Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Proverbs 14, verse four. Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you as we do each week for your word, that you have preserved it, that you have given it to us, that you have inspired it, and that, Father, it is your holy word. It is infallible in its application to our life. It is inerrant in its consistency from beginning to end. And Father, we know that it is living and active, and it's able to pierce into the division of the soul from the spirit. And so, Father, we pray that it would pierce our hearts this morning, that it would compel us to respond in righteousness to you, and that it would stimulate us on to good works. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. If you've ever worked on a dairy or a ranch, you probably have seen or have the experience of seeing an insurance agent or a banker or some other white collar professional drive out onto the ranch in his clean car and step out in his clean clothes with his clean shoes and then realized that he forgot to check his schedule, his calendar that morning to see what appointments were on his calendar because he's not dressed properly for this particular visit. And so as the person begins to tiptoe around through the mud and the muck, trying to keep to the best of his ability his shoes and clothing clean, It never works. And so there are, by the time he leaves, there are some obvious indicators that this person has been on a ranch. And those indicators can be seen by looking at him. Those indicators can be detected by smelling him. And this is because farm animals have a habit of being messy. They don't observe the same standards of hygiene that humans do. They have no desire for things like indoor plumbing. And even if they did, they wouldn't use it. But so we have here in the Book of Proverbs a reference to farm animals. And we see that Solomon is writing about oxen. And Solomon, as you know, was born in King David's house. And therefore, we can pretty much assume or deduce that Solomon grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. But apparently Solomon had spent enough time in the barn to know that you don't go there with the anticipation of keeping your clothes and your shoes clean. Our sermon text here in Proverbs 14, four demonstrates that Solomon knew that a necessary condition of keeping oxen was to deal with the mess that they make. But Solomon also knew something about humans. He knew that many of us don't like to get dirty. Solomon knew that for some people, the mess that the oxen make was so offensive that they would rather not even have the oxen in the barn. And so Solomon writes, where there are no oxen, the manger is clean. Now technically, a manger is the trough that the animals eat from. But the Hebrew word here that's translated as manger is broader than that. It doesn't mean specifically a manger, although it could mean a manger. I like what the King James says, how it translates it. It says, it translates it as a crib, where no oxen are, the crib is clean. But even the word crib is somewhat foreign to our modern ears. When we think of a crib, we think of a place where we put a baby to sleep. And so I'm gonna go with not the ESV translation today, not even the KJV, but the GVD translation, which says the word stall. where there is no oxen, the stall is clean. I think we can all agree that that's the general thrust of this passage. So getting rid of the oxen can be an effective way of keeping the stall clean, but there's at least one major drawback. For some people who are willing to get rid of the oxen, they're willing to get rid of the oxen because they don't like the mess, and these people are overlooking the reason why the oxen are there in the first place. The ox provides the strength to pull the plow and other farm implements, and therefore, oxen are a necessary part of cultivating the fields for an abundant harvest or an abundant crop production. Hence the second part of Proverbs 14.4. But abundant crops come by the strength of an ox. So the person who gets rid of the oxen because he doesn't like the mess that they make is short-sighted and he doesn't see the big picture. If you want an abundant harvest, then you're going to have to be willing to work with the mess of the oxen. Now I don't think any of us read this proverb and really believe that Solomon is writing this in order to educate his readers about some of the fine points of agriculture and animal husbandry. In fact, only 21st century Americans would even think along those lines. The agrarian culture that served as Solomon's original audience clearly understood just how detrimental it would be to a farmer to not have any oxen. And so Solomon's making a point here. By proposing the remedy for dirty stalls, that getting rid of the oxen is the remedy for dirty stalls. Solomon knows that his audience would understand this to be a completely absurd remedy. And Solomon is thereby showing how foolish and how short-sighted some people are when it comes to dealing with things that they find objectionable in life. Some people don't like to be inconvenienced by life's problems or by distractions, they may call them. And so they take steps to remove these problems, to remove these distractions from their life. But what they don't realize is that sometimes they are forfeiting things of great, great importance, things of great value. They forfeit these things just to have the, comparatively minor, to get rid of what is a comparatively minor inconvenience in their life. So let me give you an example. A Christian goes to a dinner party, and he ends up sitting at a table of strangers, one of which is this man whose life is a complete wreck. He's divorced, he's an alcoholic, he's unemployed, and he's talking exclusively to this Christian, asking him how he can get his life together. How should the Christian respond to this guy? Should he pretend that he needs to make a phone call, get up, politely dismiss himself, walk out, never come back, go find a table at the other end of the room, hide over there, find a different company? A Christian who sneaks across the room and finds another table will say to himself, wow, that person's life is messed up. I nearly spent the next hour listening to this guy and all his problems. If that's the Christian's attitude, then he's the kind of person who gets rid of the oxen because of the mess that they make. The Christian never considered that this guy's soul is a field that needs to be sown with the seeds of the gospel of Jesus Christ. All the Christian could see was the so-called mess of this person listening to this guy's problems throughout the night, and so he hastily, hastily got rid of the oxen. But at what expense? What did the Christian forfeit in order to isolate himself from the chore of an undesired dinner conversation? Messy people and messy situations cannot be avoided if you're going to expect your life and your ministry to produce an abundance of fruit. It's not that any of us necessarily enjoy working in messy situations, but that's just part of what it takes to work towards an abundant harvest. And the Christian who understands that God calls all of us to be farmers, in the metaphorical sense of that word, this person is a Christian who understands that his own personal offense to messy stalls is an absurd reason for not plowing, or not cultivating, or not doing the work that produces an abundant harvest. And to really put this into perspective, consider all the messes we've made. Because of the sins we've committed, we've made a lot of messes in our lives. We get annoyed with one another, we fight with one another, we lie to one another, we speak evil to one another, we avoid one another, and this is just on the horizontal level. Much bigger and much more significant are the sins that we've committed against God. We create idols. We put other gods before him. We disgrace his name. We fail to worship him in a manner in which he requires of us. And the reality is that all of us have made a huge mess of our lives. And Jesus, who is not responsible for any of that mess, looked upon our sad state of affairs and he said, I will have grace upon them. I will love them. I will become involved in their messy affairs, the messy affairs of my people's lives. And so Jesus did the unthinkable. Being very God of very God, he humbled himself to become a man. In other words, God the Son came down from heaven and dwelt among us. He was born of a woman and took on the form of a servant. And why did he do this? He died, I should say he did this in order to clean up our mess. The mighty second person of the Trinity humbled himself to becoming obedient to the point of death, even the shameful and accursed death of a cross in order to clean up your messy life. Hebrews 12.2 says, for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame so that he could be the founder and perfecter of your faith. In other words, because Jesus desired the abundant harvest of eternal salvation of his elect people, he set aside his own personal comforts in order to become involved in the messy work of redeeming sinners. I like the way that John Gill explains this. Instead of the glory which Jesus had with the Father from eternity, he suffered shame and disgrace. Instead of living a joyful and comfortable life on earth, he suffered a shameful and accursed death. And instead of the temporal joy and glory that the Jews proposed to him, he endured the shame and pain of the cross. And why? Why did Jesus put aside all these comforts John Gill continues, for the sake of the salvation of all the elect on which Jesus' heart was set. So here's the point. Because Jesus set his heart on the salvation of his elect, he was therefore willing to put on his boots and to roll up his sleeves and to go to work in the messy stalls of sinful humanity. To put it lightly, Jesus wasn't opposed to getting his hands dirty because he understood that this was a necessary part of the work that produces an abundant harvest. And this is the attitude that Solomon's committing to you and I. We must not be opposed to putting our boots on and going out and to work within the messy stalls of sinful humanity as well. And why? Because God has commissioned us to this task. If you are a Christian, then you carry the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that makes you a means of grace to bring the love and nurture of God to the people of this world. Let me repeat that, because this is huge. This is essential for every Christian to understand. If you are a Christian, then that means you carry the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that makes you a means of grace which God uses to bring his grace, his love, his nurture to the people of this world. This means that when God draws sinners to himself, He does it through you and I speaking the gospel message into that person's messy life. But don't think that this is all that the proverb is about, that evangelism is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to evangelism, you and I are the hands and feet of Jesus to the messy people God has placed in our families, in our churches, in our communities. Take, for example, the command that God gives to the church in Romans 12, 15. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. It's easy to rejoice with those who rejoice, right? It's not so easy to weep with those who weep. Weeping can be awkward. Coming alongside those who are weeping can be inconvenient. And most certainly, weeping with those who weep is emotionally draining to you, me. It requires you to pour out your love, your emotional energy in a sacrificial manner. You will be dealing, as it were, with somebody else's mess. And this is what Jesus did. We've already acknowledged how Jesus, being very God of very God, humbled himself to suffer the sins of his elect. But even in a different way, in his humanity, as he walked this earth and moved amongst the people of the first century, he was willing to weep with those who weep. A most vivid example of this is recorded in John 11. Jesus arrived at the home of Mary and Martha four days after their brother Lazarus had died. And verse 33 describes Mary coming out to meet Jesus upon his arrival. And we read, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And then in verse 35, we read just two words. but they are two words that communicate volumes about what it means to be involved in messy lives, the messy lives of other people. Those two words are Jesus wept. When Mary and Martha and the other friends of Lazarus were weeping, Jesus did exactly what Romans 12, 15 tells us to do. he began to weep with those who weep. And this is just one example of the type of messy stalls Christians must work in while cultivating the fields for an abundant harvest. But our sermon text is warning us that we don't always perceive these messy stalls as part of our work. And this is why this warning is so relevant to our daily lives. Because if you don't think that dealing with the messes in life is a necessary part of the production of an abundant crop, then you're going to inadvertently distance yourself from people Messy people, messy situations. Just like the man who gets rid of his oxen because he doesn't like the mess they make in the stall, you will discontinue relationships, you will abandon situations where you should have invested love and energy and the gospel of Jesus Christ to bring grace to the people that are caught up in those messy situations. That's the type of agape love that God requires you to show your neighbor. Do you see a person who's hurting? Help that person. Come alongside that person. Strengthen that person with the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. Do you see a person who's depressed? Then encourage that person. Bring the assurance of the gospel to that person. Do you see a person who's lonely? Then show biblical hospitality to that person. Do you see a person who's caught up in sin? Then gently and lovingly bring biblical correction to that person and restore them to a right relationship with God. As a member of the body of Christ, you should expect that your life will be filled with opportunities to put on your boots, roll up your sleeves, and bring the grace of God to messy people and messy situations. Like the farmer who values his oxen because his mind is set upon the production of an abundant harvest, you should value the opportunities that God gives you to bring his love, his compassion, his mercy, his grace to people who are messy and awkward and inconvenient. Just as Hebrews 12 too tells us that Jesus did not come to this earth in order to live a comfortable and self-indulgent life, So you have not been saved to a life of comfort and self-indulgence. Jesus did not give his life as a ransom so that you can spend your time on earth isolating yourself from everything that's inconvenient for you, uncomfortable for you, and that's offensive to you. Instead, you're supposed to build up the body of Christ so that you strengthen the weak hands, so that you make firm the feeble knees, to uphold those who stumble, to bring comfort to the anxious of heart, to lift up those whose spirit has fallen, to encourage the weary, to stand with the lonely, and to weep for those who weep. And if you fail to see these messy situations as part of the work that it takes to produce an abundant crop, then you not only have failed yourself, but you have failed the other members of the church. But more importantly, you have failed God and the calling that he has placed upon your life. Consider what was happening with the messy situations in the church of Corinth during the first century. A man was living in a sinful relationship with his stepmother, yet none of the Christians in the church were willing to get involved in that messy situation. They just ignored it. It's not that they didn't know this messy situation was going on. It's just a lot easier for everybody not to get involved. And so Paul, when he found out about this, rebuked them openly, publicly, rebuked them for their lack of care, their lack of oversight, their lack of accountability. Then there was the messy situation of the Christian brothers disputing with one another, even to the point of suing one another in the civil courts. And what was Paul's response to this? 1 Corinthians 6, 5. Can it be that there is none among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? Paul's reflection reflects his expectation that the Christian community has been equipped with the necessary wisdom and resources for handling all of life's problems, including the problems of settling disputes. But there's a subtlety here that we must be careful not to overlook. Paul, Paul's rebuke was aimed as much at the people who refused to get involved in the disputes as it was with the people who were involved in the disputes. In other words, Paul's rebuke in 1 Corinthians 6-5 was aimed at two groups of people. The obvious group was those who were disputing with one another. The less obvious group is those who do not want to put in the effort to settle the disputes in a righteous manner. What's especially condemning about this second group, the people who didn't want to get involved, is that Paul shames them for their attitude. He shames them. Before Paul wrote the rhetorical question that I just read a second ago, he wrote, I say this to your shame. I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is none among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? And what we learn from this is that it is shameful for a Christian to avoid messy situations because of their aversion to messy situations. Let me say that again. It is shameful for a Christian to avoid messy situations simply because they don't like messy situations. This is not to say that every Christian has to run headlong into every messy situation, tackle it, become involved, try to figure everything out. There are other principles that are applicable, principles of wisdom that we need to consider. Prioritizing your time, properly stewarding your responsibilities, recognizing authority and its jurisdiction. All right, these are all valid considerations, and when you consider these other principles, then there may be appropriate factors that come into play that will very well bring you to the conclusion that, no, this is not a messy situation that I can be involved in at this time. But the point Solomon is making, and the point that drove Paul to shame those who remained aloof in the church of Corinth, is that it is never appropriate for a Christian to avoid a messy situation just because it's messy. If you've ever said, I didn't create this problem, so why should I be the one to have to fix it? Then you should be ashamed. If you've ever said, let's not invite so-and-so over to the house because he has a lot of problems and I don't want to get involved at that level, then you should be ashamed. If you've ever said, we ought to take all the such-and-such people and move them all to a remote island so that we don't have to deal with them anymore, then you should be ashamed. That attitude is not an attitude of love. And you've been commanded by God to love your neighbor. In fact, He even commands you to love your enemy. And so, you really put yourself in a defenseless position when you conscientiously withhold Christian love from people because you don't like the way that they look, the way they act, the messiness of their lives, or some other aspect of their character. As you probably know. The Apostle John was real big on writing about love. All throughout his gospel, all throughout his three epistles, John keeps bringing agape love into the picture. And the things he writes about agape love are quite sobering and applicable to this conversation. In 1 John 4.8, he warns that if anyone does not love others, then that person does not know God. How hard does that hit? In 1 John 3.14, he writes that the way we can know that we have passed from death to life is by the way we love the brothers. And in 1 John 4.20, he repeats, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Love, therefore, is the mark of a genuine Christian. And this love should manifest itself in the way that we relate to one another, in the way we fellowship with one another, in the way that we carry each other's burdens, in the way that we show hospitality, and especially in the way that we handle situations that are not always the most favorable, the messy situations. And then this love should flow beyond the borders of the church into the neighborhoods and communities in which we live. We are ambassadors for Christ, Paul writes. God gave us a ministry of reconciliation, and as we carry forth the gospel of Jesus Christ, we do so to the lost and to the perishing of this world with the hope that the Holy Spirit would work regeneration within their heart. And so Christian love is a very important thing. It motivates us to do the things that we would not do otherwise. And where Christian love is absent, there's a need to be seriously concerned. I recently listened to an interview of Rosaria Butterfield. And if you don't know who Rosaria Butterfield is, she's a wife of a pastor of a small Reformed Presbyterian church in Syracuse, New York. Rosaria's testimony about her conversion to Christianity is an interesting story, to say the least. Up until about a dozen years ago, she had been involved in a long series of monogamous lesbian relationships. She was a feminist, social activist, and her job as a tenured English professor at Syracuse University gave her a platform for being vocal about all the things that she was passionate about. But today, Rosaria looks back at that period of her life and she describes how her unbelief manifests itself in all the ways listed in Romans 1. She was, by virtually any Christian's definition, a messy person living in a messy situation. That is to say, if you were the person that God used to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to Rosaria, you would have to know that you were going to be in some quite unusual circumstances. You would hear Rosaria say things about God that you didn't agree with. You would hear Rosaria speak about things that made you uncomfortable. She was heavily involved in the LGBT community, and so you would meet her friends, you would meet her partner. You would have to deal with her anger towards Christians. Christians who had previously condemned her with harsh words, with unloving words, and realized prior to her conversion, Rosaria's primary exposure to Christians and the Church of Jesus Christ at large was at gay pride parades. And her idea of Christians were the people who were protesting the parades. holding up the signs. And if you've ever read what those signs say, then you can understand that she didn't have a real good impression of what the Christian church looks like. Those signs are typically not the best representation of Christianity. And so Rosaria had her issues, to be sure. To love her as a neighbor would push you into directions that you probably wouldn't want to go. But the Lord was gracious to Rosaria. He placed a faithful Christian man in her life who showed her what true Christian love is. And God worked through that man to grab hold of Rosaria's heart and he began to transform her life. And within a short period of time, she was a new creation. Now, about a dozen years later, Rosaria has written a book about her conversion, and she's heavily invested into the life and ministry of the Christian church. Her eyes have been opened to the reality and the beauty of God, as well as his bride here on the earth. And so now she sees much more clearly what it means to be a Christian today. Her exposure to the body of Christ is much, much different than it was back then. And it's not just angry people holding up placards that she identifies with Christ. She sees things much differently. She sees things much more accurately. And as I listened to her describe the weaknesses that exist within the church today, I was impressed by just how accurate her descriptions were. Fellowship and hospitality are two of the most obvious demonstrations of love. Fellowship and hospitality. And when people really and genuinely love one another, they want to spend time with each other. And that's what we call fellowship. But hospitality is different than fellowship. We don't always think of it that way. We often confuse the two as virtually synonymous. But to get the idea of what hospitality is, think of what's going on inside of a hospital. A hospital is called a hospital because that's the place where hospitality is shown. Whereas fellowship is just hanging out with friends, enjoying each other, hospitality is serving the needs of other people. That's hospitality, serving the needs of other people. Nurses and doctors, therefore, they show a form of hospitality by serving the medical needs of other people. This is a ministry of love. In fact, it's the exact ministry that Jesus highlighted, illustrated when he told the story of the Good Samaritan, who loved his neighbor. It was through the ministry of hospitality that he demonstrated love for his neighbor. But hospitality goes beyond just medical needs. Whereas you serve, or I should say, wherever you serve the needs of other people, whether those people are from our church, some other church, or those are people that, these are people that you fellowship with or you don't fellowship with, or they are people from within the community, strangers that you meet alongside the road. Wherever you serve the needs of other people, you are loving your neighbor through the ministry of hospitality. What Rosaria Butterfield says about the modern church is that we lack hospitality. I'm compelled to agree with this assessment because it's the same assessment I've come to even before listening to Rosaria speak. But what Rosaria brings to the discussion is another perspective. And having spent so much time in the LGBT community, Rosaria has a perspective that grabbed my attention and I think it would grab yours as well. She explains that during the 1990s, AIDS was taking one life after another out of the LGBT community. And this was frightening. Frightening because nobody knew what AIDS was or how to stop it or how to treat it. And Rosaria said that every time another gay person died of AIDS, the LGBT community would mourn. And the mourning brought the LGBT community together in a way that they would not have come together otherwise. And what was happening here in the 90s was that the LGBT people were weeping with those who weep. That's what they were doing. They were weeping with those who weep. and they were coming alongside one another, and they were meeting each other's needs through the ministry of hospitality. And so over the years, the LGBT communities throughout our nation, not just one of them, but all throughout our nation, developed this incredibly strong interpersonal relationship amongst its members who supported one another, who fellowshiped with one another, who showed hospitality to one another, and whose companionship was truly and genuinely desired amongst the community. Rosaria says that after her conversion to Christ, after she became a Christian, one of the hardest transitions for her to make was leaving the LGBT community and replacing it with the Christian community. This is because she realized that she was leaving a community where people really did practice hospitality. And she was going into a community where people were much less consistent in practicing hospitality. And for so many people, the attraction to the LGBT is that these are people who show love to people who are in messy situations. The LGBT actually embrace messy people. They come alongside messy people. They go out of their way to serve the needs of messy people. And so the bonds of compassion, whether those are lasting and real or not, the bonds of compassion are established within the LGBT community, and those are difficult bonds to break. But we, As Christians who believe the Bible, we know that the LGBT community is built upon a false hope. They do not have the truth. The foundations of their community is unbelief, hence it's a house built upon sand. But for those who are short-sighted, those who care only about the here and now, the LGBT make people feel like they are loved. And the Christian church ought to be the place. This is the travesty of the whole thing. The Christian church ought to be the place that people turn to when they look for people who will make them feel loved. That's not what's going on. And in order for that to happen, it's going to require us, you and I, as well as the church at large, to eat and drink with sinners and tax collectors, just like Jesus did. That means we cannot run away from messy people. We cannot run away from messy situations. Or to put it in different words, that means you're going to have to be intentional in showing hospitality. We're going to have to develop a reputation in the community and in the world and our nation. for meeting people's physical needs, people's emotional needs, and people's spiritual needs. The people within the body of Christ, as well as those outside the body of Christ. And we can do this because we have the truth. We have the gospel. We have the ministry of reconciliation. We've received the love of God that comes through Jesus Christ, and therefore we are the only people in this entire world, entire creation, who are really and truly equipped to show love and hospitality to others in the manner in which God requires. Do you get that? We are the only people equipped to do this work. But we fail so often. And why is that? Has the church gotten rid of the oxen because we don't like the mess that it makes? If the church is content to walk into the barn and say, yes, yes, look how clean our stable is here, while the fields of the world are overgrown with weeds, then we have a real problem. While the church is congratulating herself for how clean and tidy the stall is, she needs to be reminded of a different stall, a stall that probably wasn't quite so neat and tidy. This is the stall where Joseph and Mary lodged in, the stall that served as the birthplace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it interesting that when the creator of heavens and earth became incarnate, he was born in the unsanitary stall in Bethlehem, laid in an unsanitary manger? Do you think this has any reflection upon the type of work that he came to accomplish? Or do you think this has any type of reflection upon the work that he commissioned his church to carry out? The task of the Christian church is to cultivate the fields for an abundant harvest. And this is going to require working with some methods. It's going to inconvenience us. It's going to push us into situations where we are uncomfortable. It's going to require more of us than what we really want to give of ourselves. God has equipped us for the task. We can love others because he first loved us. And to our shame, it would be to our shame, I should say, that if we don't do this, then we should be shamed. It's our shame already that we don't do this more often than what we do. And I'm talking about not just this, I'm not talking about this church, I'm talking about this church as well as every church in our nation. And for this reason, The American church needs to repent of being short-sighted for putting ease and comfort and convenience ahead of love and hospitality. And then we need to put our hand to the plow and not look back. We need to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit while loving God and loving our neighbor. Ephesians 4, 15, and 16 describes this task quite well, and I'm gonna conclude with this because this is really a commission, a commission to the Ephesian church, a commission to our church, a commission to the American church. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. For from the whole body, joined and held together by every point which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so it builds itself up in love. You see that? When every part is working properly, When each part is working properly, it makes the body grow up so that it builds itself up in love. That's the work of the Holy Spirit, working through people like you and me, getting involved in messy situations. May we be built up in love. Amen, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, you have placed us in messy situations. I should say we have created a messy situation. You have placed us in an ideal condition initially, and we made a mess of it. And Father, you did not leave us to our mess, but your Son, our Savior, came and became involved in the mess. He got his hands dirty and he did all the things that he needed to do in order to save his elect from their sin and to redeem them from the mess and to reconcile them with you. so that we once again had fellowship with the triune God. And Father, we are so eternally grateful for His wonderful work of grace, His atonement, His works of righteousness, His willingness to take upon Him the sin of His people. Yet, Father, we ourselves are not willing to make even minor contributions in this regard. So often we prefer our own comforts and our own isolation from messiness, as opposed to getting involved and applying the work of God's grace, the work of your grace, into the lives of the people around us. Father, we repent. We acknowledge that where we have done this, we have sinned. We thank you for those testimonies of people who have risen above this, who have not given in to the temptation of comfort, but have gone and prospered and produced an abundance of harvest through their work. Father, they are a great testimony to us, and we can learn from them. But ultimately, Father, it is the Lord Jesus Christ who serves as the example of what it means to be involved in messy people's lives. and we pray that we would be willing, as you have called us, and as we search our lives and as we consider all the many points of wisdom that we must consider, where it is appropriate for us to become involved, Father, we pray that we would bring love, we would bring hospitality, we would bring fellowship, we would bring encouragement to others so that you may draw them unto yourself and that you may have your will done on earth as it is in heaven. Father, the church at large does not have the reputation for being the most loving place. And people, even unbelievers, do not seek us for the type of affirmation and support that we ought to be known for. And while we should never overlook sin and disregard it, for that is exactly what Paul was chiding the Corinthians for, we can show love at the same time of speaking the truth in love. And so, Father, we pray that we would balance these things and that we would be careful and considerate in the way that we approach the people of the world with the gospel of reconciliation. Father, you are a wise God, you are omniscient, and we are not. And so we trust that what you have revealed to us in the Word is what you would have us to do. Give us the strength and give us the wisdom to apply these things in the manner of what you've called us to. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material here within, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.