Recovering God's Design - The Gospel, Our Hope | Adult Sunday School

Radiance of your purity, cause our faith to rise, cause our...

All right, if you'll, whoa, we're hot, we're live, come on in the sanctuary and have a seat.

All right, just a quick update before we pray, and that is that on our email chain, we've been praying for Gabe, who has

Lyme's disease and has been struggling with health issues, and Cornell just texted to let us know, ask us if we could pray, cause he's on the way to the hospital to meet with Gabe and Danielle, because he's been in and out of consciousness today.

So, we'll just remember them in prayer before we begin. All right, we will pray, and then, and I'll ask the

Lord's blessing on this time, then I'll introduce our guest speaker for today, let's pray. Fathers, your people, we gather here together today to rejoice in your good gifts to us, to fellowship around your

Word, to enjoy and benefit from the teaching of your Word, and we pray that you would accomplish those ends today in the hearts of your people.

We pray that you would teach us through your Spirit and your servant, Owen Strand, today, and that you would be glorified through our time here as we reflect upon the centrality of the gospel and what you are going to bring to us from your

Word. Thank you for your grace and kindness, and we pray that you would extend that to Gabe and Danielle, to Cornell and their family as Gabe is struggling with health issues.

We pray that you would heal him, bring them grace and comfort, teach them and show them to trust in you and incline their hearts in that direction, that they may see your hand of sovereignty and grace, and that you would draw near to them during this time.

We pray that you give wisdom to the doctors, to those who are treating Gabe, that they would know the right treatment and that you would use them as your instruments to bring healing to him.

By your grace and strength and presence, we pray that you would comfort them and encourage them in you and accomplish your good purposes for them and their family.

We ask now again your blessing upon this time, and we rejoice in your goodness to us, that we can trust you in all things, that you are a sovereign

God and that you rule in the affairs of men, and no one can question you, and we pray that you would remind us again of that goodness and that grace today through our time, our fellowship, and our worship here today.

In Christ's name. Amen. All right, our speaker today for adult Sunday school class as well as our worship service is

Owen Strand, and I'll have a bit more of a sort of a formal introduction of him during the worship service, but he was our speaker for our equipping conference this last weekend.

We had a great time of equipping and fellowship together as he taught us about the role of a biblical role of men and women, the biblical manhood and womanhood and family and relationships and the role of men and women in society and authority in the home and in the church, and we dealt of course with genders and transgenderism,

God's creation and God's intention in creation, and I trust that it was a great time of fellowship for you and edification for you.

So I will have no further ado since we have plenty of ados here, and I will turn it over to Owen Strand.

Thank you so much, Jim. Thank you everyone for being with me over the course of the weekend.

It's been a delight to be here, and this morning I'm going to go back over some of the ground that we have covered, and then we're going to dive into the power of the gospel in the second part of this teaching time.

What I want to cover initially is the vision that we were talking about from our culture that I called paganism.

So I'm going to be sketching what that looks like today, and some of that is because I think this morning at church there will be people here who weren't able to make the conference for one reason or another, and I'd like to make sure that we get this stuff out so that there's clarity on these matters to the glory of God.

And then as I say, we'll conclude by thinking about the power of redemption, ending on a hopeful note.

In Romans 1 .25, the Apostle Paul tells us that pagans have exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

That is the exact term that he uses in Romans 1 .25, and I think that's a very important word for us to highlight.

We're familiar with the concept of lying, of course, but we don't always think of ideologies and systems of thought and philosophies under that term.

We tend to think of a lie as what you do when you are a kid, for example, and your mother or father asks you if you cleaned the room as expected, as was asked of you, and you say yes, and you did not actually make your bed, and you did not actually get those clothes in the drawers, and so on and so forth.

That's a lie. We think of that phrase, little white lie, for example. And so we tend to think of a lie as something that's very contained and pretty small, and you know, it's not good, right?

Christians know lying is not good, of course, but we don't think much about the consequences of lying.

But as we talked about from Genesis 3, the fundamental work of the devil is to get us, try to get us, try to get humanity, that is, to believe lies.

To believe the lie, centrally, that Satan is the authority to follow and God is not trustworthy to follow.

That, as we talked about yesterday, in Genesis 3, 1 through 7, is the initial lie that Satan introduces to Eve as Adam stands passively to the side doing nothing to protect his wife.

So the lie that Satan gives is really one key idea, trust me, you can't trust

God, and you won't die. You will not surely die if you go against God.

That's Satan's lie. And so you've got to expand your conception, your vision, of the lie that Satan tells.

It's not simply a little white lie. It's not a mild mistruth.

It's not, to use the language that Hollywood celebrities use, a mistake. Mistakes were made, right?

No, that's not what we mean. Brothers and sisters, today, in 2024, we are up against, in America and in the

West, a lie. We're up against a lie in numerous dimensions, and the central lie,

I believe, is this. That Satan's vision for humanity is better than God's vision for humanity.

We call Satan's vision for humanity paganism. Paganism. Paganism is synonymous with idolatry.

If you're a pagan person, you live according to the flesh, and you really worship the flesh.

You do whatever you want because you believe that your internal desires and your passions are good.

And that is really, basically, the core idea that our youth are taught, for example, in many contexts today, in many secular settings and schools and universities and colleges.

Our youth are taught that if they have an internal desire, if they have a strong feeling inside, that is what they should follow.

That is their true self. They need to be authentic to their true self.

They need to follow their heart. Because whatever is strong in you, that's who you are.

Now, Christians should already be equipped to understand that that is not a sound concept from numerous angles.

You and I do have feelings. God gave us feelings. God made the human person to feel deeply, strongly, passionately.

It's not bad to feel deeply in this life. In fact, if you look at the Psalms, for example, you know that various figures in the

Psalms are going through the highest highs and the lowest lows, and they're doing so in a God -centered way.

So, Christians, including biblically conservative Christians, aren't down on feelings. We're not saying, don't feel anything, just know truth.

No, we know that we're going to be very affected by this world, and we're going to be very affected by true doctrine and the reality that God saves and the sadness of this world and the pain and hardship we all face, and on and on it goes.

But what we do need to say is that feelings don't lead the truth. The truth leads feelings.

If you are in a marital conversation, let's say this for a moment. If you're in a marital conversation, and let us say that magically, this has probably never happened in your home, but there are two different opinions that arise about,

I don't know, what to do with your Saturday afternoon. And initially, everything's good, and, you know, there's not, you know, birthday cake flying through the air or something like this, there's just a little bit of disagreement, but for various reasons, maybe some built -up frustration over the course of the week, maybe a desire to just relax after a long week, for various reasons, the conversation increases in its register, and you feel pretty frustrated at each other, not anything that's going to land you on the front pages or get you on TMZ with the news cameras, but nonetheless, there's just a, there's a disagreement, it's gone from marital conversation now to marital disagreement, and maybe there's a little bit of time that is needed to cool off.

If you've ever experienced something like that, you will know that in that kind of moment, as your frustration rises, you will probably feel pretty deeply.

Anyone ever felt pretty deeply like that? And by way of survey of this great congregation, is it usually an excellent idea when you're feeling very deeply in your frustration, whichever side you're on, to then say and do whatever is strongest in you?

Is that usually the best course of action for you? Who thinks that is the best course for marital harmony?

Raise your hand. Who thinks that is probably not a great idea? Yay! We are united. No, that is not a very good idea.

When you are in that moment, typically what you and I have to do is not say what we feel strongly, not act according to our deep emotion coursing through us, but usually let ourselves calm down, you know, sort of cool off a little bit, whatever side we're on, and then try to find a time when we can talk more constructively.

Well, that's just a little picture, a little humorous picture of how you and I should not live out of the overflow of our strongest feelings.

The same thing is true with kids. When kids, you know, are engaged in a battle over who is crossing the line in the middle of the car seat.

I distinctly remember 30 -something years ago, growing up in coastal Maine. We got to go skiing, downhill skiing sometimes.

I've been told that there's a ski mountain of sorts in the area, which I'm very impressed by. I want you to know that, because I feel at home.

And my sister and I, we'd be on the four -and -a -half -hour trip to Sugarloaf Mountain, okay, Sugarloaf Mountain, and it is, thank you for that, it is beautiful.

I like this, I like this crowd. And so we would be in the Subaru, the green Subaru that my mom loved, and my sister and I, for reasons that are not clear to me, 33 years later, would be involved in this epic whispering battle over whose, you know, books and sweatshirt was crossing the middle line of the back seat of the

Subaru. And it was like Sicilian gang warfare back there, like, you are pushing your book over the line.

No, I'm not. I'm going to tell mom. I'm going to tell mom. You know, and then it becomes a battle to who can tell mom first, or, you know, that sort of thing.

Again, for kids, kids can understand this, too. Not a great idea, usually, in that strength of passion to go by what you're feeling most deeply, probably better to calm down and remember, yes,

I do love my sibling. Sometimes it is hard, but I can do this. And so we know, even when we're young, even the young know, don't live by your strongest passions.

Don't let your desires rule your life. That's a recipe for disaster. But sadly, that is what our youth are told will help them find who they are.

That's how they're going to discover their authentic self, is to think about what is strongest in them, their strongest desire, their strongest passion, and then live by that.

That is what we call the operating software of paganism. That's how you live when you're being led into a pagan vision of the world that is different from a distinct vision of the world than what this word gives us.

That is not how the word of God says to live. That's how we're all tempted to live, and sadly, even as Christians, that is how we live at times.

We make, we all, we all stumble in many ways, James 3, 2. We all have those moments where we speak too strongly or act unwisely.

We do, even as Christians, and we need to be honest about that and confess that to God and to one another.

But we do know that that's not the way we should live fundamentally. Here's what

Abraham Kuyper wrote over 120 years ago in his seminal book, Lectures on Calvinism.

Do not forget that the fundamental contrast has always been, is still, and will be until the end,

Christianity and paganism, the idols or the living

God. Christianity and paganism, the two major competitors in our world.

In paganism, just to give you further context for what it is, there's no creator.

And this is the worldview, just so I'm clear, this is the worldview that a lot of people are being indoctrinated in right now.

This is the operative worldview of the political left now in our country.

The left and the right used to be closer together, but now the left has very much gone this way.

And in a leftist worldview, of course, there's some variants, but in general terms, again, there's no creator.

There's no divine design. There's no creator of the world, and there's no creator of the human person.

There's nothing fixed or stable about manhood or womanhood. There's no script for sexuality.

There's not a right way to conduct yourself sexually. There's no morality there whatsoever in any form.

There's no design for the family. God has not designed the family to have a father, a mother, and children in normative terms.

There's no need to protect and care for children at all. That's why when you see, you know, some of you videos of pride parades or these sorts of things, and there are children at these events, and there is no attempt to shield children from the debauchery going on, just know that that's not unintentional.

That's directly intentional, because children are the targets of this system. Children are the ones who are most under fire today in the

West. Children are pushed to the front of the war between these two sides.

In paganism, there's no Christ. There's no end to the cosmos.

There's nowhere we're headed, and there's no judge of evil. There certainly is no judge.

The judge of the world has been outmoded and put to the side.

This is what is true in a pagan system. In a pagan system, then, there are four major expressions that sin takes, and we've talked about these over the course of the weekend, but I want to just name them briefly here with you this morning.

The four major fruits of paganism today are, first, feminism.

Feminism overturns the biblical ideal of the woman and tells us that it is right for a woman to take the biblical role of the man in the home and the church in particular.

And so there's no distinction between the way men and women should live.

There's no call of God to men to be a selfless, Christ -like, excuse me, self -sacrificial head.

That's not a call to men, where men have authority in the home and the church in particular, and they're to express that in a

Christ -like way. That's not a vision that you find in paganism or feminism at all.

Instead, women really are supposed to lead men, and that goes against, we need to say this very clearly,

God's creation order. I'm not talking about some of the gray areas with the workforce or government or something like that.

We can have those conversations. We actually did. We had the longest and most intense Q &A session of my ministry career yesterday, where I was mocked mercilessly for my interest in excellent

American literature like that posed by Laura Ingalls Wilder. So if Pastor Jim and I never do ministry together again, it's because of diverging literary views.

Okay, I just want you to know that. So that's quick words on feminism. Second, sexual libertinism.

That's quite a mouthful, sexual libertinism. This is where, in simpler form, sex is severed from marriage.

So there's no necessary connection of sex and marriage. Instead, you have a sexual capacity.

Again, as I was saying a minute ago, you have whatever desires and passions you have. And in our world, in our postmodern moral order, there's no right or wrong.

We were just talking about that, right? There's no design. There's no God -given morality for you in a good way.

There's none of that. So you have sexual instincts. And it is taught, again, especially to our youth today, that it is wrong to do what we're doing here.

It is wrong to teach people that there is a moral framework to the cosmos, that you should not act on your strongest desires and passions.

We are the ones who are called repressive and intolerant and evil.

For teaching such an idea, that you should be self -controlled by the power of God's grace, that's the evil in our world, not all the terrible fruits that we are talking about.

So, because you have a sexual capacity, you should use it however you see fit.

Thirdly, third fruit of paganism today, transgenderism. We'll be talking about this a little bit more in just a moment.

But transgenderism says there is not male and female, and you are called to live according to your

God -given sex, male or female, man or woman. Instead, transgenderism teaches that you can transition to a different gender.

So you may have been given the body of a woman, but you can transition and take on the body and the identity of a man.

And you can become a man or a woman, and you can transition that, and you can go through surgery, you can take pills, you can morph your body in all sorts of ways.

And then your calling is to then go to people and make them affirm you for your change.

And if you do not do so, if you do not, for example, use someone's preferred pronouns, as many of you know, in 2024, you could easily be fired from your job, you could be turned out on the street, you could be subject to lawsuits.

So Satan has a lot of muscle behind paganism, and there's a lot of horsepower behind it in American culture and Western society.

And you see that strongly with transgenderism, which is nothing less than an utter revolt against divine design.

Those who attended the conference have heard this already, but I'm going to repeat it. No one has ever changed from a man to a woman.

No one has ever changed from a woman to a man. Not one single person.

There is no such thing as transgenderism. To return to where I started at the beginning, it is a lie.

It is one big lie. No one has ever changed their sex.

Now I'm guessing a bunch of you are with me as I say that. It's a strong word. It's a strong thing to say. We're not used to it.

Whoa, did he just say that? Yes, I did. And I'll be headed out quickly after this

Sunday school session. But no, I feel absolute confidence in saying that from the word of God.

It's just like you can't change from a person to a cat.

No one has ever changed from a human to an ape.

No one has ever changed from an adult woman to a mouse.

You can't do it. You can think you can, right? You can think you have done that.

You can substantially alter your appearance and take medication and undergo surgery and all sorts of things.

Don't misunderstand me. But you cannot unmake who God made you to be.

You can warp yourself. You can damage your body. You can put your very life in jeopardy through body altering surgeries and drugs and all the rest.

And people all around us are doing this. Young people all around us are doing this in spades.

And they are doing so under the banner of the lie. And the lie tells them what they are doing is not only okay or, you know, they can't do it.

They are being told that what they are doing is good, is praiseworthy, is them finding freedom and finding flourishing and health and happiness and acceptance.

And so what we need to understand is that paganism actually isn't just a raw system.

Paganism has a gospel. It has a gospel. It has a promise of salvation.

And young people in particular are hearing it and they are believing it. And that is leading them, as I say, to altogether warp themselves.

The fourth fruit of paganism that we see today is homosexuality. You're well acquainted with our culture's push to normalize homosexuality.

It was nine years ago in June 2015 that this country affirmed same -sex marriage, so -called.

And so we've had almost a decade after the Obergefell decision in which we have, as a society, pretended that homosexual marriage is real.

And there is no such thing, I repeat myself, as gay marriage. It doesn't exist.

Because you see, you can't change what God has set. You can try. And you can pass laws and you can tell everybody it is real and it is true.

But we need to be a people, brothers and sisters, who don't live in some sort of misty fog of confusion and softened moral absolutes and I don't really know and we just kind of shrug our shoulders like that emoji on social media.

You know, what's your moral worldview as a Christian? Well, what are you, are you going to stand for anything in your life?

Is there anything that you think would be worth speaking up about in public? You know,

I don't know, where on your platforms, social media, just kind of a shrug.

And what we have to do as Christians is not get red -faced and angry and shout at every lost person who comes across our path.

What we have to do is stand on the solid rock of God's word and in love, in great compassion for sinners.

Tell them the truth and proclaim the gospel of Christ to them.

That, brothers and sisters, is love. It is not love to affirm someone in their sin.

If I am a terrible father, cruel and harsh to my children, and I go up to you and I say, am

I a good father? Do you think I'm good? Would you, could, you know, could you give me a little encouragement?

And you say, you're great. You have nothing to work on. You're doing excellent. And you know that my wife and kids live in a home that is miserable?

Are you loving me? Are you loving me remotely? This is a familiar analogy.

If you have a, if you have a serious illness, is it loving for someone to say your health is great?

Oh no, that discomfort you feel in your stomach. I mean, I get it. Take a little Tylenol, but you're doing great.

Is that loving medical care? No, love depends on the truth.

Love is based on the truth. There's no daylight between biblical love and biblical truth.

You've got to nail that into your mind and know that for certain.

These four different expressions of paganism are all around us. They're especially, as I am at pains to say, preying on our children.

And we need to know that the stakes are very high and many around us are very confused.

The common way for Christians to think about things today is for us to wish that we weren't here.

Very common. I wish America wasn't like this.

It's very common to think, I wish we could go back. Just wish we could go back to when it wasn't like this.

I don't know when, 1950s or something, 60s. Bell -bottom jeans were unfortunate.

But at least there was some. They had the Andy Griffith show. I don't know. I Love Lucy was on.

Some entertainment you could actually watch with your children. My kids just discovered that color

TV has happened with our entertainment choices. We're big on Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy.

We watch other stuff too. We're not freaked out about stuff. We watch, you know,

Toy Story and these things and other shows. But yeah, it's very common, isn't it?

To think, just wish we could get out of this. Just wish we could go back. Just wish

America wasn't like this. That's not a wrong instinct. It's a right instinct. It shows that your moral compass is still functioning.

Praise God. Praise God for that. It's right to long for a new heavens and new earth.

Forget America. How long is America going to last? I have no idea. I hope it. I hope we fight for the civilization.

I hope we're salt and light here. But America is not eternal. Do you know what's eternal?

The new heavens and new earth. Everlasting life with Almighty God.

That's where we are headed. That's what our hope is in. Our hope is not in this country.

This country isn't our ultimate hope. The West isn't our ultimate hope. I don't mean you abandon it.

I don't mean you do nothing. That's not where I am in the Christian church. Some voices are kind of in that zone. Like, well, just give up.

You know, it's all going to see. It doesn't even matter. That's not what I think. That's not what I stand for in my tiny little ministry.

But I also know there's no biblical promise that this country will last forever.

And I'm not longing. You and I, when we feel those pangs of sadness, we're not ultimately wanting to go back.

C .S. Lewis said, in paraphrase form, when you feel nostalgia for what is in the past, you're not actually longing for what is in the past.

You're longing for a world made right. You're longing for a place of not good amounts of peace and joy and rightness and so on.

You're longing for a place of perfect peace and perfect joy and perfect gladness.

And brothers and sisters, we know what that place is.

It's heaven. And then it's the new heavens and new earth.

So it's right to feel a certain sense of longing for the past. I'm not down on that. But just know that you have to read even those desires rightly.

And you have to know that there's something much greater, even than preserving a good, historically, not perfect by any stretch, civilization like this one.

There's a greater city. There's a heavenly city. We're not here to build an earthly city.

The church has been told this in the last several years, that if we just would rally politically, we can build the city of God on earth.

We can Christianize the society. We can have a lasting earthly city. Christians have been too depressed over these things.

We've had doom or eschatology for too long. And if we would just commit ourselves to winning in America, we could make this whole sucker right.

And the reality is whatever the rise and fall of this civilization is. Hebrews 13, 13 and 14 tells us that here on this planet, on this earth, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

So all those longings for a world made right are right. They're good, but they're not going to come to fruition.

However much this civilization could improve, and maybe it will, and we pray for that, and we want to be salt and light.

Whatever though this country ends up being in the next year to five years to 10 years to 20 years.

Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. And when you're around people who are living out the fruit that we have just talked about of paganism, when you're around people who are blurring the lines of their gender, girls dressing like boys, boys dressing like girls, people embracing the ideologies and systems and wicked behaviors that I just talked about, you are not ultimately supposed to look at them and go,

I wish they weren't here. As we see in a key

New Testament text, this is what our reaction is supposed to be.

Would you turn with me? We have just a few minutes and we'll close. To 1 Corinthians 6. 1

Corinthians 6 verses 9 through 11. Paul writes this to a church that is in the most pagan place in the ancient world in the first century.

They are in a context worse than ours. So just know that as I read this.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And here's the key. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

The key for us is found in verse 11. Chi, tauta, tena, heta.

One of the most important phrases in the whole Bible. And such were some of you.

And such were some of you. You see, the Corinthian church was in a place where there was a pagan temple and there was rampant temple prostitution that occurred there.

Corinth is a seaport and sailors who had a tough life at sea for a month or two or three.

That's not an easy life, is it? Would dock and they would go wild with their pockets full of their fresh pay.

And so Corinth offered them all sorts of opportunities to live according to the flesh.

And Corinth was awash in sin like America is awash in sin in 2024.

And Paul was very clear about the sinfulness of sin. He's very clear in verses nine through 10.

The unrighteous, he says straightforwardly, will not inherit the kingdom of God.

No one who finds their identity in their sin will inherit the kingdom of God.

He's clear as crystal, isn't he here? So you and I can identify with this because it's not the people out there that have sin.

It's all of us that have sin right here. This is a little, by our nature, sin factory.

This heart, this mind, it's a sin factory. It runs around the clock shifts to produce little packets of sin.

That's the widget we produce in our own personal faculty factory by nature.

So we are not the good ones and the people outside are the bad ones.

We are the bad ones. We need the gospel. We need the gospel just as much as anyone out there living a depraved life needs the gospel.

And Paul is saying that to the Corinthian church. These are not people who all grew up neat, clean and respectable.

Some of them were sexually immoral. Some of them practiced homosexuality.

Both sides of the pairing is found here in the Greek. It's not a text that is blushing over this either.

Some of them were drunks. Some of them were stealers. Some of them were greedy. It's not that becoming a

Christian, by the way, means you never sin again. These are people who have to battle the flesh like we do until the day they went to glory.

But fundamentally, they were transformed people. God saved them through his gospel.

And brothers and sisters, that's the key. That's the key to making it through our own pagan context.

That's the key to you and me. Getting through Corinth, our own Corinth. It's knowing that the gospel is stronger than darkness.

Do you know that? Do you believe that? That's what the

Bible teaches you. The Bible isn't soft about sin. The Bible isn't, you know, shy about the effects of sin.

The Bible is clear that sin is a power. Sin isn't just a little bad thing you do once in a while.

Sin isn't just a little whisper in your mind. Sin is referred to in numerous New Testament texts as a power.

It's like a menacing, lurking figure. Always somewhere near you.

Always trying to get you to do its will. It menaces you. It rules over you when you're not a

Christian. Your sin, if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, your sin is not under management.

Your sin is not controlled. You think it is. You are under the control of sin.

You're ultimately under the control of Satan. That's straightforward New Testament Christianity.

None of us is managing our sin right. Some of us, yes, do manage to lead pretty upwardly respectable lives.

I will admit that. Pagans do. Unbelievers do. Yes. We don't all, you know, go ham every single moment of our lives.

But everyone who is not in Christ is a person who is in Satan. A person who is controlled and ruled by the flesh.

Including anyone in this room who has not trusted in Christ. But that's not the final word.

That's not the strongest word in the Bible. The strongest word in the Bible is that through the work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. People who are ruled by the power of sin.

A nine foot tall giant menacing us. Lurking us. Getting us to do the bidding of this evil figure.

Sin. This power ruling over us. Through the Lord Jesus Christ. Through His cross.

This power is dealt with. This power is overcome for us. The power of sin is broken.

Romans 6 says, Such were some of you. Paul says in verse 11. That's the reality of the gospel.

That's what it means to be born again. That's what we all need. We all need the new birth.

We all need to turn from our sin. Trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

His death on the cross. His resurrection from the grave. And then confess our sin to God. And be forgiven by God.

That you see is what Christianity most offers the world.

We offer moral clarity. We say what is true. And what is a lie.

We have to. That's our calling. It's a key part of our calling. Even if everybody else descends into postmodern confusion.

We have to be the people who know the truth. And live by the truth. And speak the truth.

But there's a still higher principle. And it's the principle of forgiveness.

A Christian is not a perfect person. Including after their conversion. Including after they come to faith.

We battle the flesh until we die. We have fits and starts. We have ups and downs. Look at the disciples in the four gospels.

Do they get everything right? Do they bat a thousand? Do they make all their free throws? No, they don't.

No, they miss a lot. They get a lot of things wrong. They have a lot of ground balls go through their legs.

They make a lot of errors. They hit a lot of shots into the net. They are not understanding

Jesus as he teaches. You think if I would just have Jesus instruct me. My Christian faith would be so much stronger.

Poor me. No. Disciples had Jesus right here. And they got lots wrong. They kept getting stuff wrong.

But it's not because they're idiots that we're better than. That's us. We're just like them. We need the grace of God just like they do.

So the Christian life is not the life of perfect people in here. Not like those people out there.

The Christian life is people who are forgiven. We're forgiven.

You were washed. Paul says verse 11. You were sanctified.

You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the spirit of our

God. That above all else is what we are here to proclaim.

We stand on the truth. We are people of the truth. We cannot give.

You in this community. Whatever role you have. You standing on the truth.

And not bending. And not pretending like you're a pagan. In order to get along.

That is your calling. That is consequential. That is witness.

That is glorifying to God. That's not. It's not left to the big politicians. The conservative senators or something like this.

Or the globe traveling evangelists. It's not left to them to be a witness alone. It's left to you to be a witness.

By the power of the spirit working in you. But even more than that.

You're called to be a person of the gospel. Knowing that such were some of us.

We are just like the pagans. But God has saved us through his gospel.

And so we have the instinct. I'll close with this. We have the instinct to want to get out of here.

Oh man. Let's find some territory. And a whole bunch of us go there.

And just be Christian there. And let's just live in some you know.

Peace and tranquility for just a little while on this earth. Let's get out of this madness.

All this stuff they're doing. I understand those instincts. I really do. They're right instincts in a sense.

But that's not why we're here. We're actually here to be in darkness. Think about the life of Jesus.

Think about the trajectory of Jesus. Jesus dwelt in eternal glory with the father.

But he did not stay there. He came toward the darkness.

And he got around sinners. Not in their sin. But he befriended them so much that he was called a friend of sinners.

Because he was a witness to them. That's our calling. We want to be

Christians who see a fire. And it's not like a little you know bitty contained fire in a fireplace fire.

Fire. We want to be those who in the distance from afar see smoke rising.

We see it rising. And we realize uh -oh. And we see the amount of smoke billowing.

And we realize this is not a contained fire. This is not a fire that anyone is managing and controlling on this earth.

And so we get in our vehicle. We go fast. We travel toward the fire.

We get there. And we learn it is an inferno. And there are people who are being very much menaced by it.

There are people in danger of being engulfed by it. And we still, this goes against every natural instinct of the human person.

We do not want to be those who sit in our truck watching. We want to be those who get out and go toward the fire.

That's what it is to be a Christian. That's how people who are pagans, lost in their sin like we once were, can become followers of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Because Christians don't head for the hills. Christians don't see smoke and don't see an inferno and go, oh we better get out of here.

We're going this way. Christians are those who say we're running toward the fire. That's what

Jesus did. Brothers and sisters. That's why we're here.

Such were some of you. Father, thank you for this passage from Paul.

We confess that we feel like we are overmatched by the darkness.

We often feel anxiety and even sometimes despair over the state of things in this country, even our community.

We go to the local grocery store and we're confronted by families in chaos, unloved, unparented children, people blurring the lines of their

God -given sex, couples fighting, just madness all around us, Father, in different forms.

And we confess, Father, that all too often we want to just get out of here. We thank you for the example of the

Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that though we were trapped in a burning building,

Jesus did not let us stay there. But even as we looked out the window in the midst of that blaze, we saw a strong Savior striding toward us.

And Jesus went all the way to where we were and found us and put us on his back and carried us out.

And now we are born again. We are made new. So, Father, by your grace, help us to do the very same thing by your power.

Help us to stand against lies. Help us to speak the truth and love, Ephesians 4, 15, and help us to proclaim the glorious truth that the gospel brings total forgiveness of sin.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You're dismissed.