Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 12 Week 2

So we are in Lesson 12, and we had just started it last week. Am I right, Lesson 12? I hope I'm right. So we started out, when we went into Lesson 12 last week, what would God have to do if He discovered the slightest merit in the sinner? What would He have to do? To be obligated to recognize it and deal with it as such. That man would have some sort of merit. What we've been focusing on the last couple of classes is trying to distinguish not only what grace is but what it isn't. And I think we have misconceptions sometimes about what grace isn't.

Question two was that Galatians 3.22, why is Galatians 3.22 a benefit to all sinners? And here's the quote. But the scripture has confined all understand that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Why is that a benefit to all sinners? Is it a benefit? How many think it is a benefit? I've only got a couple that think it is. Why is it a benefit? That's pretty good.

It's for the sole purpose that grace might be exercised towards men. The human family has been placed under divine judicial sentence of sin. Humanity is under the divine judicial sentence of sin. good place to start because from that position God can exercise grace and that's what makes it beneficial.

Combine the last two questions, if you were or had the least amount of merit that God could discover in you then he wouldn't be able to deal with you in grace. Do you see that? It's really important to understand that. It is therefore imperative that every vestige of human merit shall be set aside completely if an opportunity is provided whereby pure grace may be exercised in the salvation of men. All have to be under sin in order for God to exercise pure grace.

Okay with that? And that principle never changes. So, down to question three. The following is a true statement. Man is permitted to do nothing until God has done all that His grace designs. Man is permitted to do nothing until God has done all that His grace designs.

What do you think? Remember we talked about this? Remember this part? What was this part? What's this part? God loves me. I love him because he first loved me. What's this part? I obey him because I love him because he first loved me. And over here is he's going to reward me because I've obeyed him because I love him because he first loved me.

So with that in mind, Why a man is permitted to do nothing until God has done all that His grace designed? Is this too complicated? He is permitted to do nothing. What's that? I think he is permitted to do nothing. He's permitted to do nothing. He does all kinds of things, but he doesn't do anything that's of any benefit. Right? Well, the lost sinner, has he ever done anything to please God? No. So he's not permitted to do anything, if you understand, that would be pleasing to God. Because if he did, then grace goes out the window. And then, let's talk about the believer.

How about the believer's quote-unquote good works? So can you and I go to God and say, how about them works? It's like, how about them cowboys? How about them works? What is God going to say? What is he going to say? What's his attitude going to be? Is he really glad that you all got up and got to church this morning? You're not very responsive today. created unto good works that you could walk in them? Well, you missed a part. What's the other part?

That God foreordained that you should walk in them. So who acts first? God does. He acts in grace and we respond. So it's interesting, the identification truths that we just went through. Is there anything on this side of the cross that's pleasing to God? No. The problem is that we are positioned on this side in the resurrected Christ, but we still have a sin nature that wants to rule and control us. And there's nothing in that sin nature, nothing in the activity produced by it, that's pleasing to God. So God has to act first in grace. He did. He did. What did He do? He crucified the thing that's unacceptable to Him, which is your sin. the great works that we do.

If we think we need something from God, that makes God a debtor. Yes. And we can't make God a debtor. We can't. So if He owes us anything, He raises it again. And there is that tendency in our minds to put God in a position where He owes me. Or we even ask Him. Don't we go to Him and say, Tell me what I can do to get you to bless me.

What does that do? It puts me in the driver's seat. Grace means that I'm not in the driver's seat. I'm the receiver. I think it's a two-edged sword. We do that. We try to look at how good I am, so why aren't you rewarding me? I think the other is just as damaging. is that I'm such a lowly sinner that God can't love me, can't do anything, won't respond. But grace is negated on both. Grace would be negated on both if that is true. If bad actions create bad outcomes, other than the child training part. There's child training with the chastening and all that.

If I sin, I confess it to my fellow seekers, but there is no ending of the grace. So I think it's on both sides, the blessings and the sin side. You know, we see how great and wonderful and I should be blessed. But on the other side, I think people get so wrapped up in their sin that God can't use me, can't do anything, woe is me and all this.

And I think it's just as important on that side to understand that He loves you no matter what. I'm standing out in front, when I'm a Christian, like two years, I'm standing out in front of the mission that I worked in. Here comes this guy down the street, street guy. And so I'm being as cool as I could possibly be.

I said, why don't you come inside? He said, I'm not worthy. I'm too much of a sinner. God couldn't accept me. And the guy standing next to me, you know what he said to him? He said, you're too proud to come in. That was really the truth though, wasn't it? He was too proud to come in. I thought, wow, that was a real revelation to me. Was that really right? Yeah, it was. The guy was, hey, I'm too big of a sinner for you to be able to do anything about it. Nonsense.

That's a statement of I know better than God. That's right. I know better than God. I know how God thinks. He can't tell me, you know. Actually what I'm after there was that good works grow out of and are made possible by the gracious work of God. And so it's the order I'm after. God works first, I respond. You see that? That's really what I'm after in that question.

And so I'm not permitted to do anything that's acceptable to God until He's done something first. So sometimes, if we have the attitude like Courtney is describing, we will challenge God to do something when he's waiting for us to shut up, to stop. And when he does, when we do, we find his grace has been there all along.

On both ends of the equation it's the old man doing it. Yes it is. The old man wants to do something and be rewarded for it. The old man is telling you what a lowly scum you are and you can't receive grace, you can't receive love. I think it's a realization on both ends that it's the old man the sin nature that is prompting that.

It's not what you don't believe that God's grace is able to do. The other guy at the mission, depending on where his heart was, he might have really not understood grace and thought that was a true sin. Well, the conversation lasted more time than what I just described, because we were talking to him about coming in. He claimed to be a Christian, but he claimed to have fallen away to the point where God wouldn't forgive him or couldn't forgive him. Wouldn't, but couldn't. And so we were being real persuasive until my buddy says, well, you're just too proud to come in. I thought, well, way to run him off, buddy. But that was the right thing to say to him. Because then he was unmasked, you know.

So when does an act stop being gracious? doing the act expect some recognition or merit from it or repayment? Yeah. It stops being gracious when it is a recognition of merit or payment of a just debt. If you're like me, and you are, that way of thinking is hard to get over. It's really difficult to stop thinking like that. I'm hustling down the road because I want merit. I want recognition. What do you think Facebook is all about? Recognition. Merit. That's what it's really about. I don't care how much holy water you put on it. That's what it's really about.

So, the verse I had for question four was being justified freely by His grace. through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Everything starts with Christ and what he did. Everything starts there for us as believers. Everything starts there for non-believers. That's why last week we talked about, right at the end of class, I remember there are two admonitions in the scripture for believers and non-believers. One is for confession and the other is to believe. So which one is exhorted to believe? The non-believer. Is the non-believer ever exhorted to confess his sins? Never. Why? But a believer is exhorted to confess his sins for what purpose? To be restored to fellowship. By definition, we're already a believer.

So, when paying your tab in a restaurant, is the tip an act of grace? Why or why not? Some of you guys are cheapskates. If I was out to lunch with you, I'd have to keep an eye on the tab to make sure you covered it. Is a tip an act of grace? If I understood his notes, it is not because it's part of a transaction. You know these things they have now in the counters where you can print out your own bill? And then you can choose a tip. It always stops on 20 percent. On 20 percent, but they don't ever get that out of you, right? More out of me either. They start at 20 and then you can select. Yeah, they never get 20 out of me. That's why I usually have to add when we go out.

Hey, I paid last time. That's a gracious thing. Which means I don't have to get it back, right? You can pay next time too. Grace is no longer grace if it is complicated in the slightest degree with the payment of a just debt. So let's say I borrow $5 from Phil. So tomorrow I pay him back and I give him 50 cents. The 50 cents is not grace. It's tied to the bill. You see that?

It can never be that which is added to or part of a righteous transaction. So you can't say it's grace. You can't do a little more for God. Remember we've had a discussion, I forget who it was with in this class, one of the ladies, about good works. And the verse that Donna was quoting, we are to do good works that God foreordained that we should walk in them.

So let's say that he ordained that you're going to have five. Make it easy. Are you going to show up in the beam of judgment with six? Or four? What do you think? If he foreordained it, Are you going to show up with less than he foreordained? And if you really, really work hard, maybe one more?

No, because it wouldn't be grace. The Bema Judgment is all about rewards for grace. The whole thing is designed so that we can be rewarded by God's grace alone. And the way that we are going to lose rewards is when we were trying to add to the pile We were trying to do something that was more pleasing to God, a tip. A bounty may be added to a payment of a debt, an extra amount above the full measure due, but in no case should this extra amount be considered a matter of pure grace.

Because what do you do? We already talked about it. The percentage of what? Of the debt. It is tied to the debt. The character of the bounty thus added would, of necessity, be qualified to some extent by the relationship of the bounty to the debt. The tip or the bounty will be either more or less than it would have been had it stood alone. Inevitably, it will be affected to some degree by the righteous transaction with which it is combined. What about, you know, you read those stories where someone leaves, like, a thousand dollar tip with their lunch.

Oh, if it's more, then it must be grace, right? Yeah. 20% is grace. 21% is grace. Anything less than that. Yeah, what about that? What about that? Or, you know, a guy that puts one of those $1,500 gold coins in the red kettle. Is that grace? He made a mistake. Could be. He was reaching for a quarter. That might be grace.

Or how about like the millionaire, you know, the guy that young people don't remember, but you know. You know what makes that non-gracious? What was the first requirement? Everybody remember the series The Millionaire? Before a guy knocks on your door and says, okay, I forget the guy's name. Tipton was his name. He said, Mr. Tipton is going to give you a million dollars. But you have a couple of things you have to abide by.

Once he said that, it wasn't Grace anymore. Oh, because you couldn't tell anybody. That's right. It's not Grace anymore. If I'm going to give you a dollar, you know, it's got to be with no strings. It can't be tied in any debt. Just doing it. I'm going to throw this out there. So when we started this grace study, we defined it. And we said it was... Did I erase it? I erased part of it. You always erase my notes. So we defined it, right? We said it was the unlimited, unmerited, I think we left some of that up to time.

Favor of God, favor of God, based on the totally adequate worth of Christ. And we also looked at Aristotle's perspective on grace, which is really pretty close, but missed the fact that it was in favor of God and it was based on the totally adequate work of Christ. And so sometimes, and this is just a thought we can discuss, but when we're talking about Creature grace. Creature grace. Yeah. So the creator and his divine execution of grace versus the creation's execution of grace.

So I think we have divine grace. Then we have an attempt by maybe believers or unbelievers to act graciously in certain instances. And this could be done in payments or giving and things of that nature. And then you have believers extending grace that is 100% based on the work of God, I'm sorry, the favor of God through them, based on the totally adequate work of Christ. So I'm trying to define grace a little differently.

Graciousness, I think, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about human graciousness. Let me ask you a question right here. Is the Good Samaritan a gracious person? kind of talking about those different things, the way people behave. Whether they're believers or unbelievers, can they be gracious in the way that they behave? And I just wanted to go back to that definition to maybe help define it.

Because we're trying to communicate, can grace be tied to a debt? And the answer is no. But what if we're outside of the debt and you have an unbeliever giving beyond capacity to someone else? Is that grace? In and of itself. And if not, then what is human grace being extended to another human? What is that really? Beyond these like tipping and giving somebody something for free, basically. I think my answer would be this.

Not being able to judge the motives of the person who's not a believer in doing what they're doing graciously, I would say that... I don't know if I can make a blanket statement that says nobody in the flesh does anything without trying to get something back. It's just part of what they are. It's the way their sinful DNA is. Even to the point of...

If I do this, I'm going to feel good, then there's a reward to me. The second part of that is that when we're talking about pure grace here, we're talking about grace for righteousness before a holy God, and how we have defined grace as an environment that we live in. rather than individual acts. If we live in this environment that the operating principle is grace, how does it function? How does it work? And we're trying to go through, I think, the elements of how it does work, which includes my motivation for doing it. What motivates me as a believer to act in a gracious manner without any spoiling of merit or self-gratification or anything like that? How does that work?

I think that non-believers can be philanthropic. Maybe it's just the way I think. I always question their motives. If a really wealthy person gives a whole bunch of money to some organization, first of all I'm looking at the organization to see if they're legitimate, because most of them aren't. And two is, why did he do it? Was it a tax break? Was it for recognition? Why did he really, did he just do it because he's gracious?

I can't envision the sin nature of being gracious about anything because it's all about self. I think that's kind of where I'm going with this, is that for a non-believer, they don't have the capacity or the ability to extend grace biblically. Because they don't have the ability to determine what is unmerited. That's right. they are limited in the capacity of being able to give freely, and it's never based on the work of Christ. So by definition, biblical definition, we don't see, we can see philanthropy like you said, but it's not grace. No, it's not.

Now we may use graciousness as a term in a Webster's Dictionary kind of way, but biblically speaking, unbelievers cannot be gracious. So now the question is, How are believers gracious? Are they unlimited? Do they have the capacity and ability to act graciously in the way that God did? So that's another question. I was just going to throw this out. What could you say then that to enter into God's grace, the only way to do that is by faith?

That's true. That's a great statement. No action? That's right. Because faith is a non-meritorious act, isn't it? Somebody like Bill Gates, who has provided all of this mosquito netting, which has saved many, many lives. He's doing human good. It's not divine good. And he may have the best of motivation. He wants to help people. He may not be looking for approbation. Maybe not. He just wants to help, but he's still human good as opposed to divine good, isn't it?

I think so, and what I find... Again, I'm revealing my skeptical sin nature. When I'm watching television and they say such and such happened and it's going to save lives, I think, save what? God's the one that gives life and takes it away. You're not saving a thing. Maybe he, through Bill Gates, gave a bunch of mosquito netting and people didn't die, but they're still gonna. What did it save?

As long as there's life, there's hope. I guess. Hope for what? That they might come to Christ. That's true. That's true. You know what I'm saying, this whole concept in the world system of saving lives, I suppose if you're a non-believer and your destiny is hell, being saved from that for as long as you can is a good deal. But we as believers, Actually bailing out of here and getting to go home with the Lord is a plus, not a negative.

I hear what you're saying. I don't know. What I see with the Lord is what's interesting. He uses all the motives of man, whether they're genuine or not, to accomplish his purposes. All the time. You see it happening everywhere. Whatever they think they're doing, they're contributing to God's already plan that's in place. They may not ever have a clue that they did it, but they are.

I can think back because I met the Lord at 35 that there were several instances in my life where I was saved from dying. The car just missed me. I should have been dead in that situation. And what was the Lord doing? He was keeping me alive until I came to Christ. That's what he was doing. But I didn't see it. I went, well, you know. What does this tell?

Believers are not Believers do not extend grace. Believers cannot extend grace. Extend it or expand it? As a believer to another believer, I cannot extend grace to another believer or non-believer. Being in the family of God, having sonship, living under the grace of God, I cannot extend to a person grace. My next question, you just swerved right into it.

What must a gracious act do in order to be considered pure grace? What must it do to be considered pure grace? It has to be unadulterated by any expectation. Unadulterated? Yeah, I wrote down it must stand disassociated and alone. It's got to be all by itself. Grace speaks of a gift, not a barter or a trade. However unequal it is, pure kindness has no sense of fulfilling any obligation.

So believers have the capacity, because they're in Christ, to act this way. This is where I'm going to try to define it even further. This is a working definition for me, but if we define it as the favor of God, it can never be the favor of you. So, when God uses us for the purposes of communicating grace to another believer, or an unbeliever, it is His favor, and it is Christ doing the graciousness, because it has to be found in God's favor.

It cannot be found in our favor. So, it can't come from us. It has to come from who we are in Christ. It's always His. It's never ours. Yeah, and I think that's important to talk about that for a minute because as we, you know, what grace is and what grace isn't, pretty soon you're going to get with the negative vibes, right?

You're going to think, oh God, I never act gracious. Well, out of yourself you don't. That's right. You really don't. So you think, well I don't know what it's like to act gracious. You look to the Lord and say, yeah, I'd like to act gracious one time and know what it's like. Do you think you've ever acted graciously?

But if you ask that question, that causes you to look at yourself. That's true. You're absolutely right about that. So I think acting graciously out of the Lord is a spontaneous act of the Spirit of God through you. And you may realize it later that it did happen. There are times, though, when people will come to you for money. And without guilt, you just go to the Lord and say, what do you want to do here? It's your money. And you're comfortable with giving them money or you're not. You say yes or you say no. Both are acts of grace, because no is just as gracious as yes.

Q. But probably neither of those would be good for us.

A. Pure grace, yeah. I'm not spiritual enough to understand. I think that back to the beam of judgment, there's going to be a lot of stuff we get rewarded for in the heavenlies that we don't even have a clue of today. And then some stuff that we've been thinking, jewels in the crown, right? Those jewels really get hot in that fire. It's running through my mind though that God's grace, it's a, I don't know how to put it, it's a different location. It's a spiritual or a divine aspect rather than anything having to do with humanity. That's true. Well, it's like we've been talking about. Does God forgive our sins as an immediate act of grace? And we come to the conclusion, no it's not.

Because it was a righteous, the cross of Christ was a judicial act in which the penalty for my sins was paid. God worked first, took care of the problem. Now, under no obligation, he says to us, If you believe that I took care of your problem, which is sin, and I took care of my problem, which was sin, in my Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, if you believe that, I will save you for all eternity.

No obligation on his part to do it. He just did it because of his graciousness. There wasn't any, in my response, like Don says, has to be unadulterated faith. Because that's the one act a man can do that he can't take any credit for. Because all the credit is in what I believe, not the fact that I did. If you start your Christian life with that understanding, it makes it a lot easier to understand how grace functions and works as you grow and go along. You do run into, I have run into gracious people and they just have matured enough in Christ that they just act graciously a lot all the time. And it's not phony baloney. They're not putting on airs about anything. Because it's the Lord Jesus. Yeah. Right. And it's authentic. Yeah. And that's where I was kind of going.

We talked about how grace cannot be You have to be taught from the script. I agree. And so I'm just I'm not trying to create a set of rules as to how we use grace, but rather just an acknowledgment that grace had that term and what it means and the definition that we've set out for this class. if true, has no context except for a scriptural context. It cannot be applied to anything else outside of Christ and His work.

That's right. I agree. So, graciousness, I mean, if you want to use those terms, that's fine, but don't tie it to biblical grace that we've been, you know, talking about in Christ, because that is, in and of itself, unlimited, unmerited favor of God, based on the teleological work of Christ, and it has to remain in that in that context for it to be what we're talking about. Right.

It's not tipping or writing or anything like that. Next question, is Grace treating the person as he deserves or more than he deserves? I would say it has nothing to do with the person. She's busted again. In the paper I handed out, he says divine salvation, and that's what he's talking about. Therefore, he describes it as the kindness of God towards sinners is not less than it would be had they sinned less, nor more than it would be had they sinned more. Here's the key.

It is wholly unrelated to every question of human merit. It's not related to what I did or didn't do or how I act or don't act and how I think or don't think. It has only to do with God. He does not forgive me because I'm a white American or a black American or poor or rich or somewhere in the middle or I sin more or sin less.

Grace is neither treating a person as he deserves, nor treating a person better than he deserves. It's like Courtney treats me. It's treating a person graciously without the slightest reference to whether they deserve it or not. Grace is infinite love expressing itself in infinite goodness. Now, we've kind of gotten to a point now where Grace, like the Christian life, is beyond my capacity, right? But God doesn't say, well, it's beyond your capacity, do the best you can.

What does he say? This is supposed to be, this is to be the way that you function. So where does that leave you? Dependent. He's going to manifest that life. which grace is and love is part of it through you. I think that's a good tactic. I think what you're getting at was grace is manifested through us as we are conformed to the image. That's where grace is manifest.

I think John 1.17, grace and truth are realized through Jesus Christ. So as we manifest Christ, we will manifest that grace. 2 John 3, grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father in Ziot. It's the manifestation as we are conformed, as we are transformed. Grace will be manifest in us, but that's ultimately from Christ, the life of Christ in us.

And I'm thinking about teaching my children these things, and how do I make it clear to them what we're saying. Obviously we can get confused in the class sometimes and think of a ten year old. How do I be gracious, dad? That's a question. How can we be gracious as people, as believers? And my answer would simply be walk by faith and the Lord's living is gracious and all those things that the Lord is will be lived through you by walking in faith. It simply goes back to faith. Faith is the trigger to gracious living. That's it.

You don't try to be gracious. We don't try to extend grace. We don't write papers and emails and send people stuff and all of a sudden we're helping them understand the Bible or whatever it is. That in and of itself could be done out of your own will. But when you're walking by faith, it's a manifestation of God's life in you that is gracious. And that happens organically based on the relationship with Christ.

It's not like a five point system. That's interesting how you... Who He is. Yeah, and that's why I think the course we're teaching started out with identification because without justification and identification you don't have the knowledge to, by faith, trust Then you have the issue of race and how it operates, and then the last part is faith.

And they all have to come together in order to manifest a life that's consistent with who God says we are. I think that goes back to what I've given you praise for, is the ability to the answer to that question to your kids, I think it's to know Him.

As you know him, as you spend time with him, you then know who you are, and that will be manifest in time. The more you know him, the more intimately you know him, it will be manifest. It's not a five-point course, it's not that, it's to know him. And as you know him, it will be manifest.

So there's a conformity process that goes on. Conformity to what? to the very image of Christ from glory to glory, what's the basis of His character? It's love and it's grace. As a conforming process takes place, we love and grace comes out of us. It's not with effort. Christ doesn't have to get up in the morning and say, well, what's on my list today? How am I going to glorify the Father today? He says life just does it.

Because when we look at Ephesians 2.10 where it talks about the works of God prepared for man, it could mean that he would fulfill one of those works of love and grace towards someone, but it's all in him.

But you know what's interesting? That's the only way he does it. That's really what the body of Christ and believers are here to do. that God can fulfill his purposes through human beings. It's kind of cool he would include us. But he has to get us ready. He has to grow us up. Although you see him acting gracious through just the youngest believer, any believer most any time.

There's one verse that I just keep thinking of here. Colossians 4, 6, actually it's 2 through 6, it's just a really good passage, but it ends with, let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. And the whole little passage right above it, it's all in the same context, just like we've been talking about, how it's just the life of Christ. You pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, and looking for every opportunity, being wise in the way we act towards outsiders, making the most of every opportunity.

So it's just kind of who we are. We talk that way. Our conversation is full of grace, and we're just always looking for opportunities to I guess be gracious, and I guess this context is maybe for unbelievers, towards unbelievers, but it could certainly be. That's not who we are.

It's interesting where it is in the book of Colossians, because it's chapter 4, and it's all based on what he tells us God already did in chapters 1 and 2, and a position we enjoy. It doesn't take away from the fact that he exhorts us to seek those things which are above. If I get off of the grace of God and orchestrate my life based on doing nothing but seeking opportunities to manifest a grace that isn't going to be grace, do you see that?

Because it's God who makes the opportunities. It's God who makes my understanding. It's His work for me to understand who I am. It's also His work and motivation of grace. Grace is the most tremendous motivator there is to even have an attitude like that.

Now I can have that attitude legally because someone told me, well here's what it says, now you get out there, you know, it's like the guy with the megaphone down at the career's field, you know, he read that verse too. So it starts with God, it always does, and he grows us, he teaches us, and he conforms us so that that is who we are.

Going back to the bedrock, the addendum to both, I think J.D. and Emory, it comes back to faith. That's still bedrock. Do you believe this? Do you believe all that he said about you in Christ? What he says about himself? All those things, it still comes to you believing. It's always the biggest problem. That's the whole thing at the end, is do you believe this?

Well, what's interesting about faith is that you read this tremendous, like Colossians 3.1, since you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, right? Where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your mind, your affections on things above and not on things of the earth, for you died and your life is hid with Christ and God. So you wake up one day and you say, wow, that's tremendous.

I have no idea what it means to seek the things above. What are they? But I believe you because you said it. Once you believe, it's like, okay, I'm going to show you. Faith being a non-meritorious act, and I take God at his word, I don't need to have a seminary degree to understand, I just believe you.

And he'll start to lay it out to you. If you don't believe him, the veil is still there. That doesn't mean he stops working. He's working to clear the veil away so he can teach you how it goes and how it works in grace. So that's why, like Macaulay talked about, grace is the most, we have to be taught every step of it. We have no idea what it's like when we come to Christ. None. How it operates. Well, I didn't get finished. J.D. came just in case I finished early. That's the only reason I could teach. That and the fact that my wife had to teach downstairs. He's being gracious. Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace towards us. We thank you that you are overwhelmingly busy teaching us what it is to live in your grace. Thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.