[0:00] A second letter of Peter in chapter 1 and reading through the whole chapter. One of the benefits of studying a book like we're studying in Philippians is that we try in other readings associated with whatever portion of that we come to, to find other readings in the Bible that actually fit in with that, where you have similar emphases or where you have an expansion maybe of some of the things that we will be looking at later in the epistle to the Philippians.
[0:31] And we find in this chapter, as we'll indeed see as we quote from it later, that there are elements here of what Peter is teaching, those that he's writing to, that are very much along the same lines as Paul in these two verses in Philippians 2 that we're looking at tonight.
[0:48] So let's read the second Peter and this first chapter. Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
[1:12] His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
[1:36] For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
[1:55] For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so short-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
[2:13] Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
[2:31] Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them, and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.
[2:51] And I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things. But we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
[3:10] For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
[3:26] We have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
[3:40] Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.
[3:51] But men spoke from God, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And again, we pray that God will bless this portion of his word to us as we turn again this evening to Paul's letter to the Philippians, and chapter 2.
[4:10] And we're going to look this evening at verses 12 and 13. Philippians chapter 2 at verse 12.
[4:22] Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
[4:40] Well, we've compared the previous verses in this chapter that we've spent a few weeks going through to a great mountain peak of teaching and of truth that God has set before us in verses 5 to 11 especially, where, as we've seen, he's speaking primarily about Jesus, about his coming into the world as the servant of God to the extent of giving his life, even to the death of the cross.
[5:11] And also how God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, and so on. We've looked at that mountain. We've tried to climb as far as possible with God's help into that great mountain of teaching and looking towards the peak that outreaches us when we speak about the deity of Christ and the work of Christ.
[5:32] And we're now coming down from that mountain in order to descend into what we might say is the valley of ordinary life. As a reminder, in some way, it reminds me of what you read in Matthew chapter 17, as you find the disciples there having been with Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration, where they saw the transfiguration, where the change took place for a while in Christ's appearance, the brilliance of that light that shorn through him, and so on.
[6:05] And then as they came down from the mountain, the first thing they met was a father with his boy, his child, bringing him to Jesus. He was demon-possessed.
[6:16] He kept falling into the fire and harming himself. And they brought him to Jesus to see what he would do with him. It's really, in a sense, that's a reminder to the disciples themselves at that time, I'm sure, that although, as Peter said, it was good for them to be on the mountain, they would like dearly to have stayed there.
[6:36] Let's make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. In other words, Peter was saying, let's just stay here. Let's just stay at least a little longer. And here is Jesus, as they come down the mountain, reminding, no, this is not what your life's about.
[6:52] You're going to benefit from what you saw. You're going to benefit from what you learn. But it's for application down in the valley. It's for dealing with people like you're here seeing in this sad picture of this young man and his anxious father.
[7:08] That's what the things that you learned are for. You take the transfiguration with you. You take what you saw of my person with you into the grit of the world, into the nitty-gritty of life, as you find it in ordinary life.
[7:26] And really, that's what we find in this chapter here of Philippians. Here we've been with Paul as he's taken us up in this great teaching up to the mountaintop, or near the mountaintop, up to the heights, at least, of this teaching about Jesus.
[7:40] And now Paul is saying to the Philippians, I've taken you there. You've seen the sights there. Now you're coming back down into the valley. Now he's saying, therefore, therefore, my beloved, in the light of what you've seen, in the light of what I've said to you, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
[8:01] For it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure. In other words, in the light of what we've learned, and this is, of course, for ourselves, we're not just looking at this as it was applied to the Philippian church, because we've been here seeking to follow Paul as he's climbed this great peak of teaching.
[8:20] We've been following that, but what's it about? What have we learned about Jesus? Or rather, how much now do we, how do we actually apply what we've learned there about Jesus to our life as it is in this world?
[8:34] That's what really Paul is now coming to. And he's coming to, in these two verses, to deal with what we can call perseverance, the doctrine of Christian perseverance, or the activities, not just a doctrine, it's the activity of Christian perseverance.
[8:51] Those will see something of sanctification come soon to it, but let's just look at it in terms of the persevering of the Christian, the persevering of God's people in this world in following through with their faith in Christ.
[9:03] looking at it as it is worked out in this world as it is, as it is around you, and as you find it very often opposing all that you're seeking to be and to do as a Christian.
[9:17] And so there are two sides to this perseverance. There is our side of it, and there is God's side of it. Here is, first of all, he's dealing with our side of it.
[9:28] As you have always obeyed, now also in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And then there's God's side of it, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
[9:42] And now the relationship between these two is very important, and we mustn't get them the wrong way around. Because what we have to do, in fact, is to begin with verse 13, because that's the foundational thing.
[9:55] What you find in verse 12 grows out of or proceeds from or is set on the basis of verse 13. You can see that little word again, for, for it is God who works in you.
[10:09] In other words, Paul is saying here, this is the basis, this is the foundation, this is where your working out comes from. Outworking out of our salvation comes from God working in.
[10:20] It's not the other way around. It's not outworking out of salvation that somehow brings God to work in our lives. It's the work of God that comes first.
[10:31] And then following on from that, proceeding from that, as a fruit of that, you find outworking out. This is how John Murray, theologian John Murray, puts it in his wonderful little book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied.
[10:47] Still available, absolutely worth getting your hands on it if you can. I think it's still available in print. But anyway, this is what he says. And it's on this verse as he's dealing with this topic.
[11:01] God working in us is not suspended because we work, nor is outworking suspended because God works. Neither is the relation strictly one of cooperation, as if God did his part and we do ours, so that the conjunction or coordination of both produce the required result.
[11:25] The relation is that because God works, we work. All working out of salvation on our part is the effect of God's working in us.
[11:37] That's the relation that you find between these two verses. That's why we begin tonight by God working in us because that's where Paul's starting point is. Then we come back to look at the other verse, verse 12, outworking out.
[11:52] Now what is he saying here in verse 13? For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. That really is through the work of the Holy Spirit first of all coming to bring us to life, to quicken us, to regenerate us.
[12:08] That's the word theologians use, regeneration. What is regeneration? Regeneration is bringing what is spiritually dead to life. You remember very well how Ephesians put it in chapter 2 where the apostle there reminds the Ephesians of the kind of state they were in, the kind of lifestyle they lived, but it came from them being dead spiritually before they came to be brought alive so that they came to be Christians and said, God, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air.
[12:46] That's really what God finds as he finds us as fallen sinners. It's just an equivalent would be just a lifeless lump of clay.
[12:57] That lifeless lump needs to be worked upon. That lifeless lump of clay that you find sitting on a potter's wheel is not going to come to develop itself into a wonderful vessel to be admired.
[13:10] It has to be worked upon. It has to be, as it were, brought to life by the hands of the potter. And in a spiritual way, that's what happens to us when God begins to work in our lives.
[13:22] Remember back in chapter 1, verse 6, that Paul reminded them even there, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you. You see, God's work has a beginning in our lives.
[13:34] It wasn't always there. We weren't always converted, quickened people. God began that work. There's a point at which it begins in God's own time, in God's own way.
[13:47] But it is the Spirit of God, it is God, who brings us as dead sinners to life. It's the same as you find emphasized in the Lord's teaching to Nicodemus in John chapter 3.
[14:01] There was Nicodemus, a very skilled teacher of the law, a man who knew his scripture, the Old Testament scriptures as it was at the time. And he was quite convinced that he was within the kingdom of God.
[14:13] Nobody needed to actually tell him how to get into the kingdom of God. He was already in it. He was a teacher of the law. He was able to tutor others as to what it meant to be people of God.
[14:26] And yet when Jesus came to him, or rather he came to Jesus, he sought him out by night. Itself in John's gospel, darkness of course is very often in John's gospel representative of spiritual darkness.
[14:40] And I think that's built into the emphasis there in John 3. He came to Jesus by night. The darkness in which he came, maybe it was a cover for the fact that he was afraid others of his own Sanhedrin companions would actually see this and criticize him, find fault with him.
[14:56] But it's also representative of the spiritual darkness in which he was, despite the fact that he is a teacher of Israel. Which is what Jesus pointed out when he said, are you a teacher of Israel? Yet you do not know these things.
[15:07] What things? Well, as Jesus said to him, except a person be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
[15:18] Except a man is born by water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And there is Jesus emphasizing for this teacher in Israel, this experienced Nicodemus, you're not in the kingdom.
[15:33] You haven't come through the door of the kingdom because the door of the kingdom is the new birth. And you're not born again. And your expertise in the law hasn't given you any advantage in this sense that that itself is not sufficient to actually make you a true believer in God.
[15:53] And that's the starting point. God working in us. You see, that regeneration where God brings us as dead sinners to life, the immediate result of that is our conversion because conversion, as you know, means turning round.
[16:11] You are converted. You're turned round in the opposite direction from what you were as a fallen sinner. And conversion is the immediate aftermath or result of or connected immediately to regeneration.
[16:23] The moment you're regenerated, your life is turned around. You can see it, of course, in Paul's own experience in the dramatic form of it. There is not always as dramatic as that.
[16:34] But that's where you need to start. And I hope none of us tonight is thinking, I can be a Christian but I don't need to be born again. I can be a holy person but I don't need to actually start at the starting point of Scripture as it tells me I need to be born again.
[16:53] Are you trying tonight to please God without having that change in your life that God Himself effects? Do you think that you can be a good Christian without ever having had the starting point of God beginning a good work in you?
[17:12] Of course not. I hope not. Same is true of myself. Just because I'm standing in a pulpit and been preaching the gospel for over 30 years, that doesn't give me an entrance into the kingdom of God.
[17:26] That doesn't actually mean itself that I'm in a right relationship with God, that I've been established as righteous in relation to Christ in the presence of God. I need to be born again for that and to be born again it is God's work within that takes place to bring that about.
[17:47] And of course the reason that many, well one of the reasons that the scripture points this out to us is that not so that we see this as just an impossibility in which to turn away from the gospel, of course not, but it is to the effect that we would not be of the mind mistakenly that would think it's just enough to try and be a good Christian without being born again, without God's work beginning and carrying forward from there in our hearts.
[18:15] So there's where he starts and then he says, he speaks about that actually going on in perseverance. Now we can't say for sure ourselves how the spirit of God works in such a way, what is the mode of his operation, only God knows that.
[18:32] We cannot take that out and put it into a laboratory and try and assess it or analyze it or examine it minutely, only God knows as Jesus said to Nicodemus, the wind blows squarely wills.
[18:46] And so is everyone who is born of the spirit. There is a mystery to it. There is a mystery only understandable to God. But the great thing is it takes place and it doesn't require our understanding of all the minute details of it in order to benefit from it or to be born again.
[19:04] And you see what he's saying here. Although we cannot take it out and examine what it is or how the spirit actually works in bringing us to life, how exactly that takes place or how exactly the spirit of God then enables us to persevere in the Christian walk, what it is, what is obvious is that none of that work of God takes place without our believing actions being involved.
[19:34] I'm not saying by that that when God brings us to life we've had some part of that. We're dead in trespasses and sins but the moment we're brought to life then you see your faculties are immediately affected by that.
[19:48] Your mind is changed. Your thoughts are changed. Your conclusions are changed. Your conscience is affected. Everything that you were before is turned around. And that's why he's saying here it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
[20:08] You see sin even as believers sin still impedes or stands in the way or obstructs our thought processes our conclusions our ability to choose and our ability to actually engage in actions that are pleasing to God we still find sin standing in the way of that.
[20:32] Not sin ruling as it once did but sin still nevertheless affecting our ability to choose what is right and ability to continue to choose what is right and to do what is right.
[20:44] So here he's saying it is God who is working in you both to will and to work or to do for his good pleasure. So here he is dealing with God working in us as the basis as we'll see of our working out.
[21:03] But there's one thing still in God working in us that's important to notice at the end there of verse 13. It is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
[21:18] What is it that gives us the greatest incentive to live as Christians? What is it that gives you the greatest incentive to live a holy life? It's not your own enjoyment of it though that's not out of place.
[21:33] It's not a sense of satisfaction in yourself that this is the life that God has brought you to live though that's not unimportant either. Your greatest incentive is this that you were created to bring praise to God.
[21:47] You were created to glorify God. You were saved in order to glorify God. God's work within you has begun and has carried on to enable you to be pleasing to God.
[22:02] You see tonight that affects our sense of worship. Our sense of what is important in worship. There are many things important in worship. There is nothing more important than this and especially in our day when worship sadly has become so much a thing that's not really fully understood in many contexts where you find all sorts of deviations from the biblical pattern of worship because what's important of most importance to us tonight as we gather here for worship is not that we want to please ourselves or to have ourselves pleased with what we're doing.
[22:45] That's part of it. It brings satisfaction to your soul to engage in worship but this is the most important thing that you're bringing pleasure to God that you're pleasing to God that we together might be pleasing to Him.
[23:00] that's why we worship Him. We worship Him because we want to bring Him glory to bring Him praise to be pleasing to Him. That's the starting point really of worship.
[23:11] If I come to worship to church to worship God and my first thought is what am I going to get out of this I'm starting with the wrong point. If I come to church and think now here I am I need to worship God it's my privilege to worship God my starting point is how can my worship be pleasing to Him?
[23:31] How can it bring honor and glory to His great name? How can that actually be something that I am participating in and contributing to?
[23:43] Then following on from that of course you want to be satisfied in your own heart to know something of the emotions the exhilaration of worship and of the word of God affecting you and of the presence of God being experienced by you?
[24:00] But that's only following on from the primary point to be pleasing to Him to bring glory to His great name.
[24:12] So God working in us and then from there you go back to verse 12 therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so now not only in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
[24:27] Now it should be evident to us that when He's saying work out your own salvation with fear and trembling He doesn't mean work in order to save yourselves. That's already been done by the work of Christ on the cross as the previous verses have shown.
[24:41] That's why He's using the word therefore. This being the case. Now work out your own salvation with fear and trembling but what does that actually involve?
[24:53] Well you notice there's an emphasis here on the word obeyed on the matter of obedience. Therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so also not only in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation.
[25:09] In other words you cannot take the word obedience out of what it means to work out your own salvation. It's integral to it. It's really significant isn't it that a passage that's dealing with the obedience of Christ now should move to the obedience of his people.
[25:27] You see this is what it's doing. We've been up on the mountain. We've seen something of this obedience of Jesus presented in these verses and we've seen something of what that led to even the death of the cross.
[25:40] Now here is Paul saying now though I'm not present with you anymore this is your prerogative. This is your privilege. Obey the Lord Jesus Christ of whom we saw something of in these previous verses.
[25:57] And so that is not a mere example in these previous verses it's actually the very dynamic of the obedience of Christ the dynamic of the cross itself the dynamic of Jesus himself and his action and his continuing ministry that's where the dynamic is that's what leads to our working out and our working out includes an obedience that's patterned on his but an obedience that flows also from his.
[26:25] Remember the obedience of Christ unto death is an effective thing. It's not something that just happened in a vacuum or that you find in some sort of neutral relation to yourself.
[26:38] The power of godliness the power of the Christian life the power of living for the Lord it comes from the cross that comes from his own obedience.
[26:50] That's what's made rendered an acceptable sacrifice to God the perfection of Christ's obedience is the very ground on which we walk into the presence of God to worship him.
[27:08] And you notice that he's using also plurals here do this and he's meaning do this together therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so now much more work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
[27:24] He's saying this is what you do together. It's not just a matter of your individual progress as Christians that's very much part of it but it also involves the progress of the whole fellowship of believers in Philippi the whole progress of fellowship of the fellowship of believers in Stormway wherever the church is located.
[27:44] Work out your own salvation it is an individual thing you can't leave that out of it but it's also it's very much an emphasis on doing this together not at the expense of our individual or personal holiness and you'll see how Paul is actually saying here even though I am absent you did this in my presence but now much more in my absence you see it's not dependent on the church's leadership not in terms of its human leadership at least not saying that's necessarily unimportant of course it is that's why we pray for congregations that are vacant that they actually have a pastor settled over them to actually lead the matters of God's cause and God's worship and God's church in the world but Paul is actually saying well it doesn't really matter in the ultimate sense whether I'm with you or whether I'm not with you whether I'm present or whether I'm absent this is what you owe to Christ this is what you owe to him that you that you obey that you live a life of service to him as you've seen him when we climbed the mountain in his service of the father and for our benefit and so he's saying work out your own salvation as we said earlier salvation there cannot actually mean salvation that you already possess as a
[29:19] Christian as Christians that's come into your possession through the work of the Holy Spirit as we said he began that good work in you it's not salvation in that sense that's already been accomplished your justification your sanctification salvation the whole of your salvation has been accomplished by Jesus it's not something in that sense that you're working at what then does he mean well he means something similar to what you find as we read in 2 Peter because there are aspects of our lives in response to what Christ has done and in union with Christ as we're joined to him by faith there are aspects of our life now that follow on from the salvation we've obtained and received we're working it out in this sense and Peter here I think is very much opening out the same sort of package for us he's saying we have been given these great things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises that you may become partakers of the divine nature of raise it itself is very difficult to follow out in detail but he says for this very reason because you have already these things because you already saved people he's saying to them this is what he's saying for this very reason make every effort to supplement or to add to your faith virtue virtue with knowledge knowledge with self control self control steadfastness and so on for if these qualities are yours and are increasing they keep you from being effective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our
[31:03] Lord Jesus Christ and if they are in you he says they will be for you richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in other words he's talking really about our Christian walk and our Christian activities that are based upon Christ's own obedience and activity for us and come from God working within us when God works within you he sets you to work out to actually work out your faith in action another chapter you could just run through it later in a moment although I'm sure you know it very well already it's Hebrews chapter 11 that's really in a sense the same thing as Paul is saying here in Philippians chapter 2 to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling faith sets you to work the work of God within you that produces that faith sets you to work to some activity or other that's related to your being born again by faith and you find that list in Hebrews 11 by faith
[32:11] Abraham did this by faith Noah did this by faith all of these people mentioned there and then they're listed as people who did certain things who worked out their own salvation in the actions of their Christian believing life that's what Paul is saying if we're born again we're going to be very much active in working out our salvation and adding to our faith virtue and to virtue knowledge as 2 Peter chapter 1 has put it for us and you can even find there in 2 Peter verses 5 to 8 as we've read them there but then you see verse 10 therefore brothers be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure for if you practice these qualities you will never fall you take that verse very often we take that verse or have seen it taken out of context and people will come to you maybe and ask what does the Bible mean when it says make your calling and election sure how can we actually make election sure if we are elect of
[33:21] God from all eternity well that's not what the verse is saying the verse is saying in order to have confirmation that you are God's people work out your own salvation in terms of adding to your faith virtue and virtue knowledge knowledge with self control if these qualities are in you and increasing then ultimately they will give you and you will have an entrance abundantly into the eternal kingdom of our Lord in other words it's just living as we saw earlier in obedience to Christ and all the things that come into activities as obedient servants of Christ that's the working out of our own salvation and he is saying with fear and trembling and you might think that's difficult to fit into why should a Christian be moved with fear and trembling why should that be part of what he's saying if we're already saved and we're working out our own salvation why should there be fear and trembling well of course that all depends on what you understand by this fear and trembling and let me just quote you from
[34:32] Alec Motier's writings here's what he says about the fear of God there is a fear of God of which we know all too little and which we lose at our peril a godly fear growing out of a recognition of weakness and of the power of temptation a filial that's a child parent dread of offending God this is not the fear of a lost sinner before the holy one but the fear of a true child before the most loving of all fathers not a fear of what he might do to us but of the hurt that we might do to him and this last area of sensitivity is the deepest for there is no failure in the lives of those to whom the Lord has given his full salvation which does not pierce directly to the throne of heaven that's not to make us be afraid but to be all the more concerned to live in awe and respect and reverence and obedience to this great and glorious and holy
[35:44] God well in fear and trembling and our time is gone so there are the two sides to perseverance beginning with God's work in us and that leading directly to our working out of our salvation with fear and trembling and of course as we said it all begins at the point of being born again of becoming a new creature through the work of the Spirit of God bringing us to life that's what you must make your priority tonight if you're not yet in Christ if you're not yet saved if you're not yet among those who are born again go to God ask him to do this for you ask him by his mighty Spirit to open your heart to change your heart to give you a new mind give you a new direction to your life because without it you can't be saved without it you can't work out your own salvation with fear and trembling without it the fear and trembling you have is the fear and trembling of his punishment and that's not what the apostle is dealing with
[36:52] I read recently of a woman who was asked by her pastor did she have or could she say what her favorite verse in scripture would be and this was her response much said my favorite verse in many respects is one that's repeated very often and it's not really even a full verse it's where it says and it came to pass and it came to pass because you see when we are now down in the valley of life in this world having been somewhere on this mountain of teaching having seen something of the Lord's obedience and carrying that with us into this world the journey might sometimes feel tremendously difficult and it is difficult we're going to meet with the kind of opposition that the Philippians met was because they were a marginalized minority in Philippi and so are we as
[37:53] Christians in this life in our context in the present day we're a marginalized minority even if you raise your voice it's tough to keep going and if we're serious about the Lord and we do seek to keep going we will need to look consistently to the Lord to energize us further but you see this is what this woman is saying and it came to pass life will never be I'm sure as we would have wanted it to be it may feel very long to continue to walk in this world as a Christian the journey may seem very long indeed as we come down into the valley and we see that road ahead of us we can see there are going to be very likely difficulties and challenges facing us nevertheless as one as 2nd Peter first chapter reminded us he has given us great and precious promises it came to pass it will come to pass nothing that God promises you or
[39:03] I in the gospel will fail to come to pass there may be many times when you feel like doubting it when you feel like surely God is not being true to his promise here how can this work towards my good it came to pass it will come to pass place yourself under the guiding hand of God God and from his work in you work out your own salvation with fear and trembling let's pray Lord our almighty God we give thanks that you are our sovereign creator and Lord we give thanks for the work that you begin in your people which once you have begun it will be carried through to its completion your apostle of old was convinced of this when he wrote to them that he who had begun that good work in them would bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ Lord as we look forward to that day we don't know what is between us now and that day and that point or when it might come we don't know what challenges might lie in our way what glorious rewards and experiences also but we pray oh
[40:19] Lord for a consistent walk we pray for that readiness each day to work from what you have done in us to working out our own salvation with fear and trembling and so receive us we pray again this evening as we commit ourselves to your care we ask all in Jesus name and for his sake amen well let's bring our service to a conclusion tonight singing to God's praise in Psalm number 18 Psalm 18 this time in the Scottish Psalter on page 221 and we're singing verses 31 to 36 who but the Lord is God but he who is a rock and stay it is God that girdeth me with strength and perfect makes my way he made my feet swift as the hinds set me on my high places my hands to war he taught my arms break bows of steel and pieces the shield of thy salvation thou didst on me bestow thy right hand held me up and great thy kindness made me grow and in my way my steps thou hast enlarged under me that I go safely and my feet are kept from sliding free these verses verse 31 on who but the
[41:41] Lord is God who but the Lord is God but he who is the rock and stay it is God that girdeth me with strength and perfect makes my way he made my feet swift last night set me from my high places my hands to war he taught my hands break those still in pieces the shield of thy salvation the days on me bestow thy right hand held me up and make thy kindness make me grow and in my way my steps of us enlarged under me that
[43:09] I go save thee and my feet are kept from my gate free now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you now and ever more Amen You