Good morning, everybody. Really glad to see all your faces this morning. We're going to begin our worship time with Psalm 146, which is the psalm for today, and it says this. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God while I have my eating, putting up to trusting princes and the Son of Man in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day, his plans perish. Blessed is he whose hope is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners. He upholds the widow and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked He brings to ruin. The Lord will reign forever. Your God is Zion to all generations. Praise the Lord. Praise God for the truth of that faithful scripture praising God's goodness and faithfulness to His people. This morning as we pray, what do we need to remember as we come together? I'm sure as many of us, we have all sorts of concerns on our hearts. Is there anything in particular that you want to share this morning? Yes, Jerry? My brother Jerry Bass and his family have just struggles going on there. I just appreciate the prayers for them. And for families and married couples everywhere, you know, we know that we're under attack. I mean, you know, marriage and family are suffering everywhere. There are challenges and struggles, spiritual things that make it difficult for families and make it difficult for married couples. Pray for those around you. Pray for those in your own lives and just for the people that you have contact with because God uses marriage and family in such a mighty way to bear witness about his goodness to the world and we just want to cover those people in prayer if you would. What else? I understand Chicka was telling me that Ian's been struggling a little bit with sinus stuff this week. I went down to Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday and came back with something that I was allergic to that's had me Kind of creepy sounding, so my voice doesn't sound all that great this morning. That's the reason I think a lot of us are kind of battling those things. I'm sorry, Russell. I have a friend of mine's daughter, adult daughter, who has started having some weird seizures. They don't know why. She lives in Avery County, but they've moved her to Asheville now trying to figure out what the, you know, just weird seizures are. Yeah, it's always concerning for sure. Yeah, Zach has been making a lot of progress. Yeah, he started smoking and stuff. Yeah, Zach, he is a student who was a terrible car accident, lost family members and very nearly lost his life. He's been making significant progress. You said he's eating solid food now, is that right? Yeah, he started eating ice cream. Well, that's progress, yeah. That's a much better world. Praise God for that. He started smoking. How wonderful. What a blessing for his family. I mean, that's, they've been through a tremendous amount. I have a friend named Stephanie who's having issues with her heart. Okay, I'm afraid for Stephanie, for sure. Anything else specific this morning? Yeah, Josh? I survived these injuries. Amen, all right. Yay. We're proud of you, man. We're fairly sure he does. Josh, maybe the one I've said before, maybe one of the greatest people I know tackling a PhD program while raising family and all the stuff that he has going on teaching as well. So I remember him in prayer for sure because he's got a lot on it right now as well as serving as the elder for our congregation. Anything else specific this morning? Father, it is a blessing to come before you to bring our concerns, our fears, our troubles. It is every day, and Father, it's particularly a blessing to do it with your people, come together with brothers and sisters in Christ to acknowledge your Lordship, acknowledge your sovereignty over all the world. You are indeed the source of all our healing and all the blessing and of our salvation. God, I pray that In each of these situations, it was named this morning, Father, that you would be at work, that you would do what is ultimately your perfect will. And that in the process of that, God, as you had promised to do, that you would bless your people and that you would glorify your name in the earth. Father, help us to be faithful as we pray for people to also minister to them as best we can in your name. Show us, Lord, the ways that we can be able to serve others, that we can be able to encourage others with the comfort of the gospel, that we can come alongside those who mourn and who struggle, that we can be able to offer some relief to those who are sick or need help in other ways, Father. Just help us to be faithful servants so that our prayers go beyond mere words and become a source of action that we would Farewell the image of Christ that we're going to remember. And Father, we pray that you'd come meet with us here today, that you would be glorified by what's spoken and sung and prayed today. And Lord, that you would teach our hearts and draw us closer to you. In Christ's name, amen. Checo is going to come and meet us. Now this one is the number two of this rainbow. is He's so beautiful, so beautiful I see Hallelujah, hallelujah, praise God in all Come, we pray, tender neighbor, You are for us in distress. Praise ye, sing the Savior's praise ever. Alleluia, alleluia, gloria in excelsis deo. There was a man found with a wish, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, uh In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My teeth. My mouth. My teeth. Oh God. My teeth. Oh. Oh my teeth. is ♪ Who's on the guilty stand ♪ ♪ Who's on the guilty stand ♪ ♪ And sin has brought relief and love ♪ ♪ Who's on the guilty stand ♪ burning deep. Rejoice, you see, that fountain in his name. And there may I, though vile as he, unshone my sins away. ♪ Wash all my sins away ♪ ♪ And there may I go by the sea ♪ ♪ Wash all my sins away ♪ is is is And some treasure found, be safe to say no more. Since that day, I saw the stream, I thought it had some water. and shall ♪ He in God has been my friend ♪ ♪ And shall be till I die ♪ ♪ O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, to Bethlehem. ♪ ♪ Of all nations and all communities ♪ ♪ Of all wisdom and all the ways of man ♪ ♪ To be the King of the world again ♪ ♪ Of all kingdoms and of all thrones ♪ oh is Rejecting life, rejecting evermore. Fly away, jump, trample on the ground. To the fall, for the feet of a wall. I'm going out, ♪ Nature of our creatures ♪ ♪ Of wisdom and of the ways of man ♪ ♪ You are here before the world, my friend ♪ ♪ Above all kingdoms, above all thrones ♪ ♪ No more on this world is there no hope ♪ ♪ And all the wealth and treasures of the earth ♪ ♪ There's no way to ever keep watch over us ♪ ♪ Crucify and lay behind the sun ♪ is ♪ Who is it by ♪ ♪ Way behind the storm ♪ ♪ Who is it by ♪ ♪ He drifted and rolled like a rose ♪ ♪ Jumped along the water ♪ ♪ To the void ♪ ♪ He thought of me ♪ ♪ Out of the water ♪ is my soul I see We are, again today, in chapter 21 of Matthew's Gospel, and if you're, we've got some new folks with us this morning, so just kind of familiarize you with the way we do things at Blue Ridge. I guess we're committed to something a little different, maybe, than what you typically see in churches in the area, in that we do almost exclusively expository preaching, which means that we move through passages of Scripture in order, through entire books of the Bible. We don't necessarily Read all of them in order, because honestly, we try to avoid monotony. So we'll go from Old Testament to New Testament back and forth. Typically, right now, we're in Matthew's Gospel. Have been for some time. And I'm going to typically try to move through passages of scripture and understand them in light of the Holy Spirit's revelation and find ways to apply them to our lives to help us be better Christ-fathers. That's basically our goal. So bear with me a little moment while my coach is fighting me here. I don't know if you can see. It always happens. But that's something that has always been important to us. We felt like it was something that when Lewis was founded, that God was simply calling us to a church that would focus on making people better students of Scripture, because we find it's very easy to grow up in church your whole life and not really know that much about the Bible, unfortunately. So we feel like that's a really important thing for all of us, and we hope that you'll get that from worshiping with us. So we're going to look at chapter 21 of Matthew's Gospel, beginning of verse 28. We're now, I guess, about our third or fourth week in this one chapter, just because this is a particularly rich part of Matthew's Gospel, where he really digs into Jesus' revelation of himself in public ministry, and so I think it's really important that we understand this well. Jesus had been debating, arguing, if you will, with the chief priests of the temple, who were challenging his claim to divinity, his claim to identity with God, and so This is another interchange between the two, and begins with Jesus speaking in verse 28 of Matthew. He says, What do you think? A man had two sons, and he went to the first and said, Son, go up and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, I go, sir. But he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? They said the first. Jesus said to them, truly I say to you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes did believe him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him. Here another parable, Jesus says, there was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants. and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get the fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent some servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him, you will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give them the fruits in their season. Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures that the stone that the builders rejected has become a cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And when it falls on this stone, it will be broken into pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet. So to reiterate what we said last week, you know, Matthew's gospel account is largely focused on Jesus' rightful claim to identity with God. That's a major theme in Matthew. So logically enough, Matthew has included several instances here in which Jesus makes a very public kind of claim to sonship and in which is challenged by those in religious authority. In some sources, by the way, people see this kind of threat to use literary criticism as a way to understand scripture. to understand it in light of writing style and literature and those sorts of things. But let me tell you, God used real human beings, but he used the gifts and the skills that he gave them, right? And all of us have got certain things that are particular to us, that are stylistic about us, writers of Scripture, the Gospel writers, each seem to have slightly different emphases, and I don't think that's an accident. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. John wants us to know that Jesus is the Christ, and that knowing Him, you may believe and believe and you may have salvation. Matthew wants us to understand there's a true identity of Jesus as the Messiah, being a rightful claim to sonship of God. And so, Matthew begins this account with the identity and the priests and scribes have essentially demanded of Jesus at this point that he justify his claims. That he justify the things that he's been saying to clearly identify him with God the Father. And in response, as he did in the last passage that we read, Jesus answers the question with a question. We said that's a fairly typical thing in Jewish culture today still. It's not an uncommon teaching method, it's not an uncommon just a conversational method within some Jewish communities that you ask a question, you get a question. In the last instance, Jesus sent them a question that they couldn't answer. But which, if they could, would have revealed the truth about who he was. And Jesus challenges their understanding one more time here with a series of parables. These are stories that were meant to illustrate a spiritual truth, but in a way that would be clear to those who were truly seeking God. and would be obscure to those who are not. And that's something we talked about last week that, you know, God, whether we like it or not, and I know sometimes it's a prickly subject, but God clarifies his truth to those he's redeeming, and God very clearly says in Scripture repeatedly that he obscures the truth of his kingdom from some people. Those who have rejected him, those who have rebelled against him, those to acknowledge His authority and His sovereignty and His grace and His mercy. God does heart and hearts, and God does make people unable to understand and to see truth in something. And so we have these parables, and three of them really. We're going to cover two of them at the tail end of this chapter. The first one's a pretty simple one. Jesus uses the story of these two sons. The father comes to him, the one son, and says, hey, I need you to go out and work in the vineyard today. And he says, yeah, I'll go. but nothing happens. The other says, well, I don't think so. But then he repents of his rejection. He goes and he does what the Father has asked him. When Jesus asks the priest, he says, which one of these has done the Father's will? Well, if they could see and understand, there's a clear parallel between the scribes and the priests and the Pharisees who are very outwardly obedient. I mean, they're all about some obedience to God. They're all about making show of how incredibly well they keep God's commandments. And they check off all the things really well, but in the end, their hearts are not doing the will of God. They can see that parallel if they had spiritual eyes to see it ear to ear. They can understand that He's talking about them. That there are those who verbally assent to all the things of God's kingdom and say, yes, I'll obey you, Lord, and who don't end up doing the will of God. And there are those who, at first, kick back against the gospel, those who are hostile to the gospel, but who come to do what God has commanded, and those are the ones who truly have satisfied the requirements of God's commandments. And so he says, you know, look at this. The tax collectors and the prostitutes, the whores, the people that you most despise, The people that you would look down on, you know, so much when you pass them on the street, those people that you think of as being the least of the least in the eyes of God, they go into the kingdom of God ahead of you. Because while they may have been apostles of the gospel at first, God's granted them grace and repentance. They have accepted the truth that Dr. John preached, and they believe in the Messiah, and they are being redeemed. You claim all this righteousness, but you can't see the truth that's right in front of you. Man, you know, that's a powerful message. Actions, as they say, speak a lot louder than words. And Jesus points out that their rejection of John as the one who was sent to prepare the way for the Messiah is a failure to obey God's commands. See, they've done what we're all really good at doing. All of us, honestly, are Pharisees at heart. We are really good at taking, you know, a lot of churches, a lot of people love, you know, to pick out the thou shalt nots, right? And so we make a long list of don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And of course, you know, I tend to emphasize the ones that I'm pretty good at keeping naturally, right? If I don't struggle with tendencies for addiction or whatever, you know, then I'm very judgmental of people who do. Because those are easy for me. I make the list, and I keep the checklist, and I do the thing. But God can send you something much more than that, because even the old covenants were not about a physical checklist kind of a list. They were about the change of a person's heart. They were about taking away the heart of stone and giving the person a heart of flesh and a desire to please God. The heart that desires to please God is the one that inherits God's Kingdom through Christ. And so, He says that in rejecting John, they would disobey God's commandments. And to drive home the point, sort of rubbing salt in the wound, he says, these people which you most despise have proven to be more righteous than you. The next parable that Jesus shares is of a man, a wealthy landowner, who goes out on his property and builds a great vineyard, puts a wall around it, and sort of builds a tower, probably a watchtower. in the middle of it and digs a winepress. Winepress in these days was typically a stone structure and it might be either sunk into the earth so that it was more or less flush with the surface of the soil or it might be built up, you know, so that it was something you could climb up and over into. And so it was a structure though where you would literally dump the grapes and get on them and tramp them out with the feet, you know, just like the, you know, there's still apparently some places in Italy where that's done a little bit. Um, I think, you know, the threat of things like Catholics putting one thing or another probably, you know, made that a less popular option these days, you know. I don't personally find it very appealing, but the fact is that that was a way of producing wine for centuries. And when the grapes were harvested, they were gathered in baskets and just poured into this wine press, and then they would go and they would transfer them down and produce the wine that we put into bottles or casks or whatever and ferment. They didn't have to, by the way, we talked about this before, they didn't have to do anything to make it ferment because if you ever see the outside of grapes, if you buy them in the grocery store, they have a gray blush cast on the outside of them. Those are yeasts, and they're millions and millions of light yeasts on every grape that you find, practically, and so the moment you crush those grapes, the yeasts start doing their little job of making alcohol out of the fruit juice and sugars and very quickly have wine. This guy had a vineyard where he was going to produce wine. I guess that was part of his livelihood, his income. But he had to go away to another country. And so he lets the property. He leases it. He gives it to these tenants. And they're sort of sharecroppers, right? So they're going to work there. They're going to tend the land. They're going to bring in the harvest. And they get a part of the harvest. And then the landowner gets a part of the harvest. So time comes. The grapes should be ripe and everything. And he sends a servant to tend the crops. for their use of the land, and they live in there. And farming it, he goes to collect the part of the wine that belongs to him. And what do they do? They follow these servants. They kill them. And so the man says, well, I don't know what happened, but I'm going to send back more servants, and we'll get this taken care of. So he sends a bigger group of his servants to go and collect what's due to them. And they turn on him and kill them just the same. So we'll send my son to act as my agent, to go and deal with these people, and figure out what's going on, and collect what's rightfully due to me, and try and establish the peace. And his son goes, and of course, they see that as an opportunity. They think, wow, we can kill him. We can take all of this. The father's not here. We can be able to take all this for ourselves. And so they kill the son. And it's a really strange period in some ways, but it's also something you can see conceivably And Jesus asks these scribes, these priests, he says, what would you do if you were the landowner? What would the landowner do when he shows back up? And they say, well, of course, he'd have land. He'd have his tenants hanging, and he would take away the land. He would lease it to someone who would do his will. He would do what they would agree to do. All right? Perfectly logical. And when they say that, Jesus always from Scripture. He says, if you've never read, the stone with shoulders rejected, speaking of Christ, has become the cornerstone. This is what the Lord's doing in His marvelous eyes. In other words, the Kingdom of God is embodied in Messiah in the coming of God into a presence of man called Christ. Those who reject Him have rejected everything about the Kingdom of God, because He is the one on whom the Kingdom is built. And he says, I tell you, therefore, the kingdom of God will be taken from you, and given to a people who produce fruits. And the one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, and the one on whom it falls will be crushed. It's essentially, he helps his listeners paint themselves into a corner at the end. He's let them, you know, you give someone enough rope, they'll hang themselves, right? It's that kind of thing. He's let them for themselves. to explain the truth of God and acknowledge that they have not been beaten. And again, it's the truth that traps them. They're out to trap Jesus, to try and catch Him out, to try and quarter Him, to try and discredit or disprove Him through whatever means, through lies, through misinterpretation, through all sorts of things. Jesus traps them with the truth. And if they would but open their eyes they'd be saved. But because their hearts are hardened against Him, and against God, because the one who receives God will receive the one whom God has sent, right? So because their hearts are hardened against God, they're not able to acknowledge the truth. They're not able to receive the salvation of God. They would gladly give it. They'd have to witness the Holy Spirit guiding their perception and wouldn't have been trapped this way, but it shows that they've avoided the truth of God. Now, this point here I think we need to consider, because there are a lot of preachers and teachers and authors and things over the history of the church, I think, that kind of misused this period in some ways, in an effort to try and prove that Gentiles superseded or replaced ethnic Jews as the people of God. And I don't think that's an accurate thermo-changing script. I think that's part of a kind of dispensational theology that says God had one plan of salvation, then the old covenant, and a new plan, and a new covenant. The plan is different for Jews from Gentiles and all that sort of thing. In this teaching, the ethnic Jews are seen as being represented by the original tenants. And the Gentiles are the ones who replace them. But the true focus of this parable, I think, if you really look at it and analyze it, if we see it in light of God's prophecy in Isaiah 5, is that the vineyard represents the old covenant community. In other words, it represents those who were and were not part of God's covenants. It was those who were verbally and ethnically, by DNA, by birth, they were part of God's covenants. They were children of Abraham, but they weren't truly children of God. And that's not what you're going to get a description of. Everyone who's born of Abraham is a true child of God. But at the same time, you see that those who replaced them, those who inherited the kingdom of God, may include not only Gentiles, but those who were ethnic Jews, who were believers, of course, certainly included Jesus' disciples. They included a great many people in the first century who were Jesus' followers, who were Jews, who became Christians, who became Christ's followers. And so it's not a matter of either or. It's a matter of those who seek God sincerely, those who do the will of God, for those of you here at God's kingdom. By grace alone, God redeemed his people from Egypt, and he gave them all they needed to bear fruit in his kingdom, a life for the world. Under the old covenants, the mocked failed to be faithful, including many of their leaders who did it better. Even worse, they persecuted the prophets that God sent to them. But you know what? God had patience with them. He gave them time. He gave them grace to be able to have time to repent, to have time to seek Him. The implication of the parable is that when they murder the master's son, when they murder the son of God, that's the point of the parable. The point at which their hearts are hardened and their faith sealed and it's going to be justified because of what you've done. These parables were a condemnation to those priests who opposed Jesus. But they also stand as a pretty good warning to us today, I think. If a person is truly going to be in Christ, to be drafted into God's kingdom of grace and faith in Him, you can't finally fall away from Him. The Jesus parable also points out that there's truth that those who bear fruit are those who are truly in Christ. In other words, there's really no such thing as a fruitless believer. Remember just a few verses back, Jesus curses the fig tree that fails to produce fruit, right? This kind of circles around that. Can you be a Christian and not attend worship right away? The answer is not yes or no, but yes, but. If you're unable to join with the church for worship, but you still find ways to be part of a fellowship, praying for brothers and sisters in Christ and finding fellowship wherever you're able to and studying God's word regularly and taking advantage of broadcasts like what we do or whatever is available to you through a biblically faithful church. If you're doing those kinds of things and the heart desires to worship, But if you can pretty happily get up on a Sunday morning and go to the lake and go fishing, if you can easily lay your Bible aside and never touch it, if you can take the time that God has given us to worship him on the Lord's Day and devote that to binge-watching old episodes of a TV series or something, watching sports or whatever, this calls real concern. because fruit is our evidence of salvation. See, one of the things I think, in my personal opinion, one of the places where the capital E evangelical church kind of went off the rails a little bit in centuries past is this idea that speaking a set of words, praying a set prayer, is what makes you a child of God. And that your evidence that you're saved is, yes, on February 3rd, 1927 or whatever, I prayed this prayer, But if you look back, you're going to change some stuff in your life. That's a very false notion. That doesn't align with scripture at all. Scripture says that my purpose in salvation is that I see the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And I see fruit coming out of my life that's not for me. Believe me, I am amazed sometimes at the stuff that God does for me. And I'm not saying, in me especially, I'm amazed at the stuff God does for you people too. Because I mean, you know, I am Selfish, and arrogant, and hateful, and all those things. I have the curse of being a fleshly human being. And I'm not naturally given to being selfless, and being generous, and being kind, and those kind of things. But the Holy Spirit does that for me, and I see the working out of the presence and image of Christ through my life. And I'm as amazed by it as anybody else is. It's my proof that God is a part of my life, and I'm in Christ, and I am saved. But if you're calling yourself a Christian and you aren't gathering with God's people and you're not worried about it, that's another issue. Can you be a safe Christian, a true Christian, and go on in patterns of conscious sin, month after month, year after year? Again, I think the correct answer is not yes or no, but yes, but. Because here's the thing. As long as we live in this mortal flesh, we're going to be from the sin. education, some of those things are getting easier. And man, I'll tell you, some of them, you know, if you're like me, when God first started working my life, I started seeing what the Holy Spirit was doing. I started to see some of the really big, simple things shift. I thought, man, that's fantastic. I am so holy now because these things that I've struggled with have fallen away. Thank God that's gone. And then what happens is, you start seeing smaller stuff and smaller stuff. And the Holy Spirit starts working on those things, and more and more things fall away. But I still will always struggle with having a body that is prone to selfishness, and sin, and lust, and greed, and anger, and all those things. And so the idea that I would struggle with ongoing sin is not foreign at all to Christian life. It's part and parcel of it, to be honest. But there's a huge difference between the person who Every day he mourns his sin and begs God for repentance and mercy and healing. And the person who can just blindly ignore the grace of God and go on sinning without any concern. There's quite a difference there. And if you have a heart that wants to do it, if you have a heart, no matter how much you fail, if you have a heart that breaks when you're faced with your own sin, and you acknowledge that you want God to take it away, and you seek Him, you know that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, and you are a child of God in Christ. You know the old saying about, you know, I'm not afraid of the hard work, I can lie down right next to it and go to sleep? You know, same thing applies to sin, if you're not afraid of sin. If sin doesn't concern you, if the wrath of God against sin doesn't concern you, And you can happily go on with going against God day after day. You seriously need to check upon your salvation. You seriously need to find out what's going on in your heart. Because those things, not the membership in a church, or baptism, or having prayed a prayer, or whatever. It's these things that bury the fruit of your heart and the work of the Holy Spirit. It's the evidence of salvation. It's the evidence that you are an inheritor of the Kingdom of God. And remember, Jesus said, the whores and tax collectors would go ahead of the chief priests, because they had hearts of redemptives. They had hearts that turned and believed the truth of their doctrine, and trusted the Messiah. John Owens, the great Puritan writer, said, they were killing sin, or sin would kill you. It's so true. It's a conscious, ongoing effort. And they, too, would work it very fruitively. I can't generate righteousness. Man, my best efforts, you know what Paul says about that, I mean, my best efforts are absolutely utter failure. But I need to be in cooperation with, I need to see, I need to pray for the Lord with my Holy Spirit, bearing fruit of righteousness. And I need to put myself in places where I can practice righteousness. You know, you're not going to practice mercy if you're not around people that need mercy. You know? You're not going to practice generous giving if you're not around people who need help. You're not going to practice compassion if you're not around the brokenhearted, the downtrodden. Pray for God's grace and then go and put yourself in those places where you deserve it. James writes this in James 1, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, He's like a man who looks intently at himself in the mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no purer, who forgets what a doer acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he's religious and doesn't bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's righteousness is worthless. Religion is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, saved in the world. God, grant us that you would have a righteousness that's unlike what those chief priests and scribes and the Pharisees claimed themselves. Grant us, God, that we would have a righteousness that comes entirely from you. God, we know you are the only The true source of righteousness, the only source of truth. We know God because you are sovereign over all things. You are able to speak truth into our hearts and Father we pray for that. We ask God that you would help us to be devoted servants. To be passionate about our relationship. Not just in a touchy-feely kind of way, although there's probably certainly sentiment and emotional things that you've given us and that are important, but God, help us be passionate about union with you. About experiencing oneness of mind and spirit with you. Living in obedience to you. Doing your will for your commandments. Seeking Father to glorify you in everything you do. Father, thank you for your promise that when we seek these things, that you will not turn us away. That when our first priority is your kingdom, and the things that bring you glory, that you never fail to grant us the desires of our hearts. Father, where our hearts are weak, grant us desire. Grant us longing, grant us passion, God, for the things of your kingdom. Grant us passion and desire to see you lifted up, that you might draw men to yourself. and that people will be blessed and saved and that you will be glorified. Father, help us to be careful to check our own hearts daily, hourly, to constantly monitor ourselves, to know that we are in you and that you are working on us. Lord, bolster our hearts and encourage us, and Father, give us grace and strength when the enemy wants to condemn us. our own inability to perfectly do what we want for the integration, but God, God give us the ability every day to grow in Christ-likeness, to grow communion with Him, so that the world would see more and more clearly through us. Individually, as a church, and Father, we pray this for our brothers and sisters in congregations across this county and around the world, Father. that you would build up a church, that you would stand apart from the world, that we would, through the righteousness that you have given us, Father, bear good fruit, that the world might know and see you, and hearts might turn to you and seek you. King Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine. For Thee are the glories of sin and desire. My Jesus, He's found. Only because Christ was born to me. the proud on his feet. I'll love thee forever, the fort on thy wall. Jesus is and safe and grounded. This was told of by God. Here ever and worthy by Jesus did stand. My Jesus, before whom ye are one, in heav'n and on earth, I call ye my Jesus. Last week, we finished up Heidelberg Catechism. So a few folks asked me where we're going from there. Not surprisingly, given that we're coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and we have, I think, people of a lot of different kinds of fundamental upbringing in terms of church and that sort of thing. We're going to look at the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, which is another faithful, reliable confession that I strongly I recommend that you take a look at it when you have the opportunity. It was written in 1689 as a response to the act of tolerance. It was an opportunity that the British came and gave for religious groups other than the established state church to be able to exist and to be able to practice publicly their religion. And so Baptists in London, who were, at that point, represented the strongest force of Reformed Christians, Reformed Protestants outside of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. In England, they were a pretty strong presence. And so they published this to help people understand what it was that they believed. And I think, again, it's a very warm-hearted, very workable kind of confession. It's something that's easy to use with children at home, those kinds of days, or for their own reading. The first question says this. Who is the first and cheapest being? And the response says, God is the first and cheapest being. Second question says, of everyone that will be, if there is a God. The response says, everyone else believes that there is a God, and it is their great sin and folly to do not. And the third says, how might we know that there is a God? The Baptist Confession says, the light of nature and man and the works of God plainly declare that there is a God, but his word and spirit only do it fully and effectually for the salvation of sinners. In reference here to Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above places him in it. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out throughout all the earth, and their words defend the Lord. It's good for him to proclaim the glory of God and defend the Lord.