The Way of Jesus 4.0

Well, this is, my good friend Mr. Ernest Lennon.

Everyone say hello, earnest.

Hello.

Now, I'm not sure he goes through, maybe

rector father, reverend, you can call him Ernest.

You can call him any of those things.

I have tried all combinations, any response to all

those, so, all as well.

I had the privilege of, being involved in

a project

this Easter just gone, where essentially 30

different churches from around Fremantle and Coburn came together and we did

a stations of the cross with a modern tilt event, and we had 12 different

stations, 12 different speakers, posters with augmented reality who went to and

saw some of what I'm talking about.

Hands up if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

We had a wonderful opportunity to do something at Easter to reach into

our, into our community, basically.

And one of the first, I think random emails that I sent was going, there's

this amazing church in the middle of Fremantle called St. John's.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

St. John's in the middle of St in the Square.

And I was like, who's the guy who I need to talk to?

And I sent an email to Ernest and.

He responded a few times.

We missed each other on the phone.

Then all of a sudden I just rolled up on a Thursday and all of a

sudden I found like I'd met, a new friend and, there was an immediate

connection and an immediate trust.

Dynamic that I was really quite taken back by.

And so, Ernest, you're involved in the Easter project, say hello and just tell

us your, your thoughts on what, how that Easter thing went from your perspective.

Well, thank you very much.

Hello everybody.

It's great to be here.

please wave if I talk

too fast and you can follow my accent.

the Easter project

was fantastic.

I mean, I think that.

That recognition of friendship was, was instant when, when you came in, to

the church, wonderful, wonderful event.

Something that was, you know, retrieving the ancient practices of Christianity.

Putting that modern little twist on it, to be honest with something I had never

heard of before, augmented reality.

but it, but it was brilliant.

and there was a real

sense just between the, the, the connection with the churches.

And the event itself, and even the prayer as we prepared for that event, had how the

Holy Spirit was moving through Fremantle.

And I was really bolstered by that, uplifted by that.

I think it was brilliant.

and it, it, it fed

into what we're trying to do at St. Jones to recover that ancient

Christianity to make it a realistic option for everybody today.

So thank you.

Yeah.

Pleasure.

Ernest, give us a little

bit of your background, where you're from and what was the journey?

I mean, you, I'm sure you could.

Just talk on this forever.

What was your journey to you being at St. John's in Fremantle?

Well, obviously I'm French,

obviously, or,

or near enough.

No, I

come from Ireland.

born in, in the north

of Ireland.

grew up there.

went off to study in

England with the idea that I would go back to Ireland.

Never did fell into the church.

Australia never really

was on

my kind of horizons.

By chance I was on

holiday in, in, in Rome, and I met someone from Perth who was a priest, and he said,

wow, look, we really need priest in Perth.

Why don't you come?

And I said, oh, I'm very happy where I am.

Thanks.

And I've never heard of Perth anyway.

But somehow the, this

idea stuck with me.

I mean, I think the Lord

planted a little seed.

and so, I mean, that

was about eight years ago.

So all in that time between, I would be praying, saying the Daily

office, I would trip over some line.

Even in the Psalms, you know, the Earth is the Lords and all the people there off,

and I think they need people in birth.

You know, and this idea would keep coming back to me again and again.

And when I finished, I was working as a chaplain.

And when I was coming to the end of my contract, I thought, what do I do?

And I thought they need people in Perth.

So I gave a call and I said, do you still need people?

They said, yes.

Why don't you come?

And I came and I saw Fremantle and I fell for Fremantle, and the rest is ques.

So you're a chaplain.

Very recent history.

No, that's good.

It's good.

Good summary.

You were a chaplain before.

Where, where were you?

A chaplain?

I was a chaplain, up at a school in Oxford.

Okay.

St. Edwards.

Fantastic.

That was good.

On a per, on a personal level, tell us a little bit about your faith journey.

Have you, like, from, from early on, had a sense of faith and belief in Jesus?

Is that more, how did that go for you?

What's, what's that story look like for, for Ernest?

Well, it looks like a long story, so I'll, I'll try and give you

some snippets or highlights.

I mean, I think.

I've never had a sense that there is, you know, that, that there's

no, God, I've never had a sense that I wasn't held or looked after.

And so I usually like to try and turn that story around to say that actually

God found me way before I ever was born.

There's a sense that already, you know, I dunno through the prayer

of my mother or my grandmother or someone I was marked out in the womb.

and I've, I mean, I

usually would say that, you know, I feel God haunted as a child like it was,

there was just a sense that, that he was there and there was a sense that there

was something that I was supposed to do.

And I guess, you know, my parents weren't particularly religious, but

they had some books in the house.

There was a bookcase.

And a couple of those books I really just fell for.

One was a children's bible with lots of nice pictures, pictures of, you

know, the Israelites building the pyramids or something, you know, and

all these little colorful fact pages.

Did they build the pyramids?

I always, always wondered that.

Who built the pyramids?

Israelites,

all, all those, wonderful little tables with diagrams and

things, and, and I fell for this.

I would spent ages looking at that.

Another book that that was, there was a, just, it was a book of poems.

And so suddenly the language and the meaning behind things

became really significant.

And the other one which possibly relates still to what you were saying

before was what is the Anglican

Book of Common Prayer?

and in a funny way,

I kind of read myself into that text because it does again and

again, talk about all ye that do truly and earnestly repent.

We are to make our earnest prayers.

And I thought this, wow, I, well, I can't pray any other way if I pray it's an

earnest prayer, right?

And that became kind

of formative in terms of, of, of, of a sort of a budding spirituality.

But we go through our teenage years, you know, you run away,

you decide, I don't want this.

I,

you know, I can't.

and Christianity sometimes

seemed to be a very disappointing thing.

Because where the scripture talks about taking up your cross and following Christ.

I mean, the church seemed to be very much like, yeah, it's okay.

We just sing a few hymns and give

money and we're okay.

and I was never happy about that.

but, you know, to,

to cut a long story short, and I, I, I came back, God, God never let go of me.

Nudged me along and other people nudged me along and, and that was great.

And I met some really fantastically holy people in my life.

Some people had key moments who just made me do, choose one

direction rather than another.

And I think, again, that has been the, the hand of

God moving through.

what he's really doing

with me here, I'm still not quite sure.

The next phase is gonna be an interesting one,

die.

And I think one of the things I, when I first met Ernest, he.

He said to me, I'm, I'm not interested in

playing sort of this, you know, sort of popular

gospel, if you can understand what I mean by that.

I want to preach the true gospel, the fullness of Jesus'

death, his resurrection.

And when he said this to me, I was like, ah, this guy, I'm leaning into, this guy

I listened to.

And I think that's probably

part of one of your, joys is seeing the gospel do the work in

the people that you minister to.

So he doesn't just do St. John's in Fremont, or he is also an

Anglican church in Palmyra.

So he is running two churches.

Everybody, this guy's doing two.

Yeah.

So you could go, wow.

So everyone say, wow, wow.

He needs to be encouraged.

So, wow.

You

know, in terms of, that dynamic for you, why is the way of Jesus

earnest so important to you?

Why is the way of Jesus important and why is it important to you?

I mean, I think the, the way of Jesus is so important.

I mean, I, I guess, you know, there are times in life you,

you look for, for other ways.

You look for other ideas, you catch onto other fads.

You think it must be so, so much more esoteric or so much

more highfalutin than this.

But what I come back to again and again is that Jesus is so earthy.

It's so real.

It's so doable in one sense.

And what I mean by that, there's, there's a phrase that Theresa of Ley uses.

She talks about God among the pots and pans, and there's that sense

that actually Christ comes and is with us and he calls us to something.

And there's the fact that Christ there, there's a love there for us already.

And we know when we look at our hearts and we know when we look at ourselves,

we're not always the best that we can be.

Sometimes we're really disappointed in ourselves.

We maybe just admit that to ourselves, but that sense that God actually knows

that and still loves us and still as we've been singing before, actually is

prepared to pay an immense price for us.

And that's something which is,

is hugely humbling.

and I think, you know,

it's not about we have to meditate on the floor or chant

mantras or do different things.

In fact, we know that there's nothing we can do that we accept God's grace

and that kind of a God is some well, is the one that I can deal with

because that is, that's incredible.

I like your picture of so real, so tangible maybe.

Yeah.

He came to earth in order to make that possible for us.

Yeah.

That we could taste the reality of literally taste and literally hold

in touch.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

We've got a scripture, this, this, evening Ernest, and it's from Matthew

chapter seven, verses 13 and 14.

Just two verses.

I've got it on the screen.

I'm actually gonna read it out.

And, I've actually asked Ernest to share for a little bit, just on this text.

and then from there we may have some other questions that we'll go through.

But, yeah.

Matthew seven verses 13 to 14.

Jesus speaking.

He says, enter through the narrow gate.

For the why for wide is the gate, and broad is the road that leads to

destruction and many enter through it, but small is the gate and

narrow the road that leads to life.

And only a few find it.

Ernest want you share with us what you, what comes to your

heart when you think about that.

Scripture.

Thank you very much.

please do wave at me

if

this is, is very long.

Look, I think the,

the first thing that's kind of is, is arresting about this passage

is, you know, that we're not to be

sentimental about things.

we have to not fall

into the trap of thinking that everyone who lives with a total neglect of

God, we'll find mercy in the end.

And we have to be really done.

That's the hard part of this, I think.

Absolutely.

But we have to accept it.

Scripture says again and again, that very few go to heaven,

and we need to feel that sense

of alarm about this.

a ungodly life is very

easy to live.

You don't really have to do anything except be yourself self.

A life following your own inclinations, your own desires.

It's easy to do.

Nobody's gonna stop you.

Pleasure, pride, hypocrisy.

Dead easy, right?

So many kinds of sin.

Isaiah says that, you know, everyone can go astray in his own way.

That's just about how many varieties of sin there are.

And so the path of the godly, this one that the, the, the passage

says is straight and narrow.

It's the way of the commandments.

Here we go.

It's the way through conversion.

Conversion is the start.

Conversion is recognizing the evil and danger of your former ways.

It's coming to Christ, who is the door, I guess, coming to the door, giving up

every hope in anything else that you have cleaving to Christ with your whole

heart and continuing to depend on him.

Be reunited with him.

That's the straight and narrow way.

Any kind of partial repentance, any kind of divided trust, well, I'll

trust Jesus, but you know what?

Reincarnation might be useful in my back pocket here, just in case.

Doesn't work.

No.

Holding back on obedience.

Well, 10 commandments, I'll do eight.

It doesn't work.

Your contrition, that sense of re remorse has to be deep.

Your faith has to be unfeigned.

Your dedication has to be entire or else you're only deceiving yourself.

So I think we need to be aware that God never intended us to run after.

As the prayer book says, the imaginations of our hearts,

that's just self-destruction.

Every sin destroys the soul.

Every sin invites the wrath of God.

Let's be clear about that.

Every choice you make, every word you utter, every thought you have,

it makes your soul a little bit different than it was before.

And you are slowly with all the words and all the actions and all the things you

think, you are slowly changing yourself.

Either you're becoming closer and more in harmony with God, or you're

putting yourself in opposition and hatred towards God and to his people.

And even to yourself, I would say

you are slowly turning into either a heavenly creature or one that's

fitted for a more hellish kinda place.

Every moment you're moving closer either to joy or to loneliness.

That's the reality for us.

So sin is sin, and it doesn't matter if the whole world encourages and

applauds us for committing sin.

It's sin.

God delights in holiness.

He makes every step that his faithful servants take.

Either way, he marks it, rather he promises that our well-doing is rewarded

with glory and honor and immortal life.

So what I think when I look at a text like this, isn't it better to be a

persecuted Elijah worshiping the true God than to be an applauded worshiper of B.

Yeah, and that speaks very much I think into the society that we live in now.

I mean, you can get lots of cheers.

You can get lots of follows.

You can get lots of likes on.

Do you get likes on TikTok?

You can get lots of things, you know, but by taking a certain line, by saying

something, you won't get very many if you speak up and say the truth.

The duty we have is a difficult one, but it is a command of God.

And look, I, I, I just, I remembered this on my way out and I grabbed

it 'cause I didn't have time to copy out what it is there.

There's a text.

It's probably the earliest Christian text there is.

It's called the Dikey.

Anybody heard of it?

And it's, it is older than, than most of the gospels even.

But I brought it with me 'cause I thought it's important to look

at the very first line of this.

Lemme turn to it.

So the did key part one.

There are two ways, a way of life I. And a way of death.

And it goes on really in the, in those first little chapters.

It's very short text.

If anybody wants to, to, to

borrow it, you can.

it really picks up

on the teaching of Jesus to say how we live that Christian life.

What does that narrow way look like?

Well, let me pick some things out here.

The way of life is this, thou shalt love first the Lord your creator.

Secondly, love your neighbor as yourself, and you shall do nothing to any man thy

would not wish to be done to thyself.

There's a very quick summary of what Jesus says, and it goes through in

different, chapters in saying, you know, bless people, don't curse them.

Pray for your enemies fast, for those who persecute you.

It goes on to say that, you know, beware of the carnal appetites of your body.

And all of this teaching.

We know if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one,

give as you are commanded to do, and it goes on and on saying, you

know, really lots of things that you ought to be trying to practice.

This is the, the, the meat of the, the narrow way.

This is what we do, and it tells us that the way of death is.

Fraught with domination, murders, adulteries, LUTs for indications,

thefts, idolatries witchcraft, sorceries robberies, hypocrisies, deceit,

pride, malice of the risk goes on, and all even foul languages in there.

And it says in the conclusion, flee from these things.

Run away from them.

Now look, how hard is that?

We're all aware that, you know, the, the door, we come through the door,

we, we find conversion, but that in some ways scripture says is not enough.

You might remember what it was like before you found this church,

before you found your door.

Maybe you were in a kind of a sleep.

A lot of people are, I think, in a kind of a sleep.

Their spiritual senses really can't tell any difference between good and evil.

They dunno anything about God.

They are a stranger to God's law.

They are definitely a stranger to its inward spiritual kind of message.

It's like being fast asleep.

You have no sense, and then you have no sense that you are

standing on the edge of a pit.

And so you're not afraid of it.

You don't think if, if you think there's no God, or if you think, Hey,

God's a merciful kinda guy, isn't he?

It doesn't really matter.

I'm gonna go to heaven just as I am.

We excuse ourselves, we flatter ourselves.

We let sin persuade ourselves that we can, you know, that we can make it to heaven.

Whether we're a scandalous transgressor or one of the more decent sinners,

you know, the decent sinners who go to church on a Sunday, I could

introduce you to some of them.

We're pretty decent people.

And the sins that others struggle with, well actually they don't affect me.

I can brush those off.

Because I'm not that kind of person.

Mm. But then God touches your heart.

When the person in the darkness then is awoken out of sleep, the

light begins to break into his soul.

He sees that the loving, merciful God also happens to be a just God.

It also happens to be a terrible God who renders to every man, according

to his works, to judges everyone.

For every single I idle.

Word, for every thought, for every desire, and the law, God's

law starts to, to dawn on them.

You've never handled experience too.

You begin to see it.

Paul talks about it.

This is what Paul says.

You know, what about, you know, being, you know that sin, by the occasion of

the law actually came and slew him.

In other words, he said, I thought I was a guy.

I thought I was a good guy.

I thought I was pretty righteous.

But then I discovered all these commandments that told me something

different about how I was living.

Don't murder.

Well, what does Jesus say?

If you hate someone, you've already committed murder in your

heart, don't commit adultery.

Well, if you look at someone to lost after them, you've already

committed adultery in your heart.

None of us are guiltless, and even if we're in the church, we're still

sometimes struggling with those things.

We're not quite on the way and in the sense that we're

making any progress on it.

We found it.

We've got on, it's like me getting on the train in Fremantle.

It hasn't moved off yet.

I'm on, but I'm not making any progress.

I'm not any closer to Subiaco than I was when I got on.

We have to make sure that we are moving.

Conversion is one thing, but our regeneration, our sanctification

is something different and we have to work on that.

I'm flicking over, I wrote at so many pages here.

You would be fast asleep if I send this.

So the nature of the law actually points out to us that we have carnal hearts.

Our hearts are set on different things.

You might even call them devilish.

And look, here's the reality for us, for all of us now, even though

we profess to be Christians, we've made a commitment to Christ.

We say we're following him.

Sometimes we're dragged into doing things that we don't wanna do.

I. Mm. Simply because there's another kind of law operating in us.

We found that in our way, we're slacking on it.

We're really not making any progress.

So what do you do?

Well, cry to God.

You ask for that Pardoning love.

The partnering love that comes for those who believe in Jesus

Christ face up to our inequities.

Face up to the fact that they have been laid on him.

And that we, through his death, have been made the righteousness of God.

There's a switch right around.

What a change we learned to say wisdom.

Paul.

I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ lives in me and

the life I live in this flesh.

I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Here's how God becomes a loving father.

I'm not an angry judge.

I'm being made free from sin.

We become servants of righteousness instead.

One little thing just to add on this narrow way, it's not about making

you a nicer person, a slightly improved version of your old self.

Little best, little bit less angry, a little bit more friendly.

We're not talking about that.

It's about making you better and better until you're an

entirely new kind of creature.

You're called with all your struggles, with all your temptations, with all your

doubts, and they're different from mine.

They're different from anyone else's, but you're called with all of them

to love God with all your heart, to pray without cea, to give thanks in

all circumstances, to do the will of God on Earth as it is in heaven.

To present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God until he

makes you perfect in every good work.

That's good.

Just a little bit more information about what you read before

the early Christian writing.

That's wonderful for some of us who might not understand what you read out before.

Have you got,

can you do a history, channel lesson for

us?

Do a, a quick little lesson on

this.

So the did Okay.

I guess it's, it's

other title is the Teaching of the 12, and it's considered to be, you

know, what the 12 apostles taught.

And like I say it, it's earlier in its composition

than most of the New Testament.

So a little bit after.

Paul's first writings, so right about the middle of the first

century, this is written down and it's, it's considered to be a good

summary of what the, the, the, the first apostles taught.

it also goes on to

talk about the, you know, how, how you structure your Sunday worship

and, and how you should live together.

and it's, it's a really

interesting little text just in terms of the light that it throws on.

What those first Christians were trying to do.

But it's also, you know, and, and sometimes we, we make religion

more complicated than it has to be.

Those false gospels that you talked about.

You know, we, we set conditions on, we make it difficult.

We sometimes make it just hard for ourselves when really there's something

remarkably simple about it.

and, and this is a

good little text just to kinda reorient us in terms of how we think.

Great.

But it really sets out very clearly those two ways.

And we can't kid ourselves.

And we do struggle.

We all struggle.

Even if you get a collar on, you struggle sometimes.

It just doesn't make any difference.

It's not, it's not like the armor of God.

Well, maybe in some sense it is a little bit of the armor, but it doesn't really

give you much protection, does it?

Like, you know, if they're shooting for me, they're not shooting

for my throat, I don't think.

and, and that we have

to, we have to be able to face up to that because that is the reality for us.

We have to work on ourselves because, you know, I mean that

holiness is what gets us to see God.

We have to be different.

We have to be different than when we first walked

through Christ the door.

and that requires effort.

It requires sometimes, you know, confiding in someone else.

It requires just a little bit of a spiritual mentor sometimes.

So find that person.

I would say

it's a fascinating, tension point around

our participation in this following after Jesus, his way, the narrow path.

But when we're in that pocket, it's not us kind of molding us.

It's him and his ways that mold us.

So it's when we talk about our responsibility or our,

we've gotta do something.

We're not alone in that, are we?

And in that dynamic, I just wanna introduce the, the, I suppose the

word trust for those of us who are struggling to trust that this

narrow way is the way of Christ, this trusting him that this way.

Yes.

It might sometimes prove difficult 'cause it's narrowed, it's, it's

compressed, it's potentially a little bit more challenging than the Broadway.

But how, how, what would you say to someone who's struggling to

trust that this is the pathway?

I mean, I, I think the first thing I would say, just very generally, if there

is a God, let's go right back there.

If there is a God, then God's ways and God's understanding and God's

intellect is way out of our reach.

You know, we, we are like little ants compared to humans

in our relationship to God.

We can't understand God's ways, and so we can never say that.

We understand why God allows anything to happen.

Or why God chooses one thing rather than another.

I think the one thing

that always gets me about trusting in Christ, I think back to when, when

Jesus was, on his way to the cross, he's in Gethsemane, he's praying.

He could easily have said, actually, look, father, they're not worth it.

They really aren't worth it.

I'm not doing this, I'm not going through it.

He didn't do that.

So when things were really, really hard for him, when he was at his

lowest point, he didn't let us down.

And I think no matter how far a away we go, no matter how low things are

for us, no matter how difficult it is, he's not gonna let us down either.

And so we can hang onto that even if we don't always fully understand it.

and I think, I think

that's important.

Do, do you find you get courage from that reality?

That, that if Christ is living in me.

Right.

And he was the one who in that moment with courage.

Yeah.

Right.

Trusted that his father's narrow way across.

Yeah.

Is that, do you get

courage from that?

I get courage from that.

Absolutely.

I mean, look, I think the, the, the spirituality for Christians, if you

want to call it that, is, is one of.

Rejection, death, resurrection.

You know that we, we are called to take up our crosses.

What is Jesus saying?

He says, follow me.

He was spat on and mocked and, and persecuted and belittled and

crucified, but he rose again.

Now, we can't really expect any different kinda treatment

when you step on and I mean.

You've probably seen those, pictures about the broad and narrow way.

I mean, there's a big row with a crowd going down and they're laughing and

drinking, and they're shouting at the two little guys on the narrow path.

And it looks like they're having a great time, but obviously

they're headed for destruction.

And interestingly, I think.

In social media now there's a kind of a resurgence of images that are very

similar, where there's kind of like a big crowd shouting for one thing

and one other little person standing up for actually the truth over here.

Not necessarily about religion, but about some, you know,

societal kind of agenda.

interesting that they're coming back.

I think.

We will always

feel as Christians because we stand on something different, that we are

persecuted, that we are at least out of sync with everybody else.

And I don't think we should be afraid of that because we know

we stand on something solid.

And what I always like to remind myself about in terms

of of, of Jesus, you know, the.

Jesus gave up his life, but he picked it up again three days later.

And if you know, and, and as we take communion, if the blood of Jesus is

running through my veins, then there's nothing I have to be afraid of, not

even death, because that power to lay down life and pick it up again is in me.

Mm-hmm.

Amen.

Amen.

You mentioned as you were talking, and you didn't say this explicitly, but I

just wanted to explore it for a second.

That there's these two kind of extremes in this journey forward,

that there's this potentially, we might describe it as over love.

Like if I do whatever I want to do, like license to do whatever,

well God will forgive me.

It'll be all right.

And there's kind of like a pit over on the side here, right?

Then over, right over here, there's this other one, which is like this

ultra legalism law thing that if I just mess up this much, I'm done for.

And it's, it's a pit over here as well.

Mm-hmm.

It's like these two opposing forces.

Yeah.

If we are aware that when we're over in Ville, right, do whatever

we want to do, we need a little bit of law to kind of pull us back

this direction to the narrow path.

But we're over here in legalism land thinking that I can save myself, like

through my works, getting it right.

A hundred percent on the scorecard.

We actually need a little bit of.

Love, grace to pull us back in this direction.

Get us back on track.

I heard it said that, to, to go the narrow way.

It's like a plane needs two wings.

It needs love, and it needs truth.

And if you're keeping those two dynamics in opposing tensions in your life.

Then you've got more of a chance of actually walking this kind

of, this narrow, this narrow way.

Otherwise you've just got one wing, right?

What are you doing?

Yeah, it's going in circles, right?

So one wing, but actually what the, what the way of Jesus

is his forward moment He's pushing me forward,

he's leading me forward.

And I just, I just always found that a really helpful picture as we surrender

to not our way, but the way of Christ.

As it brings us

to a close tonight.

and is there anything

else you wanted to add to what we've already talked about that

you've, you know, sometimes when we're talking you're like, you feel

like, oh, I should've said that.

I wanted to say that.

You got anything there that's bubbling?

It's okay if you don't.

No, it's there are lots of things

that I think of these, I'm looking at the faces now.

They're thinking like, please.

Please.

No, I mean the, the, there was one verse that I, that I scribbled on,

on the, on the very first page here.

I thought, like back in Isaiah 55, I do like Isaiah maybe just a little

bit less than Jeremiah though.

So we, Jeremiah, and, and this is what, the prophet Isaiah

has written.

He said, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

And let him return on to the Lord and he will have mercy on him.

And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

And here, here we are, here, here's the reality for us bogged down by our

thoughts, bogged down in our own kind of unrighteous ways our, our, our wickedness.

Even if you think, well, I'm not really that wicked, you know, the, the list

says that we're we're worse than we, than

we, than we pretend.

and I think that, that

that is, that is so important.

And I don't want this to sound like a heavy thing tonight, I've said.

It's, it's a kind of a reality check for us that we have to

make every effort to conform ourselves into the image of Christ.

That's what it's about, because God is reconciling the world and

he's doing it through the church.

This is how God is bringing back.

You know that, you know that lovely phrase about being the salt of the earth.

What does salt do?

It slows down decay, and so here we are.

The job until Christ gets back is to kinda slow down the

corruption, to stand against it.

To, you know, be, be a Noah or be a lot in Sodom or, you know, we, we have

to stand out and say those things.

It's not gonna be fun, but it's going to change us and it's gonna

make us more Christ-like, and it's gonna bring us closer to God.

So good.

Slow down decay.

Oh man, that's really good.

Thank you for that.

Ernest, we got this

wonderful joy that when we find ourselves on the wide, on the broad road.

We've got this gift of repentance that when we find ourselves in

the wrong space, and we've already kind of prayed that way tonight, as

well as they let us, what a gift it is.

If you find yourself tonight and you're going, yeah, I'm not on the narrow

way, the simple response is actually say, Lord Jesus, please forgive me.

Holy Spirit, come transform my heart, cause my desires to be your desires.

And as I step forward into your ways, as Alex has actually encouraged us

tonight as well, man, he changes our conscience and we are formed

more and more into his image.

Would you like to pray for us as we close tonight?

Lord good almighty.

Open our hearts and enlighten them by the grace of your Holy Spirit that we may

seek what is well pleasing to your will.

Direct our thoughts and affections to think and do such things as make us

worthy to attain your unending joys.

And so order our doings after your commandments that we may be

ever diligent to fulfill them.

Grant us grace to lose ourselves, that we may truly find ourselves in you, in the

life of grace, and to forget ourselves that we may be remembered in your kingdom.

We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.