All right, well, this is the last week that I will be leading Sunday School on the law. Potentially, some leftovers will just get thrown in if I ever have to fill in for somebody for Sunday School. But what I want to focus on today is to narrow in. Last time I talked with y'all, I focused on just the general pattern sanctification of using the law. That the Christian life is characterized, sanctification is characterized by seeking, killing, replacing, and repeating. So that you need to seek the Lord Jesus Christ, Colossians chapter 3, you need to kill sin, you need to replace it with righteousness, and you need to do that over and over again. That's the pattern that I talked about last time. But what I want to do is narrow in on one of those, which is the killing. Because it's all well and good, it's the sort of thing where, you know, you've heard it probably preached a hundred times and that's not a bad thing that you've, this is not a knock on the preacher who told you a thousand times, you do need to be killing sin. But oftentimes, whatever text that you're hearing about doesn't get into the details of, okay, so I'm supposed to kill sin, what do I do? How do I do that? I'm thankful to have been meeting with someone recently who just almost immediately said, okay, I want to do that. How do I do it? He didn't, you know, have the pious response of, yes, yes, sir. I'm gonna go kill my sin. His response was, I want to do that. Tell me, tell me what the scriptures teach me about doing that. So that's what I want to be looking at. I want to be looking at how now that we have been justified by Christ, the law no longer stands over us to condemn us. We've been raised to the newness of life and communion and union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we're trying to live the Christian life where our eyes, and I'm just, I'm going to press this point over and over again, our eyes are looking at Christ. Now we want to start killing sin. And so first what I want to do is look at sin, which is lawlessness, and then I want to look at what are we going to do about that sin, which is lawlessness. So going through this morning, there's three things that I'll be considering. First, the progression of lawlessness. and that will, we'll be looking at James chapter one, I'll give you the verse in just a moment, and then the ubiquity of lawlessness, or just the ever presence of lawlessness, and that'll be pretty brief, and then what I wanna spend most of our time on is to think about how we reverse the process, or the progress of lawlessness. So open with me to James chapter one, and we'll be looking at, verses 13 through 15, particularly 14 and 15. So that's James chapter 1, verses 13 through 15. I was talking with someone recently and I started quoting this to them and they just started saying it back to me. So you might have it memorized. This is an important passage for understanding sin and temptation. So the Apostle James here begins by saying in verse 13, And the idea there that he's getting at is you can't blame God for your sin. I mean, I could go into more detail on that, but I mean, that's just the, First principle you need if you're trying to mortify sin, stop blaming God. Important part of the process. But then he gets into the details in verse 14 and 15 of how sin germinates and grows into its full form. So verse 14 he says, But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. So this could be divided in a number of different ways, but how I'm thinking about this, this progression of sin, first of all starts with temptation. I think we all probably would have expected that to be the first thing. And temptation in itself is not sin. So to say that I am tempted is to say that something is being suggested to me. I'm being tested to see what I'll do with something that's being presented to me. That's what temptation is. So Christ himself was tempted, but it wasn't sin. We're going to return to Christ's temptation later on, but temptation in itself is not sin, but it can lead, of course, to sin. But thinking a little bit more specifically, and I guess just by way of point of order, sometimes it's hard for people to tell whether or not I'm asking a rhetorical question or a real question. If you answer a rhetorical question, that's fine. So just if you know the answer, just call it out. And if nobody answers it, I'm going to treat it like a rhetorical question. So just answer questions if I say them. And if you don't know them, I will answer it for myself. But yeah, so the first thing we need to think about if we're thinking about temptation is, well, I know temptation is going to come. Where is that temptation going to come from? Who are the tempters or what are the tempters? What are the tempters? Where does temptation come from? The world, the flesh, and the devil. Yeah, that unholy trinity that we, when we make a profession of faith or when we become a member of the church, we say, we are going to stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Those are gonna be the three areas. And just understand that as the world being, I was speaking with somebody this past week, well, why is the world sinful? Is the world sinful because it's full of sinners? Or are we sinful because we are in a sinful world? Well, the answer is the world is sinful because it's full of sinners. We're the reason why the world is the way that it is. But when we speak about the world, what we're talking about is others who are enjoining us to go along with them. You think so often of the scoffers and the wicked and the Psalms. Come along with us and do what we do. That's the world. The flesh is your own. You could, there's stories about monks going off, you know, don't do that. I've said that multiple times in this series. Don't go off and live by yourself. But there's stories of monks, and they're still beset by temptation when they've gone off and they try to get away from the world. So, you know, your flesh is enough. Your own desires. But then, of course, we don't just war against flesh and blood. We also war against powers and principalities. And so Satan and those in league with him are also making war against the saints. And those three avenues are constantly going to be presenting you with suggestions, I think is a good way to think about what a temptation is. And so James starts with this idea of temptation being the beginning of sin. Just another point on the world, the flesh, and the devil. I don't think it's necessary for you to ferret out which one is the problem. I mean, that has become an obsession for certain Christians in the past. Is Satan doing this? I mean, potentially. In some respects, it's like all three are always sort of at play in one way or another. And so you don't need to get down to the bottom of, is this me or is this my neighbor who's suggested this or is it Satan? There's no way of knowing the answer to that question. The hidden things belong to God. God knows, I don't know. You just need to know that those are the avenues and you need to be on watch against those three things. Thomas Brooks has a famous work called Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, and he often uses the imagery of baits when it comes to temptation, like a bait being laid out in a trap. And I think that's a really helpful, that there is a bait there is not sin in itself. but just realize that there are baits being laid out for you in the snares all the time, and you need to be aware of that. So it starts with temptation. The next thing is that it, verse 14, when he was tempted, he is drawn away by his own desires. So even though I said the world, the flesh, and the devil, so it could come from within, Ultimately, the question is, am I going to respond to this suggestion? Well, why am I going to respond to the suggestion? Well, it's actually because I like that suggestion. So, in my corrupt bent will, I find this thing desirable. So, the word that James is using here could also be translated lusts. And I think too often we think lust is purely a reference to sexual immorality. But as far as scriptural, and Chris has made this point numerous times, but it's worth saying over and over again, lust is, I mean, really literally the words is like strong desire. It's a longing for, it's any of those things when you think if I could only have this, then I would be happy. And so we can see that that's true of sexual lust, but it's true of any desire. I remember waking up to the reality of broader senses of lusts, probably seven or eight years ago, driving through an area of Atlanta where all the cool people were and seeing them go to their cool restaurants with their cool clothes on. Cause I got lost. I just like ended up in this one part of town and feeling this, Oh, if I could do what they're doing, then I'd be so happy. They just, I want that. And, and it was like a hunger in me. And it was just very strange. Cause I hadn't, I, I at least was not had up to that point was not sanctified enough to have a clear enough head to notice that going on. And so it just struck me, oh wow, lust can take so many different forms, that strong desire, that hunger for these different things. And it's also important to realize that that lust can be unconscious. Again, I said that there was this moment where I realized what was going on, but so often it's just under the radar. I mean, you're just going from desire to desire, just led about like an animal. I mean, just remember how often in the scriptures I think the story of Nebuchadnezzar is such a clear example. When we're in rebellion, we become like animals. So Nebuchadnezzar, I've made all this. And then he really, literally, is out in the field. Well, that's just a picture of what's really going on in all of us all the time. We become led away. And these lusts are also clarified to say that you can have a lust of the mind. So we often think it's just carnal, sensual. You can have a longing, a hunger that is to do with intellectual related things. And I've certainly met people who would fall into that, fallen into that myself. When it comes to this idea of, you know, the temptations presented to you, Wilhelmus Albrachel, who is this, he's a Dutch pastor theologian from the 17th century, had just, I think, a great picture of, and he's talking about Satan specifically, but I think this is true of the world and the flesh as well, is it's like a salesman who's going around and showing his wares. And, you know, you're presented with some temptations, and nothing in you corresponds to that. You don't have any desire for it. You know, there are some things that you know people do, certain sins, and when you see them doing it, you think, I would never do that. It doesn't appeal to you. And so what Satan, the world, the flesh, and the devil, what happens next is, oh, well, what about this? Walking around and the, you know, the salesman, oh, could I interest you in this? And just going down the line, oh, You weren't interested in this sexual sin. Well, what about this distraction? What about this laziness? What about this frustration? What about this pride? What about this just waiting until something in you goes, So the temptation comes, but then you're led, and this is, I mean, James is really trying to press them with the point of stop blaming other people. It's in you. The problem's in you. You've got a desire. You just had an opportunity for it, and you responded to it according to your corrupt desires. So there is temptation that then leads to lust. And he says, sorry, in verse 14 again, drawn away by your own desires and enticed. And this is where I think Brooks is getting that imagery of being baited. He probably has this in mind. And at one point, he talks about, you know, the bait's put out there. It's shiny. You like it. You go over to it. You're drawn to it by your desires. And you just sort of start playing with the bait, you know, testing the bait, nibbling on the bait, you know, that sort of thing. And then what's going to happen? I mean, that's not going backwards. You've been enticed. You're up close. Chances are, at that point, James goes on, oh, oh, before I go on to the next thing, I think a helpful way to think about the progression here from you've got a temptation, it's being presented to you, it's a suggestion, then it happens to be a suggestion that corresponds with your corrupt desires. And so you go over there, and the shift that happens here is that the suggestion goes from a suggestion to being your own idea. I think particularly when we think about the way Satan deals with us, Satan can't control you. What's going on is something's being suggested to you, just like the world can suggest something to you. But there's a point when it passes from a suggestion to being your own. you've taken ownership of it. You've grabbed onto the bait. And that shift means that now it's yours. You can't blame anybody for it. You chose for it to go forward. picture of this I think is you know you Satan is like you know I'm using 20 different illustrations here so sorry if you're just like how many of us he's coming up with his he's like a delivery man and he brings the package up to the door plops it down on the front step okay it's still outside of your mind it's just a suggestion you look out through the window I don't know, I wonder what that is. I think I might want what's inside of that. You open the door, you bring it in. It's yours now. You chose. At the point that you saw, this has come up on your, well, anyways, I'll get into what to not do later, but I just wanted, that's the progression that's happening. You brought it into your house, it's yours now. And you've chosen it. And at the point, James goes on, then when desire has conceived, when it's become yours, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. So the progress to sin, you've appropriated the suggestion, and now it's become an object of your will. And since it is an object of your will now, your actions are gonna be moved toward that thing you desire, toward the thing that is now the object of your will. And so that will results in action, and that action, as he says, when it is full grown, brings forth death. And this is really almost exactly what we see going on in Genesis 3. I mean, he doesn't make any sort of linguistic connections to that passage here, but I think probably James had Genesis 3 in mind. In that, what happens? Eve's in the garden. Well, you know, there's this tree over here. How about you eat of that tree? No, I can't eat of that tree. I've been told I'm not supposed to eat of that tree. Yes, of course. Well, he's told you not to eat of it because if you ate of it, you'd be like him. Be like God, interesting. That sounds, yeah. And then she looks so, he says, if you eat of this tree, so that's the progression, there's the suggestion. And then it corresponds to Eve's desires. She wants to be as God. And then she looks at the tree. Hmm. Yeah, it does look like it's desirable. It's a beautiful tree. It's good for food. It's desirable to make one wise. Yeah, I want that. She brought the package into the house. And then she acted according to this thing that has conceived and become full grown. And then of course, God had already told them, the moment you do this, you die. And of course, if you've ever taught a small child, they might know, but they didn't die. But we all know they did die. And Paul talks in Ephesians chapter two, that every person's just dead. You're dead already. Well, your body's not dead yet. It's, you know, slowly crumbling. Might as well be dead. But your spirit is disconnected from God. It's dead. And so we see that progression in Eve. It's also, and this is really because I think the writer of 2 Samuel is trying to help us see that David is doing the same pattern, but in the situation with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel chapter 11, it follows that same progression. David wakes up in the afternoon. I'm just gonna stretch my legs on the porch. And the opportunities presented to him. Okay, the temptation's there. He didn't have to act upon it. That there was a woman on the roof bathing didn't have to result in anything. But David does like women, does like having lots of women. Hmm, interesting. And then he takes her. He acts upon it, he responds to that, just as Eve took of the tree, and then all the atrocious collateral damage that then comes from sinning. And I hope, there's those two biblical examples, but I also hope that right now you're thinking, that's me. If you're not thinking that's me, you're self-deceived. Because this is just how it works. from temptation to full-grown sin and death. So that's the progression of sin. Just briefly, I wanna think, before I get into what do we do about this, is the ubiquity of this lawlessness. And what I mean by that, it's ever-present, it's going to be the case until you are rescued completely from this body of death. when Christ returns. And so we have a corrupt nature and it's being transformed and yet it's still bent, it's still broken, it's still defaced by sin. And so nobody in this room is going to get to a point where they're not going to be in this potential progress that we just talked about. And the reason why is because, one, the world of the flesh and the devil are not going to be completely dealt with until Christ returns. And also, you still have corrupt desires. They may change, but they're still there. And so it's going to keep coming. The other aspect of this is I'll define in relation to the law. What the law expects, and we brought this up in the past, is perfect, complete obedience. So that means that there is always going to be some temptation out there. And I mean, for what it's worth, so far as we can tell from the scriptures, Satan is very smart. Very smart. And that's what Albrocko's point is when he's talking about the salesman. He's a good salesman. He'll size you up walking in the door. Like, I bet I know what this guy likes. And so it's going to change. But temptations are still going to be there. And so this progress will be the case until the ultimate problem, and that's why Paul says, who will deliver me from this body of death? It's just, this is gonna be the case until I'm 100% remade. And the law requires so perfect an obedience that there's basically always gonna be an opportunity for you to sin. Because you have to keep the whole thing. And so Satan might This guy's not gonna be interested in pornography. This guy's not gonna be interested in money and, you know, unlawful dealings in his business. He's not interested in those things. But I think I know what he might be interested in. People thinking he's really smart. Christians thinking he's really smart. Christians thinking he's really holy and telling him how good he is. Ooh, that's what he likes. So there's always going to be an opportunity for this lawlessness. And so at that point, we might just go, OK, well, I'm done. I'm out. There's no hope. It's just going to be terrible. Well, that, I mean, if you stopped in Romans 7, who will deliver me from this body of death? And the answer was, sorry, no one. He says, I thank God in Christ Jesus. Who's going to deliver you from this body of death? The Lord Jesus Christ delivers you from this body of death. And yeah, so now I want to think, light of that how do we reverse the lawlessness but easily I could go through this process and you could get it and you could attend to it at a fleshly level and not realize that every step that I'm about to go through is wholly dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ bringing to you himself by the Holy Spirit. So I'm gonna try reference that over and over again. But this reversal is really just to take what we just saw in progress and to go backwards. And on any given sin, you might be at a different point in the progress. So for some sins, you might be all the way in, in the death part of this story. And in some of them, it might be that you're realizing you've got these corrupt desires. But anyway, so at any point, If you can arrest the progress by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, then that is really a way that we can think about what is it to kill sin? What is it to mortify sin? You see the weed growing up, yank it out before it can grow any bigger in your garden bed that the Lord is growing in you. So the first thing in reversing this process is to feel I put the sting of death. I realize that's probably not a good way to say it because we say, oh, death, where's your sting? It's gone. So feel the misery of sin. I'll change it to that. So that's the first thing you need to do. You need to let yourself feel the misery of your sin. Just off the top of your head, so what do we do to avoid feeling the misery of sin? What are the things we do so that we don't have to feel the full force of that? Compare. Yeah, I feel miserable right now, but that guy's worse, and he's probably more miserable than I am, I guess. You know, there's different ways to do the comparison. What else? Distract. I think that, for our time, is probably the primary one, and we're really good at it. It's not to say that in every age people can't do it, but man, we are just masters of distraction. And so distraction, I think, is a huge one. And we could almost comprehend a number of things under it. But does anybody have any other? How do we avoid feeling the misery? Go to sleep. Go to sleep, yeah. Yeah, we actually realized with our just like because there's patterns of that in adults that we see. But we see it already happening with our kids, you know, when we confront them and then just want to like, I'm tired. Ooh, okay, interesting, just retreat. I mean, that's a type of just like get away from it and not have to think about it. And we could go on for a long time, I'm sure, with different things that we do to not have to feel the misery of our sin. But we need to let it have its force and realize, so Jay Adams, who's written a lot of the stuff we have for, or inspired a lot of the stuff we have for biblical counseling, he talks about how these sorts of things are alarm bells. And isn't it striking as well that so many of the things, the miseries that come from sin are the things that we think are the problem? So one that I would point your attention to as a particular obvious alarm bell of misery is anxiety. In my experience, almost without fail, if I am feeling anxious, I can Trace it back up. Ah, there's sin at the back of this. And, you know, I mean, it makes sense because you know you're guilty. When you're speeding, you're like a little bit stressed out the whole time you're speeding because you're thinking, um, there's a police car on every corner, okay? So the fact that you feel anxious when you're in sin makes a lot of sense. helpful alarm bell because what it's really saying to you is I'm doing something wrong. Now I think you can have like the like you could have expectations from sinful men and you can feel anxious because you're not meeting their expectations and that might be the in a sense the source of your anxiety but at the end of the day you're also sinning because you're letting their standard be your standard instead of God's. So I guess we're just still all guilty in that area. We're just still all guilty. So this is good. Let it have its sting or let it have its miserable effect upon you and don't blame. I mean, the reason why you have this loss of peace in the form of anxiety is not because of your circumstances or the people. It's a problem in you. Jesus Christ was able to go through all of the miseries of a sinful world and sinful people yet without sin. So those things can't in themselves cause anybody to do anything. Anyway, so I would just encourage you to note that when you're having a bad day, it's probably because you're sinning. That's been my experience. I mean, you might come with me with counterexamples, but that's true of me over and over again. So that's the first thing, feel it. But then that should cause you to go, okay, I feel miserable today, or this relationship is breaking down, or I'm anxious, or whatever it is, and then if you let it have its effect, you probably should be asking, okay, so did I, Is this because I sinned? And so you need to review the day and the situation. And the real question, and I think this is where some people will think, did I sin? And then that just becomes this terrible, scrupulous, I can't figure out what I did wrong. And I know that I, well, the help of the 10 commandments is just run the 10. Just go through and understand them according to the way that Jesus exposited them. Because if you were to, you know, you get in a fight with your children, with your wife, or with your coworker, and you ask the question, did I break any of the Ten Commandments? And you just go down, well, I didn't make any idols. I didn't, you know, it's not the Sabbath day, so I didn't do it on the Sabbath. And, you know, I didn't kill anybody. Okay, well, what would Jesus say about that? Yeah, you were killing them. You hated them in that moment. You got angry. I mean, there's just, I mean, the amount of times Han and I have a disagreement about something and then there's just, nope. Yeah, I was angry. Even if nothing else I did was wrong, I did sin against you. That's why this is bad. That's why this is not going well. It's not because of the circumstances. Oh, I can't believe I live in a world like this. No, it's me. I'm the problem. And so I would just encourage you to run, and I'm gonna give a couple examples at the end from my own experience, but run through the Ten Commandments in that full sense that Christ puts it, okay? You're supposed to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, completely. And you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. So you're gonna treat them exactly as you would wanna be treated. Did you do that? No, I didn't. I mean, almost without fail. You're gonna find, no, I didn't. But that again, it only gets us so far, but that's helpful. Because then we're going to say, OK, this is what I'm doing. I can repent to this person. I can seek reconciliation with this person. But then we back it up a little bit further in the process of James unfolding, which is that we need to avoid the bait. And we can say this as well, just flee from temptation is another way to think about this. But you might just realize about yourself, huh, I get angry when this, over and over again, Yeah, that's the bait I keep taking. Or I'm really slothful when, ah, yeah, that is the bait that I just keep taking over and over again. And being able to identify what is that that I keep on playing with and taking really will help the next step in the process. But notice the pattern is another way to put this, and avoid that pattern. You know, you think about a person who, a man who keeps, you know, this is not, this is sort of outmoded, but I've heard people talk about, you know, when there used to be adult theaters, and the guy keeps on going into the adult theater or whatever. And, you know, you sort of ask the guy, it's like, so you keep walking down that street when you go to work? Is that the only street you can take to get from your house to work? Why are you walking down the street with the adult store, adult film theater on it? Just don't go down that street. And that's what we need to be doing with whatever it is, whether it's anger, sloth, greed, you know, gluttony, these sort of capital vices, as it were, but they correspond with the Ten Commandments. But when you do that, what I think you'll find, it moves on to this next step, which is it's going to expose to you your twisted desire, your corrupt desire. Because when you look at the bait you keep taking, so for example, if you were to say, I have an anger problem, that's probably not going to get you that far. Because what you're going to realize is, oh, I get angry in this situation. What does that show me about me? I don't get angry about everything. I mean, sometimes somebody cuts me off in traffic and I'm cool headed, fine, you know, but then this happens and man, I just lose it. Well, why? What is it about that? You know, you know, this is sin to get angry, but is there another sin going on here? And then you're getting into the 10 again. And I just, I mean, I've said this a hundred times, maybe not a hundred times, a lot of times in this series. The larger catechism stuff on the Ten Commandments with the proof text is so helpful. It just shows you, oh, this, man, there are so many ways that I break this law. So I commend it to you. It would take way too much time for Sunday school for us to talk about it, but use it. And you start, so then you go back through, oh, so I always get angry when this, is that also sinful? And then you get into the bait a little bit more and see your corrupt desire and you realize, yeah, it's actually, the real problem isn't my anger, it's this other thing. It's this other sin. I always get really stressed out. I get angry at people when I'm stressed out, and I'm stressed out because I'm thinking all about how our finances are out of order, and our finances are out of order because I'm being lazy. You know, if you were to really pull it back, you start pulling up one weed, you realize there's another weed underneath it. That's the mortification process, is you're just backing it up in there. And so you realize the corrupt desire, you expose the root of these sins, you get down to the bottom of it. But then we can go even further back. And this is, you know, once we have pulled up so many weeds in so many different places, we don't want the weeds to grow up again. We need to catch them as soon as it appears. We need to, again, stop the package from even coming into our house. It needs to stop at the door. We need to see the bait. You're walking through the forest. Animals can't do this. They just see a piece of meat up there. But as a human, I go, huh, interesting. There's something hanging down. I'm not going to walk over there, because I think that might be a trap. And you just turntail. You're just going to get away from the temptation. But specifically, to resist temptation, so little time. But to resist temptation, I would just look at the example of Christ, and how it went so differently from Adam and David. So, Jesus is in a worse situation, circumstantially, than Adam and David are. David's a king, he has everything he needs. Adam and Eve are in a garden where God has provided every need that they have, succumb to temptation. Christ is in the wilderness with nothing. He hasn't eaten for 40 days. And he doesn't. Well, what did he do? Satan comes, he presents again Satan doesn't come up to Jesus and offer things that Jesus wouldn't be interested in. He says, are you really the Son of God? If you really are the Son of God, which I know is what you long to be, because you are it, then let's just see, well, a Son of God could do this. A Son of God could do this. And Jesus' response over and over again is, it is written, I shall not do this. It was sufficient for Christ to say, God has told me not to do this. Now, what's the difference between Jesus and us? Jesus is the God-man. Jesus had the Holy Spirit without measure. Jesus never deviated from the plan. He didn't have corrupt desires. He had desires, but not corrupt ones. And he still used the word of God, but we need to reckon with the fact that I am facing someone, whether it's the world of flesh or the devil, Jesus is the almighty one. I mean, we understand why he, in his fully anointedness and his being God, that he didn't do what he did. But I have a corrupt will and I have the spirit in measure And so what am I going to need in this situation? Well, I would say you still should be doing the, it is written. When the temptation comes, you realize it's a temptation, and it should be, it is written. And this is literally what I do in my mind. I realize I'm tempted to be frustrated. And I think, it is written, you shall not murder. Christ said, if you are angry with your brother, and hateful toward him, you're murdering him, and then, okay I said it's written, that's where I begin, and then I say, Christ Jesus, help me. Help me to be like you. Give me your strength that I will not do this. Help me to resist right now. And what we're told by James later on is, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Jesus resisted through those three, and maybe more temptations, and Satan fled from him. I might know what the word says, but if I just, like a talisman, just yell out ten commandments out loud, that's not gonna do anything for me. It's going to be the Lord of hosts, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is going to come to deliver me. from the temptation. That's how we resist temptation. When it comes on, the immediate thing should be, I know this is sin. God, I know this is sin, and I can only not do it if the Spirit brings me the righteous character of Christ right now. And so if I stop there, then the rest of the process isn't going to unfold. But also realize that I can work it back At any point, it can be arrested at any point. The sinful man, it's just gonna go. For the person who has been given the Holy Spirit, it can be stopped at any point in the process and reversed and mortified by the power of Christ. Just, I mean, for the sake of giving a couple examples in these last two minutes. So years and years back, first year of teaching, I was so anxious that there was a point where I was stuck in my classroom in pacing between two options, literally. Should I do this? No, I shouldn't. Should I do this? If somebody had a camera on, it would have looked absolutely crazy. That's how anxious I was. So then I think, I've got an anxiety problem. No, that was the alarm bell. That was sin full grown in me. And when I start to walk it back, okay, why am I so anxious? What was exposed is that, in a way, I could say I was just breaking the fourth commandment in different ways. I was not taking six days to do all my labor. I was very slothful. And then I also wasn't consecrating the one day to the Lord. And over the years, basically what I reckoned with is that particular job-related anxiety at its bottom was Fourth Commandment breaking. And the peace that is not perfect, you know, but that I now experience in many ways is by the grace of God. mortifying that fourth commandment breaking. But anyway, if you want to talk more about that, let me know. But let me pray for the Lord's blessing. Gracious Father, drive these things into our heart. Drive us to the Lord Jesus Christ for strength that we might kill sin, that we might reverse the progress of lawlessness. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.