For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

Many of you guys saw last week a prayer request that went out on the table with regard to the purchase, the offer that we made on a piece of land just a few miles from here. I wanted to give you guys just a very brief update about that. We did put in that offer. There was no response to that offer, and so the elders are still working, trying to discern what the best path is forward. It's not clear to us what we should do yet. And so if you guys would keep praying, I can't give you many more details than that because I don't have them. It's the sort of questions that you have about like, well, why not, are the same questions that we have. And so please continue to pray for us that we be able to discern the Lord's will in that and know what we should do or shouldn't do and why. And also that he'd give us contentment as we do this work. I don't think it's coincidental that the week that the sermon is on waiting,

I've had to wait. If you know me well, it's not the thing I'm good at. I'm not particularly patient. When I get an idea in my head, I want to go with it, and I want it to happen. So this week has been a good lesson to me. So as I've prepared this sermon, I've been thinking quite a bit about that situation, and it would make sense that you would too. So as I've already said, the topic of the sermon this Lord's Day is waiting or longing, anticipation. If you're like me, you know that waiting is not, it doesn't come easily to you. If someone promises you a good thing, it's like kids always wanting to know what's under the Christmas tree, what's in the box. They want to walk up and rattle it or shake it or they're looking in the closet underneath in the corners. Ian, you do that, huh? Yeah, he's, yep. He's over there. Yep.

Waiting is not something that comes naturally to us, and yet waiting is distinctly Christian. That's what I hope you see this morning, is that waiting is a grace that God gives to us. And there are lots of ways to wait. There are lots of ways to wait. If I were to ask you, how do you wait? When you have something that you want, how do you wait? How do you wait for dinner? How do you wait for your birthday? How do you wait for school to start? There's lots of different ways that we wait. Some of them good, some of them bad. But I want us to see this morning how we ought to wait as Christians. And the goal is very simple. We ought to wait, because we are Christians, we ought to wait with hope, by faith, and with zeal or anticipation of getting what is promised to us. That's the point this morning. It's very simple. It's a simple truth. It's hard to do.

The instructions are simple. The pieces are complex. And so we're going to open that up this morning as we study Luke chapter 2, verses 25 through 32. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law, then he took him into his arms and blessed God and said, Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant to depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation.

which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So Simeon is what we would consider a devout model man. We're told at the very beginning that he's righteous and he's devout. And I want you to understand at the very beginning the context that Simeon lived in. Because righteousness and devotion are things that we would all hold in common as being good things. We need to be righteous. We need to be devout. But so often when we think of being righteous or practicing righteousness or being devout, the circumstances that we find ourselves in often make that very difficult, at least in our minds.

Righteousness is hard because the circumstances is not conducive to righteousness. There's a consequence for righteousness sake. Jesus told us to count the cost of discipleship. And so I want you to see at the very beginning that Simeon being described as a righteous man and a devout man does not mean that Simeon lived in an easy time. He actually lived in a very difficult time. When Simeon lived, the Israelites lived in a time of oppression or of occupation. under the Roman government. They had soldiers from a godless society and civilization imposing their rule and their law upon them. And so they were, by God's kindness, allowed to still continue to practice their religion, but they were not a free people, not in any way that we would understand freedom. They were an occupied nation. They were under the thumb of their oppressor.

And they were not free to do as they pleased. It was a difficult time. But that's not the only difficulty. The other difficulty leading up to this is that God had been silent concerning his promise for 400 years. What's that mean? Well, that means that for a period of that time, 400 years, God had not raised up a prophet or anyone to proclaim his word to his people. It had been silent. They had the previous... and prophecies and proclamations in the history and all of that. But God at that time had not spoken to his people. And if you can think of a relationship that you've been in, when it goes silent and there's no more communication, what goes on in your brain when there's communication and then it stops? And it stops for a long time. Most of us would think, there's a problem. Why is there no more communication?

Have the promises or the commitments that have been made to me previously been nullified? Because they're not talking to me anymore. Are we still friends? Are we still married? Are you still my child? Very close relationships are put in danger when there's no communication. This is how we would perceive it. And God has been silent for 400 years. He's not spoken to his people for a long time. And there's the Roman occupation. And so you would understand that the time that Simeon lives in is a difficult time. That it would be understandable to be discouraged or to be depressed or to be downcast. To be resigned to the life that you have to live with no hope of it getting any better.

And yet Simeon is described as a man who is righteous and who's devout, who's looking for the consolation of Israel. And yet no one, not his parents, not his grandparents, probably not his grandparents, have heard from the mouth of a prophet about what God's going to do. So where does this devotion and this righteousness come from? How does he wait with hope? That's the question that's before us. I want to talk a little bit about waiting. for ourselves. We are studying this this morning because we're in a season of Advent, which is a time when we celebrate, we remember, we look back at Jesus' first coming, which has happened, which was happening at the time of Simeon. And yet we live in a time of transition. We live in a time where everything's not as it should be yet, and so we still wait. And so in that way, we're similar to the Old Testament saints that waited for the Messiah to come. They lived in various ways and in various seasons and various types of oppression or freedom, prosperity or poverty, depending on a whole host of reasons. Sometimes it was because of their sin. They turned away from their God and he sent an oppressor to discipline them. In our minds we go, yes, that makes sense.

They were wicked and they promised at Mount Sinai to be God's people, and yet they've turned away from that covenant and they said, no, we're going to do our own thing. And God says, no, no. And so he sends an enemy, raises up one of their enemies to bring them to humility, to bring them to repentance, to bring them back to himself. That's not the only thing that happened in the Old Testament in terms of the people of God suffering and having it be difficult. You remember when they were in Egypt. It's different than Babylon. How is it different than Babylon? They were slaves in both places, right? So how is it different? Well, it's different in that they didn't end up in Egypt because of their sin. There was a famine in the land, if you'll remember. Jacob has his sons, and they take Joseph, and they sell him off into slavery, and he ends up in Egypt, and he rises up in Pharaoh's house. And then there's a famine, and Joseph's been faithful.

And he stored up, knowing that a famine was coming, he stored up food for provision for the future. And then the famine hits and there's no food in Egypt. There's no food anywhere. And Joseph starts to sell it. And the outlying lands where Jacob and his sons live, they hear there's bread in Egypt. So Jacob sends a delegation, go there and buy us some bread. Not knowing that the ones he's telling to go are the ones who've sent Joseph there to die. So they go and they buy bread. And Joseph has this transaction when he sees his family and he tells them, no, I'm going to keep Benjamin with me. And they don't want him to keep Benjamin. And he says, you bring your father. So they go back and they go tell Jacob what's going on. And Jacob gets mad at them. And I sent you my only son and I didn't want to send him anyway, the one I loved. And now you've lost him. And they said, father, he's a good man. You got to come back with us. You can have Benjamin back. So this is how the nation of Israel, which at that time was a family,

This is how they end up in Egypt. Jacob goes with his family to Egypt because there's food in Egypt. And in time, he realizes his son, Joseph, and he wants to live and dwell with his son, Joseph. And so they're assigned a portion of the land in Egypt, apart from the Egyptians, because the Egyptians don't like shepherds, is what we're told in Genesis. They're assigned a portion of land in Goshen to live. And they live there and they multiply and they grow and they work. And at some point, they become a threat to Pharaoh. Pharaoh perceives their strength and tries to kill all their firstborn sons and puts them to forced labor. And they end up in slavery. They end up in bondage. So why am I telling you all of that? Well, I'm telling you all of that to say the waiting that they did wasn't the result directly of their sin. They were sinners, but they didn't wait in Egypt for deliverance, which is what they wanted.

They didn't wait because of their sin. They waited because that's where God placed them. That's where he put them in his economy. He put them in a season of difficulty, of hardship, of trial, of affliction. And why did he do it? Why did he have his people wait so long in a land of slavery? In Exodus 9.16 we read, Indeed, for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you my power. and in order to proclaim my name throughout all the earth. And so I want you to see from the very beginning that our waiting, just like the Old Testament saints' waiting, has a purpose. And it's not just to make us miserable. And it's not just to grind us into the ground and to discourage us. The Christian life and the waiting that we do is not meant to be a life of misery and of agony and of hopelessness.

If it were, then Simeon has no place in it. Because Simeon lives in a time much like Egypt, and yet he's righteous and he's devout and he's looking for the consolation of Israel. After years of silence, he looks and he hopes and he anticipates. And you may say, well, he had a special word from the Lord. The Spirit came to him and told him, you're not going to die until you see the Messiah. And I say, you're right. Do you think anyone else wanted that? To see the Messiah? Doesn't Hebrews tell us that they longed, that they searched, that they sought after, not knowing when it would come or who he was. They saw by faith the fulfillment of the promise that God would send the Messiah. So yes, Simeon was told, you're going to see the Lord's anointed before you die. And what a sweet promise it is. And yet he wanted to see it.

He waited in such a way that he was ready to see it. And it wasn't because waiting was easy. Waiting was hard. He didn't know how long he'd have to wait. If you think about it, let me ask you this. How old is Simeon? How old do you think Simeon was? Young or old or middle-aged or a child or what? Why? So only old people say they can die now? You know, there's no indication that he's old. There's no indication he's young either. There's just no indication about his age. Let's suppose he is old. How long ago did he get the word from the Lord that he would see the Lord's salvation before he died? We're not told that either. What if he had to wait his whole life? What if he was told in his childhood that he'd see the Lord's anointed, and yet now he's a very old man? Maybe that's what happened. It could be that he was told the night before that he's a young man. We just don't know. But my point is that we don't know.

We don't know how long Simeon had to wait, and yet he waited with hope. He was looking for the consolation. He was a righteous and devout man. And I want you to see that his righteousness and his devotion are directly related to his hope of seeing the Lord's salvation. You remember a few weeks ago, if you were here, I preached on the parable of a master going away and leaving his slave in charge, and the slave was a wicked man. The slave said, oh, you're going to be gone. It's going to be gone on a long journey. And what did he do? Was he righteous? Was he devoted to his master? No. He said, break out the wine. Break out the food. Our master's gone. You guys, we can have a party. He's not going to come back and spoil this party. We'll have a grand old time. And then he gets drunk and he's full of every kind of gluttony. And what's he do? He starts beating the slaves. This is not righteousness. This is not devotion to his master.

And why did he feel liberty to behave in the way that he did? Well, it's because he said, my master is not coming back, not anytime soon. And if you don't see or anticipate that the Lord is going to return, and if you don't look for it, not knowing how long you'll have to look for it, it will tend toward your entanglement in sin. If you think, I'm not going to have to be reconciled, For all of the things I've done, I'm not going to have to settle accounts for a long time. You're much more inclined to run up your bill. But not so with Simeon. We don't know how long he waited. It could have been hours. It could have been decades. But he waited in hope. And he didn't know how long he had to wait. And so the first thing I want you to see is that we as Christians who are to wait for our Lord's return don't know how long we're going to have to wait. I can't tell you the day or the time.

Scripture tells us that we don't know the day or the time. But we're to wait in hope, in anticipation, as Simeon did. And the fact that we don't know how long doesn't mean we don't wait in hope. Or that we resign, you know, we push that over onto the back burner because we've got more important things to do. Simeon was a righteous man. Remember that his circumstances were difficult. As I was preparing to preach on this sermon, I kept wanting to go into the Old Testament and preach because they're the ones who waited. You know, they waited thousands of years from the promise that was given to Adam, well, yes, to Adam, through the curse that the Lord declared to the serpent. They waited thousands of years. And how did the people of God in the Old Testament wait? They waited in trials and in persecutions and in sufferings. And I kept wanting to find a place where they waited, but their waiting was not in the context of persecution. Where it was just waiting because they were so...

caught up in the wait. It's so wonderful to wait. And I couldn't find it. The Psalms are full of waiting. How long, O Lord? How long? But every time you find how long, O Lord, it's, will you hide your face from me? How long will you allow my enemies to behave the way they do? How long, O Lord, will you permit this wickedness? And what were the psalmists, what was David crying out for? In Psalm 13, listen to this. He says, These are difficult times that David's living in. Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death. And my enemy will say, I have overcome him.

And my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken. But I have trusted in your loving kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Do you see the difficulty and the pleading with God to rise up and to deliver, to fulfill his word? And the hardship that attended that. And yet the joy. What does he say toward the end of it? I have trusted in your love and kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. Is that not what Simeon was doing in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of his hardship? His heart rejoiced in the salvation that the Lord would provide. David acknowledges both his difficulty and his faith at the same time.

And it's oftentimes that when we're waiting and we finally feel pressed to the end where we want to, something's got to be done. You get to that point, you're going along, you're bumping along in life and things are happening and you kind of take it on the chin and you're like, I'll be okay. And then something else happens and you go, oh, okay. And you get a little frustrated and then something else happens and you're finally done. You've reached the end of your patience, of your grace. You're no longer willing to wait for things to be straightened out. You're going to have it now. Too often we get tired of waiting. Circumstances are difficult. We've been in it long enough. We talk to young men, and the Scripture tells us it's good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth, and I haven't met a young man yet that likes it. They all want to know when it's over. I want to know when it's over. I'm a young man, so if you're younger than me, you don't have to even worry about it. You're young. I want to know, when's it over? When does my gray hair become my strength and not my shoulders?

How long, oh Lord, how long? God's people have always cried out how long. When they come to the end of themselves and they don't see a way forward in their own strength and they can't abide the hardship anymore, they have a choice. They can despair or they can pray. And they can confess their faith that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he'll do. This is what David does in Psalm 13. This is what Simeon is doing in the temple. It's inconceivable to think that this man, Simeon, would have lived his life and not been a man of prayer. How do you look for the consolation of Israel? This man lives in a time of misery. He lives in a time of hardship. A time of trial. It's all around him and he can see it and he's smart enough to look around and say, it's not how it should be. Lord, you have promised good things and mercy and kindness and blessing and a Savior to your people.

And yet we live in this way. Would you rise up, O Lord, and save your people? Would you deliver them? Are not those the type of men that are most delightful to be around? Men who have faith to bear up under the burdens of this world because they trust God. You ever see these polls? They show up on Facebook and everywhere else. You know, if you could sit down with an old prophet, a theologian, a whoever, Who would it be? And all the really pious people always say, Jesus. I'd sit down with Jesus. Well, of course we all would, but setting him aside, who would you want to sit down with? I'd love to sit down with Simeon. Throughout the Old Testament, when God's people sought deliverance, the fulfillment of the promise, as they understood it at that time, was deliverance from their enemies.

From those who hated God, from those they're oppressors. And so they prayed for God to rise up and to crush their enemies, to destroy them, to lay them waste. And we see that same understanding coming on through even into Jesus' life. Because when Jesus is about to be arrested by the thugs in the middle of the night, Simon Peter whips out his sword and what's he do? Lops off the guy's ear. He wanted to see, Simon Peter, he wanted to see the deliverance. He wanted to see God's kingdom established. His people saved. And so he pulled out his sword and lopped off the oppressor's ear. And what did Jesus do? He put it back. And he said, Simon, what are you doing? In Matthew 26 it says, Behold, one of those who were with Jesus reached out and drew out his sword and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, Put your sword back into its place. For all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think...

that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels. Now, what would Jesus do with 12 legions of angels? He'd deliver his people, militarily. Do you not think that I could do that, Peter, if I wanted to? Put your sword away. And it's at that time, when that happened, all the disciples left. They scattered. They were afraid. They lost hope. They had been waiting and waiting and waiting. And Jesus had finally come, and they were with him. But they understood his deliverance improperly. And as a result, they scattered. They lost hope. They were discouraged and fearful. He believed that the Messiah's salvation would be militant. And he wasn't entirely wrong. Jesus will come back. We're told he will come back, and he'll gird himself with a sword, and he'll reconcile all of this world to himself.

And there won't be any more resistance. And there won't be any more waiting. But that's what he'll do at his second coming. That's not what he did at his first coming. And so when he put that man's ear back on, essentially what he was demonstrating to Peter was, you have to wait. You have to wait. It's not time for everything yet. It's time for some things, but not all things. Luke 2.14 tells us that when the angels were rejoicing in the heavens, in the skies, the shepherds see them, they're crying out. And what they say is, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. When Jesus came his first time here, the one that Simeon saw, he came to establish peace between God and men. When he returns, that opportunity will be gone.

There won't be any more establishing of peace. There will be rendering of debts. And there won't be time to repent. And there won't be desire to repent for those who haven't at that point. They'll cry out for rocks and hills to fall on them, but they won't repent. They'll band together out of their hatred for God to fight him. And they'll lose. He will come in victory and he will rule over this earth when he returns. But in his first coming, When he came meekly and mild and vulnerable and weak as a child, he came to bring peace between God and men. So Simeon, when he sees the baby, Jesus declares, I can die now. My life's work, the satisfaction of every desire in my heart has been fulfilled. And I can die in peace because I've seen your salvation. And as I was laying in bed last night thinking about this, I thought, What did Simeon see? Because he says, I saw your salvation. But what did he see? He saw a baby. This is what he saw. He didn't see a king decked out in robes and crowns with power and majesty. He saw a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. And yet he declares that when he saw that child, the baby Jesus, he saw the Lord's salvation. Now, how can a man say such a thing? He says it by faith.

He saw this child and he said, you're the one. You're the one. And you're going to do all that's been prophesied about you. Even though he saw the baby, he still spoke by faith. He still had to speak by faith because even in that moment, he couldn't see everything that would come. And we still cannot see everything that will come. And so we wait in hope. We wait in faith. We speak and ought to live as Simeon did. living in a season of transition, living in a season of unrest, waiting for the consolation, looking for the consolation of God's people. So how do we wait? I've already mentioned it some, but I want to return to it. We wait primarily in this regard through prayer, making our petitions and our desires and our needs and our expectations and our praises known to God. And you know, prayer is one of these things.

that unless you're a charismatic, when you talk about prayer, we all kind of just, our eyes just kind of glaze over and it's like, well, yeah, we should pray. But we don't pray. Not like we should. Why don't we pray like we should? The reason I tell you is because you've been taught that God answers prayer. And so you prayed. And then you didn't get what you wanted. At least not right away. Maybe not at all. And the lesson you learned was a wicked one. You learned that God doesn't answer prayer. That God doesn't do what he says he does. He tells us to ask for all of our needs and all of our desires to ask him. And so we do. But at some point you didn't get the answer you wanted or you didn't get the answer at all. And you learned that you shouldn't pray. Not with your heart in it, anyway. You think, I trusted God. I waited on him and I prayed.

But they still died. I still lost my job. My parents still divorced. Whatever it is, the difficulties of life. I prayed and it didn't go the way I wanted it to. Even the way it should have gone. So I ask you, if you've had that thought in your heart, to whom else will you go? And to what else will you, where will you turn? Do you have any better offers? You don't even have competing offers of provision and care and deliverance and mercy. You know, when you spend time around older people, they kind of tend in two general directions. Generally, as people get older, they either get sweeter or they get more bitter. And it's hard to be around the ones who get more bitter, and it's a delight to be around the ones that get sweeter.

And you're tempted to believe that the ones who get sweeter had an easier life, a better life than the ones who got bitter. But that's not true. If you talk to the ones who've gotten sweeter, they're actually often the ones who've had the hardest lives, the most difficult trials. And yet they haven't been led astray to believing that God is not good and that God is not merciful or that God's not going to do what he says he's going to do. And so what you see in old people, who are sweet, is one who's learned contentment and learned to wait in faith. One like Simeon. So what do they say to you? What would that sweet old person, what would Simeon say to you if you objected and said, you know, I asked of the Lord, but he didn't give me what I wanted. What would Simeon say? He'd tell you to trust God.

He'd tell you that God is a God of his word and that he doesn't change and that whatever he says he will do, he will bring it to pass. And it's our part to wait on him and not to wait because we have no other choice, but to wait because we trust that he will do what he says he's going to do. So other than prayer, what does waiting with faith look like? Well, it looks like... increasing your knowledge of your own sinfulness, of the hardships that you endure in your life, the trials that God places in your path. These are the sorts of things that the world will tell you to suppress and to hide and to ignore and to make excuse for and otherwise to cover up. But when you ignore that, you lose the remedy. You know when you're sick and you go, I'm not sick. And someone says, here.

You have a sore throat. Have some lemon tea with honey in it. Or you have a headache and here's an Advil. And you go, I'm fine. Do you get better? You're laughing, Iroh. Do you do this? I know you do this. You're always fine. But the reality is you're lying. You're not fine. And the sooner you acknowledge you're not fine and that you're disappointed and that it hurts, the sooner you'll come to faith. To lie about that is to maintain the misery, to compound it. Simeon didn't ignore the hardships of God's people. The reality is we live in a season of transition constantly, and we ought to remember it. It's a helpful thought to me to remember that things are not as they should be yet. Not anywhere in my life. Not with regard to my own sin.

not with regard to my marriage or to my children or to my work or to anything. Nothing is as it should be. Nothing is as it will be. And that ought to give us hope that God is still at work, working out his salvation. Levi is not here this morning, but you guys know Levi bought a house and has been a long time in remodeling it, months longer than he wanted to. And I mentioned to you last week, I said, you know, when people are in the process of buying a house or building a house or doing some sort of renovation to a house, there always comes a point where they get tired of waiting. And they say, I just want it done. It's done. When you say, but you need to, what about this and that and the other thing? And they say, I don't care anymore. It's done. And what they've lost is their ability to wait. And I only say Levi because we all know he's bought a house, but he's just like all of us. The house he's moving into isn't done.

Is it? Dad says it's not done. I've been there. It's not done. So Levi's going to go live in a bit of a construction zone. But it's no different than the construction zone that all of us live in with regard to our sin and our struggles and our hardships and our trials. If things have to be done before you can be satisfied with them, you'll never be satisfied. You'll be a curmudgeonly old bitter person who no one likes to be around. And you won't be able to figure out why. You struggle with sin, you struggle with the effects of sin, you struggle with how entangled your heart still is in its sinful desires. I say to you, God came to deliver you from that. That's what he sent his son to do. Not simply to pay the penalty of your sin, not simply so that he could welcome you into his kingdom, but actually to deliver you from the lusts and the desires and the corruptions that have taken root in your heart.

And you say, if he has, I wish he'd do it. And I say, he will. Will you wait? Will you look? Will you be satisfied with the work that he is doing, even though it's not done yet? The only reason it's not done is because God's chosen not to have it be done yet. He could choose to be done like that. He could have made a world and designed redemption in such a way that when his people, when he saved them, they just didn't sin anymore. And they were perfect people now. He could have done that. But he chose not to do that. He chose to leave us in our bodies that are falling apart, that are dying, that are aching, that are broken, and in a world that's the same, to remind us to hope and to wait in faith and to look for his salvation. Galatians 4, verses 4 and 5 says, But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And Hebrews 11.1 says this, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So what is faith but to wait? And to wait with expectation that God will do just exactly what he said he would. And that when he does, it will be better than you ever could have made up yourself. So in this season of Advent, this season of remembering Jesus' first coming and looking forward to his second coming, I encourage you and I exhort you to wait with faith. And not just for his coming, but for everything that's undone in your life and not as it should be. You wait with faith because that's what Christians do. It's a distinctly peculiar Christian thing. No one else can do it, but we ought to do it. And we can do it through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so that's our work. That's our place. Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we are weak and frail and easily overcome with our sin, with the lives that we lead. Discontentment and bitterness are our native tongue. And yet we ask, Father, that you would be merciful to us and that you would save us from our sins, that you would save us in your time. And that as you're working this out in us and through us, and as we pursue it, you would give us faith and grace to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Help us to hope and to look forward to the day when things that are undone will be done, when what is broken will be fixed, when your son returns and he reconciles all things to himself. We look forward to that day, Father. We ask that you would prepare us for that day and that you would make us fruitful.

in the time between now and then. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.