All right. Thank you. All right. Well, good morning again, church. Good to see you. If you have your Bible with you, love for you to open it now to Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 to 30. Matthew 5, 27 to 30. I mentioned last Sunday in the first of these sections that are kind of a breakout on the major theme that's been introduced, which is Jesus teaching the law, that this is Jesus acting as the final and authoritative interpreter of Holy Scripture. And why not, of course? Jesus is the Word of God in the flesh. He's the spirit of prophecy. He's the author of the book. And so here we find him taking us directly into the heart and into the center of what it is all about. And so for these six consecutive sections, this is the second of those six, but we'll see Jesus saying some version of this. You have heard that it was said to those of old, but I say to you. So to be clear, Jesus is not contradicting what is taught in the Old Testament. Rather, what he's doing is he's overturning or clarifying wrong interpretations and wrong applications of these texts within the covenant community. That's important for us to remember. The Bible is authoritative. The Word of God is authoritative. Not necessarily everything that we say about the Word of God, though. Not necessarily everything we believe about the Word of God. Our interpretations, our traditions, our applications may not be. So this is Jesus taking us back to the text. correcting some very superficial understandings of God's Word. We saw him doing that last week with respect to a very superficial understanding of the Sixth Commandment, and we see him doing that again this week in the section we're looking at with a very superficial understanding of the Seventh Commandment having to do with adultery. Hear now the Word of the Lord. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, as we're going to see in a minute, there is a fairly obvious principle here that we need to take hold of. And then thankfully, again, a divinely given application. We're thankful for that. We'll get to those in just a minute. But before we do, I think it's very important for us to see as well an underlying assumption that lies behind this entire teaching. Jesus is clearly operating under the assumption that adultery is a sin of maximum significance. He doesn't say, listen, make sure you don't commit adultery because it'll really complicate your marriage. He doesn't say, make sure you don't commit adultery, because it will seriously mess up your kids. Now of course it will, that is true, but Jesus focuses here on a matter of even higher significance. He says to his disciples, be careful about adultery, because adultery will drag you, body and soul, into hell. It says that twice in these four verses. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Listen, my friends, one of the things that we need to understand is that not all sins are treated as equal in the Bible. I know we like to say that, but saying it doesn't make it so. In the Bible, it's very clear that there are differences one sin to another. If you steal a sheep, for example, in the Bible, then you're required to pay back four times the value of the sheep according to Exodus 22 verse 1. So theft is punishable by paying a fine, but committing adultery is a whole other matter. According to Leviticus 20 verse 10, if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Adultery is treated in the Bible as a capital crime. It's treated exactly the same way as murder is treated. And that makes sense, of course, because according to the Bible, a marriage is a living thing. In Genesis 2.24 it says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The Hebrew word used there means one body or one person. So a marriage creates a new person. That's why one of the You know how you go to some weddings and they ask you to leave a bit of marriage advice in the register or whatever? One of the cheesy things I always say, it's cheesy, but it's true, is that in a marriage, right, there's me, and there's you, and there's us, and us has to come first. What's the idea there? There's really three living entities in a marriage, right? There's the me entity, there's the you entity, and there's the us entity. And adultery is a deadly assault on us. And it is treated that way in both the Old and the New Testaments. And that's why what Jesus says here in this second of these six sections sounds almost identical to what he said in the first one. In the first one, he was talking about murder. In the second one, he's talking about adultery. And what he says is almost identical in both cases. Because adultery in the Bible is treated as basically a subset of murder. Adultery is a big deal, brothers and sisters. And as with murder, Jesus is here, it is ultimately a matter of the heart. That's the principle I want you to see. Verse 27 again, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So again, the problem here is that the scribes and the Pharisees had been teaching a very superficial understanding of this commandment. They were saying, you know, if you have sex with your neighbor, then you will have placed yourself in mortal peril. All they were looking at was the fruit at the absolute end of the branch. But again, here comes Jesus, and he says, God is not just gonna look at the fruit at the end of the branch on Judgment Day, he's gonna look at the source waters of your heart. The whole system matters to him. Brothers and sisters, we need to hear this again in the modern day evangelical church. Because it looks to me, for all the world, like we're reading the Bible in exactly the same way as the scribes and the Pharisees, at least on this issue. We've come to the place where we think that all that matters is the fruit at the far end of the branches. As long as I'm not committing adultery, as long as I'm not sleeping with my neighbor or my coworker, I'm good to go. That's what we think, and then we give ourselves permission to watch things on our phones, to engage in emotional affairs, to send pictures of ourselves, to solicit pictures from other people, and we say it doesn't matter, because we're not committing actual adultery. It is amazing how widespread that mindset is now in the evangelical church. which means we have the exact same defective interpretation of the Bible as the scribes and Pharisees. We're taking the lowest common denominator approach, and here is Jesus calling us out on that. He is saying clearly and authoritatively that adultery is a matter of the heart, just like murder is a matter of the heart. So if there is contempt living unchecked in your heart, like we talked about last week, That will be submitted as evidence of your unconversion on judgment day. And likewise, if there is lust growing unchecked in your heart, that too will be submitted as evidence of your unconversion on judgment day. Lust is a cancer of the heart. Lust, like contempt, is the opposite of love. Love is about cherishing another person. It's about nourishing another person. In marriage, the model that is set before husbands is that they're to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Well, that means you gotta love her sacrificially. You gotta love her as a servant. It's a very, very high bar, and of course, it's the exact opposite of lust. Lust is about taking. Lust is about stealing. Lust is about consuming. So that cancer, is growing in your heart, then it 100% calls into question the reality of your conversion. Listen, brothers and sisters, again, one of the things we need to understand is that God is not just going to take your word for it on Judgment Day. I know we think that. Here in North America we put an awful lot of stock in the words that come out of our mouths. We treat the things that we say about ourselves and the things that we believe about ourselves as if they are authoritative and even binding on Almighty God, despite that there is absolutely no evidence to support that in the pages of Scripture. Here's what I see in the Bible. Jesus in Matthew 12, for example, says, I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. So it sounds like on Judgment Day, you come to the front and you enter a plea. You say, I'm a Christian. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And God says, very well then, let's take a look. And it sounds like some kind of tape recorder is brought forward. And it starts playing a recording of every word that has come out of your mouth since the day you professed Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. And God listens to that. And he's looking for evidence of the Holy Spirit's influence in your life. Did your foul language slowly but surely disappear under the internal operations of the Holy Spirit? Yes or no? Did your accusatory rhetoric, your slander and insults towards others, did those things slowly but surely disappear under the operation of the Holy Spirit in your life? Yes or no? That seems to be what Jesus is saying in Matthew 12, 36 to 37 about our experience on Judgment Day. And if you're looking for advice on what to expect on Judgment Day, who other than Jesus should you be listening to? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God's just gonna take your word for it on judgment day. Sounds to me like he's gonna look for evidence to see if the Holy Spirit of Jesus has truly taken up residence in your heart. Because if the Spirit of Jesus is in your heart, then things like contempt and lust should be on their way out of your heart. Does that make sense? Because the Holy Spirit is like a divine antiviral that slowly but surely cures the human heart of all disease, all corruption, and all contamination. So if your heart is overrun with the cancer of contempt or the cancer of lust, that will be received as evidence of your unconversion on Judgment Day. I don't know another way to make sense of what Jesus is saying in these passages. unless I'm missing something. This is Jesus saying here, just as he did with murder, that the bar is much higher than we think and the inquiry of God is much deeper than we think. These commandments are about more than not killing your neighbors or not sleeping with your coworkers. The issue here is the health and purity of our hearts. Blessed are the pure in heart, Jesus said. for they shall see God. So if you have anger in your heart, if you have lust in your heart, then you're gonna have to give an account for those things on judgment day. Are you prepared for that? You need to be. Jesus says you need to do everything, absolutely everything you can to prepare yourself for that encounter. That leads us to the matter of application. Once again, super helpful. Super helpful for Jesus to provide the application here. I think he does that knowing that guys like me are one day gonna have to stand up here and be like, I don't know, Jesus, this sounds like pretty high bar here. Would anyone dare to say what Jesus says here if they did not have the ability to just repeat what Jesus says here? Listen to what he says, verse 29. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. So the application is pretty clear. Jesus is saying we need to wage all out war on the lusts of our hearts. That's the application. Need to wage all out war on ourselves. Isn't that interesting? Now can I tell you something, brothers and sisters? One of the things that I think, it's a deception as old as time. It is certainly, certainly on prevalent display within the church right now, but it's been there forever. One of the things the devil wants to do is he wants to get us directing our zeal in inappropriate directions. If you have a sense in your heart, you know, when the Holy Spirit first comes into your heart, one of the things that I think begins to grow in your heart is a sense of holy discontent, right? Blessed are those who mourn, Jesus said. You just look at the world and it doesn't feel like the world is the way it should be. And then usually right after that, you start looking at the church and you feel like, man, the church is not the way it should be. And you read stories and you're like, remember there was a time when the Holy Spirit would fall on the congregation and people would stay for hours confessing their sins and then crime would disappear in the city? Do you remember that? We hear stories about that. I just think, I feel so dull now and lifeless. And the world seems so corrupt and so far gone. That holy discontent is a good thing. It's actually a fruit of the Spirit. It's one of the things Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. That's a good thing. But you know what the devil does right in that moment when you begin to feel that holy discontent? He begins to say, yeah, yeah. You know what you need to do? Wage war on the world. Or he says, you know what else would work? Wage war on the church. And so we have a whole bunch of people who take the right first step. But then every step after that is just a step into distraction and disaster. They think their purpose in life now, because they're zealous for the Holy Spirit, because they're zealous for righteousness, because they want to see revival, because they want to see the world a better place, they think their mission in life is to wage war on the government, or to wage war on the church. What a giant waste of time. You know what Jesus says? If you want to make the world a better place, if you want to make the church a better place, wage war on yourself. That's it. That's the only thing you see in the New Testament. If you have a verse where it shows me that we should be making war on the government, please come and show it to me after church. If you have a verse that shows me we should be making war on each other, Bring that to me after church. Here's what I see, Colossians 3, 5-6. Put to death therefore whatever is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming. That's the battle right there. Wage war on you. Wage war on the gross things grown in your heart. Because if you can wage war on those things, think how much more room there will be in your heart for the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit. Think what a difference that would make to the church if everyone who came in through these doors came in with the fullness of the Holy Spirit's ministry in their life. Think what a ministry that would make in the world if we left from here in the full power and glorious anointing of the Holy Spirit. You want to change the world? Want to change the church? Wage war on yourself. That's the application. So how do we do that? How do we gouge out our eyes, cut off our hands, metaphorically speaking? And just to be clear, wow, it is metaphorically speaking. The church father, Origen, actually misunderstood this passage, took it literally, and surgically emasculated himself. so that he would not have to battle with lusts. That is a ridiculous misunderstanding of this passage, and thankfully it was outlawed in 325 at the Council of Nicaea. So please be careful what application you take out of this message. This is Jesus using forceful rhetorical language. He's saying wage all-out war on yourself. So again, how do we do that? in the time we have left, let me just draw your attention to some essential counsel, basic stuff, essential stuff that flows right out of this text and that has stood the test of time over centuries within the covenant community. First thing, most important thing, we've already touched on it, you need to deal with yourself. Deal with yourself. Always been a temptation within the church to put the focus on external issues, the environment, other people. But that's not what Jesus says here. He doesn't tell people to wage war on their environment. He doesn't tell his disciples to wage war on other people. He tells his disciples to wage war on themselves. Gouge out your eye. Cut off your right hand. Do what you need to do to bring yourself under management. Martin Luther picks up on that in his commentary. Thanks, brother. He says this, therefore Christ is a true master who teaches you not to run away from people. You don't need to go hide in the woods. That was a real issue in Martin Luther's day, wasn't it? Martin Luther's been half his life hiding in the woods, hiding in a monastery. Teaches you not to run away from people, nor to change your place, but to lay hands on yourself. cast from you the eye or the hand that offends you. That is, to remove the occasion of sinning, which is the evil lust and desire that sticks in yourself and comes out of your heart. That's the issue. And again, like I said, this has been a problem for the church since day one. The way that you attacked lust in the Middle Ages was to lock up men in a stone cloister. What do you find in your cell late at night when it's just you? You find the problems inside your heart, don't you? We always think it's the problem outside. Interestingly, this issue has come back into evangelicalism. Tons of evangelicals, when you listen to them talk about the battle for purity right now, they're making this exact same mistake. They're saying, well, you know, the culture is corrupt, and women dress so seductively today. So they want to hide out in the woods and make everyone wear ankle-length skirts. But is that going to solve the problem? No. Because according to Jesus, the problem is not the environment. The problem is not other people. The problem is you. The problem is the corruption of your own heart. Now listen, is the culture corrupt? Sure. Is it loving and helpful to dress modestly? Sure. But at the end of the day, Jesus says, this battle will be won or lost in your heart. This is about you. So you need to do whatever you need to do to take yourself under management. By the grace that God supplies, you need to apply the truth of the gospel to every spot of cancer in your heart. You need to throw open the doors and the windows, every nook and cranny of your heart. And if you do that, and the Spirit comes in, then you'll be healed. Because, of course, the Gospel's not deficient. The Spirit of God is not powerless. The issue is access and application. That's where the rubber meets the road. So if you don't open up, and if you don't practically apply, then you don't really believe. And that will be proven, will be demonstrated definitively on Judgment Day through an analysis of the state of your heart. So deal with yourself, deal with your heart. Then secondly, as suggested by the imagery that Jesus uses here, we need to guard our approaches. In the Bible, they often talk about the eye as the window of the soul, the window to the heart. So if you're trying to wage war on the contaminations of your heart, then obviously you need to pay attention to what your eye is looking at. All right, this is not rocket science. This is just wisdom. This is just Jesus saying, be aware of your vulnerabilities. Understand how the devil is gonna come at you. Guard your approaches. That's exactly what Solomon said to his son in the Book of Proverbs. Book of Proverbs, by the way, if you have young people in your house sitting around your table for dinner, We've gone through the Book of Proverbs twice from start to finish in our home over the course of family devotions. Tremendous stuff. Book of Proverbs is the collected counsel of a king to the son that we assume was going to replace him. And so he gives him wisdom about how to be a man, how to be a husband, how to be a father, how to be a king. And a lot of that wisdom has to do with not committing adultery, has to do with guarding the approaches to your heart. So Proverbs chapter five, for example, is all about how not to commit adultery. The first thing he says is, you've got to give the house of the adulterous a wide berth. He says, keep your way far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. So, young men, just don't think for a second that you can kind of walk by, take a peek in through the curtains, and that you'll be okay. Solomon says, understand, if you peek in through the curtains, pretty soon you'll be walking through the front door, and down the steps into the pit of death and hell. He says that exactly, verse five. He says, her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path to Sheol. So run away. that the battle is gonna be fought, not on the steps down to the basement, not on the front doorstep of her house. The battle is gonna be fought in the laneway across the street when you make the decision to go a different way, when you make a decision not to look. Don't look, don't peek, don't go, that's what he says. Paul says the same thing to Timothy. He says, flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness. Don't look at the bad stuff, look at the good stuff. Brothers and sisters, you can't binge watch Game of Thrones and Temptation Island and expect to root out the cancer of lust from your heart. You have to be smarter than that. You have to guard your approaches. John Stott is fabulous on this, and he needed to be. I don't know if you know this, but John Stott actually lived his whole life as a single man. He never married. And so he talked a lot about placing moral centuries in his life. He said this, he said, what is necessary for all those with strong sexual temptations, and indeed for all of us in principle, is discipline in guarding the approaches of sin. Isn't that good? That's a huge part of what it means to wage war on the lusts of your heart. You got to post centuries. You have to draw lines. You have to stand guard. Then thirdly, the Bible says that it's really helpful to rejoice in the permission that you're given. The Bible speaks really frankly about human sexuality. And frankly, I wish we did as well. In the modern day evangelical church, I don't know if we're trying to impress the Queen or if this is like a holdover from our British heritage. I have no idea what it is, but we have this weird idea that in church we must pretend to be offended by all mentions of sex, despite that we're binge watching Game of Thrones and Temptation Island at home. It's absolutely ludicrous. In almost every sermon I've ever preached that I've mentioned, you know, spoken frankly about sex, I've had somebody come up to me, you know, or in an email with a self-righteous and a, oh, pastor, oh, oh, and they're just like, can I just grab your phone, check your viewing history before we do this dance? Man, I wish we would just understand that there's no place for crass talk in the church. But if we're not talking frankly about sex, if we're not talking to our kids about sex, who do you think is doing that for us? Where do you think they're getting this information from? So yeah, they should be hearing it here. Man, I wish we had more dads who talk to their sons like Solomon talked to his son. He said this. Let your fountain be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? That's good counsel right there. He says to his son, do you wanna make sure that you live your whole life and never go down the disastrous road of adultery? Get married young. Rejoice in your wife. Enjoy her. Have a great love life and you'll be less likely to go looking for satisfaction in the sewer. Man, that's a good word right there. One we would all be wise to attend to. Apostle Paul says the same thing in the New Testament. He says, do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer. But then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Isn't that good? Listen, doing that which is good is often a great guard against doing that which is bad. So rejoice in the permission you've been given. And then lastly, whenever and wherever the contagion of lust rears its ugly rotten head, we need to repent of it immediately, fervently, and appropriately. Just like with what the Apostle Paul said with respect to anger. He said, don't let the sun go down on your anger, right? Just to be clear, it's not a sin to feel a moment of anger. It's not a sin to feel an attraction in a strange direction or in an unlawful direction. Martin Luther has a great line. He said, you know, you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair. Right? That's what we're responsible for. Stuff's gonna come our way, right? If you're driving out of the parking lot today and somebody cuts you off, your hand is gonna go up into the air just on instinct, but you are responsible for which fingers you then fold down. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is not a sin. This is the Holy Spirit right there. Same thing with lust, right? Don't let the sun go down on your anger, deal with this stuff quickly, be aware, feelings are gonna come, but you need to deal with that stuff immediately. You don't want that cancer to take root and grow in your heart. So attack that sin as if your life depends on it, because it sounds for all the world, if we're reading this right, as though it does. So repent of it immediately, repent of it fervently, Brothers and sisters, we just need to take sin far more seriously than we do. I mean, if the Sermon on the Mount is not giving you that vibe, then you're not paying attention. Need to take sin more seriously than we do, because unaddressed sin will sink your soul to hell. So repent of it immediately, fervently, and I think it's important for us to say also, repent of it appropriately. Your confession of sin should be as broad as your commission of sin. Do you understand what I mean by that? Your confession of sin should be as broad as your commission of sin. So all sins of lust are sins against your own body. Paul says that. And we know that according to what we read in Genesis 2.24, our own body includes our spouse. So every sin of lust, and the sin of lust needs to be confessed to God and then also to our spouse. But then depending upon how far the rot has been allowed to spread, some sins of lust are gonna need to be confessed more broadly than that. If your lust has led you to engage in inappropriate actions with another person, someone's husband or wife, then that needs to be confessed as well. Remember, adultery is an act of violence against marriage, yours or someone else's. And so it's going to need to be confessed to your spouse and in some cases to others as well. The confession of your sin needs to be as broad as the commission of your sin. And I would say this, and it needs to be as deep and as detailed as the offended party requires. Do you hear that? It needs to be as deep and as detailed as the offended party requires. Sometimes the offended party is going to say, all right, thanks. I understand something happened that shouldn't have happened. I understand what you're saying there. I don't need the details. In some cases, though, they're going to say, no, I need to know. Once, twice, where, what, when, I need to understand. They get to make that call. Confession of sin needs to be as broad as the commission of sin, needs to be as deep and detailed as the offended party requires. And listen, I'll tell you this. If you're sitting here and going, oh man, I don't see how this goes well for me. It's just going to create it. As I said last week, better to make a bad deal here than to arrive at final judgment with something like that unresolved on your record. Jesus said, come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you've paid the last penny. We need to deal with this stuff now. We need to deal with this stuff today. Brothers and sisters, this is urgent business. And I'm saying brothers and sisters, just to be clear, you know, when I started in ministry 27 years ago, the majority, I don't know, 90, 95%, the majority of adultery that I dealt with in pastoral counseling was, you know, men cheating on their husband, or men cheating on their wives to some extent. So I got that wrong. But you know what, it's interesting, in the last five years, I would maybe even say the last 10 years, it's about 50-50. And a lot of that, I believe, at least in my experience, a lot of that has to do with the phones now. Because it's so easy for women to engage in emotional affairs now with the texts, and then the texts become pictures, and then the pictures become rendezvous. Brothers and sisters, you'd be shocked how common and how prevalent this is in the church. You need to deal with this today. If there's something that you've done that you've not Confess to your spouse that you've not begun to uncover. You need to do that today. We need to open the windows. We need to open the doors. We need to let the healing light of Jesus Christ shine through. It's gonna be hard. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be painful. But in the end, it's going to be good. Can I tell you something? Something I say to couples every time, you know, a couple lands in my office with this type of scenario. I say, you know what? If the two of you are truly saved, then I believe we're going to have a good outcome here because there are two things that truly saved people can do. Number one, they can forgive. And number two, they can change. This does not need to be the end of your marriage. Not if you're both Christians, not if you're both filled with the Holy Spirit. But I will tell you, if you don't deal with it, it'll be the end of your soul. That's what Jesus is saying. I don't know how to get around that. It's going to be hard. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be painful, but it's going to be good. It's going to be worth it. And in the end, you're going to have a faith that is real. You're going to have a faith that is saving. You're going to have a faith that is powerful and a faith that is contagious that you can actually pass on, that looks attractive to your friends and loved ones. Do you want that, brothers and sisters? Man, I want that. Oh God, help. Let's pray together. Let's keep our eyes closed, our heads bowed, just like last week. I'm going to pray this for everybody. I think everybody in here needs this. We all need grace in this area. This is never an issue where you say, oh, I'm glad that's in my past. I'm totally done with that. No, we need grace from God to wage war on the loss of our heart. And you will do, you will need that every day of your life until the day you die. That being said, There are some of us who are in the throes of this battle. Some of us who maybe are on the losing end of this battle. Some folks maybe who have some business to do today based on what they've seen in this text. And they need grace from God for that. And so I'm just going to ask, as we did last week, just with every head bowed and every eye closed, I'm going to ask if you need particular prayer on this matter, if you need particular grace on this matter, I'm going to ask you to stand. And I want to clarify something. Standing is not an admission that you've done anything. Standing is just an admission. You need particular grace to wage war on this issue, this cancer in your heart. And I'll remind you too, Lloyd-Jones said last week, we looked at last week, he said, I must humiliate myself. Don't let pride be the reason you never wage war on sin. So if you need particular help, if you need particular grace with this, then stand now and I'm going to pray for us all in this room. And I'm going to pray in particular for those who are standing. Yep, I see you. Yep. All right. I'm going to pray for you folks in particular, but for all of us in general. Heavenly Father, first of all, I just want to thank you for these folks who just have the humility and the honesty to admit, this is something I'm going to need your help with, Lord. None of us can do this work in our heart on our own. Lord, we don't have the power. We don't have the scalpel. We don't have the insight. We don't have the ability to evict this stuff from our hearts. but you do, the Holy Spirit does, the grace of God in Christ does, and so Lord, just praying for that now in particular, in double portion for every person who stood up. Lord, for all of us in general, would you just help us? Lord, instead of us waging war on the culture or waging war on each other, Lord, if we just got our own hearts right, and if we made more room for the Holy Spirit in our own hearts, I believe that we could light our lamp of flame and have a witness and an influence in this culture the likes of which we've never seen. So, Lord, help us to keep our focus right. Lord, I have no energy for waging war on the government, and I have no energy for waging war on my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. But I need energy, I need help to wage war on my own heart. So God, would you give that to me? Would you give that to us? Would you give that to these few? I ask in Jesus' name.