Blessed Hope

[00:00:00] God, your Word is marvelous. As we read its pages, we find truth everywhere. Truth that convicts us of our sin, that shows us the great confusion in which we continuously live, and also the rebellion and darkness. [00:00:22] But the truth also that points us to your marvelous saving grace. [00:00:30] Oh, how we thank you, O God, that in the Bible you have given us all that we need, that we might be delivered from our sins through faith in Jesus Christ, and that we might know how to worship and serve you, the only true God. [00:00:48] We ask, O God, that by the power of your Holy Spirit tonight you would open our hearts to know, understand, to believe and to live out your word. [00:01:02] That we might be blessed, that we might be changed to be more like your son Jesus, and that we might live our lives in service and praise as living sacrifices to you. We ask that you would receive us in our prayers for Jesus sake. Amen. [00:01:32] We didn't even pray for rain tonight. [00:01:38] We're going to read God's Word again, this time from Titus 2:11, 15. Titus 2:11 through 15. [00:01:51] This is God's word for you. [00:01:55] So listen, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright and and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works. [00:02:39] Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. [00:02:44] Let no one disregard you. [00:02:48] Please be seated. [00:03:06] What do you think of when someone mentions the word training or talks about the idea of training? [00:03:16] Probably go all sorts of places. It can be very, very broad. It can be quite narrow. [00:03:22] It can encompass just. It can just include just a very narrow set of skills that you receive training in. Or if you think of the training of a child, the education of a young person. [00:03:37] We're talking about something that's very broad, really, that to train a child, to educate a child includes not just a set of skills, but really the shaping of that whole person, that child, as he grows and develops. At each stage, we want to train the whole person. [00:04:01] So if you, if you talk to someone who's in education, a teacher, a grade school teacher or high school teacher, if he's a good teacher and you're talking to him, he understands that it's his job as a teacher, not just to teach the child a set of skills. Like say, how to read or write or public speaking or math. [00:04:22] The teacher understands that he isn't even just training the child's mind to understand and to be able to think critically, but that properly understood, the training and education of a child includes the whole person. [00:04:40] It's the mind, it's skills, but it's also the character of the child. [00:04:47] If you are a Christian, then you're in training because you are a disciple of Jesus and you're in Jesus school of grace, and it's his purpose and intent to train you according to his grace. And that's what this passage is about. [00:05:11] Verse 11. The grace of God has appeared, training us to renounce certain things and to live in a certain way. [00:05:22] All Christians are called to submit to and receive and even pursue training by grace. We're going to look at this idea of how we as Christians are to be trained first, as we look at how we're trained to live in this age, to live in this age, secondly, how we are trained for hope. [00:05:46] And thirdly, we're going to look at the grace that trains us so first that we are trained for this age. [00:05:56] Verse 11 tells us that the appearing of grace in time, in history, gives salvation. What's this referring to? Talking about the fact that Jesus Christ came and took on a human nature and lived and went to the cross and died and rose to save his people. [00:06:16] But it's a little bit more than that. It's that that coming of Christ as the Savior became the occasion for the gospel to be preached. And as God revealed His grace and favor undeserving favor towards sinners by sending His Son, that became known to the nations as the gospel was preached. [00:06:42] So then as we hear the gospel about what it is that Jesus came and did, and we believe in it. Salvation comes to all men. [00:06:53] And if you've been following along here in Titus chapter two, you get a sense of the all men that Paul's talking about. [00:07:03] This grace of God comes through Christ, through the preaching of the Gospel to those who believe, both old men and young men, both men and women, old and young, all ages, both sexes. And implicitly here, Paul's writing primarily to churches made up of Gentiles. But he writes as a Jewish. The grace of God and the Gospel has come. As we saw Peter learning about this in Acts chapter 10, the grace of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ has come not just to those who are circumcised, the Jews, but to Cornelius and to the Gentiles, those who used to be separated from God, and from his grace and from his people, this salvation has come to all who believe. [00:07:52] Now, Paul then presses this and says, this grace trains us. It has appeared, training us. [00:08:03] We receive salvation through that grace of God in Christ. [00:08:08] Now, that trains us. [00:08:10] What for? [00:08:12] It trains us for the present. You've got a sentence that runs from the beginning of verse 11 all the way down to the end of verse 12. [00:08:25] It keeps going, but it runs down to verse 12. And this grace trains us to live godly lives in the present age. Now, we tend to think maybe of our salvation as referring to being saved from our sins, because we're thinking about the fact that because we've sinned, we deserve to God's wrath, we deserve hell. So we've been saved from our sins so that we might be saved from God's judgment in the future. [00:08:56] And we also often accompany that with being saved for the future. That is, there's an eternal life that Jesus, when he saves us, gives us. That's all true. [00:09:08] But Paul says that the grace of God trains us to live in the here and the now. In other words, that we've been saved, yes, for the future, but we've also been saved to live for God now. [00:09:23] We've been saved from this present evil age, from this world of darkness and from sin. We've been saved for heaven and the world to come. [00:09:36] We belong to the world in the age to come, but God has placed us now in this life that we might live for Him. [00:09:48] Now we're like pilgrims. [00:09:53] This isn't our home. Heaven and the age to come is our home. That's what we belong to. But we live in this age and we serve the Lord in this age. [00:10:04] But we're to do so without becoming like it. [00:10:08] And that requires training, instruction, shaping. You see, we become Christians as the Spirit gives us new birth and new life and faith. And we're united to Christ. We become his and he becomes our king. [00:10:24] But we have to be trained. [00:10:27] The beginning of the Christian life is the beginning of our training. [00:10:34] There's two things broadly, that Paul says we need to be trained in here with respect to this present age. [00:10:42] We need to be trained to renounce. [00:10:45] We can say broadly, ungodliness. [00:10:49] The Christian has to learn to say no to all the things we used to say. Yes, to think of it another way. We need to learn to renounce the world that God saved us from. [00:11:03] And so we need to learn to renounce everything that makes that world the sinful, rebellious, evil world that it is. [00:11:13] All of that we are called to renounce, to reject. [00:11:19] That means we have to search our hearts on a daily basis and compare our thoughts and our desires, our passions, and ask ourselves, are these in accord with God's will, what he calls us to do they match the heavenly world that we belong to? Or do these desires, are they drawing us back to the world that we came from, the world we've been saved from but still live in? And as we find things that look more like sin and rebellion and ungodliness, we're called to repentance, to turn from those things and seek more of God's grace, that we might be forgiven and that we might not turn back to it. So we're trained on the one hand to renounce, to turn away, to say no to ungodliness. On the other hand, we're trained for godliness. God's grace comes to us and trains us to renounce, but it trains us to pursue godliness. [00:12:19] Now, these two are laid side by side very deliberately. And we immediately see from the parallel that there are two things that don't go together. [00:12:31] We can't have worldly passions and self control. [00:12:37] Those are 100% opposites from each other. [00:12:43] We cannot have. [00:12:45] If that wasn't obvious enough, we cannot have godliness and ungodliness at the same time. [00:12:52] They're opposites. We, we can't be trained in both and pursuing both at the same time. That's why we're called to renounce the one and pursue the other. [00:13:05] Think of it this way. You can't move forwards and backwards at the same time, as far as I know. [00:13:11] As far as I know, maybe there's some world of physics or geometry where that works, but as far as I know, you can't do both at the same time. [00:13:20] And here, as we're called to be trained for godliness by God's grace, Paul gives us basically a summary of the whole Christian life. [00:13:29] What does it mean to be a Christian, to live as a Christian? [00:13:34] He describes the whole person from the inside out, and he describes the whole of our life or experience. [00:13:41] Self control starts from the inside. It's the moderation. We had a sermon a couple weeks ago on this. So just really briefly summarizing. Self control is the moderation and governing of our thoughts, our desires and our will by the power of the Holy Spirit. [00:13:58] So from within we're being changed so that we're moderated, governed and controlled in a way that pleases the Lord. [00:14:08] We're called to be trained in self control, but then also in Uprightness. Now, this is moving from the inner life of the person outward to our behavior. That the way we speak and act, and especially the way we treat others would be upright. [00:14:24] And then thirdly, he says that we are to be trained in godliness. [00:14:31] The old word for this is piety. [00:14:34] This has to do. If we've started from the inside, we've worked outward to our relationship with others and how we treat them in uprightness and piety and godliness deals with our relationship with God, that we have a heart that's devoted to the Lord, that pursues him, that loves him, worships him, adores him, and so on. [00:14:56] You can see there. Paul, in three words has summarized the whole of the person and the whole of the Christian experience that we're to be trained in. [00:15:06] Just a couple more thoughts on training. [00:15:09] Training doesn't happen all at once. Does takes more than 18 years to train. Well, at least 18 years to train most children. Some kids are a little faster on the uptake and maturing. But many of us take Even more than 18 years to complete our education and training. Some of us are still working on it at 40 years old. [00:15:31] Training takes time. It doesn't happen all at once. And. And so you're born again. [00:15:37] You're drawn to faith in Christ. You become a Christian and that's the start of your training. And then you're called to pursue that all life long. [00:15:47] It's a process. [00:15:49] It's one where God works in us even as we pursue Him. And ultimately it all depends. This training depends on his grace. [00:15:58] I love the way Paul puts it here. He says the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation, training us to renounce evil and to pursue godliness. This training comes from God's grace working in us, but it's one that at the same time we're called to pursue. [00:16:23] So God's saving grace trains us to leave behind the world and to pursue the new life that God gives us in his kingdom. [00:16:35] Secondly, Paul says that we are to be trained for hope. [00:16:40] We're saved to live in this world, but we're trained to live as a Christian who belongs to the world to come, as one who is a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. [00:16:54] That means we have to live in hope. [00:16:58] What is hope? Well, if you scroll back far enough, you'll remember at the very beginning, when we started looking at Titus, there was a sermon on hope. [00:17:07] Chapter one, verse one talks about the hope. Verse two. I'm sorry, the hope of eternal life. [00:17:16] What is hope? [00:17:18] It's a little different from faith. They're not completely unrelated, they're related. But hope and faith are a little different from each other. [00:17:26] Faith is how we receive Jesus by trusting in the promises of God, and we receive Christ. And as we receive Christ Jesus as our Savior, by believing in him, we receive salvation, hope. So faith is believing in Jesus, and that's how we receive salvation. Hope has to do with a longing and an expectation that the fullness of our salvation would one day come. [00:17:58] We have a salvation now from sin and from this world. [00:18:02] We have a salvation that brings us into the Christian life that we're to be trained for. [00:18:07] But there's the rest of our salvation. Eternal life in the hope of glory. And we're to long for that. [00:18:16] It's a future thing. [00:18:21] This hope is not just a wish. Sometimes we use the word hope in English and we mean something that we're wishing for. It's not very certain. But the hope that Paul talks about here is a sure expectation that the Christian has, one that we know by faith really is truly coming. Because God has promised that his Son will one day return and raise us all up and we'll be with him forever in glory. [00:18:53] So hope is a sure expectation that one day we will receive the fullness of salvation when Christ comes in all his glory. [00:19:05] Now, hope isn't just awaiting. He says that we wait in hope. We need to be trained to wait in hope. But it isn't just waiting. [00:19:14] You can wait around for something and not be hoping for it, right? If you've done something naughty and you're a little boy and mom says, dad's going to deal with you when he gets home from work today. [00:19:27] Now that little boy surely is waiting, but he's not waiting with hope that dad will return, right? [00:19:34] Hope isn't just waiting, waiting. It's truly an expectation, a longing that Jesus will come again. Looking forward to it, we might say. [00:19:47] Think of another family example. [00:19:49] You have a wife and children who love the father and husband. [00:19:55] They look forward to that moment when the front door opens and dad gets home from his long day at work. [00:20:03] They've been looking forward to expecting, hoping for Dad's return. And the children run up and they hug their dad and he picks them up and plays with them and he kisses his wife. There's that longing, a desire, a hope that dad will come home. And of course, that hope is fulfilled and everyone rejoices. [00:20:26] That's sort of the kind of hope that Paul is talking about here, that the Christian longs for, truly desires, wants Jesus to come back because when he comes back, we will see him in all his glory and all will be made well and right. [00:20:47] Our sin will be gone, the curse will be gone, everything will be made new and we'll get to live the rest of eternity doing what God made us to do, to be with him and to have fellowship with him. [00:21:03] That's a blessed hope that the Christian is called to long for. [00:21:09] Now, Paul says of this Christian's hope, this sure expectation of the return of Christ in glory, that this is a hope that has to be trained in the Christian. [00:21:22] You have to be trained in this hope. It's something that has to be cultivated, maybe like a plant. Hope is something that God implants in us. We're born again. Peter says to a living hope. [00:21:36] That is to say that the hope that the Christian has is something God implants in us when we're born again. By the power of his Spirit, he gives us the beginning of that hope. But we need to be further trained in it, like a plant that's plant, a seed that's planted and watered and it grows up and it gets bigger and it blossoms and it bears fruit. So the Christian hope has to be cultivated, trained, it needs to grow. [00:22:05] How does that happen? [00:22:07] Well, part of how it happens is we go back to verse 12, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. [00:22:20] So long as the Christian has a love for this world and the things of this life, it's going to compete with his hope for Christ and his return and the world to come. [00:22:34] We have to unlearn a hope and desire for earthly things so that we can learn a desire for Christ, heavenly things. [00:22:43] The way Jesus says it in Matthew chapter six is that you shouldn't lay up treasures on earth, you need to lay up treasures in heaven. [00:22:54] For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. [00:23:01] So one part of training in the hope of glory, the blessed hope of Christ's return, is that we have to let go of desire for earthly things. [00:23:12] We need to repudiate worldly passions. [00:23:16] And as by God's grace, as grace trains us to do that, God in our hearts makes room for greater and greater hope in the Lord Jesus. [00:23:27] How then are we trained positively to grow in hope? [00:23:33] It's the grace of God that trains us, and it trains us for hope by showing us more of the person that we hope for. [00:23:42] The hope here is in Jesus. [00:23:46] That's what he says. [00:23:48] Verse 13, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. [00:23:58] We need to grow in our knowledge of and love for the Lord Jesus. Because the more we know about him, the more we love him, the more we'll long for Him. [00:24:12] Think about it just with personal relationships. [00:24:15] The more you learn about your spouse or some other friend or loved one, the greater your desire is to be with that person. [00:24:25] Isn't that how it works? [00:24:27] As you see more and experience more of that friendship, more of that love in marriage, the more you love that person and want to be with him. And when you're separated, the greater your desire and longing and hope is to be returned to that person. [00:24:44] So it is with the Lord Jesus. [00:24:46] The more of his goodness and the more of his mercy and the more of his glory we experience, see and come to know in this life, the greater our longing for him will grow. [00:25:02] We need to be trained not just in godliness to live in this life, but we need to be trained in hope. [00:25:11] Now, there's a relationship between these two. [00:25:14] Hope and godliness. Being trained in one and in the other. We've already seen one connection between the two. [00:25:22] I think there's another connection here. [00:25:26] The more we grow in hope, the more we grow in godliness. [00:25:31] What do I mean? Think about it this way. Maybe this is a mildly negative example, but it could also be a positive example going back to the spousal relationship. Consider a man who's on a business trip and he loves his wife dearly. [00:25:50] And his heart longs to see his wife again. [00:25:54] He longs to be near her again as he sits in the airport waiting for his flight or something like that. And his thoughts wander from the work meetings he's just been through to going home. He. He thinks about his wife and the look on her face when they reunite, the things that they're going to share about what happened when they were gone from each other. [00:26:23] This man's thoughts, his heart's desire and love is for his wife. [00:26:30] And his heart is filled with hope of seeing her again. [00:26:35] Guess what's not going on? [00:26:40] His eyes aren't wandering to women other than his spouse. His thoughts and his heart's desire isn't being led in other directions because of the strength of his hope. [00:26:52] The more we long for the coming of Jesus, the more of his glory and of his goodness and of his holiness and of his righteousness and mercy. We come to experience, encounter. [00:27:03] The stronger our hope gets, the more we long for that perfect world in which righteousness dwells to come. [00:27:14] The less we love the things of this world, the more we want to repudiate it and turn away from it and to put away and reject worldly passions. And the more our heart longs to live in a way that reflects the kingdom that we belong to. [00:27:32] Do you see how these two relate, how they feed one another in a marvelous way, because they both relate to Jesus. [00:27:41] Well, there's something of the training and hope that we're called to. [00:27:46] Finally, I want to look a little bit with you looking really here Primarily at verse 14, at the grace that trains us. I keep coming back to and saying it's the grace of God that trains us in these things. [00:28:00] The grace that trains in verse 14. Here, Paul gives us in the book of Titus. He kind of keeps flipping things upside down from how he does it in other books. In his other letters, he tends to lay out the doctrine of who Jesus is and what he's done for us. And then he lays out how Christians are called to live because of it. And Titus, he cannot flips it upside down. And in these verses, he does it again. [00:28:27] Here in verse 14, he gives us the grace that is the basis for our training. [00:28:32] This is the instruction manual. [00:28:35] This is what shapes our minds and hearts and builds us up in our faith that we would pursue godliness and shun wickedness, that we would grow in our hope for the Lord Jesus. This is the grace that. That trains us. And what is it? It's the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us. That's the heart of this verse. Paul says he went and died for you. And that truth is the way. That's why you are saved. And that's what trains you, shapes you and changes you. [00:29:14] The grace of redemption trains us. [00:29:20] He says that he gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness. [00:29:26] The grace of redemption trains us. [00:29:30] It trains us to renounce this world. [00:29:36] Redemption is the fact that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from sin, from all lawlessness. [00:29:47] Jesus redeemed us. He went and he died. And redemption is our being freed from that sin and lawlessness, particularly from the power of sin. [00:29:59] He freed us so that we wouldn't serve sin any longer. [00:30:04] In fact, he says that he freed us. He redeemed us so that we wouldn't serve any sin. All lawlessness we are freed from. [00:30:15] The grace of redemption trains our hearts to turn away from all that stuff that Jesus redeemed us from. [00:30:25] Is there some sinful passion, some secret sin that you harbor or that maybe you hate, but you keep falling back into? [00:30:34] Jesus? Redemption says, I set you free from that. Don't go back to that. [00:30:43] But the grace of redemption also trains us to hope in Jesus. Glorious appearing. [00:30:52] We couldn't stop sinning. That's where we were before we came to know Jesus and salvation in him. [00:30:58] Now we have seen that Jesus has the power to save us from that sin. He redeemed us. He broke the bondage of sin. [00:31:08] Our taskmaster that was miserable like Israel in Egypt, Pharaoh pressing them harder and harder as slaves. That's the way sin was for us. We couldn't stop sinning. And whenever we tried to, that taskmaster came and bait us back into shape and drove us back to sin. [00:31:27] And Jesus was powerful to set us free from that. [00:31:32] And the more of that power we see and experience in our own lives, the more we see how great and glorious the person of Jesus is, the more we see how wonderful and merciful and kind Jesus, our Redeemer is. [00:31:50] And as we grow in that vision of Christ, as we feel that in our hearts and live it out in our lives, we say, I want to meet the man who saved me, the God who loved me and died for me. And our hope grows. Yes, the grace of redemption teaches us, trains us in hope. [00:32:16] And so too does the grace of cleansing, the purifying death of the Lord Jesus. Paul says that he gave himself for us to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. [00:32:38] The grace of Christ's purifying death trains us. It trains us to say no to worldly passions. [00:32:47] Our sinful passions are filthy. [00:32:51] They are truly disgusting and degrading. They degrade ourselves, they degrade the people around us. They bring us shame and guilt before God. [00:33:01] We're just in our sin without Christ purifying death. We are like Adam and Eve, naked and ashamed in the garden. And God comes near. What do they do? They hide. And they try to cover up their shame but with fig leaves. And they can't do it. [00:33:18] And they're terrified. [00:33:22] These sinful evil passions, filthy and disgusting and shameful. These are the things that Jesus came to cleanse us from. [00:33:33] He shed his blood to wash all of that away, to purify us, to make us clean, to take away the filth, to take away the shame, to put purify our desires. [00:33:47] That trains our hearts to say no. [00:33:52] I've been purified. [00:33:54] My eyes and my mind and my desires and my body and all of its parts and my lips and my tongue, all of these things belong to Jesus. And he came and he died and he bled so that I could be cleansed. [00:34:11] And I could use my body for pure and holy and good things. [00:34:17] It trains us. The grace of purifying blood trains the Christian to look to Jesus on the cross and say, he died to wash all that away. [00:34:28] I can never say yes to that again. [00:34:31] Only ever no. [00:34:34] But it also trains us to say yes to godliness, to be zealous for good works. [00:34:41] That purified heart, mind, soul, body, tongue, hands, feet, purified for good works. [00:34:51] Jesus has purified your heart through faith in his blood. [00:34:56] That means he takes your heart and he washes away the filth and he takes away the evil desires. And by the power of his spirit, he gives you a heart with clean desires, desires that please him, that want to do good towards those around us. [00:35:15] Remember the end of chapter one. [00:35:19] We said the Gospel summarized in that statement. To the pure, all things are pure. To those whom Jesus has purified, your whole life is filled now with things that you can do that are pure to the pure. That's you, dear Christian. To you, your life has now been purified by the Lord Jesus so that you would use it, all of it, for Him. [00:35:47] Do you wonder, how can I become a better Christian? [00:35:51] How can I be more like my Savior? [00:35:54] Look to Jesus on the cross and as you look to him, say, that's where I was cleansed. [00:36:02] I belong to Him. I'm going to use myself for good works. [00:36:10] The grace of Christ's purifying death trains us to say no to worldly passions. It trains us to say yes to godliness and good works. [00:36:21] But it trains us further. [00:36:24] It trains us not to hope in this world. [00:36:30] It trains us not to hope in this world. That's part of our problem of hope, right as this world's in front of us and the good stuff that it has to offer us is in front of us. [00:36:41] And we tend to think that what's in front of us right now, well, that's it. [00:36:47] And if I save hard and invest hard and do well for myself, maybe I'll have a decent retirement. And so maybe that's a little further in front of me. [00:36:57] And our hearts tend to put our hope in and treasure these things. [00:37:04] But Paul says that through Christ's death we have been crucified to the world and it to us. [00:37:13] We don't belong to this world and its things anymore. We've been delivered out of this world, out of the domain of darkness and grace has appeared, bringing us out of this rebellious world and into Jesus kingdom. [00:37:28] We no longer have a future here. [00:37:32] No Christ's purifying death on the cross trains us away from hope in this world and to a hope in his return. [00:37:43] By his death. Jesus has purified a people us to be his own possession. That's what he says here. [00:37:52] Who gave himself to purify for himself a people for his own possession. [00:37:59] He died to make you his his own people. His special people. [00:38:07] That's the covenant promise going all the way back to the beginning. I will be your God and you will be my people. [00:38:16] Where did that happen? It happened on the cross. [00:38:23] When Jesus died on the cross, God proved displayed to you and to the whole world what he said in the Old Testament. He said, you my people are the apple of my eye. You're my precious treasure and I'll give the blood of my own son to make you mine. [00:38:44] You're the pearl that the businessman sold everything he had so he could buy. That pearl God came and gave his son so he could purchase you for himself so that you would be his own. [00:38:59] Because you are precious in my eyes and honored. I love you. [00:39:06] I give men in return for you peoples in exchange for your life. [00:39:13] And Jesus the bridegroom came and died that he might save his beloved bride and make you his own. [00:39:25] You belong to him because he died for you and you're his bride and he's your bridegroom. And like a good bridegroom, he has gone to prepare a place for you. [00:39:41] That's what he says. I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, you may also be. [00:39:49] And when I come again, I will receive you to myself. [00:39:56] What happens at the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ is that you will be with him forever. The one who loved you more than anyone else in your life has loved you or ever will love you. [00:40:10] The one who is most glorious and most merciful and gracious. [00:40:15] The one who is wise and cares about you like no one else. [00:40:20] The one who has prepared an eternity to spend with with you. [00:40:27] He died so that you would have that. [00:40:32] You see, the death of Christ trains us to hope for his return. [00:40:40] Well, dear brothers and sisters, we are disciples of Jesus. We're in training students and we're being trained in his school of grace. [00:40:50] Let's pray. [00:40:54] O Lord our God, how we thank you that you so very plainly in the scriptures tell us the things that we need to know. [00:41:09] We thank you that you tell them to us in a way that no one can miss them. [00:41:19] We confess though, that we miss these truths on a daily basis. [00:41:26] We confess that it's not just because of our weakness as human beings. That our minds have weaknesses and we have trouble understanding. It isn't just, Lord, because we get distracted by other things. [00:41:43] We miss these truths most of all because of the sin that remains in our hearts. [00:41:48] And it clouds them so that we can't understand them. [00:41:52] We ask, O God, that you would forgive us for this sin. That you would cleanse us from it. That you would remove it, take it away, take it far from us, as far as the east is from the west. That you would take this sin and cast it in the bottom of the sea, break its power over us, change us. [00:42:12] Fill us with a vision of Christ and of what you've done for us in him. [00:42:17] So that we might offer our lives to you wholly and completely as your servants and as a living sacrifice to you, acceptable in your sight, for Jesus, our Savior. [00:42:31] And we ask, O God, that you would fill us. Even as you fill us with a vision of Christ. [00:42:37] Our hearts would begin to long and burn for his return. [00:42:42] Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.