About this sermon
1. God’s righteous judgement will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven in glory (vv. 5-7).
2. The two outcomes of the final judgment: destruction and glory (vv. 8-10).
Sermon transcript
This morning we consider a passage from 2 Thessalonians, my sermon text today, 2 Thessalonians 1 verses 5-12. You’ll find that on page 1175 in your Pew Bible. 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 5 through 12. I’m gonna read the chapter in its entirety. It’s a brief chapter to fill out the context a bit. So dear friends, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. Since, indeed, God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed.
To this end, we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the proclamation of His Word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us clear guidance and direction in the Holy Scriptures, which are your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We pray, Heavenly Father, that by your Holy Spirit, you would illuminate our minds and open our hearts to hear and receive that which the Spirit has revealed in this portion of your Holy Word.
We pray, Heavenly Father, that your Word would find a lodging place in our souls and would bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. And we would ask, Lord God, that you would grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth your word with clarity and power and with the assistance and grace of your spirit for the edification of your people, for the salvation of the lost, and for the magnification of the name of Jesus. We pray these things in his name and all of God’s people said, amen. Dear ones, you may be seated. I did remember the sermon outlines, remembered to bring them this week, so you’ll notice in your sermon outline, there are quite a number of words you can be listening for in my sermon today, if you find that helpful to follow along.
Title of my sermon today, Foundations of Faith, The Coming Judge. Well, my dear friends, one of the sad realities of living in this fallen, sin-cursed world is that oftentimes injustice abounds, oftentimes evil seems to rule the day, and even on those seemingly rare occasions when justice actually prevails, one would suspect that it often turns out to be only an approximate or relative justice, or even a delayed justice that is done. and not the full or absolute or ultimate justice that we might have hoped for. It’s easy to look around our world today and to harbor bitterness, anger, and resentment in our hearts as we witness great evils being ignored or perhaps downplayed, as we witness oppressions and abuses abounding, and as we witness the wicked prospering as they arrogantly boast in their pride. We might be tempted to fret because of evildoers, to borrow the terminology from one of the Psalms.
We might even be tempted to despair that ultimate justice will ever be done, that the multitude of wrongs which fill our world will ever be righted, and that the unrepentant wicked will ever be held to account. But my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is why the foundational doctrine of our holy Christian faith that we will be considering on this Lord’s Day morning is so vitally important for keeping us from sinking into discouragement and despair, and for encouraging us by bolstering our faith, our patience, and our hope. The doctrine, of course, to which I am referring is the doctrine that is summarized by the words of the final affirmation that is found in the second credo, the second, I believe, statement of the Apostles’ Creed. The affirmation that says of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus who now reigns at the Father’s right hand.
It says, from there, from the Father’s right hand, He, Jesus, shall come to judge the living and the dead. Dear ones, the Word of God makes it very clear that a final judgment day is indeed coming, a day when God will right all wrongs, a day when God will bring ultimate justice, pouring out His holy and righteous vengeance and wrath upon the unrepentant wicked and vindicating His believing afflicted people. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the coming judge who will come from the Father’s right hand, from the place of highest power and authority and honor to preside over the cosmic proceedings of that final eschatological judgment day. Now there are numerous passages in scripture that teach the truth that there will be a final judgment day and that it will happen when our Lord Jesus returns at the end of this age in glory at his future glorious second advent.
And so there’s many passages that I could have preached on this morning as we address this particular subject. But one passage of scripture that is particularly clear and particularly powerful in its teaching about the coming judgment day and about Christ the coming judge is of course our text for this Lord’s Day morning from 2 Thessalonians 1. And so we now turn our attention to this passage from God’s word. Now, the Thessalonian epistles are powerful and an important section of scripture. The Thessalonian epistles are likely the earliest canonical letters that were written by the Apostle Paul. 2 Thessalonians was probably written sometime around 51 A.D. We don’t know the exact year or date, but scholars tend to think 50, 51 A.D. was about the time when 2 Thessalonians had been written. And it was probably written shortly after Paul had written 1 Thessalonians.
So 2 Thessalonians was written as sort of a follow-up letter and it’s possible that Paul might have written 2 Thessalonians within about six months or so of writing 1 Thessalonians as some of the issues that he addresses in 1 Thessalonians were continuing to be issues in the church of the Thessalonians. In these epistles, Paul, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, seeks to encourage and to commend the church in Thessalonica for standing firm and for manifesting the virtues of faith, of hope, and of love, even though they were suffering persecution. We see this brought out, for example, if you would turn to 1 Thessalonians and look at verses 2 and 3. We kind of get an idea of why Paul is writing these epistles. It says here in verses 2 and 3 of 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul writes, we give thanks to God always for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope. in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so he commends these believers, these persecuted believers, that they were manifesting the Christian graces, the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love in spite of the difficult circumstances that they were facing. And then if you stay in 1 Thessalonians 1, let me skip down and read briefly verses six and seven, where Paul says, and you became imitators of us, and of the Lord, for you received the word, that is, you accepted the gospel, you received the word, the message of the gospel, in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to the believers in Macedonia. and Achaia. So Paul is writing to these precious brothers and sisters in Christ to commend them and to encourage them as they are faithfully displaying the graces of faith, hope, and love.
But in 2 Thessalonians, Paul, as a follow-up, he also seeks to address some apparent confusion that had arisen in the Thessalonian congregation about how to understand the day of the Lord. The Thessalonian Christians were having confusion and issues with understanding the final day. And so Paul, for example, in 2 Thessalonians addresses that issue particularly in chapter 2, and then if you read on to chapter 3 of 2 Thessalonians, you’ll see that Paul warns these believers against idleness, which apparently had become a problem among some of the believers in that church. Perhaps some of the believers in the Thessalonian church were thinking, well, you know, since Jesus is coming back really, really soon, or perhaps he’s already returned spiritually, so to speak, we don’t have to work, we don’t have to go about our day-to-day life.
So Paul deals with some theological as well as some practical issues in 2 Thessalonians. But in our passage for today, Paul is reminding them of the truth about the final judgment day. And this brings me to our text for today and to the first point. Beloved, we learn here in this passage, as we focus right now on verses five through seven, we learn here that God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven. God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven in glory. Paul writes in verse 5, after he has just commended them for their steadfastness and faith in all of the persecutions that they had been enduring, he says in verse 5, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering.
Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and so forth. Let’s first of all focus on verse five. Paul mentions that what is evidence of God’s righteous judgment? He says, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God. Well, we refer to what he had said about them in the previous verse. As one commentator puts it, the Thessalonians’ endurance and faith under persecution constitute evidence of the righteous judgment of God. Since God is granting them the grace to endure, He is clearly on their side and is working to make them worthy for entrance into the kingdom of God. Now, what is this kingdom of God that Paul refers to? the phraseology, the terminology of the kingdom of God is not used very often in Paul’s writings.
Paul tends to use terms like salvation and so forth to refer to this spiritual reality. But what is the kingdom of God? When he says that God is making them worthy of the kingdom of God, for which they are also suffering, the kingdom of God in what sense? See, God’s kingdom is his reign of grace and salvation that has been brought near in the person and work of Christ. And there are already and not yet aspects to the kingdom of God. There’s a sense in which the kingdom of God is already here. And we who are believers in Christ, who have received Christ as Lord and Savior, we are already in the kingdom, at least in principle, because Christ the King has come to reign over us. We are participants in his reign of grace and salvation through our faith in him.
But there’s also an ultimate consummate sense of the kingdom of God, and that is the sense from the context that Paul seems to be speaking of it here. From the context of this passage, it is clear that Paul has in mind the kingdom of God in its final consummated expression. In other words, the eternal kingdom of the new heavens and the new earth that Christ will usher in at his second advent when he returns in glory. Now, this terminology here that Paul uses about God making them or working in them so that they might be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, what does Paul mean by that? He says, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering.
What are we to make of Paul’s language here, his language of being considered worthy of the kingdom of God? Perhaps some of you are thinking right now, wait a minute, pastor, isn’t it the case that apart from Christ, we are unworthy of the least of God’s mercies, that we are unworthy sinners? And certainly that is true. The Bible makes that very clear. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None of us is worthy of the kingdom in and of himself or herself. So what are we to make of this language that Paul uses here? Is Paul here intending to teach that we can somehow become worthy in ourselves of entering into the heavenly kingdom? Is he teaching a message of works righteousness as if we could gain heaven by our own good works or our own merits or our own worthiness?
Well, beloved, if that’s what Paul is saying here, then he is contradicting himself. He would be contradicting what he clearly teaches elsewhere in his letters about the fact that we are justified, we sinners are justified and saved, not by our own good works or our own merits or our own worthiness, but by God’s grace alone, through God-given faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and apart from works of the law. So friends, here we must avoid reading into Paul’s language what he never intended to teach. Dear ones, we misread and misinterpret Paul’s language here if we imagine that he is promoting a works-based merit theology or if we think that he is somehow teaching that we can somehow earn a place in God’s kingdom by our own good works or by our religious performance.
Instead, the language, it’s interesting to note that the language that Paul is using here is the language of being counted or being considered worthy of the kingdom of God. And again, what is Paul commending these believers for? What is he commending the Thessalonian church for? Well, he is commending them for their faith. The believers at Thessalonica persevered in clinging to Christ and Christ alone with an enduring saving faith and they clung to Christ, they continued to trust in Christ in spite of great pressure from their persecutors to reject and to disown him. It was because of their living personal faith in Christ, a faith which itself is a sovereignly bestowed gift of God. It is because of that faith in Christ, Christ who himself is the worthy one, that they were counted or considered worthy in him.
And likewise, friends, we show ourselves to be worthy as we continue to cling to Christ and Christ alone as our worthiness and salvation. We’re not worthy in ourselves, we’re worthy in Him. We are not worthy by works or merit, we are worthy by faith, not merit or works. by grace because of Christ. So it is only those who cling to Christ with an enduring saving faith who are counted worthy to enter the kingdom of God. For only such faith unites us to Christ and his worthiness. Let me ask you, dear listener, have you trusted in Christ for your salvation? Are you clinging to him and him alone as your worthiness? Christ is the Savior of sinners, the only God-appointed Savior for sinners. He is the only way to the Father. And Jesus Christ died for sinners just like you and me.
He paid the penalty for sin. He rose from the dead so that whoever, by sovereign grace, believes in Him and Him alone might not perish but have everlasting life. Receive and rest upon Christ today as your Lord and Savior, and you, by the grace of God, will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God because of Christ’s worthiness and mercy alone. And then Paul goes on to say, He says that they are suffering for the kingdom of God and God is working to grant that they would be counted or considered worthy of the kingdom of God. And then he fleshes this out. He explains it in the next few verses. He says, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you. and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.
God will manifest his righteousness and his justice by bringing affliction upon those who impenitently afflict God’s people. What Paul is speaking of here, especially in verse six, but also verse seven, is what is sometimes called retributive justice, retribution. It’s the lex talionis, the eye for an eye. that those who are guilty of persecuting and afflicting God’s people, if they do not repent of that wickedness, they themselves will receive affliction for the affliction that they have inflicted upon the people of God. But on the other hand, those among Christ’s sheep, those among God’s people who have suffered affliction at the hands of the wicked, will instead at the coming of Christ will be granted relief. Verse 7, Christ will come to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. I mean, Paul and his companions In his apostolic ministry, Paul experienced much in the way of affliction and persecution as he sought to faithfully fulfill his calling and mission as an apostle of Jesus Christ.
And so, there will be justice, ultimate justice, the righting of wrongs. on that final day when Jesus returns. But some would look at this and say, well, Paul must be teaching here that these persecuted believers are made worthy of the kingdom of God and somehow are counted worthy of the kingdom of God through the virtue of suffering affliction for the cause of Christ. And in response to that kind of thinking, the Bible-believing Lutheran commentator Richard Lenski responds as follows. He writes, the idea that their suffering affliction merits this reward is the very opposite of all that the scripture teaches and of the justice here set forth. For the acts of afflicting God’s people are only public evidences of ungodliness and unbelief. In other words, of the rejection of God in Christ. The reason that the persecutors of the church persecute the church is because they are impenitent and unbelieving.
Then he goes on to say, while the perseverance under such affliction belongs as public evidence of faith in God and Christ, in the grace and salvation that they bestow. So again, we must banish, as we read this language of Paul, we must banish from our thoughts all notions of merit theology or works righteousness. To interpret this language in that way is to read into this passage, to do eisegesis, rather than to take out of the passage that which is there. And when is all of this perfect justice, this righting of all wrongs, this retributive justice, when is it going to be brought to bear? Are we to expect that it will happen this side of the return of Christ? Are we to expect perfect justice to be done in this present age? Certainly we should pray for and hope for a greater expression of justice and righteousness in society.
Certainly we should always be concerned about that. But can you put your hope in finding ultimate justice and ultimate peace in this present age? The answer is no. When will this occur? Look again at verse 7. He will grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When? When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven. with his mighty angels. That’s the parousia, that is the apocalypse, that is the return of Christ in glory at the end of this age. That is when perfect relief will come to God’s suffering children, and that is when perfect justice and vengeance will be done in the case of those who have persisted in their impenitence and unbelief. And so what do we learn from this passage so far? Well, we learn, first of all, that God is a righteous judge and his righteousness will be vindicated in the end.
It will be vindicated through the punishment of the unrepentant wicked, the vengeance of the Lord being poured out upon them. It will also be vindicated in that God will vindicate his suffering believing people, granting them relief and rest in the end. We also learn here too, as I’ve already mentioned, that God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when Jesus our Lord returns in glory. And that is where we ought to place our ultimate hope and trust in Christ, our coming king, the coming judge. We who are in him, we who are believers in Christ, we’ve already been judged and justified in Him. So we need not fear that final day. For that final day, when Jesus returns in glory and judges His people, that will be a judgment of vindication, not a judgment of condemnation.
But in the case of those who refuse to believe and repent, it will be a day of doom, a day of vengeance. Are you ready for His return, dear listener? You’re only ready for the return of Christ and he could return at any time. You’re only ready if you are in him, if you’re trusting in him. May God in his sovereign grace grant that you and I may trust in Christ and Christ alone and be ready for his revealing from heaven. We note here also in our passage as we consider verses eight through 10 and move on in our passage, we see that there are two outcomes of the final judgment that Paul expects and that we ought to expect. The one is the outcome of destruction, the other is an outcome of glory. The two outcomes of the final judgment are either destruction or glory.
Again, look at verses eight through 10. We read of Christ’s being revealed from heaven in His parousia, His second advent, and He will be revealed in flaming fire. Remember, the Bible says our God is a consuming fire. He is a God of infinite white-hot holiness. He is the God whose praise, as we sang earlier in the service, as we sang that wonderful hymn, holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty. He is a God of infinite white-hot holiness. He is a consuming fire. And Jesus, when he returns, will return in that theophanic glory fire, in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel. We learn here that when Jesus returns in glory, there will be vengeance and eternal destruction for those who reject God and refuse the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
But as I already said, there will be blessed relief as well as glory and awe-filled marveling for those who have believed. But in verse eight, we read of this vengeance being poured out on two categories of people. It says, on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Now, some have suggested that Paul is intentionally here referring to two distinct categories of people. By the category of those who do not know God, those who hold this interpretation would say that, well, that refers to the Gentile pagans, those who’ve never heard the gospel, never seen a Bible, never heard the gospel, have not been confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that would be the Gentile pagans on the one hand, with those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, well, that would be pagans as well as Jews who hear the gospel but refuse to believe in the gospel.
Well, that’s one possible way of understanding this passage, but we need to understand that this passage could be translated as follows, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God, even on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. In other words, Paul may be seeking to clarify what he means by those who do not know God. Those who do not know God are those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now Paul addresses the issue of the judgment of those Gentiles who have never been exposed to special revelation. He addresses that in passages like Romans 1 and Romans 2. But here he seems to have in view those who have heard about God and know God in the sense of knowing about him, but they ignore him.
They do not know him in the sense that they reject him. They ignore him, and they show that they ignore him by not obeying the gospel call, by not repenting and believing in Christ. But again, however we are to understand this passage, clearly unbelievers are in view, those who persist in their sin and unbelief. They will experience, they will have inflicted upon them vengeance. And then he explains further in verse 9 what they will face. It says in verse 9, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. Now, some have latched onto this terminology of eternal destruction and have said, aha, see, there’s not going to be an eternal hell. There’s not going to be everlasting punishment. They’re simply going to be annihilated.
But is that what Paul means when he talks about eternal destruction? Is he referring to annihilation? Well, no. Again, if Paul were teaching that, he would be contradicting what is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture and what Paul himself, I believe, clearly teaches. This is not eternal destruction in the sense of annihilation, but in the sense of utter and complete ruin. It is eternal destruction. Annihilation is not an eternal thing. It happens just once. Its effects go on for eternity, but if you’re annihilated, that’s it. There’s no eternal punishment or destruction in that. But notice it is an eternal destruction that is described as being away from the presence of the Lord. which indicates that those who suffer this destruction will still be conscious and aware, but they will be destroyed away from the presence of the Lord, meaning His comfortable, loving presence.
Of course, Jesus our Lord is present everywhere because He is God in His divine nature. God is present even in hell. So when we say that hell is separation from God, it doesn’t mean that God is absolutely absent from hell. It means that God is absent in his love and mercy. God is very present in hell in his holy wrath and justice and indignation. And so, this is not referring to annihilation, but utter and complete ruin. Just a couple passages to confirm this teaching, and it is a difficult teaching, I acknowledge. But this is what the Bible teaches. God is so infinitely holy, and sin is so horribly awful. that our sin merits eternal destruction, eternal punishment, away from the gracious, loving presence of the Lord. This is confirmed by that passage that I read earlier in the service from Matthew 25.
In Matthew 25, verse 46, the Lord Jesus says, and these, meaning these wicked that he speaks of on that Judgment Day scene, these will go away into eternal punishment Ionos, eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. The word for eternal in front of punishment and life, it’s the same word in the Greek. If eternal life is never ending, Likewise will the punishment, eternal punishment be never ending. And then we think of what we consider what is written in Revelation chapter 14 verse 11, Revelation chapter 14 verse 11, where it says, Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand, and so forth. And this angel will come. And I’m sorry, verse 11, I skipped ahead down to verse 14.
Verse 11 says, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name. But in contrast to the doom and the fate of those who reject Christ and refuse to obey the gospel call to repentance and faith, in contrast to that, Paul has comforting words to the Thessalonian believers and to all believers, especially those who face affliction for their faith in Jesus Christ. For he says that this will happen, this vengeance will come, when he, when Jesus comes on that day to be what? To be glorified in his saints, his set-apart ones, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. In other words, including you, because you believed our testimony.
You heard the gospel from our lips, you believed the testimony, and therefore, you too, Thessalonian believers, you too, will be glorified. He will be glorified in you, and you will marvel at him. Oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, think about it. When Jesus returns in glory, we will see our Savior face to face. We will see face to face the one who stretched out his arms upon the hardwood of the cross to redeem us, to embrace us, to forgive us, to justify, adopt, sanctify, and glorify us. And what a wonderful sight that will be as we will marvel at our Lord and His amazing grace and glory and goodness to us. And so for the saints, for those who know Christ as their Lord and Savior, this future at the return of Christ will be a glorious future.
And that is your future, brother, sister in Christ. If you are trusting Him for your salvation, that is the future that awaits you. Well, as we close our time in the Word today, let me leave you with a few points of application here. Beloved, First of all, let those who persecute Christ’s church and those who reject the gospel take warning and repent, lest they face the holy, just, retributive justice of Christ. Let all who do not know Christ flee to Jesus from the wrath to come while the day of grace yet remains. May God in his sovereign mercy and grace give you the grace to turn to Christ and trust in him as your very own Lord and Savior. But let those among God’s people who are afflicted by the wicked take heart. God will relieve, deliver, and vindicate them in the end.
And if you are afflicted or distressed or persecuted for your faith, you need not fret because of evildoers. You need not get frustrated. Commit your soul to a faithful creator. He will one day deliver, relieve, and vindicate you. And since Christ will one day come from the Father’s hand to judge the living and the dead as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed, let us, brothers and sisters, strive by the grace of God to walk worthy of His calling. That is to say, to walk by faith, not by sight. the closing section of this chapter. This is what Paul says is his wish for the Thessalonians. He says, Notice God is the one who makes you worthy. You’re not worthy in yourself. It’s by grace that our God will make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.
Why? Verse 12, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. May God be glorified in you. as we are built up in him. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, our sovereign and eternal God, we thank you that Christ our Savior will one day return again, that he will come from your right hand to judge the living and the dead. And Lord Jesus, we know that you are a perfect, holy, righteous, just judge. We thank you, Heavenly Father, that we have been judged and justified in union with Christ, and we pray that you would give us the grace to bear faithful testimony to Christ, the worthy one. For it is in his name that we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen.
As we respond to The word that we’ve heard, let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, number 480, I Have No Other Comfort, 480.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.