All right, I will preemptively apologize. I won't be able to go long with Sunday school today. My nephew is preaching in Blumenort, and I want to get there to hear him, so that's exciting. So if you see us leaving, it's not because of bad attitude or anything. I'm sorry to have to leave, but glad my nephew's preaching. Okay, do we have someone who is willing to open up in prayer before we get started here? I will ask Caleb Hamster if he would be so kind. Amen. Thank you. All right, so we are in chapter 9, and we go up mostly through section 4, but we didn't quite finish it because there is a big and a difficult passage of scripture at the end here dealing with Romans 7. And I want to give fair treatment to that passage. So that is where we left off last week. So I'll read the whole section and then we'll get into the Romans 7 portion of it here at the end. When God converts sinners and transforms them into the state of grace, he frees them from their natural bondage to sin and by his grace alone enables them to will and to do freely what is spiritually good. Yet because of their remaining corruption, they do not perfectly nor exclusively will what is good, but also will what is evil. Okay, so I'll try to explain that first so we have a framework of understanding Romans 7, and then we'll work it out some more. So this is saying that at the moment of conversion, at the moment of regeneration, when someone is born again, In a legal, or a judicial, or in theology we sometimes say in a forensic, right, forensics is dealing with a courtroom, right, courtroom evidence. So in terms of forensic justification in God's courtroom, you are completely holy and righteous. And you cannot, and you will not get more perfectly holy and righteous than you are at that moment of your conversion. from a legal standpoint. In God's courtroom, you are righteous, you are holy, you are permitted entry into the presence of God. However, in our experience, we all know that sin remains a struggle, right? Our conduct does not match our status, okay? And so, one example of this might be that if somebody is, you know, arrested for being under the influence, driving under the influence, or disturbing the peace or whatever, when their fine or their penalty is paid off, their status is different than their condition, right? Their status, you know, the guilt may be paid off, the fine may be paid up, the sentence may be done, So their status is now innocent, but their condition is still struggling with sin. Their condition is still, you know, I haven't dried out yet, or I haven't done whatever. I'm still struggling with sin. And it works that way with our justification and with our sanctification. And that's why it is so critically important that we understand the distinction between justification and sanctification. The two are linked together. You cannot divorce them. One must follow the other, but they're not the same thing. Justification happens in an instant and is irreversible. So the moment of your conversion, you are eternally perfect and righteous in God's courtroom. But your behavior takes a lifetime to catch up to that. And that behavior is not made perfect until death. After death, as we enter into glory, now our behavior and our condition are a perfect match. But until then, our conduct is catching up to who we are. Because a new man has been created and an old man is still being put to death. And that's a lifelong process of the new man coming up and the old man dying once and for all. As a 30,000 foot framework, does that make sense? Questions on that? Okay. Can we see justification happens in an instant and is unchangeable? It's irrevocable. And sanctification is a bare knuckle fist fight. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose for the rest of your life. Those things are both true. Okay. Those things are both true. Yep, Lisa. Does justification happen the moment the Holy Spirit changes your heart? That's a good question and I'm not sure I could answer that definitively. I would say it's certainly possible in many of our experiences that these things all happen at once, so much so that we can't break down the exact order in our experience. Logically, we have to say regeneration must happen first, because you don't even have the eyes or the heart to repent and turn in faith until that. So logically, rebirth has to be the first thing, and then repentance and faith right behind it. But in terms of experience, that may all happen at exactly the same moment. So we're talking about a logical order, not necessarily on a calendar. For some people it may be a few days, right? And you have sometimes those stories where sometimes we maybe don't know what to do with them, but I think we can work with it. Sometimes a tribal people, or you see this especially among Muslims, someone has either this dream or a weird feeling that a man with a book is on his way. Okay, and I'm not a charismatic, so I don't do weird stuff with that. Providentially, could God be preparing a people's hearts for the missionary that's on his way? Yes, right? And so it could happen that the eyes start to open before the gospel is presented. And one thing we have to say with those stories, especially about Muslim dreams and that kind of thing, nobody is converted by their dream. Okay, faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of God. So if there is some kind of preparation happening beforehand where God is loosening up the soil before the seed goes in, that could well be, but you're not saved by that. You're saved when you hear the word of God, when you hear the gospel presented. But God may have well been preparing the soil beforehand. And I think there's not one answer. For some people, it may all be in an instant. Some people, there may be a few days or a few weeks of lag time till they hear the gospel. So I'm not sure there's a one-size-fits-all answer. But we do have to say regeneration must come before faith and repentance. because a non-born-again person is incapable of repenting for their sin and putting their faith in Christ. More discussion on that. Does that make sense? Has anyone wondered what to do with Muslim dreams and those kinds of things? Are we ready to get into Romans 7? It picks a few verses here, but we're just going to go, we're going to start maybe at 7, and then we'll read through to the end and kind of pick our spots there. So Romans 7, verse 7 and on. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good. And we'll just stop there, because that's not the main thing it's looking at here. If you're like me, and there's a little bit of Adam left in you, and your wife says, I think you should buckle your seatbelt, what do you automatically not want to do? Am I the only one? You've got to give it a respectable distance. What is that? What is that? I think that's a little bit of Adam. And Paul is saying here, he was oblivious to this before his conversion, but when the law comes, it provokes us to sin. Now, was Paul, and all of us, a covetor before we learned about the Ten Commandments? Yes, we were. But now it has a name, right? Now we know what's happening in our heart when the law is presented to us. And so in this sense, the law is a mirror. It shows us who we are. And in a very real sense, it kills us. Because now we see, oh, there's a name for this, and God hates it. I knew I was busy coveting all the time, but now that I know this is covetousness, it's provoking it even more in me, and God hates it. So the law is a death sentence. And it says not because the law is bad. The fact that the law kills us, does that mean the law is bad? No, if the law kills us, What's the bad thing in this arrangement? This is the bad guy. The law is good. The law is a reflection of God's holy character. So the fact that the law comes and kills me tells me I'm a bad guy. Not that the law is excessive or heavy-handed or cruel. Not at all. I'm cruel. I'm a rebel. I hate God. Okay, and so the law kills me as it must. Verse 13. Did I see a hand here? Or was someone just scratching or shooing a fly? I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Going once, going twice. All right. Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. Let's stop there. There's so much packed into these verses. This is the most compact systematic theology of the Christian faith. If you look on my bookshelf, I've got a number of systematic theologies, and they're all this thick. Some of them are four volumes this thick, and all of it is trying to explain what Paul fits into the book of Romans. Okay? There is an economy of words in scripture, and we spill lots of ink and discussion trying to unpack the potent truths that Paul can fit in Galatians even. Martin Luther said Romans is the best commentary that exists on the book of Galatians. And this is true. So what's he saying here? Did that which is good then bring death to me? So did the law bring death to me? Well, in a sense, kind of, but he's saying no. No, the law did not bring death to me. Sin in me brought death to me. The law is good. The law is doing what the law always does. Communicating the character of God, but the sin in me is what kills me. One way I like to speak of this is when we talk about breaking God's law. I'll tell you something right now. Nobody in this room has ever broken God's law. You have been broken against God's law. God's law is immovable. God's law does nothing when you tell a lie. The commandment against lying is still there just like it was the day before you broke it. What's broken? You are. You kick against that goad, and if you've ever worked with animals, one of my great uncles who has a bit of a hot head, he had a heifer that kept kicking while milking. And I gather he just held a shovel there finally and he let that heifer kick herself half to death against that shovel and the back of her leg was all bloody and torn up and meat hanging out. That's us kicking against the law of God. When you break the law of God, it's you that breaks, not God's law. God's law is an immovable rock. We break ourselves against God's law. Sin is what kills us. And through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. So again, this is a mirror that shows us what's happening inside of us. Verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Who sees themselves in that verse? Boy, oh boy. Okay? Is Adam still alive in Paul? Okay, Adam is still very much alive in Paul, even though forensically, judicially, he's been killed. Clearly in Paul's experience, he's not yet buried. So now, verse 17, I skipped here, no I didn't, verse 17. So now it is no longer I who do it, okay, notice this distinction. It's no longer I who do it, but sin in me. Paul's a new man. It's not the new Paul doing this. It's the remaining sin. Paul's a new man. Paul's been born again. There's a new Paul. But the old Saul of Tarsus, the old Adam that still isn't buried, he's the one doing this. So now there is actually a separation between sin and sinner. And this is important to dwell on a little bit too. God loves the sinner and hates the sin, right? Chapter and verse, please. Where's chapter and verse for God loves the sinner and hates the sin? There is none. Because God hates all those who do evil. God hates the man who sheds innocent blood. God hates blasphemers. God hates Pharaoh. God hates Esau. And you never see any of that on a coffee mug, do you? God hates the wicked. The only way there is separation between sinner and sin is through the gospel. Now the sinner is separated from his sin. Now through the blood of Jesus Christ, your sin is as far as the east is from the west. You are now separated from your sin. Paul is saying that here. It's no longer I who do it. Paul's a new man. The old Adam that is not quite all the way dead yet is doing this. There's a separation between sin and sinner. I'm gonna stop there. Mentioned this a bit before about the separation of sin and sinner. And yes, there is a sense in which God loves unconverted sinners and he's patient and kind. This is true. So I don't want to overstate that but I sure don't want to understate it either. Can we see when and how the separation between sin and sinner occurs in scripture? Does that make sense? There is no separation until the gospel is applied. A sinner is so closely bound to his sin that you cannot, there is no differentiation. That's what's in your heart, that is literally you. And when that person dies, if the gospel has not freed them from their sin, what is it exactly that God throws into the lake of fire? The sinner or the sinner? Sinner. There is no separation. That's who we are. We are what's in here. You cannot separate yourself from you. It's you, okay? So the gospel must be radical. Grace must be amazing if we're going to separate sin and sinner in a meaningful sense. So Paul is saying here, it's not the new me, it's not the new Paul that's standing in God's courtroom who's doing this, but the old Saul of Tarsus that still dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. Okay, he's talking about the old atom again, which is what flesh means. It doesn't mean bodies are bad, it means in the flesh, the old atom system. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. Everyone's head hurt so far? Okay. This is kind of headache stuff here. But you'll notice Paul is slicing with a very sharp knife and making a clear distinction between the sin and the sinner because this is post-conversion Paul. There is actually separation between the old man and the new man, between Paul who's writing this and the sin that still dwells within him. And that is why there is some debate about Romans 7. Some Christians look at Romans 7 and they see all this battle with sin and they see the struggle and they conclude this must be Paul before he was converted. Because a true Christian wouldn't struggle that much with sin. But that cannot be the case. This must be post-conversion Paul. One, because he's drawing a distinction between his sinful desires and his sinful actions, and the man that he currently is. And two, where he says here, he says, In verse 15, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Does an unconverted sinner hate his sin? He does not. Does an unconverted sinner desire righteousness? He does not. The fact that there is such an intense war happening inside of Paul is proof this is post-conversion Paul. Okay? An unconverted sinner doesn't have this kind of a war happening inside them. They just enjoy their sin. That's it. It's simple. Being an unbeliever is very simple. You just do what the voices in your head tell you to do. Just sin. Go out. Get sloppy with the guys after the game on Friday night. Go out. Sleep with who you want. Okay? Tell a lie. Okay? Just do it. It's simple. Being an unconverted person is remarkably simple. You just sin and you just enjoy it. Okay? Heaven is also simple because there's only one nature in us. So glory is also simple. We just live for the glory of God, no hindrances, no chains whatsoever. This life here, post-conversion, before glory, is a bare-knuckle fistfight. That's exactly what Paul is describing here. Having two men living inside you, that's the kind of stuff that causes conflict. Adam being put to death and Christ being raised to life in you is going to create this kind of a conflict. This is why the Christian life is hard. And this is why Christians shouldn't get discouraged when it's three steps forward and two steps back sometimes. What else do you expect? The guy who wrote 60% of your New Testament struggled with this. Why would you be any different? Verse 21, so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, okay, so again, this must be post-conversion Paul, because he wants to do what's right. Evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. Okay, again, clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly, this is post-conversion Paul. He delights in the law of God, something only a Christian can do. But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Is this a man who's in the game? Is this a man who's going another round in the ring, fighting? You bet it is. This is a bare knuckle fist fight against sin. Okay? And again, it's easy to be unconverted. Just make peace with your sin. And it's easy to be in glory. You just live for the glory of God. This in-between time, this already but not yet fully, where the old Adam is being put to death and the new man in Christ is being made alive, that's what sets up the kind of conflict that Paul is describing here. Okay? The Christian life is hard. And I'll stop there. It's kind of an on-the-fly working through this passage. Discussion on this. Can you see yourself in this passage? Or probably you can at least see other people that you know in this passage, right? Your spouse? Can we see that it becomes fairly obvious as you read this passage, this must be post-conversion Paul? Does it make sense that it's harder and more complicated and more difficult to be a Christian than to be an unbeliever? Does that make sense? Did anyone sign up for Christianity because it's a cakewalk? No, I hope not. What's that? Then you're being sold a bill of goods, yes. Come to Jesus, your life will be easier. I think it was Rick Warren. who probably well-meaning enough, but not a great pitch, I don't think, was he was into 40 days, right? The purpose-driven life and 40 days of purpose and whatever. And he offered to give people, give Jesus 40 days. Give him 40 days and see what happens. I'm thinking, one, you don't give Jesus 40 days. He's Lord or he's not, okay? So you don't run a timer and test God. And two, your first 40 days of Christianity is probably gonna be some of the toughest. So Jesus is going to, if that's the way you're looking at it, Jesus is gonna fail your test that you've set up for him. And I can't imagine many people making it past day 40. I can't imagine many people making it to day 40 under that kind of a thinking, okay? He's Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. It's one or the other. He's not a halfway Lord, okay? If he's Lord, he claims every area for the rest of your life, period. Okay? What are some practical or pastoral comforts that we might find in a text like this? Amen. Yeah, there's a pastoral application he makes right away, right? Yep. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Yep. I happen to talk with quite a few people that struggle with assurance of salvation. Here I am, I sinned again, and frankly it's the same sin that I'm always guilty of. I must not be a Christian. And I've maybe shared this here before. My grandma Unger, as she was dying, was petrified that she had committed the unpardonable sin. And there was probably some physiological stuff happening. She wanted to anoint the Pope's head in oil. I'm not sure what was all happening in her mind. But a consistent concern for the last several weeks I went to visit her. What if I've committed the unpardonable sin? What if I've committed the unpardonable sin? It was heartbreaking. I love my grandma. And she doesn't have peace in her dying days. This is tough to watch. And her faculties weren't all there, but I tried to tell her many times, and I've tried sharing this with our kids at bedtime when they've struggled with different things. If you are outside the kingdom of God, if you have committed the unpardonable sin, you don't care. You don't care. It's not a bother to you at all, because you are so far gone from the kingdom of God, you are so hardened to the things of God, you will laugh your way into the lake of fire. If you're worried about this, it means you haven't done it. If you're scared of the unpardonable sin, that means you're still on this side of it. If you're struggling for assurance because you struggle with sin, that means there is spiritual life in you, because you care. Okay? And so then the goal isn't to snuff it out and say, well, there's still a struggle here. Let's just put this fire right out. It's no, no, no. There's a little ember still left here. Let's work with that. Let's stoke it. Let's put some more fuel on the fire. Let's get you to a place of assurance. But the fact that you care, the fact that there's a struggle is a sign of spiritual life. Okay? Pastorally, this is one of the, Romans 8 is the place I always go. And I don't know how many times I read Heidelberg number one and Romans eight to my grandma as she died, and I really hope she got it. And I trust she is with the Lord, whether she knew she was on her way there or not. Okay? Because assurance, a lack of assurance won't keep you out of the kingdom either. But we sure want to have it, and we sure want to encourage other people to have it. The fact that you struggle is one of the proofs that there is spiritual life in you. Pastorally, that's one of the most helpful things that I think we can offer people who are struggling. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Okay? The struggle is a sign of life. Dead people don't fight. Dead people don't struggle. They don't even know they're dead. They're just dead. Have we pulled everything out of this one that we want to? Is there more discussion here? Is anyone here, and I won't make this too personal, so we'll make it generic enough that no one needs to feel bad about raising your hand. Does anyone here either struggle with assurance or know someone who does struggle with assurance? Is this a relevant issue? Keep going here, and then keep reading, and read Romans 8. And remember, spiritually dead people don't care. Dead people aren't going to ask you about the unpardonable sin. Dead people aren't going to ask you about the sin that remains in them. They've just made friends with it. They're dead. They don't care. Let's go to section five. Only in the state of glory is the will made perfectly and unchangeably free toward good alone. Who wants to read Ephesians 4, 13? No volunteers? Then I am going to volunteer Curtis to read it. Ephesians 4.13. And I can read it if you don't have it there yet. Okay. So we're building up the body of Christ until we all attain, future tense, to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God Okay? So there is future glory that awaits, and in future glory, this struggle is over. In future glory, not only has the old man been declared dead, in terms of our status, but he's buried. He's gone for good. The struggle is over the moment we cross over into eternity. The remnants, the last few remaining parts of sin go down into the ground with that body. And we enter up into the presence of the Lord, and when that body is resurrected, it's an imperishable body, it's a spiritual body, and we've talked about that before. A spiritual body after the resurrection doesn't mean a floaty body made of gas. It's a body like this one. It's got meat and bones on it, it's physical, can shake hands. It can do work. A spiritual body is a body that's uncorrupted by sin. It's imperishable. That's what it means to be spiritual. It doesn't mean to be a vapor or a gas. It means to be uncorrupted by anything. So in the resurrection, it's physical, it's material, it's solid, but it is without any sin. And one of the reasons it's, well, I'll throw this out as a question for discussion here. What makes future glory better than the garden that Adam and Eve first had? What's better about your future than the garden, Lisa? There won't be even a chance to sin, right? We had already worked through this earlier. Their status was, before the fall, they weren't sinful, but they were unstable, right? It's like a vase wobbling on the table, okay? It hadn't fallen over yet, but it was unstable. In glory, there's no instability. You cannot tip. You cannot crash. You cannot sin. Okay? Because there's no desire to sin. The old man is completely replaced, both in status and in condition, by the new man. And so, the new heavens and the new earth is better than what our first parents enjoyed in the garden. And that was much better than this. Okay? But what we are headed towards is much, much better than this. There is no possibility of sin. There is no possibility of falling out of heaven. And this comes in a chapter about free will, and I think this is important too, because if we think about freedom in a true sense, the way scripture defines it, freedom is not the ability to do anything. Ultimately, freedom is freedom from sin. Who agrees that God is more free than we are? Is God capable of sin or desiring sin? No. Is that a limitation on his freedom, or is that the strength of his freedom? That is the strength of his freedom. His freedom is freer than ours because sin isn't even a possibility for him. So we enter into truer freedom. Freedom that cannot be corrupted by sin when we enter into the eternal state. Okay, so we only do righteousness because we only will righteousness in heaven and there is no possibility of us willing anything else once we are there. Discussion on that. Does that make sense? And is it helpful to use biblical definitions for words like freedom, rather than to use philosophical ones? So often when we use words like free will, it's already preloaded with philosophical baggage that is foreign to the Bible. So we need to let the Bible define our terms. The Bible defines what free will is. The Bible defines how our minds and our hearts operate. George Frederick Hegel does not get that right. God does. Dave. I think that's not in the US Constitution. You know, liberty, what, we see liberty by the word of the word today. I am 100% a libertarian, biblically. A biblical libertarian, yep. And I think that's sometimes confusing because Did everyone hear what Dave said? It's a bit loud with the fans. I'll try to repeat it in a way that Dave says, yeah, you're correct. Because I think Dave has said something very important. Dave has identified himself as a libertarian, biblically defined, right? Liberty means freedom, right? And when we talk about the law tradition that we have in North America, it was largely libertarian, right? Freedom to do this, freedom to do that. And especially in the US, it's especially closely guarded because of Christianity. And yes, the US Constitution, I do believe, is a Christian document, as is the Magna Carta, as is our law tradition, are deeply informed by Christian principles. But people today hear the word libertarian And they think, oh, so I can look at porn and smoke weed. Question for you. Can you smoke weed and look at porn in a prison cell that's six feet by six feet? Yeah. Is that freedom? No. That's slavery. It was John Adams, I believe, who said this will only work for a moral and a religious people. The founding fathers presupposed Everyone in this country needs to be a born-again, genuine, Trinitarian Christian, or else these freedoms will turn into a license to sin and we might end up with political parties. Imagine that. What if the US would have political parties? Think of how divisive that could get, right? Think if we had that in Canada. It could be really bad if we had political parties. Let's hope that never happens. that liberty gets defined by something other than God, right? And even when they talk about religious freedom, we need to think carefully about this. There was no concept in their mind that religious freedom would mean that an Islamic temple can go up in Cleveland, Ohio. That's not at all what they meant. Okay, that's shameful. That's a sign of a deteriorating society. What they meant is Connecticut, you guys, if you're officially congregational, you can be, okay? Virginia, you guys are Anglican, that's, be Anglican. Okay, South Carolina, you guys are a bunch of French Huguenots, that's fine. Okay, the Presbyterians go here. And as a nation, we are not going to have a national church. Because imagine if all these colonies have their own church, and then we say there's gonna be a national church, right? So in Virginia, we're Anglican, but in the Americas, we're Presbyterian, that's not gonna work. Religious liberty meant we're not gonna force a church on anyone. But we are going to presuppose that these are Christian people. And to run for office, you had to be an Orthodox Trinitarian Christian in the early days. That's what religious liberty meant. It's been corrupted into something, oh, so atheism is allowed, Islam is allowed, Sikhism is allowed, liberalism is allowed, and that's not what they were thinking. That's stage four cancer at the end of a good run. That's not what they meant. I don't think they could have envisioned mosques and Sikh temples going up in the nation that they were building. And a good deal of historical correction has to be. done on some of these things, the forms and the customs that we have on this continent. Because they were deeply Christian principles. And Christian principles built our society. And because we are not a moral and religious people, we are tearing it down. And the blessings that we still have are a gift from past generations that we're like the prodigal son. Dad gives us a bunch of money, we'll be rich for weeks. But it will run out eventually. Okay and so Dave just mentioned again separation of church and state what was meant was When the Presbyterian Church in America gets together, that's not the levers of government. And Anglican bishops don't get to tell the president what to do. They were also assuming everyone in the state is a Trinitarian Christian. We have turned separation of church and state, which historically just meant the church manages your affairs. The state is not going to get involved in church discipline cases. The state is not going to administer the Lord's Supper. and the church isn't going to run national defense and policing. That's what it meant. What it has come to mean is separation of God and state, right? There's no God over the state. But as one of our more recent prophets has pointed out, if there's no God over the state, the state becomes God. That's where we're at right now. The state is God. Because we have separated not church and state, we have separated God and state, morality and state. And it is not working, it cannot work, it will not work. If there's not the Trinitarian God of Scripture above the state, the state becomes God and they're allowed to have the weapons and they can do anything. And we don't want that. Okay? We want separation of church and state, not of God and state. But with all these things, to bring it back here to liberty and these kinds of things, with all of these things, it's important, whatever we're looking at, to always let the Bible supply not just the word, but also the definition of that word. This is very important, okay? Whoever controls the dictionary wins. And you see that with words like love, tolerance, right? Whoever writes the dictionary wins the debate. And so your job as a Christian is not to assume pagan definitions of Bible words. We want love, okay, what's the source of love? I actually was in a conversation with a Christian about this, a Christian who wasn't defending the morality of so-called same-sex mirage, but saying at least the state should have no stake in it, it's fine from a secular standpoint because love is love. And I asked, well, who defines what love is? And this was the first time this lady had ever even contemplated that. And she's a Christian, a weekly church attender. Well, we do, I guess. There's the problem. There's the problem, okay? God defines what love is. God defines what liberty is. God determines what the heart is. It's God's world, God's rules, His definitions. that brings us up to the end of that section and I really should be getting to Blumenort so why don't we close in prayer Father God I want to thank you for this discussion I want to thank you most importantly for the way that your spirit comes to free our will to raise up new life inside of the hearts of believers. Lord, and I pray for each one here this morning and also those who are not here this morning. Lord, I pray that we would not just be filled with your spirit, but also with an assurance and a confidence and a peace of what your spirit is doing in us. Lord, I pray that each one here would rest deeply in the confidence of their salvation, in the sovereign perfection of your work, even when it takes a difficult and winding path. Lord, and I also want to pray for our loved ones who do not yet know you. Lord, I pray that you would raise life in their hearts and strengthen them for the struggle that lies ahead as they put the old man to death once and for all. Lord, I pray that we as a church would be marked by holiness that only your spirit can produce, And I pray that we would also be marked with a fascination and an amazement of your grace and the work it does in us. I pray that you would help us to think bold and to think strongly and potently like Christians about everything, even as we've discussed legal traditions and terms and customs that have come from your word into our culture. Lord, I pray that we would think rigorously about these things, that they don't come from a vacuum. but that we would think like Christians all the way down about every last detail of the world around us. How did these things get here? How does your word speak to these things? Lord, and I pray that we would see that your majesty extends to every square inch of your creation. Lord, give us eyes to see, give us hearts to feel, give us minds to think. And I pray that you'd be with us, especially this morning. I pray that you'd be with Kenan. Thank you for the work he has done in getting your word ready to share with us this morning. I pray for receptive hearts that we would receive your word gladly, and we would be happy to obey and to be ambassadors of your kingdom out to the watching world. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for each one here. Lord, we commit each part of this service into your hands. Thank you for your goodness to us. And we pray this all in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.