Who Do You Say That I Am?

This morning I want to begin by talking a little bit about children, and specifically what Jesus said about children. He says that if we're to receive the kingdom of God, we must receive it like children. And there are things that attend children. Often the thing that is most apparent when you think of a child is their weakness, their inability to do things, some certain things, things that adults can do, things that even older children can do. In our culture, it's as if as a person becomes older and more competent, they become more valuable. And so Paul tells us that we're to put off childish thinking, childish behavior, childish reasoning, and we're to put on Christ. And yet I don't want us to understand that to mean that we're to become sophisticated and we're to become proud and we're to become arrogant.

Jesus tells us that if we're to come to the kingdom of heaven, we're to come as children. We're to receive it as children do. And there are good things that we see in young children. Young children trust their parents. Sometimes we have fun with our kids. We tell them things because they believe us. I told my kids for the longest time, and some of them may still think that Fig Newtons are called moon chips. And they would go to their friend's house and they would, you have moon chips too. And their friends would look at them. What are you talking about? Those things, and they had no clue for the longest time that that's not what they were called. And they couldn't read the package yet, so they were left believing me. Children believe what they're told. And they live a life of humility.

It's intrinsic to the nature of a child to be humble. And it's the biggest struggle that adults will face, is to remain humble, to become humble, to have our pride struck at and wounded. And this morning what we're going to do is we're going to be reading in the Gospel of Luke, we're going to be studying Jesus' interaction with Peter, the disciple. And what I want us to see is that Peter... is like a child. And Peter is a zealous man. The sins and the errors that Peter engages in are connected to his zeal or his depression. He's a man of emotion. And he's up and he's down. And that's how children are. They're up and they're down. And they're all over the place. You realize if you were to look at your child and you were to look to them to provide the stability of the home, The emotional stability, the relational stability. There will be no stability in the home if the children are to provide it. They're up and they're down. And what we see this morning, what we're going to be studying is Peter's up and his down. And I want us to identify with Peter because there are good things that Peter demonstrates to us, things where we can grow. The goal of our life as Christians is not to suppress our foolishness.

The goal of our life as Christians is to root it out, to get rid of it. Well, if you spend all of your time hiding it, you won't get rid of it. You'll be a hoarder. It's like you will hoard your sin and your foolishness up in the attic where no one sees it, but you can't bear to bring yourself to get rid of it. And so I want you to see from the beginning that as we read and as we study how Peter behaves, I don't want you to despise him. And I also don't want you to despise children because Peter... sets here an example of what we're like. And we need to learn from him. And if we're going to learn from him, we can't despise him. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? From Luke chapter 9, verses 18 through 22. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. And it happened that while he was praying, the disciples were with him. And he questioned them, saying, who do people say that I am? They answered and said, John the Baptist. And others say Elijah.

But others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again. And he said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said, The Christ of God. And he warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. by noting the first question Jesus asks his disciples. And as we get to that, before we get to that, I want you to see that he has just fed the 5,000. And prior to that, the disciples have just come back from this missionary-type journey that he sent them on, to go out preaching, to go out healing. They come back. They report what's happened. The crowds follow them. Jesus teaches them. Then as evening falls, he feeds them.

And now we pick up in our text this morning where he has succeeded in getting away with his disciples. He's alone with them. And he's praying. And so this is a particularly intimate setting. It's as if it's a one-on-one, family-only, invitation-only sort of setting. And so he's praying with them. And he's also examining them. He's questioning them. And so the first question that he asks them is, Who do the people say that I am? The disciples have been out, they've been preaching, they've been healing. Who do the people say that I am? And the disciples report to Jesus the same thing that was reported to Herod. Some people say you're John the Baptist, and some people say you're Elijah, and others think you're a prophet of old. Now, are they right? No, they're not right. And isn't it strange that these people, these crowds, they've come to Jesus Christ, they've followed him around, They've listened to him teach. They've been fed by him. They've been healed by him and his disciples. And yet they don't understand. They don't know who Jesus is. One of the first things I want you to see in this text, and this is true of children, this is true of adults. You need to understand that people can spend a lot of time around Jesus, around his people, around his word, and they cannot get who he is.

And so one of the things that we should, one takeaway we should see is that we need to be clear, we need to actually explain the most basic, simple things to people. And we need to be conversant in it. We need to know how to talk about it. Good teachers make their living doing just that. They don't teach complex, difficult, intricate, hard things. They teach really simple, really basic, really foundational things. If you were at FPU this last week, that's what you will spend the next nine weeks learning is really basic money handling skills. And there are people that if you listen to his radio show, I occasionally do. And one of the things I'm always tempted to do is I'm trying to figure out the caller, do they know the baby steps?

And lo and behold, there are people who call his show that have just discovered him, and they don't know the baby steps. And they call and say, here's my situation, and what should I do? And what he does is what I would never be inclined to do. He patiently walks them through on his radio show for the I don't know how many thousandth time. The exact same thing. Well, we teach a thing here called the baby steps. And he just goes on and he just teaches and just does the most basic things. He explains it to them. Now, do these people have knowledge about money? Oh, well, certainly they do. They've been taught about retirement and they've been taught about credit and they've been taught about interest rates and they know all of this stuff. And yet they've come and they've asked, we're kind of in a mess and we need your help. And he tells them the most basic stuff. And when they say, well, what about interest rates and what about this and what about all this confusing, difficult,

upper level math and finance, he says, no, don't worry about that. Let's just do the basic stuff. And the same is true with the gospel. We need to be conversant and willing and happy to speak the most basic things to people. The people have been around Jesus and around his disciples. They didn't know who Jesus was. And I want to caution you, though, this wasn't the fault of Jesus. This wasn't a failure of Jesus or of his disciples. If you carry on down in the text, there's this After Peter makes his confession, he says, you're the Christ of God. What's Jesus tell them? Don't tell anybody that. And so they're living in a time of transition, a time where things are shifting. We don't live in that time. Jesus has died. He has been raised. We've been given his word. We are not told, don't talk about it. We are to talk about it. The most basic things. Who is Jesus Christ?

You should think, when you have friends that you talk to, that you love, that you minister to, they should know from you who Jesus is. Oh, he's a good guy. He's a good moral leader. Oh, he's a really good man. No, they should know more than that from you. They shouldn't be confused about who Jesus is. These people were confused. And yet it wasn't the fault of the preaching of Jesus or the apostles. It's just that the gospel... was not in full view yet, but now it is. And so the people think, we don't really know who he is. We're curious about who he is. And so then Jesus moves on and he questions the disciples and he says, who do you say that I am? I understand the people don't know who I am, but who do you say that I am? And Peter pipes up and he says that Jesus is the Christ of God. And if you read this account in the parallel text in Matthew 16, he says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

Now, it's easy to move beyond Peter's confession. You're the Christ of God. You're the Son of God, the living God. And to just sort of take it in stride and be like, yep, that's right. That's who he is. But Peter's confession is significant because it demonstrates that Jesus is no ordinary man. He's not like you and like me. He's known as... the Son of Man. He refers to himself as the Son of Man. Even when he talks about himself later in verse 22, he says, the Son of Man must suffer these things. He refers to himself as the Son of Man. And yet Peter says, no, you're the Son of God. You're the Christ. Now, the first thing I want you to know is that Christ, he says, you are the Christ. What do I want you to know about that word? I want you to know that that word is not a name. That word is a title.

It's like president or mayor or king. And because it's a title, not a name, it carries with it a job description. It carries work with it that Peter understood. Peter understood you have work to do. You're not just like me. You are from God and you have something to do. You're the Christ. Christ is not a name, it's a title, and it's a Greek word that in the Old Testament would have been Messiah or Anointed One. And so Peter knows who Jesus is. He understands you are the one who was to come. You're the one who's to save your people from their sins. You're the one to set them free. You're the one who's going to establish a kingdom that will last forever.

You're the one who will make a path between us and our God. That's who you are. You're the Christ. You're the son of the living God. Peter understood that Jesus wasn't just John the Baptist or Elijah or some old prophet. And so now we come to the question, how did Peter come to this conclusion? How did Peter know who Jesus was? The people had been around. The people had seen Jesus' miracles. They'd heard his teaching. And yet they didn't know who he was, and here Peter does. And if we look in the account in Matthew, we get a clearer understanding of what's going on. In Matthew 16, 17, Jesus responds to Peter's confession, and he says, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. That's how he knew. This is significant because this knowledge that Peter had isn't something that we can get and something that we can give on our own.

I've just told you, you should be able to talk and be conversant about who Jesus Christ is. And the people that you talk to should understand who he is. And yet here we see that if they're to understand who he is, God has to give them that knowledge. Is it possible for someone to say what Peter said? Jesus Christ is the son of the living God. He's the Messiah. He's the Christ. Yes, you can teach someone to say that. You can teach them those facts, but you can't teach them, you can't make them believe it. Peter's confession wasn't just a matter of knowledge. He didn't just observe these facts. It wasn't just a recited answer. Peter knew who Jesus was. His heart knew, not just his mind. Now, I want you to see that Peter's knowledge is not perfect. Peter's knowledge is not perfect.

We're going to lean on the account in Matthew because it's longer and it's more detailed than the one in Luke. What we have in Luke is Peter says, you're the Christ, and Jesus says, don't tell anybody, I have to die. But in Matthew, we read that when Jesus said, don't tell anybody, I have to suffer and be persecuted and I have to die, Peter took him aside and he began to rebuke him, to rebuke Jesus, saying, God forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to you. So is Peter's knowledge perfect? No, it sure wasn't perfect. He had some knowledge. He believed who Jesus Christ was, and yet he immediately, in his zeal, when Jesus says, I have to die, he said, never will I allow that to happen. Never. He's talking to the Son of God. I'm not going to let you die. It's the sort of thing kids say.

The sort of over-the-top kind of silly, like, don't you understand? You just confessed that Jesus is the Son of God, come to save his people from his sins, and now he told you he has to die, and you told him he's not allowed to. You won't let him do it. This is how children speak. This is how children think. But he, Jesus, he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You're a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but on man's. And so we see Peter, if you were to trace him through this conversation, He's with Jesus. And Jesus says, who do people say that I am? You're John the Baptist. You're Elijah. You're someone, one of the old prophets. Who do you say that I am? Peter pipes up and says, you're the Christ of God. He's zealous. He's excited about it. Then Jesus says, I have to die. And Peter pipes up again. He says, I'm not going to let that happen. And Jesus rebukes him for his foolishness, for his lack of understanding. I want you to see here what's true of Peter is true of children.

Peter's zeal exposed his ignorance. If you were one of the other disciples, what would you have thought of Peter? This is the guy who crawls out of the boat, walks on water when he sees Jesus out there. Would you not be tempted to think, chill out. Come on. Like, haven't you learned yet? What did Peter do when they came to arrest Jesus? Whips out his sword, cuts off a guy's ear. This is Peter. Always zealous, always doing crazy, erratic things. And it's easy to despise him for it. It's easy to despise children for the same thing. They do things that don't make sense. You look at children and you go, what are you doing? Why would you think that? Becky puts on Facebook, I heard today, let's juggle knives. I don't know which one of her children said it, but...

This is the way kids' brains work. Let's juggle knives. And with zeal. Sounds like fun. And we look and we go, you're so stupid. Like, don't you know better? No, they don't. But there's something sweet. There's a reason Becky put it on Facebook. It wasn't because she was scared. It's because she goes, look at my children. Who says that? And there's something that ought to be maintained, protected. That children demonstrate. What do you want noisy kids to do? Be quiet. Now, do noisy kids, disruptive children, need to learn to be quiet? Well, yes. There are plenty of circumstances where, yes, they need to learn to be quiet. But there's also a way of making a child quiet that exasperates them and squashes them and ruins them. You know how little kids will say, Daddy, why is she so fat?

You ever heard an adult say that? No, because they've had that sort of engagement trained out of them. Now, some adults say it, but we go, you should never speak that way. You know, if I start talking about my weight, none of you will ever talk about me being fat. You're a big guy. I got called hot. Not to my face. You can't talk much either. But it's like the most obvious thing, right? Dave's big. He's husky. He's a big guy. Dan George says, I don't think of you as fat. You're just a big guy. Well, thank you, Dan. Isn't that sweet? The rest of the world just calls me fat, but you just call me... It's like, can we just be honest like a kid? Like Peter, can we just be honest? When we hear something we don't like, can we just go, no! And then let God deal with us. If that no was inappropriate. But we spend so much of our time...

preventing that sort of outburst. So Peter's zeal exposed his ignorance. He didn't know what he had just said about Jesus. He didn't know what it meant. And his zeal exposed it. And it actually, it didn't just expose his ignorance. His zeal actually caused him to sin. Jesus rebuked him. Said, get behind me, Satan. You've set your mind on the interests of man, not on the interests of God. Peter actually sinned by doing this. And Jesus rebuked him. Jesus didn't disown him. Get behind me, Satan, but not, you're out of the club. He simply rebuked him. And if you think of Peter going forward, Peter's the guy who maintains later, I'm not going to let you die. And Jesus says to him, a cock will crow three times before, you will have denied me three times by the time a cock crows, by the morning.

And Peter just can't conceive of it. But then the cock crows and he's reminded of his abandonment of his Lord. And he's grieved and he weeps bitterly. And then after Jesus dies, they're all disappointed. They're all scared. They're all hiding and they're all praying. And Jesus is resurrected. And then the Holy Spirit is poured out. And who preaches? Who says to the Jews, you kill them? Peter. And I want you to see that with his zeal, it causes him to sin sometimes. But it's a blessing to the people that he's around because he's not concerned about what people think of him or what will happen to him. He jumped out of a boat and tried to walk across and walked for a time across water. This is a man who doesn't think before he acts. And he actually accomplishes some good things because of it. So the question is, there's two questions I want to end by answering. What do you do?

with zeal when you see it in people. What you do with zeal when you see it in people is you don't squash it. You cultivate it. You direct it. You nurture it. You prune it. Their zeal needs to be informed by understanding. People who are zealous but don't understand who God is are reckless. They're dangerous. But Christians who are zealous, and who have understood who Jesus is as Peter did, they're useful. They're useful. That means that you who want your children to be quiet and who want them to stop, it means that you have useful children. And you don't want to squash that in them. You want to cultivate it. You want to train them. And the thing that you need to give them is understanding. Peter understood who Jesus Christ was. And it was God's gift to him that he understood.

And it's our work with our children, with our neighbors, to impart to them who Jesus is. So Peter needed to grow in understanding. And Peter's growth in understanding happened over a period of time. It didn't happen all at once. It took time with him. If you look at his life, right up until Jesus is arrested, Peter is still trying to prevent Jesus' death. Actively telling Jesus, no. And trying to prevent them from arresting him. He's actively at work. What does he need? To be smacked in the head and told, stop it, you fool. No, he needs a zeal informed by understanding. And that's what happens. And that's what causes him to preach the way he did. And to be useful to God. So growth and understanding happens over time. And that requires patience on our behalf. Patience for ourselves and our own ignorance.

If you were to look back on your life, I was having a conversation similar to this with Vanessa earlier in the week. And she was saying, if we knew eight years ago, ten years ago, what we know now about, we were talking about our children. If we had known then, it's easy to look back and go, if we would have just known then what we know now, we would have been so much better. But we need to go the extra step and realize that's going to happen again. Ten years from now, we're going to look back and say, when we're 20 years into marriage and we've got Joseph, he's 20 years old, he's out of school. We're going to look back and go, man, if we knew when he was 10 what we know now with him being 20, it would have been so much better. Growth takes time. And you can get frustrated about it. It's easy to get frustrated and feel like you've gotten gypped because you go, no one told me that then.

And you know what? That's probably true. You did not know then what you know now. You're able to serve God better now than you were five years ago. We become more productive, more fruitful as we grow. Now, because it takes time for us to grow in understanding, that doesn't mean that we should just wander around waiting to grow in our understanding of who God is, who Jesus is. I would bet you that there was people in this room that didn't know Christ wasn't a name. And not just the kids. I had to be told that. It wasn't immediately obvious to me. As far as I'd gotten was, I wonder why sometimes it's Jesus Christ and sometimes it's Christ Jesus. And I couldn't figure, I didn't know why. And we have to grow in our understanding. This is the work that God does in us. He gifts to us. He gives to us knowledge. Jesus told his disciples, it's better for you that I go away. Because when I go, I'll send you a helper who will do what?

lead you into all truth. That means you don't know it right now. And it's a humbling thing to realize that or to acknowledge it regularly. That you don't know all the stuff you know. All the stuff you think you know is what I mean. There are things that each one of us are particular about in our knowledge. We know this. And we know it better than anyone else. And what I want to say to you is, give it five years. And see if in five years you still think exactly the same thing that you thought five years ago. You're deceived into thinking you know far more than you do. Now we know that's true about children. We look at a child and we go, they don't know everything they need to know. And the things they think they know, they're wrong about. They're not called moon chips. And so they, by the very nature of being a child, are vulnerable.

are dependent, are weak, and need to grow. And that same thing is true of us as adults. The problem is we despise it. We can't have someone tell us, you're wrong. That's not right. There's something inside of us as if we've come of age and we don't have to be told anymore. We don't have to grow. Or if we grow, we will be the ones that discover the truth. It won't be, our error, our ignorance, like Peter's, won't be exposed. We'll just figure it all out by ourselves. We'll grow in knowledge, in the privacy of our own home. That's not how you grow. You'll grow in community. You will grow by observing other people who are older and wiser. The funny thing is, you know that the older people in our congregation don't think they have anything to teach the younger people? Do you know that? It's so sad to me.

Because you have things. You who are older, define it as you will, have things to teach the younger ones. And you younger ones need to learn from the older ones. And older and younger can be 35 teaching 15 and older can be 55 teaching 40. But you need to grow in your understanding. And you need to receive instruction like a child does. Like you want your child to receive instruction. When you come to them and you want to tell them, here is something you need to grasp. believe, act on, what do you want them to do? Okay. No, that's not how you want them to respond. So why do you respond that way? Why is that in your heart and it's okay, but it's not okay in a child's heart? It's not okay in either place, right? It's actually more ugly, disgusting in an adult than it is in a child. At least the child doesn't have the experience of banging their head into the wall because they're stupid.

that adults do. I have 34 years of experience doing dumb stuff and learning from it. When I became a Christian, the thought that was clearest in my mind was, you, sir, are an idiot. And if you continue to live your life according to your own wisdom, you will destroy yourself. And you will do it quickly. That was the predominant thought in my head when I became a Christian, was that I was an idiot. Because I looked at the fruit of my thoughts and I went, there it is. This is what I do. That really is the primary reason I left my home, why I left Chicagoland. I wanted to be taught. I realized I am many things primarily a fool. And I need to learn not to be a fool. And so I moved to a place where I had been instructed, where I had been taught, where I had been cared for.

where I'd been told for the first time in my life, you are a fool. It was really that simple. That's what I got told. And it was so helpful. It was so helpful to have someone hold up a mirror that wasn't from the clown factory and just say, this is really what it looks like. This is really what your life is. This is really what you do. And it was God's gift to me that I could see it in part, not perfectly. I saw it in part, like Peter saw it in part. And so if you're to grow in understanding, you have to be humble. You have to be humble enough to be taught. You have to be humble enough to have your sin exposed and then not defend it. Say, yeah, that is what happened. That is what I did. And you have to be content to learn over time. You hear these commercials on the radio about your kids and they need tutoring because they don't understand how to do this thing or that thing. And these tutors have this gimmick or this way. They're going to teach your kids to read or do algebra or whatever.

Why is that appealing to parents? The reason it's appealing to parents is because their kids have thrown their hands up in the air and they've just gone, I don't get it. And the parents are going, well, and we don't know how to get it to you. But you need to get it. You need to grow in understanding. You need to learn something. And oftentimes, at least in my experience with children, it's not that they're not getting it. It's just they're impatient with the amount of time that it takes to get it. They don't get it quick. It's not easy. And so they don't have the will or the heart.

to persevere. It takes humility to practice or to study. To study is to admit you don't know everything you need to know yet. So growth takes time. Growth and understanding takes time. So how do we get understanding, actually? The way we get it is through prayer. The way we get it is through prayer. The wisdom of the world is foolishness before God. The way you get real wisdom and real understanding is to pray for it. That's what James tells us. He says, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given him. It was God's kindness to Peter that he made a fool of himself in front of the rest of the disciples, time and again. Each one of us needs to grow in understanding. None of us have arrived. In Ephesians 4.13, Paul's speaking to them, and he says, He says that God's given some as apostles and some as prophets and teachers for the equipping of the body, for the ministry of service, until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. And so he's telling the Ephesians, you guys, we need to grow. You need to grow. And God has given us apostles and teachers and all of these things to train us until we have matured completely.

And the fact that you're here and I'm here demonstrates we aren't there yet. And so your life as a Christian needs to therefore be a life of growth, a life of humility, a life of being taught, a life of learning from God, and a life of you asking for God to teach you things. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. If you think you know everything, you're going to have to learn the hard way that you don't. But God wouldn't will that you have to learn that way. You can learn by being taught. You don't have to bang your head against the wall. You don't have to fall on your face. You don't have to sow destruction and reap it to grow and to learn. Isn't it a grief to you when children won't learn? And you look at them and you go, it's so sad to me that this child is going to do something. They're not interested in the preventative stuff. They're going to have to mess it up.

And so what do you do for that child? Do you just cast them off and go, well, I just have to learn the hard way. Go on out and fornicate and go on out and lie and cheat and steal and go on out and do all, you're just going to have to go be the prodigal son. So just go ahead. Do you open the door for him and let him do it? No. What do you do for that child? You pray for that child. You pray that they would learn. You pray that they would gain some understanding, that they would grow in wisdom, that they would know the Lord, that they would fear him. You pray for them.

So what do you think Jesus was praying about at the beginning of our passage? I think he was praying for the disciples, praying that they would know who he was, asking his father to bless their work and to save the sinners and to use these men, these common men, these fishermen and these tax collectors to build the kingdom of God. These men weren't special men. Peter wasn't special. Peter was just a man, just a fisherman. And he was zealous and he was foolish and God overcame that and God used him. And there's no reason to think that he can't and won't do the same thing with you. But you have to be humble. You have to be teachable. You have to understand that you don't know everything you think you do. Peter thought he knew. Best thing that could ever happen was you not die, Jesus. That'd be the best thing that could ever happen is you stay alive. He was wrong. So seek humility.

and be teachable ask people sometimes sometimes people will come to you and they'll say you know did you know or have you have you seen this or did are you aware of that sometimes they'll come to you but what i want from you guys in addition to that i want you to do that with one another i want us to grow in knowledge through us having faith to go to one another but i want you to have the humility to ask for help I don't want you putting questions on Facebook that you haven't asked your church family. Uh-oh. I have questions I want to ask. I want to take a poll. What do you think? Ask the people of God. Ask them what they think. Do you not love one another and care for each other's souls? Do you want what's best for your brother and sister? Are you afraid to tell them because they might get angry? So are you committed to your brother remaining in full ignorance?

Are you so committed to remaining in your own ignorance that you send those vibes to people? Don't you talk to me about that. I know about it. We need to grow in understanding. And you need to be humble like a child. And there's nothing to despise about it. When people ask me questions, you may be more apt to ask me questions because I'm a pastor. I don't think less of you for it. I'm glad. When you come and you say, here's a mess that I made. What ought I to do? What do you think? I don't despise it. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for your humility. I'm thankful for your faith. I'm thankful for your desire to grow. So don't despise that weakness. Parents, when they get old, the thing that they miss was their children needing them. He doesn't need me anymore. That's how every mom feels. He don't need me anymore. We need to grow in understanding. We need one another. We need to be humble and ask for help. And don't trust your own opinion as much as you do.

Each and every one of you thinks you're right about stuff, thinks you've got it all figured out. In the multitude of counselors, plans succeed. Gain wisdom. Seek the Lord Jesus Christ. And the things that you need will be added to you. Let's pray. Father, we believe, help our unbelief. We see that Peter knew who you were and didn't know who you were. Father, we... acknowledge that this is true of each and every one of us. Help us to grow in our understanding of you. Father, would you give us humility? Would you humiliate us for the sake of your glory? And would you teach us to learn your ways? Father, we thank you that you don't leave us in darkness, leave us to ourselves and our own thoughts, but that you've given us your word, your son, and your spirit.

to guide us, to teach us, to instruct us, to save us. Help us, Father, to make diligent use of these means and not to neglect them. Teach us and instruct us. Lead us and protect us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.