Against the background of our reading from Galatians
chapter 1, I would like you now kindly
to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter
15, and I would like to read a
few of the early verses in that chapter
upon which tonight's message is based.
Beginning with the first verse then, in 1
Corinthians chapter 15.
Now brothers, I want to remind you of
the gospel I preached to you, which you
received and on which you have taken your
stand.
By this gospel you are saved, if you
hold firmly to the word I preached to
you, otherwise you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to
you as of first importance, that Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures, that
he was buried, that he was raised on
the third day according to the Scriptures, and
that he appeared to Peter, then to the
twelve.
After that he appeared to more than 500
brothers at the same time, most of whom
are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all
the Apostles, and last of all he appeared
to me also, as to one abnormally born.
On this anniversary Sunday, coinciding as it does
with the commencement of Missionary Conference, I'm so
grateful to discover that our already resolved schedule
of preaching brings us to this particular passage.
We had already decided to be meditating on
1 Corinthians 15 for the next number of
Sunday evenings, and I'm so delighted to be
faced with this glorious passage that is before
us tonight.
I know of no passage of Scripture that
is more basic, more relevant, more apposite for
the people of God, be it involved in
a congregational ministry here in this country, in
the Western world, or being as emissaries sent
abroad somewhere.
I know of no passage of Scripture which
is more important, more basic and fundamental than
this.
In every age there are enemies of the
truth of the gospel.
They don't always wear the same guise, they
don't always appear in the same manner, but
if you examine their strategy and what they're
attempting to do, it is in some way
or other to undermine the purity and the
glory and thus the power of the gospel
of our Lord.
I suggest to you therefore that this passage
before us tonight is absolutely basic for us.
We need constantly to go back to basic
things and basic truths, and remind ourselves of
the verities of the gospel.
Of the things that cannot be given up
or negotiated.
Of basics that are so fundamental that we
dare not on any condition argue about them.
They are given us by God, and they
are given us that we may give them
in the proclamation of his word to other
people.
And that is what I want to do
briefly with you tonight, and the enabling of
the Spirit of God I trust.
I just want us to take a look
at the gospel Paul preached.
I want us to see something of its
glory.
Every page says something different, of course, and
adds to this picture, but this is a
remarkable passage and a remarkable picture nevertheless.
Now the first thing then we look at
here is the manner in which the Apostle
assures us that the gospel that he preached
was essentially of divine origin.
The gospel Paul preached, he insists, was not
of man.
It was something that was exclusively the revelation
of God to him.
This comes out of course in many ways,
but chiefly perhaps in that reference at the
beginning of verse 3, where Paul says what
I received I passed on to you as
of first importance.
He's referring of course to the gospel.
In the first three verses you remember he
said this, I want to remind you of
the gospel that I preached to you, which
you received and on which you have taken
your stand, by which gospel you are served,
if you hold it firmly, otherwise you've believed
in vain.
It is a gospel, says the Apostle Paul,
that he received.
He didn't make it up.
He didn't have it from any human being,
as the passage from Galatians 1 assures us.
He received it from God.
Paul received his message from God and from
God alone.
And so those words in Galatians 1, 11,
12 are very important for us to remember.
Let me repeat them again.
I want you to know brothers, he says,
that the gospel I preached is not something
that man made up.
I did not receive it from any man,
nor was I taught it, rather I received
it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
Now I would like you to notice there,
Paul's denial on the one hand, there are
certain things he denies in that passage in
Galatians, and there is one positive claim which
he makes in Galatians, as he does in
the passage in 1 Corinthians 15.
Notice first of all this threefold denial.
Where did Paul get his gospel from?
Well you know there are many scholars who
tell us that he took the message of
Jesus and he messed it up and made
it all theological.
What Jesus said according to them was so
very simple and lucid and clear, but when
this strange character, this converted Pharisee came along,
he took the simplicities of the gospel of
Christ and he made something out of it
that was quite different from what it originally
was.
Well listen to Paul's denial, threefold denial.
See at the beginning of verse 11 there
in Galatians 1, he says this, the gospel
I preached is not something man made up.
It is not something man made up.
What Paul is saying is that the gospel
was not a product of human reason or
indeed of any human action.
It wasn't even the answer to human prayer.
The gospel that Paul preached was not something
that man made up.
Man neither thought it out as a system
of belief, nor did he in any wise
contribute to its production.
But where did it come from then?
We'll come to that in a moment.
Look at the second negative.
I did not receive it from any man.
Now that's not just tautology, he has something
extra to say there.
Here Paul goes beyond his first negative and
he says that he wasn't handed it as
a piece of tradition, either a family tradition,
or a social tradition, or a national tradition,
or a religious tradition.
For the simple fact that it wasn't a
tradition.
He did not receive it from any man.
It wasn't that any man handed him the
gospel on the plate and says here is
the gospel take it.
No, no he didn't receive it from any
man, from any human quarter.
And then he adds a third denial, nor
was I taught it.
A young Saul of Tarsus did not hear
the gospel from the lips of his parents.
When he went to school there was no
one who taught him the elements of the
gospel of Jesus Messiah.
When he went to the synagogue or later
on in the University in Jerusalem as a
disciple of Gamaliel there was no one, there
was no one who taught him the elements
of this gospel.
No man, nowhere, none.
There you have three major negative statements.
And they deny that Paul received the gospel
which he preached at Corinth from any human
source whatsoever.
His language is such as to cut out
all human beings from being at the source
of the gospel which he had first received
and then proclaimed.
Now look at Paul's positive claim to counterbalance
that.
Not that says Paul, but this.
I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
Galatians 1.12. By a process never fully
explained in Scripture, but implying divine action whereby
otherwise and hitherto unknown facts or truths are
disclosed, made known, made clear, rendered clear to
the understanding.
So that an individual in seeing them can
grasp them with his mind, believe them with
his soul, and later proclaim them with his
lips.
Now those who care to deny this particular
claim of the Apostle Paul and the reality
of it, this testimony must be prepared to
face the facts as they are recorded for
us.
The facts as recorded point to this and
to this alone.
Paul did not receive it from man, but
he did receive it.
And you and I know that.
And we know that he so received it
that it transformed his whole thinking and his
entire living.
Morally, spiritually, in every sense from center to
circumference.
Every aspect of this man's life was forever
more transformed and transfigured and stamped and embossed
with Christ and with God's name.
And that was in consequence of his reception
of the gospel.
Well, how did he receive it then?
Well, he answers the question.
By revelation of God.
It all began to happen on the road
to Damascus.
And of course that illustrates for us very
beautifully how no man had any share in
it.
There was no one there.
No one capable of adding anything, of saying
any word to help Saul of Tarsus out
of the morass and the bondage of his
philosophical thinking and his ignorance and his arrogance.
There was no one there to help.
But God opened the heavens and he beheld
the glory of Jesus Messiah as Lord seated
on the heavenly throne.
And he was given to see the Son
of Man sitting at the right hand of
the Majesty on high.
Only God can do that.
And it all began there.
He was given to see the glories of
the Lord.
And you see, in consequence, the Apostle Paul
could never go back from that.
When you have seen the glories of our
Lord Jesus Christ, you can't go back All
the glitter, all the pomp of every other
philosophy, every other teaching, every other alternative, it
loses its power.
When once you've seen the glories of the
Lord Jesus, Jesus glorified on the Father's throne,
and once you've seen him, how did you
see him, Paul?
By revelation.
The revelation of Jesus Christ.
God gave me.
And the whole content of the gospel, the
message related to the crucified Lord now ascended
up on high, the whole message was conveyed
to him by revelation.
That's what he tells us in Galatians, that's
the implication of it.
It all happened by divine revelation.
Something along the same level as took place
on the Damascus Road also took place in
Arabia.
You remember Paul tells us there in Galatians
1 that when this experience, this knowledge of
the Lord Jesus had been given to him,
disclosed to him, he didn't confer with flesh
and blood, but he went straight for Arabia.
In other words, he went aside, he went
apart from the crowd, even from churches, even
from Christians, as well as from his enemies.
And there in Arabia of all places, possibly
in a desert place, we cannot say, but
alone and away from men, his gospel was
given him, the truth was conveyed to him.
And you have this amazing miracle of divine
revelation taking place.
When at last, years later, Paul came back
to Damascus, three years after coming back to
Damascus, he went up to Jerusalem, where the
Apostles were.
Many years have gone now in between.
When he went back to Jerusalem, he went
and he had two weeks, was it called,
dare we call it a holiday, with Peter.
He didn't know any of the Apostles until
now, but he went to stay with Peter
for two weeks.
Do you remember the consequence of that?
They heard his gospel, the gospel he had
been preaching, and the Apostles concluded that he
was preaching exactly the same gospel as they
had been preaching, and were still preaching.
But he didn't get it from them.
Now look at this.
Praise the Lord, we have a wonderful God.
Jesus of Nazareth, in his incarnate state, taught
the eleven all they needed to know.
He walked with them, and talked with them,
and lived with them, and he imparted all
the truths they needed to know about himself,
the Messiah of the Scriptures, the Christ of
God.
The same Jesus, but now glorified, now ascended,
now no longer physically present with the eleven
or anybody else, but spiritually enthroned in glory,
communicates to Saul of Tarsus, the arch-rebel
whose heart he has changed, and communicates the
gospel to him, and teaches him from the
throne in heaven.
And when Paul speaks with the Apostles, they
say, man you're preaching the same gospel as
we are.
We've got the same gospel.
We got it from the incarnate Lord here
upon earth.
You got it from the enthroned Lord upon
his throne.
Christian, missionary, worker, saint, witness, here is something
for you and for me to worship God
on its account, because it is true.
But not by man, not of man, but
of God.
Paul's gospel was the gospel of God.
Before ever he called it my gospel, he
called it the gospel of God, and the
gospel of his Son, and he received it
by revelation.
Now the next thing, I don't need to
apply that, I'm going on.
May the Spirit of God apply it to
our hearts, but you see, you and I
need to be sure that we've got the
gospel of God.
I need it.
There is no assurance that I prize more
than this.
As with fear and trepidation, I often mount
this pulpit, but I lose my fears when
I am certain in my soul that I
have the word that God has revealed to
give to you, dear people.
And unless we know that, not only are
we the poorer, but we've scarcely the right
to preach, whether it be at home or
abroad.
But of this we must be sure.
Now look at the next.
The gospel first preached by Paul, and first
received by Paul, and then preached by him,
was a gospel with saving power.
Oh, we use that word saving or salvation
very, very flippantly sometimes.
Forgetting that it's such a big word encompassing
so much, it makes a difference between heaven
and hell.
This is one of the great, if not
the greatest words of Scripture, of the Paul
reminds the Corinthians, I want to remind you
of the gospel I preach to you, which
you received and on which you have taken
your stand.
By this gospel you are being saved.
The gospel of God is a gospel that
saves.
Don't let's ever be ashamed of that.
It's a biblical term with a biblical concept
that matches the danger and the peril of
our human society here and elsewhere.
We are lost in sin and shame, but
the word salvation changes the whole thing and
brings the life of God as well as
the pardon of God into our souls, and
everything's different.
Now just a few things about this tonight.
The first thing, the gospel that is from
God, from God alone, can alone produce the
Church of God.
The gospel which is from God alone, unadorned
by human philosophies and ideas, unalloyed by anything
human, the pure unadulterated gospel of God is
the only gospel that will build the Church
of God.
Now I deliberately put it like that because
I encounter people these days, and I'm sure
you do too, we encounter them differently, but
I encounter some people who like to titivate
the gospel and like to add to it
certain things.
And to me it's like plucking the rose
of Sharon and putting it in a bouquet,
and they say that the background, what you
put alongside of it, is far more important
than the rose of Sharon itself.
And they want to accompany the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ with this, that, or
the other, because that is what makes it
palatable.
That is what makes it acceptable.
The gospel per se is not the thing
we're depending upon, it's the things that go
with it, it's the trimmings.
Brothers, I have a, and sisters, I have
a dread in my soul of dishonoring the
gospel of God by putting emphasis on trimmings,
be it in the church, or its services,
or in any other context.
When once you introduce trimmings into the propagation
of the gospel, you are in danger of
elevating things that are man-made and humanly
conceived, and thus of taking away from the
glory of the gospel of God.
And I have a dread of that, because
people want to introduce all kinds of things
into the church today.
I sometimes confess to myself, well this is
a great time in which to preach the
gospel, but I say to myself, I'm almost
glad that my days in the ministry are
drawing to a close, because I encounter so
much of this which to me dishonors my
Lord, dishonors the Lord.
He's to be the center.
It's the gospel of God as God gave
it in its purity, in its sanctity, without
any of the additions and human accretions of
so-called human wisdom.
This is the gospel that will build the
church of God.
Now wait a moment.
You can build a church of a kind
without building the church of God, and this
is where it is so subtle.
You and I can build a church that
is filled to capacity with people, all making
a wonderful sound which is apparently praise to
the Lord.
Now I've gone through this, and I've been
in that situation, and I know it is
possible to do it, but I tell you,
if I understand these words are right, it
is only the gospel of God in the
purity of its original givenness that can build
the church God is building.
And I don't want to build my own
church.
I want to be building the church of
God and if I'm not building the church
of God, I want the Lord to take
me out of the way.
Except the Lord build the house they labor
in vain that build it.
Now listen to this.
Believe it or not, an offshoot of the
true church of God emerged of all places,
of all places in ancient Corinth, in ancient
Corinth.
Now that it was a true church of
God, there's no question about it.
Listen to how Paul addresses them.
1 Corinthians 1.
Paul, he says, called to be an apostle
of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
and our brother Sosthenes to the church of
God in Corinth.
And then he goes on to those sanctified
in Christ Jesus and called to be holy,
together with all those everywhere who call on
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their
Lord and ours.
Now you've only to read these verses in
which the apostle introduces his first Corinthian letter
to realize that he's looking upon the Corinthian
believers as genuine believers, true Christians.
There were some exceptions among them, maybe.
But speaking generally, it was a true, a
genuine church of God.
He goes on and he makes an addition
at the, toward the middle of chapter 1
of 1 Corinthians.
He makes it abundantly clear that the Corinthian
church, speaking generally again, was not inferior to
any other church anywhere.
There were churches in other places.
But you read verses 4 to 9 and
it's amazing what he tells us about the
church in Corinth.
I'll come to the reason why I stress
that in a moment.
Some of you don't need telling, but let
me, let me read these words first of
all.
Verses 4 to 9, 1 Corinthians 1.
I always thank God for you because of
his grace given you in Jesus Christ, in
Christ Jesus.
For in him you have been enriched in
every way, in all your speaking and in
all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ
was confirmed in you.
Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift
as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus
to be revealed.
What do you think of that?
He's telling this church that they don't lack
anything.
The Spirit of God has given them everything
they need.
They're blessed with every spiritual gift in Corinth,
in Corinth.
Now the moral and spiritual transformation involved in
the emergence of that Corinthian church is nothing
short of the miraculous.
Corinth was one of the most unholy and
unwholesome of all Greek or any other cities
in the ancient world.
You know as well as I do that
it used to be called the dunghill of
that ancient society.
And I don't know who had done it,
but it had come, it had become fashionable
to use a verb, which is not a
verb, but they made it into a verb,
to Corinthianize.
And to Corinthianize meant, it's referred to the
act or process of making something or someone
utterly perverted.
To Corinthianize a person was to make it
utterly and completely perverted in every sense.
And Corinth was such a city.
So you remember in chapter 6 of his
first letter the Apostle Paul says this to
them.
Do you not know he says that the
wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral,
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor
homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor
drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the
kingdom of God.
And now hold your breath.
And that is what some of you were.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you
were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
What?
Oh have you got it?
Here is a true church of blood-washed,
spirit-indwelt and sanctified men and women, a
congregation of the saints of God, built upon
the downhill of ancient Corinth.
What did it?
The gospel Paul preached, not with eloquence of
man, but in dependence upon the Holy Ghost,
the Holy Spirit.
And the Spirit sealed the word to the
hearts of men and brought men to the
Savior and to God through the Savior.
By the proclamation of the gospel given to
Paul by revelation, believed by Paul and then
proclaimed by him in its beauty and its
glory and its totality to those debauched people
of Corinth, a church of God appeared.
Not just a church, but the true church.
The other thing which I can alone stress
tonight is this.
The gospel that hails from God and which
alone can produce and perfect a church in
any atmosphere, but especially in an atmosphere like
Corinth's, is based upon the death and the
burial and the resurrection of the man Christ
Jesus.
This is how this early passage in 1
Corinthians is related to our main theme, the
resurrection, Christ's and ours.
The only adequate cause for such a glorious
effect as the emergence of a church of
the living God on the downhill of ancient
Corinth is to be found in a Messiah
that was anointed of God, who lived and
died and was buried and rose again and,
listen, is risen.
Not only did he arise and it's over
and done with, he arose and he lives
in the power of an endless life and
because he ever lives to make intercession for
us, he is able to save to the
uttermost those that come to God by him.
Ours is a living Savior.
He arose in history.
He is risen still and he abides the
one with the keys of death and Hades,
dangling from his life.
Oh yes, that gospel which created the one
body of which Paul speaks of in 1
Corinthians 12 and 14, a body whose diversity
of gifts makes it capable of fulfilling the
mind and the purpose of its divine head,
even in a hostile pagan world whose love
can be of the quality of 1 Corinthians
13, the gospel that produces a body such
as that is no flimsy gospel.
There's no man-made gospel.
It must be the gospel of God.
You see, that's why Paul everywhere was not
unashamed of the gospel.
He saw it as the power of God
in operation, unto, working towards, aiming at, and
achieving salvation among all the nations.
Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Messiah
of the Scriptures.
He accepted in Peter's confession the fact that
he was, when Peter said, thou art the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Yes, and more than that, in replying to
him, Jesus said, actually, Peter, that is absolutely
foundational to my church.
Upon this rock I will build my church.
The Messiah of the Scriptures was destined to
die and to rise again.
I have no time to develop that here
tonight, so you can pacify your mind.
I have no time to develop it.
But in the Scriptures he was foretold, and
he was referred to as one who would
suffer.
The Jews couldn't take it in, of course.
They just couldn't, and you can't blame them,
in one sense.
It's such an amazing thing to take in,
that one anointed of God to be the
Savior of men should himself suffer, especially in
terms of Isaiah 53.
But it is also foretold in Scripture that
he would rise again from the dead.
Jesus himself was quite clear of that.
You remember he mentions it in a number
of places, especially in Luke chapter 24, the
two on the road to Emeus and the
rest of the disciples later on.
He said, everything must be fulfilled that is
written about me in the law of Moses
and the prophets and the Psalms.
Then he opened their minds so they could
understand the Scriptures.
He told them, this is what is written.
The Christ will suffer and rise from the
dead on the third day, and repentance and
forgiveness of sins will be preached in his
name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
He were witnesses of these things.
He believed the Scriptures concerning himself, and he
came to fulfill them.
And it is the testimony of the church
that he not only came to fulfill them,
he did fulfill them.
They were filled to the full in him.
May I remind you that Isaiah 53, though
it begins with terrible anguish and suffering, doesn't
end quite there.
Many people have read Isaiah 53 without recognizing
some of the remarkable things that are stated
towards the end of that great prophetic chapter.
May I remind you of some of these
words, listen to these words, I just cull
them out and hold them forth to you.
He will see his offspring and prolong his
days.
He's already died in the in the development
of the passage, but says the Prophet, he
will see his offspring and he will prolong
his days and the will of the Lord
will prosper in his hand.
And all that's to come again.
Or listen to these words, he will see
the light of life and be satisfied beyond
his death, beyond his anguish, beyond his sufferings,
he will be satisfied.
Or listen to this, therefore I will give
him a portion among the great and he
will divide the spoils with the strong.
Hallelujah, did you get that?
He will divide the spoils with the strong.
He who has suffered, he who is in
anguish, he who is lacerated, he who is
torn, he whom some of the scholars say
is like a man tortured and tortured not
only with physical beating and laceration but by
some hideous loathsome disease.
He will divide the spoils with the strong.
He's the conqueror.
He's the victor.
He sees the light of day.
He will see his seed.
He's not lost the day.
Brothers and sisters don't miss that.
It was foretold that he would rise again
and rise again he did.
He is the fulfillment of the prophesied pattern.
The actuality of the resurrection didn't give all
that problem to Paul and others in his
day of course because as he tells us
here in 1 Corinthians 15 there were so
many witnesses to it.
To people today the resurrection causes a lot
of trouble.
But you see Paul is almost embarrassed here
by the number of people who'd seen the
Lord Jesus and he's telling them even though
he doesn't put it in these words, look
he says he was seen by over 500
brothers and sisters at once of whom the
most part are alive to this day and
if you've got any doubts well take a
single ticket or a return and go and
see them and go and talk to them.
You know they're around today.
They saw him.
They touched him.
They handled him.
That's the way to get rid of your
doubts.
They're still alive.
I think we've lost the vision of this
and the grandeur of this and the certainty
that arises out of this.
But I must conclude with this.
The gospel of God given to all by
revelation is the gospel that relates to Jesus
Christ.
Lived, died, was buried, rose again and is
risen and lives forevermore.
But the thing that I want you to
notice particularly is this.
So this, if it was foretold in scripture
must have been God's plan from all eternity.
The cross was no accident.
What happened in ancient Jerusalem wasn't just all
determined by man.
All they did they worse.
Paul says that in the book of Acts
in chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost.
Of course you by wicked hands have taken
him and you've crucified him and you've slain
him.
He says but nevertheless he says this was
the predetermined plan of God and because it
was predetermined by God you see it could
be foretold.
You see you can't foretell.
The prophets could not foretell what had not
been foreordained.
There is no prophecy unless something has been
determined beforehand.
You can't have prophecy only guessing unless something
has been predetermined.
And if something has been predetermined the only
one who can reveal it is the person
who has predetermined it.
And the only one who can predetermine anything
is the Lord God Almighty.
He had predetermined.
He had chosen the lamb from before the
foundations of the world.
And he had been set aside and he
had been sanctified to be the bearer of
sin.
And in the fullness of the time he
sent him forth and he lived under the
anointing of the Spirit.
God did not give him the Spirit by
measure.
So he lived.
So he wrote miracles.
So he offered signs to men that he
was the scent of Jehovah.
And then the shocking thing happened as far
as man was concerned.
He died.
The bottom went out of the life of
his disciples and his enemies bought it.
But wait a moment.
On the morning of the third day there
was a real earthquake.
Not an ordinary one but an extraordinary one.
He arose, a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever with his saints to
reign.
And that is the gospel that builds the
Church of God.
In Corinth, you and I are in Toronto.
We're a long way from Corinth.
I ask you, are we?
Are we?
Some of you have been already talking to
me today about ancient Corinthian morals.
Not as they were found in ancient Corinth,
but as they are found today and impinging
upon your lives right here in the city
of Toronto.
Can there be a true Church of God
rising amidst the rabble and remaining pure?
I know of only one way in which
that can take place.
By the purity of the Word of God
proclaimed and applied and obeyed.
If you receive, says Paul, the gospel that
I proclaimed to you, the gospel which I
first received before I handed it on, if
you've taken your stand upon it, you are
saved by it.
Unless you've believed, of course, in vain.
To believe in vain is to believe on
a bubble, something that has no content, something
that is empty in the middle.
To believe on a Christ other than the
Christ of revelation and of history, the Son
of God who came and lived and died
and rose again.
Any other Messiah, to believe on any other
Messiah is to believe in vain.
For God has only anointed one, and it
is only the one of God's anointing who
has suffered and borne the penalty of our
sins and has been raised again for the
justification of a sinner.
I commend him to you.
If there are those among us tonight who
do not trust in him, O friend, trust
him.
There is no other Savior you will ever
find like him.
There is no other name given among men
whereby we must be saved.
But I believe most of us here tonight
are trusting in him.
There is one other question.
Are we proud of him?
Do we see the total significance of Christ
and his gospel?
Or do we see any need to supplement
it by this, that, and the other?
Or is not Christ and Christ alone sufficient
for us to live by, to serve by,
and to die by?
I believe he is the Alpha and the
Omega.
Let us pray.
Lord God, our Father, we thank you for
the gospel of your blessed Son, our Lord.
We thank you for the grace that has
drawn us to you in him and through
him.
We ask your forgiveness for everything that tends
to come between us and you by any
measure in which we ever dishonor him or
yourself as revealed in him.
And we pray that we may learn more
and more to see him with clarity and
to recognize and honor him fully.
Make us as individuals very cautious, very careful
of this, and grant to us as a
congregation, whether we serve abroad or whether we
serve at home, grant us, we pray, a
jealousy for his glory, a holy inbuilt jealousy
that matches your own for the glory of
your Son.
Hear us in his holy name.
Amen.