Colossians 1:9-14
Please pray with me. Our gracious
God, we pray that you would bless us and keep us and watch over
us. Keep us safe in all of life. Sanctify us by your word and
spirit. And take now these tithes and offerings and use them for
your kingdom. Make your name famous to the
ends of the earth. And we pray, Father, that you
would find us faithful living on earth. And we pray now as
our Savior taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the
kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. You may be seated. Now that we’re back on track,
I’ve been away too long I guess, let’s hear from the reading of
the New Testament. Our reading today is Colossians
chapter 1 verses 9 through 12. And as you find your way to Colossians,
let me just introduce the book very briefly so we’ll understand
where the Apostle Paul is coming from today. Colossians is one
of Paul’s four prison epistles. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
and Philemon were written from prison. Remember that the Apostle
Paul was arrested in Jerusalem for causing, according to the
Jews, a commotion for bringing a Gentile into the temple. He
made his way to one Roman official and then he said, I want to appeal
to Caesar. And so he is in prison in Rome
He is receiving guests. He is entertaining guests. He’s
paying his own expenses. He’s writing New Testament letters,
constantly doing ministry. But he hears of the difficulty
in the colosseum church. Because Epaphras, their pastor,
comes all the way from Colossae to Rome, a very long trip, a
very long trip by foot. And he says to the apostle, we
need your help in Colossae. And so Paul writes this letter
to the Colossian church to encourage them. They are facing heresy
and they are facing division. And so he writes this letter
speaking to them about the matters that are important to the faith.
And so let us hear now from God’s holy word as we read from Colossians
chapter 1 beginning at verse 9. It says, And so from the day
we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that
you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual
wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy
of the Lord. fully pleasing to him, bearing
fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of
God. May you be strengthened with all power according to his
glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving
thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the
inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from
the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom
of his beloved son in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness
of sins. This is God’s word for us. Let’s
pray now and ask for his grace and help. Our Lord and God, we
come before you today thanking you that you speak. that you
write, that you nurture and you grow us in grace in order that
we may live well the Christian life. We thank you for your word,
your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the preached
word of God and we pray now that in the reading and preaching
of your holy word you would convince and convert sinners and that
you would comfort and build up the saints of old and may we
all know for sure at the end of this hour who we are in Christ
Jesus and that we may rise and call you wonderful Lord and Savior
help us now we do pray in Jesus name amen I have a good friend
in the ministry who says pastors are always in one of three situations. They are either in hot water
getting out of hot water or about to get in hot water again. And
you know, he’s probably pretty accurate on that. Well, St. Augustine, the great 4th century
bishop of the early church, maybe some of you have read as a student
back in the days, the Confessions of St. Augustine. He wrote an
autobiography of his life. of his sin and wickedness and
of coming to faith in the Lord Jesus through the prayers of
his mother, Monica, through the friendship of various ministers,
but ultimately by the power of the Word and Spirit, he comes
to faith in Christ. But during his ministry, he said
these words. He said, God, give or command
what you will, but give what you command. It was a prayer
that he made. Command what you will, but give
what you command. To say it another way, he was
saying, God, you can tell your people. You can tell them to
do anything you want them to. For example, you can tell children
to obey parents. You can tell husbands and wives
to get along. You can tell ministers to preach
the gospel, to shepherd the flock. You can tell men and women and
boys and girls to obey the commandments of God. but give them the grace,
give them the tools, give them the ability to obey your commands. Well, one minister across town
or somewhere nearby really took it up with St. Augustine and
said, you know, God can’t command you to do something that you
can’t do. He took it up with him that God did not treat us
like puppets and that He wouldn’t tell us to do something and then
make us do it by His power. But that’s exactly what St. Augustine
was saying. God, you can tell us to do whatever
you want, but give us your spirit, give us your help, give us your
assistance, give us your grace that we might obey you. And all
St. Augustine was doing was echoing
the language of the Apostle Paul. He was saying nothing new. And
so when we come to a letter like Paul’s letter to the Colossians,
writing to a church he has never met, to people he will likely
never see in his life, He prays for them, and He prays for them
in a way that reflects what St. Augustine said later in history. God wants you to live a godly
life. He wants you to live a holy life,
and one of your prayers ought to be that that would be so.
And so here in verses 9 through 14 of Colossians 1, we have an
example of a way to pray. and of things to pray for, and
of godly and holy ends which we ought to desire not only in
our individual lives or in the lives of our children or grandchildren,
but it ought to be the collective prayer of our church. Lord, make
us, shape us this way. So I want us to understand that
yes, God asks much of us as Christians. But He freely gives to those
who ask that we may have all that is necessary to do His holy
will. So we come to this passage and
we find the Apostle Paul praying. He’s in prison and he’s literally
praying and asking. He’s taking hold of God, as the
Puritans would say. He’s like Jacob in Genesis. He’s got a hold of God and he
won’t let go until God blesses his Colossian church. And he’s
asking that God would provide for the Colossians in such a
way that he would fulfill his purposes of redemption in them
and that they might live godly lives. You’ll notice in this
passage there are four things the Apostle prays for. that they
would have clear knowledge, that they would live worthy lives,
that they would have strength for hardship, and that they would
finally be joyful, thankful Christians. Let’s take each of these one
by one. In the powerful praying we see
here in the Apostle Paul’s life, the first thing he prays for
is that they would have clear knowledge. And we find that in
the second part of verse 9 where he says, I am asking, that you
may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual
wisdom and understanding. He goes on in verse 10, so as
to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him,
bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge
of God. You see how in the end of verse 9 and all the way through
10, He’s saying, I want you to be filled full of clear knowledge
about the will of God. I want you to be filled full
with His instructions, filled full with His commands, filled
full with the ways of godliness in this life. He wants us to
know the will of God. We say in our catechism, in our
confessions, in our creeds that the Word of God is our only rule
of faith and practice. We just heard the vows of membership
and one of those vows is this, do you believe that the Word
of God is our only rule of what to believe and how to live life. The scriptures give us clear
knowledge of how we are to live, how we are to worship, and what
we are to believe about who God is and what he has done. The
motto of our denomination is from Psalm 36, in thy light do
we see light. Another way to put that might
be this, we do not see without the lenses of scriptures placed
upon our head. As I look around the room, I
see lots of glasses. I’m sure there are things I cannot
see like LASIK surgery and contact lenses. But many of us in this
life need assistance in seeing. We cannot see. We cannot read.
We cannot make clear what is in front of us without the aid
of lenses. And that is exactly what God
tells us in the Scriptures that brothers and sisters of the Lord
Jesus Christ, you cannot see to live life faithfully. You
cannot see to worship. You cannot see to parent. You
cannot see to work. You cannot see to be a neighbor
without the lenses of Scripture over your eyes assisting your
vision. And so we need to know, as Paul
prays, the will of God so that we can live life in a way that
pleases Him. Now, many people in this world
are living by the wrong manual. I was thankful this week, again,
to be part of a denomination, a membership there for 15 years
now, a denomination that has not strayed from the Word of
God. But when in times past, and it has on occasion, it has
veered to the right or to the left, it has corrected itself
by God’s grace. You know, we are the only Presbyterian
denomination with a long history, there are some younger ones,
that has come close to liberalism. that has come close to denying
scripture. It has come close to denying God. It has come close
to denying the basic tenets of the faith. And it was rescued. It was pulled back. And so we
stand in the heritage of our forebears who came to Philadelphia
in the 1700s. They came from Scotland where
they stood against the king, where they stood against the
rich landowners who said, we will rule the church. And our
forebears in our denomination said, no, Jesus Christ is the
Lord God, ruler, head and king of the church. And so you sit
here today. You sit here today under the
ministry of a church that has its roots in the Reformation.
It has its roots in the 1600s of Scotland. It has its roots
in the blood of many who died for the sake of saying, Jesus
is King. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is head
over his church. And so, brothers and sisters,
let me say very strongly, when Jesus speaks a word, When Jesus
gives us His scripture, it is our manual. It is our operating
procedures for life. And in the Colossian context,
it’s not heresy. It’s not warmed over Judaism
as some were tempted to believe in their day. It’s not Gnosticism
or the early forms of having some sort of inner light come
to you. You don’t need God. He speaks or something speaks
and I listen. Maybe to be a little bit more
modern, it’s not, maybe I’ll get in trouble here, it’s not
Oprah, okay, it’s not Brother Osteen down the way, it’s not
Ann Voskamp, it’s not all these folks who say, God speaks to
me, and so when I come before you in my conference, you’re
hearing a new word from God. No, God only speaks through His
Word. And what is the Apostle Paul’s
remedy for heresy? What is the Apostle Paul’s remedy
for division in the church? It’s clear knowledge of God’s
will. Friends, that is the only thing
that will clean up a church. That is the only thing that will
rescue a dying church. That is the only thing that will
take you from teetering on the edge of liberalism and bring
you back to sanity. And friends, we ought to pray
very hard for our own church, but pray hard for the churches
around us. Pray hard when we read the letters to the editor
in the newspaper, pray hard for our friends who are in other
places where the gospel has been compromised, where the Word of
God has been tossed out the window, and where human will or where
the latest bestseller from somebody who thinks God is sending them
revelations has become the main voice. We ought to be thankful
that God has granted us a place where there is clear knowledge
proclaimed. But we ought to pray, we ought
to beg Him daily as Paul did, Give me clear knowledge. Give
me knowledge of your will. Fill me full with it. Let it
control me. Don’t hold back. Give me everything
you’ve got, Almighty God, because I want clarity. I want to see. I want to live life in this world,
not by someone else’s rules, but by yours. And so when the
apostle Paul is powerfully praying for the Colossians. He prays
that they would have clear knowledge. But that clear knowledge leads
to something else. And we find that in the second
point he makes, that we might have worthy living. Look at what
he says in verse 10. He says in verse 10, so as to
walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him,
bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge
of God. What do we pray for? A lot of
our prayer times are organ recitals. And I don’t mean this kind of
organ over here. I mean kidneys and hearts and
big toes and little toes and lost follicles and that sort
of thing. Does God want us to pray for health? Of course He
does. Does God want us to pray for our mother’s cousin’s friend
who once knew somebody who has developed a sore thumb? Absolutely. But the point I want to make
to you is this. Our prayers need to be deeper.
Our prayers need to be about our spiritual well-being. Yes,
we want healthy hearts. Yes, we want to be free from
cancer. Yes, we want eyesight. Yes, we want our children and
grandchildren and our loved ones and our neighbors and even friends
and relations and cousins and friends of cousins. We want them
healthy and happy. But do you see what the Apostle
Paul is doing? He’s saying, I want you to know God’s will so that
you can have a godly life. And then he’s going to say the
result of that is that you’ll be a witness. You’ll shine brightly
before the world. So what are your prayers? Do
you pray for things like this? You see, the apostle is praying
with a desired result in mind. He wants the Colossians to come
out on the other side of heresy. He wants them to come out on
the other side of division and to be a healthy church, a faithful
witness, a bright shining lamp stand for the gospel in Colossae. He wants them to succeed. He
does not want to hear of a church that crashed and it burned because
of heresy and false teaching. And so he is praying that God
would give them the provision they need to live the life that
he wants them to live. Notice he says, I want you to
have a worthy life, a fruitful life, a life that flowers with
the flower and the fragrance of the gospel of Jesus Christ
so that they will shine brightly in that part of the Roman Empire.
And that more and more pagans who worship false gods will say,
who are you? And why do you believe what you
believe? And that they may speak of the gospel and proclaim the
excellencies of Christ. And that more Romans, more Americans,
more wherever we send missionaries would come to faith in Jesus
because they see the fruit of the gospel in our lives. Now
what does he mean when he says I want you to walk in a manner
worthy of the Lord? Well remember Enoch. Enoch is
that strange man mentioned in the book of Genesis. Enoch walked
with God and Enoch was not because God took him. We’ll get to Enoch
in chapter 11 of Hebrews. But it simply says all we know
is Enoch walked with God. Who else walked with God? Adam
and Eve. Who else walked with God? Well,
David. Who else walked with God? It’s anyone who by faith has
a relationship with Him. You walk with God. Walking in
the Scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments, speaks of
your manner of life. Is so-and-so walking with God?
Yes or no? Well, yes, they’re walking with
God. They worship, they listen, they hear, they practice, they
confess, they repent. Their faith is growing and increasing.
It is strong. They’re struggling to know Christ
and to make Christ known. They’re walking in a manner worthy
of the Lord. That’s what he prays. He wants
them to live their daily lives wherever God has them. in this
little part of the Roman Empire, in your little part of Burlington
or North Carolina. He wants you to live daily as
a transformed person. Remember, you are not who you
once were if you’ve come to faith in Christ. You were bought at
a price. And God has crucified our old
nature in Christ at the cross. And you have been made a new
creation. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old
has gone and the new has come. Yes, we have remnant sin in us.
Yes, we have the world and the devil as enemies. And yes, we
do continue to sin. But what God is saying is, Christian,
you don’t live like that anymore. Christian, you live a new life.
And so he prays you’ll be filled with knowledge so that you will
live a life worthy of the gospel. And notice the three things he
wants in verse 10. He wants us to be fully pleasing.
He wants us to bear fruit. He wants us to to have an inner
knowledge of the will of God. He wants us to be fully pleasing.
Maybe you’ve looked out in the backyard before and seen your
children playing. They’re actually getting along.
They’re sliding and they’re swinging and they’re playing tag and they’re
running and jumping and they’re having a good time together in
unity. And as a parent, that is pleasing
to see. You can go back on about your business of the household
chores. And that is what the Heavenly Father wants to see
when He looks down from heaven to see a family, to see Christians,
to see a church fully pleasing. He delights in that just like
a parent delights in the unity of their children. How about
bearing fruit? God saves us to bear fruit. He saves us for good works. He
saves us to do things that please Him. And so one of the things
we’re saved from is God’s wrath. But we are saved to something.
That’s to do good works. And we’re saved for something.
That’s the eternal worship of Almighty God. And so this is
not an easy thing. It’s not an easy thing to live
for God. But notice Paul is saying, I’m praying that you’ll be filled
full of knowledge and that the result will be you’ll live a
worthy life. Yes, it’s hard, but may God give you grace. You
know, one of the saddest things I think in the world is when
the church is just like the world around, when we are no different
in our worship, no different in our beliefs, no different
in our lifestyles, no different in our evangelism, no different
in our missions, no different in whatever, than the world.
We’ve lost sight of the gospel. We’ve lost sight of the main
things. And so we go, and just like Jesus said to the Pharisees,
we go about making disciples to something, but not to the
gospel. And so, brothers and sisters, let us pray hard that
God would fill us full of His knowledge of His holy will, so
that we can live a life worthy and pleasing in His sight, and
that we will be a faithful, yes, a weak, yes, a sinful, but a
faithful witness to the world of who God is and what He has
done. That is what the Apostle is praying for the Colossians,
and that is what we here ought to pray for our church. And so
when the apostle is on his knees in his prison cell, praying for
the Colossians whom he’s never met, he says, I pray that you’ll
have clear knowledge, that it will result in worthy living. Third thing he prays for is that
they will have strength for hardship. He knows where they live. They
live in the Roman Empire. He knows where they worship in
the church at Colossae, full of heretics. They worship with
people who are teaching warmed over atheism, warmed over paganism,
warmed over Judaism, warmed over you name it, they’re proclaiming
it. And he’s going to go on to say to them in the rest of the
book, if it’s not Christ, it’s rubbish. If it’s not Christ,
throw it out. If it’s not Christ, it cannot
save you. But they’re going to have to
endure this for a while. Church on earth is a foretaste of heaven,
but friends, it is not heaven. And so yes, we will have our
troubles in church, in this life. We’ll have rosy periods, but
we’ll have periods where there’s difficulty, periods where there’s
hardship, periods where we wonder if we’re gonna make it to next
Sunday, and that’s what the apostle knows about the Colossians. And
so he prays in verse 11 that they will have strength for hardship.
He says, may you be strengthened. with all power, according to
the glorious might of God Himself, for all endurance and patience,
with joy.” What is He saying to them? He’s saying, I know
your hardship. He’s identifying with their pain.
He’s identifying with the struggle that is in their midst. You know,
just these last months in our Presbytery, the churches in our
denomination in the state of North Carolina, we’ve been dealing
with one particular church where for 20 years 20 years, there
have been brothers in the congregation who have stirred it up. We dealt
with it 8 years ago. We dealt with it 20 years ago.
And about 3 years ago, we started dealing with it again. Well,
guess what happens to a church? It sits and it stagnates. And what happens in stagnant
water? Well, the mosquitoes grow and other pests. You get what
I’m saying. And nobody likes church. Nobody
wants to come to worship. Nobody knows who’s in charge.
It’s like living at the zoo. And what do we say? The monkeys
are in control. And so it’s a terrifying thing.
The Apostle Paul is saying to the Colossian church, I know
what your situation is. I know the hardship. I know that
the elders are struggling to maintain peace and purity and
prosperity, that there are heretics, there are those in the church
who are wreaking havoc. And he says, in a sense, who said the
Christian life would be easy? Nobody did. But I’m going to
pray that you will have strength and endurance for these hardships.
You know, our lives as Christians are not easy. I mean, Noah doesn’t
preach that to us. He hammered and preached for
a hundred years with people jeering him while he built a park to
save his family. Or Abraham, pack up your bags,
leave the familiar and go to the unfamiliar, and I’ll give
you a land, I’ll give you a baby. He had to wait and wait and wait.
His faith was tested, but ultimately God shined forth. The Apostle
Paul, as he writes this letter, is in He’s in chains. He will write in other letters,
I am an ambassador of the gospel of Christ in chains. He’s suffering. We go through hardship. The Colossians
are in hardship. And God is saying to us through
the Apostle Paul’s prayer, I will give you strength for your hardship.
Stay the course. Stand at your post. Endure. Yes,
there will be crosses and losses and enemies. You remember the
age-old battle that was prophesied in Genesis 3? The seed of the
woman will fight against the seed of the serpent. And we are
living, friends, in the midst of skirmish after skirmish after
skirmish, where the devil is fighting against Christ and His
church. And so he says, I want you to have strength for hardship. I would imagine every one of
you gets your electricity from the electric company. Maybe it’s
Duke Energy. You don’t have a creek and a
wheel, and the creek spins that wheel and generates your electricity.
I’m pretty sure none of you has a bicycle outside where you go
out there and spin your pedals and generate your electricity.
Maybe some of you have solar panels. But you rely on a company
that can provide you with steady, consistent electricity without
outages, without jolts, without interruption. And that is what
Paul is saying to the Colossian church, is find your strength
from on high. Find your strength from God Himself.
Find it from no other place, but find it from God on high,
who is full of grace and glory and power and goodness. He will
sustain you. And it is that same power that
He will proclaim to the Colossian church that raises Jesus from
the dead, that will sustain them as a little church in Colossae. Now, as he prays that they’ll
have strength and hardship, he gives two particular areas where
he wants them to benefit. He wants them to have endurance
and patience. Those two things, endurance and patience. Endurance,
bearing up under trial. Yes, they’re under trial. False
teachers, heretics. It’s difficult. They need endurance
to finish the race, to finish the marathon. But he then speaks
of patience, which literally means long-suffering, and is
always related to people. You’re going to have to put up
with heretics. You’re going to have to put up with false teachers,
because process takes time. Dealing with these situations
doesn’t happen quickly. I have a pastor friend I ran
into this week who, he’s pastored a church four or five years.
And I said, how’s it going? He said, well, you know the church
I serve. I said, yes, I do. He said, it’s hard. And I made
the joke, I said, there’s nothing a couple silver bullets couldn’t
handle. And he joked, and he said, yeah,
that would solve my problems, but we’re not the murder, right?
But he was saying, I have to live with the hardship. I have
to live with these people. And so these are two things that
can encourage him, is they can encourage the Colossian church
or encourage we who sometimes endure difficulty. You need endurance
to stand up under trial, but you need patience and long-suffering
to deal with difficult people. In a few verses or chapters,
Paul is going to say to the Colossians, put on compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness, patience, and above all, love, which binds
us together in unity. You see, God asked much of us,
but he gives the resources. To do what he commands, and so
there is opportunity for the Colossian church here to receive
the strength of God and to go from the impossible to the possible. And then he lands fourthly on
this fourth prayer for the people. We find it in verse 11 and 12. He wants them to be joyful, thankful
Christians. Notice how he says it. May you
be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might,
for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the
Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of
the saints in light. He has delivered us from the
domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved
Son in whom we have the redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Where are we now? We’re in June,
so we’re, what, five months away from Thanksgiving. In five months,
we’ll be brining our turkeys. We’ll be anticipating the coming
of family. But you know what else we’ll
be doing? We’ll be We’ll be thinking about Black Friday. We’ll be
thinking about shopping. And isn’t it interesting how
Thanksgiving is another one of those holidays that has been
robbed. We no longer sit and listen. We no longer sit and
think. We no longer sit and look at faces. Guess what we’re doing?
We’re going shopping for Christmas to get 7% off some sort of item
that we think we must have. And so what is it we do? We miss
the intention of the holiday. We miss time to be thankful. And the Apostle Paul is saying
to this church, he’s saying to us, in the midst of hardship,
in the midst of busyness, you’ve got to be thankful, joyful Christians. Now if we can jam a couple of
words together, that’s what the Apostle is doing here. I want
you to be thankful, joyful Christians. Thankful and joyful go together.
They’re hand in hand. And so he says to them, you need
to be thankful to God. It is good to give thanks to
God, is what the psalmist tells us. And so in his powerful praying
for provision, he’s saying to these Colossians, be joyful,
thankful Christians for the redemption God has given you. Do you remember
when God brought Israel out of Egypt? They crossed the Red Sea
and the sea folded back and crushed Pharaoh and his army. And there’s
listed for us in Exodus 15, the song of Miriam and Moses, I will
sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse
and the rider have been thrown into the sea. I will rejoice. I will sing because God has been
faithful and redeemed. That’s what Paul is saying. Be
joyful, thankful Israelites who look back and see the sea. Be
joyful, thankful Colossians whom Christ has redeemed. Be joyful,
thankful Christians here at First ARP who look back and see the
cross, who look back and see all that Jesus has done and say,
thank you. Thank you for divine salvation. Thank you for the greater exodus,
not from Egypt, but the greater exodus from sin and misery and
being enslaved. to our old nature and our old
ways. And what does he say give thanks for? Give thanks to the
Father for the redemption. He has qualified you to be saved. He has made you sufficient for
salvation. He has made you competent or
equipped to share in the inheritance, that you might have a portion
in heaven. And he calls us saints in light,
not saints in darkness, not saints who are unsaved, but he calls
us dear Christians. And so, brothers and sisters,
just like the Colossians, just like every Christian through
the ages, you have entered into, if by faith you rest in Christ,
you have entered into salvation. And we do not want to be like
those in the gospel story, those ten lepers. Nine went on their
way, but one One returned, not like the nine, but like the one
who comes back to Christ and says, thank you. You’ve given
me my life. You’ve given me my health. You’ve
given me my social life again. I can now be included in the
covenant community because you have taken away my leprosy and
brought me healing. Friends, these are Paul’s prison
prayers. These are Paul’s prayers for the church. He wants wisdom
and knowledge and power and endurance and longsuffering and joy and
gratitude and love to be yours. And so may God, by his grace,
fill us full in order that these may be true for us. Let me end
by asking you this question. Do your prayers sound like these? They should, and may God give
us grace to pray like Paul so that God will do far more than
we ask or imagine in our spiritual growth and in our church. Let
us pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we pray
now that you would indeed fill us full so that we may live worthy
lives and that we might be joyful, thankful Christians who bear
fruit in the world around us so that Jesus is lifted up and
that God is exalted and that your name might be made famous
to the ends of the earth. But may it also benefit and bless
us for you promise that when we live according to your holy
word, by your grace and by the power of your spirit, that we
will be blessed. And so bless us, Father, with
these things so that we can indeed make good on your promises. This
we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let us stand together and
sing number 478. It’s Soldiers of Christ Arise. It was in the desert, in the
wanderings, where God told Moses, command Aaron to bless the people
and bless them this way. Look up now and receive God’s
blessing on you as you live in the wilderness. And as you’re
making your way to Zion, receive it now. The Lord bless you and
keep you. The Lord make his face shine
upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace now and forevermore. And all God’s
people said, amen.