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Lord’s people. They are dear to Him; He loves them; He has

even given Himself for them, and He will certainly support

anyone who seeks to bless them. Speak faithfully to them, as

Paul did here in this epistle; he speaks extremely faithfully, yet

this is somewhat like the towel, is it not? We sometimes

connect 1

Corinthians with the water and 2 Corinthians with the towel,

but in a certain sense this benediction is like the towel too. It

would leave the saints with a sense of comfort, and a sense of

feeling the worthwhileness of what they had been brought into.

One would seek to stimulate us all. We say at the end of a

meeting, ‘May the Lord bless the word’, but why should we not

also say, ‘May the Lord bless us’; ‘May the Lord bless you’?

Dear young one, I do not know, and you do not know, what is

going to develop in you, what your potential is, and what the

Lord has put there in His working, His secret working in your

soul. I do not know what is there, but I think I would be

speaking for the body of the brethren if I just simply said, ‘The

Lord bless you’.

In Genesis 17 God spoke to Abraham, He appeared to him, it

says in verse 1, and spoke to him. It is very remarkable that

practically the whole chapter is a conversation, God

conversing with Abraham. There is something very unique

about Abraham and the way he was a confidante of God, the

way God spoke to him and disclosed things to him, brought

him, so to speak, into His acquaintance and confidence. Then

the time came when it says,

“And he left off talking with him”. There is some suggestion

there, dear brethren, of God’s greatness. He terminated the

conversation, as is His right. He left off talking with Abraham;

He had conveyed something to him. Abraham may have

wanted God to say more; he may have wanted something to

be enlarged; but God left off talking with him and that, for the