SPEAKER_00: You can open your Bibles to the book of Second Corinthians chapter three again, the same place we did our scripture reading earlier tonight.
SPEAKER_00: When the scripture refers to people as being spirit-filled, I want you to understand that when the Bible describes someone as spirit-filled, what that means is that they are being transformed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That the Holy Spirit, when he fills an individual, he does that to make them more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that you can't be conformed into the image of Christ apart from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And no one who is filled with the Holy Spirit will fail to be transformed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I have often lamented how much the charismatic movement has messed up our understanding of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The third person of the Trinity is often the neglected person of the Trinity, at least in the sense of a right understanding of Him.
SPEAKER_00: Because so much of our kind of Western Christian world views being spirit-filled as the miraculous gifts, you know, tongues and prophecy or uh even internal feelings, like I felt the spirit lead me to this, or I felt the spirit lead me to that.
SPEAKER_00: But when the Bible speaks of being spirit-filled, what the language the scripture uses about being spirit-filled is the Spirit indwelling in somebody to conform them into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And there's so many different ways the Holy Spirit does that, but I want to drill down on one in particular in 2 Corinthians 3.
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I know I say that about any chapter I'm preaching, but I really do mean it with this one.
SPEAKER_00: We read the whole chapter earlier in our scripture reading, but I want you to look just at the last two verses, verses 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And there has to be some kind of just basic understanding here that the Holy Spirit, when you come to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit regenerates you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus talks about in John 3.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one who brings salvation, he brings faith, he brings you to spiritual life, he opens your eyes to see.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, God not just regenerates you, but in the New Covenant, in the New Testament, in the church, when God saves a person, he abides with him through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit dwells in that person.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means, when you say the Holy Spirit dwells in you, the Holy Spirit, of course, is spirit, not flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't occupy space.
SPEAKER_00: So how does somebody who is spiritual and doesn't occupy space dwell in you?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he doesn't take up residence in like the left upper artery of your heart or anything.
SPEAKER_00: What that means is that he operates with you spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're a human being, you have flesh, but you have a soul, and your soul, in a sense, is the real you, and that your soul is where you're encountering spiritual truth, and the Holy Spirit is operating with you, intersects with Jesse Johnson in my soul as he takes the scripture and unites it to my soul and causes me spiritually to understand the Bible spiritually and be transformed more and more into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's happening at a spiritual level.
SPEAKER_00: Outwardly, I don't get conformed into the image of Christ as far as my physical appearance, but inwardly it happens.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the level which the Spirit fills your life.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't reside inside your corporal body, the Spirit resides in your soul as he gives you life and transforms you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's all kinds of passages about this you could turn to.
SPEAKER_00: James 1, verse 21, a very common awana verse.
SPEAKER_00: Your kids probably all know it.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
SPEAKER_00: So just think of the language James uses there.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to receive the word that's implanted in you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not normally how reception or or implanting works.
SPEAKER_00: You don't tell the ground to receive the plant that you put in it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the language here.
SPEAKER_00: It's an imperative.
SPEAKER_00: God is putting the seed in your soul, and you are receiving it.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the key word of James is describing this is you're receiving it with meekness.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord puts the word, implants the word in your heart, and you are supposed to be meek as you receive it.
SPEAKER_00: So you go low, recognizing that the authority in your life is the word of God, because it's the word of God that's been implanted in you that is able to save your souls.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a foundational distinction between the old covenant and the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what 2 Corinthians 3 is all about.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3 is about just how much better it is to be a Christian in the church than it would to be a follower of God in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to rank the different dispensations, you know, one better than the other.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you would have been alive before Noah, you get to live a really long life.
SPEAKER_00: That'd be cool.
SPEAKER_00: But also everybody's murdering each other, so it's not a guarantee, you know?
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you lived in the Old Covenant era and you were an Israelite, you have the temple and the priesthood and all of that, and there's some cool things that I guess would go along with that.
SPEAKER_00: But in the church, what you have here in the church is the Holy Spirit who dwells in your heart and conforms you into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This just did not happen in the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is a new covenant reality.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just look at chapter 3, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: That God, through Christ, has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul here is contrasting himself as an apostle, the apostle of the Gentiles, over and against what it would have been like to be a minister in the old covenant era.
SPEAKER_00: Paul refers to the old covenant in a way that probably wouldn't make us comfortable, but he refers to the old covenant as the letter that kills.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Torah is glorious, but it also killed everyone that tried to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what the law did.
SPEAKER_00: The law brought with it death.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean the law itself was sinful, of course not, may it never be, but the law showed the people's inadequacy, it showed their sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul here is rejoicing that he is sufficient to be a minister of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit in the new covenant gives life, the letter it kills, the letter here being a contrast to the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: We know that because the next paragraph, the old covenant was written on stone, but in the new covenant, it's written on human hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just that's it right there.
SPEAKER_00: In the old covenant, Moses brought the law down from the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: It was written on stone.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Israelites broke it, literally broke it.
SPEAKER_00: Moses had to write it again.
SPEAKER_00: That's the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, God bypasses that and writes it on human hearts.
SPEAKER_00: This is why the New Testament is described as the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's put inside of us, written not in stone, but written in hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what 2 Corinthians 3 is doing is Paul is basically arguing with the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: They are, in a sense, over him and are accusing him of being in it for the money and all sorts of things and being a false prophet and a false apostle and all this.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul sarcastically asks at the beginning of the chapter, do you guys need a letter of recommendation from me?
SPEAKER_00: Or do I need a letter of recommendation from you?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how would this even work?
SPEAKER_00: Who's recommending who here?
SPEAKER_00: And I think he's being facetious there.
SPEAKER_00: He's not really asking for a letter of recommendation, nor is he really offering one, because the next verse he says, You are my letter of recommendation.
SPEAKER_00: It is written on your hearts.
SPEAKER_00: You can't forge that.
SPEAKER_00: You say when you write a letter of recommendation, it's uploaded in a portal or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Not here.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Spirit of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the glory of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so much better than the glory of the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Remember in the old covenant, Moses comes down from the mountain and he veils his face because the glory is fading in him.
SPEAKER_00: The distance between him and Mount Sinai, it diminishes his glory, and so he veils his face.
SPEAKER_00: But in the new covenant, that glory is internal.
SPEAKER_00: So our glory increases.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is the difference in the old and new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: In the old covenant, the glory decreased.
SPEAKER_00: Moses came down from the mountain and kept going down.
SPEAKER_00: In the new covenant, you come to faith in Christ, and that's your starting block.
SPEAKER_00: You're only being transformed more and more gloriously the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the incredible thing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I often liken this to athletics.
SPEAKER_00: In athletics, there's a curve, you know?
SPEAKER_00: You the more you practice and the more you train, the better you get, and the better you get, and the better you get.
SPEAKER_00: And then you hit a certain age, and then training and practice doesn't help anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's only going down.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant, Moses started up there at his peak, and in a sense, only went down.
SPEAKER_00: In the new covenant, we're starting at the bottom, and we're only growing in glory all the way until heaven will never peak.
SPEAKER_00: That's the crazy thing.
SPEAKER_00: With godliness, you never peak.
SPEAKER_00: You keep getting transformed more and more throughout your life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why the big difference in the old covenant and the New Testament, and there's a hundred reasons that often many of them are described in the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I just want to drill on one here that Paul focuses in.
SPEAKER_00: You can jump down to verse 12 of chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: We have this hope, we're bold, not like Moses, who had his face veiled because of the his glory fading.
SPEAKER_00: But look at uh verse 14, their minds were hardened.
SPEAKER_00: When they have the old covenant written, there's a veil over their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because in the New Testament, verse 16, when one turns to the Lord, the Spirit is removed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, the Lord is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So the difference here, this hope is hinged on the reality of the Holy Spirit who dwells in people's hearts who believe in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So this comes back to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people ask questions about how the Lord and the Spirit relate to one another in verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I thought the Lord was Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God at reference here is the God of Christ, God is the Lord, God is Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all this is happening in chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians is happening as well.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows the mind of God except the Spirit who searches out the mind of God?
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we need kind of a Trinitarian lesson.
SPEAKER_00: So if you'll indulge me for a few minutes, you understand that the Trinity is three persons, that all three persons have the same essence, the same attributes, it's the same being.
SPEAKER_00: God is really one person, the Father, who communicates all of his fullness to the second person, the Son, and the Father and the Son communicate all of their fullness to the third person, the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the Trinity is called Father, Son, and Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There's an order to it, and I'm gonna give you a crash course.
SPEAKER_00: Here's your vocab word.
SPEAKER_00: Your only vocab word tonight is taxis.
SPEAKER_00: That's the one vocab word you need to get tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And we're I'm gonna drive it home throughout the rest of the evening.
SPEAKER_00: It's important to Paul's argument in 2 Corinthians 3.
SPEAKER_00: Taxis is just the word for order.
SPEAKER_00: It means there's a structure or an order to something.
SPEAKER_00: The three persons of the Trinity are not arbitrary.
SPEAKER_00: The three persons of the Trinity are one, two, three, first, second, third.
SPEAKER_00: Not A D zebra, but one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: There's an order to them that is precise and an order to them that is intentional.
SPEAKER_00: Taxis is a Latin word, it's not a biblical word, but the concept is, I think, very biblical.
SPEAKER_00: Taxis means order, one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how the Trinity is presented in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is always the first.
SPEAKER_00: When you see the three persons of the Trinity presented in the scripture, it's always Father, Son, Spirit, and He's called the Father because He generates the Son, He gives life to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is the image of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this that nobody has life and of themselves except the Father, and the Father has granted it to the Son to have.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize that with the three persons of the Trinity, there's never a starting point for any of them.
SPEAKER_00: This is all eternal.
SPEAKER_00: They always exist for all points in time.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is the Father by nature, and so he's always had a son.
SPEAKER_00: If there was ever a time when the father didn't have a son, then he wouldn't be a father.
SPEAKER_00: I think you all understand this.
SPEAKER_00: I've hit on this enough.
SPEAKER_00: I can see some of you smiling already.
SPEAKER_00: But there's an order to it: Father, Son, Spirit, and the Father gives all of himself to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: The Father and the Son together give all of themselves to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So every part of God is in the Father, Son, and Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The only distinction between the three is the order.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is the first, he's the one who gives himself.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is the second.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only distinction between them.
SPEAKER_00: I've often given the analogy of the Delta Airlines article I read many years ago about identical twins, and it was a uh airline flight magazine.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember flight magazines and airlines back when they were allowed to have those in the pre-COVID world and in the before, in the before era?
SPEAKER_00: And this one article asked, How do you it was different parents who had identical twins, and when they were little kids, how did they tell the twins apart?
SPEAKER_00: And there are all kinds of little anecdotes in there.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite was a parent who in all the pictures had one kid on the right and the other on the left.
SPEAKER_00: But then they realized as they were developing the film that a lot of the pictures were flipped, and so the whole plot was ruins.
SPEAKER_00: There were some parents that dressed one in red all the time, one in green.
SPEAKER_00: There's uh a set of identical twins at uh IBC right now.
SPEAKER_00: They're in middle school, and they do a shoelace trick where you know one has one color shoelace, and the other is the other color shoelace.
SPEAKER_00: If you know what I'm talking about, you'll see it now.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it's just for their parents to tell.
SPEAKER_00: There was one set that wrote in a Sharpie marker on their heel when they were born, and they kept updating it throughout, you know, because when they're little tiny, you can't tell.
SPEAKER_00: And they kept updating the Sharpie marker.
SPEAKER_00: When you're looking at the Father, Son, and Spirit, how are you able to tell who is whom?
SPEAKER_00: Which is which?
SPEAKER_00: Because they are identical in every single way.
SPEAKER_00: The only distinction between them is one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: First, second, third.
SPEAKER_00: That's the order.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is not the Father, the Son is not the Spirit, the Son is not first, the Father is first.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from that, they are identical.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the way Scripture describes this in other places.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is referred to as the source, which makes sense if he's first.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is referred to as the image, he's the image of the invisible God.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 1, the radiance of the divine glory.
SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit is often referred to as the affection, then.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is the source, the Son is the image, the Spirit is love.
SPEAKER_00: And you understand how this would work.
SPEAKER_00: The Father has an image of himself, that image is not himself, but it's identical to him in every way, shape, and form.
SPEAKER_00: If you have an image of yourself, your image is not like you because you are arrogant, and your image of you is way better than you are in real life.
SPEAKER_00: But the Father, his image of himself is identical to him in every way, shape, and form.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees his image, and his image is animated, his image has life because the father has life.
SPEAKER_00: His image is distinct from the father, but identical to the father.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father has love towards his own image.
SPEAKER_00: The Father loves himself, he sees his son, and he loves the Son.
SPEAKER_00: The Son sees his father and loves the Father, and that is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That love is the entirety of the Godhead is poured out, and that love is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So the Spirit is often referred to with affectional language.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see how there is an order to these.
SPEAKER_00: They all exist simultaneously and in all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: But you can see when you think about it for a second, how there is an order.
SPEAKER_00: Source, image, affection.
SPEAKER_00: Or another example, life, light, and love.
SPEAKER_00: God is life, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: The Father grants the Son to have life in him.
SPEAKER_00: This is the eternally generated Son, has life granted to him.
SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love.
SPEAKER_00: He puts the love of God in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as you look at this, you recognize right away, all three persons of God are all of those things, right?
SPEAKER_00: The Son is life, the Spirit is life, the Father is light, the Father is love, of course.
SPEAKER_00: All three of them are all three of these things.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, when you think about them in this order, there is a particularity to the order: life, light, and love.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why the Holy Spirit is often associated with love.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he alone is love and the Son is not love or the Father is not love.
SPEAKER_00: Because He's the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father abides in him.
SPEAKER_00: Love is in, of course, all three persons of the Trinity, but in a sense, it's rightly designated to the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: This is why he's, by the way, the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of love repeatedly in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 5.5, Romans 15 30, Galatians 5.22.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Corinthians in chapter 13, verse 14, 2 Timothy 1, verse 7, repeatedly the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Love.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it doesn't mean the Father doesn't have love or the Son doesn't have love.
SPEAKER_00: It's just when you think about it, the Father has life and gives life to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is the source, and the Son is the light that's coming out of him.
SPEAKER_00: He is the image.
SPEAKER_00: And as they love each other, that is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a couple more of these because this is going to be important when we get back to 2 Corinthians 3.
SPEAKER_00: The planner, the Redeemer, the Applier.
SPEAKER_00: We went through Ephesians 1.
SPEAKER_00: This is a big point in Ephesians 1.
SPEAKER_00: The Father plans salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is the Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one who applies salvation to the elect.
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, all three persons of God plan salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Only the Son is the redeemer because he alone has the human nature.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father and Son send the Spirit to apply.
SPEAKER_00: So, in a sense, all this is true of all three persons, but the way it's described in Ephesians 1, there is this order to it.
SPEAKER_00: God predestines you, Jesus dies for you, the Holy Spirit changes your heart to believe in that.
SPEAKER_00: You want to update this?
SPEAKER_00: Here's an updated way to say it.
SPEAKER_00: The Father has the cash, the Son is the cash, and the Spirit handles the transaction.
SPEAKER_00: The Father possesses what it costs to redeem you.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is that possession.
SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit is the one who enacts the transaction.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't put that one on the slide because, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But I like it that way.
SPEAKER_00: A creator, Christ, and church.
SPEAKER_00: And now you're starting to see a chronology to this.
SPEAKER_00: The Father creates the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, if you want to talk just about creation, the Father creates the universe through the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is hovering on the waters of creation.
SPEAKER_00: So all three are present at creation, but the works of creation are normally attributed to the Father in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he creates through the Son, of course, and the Spirit is involved, of course, but it's normally attributed to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: After creation, in the middle of the Bible, is Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is sent from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The middle of the Bible hinges on Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He comes.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's sent by the Father, and of course the Spirit aids him.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, all three persons are involved in his life and in ministry, and yet he's the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture points forward to him and then backwards it looks at him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the centerpiece.
SPEAKER_00: But now, thirdly, is the church.
SPEAKER_00: And the church belongs to the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Lord of the church, and the church worships God our Father, but the church is spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: Every person who is part of the church, every member of the church, so to speak, has the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of him.
SPEAKER_00: It is the Spirit that builds the church together.
SPEAKER_00: He gives gifts.
SPEAKER_00: This did not happen in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: When the Old Testament looked forward to spiritual gifts, it was always looking forward.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will descend to the grave and ascend to heaven on his way, giving gifts to men.
SPEAKER_00: It's Psalm 68 repeated in Ephesians 4.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the Bible speaks of spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: They are something that is given to the church to serve one another.
SPEAKER_00: We are the temple, which is a spiritual building built together by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Every individual that comes to faith in Christ does so through the Holy Spirit, and we are built into this building brick by brick, soul by soul.
SPEAKER_00: So you see the chronological order, even first, second, third.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just, that's the taxis.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just speaking of God Himself, Father, Son, and Spirit, but the way you experience that in time.
SPEAKER_00: Creation, Christ, the church.
SPEAKER_00: And third, and this will be our last one here, this is the transition back to 2 Corinthians 3, is speaker, word, and sealer.
SPEAKER_00: The Father speaks.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's the source, he's the illuminator, he speaks.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is the word, he is the Lagos, He's the content of the Father's speech.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just think about that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the entirety of God, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: When God speaks, he speaks all of himself.
SPEAKER_00: He's light, he's constantly revealing himself.
SPEAKER_00: The Son is the word, it's the full content of it.
SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit is the one who comes and seals that word in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, the Father by nature is a revealer.
SPEAKER_00: The really the essence of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: The Father reveals himself.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have a religion, we have a religion of mystery to use the New Testament word of mystery, but in the Bible, the word mystery is it's something that's revealed.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have a religion of mystery where God is keeping things back from us.
SPEAKER_00: If anything, Christianity is the opposite problem.
SPEAKER_00: God reveals too much for us to understand.
SPEAKER_00: So different than the religions of the world where you just don't know.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know if God hears.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what he wants.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what sacrifice he requires.
SPEAKER_00: You just don't know.
SPEAKER_00: You never know.
SPEAKER_00: But not in Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: God reveals everything of himself.
SPEAKER_00: Our minds can't take it all in, but it's not because God doesn't share it.
SPEAKER_00: And then the word.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the word.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is power because the word of God is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: So it has power.
SPEAKER_00: God says something and it exists.
SPEAKER_00: This is why creation in Genesis 1, God is speaking it and it exists.
SPEAKER_00: God's word never returns void.
SPEAKER_00: There are no falling words, as Samuel says.
SPEAKER_00: Everything God says comes to pass.
SPEAKER_00: That is so unlike our words.
SPEAKER_00: Our words are made up of intentions in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Well, intentions in our heart that come from our mind.
SPEAKER_00: And then there it's a vocal sound, like our vocal cords wave together and an audio sound comes out.
SPEAKER_00: That's our words.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you really mean it, you might yell it.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens to the word?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, in here it might bounce off the wall for a second, but we put sound panels in to kind of mute it a bit.
SPEAKER_00: And the word goes out.
SPEAKER_00: You say something, and sometimes you'll say something embarrassing and you hope nobody remembers it.
SPEAKER_00: You say something mean and they remember it too long.
SPEAKER_00: You say something wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Our words are just they're nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're sound and fury signifying nothing, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's our words.
SPEAKER_00: They bounce off the wall and they dissipate.
SPEAKER_00: The truth in our words is the heart that it comes from.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: Our words don't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast with God's words, which accomplishes everything, because Jesus is the word.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, the sealer.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit seals the words into our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that the Spirit, in this, what's on the screen, He is the one that's operating in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: When you look at across the line here, notice that all of the top row, planner, creator, speaker.
SPEAKER_00: In the previous slide, it would be the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: The top row is all originating words.
SPEAKER_00: The middle row is all redemption words.
SPEAKER_00: The middle row is all what is being accomplished in this world, that God is actually redeeming sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And the same is true in the previous slide as well.
SPEAKER_00: And the third word, the third line is all spiritual words.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit, it's not an arbitrary name for him.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, it's not like he father, son, and what's the third one called?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Just to make something up.
SPEAKER_00: No, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Holy Spirit because he's doing spiritual things.
SPEAKER_00: All three persons of God are spirit, but the Holy Spirit is doing spiritual things, working in our heart, applying salvation to our souls, building the church, which is a spiritual entity, sealing the gospel in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit anoints people for ministry.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit resurrects Jesus Christ from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: It's the power of the Spirit that resurrects him, that unites his soul to his body.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit fills us spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit, I'm just rattling through the New Testament list.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit comforts us, convicts us.
SPEAKER_00: If the Son is primarily the Savior, the Spirit is primarily spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all these things show life between two parties.
SPEAKER_00: The word doesn't have existence by himself, right?
SPEAKER_00: The word needs a speaker.
SPEAKER_00: The word has to have an effect.
SPEAKER_00: The sealer, he's got to have something to seal.
SPEAKER_00: He's sealing the sun to us.
SPEAKER_00: The speaker has to have an audience, the son.
SPEAKER_00: So notice that even in this at that basic level, all three of these people require each other.
SPEAKER_00: The Trinity is not optional.
SPEAKER_00: It's a required doctrine to understand how God operates.
SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit is spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus in John 16 says, I tell you the truth, it's better for you if I go away.
SPEAKER_00: And we often stumble on that.
SPEAKER_00: We think, how much better would it be if Jesus were here?
SPEAKER_00: He could solve all our problems.
SPEAKER_00: We could just ask him, What would you do, Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What's the right answer?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, No, it's actually better if you go away, because if we have to ask Jesus to solve our problems, we're asking somebody outside of us.
SPEAKER_00: But if Jesus goes away, he sends us his spirit which dwells inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference, and that's why it's better.
SPEAKER_00: So John 16, Jesus says, I'm going to send you the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: When he comes, he'll convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they don't believe in me.
SPEAKER_00: So see how the stealer is pointing back to the word?
SPEAKER_00: The spirit will convict people for not believing in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, you'll see me no longer.
SPEAKER_00: And concerning judgment, he's the ruler of this world.
SPEAKER_00: So see how all three persons are pointing back to each other.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit convicts us about Christ, and Christ says the Father is the judge.
SPEAKER_00: So look out.
SPEAKER_00: In a positive sense, the Spirit saves you by drawing you to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: So now, back to 2 Corinthians chapter 3 here.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is arguing at the end of chapter 3, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is the Holy Spirit brings this trinitary knowledge in a better way than the Old Testament has, and in a way that actually sanctifies you.
SPEAKER_00: It's different and it's superior than with what Moses had.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit brings a letter written on our hearts in verses 1 through 3, which is better than the letter written on stone.
SPEAKER_00: This is why verse 17 says, We are free from the power of sin.
SPEAKER_00: We're free from the penalty of death, we're free from the captivity to the law, we're free from the shadows of the law, we're free from the shade of Moses' veil.
SPEAKER_00: We are free to worship and live in Christ with freedom.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant is different because the gospel sets us free from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: That's Romans 8, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant kept people in captivity to the fear of sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant sets you free from all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Also, the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Did the law of Moses ever have a winner?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it only had losers.
SPEAKER_00: It only produced law breakers.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody ever succeeded at the law of Moses until Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Paul makes this point in Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, if the sacrifices actually worked, they'd stop offering them.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's just that.
SPEAKER_00: It's so obvious.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't we sacrifice the Passover lamb last year?
SPEAKER_00: They're pointing forward to something better.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody won at the law of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: They kept people in captivity to failure.
SPEAKER_00: It's a law-driven life.
SPEAKER_00: But through Christ, we're freed from all that.
SPEAKER_00: And we're free from that into the life of sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is, I want to give you a three-part outline.
SPEAKER_00: You could have guessed that, right?
SPEAKER_00: A three-part outline.
SPEAKER_00: First, beholding.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where the chapter ends, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: We all with an unveiled face.
SPEAKER_00: So the veil remembers what Moses had over his face, because his glory was fading.
SPEAKER_00: We have an unveiled face, which is Paul's way to say that we don't have a fading glory, but an increasing glory.
SPEAKER_00: Because of our unveiled face, the first little word there, we're beholding the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking, beholding at the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're taking it in.
SPEAKER_00: This is similar to the word that David used this morning that we looked at in Psalm 27, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: To gaze at the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: David didn't just want to look at the beauty of the Lord or glance at it or watch it, which are all different words.
SPEAKER_00: We have that in English.
SPEAKER_00: You watch TV and you glaze over.
SPEAKER_00: You see something run by out of the corner of your eye.
SPEAKER_00: That's David had no interest in that.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to gaze longingly with affection at the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first part of our sanctification here.
SPEAKER_00: We are beholding.
SPEAKER_00: We are introduction to sanctification as we are beholding the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: We look at it with our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: With the veil removed.
SPEAKER_00: So there's nothing obstructing our view of God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: His word is the window into his glory.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's so helpful to have a contrast between what a picture is and what a window is.
SPEAKER_00: A picture.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a vacation home in the outer banks, you could have a nice painting made of the outer banks, and you could hang it on your wall over your fireplace at your vacation home.
SPEAKER_00: But there's also a bay window right behind you where you can see the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: What would you rather look at?
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather look out the window at the ocean or at the nice, expensive painting of the ocean on your wall?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that painting is helpful when it's, I don't know, nighttime?
SPEAKER_00: When you can't see the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the painting is cool.
SPEAKER_00: But when the sun is up and the clouds are gone, you're not going to have friends over to your vacation home in the Outer Banks and gather around the fireplace to look at the painting with the open window behind you.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is the window into God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the painting, it's the window.
SPEAKER_00: It gives the clarity of God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: Now you can't take it all in, of course, because it's infinite.
SPEAKER_00: God is light, and he's shining all of his attributes at you through his word.
SPEAKER_00: But it is the window.
SPEAKER_00: I love the scene in the voyage of the non-treader early on in the book, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis's uh book, the third book in the series, according to the canonical number, not the apostate.
SPEAKER_00: Revised, Americanized numbering system of the Chronicles of Narnia.
SPEAKER_00: No, the Chronicle the Voyage of the Non-Tretor is number three.
SPEAKER_00: Get that right.
SPEAKER_00: It's very important to me.
SPEAKER_00: They're gathered around the children are at the painting in their room.
SPEAKER_00: And it's Edmund is longing for Narnia.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the they're looking at the painting and they're skeptical about it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's people making fun of the painting if you remember the opening scene, but then there appears to be a shift in the painting.
SPEAKER_00: And then water starts to drip down from the bottom of the picture frame.
SPEAKER_00: This is way better in the book than the movie version, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Water starts to drip out of the picture frame, and the next thing you know, the children find themselves stuck in the water.
SPEAKER_00: They're swimming.
SPEAKER_00: They can't discern from the room they were in and the painting.
SPEAKER_00: That's as if the painting swallowed them up.
SPEAKER_00: What Lewis is describing there is this image here that we, when we look to the word, are beholding Christ in all of his glory.
SPEAKER_00: It's unobstructed.
SPEAKER_00: And in the New Testament, this glory really does come to the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says to Martha, listen, Martha, there's only one thing necessary.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say to go to the temple, he says to listen to Jesus teach.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens to us through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We look at the glory of God, not just the generic glory of God, which you could, in some sense, see in the world, but the particular glory of God that is beheld only through the scripture and only through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's specific ways that God is glorious that take on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and we behold that through studying Jesus and His Word.
SPEAKER_00: We see who He is.
SPEAKER_00: One of the ways that God's glory is seen in the world becomes the glory of God particularly in the person of Jesus Christ as he comes to the earth taking on flesh, putting flesh to Jesus', to God's glory as he walks among us.
SPEAKER_00: Now we don't get to behold that now because Jesus isn't here.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you see Jesus now?
SPEAKER_00: You see Jesus now through looking at his word, which shows you him, which requires spiritual eyesight.
SPEAKER_00: The natural person can't see this because the natural person doesn't have the spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit of God, in a sense, is the is the earpiece that translates it into your ear.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot see unless you have the Spirit of God translating.
SPEAKER_00: He's the glasses that allow you to see the light, it focuses everything for you in the right way.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God's Spirit does.
SPEAKER_00: He shows you the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: It requires him.
SPEAKER_00: The people who listen to Jesus teach for three years, not all of them came to faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's astonishing.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite place to go in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I have friends going to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I see HS is taking their high school group there soon.
SPEAKER_00: And I met with some of them this week and I told them my favorite place is Capernaum.
SPEAKER_00: Because you go to Capernaum and it's so small.
SPEAKER_00: It's such a small little village, and it's just ruins.
SPEAKER_00: What happened to Jesus was there for three years.
SPEAKER_00: Almost everything you see in the Bible about Jesus' life took place there.
SPEAKER_00: The synagogue he preached is right there.
SPEAKER_00: It's all there.
SPEAKER_00: What happened to it?
SPEAKER_00: And you know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus left it for the last time, he said, Because woe to you, Capernaum, because you didn't believe.
SPEAKER_00: You're going down.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing to have such a small town.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't, it's not like it happened in a massive city and off in a suburb somewhere where maybe not everybody knew about it.
SPEAKER_00: This is it's a tiny, tiny place.
SPEAKER_00: That's where this happened.
SPEAKER_00: And they wouldn't believe.
SPEAKER_00: And it got destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't they believe?
SPEAKER_00: Because they didn't have the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: But the spirit comes to us and opens our eyes, and we have faith.
SPEAKER_00: We have faith.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you leave your child in the car, and let's make it like a nine-year-old child.
SPEAKER_00: You leave your nine-year-old child in the car.
SPEAKER_00: You lock the car door.
SPEAKER_00: You're running inside to get a latte from Starbucks.
SPEAKER_00: That's super important.
SPEAKER_00: You lock the car door and you tell the child, do not open the car door for anybody else except me.
SPEAKER_00: Got it?
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And you go inside.
SPEAKER_00: This is a totally safe scenario.
SPEAKER_00: The child's unbuckled and everything, alright?
SPEAKER_00: Even keep the car running if you want.
SPEAKER_00: I see some moms looking at me nervously.
SPEAKER_00: Keep the car running, I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever makes it safe for you.
SPEAKER_00: You go inside and you come back out and you knock on the door and you say, open the door.
SPEAKER_00: And the child says, approve that it's you.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: I I made you.
SPEAKER_00: I know who you are.
SPEAKER_00: I was there when you were born.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, no, I want what's your favorite color?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean what's my favorite color?
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what my favorite color is.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, what's our address?
SPEAKER_00: I look at the kid.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know our address.
SPEAKER_00: How do you convince the child that it's you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's no there's no evidence.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an issue of a threshold of evidence here.
SPEAKER_00: The evidence is that it is actually you.
SPEAKER_00: It's your voice.
SPEAKER_00: It's you.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the Holy Spirit operates when it comes to revealing God to us.
SPEAKER_00: We hear the voice of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and there's no authentication necessary.
SPEAKER_00: It is God.
SPEAKER_00: It is his voice.
SPEAKER_00: It is him.
SPEAKER_00: He made us.
SPEAKER_00: It's him speaking to us through the word.
SPEAKER_00: So we behold the glory of the Lord as we look to the word.
SPEAKER_00: So that's first, you behold the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You read the word and you see the glory of God through the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Not glory in an abstract sense, but all of the diverse excellencies that are brought together in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Second, that glory, as you look at it through the Holy Spirit, giving you faith to believe it, you are transformed into it.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament didn't do this.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament didn't bring you conformity to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But the New Testament does because the Spirit dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: And remember what the Spirit is always doing.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is revealing to you the words of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So as you are beholding the glory of God through the Holy Spirit who's opening the door, you are now transformed into the image of Christ because He's the second person here.
SPEAKER_00: There's a transformation that's happening inside of you as the Holy Spirit's forming you into the very image of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit's giving you energy to obey.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing in the Old Covenant that energizes obedience.
SPEAKER_00: There is no part of the Old Covenant that made people want to obey.
SPEAKER_00: You think you even read the blessings and cursings in the Old Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Do this, and you'll live, and I'll give you rain, and your children will love you, and you have glorious figs and all that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do this, and I'm going to hit you with hail, I'm going to ruin all your crops, and you're all going to die.
SPEAKER_00: And the people look at it and are like, how man, I can't choose.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant comes and energizes obedience.
SPEAKER_00: It's a life-giving transformation.
SPEAKER_00: So the word here, back in verse 18, you're beholding the glory of the Lord and you're being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: That's metamorphosi.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we get the English word metamorphosis from it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good illustration of this change.
SPEAKER_00: Outside of Christ, you're just the worm, and then you metamorphosize.
SPEAKER_00: You get into your little cocoon, and there's a change is happening inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're taken from your sinful condition to your glorious condition of believing in Christ and the new covenant, and that change is you're going to have the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That moth or that uh butterfly that flies away is never going to go back into the worm.
SPEAKER_00: It's a lifelong change.
SPEAKER_00: It's a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's gradual, it happens over time.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation happens instantaneously, but your full transformation is happening over the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And it happens through the Holy Spirit, showing you Christ to the Word.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 10, 17.
SPEAKER_00: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody you get saved does so through faith given to them by the Holy Spirit, and that is faith in the words of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: James, again, you receive with faith the implant with meekness, the implanted word.
SPEAKER_00: So the word who is Christ is implanted in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit puts the word in your heart, which is the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: John 17, 17.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctify them in the truth.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Holy Spirit sanctifying you.
SPEAKER_00: God's word is truth through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: So it again, it's your sanctification is happening through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 1, verse 5, because of the hope laid out for you in heaven, of this you've heard before in the word of truth which is in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This culminates in Christ being the one who sustain who sustains all things.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 1, verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: You've been born again, not of a perishable seed, but imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.
SPEAKER_00: So you're born again by the Spirit, and the Spirit is giving you faith in the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So this is all going back to the second person of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: You behold the glory of God through the Holy Spirit, and that glory is seen in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Your faith is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And this culminates finally in your conforming.
SPEAKER_00: You're transformed, metamorphosi, into the same image that's the second person of the Trinity, from one degree of glory to another, you're going to grow the rest of your life, brick by brick, growing always upward into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an abstract conformity, you're conformed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: One degree to another.
SPEAKER_00: So you're always going to be pursuing godliness.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, it doesn't mean that tomorrow you'll be godlier than you are today.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes there's stumbles, sometimes there's resets, sometimes there's a series of doubt or trials that go in your life.
SPEAKER_00: But it's trending upward, amen?
SPEAKER_00: So in a sense, it's like the stock market.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's up and down.
SPEAKER_00: It's wild and crazy.
SPEAKER_00: But over time it's going this way.
SPEAKER_00: Over time, it's growing.
SPEAKER_00: That's your godliness.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a straight line from here to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's more of.
SPEAKER_00: But you're constantly growing.
SPEAKER_00: So like I said, you may not be godlier tomorrow than you are today, but you'll probably be godlier next year than you are this year.
SPEAKER_00: In the year after that than you are now.
SPEAKER_00: You'll probably be godlier when you're raising your third kid than you were when you're first.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just uh you're growing in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And that happens by being conformed.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 4 keeps this argument up.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, there says that Christ is the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Non-believers don't see the gospel of the glory of Christ, but Christ is the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's that language again.
SPEAKER_00: So this is why Paul hinges this argument for sanctification, the argument for the superiority of the new covenant over the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It hinges on the Lord being the Spirit, God being Spirit, and the Spirit connecting you to the person of Christ through your faith.
SPEAKER_00: That is how Scripture transforms you.
SPEAKER_00: You're transformed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You're changed into his image by looking at the glory of God through the scripture and the Holy Spirit giving you the faith to believe it, and that belief is in gazing at and beholding the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There really is, as David said, there really is only one thing necessary.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one thing important for spiritual growth, and that's to look at the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, Jesus makes that same point.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one thing important for you.
SPEAKER_00: Serving will take care of itself.
SPEAKER_00: The one thing important for you is to sit down at the feet of Jesus Christ and listen to what he says and apply it to your life through the working of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That is the only thing that matters.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, you will be conformed more and more to the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not through your work or your labor or your effort, it is through the work and the energizing power of the Holy Spirit because the Lord is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: God, I pray for this congregation and pray that you would sanctify them this year by your word.
SPEAKER_00: That we as a spirit-filled congregation would grow in godliness as we apply the truth of Scripture to our life, as we apply it really by beholding Jesus Christ and are transformed more and more to his image.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be like him, we want to love him more.
SPEAKER_00: So we pray that your spirit would help fuel our love for him.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.