Christ Methodist Church Memphis
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Christ Methodist Church Memphis
The Prodigal Church #5: The Revealing of Truth | Rev. Paul
Most people think they see the world clearly—but what if everything you're trusting is a lie? This message might disrupt your comfort, but it could also open your eyes.
[0:17] So I want to invite you, if you have a Bible with you, if you have a Bible with
[0:20] you, to turn to 2 Corinthians, and we're going to continue our series reading verses 6 through 16. 2 Corinthians 2, verse 6 through 16. Hear God's word. Here we go. Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.
[1:03] These things God has revealed to us are revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person which is in him. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
[1:48] The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. Let's pray for just a moment.
[2:02] So, God, open our spiritual eyes so that we may see. Open our spiritual eyes so that we may behold. And as we see and as we behold, we recognize that our source is you. Our source is you in all your glory. Transform us from glory to glory, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I've talked to you from time to time about my stepdad, Jake, who went to be with the Lord in 1997.
[2:35] Jake was a very—we would call him a renaissance man. He was kind of good at a lot of different things. I watched him come to know Christ in his 60s, and he was not the kind of person that many people thought would come to know Jesus. And it's a part of what fuels my own heart as a pastor where I just don't give up on anybody. And may I encourage you to do the same because my stepdad was someone we prayed for for a long time and we watched God draw him to Jesus. Well, because he was so well-rounded in so many ways or just so many things that he did, including, even though this was not his livelihood, he was a pilot, flew a small plane And I got to fly with him from time to time. And sometimes we would fly in what pilots call soup, meaning cloud cover, lots of cloud cover. Remember, we have some pilots among us. You can school me on a lot of what I'm about to say. So I want to be very careful as I wade in here.
[3:36] There were times where Jake would let me fly the plane, not take off and land, just fly to the different headings in order to get to our destination.
[3:45] And when we're flying in soup, you need to pay attention to your instruments. And he would often lean over to me and say, Paul, pay attention to your instruments, because I would start flying on intuition, you know, just looking at the clouds around me, trying to just kind of figure out, is the plane level, take my eyes off the instruments. And he would remind me, we're going to get in trouble if you don't keep your eyes on the instrument so the playing flies true. Well, church, when we get to the book of 1 Corinthians.
[4:17] The church is in trouble because what's happened is that she's gone back to her primal instincts and began to follow many of the flows of culture rather than staying attuned to the instrument of the Word of God and the instrument of the person of the Holy Spirit. And because of this, she's gotten way off track. And that's why Paul writes this letter.
[4:43] And you're going to see as we journey in the weeks ahead, just how off track she became. And so as we move forward, the story of what's happening at Corinth is she moved more into the philosophical ideation or ideas of culture, and she got way off, she began to minimize the main thing, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, what Christ had done at the cross. There was a sense in which she wanted more of the philosophical ideas of the world because declaring that the church was founded upon the death of a Messiah just didn't sound fashionable. And as we covered a few weeks ago, that the gospel of Jesus Christ was just too simple. It didn't sound sophisticated.
[5:34] And so what goes on in the book of Corinthians kind of reminds me, do any of you remember an old movie called The Matrix? Some of you have seen that, all of you, most of you have seen that. And you might remember in that movie that the reality was not what you saw with the natural eye. In fact, you may remember that normal was actually, in the movie, a computer-generated normal that was actually not normal, not real at all. And people could go on believing everything was great in The Matrix. But you know where the film, how it's based upon one of the main characters named Morpheus, who is having a conversation with a man named Neo, and he engages him and says, basically, Neo, you can take the blue pill, And if you take the blue pill, it will allow you to continue to know all the... Life as you have always known it, this computer-generated false world where ignorance is bliss and humanity is enslaved to a lie.
[6:40] Or, Neo, you can take the red pill, and the red pill will open your mind to the real world, which would not come without a price that you would have to pay if you come into touch with what's really going on, reality. And so all of you who've seen the movie know Neo chose the red pill.
[7:01] Neo was a person who would not enable the wool being pulled over his eyes. He wanted to know what was real. And if you're an honest person, you want to know what's real as well. In fact, if you're an honest person, you want to know what is ultimate reality. And so this is what the Apostle Paul is engaging the Corinthian church around, and it's what God is seeking to engage all of us around as followers of Jesus Christ. That is, what is really real? Is it this temporary world all around us, or is there something more? And that's what these passages deal with in bringing the Corinthian church back to health. And so we're going to ask this question as we spend the next several hours together. Here it is.
[7:51] What is, I'm teasing guest, what is the revealing that God wants us to see? What is it that God's wanting to reveal? What is it that he has revealed that is this reflection of ultimate reality? So as we answer that question, let's begin with this. The Apostle Paul declares that it's a revealing that's imparted, not interpreted.
[8:15] Imparted, not interpreted. Now look at the verse with me, verse 6. Yet among the mature, stop right there.
[8:22] Remember, the Corinthian church is anything but mature. But what Paul is doing is painting this possibility that there's a God that wants you to know him that you can grow in, that you can mature in, that coming to know Christ is just the beginning. So there's a maturity that God is developing you in. So yet among the mature, we do, key word, impart wisdom, although it's not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who were doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. So, church, this imparted wisdom is not coming from a dude wearing a flat earth t-shirt and a tinfoil hat. This is coming from God himself, God revealing through his servant Paul, an imparted wisdom coming from God. So, We're all aware that God is all glorious. We get that. A.W. Tozer once said, if every man on earth became blind, it would not diminish the beauty of the sun. And if every man turned atheist, it would not diminish the glory of God. And so I share this because God being infinite.
[9:39] The creator of billions of universes, billions of galaxies, billions of stars within each galaxy, one universe. I misspoke a moment ago. But this reveals the gloriousness of the Creator, the glory of God. This is why the Bible says, the heavens declare the glory of God. This all-glorious, infinite God not only wants to have a relationship with you that saves you from eternal separation from your Creator, but he wants to have a relationship with you whereby you're developed, you grow, you delight in the Lord, you know joy in the Lord, you know the peace that comes in relationship with God, you know the riches of journeying and being developed by the person of Jesus Christ. But it's, as we noted a few weeks ago, remember, it's only by his grace, it's only by his mercy that you know him. It's because God drew you to himself. No one comes to the Son unless the Father draws him, Jesus said, as we covered in previous weeks.
[10:53] So this, what God's imparted to you is given to you, not gotten by you. And so Paul is sharing that if we're going to go on to maturity, then you need to be grounded.
[11:06] Grounded in the plan that God has revealed through Jesus Christ and his work on the cross for you. Paul's saying, this is where you're grounded. This is your foundation. This is why Jesus said things like, I'm the door. This is why Jesus, when he, excuse me, Paul, when he described a spiritual armor in chapter six of Ephesians, he describes that your feet are shod with a preparation of the gospel of peace. The gospel of what God has done in Jesus Christ is your foundation. It's what you stand on, even as a believer. It's not just what gets you in and becoming a believer. It's what you stand on as a believer. In Christ, my sins were taken at the cross. In Christ, I'm a new creature. In Christ, I have the mind of Christ, which is coming in this text. In Christ, I have access to his glorious riches, which is what Paul is driving at here. So nevertheless, the reason he's driving at this is that many people at Corinth have lost sight or minimized their foundation. They didn't have eyes to see or ears to hear this reality because the spirit of God within them had been minimized. We're going to get to that in a moment. So this is why he says in verse 8, none of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
[12:35] Church, think with me just for a moment. You realize the Pharisees could be a poster child for some of what Paul's talking about here, because he's driving that it's the work of God, the work of God's spirit, the work of God's grace that draws a person to Jesus. And that happens as we surrender to Christ. But the Pharisees, think about this, the Pharisees in Jesus' day knew tons of scripture, right? In fact, I would submit to you that they could quote scripture at a level that would embarrass most of us. They knew the Bible. They knew the Bible as they had it at that time. And yet, even though they had so much Bible knowledge, They disappointed Jesus over and over with their attitudes and their behavior and never perceived that he was the Messiah. And that tells us something. Knowledge by itself does not equate to spiritual maturity. We need knowledge, but we need knowledge wed with the power and the person of the Holy Spirit. In our flesh, that is our fallen nature, we can't understand the thoughts of God. and even why we would need the Holy Spirit.
[13:53] Only when we receive the Holy Spirit by submitting our lives to God, surrendering, waving the white flag, only in that lens does the Holy Spirit become real to us as he witnesses to us, Romans 8, that we're a child of God. And so the Corinthians understood what Paul had taught them when Paul was with them. And when Paul was with them in person, they were experiencing the presence of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit. But now that Paul's away from them, they drifted two degrees at a time. And I'm not suggesting that they've lost the Holy Spirit altogether, but they had become stagnant in their faith, out of touch with God and getting off track.
[14:38] And the reason, another reason is because of what we would call enculturation. In other words, enculturation is the process by which an individual learns the content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values in a way that are contrary to the wisdom of God. And that's what's happened in the church at Corinth. And where Paul begins with this imparted wisdom that's been given to the church, he says that apart from God's spirit, we can't understand the gospel, We can't embody the message of the gospel, and we can't make a right response to the gospel. You know, a lot of times as believers, we pray things like this.
[15:22] God, this is a really difficult circumstance I'm in. God, change this circumstance. And that's not a bad prayer. Not saying that. I'm not saying you shouldn't pray that. But the problem with asking God to change what's going on around us is that he always wants to start by changing what's going on inside of us. And that was what was going on at Corinth. They had all kinds of problems. There was dissension and arguing and brokenness within the church at Corinth, immorality. And I'm confident that there were people that were going, God, would you fix this? But what God was interested in doing was doing a work inside the heart of people, the people at the church. That's the great need of the day. Christians who think biblically, not culturally. Now think with me for a minute. I'm sure there's some surgeons in our room, excuse me, in our worship center here, but you didn't become a surgeon by studying five minutes a day.
[16:26] There's some pretty good golfers in the Christchurch family,
[16:29] and you didn't become a good golfer by practicing five minutes a day. I'm sure Tiger Woods didn't become a great golfer by practicing five minutes a day. But here's the thing, church. Nobody matures as a Christian by only opening the Word of God and reading it five minutes a day.
[16:49] The reason I share this is because this is a part of the problem of what was happening at Corinth.
[16:55] They had allowed culture to speak more profoundly to them than the voice of God. The truth doesn't change. The truth changes us. The philosophy of culture always has voices that don't align with what God's perspective is. The philosophy of culture says life is short. You better enjoy it. Christ says eternity is long. You better prepare for it. The philosophy of culture says this life is all there is. But Christ says, I have died for you. And there's a hidden wisdom that I've opened for you to develop you, to mature you so that you grow in relationship with me and no delight in the Lord. Where really, when you quote the verse, delight yourself in the Lord out of the Psalms, it's not just something you quote. It's an experience that you have as a part of your walk in Christ. Culture, the philosophy of culture says, center your life on me, my, and I. That's reality. But Christ says, center your life in my glory, that my purposes, that's ultimate reality. And so we recognize Paul begins with this revelation, what God intends to reveal over the Corinthian church, over our lives, is a revealing that's imparted. It's what Christ has done for you. It's the revelation of God, what he's imparted to you through the person of
[18:22] the Holy Spirit, not interpreted.
[18:24] Secondly, this is a revealing of the depth of God and not merely the surface.
[18:32] Now, I don't think I'm saying anything you don't already know when I say God wants a rich, vibrant relationship with you that has depth, that has legs. But look at these verses with me. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. Let's stop right there. Here's something you should know. You shouldn't stop right there.
[18:56] But we stopped right there because I want to tell you why Paul is quoting this verse, and then we're going to quote it properly in its context. So Paul is quoting this verse because he's pulling out of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 64. And it's a reference to when Israel was in exile in Babylon. Why are they in exile in Babylon? Well, thank you for asking. Here's why. They're in exile because they've participated in lots of deep sin, dark sin. And God is now chastising them. Be mindful, this is in the character of God. The book of Hebrews says, God chastens those whom he loves. This is a proof, one of the proofs that you're a child of God. If you're a Christian and you stumble, you'll experience a conviction of the Holy Spirit. You also experience a conviction of the Holy Spirit before you know Jesus. And the purpose of that conviction is to draw you to the source, to draw you to Jesus himself. And so the people of God are in Babylon and they're being oppressed as they're away from their home nation, and they're crying out to God, God, change my circumstances. God, change my circumstances. That's not verbatim. Help is what they're saying. But God chooses to wait 70 years. Why?
[20:23] Because he's developing them. He's weaning them off of culture and drawing them back to depend upon the Lord. But God also, in that context, wants them to know that there's hope. He doesn't want them to feel like he's condemned them. He wants them to know that he is their hope and he is their future. This is the context where Jeremiah 29, 11, which is all over t-shirts these days, that's the context where I know I have the plans for you to give you a hope and a future. God wanted to remind them that even though you're in a point of pain, that I am in control, I am at work. I have a plan. And you can be confident that there is hope. And so I don't think that's just true for them. That's true for all of us as well. So let's quote the verse in its context. So Paul, pulling from Isaiah 64, and he writes this, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. A lot of times people stop right there. They quote this verse about heaven and things like that. And I'm not saying that that's all wrong, but that's not the context. Because listen to what Paul says.
[21:38] These things God has revealed to us through his spirit. Meaning the reality is present tense, believer. It applies now in your life. God has revealed his wisdom. God has revealed that his son died for you. God has revealed the person of the Holy Spirit to you, believer. God has revealed all the riches of his glory through gifts and grace and fruit of the Spirit. It, God has revealed this wisdom that is not available to the world, but is available to the believer. And so those are the these things that was not proper English, but that's what he refers to here. And so we realize it's a revealing of the depth of God, not merely the surface. But think with me on this. The scripture says here that the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. So you might be able to call this Memorial Day weekend and movie weekend. Okay, I think Mission Impossible was released this weekend, right? All right, good talking with you.
[22:51] Many of you remember a movie called Titanic? So you may remember that that movie was produced really out of the catalyst of our finding the Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. You may remember that no one has went diving at that depth. You may remember that remote control submarines were sent down to the Titanic to photograph this vessel sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And you may remember as that the submarines were in the depths of the ocean.
[23:28] Electronically, the submarine sent images back to the surface so that not only the people on the ship, the researchers, but really all of humanity could marvel at the wreckage of the Titanic laying on the bottom of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. And you're mindful that because of those electronic signals, there was communication from the depths to the surface. Now, this may sound a little cheesy, but get the point. God has given us his word. God has given us the person of the Holy Spirit that we may be able to see beyond our normal range of vision and know him. This is a revealing of his wisdom, a wisdom that's been hidden through the ages, Paul says, that has now been made known to you, believer, for you to grow in. The Corinthians were taking it for granted. Lord, help us not, God, give us grace not to take for granted what has been imparted to us. It's a revealing of the depth of God, not merely the surface. And then thirdly, what is God revealing to us? a revealing of the difference
[24:42] between the natural and the spiritual. Look with me at this verse, verses 14 through 16. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.
[24:53] For they are folly, they're foolishness to him. And he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. So what's Paul saying here? He's saying that when he refers to the natural person in verse 14, some of your Bibles translate that, the man without the spirit. In other words, the natural person that Paul talks about here, the word refers to one who lives purely on the material plane. We have a message coming up in maybe next week, that asks the question, what plane are you living on? Because that's a contrast that Paul begins right here. And that is a person who lives only with natural understanding. They haven't been touched by the Holy Spirit.
[25:47] Jesus hasn't regenerated them. They only have the natural mind to function in. That person lives under their sinful human nature rather than the work of the Holy Spirit. And since that individual does not have the spirit of God, they cannot receive the things of the spirit, cannot receive the message of the gospel, can't receive the message of salvation because it's foolishness that a man who would be called a Messiah would hang on a cross and die for one's sins. It's foolish that God would become a man. It's foolish that he would die on a cross. It's foolish that he would be a savior offered to the world. And so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.14 that a person cannot get there apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. The mind cannot get there unless the Spirit of God reveals that to a person. Without the Spirit's work, his or her response is to reject it all as foolishness. But notice the contrast. He says, but the spiritual person, verse 15, judges all things. In other words, he discerns. In fact, the root word for judges there is not that he or she becomes judgmental of others. The root word there, the better translation, is that he or she discerns. They have the ability to discern what is true.
[27:14] This is why D.L. Moody once said, the Christian on his or her knees can see further than the philosopher on his tiptoes. In other words, the sense...
[27:24] One without the Spirit of God working in them is unable to discern the things of the Holy Spirit, unable to accurately discern the Word of God. The one with the Spirit is able to discern what is of the Spirit of God, what aligns with the Word of God. But through the man with the Spirit, he or she understands all things that are of the Spirit. But a person without the Spirit, it all seems very strange to them. As he or she understands the things of the Spirit.
[27:58] That man, that believer will gain more and more knowledge, more understanding and grow in the depth of God and into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ as they mature and move on into eternity. And so Paul, once again, quotes from Isaiah in 1 Corinthians 2.16, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? And then he makes an audacious statement. Here it is. But we have the mind of Christ. Now, why is he saying something so bold that believer, you have the mind of Christ? You have the mind of Christ because of the Spirit of God in you and the Word
[28:38] of God that's been digested into your own heart and mind. But a person without the Spirit cannot know the mind of the Lord and cannot discern the things of the Lord. When I was in seminary, I had colleagues that were in other seminaries. The seminary that I went to, what I'm about to share, didn't happen and would not happen. But there was a seminary that a lot of my colleagues attended that actually had a professor that was an atheist.
[29:11] And when the atheist seminary professor sometimes opened the Bible and began to interpret it, he would say some things that were pretty wacky, that actually did not align with the majority of scholarship through the ages. It was as if he was trying to judge a symphony when he can't hear the music. The Apostle Paul says something so bold here, and that is that those with the Spirit of God, with the Word of God, actually have the mind of Jesus Christ. Now, in a few minutes, we're going to sing a closing song, and we're going to—a few of you will hang around, shake some hands, and hug some necks, and then you'll journey to the parking lot, and you'll get in your automobile, and you will either ride home or maybe to a restaurant and share a meal, but your car at some point will need to be refueled or recharged, right? It just doesn't work that way where you just can neglect it.
[30:20] And the same is true for you. What got the Corinthian church in trouble was that they came to church on Sabbath. They did. They worshiped together house to house back in that day. But what happened when the apostle Paul left them is they didn't learn to fuel their walk with Christ on their own. And because they didn't learn to fuel their own walk with Jesus Christ, they drifted. They became enculturated. When a man or woman fuels their walk with Jesus Christ and begins to mature, it's a symptom of following Jesus' words when he said things like this, Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. You get it. Just as you eat three square meals a day for nourishment, the picture is to commune with Jesus.
[31:20] Jesus used metaphors like this, I'm the bread of life. Do you understand that, how intentional he's being there with that metaphor? In fact, there was a day in John chapter six, there was a large group following a big group of people. And you get to this verse where Jesus says something radical.
[31:41] He says to this large crowd that's following him, he says, unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you can't have anything to do with me. Now that has some metaphorical meaning with communion, but its primary meaning is what Jesus was declaring as the savior of the world. I'm your nourishment. I'm your source. And the scripture declares that when Jesus said that, that the crowd, the majority of the crowd left, and there was only a handful of people, I think it was his disciples, were the only ones left. And they said to Jesus, where else will we go? You're the Savior of the world. But what happened with the crowd is that they recognized they thought the cost was too high. But the picture of what happened at Corinth was that they had received the gospel. They had been enlightened by the person of the Holy Spirit. They were experiencing joy and newness in Christ. They were propagating the gospel in Corinth and beyond. They started out real healthy. But what happened wasn't a result or negative result because when the church gathered on weekends that the gospel wasn't proclaimed. What the problem at the Corinthian church was a lot of what was happening throughout the week and just an enculturation that began to permeate the church. And as I have said many times, loved ones, if it can happen to them, it can happen to me.
[33:08] If it can happen to them, it can happen to you. If it can happen to them, it can happen to us. And so maybe if God is among us today, maybe there's some of us that in his love, he's speaking to us and saying in your day-to-day life, come home. In your day-to-day life, change some things.
[33:37] Reprioritize your time. You know, one of the things that we need to guard against in our Western pulpits is to say following Jesus doesn't involve any cost. I mean, let me just ask you a rhetorical question. Is that the gospel?
[33:56] I remember years ago, I'm sitting with a Chinese church leader. And who had led a movement of hundreds of thousands of people coming to know Christ. And this was one of the leaders that right after the Chinese Revolution, there were approximately maybe 100,000 believers in China. And then when information started getting out in the late 90s, the church has grown to almost 100 million people. This was without the help of any Western missionaries. These are people in China laying their lives down, propagating the gospel, moving out of a lens of health in relationship with Jesus. And I asked one of their leaders when I had the honor of meeting him, and I had my notepad out ready to take, give me the 10 principles of how that happened. And I asked him one question, just talk to us, tell us, get my pen out, I'm ready. And he looks and he looks up and he this is the advice he gave to the western church three words three words die to self I'm like.
[35:15] My flesh went, dude. But my spirit went, Jesus, you said that.
[35:23] You said that.
[35:29] I got an email this morning, regarding some fellow Global Methodist Church members in Nigeria. The people group that we've been seeking to reach as a church praying for. And even sent teams to equip leaders to reach them, the Fulani, in northern Africa. And we've seen several hundred new believers among the Fulani, and we rejoice that God's moving in this unreached people group. But we were notified over the weekend that our global Methodist church sisters and brothers were attacked by the Fulani in Nigeria on Friday.
[36:13] 42 of them were martyred men, women, and children and we want to pray for them by all means.
[36:27] But I want to remind you that as your pastor stands before you this morning and encourages you to open your Bible during the week and read it, study it Go more than five minutes. Pray, commune with the Lord. It's really not a high bar. There are men and women who are living into a high bar all around the world and we want to pray for them. They're our sisters and brothers.
[37:00] But Jesus desires to commune with you. Scripture says that he stands at the door and knocks. And if anyone will open the door, remember, he's talking to his church when he says that. If anyone will open the door, I'll come in. I'll sup with him and he with me. That's a picture of experiencing fellowship, koinonia with Jesus. When a Jewish person shares a meal with another individual, that's you're entering into relationship. That's the picture. And Jesus is saying in that passage to the church, he could have easily said it to the Corinthian church. I'm knocking. I'm knocking. If you'll open the door, I'm going to come in. We're going to commune together. And I pray, God, let that be our heart as a church family, corporately. Let that be our heart individually. Let's pray.
[37:54] So jesus i thank you that you're merciful and you're gracious and you knock on doors that have been closed for a while and we pray god that all of us individually corporately would have our door open to you for richness of fellowship taking on your mind being developed Lord.
[38:21] Guarding us against the kind of enculturation that conflicts with development in our lives. So we thank you for the cross and you bleeding and dying for our sins, bearing them there so that we can know you both now and eternally. We pray, Lord, draw us to the sun for your glory. And we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.