Living Stone, Holy People

We pray briefly:

Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,
As thou didst break the loaves beside the sea.
Here on the sacred page we seek thee, Lord;
Our spirits long for thee, O living Word.[1]

Amen.

As we return to this, chapter 2, coming up with a sevenfold division for these five chapters is a challenge in itself. And the way in which it’s broken down is arbitrary and could be done differently.

It’s a reminder to us as well that the punctuation that we have in our English translations is on the most part there in order to help us navigate our way through the text. In fact, that’s always why it’s there. But sometimes it can almost point us in the wrong direction, depending on how we’re reading it. So, for example, when I began to look again yesterday at the beginning of chapter 2, which begins, “So,” or “Therefore,”[2] I said to myself, “If I look back at the immediate context in 1:25—‘This is the word, this is the good news, that was preached to you. So…’”[3] (“This is the word, this is the good news, that was preached to you. Therefore…”)—if I didn’t know what was coming next, I would be tempted to think that it would then say, “Therefore, since it was preached to you, now you must go and preach it to others as well.”

And in essence, that actually is the unfolding exhortation. But the way in which we understand—at least I’ve tried to understand—the beginning of chapter 2 is not in light of the twenty-fourth verse of chapter 1 but in light of the twenty-second verse. Because there: “Having purified your souls by obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.”

Now, what is it going to mean to “love one another earnestly from a pure heart”? The Word of God has done its work in the readers to whom Peter is writing, and they are no longer what they once were. They have been “ransomed,”[4] as we’ve been reading in chapter 1. And in many ways, they would have been akin to the folks in Crete to whom [Paul] is writing, and he described them as those who were “passing [their] days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.”[5]

And here, as Peter picks up his theme and his exhortation, it’s clear that these kind of issues were certainly not unique to various geographies of the world. And here, in the scattered regions of modern-day Turkey, the writer has to address the church in that place in the way that it is addressed in other places. The days in which they had lived according to those principles are now in the past, and now they’re living as the new people of God.

He’s about to address their behavior in relationship to the outsiders. That will be tomorrow, all being well—verse 12: “Keep your conduct among the [outsiders],” or “the Gentiles,” or “the pagans…”[6] Your conduct matters when you’re outdoors. But here, you will notice that he actually begins at home. At home.

Sincere brotherly love, Peter says, demands action on the part of the Christian. And that action involves getting rid of stuff, putting away things, and particularly putting away the sins that spoil fellowship with one another, that mar our testimony before the watching world and actually inhibit our ability to listen to, learn from, and benefit from the Bible itself.

It’s a little painful, I think, to immediately be confronted by these words, “malice,” “deceit”—actually, “all malice … all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.” Some of you may remember the late Jerry Bridges, the Navigators man from Colorado Springs—wrote a number of very, very helpful books. And in 2007, he wrote a book called Respectable Sins—Respectable Sins—with the tagline “Confronting the Sins We Tolerate.” And so, as Peter addresses them and through the Word addresses us, we have to face up to this.

The exhortation of the Bible in living in the family of God is very, very clear: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”[7] It’s very, very possible to come to an event like this and have our focus just magnified around the world, turn our gaze to here and there and learn and benefit, and then go back into our own church families and fall foul of the very things that Peter is addressing here. Our church families are supposed to be places of kindness—genuine kindness. There’s supposed to be not a steely, refrigerated dimension to the way in which we engage with one another but a tenderheartedness that is not sentimentalism—that there is a forgiveness with the wrongs that we perpetrate and experience, a forgiveness that is exercised because we are keenly aware of the forgiveness that has been extended to us.

As homes have a flavor or a tone to them… The Dutch have a word for it. It’s gezellig, which is almost an unpronounceable word, but it’s a fairly untranslatable word. It has to do with aesthetics. It has to do with tone. It has to do with lighting. It has to do with ambiance. It’s a strange word. And you know it when you see it, so that people will say, “I like this place. It is so gezellig.”

That’s supposed to be the experience when people walk into our churches, because these elements are increasingly being eradicated. And the tone that is sounded in a church—and this is hard to face up to, but it is important to acknowledge—the tone so often is the tone that comes from the pulpit—from the pulpit—so that the pastor or the shepherd of the flock or the leaders of the flock set the tone. And when that tone goes wrong, then it is very, very obvious.

There was a man called Mr. Caird who was the churchwarden at St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh. The minister while he was the churchwarden was a man called the Reverend Charles [Warr]. Mr. Caird, the churchwarden, wrote to his minister as follows: “I know that we’re not everything we ought to be, and no doubt we need a lot of scolding. But we’d all be a great deal better than we are if only you would try sometimes, instead of lecturing us, to show us that you love Jesus and that you love us.”

Wow! I’m glad that I was able to find that letter from so long ago. I fear that some may be sending similar letters to me. And God uses things to humble us. To humble us. That’s why every pastor needs a wife, if for no other reason than that. That’s why we’re given children: for our sanctification.

I’m trying to train myself to stop commenting on other people’s driving while I’m driving. But it’s a hard one for me to get rid of. And it’s—I guess it’s a pattern. I hate to testify to it. But I remember driving through our town years ago, when my children were small. I just had one in the back seat, our oldest, who’s now forty-six. He probably would have been about seven or eight at the time. And I was navigating my way through, and I had a comment to pass about the fellow in front, and, I mean, “Are you planning on having a birthday before the traffic light changes or what? I mean, you’re allowed to turn right. Why are you sitting there? What kind of person is this? Goodness gracious!” And as I had ended that little speech, there was just a voice from the back seat that said, “And that’s another kind word from your pastor.” That’s the truth.

So, progress in living as the people of God comes for us, often, slowly. And we do need one another, and we need these exhortations. But it involves not only putting away but also, as he immediately goes on to say, putting in. Putting in.

And I was reading Luther last night, and at one point he says to those to whom he’s writing, “Make sure that your points are short and clear”—as I looked at my notes, and I thought, “Well, they’re not short, and they’re not particularly clear.”

And so, here are my three points for this morning: fed up, built up, show up. All right?

Fed Up

Fed up, not as in “Are you fed up with these talks?” but—which is another subject altogether—but “Are you fed up, are you feeding, on the Scriptures? Are you feeding on the Word of God? Are you, like a newborn baby, excellently exposed to the longing of having that which is beneficial to your progress?”

We all know—and the lady this morning is hopefully not going to produce that baby, as she said. But when she does, it’ll be all over to her immediately, depending on how the feeding plan goes. And every young, novice father knows the dreadful experience of being left on your own while your wife went shopping; she was on a schedule, she said she would be back, and she never came back. And you were entirely incapable of providing the resources that were necessary in order to satisfy the demand. I can still feel it in the back of my neck, really and truly. The intense, clear, natural, physical longing is evidence of health. It is evidence of health.

Indeed, when there is an absence of the ability to feed, when there is an absence of desire, it is, more often than not—the pediatricians tell us at least—that it is an indication of an underlying issue or an underlying problem. We wouldn’t want to overdramatize it, but sometimes, when the child is there, they seem largely disinterested in feeding, and someone will say, “Oh, I think she’s just sleepy,” or someone will say, “Well, I think perhaps she’s lazy”—or perhaps something worse.

An absence of a desire for the Word of God is unhealthy and unnatural in the life of a Christian that is making progress. When James similarly addresses these things, he tells us in his first chapter there that there are two things that will dramatically inhibit the benefit of being the recipients of the truth of the Word of God—will somehow or another make it very, very difficult for us to grow up into the salvation that is provided for us as the Word of God comes to bear upon us. And the two things are these—you can find them: number one, an angry heart; and, number two, a dirty mind. An angry heart and a dirty mind: “Put away anger; it cannot produce the righteousness of God. And put away all filthiness, so that you may receive the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls.”[8] We can simply pass over that, but we can’t avoid it.

The eagerness, says Peter, of a newborn is to be matched by the Christian in the Christian life when it comes to feeding time. Feeding time. Boy, have we been eating here! I mean, this is the best conference I’ve ever been at for food! Every time you turn around, they have another one, and the next one is better than the last one. And part of the challenge is not getting fed up but making sure that you are having a balanced diet.

An absence of a desire for the Word of God is unhealthy and unnatural in the life of a Christian that is making progress.

I’m glad of the background out of which I’ve come, that I was taught early the importance of feeding on the Word of God. Scripture Union at school—first in Glasgow and then in Yorkshire—was usually led by a teacher. We gathered together. We had our own Scripture Union notes. We were told to read them, and so we did as we were told, and we had the questions at the end, as you read the text: “Is there something that we’ve learned in this concerning God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit? Is there a promise to accept? Is there a sin to avoid?”—all of these little things that just set you up as you began the day and gave you the opportunity to rehearse them.

The boys’ Bible class in suburban Glasgow, where, again, similarly, the CSSM chorus book guided you through your life. When you went to the class, as I did for the first time as a nine-year-old boy, you were in the juniors, and the juniors sat on the front row, and the semi-juniors, and it went back from there, until there were huge people back there, ages sixteen and seventeen. And amongst the many songs that we learned there was a song that some of you will know. It goes like this:

I am feeding on the living bread;
I am drinking at the fountainhead,
And he who drinketh, Jesus said,
Will never thirst again.[9]

And then it became antiphonal. And the front was supposed to sing the question, and the back was supposed to sing the answer. So the question goes, “What? Never thirst again?” And the answer comes: “No! Never thirst again!” But I can still remember it, because the nine-year-olds on the front, it goes like this: “What? Never thirst again?” And then it goes, “No! Never thirst again!” “What? Never thirst again?” “No! Never thirst again.”

“And he who drinketh, Jesus said, will never thirst again”—the food that we eat. Personal devotional life matters. The gathering of the people of God: “Assemble the people.” “Assemble the people before me to hear my words”[10]—Deuteronomy 4:10. The vital importance of gathering to hear from God, to have a divine encounter with God through the Word of God by the Spirit of God, so that the Word of God becomes the driving force that shapes the people of God and frames church life.

By “pure spiritual milk,” he says: “Because you’ve tasted the goodness of the Lord, therefore, you will want to know him more and more. By this pure spiritual milk, you may grow up into salvation.” It’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it, growing up into something? This makes me think of a school uniform, actually. Your mother, if she was a Scottish mother—I mean, your jacket looked like you had lost your arms when you went at first. But she said, “No, it’s good that you would have this, because you can grow into it. You can grow into it.” Or when your aunt says, “What is that?” your mother says, “He’ll eventually fill it out.”

And so it is that the journey of the Christian life is fantastic, because salvation is so vast! We think when we come to taste the goodness of the Lord, we’ve got it. Well, we’ve got him, but there’s so much more of him to know. There are depths of grace that we have yet to discover. And so he’s saying to them, “Listen: This Word of God that has been proclaimed to the world is such that it needs to be the lamp to your feet, the light to your path,[11] the map for your journey, the food for your souls.” And so we need to be fed up. Fed up.

My one daughter left her Labrador with us last week. And trying to be a helpful soul, I decided that I would feed it. It was virtually impossible to put the thing—not the dog but the food—on the floor before he got it. And I couldn’t even walk out of the room and turn away but it was gone! It was gone. And I said to myself as I walked away, “I wish I had a hunger for the Bible the way George has a hunger for that stuff. By George, I need to be fed up!” Yeah.

Built Up

Not only fed up—and I use that, I hope… It’s just to register in our minds. And if not, again, I told you: Just come up with your own outline. But it’s not only that we are to be fed up, but it is in order that we might be built up—built up “as you come to him, a living stone.”

And Peter, of course, was so radically transformed by the resurrection, as were his colleagues, that that was immediately on his lips. It was very easy for him to refer to Jesus in this way: as the Living One. On Pentecost, he stands before the crowd that listens to him, and he’s proclaiming the fact that Jesus is alive: “God raised him up”—“raised him up”—“loosing the pangs of death, because it was[n’t] possible for him to be held by it. … This Jesus,” he said, “God raised up, and of that we … are witnesses.”[12]

“As you come to him…” We don’t come to a philosophy. We don’t come to an ideology. We don’t come to a program. We come to a person. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. As a result of the woman that had been transformed by an encounter with Jesus at the well, the people then were coming to Jesus. The closest thing that I’ve observed in history in my own lifetime to any kind of thing that could be remotely regarded as a significant move of the Spirit of God in terms of evangelism would be the hippie movement in the ’60s in Southern California. And when you research that, you discover that they were so consumed with the simplicity and profundity of what had happened to them, that their ability to communicate the gospel was essentially this: saying to their friends, “I have met the Master. Won’t you come and meet him too?”[13]

When we come to Jesus, the “living stone,” who is “rejected by men but [chosen and precious] in the sight of God”—“This is my beloved Son”[14]—“you yourselves like living stones are being built [into] a spiritual house.” So in other words, in our coming to Jesus and by virtue of our union with Christ, who is the living cornerstone, then we are metaphorically living stones being built into a spiritual house.

Now, that terminology was understandable then, and it is now. In the Old Testament, the temple was the dwelling place of God. Peter is pointing out that now God’s chosen sanctuary is his people. And when his people gather in obedience to his command and in harmony with one another, then there is a dimension there that is found nowhere else at all. And when I think about my congregation, and sometimes after the time in the auditorium, and I look out, and I see where they are—and I see people that would never talk to one another in any other context. The head of the cardiothoracic unit in the key heart hospital in America is talking with a guy who’s a fireman. Firemen, they usually don’t hang around with cardiothoracic surgeons. What puts them together? Jesus puts them together! They got put together in this place. They are made stones, built in—and, as a result of that, are entrusted with a priestly role.

Peter here moves very quickly between his pictures, doesn’t he? You’ve got babies on the one hand, and then you’ve got temples and stones, and now you’ve got a priesthood. A priesthood. The priesthood of all believers does not somehow or another set aside the role of the pastor in Ephesians 4.[15] But we are given the privilege of bringing the sacrifice of praise[16] into the house of God.

I enjoyed very much the Communion service as it was led last night, and I listened very carefully to the way in which it was framed and the understanding that, as in the Old Testament, there were propitiatory sacrifices, and then there were dedicatory sacrifices that were offered in response to the sacrifice of propitiation. And that, of course, is the picture of Paul in Romans 12, where he says, “I beseech you, by the mercies of God”—embodied, if you like, in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus—“I beseech you, on the basis of his atoning sacrifice, to offer your lives, holy, acceptable to him as a sacrifice of praise.”[17]

And so Peter quotes the Scripture, and he quotes it in such a way that he’s in no doubt at all—I’m looking now at verses, what, 5 and 6 or so?—He’s in no doubt at all, unlike some of our friends, that Jesus alone is the cornerstone. If there ever was going to be a time when he was going to apply this to himself, this would be perfect. After all, it’s his letter. He’d have said, “You know, some of you will have read Matthew chapter 16, and you know this, and so on.” Well, he’s got it very clear in his mind. Jesus is the cornerstone—Jesus, rejected by the builders, the builders that we might have thought would be most ready to welcome him. Jesus is the one, as Simeon put it, who is appointed for the rising and falling of many in Israel.[18] Jesus is the rock of salvation upon whom we take our stand or over whom we stumble.

I’m so glad that we sang “Rock of Ages,” because the notion of refuge is there in this picture. There is no refuge from him save the refuge that is in him. “Other refuge have I none; hangs my [weary] soul [in] thee.”[19] “You are being built up,” he says. “This is what God is doing with you. He’s fashioning you according to his plan and purpose. And in the variegated nature of all these stones, he is fulfilling his plan.”

Now, of course, these people who are reading this letter will inevitably have felt themselves to be somewhat marginalized—as we go on in reading the letter, that they were suffering. As a result, they may feel small and insignificant. And what an encouragement for them to read this truth—that although they may not look like much, they are part of God’s building! Part of God’s building.

You remember in Middlemarch, in Eliot’s novel, at one point you have this wonderful statement where she says, “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”[20] The vast majority of us will not even be a footnote in history. “All flesh is like grass.”[21] But

We are building day by day,
As the moments pass away,
A temple that this world cannot see;
And every victory won by grace
Is sure to find a place
In that dwelling for eternity.[22]

Show Up

We need to be fed up because we’re being built up. And it’s time for us to show up. You say, “Well, you’re really stretching it now, Begg.” Well, I think I can justify this one, all right?

Peter then takes these descriptions of Old Testament Israel, and he applies them to the church. “You are,” he says, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness [and] into his marvelous light.” “He has fed you, he is building you in order that you might show up and show him up, as it were.”

And the pictures that are there would be understood, especially by the Jewish readers. Isaiah 43: “the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”[23] In Exodus: “You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be … a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”[24]

Now, what he’s saying there is that the choice of God is not because we are favorites. The choice of God is because we are witnesses—witnesses in order that we might show up and proclaim the glory, the excellency, the power, the authority, the saving goodness of the Lord Jesus, who has called us “out of darkness” and “into his marvelous light.”

“Once,” he says, “you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Let us call to the witness stand in this regard one formerly Saul of Tarsus. “‘Once you were not, … but now you are.’ What do you have to say, Paul?”

Formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, … insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. [This is a] trustworthy [saying] and deserv[es] … full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.[25]

And that testimony from the lips of the apostle is a testimony that to one degree or another would be represented in all those to whom Peter writes who are the first readers of this letter. Living scattered, if you like, on the fringes of the Roman Empire, they must surely, as I’ve said a moment ago—they must surely have begun to sense, as they sat under the instruction of this letter—they must have begun to sense that somehow or another, the wind of God was going to fill their sails and enable them. After all, he has provided for them; he has kept them, he has an inheritance waiting for them[26]—all of this wrapped up in his amazing and eternal purposes.

Loved ones, this is what we have to make sure we are not only believing but we are actually proclaiming—that both in our hymnody and in our Bible studies and certainly from our pulpits, we are showing forth the grace of God: We are reading the Word of God, we are being built up into the people of God, and we are showing up in order that the world might understand this.

The choice of God is not because we are favorites. The choice of God is because we are witnesses.

It is something of a problem, isn’t it—which is an understatement—when instead of this kind of proclamation, instead of the gospel of grace ringing out from our pulpits, we discover that pulpits have actually begun to proclaim the wisdom of Christopher Robin in Winnie-the-Pooh? You say, “Well, really?” Yeah, really. Christopher Robin says to Winnie-the-Pooh at one point, “Pooh, you need to know, you are braver than you believe, you are stronger than you seem, and you are smarter than you think.”[27] Oh, I would reach for a spoonful of honey, I think, to go along with that, for sure. What a cozy word! What a cozy word!

And you don’t just get this from Oprah. You don’t just get this from Joel and Your Best Life Now. No! If you listen carefully and painfully, you will discover that the philosophy of A. A. Milne is sneaking in and squeezing out of the lips of men who should know better, who, for some reason, have decided that contextualization means making sure that everybody knows how good, fine, kind they are and making sure they all go away just a lot happier than they were when they came. What a difference from this amazing Word: “You are not that brave, Begg.”

We have an alarm in our place. I hope it never rings in the house. I heard a noise some time ago. I said to my wife, “You know, there’s a noise.”

And she said, “Yeah?”

I said, “Well, aren’t you going to do something?”

I wish I was making this up. I’m not. And I won’t go on with the story, but there was a noise, and there was a policeman in the house because the alarm had gone off or something. I don’t know what it was. But she was there, and I wasn’t.

“You’re stronger than you seem.” Most men are around in the kitchen in order to take the tops of jars. My wife is around in order to take the top off the jar. I’m not as strong. I’m not that strong. And, clearly, you’ve already deduced: I’m not that smart.

“Consider your calling, [brethren].”[28] Why don’t all the really bright ones stand up right now? How about all the people from an honorable background, you stand up? And how about the rest of us recognize this: that in the economy of God, if dependence is the objective—which it is—then weakness is the advantage? If dependence is the objective, then weakness is the advantage.

And all these titles fitted perfectly because the Son of God loved them, gave himself for them, and was dispatching them to the world. Dispatching them to the world.

I’ve been listening with rapt attention to all these things. And actually, I was beginning… I’ve only been here, what, since Friday? And I’m starting to get a little jealous—especially this long-term stuff. I said, you know, “Long-term? I’m only here for, like, seven days.” And then a voice in my head said, “Begg, you are long-term.” I would call forty-two years in Cleveland, long-term. I didn’t go there because I thought it was a great place. It’s not that great a place.

But, again, it goes back, for me, always to my Sunday school days. We had funny little people who used to come and do music for us. They taught us all these different songs. And one goes like this:

Lord, send me.
Here am I; send me.
I’d like to be greatly used of thee,
Across the street or across the sea.
Here am I, O Lord, send me.

I remember singing that as a child in the Sunday school, never once imagining that the answer to that prayer would take me from my home, “the land that begat me,” the place where

These windy spaces
Are surely my own.
And [these] who here toil
In the sweat of their faces
Are flesh of my flesh,
And bone of my bone.[29]

So I get it—a little bit of it.

And we all understand it when we dig out our old movies, and we turn to Chariots of Fire, and we recognize how amazing it is that a hundred years after the 1924 Olympics, in the secular press, at least in the States, there were numerous statements concerning Eric Liddell. And that was because of his faith. That was because of the fact that he knew, when he was chided by his sister at Edinburgh University about showing up late for the Bible class, he wasn’t trying to miss the Bible class. But he was physically training. And she told him, you know, “God made you—made you for himself.” And he says, “Aye, Jenny. I know. He made me for himself. He made me for China. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”[30]

When he left from the railway station in Edinburgh to go to China, back to China where he’d been born, he got on the train, rolled down a window—dropped down the window, ’cause it used to be that leather thing, and you’d jam your fingers in it—but he dropped the window. He dropped the window, and he shouted out to the gathered crowd, which wasn’t a Christian crowd; it included Christians. He gathered them out around, and he shouted out, “Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ!” And then he led them in the singing of

Jesus shall reign wher’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run,
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.[31]

Fed up. Built up. Show up. Bye-bye!

[1] Mary Artemisia Lathbury, “Break Thou the Bread of Life” (1877). Lyrics lightly altered.

[2] 1 Peter 2:1 (NIV).

[3] 1 Peter 1:25–2:1 (paraphrased).

[4] 1 Peter 1:18 (ESV).

[5] Titus 3:3 (ESV).

[6] 1 Peter 2:12 (NIV).

[7] Ephesians 4:32 (ESV).

[8] James 1:19–21 (paraphrased).

[9] “I’m Feeding on the Living Bread.” Lyrics lightly altered.

[10] Deuteronomy 4:10 (NIV).

[11] See Psalm 119:105.

[12] Acts 2:24, 32 (ESV).

[13] Ian Ramsden and Douglas Watt, “I Have Met the Master” (1966).

[14] Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Mark 9:7; 2 Peter 1:17 (ESV).

[15] See Ephesians 4:11–12.

[16] See Hebrews 13:15.

[17] Romans 12:1 (paraphrased).

[18] See Luke 2:34.

[19] Charles Wesley, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (1740).

[20] George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872), finale.

[21] 1 Peter 1:24 (ESV).

[22] Fanny Jane Crosby, “Building Day by Day” (1890). Lyrics lightly altered.

[23] Isaiah 43:21 (ESV).

[24] Exodus 19:5–6 (ESV).

[25] 1 Timothy 1:13–15 (ESV).

[26] See 1 Peter 1:4.

[27] Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin, written by Carter Crocker and Karl Geurs, directed by Karl Geurs (Walt Disney Home Video, 1997). Paraphrased.

[28] 1 Corinthians 1:26 (ESV).

[29] Alexander Gray, “Scotland” (1928).

[30] Chariots of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, written by Colin Welland (Warner Bros., 1981). Paraphrased.

[31] Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” (1719).