The following is a message given at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Worland, Wyoming. If you have your Bibles this morning, we're going to be in Hebrews chapter 12. So let's turn together to Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. It says, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we just sang how holiness adorns your throne. And Lord, now we come and find out that your word also calls your people to a life of holiness. And Father, we know that in and of ourselves we could not be holy. We know that our lives are filled with and stained by sin. And yet through Christ and because of your Spirit working in us, You not only call us holy, you also make us to be holy. And so Father, we pray that your people would be encouraged this morning by your word to diligently pursue holiness. And Lord, if there's anyone here who is not a child of God, we pray that their own remaining lack of holiness today would convict them. But not just convict them, convict them in a way that drives them to Christ. drives them to repentance, drives them to find rest and hope and forgiveness of sins in Jesus. And we pray this in his name, amen. Imagine you went and got your haircut this week. And as you were sitting in the chair and the barber or the lady, whoever's doing your hair, she's putting the robe around you. And as she starts cutting, she says, the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut. And you finish her joke for her because you know every time that joke comes up, it's two weeks. The difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut, it's two weeks. But imagine you were going in for open heart surgery. And as the anesthesiologist puts a needle in your arm, the surgeon says, you know the difference between a good heart surgery and a bad heart surgery. You're not really sure how to finish the joke in that setting, are you? because there's nothing funny about a botched heart surgery. What's the difference? In one context, it's kind of a funny joke. In another, it's as serious as a heart attack. What's the difference? The difference is the gravity of the mistake. You can make a mistake cutting someone's hair and it will grow back. You can make a mistake in heart surgery and it will have big implications, maybe even fatal implications. This morning in Hebrews 12 verse 14, we're talking about how holiness is the evidence that we are God's people. And when we talk about how holiness or practical sanctification are evidence that we are God's people. We're not talking about haircuts. We're talking about heart surgery. We're talking about something that is very serious and really requires us to deal with God's word with a level of care and precision that doesn't lead us to think things that aren't true and also doesn't leave any wiggle room for what scripture actually says. And so I'm gonna do my best this morning to be as clear as I know how, and I'm gonna ask you to pay extra close attention to not leave any room for misunderstanding. For the past couple weeks, we've been going through a series to help us all understand, am I truly a Christian? How do I know if I bear the marks of one of God's people? We started two weeks ago by asking the question, are you a sinner? And so two weeks ago, we saw that one of the marks of God's people is that they are willing to admit that they are sinful. They're willing to admit before God, this is my sinfulness. They see it for what it is. They see that apart from the grace of God, they deserve the wrath of God, and they're willing to own their sin. But we saw last week that a Christian isn't just someone who sees their sin, it's also a person who sees and believes what Christ has done for them in their sin. And so last week we focused on what is the good news that God has given sinners. And the good news God has given sinners is that his own son came into the world lived a perfect sinless life, died on the cross in the place of sinners, was buried for three days, and three days later came out of the grave alive and resurrected back into glory. And a Christian is someone who believes that message, is someone who's entrusted themselves to that person. And so thus far, we've seen that a Christian is a sinner, a Christian is a person who has heard the gospel, and a Christian is a person who has responded to the gospel with faith and repentance. But this morning, in Hebrews 12.14, the writer of Hebrews is going to give us another evidence of a true Christian. And he tells us to pursue holiness because without holiness, no one will see God. So we're gonna look at the second half of Hebrews 12.14 under two points. First, we're gonna ask the question, what is holiness? And then we're gonna ask, how important is holiness? So what is holiness? The first thing we're gonna ask is, what are we talking about when we talk about holiness? The writer of Hebrews tells us to pursue holiness. So if we're gonna pursue something, we need to know what it is. Well, the word means to be consecrated. It means to be purified. Sometimes in scripture, it carries the idea of being set aside for special service and use. And so the big idea behind holiness is that when we talk about it in this context, it's an ethical purification where God is removing sin from our lives and causing us to follow him in greater obedience and in greater service. But when the Bible talks about holiness, the holiness of humans, it talks about it in three different ways. First, the Bible talks about a positional holiness. That's the kind of holiness that we receive. We talked about this a little last week. That's the kind of holiness we receive at the moment of our justification. The moment you have faith in Christ, the holiness or the righteousness of Christ are then given to you and at that moment you are seen in the eyes of God as if you were as holy as Christ because you are clothed in His holiness. That's one element of the way the Bible talks about holiness. But the Bible also talks about holiness as something we grow in. I mean, let's face it, is there anyone who's like, yeah, I'm as holy as Christ this morning? There's actually this great disparagement between the holiness we possess in Christ and the way we live our lives and the remaining unholiness we have. And so the Bible calls us to a life of sanctification, a life of rooting out our remaining unholiness. and following Christ in greater obedience. And so there's a past element to our holiness. The moment we trust in Christ, there's a present ongoing element to our holiness. That's just sanctification working itself out through the entirety of our lives. And then our hope is that we will one day be raised in glory and we will see Christ. And the moment we see Christ, we will be made like him. We will be holy in our glorification. And as we look at the passage in Hebrews 12, 14 this morning, we need to make a clear distinction between those three things, because again, the failure to do so is not a bad haircut, it's a bad heart surgery. And so what is positional holiness? Positional holiness is the holiness that we receive as a gift at the moment of our salvation. It's an instantaneous act of God that takes place the moment we trust in Christ, where God gives us, He imputes to us the righteousness of Christ. And at that moment, we are holy in the eyes of God. So if you're a true Christian, the moment you were saved, you were also in a sense sanctified. You were also taken out of the realm of sin and placed in Christ where you bear the holiness of Christ in your standing before God. And at that moment, you can become no more or no less holy because your holiness isn't your own, it's Christ's. Listen to a couple of scriptures that teach us this. First one comes from 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11. It says, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified or made holy. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10. You're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you might proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who once had not obtained mercy, but now have mercy. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, but it's of him that you are in Christ who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Notice what 1 Corinthians 1 30 says. It says that it's of God. In other words, God is the cause of us being in Christ and And then it says, Christ became for us righteousness and sanctification. Sanctification is the same root word as holiness. In other words, Christ became for us righteousness and holiness. And so the moment we are united to Christ, the moment God places us in Christ, we are holy. We are with Christ and we are in the presence of God seen as holy. The writer of Hebrews has already talked about this back in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews 10 verse 10 says, by that will, we have been sanctified or made holy through the offering of the body of Christ once and for all. And so this positional holiness is the holiness that really answers the question, how can sinful people like you and me ever have a right standing in the presence of God? How can we ever be accepted by God? And the answer is we get Christ's holiness. We get to be united to Christ and he became for us holiness so that if we are in him, God sees us in him. God sees us as holy as his son. But if you're a Christian, if you've been united to Christ because of all of that, you have to look at your life and say, hold on a second, because I don't really feel like that. The unfortunate reality is that our practice does not match our standing. Our standing is holy, but our practice is often unholy. Although we are seen in the eyes of God as righteous as Christ is, our daily practice is marked by sin. by waffling back and forth between, I want to pursue God, and yet I still pursue sin. And so if we're honest with ourselves, each and every one of us would say that we kind of blush a little bit when we talk about holiness, because I'm not that. And it's there that the writer of Hebrews is focusing our attention. He's commanding us to pursue holiness. And the holiness he's talking about isn't that positional holiness that we have united to Christ. He's calling us to pursue a life of holiness, a life of sanctification. Arthur Pink says, the holiness referred to in this text is not imputed holiness, for we cannot be exhorted to follow after that. No, it's the personal and practical holiness, which is not attained by standing still, but by an earnest, diligent, persistent pursuit after the same. And so the big idea is that when God forgives us of our sins and gives us Christ's righteousness, he also gives us new hearts, new desires, new affections. And part of that new heart or that new nature God gives us is that we now have a hatred for sin. The holiness we used to hate, we now love. And the sin we used to love, we now hate because God has changed our nature. He's changed our hearts. And the writer of Hebrews wants us to know that reality in our hearts, working itself out in sanctification is actually the evidence that we are God's people. And that's the kind of holiness the writer of Hebrews is telling us to pursue. And the word pursue there is important. It's not pursue and grab it and then you have it. It's pursue and keep pursuing, and keep pursuing, and keep pursuing. And so it's not a holiness you catch, and once you catch it, you have it. You have to continue to chase it in a lifelong pursuit. I think a helpful way we could think about it is, let's say you were hiking one day. And as you're hiking, you see a mountain, and it looks like the highest mountain you can see. And so you're like, okay, that's my goal. I'm making it to the top today. And so you climb and you hike and you get to the top. And as soon as you get to the top, you look out and you see what? Another mountain. a higher mountain, another mountain, and so you climbed one, and now there's another one. And so you set out and say, okay, that's the one I'm pursuing today. That's the one I'm pursuing tomorrow. And in a similar way, God calls us to pursue holiness. And although we will never achieve perfection in this life, we will progress. We will grow, we will have victories, we will have ground put under our feet so that we can look back and say, by the grace of God, I am becoming more holy than I used to be. That's something of the pursuit of holiness in the life of God's people. It's a lifelong pursuit with victories and measured growth. Although never perfection in this life, there will be growth. 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1 also talks about this pursuit of holiness. It says, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. As we've already mentioned, this holiness is not a holiness that gives us a right standing before God, but it is a holiness that should evidence the fact that we've been given new hearts. new natures, new affections. It's the evidence that God has taken out my heart of stone, my heart of sin, and he's put in its place a heart of flesh. That's one of the things God promises to do for all of his people under the new covenant. Hebrews 8, verse 10, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. Notice the promise God makes to his people. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. Ezekiel 36 verses 25 through 27, God promises, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean from all of your uncleanliness and from your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart, a new spirit, and I will put it within you. I will take out your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. and I'll put my spirit within you and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my commands." What does God promise to do for all of his new covenant people? He doesn't just promise to forgive us of our past sins, he also promises to put in our old hearts place a new heart. that desires righteousness, that has the law of God written on it, so that we actually begin doing the things that we used to hate out of that new nature. And so this pursuit of holiness is not the cause of our standing before God. We need to make that clear. The cause of our standing before God is the grace of God that we receive in Christ. but this pursuit of holiness will be in all of God's people the inevitable result that we have received that new standing and been born again. The writer of Hebrews isn't the only one who makes that point. 1 John 2 29 says, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone that does righteousness is born of him. How do you know you're born of him? You do righteous. 1 John 3, verses two and three. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And then notice what it says. Everyone who has this hope purifies himself, just as God is pure. 1 John 3, seven through nine. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil and the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifest that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not make a practice of sinning. For his seed remains in him and he cannot make a practice of sinning because he has been born of God. Jesus says in Luke 8.21, Romans 2.13 says, For now the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified." Clearly, the rest of Scripture is teaching us the same thing that Hebrews 12.14 teaches us, that God's true people will evidence the fact that they've been born again by living a life of holiness. by having a diligent, vigorous pursuit of real, personal, and practical holiness. And the writer of Hebrews is telling us, unless there's that in your life, you don't have reason to believe you're one of God's people. The second thing I want to ask though, is how important is the pursuit of holiness? How important is it that I, that you, pursue holiness throughout the rest of our lives? Look again at verse 14 of Hebrews 12. It says, So how important is holiness in the life of God's people? How important is it that each and every one of us, if we name the name of Christ, have this lifelong pursuit of holiness? The writer of Hebrews says, without it, you will not see God. In other words, an unwillingness to pursue holiness will always lead to not seeing God. And so not seeing the Lord is the result of not pursuing holiness. So what does it mean to see the Lord? Some commentaries talk about seeing the Lord, and they say, well, it means to see God working in your life. If you're not pursuing holiness, you're not going to see God working in your life the way you could. And that would certainly be true. We could teach that from the rest of Scripture. I don't think that's what the writer of Hebrews meant when he wrote verse 14. Look at the context of verse 14. It seems to me he's talking about seeing the Lord in the sense of seeing his pleasure for all eternity, being with him for all eternity, being with him in glory. Notice in verses 15 through 17, the writer of Hebrews warns us about the danger of falling away from the grace of God. And he illustrates that from the life of Esau, who did not live a holy life. Instead, he sold his birthright, and the result is that he was rejected by God and failed to receive the promises of God. Then in the next section, starting in verse 22, all the way through the end of chapter 12, he's talking about heaven and coming into the presence of God for all eternity. So when he talks about seeing God in the context, I don't take him to mean seeing God working in our lives. I take him to mean that unless we are pursuing holiness, we will not be with God for all eternity. Or to put it another way, the writer of Hebrews is telling us that unless we can look at our lives and see a continuing pattern of pursuing and attaining to some measure of holiness in our lives, we are not truly God's people. Listen to Romans 6, verses 22 and 23. Notice it says the same thing. But now, having been set free from sin, and having become slaves to God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Notice what Romans 6, 22 and 23 is teaching us. It says, we have been set free from the power of sin. We have been made slaves to God and we have the fruit of holiness. What's the fruit of holiness? everlasting life. Similarly, Jesus says in Matthew 5, 8, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Who's gonna see God in eternity? It's those that have a pure heart. That is, after all, what heaven's about, isn't it? We read it in the Psalm. Did you catch the last verse of Psalm 98? Turn over there just a minute and notice Psalm 98 in the last verse. I'm sorry, not 98, 93. Psalm 93, verse five. Your testimonies are very sure holiness adorns your house, O Lord, forever. What characterizes God's house? It's holiness. And what the writer of Hebrews is telling us is that if we are God's people who expect to be with God in his house, we must also be a holy people. That's what heaven's about. It's about God's holy people who have been made holy in Christ and have pursued a life of holiness, joining around their holy God, proclaiming his glory. And so while our personal holiness is not what merits, it's not what earns God's favor, it is always one of the telltale evidentiary signs that we are truly God's people. It's one of the evidences that on judgment day, it will go well with us. Listen to Matthew 25, verses 31 through 46. Matthew 25, starting in verse 31, it says, when the son of man comes in his glory and all of the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory and all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them one from another like a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. and he'll set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, come you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will say to him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you thirsty or give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger and take you in or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come and visit you? The king will answer and say, assuredly, I say to you, in as much as you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. Then he'll also say to those on his left hand, depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. or I was hungry and you did not give me food. I was thirsty and you did not give me a drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in. Naked and you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison and you did not visit me. And they also will answer and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick and in prison and not minister to you? then he will answer them saying, assuredly, I say it to you, as much as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will also go into everlasting punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. Who gets eternal life in Matthew 25? In Matthew 25, Jesus is teaching that those that get eternal life, those that get to spend eternity with the Lord, are those that in some way lived a life of holiness. The holiness there is ministering to the people of God, but the point is that if they did not demonstrate the proclamation of faith they have in a life of holiness, they are not truly God's people. That means if you are not pursuing holiness as the course of your life, you are not a Christian. And if you continue in your sin, it will not go well with you on judgment day. That's what the writer of Hebrews is teaching us. He's teaching us that those that are trusting in Christ, those that have a new heart, those that have the new covenant promises given to them, they will demonstrate that they have a new nature by pursuing a life of holiness. And in so doing, they're also demonstrating that they will be with God for all eternity. Let's bring Hebrews 12, 14 to a close. I wanna spend a little longer than we normally do making some application in our own lives. One of the first ways we can apply this passage is by realizing this passage flies in the face of what's often called easy-believism Christianity. There's a lot of people that have bought into a version of Christianity, which really isn't Christianity at all, that says, I can come to Christ and I can trust in him. I can confess my sins to him and he will forgive me. And it really doesn't matter what life looks like after that. My sins are forgiven. I'm once saved, always saved. And it doesn't matter if I continue to live a life of sin with no repentance and no holiness because my sins are forgiven. Hebrews 12.14 says, holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And so don't buy into a religion of easy believism that says holiness doesn't matter. There's a popular book going around right now in many Christian counseling circles called Extravagant Grace. It's kind of an ironic title because the ideas in the book are neither biblical grace, neither are they extravagant. But it's written by a lady named Barbara Duguid. which is also ironic. But on page 30 of her book, she says, let's be honest. If the chief work of the Holy Spirit and sanctification is to make Christians more sin free, he isn't doing a very good job. The church throughout the ages in the world has not usually been known for its purity and goodness. Instead, it is wracked by a constant history of strife, violence, and hypocrisy. People often cannot differentiate a believer from an unbeliever by their apparent goodness. In fact, there are many unbelievers who are morally superior to Christians and live lives of far greater nobility, generosity, and purpose than we who profess faith in Christ. Do you see what Barbara Duguid is doing? She's saying that if the Holy Spirit is concerned with our holiness in sanctification, he's not doing a very good job. Apart from the fact that that's actually blasphemous, the Holy Spirit is doing an amazing job. He's doing a perfect job. But apart from that, she then goes on to say, look throughout church history and guess what you see? You see that there's really no way of visually distinguishing the people of God from the world. And I have to say, maybe we're calling the world the people of God because the Bible actually teaches us that holiness will characterize the people of God. We should be able to look at God's people and say, there's actually holiness here. And so the Holy Spirit is not just making us reliant on Him, as Barbara Duguid goes on to say, He's actually changing us. He's sanctifying us. He's rooting out our sin. So different from what we read in scripture in a place like Titus 2, 11, and 12. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. What's the grace of God do in Titus 2? It doesn't just forgive our sins. It also goes on to teach us, to instruct us how to live godly lives where we are rooting up sin and becoming more and more holy. And so don't buy into a man-made form of religion that says you can have Christ and you can have your sins forgiven and you don't have to be holy. Hebrews 12.14 could not be any more clear. Unless you have holiness, you will not see God. There's another point of application that's just like right on the surface and anyone could pick it up. This is a passage that calls us to examine our lives and ask ourselves if our lives are marked by a pursuit of holiness and by some measure of attaining it. And so look at your life. Can you objectively look at your life and say, not only am I trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of my sins, I am also experiencing a new heart. I have new desires. I have a new nature working itself out in me, rooting out the sins of my life. And although I am not really content with the speed at which I'm pursuing holiness, I can look at my life and say the things that used to grieve the Lord that didn't grieve me, they now grieve me. The holiness I used to hate I now love, and I desire it, and I plead for it, and I pursue it in my life. The true child of God will not achieve holiness in its perfection in this life, but he will pursue it. Listen to how the Apostle Paul describes this in his own life in Romans 7. Romans 7, 21-24. I find then a law that evil is present within me, the one who wills to do good, for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity of the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? What's the Apostle Paul's experience? It's not one of perfection. He's not like, check it out, I'm a holy rock star. But it is one in which there is a battle going on. There are struggles in his heart. He says, the things I want to do, I'm not doing. The things I don't want to do, those are the things I find myself doing. There's this constant struggle, and it's the pursuit of holiness and the resultant struggle that gives him great confidence that he's really one of God's people. And so we're not talking about achieving perfect holiness in this life. But the writer of Hebrews is telling us that unless we are pursuing holiness, we are not God's people. It's the constant pursuit of holiness that characterizes the true child of God. And so as you examine your life, ask yourself this question, am I truly saved? Am I bearing the marks of someone who's saved? Or are you content to leave little pockets of remaining sin unaddressed? Are you content to merely think, my sins are forgiven? Even though they continue to remain and grow and flourish in my heart, and I am not doing anything about them. The heart of one of God's true people will not be content with sin. Well, we recognize there's a momentary pleasure in sin, right? But the heart of one of God's true people is that it yearns to be holy. It yearns to be freed from all remaining sin. You may not be content with the speed at which that is happening, but is that your desire? Is that the direction of your life? Are you pursuing holiness? And not a moralistic holiness, not a holiness that's trying to earn God's favor, but a holiness that's really growing out of the fact that I'm united to Christ. I am in Him. He is holy. He's given me a new heart. He's given me a new nature. And now I want to live like that. And so examine the direction of your life. Look back to the moment you claim to have been saved and ask yourself, is there ground that's gone under my feet? If I hit the top of any hills, if on that self-examination you see God is making you more holy, you have reason to believe you're one of God's people. You have reason to rejoice. If you see a struggle going on between a new heart and an old sinful flesh, this is the evidence of one of God's people. And it should give you confidence that your claim to faith is genuine because it is creating the pursuit of holiness. Maybe as you do all that self-examination, you discover you're not pursuing holiness. Maybe as you examine your own life, you'd say, I don't have this new nature with new desires and new longings like you're talking about. And the evidence of that is that I really don't care about holiness. I'm either quite content with my sin, I still love my sin, or maybe I don't like my sin, but I don't have the desire or the resources to do anything about it to pursue holiness. Now, if that's you this morning and all that self-examination leaves you finding yourself outside of Christ and still in your sins, one of the main things I want to be absolutely clear with you about this morning is that Hebrews 12.14 is descriptive. It is not prescriptive. What's the difference between descriptive and prescriptive? Well, imagine you were feeling sick and you went to the doctor and the doctor said, well, what are your symptoms? He said, well, I've been really, really tired for months. I get sweats. I have fevers. I'm chilled all the time. I have night sweats. I don't have any appetite. I've been coughing for months. So the doctor starts feeling your lymph nodes in your body. And he listens to your lungs with a stethoscope. And then he injects a small amount of tuberculin under your skin in your forearm. And he tells you, come back in three days. And in three days, that little place where he injected the tuberculin in your arm is now really hard and swollen and bright red. So the doctor explains to you, the symptoms you have are a potentially life-threatening disease called tuberculosis. At this point, everything the doctor has done is descriptive. He's identified your problem. He's helped you see the symptoms of your problem. He's shown you what the name of your problem is, but you would be crazy to leave the doctor's office thinking, okay, I have tuberculosis and my tuberculosis is causing me to be tired and sweaty and freezing and hungry and coughing all the time. I just need to eat more. I need to sleep more. I need to maintain a more healthy body temperature, and I need to quit coughing. Is that the cure? No, those things are the symptom of a problem, and the actual cure of the problem is you need a serious regimen of antibiotics to fight off what's wrong with your body. And in a similar way, when we talk about a lack of holiness, we're not talking about a solution, we're talking about a problem. And you would be crazy to leave here this morning thinking, OK, I just need to try to be more holy. Because the reality is that apart from Christ, you don't have the resources or the desire to be holy. Apart from Christ, you still have an old stony heart that doesn't want holiness. And what you need to do today is come to Christ and to trust that when Christ died on the cross for sinners, when He was raised from the dead three days later, He did everything you need to have a right standing before God. You need to come to Christ to confess your unholiness, confess your sins to Him, and ask Him to give you by His grace, Not because you're trying harder, not because you're being more holy, but ask Him simply by virtue of the fact that He's gracious to give you a new heart. To take out your heart of stone that loves sin and to put in its place a heart of flesh that desires Him, that wants to trust in Him, that hates your sin. And by God's grace, trust in Christ today for the forgiveness of your sins and trust in him to become for you your righteousness and holiness. Father, we pray that you will help us to rightly identify where our hearts are this morning. Lord, it would be a shame for any of us to walk away this morning thinking we are your people when we are not. excusing and justifying the fact that we have no holiness to validate our claim to be your people. So Father, if there's anyone here who's self-deceived, I pray that your word, your word that's been preached to them would expose their heart and help them to come to you. Lord, if there's anyone here who struggles to know if they're a Christian, and they really are, I pray that you would help them to Look at the evidences of it in their life, that as they see you working in their life, it would give them greater confidence and assurance that you have truly saved them from their sins. Father, wherever we're at, your word meets us, it instructs us, it feeds us, and it gives us grace. So Father, thank you for your word this morning. We pray that your spirit will continue its work in us through the week. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We hope you've been edified by the message you heard from Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Warland, Wyoming. For more information about Sovereign Grace Bible Church, or to support the ministry, contact them at sgbcwy.org. sgbcwy.org.