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By any chance of attending the first seminar on Bible study this afternoon, then you might find it convenient to bring along with you this sheet of the skeleton outline of the Epistle to the Colossians. Because at the beginning of our session this afternoon, before we proceed to detailed study of First Timothy, we shall be considering the Epistle to the Ephesians, the sister epistle to this epistle to the Colossians. We shall be using it as an example of one and another of the methods that are open to us to use in the study of Holy Scripture. You may com- uh, care to compare the contents of the epistle to the Ephesians with the contents of the epistle to the Colossians. Now let us read from Colossians again, chapter one, beginning in verse twenty four. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church. Whereof I was made a minister, according to the dispensation of God, which was given me to you, Ward, to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery which has been hid from all ages and generations, but now hath it been manifested to his saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ. Whereunto I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches that the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden away. This I say that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and builded up in him, established in your faith, even as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Take heed, lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him you are filled full. Verse uh sixteen: Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a feast day or of a new moon or a Sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come. But the body is Christ. Let no man rob you of your pride by a voluntary humility and worshiping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, not holding fast the head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God. If you died with Christ on the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourself to ordinances, such as handle not, nor take, nor touch, all which things are to perish with the using after the precepts and doctrines of men. Which things indeed have a show of wisdom in will worship and humility and severity to the body, but are not of any value and tend towards the indulgence of the flesh. God give us hearts and ears to listen to his holy word. So far in our studies, we have been considering together the topic of our Christian hope. And today, at the beginning of our study, we must linger with that same topic. And as we do so, we shall find it will eventually merge with the second major topic of this epistle, which is the topic of wisdom. Now, yesterday we concentrated to a large extent on the hope of the gospel. Today we turn to consider, rather, our hope of glory. So that our first practical task will be to notice the similarities between the two, and then to investigate more closely the differences between them. The hope of the gospel and the hope of glory are both of them, as you observed, concerned with the matter of presentation. It is the divine decree, says Paul, as he explains to us the hope of the gospel, that through our blessed Lord Jesus, one day we shall be presented holy and without blemish and without charge before God. Now, when we turn to consider the hope of glory, we find that too is concerned with this matter of presentation. We proclaim admonishing and every, every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, says Paul, that we may present every man perfect, fully mature, fully grown in Christ. And that is the nature of hope and all its blessed saving effects, for we are saved by hope. And when the going gets rough and our faith is wobbly, it is hope, sure and grounded, that acts as an anchor of the soul, and the goal shining bright before us lends new strength to reach out that we may lay hold upon it. It is the nature of hope, therefore, to keep the goal before our eyes. Now we have two. The goal of one day being presented before the majesty of the throne of God in the heavens, and hearing the wonderful challenge, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elector? Imagine yourself standing there just now, it won't do you any harm. And the other goal, the goal of being presented before the Blessed Lord. Here our terms must be a little bit more muted. The desired goal is that we shall be presented, mature, fully grown. But that raises a big question, doesn't it? Every believer will be presented before the throne of glory without charge. And that depends solely on the work of Christ at Calvary. His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and his pleading before the face of God. But shall every believer be presented fully Fully grown. grown? What is your opinion on the topic? The dying thief, within a few hours of his conversation with the blessed Lord Jesus, finished his gruesome days on earth, and in that instant was with Christ in paradise without charge, with all his ugly record blotted out and cast forever into the sea of gospel ghetto. But he hadn't had much time to develop his Christian character, had he? Will he be mature, fully grown, when he is presented? The Corinthians, what a troublesome crowd. If they had died five minutes after receiving the first epistle by Paul, they would, of course, eventually have been presented before the throne of glory without charge, because their faith was in the blessed Lord. But at the time of writing, Paul has to tell them straight to their faces, there are a pack of children, spiritual babes, and they died five minutes after that. Would they have been presented? Fully mature, developed, adult Christian character. What say you? I have to confess to you that upon much consideration, I come to the conclusion, while all shall be presented without chance, not all will be fully grown, and at last they are presented. Is it so that years of godly perseverance, diligent spiritual discipline, laying hold of the grace of God and the means of grace, in the end count for nothing. So that one dear sister who throughout many years has walked with God, and as, uh, she has discovered her weaknesses and repented of them, and sought the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, and has made tremendous strides in the development of her Christian character. She was vastly indistinguishable in glory from the brother who spent his fifty years idling about, and by the time he was ninety nine and a half was a virtual spiritual baby still. Has God got some kind of a magic wand between the believer's death and his resurrection to transform careless faith into fully grown characters? I think, by and large, I prefer, I know not about you, Peter's comments on the topic in his second epistle in chapter one, where he exhorts us with all his apostolic authority and zeal, not to say his constant repetition, that we add in the power of our faith, courage, knowledge, and perseverance and self-control, love of the brethren, and love. Why should I be diligent to add these things to my character? Well, says Peter, if you add these things, if you do these things, and by God's grace you develop your character, then you will never stumble. And what is more, so shall there be ministered to you the entrance into the eternal kingdom abundantly. Contrast, it seems to me, is not between entering or not entering. All believers will enter. Contrast is between entering pure and simple on the one hand, and an abundant entrance on the other. We should not confine ourselves, it seems to me, in our imaginations of what heaven would be like, not even to the best theatre that ever was built, or gospel hall for that matter, in the whole of the United States, plus with pews and carpets, some seats nearer the front than others. Will not heaven be not merely a place, but an experience? And if heaven is an experience, then it seems to me that our capacity to enjoy that experience will depend on how fully grown we are. Did I ever use with you that silly analogy of mine? I use it again anyway, because I'm bankrupt for analogies. They're difficult things to think of, aren't they? There was, according to this analogy, a Christmas party at which were present a babe of ten months old, a boy of eight, and a bright young thing of seventeen, her father and mother. They were all at the party. The babe sat in his high chair, had managed to get hold of a soup spoon and was dipping it in the cream and anointing his head with oil. His cup ran over all over the floor, and he had a marvelous time and enjoyed the party to the full and went to bed at five o'clock, admirably content. Eight-year-old was not in his high chair or ladling out the cream either. He was playing with his father on the floor with his electronic playing set. Father was playing more than he, but that's beside the point. Now and again, he of ten-month-old, months old deigned to look over the parapet of his high chair to survey what was going on in the floor and decided it was nonsense. He saw nothing in it. He didn't miss it either. Why? He wasn't grown enough. And then there was Suite seventeen. She wasn't dishing out the cream either, nor playing trains up on the floor, I should think not. She was sitting on the settee, dressed up in her very best Sears costume. For truth to tell, there was a visitor coming in the evening, and when presently he came, they too sat on the seat, and they talked. An eight-year-old couldn't understand it for his life. Curious enough. What would two sane and otherwise intelligent people be doing just sitting on the seat talking, when they could be on the floor playing trains? Of course, he didn't understand, how would he? He hadn't grown enough. Father and mother were there. They understood all the job and understood more than anyone. Oh, my brother, my sister, how shall I start eternity? As a mere babe, loved of the Father, knowing my acceptance, without charge, but without growth, limited in my capacity to understand what's going on. Shall I arrive, by God's mercy, fully grown and mature? Well, then, as the preacher, you are in danger of forgetting the glorious words of the first epistle of John in chapter three, that when we see him, we shall be like him. Oh no, I don't forget it. I need to cling to that verse myself. Shall I indeed, even I? Yes, I shall. When I see him, I shall be like him. What there is of me. For the babe is like its parent. But so is the forty-year-old, but there's a bit more of him. And so it seems to me that we must be careful here in Colossians not to confuse things that differ. Our being presented without charge, so we are immediately reminded in the passage, depends on Christ's atoning suffering. Reconciled to God by the blood of his cross, reconciled in the body of his flesh through death. In those holy atoning sacrifices of Christ, now forever finished. None other can possibly have any part. But our being presented mature in Christ, according to these verses, depends not so much upon our Lord's atoning suffering as on his ongoing affliction. Look, if you will, at verse twenty four, says Paul, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ. They are Christ's afflictions. They are those afflictions that remain still to be suffered. And in those afflictions, you will perceive that others do have part, and notably in explicity here, Paul himself. Or again, you may care to notice that when we are presented without charge, according to verse twenty two, it will be our blessed Lord that does the presenting. But when we come to verse 28, it is not Christ who does the presenting, it is Paul who does the presenting. And because of that tremendous responsibility that rest is upon him, he tells us that he strove and he agonized, and he used every nerve and muscle, and in addition divine and supernatural power, that he might fulfill his task, if God should so permit, and present every man fully grown in Christ. At any rate, with this we come to observe now this morning the topic for which this epistle is famous, even among the other epistles. The question of progress towards spiritual full growth and maturity, and in particular to listen to the advice of Paul on the right way to go about this question of spiritual growth, contrasted with the wrong way of going about that same task. To prepare us for that topic, let us notice now, if we will, the contents of verses twenty four to twenty nine. There are three major parts to this. In verses twenty four and twenty five, Paul tells us of his part in the process of our spiritual growth. First of all, in verse twenty four, to fill up that which still remains to be suffered of the afflictions of Christ. And in verse twenty five, his stewardship of God's mystery to fill up the word of God. The first two verses are Paul's part in the process of our spiritual growth. The second, the next two verses, twenty six and twenty seven, deal with the resources available, the potential for our glorification, and remind us of the glory of this mystery. In verse twenty six we are told of the progress of this revelation, concealed for ages and generations, but recently revealed. And then in verse twenty seven um we are told the potential for glorification, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And then finally, in the last two verses, verses twenty eight and twenty nine, Paul reverts to his former topic, Paul's part in presenting everyone mature. First of all, verse twenty eight, the process, proclaiming Christ and admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ. And secondly, in verse twenty nine, the power available and working in Paul to achieve that goal, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. Three major parts to this paragraph, and two of them all about Paul. That's a bit shocking, isn't it? Well, if you observe the man, he's given to it from time to time, isn't he? He is sailing along quite pleasantly and in the height of spirituality through Ephesians, when suddenly he takes a bend and he says, I'd like you to know how much I know. Whatever would you think of your present preacher? He's poor enough as it is, but if suddenly in the course of the exposition of the word I started to say, uh, half a minute, do you realize how much I know? I would like you to know how much I know. Paul does precisely that in Ephesians chapter three. And here again, though not normally given to boasting, 2 of the three parts of this paragraph are all about Paul, the part God has given to him. When I think of the goal that we have in view, our growth, our spiritual growth and maturity, then, my brothers and sisters, I unashamedly wish in these next few moments to inflame your hearts with love and respect for the apostle Paul. Oh, of course, not to induce in you any idolatrous love of a mere man, and certainly not to detract from the high glories of our blessed Lord Jesus. Then you see, it is easy in our modern day to forget the importance, the historical importance of the special role that God gave to our dear brother, the Apostle Paul. Not only as an apostle and servant of the gospel and servant of the church, but high steward of the mystery of God. To whom else will you point amongst the whole apostolate, so wonderfully entrusted with this great mystery of God? It has been altogether to our damage and the detriment of Christendom that in many centuries Paul has become unpopular, even amongst Christians. He was so in his own day, of course. Which is why on times you see himself in his letters draw himself up on tiptoe to his all five foot four inches high and stand upon his apostolic dignity. Listen to him in Galatians chapter five and verse two: Behold, I, Paul, say unto you. I say again, what a comical situation it would be. Signs of incipient insanity. If I stood before you and said, mark you, my brothers and my sisters, I goody say to you. You would ring for the psychiatrist. But you mustn't, when Paul speaks. I, Paul, say unto you that if you receive circumcision, Christ shall pro- pro- profit you nothing. Ah, but we've not always listened to Paul, have we? Sometimes our courage fails us, and we do like Peter, we know better. We know that justification is by faith and faith only. Sometimes we're guilty of pretending not to believe what we do believe, and we fluff the gospel. There never was an age in which evangelical Christianity was in greater danger of fluffing the basic gospel of justification by faith, and all those glorious certainties that go with it, and assurance of immediate and present acceptance with God. Come, brethren, let us listen to Paul. I, Paul, say to you that if you fluff that by allowing the appearance that all sorts and kinds of ceremonies do contribute something to our justification. And in the end, you will lose your joy and your sadness. Finish in bondage. I, Paul, say to you that if you compromise on this, Christ offers you nothing. Listen to him in Ephesians chapter three and verse one: for this cause I, Paul, you have heard how that by revelation was made known to me the mystery, the heavenly calling of the church, Jew and Gentile, one in Christ, seated in the heavenlies in Christ. What a sorry history it has been when Christendom has forgotten it, failing to remember that the church is a heavenly body, got herself mixed up with state politics, and in many countries become a state church, with all the necessary evils connected with this, and ultimately persecution of non-believers. I, Paul, say to. Oh, let's listen to Paul when he enunciates the nature of the church. And so it is in one Corinthians fourteen and verse thirty seven, isn't it? If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write. Are the commandments of the Lord in connection with the running of our churches, as he bans us the use of names, because they are derogatory to the unique glory of our blessed Lord. As he orders the use of gifts in the church, I, Paul, all pray take notice. The things I write are the commandment of the Lord. How does it strike you, my brother, my sister, as the words of some big tyrant? And I conjure up before you, by God's help, the sight of a broken body, bones aching, wounded and sore. I think of the hard skin on the man's hands as he worked at his tent making to pay his own expenses and the expenses of the team that was with him, so that he might evangelize where otherwise it would have been impossible for him to go. Think of the man standing before the elders of Ephesus and saying, brethren, look at my hands. I haven't just taught you theories, gentlemen. So working, I left you an example that you ought like that as elders so to do. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus. It is more blessed to give than to receive. We must listen to him then, and not forget these special positions that God gave him when he made him steward of the mystery. Would you know one of the marks of the true gospel? Be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, says Paul. Well, how should I know the gospel when I saw it? Well, there are two marks, says Paul, in this particular passage. The one is that the gospel has been preached to every creature under heaven. That is, it is a universal gospel. None of this nonsense of a gospel given to Mrs. Smith in the West, with all respect to all Americans, but as a different gospel for that given to the East by Jesus Christ. What blasphemous nonsense. The mark of the true gospel is, it is universal. And the second mark of the gospel, Paul taught eternal. Oh, we're going Paul was made a minister. He's not only the great servant of the gospel, he's servant of the church, isn't he? I fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church, whereof I am made a minister. So we come to think then of his part in the, uh, matter of securing our spiritual growth. As I fill up that which is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. That surely was never meant to be a criticism of our blessed Lord. As though our Lord had suffered, but hadn't suffered quite enough, so that Paul had to come up and to be done. That would be a criticism, wouldn't it? I don't know how you translate that genitive, the afflictions of Christ. Is it merely a descriptive adjective saying afflictions such as Christ endured? For my own part, I confess to you, I take it to mean they are the afflictions that Christ himself suffers. You say, what new heresy is this? Well, first, we are not talking of our Lord's atoning suffering, are we? That was finished once and for all at Calvary, never to be repeated. The head that once was crowned with salt is crowned with glory now. He offered his sacrifice for sin, he has sat down at the right hand of God. But, uh, are there no sufferings for Christ now? You say, come, come. You are going insane. Ah, he's in heaven. How could the blessed Lord be afflicted in heaven? I read somewhere that when the glory broke in upon Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, the risen Lord, we asked to know, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Not why do you persecute my people, but why do you persecute me? Ah, you say that's because the risen Lord has an interest in them, you see. He was interested when Stephen was being stoned to death, and young Christian girls were being stood over by the torturers, and Saul of Tarsus in particular, and being so tortured that, uh, until they blasphemed the name of Jesus. Our Lord was interested in that kind of thing. Interested, my brother? Is that all? You say it didn't hurt him, he's in heaven and very comfortable, thank you. Is he really? And he watched Stephen cast his last, and it didn't pain the written Lord at all. Oh come, oh God the Father, it is said in the Old Testament, Isaiah sixty three nine, so he was their savior, and the angel of his presence saved them. He bore them, and in all their affliction he was afflicted. It's an old Greek idea, you know, we get it from Greek philosophy, not from our Bibles, to be sure we don't. It's an old idea of Greek philosophy that God is absolutely, as the theologians say and the philosophers, impassible. He can't suffer, he can't change, doesn't feel anything. And the Greeks with their little minds worked it out, they thought logically, sort of, that, uh, the Almighty being perfect couldn't change, because if he got worse, then he was no longer perfect, and if he got better, he wasn't perfect to start with. So they said God Almighty cannot possibly change, and hence the feeling of suffering and grief being a change. They said God cannot feel any suffering or pain. That's what the Greeks said, and the last has infected Christendom for centuries. It's not the vision that God gives us of himself through Isaiah and through his Old Testament prophets, is it? Listen to him expostulating with Israel. He says, I'm pressed under you like a cart under a load of sheep. In my distant youth, I was a farmer's boy, and have loaded and led the farm wagons with their heaps of sheaves, and have listened to the old wagon groaning at every turn in the road. I've thought about that marvelous statement by Almighty God as he put up with his people Israel, I'm pressed unto you like a wagon load full of sheaves. Christ loved the church, gave himself for her, for her growth and beautification and the removal of blocks and blemishes and all such things. He gives himself to the work of sanctifying. Do you tell me, my brother, that the risen Christ never feels any distress of me. That he remain- retains stoic impastivity while he watches my foolhardiness, obstinacy, uncleanness, impurity, selfishness. Now, I haven't got a written savior like that. In all our sinning, he is greedy. What about you parents? When the time has come, has come from time to time to administer the rod, flipper, switch, or whatever other suitable discipline you employ, you did it grinning all over your face? Did you really? Or did he, was it somewhere true down in the deep depths, that old trite saying, it hurts you more than it hurts me? To see your teenage son go after the drugs. You don't feel pain? Would you tell me that the risen Lord watches the wanderings of his people and doesn't feel sorrow? The afflictions of Christ in all his holy exercises to bring us, so often his laggard people, home to glory and to spiritual. And he gave to Paul a part in those sufferings, and if I'm mistaken, to you as well. Have you not agonized over some of your converts? Have you never spent a sleepless night? Your emotions never been harrowed by the irrationality of sin and all those stupid things over which believers fall out and divide. You've never felt frustrated at the slowness of progress, not only of others, but your own heart. Will you not let me say that in your sorrow, bigger still, for the feelings of our blessed year, to you is given that tremendous privilege, sharing the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake. And then not only so, to, uh, fulfill, he says, the word of God. It is wonderful to read in the last chapters of R- of Romans, Paul's carefully worked out plan, always flexible and subject to the Lord's guidance, of course. But a plan that had him on the move, all the way around from Jerusalem, right through Jerusalem, and perhaps down eventually into Spain, fully to proclaim the word of the Lord, that all might hear. And in between times, between his tent making and his being stoned and recovering in prison and goodness knows what else, sitting down, pushing a weary pen to write letters, to correct the people of God, and to encourage them and lead them towards spiritual maturity. To fulfill it. Not only to be the vehicle of divine revelation and us to love, but fully to expound the word that God gave him to. Oh, I wish we could emulate him, don't you? We English a bit let today, what I speak just for one of them, I can't speak for the other forty nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine. But it has sometimes even occurred to me that I haven't got much longer to be here. I thought when I was a youth that I would get through the systematic and profound study of scripture, the whole of it, before I went home to glory. I shall have to run pretty hard now to get it done. And in your assembly, what a plan for the systematic study of the whole of the word of God. I was in the place recently, and I dared to speak about Jotla. There's an older brother to me, you know, we don't do that kind of thing nowadays. We would go to the state, wouldn't we, for the inspiration of the Old Testament. Any one of you would. When did you last preach it in your church? Am I to suppose that God Almighty has made a grievous mistake and recorded a lot of stuff that, while it's inspired, isn't really, uh, all that profitable and would so bore the people of God that it would be wise, unwise to put it on in the church program? Be pastigal, they say, as if God Almighty wasn't. You suppose that in Inspiring Chronicles God had forgotten to be practical or something? Christian maturity is a thing that will demand in the end all that God has said I cannot afford to do without a comma of it. And then there is the large majesty of the mystery itself. Allow me a few moments to talk about these. The progress of revelation. He said the, the, the mystery, we'll say, that had been hid from all generations, but now has it been made manifest to his saints. To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. As is a historic case. It is therefore forever indivisibly joined to the consequences of being an historic faith. It is a faith that was not completely and fully and absolutely revealed at one time. Uh, God spoke in times past by the prophets, in the prophets, piecemeal, in diverse manners and in diverse proportions. It means that in our blessed Lord, we have now reached the full zenith of God's revelation. Oh, how wonderful it is. We've known it for so long, it begins to, uh, get a little pain sometimes. You know? Isaiah would have given his right hand to know what you know. And King David would have thrown his crown in the dustbin if he could have purchased what you know. Fancy knowing the name of the blessed Messiah himself. You know it. You begin to know all it stands for, that blessed name whose content will fill eternity with the songs of the redeemed. And as for knowing that Christ is in you. Like David wrote somewhat more than a hundred psalms as it was. If he had known this, he'd have written ten thousand psalms. He'll have never heard the end of it. Oh God, save us from becoming so familiar, but we fail to see the extraordinary wealth of this mystery. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And it's a thing that strikes me, if it hasn't struck you, how extraordinary it is to think of Americans getting saved. Did you ever hear such a thing? Well, Paul hadn't even when he wrote this. But I remind you, gentlemen and ladies, when Isaiah was writing his delightful fifty-third chapter, reveling in the glories of God, your ancestors in Britain, Scandinavia, and I don't know where, were all painted blue and dragging their wives around by the hair of their heads and other such uncivilized activities. Ignorant, brute, savages. And you got converted, you Americans got saved and joined to the Lord, and the Messiah himself in you. A hope of glory, whoever heard the likes of it. And they shall come from the east and the west, and the north and the south. To Paul, who had known the somewhat narrow beam of the original revelation of God to the Jews, goes ecstatic with delight, sent him to the ends of the earth he knew, uh, the extraordinary measureless generosity of God that would save even Gentiles. Americans included. So we proclaim. What are finally the means and methods of this spiritual progress and maturity? We proclaim Christ, of course. My brothers and sisters, that is the secret, that is the message. Quiet. I said yesterday, pray exhort me when you see I need exhorting. But oh, if you would motivate me in the ways of spiritual maturity. If you would tell me of the resources that are mine, if you would inflame this cold clay heart into deeper devotion to the Lord. If you would deepen my faith so that I may stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, though my shield be battered in all directions, then proclaim to me Christ. Yeah. It is right we exhort one another of our first duty, proclaim Christ, and then the admonition. Oh, we need it, and we might do anyway. And the teaching of every man. The marvelous particularity of Paul's interest in individuals, that we might present every single person perfect in God. It devolves upon me, therefore, as a weak lean link in this long succession of faithful servants of God, gently this morning to inquire of you, not as a whole bunch, you sir, and you, my dear sister, and you sir, and you, and you, and you. How are you getting on with the Lord? You feel you've made progress this year? It has been a difficult year. Ah, yes, I'm not worthy to tie your shoelaces. As in academic things, so it seems to me in spiritual life, the toughest examinations come at the end, don't they? When with lessened bodily powers, we can weaken psychological re- resources and reserves, we have to face some of life's most difficult and most painful Examination. examinations. How, my brother? How, my sister, are you getting on in progress towards the church? Found further delights in the Lord? Further experience of his grace? More than hitherto victories over besetting difficulties. Further treasure in his word, a deeper intimacy with the Lord, more courage to be faithful, more grace to be tolerant. Oh, the Lord bless you, every one of you. And you, in your turn, at your great responsibility is thus to help me and all others to whom God sent you, as you labor with every ounce you can, of the strength God has given you, and with it above all, the God whose purpose it is, whose redemption it is, working in you, that wonderful and gracious miracle produces you to the perfecting of some of his people. Shall we pray? We thank thee now, Lord, for our great salvation, for the glorious hope and certainty that we shall be presented without charge before the throne of thy glory. Now thou hast spoken to our hearts, Lord, about this practical matter of our Christian growth. Grant that thy word and the study of it and the gracious movings of thy spirit amongst us this morning may mean that our study, along with all else, shall contribute its share towards this great goal, that when the day comes, we may be found not only forgiven, but But full fulgun grown for for Christ's Christ's sake. sake.