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Grace and Peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ to all the saints!

We are now enjoying summer in Finland. It came amazingly fast, from being a chilly winter/spring weather with some patches of snow still lingering in the shaded areas, to extremely hot. There are always things that do not work when summer comes and you take out all the stuff in the garden and inspect everything, tools, machines, etc. Particularly many things have broken down recently and it has been frustrating to having barely had time to fix one thing and then a new thing is broken. Some things have cost some money to get repaired by professionals, but the Lord has been faithful, and we have not lacked anything in, or after, these trials.

I am still busy translating the Canons of Dort, as I wrote about in my previous report. It is now close to the end, at the last chapter. I have also been translating at least one “day” of Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotionals every day. Other translation projects are also in different phases – one John MacArthur booklet is getting a cover and should soon be ready to hand over to the printers.

Many years ago, I translated and made subtitles to the sermon “Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church” by Paul Washer. A long sermon to translate, or watch, for many, but I thought it was important back then, and still, it is. We intend to publish this sermon as a booklet, just as it has been done in English. So, I have gone through my old translation again, compared it with the English text as it has been transcribed and put in book format, and renewed and improved it. It did take a lot of time and effort to turn it from subtitle format into a more print-and-read-friendly text. And it will still take some time before it can be printed.

In my own preaching work, I finished going through the book of Ecclesiastes, and have now begun with Ephesians. The book of Ecclesiastes, too many, is a book hard to interpret. Many have misinterpreted it as just being full of worldly wisdom, written by an old manic-depressive philosopher and other such things contrary to Scripture. My prayer with this series through Ecclesiastes has been to show that this is not the case.

Actually, it is in agreement with the rest of the Bible, pointing toward the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The concluding section, which I preached from, concludes the whole matter, and shows the main, over-arching theme, not only of Ecclesiastes, but the whole Bible: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

The sad fact is that no man has done their duty to fear God and keep His commandments, and all have incurred the just judgment of God. But from this judgment, there is blessed salvation, only through Christ who took the punishment in sinners’ stead.