What is the Straightened Way? Part 9

Introduction: The Restricted Way and Resistance to the World

0:03 The following message was delivered on Sunday evening, October 2nd, 1994, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. The vast majority of you who are here this evening were with us in our morning hour of worship, and you will already be aware of the fact that our communion meditation tonight is in fact the final installment in a series of messages entitled, Are You for Real? And furthermore, our meditation tonight is really the conclusion of the message preached in the morning hour.

0:46 With Matthew 7, 13, and 14 before us, I sought to demonstrate from the scriptures that that restricted, that pressured, that straightened way which leads to life is a way... a way comprised of an extension into every area of life throughout the entirety of one's life, of the great issues of life confronted and resolved at the narrow gate.

1:19 And this morning we were examining the fourth element of that restricted or pressured way. And I described it as the way of living in constant resistance, to the world's efforts to seduce us back to its governing passions, its regulating perspectives, and its companions. And we saw from the scriptures that whatever struggles real Christians may have with this constant effort of the world to seduce us, whatever defeats we may have, no true Christian ever comes...

2:02 is under a prevailing love of the world. For the Spirit of God has said, If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And therefore, the true believer, the one who is for real, resists the world's efforts to seduce him back to its governing passions of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the vain glory of life. He resists the world's efforts to seduce him back to its regulating perspectives in which it is preoccupied with the temporal as opposed to the eternal, the external as opposed to the internal, the physical as opposed to the spiritual, and the earthly as opposed to the heavenly. And finally, we saw that the true Christian resists the world's efforts to seduce him back to a compromising association with its own subjects. Anyone who would dull our ardor for Christ, anyone who would detract us from full-souled obedience to Christ, we will refuse to have as a Christian. He is our friend.

The Grace to Resist Secured by Christ's Death and Intercession

3:30 Now tonight, we take up the question, by what power, by what influence or combination of influences are those who are for real enabled to offer this resistance to the world to the end of their earthly pilgrimage? For he that endures to the end shall be saved. And as someone has rightly turned that text, and he who is saved will endure to the end. But now by what power, by what influence or combination of influences do those who are for real overcome the constant efforts of the world to seduce them back into its ways? And I would like to set before you, as our communion meditation, that there are at least three dominant influences which God, in His Word, reveals as those factors which enable those who are for real to resist the world's seducing influence even to the end of their days. And the first is this,

4:59 the grace to resist the world is secured for all the true people of God by the death and the intercession of Christ. The grace to resist the world is secured for all the true people of God by the death and the intercession of Christ. First of all, it is secured for them by His death. Turn with me, please, to Galatians chapter 1.

5:37 Galatians chapter 1.

5:42 In his apostolic greeting to the Galatian church or churches, the apostle writes in verse 3, Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace. This common apostolic greeting in which grace and peace are said to flow down upon the community of God's people from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ is one of the most powerful indirect attestations of the full deity of the Lord Jesus. For who but one who is God can have sufficiency, of grace and peace to answer to the needs of all of the people of God at one time scattered throughout the whole world. And this Lord Jesus Christ is then described in verse 4 as follows, Who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of this present evil world according to His will. According to His will. According to His will.

7:02 According to His will. According to His will. According to the will of our God and Father. Now in these words there are at least three very simple obvious statements of reality.

7:16 First, that Christ voluntarily gave Himself in the behalf of our sins. We have a direct reference here to substitutionary sin bearing. This Lord Jesus from whom we receive grace and peace along with the grace and peace from God the Father is identified as the one who gave Himself for our sins. And that terminology means nothing more or less than a statement of substitutionary sin bearing on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is described more graphically in chapter 3 as substitutionary curse bearing. For the result of a broken law is the curse of God upon the law breaker. And in chapter 3 we read in verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us for it is written, Uncursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.

8:36 So the statement that is obvious in the text is that Christ voluntarily gave Himself on behalf of our sins. But the second truth that is very obvious on the surface of the text is this. He did this to the end that He might deliver us out of this present evil world. He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of this present evil age or world.

9:14 Now there are times when the word age is used with reference to this evil age in which case the focus is more upon the time frame in which this state of affairs will exist. The other passages that we've considered use the word cosmos or world this order of things but there is no essential difference in the thing itself. And we are to understand in these words that the purpose of the death of Christ was to deliver us out of this present evil world. Not to deliver us ultimately at the end of the age but to deliver us now in the virtue of His death on our behalf. Albert Barnes in his commentary on the New Testament writes as follows commenting on this verse. Here it means the world as it is without religion. A world of bad passions, false opinions, corrupt desires.

10:27 A world full of ambition and the love of pleasure and of gold. A world where God is not loved or obeyed. A world where men are regardless of right and truth and duty where they live for themselves and not for God. In short, that great community which in the scriptures is called the world in contradistinction from the kingdom of God.

10:53 That world, that evil world is full of sin and the object of the Redeemer, was to deliver us from that. That is to effect a separation between His followers and that world. It follows therefore that His followers constitute a peculiar community not governed by the prevailing maxims or influenced by the peculiar feelings of the people of this world. And it follows that if there is not in fact, such a separation, then the purpose of the Redeemer's death in regard to us has not been effected and we are still a part of that great and ungodly community designated as the world. Christ's death had as one of its purposes that He might deliver us out of this present, evil world. And the third thing that is plain in our text is that He did this in keeping with the eternal plan and purpose of His Father who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of this present evil world

12:21 according to the will of our God and Father. So that this purpose, of the Lord Jesus, in voluntarily giving Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world was no afterthought in the mind and heart of God, was no independent desire of the Lord Jesus, but rather, it was but the unfolding of the plan and purpose of God the Father. Now what is secured by the death of Christ in keeping with the plan and purpose of the Father cannot fail to come to pass. Whatever is secured by the death of Christ in keeping with the plan and purpose of the Father cannot fail to come to pass. Therefore, if Christ died for our sins, in order to die and deliver us out of this present evil world, and that according to the will of our God and Father, then every single child of God who enters into the benefit and virtue of the death of Christ

13:48 will infallibly be delivered from this present evil world. If it were not so, then the purpose of the death of Christ, according to the eternal plan of the Father, would be frustrated by man the creature, and that is tantamount to blasphemy. But it is not only secured by his death, it is secured by his intercession. In Hebrews 7 and verse 25, in a section of the epistle to the Hebrews, in which our Lord Jesus Christ is set before us in terms of the better covenant, and the better sacrifice, and the better priesthood, here our Lord Jesus is set before us as this ever-living priest after the order of Melchizedek. And we read in verse 25 of chapter 7, wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost, save completely them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever lives, to make intercession for them. Now the connection I want you to see in the passage is this,

15:16 that the certainty of the saving work of Christ on behalf of his people is here rooted in the efficacy of his intercession. He is able to save to the uttermost seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them. His intercession for his own cannot fail to see its fruition in his people. Now what is it that he prays for his own?

15:53 We go back to the passage read at the beginning of this morning's ministry in John 17. Most responsible commentators believe that in this chapter, though there are certain things in the prayer that have a temporal boundary with respect to the immediate disciples of Christ, that here we have at least in principle the pattern of our Lord's ongoing ministry of intercession at the right hand of the Father. And one of the things for which he prays is this, John 17 and verse 15. I pray not that you should take them from the world or out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil of that world or the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth thy word is truth as you did send me into the world even so sent I them into the world and for their sakes I sanctify myself that they themselves may be sanctified in truth. What is our Lord praying for his own?

17:15 He is praying that as he himself was sent into this world with a mission to rescue sinners out of it without ever being contaminated by it, so having brought us to himself, having brought his own to himself, he is not praying that the Father should remove them out of the world, but that they should be preserved from the evil of that world or the evil one who is behind all of the actings of that world system that is constantly seeking to seduce the people of God back within the orbit of its influence. But because the intercession of Christ is based upon the once for all sacrifice of Christ and he infallibly secures by his intercession that which he righteously secured by his oblation the cause of any Christian being able as a pattern of life to resist the seductive power of the world, rests down upon the death and the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we contemplate coming to the Lord's table tonight,

18:44 would it not be appropriate as we see the symbol of the body which he assumed for us, the body in which, according to Peter, he carried our sins up to the tree. As we see the cup and the fruit of the vine within it representing the blood which was shed for us, not only to pray afresh, O Lord Jesus, may the purpose for which your body was assumed and given up in death, that body in which you carried my sins up to the tree, may the virtue of that death, the virtue of the blood poured forth on my behalf. Lord Jesus, will you not grant grace that I shall not be bewitched and I will not be seduced by all of the subtle influences of the world because you died to deliver me out of this present evil world according to the will of your Father. And you pray for me that I might be kept from the evil of this world. And not only to make it our petition, but to go even beyond that and to make a fresh affirmation of faith and say, Lord Jesus, because you died and because you intercede,

20:09 I shall not be brought back into the embrace of the harlot of this world. Because you died and you intercede that it shall never be so. By what power? By what influence?

The Grace to Resist Conveyed in the New Birth and Faith in Jesus as Son of God

20:27 Are those upon the restricted way enabled constantly to resist the seducing influence of the world? I answer by saying that the power so to resist rests down upon the death and the intercession of Christ. But then secondly, the grace to resist the world is controlled and conveyed in the new birth producing a life of faith in Jesus as the Son of God. That's the second great influence that enables us constantly to resist the seducing power of the world. The grace to resist the world is conveyed in the new birth producing a life of faith in Jesus as the Son of God. Turn please to 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5.

21:31 In addition to the Galatians 1, 3 and 4 passage, here is our second key passage for our meditation this evening. 1 John chapter 5, verses 4 and 5. For whatsoever is begotten of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.

22:05 And who is he that overcomes the world but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Now once again, notice the truths that lie on the very surface of this text. And the first is this. Only those begotten of God have power to overcome the world.

22:29 For whatsoever is begotten of God overcomes the world. That which is not begotten of God is part of the world and has no power to overcome it. Only those begotten of God overcome the world, but all of those begotten of God do overcome the world, for whatsoever is begotten of God overcomes the world. And that the whatsoever refers to people is clear from verse 5.

23:04 And who is he that overcomes the world? So it is not things that are begotten of God, but it is people. And he says, whatsoever is begotten of God without exception is overcoming the world. The divine begetting secures that all who are thus begotten will be overcomers with respect to the world.

23:34 Not perfect overcomers, not overcomers with equal vigor at every point in their pilgrimage, at every place along the restricted way between getting through the gate and crossing the river and entering into life, but the pattern of their lives is one described by John. All who are divinely begotten are overcomers of the world. The third truth that lies on the surface of the text is this. The primary grace exercised in overcoming the world is that faith which is the fruit of the divine begetting. Look at verse 4b. And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. He that is begotten of God, or more correctly, whatsoever is begotten of God overcomes the world.

24:40 And the question is asked, well, what is there in the divine begetting that enables one to overcome the world? The answer is this. And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. That faith which is the fruit and result of the divine begetting is the dominant grace in the ability to overcome the world.

25:06 But it is not faith in some gentle sense. But look at the next part of the text. And this is the fourth truth that lies on the surface of the passage. The primary focus of that faith is the person of Jesus as the Son of God.

25:26 And who is he that overcomes the world? Not simply he that believes, believes strongly, but believes anything, as though faith in and of itself were the overcoming grace. No. Who is he that overcomes the world?

25:42 This one who by believing has obtained the victory? It is he that believes that Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, is none other in his identity and mission than the Son of God. It is constant faith in the identity of Jesus as Son of God that in a unique way is the means of our overcoming the world. Now what's the relationship between believing in Jesus as Son of God and overcoming the world?

26:24 Well, just think back through what we saw from Galatians chapter 1. He came, Son of Mary, yet Son of God. And he came on a mission. And that mission was to deliver a people out of this present evil world.

26:44 And he gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father. And that Jesus is none other than the Son of God. He brings to his work all the plenitude of Godhood and all the virtue and power of undiluted deity. He is Son of God.

27:13 And as our faith is fixed upon him, as with the eyes of the soul we behold him, in his own overcoming power. When the enemy turned the turbines of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, and sought to suck the Lord Jesus into that machinery and the wilderness temptation, it was the Son of God. It was Jesus as Son of God who resisted and overcame. And in his strength we too are enabled to overcome.

27:54 And let me say to you who are in the world, you have never come through the narrow gate. You have never entered upon this restricted way in which the world's seducing influence is constantly resisted because you are meshed in all the machinery driven by the three turbines of the world's passions. Your whole life is framed by all of those perspectives of the world geared to the temporal with indifference to the eternal. Concerned with the external and not the internal.

28:32 Concerned with the earthly and not the heavenly. I say to you my unconverted friend, there's no way that you'll ever get out of the ensnarement of the world's power unless you are born of God. It's only the one born of God that overcomes the world. And if God is pleased to grant you spiritual life, the first manifestation of it will be you will lay hold of Christ Jesus, Son of God, in the death grip of saving faith, pleading that He would rescue you from that machinery, from being enmeshed in that whole complex structure of the world that dictates your thoughts and your goals and is the force and driving passion behind all of your dreams and your fantasies. It is only the new birth, it is only union with the Son of God that can bring you out of the horrible enmeshment of this world's system. But for you children of God, the grace to resist this world is conveyed in the new birth, producing the life of faith in Jesus as the Son of God. So what are we to do here at the table?

29:59 We are to renew our actings of faith in the person of Christ as Son of God. Sure, we look about us and see a world system that grows increasingly brazen in its efforts to seduce us and squeeze us into its mold, to use the language of Romans 12 and verse 2. A world system that is increasingly indifferent to all of the norms of God and of His ways. What hope do we have if we by faith are united to the Son of God?

30:37 The very virtue and power of Christ is at work in us through the Spirit. Peter goes so far as to say that we have become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the pollution that is in the world through lust. So in answer to the question, by what power, by what combination of influences can we continually resist the seducing power of the world as we walk upon the restricted way, I answer, not only must we see that strength to do so as procured by the death of Christ and secured by His intercession, but to see that it is conveyed in the new birth, producing a life of faith in Jesus as the Son of God. And thirdly and finally, the grace to resist the world is sustained by a constant spirit enlightened glorying in the cross of Christ. The grace to resist the world is sustained by a constant spirit enlightened glorying in the cross of Christ. And here we go back to the book of Galatians

The Grace to Resist Sustained by Glorying in the Cross of Christ

32:03 and now chapter 6 and verse 14. Paul is dealing with these Judaizers who every time they can get a Gentile to be circumcised, to be circumcised and commit himself to keep the ritual laws of Moses, they put a notch as it were on the rifle of their heretical conquests and they boast and they glory in the flesh of others. And Paul says in such a setting, verse 14, but far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified unto me and I unto the world. One of the most amazing statements in all of the New Testament. Paul says you Judaizers want to boast in those that you've taken to the local rabbi and those that now are scrupulous about buying only kosher foods and going through Jewish feasts and fasts and holy days and all the rest. You want to boast in that?

33:20 Here is my focal point of boasting. It is the Lord Jesus Christ but particularly His cross, His death upon that cross as a substitute for sinners. I will glory in nothing, he says, save the cross. And by that he did not mean some object that would physically represent to his eyes like the Roman Catholic crucifix.

33:47 He did not mean some physical representation of the cross. He meant all of the spiritual realities bound up in the substitutionary curse bearing of the Son of God. He says, God forbid, far be it from me to glory save in the cross the death of the Lord Jesus Christ through which, he could have said, my sins have been pardoned and all the typical rituals have been fulfilled and it would have been true. But rather, he says, through which the world has been crucified unto me and I unto the world.

34:29 Now no one here has ever seen a person crucified. In that day, perhaps, some of these Galatians had but it was well known throughout Roman society what crucifixion means and what it was like. It was a horrible, horrible method of execution reserved generally for slaves and social outcasts. When you wanted to demean a man to his very last breath, the way you got rid of him was by crucifixion.

35:02 And Paul says this world, this world system with its turbines of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, this world system with its perspectives of preoccupation with external as opposed to internal, temporal as opposed to eternal and all the other things that frame and shape its whole perspective and actings, he says this world has as much attraction to me as a man who has been brutalized, impaled and hung up on a cross and the buzzards are hovering over his head ready to pluck out his eyes and pick the flesh off his bones. He said this world has as much attraction to me as a man dying or already dead upon a cross, a sight that was sickening, nauseating. A tender, feminine soul would turn away in horror and some might wretch and vomit. And he says through the cross of Christ this world has as much attraction to me

36:25 as a man dying upon a cross. And he said furthermore I am as attractive to this world as somebody who is already on a cross. For not only does he say is the world crucified unto me but I unto the world. Now what's he saying?

36:50 Well I certainly don't understand the depth and the breadth of what the apostle understood when he wrote these words but surely he was saying this much. You want to know what that seductress really looks like and I use that imagery continually this morning because it's biblical. In James chapter 4 James writes to a group of professing Christians and calls them adulteresses saying adulterers do you not know that the friendship of this world is enmity with God? He takes over the imagery from the Old Testament where covenant breaking and the heart going astray from Jehovah after other gods was likened to spiritual adultery in language that would cause some of you to blush you're more fastidious than God. I won't even quote some of the language but it's graphic it's coarse therefore to use that imagery is thoroughly biblical. And what is it that will make us see through the apparent attractiveness of the bared thigh and the exposed cleavage and the wink and the whisper of this world's seduction? You take the cross of Christ and what it really signifies and you place that between you and the world and you know what the world will look like?

38:14 The ugly wrinkled witch that she really is. And she'll lose all to seduce. Can you imagine a woman with face as wrinkled as the witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs baring her thigh and showing her cleavage and winking and trying to seduce a red-blooded adult male? Unthinkable.

38:47 That's right. And to Paul that's what this world was. Why? He viewed it through the cross There was one time when the world this system had God in its hands only once only once for 33 years God in the person of the Lord Jesus dwelt among us in true flesh and blood humanity joined to his essential undiluted eternal deity and what did man do to him?

39:22 Man called him crazy said he was out of his tree man looked at him and said oh yes he's doing great miracles but he's in league with the devil and that's how he's able to do it man took him spat upon him beat him with fists rods plucked his beard pressed a crown of thorn upon him and said he's worthy of nothing less than the most shameful death a man can be given in our society put him on a cross and it was this world's system in its more raw pagan form of the elements of the Roman government and its part in the crucifixion of Christ and it was the world in its more refined religious expressions in the Sanhedrin and the chief priests and the scribes and the religious leaders whose whole occupation was external and not internal whose whole concern in religion was these things the eye of men and not the eye of God and when this world in its pagan representation with Rome in its religious representation in the Jews had its hands upon the Son of God what did it think of him it said away with him crucify him and it put him on a cross and Paul says

40:48 when I look at this world's system yes it does have its powerful turbines of the passions of the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and it was the very exposure of those things that stirred up that machinery to turn against the Son of God for this is the condemnation Jesus said that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil neither will they come to the light Jesus said if they've hated me they will hate you and they did hate him for what for the exposure of his life and words to the emptiness to the demonic nature of this world's system this world with its values of the temporal as opposed to the eternal the external as opposed to the internal he exposed it by his life and by his words the world said there's only one thing to do with a man like this let's get rid of him put him on a cross and when we have seen in the immolated outcast rejected Son of God the Lord of glory humiliated laying down his life for our sins that we might be delivered out of the clutches of that very system that put him to death you put the cross of Christ between you and the world

42:16 and she will appear for the shriveled witch that she really is and no man in his right mind would think he could find any pleasure laying his head in her bosom that's what the cross did for us he says I glory in this cross through which the world is crucified to me and here's the great problem for some of you your struggles with the world would soon in great measure end in many areas if you became so identified with Christ and the purpose for which he died namely to deliver you out of this present evil world so that your perspectives and your talk and your dress and your words and your conduct in the school and in the home and in the shop and in the neighborhood reflected at every point that through the virtue of the death of Christ you've been delivered out of this world you live by heavenly standards and heavenly goals with heavenly ambitions and with a likeness to your Father who is in heaven as reflected in the face of God and in the face of Christ and it won't be long before the great mass of worldlings will say of you you are as desirous to me as the man upon the cross

Practical Application: Living Crucified to the World

43:44 you see frankly teenagers I want to talk to you out of my heart I can't understand why some of you struggle about your so called friends when the Lord saved me and Christ became to me the pearl of great price all my friends brought me but one he was the guy that played end on our football team Louis Hardball was his name and he was the one guy that was willing to have me as a man back from the dead to have me with my whole new set of standards no more dirty jokes no more foul mouth of the things that mark the worldlings of my day which in many ways were nowhere near as gross as the things that mark the worldlings of your day the moment I began by the grace of Christ in the power and virtue of the new birth and that faith attachment to Christ began to live and speak as one who was on the narrow road in which the world's frowns and acceptance meant nothing to me I didn't have trouble choosing my friends they made the choice for me treated me like I had a skunk under each armpit and a bag of them in my breeches except one who was willing to have me as a friend with my savior maybe the problem with some of you that name the name of Christ and your struggle with friends

45:13 is you really haven't come clean from the world there's not enough about you to make the world start to regard you as being as attractive as a cadaver on a tree I don't mean you go around abrasive looking for trouble you just begin to live as one whose life declares Jesus Christ as Son of God is the pearl of great price to me pleasing Him in the slightest detail of my life to the biggest issues of life is all that matters in this life and if I've got to be the only classroom who wears a modest skirt that doesn't bear my I'm willing to have all you ready for that then don't say you love Christ that's what it means when the world's of dress is knowing because my says as a woman I am to dress in modesty how's that for starters now you want to take it right down the line

46:42 everybody's talking about the latest group rap group rock group you've said as for me I will not expose my ears to the foul language to the angry social anarchy in the rap music I will not expose my ears to the demon driven vocal cord judgment jumping around in demonic frenzy music of the rock scene and I'll be blissfully ignorant of the groups that everyone's talking about and be willing to look upon be looked upon like someone who's living on another planet to be identified with my Lord Jesus the scripture says whether I eat whether I drink whatsoever I do to all to the glory of God I defy to bow over a CD or a cassette of that kind of music and say now Lord Jesus I glorify you allowing these things to register on my brain and try to do it to be right for God to strike you dead in the midst of your arrogance dear people this world is no friend of grace to help us under God

48:10 this idea that the way you'll win them is to be like them is sheer nonsense the church never has more power to win the world when she is most unlike the world and there's only one thing powerful enough to keep the world crucified to us and that's the cross on which Christ died it is there that the world is exposed for what it is look upon it no matter what aspect of the world you're contemplating look upon it through the eyes of the cross of Christ and the world will be crucified to you and you unto the world as we come to the Lord's table taking the emblems of the blood that he shed and the body that was broken may we ask God to etch upon our eyeball the figure of the cross so that whatever we look at is seen through the eyes of the cross that the world is that system that put the Son of God to death the world is that system that will hate all those who identify with him by what power can we resist the seducing influence of the world

Conclusion and Prayer

49:39 I say at least in part the answer of scripture is threefold it is in the virtue of the death and intercession of Christ that grace is given the grace to resist the world is conveyed in the new birth producing a life of faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the grace to resist the world is sustained by a constant spirit brought glory in the cross of Christ let us pray our Father we do earnestly pray that you would take us all in hand and show us with renewed understanding how much we have allowed the world to seduce us and that we would know fresh measures of grace to be honest with our own hearts and honest before your word and we pray that in the virtue of the death and intercession of your Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit imparted to us when you gave us new life

51:00 and united us to your Son by faith and by that view of the world through the eyes of the cross we may be given the grace to resist every form of its seducing influence whether blatant or subtle that we may more and more be those in whom the Lord Jesus sees the fruit of his sufferings as we become more and more of people dead to this world and alive unto you in Christ Jesus continue with us as we come to the table may we know the gracious presence of your Spirit taking these emblems and sealing the realities they represent to each one of our hearts we ask in Jesus name Amen