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Saved From and Saved To

{# The tooltip goes through the catalogs so the separator can follow the language - CJK wants a full-width colon and no space, not ": ". #} Putting Things In Order - Part 4

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Preacher: Joshua Winters
Date: Feb. 4, 2024
Series: Putting Things In Order

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Transcription

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All right, well this morning as we come to the Word of God, we are in the book of Titus. We're working our way through this letter from Paul to Titus, and we are now in chapter 2.

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So if you have your Bible with you, you can open it up to chapter 2. Now this second chapter of Paul's letter contains two parts. In the first part, verses 1 to 10, Paul tells Titus what he should be teaching various groups of people in the churches, and he divides these groups by age and gender.

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There are things to teach the older men in verse 2, things to teach the older women, verses 3 to 4, things to teach the younger men, verses 6 to 8, and things to teach slaves, verses 9 and 10.

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Then in the second part of this chapter, Paul reminds Titus of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, and how this kind of living, talked about in the first part, flows out of the gospel.

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Now, normally we would cover these two parts in order, but because it's Communion Sunday today, we're just going to jump ahead to the second part, and then we're going to go back and cover the first part next Sunday.

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So let me begin by reading the chapter so that we don't miss the flow and connection of these two parts. This is Paul writing to Titus.

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Titus.

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Titus.

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Titus. Teaching show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

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Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God, our Savior, attractive.

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For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

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These then are the things you should teach. So the first ten verses of this chapter is Paul telling Titus to teach the people in the churches to live a certain way.

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We're going to look at that more next week. But the summary of it is that they're to live honorable, faithful, holy, pure, self-controlled, upright lives, fulfilling their various responsibilities within their families.

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And now as we come to verse 11, Paul's going to tell us the why. Why this kind of life? And he begins with this statement in verse 11.

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He says, For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. So Paul starts by reminding us of the gospel.

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The grace of God has appeared. God's grace is his kindness, his favor, his generous giving nature.

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That part of who God is has appeared. As one pastor has put it, God's grace has come to light in a way that was previously unseen.

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Not that he wasn't gracious before, but that now God's grace is revealed in a new and especially wonderful way. Paul is alluding to the gospel.

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As one commentator puts it, he is referring to the unique historical appearance of Jesus Christ, the one whom God has sent because of his grace.

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Jesus coming and living among us and all that he did and all that he said and all that he set in motion, that is how the grace of God has appeared.

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And Paul's just kind of summing up the whole thing here. All that God has done and is doing through Christ, it's a gift of his generous kindness, his grace.

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And through this gift of grace, salvation has been brought, has been offered to all people.

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So because God is generous and giving, kind, he has opened the way to be saved and offered salvation to all the people of the world.

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And Jesus is that way of salvation. He himself is the savior, as Paul said back up in the introduction of this letter.

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But now all this is not Paul's main point. It's really the prelude to his main point, which is still coming. For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

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It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

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This is the connection point to all the instructions about how we should live that came before all this.

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God's grace has appeared and it teaches us to live a certain way in this present age. So the gospel leads us to a certain kind of living.

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Christ has come from God as a gift of God's grace to us. Not only to forgive us of our sins and to deal with our guilt, but also to change the way that we live.

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And it's here that we come face to face with this gospel truth. We are not only saved from, we are saved to.

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We are not only saved from, we are saved for. God, because he is a gracious God, has a purpose for saving us that's bigger than just getting us off the hook for our sins.

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forgiveness is part of it. But it's not the whole story. It's not the only thing that God is aiming to do for us by his grace. And sadly, sometimes we miss this element of the gospel message.

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We are right to focus on forgiveness and the removal of guilt. We're right to focus on the wiping of our slate clean. But God aims by his grace to do more than that with us.

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He wants to transform us inside and out. He wants to change our very lives. He wants to take us from living sinfully to now living righteously.

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From living selfishly to now living lives of authentic love. from being full of evil deeds to now being full of good works.

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Another way to say this, sometimes we might be tempted to treat our salvation as if it's kind of like a get out of hell free card. As if it's a fire insurance policy and little more.

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But the good news of God's grace is that we are saved from the penalty, the punishment our sins deserve and saved to a new life.

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A life that's characterized by holiness, righteousness, love, good deeds. Listen to this in verses 11 and 12.

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God's grace teaches us to say no. Literally, to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.

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So there are two things that God's grace leads us to reject and turn away from. First, ungodliness. It means to live a life that does not honor God.

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To live in a way that disregards Him. A godless life. God's grace, which came through Jesus Christ, teaches us to renounce that kind of life.

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To say no to that kind of life. It also teaches us to say no to worldly passions or worldly lusts.

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This means the desires or cravings that our world has that are sinful, illicit, perverse, crooked.

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Things like greed and the desire to be rich or immoral sexual desire or the desire for revenge. Immoderate desires for pleasure like gluttony or the desire for escape like through drunkenness and intoxication.

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Desires for power or control over others. Desires for fame and prestige and popularity or the desire to win at all costs. All of these are the kinds of things that worldly passions refers to.

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God's grace, which came through Jesus Christ, teaches us to renounce those kinds of desires, that kind of life, to say no to those illicit cravings.

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Think back to the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and in his parables. He commanded his disciples not to be angry or to seek revenge or to do good things just to be seen and loved by others.

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He taught them not to be greedy, not to desire the highest places of honor and authority. He taught them not to live for themselves, but to live to please God.

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The gospel isn't just the news of what Christ has done for us. It's also the news that Christ has a new and better life for us to live.

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And to enter into this life requires us to repent as Jesus declared, to renounce the godless life and the worldly passions. That word renounce or say no to is also the same word that's used back up in chapter 1 about the false teachers.

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As we heard last Sunday, they claim to know God, chapter 1, verse 16, but by their actions they deny him. They denied God by their living.

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But here, Paul says, the grace of God teaches us to deny godless living and worldly passions. So the grace of God, the gospel of God, Christ Jesus who came teaches us not to live a life like we've just been talking about, but then he flips to the positive side of things.

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The grace of God teaches us to live a life like this. it teaches us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

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And I think it's helpful to compare the life described here with the requirements for the elders back up in chapter 1, especially in verse 8.

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And we should compare the life described here with the way that the Cretans are known to live in verse 12 of chapter 1.

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Always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons. And we should compare the life described here with the way that the false teachers are living in verse 10 and verse 16 of chapter 1.

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Do we notice a theme here? Even the word self-controlled here in verse 12 shows up all over the place here. It's a qualification for a church leader in chapter 1, verse 8.

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It's what the Cretans lack. They're always lazy gluttons. It's the one thing that Paul tells Titus to teach all the groups of people in chapter 2, the young and the old, male and female.

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And now we see why. Because this is what it is to be a Christian, to belong to Christ. We are saved from our sinful life to live lives that are self-controlled.

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Don't let the worldly passions rule over. God's grace has come through Christ to teach us, to lead us, to rule over our desires and our appetites and our cravings, to be in control of ourselves as we are made to be.

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Living upright, godly lives, good lives devoted to Him. Now we might be tempted at this point to say, well, God doesn't really expect me to change that much, does He?

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at least not until we get to heaven, right? No. The grace of God teaches us to live this way, this kind of life, in this present age, says Paul.

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There's a good many people who want the forgiveness of God, the grace of God, but not the life that God's grace teaches us to live.

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Listen, Christ did not come to wipe the slate clean so that you could fill it up again with more sins. Christ didn't come to suffer and die and atone for your sins so that you could keep doing them more and more.

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God in His grace has provided atonement and forgiveness, but are we going to try and take that gift and then willfully do more of the stuff that He died to forgive, transgress more, sin more?

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May it never be. For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people and it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

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In the midst of this, Paul reminds us of something which helps to motivate us here because, you know, we might read this and think, oh man, you mean as a Christian I have to keep turning away from all this stuff?

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I have to live a self-controlled life? upright and godly? That sounds hard. That sounds unpleasant.

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But Paul reminds us of what's coming to encourage us here. Listen, he says, we are waiting for the blessed hope that's coming. Verse 13.

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It teaches us to live this way while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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There's a wonderful certain future ahead. The grace of God appeared the first time when Jesus came, and it's going to appear again when he returns in his glory.

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This is a blessed, happy certainty that we can set our hope on. Until we are to live this way, renouncing ungodliness and worldly passions, and now living self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in anticipation of that blessed and happy day that's coming when our King and our Savior appears again, Jesus.

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Now, just in case we didn't get it the first time through, Paul's going to take us through it all one more time. Here in verse 14, we're waiting for the appearing of Jesus Christ, verse 14, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

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let's just go through this quickly. Jesus gave himself for us. He gave his life for us when he died on the cross.

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Why? Paul says in order to redeem us. He gave himself for us to redeem us. To redeem means to set us free.

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free. So, his suffering and death was a price paid on our behalf to set us free. Free from what?

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He gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness, quite literally, from every lawless deed. And that word lawless is powerful.

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What are the inhabitants of this island of Crete known for? This place is a place of lawlessness. The people all around them are lying, cheating, stealing, swindling.

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They're not working. They're given to gluttony and drunkenness. And Paul's saying Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from that. All of it.

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From that kind of lawless life and the punishment that we deserve because of it. That's why you must teach the people there in the churches on Crete to live good, upright, self-controlled lives.

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The very gospel itself is that Jesus wants to redeem us from that. He gave himself for us not only to redeem us from all wickedness, but also to purify for himself people that are his very own.

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And there are two wonderful truths here. First, that Jesus died for us to purify us, to cleanse us of that which defiles us and makes us dirty.

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Sin does that. It defiles us. It makes us dirty. And Jesus died to remedy that. He died to wash us clean.

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So now that we've been cleansed by him, should we keep going back to jump in the mud of sin, living godlessly, living to scratch the itch of worldly lusts?

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That kind of living doesn't fit with what Jesus has done for us. He suffered an agonizing, death. He took our punishment, God's wrath upon himself in order to purify us.

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And so we must now seek to live pure lives. The second truth here is that Jesus gave himself for us. He died for us to make us his special people.

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To purify for himself a people that are his very own. sin. So this is not just about eradicating our sin. It's about bringing us into a special relationship with him where we are his special treasured possession.

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Listen, God doesn't just want to fix what's broken with you and in you. He wants you. He loves you.

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He wants a relationship with you to the extent that he came down from heaven, became one of us, and died in our place to make it possible.

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Paul brings this long sentence to a close with one more reminder that yes, the gospel does lead us, teach us to live a holy life.

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We see it at the end of verse 14 there. He gave himself for us to redeem us and to purify us so that we would be a people that are his very own eager to do what is good.

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There it is again. Not just saved from, redeemed from, washed pure, but saved to, redeemed and washed to be a people who do what is good.

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The life that Christ commands us to live, self-controlled, upright, devoted to God, it's what we were made for. It's what we were saved for.

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And notice, Jesus' aim in all this was not to have his people live this way begrudgingly, but eagerly, eager to do what is good, which means that Christ died even to change our hearts, our desires, and our loves to fit this kind of living.

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This is the good news of Jesus. Have you embraced this offer of salvation, this call of Christ on your life to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live upright, godly, self-controlled lives?

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If you haven't yet done this, I want to urge you, do it today. And if you have done this, let me encourage you to let these words sink in deep and give you the courage and help to continue living the kind of life that God's grace has saved us for.

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Let's not give up, even though it's hard. God, the other night at youth, we were talking about the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. And it's the kind of prayer that we're to pray every day.

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Give us this day our daily bread. We're also in that prayer that Jesus taught us to pray and ask God to forgive us our transgressions.

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Again, literally, our lawless deeds. Forgive us again of those things that we have done and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

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Living this way isn't easy. It's hard enough for us that Christ taught us to pray daily and ask for God's help with it.

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And so may we do that. And may we not lose heart in our struggle. Each one of us for personal holiness to the Lord. And as we come to the Lord's table this morning, here's the good news.

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Even though we will fall short and fail and at times give in to temptation and sin, even though sometimes we will entertain and even act on worldly passions like we used to do all the time, as we look again to our heavenly father each day and as we pray and ask, forgive us our debts, forgive us our transgressions.

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His grace abounds to us through what Jesus did on the cross for us. He is faithful to forgive us when we confess and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

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1 John 1 verse 9. By God's grace, we are saved from our sin and guilt and we are saved to a new, upright life of devotion to God.

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And, by God's grace, we are carried from the start of this new life all the way through to the ultimate attainment of it when Jesus Christ returns in glory.

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And this grace that we need, it came to us by Christ and His death on the cross.

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So as we go to the Lord's table this morning, the bread that we partake of, it represents Jesus' body, which was broken for us. And the cup represents His blood, which was shed for us.

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We do this in remembrance of Him. in remembrance of His grace. So if you have embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior and as your Lord, then please eat and drink with us.

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If not, please refrain until you have given yourself to Him. We'll take a few minutes to pray quietly and reflect now.

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and the elders will come forward and serve the bread and the cup. And then we'll give thanks and we'll eat and drink all together in unison.

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voy voy voy!

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voy! voy