Let's ask the Lord's blessing upon our time. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your marvelous grace in our lives, and Lord, we admit that we are debtors to grace every day, but we thank you that you have shed your grace on us and called us to be sons and daughters of the living God. We thank you for that. We thank you that you have given us your word and that we can have this precious, this precious possession to guide us through all our life until that day when you call us home. We pray now, Lord, that you would keep us faithful to your word. And as we open it this morning, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our minds to receive it, that you would drive it deep into our hearts. and that we would hear it and obey it with joy and thanksgiving. For this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. What is a precept? A precept in simple terms is a rule that regulates behavior. So for example, the laws of the United States regulate the behavior of the population of this country, or at least they are supposed to. In religion, the precepts contained in sacred documents serve to regulate the lives of believers. And so for us as Christians, the laws contained in the Bible regulate our lives. with due consideration, of course, to make the distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law. So for example, we are to keep the moral law. We are obligated not to lie or steal. But we are no longer obligated to continue to meet the ceremonial laws and so you don't go home and cut down some trees and live in a shelter for a week. Nor do we sacrifice animals as a substitute to cover our sins because Jesus became our substitute. He fulfilled every precept of the law for us by his perfect obedience and pay the penalty of the law which was due to us by his death. And so we are no longer under the law, but under grace. That does not mean, however, that we can do whatever we want to do, because the moral law continues to regulate our behavior, teaching us how to live as members of God's family. Now we knew the law before we were saved because God's law is written on the hearts of all men. As Paul writes in Romans chapter two, beginning in say, let's say verse 12. For as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law. For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having a law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts. Conscience also bearing witness and between themselves their thoughts either accusing or excusing them. So the law was written on our hearts. It's written on the hearts of all men and women. And so we know it. We know the difference between right and wrong. But knowing the difference between right and wrong and then doing it is an entirely different kettle of fish. Not only did we not obey the law, we actively rebelled against the law. And we had no power to keep it. But that changed when God transformed our hearts. Because of that, we now love the law of God. We love what we used to despise. And we can say, along with the psalmist, In Psalm 119, these words. Psalm 119, 127, and 128. Therefore, I love your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold. Therefore, all your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right. I hate every false way. One of the most identifiable characteristics of a person who has been born again, who has become a genuine Christian, is that they now love what they once hated and they hate that which they once loved. So instead of rebelling against the law, we now to seek to be conformed to it. as the Psalmist again writes in 119. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word. With my whole heart I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. That is the change that has occurred in the life of every believer. Now our passage this morning is from Paul's letter to the church in Rome. Having concluded what we might call the doctrinal section of the letter, what God has done, he now writes about what we are to do and how we are to respond to what God has done. And his initial exhortation captures the dramatic change that should be evident in the life of a believer. And we'll begin in Romans 12, verses one and two. And by the way, I'm reading from the New King James. Romans 12, the first two verses. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." And the remainder of Paul's letter to the Romans essentially expands upon this initial exhortation. And in the following chapters, he touches on many areas of the Christian life. One of the most important concerns our attitude about good and evil. And this brief statement that is before us this morning deals with that subject. Our attitude towards good and evil. In this very short verse, Paul gives three vital precepts for living the Christian life. Romans 12 9. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil. Cling to what is good. Let love be without hypocrisy. The Greek language has four words for love. Storge is familial love or a natural affection. Phileo is brotherly love. We call the city of Philadelphia the city of brotherly love, which it hardly is, but we call it that way anyway. So Phileo is brotherly love. Eros, passionate or erotic love. Paul uses the fourth word. You're familiar with this word, agape. It's the kind of love that God has for us and that we are to have for others. It's a sacrificial form of love. It seeks the very best for its object. In this way, it is free from self-interest. Interestingly, however, no one actually loves this way without benefiting from it. The prime example, of course, is the love of Jesus for the church. He loved us, and he saved us from God's wrath by taking our penalty on himself. In so doing, his love was focused entirely upon his object, and that, of course, is the church, the people of God, the people that God had given to him before even time began. This love was not done out of mere duty, but out of deep and abiding affection. William Newell captures this in his hymn at Calvary. Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan. Oh, the grace that brought it down to man. Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary. That gulf was spanned by Christ's love. We said that no one loves this way, which is a selfless love, without actually benefiting from it. So just how did Jesus benefit from this wonderful demonstration of selfless love? An oft-overlooked portion of Isaiah chapter 53 that great chapter describing the sacrifice of Christ is found in verses 10 and 11, Isaiah 53, 10 and 11. But I'm going to preface that by starting in Isaiah chapter 53, verse four, speaking of Jesus. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. What a demonstration of selfless agape love. So how did Jesus benefit? Verses 10 and 11. Yet it pleased the Lord to crush him. It pleased the Lord to crush him. It pleased God the Father to have his son crucified. It pleased him. Here we see God's pleasure. God's pleasure in his Son, and the satisfaction of what Christ's finished work did, which was to justify sinners. God's love in the work of Christ is therefore, on one hand, wholly unselfish, because it seeks the very best for others. And yet, because Jesus does all things to please the Father, and because God does all things for his own glory, the sacrifice of Jesus is at one and the same time the very highest expression of self-love, not to be confused with selfishness. Christ sacrificed himself to secure those whom God had given him before the foundation of the world, a people who would become his eternal bride. The joy resulting from that selfless act will be realized when Jesus, the bridegroom, is joined to his bride at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Come with me to Ephesians chapter 5, please. Ephesians 5. Reading 25 through 27. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. What greater joy and what greater self-love can the bridegroom have when he is joined with his bride, finally united? See, in purely human terms, loving my wife is the very best thing that I can do for her. And it turns out to be the very best thing that I can do for myself. Happy wife, happy life. Loving my wife is also the very best thing that I can do for my children, and for the church, and for my neighbors, and for society at large. Do you see, my friends, the power of such sacrificial love, which is wholly unselfish, and at the same time, it is full of self-love, because we benefit from it, just like Jesus did. Ephesians 5, 28. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. What did Jesus say was the great commandment? He said the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then he added something to it. And your neighbour as yourself. We often miss the weight of that last clause. To love God, is to love ourselves. Well, the modern versions capture the sense of what Paul is saying in this verse, verse nine. Neither of the modern versions capture what I would say the depth of feeling that his words convey. Love must be sincere, the NIV says. It must be genuine, the ESV says. But the authorized version is much better. Love must be free from hypocrisy. The Greek is unhypocritos, and it means literally against hypocrisy. Why did Paul choose this particular word? We're helped by the context. He'd just spoken of the need for humility. Look at 12.3. For I say through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly as God has dealt each one a measure of faith. There's a cautionary word here. For where humility is lacking, hypocrisy will be present. It's likely that this particular letter was written from Corinth, where hypocrisy was one of the great problems in the particular church. They claimed to love God, but they were tolerating sin in an incestuous relationship in the church. They claimed to love each other, but they were taking each other to court. and they were trampling over each other at the Lord's supper. They were playing the hypocrite. In the Greek, hypocrite means to play a part like an actor on a stage. But a more formal definition of hypocrisy is this. It is a pretense of having desirable attributes and principles that one does not actually possess. In other words, it's living a lie. Hypocrisy is living a lie and we see it every day. Politicians are notorious hypocrites, promising much when they're campaigning, often doing the very opposite after they have been elected. Sports figures who use performance-enhancing drugs are hypocrites. Union bosses living large on the contributions of their members are hypocrites. We see it in the church, in the sickening excesses of the prosperity preachers, and in the sexual misconduct in churches of all denominations. Untold damage has been done to the cause of Christ by feigned godliness, people who are living a lie. It's a sorry fact that the charge of hypocrisy, which is frequently leveled at the church, has often been well-earned. And sadly, many innocent believers get tarred with that same brush. It doesn't take much to see that there could be hardly a more damaging sin in the church than the one of hypocrisy. And it can happen in very good churches and it can happen to very good Christians. It happened in the early church. Come with me please to Galatians chapter two. Galatians two. Paul is writing and picking it up in verse 11. Paul writes, now when Peter had come to Antioch, Peter, you will remember, was a very cowardly hypocrite when he followed Jesus into the court of the Pharisees. And while Jesus was being questioned, Peter was warming himself by the fire, and he was accused, ah, we know you, you're one of his followers. No, I'm not. And that went on a second time, and then a third time, and he denied it, even with curses. Massive hypocrisy. Now, you would think that after such a devastating failure that Peter would have learned a lesson. But no, that he fell into it again here in Antioch and dragged other people with him, notably Barnabas, a prince of a man, was dragged into this hypocrisy. That should underscore how pernicious and dangerous it is. No one is safe. We must be constantly aware and guard against it. Hypocrisy occurs in the church when we fail to deal with sin. We know it's there, we wink at it, we shove it under the rug, we close our eyes, we turn a deaf ear. and when we do this we are hypocrites pretending to be holy when we are not. It occurs when we greet people with smiles in the morning and then complain about them in the afternoon or have roast pasta for lunch. It occurs when we say that we forgive but we hold on to hurt feelings. It occurs when we promise to pray for a person, but it's just a flippant little remark, and we do not pray for that person. It's hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. Who among us can claim to be innocent of this? Who among us? How to guard against it? We must keep a close watch over our soul. over our heart and especially over our lips for out of the heart the mouth speaks. So let love be without hypocrisy. Let it be genuine and sincere. The second precept is such a contrast that it's almost shocking. Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor or hate what is evil. Now, in order to grasp what Paul is getting at here, we have to jettison any sentimental notion of what we think love is. Love is not primarily a feeling. It's a character trait. The context in which this statement about abhorrence appears is that of love in its purest form. And for such a love to exist, it must be separated from all that is not love. We got a clue about this, of course, when we say that God is love. God's love is not simply warm, fuzzy human feelings magnified infinitely. His love describes His being. And the fundamental attribute of God's being is holiness. Holiness, separation from evil. God is completely separated from everything that is not holy. Not only is He separated from it, but He is hostile towards it. God hates anything that is not love, and evil is the exact opposite of love. God hates evil and has created hell as his response to it. Thus, Christian love will necessarily hate evil because the love that has been planted in our heart by God is God's love. It's that kind of love that wants to be separated from anything that is evil and therefore despises that which is evil. Actively does. Love and evil cannot coexist. which is why hypocrisy is such a sin. It has a foot in either camp, pretending to be good while compromising with evil. When a person is born again, you see, there is an immediate separation from the old life. John Murray put it this way, those who now belong to the kingdom of light recoil from that which belongs to darkness. When that which is good is the atmosphere of our life, we suffocate in the paths of iniquity, and we despise the counsels of the wicked. At the very beginning of the book of Psalms, Psalm 1 captures this. Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. That one verse alone says separate from evil. Be separate from it. Don't let it contaminate you. Fight against it. Avoid it. That separation from evil and the journey into holiness begins the moment of our conversion and then continues for the rest of our life under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit as He draws us into more and more and more holiness and righteousness. Because there's such a contrast between good and evil, they cannot and should not exist in the Christian life. Hence the example, for instance, of the prohibition of a Christian marrying a non-Christian. Because light and darkness are incompatible. Now the word that Paul uses to translate habor, or hate, is a very strong one. It literally means to shrink away from evil. When you see it, you don't investigate it, you shrink away from it. Proverbs 4, 14 and 15. Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not travel on it, turn away from it, pass on. In our age, the once clear lines between good and evil are so blurred that many people no longer know the difference. And we see many examples of people calling that which is good, evil, and that which is evil, good. Christians must be able to recognize evil and take a stand against it. Which means, listen, taking a stand against evil people. Because evil is always personified. It's never just an abstract idea. Evil is only seen when it's practiced by those who are evil. So what does this mean for Christians? And here we come up against two very different ideas. On the one hand are those who believe that it's wrong to actively oppose evil. We call them pacifists. and there are large Christian populations that hold on to that particular belief, the pacifists. On the other hand, there are those who believe that evil should be resisted at every point. The truth, as it often does, resides somewhere in between those two points of view, although I'm convinced that it leans much more towards activism, because I don't think that you can oppose evil without actually acting against it. History records, of course, many instances when the church has overcome great evils in this world. There can be no compromise with evil in the life of a Christian and in the life of a church. If we belong to God, we will hate evil. This, of course, raises an obvious question. Is Paul being inconsistent here with what he says just a few lines later? Look at verse 17. Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends upon you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And also, did not Jesus tell us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? He did. Based on this and other passages, there is a common notion in Christian circles that we should hate the sin, but love the sinner. Well, this has something to commend it, it's an oversimplification to a very complex issue. How, for instance, do we reconcile that statement, hate the sin but love the sinner, with what scripture says? Psalm 5. Psalm 5, five through six. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. Psalm 7 verse 11. God is a just judge. God is angry with the wicked every day. Proverbs 6. 16 through 19. These six things the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination to him. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and the one who sows discord among the brethren. God hates this, hates it. He hates evildoers and punishes them, not only in the life to come, but in this life as well. For instance, in Romans chapter one, God's punishment against sin is made very clear in a contemporary way. Romans chapter one, verse 24. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness. to the lusts of their heart, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They're doing dishonorable things. What does God do? He allows them to do them even more. Gives them up. Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature, likewise the men and so forth. And then verse 28, Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. You continue to sin, God's going to allow you to sin even more. Listen to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Paul writes to a church in Thessalonica which is being persecuted. 1 Thessalonians 2, beginning in verse 14. For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God, which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us. And they do not please God, and are contrary to men. forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the uttermost." Paul is saying that God permits evil men to continue to do evil until they have filled up the full measure of their sins, and when that happens to a man or to a nation, judgment falls. Ultimately, God resists evil by eternal damnation. But that is then, what about now? How are we to resist evil and to what extent? Well, sometimes it's passive and sometimes it's active and we have good examples of both. Jesus showed passive resistance to evil when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. What did he say? It is written. He stood and rested firm on the word of God. He didn't lash out. It is written, passive resistance, and yet, Active resistance when he made a whip and drove the money changers out of the temple, saying, you have defiled it. My house is a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. Active resistance. And then passive again at his trial and his crucifixion when he stood in your place and in mine. We see the same thing in Paul's life. Active resistance to evil when he cursed Elemas the sorcerer. and passive resistance when he was flogged and thrown into a jail in Philippi. Resisting evil is not a one size fits all thing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Now murder is forbidden by God. But was it wrong to try to kill someone who has already killed millions and has plans to kill millions more? Was Bonhoeffer to hate what Hitler was doing, but to love him anyway? Lying is forbidden by the word of God, but Rahab lied to protect the Israeli spies. And the result of her lies was that the city that she lived in was destroyed. The result of that lie was that her next door neighbor, people that she had perhaps known for years, were killed. Was she wrong in doing so? Was the Ten Boom family wrong in lying to the Nazis to save Jewish lives? Can Christians just verbally oppose evil without actively resisting it? If you see someone beating a child in the street, do you just call the police and stand by? Or do you do something? You step in. There's passive resistance, and then there's active resistance. It requires godly wisdom to know the difference. These are not simple issues, are they? Can we hate abortion? I presume we hate abortion. But can we love those who are actually facilitating it? I can pity them because they are captive to an evil philosophy, and I can pray for them, but loving them seems incomprehensible to me when I tie love to feelings. If I let my feelings dominate, there's no possible way that I could extend any kind of love to someone who is murdering infants. These are not easy questions, and they're not simple. It takes us deep into the realm of Christian ethics, and we can't deal with it all today, but it challenges, doesn't it, to pray and to act and to think deeply. Indeed, failure to form biblical responses to evil has led much of the church into what I would call a theological and ethical wasteland. Much of the church occupies such territory today. I stress a biblical response because, frankly, some of the solutions offered by the modern church or that the modern church is involved in are, in fact, not biblical. which I think is one of the reasons why we are having such a hard time shaping our culture. Could it be that our answers to these evils are really just politics and religious garb? Are evangelicals putting more faith in ethically compromised politicians than in the Holy Spirit? Has American Christianity strayed so far from our biblical roots that we have become nothing more than the religious wing of one political party? Could it be that we have stopped relying upon the gospel, which is the only message that can combat evil? For decades, the dominant form of Western evangelism has been to tell people that God loves them, and has a wonderful plan for their lives. That is soft evangelism. And while some will be saved, a lot of others are going to be led into a false sense of security. It's a very different gospel from that preached by the Apostle Paul or by, say, Whitefield or Spurgeon. which stressed the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God that hovers over the sinner, but that also stresses grace, and that God will receive all those who will put their faith in Christ. See, the love that hates evil has nothing to do with sentimentality or feelings. Feelings can't be dismissed, of course. Jesus burned with anger at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and his blistering words to them were charged with passion. And yet he was always full of grace, wasn't he? Always willing to take someone into the fold. Always willing to express unmerited favor. and it's unmerited favor that will unlock the heart. It's unmerited favor that unlocked your heart and mine when we realized how wicked we were, how wretched we were, and how gracious God is. The love that we are to show unbelievers is a gracious love that they do not deserve. Romans 12, 20. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head, coals of conviction, that in God's grace will drive them to Christ. Remembering that our sins may be different from theirs, but just as black. just as black. The only reason we are saved is because God determined to set his love upon us. He extended kindness to the undeserving. And so, love hates sin and can have a holy hatred of evil people. I think David captures this at the very end of Psalm 139, that marvellous Psalm of God's total sovereignty, when he says this, I hate those who hate God, and I hate them with a perfect hatred. What's a perfect hatred? Is hatred unmixed with evil? Is hatred without malice? Is it possible? It is by grace. The one thing that all people need, be it a murderer like Paul, or a neighbour next door who cheats on his taxes, is grace. And with the Apostle Paul, we can all say, there but by the grace of God, go I. We are to hate evil, but love our enemies. Not from some hidden depth of kindly feelings, which we don't have, because we hate the situation, but by showing the kindness that they do not deserve, which means that we must be willing to get our hands dirty. Jude puts it this way, Jude 20, 23. For you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, and some, and on some have compassion, making a distinction. Others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments defiled by the flesh. we must be willing to take risks, which means we could get hurt. Maybe not physically, although there's no guarantee about that, but certainly emotionally when we experience rejection. We give the gospel message in the hope and faith that God is going to work through that message. But sometimes we just run into a brick wall and we are rejected, sometimes with a rejection that can hurt, especially if it's from family members. So we are to love without hypocrisy. We are to hate evil. And then finally Paul tells us, cling to what is good. It's an interesting word. It's the basis for the English word glue. And it literally means to be cemented to all that is good. In a world that is increasingly hostile to the church, it's tempting to retreat from society. It's tempting to have limited contact to unbelievers so that we don't have to experience all the unpleasantness. But to do so is to isolate ourselves from reality and fail to engage the world. And the people of this world, secular people, see such an insulated lifestyle as odd. And it lacks the credibility to speak to the problems of modern life. And modern life is messy. It's tough, it's dangerous, especially for Christians. But you know, Modern life is far more dangerous to unbelievers, because it can be snuffed out at any moment. The people around us who don't know Christ need help, and many of them don't know it. Some do, but they don't know where to turn. So we must live in such a way that they see in us that which is lacking in them. A seminary professor of mine said, we have to live in such a way as to make them jealous, in a holy way, a holy jealousy, that they look at us and they see there's something about them, don't understand it, they're really weird, but there's something about them that draws us. This is exactly what happened to my wife and I and how we began on our journey to Christ. We were at a family reunion, and one of the family members, one of the older sisters who led what I would call a colorful life, had come to know Christ. And the change in her was so dramatic, so incredible, that when Nikki and I were driving home, we said, we don't know what happened to Ella, but we like it. We like it. There was a holy jealousy starting to burn in our heart. And soon after that, God drew us to Christ. That's the way we are to live, my friends. Even little things make a difference in the corner of the world that God has placed us. When you get in your car on Sunday morning, and you drive to church, and you drive past the guy that's cutting his lawn on a Sunday morning, that's a whisper of the gospel. He sees you driving by. Oh, I wonder where they're going. Oh, he's got a coat and tie on, my goodness. A whisper of the gospel. Yeah, they think we're weird. Let them think so. But let them come and ask, what is it with you? We're to live in the freedom and the joy of God's love and grace, cemented to that which is good. You are familiar, aren't you, with Colossians. Sorry, Philippians chapter four, verses eight to nine. Philippians 4, 8 and 9. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do and the God of peace will be with you. Living this way certainly means that we must cling to all of this that Paul has talked about. And we must cling each to one another. We must pray for one another. We must not neglect the gathering of ourselves together as is the manner of some. To do so is to place ourselves and the whole church in danger. There are many things that compete for our time. Some are legitimate, others are not. But take this as a maxim. Anything that takes the place of worship, study, prayer, and fellowship is something which will war against your soul. So we have these three precepts. Our love must be without hypocrisy. Is it? or are we pretending to be something that we're not? We are to hate evil and avoid it, do we? Or do we compromise in some way? We are to cling to that which is good, hold tight to the word of God, hold tight to sound doctrine, hold fast our confidence in the Lord, Hold on to the promise of eternal life. Cling to each other. Most importantly, cling to Jesus. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for your word. And we pray, Lord, that it would strike deep into our hearts. You know us better than we know ourselves. Lord, if there is any hypocrisy in our life, if we are pretending to be what we are not, Would you please expose it? And then by the power of your Holy Spirit, work in us to change us. Lord, if there is in some way we are compromising with evil, turning a blind eye to that which we should not, Lord, would you reveal it to us? Reveal it and deal with it in our lives. And then, Father, help us to cling to that which is good. You have given us so much, so much, but you have especially given us yourself. Help us, O Lord, to cling to Christ. And Lord, I pray this morning that if there be someone here who does not know Jesus as Lord and Savior, that you would do what only you can do, that you would reach into their hearts and change them. Put a fresh heart in them. Take away the stony heart of flesh. Reveal to them their desperate need of forgiveness in Christ. Reveal these things to them, we pray, O Lord, and then draw them to Christ. For this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.