A Better Clean - July 26, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast. I have made the

Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Hey, man, that is some good walking up music right there.

Hey, I got a question for you. Would you agree with me that looking clean is

not always the same as being clean?

Who would say, yeah, I agree with that? I mean, whether it is a room that you

have in your household, in five minutes, you find out that someone you've been

waiting to visit will finally visit you and your house is thrashed.

I mean, it's been one of those weeks that you haven't been able to clean anything.

It's just been busy, busy at church, busy at work, busy with your family,

and all of a sudden they're coming over in five minutes, and you start shoving

everything into closets, every nook and cranny that you can hide stuff in, it gets something.

And so then when the people knock on the door, oh, we're so glad to see you.

Welcome in to my nice clean house.

And it probably looks clean. I bet it smells clean. We got those air fresheners everywhere, right?

Odor killers, Febreze everywhere. I mean, I know this from personal experience.

That's why I'm sharing it with you. because I've had those moments where.

But it isn't necessarily clean, clean, like you would hope that it was.

I know most of us, our houses are lived in. And so when you come over,

it's going to be lived in.

And nothing on you, honey. I'm getting that look. So I'm kind of going to do

the moonwalk here, back up a little bit.

This is on me, not you. Yeah.

Whether it's that kind of room, it looks clean, but maybe it's not.

Or perhaps it's the shirt that your teenage son picked out of from underneath his bed.

He threw it in the dryer for five minutes to get the wrinkles out.

But then when he puts it on and you get close to him, he's, whoo,

where did that stench come from?

You didn't throw a fabric softener in with the shirt?

And so what does he do? Brings out the Axe Spray.

And this isn't just reserved for young men, I'll tell you that,

because I've had young ladies in my household as well, and they learned a little

bit quicker, I need to stop because I'm in trouble.

But my daughters aren't here, so they're watching on the live stream.

Hello, Emma, back in Indianapolis.

This wasn't you, nor was it Sarah. I just made these people up.

You see, clean doesn't always mean clean.

And when it comes to people, sometimes we gussy ourselves up on the outside.

We may even do religious things. But on the inside, there's people that are

filled with guilt, people that are filled with shame, people that are torn up and hurting inside.

And there's people that are just straight up confused, not sure what to do next,

not even sure how they're going to make it through the rest of the day.

There's different kinds of clean, some that are lasting, but others that are not.

You know, the struggle between looking clean and actually being clean isn't

a new thing. It's the very issue that Hebrews chapter 10 addresses and that

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

we're going to look at today.

I don't know how far we'll get through the sermon, but we'll go until the Holy

Spirit tells me to stop or until I get another look from my wife,

who is definitely filled with the Holy Spirit. and discernment.

Would you stand with me as we read the first 10 verses of Hebrews chapter 10?

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Scripture says this, the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming,

not the realities themselves.

For this reason, it could never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year

after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered?

For worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and would no longer have

felt guilty for their sins.

But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifice an offering you

did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.

With burnt offerings and sin offerings, you were not pleased.

Then I said, here I am. It is written about me in the scroll.

I have come to do your will, my God.

First, he said, sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings,

you did not desire, nor will you please with them, though they were offered

in accordance with the law.

Then he said, here I am. I've come to do your will. He sets aside the first

to establish the second.

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of

Jesus Christ once for all.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for making a way for us where there seemed to be no way.

Thank you, God, for making a way for humanity who would go through these rituals

year after year but still never be clean.

And God, thank you for Jesus who willingly laid down his life,

his body to be killed, to die for us in our place, on our behalf.

We thank you, Father, and it's in Jesus' name that we do pray. Amen.

This morning, I want you to know that the good news in this passage is that

what religious ritual could only represent or picture, Jesus Christ accomplished

for you and for me once and for all.

Now, we're at the point in this series in Hebrews where it seems like I've preached

the same message maybe 12 times already.

But I can guarantee you, looking at the scripture passage, it's still according to our text today.

I mean, some of these themes run together because it's so true and it's so rich.

And when we think about this today, the question I want to answer,

hopefully today, but perhaps over the next two weeks, is what kind of clean

does Jesus provide that religious rituals could never provide?

And so I want to look at three of them, perhaps all today or at least over the

next three weeks. And the first thing that Jesus provides for us is this, Jesus removes our sin.

Nothing else could. As we read in here, it started out in verse 10,

or excuse me, verse 1 of chapter 10.

The scripture says that the law was only a shadow of the good things to come,

rather than the reality of the good thing itself.

You see, a shadow, it tells you something is nearby, but when the shadow of

someone you love walks up to you, you're not hugging their shadow,

right? I mean, how do you even do that?

But if I notice my wife is walking up to me, I don't try to hug her shadow.

I give her a big old hug when she lets me, when I haven't used her as sermon

illustrations, when I've said, yes, dear.

She's not going to last long. She might leave and you'll know why.

See, when it comes to shadows, it's not the real thing.

It represents something that was there or someone that was there,

but it's not the exact same thing.

But that's what the law was called. The Mosaic Law had all these commandments,

Ten Commandments, and then 600 and something other laws to explain the Ten.

We've gone over that before.

But the old sacrifices, when you really

get into them, they point not to themselves, but they point to Jesus.

They point to Christ. That is who they find their fulfillment in.

You see, one of the things we talked about was the shadow was not the substance.

The passage talked that the old system reveals the shape of God's saving plan,

that something was required to die for someone else that was sinful,

but it doesn't give you the whole picture.

It's not able to provide the final cleansing for a person's sin.

We see that's what the law was. The next thing that is exposed here in the passage

of Scripture is that the repetition exposed the limitation.

And I love how the author of Hebrews just lays this out.

If the sacrifices fully cleansed the worshiper when they brought their sacrificial

lamb, when they would bring their doves, then why didn't it stop?

They had to do it again the next time, the next year, and so on.

Their repetition showed that they were ineffective, and you had to keep doing

it again and again and again.

The third thing that we see here in these first 10 verses is this,

that the reminder was not removal.

Every time you had to go and sacrifice an innocent animal, a perfect without

blemish animal, Every time you had to do that, you remembered why that animal

was getting killed. It's because of something you did.

And not killed for barbecue, by the way, that you could partake of.

It wasn't like you were hunting or fishing. It's like, no, this animal was specifically

chosen to die because of something you did.

This annual sacrifice kept bringing back your sin to your memory with the knowledge

that the next year you were going to have to do that again because you were not free from your sin.

You were still, as the scripture says, dead in your trespasses and sins.

There was this reminder that was always there. Even when you came to do the

religious ritual, which should have been a high point where you and God meet

right there through the priest and through the sacrifice.

But yet the reminder and the guilt was still on you because you know what you did.

You know how you failed God. You know how you came up short.

It did not leave your memory.

And in fact, even the very materials that were used could not solve the problem.

The bulls and the goats, or excuse me, the lambs and anything that you would

bring, the scripture just plainly says, it is impossible in verse 4 for the

blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.

It was required, but it could not fully meet the standard.

Doesn't that drive you crazy. If you've ever built a house or you've done something

which requires some bureaucracy of government involved, and you do it to the

T, and then the inspector comes and says, nope, there's something wrong here.

Man, it just burns you up.

Well, for people as well, when they would come and do these sacrifices,

and then the priest would say, almost, but not quite.

This one thing you still need to do.

With this cycle over and over again, it's a great thing that Jesus, he removes our sin.

I want to tell you to stop using religious activity as a hiding place.

Don't get all gussied up for church and come in and do all the religious things

that we do, which are great in our flow of worship, while you're harboring anger,

you're harboring guilt, you're harboring sin.

No, what I'd like you to do is to start bringing that to Christ.

Get it out. We have altar time, right? That's a main time where we focus on

that, but any time is altar time, because God will meet you right where you're at.

And so what I'd like you to do is just these three things. Name before God the

guilt that you're holding on to.

Can you name it? Well, yeah, I can name it. I know what I did.

Well, then name that. Name maybe the feeling that you're feeling.

Well, God, I have all this anxiety, and I just can't get past it.

Name that anxiety so you can begin to deal with it.

Well, God, I'm just really angry, because, man, this guy at the grocery store

cut me off and I just haven't been able to get over it.

And I let him know that I was angry, but I can't get past it. It just eats me up and...

Name that so God can deal with it. You're trying to manage it,

but what you need to do is just confess it without excuse.

God, I flew off the handle with this guy who took my parking place.

I have no way to know who that guy was or if I could even ask forgiveness.

God, I committed this sin against my brother and my sister. I confess that.

I have no excuse for it. I just, I blew it.

So you name it, you confess it. But then the third point is what you really

need to accept here, And that is, you need to receive the forgiveness that Christ

has already provided to you.

That when Jesus says that sin is forgiven, guess what?

That sin is forgiven.

Now, there may be consequences that you have to go back and repair a relationship.

There might be some things you need to do in your own life to shore up those

areas where you've shown a weakness here.

But when it comes to you and God, you have been forgiven. It is wiped clean.

Have you received that forgiveness that Jesus offers you?

You know, if you're a long-time believer, I got to tell you this.

Hey, I hope that you're serving from a place of gratitude as you serve the Lord

and not out of guilt, not trying to make up for what you did before,

because that sin is history.

It's gone. so you can do what you do in serving God from a heart of gratefulness

to God, of gratitude, and saying, I do this because of what Jesus has done for

me and just because I love you, God.

I'm not doing this so I can earn favor with you, God, so maybe I'm really forgiven.

No, you're forgiven in Jesus.

So start serving others with the heart of gratitude that says,

I'm so thankful for what God did.

When I come to worship, I come to teach Sunday school, I come to help out with

VBS or this, that, or the other thing.

I'm here because I'm happy to.

There's a sweet spirit in this place. We sang that song today.

And that spirit is the spirit of gratitude, of saying, thank you,

Jesus, for what you've done.

I can't wait to serve you again. Man, if you're here struggling today,

I just want to remind you that if you feel that conviction of the Holy Spirit

on your heart, that conviction is not meant to drive you deeper into despair.

It's not meant to make you feel so sorry for your sins that you're just driven further away from God.

No, the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God, that little small,

still voice that points out that sin in your life, is so that you can bring

it to the surface, confess it, and deal with it and receive the forgiveness of God.

It's meant to draw you closer to Jesus.

But as human beings, we like to run away when that happens.

If you're here this morning and you're just not sure if you believe in Jesus,

if you're not sure if you even have a relationship with him,

maybe you just are flat out, hey, I'm an unbeliever.

I got to tell you that no amount of religious spit and polish is going to shine you up enough,

to earn anything from God. You don't earn it from God. God gives it to you as a free gift.

Nothing replaces, no kind of religious fervor, no kind of religious action will

replace the saving blood of Jesus Christ that He's already spilt for you.

So will you trust Him today?

The second thing that I want to answer or give to you in answering the question,

what kind of clean does Jesus provide that religious rituals never could,

and that is this simply. Jesus finished the work.

Not only does Jesus remove sin, but he finished the work to remove that sin.

If we look down through verses 11 through 14, it just really stands out that

the priest in the old temple, day after day, had to stand and continue to do

his duties because his work was never done.

His work was never done because sin abounded.

Sin flourished. And so the priest had a job that would go on and on and on.

He didn't have time to sit down.

If you've ever been at a job and it's busy and you see some guy,

some employee just sitting around that's not on lunch break,

doesn't it tick you off a little bit?

Especially if it's at a restaurant and you're waiting for your food and that's

your server and they're just chilling and you're like, dude,

my Coke Zero needs refilled.

Or, hey, what about my steak?

Where's my free bread? You know? I mean, that's a little uppity to say all that stuff.

But you get the idea, right? If someone's just dogging it and sitting down when

there's work to be done, you get a.

We see a picture of Jesus in here that is not sitting down, and I want to turn your attention to that.

You see, this passage shifts from the sacrifices that people brought to the

sacrifices that God provided in Jesus Christ, the only sacrifice that was provided in Jesus Christ.

Jesus came not to throw away the old system, but he came to fulfill it.

He came to complete it, to finish it off once and for all, so that year after

year, you wouldn't have to keep going and going and going for the same sin, the same trespass.

The contrast is striking. The priest standing day after day doing his work,

but we see the picture that Jesus, he sacrificed himself once and for all for sins and then sat down.

It kind of reminds me of some NASCAR races I watched, and these guys are just

going at it for hours, driving these race cars. And maybe the AC goes out,

their system, their fan doesn't work anymore. They're just exhausted.

And as soon as they get out of the car, the last thing they want to do is,

especially if they win, is to talk on the microphone because they're just so exhausted.

And so they just kind of slouch down and they lean up against the car.

They're exhausted from the work they did to win the race.

They went all out for that. I kind of take that picture and apply it to Jesus.

He sits down after the work he did in redeeming us and dying for our sins and

fighting against the enemy and bringing captivity captive and taking them out.

And here he is. He sits down. It's not a sign of weakness.

It's not a sign of exhaustion that Jesus sits down, but he sits down in victory.

He's done all that he can do. There's no more. And so now he rests.

He sits down. See, Jesus came with a prepared body.

We read from the psalm today, a messianic psalm, looking forward to Jesus,

looking forward to the Messiah.

We read here in Hebrews, looking back at what Jesus did, how he fulfilled that.

Jesus' body was given on our behalf as the sacrificial lamb,

as the spotless sacrificial lamb.

God didn't provide another animal like he did when Adam and Eve sinned to cover

our shame, but he provided Jesus with his physical body, his son in the flesh,

to die on our behalf, to do what animals in their death could never do,

and their blood that was spilled off, that could never do for us and our sin, our sin problem.

And the Scripture says that Jesus obeyed the Father's will, completely obeyed it.

The clean that we need doesn't come from a sacrifice of bulls or lambs,

but it came from the obedience of Jesus Christ, being obedient to His Father's will,

not some kind of religious performance, as some cults will say,

Jesus really wasn't killed on the cross, he just faked it.

Well, we have testimony in the scripture that tells otherwise.

We have a soldier who plunged a spear into the body, physical body of Jesus.

And out of that, the separated blood and plasma poured out, blood and water.

And we have evidence that he was dead and put in a tomb.

We have much evidence Jesus died. He willingly died. He obeyed the Father's will even unto death.

And as a result, Jesus offered one sufficient sacrifice for you and for me. It was enough.

So that guilt that you hold on to that Jesus has already forgiven you for,

you don't need to anymore.

That guilt is not a sacrifice you offer to God. He's already done away with that.

It's kind of like going to heaven with a bag full of gold.

And someone asks you, why do you got that bag full of asphalt with you?

Look at our streets, they're paved with gold. Okay, that was a bad joke,

but you get the idea, right?

You're holding on to something you don't need to hold on to because Jesus has forgiven you for it.

Jesus sat down because the sacrifice was completed.

The old priest stood in unfinished ministry, but Jesus Christ sits down in finished victory.

He could do that because the work was done.

Something we fight against. I know I fought against it before in my life.

And it's a quiet fear that Jesus forgives me just until my next failure.

That Jesus forgives me until I blow it again. And in doing that and holding

that fear, I set myself up for failure because I put my standard on not who

Jesus says I am as a forgiven man in Christ.

I put my identity and I aim lower and I say, I'm going to mess up again.

I'm going to trip up again. I'm going to say the wrong stupid thing again.

I'm going to do and make the wrong decision.

Rather than aiming high to who God says I am in Him,

as someone who can control my tongue because of the Holy Spirit of God,

as someone who can rely on the wisdom of Scripture, who can rely on the wisdom

of brothers and sisters in Christ, who can rely on the Spirit of God to guide me,

You see, we aim low when we should be aiming high, and we need to replace I

hope I've done enough with Christ has done enough.

In a few weeks, we're going to hear from a sermon that says to fix our eyes

upon Jesus, the author and finisher or perfecter, completer of our faith,

but we'll save that for that time.

Hey, if you sin, you mess up, you make a mistake, confess it quickly.

Receive forgiveness humbly and refuse to turn guilt into a second Savior,

hoping that by holding on to this guilt, you earn some forgiveness.

You can't earn forgiveness. It's already been granted. So trust Christ in that.

And then third this morning, in answer to the question, what kind of clinging does Jesus give us?

Jesus cleanses us within.

As we said before, he saves to the most, he cleans us to the uttermost.

And the final three verses here, it reiterates some promises that are made in

Jeremiah, that a new heart is going to be placed.

Into believers, that our name will be written upon, or his, excuse me,

his laws will be written upon their minds and their hearts.

And in verse 17, it says, their sins and lawless acts, I will remember no more.

And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

Once and for all, Jesus cleanses us. He cleanses us within.

Christ's clean is a better clean.

It's not merely external, but man, it's a clean you could smell.

It's a clean you can see in the way a transformed person lives and interacts with others.

His law, written on our hearts and minds, as the scripture says,

talks about not just outward compliance, but inward transformation,

reshaping desires, renewing our thoughts,

Living out a new relationship with him. And man, that's where it's all about.

Right there. Titus 3.5 says this.

Make sure I get this thing right. He saved us not by the righteous deeds that

we have done, but according to his mercy through the washing of new birth and

renewal of the Holy Spirit.

It's nothing that we've done to earn this forgiveness, except to say, God, forgive me.

Empower me through your spirit to live the life you want me to live.

Take away my guilt. Take away my shame. And so this passage shows us that God

writes his will within us.

Guess what? His will within you, it's going to agree with this thing we call the Bible.

It's going to agree with what is written in the words of the scripture.

God writes his will with The new covenant is not merely about rules,

you see, but it's about transformation within you.

2 Corinthians says that in Christ, you are a new creation. You're a new creature.

The old is gone. Behold, the new is here.

We believe that in 2 Corinthians 5.17, that the old is gone and the new is here.

It means there has to be a transformation.

Reminds me of an old Sunday school song that I won't sing because it will be

stuck in your head or your ears as an earworm and never leave you.

But it was something about bullfrogs and butterflies and being born again.

Now it's in your head, isn't it? Thank you, Salty the Songbook.

God writes his will within your heart. God remembers your sin no more.

Better clean offers a full forgiveness for you and for me.

Not because God overlooks your sin, but because Christ has dealt with it completely.

Jesus paid the price. Now, we ought to treat forgiveness and God's mercy with

great respect, especially his grace.

We've got to understand that christ has dealt with your sin and that full forgiveness,

He remembers your sin no more And I really believe the third point here on this

section is that god Ends the sacrificial grind,

Going year after year to make sacrifices.

Maybe you come to church because you feel guilty about something Well, i'm glad you're here,

But don't come here out of guilt Come here because you love god and you want

to worship with his people and you want to hear from the word,

you want to respond to that word, you want to praise God with other people who

have lived the same kind of experience that you've lived.

It's not about a religious grind. See, where sins are forgiven,

there's no longer an offering for sin because it's been made once and for all.

The search for another cleansing sacrifice is over. And so if you're still searching,

have you really found Jesus today?

Have you really asked him to forgive your sin, to cleanse you from that.

You see, it's time for us to move beyond sin management.

It really is. And let's move on into spirit-filled transformation,

spirit-empowered transformation.

Quit trying to manage the sin that likes to come and trip you up.

Give it to Jesus and let him take care of it once and for all.

Back in the day when I used to run around the track for my high school sport,

there was one year that the track was in bad shape.

You ever realize that tracks can get potholes?

And that's dangerous if you've got these spiky shoes on and you're running as

fast as you can around this thing.

Well, what they did for a while at my school was just to put a pair of hurdles

with some yellow tape around it.

Well, that's great until race day. Then what do you do? You're hosting a track meet at your school.

You've got to be able to have the use of everything. Well, eventually,

finally, they fixed it once and for all until the next year.

It's not a good comparison.

When something needs to be fixed, you want it fixed permanently.

You want something not to be able to trip you up. Jesus has done that.

Those sins which so easily beset you, which maybe they're generational against

your family, and you've just got to deal with them as they come.

You need to give those to Christ. Let him remove them completely once and for all to take care of that.

So what I'd love for you to do is if there's something in your life, believer in Jesus,

that continues to trip you up, that continues to tempt you, that you continue

to be weak in, ask the Holy Spirit

to expose what is hidden in your heart that likes to hold on to that.

What is it in your relationship with others that you have to react badly because

you're holding on something so closely to your heart? It may be a past trauma.

It may be a past failure.

It may be something you're just reluctant to let go because it's been a security item for you.

Would you ask the Holy Spirit of God to expose that in your heart,

to bring it to the surface so it can be dealt with?

Ask God to renew in your life what is weary, what you're just tired of.

Aren't you tired of striving against something?

Wouldn't you rather be freed up to be the person that God has created you to be, to live into that?

Ask God to reshape in your life what has become disordered.

And living in life, even as a believer, there's bumps and there's bruises and

there's scrapes. And sometimes we can get bent out of shape.

And we need God to help put things back into order for us.

I'll bring up the area of finances. Sometimes living in this world,

it can throw that into a tizzy.

And you go to pay your tithe Sunday morning and you don't know that you can make it.

And you say, Lord, I've committed this to you, but you know that your car just

needed four new tires, the dishwasher broke, your backup dishwasher wife is

not going to do it, or your kids.

That is not her. This is purely an example.

Anyone want a lunch guest this afternoon?

Not just this afternoon. Anyone I can stay with for a week, maybe longer?

No, Melanie is blessed to have four different dishwashers in our house,

and two of them that are dogs, so...

Don't worry, if you come to my house, you can eat off the plates.

It's okay. They do a good job.

Because we've got to start living as people that are transformed,

that are different from the world.

The people in the world, they're looking for other people that have overcome

sin, not in their own power, but because they've received the forgiveness of

Jesus and because they can live into a transformed life,

free of sin like God intended for all people to live.

Free from those trespasses, living to bless other people, to be blessed,

to serve out of gratitude that we've been given.

Jesus finished the work of cleansing your heart.

He sat down at the right hand of the Father. And how would it be if you could

start truly living today?

And so as we close, I just want to ask you this, or I'll tell you this.

Stop settling for a surface clean.

Religious rituals may organize our behavior, remind us of why we do what we

do, and point us toward truth, but they can't cleanse us from sin,

because Jesus has already done that.

Jesus provides the better clean. He removes what the rituals could only remind us of.

He finishes what they started, and he offers it to us today.

The call in our passage today is not to keep trying harder, but the call is to come to Christ.

Bring in your guilty conscience, your repeated failures, your religious exhaustion,

and the fear that you're not clean enough. Bring that all to Jesus.

Let him truly cleanse you. As the old bar of lava soap commercial said,

let this bar of soap lava you clean.

Let it scrub all the grime off.

And then, glory be to God, stand in his holy presence.

What I'd like you to do this week is just take 10 minutes, write out one specific

guilt or sin that you've been struggling with or carrying, and then pray that

God would ask, pray to Jesus that he will cleanse you completely from that.

It might take more than one day this week, folks. Life is hard.

Sin is real, and the hurt is real. However long it takes, start with 10 minutes

and just go before the Lord. Be honest with him.

He knows you. Why does this matter? Well, because if you keep hiding behind

religious appearances, the guilt's going to keep eating away at you from the inside.

It's going to kill your peace that you have.

And if it kills that peace that you have inside, we're talking restless nights.

We're talking that it starts to affect your relationships, begins to show up

in the stress of your daily life.

Boy, isn't it better to go to sleep at night with a clean conscience,

with a clean soul, being clean before the Lord.

As we conclude, really this time.

The clean that you've been seeking isn't in rituals, but it's in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus welcomes your mess, and he offers you peace beyond understanding.

Would you receive that today?

Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to gather together

and worship today. And Lord, thank you for your message.

Lord, as we come to this point, would you speak to our hearts?

Lord, is there something we need to name that we need to confess and that we

need to receive from you as far as forgiveness goes.

Lord, maybe we need to open the closet doors of our life where we've shoved

all kinds of junk to make our life look clean.

But Lord, it's time to clean out those closets. And God, we know that Jesus

is the greatest closet organizer in our hearts.

Father, may we open those doors that we've hidden stuff in. And God,

may Jesus have full reign. May the Holy Spirit search our hearts this morning.

Lord, bring to mind those things that you would have us to deal with,

to name, to confess, to give over to you, God, so we can receive what you have to give us.

Lord, we ask that your Spirit would speak to us today, this week,

as we spend those 10 minutes.

Father, with you, your Holy Spirit searching us.

And God, we pray that you'll be glorified on account of all this.

It is in Jesus' name that we do pray.

Amen. I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast.

You can find a copy of today's sermon, as well as other sermons,

and the sermon outline from today on our church's website, www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.