00:00: Please pray with me.
00:05: Father in heaven, we want your name to be hallowed.
00:10: We thank you, we praise you for making us your children, your sons and daughters through faith in Jesus and allowing us to know you as Father.
00:21: And we ask that you would be at work in our lives, in this church, in our community, around the world so that your name is hallowed, so that you are revered, respected, honored, cherished.
00:35: We think of our international workers bringing the gospel message to the ends of the world, and we ask that you would help them to represent you faithfully and clearly so that people don't just pray some prayer, but that their lives are transformed and they surrender to a life lived for the glory of God, that your name may be hallowed.
00:56: We ask that your kingdom would come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
01:02: We think of this place and this time where we are, and we look backward and celebrate you sending the king into the world and the coming of the kingdom of God that began with Jesus, and yet we know that it has not fully arrived, that there's still yet much to be done, and that we have our place in that process, but it is Christ who builds his church.
01:27: And so we pray that you would build your kingdom and that you would build your church in this time and place, including here within Faith Chapel.
01:36: We pray that you would, by your spirit, provoke us to overflow with the good news of who Christ is for all who trust in him, that you would help us to be so in awe of Christ that we can't help but share him with others.
01:56: Build your kingdom in our midst and help us and help others to lay down our pride, to lay down our will, to surrender to your purposes and your plans and not go astray by insisting on doing our own thing in our own way.
02:10: We confess that we need peace, a peace that we cannot produce on our own, the kind of peace that is the result of your spirit at work in us.
02:24: And so we ask for that.
02:25: But just like you told us to pray for daily bread and that daily provision, you've taught us to ask for your provision in a way that keeps us dependent on you.
02:36: And so I ask that you would steer our hearts and steer our minds back towards Christ again and again and again.
02:44: And in that context of fixing on Jesus, surrendering to him, that your spirit would produce in our lives the peace that we long for and need.
02:57: Father, I pray for our time in your word right now that it would bear fruit, the kind of fruit that I cannot produce, that none of us can will or cause on our own, but the kind of fruit that only your spirit bringing it to bear on our hearts and minds can.
03:16: We pray this in Jesus' name.
03:18: Amen.
03:21: I spent time this week wrapping presents.
03:25: Wrapping presents is not my favorite activity.
03:28: It's okay.
03:29: It's fine.
03:30: But I really like giving gifts.
03:33: I love to give a present of some sort to somebody and watch them open it, especially if I know that I got the right gift for the right person with this.
03:42: That perfection of pairing between the gift and the receiver.
03:49: And as I think about that, in connection with our faith as believers in Jesus, I can't help but think about the gifts that the Father has given us.
04:00: Now, if we were to narrow that down and try to say one gift, we would probably start by saying, well, salvation, forgiveness.
04:08: But that really doesn't do it justice, does it?
04:11: Because we've been forgiven, yes, but we've also been counted righteous by God.
04:17: And we've been restored to relationship with God.
04:21: We've been given the Holy Spirit to live in us to guide us, to correct us, to empower us, to lead us, and to make sure that we don't fall away from Jesus and that we continue to the end of the road and persevere in our faith, ending up into the fullness of all that Christ has died for.
04:41: There's so many aspects to the good gifts of God that all come back to Jesus.
04:49: And there is no Lord and Savior Jesus without Christmas.
04:55: Now, Jesus himself, of course, has always existed and will always exist.
05:00: But the work that Christ has accomplished for us doesn't happen without Jesus coming into the world as he did that first Christmas.
05:09: This morning, we're going to look in Romans chapter 8 at a portion of what God has accomplished as his gracious gift to his people.
05:20: So find your way to Romans 8.
05:24: We're going to focus in on verse 32, but I want to read some of the context that sets the stage for that.
05:30: Romans 8 is perhaps my absolute favorite chapter in the Bible.
05:34: If I could only take one chapter and have that, I might choose Romans 8.
05:38: It blows my mind every time I read it.
05:40: It's just so full of the benefits of Christ for his people and the working of God's spirit and the totality of the blood-bought gift of Jesus.
05:54: Let's pick up in verse 28.
05:55: And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
06:02: For those who are called according to his purpose.
06:05: For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
06:16: And those whom he predestined, he also called.
06:18: And those whom he called, he also justified.
06:20: And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
06:23: Those verses tell me as a Christian that God had a plan for me before I was born.
06:31: And not just me, but all who come to know Jesus, all who are saved.
06:36: That before time began, and then through and into eternity, through this life and on into eternity, God has a plan.
06:45: He has a purpose that he is bringing to pass.
06:48: A plan that involves salvation, forgiveness, restoration to relationship with God.
07:00: God didn't just plan these things or intend these things or wish for these things.
07:06: God caused these things.
07:10: He foreknew.
07:12: He predestined.
07:13: He called.
07:15: He justified.
07:16: He glorified.
07:16: These are actions that God takes for the good of his people.
07:21: God is not a distant God who stands at a distance and hopes for the best and leaves everything in our hands.
07:28: No.
07:28: He is a God that engages, rescues, saves.
07:36: everything, absolutely everything that I encounter in life as a believer in Jesus, as somebody who loves God, everything that I encounter is something that God uses for my eternal benefit.
07:59: Verse 28, where we started, says that we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him.
08:05: In all things.
08:07: And then the rest of what we read is the foundation for that truth.
08:12: For this, for this, for this.
08:14: Paul is explaining to believers, you can know, you can be confident.
08:18: In fact, we do know this.
08:19: For we know that God works this way.
08:22: All things are used for the good of those who love God.
08:26: Because this plan of God is being worked out by God.
08:30: from eternity past to eternity future.
08:35: That staggers my mind.
08:38: I'm a thinker.
08:39: I'm an analytical guy.
08:40: And when I see that, it's like looking into a bottomless chasm where you can't even plumb the extent of what's before you.
08:48: It is so huge.
08:50: It is so thorough, so undeserved, so generous the way that God works and the thoroughness with which he works in the life of every single Christian.
09:03: If your heart has been changed such that you sit here today loving God, the God that you, at the start of your life, had no interest in, a God that you lived in rebellion against, if your faith in God is in that place, dependent entirely on Jesus, not performance, not being good so that God will like you or love you or accept you.
09:30: If it's simply trusting in Jesus and you love God, then these promises from God's word are describing your life.
09:41: And if that's not you, it can still be you.
09:46: You see, because we don't know in that series of five things that God does in verses 29 and 30, whether it's describing us except at the fourth point, justified.
10:00: That's describing that moment when somebody places their faith in Jesus.
10:04: And so when you place your faith in Jesus authentically, repentantly saying, I want God.
10:10: I want to surrender to him.
10:11: I want to be rescued by him.
10:12: I want to be transformed by him.
10:13: When you do that, the pin is on the map.
10:16: You're at point four, which means you can look backward and say, how did I get here?
10:20: Well, God did this and this and this to get me to this place.
10:23: And I can know that he's going to get me across the finish line.
10:26: That can be you this morning, this Christmas.
10:29: It doesn't have to be something where, oh, I've gone to church once in a while or every week or almost never.
10:36: I don't know where I stand with God.
10:37: You can know if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God accepts you.
10:42: He loves you.
10:43: He forgives you and he is at work in your life.
10:48: These truths leave me almost at a loss for words.
10:53: I say almost because I'm not going to stop talking.
10:56: Apologies.
10:57: But also because I feel like that's where Paul goes in this very passage.
11:01: He says in verse 31, what then shall we say to these things?
11:07: I almost feel like he's saying, this is so profound.
11:10: How do you even begin to say anything appropriately suitable in response to this magnitude of truth and grace?
11:19: And yet he realized he couldn't just stop there.
11:22: You can't take this level of God's goodness and say, I need to go on to something else.
11:27: You've got to wrestle with it.
11:29: You've got to think this through.
11:30: You've got to embrace this with heart and mind and hands.
11:35: Have you ever had somebody give you a gift that was so amazing, so overwhelming, that it just leaves you speechless?
11:45: You're like, I don't even know how to say thank you in a way that suits this moment.
11:52: And yet silence isn't the answer either.
11:56: You've got to do your best to put into words what may transcend your ability to put into words.
12:03: And so you squeak out some sort of response because the gift is so wonderful.
12:07: I think this is like that.
12:09: And so Paul manages to keep going.
12:11: He says, verse 32, if God is for us, who can be against us?
12:18: Now this is a rhetorical question.
12:20: What Paul is saying, God is for us, right?
12:24: In light of what he's done, in light of the purpose and plan of God, God is for us who trust in Jesus.
12:31: Therefore, no one can be successfully against us.
12:35: Now, I added a word there, successfully, because it's necessary.
12:40: It's implied.
12:42: There are lots of people against us as Christians.
12:45: There are people who are against Christ and Christianity and Christians.
12:50: We see that in the world around us.
12:52: Jesus talked about it a whole lot in the Gospels.
12:55: The early church experienced it.
12:56: It's described in the New Testament epistles, the letters of the New Testament.
13:02: And certainly, Satan himself is against us.
13:06: So, who can be against us is not at all a statement that you won't have opposition, but rather it's saying, who can effectively, who can successfully be against us?
13:17: Who can oppose us with any hope of victory?
13:20: And the rhetorical question's answer is, no one.
13:24: Of course.
13:25: Just this morning in Sunday school, we looked at the story in Mark chapter 5 of Jesus healing the demon-possessed man in the Gentile region and casting out thousands of demons from this one man.
13:38: And it struck me in a fresh way as I looked at this because there's other stories in the Gospels where Jesus casts out a demon from this person or that person.
13:46: But in this case, it's literally thousands.
13:49: And so when you picture Jesus versus a demon, well, Jesus wins.
13:54: But what about if the demons team up?
13:55: What if there's 10 demons or 100 demons or 1,000 demons versus Jesus?
13:59: Doesn't matter.
14:01: Jesus wins.
14:03: Jesus is unbeatable.
14:05: Nobody can oppose Christ and win.
14:09: Therefore, if God is for us, nobody can oppose us and win in any eternal sense because it is Christ who is at work within us to secure us and preserve us and to ensure that we are permanently, decisively, perseveringly saved.
14:28: The God who made us.
14:30: The God against whom we have lived in rebellion by ignoring Him and living our own way.
14:34: The God who will one day judge us and will not fudge the records.
14:39: The God who is wrathful and righteously angry toward us for our sin.
14:43: That God is for us, in favor of us, loving toward us.
14:50: Our faith is in Jesus Christ to save us.
14:53: And therefore, God is for us.
14:56: No one can be successfully against us.
14:58: He is on our side or better and more accurately, He has brought us onto His side.
15:05: He has caused us to switch teams.
15:08: This is the ultimate Red Rover, right?
15:12: Young kids these days, they have no idea what a good game is, right?
15:16: They're just on their screens.
15:17: But back in the day, we played games that sent kids to the hospital.
15:21: These were rough and tumble games that we don't teach kids to play because we're not allowed to play them anymore because somebody always got hurt playing Red Rover.
15:28: But you switch teams, right?
15:30: Somebody did something that they would hold tight and make sure that it was secure so that you join their team.
15:40: Christ has brought us onto His team and preserves us on His team.
15:46: I remember playing Red Rover in late high school, early college age and our team had a strategy that we'd split up the weakest people between the strongest people, those poor weak people, right?
16:00: Somebody would come running and they would aim for one of those gaps and the strong person would just hold on with all that they are worth and that poor person was like, I got nothing left and they were wishing the strong person would let go and he didn't.
16:14: Christ will not let go of you.
16:18: Once you're on His team, He will not release you, which is good.
16:23: Amen?
16:25: What shall we say to these things?
16:29: And he goes further.
16:32: The work accomplished by Jesus was made possible because Jesus was born all those years ago as a human being or as the old Christmas carol, Hark the Herald Angels Sing puts it, Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.
16:50: Hail the incarnate deity.
16:53: Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.
16:58: That's talking about God becoming a human being.
17:01: Distaying God but not holding on to all the privileges of being glorified in heaven the way that He deserved to be.
17:10: Instead saying that He was going to humble Himself and experience the life that we live.
17:15: Becoming a human being born in the most lowly of things.
17:18: We sang about this, the lyrics were on the screen this morning, the artisan inside the paint, the architect inside the plant, the creator inside His creation as part of His creation.
17:29: Not that Jesus started or was created but He wrote Himself into the story.
17:34: The writer becoming a character in His own story.
17:39: What an amazing reality.
17:42: And brings us to verse 32.
17:46: He who did not spare His own son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
17:59: Not only is it impossible for anyone to be successfully against us because God is for us, verse 31, but Paul tells us as Christians we can bank on extravagant, bottomless, breathtakingly generosity from God.
18:16: Let me read 32 again.
18:17: Catch this.
18:19: He who did not spare His own son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
18:31: Now it's phrased as a question but it's not because Paul's uncertain.
18:36: He's telling us something in the form of a question.
18:41: I had a math teacher in high school that was like Ben Stein of Clear Ice and the Wonder Years and you talk real plain and you ask him a question and if the question was yes, he'd say is the Pope Catholic?
18:56: it was such dry humor I ate it up.
19:02: I loved it.
19:02: I thought it was just hilarious.
19:04: Okay?
19:05: And when he asked the question is the Pope Catholic?
19:07: He wasn't asking a question.
19:10: Literally he was but figuratively he was saying the answer is of course.
19:14: Absolutely.
19:14: He was making a statement in the form of a question.
19:17: That's what Paul is doing here.
19:19: He's making a statement in the form of a question and what he's really telling us is two things.
19:26: Verse 32 has two parts.
19:27: There's a foundation and the building that sets on that foundation.
19:32: It's a promise and the basis for the promise.
19:36: The promise is that God will graciously give Christians all things.
19:41: That's the promise that we can hold on to.
19:43: The basis or foundation for that promise is that God did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.
19:51: That's the reality on which the promise rests.
19:53: If God did not spare or sorry if God had spared Jesus and had not given Jesus up for us all then we can trust this promise.
20:03: It depends on the promise of what God has done in Jesus.
20:07: It's an argument from greater to lesser.
20:10: If God has done the hard thing then we can be confident that God will do the easy thing.
20:15: And surely as God has already done the hard thing we can trust that God will do the far easier thing because we don't need to doubt God's intention and commitment.
20:22: He's already made it clear.
20:24: I've got a house which means I have a mortgage and I'll be paying on it for a long time.
20:30: My kids will be out of college and on their own long before I pay this thing off.
20:34: If I spend 30 years paying off this mortgage and I reach the very final month and I reach that final payment that will end the whole mortgage and I've got the money in my checking account am I going to send in the check?
20:50: Of course I am.
20:53: If I've spent all that money and all that time paying the bills for 30 years and I have the ability to follow through obviously I'm going to right?
21:03: The track record proves that that's going to happen.
21:09: Look at the foundation the track record on which the promise rests.
21:14: God did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.
21:18: Think about that.
21:21: Think about who it is that God did not spare.
21:26: Verse 32 tells us that was God's own son.
21:30: If there was anybody that deserved to be spared it's him.
21:34: If there was anybody that would be harder to not spare who would that be?
21:40: I mean God is perfect in relationship with himself.
21:44: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit have eternally existed in perfect unity and love and harmony and that's who God the Father had to not spare.
21:56: Jesus was not somebody created by God and then adopted as a son.
21:59: Rather the Bible teaches Jesus to be none other than the eternal uncreated God.
22:05: The very one who created the universe and in whom Colossians 2 9 tells us the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
22:15: if we could have been on earth at the time when Jesus was on earth we would have seen what looked like any other man.
22:24: But in that man was the fullness of God.
22:27: The entirety of who God is present in this one person.
22:33: That is the son that Romans 8 3 speaks of when it says God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
22:43: Making him just like you and me are.
22:45: We're sinful.
22:45: Jesus wasn't.
22:46: But just like our sinful flesh he had full human nature.
22:51: Jesus was and is and always has been the son of God.
22:56: And yet at Christmas that first Christmas he became one of us.
23:02: That is the one that God did not spare.
23:06: In fact the New Testament a couple of times tells us of God calling Jesus his beloved son.
23:11: At the baptism and at the transfiguration God speaks from heaven and said this is my beloved son.
23:18: I usually don't talk to my boys that way.
23:21: I mean I'm a dork and I'm a pastor so I throw out the word beloved once in a while.
23:28: But God says this is my beloved son.
23:32: He didn't just say this is my son.
23:35: He said this is my beloved son.
23:37: That is the heart of God towards Jesus.
23:40: And yet the father did not spare him.
23:45: But instead of sparing him gave him up for us all.
23:48: Well gave him up.
23:49: What does that mean?
23:50: Gave him up.
23:51: That means as Philippian 2 describes that Jesus didn't get to cling to his divine rights and rather humbled himself to the point of becoming a human being and submitting to a life of service on earth even to the point of being put to death unjustly.
24:08: as Isaiah 53 puts it that we esteemed him Jesus as stricken and smitten by God and afflicted.
24:17: It was the will of the Lord to crush him.
24:20: He God has put him Jesus to grief.
24:25: God wanted Jesus to suffer.
24:28: Why?
24:30: So that he could take our place.
24:33: Taking the suffering that we deserve for our sin.
24:36: Jesus substituted himself.
24:39: God didn't want Jesus to suffer just to make him suffer.
24:42: He wanted him to take our place and bear our punishment.
24:47: Gave him up for us means that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, arrested in secret, tried by Pilate and Herod both, mocked, beaten, scourged, spit upon, wrongly condemned and publicly humiliated, then finally nailed to a wooden cross.
25:05: It means, as Acts 2 23 tells us, that everything that came to pass involving Jesus being taken into custody and being crucified and killed by lawless men was according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.
25:20: Exactly according to plan.
25:24: God did not hold back.
25:26: He poured out his wrath toward our sin by allowing Jesus to bear our sin and therefore bear God's wrath against it.
25:36: God Jesus was so struck by God's wrath that he cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
25:46: That is the gift of Christ.
25:49: God did not spare his only son because that was the only way he could spare us.
25:54: God did not spare Jesus the slightest bit of hardship, the slightest bit of suffering, the slightest bit of wrath, so that God could spare us those things which are due us for our sin.
26:07: Now I'm not saying that we don't go through hard things, but we don't go through hard things as a punishment for sin as Christians.
26:17: We go through hard things as God is working good in our lives, we go through hard things as God is transforming us and making us like Jesus, but not as condemnation and punishment for sin anymore.
26:28: As one of my favorite authors so aptly phrased it, God spared his son no pain that he might spare his saints no pleasure.
26:38: God wants to bless us in ways that we can't even wrap our heads around and yet that meant punishing Jesus.
26:48: Which brings us back from the foundation of the promise to the promise itself.
26:55: He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
27:02: Again, he's telling us, not asking us.
27:05: To rephrase verse 32 as statements rather than as a question, it would read something like this.
27:11: It would be, God did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.
27:15: Therefore, because God has already given the most serious, the most valuable, the most costly thing in the universe, his only son, therefore, there's nothing that's good for us that God is going to hold back or be stingy with.
27:28: I think about that in comparison to the opening pages of scripture where in the garden, Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent into thinking that God was being stingy, or at least Eve was.
27:40: This attitude of God's holding back on you.
27:43: God is not letting you experience everything that's worth experiencing.
27:48: And now we're told in Christ that there's no way that can be the case for his people because he's already given the most costly thing, his son.
27:59: Again, that quote, God spared his son no pain that he might spare his saints no pleasure.
28:04: Because God gave Jesus, of course, we can be sure that God will, with him, with Jesus, graciously give us all things.
28:12: Well, what are all things?
28:14: It doesn't mean everything pleasant and easy and comfortable in this life.
28:17: It doesn't mean everyone's going to have a giant house and a fancy car and a bank account that's just overflowing.
28:25: It doesn't mean easy family or friend situations.
28:31: The all things does not mean freedom from suffering.
28:35: In fact, the following verses, 35 and 36 in particular, tell us very explicitly of the suffering that is common to the Christian.
28:42: So all things must mean something like God will give us everything truly, good for us in light of eternity, which is totally what verse 28 that set the stage was talking about.
28:56: Working all things for our good.
28:58: All things that we need along the path of being made like Jesus, verse 29.
29:03: All things that we need on the path of having been called by God to salvation in Jesus with the goal of ultimately being glorified in the presence of God.
29:11: All things that are suitable for that.
29:17: Have you ever been to an escape room?
29:20: They put everything you need in that room, right?
29:24: Not everything you need for the next three weeks.
29:26: I mean, it's not stocked with food and supplies and toiletries and whatever, but everything you need for escaping the room.
29:34: It's in there.
29:35: You may not find it right away.
29:37: You may not realize everything, how everything fits together.
29:40: You may get stumped, but everything's there.
29:42: God gives us all things that are needful for him working out his good plan of salvation and transforming us to make us like Jesus.
29:54: God will give us everything truly good for us in light of eternity.
30:01: The all things we can do through Christ who strengthens us, Philippians 4, includes hard things like being hungry or being in need so that we learn to trust him more.
30:14: God has bigger plans for us than just the temporary things of this life.
30:20: If we come to God with the expectation that he just makes life easy for us, make it easy, Jesus, make it so that I don't struggle, make it so that I don't have to deal with unpleasantness, we are asking God to lower the bar of his goodness.
30:35: We are asking him to give us less than his best because we can't understand just how good he is in his plans.
30:48: God is not stingy toward his children.
30:51: God is not going to hold back for us the slightest thing that is eternally good for us.
30:55: In 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 21 to 23 Paul says, all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all ours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
31:14: In Christ you've been given the world, a good church, life, faith, at the right time and not before.
31:19: God will bring you through death to himself, a far better thing than staying here.
31:23: Everything that you encounter is being used by God to accomplish good.
31:30: That's hard to believe in the moment.
31:32: I've had times where I was hurting so bad I began to doubt whether I would persevere in my faith in God.
31:40: And it took a long time for God to bring me through that pain to the place where I could react in a way that was more than emotional.
31:51: Where I could say, okay, that was brutally hard, but God's using it.
31:58: God and because I know God to be good and because I know God to be for me in Jesus, there must be things that are good that God wants to accomplish in me and through me that couldn't happen an easier way.
32:13: Okay, I'm going to trust him that he knows what he's doing, that this really was necessary.
32:21: God reigns so supremely and so graciously over the whole of human existence that everything, is worked by God for your good if you are a believer in Jesus Christ.
32:33: Everything good for you is to be given to you.
32:40: Can we trust God to know what he's doing with that?
32:43: Some of you are at the stage where you've got young children.
32:47: Don't do what they want.
32:50: Young children are stupid, right?
32:52: And every parent's like, yeah, mine was for sure.
32:55: Takes after his dad, right?
32:57: Young children don't know what they should want.
33:03: We're just like that sometimes.
33:06: We think we know better than God and God's like, no, no, no.
33:09: If you understood everything, you wouldn't be asking for that.
33:11: You wouldn't want that.
33:13: Trust me, I know better.
33:17: More surely than Jediah can trust Tryana and Ty, we can trust our Father in heaven.
33:24: Amen?
33:28: That first Christmas when Jesus Christ was born, God gave the greatest and ultimate gift of his own son and secured for you and for me every good and perfect gift.
33:43: Not just by his coming, but all his coming brought with it.
33:47: His perfect life, his death in our place, his resurrection as the victorious, grave, death conquering king.
33:57: This time of year, we tend to give things you buy in a store or order online.
34:04: The gifts of God rarely fit under a tree.
34:08: They often come disguised as trouble, but they are always for our good, and not one good thing is withheld by our Father.
34:20: And you know that's true.
34:23: Because we know that he's given us Jesus.
34:26: Let's pray.
34:28: God, help us to believe more fully, to trust more deeply, to rely on you beyond what we can understand, to confess, not just with our mouths, but with our hearts, that even when we don't understand, you are good, that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good, that we trust him.
34:56: When times are good, and easy, and joyful, and when times are hard, and the pain is deep.
35:04: And may, at the center of this Christmas season, may our hearts and minds be centered on the gift of God's own son.
35:12: In Jesus' name we pray.
35:14: Amen.