TPW #15 | Sinful Neglect of Scripture

The Danger of False Teachers and the Need for Scripture

Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse deceiving one another and being deceived. The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in.

Uninterrupted warfare for the truth.

The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers. They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.

Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture. What happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross?

That was the day of wrath. That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation. Brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our.

Unity to Christ.

Welcome to the Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church here in Northeast, Tennessee and Kingsport, Tennessee. Today I wanted to do a special podcast of a sermon I preached not too long ago that I called sinful neglect of Scripture.

And I've been told that this was a helpful message by a number of people. One of the things about living in the time in which we live is that we live in the information age and we have access to everything.

I mean it is unbelievable how much information. I mean just looking at my own study here, I've got you know hundreds and hundreds of books. I've got thousands more electronically. I've got all sorts of resources.

The internet has just untold numbers of books and videos and there's all sorts of stuff out there and it can be pretty overwhelming. People ask me you know from time to time at church, you know, do you listen to some podcasts and do you listen to this and that or what do you listen to?

Well, I do listen to stuff not as as faithfully as I as I used to in the past but what I tell people that they need to be doing though, and this is a promise I made myself when I was still in seminary, is that although I value books and I read constantly and you know, there's always multiple books being read at the same time, but you need to be reading the Bible more than all other books combined.

That was something that I promised myself when I was in seminary because you're introduced to so many great theologians, so many great writers whose incisiveness should not and must not be ignored and yet there is no substitute for good old Bible reading.

Just reading the English Bible and a really good translation and making sure that you are getting all the way through the Bible. I've always recommended to people and encouraged them to get through the Bible three times a year.

When people immediately hear that and think, are you out of your mind? You know, I've only gotten through the Bible once in a year, like one time 15 years ago, and you know, I hate to to come down kind of hard, but there's no excuse for that.

There is no excuse for that. I always think the church would be so much more united if people read their Bibles, but we are not a generation of readers. The Millennials especially are image based people.

That's one of the reasons that our churches often do not appeal to them because they're they're used to entertainment. They're used to sound bites. They're not used to a sustained thought on a question of truth for more than five minutes at a time usually and with all of the the media outlets for entertainment.

I mean with the internet and Wi-Fi and everything. It's just unbelievable. We do not know the meaning of quiet solitude with a Bible and spending time in prayer and the study of God's Word is just it's becoming more and more rare and yet it is the key to Christian growth and also Christians knowing how to pick a church and where to go to church and what are you looking for in a church and that sort of thing, but we need to be readers of the Word of God and all the information that we have it's a blessing.

It's a great thing, but never let anything take you off of the daily intake of large sections of God's Word. Every Christian whether they're a full-time minister or an elder, you know, I was a I was a computer programmer for 11 years before I was a pastor and I had you know a lot of kids while I was working full-time and serving as a ruling elder and a Sunday school teacher and etc, etc, and you got to stay on top of your Bible reading no matter what's going on.

You will make time for what's important to you. You will make time for what's important to you. Everybody does it no matter how busy they are. So this message that I preached on a Sunday night back in March I hope that it's encouraging to you, convicting to you, but make sure that you are reading all the way through the whole Bible.

Yes, even the first 10 chapters of 1 Chronicles. Yes, even the book of Leviticus and Numbers and and those passages and sections that are often skipped over Zechariah and Haggai and Zephaniah and the minor major prophets, etc. Song of Solomon.

We need to be getting through the whole Bible so that we are balanced and so that when people say things that are wrong, when people use biblical terminology and use subtleties of speech in trying to get across their false teaching, we are alerted to it immediately because dozens of passages will come to mind.

So with that I hope that you enjoy this message called Sinful Neglect of Scripture.

Josiah’s Discovery of the Book of the Law

Good evening.

Please take your Bibles and turn to 2 Kings 22. 2 Kings 22 verses 8 through 20. This is a dark time in the history of Israel and a radical great discovery was made that changed everything. 2 Kings 22, beginning of verse 8.

This is God's Word. Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law and the book of the law is the book of the law and the book of the law is the book of the law.

And the house of the Lord and Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan who read it. Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought back word to the king and said your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord.

Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king saying Hilkiah the priest has given me a book and Shaphan read it in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes and the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Akbor the son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe and Asaiah the king's servant saying go inquire of the Lord for me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found for great is the wrath of the Lord that burns against us because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us.

So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikva, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. Now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter and they spoke to her.

She said to them thus says the Lord God of Israel tell the man who sent you to me thus says the Lord Behold I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants. Even all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read.

Because they have forsaken me and I've burned incense to other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands. Therefore my wrath burns against this place and it shall not be quenched.

But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord thus shall you say to him. Thus says the Lord God of Israel regarding the words which you have heard. Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants.

That they should become a desolation and a curse and you have torn your clothes and wept before me. I Truly have heard you declares the Lord. Therefore behold, I will gather you to your fathers and you will be gathered to your grave in peace.

And your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place. So they brought back word to the king. May God bless the reading of his infallible word. Let's pray, please Our God and Father we are the most blessed and the most happy people in all the world.

Because we have in our hands and our Bibles. Every word that you wanted men to know. Everything that we need to know to be happy and blessed in this life and the next. Everything we need to know to be forgiven of all of our sins to be accepted in your sight to be able to live our lives and its ups and downs and its blessings and its difficulties in The peace and joy knowing that when we die.

We will go to be with you in heaven forever because Jesus Christ our Redeemer lives and has redeemed us perfectly from our sins. Lord forgive us. For our negligence of your holy word its glorious treasures.

Provide so much peace so much comfort so much instruction and yet we neglected. Forgive us Lord and we pray that you would create in our hearts a fire for your word that will burn bright. That we might be a generation like that of Josiah and Hilkiah who found the book of the wall and who tore their robes.

And asked what have we done? And what do we need to change? What else do we need to learn and understand from its sacred pages? May we learn Lord as Isaiah 66 says to tremble before Your words and we pray you would bless us to that end this evening in Jesus's name.

Amen. The greatest testimony to the folly and wickedness of America in 2018 is that by and large? We are no longer a generation of Bible readers. The Bible is ridiculed in colleges and universities by the most close-minded and uneducated bigots.

We call them professors even though they really no longer profess to believe in anything except that one grand truth that there is no truth at all for them to profess. That perhaps the world has ever seen.

Our nation is collapsing into misery and economic disaster. This is shown by the fact that we can no longer say with certainty What marriage is. We can no longer say with certainty how many genders there are and what constitutes a family?

The greatest economic unit of any society is the family, but we evidently no longer understand what a family is. Our rebellion against God has taken the form of the wholesale murder of unborn children in the name of pleasure with no strings attached and Convenience along with every other form of sexual perversion known and unknown to mankind.

While these things are destroying us the very Word of God Which if read and believed would deliver us from our own certain destruction and total unhappiness sits unread. Unstudied and openly mocked by those who need its life-giving message the most.

Humanity without God is a curiously stupid and self-destructive group. Those who cry the loudest for freedom to pursue whatever they want to do and be in life are Themselves the practitioners of the lowest and most degrading forms of slavery to sin imaginable.

What could be more irrational and foolish than a man? Chained to a wall in a rat infested prison who is disease-ridden covered in his own filth and on the brink of starvation shouting to all around him how great it is to be free and.

Yet that's exactly what we are without God and without his holy word the Bible this nation Is a nation of slaves to sin? Chained in our own filth. Crying out to everyone that we are free when we are practitioners of the lowest form of slavery imaginable to sin.

The Bible as the World’s Most Attacked and Most Translated Book

The late D. James Kennedy wrote a fascinating book called What if the Bible had never been written. And in the opening section of that book? He wrote this to speak of the Bible is to speak in superlatives.

It is the most published and most widely read book in the world. It is the number one bestseller in the world and has been for centuries. It is the most widely Translated book on the planet even as you read these words.

There are missionaries around the world studying various languages in order to translate the Bible or portions of it into that tongue. Those missionaries may even be the first to put that language in writing.

Such work has gone on for centuries. Hundreds of the world's languages first appeared in writing thanks to the Bible in the past 500 years. Since the time of Johannes Gutenberg the Bible has been published in 2123 languages and dialects.

Even in those places where the Bible has been forbidden. There is a great hunger for the Word of God. Just recently in Cuba the communist dictatorship has allowed the sale of the Bible. The United Bible Society reports the following quote.

Since 1993 we have been allowed to put Bibles in every library in the country of Cuba. Also under the Ministry of Culture and this year the year 1996 as in 1992 and 94 We were able to distribute the Bible at the International Book Fair where once again, it was the best-selling book.

For us it is very interesting that people who do not belong to a church buy this Bible in the book fair. There is something like an explosion in Cuba because everybody wants to have a Bible. And quote says the United Bible Society.

Kennedy continues how important is the Bible to those who don't have a copy but would like one. We in America often take the scriptures for granted. We usually have more than one copy and we don't realize how precious a copy of the Bible is for those who don't have one.

For example, I read recently about a remote village in Indonesia named Seiko Ron Kong. Where many Christians had to share just one Bible among all the church members? Then they heard about free Bibles available to them in their language.

The only catch was they had to walk all the way to stuff on to get them. Yes, the farm was far away a seven day walk. So a delegate of seven hearty souls walked all the way. Picked up the 15 heavy boxes and carried them seven days a walk all the way back to their village.

The United Bible Society's reports that this loving act brought much joy to the villagers. They wrote and published in response to a quote. There was great excitement in Seiko Ron Kong when the travelers returned with 300 Indonesian Bibles enough for everyone in the village.

No other book inspires this kind of incredible excitement and commitment. The Bible is indeed the book of books and.

Quote.

The Bible’s Power in History Against Persecution and Suppression

The Bible turned the world upside down that we live in the enemies of God's people who have understood God's people the best have made one of the grandest goals in their Schemes against the Word of God and against people to destroy the Bible.

Antiochus a ruler known as the madman during the intertestamental period launched a blood campaign Against the Hebrew people with an eye to destroying every copy of the Old Testament books on earth. The book of first Maccabees.

The one of the intertestamental non-inspired apocryphal works records this in first Maccabees 156. And the officials of Antiochus rent in pieces the book of the law which they found and set them on fire and Whosoever was found with any books of the covenant the king's sentence delivered him to death.

Josephus and his Jewish antiquities written shortly after the time of Christ said this quote. And if there were any Sacred book of the law found it was destroyed and those Jews with whom they were found Miserably perished also end quote after the coming of Christ and the preaching of the gospel all over the Roman Empire 10 successive Roman Emperors Persecuted Christ followers often killing them in the most unimaginably brutal ways.

It was the Emperor Diocletian. He was the one who finally understood what had to be done to erase Christianity from the earth in the year 303. He finally knew what was really going on and what it took to destroy it.

The Bible had to be eradicated. The historian Hurst or said this quote. All Assemblies of Christians were forbidden under Diocletian and churches were ordered to be torn down. Four different edicts were issued each excelling the proceeding in its intensity.

One edict ordered the burning of every copy of the Bible the first instance in Christian history. When the scriptures were made an object of attack and quote even at the time of the Reformation and the widespread printing and Distribution of the Bible the Bible itself the very Word of God found its way onto the Roman Catholic Church's index of forbidden books.

Is that not remarkable. The Council of Trent Rome's response to the Reformation stated clearly that the wide circulation and possession and reading of the Bible would generate quote more harm than good and Quote and therefore the Council of Trent said that those reading or possessing the Bible quote without permission may not receive absolution from their sins.

Until they have handed copies of the scriptures over to the proper officials and quote. The historian Schroeder said this quote. Persistent effort was made by the Romanizers to suppress the English Bible.

In 1543 an act was passed Forbidding absolutely the use of Tyndale's version and any reading of the scriptures in assemblies without royal license and quote. It is a terrible tragedy at least to those of us who love the Word of God.

It is a terrible tragedy that it's a historical fact that between 1525 and 1528 those four years of The estimated 18 ,000 copies of the Bible printed only two fragments are known to exist today. Rome and the Inquisition were that thorough in their utter contempt for and Detestation of God's Word.

Imagine the Bible being translated into our language for the first time. Imagine brand-new freshly printed copies of the Bible in English being thrown into bonfires. It doesn't that make you righteously angry.

The enemies of Jesus Christ who have understood where the heart of the antithesis really lies. Between belief and unbelief between believers and unbelievers have directed the hottest of their hatred Primarily at God's Word to attempt to destroy it from the face of the earth.

When the Bible was forgotten in Israel They succumbed quickly to the world around them and even the prophets themselves who were sent by God to call the people Back to the words of the covenant back to the words of the law in the written scriptures.

Many of them were given martyrdom as a reward for their efforts. Why does Satan hate this book so much? Because the message it contains which explains God's great historical acts of redemption in the person life cross work Resurrection and ascension of Christ is the means by which all of Satan's strongholds continue to be plundered by God.

That's why he and his followers Detest the Word of God and have sought to erase it from the world and hate those who love it misrepresented in public and blaspheme it constantly. Genesis 5 or Genesis chapter 6 verses 5 and 6 Describes what the world was like when there was very very little light at all given by God.

Noah and his family were the only ones that seemed to have any knowledge of God at all in the world. But this is a snapshot of what the world's like without divine revelation without the special life-giving Saving words of God given to us in the pages of the sacred book Genesis 6 5.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of His heart was only evil. Continually and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart.

But you see after the floodwaters receded and God gave a new command for a new beginning spread out. Multiply and cover the earth men gathered together with their one language and said no. We're gonna build a tower up to the heavens to make a name for ourselves and God said no you're not and he confused their languages and they all spread out and then God.

Spoke in.

Genesis 12 to Abram you go out of your father's house and I'm gonna be with you and I'm gonna keep giving you more promises along the way. And then the light started to shine and the church has grown and grown and as the Word of God has been written and Copied and translated into more languages and then the coming of Christ the fulfillment of all those Old Testament prophecies and promises and then the beginning of the church and then the publication of the New Testament documents and then it's a Translation and on piles of corpses to get it into our language.

Here it is today and we live in a society that has been so influenced by the Bible the very Freedom that we have to sit here. The very prosperity that we enjoy is because of this book. And it's amazing those who enjoy those blessings spend their lives attacking mocking misrepresenting and ridiculing that book.

The Bible is the moral Miracle of the world. It's still amazing every time you read Genesis 1 and 2 and you see that God created Adam and Eve and That God took one rib from Adam's side and made him a wife and a man Shall leave his father mother be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

That was Radical in the world in which that was delivered by Moses. Everybody was a polygamist back then and yet you see it was a creation ordinance. It's the way that God designed things to be monogamy is God's design for the world.

It's the moral miracle of the world the Bible is and we live in the shadow of all of its benefits here right now this day. You see the vile the erring and wicked men have devoted their lives to contradicting and destroying it only to die Lonely and forgotten themselves their names and stories could be told almost endlessly in France the deist and playwright Voltaire Produced a number of volumes brimming with hatred for the Bible.

No one in Europe ever did more than that man that that vile man Voltaire did to try to destroy the Bible in the Christian faith. France itself as a nation as you all know rejected the scriptures and Embraced that horrendous movement called the Enlightenment by historians a movement which exalted unaided human reason as the ultimate source of truth and virtue and discarded the Bible and Eventually because of that the greatest event in human history since the fall of the Roman Empire took place in France the French Revolution.

It was a bath of innocent bloodshed where tens of thousands of perfectly innocent people were beheaded and massacred By a revolutionary government and it ultimately did not produce what it promised to produce liberty fraternity equality.

Instead it left a power vacuum That was ultimately filled by one of the most evil and ruthlessly ambitious dictators of all time Napoleon Bonaparte. Since France rejected the Bible and went the direction of the Enlightenment.

Historians have pointed out that the government of France has collapsed 35 times since they did that Voltaire. Voltaire that French philosopher and writer and playwright a man who enjoyed cross-dressing and other fun things like that Said that within 100 years of his death Christianity would no longer exist.

Since Voltaire's death He is the one that has been for the most part forgotten. And one historian has jokingly pointed out an irony that we all need To remember. After Voltaire died his house was turned into a publishing house for Bibles.

In.

America there was Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll who gave their pens to attacking the Word of God. Thomas Paine died a bitter and lonely old man having lost most of his friends due to his political views and his hostility to Christianity.

His trifling little book Common Sense is mostly ignored today. In fact one person pointed out that in the city of Stockton, California. A city that has more than a quarter of a million people that live in it.

The public library's single copy of Thomas Paine's attack on the Bible called the age of reason has been checked out 16 times in the past 10 years. What the enemies of God's truth have always noticed is quite simple.

The truths that are preached in the Word of God turned the very world upside down. And of course from our perspective the doctrines of Scripture are what turns the world right side back up. When the gospel gained a foothold in the city of Thessalonica as recorded in Acts chapter 17.

The enemies of the gospel became envious and stirred up riots and mobs to attack and kill the new Christians. And the scriptures tell us this in Acts 17 verse 6. But when they did not find them they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city crying out.

These who have turned the world upside down have come here, too. Satan hates the Bible and Satan's followers hate the Bible, too. You see it's the regenerating power of the living Word of God that turns the world upside down.

It doesn't do it by force. It does it by changing people from the inside out. It breaks the power of sin and creates repentance and faith in the hearts of sinners. Satan's most cherished and beloved strongholds shake and quiver at the Word of God.

The Apostle Peter understood this very very well. 1st Peter chapter 122. He wrote. Since you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit and sincere love of the brethren. Love one another fervently with a pure heart having been born again.

Not of corruptible seed but incorruptible through the Word of God which lives and abides forever. If you are a Christian if you are born again and justified and you've repented of your sins and your hope rests in Christ Alone, it was the Word of God that made you born again.

Peter says. Because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is the flower of the grass the grass withers and Its flower falls away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.

You see why in our church and I pray that this continues until the end of time until Jesus comes back. There will always be the reading and exposition and proclamation of the Bible without that you don't have the power of God.

I don't care if your church has 10 ,000 on a Sunday if the Bible is not being read and taught God's power to save and make people alive and Sanctify them and cancel sin and break strongholds and raise up men for gospel ministry.

That power is gone. When the word is silent, I want you all to consider with me what the world was like when Jesus sent his apostles into it. What was the world like when Jesus sent out? Those Galilean fishermen.

To preach the Word of God in the gospel of Christ the world that they stepped into was filled with superstition. Cruelty lust and the grossest forms of paganism imaginable. Jesus sent his followers into a world that would prove to be violently hostile to God's truth.

In fact.

Jesus told his disciples you will be beaten and many of you will be killed for my sake and for the sake of the word and these men. Their message was simple and it's a radical message and it still is a radical message and it's just as Intolerable to our culture today as it was to ancient Rome.

Here was their basic message all of the established Religions that then existed were false and useless and had to be abandoned at all costs. Jesus's Apostles told people steeped in sin that they needed new lives and that they were on the surest paths Straight to hell.

They did not repent and turn to Christ. The gospel did battle against the worst of idolatry tradition a bigoted Jewish priesthood Sneering philosophers ignorant and uneducated masses and bloodthirsty Roman Emperors.

And I will tell you that the odds never looked so bleak for any cause in the history of mankind. Jesus disciples had to do battle had to do this with no swords. No guns. No knives bombs tanks horses or artillery.

Jesus gave them no worldly powers and no gimmicks of fake promises or Entertaining silliness to try to compel belief out of people. It is the sheer Holy Spirit driven power of.

Truth from.

Scripture that compelled men to believe and that broke their idolatry and brought them to Christ. JC Ryle said this quote the preacher of Christianity in the first century was not a man with a sword and an army to Frighten people or a man with a license to be sensual to allure people like the priests of the shameful idols of the Hindus.

No.

He was nothing more than one holy man with one holy book. And how did these men of one book? prosper in a few generations. They entirely changed the face of society by the doctrines of the Bible. They emptied the temples of the heathen gods.

They starved out idolatry and left it high and dry like a stranded ship. They brought into the world a higher condition of morality between man and man. They raised the character and position of women.

They altered the standard of purity and decency. They put an end to man's cruel and bloody customs such as gladiatorial fights. There was no stopping the change. Persecution and opposition were useless.

One victory after another was one. One bad thing after another Melted away whether men liked it or not. They were slowly affected by the movement of the new religion and drawn within the whirlpool of its power.

The earth shook and their rotten shelters fell to the ground and quote. If only our confidence in God's Word was greater than it is We would stop watching all the meaningless silliness that we do. We would remember that the time that we live is the one commodity in our existence that can never be Replenished.

The time that passes you by is gone for the rest of eternity. Time is the fire in which you and I burn and eventually we all die it will hunt us down and make the kill. And if you want to be happy and Productive and sleep well and live a full life of purpose and meaning and bring glory to the creator of all you must be reconciled to him through Christ alone and get hold of a Bible and wear down his pages with reading and Studying and make it flow out of every pore in your body.

Paul said to the church at Ephesus a church that lived in the furnace of persecution. He said to them see them that you walk Circumspectly not as fools, but as wise. Redeeming the time because the days are evil when you look at your life.

Look at it as a finite amount of time and the days pass you by and the hours pass you by and the things that Take up our time that are not productive that don't have anything good in them. They come and they go and the time goes by.

Remember that God speaking through his spirit in his word is telling you and I to redeem the time that we have. Make it productive. Think with me of the incredible victories and the impact that people have had for righteousness and truth upon this world.

Because they became zealous students of the Word of God. When God finally by his glorious grace cracked through my hardened heart and made me his own. It was the Bible that became my companion and teacher and the more I read it starting at age 18 the more Heartbroken I became because of how much of my life I had wasted being a coward Chasing meaningless dreams of fame and glory and trying to be something I was not.

The answers had always been there and to see the depth of my own Selfish evil heart and desires all the hatred and bitterness that have been lodged there for so long. God destroyed it by the cross of Christ to be entirely Forgiven once for all to be legally declared righteous before God because of Christ alone to know that my eternal happiness Was secured and would be waiting for me when I died.

No matter what it all became fuel to the fire. Even remembering both the wonder and the heartache of those early days is still hard and it still stirs an even deeper desire to put sin to Death and to pursue holiness.

God brings us to the very dust of death when he saves our souls and justifies us once for all eternity in our Justification in our salvation, but he raises us back up and gives us new life and then sets us moving forward moving in a whole new Direction armed with the power of his word.

Changing us correcting us instructing us each day that goes by us. Now that we know Christ is a day we live for him. Now we want to know what does our Lord and Master and Redeemer bid of us? Remember Peter.

Peter a man who had fallen and sinned so badly in his triple denial of our Lord on the night He was arrested before his crucifixion. Peter was a man who understood grace. He understood what it was to be forgiven and to be given more chances to do what was right.

He wrote in his first letter 1st Peter 4 1 2. Therefore since Christ has suffered in the flesh arm yourselves also with the same purpose. Because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.

So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men. But for the will of God. Think of the victories God has won in your own life over sin. Think about the sins that you used to be dominated by that God has broken through the power of his word.

Think of the victory that Christ won over the punishment of your sins at the cross. Think of his justifying righteousness that has really and truly been credited to your account before God so that you have a true and righteous.

And just claim on eternal life. Eternal life. Think of it. Think of the masses of people who used to be drowning in sexual filth and perversion who have been Delivered from those things to the highway of holiness the highway of happiness and joy and truth in Jesus Christ.