Biblical Anthropology - Old & New Man, Old & New Nature - Part I

Cool. So today's topic is old man, new man, old nature, new nature. You've got the handout today, which is actually sort of a revision or a cut and paste of the document. It's actually on our website. So if you're ever looking for this as one big cohesive document, you can find it on the Holly Hills website.

And it'll carry virtually the same information. Nancy cut it up and made it a little bit more palatable. Oh, Vern, sorry. Vern cut it up and made it a little more palatable for a classroom setting. But if you wanted the original document, because we're all about original documents here, you can put it right there.

I was listening to, actually when I was taking courses at Tyndale, Arnold Fruchtenbaum was teaching in Romans, and he said after long hours of study and checking, he actually was able to identify one of the thieves that was crucified with Christ. And it's actually found in the Bible. It was kind of a weird thing. He found out that one of the people, we don't know about the other one, but one of the people who was crucified with Christ had to be Paul's father. Because Paul wrote in Romans 6, you know, my old man was crucified with Christ.

And that's what we're talking about today. So, the purpose of our class is really to seek definition in these biblical terms, old man, new man, old nature, new nature. How many of us, besides me, actually we don't have to raise hands, but I've often thought of these things as kind of synonymous. Old man and old nature, or new man and new nature, or sin nature, all those words kind of got muddled. to me, into kind of one big ball of before and after.

So, it'll be fun for us, I think, to look. Today's class will explain the biblical teaching regarding the unbeliever as the old man, to the point that a person becomes a believer, and the next class will address these terms for a person who has become a believer that is a new man.

So that's kind of the thrust of where we're going, which is going to be cool. Very cool. The overarching, kind of the most important point that we have to remember is that in a first class, we're going towards, let's see, faith in Christ for eternal salvation. And that's what we get to right at the end here. That's the big picture today, faith in Christ for eternal salvation. And then the big picture for next week is going to be daily fellowship with him.

So that'll be the focus of next time. So we've got three kind of key passages, and what I'd love to do is have everybody look up one. And between the many of us, we should have all of them covered. And I'll have you hold them, if you can, the whole time, because we're going to continue to refer to those, though we're not going to just work through them really systematically.

So Romans 6.6, Ephesians 4.22, and Colossians 3.9. Okay, I've got a 6'6". Can I get a witness?

Do we have an Ephesians 4.22? Yes, Nancy, thank you.

And Colossians 3.9? Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay.

So, these are three verses that talk about the old man. And these are the ones that we're going to use to kind of guide our study today. Let's see. Yeah, I think in the NASU, or in the New American Standard, you're going to find old self instead of old man, but that's just a difference in translation, so we can take those as perfectly synonymous. See the old man more in the King James Version and some others.

Alright, Romans 6. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. Awesome. Thank you so much. Nancy, Ephesians 422? Ephesians 422, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit. Thank you.

Gina Clough? Okay, we're going to look at these a little bit more in depth as we go today. But I just wanted to get a precursory idea. What's the nature of these passages? What kind of tense value do you get as you look at them, as you look at the one you're holding in your Bible right now? Are they something that's been done, something that we're going to be doing constantly, something that needs to be done yet in the future? Sounds awful past tense-y, right? So most of these, in fact most, all three of these passages have a really strong past or it's been done kind of feeling to them, don't they? When it's talking about the old man. should be like a Colossus passage.

Having a deal. Wow. So they're just laying aside. Yes. Yes. Laying aside. OK. So there you go. So they've all got, especially in the Greek, and sometimes we goof that up as we get it into English for one reason or the other, but it's all the idea that it's past tense. It's something done. And that'll come into play a little bit more as we go forward, surely. OK.

As we look at also 1 Corinthians 15, 22, we see, "...for since by a man came death, by a man came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." So, the key point and the key thing is that we're going to see today and that I think we need to nail out today more than anything else is that your old man or the old man and the old nature are not the same thing. That there's biblical distinction between the old man and the old nature. And it's not just a semantic, you know, oh, come on, that's a detail. Old man, old nature, what's the difference?

But actually has a very specific application in our day-to-day walk. And it does make a big difference in how we understand who we are in Christ and how we understand how we're going to be conformed to the image of Christ. In any event, I love this quote by Ironside. I think it's very succinct and kind of puts that away. So I'll read it here. We're at the bottom of page one.

What do I mean when I speak of the old man? Some people confound the old man with the old nature. You see, the old man is more than the old nature. The old man is the man of old, what you once were before you were converted. Now you are through with the old man, the man of old. If you are a Christian, You're not to live like that any longer. You're now to live in accordance with the truth of the new man. And who is the new man? A man in Christ. That is the man that I now am through infinite grace.

So your old man was everything that you were before you put your faith in Christ, right? So these two terms, old man and sin nature, are often mistakenly understood as synonyms. So where is the old man positionally? Positionally, where's our old man? Or where was the old man, in our case, as believers? Currently, he's crucified. Where was he before he was crucified?

In Adam. Yeah. Positionally, the old man was in Adam. Before we were in Christ, we were in Adam, right? At what point did you cease to be in Adam? Yeah. When you believed. You ceased to be in Adam. You're no longer in Adam. If you're really trying hard, what do you have to do to get back into Adam? Or not trying hard. How do you get back into Adam? Yeah, there's no road map for that. We can't get back into Adam. No directions, right? To get back into Adam.

So, are these major passages that we talked about telling us to do something to keep us in Christ and keep us out of Adam? No. No, they're talking about something that God has already done, aren't they? They're already saying that our old man was put off, was done away with, was laid aside, right? So it's something that's already been done.

So there's nothing we can do to get back in Adam. There's no way that we're going to wind up back there. And thus, if we say that I'm still struggling or dealing with my old man, it's like I'm still dealing with the part of me that's in Adam, which doesn't make any sense biblically, right? Because our old man's been crucified with Christ, has been done away with.

All right. Now, the will of the old man. Does someone want to look up Acts 24, 27 for me? Here we're going to see the Greek word thalo is the word for to wish or to will. And we've seen in the Bible that the unbeliever does indeed have a will. Certainly has a will. Whoever finds it first. 24, 27. That's not it? Oh, no. 24, 26, 24, 26. 24, 27. It doesn't work.

That's it. Is that it? That's it. OK. But after two years have passed, Felix was succeeded by coercive feasts and wishing to do the Jews a favor features left, fall in prison. No? That's 24. Is that it? OK. Good. So the will there. The will there is being exercised by an unbeliever. So this is the word you wish to say hello, which means to will. Yeah. OK. Let's read the passage again. I don't I don't have it pulled up. But after two years.

Felix willed that a certain outcome happened, and so it's Felix who exercises his will as an unbeliever. Yeah, and he could have just as well willed not to do that, but he willed to do it. So there you have the unbeliever. having a will, having an ability to make choices, having an ability to trust in things.

We also see in Isaiah 53, 6, A and B, all of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. So as a matter of our own will, as unsaved people, our own will, we turn away from the Lord. It's getting back to that truth. Thankfully, and then as we get to this last paragraph here, it says, thankfully God has not left the unbeliever exclusively with his will and inclination of the sin nature. God has not left us just to ourselves and the will and our sin nature. What else is there? What's the ministry going on? The ministry of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, all of a sudden we have the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

So as we look at John, which you find at the top of the next page, John 16, 8-11, I'll just start reading at the top. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me. And concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me. And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. So what does this passage tell us about the role of the Holy Spirit? What's one of His ministries, one of His purposes with the unbeliever?

Yeah, to convict. So is mankind as bad as it possibly could be? Not yet. Will it ever be? It will be pretty horrid. Yeah, it will be pretty horrid. There will come a time when in the tribulation, when God allows man's sin nature to get as bad as it would be, or as it could be, I guess, to go to the absolute limit of it. But right now, man is not as bad as he could be.

You still see unbelievers acting out in honesty, occasionally. Or acting out in love, for lack of a better word. Acting out in care of others, and caring for others. So you'll still see those things and you'll see that a non-believer will very often be convicted of sin. So what I would put forth to you is that every non-believer is given, every human is given enough light to choose by. Just enough light to choose by.

And they can recognize that and still not choose to trust in Christ. Have you ever met a believer who's like, you know, I haven't been doing very well lately, I've been doing things that I know are wrong, and I feel like I just need to get back to church and start checking those boxes and get that done. And you say, you know what you really need to do is put your faith in Christ. What you really need is to trust in Him for your salvation. And they say, yeah, no, I just need to get back and take the host and do the deal. If I just start checking the boxes and stop doing the bad things, then I'll be right with God again.

Ever experience that? They've got enough light to know that they're walking a bad path. But oftentimes, even in light of the fact that they're convicted of sin, they choose that, oh golly, that guy seems like the smell of death to me. And if I just can go and be religious enough and check all those boxes and get the job done, and make myself feel better, style up my conscience, then I'll go do that instead. So anyway, the reality that once again, everyone has at least enough light to choose by.

So the convincing or wooing or convicting or wooing ministry of the Holy Spirit is how God draws the heart of the unbeliever to come to believe. All right. When we see as an extension of this, someone want to look up Acts 16.31 for me. They said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Awesome.

Here's Paul talking to the old man, who has not been crucified with Christ yet. And what does he say with an active imperative? You must believe. He's talking to the old man, right? And obviously the wooing and convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit is at work on this guy, because he says, sirs, what must I do to be saved? But then he tells the old man, he doesn't say, look, the Holy Spirit is just about to make you believe, so enjoy this for a few minutes and then you'll be in. He says, you actively must believe. And so really, at the most basic level, the last decision that the old man makes is to put his faith in Christ. And the minute he makes that decision, he's gone. Or she's gone. crucified, never to return. I don't know if this is really new or really remedial. Does anybody have any questions so far? I've been trying to think this through. How do I make this clear in my own mind?

It's a little bit like if you have a container that is the old man. I am in that container. And then I say, oh, I believe in Christ. I'm taken out of that container and put into the container that is Christ. And that's me. That's my personality, my brain, my soul. That's the wrong word, I think. My spirit. I've been taken out of that old man and placed into Christ. And so now I'm here. So I don't have that old man anymore.

And the taking out and the putting in, that's all God's doing. All we did is believe. Period. And that belief is depending on what He did and does and will do, not faith and weakness. Yeah, well, and just like, you're all sitting on pews here, right? Who of you, by your faith in the pew, is making the pew hold you up? Faith isn't a work, right? The faith has nothing to do with the ability of the pew to hold you up.

You could have total faith in it and it could give out. We have that domino effect thing that you always see in movies. You say, oh, I had such great faith in it. It's the ability or the properties of the pew that holds you up. Your faith in it just allows you to sit and trust in it. So in the same way. In the same way we see that faith or belief or trust in something can never be accounted to us as a work or as something that we do and count as like, hey, I believed. I'm so cool. No, never. Never, never, never. All right. So that's fantastic.

Thank you for that illustration. I think what's difficult there, though, too, is that fragmentation that starts to come to your mind. I'm somehow here, and I have this old man over here, and I have this new man over here, and I, you know, I have trouble with that. As far as that fragmentation of the way you treat people. And I'm somehow independent.

Yeah, there's a part of you, and we're going to talk about the continuity of person in a second, but... The old man and the new man are rooted in a position. And those statements are having to do with position, and especially that. But our continuity of person does not depend on position.

But the old man and the new man talks about where you are But it's definitely hard to wrap your brain around. I mean, honestly, this was one of the more intimidating lessons that I've had to teach because of it. It's like, oh, man, new man, old nature, new nature, where we how we understand that is obviously very important, but it is also It's just not simple, I guess. Or it doesn't seem simple at first blush is probably the more appropriate way to put it.

But the reality that our old man is, like Nancy said, if we look at it like a container, or positionally, that's what tends to make the most sense to me. Is that I, the person, I the person was positionally in Adam, just as I'm positionally in Christ now. And when I was positionally moved by God to be put in Christ, the old man was completely done away with and completely gone.

For some reason, when Nancy was talking about containers, I couldn't help but think of mason jars. So it's as if the mason jar was shattered, you know? And I'm in a new mason jar, which hopefully is not sealed. Well, no, it is sealed, and I'm all good with that. So it's fine, because maybe we don't need air in the Jesus mason jar.

One thing to look forward to is that one day we will be free from the presence of sin, and that will all be clear to us, and we won't have to vacillate back and forth wondering, because there will only be one God, so to speak. And then that's what we're going to talk about quite a bit more next week with Old Nature, New Nature. We won't have the older, the sin nature, heartening over our shoulder. looking over our shoulder and asking us, you know, telling us, commanding us, shouting at us. So, what we're looking forward to, because the old man's already been done away with, what we're looking forward to is to see nature being done away with as well, which is fantastic even to think of it, to not even have that nagging desire, or nagging voice, I guess. So, any other questions or comments, any way in illustrations?

I was just thinking, when our position is changed into Christ, We're sealed. And I think that's perfect. We can no longer go back to being in Adam. But we bring our sin nature with us because that's connected to our human body. And now I'm probably jumping ahead to what you're going to talk about next. And so it won't be until we lose these human bodies that we lose the sin nature.

Precisely. I think that's precisely what we're talking about. Yeah. And the reality is that if we could get back into our old man, it's paramount to saying we could get back in Adam, that we could reverse our position. You're saying we could lose our salvation? Yeah.

The old man is in Adam, period. The new man is in Christ, period. The new man never goes back to being an Adam. And the old man and Adam can never step into being in Christ without being there permanently, and it's only by faith. And becoming the new man. Yeah. Those two distinctions are clear. The old man is an Adam, period. The new man is in Christ, period. And that's why this is actually important, and not just semantic. You're saying this new Mason jar is shatterproof? Better than Pyrax.

But the reality is, is that, well, actually, so then, I mean, and I'm speaking as someone who's not had a really clear distinction of this, but has allowed my other, maybe, my more clear theological understandings override it. But if you weren't going to do that, if you weren't going to let your your more clear understanding of, say, your eternal security, override your old man, new man misunderstandings, what would be some of the consequences of us confusing old man with old nature? That's kind of a complex question. It's a little unfair. What are some of the consequences? What are some of the reasons why this is important, do you think?

I think what it comes to is, are we battling slipping in our position? Or are we battling something that is a residual of the position we want to have? In other words, are we ever in a place of scrambling to try to keep from slipping back into our old position?

That's never in question. It's only a question of this residual remaining sin nature. The collection of attributes of the old man that are with us until we're out of this body. Yeah, so we're fixed. However, do we still deal with the sin nature? Yeah.

So if we confuse sin nature with old man, then all of a sudden we bring into question our salvation. Unless, once again, like I said, in my misunderstanding of this, or my confusion of all this, I just allowed the clear passages on our eternal security to override anything and just try to make old man synonymous with old man mean what sin nature means, but never make sin nature mean what old man means, if that makes sense. So, never make sin nature a positional truth, but at the same time, so anyway, in confusion of all that. What good would it do to explain the confusion? None, none at all.

But nevertheless, the reality that we look at all of a sudden, one, we look at trying to hold our position, and two, we look at, once again, the mistranslation of Ephesians 4.22, the idea that we're constantly putting off our old man. We're supposed to be getting up every day, and then another one you hear is, I've got to get up every morning and crucify myself with Christ. Doesn't that sound painful and time-consuming? I have April help, and she's more than happy to do it. That's why you need to have lots of kids. Anyway, so the reality is that we often get caught up in or at least Christian culture, Christian popular culture, gets caught up in the idea of redoing your salvation every morning.

Getting up in the morning, re-crucifying yourself with Christ, or letting myself be crucified with Christ, or something to this effect, when really what Paul was talking about in Galatians 2.20 as well as these passages, it's something done, it's something finished. You don't have to wake up every morning and put off the old man again. It's something completely done. You just have to rest in the position that God has already given you. You don't have to wake up every morning and do a triple backflip out of one jar into the other. You're placed and sealed in that jar.

Isn't that a function of the sin nature that tempts us into that? I think that the sin nature would be more than happy to distract us from abiding in our position by confusing us about the old man. I think he'd be more than satisfied with his work if he were to do that. and make us try to earn our salvation. I think that after not allowing a person to come to Christ, the next thing that our sin nature and that the world and the devil want us to do is make us doubt it.

Well, for the believer, that's all the enemy has left, is to try and confuse in us the difference between the old man and the sin nature. And as long as he can distract us from walking straight and narrow, right there in the path, in the light, that's all he can do. Because he knows it's enough to distract the unbelievers out there in the world to see, oh, well, he's not really thing that he calls a sin, he's a hypocrite. And that's all the devil needs.

And the reality that as long as he can keep us, or as long as those three-fold enemy can keep us trying to earn our salvation, trying to do this, trying to do that, we will be completely distracted from the idea of sharing the gospel with others. Because we're so busy kind of trying to hold our own salvation in check and hold our own thing in line.

Furthermore, what kind of good news do we really have? Hey, I've got great news for you. You're in sin, you're totally helpless, but God made a way for you to earn it. That's not good news at all. That's really bad news. Not only do you not get to have any fun, you could also fail at the last minute and go to hell. Merry Christmas! Good summary.

But the reality is, as we understand this, as we understand our position, as we understand our salvation, we have great news to share. We have great news to share with people. And whether, in my case, I just get forgetful, or get stupid, or get distracted, but the reality is, as we're working with people, as we're walking around rubbing shoulders in front of people, Lloyd Verne said it once, Christ put himself in you right next to an unbeliever for a purpose, for a reason. As you live out Christ's life in you, you have the best news in the world to give them.

Better than, hey, there's a guy out there giving out $100 bills to anyone who asks. Way better news than that. And yet, if someone was out in this street corner giving out $100 bills, I'd very happily tell anyone, hey, get in there. There's someone I didn't even know. Go over there. Get a $100 bill. They're free.

And yet I'm kind of tentative to ever really talk about Jesus and the unbelievable grace that comes. Yeah, so another reality of confusing these things can be, as we think them out, the gospel no longer is really a gospel anymore if we fall into their logical and follow that error between confusing old man and old nature.

Second Corinthians 5.17, if we didn't read this, boy, we'd really have missed it. Kevin, could you read that for us? Great.

So, if anyone is in Christ, that's a positional statement, right? It's not talking about if anyone earns their way into Christ. paramount to abiding, or walking in the Spirit. It's a positional statement, not a conditional statement. So if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature.

This new here is new in kind, not new in time. So, you know, I bought a new car that is really an 09, brand new model, never made again. Not, I bought a used car that's new to me, and new in time to me. So it's actually new in kind, something that was never before seen on the earth.

And what happened to the old things? They passed away. They're gone. The old things are gone, and behold, the new things are come. So once again, there's a positional statement that the old man is gone. The chances of being an Adam are history, are past tense, evermore relegated to the past tense. And we are now forevermore in Christ.

Now, weird thing, I don't know how many of us became believers as adults or as teenagers, when you really put your faith in Christ. But did you notice the next day how, since you were a new man, a new creature, you had to be reintroduced, you'd forgotten all your friends, and you'd forgotten everything that you were before, and you had to learn how to, like, you know, use the internet again? No, right, nobody had that experience. You've got Christian amnesia! Well, I'm sorry, I had to use the internet after I was saved.

There is this continuity of person, and I think we've made a couple great examples of it. That thing that's taken from one jar to the other, one container to the other, that's the continuity of person. That's our personality that still goes forward and is still made unique by God. That continuity of person, that person, that I, that moved from one jar, one position to the other, is different from your person that God moved from one jar to the other. Different personality traits, different abilities. I haven't been nitpicking here, but I guess I keep coming back to this thing. This jar is not an inanimate thing. It's a life source, is it not? I mean, this jar that we're coming out, we're coming from a life that's driven by by the sin nature totally, right? And then the new life is Christ, right? We don't operate without something as a life source, right? I don't have any on my own. Doesn't that imply that with the mason jar, I have an entity that is independent and I move from one to the next? In my mind it does. A Petri dish? Except that there is something that has to be saved.

Right. It's not the old man. Correct. And so the old man seems like a positional move, you know, an old man move, right? I get where you're coming from there. But it's these mason jars. Mason jars are the way to change the position. It's just something that falls apart. All right. Did it get soft?

I'm really impressed by what you're saying, that it's made an impression on me. I don't quite know how to answer that, because I do believe there is a third thing that gets unplugged from Adam and plugged in to Christ. So we've got another analogy that's going to fall apart.

I think the distinction is, the distinction is, the basin jar analogy may or may not help, But the old man is a positional statement. It's all about the position. The new man is all about the position. And all this is saying is that there is a continuity of person between those two.

I was a Pharisee. I did this. I did that. I was born to this tribe. And say I about all that he was in his position as the old man in Adam. And he can still say I now, but I consider that all sewage rubbish. And that continuity between the two is not about position. from the old man in Adam to the new man in Christ. And it is Christ's very life that is now given to him in this new man with the new nature. The understanding of that is what keeps you from responding to the sin nature.

Fantastic. Cool. I feel so much better about all that. I love it when people ask questions and you're like, not even there. I'm sorry. You've got to explain it to me because I don't understand. That's fantastic. Thank you. That's awesome. All right. So yeah. Essentially, that's where we're going to leave off with the continuity of person.

We'll pick up there next week with, let's see, Burn already alluded to this, I think, First Timothy passage, but Paul writes, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service. Even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. So Paul, who was also the one who penned these verses, I was crucified with Christ, the old is gone, the new will come, would just as quickly pen, I was this before Christ, I was that before Christ, in that continuity of person. It's not as if we get the continuity of person from a different biblical author.

But rather, he didn't see any disharmony or disunity in that. And we'll pick up there next week. Does anybody have any other questions, comments, complaints? No complaints? That's good. Does anybody have anything else to say? Vern has some words to say about our handouts and so forth.

Initially, we handed out a binder and it had this schedule on it and we called it a preliminary payroll contents in the front there. What we've done on the file as we've gone along is to give the page numbers, because we're writing this as we go, give the page numbers and then we've begun on the file to add the appendix numbers. There are now 10 appendix items with today's handout, okay? When we're all done, This will give you a new one of these with the page numbers for each section. And we'll list all the appendix sizes. So we'll give you a new one for this front schedule and table of contents that will give you an index to everything that's there, page numbers and appendix numbers and all that.

All right. Then behind that, you'll have the main When we're all done here, you should have a complete set. If you don't have a complete set. with you, because if you walk up and say, give me the rest of the stuff, they don't know what the rest of the stuff is that you need. So take the binder with you, and they'll be glad to help you pulling things out, because they keep extra copies in the file, and they have a copy just waiting for you. All right.

What we're going to be doing is, the rest of this month, we will finish out this theme of Starting in April, we're going to have two quarters, so it'll be twice as much as what we've been covering. Two quarters of council. And that we're going to kind of start over. We can go ahead and use the same binder, because I think it'll hold up. Anyway, I'm just trying to keep the paperwork a little bit straight.

You're picking it up, except for the binder and initial schedule, which is preliminary. You're picking it up pretty much each week, or in this case, we're combining two weeks into one. But in the end, we want you to have an index in the front, then your main everybody, or hopefully it's not so confused that you can't ask any questions. Have you got any questions?

What does this have to do with the mason jar? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Not a mason jar, a very special one. It would be three little pints. I was going to ask, was that quarts or pints? Yeah, there you go. We're going to have two known bugs.

When we start the counseling, it's going to be a different notebook. We're going to stick with this one because I think we'll have sufficient capacity. By the time we'll only get maybe a dozen or so more pages beyond what we have here, I think we'll be plenty of capacity to have this all in one. And that's why we put a biblical anthropology and business counseling all in one notebook, to try to keep it together.

The idea is that when we're all done, you have something that's useful and you can actually refer back to it. range of it, but one of the things we've discovered here is biblical counseling is an intended activity by God for every believer. Every believer. It's not something, oh that guy's a counselor and he's got umpteen million degrees and state certifications. No. Biblical counseling is an intended activity for every believer.

Everyone. And there may be areas That'll end up being short of the fuller concern. That'll be today. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, we praise you for this time. We thank you that your Word is clear and that you have given us, by your Holy Spirit, the illumination to understand it and to see it. And Lord, we praise you that you have given us the ultimate counseling guidebook in your Word, Lord. You've given us encouragement for our dark situations, and you've given us Lord joy and life in our our position in you and I praise you for making that clear to us and Letting us understand it I Pray that we could continue to rest and abide in you as we go out this week and all that you've done in Jesus name Amen