I would invite you to turn with me to the book of James this morning, through James chapter 4. And I'd like for us to read the first 11 verses of this chapter this morning. We can lift the Lord's Word open before us, but let's fill our hearts in a word of prayer. And let's all pray and ask the Lord to speak to us through the reading and the preaching of His Word. Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee this day that we can turn to Thy Word with confidence, knowing that it is indeed the very Word of God. that it is inerrant, that it is infallible. We thank Thee, Lord, for what it shows us about God and about Christ. We thank Thee, Lord, that it reveals our sins, that it teaches us what's right and what's wrong. We thank Thee that it points us to our Savior and teaches us of His wonderful graces and mercies and so great salvation. Lord, do You have asked of me this morning that it may please You to speak to our hearts from Thy Word. May it please Thee, dear Lord, to send to us Thy Spirit, to bear witness to our hearts from Thy reverence and the matters that pertain to the truth. We do ask of Thee this morning, Lord, that Thou wouldst serve each and every heart and minister to every heart need according as Thou dost see that need to be. And we ask, dear God, that Thou wouldst revive Thy people and revive this nation, teach us Thy fear and Thy love, but we do ask it be your job to draw close to us even now. To this end, O Lord, I plead the blood of Christ over my own heart and life. I am mindful, Lord, of my insufficiency for the task before me now, but I cast myself upon Thy mercies and I plead the blood of Christ over my own heart and life. And I ask, O Lord, on the grounds of that blood, that it may please Thee, to grant to me fresh cleansing and fresh unction from on high. Grant to me strength of heart and clarity of thought and speech. Grant, O Lord, that Thy Word would go forth with power and that it will not be the voice or the ideas of a man that I perceive, but may it be God's Word and God's message, that is perceived as being the very Word of God and the message of God. for thy people for this hour. If there would be any among us here, Lord, that are strangers to thy grace, may this be a day of salvation. May it be a day when lost sinners close in safely with Jesus Christ. The Lord come among us now, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. James chapter 4, we begin in verse 1. From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts at war and your members? Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain, ye fight and war, but ye have not because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, but ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do you think that the Scripture saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy, but he giveth more grace? Wherefore we sayeth God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law. But if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. We'll end our reading at the end of verse 11. And we know that the Lord will add His own blessing to this reading from His inherent and infallible Word, for His name's sake. This past Tuesday, I'm sure you're all aware, has left an indelible mark upon the history of our nation. September 11, 2001 will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it, nor will it be forgotten by those who record history. Already this date is being placed alongside other dates that have left indelible marks upon our nation. December 7th, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, thus bringing this nation into World War II. November 11th, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, to name but a couple. The events of this past Tuesday, I feel, are too monumental not to be addressed this morning. And yet I'm keenly aware of my own insignificance in comparison to that day. It might be more appropriate if we were able this morning to have a New York firefighter, a rescue worker to speak to us instead. Certainly those who have been to Ground Zero, as it's now being termed, and have seen it and smelled it and labored in the mountain piles of dust and rubble, certainly they feel the impact in a greater way than those of us who are insulated from it by the comfort of our homes, where we have been enabled to view it in our living rooms. I would, however, be careful not to make too great a contrast between those who are directly affected by that day and others who have merely watched it on their televisions, because we've all been affected and we've been affected deeply. You couldn't possibly watch such scenes of destruction. Knowing what you were seeing was not some Hollywood special effect in a movie, but was indeed reality. You couldn't watch that without being stunned and grieved and outraged. I was on the phone with James while that happened. He had heard down at Bob Jones that something was happening, and he asked me what was going on, and in the very process of explaining it to him, that first tower collapsed right in front of my eyes. Oh, you couldn't see or hear the reports of those who have presumably lost their loved ones to these tragedies without being deeply affected emotionally. These are heart-wrenching scenes. The scenes of those who hold out pictures of their loved ones, hoping in all likelihood against hope that maybe they'll turn up in a hospital somewhere. And the subsequent events that we've seen. the flag waving, the blood donations, the crowds cheering the rescue workers, the medical personnel waiting and anxious to help, the iron workers laboring tirelessly, tirelessly, refusing to quit, a unified Congress singing God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol. Who would have ever thought we could see such a thing? All of these things, and many other things as well, indicate very clearly that this attack upon America has had an impact upon this nation that is unlike anything most of us have ever seen or experienced. What does it mean? How could this happen? Where will it lead, and what will be the end? These are questions going through the minds of many people across this land this morning. We're hearing the term war these days in ways we've never heard it before. In the past, we've heard reports of how terrorist groups or third world nations have declared war on America, but such statements were never taken seriously, really. We've found such words to be no more threatening to our safety than a fly buzzing around our head. But now our president is using the term. And Congress is using the term. And the news media, the news anchormen are using the term. The destructive actions of last Tuesday are not being viewed as isolated acts of terrorism, but they're being viewed as acts of war. And we're being told now that we are a nation that is at war. And of course, this war is different from other wars because we're not fighting such a tangible enemy as what we fought against in previous wars. People are truly being shaken to their very roots, and it is proving to be a time of deep heart-searching. Isn't it interesting to see the emphasis on God and on prayer and on church this past week? One can almost get the impression that it wasn't even illegal to pray to God in our public schools. Is this an act of God's judgment? Some people ask. Is this the fulfillment of prophecy? One man that my brother John and I spoke to yesterday asked us this question. Does this mean the Lord's return is very near? Or on a more bitter note, and I've heard this question brought up in a couple of interviews, how could God allow such a thing? Isn't He a loving God? Isn't he all powerful? Why then does God seem fit to allow such horrific deeds to be done here in this land? As I said a moment ago, I'm keenly aware of my own insignificance before the magnitude of the events of this past week, and so I'll resist the temptation of using this pulpit as my own personal platform. It really doesn't matter what I think or what you think for that matter. But it does matter what God's Word says. And what I would endeavor to do this morning is to shine the light of God's Word, not only on the tragedy of September 11th, but in a broader context, upon the whole concept of tragedy and evil, and especially war. War and fighting. For you see, war and fighting are the specific issues that are addressed by my text this morning. Would you look at the first verse, at the very beginning of James chapter 4, and look at the question that's being raised, from whence come wars and fighting among you? This is the topic to be considered in this chapter, and it's a topic worth looking at this morning in the light of what has transpired in our nation. And so understanding and responding to the tragedy of war, that's the theme I want to address this morning. Or if I could put it to you very directly, we must understand and respond to the tragedy of war. We must understand and respond to the tragedy of war. And these first 11 verses of James 4 are very instructive for teaching us how to understand and how to respond to events like the one we're now experiencing in our country. Would you consider with me then, first of all, that the Bible explains war. The Bible explains war. Look at it again with me in verse 1. from whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, that war in your members? James raises the question, or raises the issue, through a question of inquiry, and then he answers that inquiry through another question, this time a rhetorical question. Where do wars come from, he asks? Why is there fighting among men, among you? And in his rhetorical question, he provides a very concise answer. Come they not hence, even of your musts that war in your members. This text takes us really in the opposite direction in which the world would take us. Why other wars, the world wants to know. Why other fightings, the world is asking at this time. And in the case of last Tuesday's tragedy, the answer would be something like this. There are wars because some militant terrorist group took it upon themselves to make war against us. We're a peaceful nation, we've been told. The cause of war must be traceable to sources outside of ourselves. Really? What about the war against crime? I mean, it is a war. You may reflect back to the riots in Los Angeles, to the difficult and challenging task that the L.A. Police Department has had to bear in recent years, and it's a war. It's a war against crime and criminals against the police. Why does that exist? What about the war that's been raged for years against innocent unborn babies? Why does that exist? In a war-like response of some that take it upon themselves to treat abortion clinics in terrorist-like fashion. Why does that exist? How about the war between families? How about the war between husbands and wives? How about the war between neighbors? You know, in my neighborhood, we've got a man that has declared war on the rest of us. He puts out a sign in his yard that points to our neighbor across the street, and he calls them all manner of profanities. The guy's nuts. He goes up and down the street just looking for ways that he can declare war on us. Of course, fortunately for the rest of us, this man is very old. I don't know if he himself maybe was affected in the World War, but he just seems to be at odds against the whole neighborhood, and he declares war upon us all. What about the wars that are waged in more subtle fashions, the wars between businesses, or the wars between political parties, the slander and the smear campaigns, or the defense of reprehensible conduct on account of party loyalty and allegiance? What about these wars? You see, folks, and we all know this, war didn't begin last Tuesday. It's been going on all our lives. It's been going on for as long as the so-called civilized world has existed. Have we forgotten Desert Storm? Have we forgotten Vietnam? There you had not only a war being waged in the faraway jungles of Southeast Asia, but you had the war on the home front, or the college demonstration. Have we forgotten 10 states? Have we forgotten, maybe you've never known about this, maybe you've known and forgotten the blowing up of the science building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. This was a building targeted by members of the anti-war movement because they thought research and development for weapons and ammunition was going on there. So they blew it up and killed a professor. What about the two world wars? What about the Holocaust? Doesn't it seem obvious this morning? that the study of history is the study of war. It is as if war is what highlights history. We probably know very little about what happened between World War I and World War II, but anybody with the least amount of education knows at least a little something about those wars. This is a subject, you know, that kind of strikes home for me because I can remember as a young man facing the prospects of Vietnam how depressing I used to consider the whole matter. That and nuclear proliferation used to depress me. Why do we seem to be so bent on self-destruction? I used to raise that question a lot in my mind. I suppose it was a question that ran through the minds of many that made up that counterculture of the 60s and 70s. And I say it's a key issue and an important issue to me because one of the key factors that contributed to me finding Christ as my Savior was the very succinct answer that the Bible provided to that question. From whence come wars and fightings among you? Look now at the answer that verse 1 provides. Come they not hence, even of your rusts, that warring your members? Doesn't this text indicate to us very plainly that the real problems we face in the world today are spiritual in nature? More exists without because more originates within. More is traceable to the lusts of our members. And in the very next verse, or the very next two verses, in verses two and three, James enlarges upon this proposition. Look at those verses with me, if you would. ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and to not obtain, ye fight and war, yet ye have not because ye ask not, ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. No one's exempted, not even Christians, from the awful battle against lust that rages within our members. And here is a telling verse that goes a long way in explaining war. We have wars because we can't be satisfied. We kill and we desire to obtain, but we never obtain it. We're never satisfied. It doesn't matter how much a man has, it's not enough. He needs more. He wants more. He thinks he's entitled to more. It's no fair that someone has more than you or more than me, and it's no fair that one nation has more than another nation. And so a man is driven by lust, by covetousness, by sin. That's it in a word, isn't it? By sin, that struck me so hard as an unconverted lost man that the Bible explains it so simply by a single word, sin. You could say that what you find in the heart of an individual sinner is a microcosm of what you find in the world. Or to put it another way, the awful tragedy of this past Tuesday is but an enlargement of what takes place in each one of our hearts. And as I say, the revelation of this truth is really what drove me to Christ. I could see sin so plainly in others in those days, but I couldn't see it in myself. until the light of the glory of the gospel broke through my hard and rebellious heart. And it was the sins of my own heart that I was enabled to see first by God's grace. There were so many external sins that I didn't see right away, but I saw my heart condition. I knew that if you filled this world with people just like me, or you could say just like you, You would have a situation at least as bad as the current situation in the world. But before we leave this point, would you look with me at what verse four says? James doesn't pull any punches, does he? The adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. The real war and the true origin of war is traceable to the war against God. And this war isn't divided by nationalities. It's divided by those who live solely for what they can have in this world. The temporal and vain things of this world are what govern their lives. And those who live by this mindset are revealed in this verse as being at war against God. You could say in a sense I suppose that every war is a holy war because man in his sin has declared war upon God. Those who live their lives with no reference to God are in rebellion against God. And to the degree that the Christians long for and love the things of this world, they place themselves in enmity against God also. It's a war for autonomy. Man wants to be independent of God. Man wants to sit on his own little throne and have the universe revolve around him. This is the Bible's explanation of wars and fightings. It's not really that hard to understand, is it? It can be explained in that single word, sin. Men sin against other men. On a larger scale, nations sin against other nations. My prayer during this time of heightened awareness about good and evil and God and prayer is that men and women will search their own hearts and discover and repent of their own sins and then turn to Christ. And needs to begin with the Church of God. Some preachers have been thundering against the obvious sins of our day and have pointed out, and I would have to agree with them, that the sins of this nation do indeed cry for judgment. But I fear that the Church of Christ is still too unwilling to acknowledge and deal with its own sins. The sins of ascribing legitimacy to things that are unscriptural. The sins of ascribing legitimacy to religions that deny the gospel. Oh, make God search our hearts and grant to us, his people, the discernment we need and the courage we need to face our own sins and to repent of them and to turn to Christ. And so our text provides for us an explanation of war. If we're going to understand the kind of tragedy that rocked our nation, then we must understand, from whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in you members? But will you think that if we rest upon the truth that God has responded to war? God has responded to war. Look with me, if you would, at verse 6. It says, but he giveth more grace. Therefore we say, if God resisteth the proud, but God giveth grace unto the humble. The question that has perplexed so many and has created so many skeptics is the question, why doesn't God do something? Why doesn't God intervene to thwart the plots of terrorists whose aims are so destructive? Why doesn't God protect innocent victims from such atrocities that we witnessed this last week? Why does God allow evil and suffering and tragedy? I heard a question along these lines put to Billy Graham's son by Diane Sawyer. on ABC News. And Franklin Graham answered the question right by pointing out the relationship between evil and sin. But then Diane Sawyer challenged him further by pointing out to him that there are so many different ways to interpret sin and evil, and all are not agreed as to what constitutes sin and wickedness. She then went on to quote a statement by Jerry Falwell that supposedly drained Tuesday's events on the abortionists, and the homosexuals, and the ACLU, and the feminists. I was trying to track down that statement, actually, and I visited Jerry Falwell's website, and he had a disclaimer on the very front of it in which he says, I hold nobody responsible but those who actually perpetrated the deeds. And you could tell on this TV interview that Diane Sawyer was very agitated by the remark of Jerry Falwell. I'm afraid it was probably striking pretty close to home with her. And Franklin Graham, I was actually glad for his response. He didn't try to distance himself from Falwell. He assured her that she was taking the statement out of context. You know, that interview does raise an interesting and a certain point If we can't clearly define sin and evil, then we'll make no spiritual progress at all in the light of this tragedy. Indeed, if we can't define sin, then we really have no moral authority for even saying that the suicide mission of these terrorists was wrong. They certainly didn't believe it was wrong. They evidently felt it to be so right that they were willing to die. We oppose their deeds. We oppose their deeds on the same grounds that we oppose abortion, and sodomy, and all sin. Our grounds for opposition is based on what God has revealed in His Word. But what about this whole matter of God being indifferent to the types of tragedy that we've now experienced as a nation? Could God have prevented this? Is God indifferent or unable to prevent these kinds of things? And it's probably worth noting here that we don't really know how many plots God has indeed thwarted. There really is no way to trace the number of times things are prevented. An appropriate follow-up question to the skeptic would be, how have you responded to the myriad of days and hours that you've lived that have been free from tragedy and harm? How often have you thanked God for days of peace and joy and security and freedom? Do you thank God by ignoring Him? Do you express your gratitude by showing complete disregard for the ways that are pleasing to Him? But as a matter of fact, God has never been indifferent to the plight of man. And though God could not be blamed for the responding in anger against the sinner for His rebellion, instead, our text tells us, He giveth more grace, and He giveth grace to the humble. How has God responded to human suffering and tragedy and misery? He's responded by giving grace. And the greatest manifestation of that grace is found in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, John writes in the first chapter of his Gospel, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Here's God's response to war. He gives grace. And if you know anything about Christ, then you know that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He beheld the effects of sin while He walked the face of this earth. We read of Him in Matthew's Gospel that Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses in Matthew 8 and verse 17. Like the victims of Tuesday's tragedy, Christ was also a victim of tragedy. But unlike the victims of Tuesday's tragedy, Christ subjected himself to tragedy and to travesty. I heard just a brief news clip about a lady who missed her plane, which as it turned out, that plane became the terrorist's instrument of death. How humbled she must feel. How frightened she must be to think of how close she came to meeting her death. For when Christ left heaven's glory to come into this world, he knew full well why he came and went away to heaven. He came knowing that he would die, and he came knowing how he would die, and he came for the express purpose of dying. In John's Gospel, chapter 8, verse 37, we find him standing before a conscious pilot. He's already endured a sleepless night during which he was apprehended and the abuses against him begun. And then a statement that encompasses all that he had experienced in suffering and all that he would soon suffer. He says in that verse, to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world. that I should bear witness to the truth. It's as if the Savior is pointing to himself in the context of his sufferings and saying, this is why I came. This is my response to tragedy and war and the plight of man. He bore witness to the truth that the Messiah should suffer and die and be buried and rise again. He bore witness to the truth that sin cries for judgment, and then he bore that judgment for those who would believe. We're horrified by what innocent victims have suffered through the attacks of terrorism. Christ was also an innocent victim, but more innocent is the fact that anybody that died this past week, in their attempt to do away with Christ, his enemies just could not put forward any kind of witness, not even false witnesses, that could bear any credible charging against him. Everywhere he went, he performed acts of grace and mercy, healing those who were sick, relieving those who were afflicted, delivering those who were tormented, demonstrating time and again that God is gracious and God is compassionate. But in spite of his words and his deeds, wicked men laid their hands on him and put him through a mock trial. And they buffeted him. And they spit on him. And they laid bare his back and whipped him with a whipping that in itself was powerful enough to take a man's life. And they pressed a crown of thorns into his brow and then they let him away and drove nails through his hands and his feet and left him to expire, crucified to a cross, the whole time mocking and deriding him, even while he was nailed to that cross. Oh, don't ever dare suggest that God is indifferent to human tragedy and misery and suffering. He knows it full well. He's responding to it by subjecting himself to it so that we might be saved from the awful penalty that our sin deserves. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The Bible explains war and fightings. They exist on account of our sin. The Bible also reveals that God is not indifferent to the plight of man. He's fully aware of our sin, our guilt, and our misery. He knows that man in his sin has declared war on him, but he's responded to it, not by taking up arms himself, as it were, but by sending his son to be a victim of tragedy, to die a cruel death on the cross in order that we might be saved. All this is contained in the statement of our text. He'd give it more grace. We know that. God's response to wars and fightings. It remains for us to consider, finally, how that we must respond then to God. The Bible explains war. Christ has responded to suffering. Now the question we have to confront is, how will we respond to God? Look with me, if you would, at verses 7-10. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. These verses contain a number of imperatives that can be applied to the sinner and the saint alike. The first one is a command for submission. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. It's a call for surrender to Christ. Lay down the arms that you've taken up against God through your stubborn self-willed rebellion, James says in essence. Don't be so foolish as to go to war against the power of omnipotence, but submit yourselves to God. God hasn't declared war on you. God hasn't yet visited us with the judgment that our sin deserves. He sent His Son instead. He subjected Himself to the judgment that was our due so that He won't have to go to war against us. He's made it a way instead for reconciliation. This is a day not of judgment, but a day of salvation. So submit yourself, therefore, to God through Christ by believing in Him and calling upon His name. The next imperative in verse 7 reveals that even those who submit to God through Christ don't escape spiritual warfare. We have an enemy who desires our defilement and our destruction and therefore we are given a command of resistance. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The big challenge we're facing as a nation right now is in identifying the enemy. The same could be said in our spiritual warfare. We must recognize that the enemy of this nation and the enemy of our souls is the one who would tempt us with sin, the one who would lure us into the pleasures of sin or the rationality of sin in order to defile and corrupt us and pull us away from God. The enemies of our nation are not merely terrorists who wreak havoc and cause destruction, but there are spiritual forces at work in this nation that have been at work for many years. Paul describes them in Ephesians 6, where he reminds us that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. These are ultimately the forces behind sin that lure us into sin and lure us into legalizing sin. If hearts have truly been touched as a result of the tragedy of this past week, then we ought to see the devil resist it. Resist it on a personal level and resist it, I would hope, on a national level. Oh, that those who rule our land would learn to fear God and submit to God and in the light of the holy and gracious character of God that they would in turn resist the devil and resist the devil's ally who is found in the sinful nature of man. But let's not leave the warfare solely to our leaders. This is a command that comes to each individual and to each and every Christian. We must raise our resistance to the devil. And the way this is done in large measure is to heed the next imperative in our text found in verse 8, which comes to us with a promise attached to it. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. What an incredible manifestation of grace. The invitation, yea, the command to draw near to God. How is it that sinners and rebels can draw near to God? After all, we're told in 1 Timothy 6 and verse 16 that Christ only has immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man has seen nor can see. And yet we're told that we can and that we should draw near to him, and he'll draw near to us. This can only be done by giving heed to the imperatives that follow in verse eight. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. We are here commanded to appropriate the means that God has provided for our cleansing and our purity, which is the blood of Christ. By faith in his shed blood, we cleanse ourselves from our sins and we purge our consciences from dead works to serve the living God. Our sins, you see, brought forth the shedding of his blood. Our sins brought the lashes of the whip upon on his back. Our sins are about to hammer down upon the nails that have fastened Him to that cross. Our sins are but left uncrucified. It's no wonder we're commanded in the next verse, in verse 9, to be afflicted and mourn and weep that your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up. Well, there is a lot of mourning and a lot of weeping taking place in our land at this very hour. We mourn the loss of so many whose lives were tragically taken. We mourn the loss and admire the heroism of the rescue workers who met death head on when they went back up the stairs of that tower. We mourn for the families who are this day mourning the loss of those they love. But if we would gain the spiritual benefit of our mourning and we must examine our own hearts and mourn and weep and repent of our own sins. And if we will, as individuals and as a nation, then our text brings to us another promise, that God will lift us up. Let's pray this morning that out of the assheaps in New York and Washington, D.C., God will raise us up that He'll raise us up to be a nation that's stronger spiritually because in our humility and mourning we face the truth of our sin and we repent of our sin. This is not the praise to know to complain about someone else's sin. We have enough sins in our own hearts and lives to occupy our thoughts and our prayers. May God then give us grace. Thank the Lord, we're told, and He giveth more grace. In His grace, may He grant us the power to restrain our sin, the mercy to forgive our sin, the strength to enable us to overcome our sin, and the vision of His glory to transform our lives and conform us into His image. Let's submit ourselves, then, to God. Let's close in on a word of prayer. And let's all pray. I would invite you in the place where you sit right now to get bowed before God, to submit yourself to Him. We'll ask the Spirit to search your own heart. This is really where it must begin, in our own hearts. We don't have to search far to find sin. We can find it right here where we are, in our own hearts. What sin would God place His finger on in your heart and ask? All may He give if you've graced. If you search it out, if you've graced it, if you can have it, if you can leave it under the blood, so that God, by His grace, can lift you up. And if what we do here this morning, individually, incorporated, will be something that's not a cause of indiscrimination this morning, then God will lift up our nation also. Let's pray to that. Heavenly Father, we vow before what He was warning to confess to Thee that we are not worthy of the least of Thy blessings, for we've sinned against Thee, Lord. Let us ascend to Heaven, our anger, our lust, our violations of the God-commandments, Lord, we know them too well. It's a very easy thing to look out upon the Lamb, dear God, and complain and mourn and lament about the sins of our land, which are indeed many, and which cry for judgment. Lord, may we be willing to humble our own hearts before you this day. And we do pray that the work of revival would even begin in our lives and in our hearts and that my church and ever do pray, O Lord, that it will spread. May it spread to the inhabitants of this land, so that we may be delivered from the sins that do afflict us as a nation, and that bring reproach to us as a nation, and that invite acts of judgment upon this nation. Lord, after our shame as we pray, I thank you for sending in a nice son, I thank Thee, Lord, for Thy love and compassion. I thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that Thou art not indifferent to the plight of man. Thou art very familiar with tragedy and with awful agony, with shame and scoffing really. Lord, we worship Thee today and we thank Thee for Thy willingness to die on the cross for our sins. And we will believe in Thee, Lord, and we look to Thee today, we would, in obedience to Thy birth, submit to Thee and draw near to Thee, and afflict ourselves and repent of our own sins, and look to Thee, Lord, for grace and power to restrain and forgive and enable and transform us. O Lord, who will work in our hearts, who will work in this church and in this denomination, who will work, O Lord, in the hearts of Thy people across this land, and then do a work that will spread to those that are yet outside of Christ. May they come to realize the need of Thee. May they come to realize the great love and compassion that Thou hast shown to this world in sending Thy Son. We do pray, O Lord, that Thou will give grace and more grace, and that grace will indeed bring in our land again as we see inhabitants of this land, by fear of God and in the love of Christ. Lord, have mercy, we pray, that we do think again, Lord, of those that have been directly affected by this tragedy. Lord, we pray that Thou wilt have mercy on them, and draw their hearts to Thee, and help them especially to know in this hour that God is not indifferent to their plight, and that He knows all about it, and that He has responded to it a long time ago by sending His Son. Lord, touch the hearts of those who mourn, and draw their Satan within to Thyself, and may it please Thee, Lord, or raise up a new new nation that will honor and glorify Christ. But when we do pray it, these things set out in Jesus' name. Amen.