2 Thessalonians 2:1-12
Amen, you can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of the scriptures to the book of 2 Thessalonians.
Today we’ll look at chapter two, one through 12. So this week
I flip-flopped. Usually I put a bunch of verses
in, I chicken out, but this time I put a few in and I got bold.
So we’re gonna look at two, one to 12, and I’m very sure, very
confident that I will disappoint many of you. Because this is
one of those in time sermons and I’m gonna give you zero in
time answers today Not sure what we’ll do next week, but there
may be a round two of this where some of that may pop up Not the
answers, but I don’t know. We’ll see got to pray about it
Probably chicken out Just watch TV The in times preachers is what
I’m at Okay Some of y’all probably do. All right. Second Thessalonians
2, 1 to 12. This is the apostle Paul speaking
to the Thessalonians. He’s been away from them for
about six months. Got lots of questions. This is one of the
most troubling things is did we get left out of the second
coming of Jesus? So he says now concerning the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together
to him. We ask you brothers not to be
quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by spirit or a spoken
word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the
day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any
way for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first. and the man of lawlessness is
revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself
against every so-called God or object of worship, so that he
takes his seat in the temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told
you these things? And you know what is restraining
him now, so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery
of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains
it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless
one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the
breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance
of his coming. The coming of the lawless one
is by the activity of Satan with all power. and all false signs
and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing
because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore,
God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what
is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe
the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Pray with me. Lord, the scripture itself says
that some things in Paul are hard to understand. So Lord,
give us understanding of what will save us and what will sanctify
us. And we ask Lord that the things
that may cause us to speculate would not trouble us, but that
we would know for sure that we should live in light of the second
coming. We should live in light of the glorious coming of Jesus. He hasn’t come yet, but we look
forward to that day. And so prepare us now by your
word and spirit. We pray in Jesus mighty name. Amen. This passage
begins with a interesting phrase now concerning the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him. It’s an interesting phrase because
we often don’t think about the second coming in the way he just
phrased it concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and all the
headlines. No, that’s not what he says.
Concerning the Lord Jesus and who’s who and what’s what and
when’s where and all the rest. He says, no, concerning the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to
him. Think of that for a moment. God
is a gathering God. He gathers Israel out of Egypt
and brings them into the promised land. He gathers a remnant of
his people out of Babylon and brings them back to Judah and
Jerusalem. Jesus, when he went into the city of Jerusalem, he
wept over the city and said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would
have gathered you. as a hen gathers her chicks,
but you would not. And he speaks of their unbelief.
We talk about the gathered church on Sundays, the gathered and
perfected saints of God. And we understand that throughout
the scriptures, the ultimate goal of God’s covenant with his
people is that they would be gathered to his presence forever. where the lion will dwell with
the lamb, where the child will play by the serpent’s den, where
we will beat swords into plowshares and there will be no more sin
and death and darkness and destruction, but only the eternal presence
of Almighty God. And so concerning the coming
of our Lord Jesus and our being gathered to him. We must sort
of chuckle, I think, at how much ink has been spilled on the days
and the numbers and the secrets. Lots of television shows, lots
of maps, lots of charts, lots of speculation, lots of looking
into the things surrounding the second coming. And isn’t it funny
with all this looking and speculating and, I mean, books sold, TV shows
produced, all the rest. And what does Jesus say? I don’t
even know. And I have this picture in my
head that he’s going to get the divine tap on the shoulder. It’s
time. Go. And so if Jesus says, I don’t
even know, only the Father knows, why do we spend all our time
thinking, looking, speculating, mapping, charting, drawing, TV
show and movie-ing? I mean, all the rest. It’s what
one book I have on my shelf calls Last Day’s Madness. And there’s lots of looking,
but I wonder how much living, how much living is being done
in light of the coming of the Lord Jesus and the things that
he reveals to us. You know, the devil is in the
details, right? And we love the details, but
remember, the devil’s in them. We like to be swivel headed. Where?
Who? What? Is it Russia? You know, who’s
the bear? You know, our tanks and helicopters,
you know, the whatever. It gets real exciting, but it
will get you off the beaten path. And so living faithfully and
fruitfully in light of the second coming of Jesus is the goal,
is the big picture. It is the meaning of life. It
is the purpose of life. It is the end or the goal of
life to be ready, to be gathered to God. That is what we want
to think about today, what we want to focus on today. So now
concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being
gathered to him, We want to think on living and growing and enduring
in light of the second coming, in light of being gathered into
Christ. So the question is, how should
we think and how should we live? Should we be swivel headed, always
looking? Should we be level headed, knowing
what God tells us, trusting that it’s sufficient and living out
of these truths? We know that tribulation, the
Thessalonians were told that tribulation would not be the
way things would be forever. There’s a now and a not yet aspect
to the Christian life. There’s a now aspect. Things
are great. We’re in Christ, sins forgiven.
But there’s also the things aren’t so great. There’s tribulation,
hardship, trouble. And then there’s the not yet,
the glorious coming of Jesus and our gathering to him. where
at the end of Revelation, it says, now the dwelling place
of God is with man and I will be their God and they shall be
my people. But until then, how should we
think? How should we live? Well, the
way we want to zip through this passage today is not through
the who’s the lawless one. Sorry. Not through what is the
rebellion or the apostasy, not all that. I want us to think
about the things that we can do to live well and to think
well during this time. The first thing will be don’t
be alarmed or quickly shaken in mind. That’s in verse two,
I believe. The second thing is let no one
deceive you in any way. Third, Paul says, remember, I
already told you this, right? Why are you struggling? I already
told you this. Sounds like a parent. The fourth thing is the restrainer.
We’ll talk about him. We’re not going to tell you who
he is because we don’t know. And then the fifth thing is the
devil’s delusion. So these are five things that
can help us live in light of the coming of Jesus and live
in light of realities, spiritual realities that we will face.
So the first thing he says is do not be quickly shaken or Alarmed
in mind do not be quickly shaken or alarmed in mind verse 2 says
now concerning The coming of our Lord Jesus and our being
gathered together to him we ask you brothers Not to be quickly
shaken in mind or to be alarmed Then he gives three things either
by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter Seeming to be from
us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. This is
a really bad joke Someone has played on the Thessalonians.
Hey, Jesus already came back. You missed it. Right. That’s a really terrible joke. And so apparently Timothy has
come back from his visit to the church at Thessalonica and he’s
come back and said, told Paul, he said, apparently they’ve gotten
this letter or some spirit or some person has been teaching,
preaching, telling, you know, fake preaching, teaching, telling
that Jesus already came and they’re not to equate it with the modern
day, they’re left behind, right? Whole different thing. That’s
the secret rapture business, but they’re left behind. And so they’re
distressed. We miss the coming of Jesus. And so they’re troubled
and they are shaken and they are alarmed. And Paul is going
to remind them. We talked about this, the three
Sabbaths I was there. I’m sure Timothy encouraged them
on this in their first visit. There’s a little bit of second
coming stuff in first Thessalonians. And so what, what told them,
what made them think they missed the second coming of Jesus? Well,
first thing, if you think, if you think you missed the second
coming, you didn’t, right? Read Jesus teaching on the second
coming, read the whole Old Testament about the day of the Lord, read,
read the New Testament about the second coming of Jesus, the
day of the Lord. And you will see that there is no way it can
be missed. it will be such a bright and
loud and glorious and cataclysmic event. You think when Jesus was
crucified and died on the cross, and you think of those local
earthquakes in Jerusalem, and you think of the tombs opening
in the area of Jerusalem, and as Hebrews 11 said, some received
back their dead. You think about that on a local
level. How about on a global level? And so you won’t be able to say,
hmm, I think I missed the second coming. No, if you are unsaved,
you will be asking that the mountains fall on you because you’d rather
be crushed by a giant mountain that reaches up into the heavens
than to be crushed by the hand of almighty God, the judge of
the earth. And so if you wonder, have I
missed the second coming? There’s no way it’s so bright,
glorious, grand, cataclysmic, all the rest. You never could
miss it. But also, these folks are being deceived
either by a spirit, either by a false teacher or a letter. So we get like Paul’s letter
to Timothy, Paul’s letter to Thessalonians, Paul’s letter
to the Colossians. And we have in our 27 New Testament books,
You know, we got four gospels, we got some apocalypse, and we
got a bunch of letters, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, 1st, 2nd Peter.
There’s a bunch of other letters out there. Maybe you’ve seen
them. A lot of them are called pseudo, like fake, pseudo-pigraphia. They claim to be like letters
of Jesus, letters of Thomas, letters of whatever. You know,
there’s two other letters to the Corinthians we don’t have.
But under the inspiration of the Spirit, we have 27 books
in the New Testament, but there’s all these other extra letters
floating about. And, you know, in a couple of
weeks when we get towards Easter, what will they put on the news? We
found another letter, right? Or we found the box with Jesus’
bones in it, all this crazy stuff. That’s all the fake stuff. Well,
we don’t see too much of that. It’s been 20 years now. Since
the Da Vinci Code, that was kind of one of those hoaxes. And for
some reason, the church really got into the Da Vinci Code. I
don’t know why, but they did. That’s why you need Paul’s coming
to Thessalonians and saying, quit reading that stuff. It’s
bad. So anyway, spirit, spoken word, letter, fake letter, something
has gotten them duped. And remember how Paul commends
the Thessalonians and first Thessalonians, when we came to you, When we
preach the word to you and you turned from idols to serve the
living God, you received our word, our message, not as the
word of men, but you received it as the very word of God. Now,
apparently they’ve received the word of men and it has them shaken
in mind. It has them alarmed. And so challenge here for us.
Read the word, read the word. Don’t, don’t get into all this
extra fanciful business. It will shake your mind and it
will alarm you. And that’s not what God means
for you as a Christian to be shaken in mind or alarmed. Well,
the second thing he says after do not be quickly shaken or alarmed
in mind, he says, let no one deceive you in any way. Let no
one deceive you in any way. Verse three, and then backing
into verse two, he says, let no one deceive you in any way.
Well, how did he think they were deceived? Either by a spirit. Don’t people love to say, oh,
the spirit told me this. Okay. You might’ve had chili
rellenos and it’s probably a tummy ache. Um, And I don’t think you’re
that special. You’re not an apostle that ended.
Um, so unless it’s in the word, uh, we need to be really careful.
So either by a spirit or a spoken word, you know, if somebody stands
up and says, that says the Lord, and they don’t have this out,
there’s a reason this sits right here on Sunday. It sits right
here. I’ve seen preachers, they’ll
read the Bible and they’ll set it aside because they got 9,000 pages
of notes to bore you with. This thing should sit right here
and should assure you that as long as this is open, we’re being
faithful to the scripture. That is the hope. That is the
prayer. That is the goal. But let no one deceive you in
any way, either by a spirit, a spoken word or a letter. We
get some letters at the church from time to time. I always put
them on Jay’s count desk. Cause he should, you know, he
needs to be discerning, right? But there’s some doozies. Oh,
Pastor Crods, a spirit has told me that there’s a whatever deception
in your church. And I’m like, how do they know
this? They’re not here. But that stuff’s all around. It always involves sending money.
Yes. Yeah. Which we don’t do. But what’s he saying here? Let
no one deceive you. Be level headed. Know your Bible. Understand the day of the Lord
theme throughout the Old and New Testaments. Understand Jesus
end times themes and messages. Learn your doctrine. I love how
Sinclair Ferguson says doctrine is the Velcro to which truths
stick. And so, you know, your doctrine,
you’re reading your Bible and you, you interpret things accurately. You also have doctrine as rain
X. I have to tell him about this
because this is something I came up with. You put a little rain
X on your windshield and what happens when it rains? It just,
it just flows away. It’s like wax on a hood. Um,
we need to know what is right. And we need to know what is false.
We need to receive what is right. We need to deflect what is false. What has to happen, Paul is telling
them, hasn’t happened yet. So if you think the second coming
has already happened, what has to happen hasn’t happened yet.
There has to be the man of lawlessness and there has to be the period
of lawlessness, the rebellion, the man of lawlessness, the lawless
one, the son of destruction, the one who opposes God, who
exalts himself, who sits in the temple, And he declares, I am
God. Now, if you were to put this
in the timing of the Thessalonians, about 50 AD, the temple is destroyed
in 70 AD. You go to Israel today and you
see the rubble. You see the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, but there’s
no Solomon Hezekiah’s, you know, temple left. Now, some will say,
oh, we got to get the temple rebuilt so that somebody can
go in there and sacrifice a pig and sit on the altar and, you
know, all this crazy stuff. That’s a whole nother day. That’s
a whole nother ballgame. But we got the man of lawlessness,
the lawless one, the son of destruction. He’s going to oppose God. He’s
going to exalt himself. He’s going to sit in the temple,
whatever that means. And he’s going to say, I’m God. And what
does Paul say? He’s restrained for now. Now I want y’all to think of
this. God restrains so much evil. There is so much evil that could
happen that God restrains. And every time we say, oh, woe
to me, look at what happened, whether to you or national crisis,
whatever, instead of wringing our hands and saying, why God,
why God, perhaps our beginning prayer should be, thank you that
you have restrained so much evil that this event is actually rare. You know, if God did not restrain
this broken, sin-filled world, can you think of the amount of
evil we would see? Now, we see it break out in certain
cities. We see it break out in certain
territories. We see it break out where there’s
a worldview this or a set of laws that. We see it break out
where people just love war. we see it break out and it sort
of stays there. And maybe, maybe we try to go
help. We try to fix a city or we try to fix a region of the
world. And what does it always do? It always goes back to being
broken. And that will likely be the case until the gospel
comes or until Jesus returns. But there is so much evil that
is restrained now. But what is Paul alluding to?
The restrainer, is going to stop restraining and it’s going to
be bad. Now, if you run over to the book
of Revelation and it talks about God’s people being sealed, God’s
people being protected, God always preserves his church. And if
you don’t believe that, read the Old Testament passages where
like, for example, 144,000 Assyrians had surrounded God’s people. And the king is shaken in his
boots. He’s shaken in mind. He’s alarmed. But the prophet comes and says,
hey, don’t worry about it. God is in control. And what happens
in the night? One angel comes and routes 144,000. Is God able to save his people
in hard times? Absolutely. You don’t need to
worry about the details and the helicopters. And is it the Russians
and the Chinese and the North Koreans? And you know why all
that’s really irrelevant? Because these are new nations.
And how did we interpret the Bible 1,200 years ago or 800
years ago? There wasn’t all that. And so
we interpreted the way that it can be interpreted across the
ages. There will be lawlessness. There will be a lawless one,
but there is a mighty one who will restrain. And so the activity
of Satan with all his power, all his false signs, all his
wonders and wicked deception. Are we going to be swivel headed
or will we be level headed? Let no one deceive you in any
way. Well, third thing he says, remember, I told you these things.
So don’t be shaken or alarmed. Don’t be deceived. Let no one
deceive you. Then he says, remember, I told you these things. Do you
not remember? Verse five says. When I was still
with you, I told you these things. Second missionary journey, zipped
through Galatia, couldn’t minister in Asia, had a dream, vision,
come to Macedonia, ministered in Philippi and Berea, got thrown
out of those cities, ministered in Thessalonica, got thrown out,
went to Athens where he was troubled by the many gods, preached to
them that unknown God, I proclaim to you, it’s Yahweh, it’s the
one in which we live, move and have our being. And so Three
Sabbaths though, back at Thessalonica, he explained to them, he proved
to them it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise
from the dead. And he says to them, this Jesus
I proclaim to you is the Christ. Some believe, some didn’t. The
ones that didn’t believe, that had the Satan delusion, the one
that believed a lie and not the truth, they persecuted Paul and
they ran them away, ran them off. But while Paul was with
them, and then when he sent Timothy back, they were taught from the
old Testament. They were taught from the apostle
who would, as he spoke and was carried along by the spirit and
wrote these things down, was writing the new Testament. And
so they had the Bible, they had the gospel, they had the doctrine. And so one of the aspects of
practical Christian living for them and for us is to remember
what we learned in church. Paul was with them three Sabbaths,
probably had some Bible studies at night, afternoons, mornings,
whatever. Probably was making hay while the sun was shining
and before he got ran out of town. Think about how many Sabbaths
you’ve heard the word. You might can say hundreds of
Sabbaths I have heard the word. And so you don’t need to be shaken
in mind and heart. You don’t need to be deceived.
You need to remember the practical Christian life is in light of
the second coming of Jesus. I can endure persecution because
of the second coming. And I can live well knowing that
Jesus will soon return. And so remember, he says, I told
you these things. Perhaps you’re not reading your
Bibles. Perhaps maybe you’re spotty on
church attendance or your growth and grace. You need to eat your
Wheaties, right? You need to eat your veggies.
You need to eat your fruit. You need to eat and drink and
feed on the word of God. It is what will fortify you and
keep you from being deceived. It is what will keep you from
being shaken in mind and heart. And it is the thing that we teach
over and over, just like Paul. And sometimes the one another
passages in scripture, the pastoral passages in scripture, the purpose
of the Lord’s supper is to grab us by the shoulders and say,
remember, dear one, you’ve forgotten. That’s why we say at the beginning
of most services, we’ve come from busy weeks. We’ve come from
noisy worlds. We’ve forgotten what is good.
We’ve forgotten what is right. And we’ve forgotten what is true.
We’ve gotten swivel headed. We’ve gotten sucked into the
world or even Satan’s delusions. So he says, don’t be quickly
shaken or alarmed in mind. Let no one deceive you. Remember,
I told you these things. Now he’s going to speak in verses
six, seven, and eight about the restrainer. And you know what
is restraining him now. So the Thessalonians know, not
going to tell us, but apparently they talked about it. You know
what is restraining him now. Only he who now restrains it
will do so until he is out of the way, whom the Lord Jesus
will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing
by the appearance of his coming. So when Jesus returns, he’s going
to do two things. He’s going to gather you and
bring you safely into heaven. heaven’s dwelling, and he’s going
to breathe the breath of death. Now in my house, that’s somebody
who hadn’t brushed their teeth, right? The breath of death. But
with Jesus, what is it? One little word shall fail him.
One expression of the mouth of Jesus will kill this man of lawlessness. But he’s restrained for now.
You know what is restraining him. Only he who now restrains
will do it till he is out of the way. And then Jesus is going
to bring him to nothing. Who’s the restrainer? We don’t
know. There’s been a bunch of guesses. I will not go through
them. They’re not terribly edifying. We don’t want to build a doctrine
or you know, have a church of the second coming of people who
believe these nine nutty things. That’s not real sanctifying or
helpful. But we want to think big picture. We know who God
is. We know that God makes eternal, perfect decrees. What he sets
out to do, he accomplishes. He accomplishes them in two ways.
One is through creation or what we call natural laws. There’s
seed time and there’s harvest. There’s sun and there’s moon.
There’s day, there’s night. There’s male, there’s female,
there’s gravity. And these things you cannot deny,
they just are. And humanity spends a whole lot
of time trying to figure out how to break God’s natural laws,
and it can’t be done. We’re seeing it today in the,
not just the sexual revolution, but the gender revolution. Just
because you cut and reshape, reform something does not make
it so. In fact, it has disastrous results. But what about the restrainer? What about the God who makes
his decrees? Well, he works them out in creation,
but he also works them out in providence. Providence simply
means pro before. And then in theology, it means
that God sees before and provides for everything. It’s not robotic
or mechanistic, but it’s very comforting. We read things like,
God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. So why, when Moses went and preached
to Pharaoh, did his little messages or sermons or prophetic utterances
not just melt Pharaoh’s heart, and Pharaoh said, okay, Moses,
whatever you want, and add 20%. It’s not the way it worked, because
it said God hardened his heart. His providence was over the heart
of Pharaoh. Or Cyrus, we’re thinking of Cyrus
tonight in Isaiah 45. God says to Cyrus, you are mine. I’m going to use you, you wicked,
evil man, to bring my people who’ve been in exile 70 years,
I’m going to use you to bring them back to the promised land. What about all the ites? How
did Israel get a promised land? Well, the iniquity of all the
ites, the Amorites, the Jebusites, the Canaanites, all the iniquity
rose up to a certain level where God was willing for judicial
reasons to let Israel come in and wipe them out so they could
live in the promised land, live in houses they didn’t build,
drink out of cisterns they did not dig, eat grapes from vineyards
they did not plant, and have walls they did not build, olive
trees they did not tender. And so God’s decrees, his providence,
his creation, he is the God, the sovereign, the Lord over
heaven and earth. And so in some sense, you might
think God is the restrainer, but also doesn’t he move in the
hearts of men? Doesn’t he frustrate armies?
Doesn’t he take away life just when someone thinks they’re mighty
and making it? He has a way of giving them a
heart attack. He has a way of the arrow landing
between the gaps in the armor of wicked King Ahab. God is the
God of decrees and creation and providence. And as he super intends
over the work of this world, he, through perhaps world leaders
or governments or through the church or through well-meaning,
even oblivious people, he is working out things. And so the
restrainer, ultimately God, but he works in and through and among
human agencies. But one little word, one little
breath will take away this evil one, this lawlessness one. Let’s
last think about the devil’s delusion. So he says, don’t be
shaken, quickly shaken mind to heart. Let no one deceive you. Remember, I’ve told you this
stuff. Just spoke of the restrainer. Now the devil’s delusion, verses
11 and 12. Therefore, God sends them a strong
delusion. It sounds like Romans 1. so that
they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned
who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
When Moses writes the first five books of the Bible, he’s giving
them a world and life view. Why is there anything at all?
Where did it come from? What’s our purpose in living?
What happens when we die? How do we know right and wrong?
All of that is in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And it’s comparing contrast to the other gods of the ancient
Near East, but it also helps us, doesn’t it? see the rise
in secular humanism, when we see the rise in the gender madness,
when we see the rise in this ideology or this worldview that
is contra or against God, we go back to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy, just like the people of old did. And
we see that there is a God. He is Yahweh. He’s creator. He’s
covenant maker. He’s covenant keeper. He gathers
a people for himself. But remember Satan entered the
garden and he told the big lie and that big lie has spread so
that people don’t worship and obey the creator. They worship
and obey the creation. They deny the worship that is
due the living and true God. And so man is the chief end is
the delusion. They ignore God. And so this
is what God warns ancient Israel of. When you go into the promised
land, don’t marry these people. Says same thing to the church,
don’t be unequally yoked. These are those who worship themselves.
They worship things, they worship ideas, and they don’t look to
the living God. So Christians, how do we live
in light of the second coming? How do we live in light of this
God delusion, this devil delusion? How do we live in light of the
restrained, wicked, and lawless one? We should take heart. The
devil’s schemes are under the sovereignty of God. Yes, we’ll
have troubles. Yes, we’ll have tribulations.
Yes, we will face death. But what does Jesus say? Behold,
I am coming soon. And he gives us the Lord’s supper
as a pledge to remind us that he lived, that he suffered, and
he obeyed, and he died in our place, and that he’s gone to
prepare a home for us in heaven. What does he tell the disciples?
Let not your hearts be troubled. but believe also in me and my
father’s house are many rooms. And when he serves the Lord’s
supper to the disciples, he says, this meal is for you, the church
to eat, to bring you comfort, to bring you reminders and to
bring you strength until I come and gather you. And so remember
at the second coming, which hasn’t happened yet, Jesus will breathe
on the enemies and they will die, but he will gather you into
his presence. Let’s look to him now in prayer.
Lord, we give you thanks for your love and your kindness and
your grace to us in Christ. This is a topsy turvy world.
This is an upside down world. And we remember the apostles
who in Jerusalem were not turning the world upside down. They were
turning it right side up. So we pray today that your word
and your sacrament would turn us right side up. Maybe we’ve
been in the wrong direction. We’ve been following the wrong
path. We’ve been serving the wrong God. We’ve been tempted
this way and that, and we need to look again to Christ. And
so feed your lambs, we pray, by your word and by your sacrament.
It’s in Christ’s great name we pray. Amen.