Jesus of Galilee

We'll take a reading from the Gospel according to Matthew and chapter 26, the Gospel according to Matthew and chapter 26. And we'll come in at the end of the chapter at verse 62, a little paragraph here, Matthew 26 and verse, no, a little further down, verse 69, we'll start. Now Peter sat without in the palace, and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.

But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them, for thy speech bereath thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew.

Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him before the cock crew, Thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly. Now that's all the reading, and we trust the Lord's blessing upon his word.

Those who do a little bit of traveling, you know that we have to be very precise to give your full name, just exactly as it is, exactly as it appears on the passport. The first given name, second name perhaps, and then the family name. And it takes it all just to give your own distinctive identity.

When we come to New Testament scripture, of course, we always appreciate the full name. Lord, Jesus, Christ. Jesus was the given name.

He wasn't always Jesus. It was given to him. Christ was also a given name.

It was the title of his messianic office. Then if I can speak reverently, Lord is the family name. God the Father is not Jesus, but he is Lord.

The Holy Spirit is not Jesus, neither is the Holy Spirit Christ, but the Holy Spirit is Lord. And of course, the Savior is Lord. So, he belongs to that great community of the eternal trinity, the fellowship of divine persons.

And Lord is his eternal name, his eternal title, and the given names Jesus and Christ. All of them need to be combined just to give us a sense of who he really is in the fullness of his person. He's Jesus the man, and all that God expected man to be has been expressed in the sinless humanity of the Lord Jesus.

He's Christ the Messiah, and every messianic office and every messianic expectation will find its complete fulfillment in him. And not only is he the man, the Messiah, he's also the master. And as Lord, he has taken a seat at God's right hand in a society where the name Jesus is tossed around, maybe without very much thought, charismatic kind of people, they love to be singing about Jesus and Jesus and Jesus, and that title can be used appropriately.

I think that constantly and particularly and most frequently, we should refer to the Lord Jesus Christ. Each one of those names is associated with something else, and I want to speak upon a unique title of Jesus this afternoon in the final session. We have read the comment here in connection with Peter, and the damsel came in and she said, thou wast also with Jesus of Galilee.

You'll not find that anywhere else, just Jesus of Galilee. Galilee is a very special place on the surface of this globe, and with that particular little piece of geography, the worthy name of Jesus, it will be connected forever. And I want to think just very devotionally and very simply at the close of the day, you won't need notebooks and you won't need any great degree of application or concentration.

I want to speak about Jesus of Galilee. We're familiar with Jesus of Nazareth, which occurs quite often. You could find a passage that might refer to Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

But here only, on the lips of this unconverted girl, she had seen the Savior, she had heard the Savior, she had heard about the Savior, and the best that she could say was fairly accurate. She said, he is Jesus of Galilee. The first matter that I want to speak about is the seclusion of Galilee.

Galilee is what we might call the neglected part of the land of Israel. It's not close to Jerusalem, the great capital, the place that had all the rabbinical scholars and had all the expertise, the place of officialdom. It's north, Galilee of the Gentiles.

There's a large mixture of Gentile people living in Galilee. It's not a place of large cities. It's mostly, in New Testament times, a place of small villages.

I think it touches the heart of every believer that your Lord and mine spent the greatest amount of his time on earth in just a nondescript little province called Galilee. It was a place that had been oppressed. If we were to turn back to the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 9, it tells us in that prophecy that when the armies came invading the land from the north, it was Galilee that suffered most.

The heavy tread of those pagan armies, they left the footprint of their military boot upon Galilee. They established their camps. They used it as the main traveling route for the invading armies, and the poor people of Galilee had suffered.

It's called in the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 9, their vexation. But it tells us that the people who had suffered and the people who had days of darkness and days of depression and disappointment, upon those people light shined, and God gave them a special favor. As a compensation for the suffering of previous ages, the Savior came to Galilee, and that rather place that was just a place of estrangement and was despised by the officials in Jerusalem.

That's the very place where the Savior lived. The town where he spent most of his time was Nazareth, and that was in the territory of Zebulun. And then he moved at the commencement of his ministry or early in his ministry, he moved to the town of Capernaum, and that was located in the territory of Naphtali.

Again, a despised place with those little tribes that didn't have any great prestigious history, and it was right there with the poor, the despised, the ordinary, the marginalized people, and our Savior came from glory, and accommodated himself to the small geography of Galilee, and we worship him forever. You know, we live in a world, dear brethren and sisters, where people are always seeking to reach for bigger things, and to go for bigger places, and to make things better in this world, and it humbles our pride, and it rebukes our materialism, just to remember that he's Jesus of Galilee, and the most of his years were spent in the seclusion of that ancient province. The second subject that I want to mention is not only the seclusion of Galilee, I say a little bit about the settlements of Galilee.

I've already mentioned it was a place of small villages, especially lower Galilee, it was upper Galilee and lower Galilee, and it was lower Galilee where the Lord Jesus spent most of his time. Think about the little village of Nazareth, never mentioned in the Old Testament, just a little hamlet in the hillsides of Galilee, and in that hamlet, there's a carpenter's shop. It's not just that he was a carpenter, he was the carpenter.

I presume that Nazareth was such a small little village, they just had one carpenter. One carpenter was enough to do all the little jobs that the local people require, and he was the carpenter, and he worked manually, and he worked regularly, and he worked contentedly for years, just in the little hamlet of Nazareth that crests the hill on the northern side of the Jezreel Valley. He could look out across from that little place, like the place where one day they went to throw him over the brow of a hill, and he was looking right down into the Valley of Megiddo.

We used to have a brother back in Ireland, and he used to tell us with maybe a little bit of imagination, and I hope a little hint of inspiration as well. He thinks about a day when the Lord Jesus could again revisit the Valley of Megiddo, and when the armies have all been destroyed, and when the victories have been won, and standing up at the head of that valley is the great champion of Megiddo, the conqueror of the ages, and as he stands there and world dominion at his feet and world government in his hand, he'd be able to look up just to his left hand and say, here I stand today as the champion of Megiddo, and I spent almost 30 years in the little village under as the carpenter of Nazareth. And that small settlement was graced by the benign and the beneficent presence of our blessed Lord.

What about the little village of Capernaum? That wasn't the place of the carpenter, that was the place of the many cures. The Lord Jesus moved to that village, and the people thronged to hear the music of his lovely voice, and they brought the sick, and they filled the streets, and the Bible tells us that he healed them all with compassion that couldn't be measured, and power that couldn't be exhausted, the place of Capernaum. He put upon that village the insignia of his tender care, and the lepers, many of those other sick, Peter's mother-in-law, they will never forget the day that the Lord Jesus came into their small, little settlement on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and he was... What about Bethsaida? That's another little village just around the northern part of the lake, and from that he called some of his disciples, the town of Andrew and Peter.

What about the village of Nain? As we call it, well, I'm not sure what you call it, do you say Nain? The Hebrews would say Nain. So we'll just follow the right pronunciation this afternoon. The little village of Nain is down further south in Galilee.

You remember the day he went to that village, walking through its gates was a broken-hearted widow, and she was at the funeral, attending to the funeral services of her only son, and the scene that is just drenched in grief and sorrow, and the Lord of life, he met the procession of death, and with a mighty word of his power, the whole situation was completely changed. What about the village of Chorazin, or Chorazin, as maybe we would call it? All those little settlements, I say he visited them, he constantly did the circuits of his preaching, those places became the dispensary of his rich blessing. Thousands will remember the day that he crossed the threshold of their door.

Broken hearts will remember the binding and the calming effect of his words. Those that were bruised and crushed, he lifted them again. The bruised reed he didn't break, and the smoking flecks he never quenched.

I would love that God would give to us something of the spirit of Christ. We have got this idea of one upmanship, and we have to be the highest, and we have to be the biggest, and we have to be the hardest, and we have to be the toughest. Dear brethren, as long as we behave like that, I'm not speaking about principle, I'm not speaking about obedience, I'm just talking about those arrogant attitudes of self-promotion, and as long as we continue like that, acting in big ways and looking for big things, we are light years removed from the spirit and the attitude of Jesus, of Galilee.

He knew the seclusion of Galilee, far away from the capital. In fact, not too far from Nazareth, there was a large city called Sephora, or Sepphoris. Just about four miles across the countryside, and you could see it from Nazareth, and that large city, the archaeologists have scraped back the sands of time, and they have uncovered quite a rich civilization in the first century.

We're never told the Lord visited that even. Just across the hill, we never read that he went to the large city, and we appreciate the seclusion and the settlements of Galilee, Jesus of Galilee. What about the synagogues of Galilee? You know, those synagogues, they were places where people gathered every Sabbath day, and they listened to the rabbis, and they listened to the men that were in positions of authority, and every week, they just went through the same dry, rigmarole, ritual, repetitive prayers.

It was all very predictable. There was nothing fresh. There was nothing warm.

It was completely devoid of divine unction. I say, it was a great day when the Savior walked into the synagogue at Nazareth. It was his custom to be there.

He'd been there for years. He didn't rush to the platform. He waited until the time had come.

What a day when he reached up to the podium, and with what reverence and dignity, he took the book, and he unrolled the scroll of the sacred prophet, and the author of the book, he was also the subject of the book, gave the book back to the minister, and with dignity, he preached. You know, I think at all our meetings, we should give a primary place to God's book as being marginalized by other things. They have all kinds of presentations nowadays.

Sometimes you'd hardly know if there was a Bible at the meetings at all. Dear Christians, let us keep to the book. The Savior honored the book in the synagogue at Nazareth, and the Bible tells us the eyes of all the people, they were fastened upon him.

I see an awful lot of preachers, and I see it myself, and the eyes of the people are not fastened. Sometimes I see the whites of their eyes when they've rolled around to expose another hemisphere. Sometimes I see them looking to the left and looking to ... No one slept.

No one looked around. No one gazed away. The day that Christ was there, and the synagogue of Galilee, the walls had never heard a voice so sweet.

They'd never heard preaching so powerful. They'd never sensed compassion that was so real. Oh, may God help us to appreciate the sins of the platform.

Many of our weaknesses commence here. We stand here and blame the folks down there. Many of the problems are here.

If we had a ministry enough in touch with heaven, those who hear us would be searched and sheltered and enriched and preserved. The poverty of the pulpit is reflected at times in the poverty of the people, but it was a great day. What about the synagogue at Capernaum? There was a day the Savior went there, and there was a demon in the synagogue.

That wasn't any advantage. The Savior was able to expel the demon, and before he went on to teach the people, they were left exclaiming, what manner of man is this? His word is with power. He put out the demon.

Sometimes we have to expel things that are unclean and things that are unacceptable so that an atmosphere can be created, that the word of God can be preached. I would say, dear Christian, whether or not you receive much benefit from the conference will depend upon your attitude. Some Christians come to meetings with a critical attitude.

Some come with a carnal attitude, and they go away just as carnal and just as critical, and they get very little benefit. I say we need to search our hearts and make sure that these unclean attitudes are expelled so that the word of God can be spoken with good effect. That very same synagogue, the foundations of it are still there today.

They tell me you can go to Capernaum, and you can see the black basalt of that foundation. Interestingly, synagogues in the first century, they had a little motif at the front door, the lintel that was just across the front door. Sometimes it was a picture of a vine representing Israel.

That was quite frequent. At other times, it was a picture of a lampstand or the menorah that represent. But you know the lintel, the lintel which has been discovered from the synagogue at Capernaum, most unusually, it had the motif of the golden pot of manna.

That's the synagogue where the Lord stood in John's gospel chapter 6, and he expounded to those people in the synagogue that had the symbol of the manna on the door. He stood as the reality of the manna at the pulpit, and he told them, I am the bread of God, the bread of life, the true bread which cometh down from heaven. He that eateth me shall never hunger, and we are glad that we have found that bread.

Sadly, many went away that day and missed the purpose and missed the point of the Savior's preaching, but he was there in the seclusion of Galilee, in the settlements of Galilee. Oh, Jesus of Galilee and the synagogues of Galilee, thank God for the royal visit of the King of Glory to this small world of ours. What about the slopes of Galilee? You know, he used the topography of that simple little rural district as an auditorium for his preaching, and on those grassy slopes that just nestled around the lake, because Galilee is like a sapphire of blue in the midst of a setting of green.

The Savior sat on the boat and used the curve of the slopes of Galilee as the sounding board for his speech, and he spoke to the people as they were able to bear it, spoke about the lilies of the field, spoke about the birds of the air. He spoke about the sower going forth to sow, rich illustrations that have never lost their value and have never lost their vividness, and just spoke to the people. The common people heard him gladly.

He never had a problem getting the place filled. When the synagogues wouldn't have his preaching and they wouldn't accommodate the crowds, the great Creator went out into an auditorium which he himself had produced. I believe that God, in the production of creation, had carved out the Sea of Galilee and those surrounding slopes with this in view, that one day his own son would need those slopes as his auditorium, and the acoustics, the atmosphere of the Galilean air, it was enriched by the vibrations of the melodious voice of the Son of God, and the people crammed.

The men were there, the women were there, the children were there. They didn't need to segregate the audience. They all listened.

You know, we could hardly get a hundred people to come to listen to it. When people are listening to us, you see them looking at their watch covertly, hoping that you'll soon be down and soon be done. People listened to Christ.

They could listen until the sun was setting in the sky and they wanted a second day and they wanted a third day. I tell you men, if we could get more of Christ into our meetings and into our ministry, the meetings would go on smoothly and gladly. We live in an age where meetings have to be shorter and meetings have to be curtailed, and you could hardly have a conference unless you accompanied the Bible with a volleyball to keep the thing going.

The Savior never needed any of those additions. The accessories of games and entertainment were the unnecessary accretions for Christ. Just the pure Word of God and the fullness of the heart of Christ and the wisdom of an eternal world communicated in the vocabulary of this world.

Oh, that God would give us, give us just the ability to communicate with our people. As that was said in the good hymn, Master, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of thy tone. Sometimes there can creep into our ministry a harshness, some kind of a resentment, some kind of a bitterness that was absent.

The Savior spoke very strongly and very sternly. It was a sad day when he had to upraid those villages where in most of his mighty works were done and his heart was breaking as he thought about a day of judgment and he could see them descending one after another into eternal doom. Robert Murray McShane was a great Scottish preacher.

He went to that land way back maybe 1830, 1840, and as he sat beside the Sea of Galilee, he wrote a beautiful poem. How sweet to me thy deep blue wave, thou Sea of Galilee. For the Holy One who came to save, he often stood by thee.

Restful the mountains around thee meet, thou calm reposing sea, but sweeter still the beautiful feet of Jesus once walked upon thee. He looked across the shore and he saw a pile of ruins. And he says, tell me, ye mouldering fragments, tell, was the Savior's city here? Lifted to heaven has it sunk to hell, with none to shed a tear.

O that my flock from thee might learn that the days of grace will flee and all who now salvation spurned shall mourn at last like thee. I want to throw out a challenge. Is there anyone here today, today not saved? Jesus of Galilee has never won your heart, never melted your spirit.

And you're setting your sails for the wide old world and crossing the Sea of Life without a chart, without a rudder, without a captain. And you're heading from Garnevilla to the Gehenna of eternal fire. I would say this afternoon, appreciate the Jesus of Galilee and the Jesus of Golgotha.

And you'll be able to say, having trusted him, the torment and the fire mine eyes shall never see. I'll just say a little bit about that, the Sea of Galilee. Oh, he's Jesus of Galilee.

He not only was in the synagogues and the settlements and preached to the people as they surrounded the slopes and lived for years in the seclusion of that province, but he was on the Sea of Galilee. I could talk for long enough at that. You're listening, I expected more to be sleeping now, but you're listening well.

And I'll not go over, I'll be concise. What about the boat? What about the fish? What about the nets? What about the day that he told Peter to go and put in a hook? All of those were techniques, the casting net and the drag net. All of those were techniques that the Savior observed on the Sea of Galilee.

And he took the common objects and he interwoven them into his ministry and into his parables. The Sea of Galilee, I say, it will never be forgotten. And a simple little lake, a dozen miles long and seven miles wide.

It's a little lake, a little patch of water. In this world, by American standards, it would seem to be minuscule. It's lifted.

It's lifted to eternal fame because on that wave, once the Savior used it as a pavement for his feet. And we appreciate Jesus of Galilee on the Sea. What about the storms of Galilee? That was very significant.

There were no storms in that sense in Jerusalem, but there were storms in Galilee. And the Savior was there. Two different storms that the Bible tells us about, as you know very well, and very, very different they were.

In the first storm, I'm thinking of Mark chapter four, as opposed to the second storm in Mark chapter eight. The first one, the Savior was in the boat. The second one, he was on the mountain.

In the first storm, the disciples were so taken with the danger that they cried out in alarm, we are perishing. It was the danger that was really upsetting. In the second storm, there was no danger that they would sink.

That never appeared. But the problem in the second storm wasn't the danger of great big waves that were covering the boat. It was just an adverse headwind.

And it was the difficulty. They were toiling and rowing. And they were rowing.

There was a lot of effort. And they were putting in a lot of muscle. And they were making very, very little headway.

And he was watching them from his position in the mountain. And each one of those storms, well, I can't go into detail. Maybe there's a Christian here today, and you're in a storm of danger.

That hospital appointment, those difficulties that are coming into your life, those health concerns, things getting a little bit out of control. Maybe the little bark of your Christian experience is being buffeted by the billows of trial and all kinds of... And you wonder, where is this all going to end? I say, dear Christian, every tempest driven bark with Jesus as its guide shall soon be moored in heaven's calm, in glory to abide. I say, there's no danger absolutely secure.

Maybe there's a brother here, and it's not so much the danger. It's just the difficulty. Maybe it's a Sunday school teacher.

For all the effort you're putting into it, you're getting very little progress. Maybe it's an overseer. You're working hard.

You're giving your best. You're toiling and rowing. And you couldn't pinpoint just that much headway.

Oh, the Savior knows all about it. And I say, dear Christians, in those storms of Galilee, those disciples got to know Christ in a way in which they could never have known him without the storm. And I say, that's what the Savior still does with us.

In the difficulties of life, he draws near, he speaks his word, he gives to us his presence, and he makes himself real with an intimacy which we don't enjoy in the brighter and in the better days when we're basking in the sunlight of success. You have heard all of those stories preached, and rightly so. The storms of Galilee, they meant a lot to the Savior.

What about the solitudes of Galilee? There are two particular verbs that are used here in this connection. We're told concerning the Lord Jesus when he was staying in Peter's house, that rising up a great while before day, he went out, and he departed into a solitary place, into a desert place, and he there prayed. He rose up while the other people were still sleeping.

He went out of the house, and he departed from the village, and he immersed himself and his soul in the isolation of those wilderness places. Just there he went out. Another time we're told that he went up.

He went up into a mountain, and there prayed. And away from all the bustle, and from all the claims upon his attention, and from all the demands of the people, and the disciples could come and say, Lord, they're looking you to preach. They're looking you to preach.

They're looking for you. You better come. No, the Savior punctuated his busy service with times of solitude and times of silence.

He went out, away from other people, away from distractions, away from noise, away from activity. He went out, and he went up. And when he came back down, and when he came back in, his service had been enriched and refreshed by new communion with heaven itself.

Tell me this, just as I give it a little practical application for a minute. What about your life? Do you go out? Do you ever switch off? I speak to my younger friends. Have you a place where you cut off all connection? No text messages, no Instagram, no Facebook, no emails.

You just go out, away from the friend. Oh, there are times that you'll need friends. And make sure you have good friends.

And I say here that not all Christian friends are good friends. If you find yourself mingling with friends, and their mind is full of frivolity, just carelessness and carnality, that's not the company for you. You'd better spending time alone, alone with thee, oh master, where the light of earthly glory dies, misunderstood by all.

I dare to do what thine own hearts would pray. I've been impressed by so many younger people here. You know, I wonder, will all the younger people here make it for God? We live in a world where social media is very intrusive.

We're always on demand. We're always answering calls. We're always in contact with this one, and that one, and the other one.

And we have almost lost contact with heaven. I say to my Christian friends, there are times when you have to pull the plug, switch it off, turn down the noise, get away from it. If my blessed Lord visited the solitudes of Galilee, and he went out, then go up, rise in prayer, and fill your spiritual lungs with the oxygen of another world.

Become acquainted with things that are holy, and things that are heavenly. And when you come back down and you rise to worship, there'll be a depth in your worship, and there'll be a power in your preaching, and there'll be an unction in your testimony. Young men, go out and go up, and learn to cultivate the silence of solitude.

Talk about me time. I hear this talk about me time. It's a pile of nonsense.

It's not so much me time that we need. It's time spent alone with God, in the deepening and in the development of our communion, and the reading of our lives, of the awful shallowness, the shallowness that the social activity of our age is producing. And there's just robbiness of power with God.

But thank God for the solitudes of Galilee. Maybe I'll just say a little bit about the school of Galilee. You know, the Lord, he called a number of men.

None of them were professional men. None of them were highly educated. Education is fine.

Professionalism is fine. But in the things of God, it's not essential, and it's not a substitute for spirituality. The Savior called those men.

They stayed with him. They walked with him. They listened to him.

They lived with him. They ate at the same table. They sailed on the boat with him.

And over a period of three years, in the college of Christ, he trained those men. And when he went back to heaven, that little band of men were able to conquer the world for God. The school of Galilee, it's a good, you know, I don't know if it's come here, but there's a philosophy back in our own country that we need to have men that are seminary trained.

What do you think about that? Seminary trained. We need to have men that go to theological college. I'll say today, even though I might be hung for it, if we degenerate to that, seminary trained men and college trained men, it's the rock upon which assembly testimony will perish.

I believe we need men that are trained. But you say, where are you going to send them? Where's the college where they'll get the training? The local assembly. That's the college.

And it's not the learning of Greek and not the learning of Hebrew. No problem with those languages. It's the learning of God and company with Christ that will develop the character and the soul of a man that will be useful in service.

And the Lord Jesus used those different areas in Galilee as a school, a seminary, if you like Christ college and the seminary of the savior. And he trained those men and sent them forth. I say, and they turned to use the language of the X. They turned the world upside down when it all was over.

He had been to the cross. It was quite a momentous time when he left Galilee and he headed south to Golgotha. And just before he went to the cross, he told his disciples, he said, I'll rise again.

And he says, I'll go before you into Galilee. He said, I'm going to give you a fresh start. They all failed them.

They all forsook them and fled. You'll say all the training that these men received, it seemed to be just for nothing because they collapsed in the final crisis. The savior didn't, the savior didn't rubbish the man.

He said, no, I'll go before you into Galilee. And he says, man, where it all started, he said, we'll start there again. And he said, I'll give you another chance on resurrection ground.

I'll give you the Holy spirit. And he said, and so he took them. I think our brother read it last night or at least refer to it.

He took them to a summit in Galilee. That was the high point. And just on that high mountain, it seems to me as if the savior surveyed the world and he looked across the dispensation.

He said, all power in heaven and earth is given unto me. And from this summit, he says, you men move out and make disciples with your preaching and mark disciples by baptizing them on mold disciples by teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And thank God the commission is valid still.

And we're still seeking, still seeking to just advance the work that the savior announced and the great commission from the summit in Galilee, the great mountain that concludes the gospel. According to Matthew, I say, don't we value Jesus of Galilee. I can hardly stop.

I just, I think I have a note of it here. A lady wrote to him. She didn't live so very far from here.

One of your own country persons and fancy. I stood by the shore one day of the beautiful murmuring sea. I saw the great crowds as they thronged the way of the stranger of Galilee.

I saw how the man who was blind from birth in a moment was made to see the lame was made whole by the matchless skill of the stranger of Galilee. And I felt I could love him forever. So gracious and tender was he.

I claimed them that day as my savior, a stranger of Galilee. Isn't it good dear believers that he not only went to Galilee, but one day he visited Garneville. He's not a stranger here.

We know him. We love him. We seek to obey him.

We will soon meet them in the air. And when we arrive in scenes of everlasting glory from Garneville to glory for all eternity, we'll remember Jesus of Galilee and thank him that he ever came there and that he ever came here and that he ever went to Golgotha and will take us to be with him in the bliss of eternal ages. I trust the Lord will help us.

There's nothing as important in a conference as just having a fresh appreciation of Christ. Dear brethren and sisters, what's it all about? I know that you have problems with him and you have problems with her and you have difficulties in the assembly and there are discouragements and there are relationship challenges. Oh, we have it all.

And times we feel like walking out and going away because of him and her on that one. Forget about them. It's all for him.

May God help us to have a clear focus on his matchless grace and his faithless glory. Thank God for the stranger, the savior, Jesus of Galilee. Let us pray.