1 Peter, chapter number 1, in verses 1 and 2, the Apostle Peter has given us a description, the identity of God's children, important for us to be familiar with as we journey through this world, experiencing trials, suffering, which will be a normal part of our passage during our time here. He describes us as strangers in verse number 1, we considered that, and he describes us in verse 2 as elect, and so we are now in this portion toward the end of verse 2, we are now considering the evidence of being God's elect, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace to you, God's elect, we are traveling as strangers in the world, obedience is an essential feature of God's elect people. Obedience is the result of God's Holy Spirit, who has, is, and will continue to set apart the elect for sacred use, God's use. The Word of God is the means used to bring about spiritual life in the elect who were born into this world like every other human, spiritually dead, with a sentence of death and judgment looming over us. But God has appointed a time and a place where the elect would hear the gospel of their salvation. At some point, the Spirit will use the Word of God and regenerates the soul that was once dead in their trespasses and sins, and causes the dead to be raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. That life has been sanctified, set apart by the Spirit. That life is now designated for sacred use. That new life is a spiritual life, living in a physical body with an old nature, an old man. And now that new life is now the residence of God's own Spirit. The Spirit dwells in every elect child of God, and his goal is to increase the development, the progression of our new life as he diminishes the corrupt tendencies of our old nature. We, God's elect, are becoming more and more obedient. And this is how we recognize the elect. As Peter has worked that out from foreknowledge, election, sanctification, and obedience. This is how we recognize the elect. They hearken, as the word obedience means, they hearken to God's Word. They have ears to hear, and there's an interest in obedience. That's the elect. And he adds, or another feature of the elect, Peter says, is they come to the fountain drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and they receive cleansing from their defilements and their failures to obey. The elect desire to walk with God and to fellowship with him as their father. The elect confess, they acknowledge their sins, they desire to be cleansed. The elect repent from practices that have been wrong and sinful. And now they endeavor to turn from their sins and do those things that please their heavenly Father. All of this is going on in the life of God's elect. In order to bring about, as Paul said, our conformity to the image of his own Son. And so the Father, Paul tells us in Romans 8, predestinated us that Jesus Christ would be seen, formed in our life now, while we live in time, and are resisted by the world around us, our own flesh, and the devil. The power of our resurrected Savior is for our use in this world. It is the source for all changes that are being made in our life now. The elect are afforded the privilege of living with a clean conscience. We must not minimize the value of a washed conscience. The Holy Spirit, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, gives Peter this insight and instruction as he traces the life and experience of the elect of God in time. The Holy Spirit is cultivating a new conscience in the new life that has been born in us. It's shaped and formed by God's Word and can be defiled. And the result is guilt, even in a Christian, and a troubled conscience that requires us to deal with our sins. This is all of God's working and His plan concerning us. Before we leave this theme where we were last Sunday on the sprinkling of the blood, there's a few more things that I would like to say. Go to 1 Timothy and chapter 1. Some things we did not have time to cover last week I would like to insert before we move on to the next phrase in Peter's letter. First Timothy chapter number 1, he says in verse number 1, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope. He views his position as a minister of the gospel. Paul's identifying it in his life as well as Timothy. It comes by commandment. It came by authority that was imposed upon him by God to be, to be a minister of the gospel. In verse 5 he then writes, now the end of the commandment, this commandment that is upon us Timothy, the end of this commandment that has been given to us from God, the end of this commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned. Here in verse 5 Paul is referring to a three-part disposition. These are dispositions for God's ministers that they must live with and live by. All who are under the commandment to shepherd God's children as it's his duty to make sure that all who are under his oversight understand and practice these dispositions as well. Love out of a pure heart. That's the goal of my life. If it's the goal of your life, that we love each other honestly, truly, without hypocrisy and that we have a good conscience, that we maintain it. And I'll say a little more about that in a moment. And that our faith is sincere, genuine in our hearing and our obedience to the things we hear. Real faith. These must be qualities, dispositions in Timothy's life as it was in Paul's life. And it's the duty of every minister of God to have those same qualities. But it's also the duty of every believer to make sure these things are true in them as well. Paul uses this phrase, a good conscience is one that functions for our benefit. A good conscience. A good conscience must be kept washed to function for our benefit or it will trouble you. A defiled conscience will hinder our walk and service to God. Look at how Hebrews deals with this in a couple of portions. Hebrews chapter number 9, first of all, Hebrews 9, in verses 13 and 14, he speaks about the blood of Christ so much throughout Hebrews, but in verses 11 and 12 as well, our eternal redemption was not achieved by blood of bulls and calves, but by his own blood. He has obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. The blood of Christ, how much greater it is than all of the Old Testament blood sacrifices to purge, he says, a verb, purifying your own conscience from, from, and then to, right? From dead works, and those are the things that we do, sinful things. Those are dead works. They have no value. They have no life. There's no eternal purpose to our dead works. And we are yet guilty of committing dead works. But the sacrifice of Christ is intended to cleanse us from those things so that we might serve to serving the living God from dead works, which defile the conscience, pollute our own mind and our relationship with God, hinder our fellowship and service to him. The blood, the sprinkling of the blood of Christ cleanses us from dead works so that we continue to serve the living God. The conscience is put into every human that is born according to Paul in Romans 2. It's shaped by many human factors. It's perverted by our culture and our flesh and spiritual wickedness of the world. It can be silenced by ignoring it and hardened, searing it so that it has no influence in our life. The conscience of the new man, however, it can be developed by the spirit and word of God in you. It can be confused, yes, it can be confused even in the new man by wrong teaching. And it too can be silenced by unconfessed sin and the sensitivity of the conscience to the truth, Paul says, can be seared. The blood of Christ is how the conscience is silenced against us. The blood of Christ is how the conscience is silenced against us. It wants to cry out, in Hebrews 12, the sprinkling of the blood speaks better things than the blood of Abel. The blood of Abel cried out for revenge, for retribution. But the blood of Christ cleanses us from the conscience. If you want to live well with God and serve Him, your conscience must be kept clean. The only way that has happened, the spirit and truth help us to navigate the complexity of the conscience and develop it, as Paul said, into a good conscience, a good conscience. So friend, when you confess your sins, I think the point we want to make here, when you confess your sins and you go to God and acknowledge the things that you have done, and you seek forgiveness from Him as 1 John 1 works those details out for us, don't let your conscience keep crying out against you. The blood of Christ silences the conscience. Apply the blood. Every time the conscience wants to bring up old things to haunt you and defeat you and keep you from serving God, apply the sprinkling of the blood. It speaks greater things than all the blood of bulls and goats. It purges us from a polluted conscience so that we might serve. Look at Hebrews chapter 10. There's another good reference here before we leave this subject and move on with Peter. Even ancient philosophers acknowledge there's something at work in all human beings that helps to sort through what is right and wrong. There's a moral principle that exists. Psychologists acknowledge it as well. There is a conscience, but that conscience can be greatly distorted and polluted, even in the Christian. So we must deal with it. We cannot ignore it. When there is guilt, we've got to deal with it. Where do you go to deal with the conscience? To the blood. By confessing the sin and acknowledging it, seeking forgiveness, we purge ourselves from those defilements and equip ourselves in a fresh way to serve the Lord again. Look at chapter 10 beginning in verse 14. Some great verses here. We'll read through verse 22. For by one offering, he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. This is that initial sanctification act of God that we talked about a couple of messages ago versus the progressive sanctification. This is the initial that provides us the opportunity for the progressive. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is witness to this, to us. For after that he had said before, this is the new covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them. What a change from the old covenant to the new, from the external pressure of the commandments to now with living inside of us. By the living spirit of God and with the hope and the promise that their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission, forgiveness of these is, there is no more need for the offering of sin, sin offerings. So brethren, therefore, having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh, and having now an high priest over the house of God, who is Jesus Christ, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. You see, the need of what we must do to come into the presence of God, cleansed, washed, is how we are to enter into his presence. We are invited to come into his presence, the presence of God, and we are invited to walk in fellowship with him, but we must come with. Notice that, we must come with, let us draw near with. These things must accompany us. As we enter into the holiest of holies, these things must accompany our entrance, a true heart, one that is in full assurance of faith and confidence in the God who has saved and invited them, is in a right relationship, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. When you enter into the presence of God, if your conscience is crying out against you, you're not going to linger long there. You're not going to pray well then. It's unnerving. It's intimidating. It's difficult to remain in the presence of God when the conscience is taunting you. What a wonderful provision that God has provided for his elect people, that our conscience can be cleansed. We can be sprinkled with the blood of Christ, purged from those things that defile us. And the reason he can do that, he's already paid for them all in the blood of his son. Now he provides the sprinkling, the continual washing of sanctification. Okay, let's go back to 1 Peter. Let's add to where we left off last Sunday on this matter of the sprinkling. The elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification, that's a progressive work that is being done by the Spirit. There's initial, there's progression that is being made here. The elect of God go through this process of being set apart and continually being set apart. And the Spirit of God, through this work, brings them unto obedience. This is a disposition that is found in God's children, the elect. Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace to you. Peter states in this concluding phrase here as we come toward the end of his opening, his greeting, he expresses his desire, his wish for all who read this letter. Whenever it's read throughout human history, this is for us, the elect. Wherever God's children are located on the earth, it's for the elect. And whatever their present conditions are, it really doesn't matter. Here, Peter expresses the constant desire of God for his children who are strangers in this earth. Peter is not simply expressing his own heart, he's expressing the heart of God. Grace to you. Grace to you. And may it be multiplied. As we read this particular opening of Peter, we've tried to keep in mind that there is a scope and sequence to Peter's words. The statements made leading up to the wish for them here. Grace to you and peace. The statements made leading up to this wish for them. It's an interesting, in the Greek, it speaks of a wish, a desire for something. It's in a particular mood that suggests that. Peter is referring to heartfelt desire and hope for them. But he turns it into prayer. It is also in the form of a prayer. But he doesn't get here just with random ideas. I mean, the things that are laid out here in these two verses are not random. God's Spirit doesn't do random. There's a purpose in why these things are laid out this way. And so he brings us to this place of grace to you through a channel of different things that he has said that need to be considered. So every phrase. Every phrase leading up to this grace to you is important for the application to fit to put ourselves as recipients of this blessing. We can't just say grace to you. The letter doesn't start that way. There is a procedure here. There is an identification, a recognition. There is a movement that takes place. There is evidence of the Spirit of God at work in a human life that reveals they are the elect of God because he brings them into a place of being obedient, hearkening, seeking to obey the voice of God in their life. These people desire to be washed and cleansed from their sin. They don't want to live defiled day after day after day. They want to be washed. And it's to them that he says, the heart of God to you, grace to you. To you there is grace. This idea of grace is a word that is bigger than what we can even begin to imagine this morning. Peter uses it and I think it's important to at least glance. We won't have time to get into the depths of what he's saying, but I want you to see the other seven references that he makes to grace. The same word that he uses here. When you hear the word grace, you need to think about what is commonly simply stated that grace is unmerited favor. And that's probably one of the most concise definitions of grace that we can offer. Unmerited favor. And it means there's nothing you can do to earn it. There's nothing you can do to merit grace. It is free and it comes from God without works. Grace. Grace. You'll see how it shows up here. When we think of it, we, as Peter does initially, we think of it often in terms of our salvation, right? Grace in our salvation. That's where, as Stephen mentioned earlier, the subject of grace begins there. That's where it begins, our salvation. You go to the Apostle Paul and read in chapter one, and he talks about this grand scheme, plan of God's Trinitarian salvation engaged in our redemption. The word grace keeps showing up there in reference to what God has done. Salvation is all of grace. There's nothing human, no human handprint on grace. It's all divine. And we as people who believe in sovereign grace, we mean by that, that God is the one who acts initially and completely in our salvation. No one manipulates him, buys him off, causes him to act. This is his own free choice. Free grace. And we acknowledge that in our doctrine of salvation. But there's much more to it than that. And I realize as I'm thinking through this and preparing over the last weeks, that sometimes I forget how big it is. And Peter's going to open this up for us concerning the doctrine of grace. So I'll have you glance at a few references. We'll say a sentence, statement, and move on. Because we'll get to them at some point in time. Chapter one, verse ten, he says, Of which salvation, this grand scheme of salvation that he has been dealing with in chapter one, in the first few verses, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched out diligently, who prophesied, predicted the grace that should come unto you. There is a special movement of God toward his people that the new covenant opened up. They heard about it. They anticipated it. They saw the shadows and types. Oh, the grace of the salvation that has been brought to you. Look at verse 13. He'll use the word again. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind and be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Not only did grace begin the process, grace is going to culminate it. You can't imagine the grace of God that will be on display when he returns for you. It's grace. Look at verse, chapter three, verse seven, dealing here in the subject of marriage. He says, Likewise, you husbands dwell with them according to the knowledge, according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker, fragile vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life. Life is a grace. When God gives you a partner to travel with, that's a grace from God to you. Just as he does with singles, Paul will say to the singles, God has a special grace for you that you can live your life to the honor and glory of his name. So the grace of life, whatever your life has been called to be, God has grace for your life to carry you through it from beginning of your salvation to the end. Look at chapter four and verse number 10. Again, he will use it here. As every man hath received the gift, whatever the gift that God has given you to utilize in body life. Did you know that? Every one of you have something to give to the benefit of the body. Use that gift for the body. That's the exhortation. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good stewards of the multifold grace of God. Do you realize God has, your gift is a grace to you from God. It's a grace to you. Use it for the benefit of the body of Christ. Chapter five, verse five. There's a few of them here in chapter five, verse five. He says, likewise, you younger submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility for God resisted the proud and gave the grace to the humble. So here's a qualifier now. God's grace only belongs to his elect. And the elect only experienced the grace of God when they are sprinkled and washed, made clean. And those who receive the grace of God must come before him in a particular condition of not only being washed but humbled. God hears the cries of the humble. The Old Testament is filled with that. And here Peter is reminding us. God resists the proud. You have a need in your life. God resists it as long as there is pride and haughty arrogance, self-righteousness, whatever form it takes. God resists your need. So you're humble. And so to the humble. The promise is made so humble yourselves. Therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, knowing he cares for you. What a sweet place to be in your relationship with God that you have full confidence. He not only is hearing, but he is willing to shoulder, take on your burden with you. But it is qualified. It belongs to the humble. That's what God does for the humble, not the proud. Verse 10. But the God of all grace, who hath called you unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, established, strengthened, and settle you. And here the grace that carries us through life, carries us through trials, carries us through every difficulty. That grace that carries us, supplies us with all that we need to live. And profit. From life. And all of its experiences, no matter how painful and dark those days might be. God promises to carry you through and provide all the grace that is necessary. To profit from all of those experiences of your life. And then he closes with another statement on grace in verse 12 to Silvanus. A faithful brother unto you. He has sent his letter. It seems dispersed. It began the disbursement of this letter across the Roman Empire. A faithful brother unto you. As I suppose, I have briefly written this letter. Doesn't see it as a lengthy essay on any particular thing. It's a letter addressing the people of God. Exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein you stand. And so here Peter is concerned with whether or not the grace that people are talking about is the true grace. A lot of people talk about grace, have no comprehension of grace. A lot of people use the term but do not live within the term. And so one of the purposes Peter even says for writing this brief letter to you is to clarify the true grace of God to you. And so these are Peter's eight statements on grace. And he is concerned in the end, his last statement about the perversion of grace. False grace. He emphasizes true grace in contrast to false grace. Jude, in his one little chapter book, talks about false grace. He talks about people who take the grace of God and turn it, twist it, redefine it, explain it differently than God intended. They actually turn it for making allowances for sinning more freely. Oh, the grace of God is so big. It's so great, it's so grand. And like Paul, well, let us abound in sin so that grace may abound greater. Paul says, God forbid. If you've truly been redeemed, you can't think that way. But Jude writes about people who take the grace of God and twist it and end up denying the very Lord. It's not that they don't deny the Lord existed. But what Jude meant is that they reject his lordship over them. They will have nothing to do with the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ. He emphasizes the Lord in both phrases. And so Peter ends his discussion on grace where he began. True grace is the truth about our Savior and the salvation, which is all, all of grace. When we think of grace, we kind of look over these ways that Peter has used it in this letter. We come away with, I hope, a deep sense of how huge and infinite the reservoir of grace that has been opened for all who are God's children. Not only is it huge, but through this statement beginning in Peter, grace to you and all that he's going to say about it is to challenge us to draw more from God and his grace. God has designed his plan for us that we would journey through this world with all of its allurements and deceptions, living in a fleshly body and nature that naturally gravitates to carnal things and spiritual forces everywhere at work to confuse us, deceive us, trick us to engage in things that can easily defile us. How blessed to hear the apostles say and speak to us the mind of God, grace to you, grace to you. You have great need of grace, grace to you. Peter uses this word grace as we noted in various ways to illustrate the wide application to our life in this world. We need grace for everything and we need it constantly and we need more than we can even imagine. We need much grace multiplied, he says to you. Peter believes in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and our salvation, that he is speaking on behalf of our Father and he's telling us, dear child, I have much more for you. Yes, my unmerited, undeserved free grace is available to you, grace to you, my elect. When you read Paul in chapter 8 of the book of Romans, I don't have time to go there and read that, but he goes through all the things that God has done and he says, brethren, brethren, if God has done this for you, how do you think he will withhold anything from you? He that gave his own son for you, he worked out your eternal plan of redemption for you. So regardless of what you encounter in this world, don't be distracted and don't think that God is not listening, nor does he somehow not care. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Know that, believe that. Grace to you. The Father wants us to be persuaded of this. A couple of closing thoughts from Paul's statements on this subject. Look at 2 Corinthians in chapter 9. The context here is about giving and supporting brethren who are in need. And here it's a church at Corinth. Paul is exhorting them to help support the poor believers in Jerusalem. We've tried to do that as a church, whether they are in Haiti. We have sent gifts of money to help them to achieve different things, to live and survive in very difficult times or other parts of the world. And here the church is being exhorted to give resources. Give of your own substance. Give out of your own need. And with that in mind, he then says in verse 6 of chapter 9, But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap bountifully. Every man according to his purpose in his heart shall let him give, not grudgingly nor out of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver just like himself. He gave cheerfully the greatest of all gift for us. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you. And here it's used in the context of human needs. Whatever your need is, however God chooses to supply it, consider it a grace of God to you. Anytime you make a sacrifice to bless another life, trust God that His grace to you will supply your need. That's what Paul is saying here. He will make all grace, all your needs that you have need of, God will give all grace to supply all of those needs to your life. Look at what he says in chapter 12, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, about a particular trial in his life. 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Paul had a trial going on physically. He felt he had a physical need. He felt his physical condition was limiting his own ability to minister. And so he went to God again and again and a third time again. God remove this infirmity, this physical ailment in my life. Verse 8, for this thing I besought the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And God said unto me, Paul, communicated to him, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength will be made perfect in your weakness. Most gladly, therefore, Paul says, will I rather glory in my infirmity that the power of Christ may rest upon me. So God did dispense grace. It was just not the kind that Paul had wanted and asked for. But God gave him grace. And Paul was blessed by the decision that God made concerning his need. Our needs as frail humans are many. They exist in every realm. We need grace spiritually to see and understand and apply the truth we hear. Even this morning, we need grace, cry out for grace. We need grace to combat our old nature today. Whatever it is about your old nature that is holding you back and causing you to stumble along, God has grace for you. We need grace to put on the new man, which has been formed after the image of Christ. The Spirit of God is working this, and we are required to enter into that process by yielding and submitting and putting off and putting on. And not everything is easy to put off and put on. We need grace to do it, that we might become like the image and image of our Redeemer. Sometimes we need grace because of health problems. It's not always that we're looking for a cure, but to live with our condition. We need grace. Health breaks down. We all have infirmities. We get older, they multiply and they get bigger. What do we need? We need grace. Not necessarily to be healed, but grace to journey with them. Sometimes we're desperate. Have you ever been desperate? We've been desperate, my wife and I at times. God, we don't have enough to pay rent next month. Some of our earlier days, there were serious stresses and battles to try to just meet our needs as we're going about planning a church without resources coming by way through the church. But we had needs and we cried to God. We can't even begin to tell you, list all of the times that God's grace ministered to our material needs. It's grace. We needed grace. God gave grace materially. God chooses which avenue that He wants to dispense His grace to us in. Whatever He chooses, it may be to remove a trial. It may be like Paul, no, you need the trial. I'm going to give you grace to endure the trial. God makes those decisions. We don't. And like Paul, we ought to rejoice and consider the blessing of God's grace now resting upon us being more valuable than being healed, as Paul said. And the nice, wonderful thing is that God has made it clear to us. Look at Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews in chapter 4. That God has established a place in heaven where we can go at any moment and ask for more grace. And so in verses 14 through 16, seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession of faith. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our own weaknesses, our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet he without sin. Knowing this to be so, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace. Why do we go to the throne of grace? That we may obtain mercy and find grace, more grace to help us in the time of our need. So we have a place to go. We don't have to wonder, okay, I need grace. Where do I go to get grace? We know where to go. The one who sits on the throne with his scepter has extended it to every one of his elect people. Come, come to me. Come the proper way. Come as a man or a woman who has dealt with their own sin in their life and they've confessed it and they've acknowledged it and they've been washed. Come to me, humbled, not proud and haughty and arrogant, but come to me, come to me confidently. Know, be assured, I have your interest on my heart. Come boldly to the throne. And then he makes a statement that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. It's interesting, the language here is depicting a cry. Not just... Help! Help! That's the cry. That ought to be the spirit that is common among us. We have so much need. Help! I need your grace. Help. I need assistance. When this word is uttered, there is an urgency in heaven. Mark my words, there is an urgency in heaven. When a child of God says, help, heaven is moved to come to the aid of the children of God. We believe this to be true even when God seems to not respond. He hears. He's moved to act on our behalf. It's urgent to him because it's urgent to you. But we must in faith trust him to do the right thing because he is righteous in all of his judgments. The throne of grace dispenses mercy, some form of compassion and aid is on the way. Aid is on the way. God hears the prayers of his saints who come into his presence properly. One of the traits of God is God is a gracious God. A few references I've asked a few of our men to read, beginning with Numbers chapter 6. It's a part of the benediction that God gave to Aaron to pray upon the people, know this, I desire to be gracious unto you. That's my heart towards you. Joe. Gracious is the Lord. And then finally Nehemiah. Amen. As elect people of God, those who have come to him by faith through Jesus Christ and the redemptive plan that is offered in the gospel and you have believed and repented and now stand among the saints as an elect child of God to you. God has placed you in a position to be the recipients of his gracious nature. Do you desire anything more than that? Is there anything that could be greater than that? That the God of the universe, the creator of all things, as Bill shared with us from Colossians, that this God chooses to be gracious to us and he wants us to know I've got grace for all your needs. There is nothing you will experience that I don't have the grace to meet and to provide for you. Don't try to work your way into that position. You can't. Don't try to do enough good works so that God will favor you with his gracious nature. You can't. Just walk clean. Walk clean with him. Walk humbly with him. And when you have needs, cry to him and he will hear your voice. Why? He is a gracious God. And all of his grace has been wrapped up and put into his own son. And his son came and achieved all that is necessary for God to be both just and a justifier and to provide a salvation plan for us. And there's enough grace in the riches of Christ that there's grace for every elect God since the Garden of Eden to the last one. And I have news. You cannot exhaust that grace. Don't let your conscience cheat you. Go to God. Be at peace with him. Don't let the things of your past steal from you what you are entitled to. The grace of God. It's for you. Grace to you. This is the heart of God communicating to us today. May we learn to take much. He is honored when we do. If we take little, we show very little regard to what he has done. Let us be a people who take much of God's grace into our life. Father, thank you for these moments that we could reflect upon your word. May it remain. May it bring forth fruit. And may Christ be exalted. How could he not be exalted when we contemplate what has provided the grace of God for his people? It is the blood, the sprinkling of the blood that has opened up this great provision for your children. Thank you, Father. In Christ's name, amen.