Message Description

Care Pastor George Palombo teaches out of the Old Testament from the book of 1 Samuel in order to instruct about the origin and full meaning of entering a covenant.

Message Transcript

Well, good morning and happy New Year everyone! 

So, we're here as participants in worship. Isn't it good to be together and be physically present with one another? If you're here for the first time, welcome. It's good to be together with you. If you're here for the second time, good. If you're here because you have made a commitment maybe to be around the church again on a consistent basis, that's awesome. If you're at home and you're still in your Spider-Man pajamas, then by all means, we're glad that you're doing that even if you've failed in your commitment already for your new year. 

Listen, it's good for us to get together physically. I don't know about you, but I miss when we do not get together physically and here's why. Being together physically in worship is not like being together physically like when we go to a movie or if we go to a, unfortunately as we've seen, at a political event over the past week, because there are varied philosophies. When we come here, we have the privilege of hearing God's Word, and of singing hymns of praise and worship to Almighty God together. We are participating in this together. 

How many of you know there's a Steeler game today? Anybody know? You better laugh at all my jokes today or I'm going to keep you way past the Steeler game time today. But there's a Steeler game today and watching it on TV is very different than going to the game. And going to the game is even a little less than participating in the game. How many of you know that the Browns' head coach today will not be participating in the way that he would like to be. And he'll be at home or he'll be somewhere watching the game. 

Okay, this is not an indictment against anybody who's been at home worshiping, but there's something about being together in worship together. Because together we become participants in the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the new life of Christ in a covenant community. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. I tried to make a smooth transition. 

Incidentally, my name is George Palombo if you don't know me. I'm one of the pastors on staff here. I spend a lot of my time over in the Chapel, so it's good to be together with you this morning in this space together. And this is a sacred space. Again, it's not like any other space. So, it's good to be together in this space together. 

So, what is a biblical covenant? We're going to look at that this morning. The Bible is broken down into two testaments, the Old Testament, and the New Testament, but it's really about two covenants. And in those covenants, and we're going to discuss them a little more, what we ought to keep in mind and we need to keep before us all the time, is that when we read through the scriptures, we do not read through them with an Eastern mindset. And it's not that we need to learn Hebrew or Greek this morning before we listen to the message, but to keep this in front of us as we keep the idea of what a covenant is in view. And I know that Chris mentioned a little earlier and I alluded to it shortly, I think it would be a dereliction of duty as a minister this morning to not pray for our country this morning. So, if you would please just bow your heads with me and we're going to lift up a prayer to the Lord. 

Heavenly Father, you are sovereign, You're omnipotent, You're omniscient. And we are not. We live in an individualistic culture. We prize our freedoms and our individualism. As Americans, we love our freedom. It's important to us. And this past week, we've seen people on every side of every aisle, political, philosophical, who sense that their freedoms are being encroached upon. Lord, teach us that freedom that's unhinged from Your order can quickly lead to personal autonomy on our part. Especially when You are not at the center of our lives and our worship. So, this morning, Lord, while we pray for peace in our country, we implore You to give us eyes and ears to understand how it is that we have peace with You. Forgive us, Lord, of our individual rebellion. Lead us into Your truth, from Your perspective, out of Your word. Lord, let this be for our good and for Your glory. And Lord we lift this up in the covenant name of Christ. Amen. 

So, I spend a lot of my time over in the chapel and I know that I've mentioned this over there before, but as a minister, we have the opportunity to talk to people about whether or not that they have ever come to peace with God. And when they're on a sick and deathbed especially, this question becomes really prominent. And one of the most frightening answers we ever hear is this one, "Oh, I've made my peace with God. I've made peace with God." As a minister that makes me tremble. Because what it indicates is that we have some belief system that we are able to approach God arbitrarily. That God doesn't have any rules, He doesn't have any standards, He has nothing. It's just my prayers. I pray to God. He either answers or... 

Let's be clear about one thing before we get started. There is one mediator between God and man. And it's the man Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul tells us these words, "One mediator between God and man." God's ways are not arbitrary. He has done something so profound, so incredibly impacting on our behalf. He will settle for nothing less than for us to approach Him within these boundaries. And these boundaries are the covenant that He made with His son on our behalf, Jesus Christ. So, the question begins to be not whether or not we have made peace with God, but whether or not God is at peace with us from His perspective, because it did not come cheap to Him. He did not create 90 ways to approach Him. The Bible tells us that when God created Adam, He entered into a covenant with Adam. Adam was required to obey God in order to secure God's blessing. We all know the story. Adam failed the covenant. He broke it. Sin entered into the world and the world was cursed. The sin and the curse have spread to all of humanity. And we don't have to ever open our Bibles to know one thing. This verse in scripture, in Romans 5:12 we read, "Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin," speaking of Adam, "And so death spread to all men because all have sinned." 

You don't ever have to open a Bible to understand that the death rate on this planet is still one to one. We all die. It's 100% of us. None of us are going to make it out of here alive and we know this. And as Westerners, we tend to want to scream out at this point that, "Adam was my representative. Well, I don't like the way he represented me." Raise your hand if you don't love the way Adam represented you. We scream this in the West here because we say, "No eternal condemnation without my personal representation." But before we begin giving Adam too hard of a time, everyone in this room knows that we have all failed. We have all agreed with Adam. 

See, because in the garden, Adam wanted the one thing that he could not have. He had all kinds of freedoms in the garden. More freedoms than you and I enjoy today. And he had something that was more dynamic than freedom. He had liberty. Adam had the liberty to enjoy every freedom that God had given him and to do so within the boundaries of God's safe hand. We, on the other hand, want to live autonomously. We want to live independent from God, and every one of us chooses this way. With every breath that every human being takes, we know one thing. You know it. I know it. If you have never heard the gospel before or you hate church and hate God and His Christ, you know one thing - you did not bring yourself into this world. You do not take every breath independent of the one who did. You do not take one step, nor will you have one more heartbeat without the sovereignty of an intervention of a holy God. 

And mankind has railed against this from the very beginning. We want to be independent from God. "We will" is like the anthem of humanity. We will without God. We don't want Him in our thinking. Who is the most hated religious leader of all time? Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk about that this morning and why. The Apostle Paul confirms this in his letter to the Romans. He says, "All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God." All is universal language. There are no exceptions. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. "There are none righteous, no, not even one," the Apostle goes on to tell us. 

So, if our first representative failed us, Adam, and we agree with him in totality, what we need is a second Adam. And fortunately, the scripture tells us about this second Adam. If we open our Bibles at First Corinthians and chapter 15, we learn this in verse 45, it says, "So it is written that the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam," indicating there's another Adam," a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural and after that the spiritual. The first man was dust of the earth. The second man, the second Adam, is of heaven." 

So, here we are, and we have this message this morning called Related to God, and it begs the question of what does it mean to be related to God? I mean, aren't we all related to God? We read in the scriptures, "In Him we live and move and have our being." But what does it mean to be related to God in a special covenant sense? And that's what we're going to talk about. The idea of a covenant might not be completely foreign to us. If you're married in here, you've probably heard that word. If you're in law, you know there are land lease covenants. There are covenants in legal-binding contracts, so we're somewhat familiar with the term covenant. 

Which incidentally, I want to throw out a little advertisement, a little bleep for Story of God this week that Chris introduced, or Russ did. It starts this Thursday. You can still sign up online. And we are going to elaborate some of the content of this and protract it out a little further if you're interested. So that'll be every Thursday for three weeks beginning this Thursday. It's not too late to sign up. Okay. Done with that. 

So, the scriptures are actually littered with covenants, okay? There are covenants between God and man. And there are covenants between man and man, but no covenants between man and God. And here's why. We wouldn't keep them, and we cannot approach God on our own. Remember how many mediators are there between God and man? One. There's one mediator. There's only one that can approach God on our behalf. So, a covenant is a lot like an agreement, but it's more than an agreement, but it's certainly not less than an agreement. God entered into a covenant with Adam. And then there was the flood and God reaffirmed it with Noah. And Adam and Noah, they couldn't keep covenants for more than a chapter or two. So, by the time we get to Genesis 15, God enters into a covenant with Abraham. 

And in Abraham's case, because God is exhausted with our rebellion, He says, "Abe, I'm going to enter into a covenant with you, but here's what I need you to do. I need you to just lay down and take a nap, okay? While I do this." If you read about the covenant that God entered into Abraham, you notice that He puts Abraham to sleep. A deep, thick sleep. He falls into this dark sleep. Because God is about to do something in this promise that is all about God. God is the instigator. God is going to be the one who lays out the promises, the benefits, the blessings, or the curses. He's going to do the whole thing. He's going to begin the covenant, and He's going to be the one who fulfills the covenant. "You sleep, Abe." 

You, however, are the beneficiary of the covenant. So, when two people entered into a covenant in scripture... Let's suppose Chris and I entered into a covenant together, here's kind of what it might look like. Chris takes off his cloak, or his coat, and he gives it to me, and he covers me with it, and he says, "George, I want you to wear this coat, and when you wear it, people are going to know that you and I are in covenant together. And when they see you, they're going to see me, and they're going to say, 'Don't mess with George. Chris is his covenant brother. You don't want to mess with him. Chris is beefy. He's a beefcake. Don't mess with George. Chris will be coming to his aid.'" 

Then a sword and shield might be involved in an Old Testament covenant. Chris would take his sword and his shield, and he would give it to me, and what that would signify is that all of his strength has now become all of my strength. And that if I go to battle, everyone knows that Chris is going to have my back. Part of the covenant. 

Another part of a covenant would be he and I would share a meal together, and that would indicate that all of who he is entering into all of who I am, and vice versa. So, the plot begins to thicken as to how this relationship is going to go about. And then there would be the cutting of the covenant, the ceiling of the covenant. And Chris and I would take, and we would cut our flesh together. And then we would bring our flesh together and let that blood mingle together. And what that would indicate is that all of his life is entering into all of my life. And all of my life is entering into all of his life. This is a big deal, because not only is that happening, but all of the generations unborn in Chris are entering into me and all of the generations unborn are mingling together. Do you get how serious a blood covenant really was? 

A tangible example comes to us from First Samuel in chapter 18. We're not going to be able to go through this whole story, but you can do this on your own. You should all go home and read First and Second Samuel today. But here's how it goes, he says in chapter 18, "After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David. And he loved him as he loved himself. From that day, Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as he loved himself. Jonathan," here it is, "Took off his robe. He gave it to David, along with his tunic. Even his sword and his bow and his belt." 

So, we begin to see this covenant between Jonathan and David starting to come together. This is an actual historical event that's preserved for us in scripture. It's like a signpost that helps us to understand how can we be related and in someone who lived 2000 years ago? How are we related to God? We're related to God in covenant. 

If you read through the New Testament, if you went home today and you read through the entire New Testament, it would come upon you that you would see this little, teeny prepositional phrase over and over and over again. And you would see the words, "In Christ. In Christ Jesus. All spiritual blessings are ours in Him, in Christ." We see that over and over again. Now while that idea might run right past us in our first reading, remember one of the first interpretive rules of scripture is to try and read scripture as though you're listening to it the way the first hearers read scripture. So, we may see, "In Christ. In Christ Jesus," and be like, "Okay. All right. I could read that." But the first readers of it went, "Oh, my goodness. This is covenant language." Okay? They understood it just like that. They picked right up on it. 

This passage is the story of a covenant made between King Saul's son, Jonathan, and one of King Saul's generals, David, at the time, who had come from mere peasantry. We ought to keep that in mind. He's not of kingly birth, he's not of a kingly line. He is a peasant boy. So, here's Jonathan. He lives in the household of Saul. If you know anything about Saul... wasn't a great guy. He failed in a lot of ways. His son Jonathan, however, is a godly man. He's a God-fearing man, and he sees David and says, "That is my man. I see something in him. I know he's anointed. He has God's mark all over him." The theme of this runs all the way through First and Second Samuel. 

It's important that each of these men understood that they were representing all of the generations that we're going to be unborn in their family line. This covenant is reaffirmed in First Samuel 28:14 through 17, and verse 42. And the key term that is used in covenant language, it is the bedrock of a covenant, is this term loving kindness. In Hebrew it's hesed. You may have heard Kurt used that word in here before. And it really translates for us into loving kindness. And it's not just, "Hey, I feel emotional towards this chick. I'm feeling like I love my wife today." Okay, this is something deeper. This is a loyal, steadfast love that is literally commanded towards another. And this is what the bedrock thought... It's really best thought of as a devotional kind of love. 

Forgive me if you've heard this story before, but it's brief. Jay Adams writes in his book, "A man is deeply burdened by a failing marriage and he visits his minister for pastoral counsel. He explains his predicament and says to the clergyman that love has exited from his marriage and he wants out. He looks to the pastor for any small hope that the pastor might be able to offer. The pastor says, 'Sir, look. The Bible says that a man must love his wife, therefore it is your Christian duty to go home and love your wife.' 

"Well, the man was pretty angry, and he said, 'How am I supposed to do that? This is my problem. That's why I came to you in the first place. The fact is I don't love my wife anymore. I want out. Can't you give me any better advice?' The pastor was undeterred, and he took a different track. He said, 'Why don't you try a separation for a while? Why don't you move next door to your wife for a few weeks and see how that goes?' Well, the man was growing impatient. 'What good is that going to do? How can living next door help?' The pastor replied very calmly, 'Doesn't God command us to love our neighbors? Maybe if you lived as your wife's neighbor for a little while, you'd learn to love her in a godly fashion.' 

"The man groaned and said, 'Sir, you do not understand what I am saying. You're missing my entire point. It's not that the romantic fire has gone out and I need a little help and I'm coming to you for that. I hate this woman with every fiber of my being, and I need to be away from her. I can't even live in the same neighborhood.' The minister said, 'Am I to understand that perhaps you have forged some sort of severe enmity towards your wife?' 

"'Bingo. Pastor, you're finally catching on. You're not as lame as you look.' He says, 'Oh, okay.' He says, 'Let me remind you. God does not suggest to us but commands us to love our neighbor.'" 

Well, this is a picture of what this love that is commanded towards another. It doesn't depend on the beloved becoming lovable. If that were our position before God, we're in trouble. Because we're not always lovable. I love my kids so much, but sometimes... You know if you're a parent. Okay, sometimes you just want to ship them off to the moon, but it doesn't mean you don't love them anymore. Jonathan and David did not need to enter into a covenant together, but they knew that their progeny would need this covenant. 

So, there's this plot, that King Saul wants to kill David. And this does nothing for Jonathan except to reconfirm in him that David is God's man for the kingdom of Israel. But listen what would have to happen. In order for this covenant to come to fruition, here's what would have to happen. Prince Jonathan would have to die to his right to the throne. Let me say that again. He would have to lay down his life of the throne and the kingdom, not only for himself, but his entire family. He would have to die to all of his ambitions as King in order to enter into covenant with Jonathan. 

But he also knows that David's life is on the line with his father. And we read in verse 17, he says, "Don't be afraid, Jonathan. My father Saul will not kill you. He will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this." The two of them made a covenant again before the Lord. It's central for us to realize that to benefit from this covenant, Jonathan would have to lay down and abdicate the throne. To David, he was doing the absolute unthinkable. So, time passes, and these two teenagers, they grow up and they have families, and they have children. And as time goes on, the old enemy, the Philistines, they come in and there's a battle, and in this one battle, both King Saul and Prince Jonathan are both killed in battle. 

End to the story. Right? Well, in the near Middle East in 1000 B.C, it was a bloody place. And a conquering king's first order of business was to destroy the entire family line of the one who had proceeded. When news reached back to the palace that Saul and Jonathan were dead, everybody scrambled. It was like, "How do we get the heck out of dodge as fast as possible?" So, in this ensuing movement, one of the aides in the family picks up this little boy and goes to run with him. It's Jonathan's son. And she drops him, and his feet are crushed. And she picks him up and she takes him out to this little shack out in the desert to live and live out his days. A little place called Lo-debar, which means no communication, incidentally. Without communication from what's going on over here. 

Look, I just even want to quickly point this out. There is a world out there who has no communication with what goes on in here. And it takes something very special to happen for that world to understand what happens in this space. It requires you and I to take that message out, and we're going to see that here in a few minutes. Because the Word of God can break through to even the most stubborn spaces where there's no communication. Unrest follows after this transition of power, and David, it takes him a while to get his kingdom organized. And finally, he asks this question sometime later, it's in Second Samuel, in chapter nine. He says, "Is there anyone still left in the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?" Well, that would have raised some eyebrows. 

Now there was a servant of Saul's household name Ziba and they summoned him to appear before David and David said, "Are you Ziba?" "At your service." The king asked, "Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness?" There's that word hesed again. Ziba answered the king, "There is still son of Jonathan. He is lame in both feet. What would you want with him?" He's a lame guy out in the desert, he's lame in both feet. What would you want with him? "Where is he?" the king asked. Ziba answered, "He is at the house of Makir, son of Ammiel in Lo-debar." So, King David had him brought from Lo-debar. And when Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor. David said one word, he said, "Mephibosheth." "At your service." 

Now David's next words are intriguing. He says, "Don't be afraid." Why would he say that? It's because Mephibosheth had every reason to fear that his head was about to be lopped right off of his shoulders. David said these words next, "I will surely show you hesed for the sake of your father, Jonathan. I will restore to you all of the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul and you will always eat at my table." Mephibosheth bowed down and said, "What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me?" 

Now here in the West, we love our dogs, we love our puppies. And I don't love your dog, I have to be honest with you. I'm not a dog lover, but we love our dogs here. Please don't hold that against me. We love our dogs. But in the Middle East, the dog was a filthy, filthy creature. The only thing worse than a dog was a dead dog, and a dead dog had one purpose and it was to be thrown out on the ash heap to be burned, because it was dirty. And this is what Mephibosheth is saying before David, the king. Try to get hold of this. Here's Mephibosheth, he's been out in the desert, and he's been hanging out with people, probably hanging out in the local pub. And he's got this opinion that he's forged about David. Remember, David, in his mind is the usurper to the throne that rightly belongs to him. And you know, he'd be right if there wasn't a blood covenant made between Jonathan and David. He could become the natural king. He could become the owner in the kingdom. 

But there's something better. There's a covenant that's been made on his behalf. One he did not deserve. He had no part in it. He did not choose it. Is any of this beginning to click for us about what a covenant looks like? He didn't get what he deserved, and he didn't even get what he expected. Listen, he got grace where the cultural mandate was death. That's what he got. Based on a covenant that was made before he was ever born between his father Jonathan and David. Mephibosheth had been in Jonathan, and by virtue of being in covenant with David, Mephibosheth was in David. Wow. 

Where does this go for us? Well, listen, Mephibosheth had to make a decision here. It sounds simple. "Hey, I'm going to leave that nasty, impoverished lifestyle out in the desert. I'm going to go and hang out in the palace for the rest of my life." All is going to be so cool, except when you go there, you're going to learn that you're not going to receive a royal welcome probably from everybody who's in the palace. Well, this could be an indictment on the church. In comes Mephibosheth and here's what he has to do - he has to die to his old life. He loved that life, because that life afforded him anger, bitterness, hostility, and resentment. He cherished it. Do you know anybody like that? They cherish those things, it's their comfort space. Mephibosheth had to die to those comforts in that small space that he lived in, in order to gain all of the riches in the palace. 

But it wouldn't be simple. He couldn't go into the palace and fake it. That wouldn't last for long. That just would not be an easy thing to do and he wouldn't be able to fake it for very long, incidentally. Because people would be tormenting him and saying things to him like, "What are you doing here? David, why did you let this filthy, stinking, rotten, smelly, from out there... You let him into this palace where it's clean and we scrub it, and he's stinks. Why did you let him in here?" And do you think Mephibosheth would not have been wise to these things and understood them? How was he to respond? I love the picture of about that time, David going over into the cupboard and grabbing one of those robes that were going to clothe him in a new way. And as he does, his arm reaches up and Mephibosheth sees the scar in David's arm. And it dawns on him that he doesn't deserve to be where he is. But he is where he is because of a covenant made in blood before he was ever even born on his behalf. It wasn't for him. But he was a beneficiary of. It wasn't about him. But it was for him. 

Listen, here is the glory of the covenant. God the Father has entered into a covenant with God the Son on our behalf. Amos 3:3 says this line, it says, "Can two walk together unless they be an agreement?" Man, you read that, and you go, "I guess." No, that's covenant language. They can't. Two cannot walk together in covenant unless they're in agreement. When God enters into covenant with humanity... Here's Jesus, He sneaks into the human race and He becomes one of us. For us. He takes on human flesh because only... Listen, only God can enter into covenant with God. Do we get that? The first Adam miserably failed. The second Adam, however, is God entering into covenant with God. 

If we could get swept up into that in the church and understand what has happened on our behalf. This is when we start asking ourselves, "How do I know I'm a believer? How do I know that I'm a believer? How do I know that I'm in Christ? How do I get there?" The same way Mephibosheth did. Like this. You are marked by a characteristic of gratitude. It's the mark of the believer. It's humble gratitude. A thank you. When Mephibosheth came into the household of David, everything he did now... If David would have given Mephibosheth a bunch of rules and said, "You need to stay clean. You need to make sure that your hair's cut the right way." He knew Mephibosheth couldn't keep all those rules. That's not what gave him the right to be there. It was about the covenant that was made before he was ever born. 

If we could get that into our DNA as believers, it will transform absolutely everything about the way we approach the world and take the mission and the message of the gospel. This is our privilege to do. It's not our duty to go out and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our privilege. It's the only response we would have to finding out that we're in covenant with God the Father through Jesus Christ, is one of, "Oh, my goodness. How can I share this news with everybody? Look what God the father did for me in God the Son. And look what I get. I get the inheritance of eternal life." When we hear about being clothed in this new robe in Revelation, why? We're going to get a new robe because we're going to get a covenant robe. We're going to be seeing... The theologians call this the great exchange. All of my sin went to Christ. All of his righteousness became mine. And it becomes yours. This is the way God commands His love. 

Listen, He is faithful to whom? Who is God the Father faithful to? He is faithful to His Son. He's faithful to His Son. He has promised His Son an inheritance and aren't we lovely? We are the inheritance. The Church of Jesus Christ is the inheritance that God the Father promised us. Are we always lovable? I don't know about you, I'm not always that lovable, but it doesn't depend on me. It depends on my covenant representative. He is the one who was able to keep the law. You can't keep the law. If you're a Christian and you've been around... I can't keep the law. I can't do it. I'm frustrated. If you've been a Christian and you're frustrated because you can't do it, guess what? Relax. You can't do it. It's been done for you. 

Does that let us off the hook of living a godly life? Of course not. But we live it in gratitude, we live it in thanksgiving. God the Father commands His love towards us and it looks like this. This is what faithful love looks like. I'm going to close with this. A man left his wife and kids for a mandatory work conference with a group of his co-workers. As often happens at the end of a day at one of these conferences, a group of guys were all standing around having a beer and they were marveling at all the beautiful women who had showed up at the conference. One guy made this enticing quip to the rest of the guys. He goes, "Holy smokes. Have you ever seen so many beautiful women in one place before? If you can have any woman at this conference, who would you choose?" Without any hesitation, one of the guy's eyes lit up and he said, "Oh, man, there is this one woman here. She is absolutely stunning. I can't even stop thinking about her. Everywhere I turn I see her. I can't focus on this conference, I'm not picking up what I need to pick up at this conference, because there is this woman who I just cannot get off my mind."

His buddy is like, "My man, why don't you show me who she is." He starts looking around for her and he points out his finger and he goes, "There she is right over here." And he points to his own heart. And he says, "It's my wife. And right about now, she's at home. She's probably soaking wet. She's giving my little boys a bath. And as soon as she's done, they're going to continue to learn the Lord's Prayer, because they wanted to know it when I got home." Listen, that is a love that is intentional. Could that man have been distracted? But he chose to intentionally love his wife. That is the hesed of the covenant relationship that the scriptures talk about that we are the beneficiaries of. And God has done all the work in Himself, by Himself, for us.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. Lord, if we claim to be without sin, we're deceived. The truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, Lord, we are grateful that you are faithful to your Son, because He is faithful and He is just and forgives us our sins and purifies us from all unrighteousness. And we thank you for these things in his name.