Well I want to invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word this morning to 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 and 2, 1 through 3. 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 through 3. I've titled the sermon this morning, Growing Up in Our Salvation. I pull that directly from the text. A couple of churches ago, I pastored First Baptist Church in Brooksville, Florida, just about an hour and 15 minutes or so northwest of here. And there was a lady in the church that pretty much adopted our boys, our three boys. And, you know, she was kind of like the grandma. We'd go over there and they would get all the sweets they wanted, you know, and then play out in the pool out and just enjoyed a lot of time. But one of the things that I noticed that she still had whenever we went to Jeannie's house a year ago, year and a half ago, something like that, is whenever you walk into her garage, that there on the wall, right next to the door to go into the house, there on the wall are still all of the markings that she made when our boys were young, you know, just growing. And each of those marks has a line for how tall they were and their name and their date. And our boys loved that. They loved that. They loved to go over there and see how much I've grown since the last time. Since the last time I was here. And she would mark it. I mean, the whole wall just has tons of markings on it all the way up. And it's just kind of natural, isn't it? We love to grow, except when we finish growing and then we're growing this way. We don't like to grow that way too much, but I mean, growth is good. If you have a child and they're not growing, they're not growing taller and they're not growing in many of the attributes, their relational skills and their mental skills and everything else, if they're not growing, then we're wondering, what's wrong and how do we fix it? Growth is good. In fact, when we see Jesus, when He came as a baby and then grew to the age of 12, we have the text that Luke wrote to us, Dr. Luke wrote to us, and told us about how Jesus grew. And it's in Luke chapter 2, verse 52, and we have this on the screen. And it says, and Jesus progressed, or Jesus increased, that word could also be grow, Jesus grew in wisdom, that means His mind, information, and how to use that information. He grew in stature, that means He grew physically. He grew in favor with God, that means He grew spiritually. And He grew in favor with people, that means He grew relationally. And so even there we have a verse that says, Jesus, when He came as a man, grew, and growth is good. Growth is good. It's to be celebrated. And what we come to this morning as we come to 1 Peter 2, verses 1 through 3, is we see three verses that tell us you gotta keep growing as a Christian. You gotta keep growing. Just as you celebrated growth whenever you were younger, you gotta keep growing. And so let's talk about that this morning as we read our text, and then as we go back and look at it verse by verse. 1 Peter 2, verses 1 through 3. Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the Word, so that you may grow up into your salvation." Some of your translations don't say, into your salvation. We'll talk about that momentarily. Verse 3, you have tasted that the Lord is good. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning again and we thank you, Lord, that you have just spoken to us as we read your word. This is not just what you said, this is what you are saying to us. And Lord, I pray that as I have studied on this text over this past week, as I've dug into this text and looked under rocks and looked at original words and looked at context and looked at everything, Lord, I pray that I would accurately convey to these, your people, what it is that you are saying, that I would unpack it and explain it in a way that each of us would be able to understand. But Lord, I also pray that your Holy Spirit would drive these truths home. so that we would apply it. And if it requires us to change how we think, if it requires us to change how we behave, to repent and to change, Lord, I pray that you would give us the grace by your Holy Spirit to make those adjustments. We want to become more like Jesus. We want to grow up into our salvation. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Alright, so if you have your bullets and notes, you can pull those out if you haven't already done so and be ready to fill in some blanks. And you've got plenty of space where you can write in notes along the way as you would desire to do that. The first thing that I saw as I looked at verse 1, the action point is, I will get rid of sin. I will get rid of sin. This is actually written as an imperative as a command verse 1 therefore rid yourselves Rid yourselves of all malice all deceit hypocrisy envy and slander. Okay, so When you look at God's Word or look at anything when you see the word Therefore you need to look at what it's there for right? I mean, it's not complicated when you look see the word therefore look at what it's there for What the word therefore does it says based upon what has just been said? this is what we need to talk about, or this is how we need to respond. Therefore, because of that, let's talk about this, let's behave in this way. So what's the therefore, therefore? What has he just been talking about? Well, as we went through chapter 1, it's primarily a big treatise on pursue holiness. become like Jesus. In fact, look at chapter 1, verses 15 and 16. And as we talked about that, we realized that the Word of God does not call us to be good. That's not a high enough standard. Good is defined by the culture, right? Good is defined by the culture. Holiness is defined by the Lord. And the only way we know what holiness looks like is to look at Jesus in the word. And the only way we know how to behave in a holy way and to think in a holy way is to get in God's holy word and ask the Holy Spirit to drive these truths home to our heart. And so what we just looked at, what we looked at in chapter one, what Peter wrote about, was pursuing holiness. But then last week, What we see Peter did is he said, okay, let's talk about holiness in your relationships. And you are to love one another. You are to love one another. And he talked about how it is that we are to have, verse 22, chapter 1, verse 22, "...since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love to each other." Right? You care about each other as friends. As a result of that, he says, I want you to grow in your love. From a pure heart, agape love one another constantly. So, that's what he's talked about. He's talked about we need to chase after holiness to become more like Jesus. And one of the ways that looks is how we love other people. That's the context in which we get to chapter 2, verse 1. If we are to pursue holiness in our relationships with those that we like and those that we don't like, there are some things that we must get rid of if we are to love all others rightly. Look at some of the things that, in fact, well one of the things also I want to look at is in your translation, at least in the CSB, it says, rid yourselves, or get rid of, or whatever your translation says. One of the things that ideally pastors do is we've been off to college and seminary so we can kind of look under rocks and look at the original words and things like that that maybe some people are not able to do. so that we can kind of bring out some things and even give more color and understanding to what God's Word has said. I want you to know that the way in which that Word is written in the original language, rid yourselves, it is written in such a way, it's written in what the Greeks called the aorist tense. And what that is, is it is a tense that means get rid of it once and for all, right? It means these things that Peter's about to talk about, don't let this be an ongoing sin in your life, in your heart. You need, I need, to get rid of these things once and for all. That we despise them so much that they will no longer be a part of us as we're relying upon God's Holy Spirit to enable us to do it. These things will not be true of us, right? So rid yourselves of all, let's look quickly at the list, malice. Malice. This is just wicked ill will this is where somebody said something to us somebody did something to us and whenever we're around them we're wanting to we have to bite our tongue because we're wanting to say something and we wouldn't do anything physically to them but if if something happens to them we're going to interpret that God is the one who did that to them and we find some satisfaction that they got hurt right that's malice He said, get rid of that. Get rid of that. Jesus said, love your enemies. Malice. Get rid of malice. Get rid of deceit. Deceit. What deceit is, is it's a word that was used originally to talk about baiting a hook, catching a fish. You know, you don't just throw the hook out there and expect to catch a fish. You have to bait it. You have to hide that hook and put something on it that that fish wants. And when that fish grabs what it wants, it realized that it got something it didn't want. Right? And so that's deceit. That's deceit. Deceit in our relationships is in some way, somehow using, manipulating someone else for our own personal benefit. Right? It's not their good. Their good is not what is in the forefront of our mind, that we're doing, the way we do things, the way we treat people, maybe the way we treat that one person or whatever it is, we are doing things, manipulating them so that they get what they don't want, we get what we want. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. We understand what that is. That's like, you know, talking about somebody, that dirty scoundrel, you know, I can't believe that no good for nothing did that, said that to me, and then the phone rings and we realize it's them. Oh, hello, I was just talking about you. No, of course I wasn't saying anything bad about you. hypocrite, right? That's what he's talking about. Don't do that. Well, then I'll just tell him exactly what I think of him. No, then we go back to malice. Don't do that either, right? We've got to get a clean heart. What Peter is saying is, if we are to love others, we've got to get rid of this stuff. The next one is envy. Envy. You know, at the end of the book of Genesis, Joseph was, we read in Genesis 37 all the way through chapter 50, the end of the book of Genesis, we read the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors and how his dad played favorites with him. Just because his dad played favorites doesn't mean that was the right thing to do. We all know that was a horrible thing to do, to play favorites. But what did that do to his brothers? His brothers envied him. They resented anything he got from his dad. Do we envy? I'm telling you, social media causes so much envy to be escalated. They got to go somewhere, they got to do something, they got to have this, and I didn't get it. And envy wells up. Can't love others well if we're envying or slander. Slander is when we say, I wouldn't dare do anything to them, but I'm just going to talk badly about them and hurt them that way. I'm going to try to get people over to my side. I'm going to talk badly about them and I'm going to get them over. I'm going to, well, I'm not going to call it gossip, but you know, that's what we do. And that's what slander is. It is saying things about someone else to bring harm to that individual. I will never forget. I mean, As I listened to Pastor Adrian Rogers there whenever I was there at Bellevue, many things he said just continually resonate, and I'll never forget one of these things he said. He said that there will be some that say, well, I don't gossip, I just listen to it. And he said, it is a poor excuse. It's a small compliment to you that others use your ears as a garbage can. If we just listen to it and they're dumping their filth in and they're gossiping and putting it in, that does not mean that they value us. That does not mean they value us. It's a small compliment to us that others use our ears as a garbage can. Don't listen to gossip. If we are to love others well, we've got to get rid of that, okay? So let's go to point two. Nature abhors a vacuum, right? Nature abhors a vacuum. If you get rid of one thing or more things, you better fill it up with something else. Because if you don't, this is coming back. And maybe even worse, Jesus even told a parable about that one time. If we get rid of something, we better fill that void up. So if we are to rid ourselves of all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all of those things, if we get rid of those things, what do we fill it up with? Look at second point. I will crave Bible intake. That's what we fill it up. Time in God's Word. Get rid of the things in verse 1. Verse 2, fill it up, like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the Word. Desire the pure milk of the Word. Peter doesn't simply say, read your Bibles. He gives an illustration that we all understand. Lord willing, in December, Kim and I are going to be grandparents for the first time, and we're going to have a little baby girl that's, you know, still in incubation. And in December, we're going to get to hold that little girl in our arms. I know that we don't look old enough to be grandparents, but we're going to be grandparents. December and I'm telling you that that child that little precious girl is not going to know how to talk for a good long while but there's going to be a clear way that we're going to know that she's hungry and want some milk. What's she going to do? Cry. And if we take just a few seconds too long to get milk into her mouth, what's she gonna do? Get louder, right? I mean, it's a simple principle. We understand this. And then what happens whenever we put that bottle there into her mouth and she now begins to enjoy milk? What's she gonna do? She's gonna quiet down. Everything's gonna be good. She got what she was craving. Right? That's the illustration that we get right here. Get rid of the bad stuff that would cause you to not be able to love others well, and what do you fill it up with? Get into the Word, and crave it like a baby craves milk. Crave it like a baby craves milk. Or, like what happened to me yesterday. sense of urgency. Yesterday, Kim and I got to meet up with our oldest son and his wife, who's carrying our granddaughter, and we got to meet with them in Daytona Beach. We did a few things, played putt-putt golf and did a couple of things over there. One of the places that we went to that Kim and I took our boys to a couple of times, years ago, was the lighthouse there just south of Daytona Beach, Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. And that thing is pretty tall if you haven't been there. And they don't have an elevator in it. It's 176 feet to the top, and it's stairs all the way up. And so, you know, we went inside of that lighthouse and we climbed up to the top. And I was sweating a little bit, but it was also hot yesterday. And so I thought, man, I'd love to take a picture from up here. Because I've taken pictures up there before. Well, I had my running shorts on. I didn't have my, because I knew it was going to be hot outside, I had my running shorts on, so I didn't have back pockets. And I knew I needed my card to pay to get in, so I put my card in my pocket, I put my phone in my pocket, and I put a couple of, put my key in my other pocket. Well, when I reached to pull out my phone, guess what else came out? My debit card. And the wind caught it, and I watched it just flip, just keep going. 176 feet all the way to the bottom. I mean that thing had to have made 30 or 40 yards out It was a long way out and I watched where it landed and I said Zach get over here really quick Zach I need you to look down there watch that spot. I know you can't see the car but watch that spot make sure nobody goes back there and if they do tell me what they're wearing and so I'm telling you It didn't take me. I was down those stairs in less than a minute. I'm not exaggerating. That's the fastest I've ever done those stairs. Fastest I've ever done those stairs. Why? Because there was something I was craving really bad. I wanted to get that card in my hand. I went behind the building where it went in between two buildings. I got the card. I went and looked way up there to Zach and Danny who are about this small. I got the card. I was satisfied because I got what I was craving. That's what Peter is saying. That's what God's Holy Spirit is saying. Crave the milk of the word like a baby craves milk or like Matt craved that debit card, right? Do we really crave God's Word that much? I mean, data tells us, the polls tell us, that Bibles collect dust throughout the week, and that the time that is spent is just a matter of a few minutes a day in God's Word. And then it's kind of casual reading, not really deep, intense reading into God's Word. What's the benefit of getting into God's Word? You know, what's the purpose? What's the purpose of craving? Look at point three. I will grow into my salvation when I get rid of the sinful, the things that would cause me not to love others well and replace it with a craving for God's Word that will only be satisfied when I'm spending time in God's Word. And then when I don't have God's Word in front of me, I'm reflecting on it. and God's Holy Spirit is bringing truth to my mind so that I'm able to enjoy God's Word, what's the purpose? What's the benefit? The benefit is not just to know more about God's Word. That's not it. It's not it. Just to know more about it. That does us no good. The Pharisees knew the Scriptures backwards and forwards. And in our Bible study this morning, our Sunday school lesson this morning, we read Matthew 23, Jesus went off on those guys. You scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, you brood of vipers. They knew God's Word, but they weren't changed by it. It's not just getting into God's Word, it's getting God's Word into us, right? So we can grow. Let's look at point three, I will grow into my salvation. Verse two again, like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the Word, crave your time in God's Word so much that your heart, your mind are not satisfied until you are reading God's Word and meditating and reflecting on it. Like the psalmist, oh how I love your law, it's my meditation day and night. But like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the Word so that by it you may grow up into your salvation. Now, into your salvation, again, does not appear in some of your translations. It does appear in the most ancient Greek manuscripts. But even if it wasn't in there, desire the milk of God's Word so that you could grow up. Well, grow up into what? Grow up into what? grow up into Christ-likeness, grow up into the fact that we have been saved, but just trusting in Jesus. That's not the whole thing. That's the beginning of it. It's a lifetime of trusting Him. It's a lifetime of knowing Him. It's a lifetime of enjoying Him. It's a lifetime of serving and obeying Him. Grow into our salvation that we received when we got saved, right? Get into God's Word, get God's Word into you so that you can grow in your walk with the Lord. Now, I know that there are those within Christendom that believe that our job, and basically our only job, is to see people get saved. Now, be very abundantly clear. That is the first task, and the big task. Because if people don't come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, they're going to spend eternity in hell experiencing God's wrath. God loved us so much that he sent his son to die on the cross so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. That is so non-negotiable, that is so important, and we must be about the business of doing that. But when we look at Matthew chapter 28, go into all the world and make disciples. It's not just get people saved, it's help save people grow. One of the things that I noticed as a kid, as I was growing up in church, is as the offering was said and as the deacons or whoever was in our churches, it was deacons that would pray over the offering, they would say the same prayers over and over and over. And one of the things that became very clear to me was that they always prayed, Lord, save some lost soul today. But they never prayed for saved people to get right. And I knew that not all those rascals were right because they were causing my dad trouble. My dad was the pastor. I knew they were causing my dad trouble. They didn't pray for saved people to get right. They only prayed for lost people to get saved. We are to be about the business of both. Of both. It's not just lost people need to be saved and give their lives to Jesus, but it's also now, saved people, you need to grow. so that you can grow up into your salvation. Let me give you two things that the New Testament makes clear that Christians are to grow into. The message of the New Testament for Christians is to grow. The first thing is I must grow in my knowledge of God's word. You know that that's what I'm all about because I grew up in churches and then I went to college in churches and seminary and some of those I was blessed to see The word that was preached, that was meaty, that gave those who were saved something to chew on, something to grow from. Adrian Rogers there at Bellevue Baptist Church was a master at that, a master at that. But I also saw where there were those that preached from the pulpit, things that were shallow, and it was always and pretty much only the gospel message. And even those that were saved were shallow, shallow, because they felt like, hey, I'm saved, I've said the prayer, I'm good. You know, that's it. That's really all there is. No, when we are to grow, it comes as a result of us digging into God's Word. I talked to this past Sunday night. At Sunday nights, we really kind of dig in and talk about some thorny issues, and tonight we're going to talk about a couple really thorny ones. As we're reading through the Bible in a year, But one of the things I talked about last Sunday night is I said, how many of y'all have ever studied the book of Hebrews? And a few hands went up, and I said, what would you say? The book of Hebrews, is it easy to understand or is it hard to understand? Clearly, everybody said it's hard. It's not easy, it's hard. But the thing is, is in this deep, theologically rich book where essentially the writer of Hebrews is saying Jesus is better than anything the Old Testament had to offer, As we are reading through that, a deep, meaty book, the book of Hebrews, even he said, I am so disappointed in you readers because I can't go deeper. Listen to what he said in Hebrews chapter 5 verses 11 through 14. He said, We have a great deal to say about this. I'd love to talk some more about it. And it's difficult to explain. Why? Because I can't think of the way to explain it? No, he's saying because y'all couldn't understand it if I did. Since you have become too lazy to understand, Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need somebody to teach you the basic principles of God's revelation. You need milk, not solid food. And maybe a red flag goes up there and says, ah, Peter said that we are to crave milk. No, he didn't. He said, like newborn babes crave the milk of the word. He's not saying stay on milk. He's saying develop the appetite of a baby. But I'm telling you, if a baby is to be healthy, it's not going to crave milk and only milk its whole life. It's going to grow up, right? And so he said, you need milk, not food. He said, y'all are still spiritually babies. Verse 13. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness because he's an infant. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil. And so even in the book of Hebrews, a very meaty book, he was chiding those that read his writing and said, I wish I could explain, but I can't do it because y'all aren't spiritually mature enough. I'm telling you, one of the clear things, we cannot grow in our walk with the Lord if we're not in the book. and not just reading it, I mean reading it and studying it and asking God's Holy Spirit who authored the book through the pen of about 40 men, asking God's Holy Spirit to enable us to understand, looking at commentaries and study resources, men and women who have read this and studied it to help us to understand that. If we are to grow, we have got to be in God's Word. There are no shortcuts. No shortcuts. I must grow in my knowledge of God's Word. And the second thing, I must grow in my application of God's Word. It's not just about knowledge. It has never been about knowledge. We don't grow just in our knowledge of God's Word. We grow in our application of God's Word. Right? I mean, it's no good to just read a book on how to fly a plane. If you don't apply it, if you don't apply those principles, and you hop in a plane, and you say, okay, I'm gonna fly this thing, but you're not applying what it is that you learned, you're no better off for having learned that information, right? It's not just the knowledge, it's the application. The application, look at 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. The application is 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All scripture means all of the Bible. is inspired. That word is God-breathed. It's God's very breath. All Scripture is God's breath. It's breathed out by God. It's God's literal words, and it's profitable. That means it's good. What's it good for? For teaching. If you have a King James, it says, for doctrine. That's a beautiful translation. Beautiful doctrine is good because it tells us what to believe. I don't know what it is that I'm to believe. I mean, the world's just throwing all sorts of philosophies and all sorts of things around out there right now. What is it that I'm to believe? The Word of God is God-breathed, and it's profitable to tell me what to believe. How are we going to know what to believe, especially when we're being bombarded by so much other stuff if we're not in God's Word? God's Word tells us what to believe. Then the next thing is it's good for rebuking. That means God's Word is used to convict us whenever we mess up. One of the things, I think it was, I don't have this in my notes, I guess you could check me on this, but I think it was James Madison at the beginning of the formal founding of this country that said something to the effect that our Constitution and our experiment in a representative republic, that our experiment will only work for moral people. That if people are morally able to keep themselves in check and not do bad things, then we can have all of the freedoms that this country has to offer. But the freedoms will rapidly begin to deteriorate if more and more we have a country where we are not doing self-checks. The Word of God is given to rebuke us, to tell us, stop it. How does it do it? Read Scripture and rely upon God's Holy Spirit. Whenever you do something wrong, to knock on your conscience, God is good because it tells us what not to do. It tells us when we messed up. Number three, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have thought that. Lord, that was a wrong attitude, a wrong motive. One of the verses that the Holy Spirit brings to my mind is 1 John 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The Word of God tells us how to get right again. And then the fourth thing it's good for is for training in righteousness. It tells us how to behave. to behave. So what's the result? Verse 17, so that the man of God or the woman of God, this was given because Paul was writing to a man, writing to Timothy, but this is so that the Word of God, if we really get into this, the application is, so that the people of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So that we are the kind of people that God can call to things or Or, in our place of business, we can be the kind of people that are those that our employers can trust, those that our fellow peers respect. Even if they don't agree with us, they know that we're a person of integrity. They know that we take our walk with the Lord seriously. It's not just knowing God's Word, it's applying God's Word. The other areas we're to grow in is our love for the Lord, our relationship with the Lord, our relationship with others. Well, how do we know how that works? How do I know how to grow in my relationship with the Lord? I go back to number one, get into your knowledge of God's Word. God's Word tells us how to grow in our relationship with the Lord. We're to grow. Number four, and we're done. What are we motivated by? What's the motivation for growing? We've got to have a powerful why if we are to make good on what we're doing. What is the why? What Peter does is he quotes a passage. The third point, I am motivated by a desire for more of the Lord. I'm motivated by a desire for more of the Lord. Peter quotes Psalm chapter 34 verse 8 when that says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. What Peter is doing is he's playing off of this analogy that he gave just a little earlier. He said, I want you to crave the milk of the word like a baby that desires milk. And he's talking about taste. That baby's not going to be satisfied until it has that milk there in its mouth, and then it's satisfied. He said, I want you to crave God's word that much. And he says that you will be able to crave God's word that much, verse 3, if you have tasted that the Lord is good. Do you know what he's saying? Do you know when we first tasted that the Lord was good? When we first came into a realization that God really is love, and he loves me. God really is gracious, and he's gracious to me. That God really is forgiving, and he has forgiven. When do we come into that first taste that the Lord is good? When? When we get saved, exactly. Peter is saying, if you have genuinely tasted that the Lord is good, if you are genuinely a follower of the Lord, and you love your relationship with the Lord, Let that be a motivation to hunger after what He's wanting to tell you in His Word. Not just to get into it, to say what it says, but to do it. To do it. As I mentioned a little earlier, Kim and I are going to have, Lord willing, a beautiful granddaughter here in just a few months, and we're going to be able to hold her in our arms. But I'm telling you that If that baby came out and we were holding her and we noticed she didn't have an appetite, our hearts would immediately begin to break. Something's desperately wrong. Dr. Fixer, do something. She's not hungry. Dr. Fixer, help her. Lord Jesus, please help her. She needs to be hungry because if she's not hungry, she's not going to eat. And if she's not going to eat, she's going to die. If she doesn't hunger, we would say something is desperately wrong. Christian, I'm going to tell you that if you are not hungering after God's Word, something is desperately wrong. Something is desperately wrong. We cannot grow in our walk with the Lord if we're not spending time in His Word, asking His Holy Spirit to drive the truths home to our heart so that we can believe it, so that we can do it, so that we can do it. I do know that the polls are saying that it looks as if Christianity here in America is shrinking. I don't believe that is because people are less hungry. I don't believe that it's because the culture around us is not hungry. I think what's going on is the culture around us has watched Christianity for a while and assumed that that's not what satisfies. And I think one of the reasons is, is because we claim to believe one thing, and yet we don't live it. We claim to follow a Jesus that loves all the little children of the world, red, yellow, black, and white. They're all precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world, and yet Christians, or at least lost people know Christians, that don't love people, look down their nose at people. We need to know God's Word. But friends, I'm telling you, we need to grow up in our salvation and put God's Word into practice and ask God's Holy Spirit to enable us to believe it and to live it out. Because I do believe that the world out there is hungry. They're just looking for something that's real. They're looking for something that's real. Is your relationship with the Lord real? Is it attractive? Is it something that draws people to the God that you serve? That's what God intends. That's what God intends. There may be somebody here in this room right now who does not know the Lord Jesus relationally. You know about him, but you don't know him relationally because there's never been a time in your life where you have asked him, Lord Jesus, please forgive me and save me. I'm giving myself to you right now. I know that I've broken your laws. Please forgive me and save me. I want to belong to you right now. I'm giving myself to you. Friend, I'm telling you that if you do not know Jesus as your Savior, if in the sincerity of your heart, if you acknowledge your guilt before God and then run to the cross and ask His forgiveness and give yourself to Him, you're trusting in Jesus to save you, then you will have crossed the start line, and then you can enjoy the process of growing into your salvation, of enjoying living the life in a broken world the way that God has intended for us to live in this world. If you've never been saved, why not, as I bow my head right now and lead us in prayer, why not ask the Lord Jesus to forgive you and save you? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning and we thank you so much for your goodness and for your grace. And thank you, Lord, that your Word tells us that you are there for the one who will call out to you in sincere humility, asking to forgive them and save them and That that is a prayer that you long to hear, an attitude of the heart, a parser of the heart, where they are trusting not in themselves anymore to make them right in God's eyes, but they're trusting in you, Jesus, and what you did for them there on the cross. Lord, I pray right now that there is someone in this room who's asking you to save them. And by faith, they would receive that gift of forgiveness and righteousness and eternal life and all of the other things that are a part of that package that they would receive by faith what you are offering to them right now. And Father, I pray for those of us here in this room that know that we're saved, but also realize that there is always more room to grow. Growth in understanding your word, growth in applying it, growth in our relationship with you, growth in our love for others, growth in so many areas. Lord, I pray that we would not go away from here just whimsically throwing your word aside and moving on to the next thing. Lord, I pray that we would leave here thinking how it is that we can put into practice what you are saying to us in your word. Father, I pray right now as we go into this time of response, whether it means that someone comes forward and just kneels at the steps or stands at the steps just as a way of privately and yet publicly spending time in prayer to you. I pray that you would give them the courage to do that. If, Lord, there are those who just feel the need to just let others around them sing, but they're gonna bow their heads and they're gonna pray and they're gonna talk to you and do business with you, then give them the ability to do that and to receive from you what it is that they are needing and craving. Father, I pray for whoever may need to step forward and talk to me about some decision you're leading them to make, or maybe you have already led them to make, and they just want to inform me. Right now, Lord, I pray that each of us would prayerfully ask how it is that we should respond to your Word, and then respond accordingly. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.