Show Notes
2 Corinthains 13:1-10
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Let's pray.
[00:00:07] Our savior, we come to worship you today with all kinds of things on our hearts, all kinds of things going on in our lives in various ways. We need you as our helper, as our keeper. We need you to be our savior. We need you to be our friend.
[00:00:25] Sometimes I remind people about friendship, that there's no one person who can do everything. But that's, of course, different with you. You alone are omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, able to do everything according to your perfect holy will, able to know everything, see everything, be everywhere. Lord, let us learn to depend on you for everything that we need, from the things that we deem perhaps too small to ask help for, to the things so big we are too proud to ask help for.
[00:01:06] Let us learn to rely on you and to trust you at all times.
[00:01:12] We ask that you would teach us these things and embed them and grow them in our hearts even more as we come to the reading and preaching of your word in two corinthians. Lord, we ask that you would bless us in understanding and acknowledgement and in trust. Give us a hope in you that will not be put to shame. Help us to rejoice even in difficulty, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:40] Let's continue in God's word in two corinthians. Please remain standing.
[00:01:48] We are getting very close to the end of this letter.
[00:01:56] Next week, I'm going to be following family camp. I'm going to be preaching in California, one of our churches that's been missing a pastor a while. That's something you can be praying for.
[00:02:11] It takes a while to find a new minister, it turns out, at least in some cases, pray for the churches that are with empty pulpits. But I'll be in Westminster, California, next week, and then we'll be back the final week of June to finish second corinthians this morning.
[00:02:31] Second Corinthians, 13 110.
[00:02:41] Let's hear God's word.
[00:02:45] This is the third time I am coming to you.
[00:02:48] Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
[00:02:53] I warned those who sinned before and all the others. And I warned them now, while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not spare them. Since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me, he is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you. For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God.
[00:03:27] Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.
[00:03:32] Test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail to meet the test.
[00:03:41] I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test, but we pray to God that you may not do wrong, not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may have seemed to have failed. For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for. For this reason, I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come, I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.
[00:04:20] May God bless his word to us this morning. Please be seated.
[00:04:47] Well, in this passage, Paul addresses the nature of his authority, as he has been throughout many chapters, and we see something of the context in which he's speaking right at the very beginning. Right. Paul provides the context. Paul provides the understanding.
[00:05:07] What is it?
[00:05:09] What's the context? Well, he says, I'm coming to you a third time.
[00:05:15] In verse two, he says, I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warned them now, while absent, as I did when I was present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not spare them.
[00:05:27] Paul mentions this, every charge must be established by the evidence or two or three witnesses. And essentially what he's saying is that his times, these various times of his coming, serve, in a way, as witnesses of the problem.
[00:05:44] Right. Paul is not looking for proof that something is going wrong. He knows something is going wrong. And what he's saying is he's seeing a pattern of it. He came the first time, he warned them a second time. Now he's warning them a third time while absent, and then he's planning to come again.
[00:06:08] And what's Paul's hope?
[00:06:10] Did you hear it? What's he hoping will happen? He's hoping that these repeated warnings. He's hoping that these repeated calls to change and repentance will result in what? Repentance, change.
[00:06:28] And that when he comes a third time, he won't come and then have to slam his head against the wall and say, I thought I told you.
[00:06:37] Why are we still here? And really, more than that, I'm speculating a little bit there about the emotional life of Paul. What he really says is this, that I will have to be severe, what is he talking about? He's talking about the discipline that he is called to exercise as an apostle of Christ. As a minister of the gospel. He is not simply to just tell people, here's what you ought to believe, and then walk away. He has a discipline. He has the responsibility to instruct, to encourage, to exhort and to rebuke, to call people away from their wandering, just as the Lord does.
[00:07:20] Right. He, our Lord and savior, is a good shepherd. When a sheep wanders away astray, he doesn't say, well, oh, well, no. He goes after the one whom he loves, as Paul says. He does it for restoration. In verse nine, your restoration is what we pray for.
[00:07:43] There's this strange thing happening, though, in the church of Corinth, something Paul is feeling frustrated about and has been expressing and warning them against in various ways. And it's this, although there is a certain group among the Corinthians who have been stirring up problems, creating divisions, attacking Paul and his associates and the various ministers of the gospel, and causing people to follow after that.
[00:08:12] And he has been warning them. Instead of heeding the warning, people are giving in to these lies about Paul.
[00:08:19] And if you've been going with us through one corinthians, you've heard this a number of times, various accusations of his weakness in various ways.
[00:08:29] And Paul is concluding all of this here.
[00:08:32] When he, again, he addresses the point and he addresses his actions. So what is he saying?
[00:08:39] Well, on the one hand, he's saying, I don't really care what you think about me. If you think I'm weak, so be it. I don't really care what you think about me. What I care about is your restoration. What I care about is your salvation.
[00:08:58] I love you, Paul is saying, so if you want to accuse me of this or that thing, it doesn't matter to me personally, but insofar as it is undermining the help that you need, that's a problem.
[00:09:13] This is a perfect balance. Balance is probably not the right word, but trajectory. Heart of a minister of the gospel, one that I've been trying very hard to take to heart this sense that to let go of oneself, to not care so much about what people think about yourself, but on the other hand, to uphold the dignity of the office, to do the work, and to do it unflinchingly, as Paul does here, there's a sense of a warning that Paul gives.
[00:09:51] Paul gives in various ways.
[00:09:56] He not only says that I will be severe in the use of my authority, that God has given me. But he talks about why.
[00:10:04] It's not because he's personally upset or he's offended or he's embarrassed. That's not why.
[00:10:12] The reason why is in verse three, and it comes as a little bit of a jab.
[00:10:19] He says, since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me, let me read it in context. I warned verse two. I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warned them now, while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not spare them. Since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me, in other words, they're attacking him. They're saying, oh, is Christ really speaking in him? Is he really strong? Is he really this, and is he really that? He says, you want proof? I'll show you proof. I am going to come, and I am going to come with the severity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:11:02] I am going to come in power.
[00:11:08] And speaking the word of Christ, does that mean that Paul was not speaking the word of Christ before, that he has been failing in some way? Well, no.
[00:11:20] How do we understand this?
[00:11:22] He says this.
[00:11:25] He that is Christ, this is in verse three, is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you. For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God.
[00:11:40] So Paul makes this doctrinal point, right? He makes this doctrinal point about the Lord. Number one, the Lord is not weak in dealing with us, right? He's not trying to do something and then unable to do it. Right? That's weakness, right? Trying to live something, and it's too heavy, trying to go somewhere, but it's too far. No, the Lord is not weak in dealing with us.
[00:12:08] He gives us the corollary, other side of the coin. He is powerful among you. And there's so many ways in which we can see the power of Christ in the church, right? In the salvation of souls, in the light that shines, in the sanctification that is happening, in the love for the weak and the protection for the destitute, all these things. The power of Christ is seen.
[00:12:35] He then grounds this truth in verse four, for he was crucified in weakness, that's true, but lives by the power of God.
[00:12:48] There was this twofold phase to Christ's ministry, right? He came in weakness and was crucified in weakness, and he lives by the power of God.
[00:13:02] The work of Jesus Christ began and continues with a call to repentance. Right? A call. Come unto me, all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest repent and believe the gospel. You're not far from the kingdom of God, right? All of these encouragements, admonishments, urgings, and then sometimes strong words of warning like, to the Pharisees and others.
[00:13:30] But there's this call, a call to come.
[00:13:34] That call continues on today through the call that is centered on the cross.
[00:13:43] There is coming a day, though, in which the glory of God that is in Jesus Christ right now, will be manifested in a great and glorious way on judgment day. There is a time when the Lord Jesus will stop calling people to come to repentance. There's a time when he will stop calling us to come in, and there will simply be judgment.
[00:14:11] Paul is acting in a similar way.
[00:14:14] He says at the end of verse four, for we are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God.
[00:14:24] It's a little bit hard to understand, but I think what Paul is saying is that he is ministering in Christ in both of these ways. He is calling these people within the church to repentance. But there will come a time in which the calls end.
[00:14:42] And as he says in another place, he begins to hand people over to Satan.
[00:14:50] These are strong words, right? Strong words.
[00:14:56] Before we consider that a little more, I want to think about how Christ comes in judgment. What does Paul have in mind? Let's look at three passages. First, Matthew, chapter 24, verses 30 and 31.
[00:15:33] So Paul is seeking to be like Christ.
[00:15:36] He has been weak, not because he's a fake apostle, but because he's a true one. Just as the Lord lowered himself, Paul does as well. But there's coming a day when the Lord will exercise power in judgment, and that will be severe.
[00:15:52] And Paul is pointing the way toward that judgment in his potentially severe discipline on his third visit.
[00:16:03] So what does he have in mind? Chapter 24 of Matthew, verses 30 and 31, we read of Jesus then will appear in heaven, the sign of the Son of man. Then all the tribes of earth will mourn, and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
[00:16:33] We have here in the coming this description of the coming of the Son of man, both judgment.
[00:16:39] Both judgment and salvation. I suppose I should read verse 29 as well. Let's read that immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.
[00:16:57] This cosmic coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, in which both heaven and earth are shaken, he appears the son of man.
[00:17:08] The earth will mourn, and they will see him coming on the clouds of heaven.
[00:17:13] What you don't want to imagine here is this sort of cartoony Jesus on some puffy clouds or something like that. What Matthew is doing here is he's drawing on Old Testament imagery of the divine warrior riding on the clouds like a chariot, right? There's images in pagan religions of similar kinds of things, right? The gods riding on the clouds, lightning serving as weapons of war. These kinds of things, these are just imitations of the true thing, counterfeits of the real king, whom we cannot disregard when he comes riding on the clouds. These clouds of heaven are probably not just water in the sky, but the clouds of angels, as Ezekiel describes these way in which the Holy Spirit even is anointing the Lord Jesus, in which he surrounds himself with a kind of both a veil and a power, and comes on these chariots of his heavenly host in such a way that the prophets, when they see these images of the Lord, they are terrified.
[00:18:38] They fall down and beg for things like cleansing and even death.
[00:18:46] This is how the Lord will come with power and great glory, sending out his angels to gather the elect from the four winds. Let's take a look at another passage, this next one from revelation, verses 1911 through 16.
[00:19:06] Revelation 19 11 16.
[00:19:25] Then I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the word of God.
[00:19:52] And the armies of heaven, arrayed in finely white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, king of kings and lord of lords.
[00:20:25] One more second. Thessalonians 1710 2nd Thessalonians one, seven through ten.
[00:21:05] I'll start in verse six so I don't pick it up so much in the middle, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to those who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, inflaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at all those who have believed because our testimony to you was believed.
[00:21:53] What do we see in these passages?
[00:21:58] Well, we see that whatever severity Paul might bring to the second, to the Corinthians, second Corinthians, to the Corinthians.
[00:22:06] Whatever severity Paul might bring to the Corinthians, it does not compare even a little bit to what is coming on Judgment Day.
[00:22:17] And yet the Lord uses that work of discipline in his church to save us from judgment day. He calls us, as Paul says in this section two corinthians, he is going to do this thing. Why? For their restoration, for their hope, for their salvation. The goal is so that this will not happen to them who refuse to obey the gospel, but so that this, these things would happen to those who believe.
[00:22:56] To put it more clearly, he does what he does, ministering Christ's word, so that we would hear and believe and not be objects of judgment, not be objects who deserve eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might, so that we would not have to come under the vengeance of the Lord Jesus Christ for refusing to believe and obey the gospel.
[00:23:30] We're called to follow the Lord, to trust in him with everything that we have, not reject him. When you reject the king of kings, when you reject the lord of lords, guess who's going to be in trouble. And significantly so, the image of the wine press, you know what a winepress is?
[00:23:54] Presses down the grapes. The cracking and splattering of fluid that looks like blood.
[00:24:04] The vengeance of the Lord is not meek or mild.
[00:24:10] And this is a great hope to those who are afflicted by evil people who cry out to the Lord, Lord, save me. Be my helper, be my protector, because he says, I will hold fast. Don't worry. Don't let go. I will protect you. I will keep you. Justice and judgment is mine. You can trust me for that. What a great hope, right? For those of us who belong to the Lord, who belong to that city, who are citizens of that kingdom. We are surrounded by walls that are impenetrable, a glorious kingdom that will hold us and keep us forever full of freedom and light and abundance and pleasure.
[00:25:02] But it also keeps those out, and that's good.
[00:25:07] It keeps those out not because they made a mistake, not because they, whoops, didn't do the right thing, or there was a glitch in their operating system, but because they refused to obey the Lord.
[00:25:23] And when they heard the gospel, they refused what was given to them.
[00:25:29] That's why Paul is warning them and warning them and warning them. He says, you must believe. You must repent and believe. As Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Don't delay.
[00:25:43] The scriptures specifically tell us that we do not know and will not know the day that the Lord comes in this judgment. Could be today, could be tomorrow.
[00:25:57] We do not know.
[00:26:00] Our repentance and faith in him should not be based on our clever calculating of repentance. Time.
[00:26:09] You are going to fail at that game if you play that game.
[00:26:15] Our repentance, our turning from our sin, our turning to the Lord, has to be based only on one thing, the free offer of it to you.
[00:26:27] It's here. It's now.
[00:26:30] Right now. The Lord promises to forgive all of our sins, past, present and future, if we trust in him for that forgiveness.
[00:26:41] If we look to him, if we follow him, he promises to give us everything.
[00:26:48] There is coming a day when the Lord will come to judge the world, and those who have refused him will perish and will suffer under eternal judgment. But those who have received him freely, I will add, simply as a gift, him just giving it to you, receive the forgiveness and all that he offers, glory and eternal life.
[00:27:16] That judgment day is not yet here, obviously, because we're still here, which means that right now, today, the scriptures say, and today is still. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the season in which Christ is sending his ministers into the church and into the world to admonish, exhort, rebuke, urge. And if that fails, as Paul says, more severe forms of discipline come.
[00:27:49] The Lord, of course, may enact discipline in his own providence. You don't always have to wait for a minister of the gospel to get to you or the elders of his church.
[00:27:58] Jonah, for example, Ananias and Sapphira, may be another example. The Lord in his providence. He knows where to find us. He knows where to catch us. He knows where to discipline us. He knows what to take away to make sure that we learn our lessons. He knows what to give to teach us the things we ought to know. Why does he do this? Because he loves us.
[00:28:27] It's Father's day.
[00:28:30] What does the scripture say about fathers and about our heavenly father? In Hebrews, it says he disciplines us because he loves us, because he cares for us. A father that doesn't care, doesn't do anything.
[00:28:46] We call that neglect, abuse. Even the Lord doesn't do that. He goes after us and he loves us. And what ended up happening with Noah? Or, well, Noah, we could use him, too. Jonah, I meant to say what ended up happening with Jonah. Old city of Nineveh was saved because of the lord's discipline. It took a while, right? It took a while, but the Lord was able to accomplish it.
[00:29:16] And he continues to instruct us through his discipline of Jonah and Ananias and Sapphira and many, many others.
[00:29:26] So the Lord can act in his own time. But at the same time, the scriptures tell us that he also uses these ordinary means of getting a hold of our hearts. He ordains certain things in the church, as we see with the apostle Paul here and as we see in other passages. And those means do not only include the ruling elders of the church and ministers of the gospel, but one another.
[00:29:55] What does Matthew 18 say? When your brother sins against you, go talk to him.
[00:30:03] Call him.
[00:30:04] Say, this is not working. I'm concerned about you.
[00:30:09] I love Colossians 316. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. You could stop right there. That's a lot to think about, letting something dwell in you richly, like one image might be like a teabag, right? Infusing right everything, all of that water.
[00:30:32] Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teaching and admonishing one another.
[00:30:40] We have a responsibility to one another, don't we? We have a responsibility to teach one another, to admonish one another sometimes to rebuke one another. There are bad ways to do this, of course. Horrible ways to do this, sinful ways to do this. Jesus talks about this right before you go, like getting the speck out of your brother's eye. You might take the log, right? The giant log out of your own eye, right? There's good ways and bad ways to do this. But we have a responsibility for one another, don't we? To care for one another, to love one another, to support and sometimes to give the wounds of a friend, as proverbs talk about, which are healing and good and helpful.
[00:31:29] I should finish the rest of that verse. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teaching and admonishing one another, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Maybe not where you thought he was going with that, right? Teaching and admonishing one another with singing. It's one of the reasons we like hymns, and we sing hymns that are so rich here because it's part of our ministry to one another in which we teach and admonish and sing together the things that are true, the things that are of the Lord, and helping to attune our hearts, to sing of the grace of God, the truth of the work God.
[00:32:12] There also is a responsibility, though, of those who have been given, as the gospels say, the keys of the kingdom, to lock and unlock, to bind and loose.
[00:32:25] There's a responsibility of those who are called overseers, ruling elders and ministers to act as Paul does here. Which is why at the end of Matthew 18, it says, if you fail, or if your work and trying to reclaim your brother fails at a personal level, and then you bring a group of others, and that doesn't work either, then you should tell it to the church.
[00:32:55] There's a growing circle of responsibility, a growing circle that gets. It gets involved.
[00:33:06] And Paul says, and then, as I mentioned before, in one corinthians five, five, Paul dealing with one person who was sinning in various heinous ways in the church. He said he handed them over to Satan, which is to say they're no longer under the authority of Christ's ministry of grace in his church, but under the authority, as he puts it, in another place, of the prince, of the power of the air, subject to him.
[00:33:36] And you know what happens to those who are subject to Satan. They eventually serve the same sentence that Satan will serve. I'm forever destroyed in the lake of fire. Eternal judgment.
[00:33:53] I realize these are hard things to hear, but I have to ask you to be reasonable with me. Are these things that I should not say?
[00:34:06] When God, who made the world, comes into the world to save us from these various things, when the Lord of heaven and earth enters into the world to dwell within us and take away the sins of the world from these very things, should I or should you or anyone else just sort of smooth over that and not really tell the truth?
[00:34:32] Of course not. That's the gospel. We have to announce it, proclaim it, share it, tell it, urge people toward it, warn people away from what is coming.
[00:34:46] What was so agonizing about the cross that Jesus would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What was so agonizing about that moment?
[00:34:58] Was it the nails in his hands?
[00:35:01] Was it the crown of thorns on his head? Was it the betrayal, the humiliation?
[00:35:09] Was it the suffering from the lashes or the injustice in these fake tribunals yeah, it was all of that, but it was more.
[00:35:21] He bore the sins of the world.
[00:35:25] He took on hell for you.
[00:35:31] Should we smooth over that? Should we not announce that? Of course we must. When Jesus takes the judgment of hell from us, we don't gloss over this. We don't ignore it. We announce it as the greatest news there ever has been and ever will be.
[00:35:49] If you want to understand Christ, you must understand this.
[00:35:55] And to understand it, you have to be taught it, told it. And sometimes that teaching, of course, requires discipline.
[00:36:04] There are times when we are a little thick hearted. Aren't we a little too numb to these realities? We don't care as much as we ought to care. Love as much as we ought to love. We don't fear God as much as we ought to fear God.
[00:36:23] So the Lord wakes us up.
[00:36:27] He gives us and does not just one thing, often thousands of things in our lives to wake us up.
[00:36:35] And sometimes in the midst of it, it is very unpleasant.
[00:36:39] Some of you, I know your stories, have experienced this, and it is very, very unpleasant to experience the discipline of the Lord.
[00:36:49] But I also know there's not a person alive who has been set free from the ravages of sin through the discipline of the Lord, who will not up and down thank him for it all the rest of their lives and into eternity.
[00:37:04] Not a single person who won't tell you, I'm so thankful for what the Lord did to save me from myself.
[00:37:19] In one of our catechism questions, it says, how does Christ execute the office of a king or exercise the office of a king?
[00:37:30] One of the lines or one of the clauses in there is that it says that he subdues us to himself.
[00:37:38] I love that.
[00:37:40] The kingly nature, this glorious nature of God, he comes into the world and he subdues us to himself.
[00:37:49] He takes people that are rebelling and throwing temper tantrums and he says, calm down. And he gets us to calm down. And he says, listen. And he gets us to listen. And he says, see? And he gets us to see, because he does this work in us, this miraculous work of unblinding our eyes, unstopping our ears, and causing dead hearts to come alive.
[00:38:16] This is powerful. This is glorious, and we must desire it and seek the Lord for it.
[00:38:27] And so when the Lord disciplines us through his servants, we must heed it.
[00:38:33] And those who have been given the duty and role in the church must not exercise it lightly, but pray for wisdom. And together we must learn to let the word of Christ, yes, his rules and commandments and also his gospel.
[00:38:53] The good news that empowers us to live.
[00:38:57] The good news that he came into this world to save us from our sin and from its consequences.
[00:39:05] We all together must learn to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.
[00:39:13] And one way we can do that is by teaching and admonishing one another in our singing and also our praying and also our fellowship and also our acts of service in many other ways.
[00:39:30] May the Lord grant these things to us, his church, his people, his body, and may his glory be made known in us.
[00:39:42] Amen. Let's pray.
[00:39:45] Our heavenly Father, we come before you now, humbly bowing our hearts before you, recognizing the sin that is in us and in our church, in our body, the sin that exists not only here, but in every church throughout the world.
[00:40:04] We ask that you would continue to do that work of perfection, of sanctification, that you would work in us and transform us according to your perfect will and your plan, taking away the dross, refining us in the fire, that we might become more and more like you, that we might become more and more free, that we might enjoy more and more of the life that you have given to us, a life of freedom, a life of godliness, a life of righteousness.
[00:40:37] Help us, Lord, to love the things that we ought to love and hate the things we ought to hate.
[00:40:44] Help us to learn how to talk to one another, to rescue one another, to encourage one another. Help us, o Lord, to be a strong in the midst of difficult times and to take our discipline well, whether it be mild or severe. Lord, let us never miss an opportunity to learn from you and to grow in your grace.
[00:41:09] Thank you for not neglecting us. Thank you for shepherding us and using your rod and your staff to defend us from our enemies and to keep us from our own wanderings.
[00:41:21] Lord, guide us into good places. Guide us into two streams of living water. Restore our souls.
[00:41:31] Lord, we pray for those who do not yet know you, for those who have not yet experienced the marvelous work of your grace.
[00:41:41] We ask that you would be at work in their hearts and that you would bring them from death to life. Let the words of your scriptures, the warnings, and the promises, cause them to turn through the power of your holy spirit unto salvation and help us to spread that word to those whom we love fearlessly, with boldness, trusting in you and the good things that you are doing.
[00:42:12] We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
