Matthew 1:18-25

Thank you, music ministers, your Bibles.

Turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter number one, verse number 18.

Today we're going to take a break from our study, as I said, of Ephesians and John and

turn back to Matthew, in the interest of getting ready for Christmas.

I thought it would be good, once again, to look at the arrival of the King of Glory into

this world, in this particular aspect, I find fascinating.

I really never tire of, as I said, recounting this remarkable story, of how our sovereign

omnipotent God lowered himself, condescended himself to come to this place, consider Philippians,

chapter two, verse seven, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant, remember

we went over that a couple of weeks ago, what that means, and being made in the likeness

of men.

Romans 8.3 reminds us this, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin,

there's your substitutionary atonement in one phrase, though he himself knew no sin.

So let's turn our attention now to the King's arrival, and I just want to read, of course

I'll have my glasses down, I want to read verses 18.25, Matthew's account.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows, when his mother Mary had been betrothed to

Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, planned

to send her away secretly, but when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord

appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary

as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from

their sins."

Now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet,

behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his

name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

And Joseph awoke from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took

Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his

name Jesus.

Now you know, we often talk about how amazing it is to be living during a time in history

when such dramatic changes have taken place during just really a few generations of people,

both technologically and culturally.

Never before in the history of the world have such dramatic changes taken place in such

a short period of time, and let me give you my favorite example of this for all time that

I'll ever have, and many of you have heard this, but you need to hear it again.

I had a co-worker when I was at the Assessor's Office.

He was still working part-time at the age of 80, and he was in my cubicle, and he had

worked at the Assessor's Office for a long time, he came back in part-time in retirement.

He was a lifelong resident of Central, great Christian brother.

I love brother Leland, was his name.

You know where he grew up?

Right down the street here on Blackwater Road, which is what?

A mile and a half from here?

Blackwater Road, maybe?

A mile and a half?

I used to ask him questions, because you get a lot of time at the Assessor's Office to

ask questions of your co-workers.

I would want to know about his childhood and about how things were during World War II and

all these different things, but the most fascinating thing that he shared with me was that when

he was a boy living right there on Blackwater Road, Blackwater Road was a gravel road, and

none of the houses out here in Central when he was a boy had electricity or running water.

None of the houses out here.

Now, he was 80 at the time.

So even if you figure he was remembering when he was five, right, just 75 years ago in this

community with all this technology that we have, there was no running water out here.

People were living out here out of well water and no electricity in the summertime.

Can you imagine the changes that we've seen?

There's no period of history like the period of history that we're in right now over the

course of the last 100 years as nothing comes close.

Mr. Leland recounted how amazed that they were.

When one day the power company came and they were running electricity down the gravel road

of Blackwater Road and they ran one line to the house, which was only able to supply the

energy and electricity for one drop light in the living room with one bulb.

And he recalls that they did it at night and they turned it on.

He said it was like daytime at night.

They just marveled because prior to that, in this man's lifetime, they had candles and

lanterns.

Just think of that.

Think of going from that in one lifetime to an iPhone in one lifetime.

It's incredible.

In addition to this, think about the cultural changes that we have seen just in my little

57 years of living.

I mean, I find it fascinating, of course, Christie loves this, to watch Me TV.

Joey and Tracy love Me TV as well.

And I remember very clearly what America was entertained by when I was a kid compared to

what it's entertained by now.

I mean, go back right now and watch, for instance, The Love Boat.

I can't believe we watched that.

I can't believe we were entertained and we didn't miss The Love Boat because before cable

there's three channels and you just watched what came on at night.

You were highly entertained by it.

Go back and watch it now.

It's like something's wrong with us, right?

And of course, you know, the same is true in the church.

And we talked about this many times over the last hundred years, the decline of sound doctrine

and theology.

And now we have all this quote-unquote secret sensitive man-centered psychology, therapy,

preaching, all the rest.

But including in all of this decline is something that we've seen come about in religious polls

that have been taken over just the past couple of generations.

And it is this.

There is a continuing decline in the percentage of professing believers in Jesus Christ who

believe in the literal virgin birth of Christ.

There's a literal decline in that.

This topic makes the rounds on TV every year.

I mean, what's today?

Sunday.

So Christmas is what?

Thursday.

Just go.

If you got cable or stream, discovery or CNN, just there be, you know, they searching for

Jesus still.

Still hadn't found him as I tell you all the time, but they're still looking for him.

But by logical necessity, I want you to think about this.

If you deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, you also by necessity, you deny the deity

of Jesus Christ, the Godhood of Jesus Christ, because it's very clear that all four gospels

teach that Jesus considered himself to be more than just a man.

You only need to have the powers of reading the gospels to understand that.

And it's also very clear from the rest of the New Testament, as well as from the historical

records that Jesus, his disciples, and all of the early church held him to be none other

than the divine Son of God, God in human flesh.

That is the documentable, not even debatable evidence that we have from history and from

Scripture.

And his enemies knew this is what he claimed.

Look at John 5.18, if you want clarity, here it is, for this reason, therefore the Jews

remember when John says that he's referring to the Jewish leaders, were seeking all the

more to do what?

To kill him.

Why?

Why?

John?

Because he was not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own father.

What did that mean to the Jewish leaders?

Being himself equal with God.

That's why they wanted to kill him.

Does it need to be any planer, stated, than that?

And that's why C.S. Lewis said, as you know, you've got three choices, very profound on

C.S. Lewis' part, that you've only got three choices of what you do with Jesus, and you

know these.

Well, either he was a liar, he was a lunatic, or he's Lord.

That's all you have, because he claimed to be God incarnate.

And so when these liberal theologians deny the virgin birth, because they just can't

deal with the supernatural, and thereby deny Christ's deity, the God-man, the God-hood

of Jesus, you have to wonder, why would they even want to be identified as Christians in

denying these things?

Because, think of this, if they are right, and there was no virgin birth, and Jesus is

not God, then guess what they have?

They only have two choices from Scripture.

Either he was a liar, or he was nuts.

He was insane.

He was out of his mind.

The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the central fact of the New Testament.

It's the essence and the power of the Gospel.

Is that God became a man, and that by being both truly God and truly man, he was able to

reconcile sinful man to holy God, the only one that could.

Jesus' virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, resurrection, ascension, and return are all

the integral aspects of his deity.

And guess what?

They stand or fall together.

If any of those teachings, all clearly taught in the New Testament, is rejected, then the

entire Gospel is rejected, and Christianity completely implodes in on itself.

It's not true.

So today, to highlight this truth, now we're entering into Christmas week.

If you can believe that, it's Christmas again.

Let's dig into the very first aspect of Christ's deity, and that is the virgin birth.

That's what we're going to be discussing today.

Look again with me at verse 18.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, look at

this.

Look at this.

Jesus was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

That's the Holy Spirit of God.

What does that point to?

That points to his deity.

That statement by the Holy Spirit, who else could that refer to this child?

By itself, now by itself, this verse does not prove that the Bible has God or its author,

but the very fact that the remarkable account of Jesus' divine conception by the Holy Spirit

is given to us in just one phrase of one verse strongly suggests that this story was not

just man-made.

Why do I say that?

Because think about it, it is just not human nature for us to describe something so astounding

and so marvelous in such a brief phrase.

If man had wrote this, we would expand and elaborate this and we would give every possible

detail and Matthew goes on to get more information related to the virgin birth.

But the fact of it is just given in one sentence.

If you look in your Bible, the first 17 verses of Matthew, we get a human genealogy of Jesus,

but only part of one verse gives us his divine genealogy.

In his divinity, Jesus descended from his place as the eternal second person of the

trinity by a miraculous and never repeated act of the Holy Spirit.

His Holy Spirit.

Just think about that.

The third person of the trinity bringing into the conception and into the womb of Mary,

the second person of the trinity.

Your brain can't figure that out.

Then further, further than that, think of this, the same Holy Spirit who did this, divinely

inspires Matthew to just state the fact she was found to be a child by the Holy Spirit.

Just succinctly like that.

Note an affirmation that this was not written by a human author.

Now, this verse also identifies Mary as the mother of Jesus and you know, really, we don't

have much information about Mary.

We learn elsewhere in Scripture that she was a sinner just like you and me.

Very likely, of course, she was a native of Nazareth and she came from a poor family.

We had a sister named Salami.

Her sister's sons were James and John, the sons of thunder.

That made them Jesus's first cousin and I marvel to just, you know, they're related,

they're cousins.

And I think about John.

I think about John growing up with Jesus as his first cousin and then he writes in the

beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and all the rest

of the amazing parts of the deity of Christ and John wanted just blows your mind, right?

We also know Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, was her relative, most likely her

cousins and his family, right?

Now, we know that Mary was a godly woman, sensitive, submissive to the Lord's will.

We read that in Scripture, but still a sinner is like Joseph.

And we know less about Joseph.

His father's name was Jacob.

He was a craftsman.

He was a construction worker, most likely a specifically a carpenter, as we know by trade.

Most importantly, look at verse 19 tells us he was a righteous man and the King James

says in its translation, he was a just man.

What does this mean?

It means he was a believer.

This means that Joseph was an Old Testament state.

It means that Joseph was the descendant spiritually of Abraham, just like all Gentiles are in

the New Covenant.

And verse 18 also says, look at this, he was, Mary was betrothed to Joseph.

And it's possible they were very young when they were betrothed.

Girls were often betrothed at 12 or 13 boys, just several years older than that.

That was traditional.

We don't know exactly, but more than likely that was the case.

And now you have to understand this in Jewish custom.

The betrothal was more than our modern day engagement.

It was as binding as marriage is today.

You had to have a divorce to terminate the betrothal.

A Hebrew marriage involved two stages.

First, there was what was called the cadetion.

That is the betrothal.

And then the hoopah, that was the marriage ceremony.

The Hebrew marriages were usually always arranged, and usually always arranged by the dad.

Now ladies, can you imagine your dad comes to you?

All right.

You got cousin Eddie here.

Sorry.

And then she was expected to live a life of bliss with this guy.

The therapist could have made millions of dollars in those days, right?

Now a contract was made with a dowry, which was called, it was the bride price is what

the dowry was called.

It was paid by the groom's family to the bride's family called the mohar.

And the contract, it was binding as soon as it was made.

The couple was considered legally married, even though the hoopah, the actual marriage

ceremony and the consummation of the marriage didn't often happen until as much as a year

later.

The betrothal period served as a time of probation, a testing of fidelity.

And usually it was the man having to prove he would build a house and, you know, he would

have to prove that he could provide.

The couples really had little of any social contact at all during the betrothal period.

So hello Houston.

We got a problem here.

A verse 18 tells us that look at it during the betrothal period before they came together

to consummate the marriage, Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

Now sadly today, that'd be no big deal in our culture, right, unmarried teenage girls

get pregnant all the time in our day.

It was scandalous back during this time.

This was scandalous back when Brother Leland was getting water out of her well in America.

Sexual purity is high on the list in both the Old and New Testaments and God is very

serious about it and the Jews knew this and they believed it.

And Mary's virginity was an important evidence of her godliness.

And yet she's found with child.

She's pregnant during the betrothal.

This is an extremely hard circumstance for this very young couple.

Can you imagine the reaction of Mary's parents who had raised her?

I love the scene in the Nativity movie.

It's so tense when they find out that Mary's pregnant.

And this, of course, doesn't come from Scripture, but I love the way they depict it.

If you haven't watched the movie Nativity, you need to.

It's the greatest movie about the birth of Jesus I've ever seen.

I think it's streaming on Amazon or whatever.

But Mary's trying to explain herself and she says, "Father, I have broken no laws."

And he says, "Oh, Mary, you have broken every law."

It's just such a scene and you can imagine that that's how the father felt.

And this is a great time at this point in the story to remind ourselves not to listen

to the TV preachers who tell us on a regular basis that coming to Jesus frees you from

your problems and makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise.

As evidence here, if you are a believer, the Lord will put you in hard circumstances.

I can't imagine a circumstance much harder than this one.

But why does God do that?

Well, there are many reasons to build endurance in your faith, to build patience, to build

trust, to test our faith, not for Him to see our faith.

He already knows our faith.

He gave it to us, but for us to see, to have evidence that we truly do have saving faith.

Once we come through the fire and the faith is still there, that we really have it.

And of course, in all of that, to conform us to the image of Christ in the big picture

for His glory.

And oh, Joseph, he's in a hard spot here, just like Mary.

Look at verse 19 and Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to

disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

Now remember this betrothal meant that they were legally married and because Joseph was

a righteous man, a godly man, he had a double problem.

He knew that he shouldn't go through with the marriage based on the information he had

so far.

He knew for sure he wasn't the father, right?

And at this point, he could not possibly think anything other than the fact that Mary had

committed adultery with another man.

What else could this man have possibly else thought at this stage of the game?

There's nothing else that he could have thought.

That's the natural flow of things and it must have been just mind boggling because I want

you to think about this.

If God picked Mary to be the mother of Jesus, then you know that even just among what we

call the righteousness of man and man standard, she must have been a special girl, right?

To be the one God chose.

So her outward action, that's why Joseph probably picked her, it just wouldn't make

sense.

That was just possible.

I'm sure the same is true with her parents and all of her family.

So this was just agonizing, right?

Because Joseph obviously loved Mary and not with worldly Hollywood love, the shallow imitation

of what we call love in our culture, Joseph loved Mary with the love of a righteous man,

the love of a godly man, a saved, genuinely regenerate, believing man.

And because of that righteous agape love and the kindness that naturally comes with it,

he could not bear the thought of shaming her publicly.

That's what, look at that phrase, not wanting to disgrace her means in this verse.

And guess what?

He had every right to do that.

He could have done that.

I mean, it could have went as far as having her stoned to death, actually, because that's

what Deuteronomy 22 calls for in the law of God, Joseph loved her with godly love.

And think about it, Joseph had been shamed in this too, but his concern was not for his

own.

That's how you know he was a believer.

His concern was not for his own shame, but his concern was for her shame that she would

have to go through.

And since he didn't want to disgrace her publicly, this verse says he planned to send

her away secretly.

This means that here was the plan he came up with.

He planned to divorce her in secret, where everybody wouldn't know.

And even though before long, everybody would have been guessing what was happening because

the old belly is getting bigger and there's no marriage ceremony that's happening for

a little while, she would have been protected.

And most of all, she would have been allowed to live and not be stoned to death.

And one of the most horrific deaths, besides crucifixion that you can think of.

What?

Organizing trial, this must have been for Joseph and Mary and how young they were.

And just as God often does with his children, just when we're almost at the breaking point,

just when we're at the end of a, why is this happening to me right now, rope?

God lets us know who's in control.

God reminds us who it is that we're supposed to trust in the hardest of circumstances.

Look at verse 20 and 21.

But when he had considered this, when he thought of all this stuff, behold, an angel of the

Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary

as your wife for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

It is twice and she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save

his people from their sin.

That is God to the rescue through an angel with the greatest and most important piece

of information in the history of mankind.

God is coming to earth to save his people from their sins and you, Joseph, are going

to be his legal earthly father, can you imagine?

So this hard, impossible, no way to naturally get out of this dilemma needed a supernatural

way out and God provided it for Joseph supernaturally through the event with the angel, which must

have been more real to Joseph than anything he ever experienced because we're going to

see in a minute how he responded to this dream.

Look at verse 21.

The angel says you shall call his name Jesus.

This is a form of the Hebrew names from Joshua and North Baton Rouge, uneducated preacher.

I don't know how to say all these things, Yeshua or Yeshua, the meaning of which is

really you need to know Yahweh will save the name of God.

Look at verse 22 and 23.

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, behold

the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel

which translated means God with us, do you need to read any further about who Jesus is?

Really?

Now, this is amazing.

Matthew explains here to us that the virgin birth of Jesus was predicted by God in the

Old Testament out of the book of Isaiah that all the people involved in this situation

had been reading all of their lives.

The Lord clearly identifies the birth of Jesus as the fulfillment, the direct fulfillment

of prophecy.

Look at all this in verse 22 of Christ's birth.

That was the fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet and let me

tell you something.

That is the definition of biblical inspiration.

God does the saving and the human instrument is just the means God uses to bring his word

to us and in this case the prophet was Isaiah and Matthew again is quoting a prophecy given

by Isaiah specifically from Isaiah 714 that all these Jewish people had been reading this

verse all their lives but it was given some 700 years before Jesus was born.

His name, Emmanuel, is used more as a title or a description that a proper name.

Look at the meaning God with us.

Now let me ask you something.

I want you to go back to Isaiah's time, 700 years before Jesus was born.

This had been on the scrolls on the papyri for 700 years.

How does a man 700 years earlier come up with this idea?

A pregnant virgin is going to be called God with us.

Think about that for a second.

That's documentable fact.

How in the world did Isaiah come up with them two things?

There's only one possible answer.

Divine inspiration.

There's only one answer.

That's one of the reasons why I became a Christian.

We have evidence.

It's just another of the many proofs that the Bible is what it claims to be the literal

and fallible and errant, all authoritative, all sufficient word of the living God.

And while the skeptics can balk all they want to at Jesus's virgin birth and deity,

it is impossible to deny that this is what the scripture teaches.

Just in these few verses, think of, we looked at so far, verse 18.

Look at it.

Mary is said to be found with child by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 20, Joseph is told by the angel for the child who has been conceived in her is

of the Holy Spirit.

Here in verse 21, he's given the title through the prophet Isaiah, Emmanuel, God with us.

So the problem that the skeptics are having is not with the Bible.

It is always right.

The problem is a sinful unwillingness to submit to what the scripture is teaching.

That's the problem.

Jesus is God, and he was born of a virgin.

Now, in our last verse of this text for this morning, we get Joseph's response to this

amazing supernatural angel visit.

Look with me at verses 24 and 25, and Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel

of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she

gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

So what is Joseph's reaction?

All we know from the scripture here is one thing, immediate obedience.

That was Joseph's reaction.

He that he was aroused from his sleep confirms that the visit from the angel was in a dream.

And we see this method used by God to communicate several times throughout scripture.

Obviously, obviously, when God sends an angel to communicate his will in a dream, this is

not a dream that you forget when you wake up, right?

It was obviously so real and so vivid to Joseph that he could care less now what the people

of Nazareth think.

I don't care what you people think.

This is supernatural what's happening right here in my family.

He went straight out and finished that marriage procedure.

He went straight.

Let's go get married.

Just think of the utter relief for young Joseph and Mary.

How thankful, how amazed, how amazed they must have been.

He must have been thinking, man, God really does have.

This is just incredible right here.

I never thought I would be getting out of this situation.

Not only could he take Mary as his wife with honor and righteousness, but more than that,

he's given the stewardship of caring for God's own son while he's growing up.

And just think of Mary's will.

Her joy.

Just think about that first moment when Joseph is saying, Mary, I got something to tell you.

Just imagine as he's saying the words and recounting what the angel said in the dream.

How overwhelmed with relief and absolute joy Mary must have had in her heart.

Now they were both on the same page.

I mean the same page.

They didn't care what the people thought anymore.

And they now have this amazing, awesome responsibility.

Now we don't know much else about Joseph's life, but the things we do know are fantastic.

He took Jesus to the temple for the dedication as a baby.

As the provider and the protector of his family, he took his family to Egypt to escape the

bloody tirade of Herod.

And he took Jesus and the family to Passover in Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old.

But one thing else must have been certain about both Joseph and Mary.

They had to have been God with you because it's inconceivable to think that God would

entrust his son into a family where mom and dad were not totally and faithfully committed

to him, right?

Matthew also makes it clear that Mary remained a virgin until she gave birth.

He says that very specifically, and that implies that normal marital relations began after

that time.

This and the fact that Jesus' brothers and sisters are spoken of numerous times in the

Gospel prove that Mary did not remain a perpetual virgin as Catholicism teaches.

She was not immaculately conceived without sin.

The immaculate conception, if you don't know, is Mary not Jesus.

She did not live a sinless life.

She did not ascend bodily into heaven as the church teaches.

None of those things are what the apostles ever taught, not one time.

None of those things were taught in the early church.

All of that is false.

I'm sure Mary is absolutely horrified that people are praying to her statue right now.

Horrified by that, that a billion people are believing that.

It's horrific.

And I know that gets me in a lot of trouble, but I don't care as the truth.

And Joseph, in his final act of obedience to God's instruction, did just what the angel

said.

Look again at the end of verse 25, and he called his name Jesus.

The supernatural birth of Jesus is the only way to account for the life that he lived.

A skeptic who denied the virgin birth once asked a Christian, "If I told you that child

over there was born without a human father, would you believe me?"

To which the believer replied, "Yes."

If he lived as Jesus lived, the greatest outward evidence for Jesus' supernatural virgin

birth and deity is the life that he lived, the king of glory.

We heard R.C. say it this morning about how so many people are affected by the life that

Jesus lived, even people that are not believers, hold to some of the tenets of his life.

How many times have you heard unbelievers do unto others that, you know, you haven't

done unto you, right?

Read the Gospels and see.

Read Luke's account.

Now today, we've looked at the king's arrival from Matthew's perspective.

I encourage you to read Luke's account.

We read it this morning.

Go back and study it.

Study each part of it.

Look at all the study notes in your study Bible.

Get a fuller picture of what happened when God became a man to save his people from their

sins.

No matter what people choose to believe, no one can escape the reality that it is the

eternal destiny of every human being ever born that hangs in the balance as to what

they do with this king who was born to us over 2,000 years ago.

Was he a liar?

Was he mentally ill?

Or is he Lord?

Is he who he claimed to be?

Is he who Matthew said he is God with us when he was here?

If you've come to the conclusion that he is Emmanuel, but guess what?

Just believing that flag intellectually is not enough for you to spend eternity with

him.

Just the devils believe and they tremble.

You must come to him on his terms of Bible repentance and saving faith.

You have to come to him acknowledging your own complete and utter spiritual bankruptcy.

You must repent and return from your sin and turn toward him and who he is and what he

has done as a substitute for sinners.

You've got to believe that having this saving faith in his perfect life and his death on

the cross and his rising from the grave has the power that those realities have the power

to reconcile you to God that it actually really truly has the ability to place all your sins

upon Christ, punish all your sins in Christ on the cross as your substitute, forgive all

your sins, and then turn around and have God declare you righteous with Christ's righteous.

You must truly believe that God and Christ have the power to do that through his sacrificial

death and his rising from the grave.

That's the gospel.

That's why he came.

Folks, that is what Christmas is really all about.

Send your life to living for this King, born in an animal stable, raised from the dead

for our justification, ascended back to his rightful place at the God the Father's right

hand, and he will come back in glory to judge the living and the dead, and guess what his

kingdom will have no end.

Merry Christmas.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for Matthew's credible account, marvel at the fact that the same

Holy Spirit who inspired Matthew was the agent involved in the conception of the God-man

Jesus in Mary's womb.

It's far beyond my little pea brain to just even think in, but it is the truth.

It is the Bible truth.

And so I pray, Lord, that you, as we leave here today, that we would have a deeper understanding

from what we've heard about this amazing reality of the incarnation of Jesus into this world.

Lord, help us to not take Christmas for granted, but to focus our attention upon the realities

of the season.

Bless your people here at Providence.

Bless the families that are represented here.

Grant us grace throughout the rest of the season and throughout the rest of our lives

as we need not only saving grace, but sanctifying grace.

We might all live for your glory.

Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.