Good evening to everyone. You can turn in your Bibles again with me to Philippians 3. As we continue to look at the importance of our knowledge of Christ, continuing from this morning's sermon, we are using this wonderful text in Philippians 3, verse 8, once again as a base camp to explore some Glorious truths that inform us as to why the knowledge, the Christian's knowledge of Christ is of the highest order of knowing. Philippians 3 and verse 8, the Word of God.
Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your truth. We rejoice once again in your goodness to us that we can gather together for the worship of our great God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Do bless us once again in this time of preaching. Help us to honor you, to glorify you, to glory in you. And we do pray that you would help us by your spirit to know all the more your truth as you've revealed it to us. And we pray that you would receive all glory in this place.
We pray in Christ's name, amen.
Introduction: The Excellence of Christ
The Apostle Paul uses the term here, excellence. It's a wonderful word that he employs here in speaking with respect to his knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, yet indeed I count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. This language, as we know, we use it in our parlance, it means the surpassing worth of a thing.
And not just as it stands on its own, but as it stands in relation to other things, rivals that are certainly, that are, do not meet up to, do not come close to, do not match that thing which is described as excellent. So Paul is saying here, I count all things lost for the surpassing worth for the super abounding glory of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord. Notice the comparison comes for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. So the surpassing worth of Christ compared to the all things that he counts as loss that he that he counts as rubbish.
And so, we continue what we were looking at this morning, seven ways in which the Bible sets forth to us the surpassing worth, the significance, the importance of the Christian's knowledge of Christ. We looked this morning at the fact that Christ is the scope of the whole of Scripture, that the entire Bible, page after page, chapter after chapter, points to Christ. We looked at the fact that Christ is the telos, that is the end point, the goal, the blessed terminus of all creation and providence, the purpose, the grand design behind those things. We looked at the fact that Christ is the champion and mediator of the covenant of grace, and fourthly, that eternal life hinges upon the knowledge of Christ.
Hopefully, cumulatively, as we're going about this preaching exercise, our Christian souls can feel the glorious weight of the importance of the knowledge of our Christ. So,
Overview of Three Final Points
we move on then to look at the three final points of these seven, and the ones that we're going to look at tonight are that Christ is the sum and substance of the Christian gospel, that the very message that is to be believed is about Christ, that Christ is the head and savior of the church, and that our present hope and future glory are in Christ. And so,
Christ: Sum and Substance of the Gospel
fifthly then, as we continue, first for this evening, but fifthly, Christ is the very sum and substance of the Christian gospel. He is, or the gospel, the very good news that is to be believed is about Christ. And that the gospel is about Christ is a truth that the New Testament does not suffer us to hold loosely. It is, after all, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is the good news in which you stand, by which also you are saved. It is the power of God to salvation. for everyone who believes. It is that which steadfast saints are to be striving together for, and the account of it, the account of the gospel, is so bound up with its object, Christ, that Mark, that gospel writer, opens his inspired record of the Savior by naming it the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The gospel is a message of such cardinal centrality and importance that the Apostle Paul will not tolerate any diminution of it, pronouncing anathema on anyone who would seek to pervert it.
It is a message of such surpassing weight that to disobey it is to invite the fiery vengeance of God so precious that self-maledictory pronouncements are made should one fail to preach it, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, 16, so glorious that the feet of those who deliver it are called beautiful. And it's so precious, so surpassingly excellent in its Christocentrism, its Christ-centeredness, that the theater of providence, that in the theater of providence that the angel of the Lord calls it, the good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. And that announcing, that glorious announcement of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, that announcing angel calls it good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. Now, when we come to the Bible, These are all, you know, well we've already rehearsed some summary statements and some clauses and phrases that the Bible set forth with regards to the fact that Christ is the very sum and substance of the gospel, but does the Bible tell us that?
And of course it does.
The Gospel Defined in 1 Corinthians 15
You can turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15. The phrase summon substance is a phrase used largely in English prose and theology. It simply captures the reality of the matter of a thing gathered up into its core. What is the core of a thing?
The distillation of something into its very essential heart. And so when we say the sum and substance of the gospel is Christ, that's what we're saying, that the matter of the entirety of the gospel has Christ as its core. And the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 speaks, writes, to this very reality. Notice in these words at verse one, words very familiar, hopefully, to all of us.
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all. Now, that isn't Paul saying that I delivered to you first chronologically. that his message came to Corinth first. We know that it didn't.
But it carries the weight of, for I delivered to you as a matter of first importance that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the blessed good news that is to be believed. What is Christianity to be about? It is to be about the proclamation of the gospel.
And what is the gospel? It is nothing other than thankfully and gloriously than the person and the work of Christ. Christ buried, Christ died, Christ buried, Christ rose again the third day according to the scriptures for the sins of his people. And so our importance, the importance of our knowledge of Christ is seen in that Christ is the very sum and substance of the gospel.
Paul, in the context here, is issuing a strong logical corrective against a prevailing error that was undermining and destroying the very gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's found in verse 12. Now, if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, How does some among you say that there is no resurrection from the dead? If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ is not risen, and our faith as Christians is futile. But, thankfully, the Apostle Paul says Christ is risen, verse 20.
And so this language of 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4, encapsulating the Gospel as the death, burial, and resurrection of the Glorious One, Jesus Christ is tactically employed by the Apostle Paul to target errors that destroy the very gospel of Jesus Christ. Precisely because the gospel beats as the very heart of the Christian religion, and precisely because its very lifeblood is Christ, every attempt to, every attempt of its to empty of its meaning strikes at the very heart of Christianity. Every attempt to get and to destroy the very heart of the gospel, which is the heart of Christianity, strikes at the very life of the faith itself. Man in a state of sin seeks to malform the gospel of Jesus Christ into some, usually some man-centered system of religion.
Whether recasting redemption as the reform of social structures so that salvation becomes the amelioration of cultural ills, or dissolving the gospel into simply a framework of God-moralism, or valuing Christ only insofar as he satisfies the appetites of fallen man, or resituating the good news into a context where God exists simply to make us happy and well-adjusted, false claimants of the Christian religion are relentless in their perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we may say that those even closer to the pale of orthodoxy, those untaught and unstable in the word of truth, Offer up silly contortions of the gospel, like, and you've heard this before, preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Or they render it essentially propositionless, ripping it away from the Apostle Paul's disclosure and rendering it into something like, feelings rather than the facts of faith, subjective sensations of a felt spirituality, rather than the glorious objective content believed upon by amazing and victorious grace.
And so the Christian, taught by the Spirit of God and according to the Word of God, confesses the gospel exclusively as constituted of the doing, dying, and rising again of the Son of God.
The Gospel Proclaimed in Acts
When we go to the pages of the book of Acts, which is where we find the gospel opened up in its declarative glory by the early church, what do we find? This simple and vitally important definition of the gospel as being the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners is given narrative weight in the pages of the book of Acts. Broadly, first, In sermon after sermon, Christ is exhibited as the chief object of Christian proclamation. You can turn with me to Acts chapter five.
When the apostles go about their commission, their mission in this lower world, what do they do? What do they say? What is their proclamation? Notice first at Acts five, And verse 42, these simple words, and daily in the temple and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.
We have these summary reports throughout the book of Acts with regards to the preaching activity of the early church. What is the message? It is that Christ is the sum and substance of the Christian gospel. Notice in Acts 8 at verse 35.
Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. In Acts chapter 11, notice there at verse 20, verses 20 and 21. Here we read, but some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
So broadly speaking, the missionary activity, the preaching activity of the early church in the book of Acts is some variation of they preached Jesus to them. And then we look at what is then specifically the content. If the who of Jesus, apostolic proclamation is Jesus Christ, then what is the what of Christian proclamation with regards to that Christ? Well, specifically, as we read the book of Acts, we see Christ's death, burial, and resurrection very often truncated into Christ's death and resurrection as that which constitutes the burden and the proclamational core of the Christian message.
You can turn with me to Acts 13 for a moment because here we have the untruncated, that means the fully expanded formula, if you will, of death, burial, resurrection for sinners as the good news of Jesus Christ. In Acts chapter 13, notice beginning at verse 26, men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent. For those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know him, nor even the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause for death in him, they asked Pilate that he should be put to death.
Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning him, notice, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses to the people. And we declare to you glad tidings.
That promise, which was made to the fathers, God has fulfilled this for us, their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. So, here we see that Paul's definition of the gospel as Christ died for your sins, our sins, the believers' sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised again the third day, according to the Scriptures, is given narrative weight here in the pages of the book of Acts. They took him down from the tree, laid him in a tomb, but God raised him from the dead.
The Gospel Confessed in the Creeds
Early, not early, the entire generations, but early, creedal Christianity leapt upon that blessed truth and In the Apostles' Creed, for example, that many of you may know or will recognize, that very heart of the gospel is always captured. It's interesting that Hercules Collins, an old particular Baptist from the 17th century connected to our confession of faith, In his republication of an Orthodox catechism, wherein he baptizes the familiar catechism of the Reformed churches, in there he brings out the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, and he says, all Christians ought to know these. The Apostles' Creed captures the gospel in that it says, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to hell. The third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
The gospel of the Apostle Peter, which is the gospel of the Apostle Paul, which is the central message of Christianity, is about no one other and no thing other than the person and the work of Christ. This is what's so glorious about the Christian gospel is that it has nothing to do with us. It's wonderfully Christocentric in any way. It takes our eyes off of ourselves, it takes our eyes off of our neighbors, it takes our eyes off of the world, and it calls us to cast both eyes upon a risen and exalted Christ who came into this world, sinners to save.
What a blessed truth.
Christ: Head and Savior of the Church
Sixthly, secondly tonight, the importance of our knowledge of Jesus Christ. is that Christ is the head and savior of the church. When we look at the church of Jesus Christ, it is exactly that. It is the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the thread woven throughout the very fabric of the church.
He is the one chosen and ordained by God to perfectly redeem and so therefore to graciously govern all those given to him by his father. In the execution of his promise to build his church victoriously in Matthew 16, 18, remember that passage, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In that promise to build his church victoriously, even against the wicked strivings of hell. The incarnate son has given himself, the incarnate son has given himself for his church first in the perfection of his redeeming work.
Of course, how is the church populated? By the perfection of his redeeming work. He has sent his spirit to apply the saving benefits of that redeeming work to his church. He by that same spirit, working by and with the word, increases and strengthens the faith of all those who constitute his church, and he graciously governs his church, ruling and reigning at the right hand of the majesty on high.
We ask again the question, what is a reason for the importance of our knowledge of Christ? It is that Christ is the head and savior of the church.
The Great Commission and Christ's Authority
Turn with me to Matthew 26 for a moment. Consider this, which we know, Matthew, sorry, did I say 26? I meant 28. Matthew 28, verse 18, the great commission, a passage no doubt familiar to all of us.
Notice that, With all power and authority given to him by virtue of the perfection of his obedience unto cross death vocation, his job, his calling, his work, Christ is the giver of the commission. the content of the commission, and the one who abides with those involved in the commission. Verse 18, and Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
The blessed reality of the Great Commission and the reality of the church as it is, of course, intimately connected to that, is that Christ gives the commission, he is the content of the commission, and he is the one who abides with those involved in it. Praise God for all of that. Praise God that it's not, you know, the Pope of Rome, that Antichrist who is the giver of the commission, that it's no earthly figure. Praise God that we're not the content of the Great Commission.
And praise God that it is no one other than Christ who is the one that abides with those carrying it out. He is the one who is behind the empowerment of those proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ. He is the one through whom our prayers rise up acceptably to God. He is the one at the right hand of the majesty on high who sends his spirit for the strengthening, the protection, and the empowerment of his church throughout the ages.
If we think about this point regarding the importance of our knowledge of Christ as it is connected to the church.
Christ in the Worship and Sacraments
We can see this not only in the church generally, the commission specifically, but also as we have already noted with regards to the worship of the church. as we noted only briefly this morning, and as I just alluded to now, when we engage in the worship, proper biblical and Christian worship, our worship is going to Father, to Son, and to Holy Spirit. The Son of God, the second person of the blessed trinity, is the recipient of the worship of the Church of the living Christ. In addition to, of course, the Father and Spirit in the undivided unity of the triune Godhead. He is also the mediator through whom acceptable worship is given to the triune God, and he is that blessed one in whose name we gather and in whose name that we pray.
Not only that, but when we, of course, consider the two sacraments of the Christian church ordained by the Lord Jesus Christ to be continued in his church to the end of the world, these two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are testaments to the importance of our knowledge of Christ. baptism in the Lord's Supper, those Christ-given holy appointments and ordinances of positive and sovereign institution, they communicate to us the inseparable connection of Christ to His church. Connection, the inseparable connection between our Savior and and his glorious church. Baptism signals to its immersed believing recipients fellowship with Christ in the perfection of his saving work, indissoluble union with Christ, the certain forgiveness of sins by virtue of Christ, and commitment to the triune God through the mediation of Christ. Baptism is for the believer, but it is about Christ.
And with the Lord's Supper, it is observed by the churches of Christ for an abiding memorial of that obedience unto cross-death perfection of the incarnate Son, and for the spiritual nourishment, Christ providing this by His Spirit from His place of ascended glory, the spiritual nourishment of believers as they spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified and all the benefits of His death. The Lord's Supper that we engage in is for believers, but it is about Christ. Whether we talk about the very building of the church, the very constituting of the church, the worship of the church, the sacraments of the church, any glory that the church herself has, it all comes back to Christ. Son of God and Son of Man, one mediator for the salvation of a multitude.
The importance of our knowledge of Christ is seen in that Christ is head and Savior of the church. And
Christ: Our Present Hope and Future Glory
seventhly and lastly, thirdly this evening, the importance of our knowledge of Christ is seen in that our present hope and future glory are in Christ. When we When we ask the question, what is our present hope and what is our future glory? Hopefully we answer, well, it's Christ. When we as Christians speak of the hope that we have, it is not that species of hope with which the world is familiar.
The world's hope is a strong wish for a particular thing to be true or to take place in an uncertain future. When we think about hope outside of everything other than the blessed Christian reality, it's all about uncertainty. It's a desire for some future good to be possessed, but a desire held with no assurance of ever obtaining that good. This is what is so miserable about any hope so-called that is outside the blessed scheme of Christianity. is that it holds forth things that, well, first of all, it holds forth things that have no eternal worth of themselves at all, but not only that, but it holds things forth in an uncertain future, the desire for some future good to be possessed, which is no good, true good and lasting good at all, but a desire held with no assurance of even ever obtaining that good.
Our hope, the hope of the believer is the certain expectation that the promises of God are infallibly certain and secured for us. Hebrews 10, 23b, for he who promised is faithful. That's the hope of the Christian. Stand fast in the hope of your calling without wavering.
Why? Because he who promised is faithful. The hope of the Christian is the certain expectation that the promises of God, because they are yea and amen in Christ, the glorious and the perfect one, they will bear out, they will come to pass, they will most certainly be effectually executed. The Christian's hope is glorious and it is not the world's hope.
The Christian saved by amazing and victorious grace alone through the free gift of faith alone should simply and joyfully the answer in whom and in what is our Christian hope found with in Christ and in his work alone. We sing that hymn, of course, often, and we could sing it every Lord's Day, and I'd be okay with that. That stanza of which we're all familiar, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.
A good old 19th century Baptist, Edward Mote, a London Baptist pastor from the 19th century. And, you know, those, it's not just, hopefully, when we read those hymns, you know, that hymn specifically, because we're talking about it, it's not just some poetic flourish of a bygone hymn writer. but the very biblical and confessional attestation of the Christian church. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Our confession says this certainty is not a bare, conjectural, improbable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope. but an infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.
Thank God, praise God, that our hope is certainly not in our inglorious selves and in the feeblest of our best works. It's okay to call ourselves inglorious, because we are, and certainly compared to the glory of the perfect one, Jesus Christ, and the holiness of a God in immeasurable perfection, we are marked by inglory. And even in the best of our works, we bear a weakness and a feebleness. There is no salvific formula or economy of salvation where our imperfect faithfulness is added to the perfect faithfulness of the incarnate Son of God as the the composite sum that equals the hope of the Christian church.
Our acceptance with the triune God is not by, as the prophet Isaiah would write, our filthy righteousnesses, but much rather the Holy Scripture explicitly refers to both the person and the work of Jesus Christ as our hope. Notice something that possibly can just be read in passing. If we're not focused, everything in the Bible can be. But notice in 1 Timothy 1.
Christ as Hope in 1 Timothy
Notice in 1 Timothy 1. In fact, immediately out of the gates, by the pen of the apostle Paul, We read this, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. It's a simple and very brief text, but man does it carry a lot of weight in its simplicity. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope.
Our hope is Jesus Christ, His person, His glorious person. And notice as well, the Bible opens up the reality of His work, of course, as being the ground of our hope. In 1 Peter,
Living Hope Through Christ's Resurrection
Also in near the beginning of his first epistle, we read these words. Remember, our point is that the importance of our knowledge of Christ is seen and that he is our present hope and future glory. Notice in 1 Peter 1, in this doxological proclamation of the wonder and the majesty of redemption by Christ, beginning at verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
You know, that's a little modifier there that's given, not that hope by itself is bad, but just so that we understand, it's a living hope. You know, the world's hope is a dead and a dying hope. Anything that does not have Christ as the hope of the one who has hope is dead and not living. Here, the wonderful, the doxologically animated pen of the Apostle Peter is blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope. through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
They're tying hope back to the sum and substance of the gospel, which is Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. And notice, with regards to future glory, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. You know why the Apostle Peter is writing this? Well, I think we could say first, he's writing it because it's true and it's glorious.
But what is going to be the boon to the Christians' courage when they're faced by an opposing world, when they're faced by a hating world, when they're assailed by the devil, when they're allured by the world, and when they're confronted with the lusts of their own flesh? It's, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope. It's the ground of the Christian's confidence in this lower world, and it's the ground of the reality of the world to come, when world without end, we will sing with the angels, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. is whether it is our present vision of faith or our future beholding by sight, that is, whether now in the state of grace or then in the state of glory, the object of our seeing, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is our hope. And this being so, it ought not be strange to conclude that the knowing of the one who is in his person and work, the very ground of saving certainty and everlasting blessedness of present hope and future glory is a matter of chief importance.
Application: Knowing Christ in Every Calling
The knowing of Christ is not a cold intellectual exercise, the pursuit of which gets in the way of our enjoyment of Christian hope. The knowing of Christ, which should be the sustained, purposeful undertaking of every sinner saved by grace, is the simple expression of a heart that has found Christ as the one who is precious to our Christian souls." It's at once both the easiest and the most difficult thing to preach Jesus Christ. because of the glory and the weightiness of the subject matter. It's the easiest thing because of the glory and the weightiness of the subject matter. What a glorious thing to preach of the one who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in all of his glory, in all of his majesty, in all of his perfections, who took upon himself our nature to redeem us from the madness and the inglory and the shame of sin. who does so perfectly and who brings a multitude of sons and daughters to glory by virtue of that perfection. but it's difficult because of the glory and the weightiness of the subject matter.
How do you capture that in a measure? How do you capture that in 37 minutes? How do you gather together the essential weight of the glory of the sum and substance of that one who is in his very person and work, the glorious incarnation of the way, the truth, and the life, as Spurgeon calls him? It's difficult, yet, with that stated, made alive by grace alone in order that through faith alone we might rest in Christ alone, the Christian is ever captivated by that apostolic spirit.
We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. To us who believe, he is precious, and so we do well. According to our various callings, Whether you're a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, or whether you're one who is called to be faithful in this lower world as a Christian, testifying to the grace that you have, Whatever your calling may be, we are, according to those various callings, to confess Him, to speak of Him, to preach Him, to write of Him, so that a lost world may learn of the only way of salvation, and so that those who believe may grow in the grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The very intent of the Holy Scriptures is to disclose Jesus Christ.
He is the very end and purpose of all things, of all creation, and of all providence. He is the champion and the mediator of the covenant of grace. Eternal life hinges upon the knowledge of Him. He is the sum and substance of the Christian gospel.
He is the head and savior of the church, And He is our present hope and our future glory. All of that is in Him. And so may we all have that same vigor as the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 and verse 8 to count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Closing Prayer
Well, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your truth. We rejoice in your goodness to us. We thank you that we can behold the glories of Jesus Christ by virtue of being brought forth by amazing and victorious grace that by faith we might see with eyes of faith the one who is glorious in his person and glorious in his work.
We pray that we would study Him, that we would know Him, that we would glory in Him, that we would take part in that commission that is about Him, whether preaching, whether praying, whether sending, whether giving, wherever we may find ourselves in our various callings, help us to be about Christ, His glorious gospel, and the presentation of it to a dying world. And we pray that you'd go with us into this week, that we might conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do help us to rejoice in his truth and to shine forth the riches and the excellencies of that truth to a dying world. Do go with us into this week.
Help us to live for your glory. And we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our precious Savior. Amen. Well, you can turn in your hymn books, if you don't know it, to the Gloria Patri, which is 572.
We'll stand and sing that together.