Let us pray. Lord, how weak we are, and how weak the church is in and of itself. How vulnerable, how defenseless before the might of our great adversary, the devil. But we thank you with all our hearts this evening for an Almighty Saviour who has triumphed over the powers of darkness by the cross, who rose triumphant, who reigns with all authority in heaven and on earth in His hands. We thank you that in Him, strengthening us, we are more than conquerors. And we thank you that in Him, through His wonderful life flowing into the church, the church is built. And the gates of hell do not prevail against it. and every living member that is added to it is secure in Christ. He gives to his sheep eternal life and they shall not perish. And one day that blood-bought church will stand in the presence of our great Saviour, complete and perfect. And we thank you that so many of us here have the privilege of being part of that church which is His body, secure in Christ, certain because of Him, of being with Him in His presence forevermore. We thank you once again for this evening that it is our privilege to enjoy together in the presence of one another, in the presence of our great God and Saviour. And we pray for your continued blessing upon us as we Further, read and hear the word of God as your servant brings to us that word for our edification, for our salvation. May he be filled with the Holy Spirit and may we, through him, be ministered to in a way that will build us up in our faith, that may lead someone here to faith and to the righteousness with which he so perfectly clothes his people. Hear our prayer for your great namesake. Amen. It is my privilege now to welcome Dr. Sinclair Ferguson to our pulpits. Thank you. Well I'm very grateful to your minister David Campbell for his welcome and a great joy to be with you and see many friends again, old friends I'm able to say. I was saying to somebody earlier on it is 30 years and nine months ago I first came to preach here and many of you have been friends therefore for now our friendship into its fourth decade. And it is a great delight to be with you, to be here with the trustees of the Banner of Truth Trust, which is why both Ian Hamilton and I and others are here this evening. And a special joy to me to be speaking this evening alongside my very longstanding friend, Ian Hamilton. We've known each other for, I think now, 39 years. And we met, first of all, a couple of weeks before I got married. He was helping with a number of others to move my books from my then fiancé's house to the house we were going to live in. I can't remember why they were in her house. But she had them, and that was the first time Ian Hamilton and I met, although we knew, I think, of one another. What Ian Hamilton didn't know was that in one of those many banana boxes he was carrying books in. I'd been told, if you're going to move books, banana boxes are the things. And being a compliant individual, banana boxes I searched out, and Ian Hamilton carried many a banana box. What he didn't know was that inside one of these banana boxes was the book that he held in his hand this evening and recommended to you, Charles Ross's book, The Inner Sanctuary. I add two reasons, three reasons, indeed, why you should purchase this book if you haven't already done it. The third reason, alongside the two Ian Hamilton gave, is Ian Hamilton recommended it to you. And that should be sufficient shame on you if you don't accept that recommendation. And the fourth reason I recommend it, as I was saying to Ian earlier on, is that I think just before Christmas in 1967, I opened a parcel and outside that parcel was the handwriting of a girl of whom I had become more than a little fond. And I opened up the parcel and at the top of the parcel was Charles Ross's book, The Inner Sanctuary. And when I saw that book, I had hope. And that hope was fulfilled partly with Ian Hamilton's help carrying the banana boxes of books to our new house. I can't absolutely guarantee you that if you read this book, you will have a happy marriage. But it's helped me So, not least if you are young, it's only $5, which these days is some combination of things you buy at Starbucks. So, do not leave tonight. Remember, this is what some people call Halloween, and it may be dangerous for you. You may turn into a pumpkin tonight if you don't go away with Charles Ross's. inner sanctuary for only five dollars. I want to recommend also to you this very recent book by a mutual friend of Ian Hamilton and mine, Eric Alexander, who many of you may have heard preach either in the flesh or on tape. One of the great preachers of the second half really of the 20th century. And this is quintessential Eric Alexander. And I commend it to you for many reasons, because he's a friend, because these are marvellously enriching messages to read, full of biblical truth expressed with a delightful Christ-centred simplicity. And it's only $8. So forget about your coffees this week, and you can go home tonight, $13. Inner Sanctuary, our great God and Saviour. And I'm not sure, I did ask if this magazine was being given away free. It's the November issue of the Banner of Truth Trust magazine. It's got two very interesting articles related to the Reformation. One on John Calvin, the other a piece by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, remembering the Reformation. And if it wasn't meant to be free, it is free now. remember these books. Now let's turn to the more important book and to the letter of Paul to the Philippians and to the third chapter of Philippians, which I want us to read at least in part. In many ways, this wonderfully brings forward what we have heard in the previous hour. about the gospel. The Apostle Paul now writing to perhaps his favourite church in Philippi, that marvellously multicultural, multi-socio-economic church, demon-possessed girl delivered, a rich businesswoman, her heart opened by the Lord, a jailer converted to Jesus Christ, all sitting in the room, listening as one of their elders, doubtless, reads out Paul's letter to the Philippians. And he's warning them, among other things, about the danger into which the Galatian Christians had fallen. And so he says in verse two of chapter three, watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh, For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law, a Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my prophet, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. The Apostle Paul was, among other things, conscious that God had made him an illustration of the Gospel. You remember how in 1 Corinthians 4 he comments on the fact that he feels as though in some great triumph, like prisoners put on display right at the very end in that prominent final position. He and the other apostles have been put on display, demeaned in the world, but glorious illustrations of the Christian life and the power of salvation in the gospel. And there are many places in the New Testament, actually a surprising number of places in the New Testament, where the Apostle Paul reflects on how this came to be in his life. We are familiar with the different occasions in the Acts of the Apostles, there are three of them, where the story of his conversion is narrated once by Luke and twice by Paul himself. That is the outside story of how the gospel worked in his life. But there are many occasions, sometimes just an occasional statement in half a verse in his letters. On other occasions, greater detail or more concentration. But in the majority of Paul's letters, somewhere he refers to his own conversion. How God had mercy on him because he acted in ignorance as he persecuted the church. How God set him apart before he was born in order to be brought to faith in him. How the Son of God was revealed in him. How his eyes were opened and he was able to see the light of the glorious Gospel of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But there is no passage in the New Testament where Paul in such detail describes his own spiritual pilgrimage. The outside of it is described in the Acts of the Apostles. The inside of it he describes here in Philippians chapter 3. And it's relevant to us this Reformation weekend partly because It has been said much more loudly in recent days that the Reformation gospel was not the same as Paul's gospel. Indeed, the Reformation experience of grace and salvation was not the experience of the Apostle Paul. And so, I'm sure some of you will have heard it said even about his experience on the Damascus Road, that it was much less of a conversion from a man who was conscious of his sinfulness into a state of grace, and it was much more a calling to believe that the Messiah was the Messiah not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. And so this passage in which the Apostle Paul describes his spiritual pilgrimage is particularly relevant to the times in which we live. Was the experience of the Reformers similar to the experience of Saul of Tarsus? Was the gospel of the Reformers identical to the experience and gospel of Saul of Tarsus? Or is there such a dissimilarity in it that the Reformers got things wrong? Some of you know that these are not things that are being said, as it were, out there in the secular world, but among evangelical Christians who have begun to hold precisely these positions. That's one of the reasons, although not the only reason, I want to think with you this evening about Philippians chapter 3. You can bracket all that out of what I want to say and you will find, as we've already been considering, that in this passage there is the marrow of the gospel of Jesus Christ. expressed in the experience of the Apostle Paul as a large-scale working model of how God's saving grace operates in the lives of sinners. And there are really two halves, aren't there, to Paul's life. I think I can put what he says here in this passage very simply. He describes first of all what he was by nature And then he goes on to describe what he discovered by grace in Jesus Christ. Well, what was Paul by nature? Well, he tells us, doesn't he, what he was by heredity. He was a man of impeccable pedigree. It's remarkable really what he says in the beginning verse 4. I myself, he says, have reasons for confidence in the flesh. For all that I've inherited from my parents, from my religious context. If anyone else thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I have more. That is an extraordinary statement. He is saying he surpassed all of his contemporaries in his ability to place confidence for his salvation in the accomplishments of his own nature. And he lists them, doesn't he? The things he received by heredity. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He belonged to the people of Israel. He belonged to the tribe that produced the first king, the tribe of Benjamin. He wasn't a half-caste Hellenistic Jew. He was a Hebrew-speaking Jew of Hebrew-speaking parents. Not only so, but having received that by nature in which, of course, he did boast, he adds the fact that as to his personal choice and performance, he deliberately chose the strictest sect among the Jews, of the Pharisees. More than that, he goes on to say, as far as righteousness according to the law was concerned, I was blameless. He was, in a sense, a kind of later edition of that rich young ruler whom our Lord Jesus Christ encountered, who asked him what he had to do to inherit eternal life. And Jesus, knowing the man's heart, said to him, just keep the commandments. And his immediate response was to say, Master, as to the law, I am blameless. I have been keeping these commandments from my youth up." Indeed the Apostle Paul gives us indication that as he looked round he was not able to see among his peers anyone who could match him. Beginning of his letter to the Galatians he says to the Galatians that he outstripped many of his contemporaries. And when he says that kind of thing you understand that when we read that he had outstripped many of his contemporaries in zeal, that was just a modest way of saying all of my contemporaries. He was head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the radical nature of his commitment to what he saw to be the truth of God. And that's what he was by nature. By heredity, he had this impeccable pedigree. By performance, he was a radically committed believer in his religion. And then he discovered, didn't he, about the condition of his heart, that he was a man with a violent heart. And we know how that erupted. We sometimes think, I think mistakenly, well of course he had a violent heart. He persecuted the church of the Lord Jesus Christ because he was a Pharisee. But it wasn't because he was a Pharisee he persecuted the Church of Christ. How do I know that? Because not all Pharisees persecuted the Church of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the great teacher Gamaliel, under whom Saul of Tarsus had diligently studied and whom he honored, rather than persecute the church of Jesus Christ was the man, you remember, who held up his hands and said, let's take the middle ground here. If this new thing is of God, then it will triumph. If it's not of God, it will fall to the ground. But let's not persecute them. So it's actually very important to understand it wasn't because he was a Pharisee he persecuted the church of Jesus Christ. It was because he was a man with an angry heart. And he tells us in a very interesting way, I think, how that emerged in his life. Do you remember how he reflects on his past life in Romans chapter 7 and says, you know, as far as the law was concerned, I felt myself to be blameless. And then he says, the law came and sin revived and I died. I discovered, he is saying, I was dead in trespasses and sins. And I needed saving grace. Now you recall what commandment it was that broke into his soul. You shall not covet. Interestingly, isn't it the same commandment the Lord Jesus was using with the rich young ruler? You've kept the commandments from your youth up. You're blameless according to the law, says Jesus. And then like a pharmacist with a spiritual remedy, he pulls down one of the 10 bottles of the law and says to the rich young ruler, how do you respond to this medicine therefore? Go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor. That was the young man astonished and went away sorrowful because he had so much riches. And his fingers were too sticking to the riches for him to be able to release them so he could hold on in faith to Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord and follow him as his disciple. Jesus was just bringing in that commandment at the end to demonstrate that rather than keep the law, this man had failed in this one point at least and therefore had transgressed the whole law. Now he responded to Jesus' preaching of the law in one way. Saul of Tarsus responded in another way. He responded with profound anger. You may have seen that in people. You sometimes wonder why is it these people are so angry with Christians. I think the New Testament gives us one major clue as to how this happened. I wonder if you've ever asked yourself the question why was it the commandment about coveting that broke into the heart of Saul of Tarsus and released this anger against the Church of Jesus Christ. After all, he says, doesn't he, as I've mentioned in Galatians chapter 1, that he was outstripping all of his contemporaries. Coveting was surely not the problem of the man who was head and shoulders above everybody else. Until something happened. And Luke gives us the clue, doesn't he, in Acts chapter 6. He tells us in Acts chapter 6, that Stephen, who was one of those men who was chosen to assist the apostles, you remember, a man full of God's grace and power, who did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. And he began to preach. And apparently sometimes This man's face was so transformed by a kind of Moses-like reflection of the grace and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ that sometimes people thought he had the nearest thing to an angel's face. But listen to this. Opposition arose, however, from members of the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called. Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. These men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the spirit by whom he spoke. When you see details like this in the Acts of the Apostles, you know, you're really interested in where people from the church come from, that some are from Lancaster County and some of them from Philadelphia and some of them are from Pittsburgh. You don't usually put that in the church brochure. Why was this so significant for Luke? Because Saul of Tarsus came from Cilicia. and was therefore almost certainly a member of the synagogue that listened to Stephen preaching. And nobody could withstand the grace or the power with which he spoke. And I think, I can't prove it, but I think this is Luke's hint to us. Dear friend, if you ever go on to read Romans, remember what I've just said here. It was this that evoked covetousness in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, because this man had something he did not have, nor did he want this other man to have it. And nothing he could do for all his knowledge of the Old Testament, for all his sense of having kept the law from his youth upwards, Nothing was able to bring, as it were, release from this awful sense that for the first time in his life it was becoming clear to him that he was a sinner in need of God's mercy. And so he raged against the light and sought to destroy what he did not have. and was there as Stephen died and as the man, the dear man died in shame and humiliation and in awful pain. He was standing there guarding the coats and saying, yes, yes, yes to this man's destruction. And then went off in an almost demonic inspired rage. Not because he was a Pharisee, but because he was a coveter. And a coveter is not only somebody who lacks what another possesses, but will destroy the other because he possesses it. And sin revived and Saul of Tarsus died. And so when the Lord Jesus floors him literally on the Damascus road, he says to him with a I wonder if this is why he says, God had mercy on me. Because Jesus says to him with such heart searching truth and yet such loving tenderness, Saul, it is hard for you to kick against these gods. And by God's grace, God had mercy on him. And the man who had sought to persecute the church became this glorious demonstration of a man who was able to say, I once lived and then I died. And now I no longer live, and yet I do live because Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And as we were hearing so richly earlier on tonight, he learned what it was to live his life out of the resources that he had found in the Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus had said to him, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And for the rest of his life he had obviously pondered that. How could he be persecuting the Lord Jesus in heaven when in fact he was persecuting his people on earth? Simple. Because his people on earth were living out of the riches and resources that they had found in their head in heaven. At the end of the day, the very one he sought to destroy had mercy on him. And so it's written in large letters for all to read that what he was by nature was a man in need of saving mercy and God in Christ had mercy upon him. And the transformation was amazing and that's what he speaks about, isn't it, in the rest of this passage. He says, I'm no longer where I once was. But he says, whatever was to my profit, I now count as loss. And so the rest of the passage is taken up with not so much what he was by nature, but what he became by grace. He was an ambitious man by nature. And he became Christ-ambitious by grace. And you see that. Look at what he says in verse 9. He says, My desire now, he says, is to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own. That's exactly what we've been hearing about. Not my own righteousness. My pathetic righteousness as I foolishly think I have kept God's law. But when God's law pierces my conscience, I realise there is not a single law of God I have kept. I am sinned from head to toe, from arm to arm. And so I want to be found in Christ. So that I am sheltering under Christ's righteousness. So that the wrath of God that I deserve that has fallen on Him might be a wrath from which I know I am eternally free. That the guilt and the shame I feel I have has all been placed upon Jesus Christ. The guilt of it that haunts me is no longer mine because He has taken it. Though he was innocent, he was declared guilty in my place. And yes, with that, the shame of it, the shame of my sin that paralyzes me, brings me into bondage, blackmails me. As he was nakedly exposed under the judgment of God, he's taken not only my sin, but also my shame. And now I'm found in Christ. He must have felt that shame, don't you think? Barnabas came alongside him and said, I'll be your companion to introduce you to these fellow Christians. Don't you think Paul must have known awful shame as he came in? A man who had sought to destroy the church, who had been complicit in the murder of brothers and sisters in these churches. The shame And so he knew that Jesus had died for his shame and that he could be safe in Christ and covered by Christ if he was found in Christ. And then he says he wants to grow in the knowledge of that Christ. He says, I want to know Christ Jesus, my Lord, in his surpassing greatness. Do you know some people just love language, don't they? You can tell when they speak, they have a feel for language. That's something I've always admired, people who have a feel for language because they have a limited capacity to, as it were, draw together words and vocabulary that will just exude what you want to say. So many of us live a kind of frustrated life with words, don't we? But this man, he kind of luxuriates in this language. He says, I want to know the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ my Lord. And even in English, perhaps especially in English, the sheer length of these words kind of captures the emotion of the man. He wants to linger on this. You know, it is to be in a church service that you're sitting there praying to the Lord, get us out of here. This is so boring, so dull. You don't know that here. Thank God you don't know that here. But you know, when you love somebody, I wouldn't like to tell you what I did with my little copy of the Inner Sanctuary. What that meant to me. I would have hugged and kissed that Inner Sanctuary. Because it meant so much to me. Because of who had given it to me. And here's the Apostle Paul. He's been showered with mercy. He looks to Christ who is at mercy on him and he says, you're surpassing greatness. It's not just that he's great, it's that he's surpassingly great. And it's not just that he's surpassingly great. This is a very interesting thing to me. When Paul says Jesus is Lord, he usually means Jesus is Jehovah. Jesus is the Son of God. No, usually he's not talking about himself or his own disposition. He's talking about who Jesus is. But in this statement, he is talking about his own disposition. He's speaking about the surpassing greatness of Jesus, who is Lord. But as that Lord, he's able to say he is my Lord. Everything laid in tribute at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the passion of my life is to grow in knowing Him better. If He is surpassingly great, brothers and sisters, there is an unending adventure in coming to know Him and love Him and trust Him and rejoice in Him far more than we already do. Speaking of knowing each other many years, some of you I've known 30 years. I don't begin to know you. Ian Hamilton and I have known each other 39 years. We don't begin to know one another. Married to my wife 39 years and thinking when I met her, no man ever knew woman like I know this woman. And very quickly awakening up to the fact I didn't really know this woman at all. and those of us who have been married many years. This is not a joke. This is the reality. We still don't know a fraction of who our wives really are, although we know them best of all. And if that's true of those who have been saved by Christ's precious blood, how much more true is it of Christ Himself? That's why we have long sermons, isn't it, in Reformed churches? Because there's so much to know about Him. And people don't understand. They think, how can you concentrate that long? And you say to them, did you never love anybody? Oh, eternity is too short, you see. But it's not only that. He wants to experience fellowship with Christ, doesn't he? He says, I want to be found in Him. I want to know his surpassing greatness. But I also want to know, verse 10, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection. He's not doubting he'll attain to the resurrection, it's just that he's not quite sure what the mechanism is going to be between now and then. But do you see what he's saying? Tremendously significant. He is saying, I so trust Christ, I so want to know Christ, and I understand if I am going to embrace a Christ who was crucified for me and raised from the dead, having come to know Him as the risen Saviour who floored me on the Damascus road and brought me into His kingdom. I know that embracing the resurrected Christ means embracing the Christ who was crucified as well as resurrected. And that in that embrace, I'm going to become more and more like him until that day that he refers to at the end of the chapter when he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his body of glory. He's saying I want to experience that ongoing fellowship with Christ that more and more will make me like Christ as I share in the impress of his death and His resurrection upon my life. And as you know, this is a great theme in Paul. 2 Corinthians 4. Always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal body. Death works in us, life works in you. Now here's a question. Where did he learn that? Now we're back to the Damascus Road. and to what happened before the Damascus riot. Where on earth did Saul of Tarsus first see death working in someone and life working in somebody else? That's his life story, isn't it? He learned that too from what he saw in Stephen. It's wonderful, isn't it? He wants to know Christ. He wants to experience fellowship with Christ. And he wants to grow in everything that will make him like Christ. And so do you notice he expresses what we might call a kind of holy dissatisfaction. When you really trust and love the Savior, There is both satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the Christian life, isn't there? Satisfaction in Him, but dissatisfaction that you don't know Him better than you do, and dissatisfaction that you're not as like Him as you long to be. And Paul says this, I've not already obtained this. I'm pressing forward. And so wonderfully one of the marks of the growing Christian is there is this element of dissatisfaction. There must be more in Christ and there needs to be more in me because of Christ. And so I live this way with a kind of contentment that's discontented. But a discontentment that's supported by my contentment in Christ. And then, of course, he grows in single mindedness. In verse 13, brothers, I don't consider myself yet to have taken hold of this, but one thing I do. I sometimes wonder what was happening in the room when Paul wrote that. People looking over his shoulder, you know, with these old writing implements, you couldn't write quickly. With that old paper you couldn't write quickly. And so if Paul himself is writing this, he's writing it very slowly. One thing I do. And if you're one of the apostolic band of brothers, you're saying, wait a minute, Paul, isn't this a God-breathed letter you're giving them? Aren't you the mighty Apostle Paul who speaks with the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ? You never do just one thing. Paul doing one thing? He tells us he's always doing a hundred things. He's praying, he's caring, he's verdant, he's running around the ancient world, he's being stoned, he's spending the night in the sea, he's in jail, he's preaching hour after hour, he's making tents, he's caring for the churches, he's spending time with Christians, he's got many sleepless nights. The one thing he is never doing is one thing. And he would say to us, wouldn't he? No, you've got the wrong end of the stick. I'm not doing a hundred things, I'm doing one thing in a hundred different ways. I'm pressing on to know Christ, who knows me. And that's what leads to this great sense of spiritual accountancy that drives this passage. He mentions it, doesn't he, in verse 7 and in verse 8. Whatever was to my prophet, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things." He's saying, look at the loss column. I'm prepared to put everything into the loss column for the sake of Jesus Christ. Indeed, he says, I consider them rubbish. Dung is the word. Not because he despises his inheritance or despises the things of this world, but by comparison with the sheer greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as his Lord. Everything he's ever lost is so much trash going out in the garbage. He probably was disinherited actually. Jewish converts were, and in many instances still are, literally losing everything. But he's grasped the great equation, hasn't he, of God's grace, that everything minus Christ is worth nothing. Christ plus nothing is still, at the end of the day, everything Now here's the thing, do you notice he goes on to say, if you're spiritually mature, that's how you think. If you're really spiritually mature, that's how you think. And that was Paul's conversion. It's surprisingly like Martin Luther's conversion, don't you think? Or John Bunyan's conversion? Or perhaps your conversion? Paul does not say every person who comes to faith in Christ comes in precisely this dramatic way. But he was brought to faith in Jesus Christ in this dramatic way. to demonstrate to us that when anyone comes to faith in Jesus Christ, whether attended by the dramatic circumstances or the sheer largeness of life that was true of Saul of Tarsus, the same glorious drama is repeated. And we are brought from what we were by nature to what we become by grace. And there is no other way. from nature to grace, from sin to salvation, from anger to peace, from guilt to pardon, from shame to glory, from myself into Christ. So I wonder, where you are tonight? Could you say you were found in Christ tonight? Could you say you're still growing in the knowledge of Christ tonight? Are you committed to this kind of fellowship with Christ tonight? Do you count everything as loss for Christ? Do you know the surpassing greatness of calling him my Lord tonight? You know, I think I have a sentence that I've ended more sermons with than I could count. And it's this. Isn't the gospel of Jesus Christ the most glorious reality in all the world? Amen and Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ that have been put on display to us tonight from just fractions of the Word of God. For all it means to be able to say that the life we live, we live by faith. in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. And for the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, our Lord, we give you thanks. And pray that our lives and our church fellowships, and not least this church fellowship of which we are part this evening, may be so full of Jesus Christ in all His riches and glory, displayed in so many different personalities, brought in so many different experiences to the one way of salvation in Jesus Christ. that the world in which we are living, and not least those who are angry because hostile to Jesus Christ, may be brought sol of Tarsus-like to find in Him what we have found. And so we pray that you would bless us to that end through your word, in Jesus our Saviour's name. Amen.