Would you turn with me in your copy of God's Word to Ephesians chapter 5? Let me just ask you, I say it maybe every three weeks, but let me ask you to just make it a habit. When we're done with the reading of the Word, don't put your Bibles up. Don't put your Bibles up, because a good sermon should drive you back to the Scriptures over and over again. Paul told us that the Bereans They they searched the scriptures to see if these things were true and I want to challenge you to do the same Search the scriptures to see if these things are true Our text today will be Ephesians 5 verses 3 through 5, but I'm gonna start at verse 1 just for context Remember this please before we start this is the inspired inerrant infallible Word of God and it is it alone is the only rule of faith and practice and Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among the saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will endure forever. We're right in the thick of a section of Ephesians where Paul is teaching us how to live the Christian life. Now, that's very, very important that we understand how Ephesians is broken down. That Ephesians 1 through 3 have almost no commands in them whatsoever. They are all about how we are saved. It's all about the work of the Trinity in our salvation. That the Father predestined us, that the Son redeemed us, that the Holy Spirit applies that redemption to our hearts. But then we get to chapter four and there's a shift of emphasis. So far, before chapter four, we were given almost no commands. It's just what Christ has done. Because beloved, your salvation is 100% accomplished by Christ. You cannot add to it. You do not do a single thing to make yourself more saved. Christ alone saves you. But then Paul, as he does in almost every letter, he shifts gears a little bit and he says, okay, now as God's people, here's how you're to live. And he's given us all sorts of instructions about how to live. So we've talked about putting off anger. If we're God's people, then we shouldn't let the sun go down on our anger, Paul says. If you're God's people, then you shouldn't speak in lies, but put on truthfulness. You shouldn't be lazy, but you should work hard to the glory of God. You shouldn't be bitter and angry and resentful towards each other. There should be no malice among you, but rather you should love as Christ loved you. These are the imperatives that Paul has been giving us so far. Here is how you are to live as Christians. Now, I don't want you to miss that fact. He is not telling us how to be saved. That is utterly important. He's not telling us, if you do these things, then you'll be saved. That's works-based salvation. What he's telling us is that if you are a believer and your past has been nailed to the cross and you trust in Christ and you trust in his word and the Holy Spirit is living in you, then this is how you're to live. We can't lose those bearings. And now Paul comes to a very important issue for Christians to deal with, and it's the area of sexual immorality. Some of you saw the title of today's sermon, and you probably thought, you know what? Polite people don't talk about that stuff, and especially not in church. Well, beloved, guess what? The church is the only place that's not talking about this. Our culture talks about it constantly, and we have been silent. We've been too embarrassed to talk. We've failed to train our children to think about sexuality because we haven't had the guts to talk about it. How's that working for us, by the way? How's it going? I'm just curious. Does the world seem to be getting it with us keeping our mouths shut? Not at all. So for those of you who are a little uncomfortable, don't worry. You're no more uncomfortable than I am. For those of you who are parents and are a little bit nervous right now, I got kids here too, and I'm gonna do my best to keep this PG, because I know there's young children in here. I will say nothing provocative, but I will say what the Bible teaches about this issue. Children, you may have some questions today. And I hope you'll take as an opportunity to ask your parents. And your parents will tell you just as much as you need to know right now. And as you get a little bit older, you'll need to understand a little more. But this is something that needs to be discussed in the church. Parents, if you're not talking to your children about this, guess what? The world already is. The world is screaming at them through their television screens and through their computers and all sorts of places. They're hearing about it everywhere except for at home in most cases. So parents, we need to take the opportunity to graciously help our children to understand how God has created sex to work. Let me say a couple things about why we of all people need to deal with this. The first is that it's pervasive. Paul is writing here to the Ephesians. The Ephesians in Ephesus was one of the great structures of the world, the temple of Diana. And what happened in the temple of Diana was people would go in there and the way they worshiped was through ritual prostitution. It's hard to get our heads around. These people understood life in a sexualized culture. But I want you to understand something, and I heard several commentators say this as I was studying, and I think it's absolutely true, although it hit me strange at first. If you took one of these pagans from Ephesus who were used to that temple prostitution, and you dropped them off in our culture, they would blush. Because what used to happen, and it used to happen up till 20 years ago in America, is this was something that happened in private. This was something that happened behind closed doors. You had to look for it. Well, guess what's happening today? It is looking for you. pornography, sexual pervasiveness. It is looking for you through billboards, through your computer screen. You do not have to look for it anymore. It is looking for you. That is a novelty of our day that I don't know that any other culture has been able to parallel. It's pervasive. Second, we need to talk about this. Because of the danger of sexual immorality, it destroys marriages every single day. It destroys churches. I remember being in seminary, probably the most sobering class in my seminary career. We had a guest speaker who had done a study on, he had done his doctoral dissertation on pastors in the ministry who had committed adultery and how the church responded. And here's what he said again and again and again. He told the story and then he said, and the church closed and the church closed and the church closed. It is so destructive to our marriages to the church. You can think about David, King David, sexual sin led eventually to the downfall of Israel. But there's no greater danger of it than what it does to our souls. Anyone who does not repent of sexual immorality will ruin their souls for eternity, the scriptures tell us. Third, we need to talk about this issue because sex is glorifying to God when it is rightly understood. Now, does that surprise you that we can say that when rightly understood and rightly applied, God is glorified in sex? How many of us have ever thought about that? That that is one way we were created to glorify God. But you cannot glorify God and you can't fully enjoy the marital relationship if sexual immorality is all over the place in your life. You will not enjoy your own marriage the way you could if sexual immorality has an undue role in your life. This is interesting. I think it'll shock you. Of all people in the history of the world, do you know who I think best understood and enjoyed human sexuality? The Puritans. That's why they had so many kids. But they understood that this was a good gift from God, but it's only a good gift when used rightly. This is so difficult for us to understand because we live in a society that on the one hand, it is obsessed with sex, and on the other hand, it has no clue about it whatsoever. And so we have to train ourselves not to think like our world. There are only two understandings of human sexuality that the Bible allows for. There's a godly view and practice of sex on the one hand, and there's an ungodly view and practice on the other hand. So let me ask you first as we get started, does your view of it and your practice of it right now in your life and things that perhaps you need to repent of, do they reflect a godly understanding or an ungodly understanding? As long as immoral sexuality has a role in your life, you will not experience what God calls godly sex. Now onto the passage. This passage actually contains a progression of thought. Paul starts with sexual immorality. Now that'll include things like adultery and fornication. And then it progresses to covetousness. So that's just looking longfully at something. And then Paul makes this really strange progression. to where he says, you can't even joke about it. You can't even make crude jokes about sex. Now, we're going to think, why? That's so harmless. And Paul says, no, that's where it starts. It starts with a low view of human sexuality. That's where the covetousness comes from. And that's where the adultery comes from because we don't understand it in our daily lives. We don't know how to look at it. Paul is moving from the most obvious with adultery and fornication to the most insidious with crude, coarse joking. Is Paul prude? Is Paul just being prude? Y'all, we live in a highly sexualized culture. The things that we accept as the norm today would have been appalling to every generation of Christians in history. So we have been conditioned to accept things that we ought not accept. We have normalized things that ought not be normal. I don't just mean in the world, I mean in the church. We laugh at things that the world should be appalled by. So I'm going to ask you to please step outside your ethic of human sexuality and into the Bible's ethic, which is this. Sex only belongs in the monogamous, committed, heterosexual relationship, marriage relationship, and anything outside of that is sin. Can we start with that as our premise? It only belongs in the context of a monogamous, committed, heterosexual marriage relationship, and anything outside of that is sin. All right, we're done with the introduction. Let's look, verse by verse. Verse three, Paul says, sexual immorality and all impurity have no place among the saints. Now, most of us are legalistic and we're gonna say, well Paul, what qualifies as sexual immorality? And the answer is anything outside of the bounds of committed monogamous heterosexual marriage. We've created all this gray area about sex. The Bible has no gray area. It is either godly or it is sin. And so any case of human sexual activity outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage is always sin. And Paul wrote this because there are many in the church who came out of that Temple of Diana setting where sex was a big part of their life and the misuse of it was a big part of their life. undoubtedly he knew some of them were still struggling with it. In fact, when he wrote to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 5, he said, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. Talking to the church at Corinth. Let me say this, for those of you who struggle with this, For those of you who have past struggles or ongoing struggles, you're in good company because there is not a church in the last 2,000 years where there has not been an ongoing struggle with sexual immorality. I don't say that to give you license to continue in it. I say that to say you're in good company of saints who have gone before you, they have struggled, and they have overcome through the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps you feel utterly defeated in your struggle with sexual sin, so much so that you don't even fight it at all anymore. Let me give you some encouragement, beloved. As long as Jesus Christ lives at the right hand of God, and he does, and as long as the Holy Spirit lives inside you, and if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives inside you, then your battle is not over. You do not need to throw up your hands and say, I give up. You are not condemned to a life of defeat at the hands of sexual sin. And I want to encourage you to continue to do battle with it. Perhaps you've already capitulated. Let me encourage you to pick up the weapons again. and do battle with it again, because here's what happens. If you do not do battle with sexual sin, you will sink further and further and further into it. I want you to think about some ways that sexual sin hurts us. First, it steals from you the joy that is reserved for your marriage. It steals from you the joy that is reserved for your marriage. It will complicate and it will damage your current marriage, and if you're single and you think, what's the big deal? It will make it very difficult and complicated for you in your future marriage. Another thing sexual sin does is it robs us of our spiritual vitality. You will not grow spiritually while you're in the midst of sexual sin. You will not grow in your understanding of grace. If you are willfully, happily, complacently engaging in sexual sin, you cannot grow in your relationship with Christ. What will happen instead is you will become laden with guilt. What will happen instead is you will constantly beware of your hypocrisy. And your love for the Lord typically grows cold if you do not fight this sin. One more effect of sexual immorality. It is a downward spiral. It's a downward spiral. It might start innocently with one act, but what happens is it goes from one act to one habit to one addiction that you cannot overcome. That is the pattern that man after man after man have confessed to me. Here's what's so deceptive about sexual sin is it feels like we're exercising freedom. What could be more free than for me to do whatever I want to? And you end up in addiction. You end up in bondage. You end up with no ability to say no. Does that sound like freedom to you? No, it is chains disguised as freedom. I want you to hear something that happens when we are unrepentant of our sexual sin. Romans 1. Paul's been talking about the godless state of man apart from Christ, and he says there that sexual immorality and especially homosexuality is one sign of God turning people over to judgment. In other words, they think they're practicing freedom. But here's what Paul says in verse 26, for this reason because of their godlessness. God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. Do you get what Paul's saying there? Homosexuality is judgment for sin. It itself is judgment. It's hard for us to get our heads around. But the biblical ethic of sexual sin is that it is a downward spiral that always gets worse, and it never can find relief. It always has to get more intense. There always needs to be something new and something more. We need to understand this. Maybe you're a man today, and you're in a marriage where you don't sense that your wife loves or esteems you. And there's somebody, along comes an attractive woman, and she's affirming of you, and she's kind and sweet and everything that your wife isn't, and you feel your heart being tugged in that direction. And the Apostle Paul is saying, hey, think about your soul. Think about your family. Think about your children. Think about your church. Think about the witness of Christ. All those things are at stake with that temptation. Wives, you're saying, look, I have a husband that's not there for me emotionally. He's distant, we just don't connect. He doesn't understand me, he doesn't care about me. And then someone comes along and provides everything that your husband can't provide. And it seems so right. Or maybe you're a young person. You have no prospect of marriage at this point, and you think, what can it hurt? What can it hurt? Maybe you're a young couple, you're dating somebody, and your relationship has gone in a way that it ought not. Paul knows that sexual immorality takes on a myriad of different forms, and all of them are sin. And Paul wants to arm us here to say, no, I will not, because it will destroy my home, my family, my marriage, my soul. I will not do it. Paul says to us, 1 Thessalonians 4 3, for this is the will of God for you, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. What does God want from you? Does he want you to be a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief? I don't know, but he wants you to abstain from sexual immorality. We know that. Then verse three, Paul moves down the spectrum to something that our culture would probably say is less harmful, what he calls covetousness. Now, we think of covetousness as wanting something that belongs to somebody else. But if you think about the original, the first application of the 10th commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Covetousness in terms of sexuality is longing for someone, lusting for someone who does not belong to you, who is not yours to have. Adultery never just happens. It's always the product of taking too long a glance, letting our minds wander where they ought not, letting our flesh be tempted. That's why Job said, I covenanted with my eyes not to look upon another woman. Well, here's what we've got going for us. We've got modern technology and it's piped into us, isn't it? And we look on the screen and guess what? Covetousness. Let me share with you some statistics. 35%, so just over one in every three internet downloads are pornography. Did you know that? One out of three things going on in the cloud are pornography. Every second, 28,000 users are watching pornography on the internet. 37% of families in the United States report that pornography is a problem in their home. The US spends $11 billion annually on pornography, more than the total of all other nations. The average age, this will hurt your heart, the average age that a child is exposed to it now is somewhere between 9 and 11. And most of the time, it's not in print form, and it's not even on a computer. Most of the time, it's on a phone. Boy, it's harmless, isn't it? Families, be vigilant in this area. Dads, that starts with you. Home computers, you need accountability software. We can talk about that. Parents, if you're going to give your child a phone or a tablet, please make sure it's got a way for you to hold them accountable. It's got filters. The chief desire is that they not see it in the first place, but then if they do see it, you need to know about it. Parents, be vigilant. And if you're sitting there saying, my child wouldn't do that, let me ask you, would you? Because if you would do it, guess whose sin nature they inherited? They got yours. Your child would do that, and your child might not do it on purpose, but guess what? It's not just a matter of them looking for it. What did we say? It's looking for them. As much as I would like to think we are immune Christians or not, 60% of professing Christian men have an ongoing struggle with pornography on a regular basis. 30% of Christian women have an ongoing struggle with pornography on a regular basis. Wives and husbands, you need to be allies for each other in this fight. Don't be judge, jury, and executioner. Be a friend to your spouse in this battle. help one another. Remember 1 Corinthians 7. One of the reasons for marriage is so that you don't burn with passion for others. It's to satisfy that passion. Let me say this so that there's no misunderstanding. Looking at pornography is sexually immoral. So let me ask you, those of y'all, and many of you did, and I commend every one of you for this, but many of you have taken a bold stand over the issue of homosexuality. Let me ask you a question. Do you stand for the Bible's whole sexual ethic? Do you accept the Bible's whole sexual ethic? Or do you just condemn homosexuality because it's something you don't struggle with? It's a hard question for us to wrestle with, but to condemn homosexuality, but to laugh at pornography and to be sexually immoral yourself is hypocrisy. We need a whole, a fully-orbed sexual ethic as Christians, and the Bible gives us that. Then Paul moves on. He starts to make this point there. Verse four, he says, let there be no filthiness or foolish talk or crude joking which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. He's moving further down that spectrum. It started with adultery and fornication, sexual immorality, then covetousness, looking where we ought not look, and now he's talking about our thought lives, because guess what? You don't act on something unless you first let your mind go there. So controlling your thought life important. Now Paul, why are you being so prude? Isn't humor a good thing? Yes, good humor is a good thing, but this is not good humor. Joking about sexuality and body parts shows ignorance of God's ethic of sex in the human body. Here's why this matters. When we joke about sex and use filthy language and coarse joking, we relegate the God-ordained beauty of of sex to the realm of the tawdry and filthy and nasty." Have you ever seen that before? People take something that is beautiful and is good, and they make it disgusting. They make it something to be embarrassed about. And here's what happens. We grow up like that. Our parents don't tell us how we should look at it. And then we come into marriage totally confused about what this is and what we're to do. We feel ashamed about it when we're in marriage. And the Bible has to tell us, no, this is a really good thing now. Husbands and wives, this is a good thing. Most Christians don't know how to see it as a gift from God, but it is when done correctly. That's why we can't joke about it. That's why we can't make it nasty and tawdry and filthy, because it ruins the beauty that God has intended. So recap, what Paul is saying so far is that we're to have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual immorality. And we're in a culture that has a very high threshold, a high level of tolerance for sexual immorality. We are to have a zero-tolerance policy in our own lives, which means no covetous looking, no pornography, no crude and harsh and coarse joking. That's what the Bible's telling us. Women, let me ask you. Let me plead with you for a moment. There is a way that you can dress that accentuates inner beauty rather than drawing and accentuating, drawing attention to your physical body. Because when you dress in a way that draws attention to your body, your brothers in Christ look where they should not be looking and think about things they should not be thinking about. Sisters, we need you desperately to dress in a way that does not draw our attention to your body. That's hard because it's so counter-cultural. But ladies, your God made your husband the only person that should be looking like that upon your body. And so we'd ask, ladies, would you keep that body for your husband and not for others? It's an area where Christian women, the true inner beauty of our Christian sisters, can be on display in a world that doesn't know what that is. All right. What's the big deal? Why should we, 150 or so of us, be holy when we live in the midst of an unholy world? Why does this matter? Look at verse 5. Are you uncomfortable yet? Because we've got this thing we believe in called justification by faith alone. The Bible doesn't teach you are saved by faith and sexual purity, does it? We are saved by faith alone. So how is Paul telling us here that the sexually immoral and the covetous idolaters have no inheritance in the kingdom of God? I think the key is something Paul says here in this little caveat in verse 5. He says covetousness, our version puts a parentheses there, that is an idolater. Paul is explaining the heart of sexual sin, of unrepentant sexual sin, it is idolatry. It is idolatry. You see, sex was given for our enjoyment and our fulfillment, but on God's terms. He created it to be fulfilling only as he ordained it. But guess what Satan does? This is not a new technique for Satan, but Satan comes to you and he says, has God really said? Has God really said that this belongs only in the realm of marriage? Has God really said that we're not to look lustfully upon another woman? Has God really said that? And then Satan comes to us and says, God is holding out on you. He's got something better for you than his agenda and his ethic. And so that's what leads us to sexual immorality. When we engage in sexual immorality, what we're doing is we're saying to God, God, you are wrong. Your laws and your rules and your understanding of how this works are all wrong. We're not just breaking a law. Here's what we're saying. We're saying, I will be my own God. I get to make the rules around here, not you, God. It's the ultimate expression of idolatry. It's idolatry of self. And Paul makes this bold statement, because he knows that idolatry is the product of a heart that does not know Jesus. Now do me a favor, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6. We're gonna spend the rest of our time there, because we need to figure this out. We need to wrap this up. 1 Corinthians 6, Paul's talking with the Corinthians, and boy, you ever think you got problems in your life? Just spend some time in Corinth. Those people were a mess and a half. Whenever you have a passage that is difficult like this one, Scripture interprets Scripture. So look at what the whole of Scripture says. Paul explains this to us here in 1 Corinthians 6, 9 to 11. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters. Look, Paul's putting those two together again. Sexual immorality and idolatry go together. nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will enter the kingdom." Well, I'm out. How about you guys? But keep reading. Verse 11. This will be the balm of Gilead to your heart. He says, and such were some of you. Such were That gives us hope that it can be put in our past. And that gives us hope that it will not be held against us. Such were some of you, but it has been separated from you as far as the East is from the West. Your past sexual sins, if you are in Christ, were nailed to the cross and you bear them no more. Paul says you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. The beauty of the gospel is that Paul can say such were some of you. You were unrepenting. You were defined by those things. You were one who had no inheritance in the kingdom and you were under the judgment of God. So what changed? Christ changed you. All your sexual sin and your past and those things that defined you were nailed to the cross in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ never sinned one time, but on the cross, he bore the sin of a sexually immoral person. He bore the sins of pornography. He bore the sins of adultery. And friends, if that is in your past, it was nailed to the cross. For all who repent and trust in Christ, it is nailed to the cross with him. So important, because some of you are in here and you have sexual sin in your past and you feel like you're damaged goods, don't you? You feel like God will always keep me on the bench. I will always be B team because of what I've done. You feel like you're always wearing the invisible Scarlet A. And here's the truth. If you won't repent, that's true. All of that's true of you. But if you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, then guess what? It's only true of Christ now. It was laid on Christ. And what God sees when he looks at you is the sinless perfection of his Son. You are no longer defined by being sexually immoral, or an adulterer, or an idolater, or a swindler. All of that is nailed to the cross of Christ. And you get his righteousness on your behalf. I want you to see how dear you are to Christ. Don't you see how dear you are to him? Look down, we're still in 1 Corinthians 6, look at verse 13. Paul's talking about why not practice sexual immorality. Verse 13, he says, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Essentially what Paul's saying here is you belong to God. You belong to him. He owns you, he loves you. And then verse 15, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Paul's saying, not only do you belong to the Father, but Jesus Christ purchased you. Acts 20, you are purchased by his blood. And he has nail prints in his hands that serve as his receipt for your purchase. And then verse 19, so we've been told, you belong to the Father, you are dear and precious to the Father, you are dear and precious to Christ, because he purchased you. Third, verse 19, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? Just as the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament were the place that the Holy Spirit dwelt, they were holy ground, you are that now. despite your past sin, despite your selfishness, despite all that is true of you and more than you will ever know. The Holy Spirit says, I will live in you. That is amazing. What that means is, regardless of your past, you are holy to God. That's why he says here in this passage several times, as is proper for the saints, you are holy to God. Therefore, no sexual immorality, no coarse joking, no covetousness, because you're holy to God. Let me close quickly with an illustration. Many years ago, we had a president who had such high regard for the Oval Office, he would not go in there without wearing a coat and tie. He said, as far as our country goes, this is the closest thing to a holy place, a sacred space. So morning and night, alone or with others, he would not go in there without a coat and tie. He thought it deserved better. Then a little while later, we had a president who used that same Oval Office to commit sexual immorality. And the sin itself was disgusting, but people were more repulsed because he did it in the Oval Office, the holy place, as far as America goes. Beloved, you are God's sacred space. His Holy Spirit dwells in you, so when you look at pornography, when you engage in sexual immorality, even when you make inappropriate course-joking, you are bringing the Holy Spirit into something very unholy. You are bringing Him into something He has no desire to be a part of. Don't bring him into your sexual immorality, but be holy as he is holy. And the beauty is that in Christ, no matter what your past looks like, no matter the last time you looked at pornography, there is an opportunity for a fresh start in Jesus Christ. Let's go to him in prayer. Father, we confess this is absolutely not easy. And at times we've wanted to cringe and probably even run out of here. And there's children that'll have questions. There's adults that'll have questions. There are people in here who feel tremendously guilty. We look around. We know that if 60% of Christian men and 30% of Christian women are looking at pornography actively, that means that at least some in this room are struggling with it. Oh, Lord. Now is a time not for us to be judge, jury, and executioner, but a time for us to show grace to one another. Father, I pray that you, for those who are burdened by the guilt of their own sin, I pray that they would seek out one of our elders, seek out our staff, and confess their sins, and that they would get accountability and help for it. Father, we know that this is messy, but we are never so messy that we are outside of the reach of the gospel. Father, the answer to our sexual sin is not, I'll just try harder. The answer is, I run to Christ and I cast myself upon him. Father, thank you for the gospel. It's not just something that we believed one time and now it's up to us. But day after day after day, we return to it. Because day after day we forget it, and we run after the world. Father, teach us to treat our bodies as sacred space. Teach us to hate sexual immorality as much as you do. Help us to enlist buddies, battle buddies, for accountability. Father, there's so much more to be said, and we trust your Holy Spirit to keep saying that into our hearts. Father, if there are some in here who realize that they have been idols to themselves, that they have worshiped their own will rather than the Word of God, would you grant them repentance now, that they would trust in Christ, that they would experience the newness of life that's promised to us in the gospel? We pray all this in Christ's name, amen.