First Peter chapter two verses one through three. The word of the Lord. Therefore lying aside all malice all deceit hypocrisy envy and all evil speaking as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious the grass withers the flower fades the word of our God will stand forever. Probably. Thought about this at least once in your life Probably often, but what what are the what's the difference between a Christian and a non-christian? What is it that makes them that makes them qualitatively different? Well, I mean there are many things that we can think about that might set them apart that aren't actually the difference between them I mean you can think of that about Christians and non-christians and you can't say to any great degree Christians are wealthier and Or Christians are smarter or the better looking or their teeth are whiter than their unredeemed neighbors. I mean obviously I stand before you as an evidence of that particular fact. But it also isn't they that they live longer or that their lives are in contrast their neighbors free from suffering or that they never experienced pain or sickness or disappointment or those things. Peter's time, in fact, there is thinking on Christians were more likely to suffer in this world than their non-Christian neighbors. And we need to remember that is still true in some places in the world. People are far more likely to suffer if they happen to be Christians than if they don't, at least in a worldly sense. So if there is a difference between Christians and non-Christians, then that difference can't lie simply in external circumstances. OK, the things that happen around them or that happened to them in this life. Now, an unbeliever, if you ask them that question, they might say, well, the difference between Christians and non-Christians is just that Christians do different things on Sunday. For instance, they all get together and they they go to church. But those of you have been Christians. for any time know that while they're together going to be differences in the way that Christians behave and non-Christians that that isn't the central difference between a Christian and a non-Christian nearly their outward behavior. Those of you have been Christians also know that non-Christians can often mimic the behaviors of Christians and though they don't necessarily believe the same things they might be able to do the same things on a current on occasion. So what does the Bible say about this? What does the Bible say is the big difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? Well, it does point to some of the behaviors, as we said, but the biggest difference that it points out is not an external difference. It's not a difference, if I can put it this way, in terms of do. It's a difference in terms of done. It's a spiritual difference, a difference that Jesus Christ has made within the believer, something that he has done. And something that produces perceptible differences in what they do believe and what they do say what they do. The difference, as Peter has already told you, is that Christians have gone through a renewing process that natural men haven't a process that Jesus Christ has worked in their lives. The Christian has been regenerated. The Christian has been born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore he has a changed heart. And he has a different principle animating everything that he says or he does, or at least he should. He should be working according to a fundamentally different perspective or plan than the non-Christian does because of what has happened to him. The Christian is, as Second Corinthians 517 puts it, a new creation. It's an amazing thing. They are something utterly new. The old person that they that they once were, that we all once were, has been crucified with Christ, has been put to death. It is dead. It is buried. And they are new men. The Christian is a new man who has been united to Christ through faith. And therefore, those of you who have been born again by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are called upon to reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And there are many analogies that we can make for that difference. One lives in the kingdom of darkness, the other has been translated into the kingdom of life. Things like that. But ultimately, it's a difference in the soul. A difference in the inner being of the person. A difference that has changed the way that they feel, even. For instance, those who have become Christians, if you've become a Christian, you know this, you will have experienced it. But the things, for instance, that you once loved before you became believers, many of them you now hate and you see them as repulsive. I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I went there. I can't believe that was the kind of thing I enjoyed. And then the things that once repulsed you, I can't tell you how repulsive the idea of going to church on a regular basis was to me as a believer, as a nonbeliever, as a believer. Oh, boy, there's a slip. No, but as a nonbeliever. But now that that change has occurred, I can't even conceive of not going to church on Sunday. The idea that I would go multiple Sundays without being in church is something that I would view with horror. I read the words of Samuel Rutherford, who was because he was a true gospel preacher at a time when gospel preaching was not held in high esteem, was ripped out of his calling and put into exile. and told he could no more preach the word of God, how he lamented all of his dumb Sabbaths, as he put it, the days when he couldn't preach. And and when I think about that, it is something that I, too, would view with horror the idea that I couldn't open my mouth and speak the words of God again and again and again and be used. But that wasn't always the case with me. There was a time when I I hated God. I didn't want to be used in his kingdom. We've been reading in our family worship about about Saul and how He was changed by God. He went from being a persecutor of the church to a servant of that. And that was because of the inner change that God made in his life. It wasn't merely a moral renovation. It wasn't that Paul was a guy who said about doing bad things, that he was a party animal or something like that prior to God working in his life. But God touched his heart and changed fundamentally who Saul was. He brought him to spiritual life. And that's the way believers are. And as their lives go on, they grow in holiness. They become less like the person they were before God changed them, and they become more like their Savior into whose image they are being conformed. Christians are supposed to look more like Jesus Christ each day, although it usually it's an imperceptible change. You don't go immediately from from sinner to Christ in one one easy step or 12 easy steps, as a matter of fact. It's usually all the steps that take place in your life before you get to be looking more like him. But there should be a saver. And I'm sure you've experienced that when you've met. Hasn't it happened when you've met somebody who's been a Christian for a long time? There's a sweetness about them. There's a there's a there's a savor about them. They I don't know. They sound weird. They smell like Christ. They feel more like Jesus than they do the world, so to speak. And you can gain that from their their their speech is tinged with holiness. And when you meet that kind of person, you need to sit, so to speak, and talk to them and be in converse with them and grow through their help. They are becoming new creations. We all are once we've been changed. And that is why we read so many exhortations like Paul's in second rather Colossians 3 8 where he says. But now you yourselves are to put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. Now, I hope you see that Paul and Peter frequently in their words, OK, talk about the new believer as a newborn and somebody who's been born again in Christ. We're kind of like babies in that sense. And it makes sense to do that. I mean, if you're a new believer, you've been recently born. OK, you are a newborn. And we you know, you could you could trace a man's progress as he goes from baby to toddler to adult in his physical life. And you can do that in spiritual life as well. You can see the progress that we make as we're growing in grace. as we're becoming more and more mature in the faith. And so it's no coincidence, therefore, that Peter picks the list of things that the Christian newborn should lay aside in verse one, because these are things that you don't find generally in the life of a newborn. OK, now, I'm not saying that newborns are entirely without sin. Those of you who have had a newborn, you know, that kind of thing. Obviously, there is still you can see the taint of sin. I've said this many a time, we don't have to sit down with our kids and we don't have to train them to be liars. Mommy and daddy need to tell you how to deceive people. Now, you know, they gradually they pick up on it themselves because there's that root of original sin within them. But brothers and sisters, there are some sins that you don't thankfully find in newborns that develop only later on as they continue on, and those sins are related to one another. There's sins that come from hate and produce kind of a deceit, a desire to conceal and that maliciously. What are the sins that Peter mentions here that are related to one another? Well, the first one he mentions is malice. Malice, of course, is to hate others and to actively desire that evil and not good would happen to them. Unfortunately, we see a lot of that, obviously, in the world, that people wish malicious things would happen to those they view as their enemies, those who they see as standing in their way. So they desire that evil would happen to them. It's interesting, isn't it? in some of the religions of the world Islam for instance. You desire that the enemies of the Lord might be destroyed and you do all that you can to to ensure that that happens and you hate them you absolutely despise. But. For the Christian, that's not the case. We're called to love our enemies, not to desire malicious things would happen to them. Now, that doesn't stop us, of course, from exercising the sword of the magistrate and restraining evil. We are called upon to do that. But we should not feel malice in our hearts, even towards our enemies. It is fundamentally out of keeping with our with our new lives. Another thing that we shouldn't have going on in our lives is deceit. What is deceit? Deceit is guile. It's the opposite of transparency. And it's the mode that some people will adopt instead of purity. Instead of actually having a changed life, I'm going to pretend that I have a changed life. And as a result, they become hypocrites. And that's the next one that he mentions hypocrisy. That's a word that comes to us, obviously, from the masks that a Greek actor would wear. He would put the mask up and it would conceal his actual identity. And that's the mask that those who are committed to guile use to conceal the truth about themselves. I'm not really a believer, but I put on a mask and pretend I'm a believer. C.S. Lewis, I've just been reading through his his book, Pilgrim's Regress, which is it's an interesting study of the philosophies of his time. And he was talking about the state of the church and he was talking about the state of the stewards of the church, the ministers, for instance, of the Church of England, who didn't actually believe, but pretended like they did. So he has this interesting and bizarre little scene, but it's very it's a it's a great and eloquent testimony. This little boy meeting with one of the stewards of the church and the stewards all kind of jocular and friendly with him. And then he reaches up and he takes down a mask and he puts it over his face and the mask has terrifying features and a long white beard. And he talks to him in a grave voice about God. And then he says, You haven't sinned, have you? And then he takes the mask aside and said, Yes, tell the lies better for everybody. And he puts the mask back and the kid says, No, I haven't seen. He says, Good, good. You know, it's hypocrisy. What is the steward doing is concealing the fact that he doesn't believe. And he's teaching others that hypocrisy as well. That's hypocrisy. It's something that we wear to conceal our true nature. Then there's envy. What is envy? Well, envy is a spiteful resentment that others have been blessed in ways that we haven't. It's not fair. I should have what they have. They don't deserve it. I do. Setting ourselves first. And then evil speaking, or slander as it's sometimes called. What is that? Well, that is malicious speech. And it's designed to cause harm to who? Well, usually to those whom we envy speak badly of them because we don't like them and they shouldn't have what we do. So we speak evil of them, tear them down. Obviously, all of those qualities will be present in us to a greater or lesser degree before we became Christians. Some people do have more common grace. You don't see them quite as badly, but they are present in the nonbeliever. I know I can't tell you how many examples of all of these things that I can think of in my own pre-Christian life. Sadly, I can think of a few examples of these in my post-Christian life, but that's not the way it's supposed to be. They are not supposed to be part of our lives. If we have been honestly born again, they are a part of our old life. They are the qualities of the old man who was crucified, and they should literally smell to us like death. And they will ruin us if we persist in them, if we try to keep those things, because they are absolutely antithetical to Peter's instructions, for instance, to love one another fervently with a pure heart. You can't do it. You can't have malicious feelings towards someone. You can't speak evil of them and have a pure heart. And brothers and sisters, if we're going to live lives of guile and a lack of transparency, we will find that it is impossible to love one another fervently because we have to keep away. I mean, a couple that has secrets from one another and doesn't tell each other what's going on in their hearts and so on, well, there's a huge impediment to love. In counseling, I find husbands and wives who can't share their feelings with one another. They aren't transparent. They aren't open. And as a result, there's an impediment to their ability to love one another. And as a church, we don't need impediments to our love. We need to be transparent with one another. We need to be guileless with one another. We are to remain, in that sense, as newborns, without guile, without deceit, without malice, without those advanced sins. We can say in Sin 101, we don't need to go on to 201, OK? Remain newborns when it comes to sin. But of course, brothers and sisters, while we are to remain newborns when it comes to sin, we are not to remain newborns in all things. Far from it. As Christians, we are to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is one area where we are not supposed to stay newborns. As Paul says in First Corinthians 1420, Brethren, do not be children in understanding. However, in malice be babes, but in understanding, be mature. There's one place where we are to be growing day by day. Now, kids, let me ask you this question. What does a newborn need to grow? Do they need candy bars and Coca-Cola? What do you think? No, I don't think they need that. What do newborns eat? What do they need to eat to grow? Milk! Right, that's what they need. They need milk. Well, Peter says that we are like newborns in one sense. We need the same thing to grow. We need not physical milk, but we need the pure milk of the Word. And what Peter means there, when he says the pure milk of the word is the Bible, the Bible preached, the Bible read, the Bible opened up in our family devotions, the Bible opened up in our family worship, in our personal worship, our personal devotions, all of those things. That's where it should be seeping into us, where we should be partaking of it. You see, God's word does convert us, but that's not all it does. God's Word is meant to convert us, and it is also the means that God has appointed to sanctify us, to grow us day by day in grace. And so as bread is nourishing to our bodies, God has given us manna from heaven that he has designed to nourish our souls. But he says something about the milk, something about its quality. Did you notice what he said about the quality of the milk? Is it supposed to be watered down milk, adulterated milk? No. He says it's supposed to be Pure milk. To desire the pure milk of the word is what we should have. And the word pure there is a word, it's Adolon, okay? And the meaning of that word, it's a Greek word, it means watered down. Unscrupulous, for instance, Greek wine merchants would water down their wine so they would have more of it and would be able to sell more of it. But that's not the way it should be with us. What Peter says is we should want the whole gospel, the true gospel, a gospel that is rich, a gospel that is full of things that promote our growth in the way that a mother's milk is incredibly rich and filled with all these vital nutrients and antibodies that best promote an infant's healthy growth. And that means that we need the full counsel of God. Not I know some of your health nuts, but there is one area where we should not. I should say health nuts. Some of you are very conscious of your bodily health and desire to promote it. And that is something that I esteem you. And I wish I had more of that desire myself. As you can see, I'm not doing so good there. But there is one area where we should not want fat free skim milk. And that is when it comes to the pure milk of the word. We should want that full strength gospel. Now, in that gospel, there will be things that offend things that rub us the wrong way. I can't tell you, brothers and sisters, how many things rub me the wrong way about the Bible when I first became a believer. But I got to tell you, I needed to hear those things. I needed them to grow in ways I didn't even know I needed at the time. But now, in hindsight, I can see, yeah, I needed to be humbled. Oh, yeah. No, I need my understanding that. Oh, yeah. No, all of those things. And though at one at one time, they kind of they were like a cheese grater occasionally over my ears. Well, let me put it this way. The cheese grater removed some of the things that didn't look like Christ. And I needed that process to go on. Now, Peter says we should also not only desire, we shouldn't just have that pure milk, we should desire that pure milk. We should want it in the way that a newborn wants milk. We have a newborn in our house and she tells us when she wants milk. She tells us on a basis every every few hours. She really wants milk. She can't go for more than a few hours without crying in hunger. Well, brothers and sisters, what Peter says is that we should be like newborns and not as well. We shouldn't be able to go for hours without crying in hunger. Edmund Clowney put it this way. He said Christians should be addicted to the Bible. Shouldn't be something that we can do without. It should be something that we want and that on a regular basis should wake up in the morning thinking, I need my Bible fix. We should want to have that going on all day. This is one addiction that will do us good. One of the very few and promote our growth. Now, if I can make three applications to you of these particular verses, one of the things that I try to point out in counseling is for the Christian, obviously, it's not your external circumstances. that are critical to your spiritual well-being or to your spiritual growth. So, amongst the things that will not be decisive factors in your spiritual growth, you can include things like your job, like your location, like your spouse, like your kids, your education, your bank account. None of these things are determinative in how well you grow. How will you advance in the faith? Not even suffering or deprivation in your external circumstances can prevent your growing in grace. Think about this. Paul and Silas rejoice and sang hymns sitting in the stocks in a Philippian jail, having been beaten. And yet they still rejoice. Think about this, the church is growing by leaps and bounds in places where there is nothing. where they have nothing but, you know, essentially mud to work with. And yet the church advances and people are growing in grace. And then on the contrary, the bizarre thing is that it is stagnating in the places where the people have the most in the industrialized world. So it's not those circumstances where we have a super abundance of things, at least that create growth. What is it then? Well, the things that really prevent our growth, that impede the growth of the church, all of those things, and I try to make this point as well in counseling, all of them lie within us. We are the biggest impediments, often to our own growth in grace, to our own realization of spiritual happiness through Jesus Christ. Now, brothers and sisters, if we don't lay aside the sins of our former lives, if we don't do that, If we don't pursue the opposite, then I can guarantee you this, you will never have the fullness of the contentment, the peace, the joy, all of those peaceable fruits of the spirit that we should desire. You will never have them. You will always have something that hangs over you, a storm cloud that follows you around. It's been my experience that often the reason that Christians don't want to do that, they don't want to lay aside those those sins that categorize their former lives is because they are tremendously fearful of doing that. They are mortally afraid of the consequences, for instance, of getting rid of their collection of masks. I show people who I really am. They won't like me. If I'm entirely transparent with somebody, I'll be giving them ammunition they could use against me. It would be safer for me to keep my masks. It would be safer for me to hold on to guile. But brothers and sisters, we have to get rid of them. We have to be dealing transparently with one another in the faith, and we have to be dying to self, putting others ahead of ourselves. Now, we fear being exposed. But if we don't expose ourselves, then we won't. We don't become transparent. Let me put it that way. I don't use that phrase. If we don't become transparent with one another, we'll never really know one another. And that will always be an impediment to love within the church. And brothers and sisters, you don't need to have to go through life. The natural man goes through life always saying, if I don't look out for number one, no one else will. If I don't look out for number one, no one else will. I'm looking out for number one. The brothers and sisters in the church probably realize there are two, two people who are looking out for your interests always. The first is your brothers and sisters in Christ. If we truly love one another. Then we are always setting others ahead of ourselves. And therefore, you have an entire body of people who are looking out for your spiritual and physical well-being at all times. And then secondly, and most importantly, Christ is always looking out for your spiritual good. And he says, I will never leave you or forsake you. And he will do good to you through the means that he has appointed. If we don't, though, believe that, we will end up living more like the old man than the new, and that should not be. The degree to which we do put off those sins, the degree to which we do live in newness of life, is the degree to which we show we trust God's promises, we trust God's provision. And the degree to which we don't do that is the degree to which, as I said, we don't enjoy the fruits of the Spirit. Things like love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of which, as you can see, are diametrically opposed to the things that Peter says we need to put off. So if you want the benefits of new life in Christ, then we have to die to self and we have to bury the old man and not drag our old habits with us. Now, please believe me when I say this. No saint who has laid aside the things that Peter lists here has ever suffered from it. No saint who has gotten rid of his mask collection. who has decided to live a life without malice and deceit and so on, has ever regretted it. And I hope you have all reached the point in your lives where you can honestly say, I want to walk with Christ. I'm tired of walking away from him. I did that for far too long. I want a life that is full of love, not malice. I want a life that is transparent, not deceitful. I want a life that's full of truth and not hypocrisy. And I want a life that is full of contentment and not envy. And I want my speech. I want my speech to be a blessing to all, to encourage, to uplift, to exhort, necessary to admonish, but to do so with gentleness and respect and as a token of my love to my brothers and sisters in Christ. I hope you've all gotten to that point. Now, speaking once again, if I can apply this truth about the milk of the word and the need that we have for it. Let me give you a scenario, right? I want you. I'm going to give you a scenario. You're all doctors now. All right. Some of you are already doctors, but now you are all doctors. Let us say that someone comes to you for advice. A family comes into your office and you notice immediately as they come in the door that this family is just skin and bones. They are emaciated, their eyes are sunken in, they're drowsy, they're kind of shambling, they sit down in their seats in front of you. And you ask them, what's going on? What's happening to you? And the husband says to you, well, let me tell you, doc, normally we don't eat any food. But one day a week, what we've been doing is we usually go out to eat and for one hour we sit down to a feast. But I have to tell you, we are so utterly unused to eating that we're only able to digest about 10% of that meal that's set in front of us. And during that time, we are just weak and distracted and listless. And sometimes we barely even get to the food. Now, Doc, we know we have a problem. So we've come to you for advice on how to solve it. Now, here are the two solutions that we've come up with. And we want you to decide between them. Now, I think we should just stop going out to eat altogether. Because it's obviously not doing us any good. But my wife, my wife thinks we should go to another place where there are smaller amounts of real food and more of a synthetic food substance that's easy to chew and swallow. What do you think? Well, brothers and sisters, what would you say to them? Would you say, hmm, those are two great options. Let's see. I mean, you would look at them and you would say, that's ludicrous. My friends, your problem isn't the food you eat once a week. It's the fact that you're not eating on a daily basis. So neither of your options are good options. Brothers and sisters, though, if you say that you just diagnosed the problem of many, if not most modern Christians and you just listen when you've heard their solutions, the solutions that many of modern Christians actually come to their starvation problem. I go to church, but because I never read the word and I'm never in it, the means of grace essentially just bounce off my head and I'm just kind of like this during the time and then I escape from it and so on. So what I need is to stop going or alternatively saying this is just too hard to digest because I'm not used to digesting food. Therefore, I need less food at the place where I go to eat. And you want to look at them and say, no, brothers and sisters, what you need is more food during the week. You need to be more often taking in that food and keep this in mind. We live in a time where there has never been so much word available, so much pure milk out there. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff. But think of how much there is of the real living word that's available these days in books, magazines, the Internet, videos, radio, DVDs, so many things that your brothers and sisters in Christ, for instance, at the time that Peter was reading a writing rather did not actually have. And so the problem of many Christians is not actually a lack of food available to them as much as it is kind of, if I can put it this way, spiritual anorexia, just not eating. Now, there are some reasons that a Christian might feel a lack of desire for that, that pure milk of the word. And the greatest is simply that the very desire for God and his grace. is something that grows as we take advantage of it. It's interesting, the more you eat, the more you want to eat when it comes to the pure milk of the word, the more you taste and see that the Lord is good, the more you want to taste more, the more you want to come to it. Put quite simply, the more milk you take in, the more milk you will want, the more milk you will be able to digest. Jonathan Edwards. Put it very well. He talks about this increase in this way. He says the kindling and raising of gracious affections is like kindling a flame. The higher it is raised, the more ardent it is and the more it burns, the more vehemently does it tend and seek to burn so that the spiritual appetite after holiness and an increase of holy affections is much more lively and keen in those that are eminent in holiness than others and more when grace and holy affections are in their most lively exercise than at other times. It is as much the nature of one that is spiritually newborn to thirst after growth and holiness as it is the nature of a newborn babe to thirst after the mother's breast, who has the sharpest appetite when best in hell. So as we grow stronger and more vigorous, we'll want more and more food. But if we'd stay away, we grow weak and unable to absorb even that which is offered to us. Now, if a Christian Has a small desire for the word that is that is a good thing. It shows that that that change at least has taken place in their lives. And there is great hope for their advancement if they will merely apply themselves to the means of grace. It's not a magical system that I'm setting up before you. I'm not saying you know you need to go and buy a wand and say these magic words or enter into a 12 separate just apply the word the word of God to you just come under the means of grace as often as you can. And you will see those changes occurring in your life. But what about that other scenario? That's a possibility. What if the Christian has no desire for the mouth of the word? None at all. Not even a limited one. Well, then, brothers and sisters, there can be only one explanation for that. And keep in mind, as I tell you, this Peter is writing to the church. So he says that this is not a possibility that is not possible for the church. In other words, It can be the case with Christians who are attending church that this is the case. Peter puts it this way in verse three. You will desire the milk and you will grow if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. If you become a Christian, if you've been converted, if you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good through that conversion process and you've been born again, you will desire the milk of the word. There's just no way two ways about it. In other words, Only those who have come to the Lord by faith in Christ, who have truly tasted and seen, will desire that milk of the word, though. Only if you have been converted. If you don't desire, therefore, the milk, then, brothers and sisters, don't kid yourself. If you have no desire to get the word, as Bill Harrell put it, a lack of spiritual appetite indicates a lack of spiritual life. Now, brothers and sisters, it is my desire, my fervent desire, that all of you would want the pure milk of God's word and that all of you would be growing. That is, in one sense, what God has put me on this earth for and that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. If I'm giving you the pure milk of the word and if you are growing in grace, then what is supposed to be going on is going on. But I don't want you to fool yourself and I don't want to be guilty of fooling you. If you have never truly seen your overwhelming need for the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have never truly come to him by faith, if you've never closed with him, that encouraging yourself to grow in grace is silly. It's putting the cart at the head of the horse. It's like encouraging you to run a race you haven't even entered into. You need to do the first things Calvin put it well, he said he only makes progress in the gospel who in heart comes to God. That's the first thing that needs to happen. If you're thinking even now. I don't think I've ever closed with Christ. I'm not sure that my heart has ever gotten right with God. Well, then you need to start with that. And the place to start with in grace is not not necessarily by drinking in the pure milk of the word in the sense that he means here, but to begin by coming to Christ through faith to learn that the sweet taste, the honey of God's grace before you move on to the milk of being built up in the word, so to speak. You have to be born again before you can spiritually grow up. It's just the way it happens. Babies don't grow until they're born. They grow in the womb, but they never grow to maturity there. They have to be born first. So what do we need to do? All of us, we need first to taste and see that the Lord is good. As Psalm 38, 34, 8 puts it, blessed is the man who trusts in him. That's what we sang this morning. We need to have that experience of God's converting grace in our hearts. And I pray that you have that already. But if you do not, if you don't, well, there's no need to despair. Because God's grace is freely available to all those who come to him by faith in his son, Jesus Christ. And now is the acceptable day, as has been said. You have heard the gospel of salvation preached to you, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, as Paul himself said, of whom I am chief. Now, if Paul was able to call himself the chief of sinners, if he had partaken of murder and all sorts of awful things, if he was walking away from God, I know most of you have not sunk to those depths. But regardless, brothers and sisters, friends, do not think that there is any sin out there that is too great for the grace of God to intervene, that you are too far from the kingdom to enter into it. All that need happen is that work of grace in your hearts. All you need to do is come to the Lord Jesus by faith, and then you can begin that wonderful process of growing up, of having a changed life, a new perspective, of being a new creation. Don't you want to be a new creation? I know I certainly do. I look back on what I once was and I say, oh, my word. Thank heavens, I did not continue on in that progress. Where would I be today, had Christ not intervened, and more importantly than that, where would I be eternally had Christ not intervened with this grace? I pray that that's the case with all of you. If any of you have questions about how to begin that process, please ask me, ask the elders, come to them and ask them that sincere question that the Philippian jailer asked. I said in Sunday school, and it's true, it's the best question of all to ask serves What must I do? That's the essential question. And I pray that you have all asked at least once.