A Prayer

Father,

In Your kindness, You have revealed Yourself to us in the Scriptures. Each page says something about who You are and what You do. There are so many themes that come through the Bible. And one of them is that You are the holy God. Many of us remember the place where we the cherubim are shouting back and forth, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And they said this afraid to look upon You in Your holiness.

You are the holy God. In You there is only purity. And there has never been any deviation from that. And there never will be.

But we are not like that. We are not holy, not like You are. Even a few moments of honest reflection make it clear that purity is not who we are. No, there is much that is impure in us. There is much sin. We are so very different from You. And this is the case even though You created us as pure and holy, just like You. But it's not that way now. We are filled with sin.

It is because of Your holiness that You should destroy us. Our sinfulness can only be understood as repugnant to You. But You haven't destroyed us. The only reason why is that along with being a holy God, You are also a very gracious God. So, seeing our plight, You came to relieve it. Here, we remember Jesus and what He has done: incarnation, holy living, substitutionary death, resurrection, ascension. Jesus has come to deal with the problem of Your holiness and our sinfulness.

Having established all that was needed to solve that problem, He sent the Spirit so that all that He achieved would become ours.

And so, we are not destroyed. And we won't be. But that's not because we are now holy. It's because Jesus was holy for us.

But even that isn't the end of the story, as good as that is. The day will come, (How long, O Lord?) the day will come when we will be holy. Every little bit of sinfulness will be gone. Attitudes will be changed. Twisted thinking will be straightened out. Desires will be purified. We will be holy through and through, just like You.

Thank You, Father, for this hope. One day, the sin that still trips us up and offends You so, will be gone. Life will be so very different. Help us, Father, to endure faithfully until that day arrives.

And now, Father, so that we will endure, we ask for Your blessing on the sermon. We ask that what is true in it would strike home and do good in us all.Through Christ our Lord Amen.