In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment and not allowing small things to disrupt our lives. He acknowledges that we are creatures of the present, constantly influenced by external factors. However, he reminds his audience that there is another dimension to consider - the eternal perspective of God. The preacher encourages the listeners, who are strangers and have been deprived of their rights and possessions, to remain submissive and not become bitter or rebellious. He assures them that God knew them before the world began and has made sufficient provision of grace to maintain their peace and glorify Him in any situation that may come their way.

Would you turn, please, to 1 Peter. The first Peter in the first three verses will constitute the text. There is so much in Peter that one would like to dwell on, almost every word, at least every phrase, rich with meaning. By the time Peter had written this epistle, somewhere around 60 A.D., 30 years after the death and resurrection of our Lord, he had gained so much knowledge and insight that the epistle that he wrote was filled with meaning. Every word, every line replete with spiritual blessing. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we'll stop there, karma or not, and go back to the first verse. Notice that the letter is written to strangers. This word has reference to the fact that God's people had already been scattered. They'd been scattered in two ways. First, the grace of God had found some in distant and difficult lands. He'd found them through the itineration of businessmen that were Christians and apostles that were traveling. But there is a second reason for Christians to travel, and that is persecution. They become unwanted. And so many of them had been driven out, away from their homes and families and businesses, and had found themselves in these various places, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. I'm glad he mentions these places. Of course, he could have gone on and added all the others where the saints of God were, but this is sufficient for us to realize this much. Everyone is important to the Lord. Now that's what this has said to my heart. Everyone is important to the Lord. If this can grip you today, perhaps you feel very lonely in the place where you're employed. You say, well, all these hundreds of people in our office or our department or our business, and so few, if any, share my love for Christ. I just feel as though I'm the only one here. Perhaps, as our brother Pope, you've been in the service, and you felt while you were there, oh, there's just no one here that cares. I'm all alone. Perhaps it's in your town. You came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and your social group began to feel, well, they're just a wet blanket. They're just no fun anymore. We don't want anything to do with them, and it's become lonely. Well, I think this is exactly what the Spirit of God wanted these people, to whom the letter would come, to realize, that whereas God knows it is lonely, whereas you may be the only one on your block or in your business or in your place, nevertheless, he's concerned. Strangers. Few we may be, unimportant we may be in the eyes of the Lord, in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of the Lord, notice, now notice, notice what Paul says. Strangers, just hardly to be reckoned with, as far as a group is concerned. But notice what he says about these strangers, that they are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Why, God has known about them from before the foundation of the world. Are you not glad today that you've learned in the word that he's loved us with an everlasting love? Aren't you? I am. It's so reassuring to one's heart to realize that God lives only in one time element. Of course, we are pressed by the passing of time, how different it is for us and God. We're creatures of the moment, the creatures of now. You understand when you can visualize your life by a roll, like the huge rolls of paper that they take into the New York Times around the corner, that's sundered down off of the truck as they roll in to become newspapers. Well, if you can see one of those rolls on a spindle, and here a steel knife edge, and the paper passes this thin knife edge, and here's an empty spindle. When we're born, the spindle of the paper is attached, and as the days go, the spindle turns. And as it turns, the roll of the future is lessened, and the roll of the past is increased. But now is this knife edge, and this is where we live. We live right here on this thin knife edge of now. We make our decisions there. We make our choices there. We live there. If we get up in the morning and coffee's weak or the toast is burned, day's spoiled. If we miss our bus, day's spoiled. Because we're moving from one now to the next now, and we're influenced by whether the wind gets dust in our eye or whether the boss had a bad night and is grumpy when he comes into the place we're employed. Little things like that can completely change our lives because we're creatures of now. We're living here as this thin thing passes the moment. But you see strangers scattered, driven from homes, from families, from the things they'd hoped for, the longings they'd had, and Peter wanted them to know, look, there's another dimension here that you've got to keep track of. Before the foundation of the world, the Father knew you. Because whereas you're living in this spinning, hurrying now, in the Father's eyes, the whole roll is spread out. It is not a spindle. He lives with that whole roll spread out in front of him because there's only one time element for God, and that's eternity. Everything is now to God. The past is now. The future is now. He lives in only. So when it says foreknowledge, it's something to help us understand, but it didn't explain what God did because God always lives. With God there can be no foreknowledge or post-knowledge. He's living in one time element, the eternal now. It's all before him. It's all there. So you see, with us, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but in God's eyes it's already happened. You say, well, I don't understand that. Well, I don't either, to tell you the truth, but I don't have to understand it. I don't even understand electricity yet, so I'm not going to get excited about this until the physicists tell us we can't use electricity until we can define it and explain it. I'm going to go right ahead rejoicing in the fact that God lives in the eternal now and that he doesn't learn in sequence and he doesn't learn in parts and he sees the end from the beginning and the past is to him as the future and the future is as the past. And God is there, thus he's always now. That's why he's Jehovah Shama, the Lord who is there. He's there in the past and he's there in the future and it's all now to him. And this means, then, that from eternity past, God has known all about you. David had this, you know. David saw this. For in the psalm he said, Whither shall I go from thy presence or whither shall I flee from thy spirit? If I send up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the outermost part of the sea, there thy hand leads me and thy right hand sustains me. God is not only in the eternal now, but he's in the eternal here. Every place is here to God. Every place is now to God. And he said, There's not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. God doesn't only know what we've said, but he knows what we're going to say without in any wise coercing or controlling. You say, I can't understand it. Well, that's two of us. Neither can I. But God is beyond my comprehension and he's beyond yours. And if I could comprehend him and completely intellectually grasp him and all that he is, then there would be two of us that would be omniscient and two of us that would be omnipresent and two of us that would be God. And so we read in Ephesians the third chapter that we can experience the love of Christ which passes intelligence, goes beyond the grasp of our little finite minds. Now, I know more about God than I knew last year or last week, but I don't know as much as I'm going to know next week because I'm going to seek him and wait before him and I'm sure you're joining me there. But we learn, we add to truth, we add one truth line upon line and precept upon precept. That's the way we learn. But God doesn't. He doesn't learn in sequence. He lives there. So the past is the present and the future is the past. So we elect accordingly and he says to these strangers, God's known you and he's loved you from before the foundation of the world. It's kind of lonely up there in Pontus and it's a little bit cold there in Cappadocia, but don't be discouraged over there in Asia. God's known all about you from before the foundation of the world and he loved you when you were utterly unlovely, when you didn't have a thing to commend you to him, not a thing to offer to him, when you were altogether sin. He didn't set his love upon you because you were lovely or because of what you'd done. He'd loved you before you'd had a chance to do it. He'd loved you with an everlasting love. Isn't it wonderful? And here we come to this word elect. That's a great word. Some people confuse elect and predestination. You shouldn't, you know. Elect is who and predestination is what's going to happen to those whom he's called. And predestination has to do with the end. Election has to do with the beginning. He's predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his son. But he knows everyone that's going to respond to the means of grace. Here's the invitation. Here's the arch over the gateway, and it says, Whosoever will may come, and a sinner going down there in open rebellion, knowing not that the Spirit of God's awakened him, knowing not that the Spirit of God has caused him to see his guilt and tremble with a sense that he deserves God's wrath, turns in at this gate, whosoever will may come, and no sooner is he in, forgiven and pardoned, than he looks around on the other side of the arch, and there carved in the marble, it says, Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now, I don't understand that, but I'm so glad that this was written. It wasn't written to these poor, scattered strangers so they could understand it. It was written so they could rejoice in it, so that they could rest in it, so that it would comfort them, so that it would encourage them. And he says, I want you to know that the Father knew you. He knew all about you long before a world was made. Now, I'm not begging the question that there are intellectual problems, and if you'll give us three or four hours together someday, we'll talk about the intellectual problems and the scriptural difficulties. I'm prepared to do that, but I'm also prepared to say that when this was written to these people scattered throughout Pontus and Galatia, it wasn't to create a problem, it was to bring comfort, that the Father had known them and loved them, and that here they were despised and rejected of man, scorned by their fellows, but they were loved by God. But notice, it's not only that they were elect by the work and grace of the Father, but they are also in the family of God through the sanctification of the Spirit. And I mention this. It was the Spirit of God that awakened me and you to our need. He's the one that can bring us to see that if we died as we were, we'd go to hell, that we deserved God's wrath and anger. He's the one that brought that confidence and assurance and certainty to our minds. He's the one that showed us we'd sinned against God's holy law and deserved God's righteous wrath. It was the Spirit of God that did that. Now, he may have worked equally well in some other mind, but he never saves anyone against their will, you know. And whereas someone besides you may have been in the same meeting and heard the same message, may even have had mother praying, the Spirit of God brought the same ministry of grace to their heart as to yours. Their heart was hardened, their necks were stiff, they wouldn't turn, they wouldn't change. That's why God says to sinners through the prophet, Turn ye, turn ye, for why will you die? It's the appeal of the Spirit of God. It's the drawing of the Spirit of God, initially awakening sinners and drawing them to an awareness of their guilt. But it doesn't stop there. He also brings us to see what sin is. The Spirit of God is the one that causes a sinner to recognize that the reason God has pronounced capital sentence upon him is that he's a capital criminal. And that because he sinned against the high and holy God and enthroned his own throne above God's and has decided that he would worship himself and that he was worthy of that worship, that this is treason and treason deserves the punishment pronounced upon it. And so it was the Spirit of God that convicted us of our guilt and brought us to the place where we realized that if we were to ever have any grounds of relationship with God, we must purpose to render to the worthy one what we refused to give him before. And God is God and he deserves to be worshipped, and he deserves to be obeyed, he deserves to be believed, he deserves to be loved, and a repentant heart is a heart that says, I'm going to stop giving to me the things that belong to God and begin to give them to God. Now we could make it much more complicated, but that's really what it is. It's a turning from worshipping of self to worshipping of God. Now we can make it difficult and use theological terminology, but that's what it is in its essence. Here you on the throne as a sinner, choosing, ruling, governing, controlling, I will be, do have, get, and thinking that everybody else should pay a little incense at the shrine of yourself, then you begin to realize that this is treason. You're refusing to render to the God of heaven the worship and the obedience and the homage and the love that he deserves. And so you change from idolizing yourself to worshipping God. A right about face in purpose, in direction, in government. It's the Spirit of God that does that. And then it's the Spirit of God that shows you that the only way that past sins can ever be dealt with is through the work of Christ. That you couldn't have lived a thousand lifetimes, acquire enough merit by your effort to atone for one sin. And so, he's the one that crowds you to Christ, because none of us would come to Christ if we weren't crowded there. You know, we'd all like to figure out some way that we could do it. If I can just pay my debts, if I can just stop getting drunk, if I can just stop beating people out of this or cheating, then maybe God would be merciful to me. God won't be a... You've got to stop, but that isn't why. You don't stop in order that God will be merciful to you. He'll stop because it's a crime. But he's merciful to you even when you're in your crime, but in the sense of loving you. But he has no opportunity for extending that mercy until you change your mind about this. Who's going to be boss? And it's the Spirit of God that shows you Calvary, shows you the finished work of Christ as part of the sanctifying work of the Spirit. He's the one that enables you to reach across 2,000 years and embrace the Son of God. He's the one that gives that faith. You can have faith in what the Bible says about Christ as history, but it's one thing to leap out over the yawning mouth of hell and find that you're stretching clear across 2,000 years to take Jesus Christ into your heart. That faith comes from the Holy Spirit. It's a gift. And it's the Spirit of God that regenerates you, and we're going to speak more of that in a moment. And he is the one that tells you all of this is the work, the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Do you know what sanctification means? Set apart for holy purpose and prepared for that holy service. That's what it means. Set apart. That has reference to the judicial ordering of this. It's sanctified, but that's only one aspect. The second aspect is prepare for that holy purpose. Cleansed, prepared for that purpose for which it's been set apart. So it's the continual work of the Holy Spirit. He does it today. Perhaps today you'll be in a conversation, and you will find that that conversation is going in a direction that it shouldn't go, and all of a sudden you're going to feel an inner grief and a pain, a poignant penetrating, just a pinprick. What is this? Well, it's the Spirit of God warning you. Don't go and don't talk like that. And I'll tell you, if you continue to talk like this, it'll be sin, and it's going to also necessitate brokenness and confession, cleansing. And so the work of the Spirit of God is to keep us, warn us. He becomes the spiritual nervous system of the Christian so that we won't get hurt, and then when we are hurt, he is the one who gives us pain till we deal with the matter. Because this is his sanctifying work. He applies the Word, and it's through the Spirit. Now, notice, unto what? Some people have an idea that the grace of God is just to give people a license to sin, but that isn't what it says at all. We are elect according to the foreknowledge of God through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Unto obedience. Unto obedience. Now, the evidence that the blood of Jesus has been sprinkled to your conscience and you have passed from death to life isn't in your testimony. You say, well, I can give you every scripture verse in the plan of salvation. Well, that's good, and I'm grateful. And no one is saved apart from it. But don't get too smug and proud about that, because remember there's every, almost every demon in hell could do the same thing. And they remain demons, too, because they know the plan of salvation. Bibles can be gotten and truth known. Demons knew who Jesus Christ was. They knew about him. But they remain demons. Now, the evidence that the grace of God has worked in your heart isn't that you've memorized the plan of salvation. The evidence is that what's in the plan has been transmitted to you. It's in you. You see, salvation isn't a plan. We've said it so often. It isn't a decision. It isn't a scripture verse. Salvation is a person who's come into the heart and into the life, changing the life. And the evidence that the blood of Jesus has sprinkled all that guilt of the past and washed it away is obedience. It's an election unto holiness. I had joy years ago in a friend of mine who was from the Pilgrim Holiness Church, Lorne Sparks, out in Anderson, Indiana. Dear man of God, loved the Lord, a missionary friend that was very earnest. But he had some very great misconceptions concerning the nature of the grace of God and people that believed in it. So I was reading at the time, as I do from time to time, Spurgeon sermons. I just feed my soul because this man certainly knew God. And I was reading in a volume that was very difficult to get, the Park Street sermons before he went to the tabernacle. Most of what you see are the tabernacle sermons, but these were Park Street in the church before they built the big 5,000-seat tabernacle for him. And they had a Sovereign Grace Fellowship in which they'd meet on an afternoon and someone would speak to the five points of Calvinism. Each one would be a speaker and they'd speak into the evening. Well, Mr. Spurgeon was introducing the speaker that was going to deal with the subject, the election. And I was reading to my friend. I said, Lorne, he went past my room. I said, Would you sit down? I want to read something to you. So I turned into it. I said, What is the book? I said, You listen. Can't you get a blessing unless you know the pedigree? He said, I don't listen. So he sat there and I began to read. And it says, Anyone who claims to have any part in the election that is living in known sin and deliberately continuing that sin gives evidence that he is either criminal or crazy. For we understand that this is an election unto holiness and unto obedience. And Lorne, my pilgrim holiness brother, sitting there saying, Amen, amen. That's what I believe. Amen. And I said, Do you like that? Oh, he said, That's good. Now, that's what my. Yeah, I said, Do you want to know who wrote this? Yes. Who, by the way, who wrote it? I said, Charles Spurgeon at a Sovereign Grace Conference in England. Said, Oh. That's it. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God through sanctification of the spirit unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Now, grace unto you and peace be multiplied. You know, I said this morning when we were talking with a little epistle of Jude, if it had been reversed, it said mercy and peace in Jude. Here it says grace and peace. It's similar because grace is free and undeserved mercy. Mercy is free and undeserved grace. And so here it says grace and peace. Free, undeserved, unmerited favor. Now, if this had said peace and grace be multiplied unto you, I wouldn't believe that it was inspired of God. Because, my friend, there can never be peace until you've known grace. Now, I want to say that. I want you to know that. To endeavor to have peace without grace is absurd. As well as stupid. And that's what's happening today. People are buying tranquilizers, not by the pound, but by the ton. Because they're endeavoring to find peace without grace. Every kind of narcotic that can be distilled from this world in which we live. And isn't it amazing that the things which are used to narcotize the mind and bring a false peace to the spirit are things which are distilled out of the weeds that grow from the ground. Or invariably. Or something that's taken from the earth. As though man who was made for God and can only have peace when he has grace that's removed the mountain of his sin and united him to God is unwilling to look up and find God. So he goes down, creeps among the weeds, and finds something that will soothe his mind and give him peace in his spirit. It's a substitute for knowing God. A substitute for meeting him. Any kind of narcotic, anything that becomes an escape, as a means of escaping from the responsibility of dealing with truth and meeting God is a satanic substitute to give something counterfeit to a man. He wants peace, he isn't willing to meet God on his terms of repentance and faith and experience grace so he gets something he can put into his blood veins or some way narcotize it to give peace. A false sense of peace. Peace can only come through grace. Because the spirit of God has said the wicked are like the troubled sea. And this is an evidence of God's love that he refuses to let the wicked be anything but a troubled sea. This is his grace. He forces the wicked to go on in their rebellion against God by making them live every day with the torrential upheaval of their spirits. And he won't let them find peace. In the morning they say, would God it were night. At night they say, would God it were morning. And this is God's grace. And the wicked want to do something about it. So instead of meeting God in brokenness and confession to no grace, free unmerited favor through the blood of Christ, they'll try to get some other means of doing it. Try to escape from this gracious work of the spirit of God to keep people from being whole and complete and happy and content until they know Christ. And so, here he says grace and peace. They always go that way. You'll never know peace until you know grace. The only place to know grace is at the cross where the blood of Christ was shed for the remission of our sins. But you notice it isn't. They're strangers. They're elect, yes. They know the beginning of sanctification by the spirit of obedience. But Paul says, listen, if you think you've had grace so far, wonderful, but there's more for you. And if you think you've had peace so far, yes, but there's more peace. They want it to multiply. Don't you need a multiplication of grace this week to help you? That place where you failed last week, you know, when they said that to you, you really shouldn't have replied the way you did. That wasn't becoming to you as a Christian. There's grace for you this week. If they say something like that, you won't need to say it this week if you'll avail yourself of that grace that's in Christ. And then there won't be the disturbance because you know after you said it, how you went home and how you wept before the Lord. You groaned before God and you said, oh, God, forgive me. I never should have said that. And it took away your peace until you knew the grace of cleansing and forgiveness. Now let's ask grace beforehand, shall we, so we won't lose our peace. Let's ask God to give us grace this week so we won't like the little girl who said, now, Jesus, last week when the devil came to the door, I listened to what he had to tell me. This week when he knocks, you go to the door. And you tell him that I'm not here anymore, that you're living in my house now. That's grace. That's grace. That's the grace that's going to keep you from doing the thing or thinking the thing or saying the thing that's going to take away your peace. That's the multiplication of grace so that they aren't going to be distressed. Notice now, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what's he saying? All the election of grace of the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit and the reconciliation and the cleansing of the Son is to the end that God be glorified. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here it is. Everything that God does, he does in order that the Father might be glorified in the Son and the Son might be glorified through the Father. And therefore, when you avail yourself of God's grace and enjoy God's peace, when there's that obedience to him who's called you out of death into life, you're glorifying him. And Peter writing says that he wants these people to know that though they're strangers, they've been deprived of their rights and their goods, not to become bitter, not to become resentful, not to become rebels, not to become renegades, not to fight, but simply to go on in submission to the one who knew them before there ever was a world. And it knew this too. He knew what was going to happen. He knows what's going to happen next week. And he's made sufficient provision of grace so that your peace won't be disturbed and you can glorify the Father in the midst of what's coming next week. Now, I don't know what's coming next week, nor do you. Many of us wouldn't have thought that what came last week would have come, but it did. You see. And so what's necessary is that we should recognize that whatever's coming next week, God is there now. When he puts forth his own sheep, he always is before them, and he's there in that now. And he has sufficient grace so that you won't have to have anything disturb your peace, so that you can, in that situation, whatever it is, glorify the Father and the Son. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what he put into your heart? That's what it means to love God, to want to glorify him, to want to walk through those circumstances, to want to walk through that situation. I talked with Brother and Sister Sterling Cobble, Mr. Cobble's son. And Miss Norma was saying that in their home there in that little town in Ohio, one night, husband was with the young people in a meeting, and Halloween night, trick or treat, she went to the door and a big, mad boy was there. And as she went to get something to put into his bag, she thought it was kind of silly, such a big boy was there, must have been his teens. And just as she put it into his bag, he reached out and he hit her in the chest, knocked her to the floor, and she started to scream and ran. And she said, my nerves have been so terribly on edge, and I do want God's people to pray for me. I said, yes, I understand, and it's hard, and it's difficult. But we sat there on a bench at the grounds of Winona Lake. And I said, you know, Norma, God kept anything from happening but that. God spared you. And you know, he was there. This could never have hit you, could never have touched you if Father hadn't let it. Because the God who knew you before the world was knew this too. She said, I hadn't seen that, I hadn't realized that. And then I took her again to 1 Thessalonians 5.18, where I bring you so often and I bring me more often, believe me. In everything give thanks. You see, from the moment we're born again, Father has said that nothing can touch us but what is to the end of making us like Christ. And so we've been begotten unto a living hope, a living realization, a lively hope that from the moment we're born of the Spirit of God, nothing can touch us but what is to the end of making us like Christ. God, who's known us before the world was, knows everything that's happening to us in the world. And he's given us sufficient grace so that we can walk through whatever it is that he brings to keep our peace undisturbed and bring glory to him. This is our hope. It's a hope that is making today joyous. It's not only the assurance that when we'll die we'll go to heaven. That's good. But that would really be, instead of a living hope, that would be a kind of a dying hope, wouldn't it? The expectation that when you die you'll go to heaven. Now it says a living hope, a hope that is so real, so vital because it's centered on the Father and on the Son and the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being so that nothing can touch us but what Father wills it, and he wills it for one purpose, to make us like Christ. And therefore, there is in our relationship to Christ, being born again, born into his family and become a child through faith in Christ, the certainty that we're his and the realization that he loves us with an everlasting love, that we are indeed the apple of his eye, the darling of his heart, the bride that he loved and for which he gave his life, and that nothing can touch you, my dear, but what your Father lets it. O strangers scattered abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Asia, don't you understand your Father knows all about you and he loves you and he loved you before you were worthy and he loved you when you were nothing but sin and he's made every provision in grace to cleanse you and he's made every provision in grace to keep you because he wants your life to be to the praise of the glory of his grace and so he says it's a living hope. We've been begotten unto a living hope. A living hope. And Christ is not only going to be with us when we come down to the shore of time and step out into the waters of death, he wants to be with you today. He wants to go home on the subway or the bus or the car with you. He wants to go into the circumstances of tomorrow with you. We've been begotten unto a living hope. Not just a hope that when we die he'll be there to take us over, but as we leave he's going to go with us. If it's back into obscurity, if it's back into persecution, if it's out into martyr's death, it's a living hope. The realization that Christ is to be with us in every circumstance. This is what he wanted these scattered people to know. This is what he wants the scattered people here to know. For we're scattered. Sometimes we have people here from Wanton, Long Island and Morristown, New Jersey and Irvington, New York and Tottenville, Staten Island and about 40 miles, you know. Worst place in all the world for a church. Impossible. You can't have a church at Times Square. You know, everybody knows that. Here you are and as soon as the service is over you're scattering. Some to your rooms and some to your homes and some out in the islands, some in New Jersey. Scattered. But you know something? He's going to be right there with you. I don't know what's coming, but I know who's going to be there and what comes. That's what he wants us to know. A living hope. The Lord Jesus is going to go right there with you. If you'll let him. Shall we bow our hearts together in prayer? Our Heavenly Father, here we are. This side of eternity still in the pilgrimage. For some it gets lonely with the loss of friends and loved ones and they're trudging up the hill toward Thee alone. Some, Lord, knowing that they've got to leave families and even careers and ambitions because they've heard the call of Christ, Go for me. Some are, Father, that have had to leave loved ones precious to them because they had seen the vision of Thy truth and holiness. And some, Lord, that are going to have to stand alone in a place of employment. They're going to have to endure taunting and misunderstanding. Lord, we're going to leave one another now. We'll gather some of us who can tonight. We'll never be together just as we are. Some are going to the mission field. They never come back. Some may go to their homes and never come back. We'll never be the same as we are today. Give to us this certainty that we'll never need to be alone because we've been begotten, if we're in Christ, unto a living hope. The realization that He's with us and in us, He's going to be all we are. He'll supply everything we need and that there's nothing that we need fear because we have Him who conquered fear and conquered death, the Lord Jesus Christ. Should there be some here who do not know Him, might they even in this moment open their hearts door for that door always opens from the inside and invite the Lord Jesus to come in to cleanse and to pardon and bring joy and peace and life, eternal life. And Father, those that have walked a lonely walk this week, may they sense that the Lord Jesus is with them and in them, begotten unto a living hope. We ask in the name and for the sake of Him who loved us and washed us in His blood, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Let us stand for the benediction. Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be dominion and power, our majesty and praise now and forever. Amen.