Peter 3 and verse 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
The just were the unjust.
To bring us to God.
A truth that I so enjoy and which I find such comfort.
End.
Rehearsing in my own mind is the first aspect of this verse.
Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
There's a word in the New Testament in our English Bible called propitiation.
So a well known verse is first John 22 and he is the propitiation for our sins.
Not for ours only, but for the whole world.
This is the first.
Beautiful, important foundational aspect of the gospel is that we are not even involved yet, except for the contribution of all of our sins in Genesis 22, we read.
That Abraham.
Prepared and took.
Wood fire.
The knife left the servant behind.
That's it, they went, both of them together.
Nobody else.
Father and son.
So in Calvary's cross, it's not the Father and the Son during those hours of darkness, the man Christ Jesus.
Offering himself.
As a sacrifice for sin and to put away the outrage, the stench of sin before a holy God.
It wasn't just 30 years or 33 years of anticipation leading up to that.
And I suppose you and I could say it wasn't even thousands of years of anticipation.
But God had that work in view.
He had that purpose in view, that not only would his Son be exalted, but He would be exalted in these many sons. He would have brought home the glory, and there was no other way.
You and I could step one inch closer to that glory than by the work of His Son.
Propitiation is the side of the cross that has to do with God.
With what has been an offense.
And an outrage to God in a world that he made.
And if no other Sinner or no other person was blessed by that.
What a great work still.
That he took away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
The Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world.
Holy.
Holy.
Holy say.
Done there.
Little wonder.
Little wonder that the sun was veiled. Little wonder.
When what took place at Calvary's cross?
When deep called into deep, and all the waves and billows rolled over the only sinless man.
I've been in the construction business all my life, since I was a teenager.
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In the good old days were really the bad old days because people weren't treated very well and it was very dangerous.
And we were very.
To what could happen?
And as a young man, I thought I could dance along steel.
Dance up in the air.
We shoveled snow off the beams.
Ridiculous.
There's many men that are not afraid to work at heights.
There are certain uh, ethnic groups that are famous for working steel and working at heights.
There must be blessed with great balance and very little fear.
And it's not hard for us to find people that want to work up in heights.
But in the old days we used to have.
Sometimes where we had to send someone down on the ground.
Into a drilled shaft. Into a deep foundation.
I'll try maybe if I bring this closer.
Please speak about it. I can't turn the microphone up anyway, OK?
There are deep foundations that are drilled deep in the earth. We still do this today.
And there's an institute called the Deep Foundations Institute.
Which meets around the world, of which I think I may still be our company's representative, I can't remember.
But these foundations?
It's hard to find someone. Sometimes you have to go down and someone has to verify that something didn't happen.
Or that the reinforcing steel or the, or the rock walls or the soil walls or whatever are still in place is very hard to get somebody to go down into those steps and me myself.
I do not think I have any phobias.
But I could have an I. I would have a nightmare if I thought of going down into one of those shafts, no matter how many safety apparatus they put on me or above me.
But the Lord Jesus went down to the very bottom.
And he did that for God.
And just like in type in the book of Daniel.
There's a conflict. The king loved Daniel and didn't want. The last thing he wanted to do was to throw Daniel in a den of lions.
But the law, the Medes and Persians says.
He must die. He must be thrown into the law, into the with the Medes and Persians, into the den of lions.
Try to speak louder.
And so you know the story, and the king has spent a sleepless night.
And then he comes, and they take the stone away.
What suspense I think of that when that king, oh, Daniel. And then the voice comes up from the deep. O king, live forever. What delight, what delight that that king, he hasted to take him out of that den.
Righteousness was satisfied. He was thrown into the den of the lions.
And now he could bring him out.
A picture, really, of course.
Of a certain aspect of the work of Christ.
Righteousness now has been satisfied, God's holiness maintained.
And that deep foundation has been laid.
And it's a foundation so deep, so powerful, that it can carry anything that the purpose of God.
Would put on that foundation.
And I love to think of that aspect of the work of Christ.
That he died for God. That he had God before him.
And I love to think of it as the foundation that you and I can go out to the vilest Sinner.
Homeless man, whatever Sinner you can think of in your mind and you can say you know what?
God loves you.
I know that God loves you, I know that from this book, and I know that Christ died for you.
And on the basis of what he did, I can extend to you an invitation.
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That if you put your trust in him.
If you lay hold of him.
You can be saved from all your sins. You can be forgiven from all your sins.
And you can have blessings that it would take me the rest of the day to unfold to you, and you can have them immediately.
Based upon that holy work on Calvary's cross.
He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.
The stench of an unbeliever, sins that goes off into a lost eternity will not forever be odious, obnoxious to God, because the Lamb of God will have taken away the sin of the world.
Wonderful.
But we also know in the work of Christ in atonement is one work.
And the scriptures, sort of.
Kind of pulled back little parts of it so that we can understand is the way it seems to me.
It's one work, we need to remember that.
But so now what?
What a great work he has accomplished on Calvary's cross. God has not only satisfied.
He's glorified. If you fix something that was broke and you restore it to the person just the way it was, they will perhaps be satisfied.
But as the type in the Old Testament, when someone takes something away, they are to add the 5th part.
And the Lord Jesus has added the 5th part in that He has brought glory to God.
Think of it even on the occasion of sin entering the world.
So God is glorified now.
As we were saying in the reading meeting, I think it was this morning, I have finished the work gave us me to do. I have glorified thee on the earth.
The construction business, we don't let. Generally we don't let.
The people building the work attest to its quality. We have other people do that for obvious reasons.
Because I, my whole career, especially when I was younger, did. Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? Just like with your kids, right. Did you do this? Did you know whatever it might be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you find out, of course, often that it's not that way.
But you send someone independent who is qualified objective to assess the quality of what was done.
As we were saying this morning, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was qualified to pronounce on the quality, the completeness, and the character of the of His own work that He accomplished here in this world.
And so, as we read in first Peter 3.
He suffered for sins.
The just for the.
To bring us to God.
And sometimes we hear from, from younger ones or it's a mistake to say it. And I, I have told the occasion once where I was in a gospel meeting in a home and the young brother stood up and he said God loves you, Christ died for you on Calvary's cross. He bore your sins. And he went on for 45 minutes. And I'm sitting there, you know, this isn't right. And, uh.
And sure enough, there was a man next to me in the in the chair who was listening. He had invited neighbors and folks in and I said, So what do you think? And he said, I don't see what the problem is. And I'm like, you don't see what the problem is. He said, we, he told me God loved me and Christ died for me and he bore my sins. I don't see that I have to do anything or that there's any problem.
Because he failed to distinguish between the propitiation as we read, as we, as I quoted in first John, that aspect which was for God.
And the blessing that flows out to you and me when we accept Him as our substitute.
So as you know, in Leviticus 16, there's that picture of the two goats, the one aspect, as we've spoken about Christ dying for God.
And the other aspect were the sins of the people are confessed on the head of that goat. He's taken by the hand of a fit man out into the wilderness.
A picture of our sins taken away when we put our trust in Him.
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And so only the believer can say he bore my sins in his own body on the tree.
And when I put my trust in Christ in that man and that person.
Who did that work? All the value of what he did flows to me.
Because you would be shocked.
At how little some of us knew about the truth of the gospel when we got saved and we were saved and we knew we were.
And we knew it was forever.
But if someone gave me a quiz like you would give it to the children tomorrow morning, maybe about the blood of Christ and the death of Christ, I'd have been guessing. If it were multiple choice, I would have been guessing.
But when we believe on him, and if you check this out at some time as you go through the New Testament, how many times the Spirit of God enjoins us to put our trust in a person, in the man Christ Jesus far I I don't know the percentage.
Many more times than it tells us to put our trust in his work.
And again I say, when you put your trust in Him, all the value of what He did flows out in blessing to you and me.
He knows what he did and God knows the value of what he has accomplished. All flows to me.
So that's an aspect of the work of God.
That we call or the scripture calls atonement.
The foundation where God can be just in justifying the Sinner.
Where righteousness and peace have now kissed one another, and mercy and truth.
Are met together.
At the cross. And so how do you and I, we kind of jumped ahead. How do you and I, how do we, as it says at the end of that verse, the just for the unjust that it might bring us to God.
How do I get brought to God? How am I reconciled to God?
So you've probably heard speaking to souls, as I've heard speaking to souls, and they tell them about the work of Christ and they say, well, let's see, I agree with that. God did his part and you have to do your part.
Your part is the rather unseemly part.
Of all those sins, and my sins heaped upon his head.
And so how is it that I get the blessing?
And it's at a pretty young age. We learned that it's through faith.
It's through faith.
And so how does that faith come? Where does that faith come from?
And so if we were to turn to Ephesians two, we read, By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.
And so I was there in in.
Anguish deciding in a little house in Palmyra, ME.
Am I going to do this? Am I going to accept Christ?
And probably sweat on my head and.
And then I did.
So hurray for me, right?
And then I got saved. And then in a few weeks the Lord sent a brother.
Down took me under his wing and he taught me and he said, you know, brother, you didn't find the Lord, he found you.
And I learned the truth that that we've been enjoying and teaching for decades.
As the illustrators is often used like in this meeting room.
That on the outside of the meeting room, there's a there's an invitation that says whosoever will may come.
Then it says come.
And whoever preaches the gospel tonight is going to forget and ignore some of what I will probably say in the next 5 minutes.
And press upon souls their responsibility.
Because man is responsible. You're responsible for what you've done in your life. You're responsible for everything in your life. You're also responsible to obey the gospel.
Because it's the command of God. God has commanded that all men should repent and believe.
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And so I, I thought it was something I did. And then I, there's a brother taught me. I got it, It says just then you come inside the meeting room.
And you look back over the same door that said come, and it says chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
And I say wow.
And I've been saying that in my soul.
Ever since.
And, you know, sometimes people say.
What's fair? It's not fair.
He chose that one. He didn't choose that one.
That's not fair.
I see you're right, the gospel is not fair.
What's fair about the only sinless man bearing my sins on the cross of Calvary? We are so far beyond fair. I don't even want to talk about fair anymore. There's nothing fair in the gospel. It's beyond fair.
But the gap between my inability to understand why he would choose me and the fact that he did.
Results in worship and Thanksgiving in my soul.
When the woman When the Lord met the woman at the well of Sikar, he expressed to her.
That that's what the Father was seeking was worshippers.
Now, I know I'm going to move on here, but I know that a lot of young brothers lately are troubled with the truth of election.
And it has come up.
In general meetings, and it astonishes me to be frank.
Because to me, it's a foundational truth that I was taught in my first months as a believer.
Because without it, nothing really in the New Testament really fits, and with it everything fits together that we understand. And if we understood more, we see more of how it all fit together.
Let me just read for the sake of time 2 verses Second Thessalonians.
2nd Thessalonians 2.
Verse 13.
Written to some fairly young believers, verse 13. We are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit.
And belief of the truth.
Whereunto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So much in those two verses.
If you struggle with allowing God to be God.
And to do what he thinks is wise and just.
Then may I just suggest to you that you try to put it in context?
And the way to put it in context, I feel, is this, that God has made a bonafide.
Offer to all, He has made provision for all. His heart of love is such that God so loved the world that he gave the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
And God desires that all men will be saved to come to a knowledge of the truth and to back up that desire. In His heart of love He has made provision.
For all to be on that deep, deep foundation laid by Christ on Calvary's cross.
That offer has gone out.
To all.
Falsehood.
And so did some accept and some not know.
The parable is plain that all began to make excuse.
This excuse, that excuse, the other excuse, and no man of his own volition, of his own will, would accept that offer.
And so God could have shut the whole thing down South to speak.
I displayed my love in the sending of my son. I made an offer to all. I made provision for all. All things are ready and none would come.
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God could have shut the whole thing down in righteousness.
Folded it all up like a garment.
But you know the context. That is the context in which he says, you know what, we're not going to stop there.
I'm going to compel some of them to come in and I can do that.
I can do that.
And so he compelled, He compels you to come in.
And you may have thought that it was a decision you made, just like I did. I felt it was a decision I made, and I did.
Make that decision. But I learned.
That it was the Father that drew me. That God chose me.
Before the foundation of the world. That he worked in my soul. That the Spirit of God worked in me.
To say, in my dark soul, let there be light, and there was light.
And so the action of the Spirit of God in your life and in mind, if you are a believer.
Was to give you life when you were just plain dead.
That's the quickening or life giving power that God exercises. That's a second or a further work of God. There's the work of Calvary's cross and as we sang in that first hymn.
Faith to which trust? Let me quote it.
Faith to the trust, the blood through grace. From that same love we gain as sweetly as it suits our case. The gift had been in vain.
And so he has not only done that great work on Calvary's cross through the work of his son, but he's done a work in your soul.
Through the Spirit of God.
To give you life, he said. Let there be light in your soul.
And that life, in different ones, it works in different ways. And the Lord Jesus spoke about this to Nicodemus and you can read about it all through the Scriptures. And once you see it, it's everywhere.
It's everywhere that God hath chosen you to salvation, and then it says through sanctification of the Spirit.
It's the work of the Spirit of God in you to give you life. And guess what that life has? It has faith.
It's the gift of God.
And faith latches hold to the testimony that God gives. That's what faith does.
It believes God, not just in God, it believes God.
Unto believe for the truth.
And so this is the wonderful work of God in a soul.
In addition to what he has done outside of us, he has done a work in US.
To call the darkness. To call into the darkness and say, let there be light.
You know you can say these things are mystical and hard to understand.
Well, maybe. Maybe they are spiritual, but how do you understand biological life?
Do you understand natural life, Biological life? Who understands that? Get the greatest scientists in the world and put them in this room. They don't understand it. They understand what it does.
They understand aspects of it, but they don't understand where it came from, how it initiates.
Natural life is a mystery, and it's part of the testimony of God and creation to man.
And so is spiritual life.
And so now we have this life.
And now we are not only quickened or born again, but when we believe the gospel of our salvation, as it says in Ephesians chapter one.
We're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
And the Spirit of God indwells us now.
And gives us confidence and gives us an ability.
To go forward in that life that He has created, a life that is one with Christ.
And so that's why the normal position for the normal attitude of a Christian is not to say, like we used to say to some of some of Christie's relatives, you know, we'd labor with him in the gospel and.
For hours the next day before you're about to catch a boat back to the mainland, you say So if you died tonight, where would you go? Would you go to heaven with the Lord Jesus? I hope so. And you just.
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You're you're a little disappointed.
Because there hasn't been that last part of that verse in 2nd Thessalonians 2 unto belief of the truth. But let's turn briefly to Philippians chapter one.
Philippians One, verse 6.
We talked about the.
Optimism or confidence?
Philippians one being confident of this very thing. Verse six. That he which hath begun a good work in you.
We're performing until the day of Jesus Christ.
Turn over to the second chapter. I think it is.
Philippians second chapter verse 13. It is God which worketh in you.
Both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So now we have another aspect of the work of God.
He's going to work outside of you and me, the father and the son.
The Man Christ Jesus.
Accomplish the work of atonement on Calvary's cross before any of us were born, and then he doesn't work in your soul whether you're three years old or four years old or 50 years old.
To quicken you, to give you life, and with that life you've you've attached by faith to the person of Christ.
The Spirit of God has sealed that work in your soul.
And now you are connected to Christ for all eternity.
And so at that point, obviously we could all just say, OK, isn't that enough?
No, it's not enough.
It's not enough for him.
And so when I was first saved, and maybe it was this way for you, you thought, well, I remember thinking, as we sometimes say a little bit irreverently, just stick a fork in me, I'm done. I can remember that feeling like it was yesterday. My whole life is now a success.
Just stick a fork in me, I'm saved, I'm going to heaven, I'm going to be with Christ, and like Christ, there's nothing left. And what a thing to discover through my brethren's teaching, through the Lord. That is just the beginning of my life. It's just the beginning of a life as we had before us in Hebrews 12.
Which I had thought to step to but I don't have time now anyway.
But in Hebrews 12 we see that God refers to.
His active work that goes on with you and me today and tomorrow, and as long as he sees Fit to do it because he has an interest in US morally.
He could have just taken us out of here 1 by 1 when we got saved.
We could be waiting in that other room. We could. We would be unclothed. We would be, as we would be us without a body, waiting for that great day. He could have done that.
But no, he's left us here. You really sent us here, and he has a purpose for us here if we read in Romans 8.
A sweeping.
Summary.
Of God's work, Romans 8.
In verse 28 to pick up the context, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow.
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified.
Them he also glorified.
You've been chosen.
You've been chosen for a destiny that he chose.
That destiny is to be with him, to be like him, to be conformed to the image of his son.
When the time came, he called you and me.
He justified us.
He hasn't yet glorified us in the eternal present. If we speak of it, it's as good as done. But we're still here. When the Lord Jesus comes, we will be taken to be with Him. We will be glorified.
The last piece.
A result of the work of Christ in you and me. And so, as we go through our day by day, let's just finish with a verse at the end of Hebrews. Hebrews 13.
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As we go through our day or our week or our year, if the Lord tarries, as we look back through our life, If we walk with the Lord for many years.
I would encourage you to look in the context of the fact that yes, there's been a finished work on Calvary's cross, but there's an ongoing work and Christ is is serving us now on high as an intercessor, as our great high priest, as our advocate, as the captain of our salvation and the father of spirits like a Potter is working you and me through the circumstances of life. We have the privilege of of instruction as Nick.
We have the exhortation to get into and understand and grow by the knowledge of God's Word.
So that we can put into proper context the experiences of life and we can grow. He wants us, as we've had before us already in these meetings, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And just in closing, in Hebrews 13.
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep.
Through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will.
Working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
We are his workmanship.
You and I are the work of God. God is he created the world and I guess he stopped creating, but in the new creation he's still creating every day. We are his workmanship created unto good works that God has put for our deigned that we should walk in them. So to me it is encouraging, heart warming, humbling to think that he.
Would stay with us all the way through and be so invested.
In our spiritual growth, it matters.
That we might be well pleasing in his sight when the Lord comes.
Body, spirit, soul, everything like Him. In the meantime, the work of the Spirit of God and your soul and mind is to become more transformed and more like Him now.
That we might be here for His glory. We have maybe just a little little time. May we all be exercised. That our life may count for Him and bring Him glory. That His work in you and me would be fruitful.
Let's just pray.
Our God and our Father, we give thee thanks for thy great love to us.
We thank Thee for the sending of Thy Son. We thank Thee for reaching out to us when we had no thought towards Thee in bringing us to Him. We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for living for us now on high.
And we thank Thee that Thou hast pledged to never leave us nor forsake us. We thank Thee, our God, for thine interest in us, for our spiritual growth, and how Thou dost order our circumstances, and for the privilege of instruction in this life. We pray would we exercise, Lord Jesus, as we had before us to follow peace with all and holiness without which none of us can see Thee in a practical sense. Help us, Lord Jesus, to have our eye upon Thee.
We thank Thee for thy great love to us. We thank Thee for the treasure we have in Thy precious word. Where would we be without it? We thank Thee for it. Help us to have a a zeal and a desire, Lord Jesus, to dig into these precious things and to make them good.
In our lives we ask our blessing, Lord Jesus and I, worthy and precious name, Amen.