Father, we pause just one more time quietly.

We've been praying in song and now I want to pray in this moment.

And acknowledge that we are fragile.

And we do want to say to all of our fears and anxieties,

goodbye. fears and goodbye

I pray that whether it's ISIS

in the beheadings of 12 Assyrians

and the killing of another American aid worker.

Or whether it's Ebola.

Or whether it's the collapse of any kind of moral consensus in our land so that we

glory in our shame or whether it's a marriage being stretched to the breaking point this morning,

or whether children who are acting in ways that are inexplicable to us,

or whether it's cancer or whether it's job conflict.

Lord, I pray that right now

our anxieties would be bidden

goodbye in the presence of the massive truth of the centrality of Jesus in history and in the gospel and in our lives.

And I pray that that would be exalted, would be seen and loved this morning.

So come and help me to that end I pray through Christ. Amen.

So what I would like to happen by God's grace through his spirit and His Word is for you to see, perhaps more clearly than

you have before, and feel with greater intensity than you may have before

the truth that the gospel is the apex or the supreme expression of the grace of God, and by gospel I mean the events of the death

and the resurrection of Jesus for sinners, that that is the supreme expression of the grace of God

...