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Good morning to you, anyway. It's delightful to see you looking so bright and breezy, in tune with the weather. Let's begin our study by reading in Holy Scripture, first of all in the book of Genesis in chapter forty nine. The book of Genesis, chapter forty nine, And we read there at verse three. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power, unstable as water.
Thou shalt not have the excellency. Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed, then defiledst thou it. He went up to my couch. And now from our epistle by James in chapter one. James chapter one. We shall read the first eighteen verses. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion, greetings.
Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into manifold temptations, knowing that the proving of your faith worketh endurance. And let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. Let him ask in faith, nothing doubting, for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.
Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord, a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate, and the rich in that he has made low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun ariseth with the scorching wind, and withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth. So also shall the rich man fade away in his goings.
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he has been approved, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man. But each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death.
Be not deceived, my beloved brethren, every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. So far, then, the word of the Lord. And I am sure that you would like me, on the behalf of all us visitors, first of all, to thank the organizers and the workers at this conference for the mammoth task they have done and their prodigious efforts in supplying this happy occasion for us all.
We are indeed grateful to them, and we thank them in the name of the Lord. By God's goodness, then, we have six occasions of these mornings to study together the epistle by James. And to me falls the unenviable task of leading your thoughts and expounding James's words. An unenviable ta- unenviable task, because I cannot forget that standing central to James's epistle is this sober warning to all of us who dare to teach.
My beloved brethren, be not many teachers, knowing that you shall receive the severer judgment. To stand to teach God's holy word is to profess to understand what it means. It is, of course, comparatively easy to understand what the word of God means, but understanding what it says is not the same thing as doing what it says. No teacher can afford to forget the words of the Lord Jesus, that he who knew not his Lord's will, and because of his ignorance failed to do it, shall be disciplined with few stripes.
But he who knew his Lord's will and then failed to do it, shall be disciplined with many stripes. You may rest assured, therefore, that as we study this very practical and very searching word of God, I shall not be laying down the law to you as though I were in any way superior or had in any sense already attained. By God's grace, I follow on. My task this week is to wait on the Lord that he may speak to my heart.
And you, I am assured, have not come sermon tasting, uh, to test the quality of your preacher's eccentricities. You have come to have business with God, to allow the Lord, as always, to encourage our hearts by his grace and his love, at the same time to take courage in both hands and allow the Lord to probe our hearts, to investigate our performance, to put his finger on things that are still not as they should be in our Christian living.
That we might be brought humbly to own the truth of his corrections and seek his grace that from this week onward we shall be different and better men and women than we were when we first assembled. That our Christianity may be richer and deeper and less superficial and more sincere and more attractive and more alive and vibrant, more pleasing to the Lord and more effective in our testimony to the world.
Last night, then, I explained what I meant by the title James' Vision of a Perfect Man and Woman, and that I need not now repeat. I need perhaps a word or two to explain what I mean by perfection, James' vision of a perfect man and woman. I borrow the word from James himself. For instance, he says that if any man is able to control the tongue, the same is a perfect man. James does not mean so much sinless.
We shall not be talking this week about sinless perfection. Though we believe with all our hearts that one day, when the Lord comes, we shall be sinlessly perfect, thank God. We are talking this week about perfection in the sense of maturity, of full growth, of developed character. And in that sense, therefore, we're to read James' lessons of what are those features that mark a fully mature, a fully grown believer.
Once more, of course, we shall have to admit to ourselves what James tells us, that in many things all of us still stumble and fall down. None of us yet has attained. We have to say with the Apostle Paul himself, not that I have already attained, all or were already made perfect. On the other hand, we mustn't take that as a get-out, may we? As an excuse for excusing our bad behavior, our grumbly dispositions, and all those ugly other things that beset us.
We must follow on. We must take a leaf out of the book of the two and a half tribes, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh. We remember that when one bright morning His Lordship Moses accosted them and charged them with being virtual apostates, wanting to settle down and forsake the battle of the Lord and rest on their oars, leave things exactly as they were. They protested, it is not so, my Lord Moses.
We are not the old laggards that you think. We are prepared to go in the very forefront of the armies of the Lord, to fight relentlessly until the last battle has been won, and we may with honor put up our swords and hang up our sheaves. We need to be like them, don't we? So that should we, on leaving the tent this morning, bump into his Lord Moses, or else the good man James, and they look sternly at us and said, I hear you've been slacking recently and not making progress, we should be able to say, 'Tis not so, my good sirs.
We are determined, though we have not yet attained, but we are determined to follow on, fight in the vanguard of God's people, and thus make progress ourselves and encourage others. Nor are we prepared to give up the battle, or sheathe our short swords, or hang up our shields until the final battle is won. We are to think then on six features taken from the many that James lists.
We are to think together on six features that, uh, help to describe the perfect man and woman. Tomorrow we think the perfect man and woman is not religiously self-deceived. It's a sobering thought that one can use one's religion not to eradicate sin, but to mask it and to perpetuate it, and thus deceive others. A mature believer has seen the danger, does not allow himself or herself to be religiously self-deceived.
True mature believer does not, is not guilty of social discrimination, bringing in worldly standards in their relationships with their fellow believers. Nor, in the next place, given to double talk, one minute blessing the Lord and singing delightful choruses, and the next minute cursing their brethren. Mature believer is not divided in their hearts' loyalties, with half of the heart given to the Lord, but the other half and more given to loving the world and provoking the Lord to jealousy.
Finally, James reminds us that the mark of a mature believer is not to be impatient in the midst of suffering. Some of those topics are exceedingly practical, may have us going out of the tent with our tails between our legs, so to speak. Mercifully being a very nice, kind teacher, James, however, starts his epistle, and we start this morning our studies with a delightfully joyful topic. The topic of temptation.
Count it all joy, says James, when you fall into all kinds of temptations. Which sounds a bit odd, doesn't it, when you first hear it? You possibly count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations. It'll sound even more odd when we discover what James means by his term temptation, he is not talking about those delightful temptations that come in the form of too much cream on the pavlova, which we are tempted to take at the urging of our hostess, to the peril of our figure.
James is talking about trials. Temptations, of course, because most trials involve temptation sooner or later. But the word he uses means trial, and he is thinking of all kinds of trials, but trials that one and all will have the effect of ex- showing whether we are true believers or not. Here, as in so much of what he has to teach us, James is harking back to what the Lord Jesus himself said, which we now have recorded in the gospel.
And in particular, when he uses this word trial or temptation, he is echoing what the Lord Jesus said in his famous parable of the sower. Let me read you our Lord's description of the seed that fell on the stony ground, the rocky ground. I read from Luke's gospel, chapter ah eight and verse thirteen. Take the reference if you can, that you may ponder it later.
Luke's Gospel thirteen. and verse 13. And those on the rock, says the Lord Jesus, are those who, when they have her- heard, receive the word with joy. But these have no root. Who for a while believe. But in the time of trial, and here is James' word, in the time of trial, fall away.
What a dismal scene. People who began by receiving the word with joy, and you would have said their beaming faces told you of the reality of the work that had been done in their hearts. Ah, but in the time of trial, they fall away. How come they fall away? Because, says the Savior, they had no root.
They never, never did have any roots. There never was any possibility of their doing anything else, but fall away. A plant that has no root is bound to wither and certainly will never bring forth fruit. Now, this is a very solemn thing, isn't it? Our Lord Jesus himself says that they did believe, who for a while believed.
When the Lord Jesus says they believed, it's not for me to say that they didn't believe. They did believe. Say, how come then, Mr. Preacher, can a believer fall away in time of temptation? Here, the answer to our question lies in noticing how the New Testament uses this word believe. For instance, in John's Gospel chapter two, we read that at the feast day, many believed on the Lord Jesus when they saw the miracles that he did.
But our Lord didn't commit himself to them. Why not? Because he knew what was in man, and in particular what wasn't in man, and saw they had no root. This was a shallow kind of a belief, brought about because they had seen miracles taking place under their very nose. Of course, it would be marvelous to have somebody around that whenever the wine cellar ran dry, would make new wine for you and provide you with a cheap breakfast and a free lunch by multiplying loaves and fishes and other such things. And with broad grins stretching from ear to ear, they welcomed them all.
Yes, we believe in him, marvelous. They had no root. And presently they withered. In his chapter eight, John calls attention to another group of men. It, uh, he says that, uh, when our Lord said these things, many believed on him. Jesus therefore said to those Jews which had believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are you truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Once more, we notice that these people had professed to believe in the Savior. And now the Savior, taking them at face value, says, gentlemen, very good. You say you have believed, marvelous. Now the mark of a true believer, a true disciple, is this. If you continue in my word, then you will be really my disciple, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. But even as he said it, a frown passed over their faces. They said, excuse us, Lord, what do you mean?
The truth shall make you free. Free from what? Free from sin, says Christ. You see, becoming a believer and entering my school of one of my disciples means that you embark upon a course of learning my word and doing my word, and in the process coming to be made free from the grip and tyranny of sin in your life. Wouldn't that be marvelous? Now their faces resembled a volcano about to explode.
They said, and who asked you to come here? Who do you think you are talking to? Pertinence of suggesting we are sinners in the grip and slavery of sin. I'll have you know that we are children of Abraham, that's what we are. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, we are children of God. Will you go and preach from the corner? We didn't ask you to come here with that impertinent talk and suggesting that we're sinners that need to be set free.
He said at that first that they believed. Now you see what kind of belief it was, don't you? Had no root. They had been attracted by the intellectual interest of our Lord's teaching. Oh, who has not felt it? Haven't you felt it, my brother, my sister? Oh, the sheer charm of our Lord Jesus as a teacher. How lovely his parables were. Though we have read them a million times, they still charm us, don't they? Those delightful word pictures, the parable of the prodigal son and of the lost silver and of the rich fool and all the other.
What delightful things they were. And it's possible, you know, and quite right, to sit and be charmed by the sheer intellectual artistry of our Lord's teaching. And to mistake it for the actual carrying out of what he teaches. So it was with these people, and they showed their true colors, and they fell away, and our Lord had to point out that far from being children of God, they were children of the very devil.
In time of trial, they fell away. And our Lord is speaking of those kinds of trials that inevitably come, that will have the effect of demonstrating whether we are true believers or not. And hence James's advice might must sound exceedingly comical, mustn't it, when you first hear it? Count it all joy. When you fall into trials so severe, they will penetrate to the depths of your heart and show whether you do have root or not, show whether you are a believer or not.
How could you possibly count it all joy? In the course of my career, I often had the unpleasant duty of invigilating in examination. It is, I, I have to confess, a cruel sport, even for those who like it. Many, many times did I come down to an examination hall, and outside a hundred, two hundred, four hundred students, some of them about to face their final examination, with all that would depend on that, whether they passed or not, whether they got a good enough class degree to enter the profession that they wanted to enter.
Now everything would depend upon the exam. Their faces were a study. There would be some, of course, that would be leaping and dancing about and cracking jokes and trying to make out that they felt happy. The most were in sober mood. And when they sat down at the desk and turned the pa- the question paper over, ah, there were smiles about the place. Oh, somebody got the question they wanted. There were worried looks on other faces, much pulling of hair and biting of nails and furrowed brows.
This was finals. Nobody that I knew ever counted it all joy. How could they? For the simple reason, of course, that they couldn't know whether they would pass or not. Until the learned examiners pronounced their verdict. And outside one hundred, two hundred, four hundred students, some of them about to face their final examination, with all that would depend on that, whether they passed or not, whether they got a good enough class degree to enter the profession that they wanted to enter.
Now everything would depend upon the exam. Their faces were a study. There would be some, of course, that would be leaping and dancing about and cracking jokes and trying to make out that they felt happy. The most were in sober mood. And when they sat down at the desk and turned the pa- the question paper over. Ah. Aha. There were smiles about the place. Oh, somebody got the question they wanted. There were worried looks on other faces, much pulling of hair and biting of nails and furrowed brows.
This was finals. Nobody that I knew ever counted it all joy. How could they? For the simple reason, of course, that they couldn't know whether they would pass or not. Until the learned examiners pronounced their verdict. But here now comes the secret, says Jane, of facing trial with joy. Listen to it. Count it all joy, says James, knowing that.
Mark the verb. He doesn't say hoping that. He says, knowing that. Here is the secret of facing such trial with joy, therefore. We can face it knowing on God's authority that the trying, the proving of our faith produces endurance past. perseverance. That doesn't simply mean it turns us into persevering kind of men and women.
This, once more, is the word that the Lord Jesus used in that famous parable. Let me revert again to it. Verse fifteen this time of Luke chapter eight. and that's the seed in the good ground. These are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast and bring forth fruit with perseverance, with endurance, not with patience, at least if you understand the word patience in the modern English sense.
Patience is distinct from impatience. Some of God's good saints are on times horribly impatient. We're not talking about patience as distinct from impatience. We're talking about endurance, perseverance. The good seed is that which grows and brings forth fruit with endurance. There's only one way known to man, and I nearly said to God, though he has his exceptions, only one ma- way known in this life to bring forth fruit in a plant, and that is if the plant persists in growing through the rainy days and through the sunny days, through the wind and through the calm, and by that miracle of nature using these forces, the sun and the wind, the calm and the storm, the cold and the heat, using these forces by the miracle
of plant life, to persist in growing, and in the end bringing forth fruit, so that the same forces that would destroy a plant that had no root contribute to the maturing and the fruitfulness of the plant that has a root. We are, as we face trials that will test whether we are believers or not. We are to count it all joy, says James, for we can have it on the authority of God himself. We can know that trial produces endurance.
And in that confidence, we can go through the storm. Paul says the same thing, doesn't he? We glory not only in hope, we boast, we exult in confidence in the face of tribulation, says Paul, Romans chapter five, knowing that tribulation works, persistent, endure. Ah, you know, the students wouldn't have felt so uncomfortable, would they? So on edge, so worried. If they could have been sure in their heart that they would come through the test with flying colors.
This is what makes life and trial faceable by a believer. And if this morning I speak to some fellow believer whose heart is besieged by difficulty, whose life is almost overwhelmed by trial, you feel it is almost impossible to carry on. You feel like giving way to the advice that old Job's wife gave to Job. Pack it up, man. Curse God and die and have done with it.
If I speak to you and you are in that frame of mind this morning by reason of extraordinary trial, oh, courage up. Your examination may be terribly severe, but we're all in the examination hall with you. Sooner or later, we must all face our papers. Courage up. The blessed Lord himself says that you may count it all joy, grim kind of joy may be, but count it joy, knowing that where there is true faith to begin with, tribulation produces endurance.
You'll say, Mr. Preacher, you're giving the game away just there. You shouldn't have added that nasty little phrase, where there's true faith to begin with. Yeah, so if there's true faith to begin with, it must be nice to know that a true believer cannot be lost. But you say, that's just the point. How do I know that I am a true believer to start with? If I could know that, then I could face life's trial with joy. But how can I know whether I'm a true believer to start with? If you're saying that when trial comes, trial has the effect of demonstrating whether we are true believers or not, whatever would become of me, if only after trial I found out that I'm not a true believer after all.
How can I know before I start, before the trial begins, that I'm a true believer? The Apostle John is a great help to us there, isn't he? I beg leave to read for you a word that he has given. It comes in his first epistle, chapter three. Pray notice exactly what it says. And hereby know we that we know him. Hereby know we that we know. Sounds funny when you first hear it, doesn't it?
Why the repetition? Hereby we know that we know. The situation is this, here's a person, and she says, I know the Lord. Marvelous. But how can that person be sure she knows the Lord? How can she know that it is a true faith that she has, that she really knows the Lord and is not deceiving herself, imagining she's a believer when she isn't a believer? Can you know that you know the Lord? Well, yes, of course you can.
What is John's way of doing it? He says, look here, hereby know we that we know him if we keep his commandment. That's one way of knowing, isn't it? We don't have to trust to moods and fancies. We have to ask ourselves, is there a desire in my heart to keep the Lord's commandments? Of course, there are many things in which we fall short, but if we're true believers, that will grieve us. The set of our heart is that we will want to do the Lord's commandments, and the reason is this: if you really know the Lord, you will find the Lord exceedingly wonderful and beautiful.
Of course you will. If you really know the Lord and he is wonderful and beautiful in your eyes, you will want to do his commandments, won't you? The person, therefore, who says, I know the Lord, but then doesn't want to do the Lord's commandment, obviously doesn't know the Lord. Let me, uh, let me illustrate the whole point. Suppose you say to me, Gooding, which country in the world do you like the best? And I say, well, Switzerland, oh, that's an easy thing. Switzerland is the country for me, marvelous country, Switzerland.
Oh yes. Ah. When were you last there? Well, not recently, but I love it. You say, that's very interesting. Are there any features in the landscape of any country that you don't like and you wouldn't think of visiting? Well, you say, I- I'll tell you what I don't like in a country is mountains and lakes. I can't stick mountains and lakes and snow-capped glaciers and all that thing, and cows with tingling little bells around their necks. I abominate. I wouldn't go anywhere near it. And you say, you like Switzerland? Oh yes, I like Switzerland. What would you conclude?
That the man is talking nonsense. He does not know Switzerland. And if we say, oh yes, I know the Lord. We don't have any intention of keeping his commandments. What we show is that we just don't know the Lord. If we knew the Lord, we should know that the Lord is exceedingly beautiful. We should love his word and want to do it, and be the first to admit with sorrow when we fail to do it.
Yes, we can know that we know. Knowing that we know, we can face trial with all joy, says James, sure of the outcome. It will produce endurance. Let endurance have her perfect work, says James, that you may be complete, mature, lacking in nothing. And that is where perhaps the difficulty comes.
We would, or at least I would, like it that when trials come, if they have to, that they should be short, if not sharp, and over with. It's the long drawn out trial, isn't it? The burden of a bereavement that will never be made good. A loneliness that can never be undone this side of glory. A handicap that will be with us for the rest of life.
Pain that persists. As well as the difficult sudden shock. The call for our powers of endur. That's what makes it a trial, doesn't it? The only way of producing maturity, says James, is to let trial have her complete What? work. I suspect that cakes ha- have a difficulty with this advice.
Not that I know anything about cakes. I made a cake once, strictly according to the book, well, more or less according to the book. I didn't fiddle with the unnecessary details, but, uh, I- I- I made this cake and put it in the oven. Uh, stupid cake. It reacted the wrong way and came out so flat and stodgy that not even the dog would eat it. So I gave up on cakes. Uh, you know, there's no accounting for them. But I suspect a cake might, when the pressure and the heat began to, uh, make its presence felt, so many hours at so many degrees on the gas oven, you know what it is, could say if it we- if it had a voice, here, get me out of this.
I've had enough of this. How long is this going on? Two hours? two and a half hours? That foolish, of course not. How do you expect any reasonable-minded cake to put up with all that degree of torture? The fact is, if you brought the cake out too soon, it would spoil the cake, wouldn't it? How often we, whose concept of time is so small, for whom trial therefore seems so long, feel that somehow God has lost his sense of time.
Because we cannot grasp the wonder of the eternal result at which he aimed. Let endurance and persistence have her perfect work, that ultimately you may be entire, lacking nothing. That being so, we shall need wisdom to know how to react to life's circumstances. James encourages us the thought that if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God.
God will give it without upbraiding us, give it liberally. Give us that wisdom to face life and to see what God is doing. Therefore, to come to cooperate with God, even though on times it could be painful. And not to get grumpy with God. And not to kick God's shins till he's obliged to ease the pressure. Oh, how easy to talk, isn't it? How difficult to submit to the wisdom of God.
We so often think we see the guidance of the Lord when days are sunny and life goes well. We say that was an obvious guidance of the Lord. Not so readily do we read failure and disappointment, damage and difficulty as the Lord's guidance. It could be, couldn't it? Only we should need divine wisdom to see it, and if we lack it, we may ask of the Lord, and he will give us wisdom.
To dare to believe that all things work together for good, to that great and eternal good of our being conformed at last to the image of God's Son. Only let him ask in faith, says Jay. And as we go now, we listen to his final exhortation for this morning. Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like the troubled sea, unstable, double-minded, unstable in all his ways.
We are not to waver. Pray, what does it mean? Well, we are not to be in two. We come to God and wish for wisdom. We must persist and constantly apply ourselves and constantly come asking God for wisdom. By the very nature of the process that's going on, I shall need wisdom today and wisdom next week. Wisdom to face the unexpected event. Wisdom to know how to handle my prosperity and joy.
For many a cake's been ruined by prosperity. Wisdom to know how to face my unexpected success. Wisdom to know how to face sorrow. I shall constantly need to come and ask for wisdom. And I must therefore not be double-minded. Suppose, madam, you are a famous teacher of the piano, and I've heard you play. I say, goodness me, I'd like to play like that, I would indeed. So plucking up courage with all my accustomed impertinence, I come and say, madam, would you teach me, would you take me on and teach me the piano?
And you have a look at me and say, I doubt it. Oh, I said, but I, I, I, please do, because I, I really want to play the piano, you see. I, I, I really do. Well, you say, I give you a chance then. You'll be here three times a week. Oh, I see. What did you say? Three times a week? Yes, three times a week. Oh, no, I can't come three times a week. Come once a week. I have to go out playing cricket with the boys. Yes, do you want to play the piano? Oh, I do. All right, make it once a week then, but see you're here. So I come the first four weeks, and then I don't turn up for the next four.
And when I turn up finally, you say, oh, hello, Gooding. Ah, you're the man that wants to play the piano. Yes, I do indeed. And where were you this last four weeks? Oh, it's not four weeks since I was here, is it? You say it is. Dear me. I didn't realize the gap had been so big. Uh, you say, well, I'll tell you what it was the first week. Uh, there was such a marvelous, uh, uh, uh, film on TV, and I felt I couldn't miss it, you see. Oh, I see, yes. And what happened the second week? Well, my friends came around and said, would I come out for a game of golf today? Yes.
Oh, I see. Yes. Uh, what the third week? Well, Aunt Jemima turned up, and she invited us all to Maud's ice cream party, uh, parlor, you know, and and we had some marvelous ice creams. And she says, do you really want to play this piano thing? And she said, yeah, I want to play it, but you're not going to tell me that there's anything wrong with ice cream, are you? Well, no, she says, there's nothing wrong with ice cream. Get as much as you can, but I tell you this, if you want to play the piano, you'll have to make your choice. Do you want to play the piano? Or do you want to eat ice cream?
Says she, I, I could be an Olympic gold medalist if I wanted to. Often thought if I watched them running and standing on the podium there with a chain around their neck and the anthem of their country being played, marvelous thing. I like that feeling too. Only difficulty is I'm not prepared to get up every morning at five o'clock and swim twenty li- lengths of the, uh, of the local swimming baths. Why not an Olympic medalist? You want to have the crown of life, my brother? Would we know the crown of life in the coming day?
Then we have to make up our mind. Do we really want it? Or is it just a feeling that comes over us now and again, some Fridays and alternate Wednesday afternoons? For a double-minded person that wants to go on with the Lord today and forgets it for the next month is unstable. Let not that person think that they shall receive anything of the Lord. So may God use his word to help us.
And not least as we spend these coming days in his will together, we might show our divine master, our teacher, that we're not double-minded. We want to go on. And by his grace, we are prepared to make progress in the Christian life, in the school of Christ, the number one activity in life that must take precedence over all else. So shall we be blessed.
God grant it so for his name's sake. Amen. Let's sing just, uh, two verses of a very well-known hymn. Would be suitable. My dear boy. One hundred and seventy one, one seven one. just to, uh, let that teaching just, uh, penetrate into our hearts. Oh, joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee.
I trace the rainbow through the rain and feel the promise is not vain, that born shall tearless. Just the first and the third verses, remaining seated, verses one and three. Just think about these words. Das three.
Oh, joy that secrets me. I cannot close my heart to blame. I trace the rainbow through the rain.
