The following is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007.
The Scripture reading was Luke 24:13-35.
One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by the American poet, Robert Frost. It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Our reading in Luke 24 is about another journey on a road that made all the difference. Certainly it made all the difference to the two disciples who met Jesus on that road, and I believe it can make all the difference to us in our lives too.
It would be good if you have your bibles open at our passage to follow what I’m saying.
The title of our service tonight is “He is with us.” Now that might seem a rather strange title to some of us. “He is with us? Where is he then?” someone might be thinking. Tonight, we’ll see four ways in which Christ is with us here today.
At the beginning of the reading, in verse 13, two of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas and one who is un-named – are walking from Jerusalem on seven mile journey to a village called Emmaus. This happened on the first Easter Sunday, the same day as the disciples discovered the empty tomb and heard that Jesus was risen, early on in the morning. From the passage we get a few clues that this journey may be taking place in the late afternoon, but we don’t know the exact time. We can’t be sure why they are making this journey either, though the most likely explanation is that they are probably on their way home to the village where they live. And this is the scene for a truly amazing meeting with Jesus after his resurrection. This is the first time in Luke’s gospel that the risen Jesus actually appears in person to any of his followers.
Like most people when they’re out walking, the two mean are chatting to each other. And then a stranger approaches them, presumably from behind, walking in the same direction as the two men are heading, and he joins them on the journey.
Much has been made of the fact that the two disciples don’t recognise who Jesus is when he starts walking and talking with them. All kinds of explanations have been offered for this: Jesus had the hood of his cloak up and they couldn’t see his face; the low afternoon sun was in the disciples’ eyes and they couldn’t see Jesus’ face in shadow properly. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. It is a mystery. But it would seem that after the resurrection, Christ’s physical appearance could alter, so that his features were not recognised at times, even by those who knew him very well. Before the resurrection Christ just looked outwardly like an ordinary man; indeed, he was an ordinary man. After the resurrection he is revealed as the majestic Son of God, risen and triumphant, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in all his glory. And it seems to me that his outward appearance after the resurrection was capable of displaying his glory.
Something similar happened at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, where Christ’s glory as God the Son is briefly revealed. Luke 9:29 says of Christ at the transfiguration, “While he was praying his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white.”
Once Jesus meets with the disciples on the road, a wonderful transformation takes place in these men’s lives, as in turn the disciples talk with Jesus about what's been happening, then Jesus talks with the disciples about what the Scriptures say about himself as God’s Messiah, and finally the disciples and the risen Jesus share in the fellowship of a meal, during which they finally recognise who he is when he breaks bread with them. Jesus then leaves them as suddenly as he came, but with their lives forever changed.
When Jesus first came to them, these men were filled with sadness. Verse 17 says, “They stood still, with sad faces.” The word translated “sad faces” is found only here in the whole New Testament. It means “looking sad”, “gloomy faced”. These men had been devastated by what’s happened. They’ve seen not only their teacher and friend murdered in the most barbaric way possible, but they’ve also seen their hopes and dreams dashed as the one they thought was going to “redeem Israel” or “set Israel free” (verse 21) from the Romans, apparently fail in his mission and leave his followers disorganised, disappointed and despondent.
By the end of this passage the two men are energised with the fire of God’s Word burning inside them, with the joy of knowing that “The Lord is risen indeed!” and with a new-found zeal that took them out of their village in the middle of the night, back on the road to Jerusalem, so they can tell the others the truth about the resurrection without any delay.
How come? What changed these men? Well, it was meeting the risen Lord Jesus Christ and spending time with him that day that made the difference. But what about us?
Well there’s one way we don’t have Jesus with us in the same way as the two disciples had him with them. On the Emmaus road they had the risen Jesus with them in body. He was right there with them physically. Never forget that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the rising to life of his physical body, not just his spirit. The tomb was empty – the body was gone – and the risen Christ is not a spirit, he is flesh and blood. He still bears the marks of the nails on his hands. He ate meals with many of those he met after he rose from the dead. Spirits can’t eat food.
Forty days after the resurrection, the Bible tells us that Christ ascended into heaven. So his body is no longer on the earth. We no longer see him. We no longer have Christ with us in that sense – with us physically I mean.
Perhaps that’s something we regret about living in this period in history: we don’t get to be with Christ physically, to see him face-to-face. Perhaps it’s one of the many things we look forward to heaven for – that then we will finally get to stand face-to-face with our Saviour and look into his eyes? Probably with tears of thankfulness in our eyes. But there’s two things we should remember if we think we’re in a more impoverished position now compared with the people who we read about in Scripture who actually saw Jesus and spent time with him. First, remember that it was quite possible to have Jesus with you physically and yet not see who he was. Not only was this true of the two disciples for most of the time Jesus was actually with them in the passage, it was true of many if not most of the people Jesus spent time with during his life. The Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, the chief priests, whole towns and villages failed to recognise who he was even though he was with them physically. So just being with him face-to-face doesn’t guarantee that anyone would believe in him or accept him as Lord. The second reason we shouldn’t feel automatically impoverished because we don’t have Jesus with us in body is because of what Jesus himself said. When the risen Jesus met with Thomas in John chapter 20, he says to him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
There is a blessing from Christ himself on all those who believe in him without having seen him in the flesh, a special blessing for people like us.
Now, even though there is this difference between us and the circumstances of the two disciples, there are three ways in which Christ is with us in ways that are like the ways he was with the disciples in our passage. Let’s look at these three ways because they are each vital to our lives as Christians. Based on this passage I would say that Christ is with us as we speak with him in prayer, he is with us as we read the Bible, and he is with us as we have communion with him and fellowship with each other as his people, the church.
In the first section of the passage from verse 13 to verse 24 we have a conversation between the disciples and Christ, with the disciples doing most of the talking, telling him about what had been happening in Jerusalem. In the passage Jesus shows that he’s interested in what his disciples think and in hearing what they have to say; he’s interested in what makes them sad, or worries them, and what makes them tick; he’s interested in knowing the things that they don’t yet understand about him or the Christian faith. The disciples on the Emmaus road talked to Jesus about all these things and Jesus took the time to listen to everything they had to say, even though he already knew the whole story they were telling him. He took the time to listen to them – he didn’t jump in right away and reveal who he was.
I think Jesus is still the same today. We don’t speak with him face-to-face, but we do speak to him when we pray. For us, when we pray, we can address any of the three persons in the Trinity – probably mostly the Father, but sometimes the Son, Jesus, and sometimes the Holy Spirit – but all three hear our prayers.
And I believe Jesus is with us when we pray. He’s still interested in what’s on our minds, how we’re feeling, what’s happening in our lives, what’s worrying us, what’s bugging us, what we’re happy about, what we understand about him and what we don’t understand yet. So often we tend to think of prayer as being about asking God for things. And of course that is an important part of prayer, as is praising God, confessing our sins, and giving God thanks for what he’s done for us. But I believe prayer is even more than this. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, a relationship of communication between us and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in this sense that we can and should “pray without ceasing” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. As we pray, sharing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, sharing our lives with God as we would with our closest friends, completely openly and honestly, not only does God delight to hear us as his children, but I think it is very good for us to get things off our chests, not keeping anything bottled up inside us. Even things we can say to no-one else, we can always say to him.
And when we do that, Christ is certainly with us, just as surely as he listened carefully and patiently to Cleopas on the Emmaus road.
The second way Christ is with us is in the words of Scripture. In the passage, once Jesus hears everything Cleopas has to say, he then leads both disciples to consider what the Scriptures say about the Messiah: not only that he would suffer but also that he would then enter into his glory. In other words, he’s starting to prepare them for the fact that not only was the Messiah to die, but he was also to rise again. Verse 27 says:
“Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.”
So Jesus went through the Old Testament (remember this was before the New Testament was written) and explained to the disciples what the Bible is all about: it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the theme of the Bible, the hero of the Bible, and he is in every part of the Bible. Indirectly or directly, it’s all about him. We don’t know exactly what passages Christ focused on as he explained the Bible to the two disciples. Maybe he went right back to the first chapter of Genesis and explained how it was by the Word – by Christ himself who is the Word of God – that the heavens and earth were made. Maybe he took them to Genesis 3:15 to show how even from the time Adam and Eve sinned, God had promised to send the Messiah, the Seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s head. Maybe he explained to them how the system of sacrifices laid down in Leviticus were symbols and types of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Maybe he explained to them how King David stands as a type of the Messiah’s kingship over his people. Maybe he explained to them the prophets who foretold where Jesus would be born, what his kingship would be like, and even how he would suffer and die for his people (as described in Isaiah chapter 53 for example). It doesn’t matter what passages Christ focused on, or whether he spoke more generally, not even looking at specific passages, because Christ is in all the Scriptures. They are all about him, in one way or another.
He is the great theme of Scripture and he is the key for correctly understanding Scripture. It’s probably not going too far to say that you won’t go too far wrong in interpreting the Bible if you remember this simple fact: Christ is in all the Scriptures.
This has tremendous implications for us and for what we believe. To give just one example – you sometimes hear people painting a false picture of Jesus as this lovey-dovey, rather effeminate, do-gooder, who is so easy going that you can treat him any way you like, and live any way you like because he approves of everything and can’t do anything but love everyone. But Christ is in all the Scriptures. In the Old Testament he often appeared as the angel of the Lord – the same Lord who went through Egypt on the night of the Passover killing the firstborn of the Egyptians, the same Lord who stood shoulder to shoulder with the three men in the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, the same Lord who went into battle for Israel and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night in 2 Kings chapter 19.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (John 8:58). And so if our view of Jesus is radically different from the God of the Old Testament, we know we’ve got it wrong, because Christ is in all the Scriptures.
The Scriptures are all about Jesus, so it follows that whenever we read the Scriptures, whether at our services, or at our Bible study, or at home on our own, so long as we read them with a genuine desire to learn about God and learn from God, He is with us as we read.
Of course it is possible to read the Scriptures in the wrong way. It is possible to read them while sitting in judgment on them, accepting or rejecting them as we go. If we read the Bible that way, we will still read about Jesus but he will not be with us as we read.
But if we read the Scriptures in faith, looking for Christ, and accepting that what we read is not the word of man but God’s Word, then Christ will be with us and, like the disciples on the Emmaus road, reading them will be like a fire that burns within us, refining us and purifying us, energising us to live for him, and warming our hearts as we think on God’s love and grace shown towards us.
The third way in which the passage shows Christ is with us, is when we are in fellowship with other believers. In the passage Christ is with the two disciples when he goes into the house and eats a meal with them. And it’s interesting that it was when he broke the bread that the disciples then recognised him for who he really was. We don’t exactly know why this was the case. Various commentators speculate on this. Was it because as he broke the bread they could see the nail marks in his hands for the first time? Was it the way he broke the bread that reminded them of the way he did it before? Was it his tone of voice as he said the blessing or the words he used? We can’t be sure if it was any of these or something else, or if it was because the supernatural change in Christ’s appearance was lifted and they could now recognise him. Yet the fact is that it wasn’t as they spoke to him, or as he explained to them about the Scriptures, but in the simple act of sharing in the fellowship of a meal that the disciples recognised him.
What does that mean for us today? It’s tempting to see this breaking of the bread in terms of the Lord’s Supper, holy communion. Certainly I think that’s partly what we can draw from this passage. Christ is with us as we share in the Lord’ Supper. Of course this doesn’t mean the bread and wine at communion turn into Christ’s body and blood, the blasphemy that Roman Catholicism teaches. But in a spiritual sense, Christ is with us as we eat and drink the bread and wine at communion. In a special way, at the same time as we physically eat the bread and drink the wine, looking to Christ in faith, we feed on him spiritually, nourishing our souls as we consider the new covenant sealed with his blood, as his body was broken for us on the cross.
But I don’t think that’s all this passage means. I don’t think we should restrict Christ’s presence being with us when we gather to celebrate communion. After all, there’s nothing in the passage that says the meal the disciples shared with Jesus was the sacrament of communion. It was just an ordinary meal two hungry travellers might have at the end of any day.
No, I think this passage teaches us that Christ is with us every time we come together for fellowship. This is of course what Jesus himself said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.” And here we see that happening. When we come together in his name – as his people gathering together – he is with us. It doesn’t matter whether that’s for a service of worship like this, or in our Bible and prayer meeting, or for the Kirk Session or Congregational Board, or for a social event. When we gather for Christian fellowship, Christ is with us in the midst.
What a great privilege and responsibility that is! But what about when we’re not gathered together. What about when we all go our different ways? What about when we aren’t reading our Bibles, or spending time with God in prayer? Are we on our own then? Is Christ not with us then?
Well there’s a way that Christ is with us that’s not mentioned in our passage. There’s a way in which we are in a better position than the disciples in the passage. Although they spent time in the physical presence of Christ and although he stayed with them for a while that day, at the end of the day they were left by themselves. Just after they recognised who he was, verse 31 says, “He disappeared from their sight.” He left them at the end of his time with them.
We’re in a better position than this. Christ is with us all the time through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, living inside us. This is what Paul says in Romans 8:9-11, writing to Christians:
“But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to – if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.”
We must remember that the events in our passage took place before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, which was fifty days after Easter day. The disciples on the Emmaus road met the risen Jesus, but we who live not only after that first Easter but after Pentecost actually have the spirit of the risen Jesus living inside us, not for a few hours, or a day, but with us forever. That’s what Jesus promised just before he ascended into heaven, in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said.
This is what Jesus also promised us in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
He was with the disciples during that wonderful day; he is with us all the time during all our days. This is the truth for every Christian believer. He is with us.
He is with his people as they pray, as they read the Bible, as they have communion with him and with each other. But the question everyone has to think about sooner or later in their lives is this: Am I with him? In other words, have I really met with the risen Jesus and decided to follow him?
Yes, he’s with his people in all these wonderful ways, but are you one of his people? We need to ask ourselves, “Have I believed in him? Have I trusted in him and committed my life to him, accepting him as my Saviour and Lord?”
If you have, then he is with you in everything you do. If you haven’t yet trusted in him and accepted him, then he is calling you to himself tonight, with the promise that he will never turn away anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved,” as Romans 10:13 says.
John 3:18 says: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
There is a choice before each one of us tonight. It is to travel on life’s road with Christ as our companion, our guide, our Saviour and our Lord, or to travel on life’s road without him. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.”
Thursday, 12 April 2007
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Loyalty to Christ
This is an edited version of a sermon preached at a Guild meeting on 13th March 2007.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
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