It's good to be with you this morning. As Sean said, my name is Andrew Shank. I'm the RUF campus minister at Western Carolina. And I'm not sure if you know or not, RUF is the official campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America. So it's your ministry to Western Carolina. I'm called by this presbytery to go to Western Carolina. So me and my wife didn't look at each other one day and say, I think we should do campus ministry at Western Carolina. And we got called by the presbytery. So we are there under the authority of our denomination and with the support and encouragement. And it's been great coming back to the mountains, you know, coming in to the presbytery, probably the most frequent question I got was not like my views on creation or women in ministry was like, why would you want to leave Hilton head to come to the mountains? And for us, the beach is exile. Like, I grew up in a small mountain town in Virginia. I interned with RUF at Virginia Tech. When I was an undergrad at NC State, we came towards Asheville, we came towards Pisgah National Forest, we came towards Smoky Mountains every chance we got. So, my three years in Hilton Head were, Jesus is 40 days in the wilderness and that kind of preparatory work to the real calling and real heart home for us. So we are thrilled to be back in the mountains. I have a wife, Trish. We've been married for just over five years. Actually, almost six. We have two little girls. Sophie is three and a half and Maggie is half. And they're sweet. We really don't know what Maggie thinks most of the time, but she seems to like us. Sophie loves students, and right now she's in this phase where she has a crush on every boy. Any college student, freshman guys, senior guys, whatever, they come over, she just gets giggly and bright-eyed and wants to show off her princess dresses and all this stuff. Our family loves it there, and the students have welcomed us and our family as well. We appreciate your prayers as we continue in this work. The first day of classes is three weeks from tomorrow, so we'd really appreciate your prayers three weekends from now, or now in preparation for three weekends from now, as we approach new student orientation and the student activities fair and first day of classes, and as all these starry-eyed, enthusiastic, and terrified freshmen show up on campus looking for a home. Pray that RUF can be that home for them. This morning we're looking at Romans chapter 7, verses 7 through 13, and a little word of introduction here. In the book of Romans, as you read, Paul often talks about the law, and he mentions several things about the law, and some of them are surprising. He says in chapter 5, verse 20, that the law came in to increase the trespass. He says in chapter 6, verse 14, we are not under law, but under grace. In the beginning of chapter 7, verse 4, he says, we've died to the law. And in verse 6, he says, we're released from the law. He says all these almost surprising things about the law and how we're not related to it. And it leads us to a natural question. Is the law sin? If we've died to the law, if the law comes in to increase trespass, is the law itself sin? And we're going to look at Romans 7 through 13 this morning to see how Paul's answered this question. Follow along with me as I read, starting in verse 7. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet. If the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. So did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, as we open your word this morning, as we look at the relationship between your holy law and sin, I pray that you would teach us, help us to see how these two things are related, help us to see how we relate to both of them, and above all, help us to see Christ. Do this, we pray, for we ask it in his name. Amen. So again, the question that Paul starts off with is, is the law sin? We've died to the law, we're no longer under the law, but is it sin? And right away, Paul takes that question off the table. He says, by no means. You know, if we were reading a different translation, it might say something like, are you kidding me? Seriously? Like, no way. No way, Jose, as Sophie likes to say these days. Of course not. But that leads us to a natural question. Okay, if the law is not sin, how are these two things related? And we'll see this morning three ways that sin and the law are related. First, the law identifies sin. The very first thing that the law does is it identifies what sin is. Look again at verse seven. Paul says, is the law sin? No way, Jose. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Before we dive too deep into this passage, I think it would be helpful for us to define some terms. So what does Paul mean when he says law or when he says commandment in this passage? He's not talking about Roman law, but he's also not talking about the entire Old Testament. Because in the Old Testament, you find that we have three different kinds of laws. If you're familiar with the Westminster Standards, they talk about these three different kinds of laws that we find in the Old Testament. First, there's a civil law. The civil law is applicable to the people of Israel as God's chosen people living in a theocracy under his rule. And the civil law includes things like the role of the king, the work of scribes, particular punishment for particular sins. And these particular kinds of laws, the civil law, no longer applies to the people of God in the New Testament age, the church, because we don't live in theocratic Israel. But the principles behind the laws still stand, right? We don't deal with oxen and donkeys anymore, so that law about, you know, when my ox falls into your ditch, here's how we make that right, that doesn't apply, but the principle behind it, restitution and justice, still very much apply today. It's similar with the ceremonial law, the second kind of law. This included things like how we become clean again after touching blood, what to do with lepers, how priests should dress, what they do at the tabernacle or at the temple, and procedures for offering sacrifices and anointings and all these And again, these particular laws no longer apply because Christ has fulfilled them. That's what the book of Hebrews is about. This church that some man is writing to wants to go back to the temple and to the sacrifices, and the author of Hebrews says, you have something better. You have the fulfillment of those laws, so we no longer need to follow those. But again, the principle behind them endures. Touching blood no longer prohibits us from coming to worship. But the fact that the holiness of God demands that we be pure in his presence still very much applies. So Paul's not talking about the civil law. He's not talking about the ceremonial law. What is he talking about? Well, the third kind of law you find in the Old Testament is the moral law. It's summarized in the Ten Commandments, and it undergirds those other kinds of laws. And the moral law It's binding on all people at all times and all circumstances because it's an expression of God's own character. Our God is the God of truth, so he commands us not to lie. Our God is the God of life, so he commands us not to kill. Our God is faithful to his people, so he commands us not to commit adultery and on and on. These laws are rooted in the character of God, which does not change, so they do not change. This is what Paul has in view when he talks about the law or the commandment in this passage. He's talking about the moral law as summarized in the Ten Commandments. And because that law reveals the character of God, what he's like, what he loves, it identifies the opposite. It identifies what sin is. That law doesn't create sin. It identifies it. Imagine you're asleep in bed. You wake up, it's the middle of the night, and your stomach's growling. So you think, I'm going to get up, go to the kitchen, get a quick snack, glass of water, come back to bed. And you think, I've lived in my house a long time. I know where stuff is. I know what rooms are between my bedroom and the kitchen. I know where the furniture is and doorways. I'm not going to turn on any lights because I don't want to wake my spouse up. I don't want to wake the kids up because it's hard to get them to go back to sleep. I'm just going to venture to the kitchen and get a snack on my own. What's going to happen? You are going to stub your pinky toe. You're going to step on the cat's tail. You're going to step on a Lego and your girly scream is going to wake up your kids. Now, imagine if instead of trying to make that journey in the dark, you turned on a light, or got out your phone and turned the flashlight on, or whatever it is, you turned on a light and you saw, oh, the cat's sleeping right here, I need to walk around it, there's a Lego minefield, so I need to avoid that. It would be ridiculous for you to say that the light you turned on created all those obstacles in your path. What the light does is it reveals what's already there. That's what the law does. It doesn't create sin, but it identifies it. It reveals it so that we can see it. There's a simple application here. Don't let anything other than the word of God define sin. Our culture and our world tries to redefine sin, to say these things are now permissible, and these new things are now impermissible. And it's really easy for us to point at that, but we try to do this ourselves too, don't we? I don't know what the culture is like here at this church, but I know in past churches that I've been in at times, certain things are added in. What do you mean you don't listen to Christian radio? What do you mean you haven't read your kids the Chronicles of Narnia? Don't you love them? What do you mean you voted Democrat, or you've never read mere Christianity, or like all these things we add to the law of God, or we try and take things away. It's just a little white lie. But we don't get to define morality. Only the Bible does. Only the word of God defines the law of God. And that would be really helpful, right, if that's where it stopped. If the word of God just identified sin, The problem comes when the word identifies us as sinners. Look at verse nine. Paul says, apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Paul's saying here that it was through the law that he came to a realization that he himself was a sinner. Before the commandment came, he was fine. Ignorance is bliss, right? He was alive. Sin was dead. Sin? What sin? Paul would have said. I'm fine. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was circumcised on the eighth day. And I'm a Pharisee of Pharisees. And all of these things, I'm doing really well, actually. But when the commandment came, when Paul came to a true understanding of the moral law of God, it identified him as a sinner. Ignorance might be bliss, but it's a dangerous bliss. His confidence in his holiness, his righteousness, his own efforts to keep the law crumbled, and he called it all filthy rags. Again, the law didn't make Paul into a sinner. It just revealed what was already true about him. When you ask people what their favorite book of the Bible is, what's the answer that you most frequently hear? Second Chronicles, right? But in Second Chronicles, there's a great illustration of this point that Paul is making, that when we come to a true understanding of the law, we are identified as sinners. In 2 Chronicles 34, Josiah has started to reign in Judah, and after generations of bad kings, Josiah seems like the guy who's going to bring things back. He's tearing down altars in the high places, he's calling people out for their sin, he's reinstituting right worship. and they get to a point where things are progressing and he says, you know, this temple that Solomon built, my great, great, great, great, great granddad built, like, it's a little shabby. The color scheme in the bathroom's a little off. You know, we need to update things. We need to restore it so that we have a place to worship God rightly. And so first thing you need to do in a renovation is make sure you have enough money. So he sends people to go and find money and they go into the temple to find the offering. And as the people are going into the temple, they go down into the basement and find some money down in the basement, but they find something else. They find a scroll. And in 2 Chronicles 34, we read this. Shaphan, the king's secretary, brought the book to the king and further reported to the king, all that was committed to your servants they are doing. The subcontractors are doing their work. People are being paid. They've emptied out the money that was found in the house of the Lord and have given it into the hand of the overseers and the workmen. Then safe in the secretary told the king, he'll kayak. The priest has given me a book and safe and read it, read from it before the king. This book is the book of Moses. It's Genesis through Deuteronomy and was gathering dust in the basement of the temple. And this man reads it before Josiah and verse 19 continues. When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes. The king commanded all the people present go inquire of the Lord for me. And for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that has been found for great is the wrath of the Lord that has poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do according to all that is written in this book. Josiah was doing great things. He was trying to obey God. He was tearing down places of pagan worship. He was reinstituting right worship. But when he read, when he heard read the law of God, when he truly understood it, he tore his clothes because he realized that it wasn't enough. He was a sinner. The nation, was farther gone than they could have imagined. Have you had this happen to you? Have you seen your own sinfulness through the word of God? When you go to the Bible, when you read it in the morning, in the evening, whenever you do, what are you going for? Are you going for encouragement? It's there, and we should go to it for that, but there's so much more. Are you going for direction in life? It's there, but we must look for more. Don't ignore the word of God when it points out sin in your life. It's uncomfortable, ignorance is bliss, but it's a dangerous bliss. Don't avoid the word of God because it points out sin in your life. Have you ever had that happen where you're enmeshed in some pattern of sin, you just can't get control of your anger, you can't stop lying or some other thing and you think, man, I really should read the word, but then I'm gonna have to change. And I kind of like my anger. I kind of like people not knowing me and that's going to make me uncomfortable. And so we avoid the word of God. We avoid prayer because we know that it will call us to change because we know it will make us uncomfortable. Ignorance is bliss, but it's a dangerous bliss. If you're a believer today and you aren't regularly letting the word of God identify areas of sin in your life, you're in a dangerous place. Let the word of God identify your sin that you might bring it to the cross and grow to look more and more like Christ. This is all really helpful so far, right? The law tells us uncomfortable things, but it tells us true things. It tells us what's true about sin. It tells us what's true about us and how we need to change. It's uncomfortable, but it's good. And if it stopped there, we'd say, what's the problem, Paul? But then he goes on, Paul points out the second aspect of the relationship between sin and the law. And that's that sin abuses the law. First, it abuses it subtly. Look again at verse eight. or the end of verse seven going into verse eight. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet, but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, jujitsu'd in me all kinds of covetousness. Do you see what Paul says? He says, I didn't know what it was to covet until the law said, don't covet, and all of a sudden I'm coveting. Right, something happened strategically with sin where the mere mention of the commandment produced the rebellion in him. Sin takes the law, which identifies sin, and uses it to produce sin in us because it capitalizes on our natural rebellion. The essence of our sinfulness is a rejection of God's rule over every aspect of our lives. It's what we heard earlier from the Tower of Babel. I don't want God to rule us. Let's set up a kingdom for ourselves. So when the law points out an area of sin, our natural sinful old man response is to push the bounds and say, you're not the boss of me, you can't tell me what to do, I'm going to go my own way. And we run from God's rule into sin because what we love is not the sin, but the rebellion. We recognize this in children, right? When Sophie was I don't know, 10 months, pushing a year and a half, just starting to figure out how to move and crawl and roll over and all this stuff. We told her, babies aren't allowed in the kitchen. And how much does a 10-month-old understand about a simple sentence like that? But one of the helpful things was our apartment in Hilton Head had this nice line between the carpet in the dining room and the linoleum in the kitchen. And so there's this like metal band that separates the rest of the apartment from the kitchen where there are knives and hot stoves and like dishwasher doors that could fall on her and all these like dangerous for babies things. And so we trained Sophie and we said, this line is your 49th parallel. Do not cross it. Right? What did she do? You know, she'd hang out next to it. and an arm would flop in, right? Or she'd be playing beside it and drop a ball so that it accidentally rolled into the kitchen, and like, look at the ball, and then look at us. Am I allowed to go in now? How much does this law apply? What are the consequences if I break this rule? It's what kids are supposed to do, but it's infuriating. Because like, as soon as you say, don't do that, that's exactly what she wants to do. Do we recognize it in ourselves? Because our hearts still struggle with that old man, that indwelling sin, gut reaction to rebellion. Augustine, in his Confessions, talks about a time before he was converted, as he was a young man, he was out late one night with some friends, and they were carousing around town, as he says, and they went past a pear orchard that had trees that were full of fruit, and he says, they were pleasing neither for their sight or for their taste, like they didn't look good and they smelled worse, but they broke in, they took off a huge load of pears, and they threw them to the pigs. This is what he says about that. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart, which you pitied even in that bottomless pit. Let me confess to you what I was seeking there, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error, not that for which I erred, but the error itself. He says it was foul, and I loved it. This is the subtlety of sin. Abusing the law through our natural rebellion so that it actually excites sin in us. The application here is to keep watch because sin is subtle. You know, when I read that passage, I said, instead of produced in me, I said jujitsu'd in me because I think it's jujitsu that uses the momentum of the opponent against them so you can like throw them out of the ring. That's what sin does. It uses our own momentum towards rebelliousness and pushes it towards sin. So keep watch because sin is subtle. Are you trying to teach your children about the importance of honesty and patience? Be on guard for deceitfulness or quick-burning anger in yourself. Are you frustrated at your spouse's impatience toward you? Be on guard for your own. This passage should change the way that we think about sin, because we think of sin as mere actions, but the way Paul talks about it here is it's a force. It's strategic, it has intentionality, and abuses it subtly, but also strategically. Look at verses 10 and 11. Paul says, the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me. Paul uses the phrase seizing an opportunity, and that's military language. It's the picture of claiming an outpost that's poorly defended, maybe that's forgotten, so that you can more effectively harass your enemy. And that's stage one of sin's strategy. It wants to claim a forgotten, a poorly defended part of your heart through the commandment so that it can deceive you and kill you. Sin is aware, alert, and ready to capitalize on any opportunity because it's your enemy. I don't often see sin like that. I see sin like the gnats in my yard, right? When I'm out doing yard work and there's some gnats floating around, it's annoying, it's frustrating, and if one lands on me, I'll try and swat it, but it's just a gnat. Paul says sin is more like a lion hiding in my garden. That as I'm out doing yard work, I'm picturing it like gnats that can't really hurt me, but it's a lion waiting to devour me. hunting me, stalking me, not revealing itself until it's too late to stop. Because again, sin is your enemy. So the application, fight it. Give no opportunity to sin the flesh and the devil. Fight it with prayer. When you see sin in your life, pray that God will help you defeat it. Fight it with community. Invite others into your life so that they can help you in your struggle against sin, so that they can help you see the sin in yourself that you can't see. Because sin is our enemy, subtly and strategically abusing the law to destroy you. So fight it. Paul's shown us two things so far about the relationship between sin and the law. The law identifies sin, and sin in return abuses the law. It's not the law's fault that sin takes advantage of it, which is why Paul says in verse 12 that the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. But all that leads to another question in verse 13. Did that which is good then bring death to me? In other words, if sin was going to abuse the law and bring death all along, why give it in the first place? Did this good thing become an instrument of death? And Paul responds, no way, Jose. Are you kidding me? By no means. Seriously, of course not. But then he points out the third way that the law and sin are related. The law exposes sin. And some of you are thinking, okay, this seems like a repeat. Your first point was that the law identifies sin, and now you're saying the law exposes sin. I want you to think about Scooby-Doo. Has anybody ever seen an episode of Scooby-Doo? It doesn't matter which one, just any episode of Scooby-Doo, because they're all exactly the same. Because these kids and their dog show up in the mystery mobile at some, like, rundown place. You know, it's an old mansion, it's an old abandoned amusement park, it's a wharf that's no longer functioning, and there's something happening at this place. And early on in the episode, they identify it. You know, it's the mummy. It's the, you know, radioactive blob monster. It's whatever it is. This is what's causing all this dysfunction here. And after about 15 minutes of jinkies and clues and musical numbers and weird chases and Scooby snacks, at the end they finally catch the culprit and they unmask it. They expose the old caretaker or, you know, the mechanic who's down on his luck or whoever it is. But at the beginning they identify. They say it's that thing. And at the end they expose, they show what's really going on, who's really behind the mischief. This is what the law does, it exposes the ugliness of sin. Look at verse 13 again. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. The law unmasks the ugliness of sin. It shows its ability to corrupt, to twist, to take that which is good and use it for evil purposes. Because we can't watch something good and beautiful be abused or destroyed and not respond with horror. Imagine if you went to the Louvre in Paris or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and were standing looking at a beautiful painting. You're lost in it, you're noticing the brush strokes and the subject matter and you're just amazed at the beauty of this thing and someone comes running in from behind you and slashes the painting to ribbons. Would you not respond with horror at what that person had done? Paul wants us to see the beauty of the law, the holiness of the law, the uprightness of the law, because it is an expression of God himself. And he wants us to see sin abusing that beautiful law so that we respond in horror at sin, so that we hate sin. because that will lead us to repentance. True repentance involves more than just hatred and sorrow of the consequences of our sin, but of the sin itself. A truly repentant heart will say, even if there are no consequences, I hate this sin. It will say, even if the consequences are to my benefit, I hate this sin. The law exposes the ugliness of sin so that we would hate it. But it also exposes our helplessness against sin. This isn't any particular verse, any particular word or phrase, but the passage as a whole. Because you look at the beauty of the law. It identifies sin, but it has no power to stop its abuse. It identifies us as sinners, but gives no power to eradicate it from our lives. Sin just takes the law and uses it to excite sin from us. The law exposes our helplessness against sin and our great need. John Bunyan talks about this in The Pilgrim's Progress. If you haven't read it, I recommend it to you. It's an extended metaphor about the Christian life, and it's really interesting to read in kind of today's world, because you say it's 100 pages long. the guy gets converted on like page three, and there's 97 more pages of the Christian life, right? And we kind of function the other way. We talk about all the preparation to conversion, and then once somebody's converted, we're like, okay, great, we're gonna move on to somebody else now. And John Bunyan says like, no, the Christian life is a process, it's a walk, it's a journey. And along this journey, Christian ends up at this huge mansion, and he's taken into a room. And this room that he's taken into is filthy. It's dusty. It's hard to see. It's hard to breathe. The windows are clouded. And his friend, the interpreter, John Bunyan's just on the nose. The guy's name is Christian. His friend is the interpreter. It's not hard to understand what he's driving at. Interpreter calls for someone to come in and clean up the room. And they come in with a broom and a dustpan, and they start to sweep. And all that happens is that the dust in the room jumps into the air and moves around, but never gets cleaned. It starts to choke Christian. He can't breathe. And Christian asks, what does this mean? The interpreter answered, this parlor is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel. So the room is our heart. The dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. The man who tried to sweep at first is the law. As soon as the law began to sweep, the dust flew about so much, the room could not be cleansed by him. You almost choked." That's what we've seen in this passage. That when the law comes in, it doesn't get rid of sin in our hearts. It stirs it up. It complicates us. It makes us see it so that we're on the verge of death and despair. But then the interpreter calls for someone else. A woman comes in, and she brings some water with her. And she sprinkles the room. And when that's done, the dust is neutralized. She gathers it up and easily cleans up the room. And Christian said, what does this mean? And the interpreter answered, the lady that brought water and sprinkled the room is the gospel. After she sprinkled the room with water, it was cleansed with pleasure. Because when the gospel comes with its sweet and precious influences, Sin is vanquished and subdued even as the dust was, and the soul is made clean through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of glory to inhabit. Here's another illustration to try and get the same point across. We have over in, we live in Webster, which is between Silva and Cullowhee, where the university is, and we have a couple acres there, and students come over all the time. But this summer particularly, as it's rained a lot, I'm mowing the yard like twice a week. And we're pruning bushes, and we spend a lot of days out in the yard working, and yesterday was one of those days. I spent the first part of the day using the chainsaw to cut up some limbs that had fallen and that we had pruned down and making some firewood, and then I mowed. And I'm a sweater, so by the end of this, when I walked inside, I looked in the bathroom mirror, and there were, like, wood chippings in my hair and grass clippings, like, all over my face and arms. It was filthy. So what did I do? I took the mirror off of the wall and started to scrub myself with it. Right? Of course not. But that's how we act when it comes to the law. Because the law is a mirror. And what mirrors do is show you where you're dirty. And what we do so often is we look into the mirror of the law and we see sin in our lives and we say, I'm going to double down. I'm going to try so much harder. I'm going to really work to obey this law now. I'm going to use the law to clean up myself. How is that going? Does it work? No, of course it works for a little bit, but then we're tired, or we're frustrated, or we're selfish, and we just fall back into sin again. The point of a mirror is not for you to use the mirror to clean yourself up. It's to show you where you need to be cleansed so that you can go to something that actually works, and that is Jesus. Jesus is the only one who's able to cleanse us from our sin. because he wasn't excited by sin. He had no natural rebellion for sin to capitalize on to lead him into sin. He's actually able to help you because he has no sin in himself. Don't look to the law to cleanse you because it can't. Let the law be a mirror that drives you to Christ. I mean, look at the power of God in this passage. Sin's project is to take beautiful things and wreck them. It's to take Joseph and his relationship with his brothers and take his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery. It's to cause Haman to plot to kill the Jews. It's to cause men to kill Jesus Christ on a cross. But God's project is taking the destructiveness of sin and turning it into something beautiful. Joseph's slavery is the means through which he comes to power in Egypt so that his family does not starve to death. Haman's hate project against the Jews is what's used by God to protect them even in their exile. And sin's greatest victory, Christ's death on a cross, is what God uses to destroy sin itself. You see, we are helpless against sin on our own, but God is not. So stop trying to clean up your sin on your own. Instead, let the law be a mirror to drive you to your Redeemer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Christ. We thank you. We thank you for a Redeemer that actually works. We thank you for a law that shows us our need. and drives us to Him. And yet, Father, it's so often our tendency to try and do the work ourselves, to say, I've got this, I'll take care of it, I don't want help. Father, help us to be humble enough to run to Christ. For the first time, for the thousandth time, whatever it is, help us to run to Christ. And seeing the grace, seeing the beauty, seeing the forgiveness that He offers, help us to respond in obedience, to show our love and our gratitude through obeying him, not to earn forgiveness, not to earn salvation, not to pay back as if we ever could, but simply to say thank you. Father, help us not to avoid your word because it's uncomfortable, but help us to enter into that discomfort to be driven to healing, to be driven to holiness, to be driven to restoration, to be driven to Christ. Do this, we pray, for we ask it in his name, amen.