GO5PEL - SIN (Jan 15 2017) - Mike Armstrong

We're going to be looking at a few different uh verses from the book of Romans here today as uh as we jump uh back into our series.

And um, if you uh were here last week, you know that we've started up our series called uh just simply gospel, which is really what we're we're kind of breaking the gospel down into five key words.

All right, and these are the five words that really get at what the core of the biblical gospel message is.

And so if you're here last week, you know that we started with the word God, right?

And the idea that the gospel, the good news, begins with the idea that there really is a God, that he exists, uh, that he created the world, that he created uh you and I, and that he made us to enjoy a you know life-giving, soul-satisfying, joy-producing life with him, where we where he would be just the center of everything in our lives.

Now that sounds, I hope, that sounds pretty good, right?

It sounds pretty awesome.

Uh, and it was until everything uh kind of went off the rails there, okay, because sin entered into the picture, didn't it?

And it entered into the picture through our original parents, Adam and Eve.

Through Adam and Eve, when they rebelled against the Lord, and they uh ushered sin uh into the world, and all of that altered the existence of humanity forever.

And so what we're gonna be doing this morning is we're really gonna be diving into this issue now of our sin.

We're gonna be talking about that, the effects of our sin, uh, what our sin does to uh to us, what it does to the Lord, the the ramifications, the the consequences uh of our uh rebellion against the Lord.

Now here's a really key verse.

It's Isaiah 59, verse 2.

Isaiah 59:2

And uh you see it there, it says this but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.

Okay, your iniquities have made a separation, that key word separation there.

Okay, so mankind's sin, it's essentially like this.

It's essentially like throwing a grenade into the flawless bond that God intended to have with man from the get-go.

It's like throwing a grenade in that.

It just you know it blows it to smithereens, it wrecks it.

You know, what was once God and man, okay, together, this is God and Adam and Eve, is now understood as like, okay, God's over here now, and we are like way over here.

Okay, and there's now there's this huge chasm of separation that exists between us and God.

Okay, and here's the thing: there is no way, okay, no way for us to get back to the Lord on our own.

Okay, that's what our sin does, that's what our sin causes.

Now, if you think about that, huge problem.

Okay, huge problem for all of humanity, for all of mankind.

And so, what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna unpack all of that.

We're gonna talk about what all of that means.

So before we jump into Romans chapter 3, I'm just gonna pray.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

So why don't you join me as we do that?

Lord, as we jump into this, Lord, we're talking about a very serious uh topic, Lord.

Uh nothing more serious than this.

And this is the fact that our sin has caused separation uh between us and between you, between our Creator, between our us and our God and King.

And Lord, I pray that we would feel appropriately just the weight of that here this morning.

Lord, I pray that uh you would be working in each and every heart, Lord.

You would be stirring up in us maybe the areas that we've been blind, maybe the areas that we've been blind to our sin and not even realizing that we're going in the wrong direction.

Lord, I pray that those who are just in outright defiant rebellion against you, knowing that it's sin and not caring, Lord, I pray that you would bring brokenness.

Lord, I pray that you would soften our hearts.

Lord, you can do this.

Lord, this is not too great of a task for you.

This is why you came.

It's to unite us back to you, to erase the separation that once existed.

So, Lord, I pray that as we dive into this, Lord, your your glory would be here.

Lord, we pray for that in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, here we go, jumping right into it here.

Okay, my sin separates me from God, and that's a huge problem.

Okay, it's a huge problem because it means that I'm not good.

Okay, not even close.

Okay, not even close to good.

Okay, so in Romans chapter 3, verse 10, hopefully you're there by now.

Romans 3:10

Um, this is what it says, and we've gone over this verse a number of times because it's just so core to our understanding of how our relationship uh with God uh works here.

And this is so, again, foundational core for us.

It says this, as it is written, okay, none is righteous, no not one.

Okay, none is righteous.

Now, first of all, okay, the word uh gospel, you know what that word means?

You ever heard this before?

The kind of the definition of gospel?

It means what?

It means good news.

Right?

You've heard that?

It means good news.

Now, it's the good news of salvation for everybody.

That's what we're saying.

So the good news is salvation is now available through the person and through the work of Jesus Christ.

That's what the gospel is, and that's why we would call it good news.

This separation that exists for us can be fixed.

Now, in order for this message to truly be good news for us, in order for us to truly rejoice and see this as this really great thing, okay, we need to, first of all, come to a deep awareness of our sin.

We need to.

Okay, we need to come to this understanding of what our sin is and what it is caused, what it means for us.

Now, now some of us might ask the question, why?

Why do we need to be so aware of our sin?

Why do we need to talk about this?

You know, why do we why does this topic come up all the time in our church?

You know, why do we have to like spend an entire message talking about this as a theme?

Right?

Like, wouldn't it be a lot easier and a lot better if we just kind of you know kind of pushed this aside and and focused on the you know the truly good news parts of the gospel?

You know, where we can kind of just focus on what Jesus did and and how great he is and and all of those things, and you know, why why this focus on sin?

Okay, why?

Well, a few reasons.

Okay, first of all, I would say one of the first reasons here is because uh that we are sinful uh is simply the truth about us.

Right?

It's simply the truth about each and every single one of us.

Now I hope you would agree with this.

It's never a good idea to ignore the truth.

Right?

Would you agree with that?

Never a good idea.

It's kind of like that, uh, you remember American Idol?

I don't even think that's on TV anymore, is it?

But you remember that?

It was always like in the first episode or two, they would always get somebody up there on the stage.

It's probably all rigged, I get it.

But they would get somebody up on the stage uh to sing, and they were like garbage.

Right?

You remember that?

And everyone would kind of be laughing and making fun of them, and people would be like booing at times, and the, you know, the like Simon Cowell, is that guy's name?

You'd always be like this, he'd have the really tight shirt on, you know, and he'd be like, and finally he would stand up and he'd say, like, you're you're you're the worst, right?

Get off the stage.

And so many times, what would what would be the reaction of that person?

Right?

It would show them backstage afterward, they after they'd just been like decimated by everybody, and they would be like, No, you know what?

I'm not giving up on my dream.

And I and I think that I really have a gift, and I think that I should be doing this and going for it, and I'm not letting anybody ever bring me down.

What do you notice about that?

They refuse to face the facts, right?

They refuse to grasp the truth about themselves.

Now, listen, facing the truth uh is almost always painful, isn't it?

It is, it's painful at first, but hey, it's what's best.

It's what's best.

Unless you want to live in this like, you know, make-believe, you know, fantasy world where you know think you think everything is is uh one way, but you're really just kind of detached from reality and you're not facing the truth.

Okay, proclaiming the truth is also ultimately a loving thing to do.

Now I understand it, you can do, you can, you can level the truth at somebody uh harshly, but here's the thing God loves you.

God loves us, and so at the end of the day, he's going to tell us what's wrong with us.

That's what he's going to do.

Okay, another reason why we need to be so aware of our sin is because accepting that we're sinful is like the first step towards real change.

Right?

You can you can go ahead and and ignore the truth about your sin, like you know, if you really want to, go for it.

Okay, but it but if you do that, just understand this you're never really gonna change.

You're never really gonna grow that that healing, that kind of brokenness that you sense within you, that that is never going to get fixed.

And so we need to face that head on and recognize that and invite Jesus into that so that he can begin to change us and grow us and heal us.

Okay, third reason we need to be so aware of our sin is because without the understanding of just how depraved and just how broken we really are, the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross will never strike us as awesome.

It won't.

So if we if we fail, if we neglect the reality of our sin, what Jesus did we're just gonna be like, okay, so He so He loves us.

Like, I you know, do I even really need this?

Is it you know, is it that important to me?

But when hey, listen, when you when you face the reality of it, when you face the truth and you realize, man, I am I am far more broken than I than I even want to admit, I'm far more broken than I can even realize, then you see this gap between where you're really at and the message of the gospel.

And you're like, wow, what Jesus did is way more incredible than I ever thought.

It's amazing.

And your sense of awe and your sense of love for Christ and your very motives will begin to change as you live your life for him.

You'll be like, this is what he did for me.

I am dust.

I don't deserve this.

How great is he! And your love for him will grow.

Your love for the gospel will grow as well.

So again, back to our verse here.

What does it say?

It says, None is righteous, no, not one.

And what exactly does that does that mean?

Well, it means this, and listen really carefully to this.

Okay, it means that it means that morally speaking, okay, every single person that exists, or every single person who has ever existed, or ever will exist, is is completely, okay, thoroughly, totally, absolutely corrupt.

Okay, completely corrupt.

Uh, another way of putting it is that we are spiritually bankrupt.

We're spiritually bankrupt.

And that's because of our, first of all, inherited sin.

Okay, so the sin that every single human has in them now, because of the sin of Adam and Eve, when they asked, hey, they had children, that sin was passed down.

The scriptures call that our sinful nature, or uh some translations would call it the flesh.

Okay, so we are spiritually corrupt because of our inheritance, uh, inherited sin, okay, but also because of our conscious, willful, intentional sin.

Okay, because of that as well.

So we can't just play the blame game on Adam and Eve here.

We also decide to.

Okay, that's that's you, that's me, that's that's everyone, that's all of us.

Okay, in other words, we are spiritually unrighteous in the sight of God.

That is where we stand.

Okay, we are we are not good people.

Okay, not not one of us are, not strictly speaking, not deep down, anyways.

And listen, for a lot of people, you would, and you would see this, not even on the surface are we good people a lot of the time.

Right?

Like the ugly stuff really comes out, and uh you've you've seen it in yourself, and for sure you've seen it in other people.

Now, I think that there can be some, you know, sometimes some confusion about some of this for us, right?

And I think we kind of question, really?

Like deep down, is it really that bad?

Like, Mike, are you are you not maybe exaggerating a little bit here?

Because I think we all have you know people in our life, right?

People that we've seen, people that we know and love, that we would consider, you know, on at least some level good.

Right?

Wouldn't you say that?

Like we all have people, like you know, you've said before, like she's such a great girl, right?

Or or that guy, he's he's a good man.

Right?

We would we've all said that, I've said that a lot of times, and I'm sure that you have too.

Okay, now uh what I think we mean when we kind of say those things or we think those things about people is that you know, generally speaking, those kinds of people kind of conform to how someone ought to behave.

Meaning that those people are you know polite, you know, they're they're they're kind, maybe they're you know they're they're funny, they you know, they they're the good citizen, they they vote, they they tip well, you know.

If they you know knock you down in your men's hockey league, they're gonna make sure that you're okay before they skate away.

You know, like good guy, right?

Good guy.

That's how we look at people.

And so sometimes we have kind of a hard time reconciling what we see, the scriptures saying, you know, that man is like flawed totally with what we kind of see or observe with our with our own eyes.

Right?

And we see that people are, you know, people are generally like kind of good on at least some level.

You know, they're they're they're they're they're charitable, right?

They they they commit good acts, they're they're generally likable.

But then we see what the Bible teaches, and it says that none is righteous, right?

No, not one.

Or what does Isaiah say?

You've heard these verses before, right?

That all of our even our righteous deeds before the Lord, apart from Jesus, are what?

They're filthy rags, right?

Even our righteous deeds.

Or it says also in Isaiah, uh all uh we all like sheep, or all we like sheep have gone astray.

Right?

We've all gone astray.

And so we read what the scriptures say, but then we seem to kind of observe with our eyes and kind of sense with our heart that maybe, you know, just just maybe people aren't quite as bad as that.

Right?

We look at that and that's kind of what we think.

And then here's the other thing.

We also do this with ourselves, don't we?

We look at ourselves and we're like, you know, I behave pretty well, and you know, I'm a pretty good guy, and you know, I, you know, I go to a small group and I, you know, give to my church, and you know, I'm serving, and I try to provide for my family, and you know, I got a pretty, you know, pretty decent marriage going, and all of that.

And I mean, you see how how how pretty quickly we become blind to kind of the severity and and the ugliness of our sin in God's eyes.

Right?

You see how we do that.

You don't, you know, we don't see it as the huge problem uh that it really is.

Okay, and if we're not really careful here and we're not believing what the scriptures say and and learning to understand what all of this uh is really all about, we can begin believing, at least somewhere in our hearts and somewhere somewhere in our minds, that hey, maybe I'm actually okay.

You know, how how much do I really need Jesus at the end of the day?

After all, I'm I'm pretty good.

I'm pretty good.

Okay, the truth though is exactly what the scriptures say.

It's exactly what the Bible says.

Okay, in the eyes of God, we're just not good.

Right?

It's not even close.

We're that off.

And I mean, if you were to you know just kind of take a second here and honestly assess you know all of your angry frustrations, all of your lustful thoughts, your you know, your gossipy conversations, your judgmental attitudes.

Okay, if you were to think about all of those, the that kind of course in, through, and and out of you, and for some of us here, all of the above, since we've been here in this room today, right?

If you were to look at all of that and you were to admit all of that, okay, I think it becomes pretty clear that our sin makes a mess of us very quickly and very, very deeply.

Right?

And and and if we're not careful here, um, we can we can miss that and we stop seeing our sin for what it really is.

Right?

It's bad.

Right?

It is it is not good at all.

And if you're still wondering about that and you're still kind of questioning that, I would say there's a really good test here.

Any of your flaws, any of your mistakes, any of your sin that you try and uh uh you would love uh to fix, I would just say this.

Go ahead and try and fix it.

Okay, try try and stop the anger, try and stop the lustful thoughts.

You'll find out pretty quickly that you can't fix yourself.

You can't do it.

You need help from outside, you need the Lord uh to punch through in a big way.

Okay, your sin is ugly in God's sight, and it separates you from Him.

Okay, so humble yourself here right now.

Agree with what He says about it.

Yeah, the picture uh is not pretty, right?

We're just flat out not good people, okay, from the kind of tainted and and selfish motives within us that drive us towards doing things that kind of give us this kind of thinly veiled appearance of goodness to the you know outright, ugly, and difficult, you know, ways of that sin kind of you know seeps out of us in various ways.

Okay, just admit it.

You and I are a disaster when you break it right down.

Like I'm admitting it, I know that I am, I'm a mess, and I need the Lord big time.

I'm not good.

I'm not even close to it.

Not even close.

Okay, my sin separates me from God, and that's a huge problem.

Second thing, because it means that I've missed God's standard.

I've missed God's standard by a long shot.

Okay, if you would jump down now just a few verses to Romans 3.23, this is a famous verse.

Many of you would know it.

You've got it memorized as all part of the Romans road if you've heard of that, but this is what it says.

It says, for all have sinned.

Okay, we've been talking about that already.

Hopefully that's clear enough by now.

It says this though, and fall short of the glory of God.

We fall short of the glory of God.

Okay, you see what the standard is there, right?

The standard that we're all trying to measure up to, it's uh it's God's glory.

Is it where we fall short of all of that?

Now, the word glory in the scriptures, it's actually packed full of meaning.

Okay, but simply put, you could say that that God's glory really refers to his awesomeness.

Okay, it refers to his perfection, it refers uh to his power, it refers to his might and his strength and his goodness, all of that.

That is God's glory.

Okay, and we as sinful beings, we just we fall short of that.

We fail to stack up to all of it.

Okay, and that's what it means by fall short.

Now, the New Testament word for glory there is the word doxa.

That's what it is in the Greek.

I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of it, but this is what it means.

It means the light that comes from something brilliant.

The light that comes from something brilliant.

Now, some of you guys have heard of James McDonald.

This is what he wrote in his book Vertical Church.

Okay, he said this glory is the manifestation of God's reality.

Glory is the manifestation of God's reality.

And he says, as heat is to fire, glory is to God.

As wet is to water, glory is to God.

He puts it this way, too.

I like this.

As um as light is to bulb, glory is to God.

And he says, glory is the max we can handle of seeing God.

Glory is the max that any one of us can handle in seeing him.

And so you think about Moses.

That kind of reminds me of Moses, right?

Up on the mountain, you know, and the Lord says, I he's like, show me your glory.

And so Moses, he could barely, he had like he had his back turned, he had his eyes closed, he had, you know, the Lord passed by him, he was like hidden in a in a rock kind of thing, and and and like he shone for days after that, right?

That that's that's all he could handle.

And even then he could barely handle, he could barely handle that.

And so when Romans 3.23 here says that we fall short of God's glory, it's telling us that you know that try as we might, okay, try as we might, we're never gonna attain the level of glory that God possesses, and the level of glory that He holds us to.

And so another way of thinking it uh about it is this you know, if glory is what radiates off of God, okay, think about it that way.

Glory is what radiates from him.

You and I, we don't even measure up to the radiation.

Okay, that's how fall how short we fall from all of that.

And this is what MacArthur explains about the words fall short.

He says this, it has the basic meaning of being last or inferior.

Last or inferior.

And then he says, every human being comes last as far as the glory of God is concerned.

Every human being comes last.

I mean, that what should that do?

That should cut through us like a hot knife, shouldn't it?

It should cut through us.

So so put it this way in an awesomeness contest with the Lord, you and I dead last.

Okay, dead last every single time we are failing uh in that race, uh, in that contest.

And so, what's the standard that you and I need to measure up to?

In order to be considered acceptable in the sight of God, what's the standard?

It's this.

White hot perfection.

White hot perfection.

So the question for us then this morning is this.

How are we doing in that?

Right?

How are we doing in that?

You know, not good should be the obvious answer.

Okay, we're not doing well.

I mean, when you start to think about where the benchmark really is and just how high it is and how attainable all of it really is, how perfect God is and how imperfect you and I are, doesn't it just kind of make you feel ridiculous and kind of dumb forever thinking that, yeah, I'm a pretty good guy?

Right?

Like I'm I'm doing well.

No, we're not.

We're not really at all.

Right?

We should be stripped, stripped bare of our of our pride and of our arrogance and you know all of that when we realize that listen, my sin, it means that I've fallen so short.

Right?

And it has separated me from a God who is glorious, a God who is white hot in his perfection, a God who is perfectly good, who has never failed, who has never struggled, none of it.

I fall so short, Lord.

You are God and I am not, Lord.

I have missed your standard by a long shot.

I really have.

All right, so we know that our sin separates us from God.

Okay, we've gotten that.

We're building here.

It means that that we're not good, and you know, we've missed the standard, and you know, hopefully, at you know, by this point, you know, you're kind of feeling the heaviness of this, right?

You really are, hopefully.

And you know, I wish that I could say that that kind of the heaviness is about to lift, and you know, we're heading off into kind of the lighter, fluffier stuff, but unfortunately, it actually gets worse.

Okay, what else does it mean for us?

It means that I'm going to die.

It means that I'm going to die in every way possible.

Okay, Romans 5, verse 12.

Romans 5:12

Would you skip ahead to that with us?

5 verse 12.

And listen, I know that the temptation, as you're hearing this, and it feels like you're just, you know, you've gone some rounds with Tyson, right?

And you're taking that.

The temptation just kind of tune it out.

Like I can't hear any more of this, and you know, I'm not sure I want to face any more of this reality.

Well, I would encourage you, lean in here, press into this, pay attention, because we need to hear it.

This is what Romans 5, 12 says.

It says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, that's talking about Adam, okay, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Okay, so what is this telling us?

It's telling us here that through the sin of Adam, what entered into creation?

Death.

Right?

Death entered into it, entered into the picture.

And it spread from Adam and Eve into Cain and Abel and to all their children and all the way through all generations to us and our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids and all the way through like some some awful and terrible disease.

That's what's happened with sin.

It's spread.

Now, in case you know anyone here is still kind of tempted to not take sin very seriously, you need to understand this that it kills you.

It kills you.

Why?

Because you're not good.

Because you're not good, because you've missed the standard, because you fall so short of God's glory, because your sin has separated you from God, and there is that huge gap there, it means that you are going to die.

It means that you are going to die.

Now, I believe that everyone here probably is well aware of the fact that physical death happens to all of creation, right?

Every little thing, every living thing, I should say, um, dies at some point.

Okay, but did you realize that death in all death is the result of sin?

Did you know that?

Okay, we weren't created to die.

That wasn't the original uh intention here.

That's not the way it was supposed to work.

Death was not intended to be a part of life.

Okay, don't let anyone ever tell you that death is normal.

Death is not normal.

You will hear that from time to time, maybe many times, at funerals.

Well, death is just it's a normal part of life, and this is what happened.

No, it's not.

That's not the way the Lord created it to be.

He created us to live forever.

We were not supposed to die.

Not at all.

Okay, we were created to live forever in harmony with our God.

But in Genesis 3.19, so this is after Adam and Eve had completely blown it in the garden, and the Lord is meeting with them again, and he is doling out the consequences for their rebellion.

This is what he says to them.

Genesis 3.19, he says, By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.

From dust you shall return, it says.

Okay, but what else does it mean?

How else do we die?

Well, we also die spiritually.

We die spiritually.

Ephesians 2, verse 1 says, you were dead in your trespasses in sins in which you once walked.

Ephesians 2:1

It's talking about spiritual death.

Okay, dying spiritually means that the the intimacy, the harmony that originally existed between God and man has now been destroyed.

Right?

It has been obliterated.

In other words, our sin and the separation there from God means that we are no longer on good terms with Him.

We're no longer on good terms.

We are now considered enemies.

We're considered enemies.

You know, we've we've wrecked everything.

We've we've thrown away everything that God implemented because we thought that we knew better.

Right?

Adam and Eve sinning, and then ultimately any sin that you could ever pick that any of us have ever done is us saying, Lord, I want to be God.

I know what's best, and I want to do this my way.

And then here, to take it a step further and to make it even more bleak, it means that we deserve his righteous judgment.

We deserve it, we deserve hell, we deserve wrath, we deserve eternal separation from God.

It means that we deserve to die.

We deserve it.

It's not unfair that we would have that coming at us because we've sinned against our Creator.

And listen, one of the most awful and kind of sickening realizations that could ever wash over you is knowing that, hey, listen, I can't do anything to fix this.

I can't do it.

I can't behave well in order to impress God.

It's not gonna work.

I'm too corrupt to even to get anywhere with all of that.

Okay, our separation from God, it's a colossal issue.

It's really huge because it means that we're dead.

We're dead physically, we're dead spiritually in every single way possible.

It means game over.

It means game over.

Or does it?

Right?

Or does it?

Okay, the reason, the only reason why it is not truly game over for all of us is because it's because of God.

It's because of God who didn't have to put up with all of our nonsense, right?

He didn't have to do all of that.

But he decided to make a way.

He decided to make a way, he decided to draw us near when we were far off.

He decided to fix that chasm of separation.

He decided to do it by fixing it himself, by coming to earth in the form of man, by living the perfectly righteous life, the perfectly pure life that you and I never had a chance of ever doing properly.

Right?

And that's what he did when he came to earth as Jesus.

And beyond all of that, he went to the cross for us.

And he died the death that you and I should have died.

It should have been us up there.

Okay, Jesus Christ, he did not fall short of the glory of God.

He did not.

And he did it all so that through him you could be brought near.

You could be brought near.

That chasm of separation, it's a thing of the past.

Your sin, forgiven.

Death, defeated.

Once and for all.

And now next week, what we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna spend some time talking about the word substitution and really mind down into exactly what Jesus Christ accomplished for us on the cross and what his death in our place truly means for us.

And we're gonna go into all of that.

But for now, uh, here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna give you an opportunity to respond to what you've just heard and to respond to hopefully what the Lord is doing in your heart and what he's doing in your mind.

We're not gonna sing a closing song here.

In fact, I'm not even gonna pray to close the service.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna give you the chance to just get right with the Lord.

Okay, some of you, some of you, I don't know who, but some of you do not know Jesus Christ as Savior, and today needs to be the day.

Okay, no more running from him, no more asking questions, no more pushing it off, and I'll figure this out later.

No, today needs to be the day of salvation.

Where you recognize what we've just been talking about all morning and realize that Jesus went to the cross to pay for your sin, trust him as your savior, confess all of your garbage, all of your nonsense, all of your pain and your hurt, all of it to him.

Ask him to forgive you and to be your Lord.

Do that today.

Do it now.

And then I would say there are a large group of us, most of us here probably in this room, who have done that.

And we did that maybe years ago.

But kind of like, you know, when you have a really you know hard day at work and you've been working really hard and you're kind of sweaty and grimy after all of that, and you come home and you're like, I need a shower because I'm I'm feeling kind of dirty and I'm feeling kind of gross.

Well, the same thing happens to us spiritually.

You know, as we neglect dealing with our sin and confessing that to the Lord, it kind of builds up like dirt and grime on us.

And today is the day, right now is the time where you need to get right with the Lord.

Maybe there's some areas in your life that you have not been paying attention to.

You've been letting them get you've been letting it get away from you, and the sin has been building up and building up like grease, grit, and grime.

You're like, Lord, I need to get this right with you.

I need to confess this to you.

This is this is in the way of a good relationship with you.

And so we're gonna give you an opportunity to do that right now.

And how are we gonna do that?

Well, we're gonna keep this place, uh, this room right here, as just kind of a quiet, reflective uh sanctuary for you to get right with the Lord.

And you know, we have this area at the front, it's a pretty pretty big spot here.

And one of the powerful things that you can do is just kind of come come to the front.

You can get down on your knees and you can just pray.

If you need to, you can weep.

You can do business with the Lord by coming up to the front.

You can also choose to just sit where you are in your seat and spend some time, as much time as it takes.

Don't worry about the teardown.

Don't worry about all of that stuff that needs to happen.

It's about getting you, your heart, ready and right with the Lord.

You're gonna do that.

We're gonna have some people up at the end afterwards who will be able to pray with you as well.

If you need some help, you got some things that you want to work through, we are here for you.

Okay, that's how we're gonna do it.

If you need to leave, if you need to, you know, go talk with somebody, we ask that you wouldn't that you would leave here very quietly and make your way out into the atrium, and you can do all of that out there.

All right, so is that clear?

Don't neglect this.

Don't run out of here.

I mean, even if you're sitting here and you're like, the Lord's not stirring up in my heart, spend some time praying that he would.

Lord, break through this crust, break through the hardness of my heart.

Lord, do a work.

That's what we pray, that's we want.

So that's what we're gonna do right now.

Your love.