Be Like the Bereans

- So joy to be here this morning. Kiran and I are so thankful to be able to have the weekend with you and to talk about spirit of growth this morning in Acts chapter 17, if you'll turn your bibles there. I think it was probably about a decade ago when Pastor James and I met and I watched and prayed and rejoiced as five years ago. The Lord brought you together to be a congregation and how thankful to be able to participate with you this weekend. This has been a wonderful delight to us and so we're thankful. Acts chapter 17, we have a number of stories taking place. You've got Paul going to Thessalonica and having a very short ministry there. Three weeks he's there and he gets run out of town. Not exactly what you're looking for when you're a traveling preacher. Then he goes to Berea, which we're gonna focus on. And then the Thessalonicans swing back, go to Berea, a long way from them, run Paul out of town and Paul into going to Athens. And so we see this varied movement of the spirit of God through the proclamation of the word. Now, this weekend during our workshop, we looked at a number of things that are regular spiritual disciplines that help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of those is learning to live in the therefor, to live in the promises, the indicatives, the declarations of what God in Christ has done for us. So we look at the death and resurrection and reign of the Lord Jesus and we live out our Christian lives with that grounding. And out of that, we want to be like him. So we pursue holiness in practice. We are a holy people. We're called saints. That means holy ones. If you don't like that, then you don't like the Christian life because that's who we are. But we want to look like it. Sometimes we don't look too much like saints, do we? And so we need that gospel to wash over us and work deeply in us. We need to put away sins and we need to deal with sins in our lives. So we spent time talking about confession of sin. But then the focal point that I want to consider this morning, and we talked about it during the workshop, was learning how to long for the pure milk of the word so that by the word, we might grow in respect to salvation. So give your attention, if you will, Acts chapter 17, beginning in verse 10. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into this Jewish synagogue. Now, these Jews were more noble minded than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed. Many of them therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. And those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens. And after receiving of command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. This is God's holy, inerrant, eternal word. May he write that word on our hearts. Well, over the centuries, there are names of certain places, certain communities that are not only identifying a geographical location, but they're suggesting an ideology. They're suggesting a lifestyle. So if you hear Sodom, you immediately think of immorality. If you hear Laodicea, Revelation three, you immediately think of lukewarmness. If you hear Babylon, you think of worldliness. If you hear Corinth, you think of compromise. Well Berea stands in a very positive light. If you hear Berea, you think about these were people that got into the word of God. They examined the scriptures daily to see what Paul and Silas were preaching out of the word of God was true. They wanted to know Christ. Now the scriptures they had were the scriptures of the Old Testament. New Testament was not written at that point. So when he refers to the word of God, he's talking about proclaiming the gospel, preaching Jesus from the Old Testament scriptures. We need to see that. We're not just New Testament readers. That New Testament opens for us what God has spoken in the Old Testament as well. The reality though, if we say let's be Bereans, we're exhorting one another, read the word, love the word, listen to the word, dig into that word, apply that word. And yet just attending a church where God's word is proclaimed doesn't equate to that Berean spirit. I mean, we must do more than show up. Now showing up is a good thing. We love for people to show up to sit under the preaching and teaching of God's word. But we must learn to listen to the word. And that's something that you develop. Yeah, we have ears, but do we have ears to hear? We must learn to cherish the proclamation of scripture. But unfortunately, not all people hunger for the word. The late J.I. Packer, the great Bible scholar, theologian, evaluated the current life of the church. And he pointed out a lot of great uncertainties that exist in churches where there should be certainties. He wrote, the outside observer sees us, referring to the church in general, the outside observer sees us as staggering on from gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt, like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing at all where we are, of which way we should be going. Now he wrote that after reflecting on the Protestant Reformation from the 16th century, the Puritan era that built upon that in the 17th century, the first and second grade awakenings in the 18th and 19th century, and how there were changes from which we slid from those times of spiritual awakenings. He continues, preaching is hazy. Heads are muddled, hearts fret, doubts drain our strength. Uncertainty paralyzes action. Why this spiritual confusion? He said, we know in our bones that we were made for certainty and we cannot be happy without it. And yet, unlike some of those former periods of spiritual awakenings, we like certainty. Why is this, Packer says, we blame the external pressures of modern secularism, but this is like Eve blaming the serpent. The real trouble is not in our circumstances, it is in ourselves. For two generations and more, our churches have suffered from a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. You see, without that Berean spirit, we live in a spiritual famine for God's word. But we're helped. We're helped today by seeing what happened with these brothers and sisters in Berea. So this is what I want us to think about this morning. How you listen to and interact with the message of God's word tells the story of your spiritual life. How you listen to and interact with God's word tells the story of your spiritual life. So let's be Bereans. We've heard that maybe going up at different points so that we hunger for the word of God. Do you have that sense of hungering for the word like the Bereans? Well, let's learn from their story. First, let's think about providence in the word, providence in the word. If you back up the early part of chapter 17, things got ugly fast in Thessalonica. Paul and Silas stayed a little over three weeks in this large Greek city that was very idolatrous and worldly and they had a large Jewish community and they had to be spirited away by new believers because the Jews in the synagogue had no hunger to know the living God through his word. It was not that they weren't religious people. It was not that they didn't express some interest in God the Creator, but they didn't want to know what the word said. And so they reacted and they attacked these gospel messengers. And so antagonistic were they against the gospel that when they heard the word proclaimed that the word had been proclaimed in Berea, they traveled to Berea to duplicate their opposition, looking verse 13. But when the Jews of Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul and Berea also, they came there as well agitating and stirring up the crowds. It wasn't just enough for them to reject the word. They didn't want anyone else to get the word. Now, that's true unbelief, rebelling against it. But notice how Luke describes the proclamation of the gospel as the word of God had been proclaimed. Now, were they taking the book of Isaiah in preaching? Were they preaching from Genesis? Were they preaching from Ezekiel? Were they preaching from Hosea that I was reading this morning? Were they doing that? We don't know where they were preaching, but we know that from those Old Testament scriptures, they were preaching the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul had this gospel understanding of and gospel interpretation of the whole of scripture. He had no interest in casual Bible lesson just to bolster the knowledge of those who were listening. He saw Jesus Christ in all of scripture. Do you, do you see him there? Not in some kind of artificial imposition upon the biblical text, but that the whole movement of the Old Testament points to that New Testament revelation in Jesus Christ. The whole is revealing Jesus and his redemptive work. And so the Thessalonians Jews weren't mad that Paul was doing a nice Bible study. They weren't upset about that. He could have done that for weeks and weeks and months in Thessalonica. They were angry that the exposition of scripture revealed the purpose and plan of God in sending his son as the promise that was made in the garden, that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. And Paul was saying that seed that descended is Jesus. They didn't like it that Paul was saying that promise that was given to David about a king that would sit on his throne forever. That was not about Hezekiah or another one of his descendants. That promise was about Jesus. And so they hated the gospel of Jesus Christ that exposed their sins and called for repentance and declared that the only way to God is in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. Well, those Jews aren't alone. Those Jews are Thessalonica. Their comrades in warfare against the gospel persist. We see them all over social media. We see them punching with malice at the truths of the gospel. But I would say consider their lives. Take a look at their lives. Take a look at their attitudes. Listen to their words. Listen to their tones. They're attacks on the gospel in Christianity or a self-righteous veneer to cover their guilt before a holy God. It is a self-righteousness to excuse their own sin and godlessness. They seed with bitterness. They advocate rebellion against God. They speak with malice and vindictiveness. Is that where you wanna learn about life in eternity? Is that where you wanna learn how you walk through suffering and adversity? Are they true teachers of the word of God? Don't let Satan pull the wall over your eyes in listening to those kind of people for even a moment. And yet here's the divine irony. This is to me so absolutely thrilling in this text. When Satan does his best to stamp out the gospel, God acts by his governing his providence to redirect open doors, change direction, and bring new people into the kingdom through the preaching of the gospel. Look at verse 10. The brethren, Paul and Silas have been run out of Thessalonica. The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night traveling in that area by night. There were no street lights. We don't know if it was full moon time, but they traveled by night to Berea. You'd get out of town by night. And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now Berea was not on the main road, the Via Ignatia. As a matter of fact, the ancient orator Cicero called it an out of the way town. That's like saying it was where a bunch of hicks lived. And that was just ancient for that. It was just way out in the sticks, out in the boonies, away from everything else. It was 20 miles off the beaten path and here was this little community of Berea. But what happened there? A spiritual awakening. God moved. God moved. And the gospel broke out among them. God had, or Satan had his plans, but God and God's plans topped the evil intent. The gospel came to Berea. And a few years later, we read in Acts 20, verse four, that Soapeter of Berea accompanied Paul and Barnabas, or Paul and Silas on the third missionary journey. When did he get saved? When Paul and Silas got run out of Thessalonica and they fled to Berea by night and they ended up preaching the gospel, and Soapeter comes to faith in Christ. Even in those few weeks in Thessalonica, amazing things were happening. We see this later on, Acts chapter 20. Aristarchus and Secundus joined Soapeter with the apostle Paul and became traveling missionaries of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God, in his gracious acts of providence, sent Paul and Silas to Thessalonica and then to Berea. And Satan thought he was running them out of Berea. Instead, God was sending them, or running them out of Thessalonica. Instead, God was sending them to this out of the way place of Berea so that Secundus and others could believe and come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. The providence of God continued when Paul got run out of Berea. Notice verse 15. Now, those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens. Paul goes to Athens and he preaches the gospel there and we read toward the end that in Acts chapter 17, verse 34, that there were new converts. Dionysius the Areopagite, he was involved on the hill of Ares, this place where all the who's who of Athens carried on their daily business. Dionysius came to believe the gospel and so did a woman by the name of Demaris and others. Think about how the work of the proclamation of the gospel continued in Greece by providence moving his messengers from one place to another. We grieve, rightly so. We grieve when persecution breaks out in so many different places because we feel for our brothers and sisters. We think about the persecution of Christian messengers in Beijing and Tehran and so many other places. And you look at that and you think, are they conquering the gospel? No, they're not conquering the gospel. God just sending his messengers somewhere else. Did some of them suffer in the middle of it? Yes, yes, but they have their eyes on glory. They've learned to live in the eternal hope that is in Jesus Christ. I have read some of the stories of some of these brothers and sisters that have gone through horrendous things and the joy in their life is amazing. I have a friend who lives in Russia. I will not name the city, but he is under regular persecution. And he is one of the most joyful Christians I've ever been around in my life. I just get amazed, I'm thinking, you are hounded every single day of your life. You go out on the streets, you're hounded, you're watched. They're trying to find some way to get you. And what are you doing? You're regularly preaching the gospel to hundreds of people. You're planting churches in an area where it's forbidden for you to plant these evangelical churches. God is doing that. I was in one of the cities in China a number of years ago where believers had been persecuted and moved out. And I just was amazed at the joy these people under persecution because they were living life in Christ. The gospel had taken root in their lives. Do you realize the privilege by the providence of God that you have to hear the word of God? I mean, you gathered this morning, no one aimed a AK-47 at you. There were no security cameras watching you walk up to this school building and coming in and there's no one out checking your license place. There's no one that's going to be following you when you leave. That's the kindness of the Lord. Do we stop and realize countless numbers of our brothers and sisters do not live the way we live? And so what do we do? Are we Bereans? Do we count it such a privilege to hear the word and we want to just keep digging and digging into that word? May the Lord work that spirit in us. But secondly, we see not only providence and the proclamation of the word, but second, in this text, we see listening to the word. Luke distinguishes the Jews in Berea from those in Thessalonica, notice verse 11. Now these Jews were more noble minded than those in Thessalonica. He didn't mean they were smarter, but they had a different character, different sentiments about them. It tells us something about the disposition they had to receive the word that was expounded. When writer put it, the people were more willing to learn than those in Thessalonica. They had listening ears while those in Thessalonica covered their ears because they didn't want to hear the words of truth. Instead of being suspicious and jealous and angry, those in Berea saw the scriptures as the final court of appeals. This is where God has spoken. Now, did they have different barriers than those in Thessalonica to get to the gospel? No, they had the same barriers. They had to see that they were inadequate in themselves to understand the scriptures. They had to see that their faith had been misplaced. They had to realize that apart from repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they had a dead religion. Just like the people in Thessalonica. But they had come face to face with the crucified, resurrected savior of sinners in the Lord Jesus Christ and they believed the gospel. Their attitude was different. Notice it says they received the word with all eagerness. They welcomed the word of God. And when he talks about the word, he's talking about the gospel. He's talking about seeing, as we would say, seeing Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. For them, Genesis to Malachi. Seeing all through the scripture. So what Moses wrote, what the prophets wrote, what the wisdom writers wrote. Just as Jesus described in Luke 24 to the disciples, these are the things that are written about me. They believed that gospel of Jesus Christ. They read the Old Testament and they met Jesus. You see the grace of God in his word. They welcomed a chance for the word to be explained and applied and in their heart hunger, they came to know Christ. Does that describe you? Or if you, one of those has been lulled into the motions of the Christian faith, but not really eagerly digging in the provisions God has given to us in his holy word. You see, we can be so preoccupied with the trivial and the temporal and fail to find ourselves digging into the word of God. Let me give you three observations that maybe will help us to better listen to the word. One, listen. Listen to the word proclaim. How do you listen? Well, I loved the way one guy put it. He said, listening is not a one way endeavor. It is a joint venture between the preacher and the listener. And then he compared it to a pitcher and a catcher in baseball. It's not just a pitcher pitching. Somebody's got to catch the ball. Well, I'm trying to pitch today and I'm not trying to throw you curve balls or sliders. I'm just trying to pitch it to you to catch it. We both have a part in that process. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote, we are told that men ought not to preach without preparation, granted, he said. But we add men ought not to hear without preparation. Which do you think needs more preparation? The sower or the ground? You see, we must learn to approach listening patiently, humbly, spiritually, disciplining our minds to listen. Listening to a little talk on the weather or the turning of the leaves or something like that is not very demanding to our ears. But listening to biblical exposition means we must concentrate on the biblical text. We must engage our minds in thinking on the text implications. We're not just learning a Bible story. We're learning what has God spoken that I need to hear and apply in my life. We're learning to exercise our affections on the applications that arise from that biblical text that just won't be understood and applied apart from attentiveness. And it's easy to daydream. Maybe some of you are daydreaming now. You're sliding off, you got me fooled. But it's easy for us to daydream about random activities instead of listening to the word. Or in our day when everybody has their phones and out, maybe it's that, I wanna see what's going on. No, you won't know the word like that. You've got to listen. There's a battle taking place whenever we gather for listening to God's word proclaim. Our flesh is pulling us in one direction. Satan is trying to drag us down into deep dark holes so that we don't listen to the word by faith. But a second thing, we not only listen to that proclamation, but see the Bible as a spiritual book for a hungry heart. See the Bible as a spiritual book for a hungry heart. The Bible is a spiritual book. And we will only know it superficially if we're not devoted to the God who gave us this book. If we fail to discipline ourselves to read and meditate on the word, then we're gonna have trouble listening to biblical expositions. If we're more inclined to entertaining talks than truths that require us to engage heart and mind, then we've not yet listened and learned the power and the richness of the word of God. Let me give you five actions, most of them from Psalm 119, which you read a moment ago, that will help us. One, believe the word's authority and sufficiency. Forever, oh Lord, your word is settled in heaven. Psalm 119, 89. Do you believe that? If that's true, then it's worth listening to that word being expounded because this word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. So it's altogether sufficient, Psalm 119, 105. Second, regularly pray to learn the word. Pray with the psalmist in Psalm 119, 18. Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law. We need Spirit to work, so we need Spirit to help. We can't just merely rely on our education. We have to rely upon the Holy Spirit to help us. Third, regularly read the word devotionally. It's important to get near the Lord. You're only gonna get near the Lord when you listen to Him speaking to you out of His word. That's when we deal with sin. That's when we yield to Him in obedience and humbly trust Him as those promises in the gospel are working in our lives. Psalm 119, 97. Oh, how love your law. It is my meditation all the day. How sweeter your words to my taste. Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth. That sweetness grows with regular practice. Fourth, apply the word daily. You want the word to take root in your life as you meditate, as you pray through on a passage, as you apply it by faith. Psalm 119, 129 and 130. Your testimonies are wonderful. Therefore, my soul observes them. A making application. The unfolding of your words gives light. It gives understanding to the simple. And then fifth, seek to learn the word comprehensively. That means it takes a lifetime. You read, you meditate, you listen, you ponder, you study, you discuss, get rid of excuses. I'll have people say, well, you know, I'm no Bible scholar, I feel like saying, I know you're not a Bible scholar. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to be a student of scripture. Well, you know, I'm really busy, really. Everybody's busy. I mean, we are all busy, but you know what we do? We carve our time for things we love. And so, if you're going to be a one who's devoted to the Lord, you've got to learn to read the word comprehensively. We're talking about reading that word that stands forever. Heaven and earth may pass away, the Lord says, but not His word, not His word. So we spend time with that word. How are we gonna do this? Well, see the old and new testaments connected. They're not two different books. It's one Bible that's in both testaments. She had lied on each other. See the Christ centeredness of scripture. In John five, the Pharisees were complaining about Jesus. And he said, you search the scriptures. We caught you thinking them, you have eternal life. It is these that speak of me. He was talking about the Old Testament. And so we learn as we read the word to develop a good interpretive practices to see Christ in all of scripture. We learn to trace doctrinal themes throughout scripture. We have 66 books of the Bible connected to each other. Not one book contains all the doctrine we need to know. It's found throughout scripture. And so I'm gonna challenge you. You got a new year coming up pretty soon. Read through the Bible in 2026. At least, at least read through the New Testament a couple of times. There's all kinds of reading guides. You can find them online. Pastor James, you can point to those. Read through the scripture. Let that be a disney. He said, oh, just so much. You're just getting a little bite. You're not eating the whole elephant at one time. You're sitting in a little bite of it at a time. Day by day, bad day, feeding yourself. A third thing, be a student of God's word. The welcoming eagerness we see in verse 11 on the part of the Bereans led them to be student to the word. They received the word with all eagerness or great eagerness, examining the scriptures to see if these things were so. They were searching them out. They were comparing one verse to another. One portion of scripture to another. One genre to another. They were seeing all these things together. Do you do that? Now, your pastors faithfully study the word and seek to expand that word and seek to be absolutely accurate. But I'll include myself here. We are not infallible. And so you have a responsibility to search the scriptures. Now, the conclusion you come to may be wrong. That's why you have the body of Christ to help you. I mean, when someone, we had a man in our church years ago that came up with this kind of a wonky view of salvation. It's just odd. He was a good man. He was very serious and he was diligent. But he was wonky. You know what I mean? Just out of balance, you know? He was off the trail. But his problem was he wasn't letting others in the body correct his faulty thinking. He just wanted to hold on to it because this is what I see. Don't be like an iron rod. The Lord has put you in the body of Christ who's given you pastors, elders to teach and train and you need that help. But they, those elders and pastors need your help to make sure they stay on track. So be that kind of student of the word. Now, why do we wanna be so diligent so that we might live in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ? I mean, think about this book, the Bible. Written over a period of probably over 1500 years, 40 different human authors moved upon by the Holy Spirit to give us this word written in different genres. And so, you know, you've got law and you've got prophets. You've got wisdom and you've got gospel and you've got history and you've got a pistol and you have apocalyptic. You know, these different ways of writing and all of it woven together so that Jesus could say the scriptures speak about me. Do you wanna believe Jesus or some dude with a podcast that's denying scripture? That dude doing the podcast didn't hang on a cross for you. That dude on the podcast didn't rise from the dead. That dude in the podcast is not raining over the details of life and one day going to return and gather his bride. Jesus said these scriptures speak about him. Paul tells us the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God because they're foolishness to him. So if you hear somebody saying something foolish about the Bible, just come. Okay, this is because you're not a believer. You do not understand what God has spoken. The gospel's not taken root in your life. Paul said we cannot understand them, these scriptures, because they are spiritually appraised, spiritually understood. So regularly read the word of God with dependence upon the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and understanding. So how do you study this Bible? You got a different time. Some of you have some leisure, leisure is. And I understand that. So you're gonna be working at different levels, different paces, different levels of experience. I love what St. Clair Ferguson said. He said the important thing regarding Bible study is to adopt a discipline plan that is most helpful for you. May not be able to do what the person next year is doing. So how do you study it? Well, Ferguson quotes portions from the Westminster Confession, and then I'll give a little interpretation. He said, one, the way in which we come to understand the central teachings of scripture is by discipline use of the means God has given us to interpret it. Regular Bible reading, the gathering of the body, worshiping together, hearing the word expounded, the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, the instruction given to pastors and teachers who are shepherding us, common rules of interpretation, all of those are means God has given. A second thing, when we read and apply scripture, we should read scripture on its own terms and not impose on it what we think it should be saying. In other words, don't read things in to the word, but let the word speak. Pay attention to the immediate context in the theological context of the book in which you're reading, and compare portions of scripture with portions. Then a third thing, each passage of scripture has its own basic meaning within its context, not multiple, possible, and equally valid meanings. So in other words, we're trying to understand what does this text say? Now, why do I think about it? Not what 20 things does this scripture say? What does it say? And it takes a lot of discipline to get to that point, and that's what the Bereans were doing. They were digging into the scripture, and they saw that the scripture centered on Jesus of Nazareth as the promise Christ. There were those in Thessalonica that didn't wanna see Jesus as the answer to the promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12, or the description given to Isaiah in Isaiah 53. They didn't wanna see Jesus there, but he's there, you gotta deal with it, or you gotta be like them, and be absolutely obnoxious toward others. You see, God has given us that word, but we'll only enjoy it if we're regularly in it, and we're seeking to understand it. And so, I'm gonna encourage you, be one, as Paul said, who is diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately, literally means cutting a straight furrow, some of you, maybe had farming background like me, cutting a straight furrow. In other words, interpreting that word rightly makes you handle the word of truth. Well, the last thing in a close is third, responding to the word, you see this in verse 12. Many of them, therefore, therefore believed. With not a few Greek women of high standing, that means a lot of Greek women of high standing, as well as men. Many of them, therefore, believe. So, what Luke is cluing us in on is as they heard the word of God, and then as they examined the word of God, something absolutely supernatural happened. They believed the gospel. And you know, I'm looking at a group of people, and this could be said of you. Maybe there's some here and that can't be said of you. Here's what I want to challenge you to do. Read the word of God. Just pick the gospel of John, the gospel of Mark, Luke, Matthew, take your pick, read through Romans. You say, can I start in Genesis? Yeah, if you want to, go ahead and start in Genesis. Study this God of creation. See this God who promised when Adam, and he fell in the sin that the descendant of the woman, would one day crush the serpent's head. There's the gospel. And then see, where does that lead you? And I want to challenge you to do that, and do something so bold. It's to say, okay, God, I have not believed in you. I have not trusted you, but I'm gonna open your word. Will you show me if what this preacher's talking about, and what this church has been talking about is true. Will you show me that? And many of them believed. This passage presses us to take seriously the word of God. And if you will learn to feed on the word, you'll find your spiritual life taking off. It's gonna happen immediately. Probably not. You'll see a few things pop here and there. But it's this long process. And as you've buried yourself in the word, you're gonna find yourself delighting in the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you've given us your truth, that we might know you, that we might be shaped in you, that our lives might reflect the Lord Jesus, and how we pray that you would be pleased to raise up in this congregation a whole church, just students of the word, delighting in you and receiving from you. We pray for such mercies in Jesus' name. Amen.