Well, now shall we turn together to the
first epistle written by John in chapter 5,
and we shall read again verses 18 to
20.
We know that whosoever is born of God
sinneth not, but he that is begotten of
God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth
him not.
And we know that we are of God,
and the whole world lieth or lieth in
wickedness.
And we know that the Son of God
is come, and hath given us an understanding,
that we may know him that is true,
and we are in him that is true,
even in his Son Jesus Christ.
This is the true God and eternal life.
Now, the Apostle John is concluding his very
wonderful epistle, comprising of only five chapters.
It is a very remarkable document, and I
think that those of us who, over the
last year or so, have been meditating upon
the words and the teaching of this epistle
will have to concede that it has the
capacity both to challenge and to comfort.
It searches us.
It casts its rays of light deep into
our consciences and into our hearts.
It searches us out.
It makes us examine ourselves.
It somehow helps us sift the wheat from
the chaff.
But it is also full of comfort.
There is hardly an epistle in the New
Testament that is capable of bringing more comfort
to those who are truly the children of
God.
And I trust that something of the challenge
as well as of the comfort, the comfort
as well as of the challenge, has found
its way into our lives as we have
been meditating upon the teaching of this apostle
of our Lord's.
But now, how will John wrap up or
conclude the writing of the epistle?
What's he going to do?
Well, we have that conclusion really in the
verses that we have chosen as our text
tonight.
This is really the closing word, as it
were, the final message.
And it is all given us in a
cluster of certainties, or as I put it
in our subject, a stock of certainties.
In the course of the epistle, John has
been referring to some uncertainties.
But he and those whom he addresses here,
he with them, now comes to the end
of the epistle, then they come to the
end of reading it, he to the end
of writing it, and he assumes that they
with him can conclude on a note of
glorious certainty, a threefold certainty.
And I want us to look at these
tonight and just see what God has to
say to us as we meditate upon them,
and what he's putting into our hands and
into our hearts as we go out into
the world to proclaim his word and to
be witnesses for him.
Now let's look at these three certainties then.
First of all, we have a certainty which
is largely in the realm of the intellect,
of the mind, of the understanding.
It's the certainty of a general principle.
Look at these words in verse 18.
We know, says John, that anyone born of
God does not sin, but he who was
born of God keeps him.
This is the Revised Standard Version.
And the evil one does not touch him.
Now let's look at this statement.
This is the first certainty that you and
I may have if we have applied the
teaching of this epistle to ourselves and we
discover that we are truly the sons of
God and the daughters of God.
What is it, says John, talking about?
Well, it's the certainty of a general principle.
And we need to know this.
We need to have this clearly embedded in
our minds as we look at the world
outside of us and as we apply the
Christian faith to ourselves.
Here it is.
We know that anyone born of God does
not go on sinning, but he who was
born of God keeps him, and the evil
one does not touch him.
Now let's take it little by little.
The first point that we notice here is
this.
The Christian is described as a man or
a woman that is born of God.
This has been made true in the epistle
already, over and over again.
John has a reference made to this.
A Christian man is twice born.
A Christian person is born a second time.
In the first place, a man is born
of woman, to use a little usage.
But a Christian is born again.
He is born of God.
His first birth follows the normal processes of
procreation.
His second birth follows the principle of spiritual
regeneration.
So that every Christian man or every Christian
woman is a person who has been born
the second time.
Let me put the question.
Are you quite sure?
Am I quite sure?
Are we sure tonight?
As we come here into the house of
God, are we quite sure that we know
something about this being born again of the
Spirit of God?
It was, too, a very high-ranking ecclesiastic
that our Lord Jesus had to say with
some rigor and with a very pointed, almost
accusation.
Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he simply doesn't know and
cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is
flesh.
That which is born of the Spirit is
Spirit.
Marvel not that I say unto thee, ye,
you must be born again.
It's not enough to be a child of
Abraham according to the flesh.
A child of Abraham according to the flesh
must become a child of Abraham according to
the Spirit.
Abraham was a man of faith, and because
he was a man of faith, he knew
God.
In the knowledge of God, he was truly
a child of God.
Now, that's the first thing that John says.
Now, look at the way he proceeds.
An inevitable and universal consequence of being twice
born is this.
Anyone born of God does not sin.
Now, that really is a little bit confusing,
the way it is put, because the casual
reader would conclude that that means that anybody
born of God doesn't sin anymore.
Now, that's not what John really said.
We've examined this before as we've been plowing
our way through the epistle, and we can
just put it now in summary form.
What John really said is this.
Any person who is born of God ceases
to live a life of habitual sinning.
In other words, the habit of his life
is no longer doing that which is wrong
in the sight of God.
His habit is different from that.
He may sin.
He may fall.
John has been saying, actually, in the very
first chapter, that if any man says that
he has not sinned, well, he's just a
liar.
He goes as far as that.
Or if we say that we have not
sinned in ourselves, the truth is not in
us, he says.
John is conceiving that we may have sin
within us and that we may fall into
sin.
But if any man is born of God,
he does not go on habitually sinning.
In other words, the characteristic of his life
is not sin, but righteousness.
Not wrongdoing, but right doing.
Not pleasing himself, but pleasing his God.
What has happened, what has changed, then, is
the tenor of his life.
Looking at a man, you may judge what
he is, because you see the habitual mode
of living, either in accordance with sin, which
is unrighteousness, or with goodness, which is righteousness.
If any man be in Christ, there is
a new creation.
Old things are passed away, behold, everything has
become new, and all things are of God.
Now, this is a principle that we must
know.
We've gathered this, says John, we know this
from what we've studied together in the bulk
of this epistle.
It's a general principle.
And then he goes on to explain why.
Why is it that a man born of
God does not go on sinning?
Now, you will have noticed, if you follow
the reading in your own New Testaments, you
will have noticed from what I've said already
that there are two different translations of the
second part of verse 18.
In the King James Version, we read this.
He that is begotten of God keepeth himself,
and that wicked one toucheth him not.
That's one translation.
Another translation is this.
He who was born of God keeps him.
Now, let's take one at a time.
What does the first mean?
Well, the first is fairly obvious, is it
not?
He that is begotten of God keeps himself.
If that is what John really wanted to
say, what he's meaning is this.
A man that has been begotten of God,
that has been born the second time, has
the divine nature within him.
He has the Spirit of God residing in
himself.
And having the divine nature and the Spirit
of God within him, he is a person
who looks after himself spiritually, and who keeps
himself pure and clean, who keeps himself from
evil.
Now, this is quite biblical, and John might
very well have been saying that.
Let me remind you of other places, for
example, where we have the same sentiment.
In 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 22,
Paul tells the young Timothy, keep yourself pure.
Keep yourself pure.
Now, he's not talking to a non-Christian
there.
A non-Christian could not do that.
A man who is not born of the
Spirit of God simply could not keep himself
pure from sin.
But Paul is addressing a Christian.
And a Christian has the divine nature.
And he enjoys the privileges of a son
of God.
He can talk to his father.
He can draw grace from the throne of
grace.
And he has the Spirit of God within
him.
And he has the Word of God to
guide him.
And he has the fellowship of the people
of God to encourage him.
And therefore, every Christian should be able to
keep himself in that sense.
James says exactly the same thing in principle
in chapter 1 and verse 27 of his
letter, when he says this, religion that is
pure and undefiled before God and the Father
is this, to visit orphans and widows in
their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from
the world.
Keep oneself.
Now again, you see, James is not talking
about the once-born person, but the twice
-born person.
If you're twice-born, you have capacities.
You have energies.
You have within yourself the Spirit of God.
And within you reach all the privileges of
the children of God.
And therefore, you are responsible.
I am responsible.
You cannot say that you're a Christian man
twice-born without acknowledging that you have responsibilities
and obligations.
You have all the privileges of the children
of the kingdom.
Therefore, use your privileges.
Draw upon your resources.
Keep yourself, says James.
Keep yourself pure.
Jude says exactly the same thing in principle.
In Jude verse 21 of his one-chaptered
letter, he says, keep yourselves in the love
of God.
Now, I don't need to harp upon that.
John may be saying that.
He may be just referring back to what
is just said.
A man who is a true Christian has
been born of God.
He has the seed of God in him
and the Spirit of God dwelling in him.
Therefore, he should keep himself from that which
is evil.
But now there's another possibility here.
And linguistically, I think, this is quite as
possible as the other.
And it's the one we've quoted from the
Revised Standard Version, and you also find it
in other versions of the New Testament.
He who was born of God keeps him.
Now, the reference here is to the Lord
Jesus Christ as the one begotten of God,
born of God.
And He pledges to keep those that are
twice born.
If any man is a Christian, he is
born of God.
And the one begotten of God, the one
person born of God, namely the Son of
God, He keeps all the twice born.
Now, my good friends, this is equally true.
Did not Jesus say that He will keep
His sheep?
Did He not say, no man shall be
able to pluck them out of my Father's
hand?
I and my Father are one.
Did He not say that He was the
Good Shepherd?
Does not the New Testament say that He
is able to keep us from stumbling or
from falling?
That He is able to present us faultless
before the throne of His Father with joy?
Of course.
I'm not quite sure which John wanted to
stress.
Perhaps both.
Because in one place, at any rate, the
Apostle Paul brings the two together when he
says this to the Philippians.
Work out your own salvation, he says, with
fear and trembling.
You work out your own salvation.
But he did not stop there.
Why?
What?
Because God is at work in you, both
to will and to do of His good
pleasure.
You do it because God is doing it.
You work with God.
You respond to Him.
God and you together in the fellowship which
is salvation.
You do that, says Paul.
It may very well be that John means
us to take both here.
I don't know.
But at any rate, the thought is clear.
The Christian is a person who keeps himself
and is kept from sin and evil by
the One who is begotten of the Father,
even the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the consequence is this.
Now again, our English, and especially the King
James Version, is not very good here.
It says, and the wicked one doesn't touch
Him.
Well, the wicked one does touch Him.
If by touch you mean temptation, it isn't
touch.
Touch is not the right word here.
Who is here untouched by temptation?
The work of the devil, the hand of
the devil.
If touch is to be equated with temptation,
then this language is not very appropriate.
The word that John really used should be
translated a little different from that.
What John really said was this.
The wicked one doesn't cling to Him.
He's not able to get his teeth in,
may I say that?
Or can't get a grip on Him.
I don't really know, and I don't want
to dogmatize this.
I don't want to say it dogmatically, but
the picture that it conveyed to me, and
I'm not a linguist, I'm not a specialist
in languages, but the picture it conveyed to
me is the picture of somebody mountaineering.
And you know, if you're climbing a mountain,
you want to get a good foothold somewhere.
And especially when the slope is a bit
steep, you've got to get your foot in.
And it's not safe to climb any higher
until you've got your foot firm.
And I believe that what John is saying
here is this.
The devil can't get a foothold on the
man that the Son of God keeps.
Oh, he'll come and he'll touch you all
right, and he'll tease, and he'll harass, he'll
entice, and he'll suggest, he'll do all sorts
of things, but he can't get a foothold.
He may get you down, but he'll rise
up again, as we shall see in a
moment.
He doesn't really find a home in the
heart of the man who is born of
God.
He has the first certificate, and it's in
terms of a principle, something that every Christian
knows.
As you think of your life, as you
teach your children, as you go out into
the world and represent the Christian faith to
other people, know this.
A man that has been born of God
does not go on sinning that the habit
is broken.
Oh, he may fall, but the evil one
doesn't really get a foothold in his life
so that he can take control again.
That is because the person born of God
is able to keep himself, and he's able
to keep himself because the Lord Jesus is
his Saviour.
Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
shall save his people from their sin.
Is Jesus Christ your Saviour?
Then he saves you from your sin, and
saves me from mine.
That's the first certainty, the certainty of a
general principle that relates to those who profess
to be Christian.
Now look at the second.
The second of John's certainties relates to personal
experience.
Verse 19.
We know that we are of God, and
the whole world is in the power of
the evil one.
Now, let's take this again, little by little,
piece by piece.
The apostle claims to be sure that he
and his fellow Christians were born of God.
We know, he says, that we are of
God.
So, according to this, a Christian man or
a Christian woman may know that he belongs
to God.
It is given us by the grace of
God to know our spiritual pedigree.
These things I write unto you, says John,
in verse 13, in order that you may
know that you are the children of God,
that you are his people.
I trust that all of us tonight will
know of a certainty that we are born
of God, and we are his people.
Because until we do, there are certain things
in life that we can't tackle.
We can hardly help other people beyond that
place where we have come ourselves.
We cannot lift other people higher than the
level we ourselves have attained.
And if we don't know this kind of
certainty, then we cannot lead other people into
the certainty of God's mercy and God's grace.
Now, how can you know that you are
of God, born of God?
Well, it may be that John is referring
back to the verse that we have just
been looking at.
We know that whosoever is born of God
does not go on sinning.
Therefore, it may be that what he had
in mind was this.
The habit of sin has been broken in
our lives.
The tyranny of it, the mastery of it.
You remember that word in Romans chapter 6,
where Paul says, Sin shall not have dominion
over you.
Every man and woman who has been baptized
by the Spirit into the body of Christ
and is a child of God, every man
and woman who is born again, that person
is a person concerning whom you may say,
Sin shall not have dominion over him.
He is capable, says Paul at the end
of Romans 5, of reigning in life.
Now, these are great terms, and either they
are true or they are false.
A Christian is a man who can reign.
He is a king.
He is called to be nothing less than
a king in the midst of life and
in the midst of death.
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
Now, we know, therefore, if this dominion has
been broken within us, we know that God
has done something within us.
We know that salvation has begun.
I was reminded as I came out from
the house tonight of an incident in one
of the old Scottish kirks when they used
very seriously to cross-examine incoming members into
the fellowship.
This was the prerogative of the minister and
a number of the elders acting in concert.
There was a young lass in her late
teens, timid and shy, without many words on
her lips, who made a profession of faith
and sought access to the fellowship.
And an old, dour elder questioned her.
The first question was this, Have you discovered
that you are a great sinner?
To which the little lass, looking up at
him, said with trembling voice, Yes, sir, I
have.
Second question was this, Have you discovered that
the Lord Jesus Christ is able to save
you from your sin?
And with half a smile, albeit still timidly,
she said, Yes, sir, I have.
The third question was this, Having discovered that
you are a great sinner and that Jesus
Christ is able to save you from your
sin, do you now sin?
Looking utterly confused, the little lass said, Sir,
she says, I do, I do.
Say it again, lass, said the old elder,
without a smile on his face, a forbidding
look, giving the girl no cue as to
what he expected.
Say it again, if you have discovered that
you are a great sinner and that Jesus
Christ is a great Saviour who is able
to save you from your sin, do you
still sin?
I do, sir, she said, I must be
honest.
Well then, said he, what's the difference?
He used to sin.
You've discovered that you're a great sinner and
you've discovered that Jesus Christ is a Saviour,
what's the difference now that He's your Saviour?
And she scratched her head and she says,
I find it very difficult to explain, she
said, but it seems somewhat like this.
And, as it were, with a puzzled look,
she said, it used to be as if
I were running after sin, and it seems
now to be that sin is running after
me rather than I running after it.
You know, that's exactly the truth of the
case.
In our unregenerate condition, our hearts and our
lives and our spirits go out after evil,
deep within us calls to deep without, and
anything the devil dangles before us, we fall
for it.
The difference in the man who has been
changed by the grace of God and become
a child of God is this, he does
not go on sinning, the tyranny of sin
has been broken, though sin still runs after
him, Satan runs after him.
We may know, says John, we may know
that we are of God when that tyranny
has been broken.
Because only God can do that.
Satan can mar, but it's only God that
can make us again, so that the image
of the Father is embossed upon us.
But Christian certainty deepens by contrasting the genuinely
Christian experience with that of the whole unbelieving
world.
And I think this is the main thrust
in verse 19.
Look at it again.
We know that we are of God, and
the whole world is in the power of
the evil one.
Now John has already said, said it three
times as a matter of fact in the
body of the epistle, that the whole world
is of the evil one.
He's already said that.
I believe that what he wants to stress
now is that the world of unregenerate men
and women are quite happy in the lap
of the evil one.
The whole world lieth in the evil one.
It's lying down, you see.
Now this is the characteristic of the world
outside of the church, outside of Christ.
Men and women are happy to lie down
in sin.
Happy with it.
They like it.
If you try to get them out of
it, well they say, no, no, no, you
can't take me away from this, or you
can't take this away from me.
I must have my sin.
I must have my habit.
I must have this and that, and I
can't live without it.
They're lying in it, you see, like sheep
in a meadow.
Lying down, chewing the cud.
This is their life.
This is their element.
They're lying in it.
And if you threaten to take their sin
away from them, they'll almost strangle you.
Now by contrast, says John, we know that
we are of God.
Why?
Because he that is begotten of God does
not go on sinning.
He can't lie down in it.
You may fall into sin, but you get
up again when you want to leave it.
You'll be tripped, and you get down, and
you'll do that which is evil.
But you hate yourself, and you loathe yourself,
and you look to your Savior, and you
say, oh Lord, have mercy upon me.
Forgive me.
We'll turn to the fount where sin is
washed away.
We'll confess our sins, and we'll discover again
that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son,
is able not only to cleanse us from
sin, but from unrighteousness.
What John wants us to get here is
this, that the habit of life that is
disgusted with sin and loathes evil proves that
we are out of God, born of God.
I came across this little statement somewhere.
I'm not sure who the author is.
As there can be no argument of chemistry
in proof of odors, like a present perfume
itself, as the shining of the stars is
a better proof of their existence than the
figures of an astronomer, as the restored patient
is a better argument for the skill of
a physician than his paper qualifications, as the
testimony of the calendar that summer has arrived
on a certain day is not half as
compelling a testimony as the blue sky above,
the warm air and the gentle breeze, the
most assuring of all assuring factors in relation
to the soul's birth of God is to
see itself weaned away from the world that
is content to lie in sin in order
to cultivate a walk of fellowship with God.
My friend, if you are weaned away from
sin and can't lie down in it at
any cost, at any price, that means that
you can say about yourself that you're born
of God.
It's the second certainty.
There is no doubt about it that the
man who is dissatisfied with himself and his
condition and is leaving every semblance of sin
in order to perfect himself before God by
his grace is a man who is born
of God and not simply a woman, twice
born.
The third certainty is this.
The third in this stock of certainties relates
to the particular and exclusive means whereby men
can be born of God and saved from
their sin and from the world.
It is the certainty of the way of
salvation.
And we know, says John, and we know
that the Son of God has come and
has given us an understanding to know him
that is true, and we are in him
that is true and in his Son Jesus
Christ.
This is the true God.
Now, very briefly as we close, if it
is true that the whole world lies in
the evil one or in evil, content to
lie motionless in an element that will at
last crush them to eternal misery, and some
of us have found a way out of
that, some of us have found an exodus
out of that death-like vice, and have
found a way into fellowship with God, the
true God who saves from sin and makes
men anew and keeps them from sinning, if
it is true that we have made this
great discovery, it is so necessary that we
are sure of the way of salvation that
we may share it with others.
What is it?
First of all, John points to the historical
basis of it all.
We know, he says, that the Son of
God has come.
It is not Christmas time yet.
But John points us back unequivocally to one
historical event, and it all started there, says
John.
God the Son became man.
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us.
God came in the person of his Son.
He arrived.
My good friends, if you are a Christian,
there should be a dance in your soul
as you contemplate this, and as I do.
God the Son came, and because he came,
this kind of thing is possible.
If he had not come, you and I
would still be lying in our sin.
I dare not think, I dare not imagine
tonight where I myself would be if it
were not that Jesus came in history, first
of all, and then ultimately into my own
life.
Jesus came, and when Jesus came, the whole
movement began.
Whereby the power of sin in human life
can be broken.
He came, the Son of God.
Now, I'm passing that.
It's important enough to keep us together for
a week, but let me pass it in
order to come to this.
We know that the Son of God has
come, and, says John, has given us an
understanding that we may know him that is
true, and we are in him that is
true.
Now, the one thing I want to stress
is this.
He who came, says John, has given us
an understanding to know him that is genuine
and real.
A true God, a true Savior, a genuine
Savior, a genuine and real Savior, the real
God.
There are so many gods about.
That is, objects that we treat as if
they were deities.
And sometimes persons, too.
We worship them.
This is a world that loves to worship
its idols, and the idols of the world
are many.
I shall not attempt to enumerate.
You may use your own imaginations, but all
the people that are worshipped tonight, just because
of their capacity to run a little faster
than somebody else, or to crack jokes on
the television screen, or to do this, that,
or the other, and they're worshipped.
And when they die, a whole world mourns,
though they may be living in gross immorality.
And a whole world mourns because an open
sinner has died, not because he's gone to
hell, but because their God has vanished.
This is a very sad state of affairs.
There are tin toys and tin gods, but
there's a real God, says John, who does
the real work of salvation, who salvages the
soul, who remakes man after his image.
The God of creation is the God who
recreates the real God.
Now, says John, He who came, the Son
of God who came to do this work,
He has given to us who are twice
born, He has given us an understanding that
we may know Him that is true, and
to be in Him that is true.
Now, this is the climax of a mode
of reasoning which has many previous aspects to
it.
John tells us in his gospel, and he
tells us indeed in this epistle, that in
the Lord Jesus Christ we see God.
You remember the words of the gospel?
Jesus said, They that have seen me have
seen the Father.
But there were people who saw Jesus who
never saw the Father in Him.
There were many people who saw Jesus, saw
Him working His miracles, heard Him teach Him,
teaching with authority, with clarity, but they never
saw God, they never heard God.
Now, says one of those who used to
be called a Son of Thunder, if I
rightly understand that, he must have had a
fairly quick temper, and he was the type
of man who wanted to call all heaven
down in judgment upon others.
That's the kind of man he was.
But now he says, something happened to us?
I am the rest of us, he says,
something happened.
Not only did we see God in Christ
and hear God in Christ, but He who
is born of God gave us a dianoia.
It's a special word.
He gave us an understanding.
He gave us the capacity to recognize Him.
To see that He is the true God.
And having seen that He is the true
God, now because of a right relationship with
Him, to be living in Him, in fellowship
with Him.
My friends, this is a wonderful gospel.
Jesus Christ not only came to declare that
there is eternal life in Himself, He has
come to impart to men this capacity to
understand that in Him God has come.
That He is real, that He is true,
that He is genuine.
And therefore, in the Christ who has come
and done everything that is necessary for our
redemption, to come to know the true God.
That's why John concludes this epistle with this
warning.
Now he says, little children, keep yourselves from
idols.
Jesus has given you the capacity to know
the true God.
Explore it.
Exploit it.
Employ it.
Act upon it.
Use it.
Use your time and get to know the
God for whom you have a capacity to
know.
Whom you have a capacity to know.
May I close then with these three clusters
and us, whether tonight you and I are
quite sure that we are the children of
God twice born.
Are we sure that the Lord God Almighty
has done something in these souls of ours
that no amount of human psychology or preaching
or persuasion or coaxing could do?
Are we quite sure that our so-called
Christian experience was not psychologically induced and is
simply skin deep and can vanish when the
weather changes?
For a work of God in the soul
of man is a work that abides for
all eternity.
If any man be in Christ, there is
a new creation there.
We know.
And we know it all because He has
made it possible and He has given to
us all this, says John, wrapped up in
the one little parcel across which we write
eternal life.
Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, do we acknowledge before Thee that
the word of Scripture always seems to penetrate
into the depths of our minds and our
hearts and consciences.
And those of us who have been browsing
through this epistle written by Thy servant John
of old have found that almost in every
verse we are challenged.
And tonight again as we have been meditating
upon these three certainties, they have their own
peculiar way of getting under our skin and
into our hearts.
Father, we would know Thee as Thine apostles
did.
We do not ask that we should have
all the privileges that they had.
Indeed, we know that that is not possible.
But we do ask that we may know
Thee as the real God in Jesus Christ.
Draw us after Thee then.
And in each of our lives where this
experience of knowing Thee has begun, deepen it,
quicken it, perfect it.
And help us to keep ourselves from idols
and to give of our hearts entire worship,
its love and its faith and its joy
and thanksgiving and obeisance.
Help us to give all our hearts to
Thee who are the true one.
And help us, we pray, as we walk
among men who know Thee not and who
lie in the wicked one and who are
apparently quite happy to live and lie down
in evil.
O Lord, help us to bring light to
them and life to them and love to
them.
And help us to be before them the
very epistles of heaven and of God.
May we be the message as well as
the bearers of a message that Thou shalt
have glory and men's salvation.
And in this way, O Lord, if it
please Thee, extend the bounds of the church
and the numbers of the redeemed.
Add to Thy church daily those whom Thou
art saving.
And grant that as numbers are added, so
too our strength may be imbued with the
Spirit in power.
Hear us now and forgive our sins, in
Jesus' name.
Amen.