Flee Youthful Lusts #3

That's sweet. Did you guys hear him say amen? Or, that was amen, just didn't sound like amen, but it was amen. That's sweet. So this week, we're going to be finishing the section we've been studying in 2 Timothy chapter 2. The past few weeks, we've studied Paul's instructions to Timothy as a young pastor. Young meaning that he was probably my age. So, young. His instructions were basically to mature and to grow past the lusts that attend youth. And in his work, he ought to strive to be a peacemaker, not a fighter. Last week, we saw how young men are often given into the temptation to fight and to quarrel with one another, and usually to no good effect. It's fruitless. No one is benefited or edified. Many are corrupted or confused.

from 22 to 26. These verses contain the reason why we shouldn't be so quick to fight. Many of us in our own hearts, if you have children, you've probably been bombarded with this question to the point of exhaustion. Why? Why? You say something and they say, why? And you tell them an answer and they say, but why? And it goes on and on and on until you say, be quiet. Today Paul gives us in these verses, why? Why is it so important that we keep watch over our tongues? Why is it so important that we not be quarrelsome? Why? In short, Paul's answer, before we read it, I'll tell you, is that fighting and quarreling does not lead or produce salvation in the people that we engage with. No matter how adamantly or loudly we fight, no matter how true the things we say happen to be, it is God alone who saves sinners.

And our behavior can either be a great help or a great stumbling block to those that we interact with. And so Paul's exhortation is that we would head in the direction of being a great help and not a great stumbling block. As I said, our text is 2 Timothy 2, verses 22 to 26. Would you please stand as you read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart, but refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. The Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses, and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I remember when I first came to faith, and for those of you who don't know, for me that was early adulthood, 21, 22. So I'd lived all of my school age years being completely unaware of...

who Jesus was and what the gospel was, what a Christian was. I'm sure there were Christians that I'd interacted with. As I look back through my high school years, I can see the kids, probably the ones that were named Christian, were probably from Christian families. But I knew very little, and so I didn't have the moral formation that Christians do about right and wrong and what God has said yes to and no to. And so coming up through my teenage years and into adult years, I did what I thought would make me happy, which is what most of us do if we're honest. We look at our day, we look at our responsibilities, and we go, what would I find joy and satisfaction in? That's what I'm going to do. And so that's what I did. And then I became a Christian. And all of a sudden, everything that I'd thought I knew, and everything that I'd spent my life doing, caring about, trying to find happiness, and all of a sudden I was looking at it from a new perspective. And it wasn't just my behaviors, but it was the people I interacted with. All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, that's a sin, and it's never made me happy, and it doesn't make you happy, but now I'm, by God's grace, I'm opposed to this thing that I didn't used to be opposed to, whatever it was.

drunkenness, fornication, gambling, lying, you name it. All of a sudden, I'm opposed to it. Somewhere inside of me, I'm like, that's wrong. But all of my friends, they're not Christians. And so I went through this conflict, an internal conflict. How do I relate to, how do I speak to, what do I say to my friends? Because to them, they, like me, they didn't know what it meant to become a Christian. And I'd become a Christian. And all of a sudden, I'm interacting with them, and the foul language that used to be so commonplace, my conscience was offended when I would swear or when they would swear. And all of a sudden, it's like, what do I say about it? What do I do? And I'll ask you, what sorts of things happen? What do you think happens in those sorts of situations? Sometimes it's good, I think, and sometimes it's bad.

It's bad when the newly minted believer takes on his pulpit and starts condemning all of his friends immediately. I think that's bad. And everyone sort of gets whiplash in the group, and they're like, but you used to, like, what? You're all high and mighty now, Mr. Holy? These young Christians may think, we can't do this anymore. They've been made alive, and they care, and so they speak with... With all kinds of energy and very little wisdom. And they make a mess of it. And they face a new temptation. Before their temptation may have been to curse and to take the Lord's name in vain and to fornicate or whatever it was. But now the new temptation they face is pride and boasting. They look down on their friends. Last week they were your friends and this week they're these awful people.

And so this new Christian with very little grace or wisdom begins to tell them how awful they are. It doesn't go well. That's not always the case. In my situation, there was some of that. But there was a thing that was also true about me and my friends. And it was this. I cared about them. I cared about them. And when I became a Christian, I only cared all the more about them. And I wanted them to be free of their sins. And I realized I can't free them. And I didn't know what to say to them. And so the words that I would say and the things I would be able to come up with were, if we were to judge them now, we'd say, that's pretty pathetic. But it's all I could come up with. But a few things were true. I did love them. And I did want them to be free of their sins. And those two things constrained me and kept me from hammering on them.

And it is true that most of them I'm no longer friends with. Don't even have contact with them on social media. Because there was an increasing divide between them and me and our priorities and the circles we moved in and the things we did. We just grew apart. But I loved them. And I wanted them to come to Jesus. And as I became a Christian, it occurred to me that there were people in the past I had sinned against. at least one occasion, I wrote them a letter asking them to forgive me. And I hadn't talked to them in quite some time. And I wrote them a letter saying, I've sinned against you. A bad friend was a corrupting influence. Would you please forgive me? I hope that the Lord doesn't use it to harden your heart. And I'm praying for you. And their response was, you don't need to pray for me. I don't need your prayer. And so there I'm left sitting with the reality of the harm I've done.

hardness that exists. But I tell you all of this to say, we ought to actually love people. We actually ought to love them and care about them. And the fact that they don't believe the gospel or don't know the truth or don't vote the right way or whatever your shtick is, if you're a Christian, you ought to love the lost. Your heart ought to be grieved when you consider Their life and their end. Now, why am I saying all of this to you? Well, the reason I'm saying all of this to you is that our goal as Christians, our great aim ought to be to see the Great Commission fulfilled, to see the nations discipled, baptized, and taught to obey all that Jesus commanded you. This is what we ought to have in our minds each day.

We ought to want to see people come to faith in Jesus, see them baptized, growing in godliness as their disciples for the rest of their lives. None of these parts can be left out. It's not enough for them to come and get baptized, to get saved. We ought to want to see their discipleship. But what comes at the very beginning of all of this, a man or a woman becoming a Christian, is repentance. Repentance. Repentance is not something you do just once. It's something that's meant to attend the whole life of a Christian. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, the first thesis that he wrote was, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, in Matthew 4, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he willed that the entire life of believers be one of repentance. And so you should think of repentance as being the inauguration.

of the Christian life. There must be repentance. And so when we live our lives, our great goal, the fulfillment of the Great Commission, the things that we should be seeking first among the nations is repentance. That they would come to acknowledge of their sins and that they would see their need of salvation and that God would work and bring them to repentance. Our job is not first to convince them of the truth. It's to bring them to repentance. Our job isn't to argue with them and prove that we're right and vindicate ourselves. It's to bring them to repentance. Our job is not to be on the right side of history. It's to bring men to repentance. And our job, as I already mentioned earlier, is not to look down on or to boast when we see men who believe lies. Our job is to bring them to repentance. And so when you interact with someone, Christian or not, You must always remember that they have an immortal soul. However wicked they are and however distasteful their behavior may be to you, they have a soul. They're made in the image of God. And they're either going to go to heaven or to hell. And what you say and do or don't say and don't do is to be useful to your Father in heaven as you minister to them. So there are things you ought to say and there are things you ought not to say. There's things you ought to do.

And there's things you ought not to do. All in an effort to point them to their need of Jesus. That's your objective. This is what you should be thinking about. This is what we should be praying for. Now, I said that our objective is to bring them to repentance. But we can't bring them to repentance. I can't bring them to repentance. Paul says here, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance. And it is a freeing thing to realize you can't make someone repent. I was at the conference this past week, and some of you were there this past week, rather. And someone said something that was very helpful. They said, you realize that in terms of discipline, in terms of changing behavior, repentance, a father has an implement. What's his implement? The rod. And the civil magistrate, he has an implement. And what's his implement?

The sword. What does the churches implement? What do we have in our hands to bring men to repentance? The word of God. But even that's a bit of a stretch. If I were to say, if I could hand you a rod to get you to get somebody off dead center and to do what you want, or I could hand you a sword to get them moving in the right direction, or I could hand you the gospel, which one do you think you could wield the best to get somebody to do something? It's probably a rod or a sword because those are in your hand and you can inflict pain on them. You can threaten them. You can make them scared. But with the word of God, which is what we have as our implement to bring men to repentance, what good is it if God doesn't pour water on those seeds? Only he can bring men to repentance. What we have as the church, what I have as a pastor, what you have as

a friend and a neighbor is simply your own testimony of God's goodness and kindness. You have moral suasion. You can say to them, that is not going to bring you life and make you happy. I know because I tried. And now I've realized because God was kind and he showed me, this is not what I should pursue. This is not what I should hope in. And so only God can give repentance. And apart from his work, No one will come to repentance. You can't make them because you don't have the power or the might to breathe life into dead bones. And that's as true with your children as it is with the President of the United States. You don't have the power to. In Ezekiel, God teaches him this lesson, and us, in this way. Ezekiel, in chapter 37, it says this. It says, The hand of the Lord was upon me.

And he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley, and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know. Which is kind of funny if you think about it. It's a nice way of saying, I don't know, but you do. Again he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive and you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. Could you imagine being Ezekiel in a valley of dry bones?

This is your congregation, Ezekiel. Preach to them. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a noise and behold, a rattling. And the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked and behold, sinews were on them and flesh grew and skin covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may come to life. So I prophesied as he commanded me. And the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet an exceedingly great army. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.

Now, There was Ezekiel, prophet of the Lord, a man. And the Lord takes him out into this valley. And it's not clear to me whether this is literal. I tend to think that this was more of a vision or an example. He takes him out there and he says, you see all the dead bones? You see where there used to be life? If you were to walk out into a place and you were to say, look at all the bones. They're everywhere. They're dry. They're falling apart. They've been picked over by all the birds of the sky and the bugs and everything. There's nothing left. There's just bone. No life in them. And then you were asked the question, can you make these alive? Can these bones live? And Ezekiel says, no. And then the Lord says, speak these things to them. And he did. And life and breath came into the dead bones. By whose strength?

What power did Ezekiel have in himself to give life to those bones? None. What Ezekiel did was simply what God commanded him to do. Say these things, and God worked through that to bring life to those dry bones. Are God's ways so different today than they were in the days of Ezekiel? Does he bring salvation and repentance to men in some new way? Does he still use us as ambassadors of his grace? His mouthpiece, if you will, to bring the dead to life, to bring them to repentance and to faith. Does he use our arguing and our posturing and our boasting and our condescension to breathe life into dead bones? No. What is gained and what is benefited from all the words and all the running of our mouths? What benefit do we impart to the people that we speak to? What hope do we...

proclaim to them when we argue and when we fight and when we mock and when we rebel? What is our aim and what is our goal? Why do we say the things we do? Why do we neglect the things we neglect? I think too often it's because the repentance of the wicked is not a high priority to us. And so from the very beginning, our desire should align with Paul's words here that God might use us to bring the lost to repentance. This is a request. As Paul communicates this to Timothy, do all of these things, kindness, patience, gentleness, if perhaps, hope, dear son of mine, that God might use you and move through you to free them from their bondage. If perhaps he might grant them repentance. Think for a minute. Some of you may not have had an experience like I did in terms of growing up as an unbeliever and then, having sort of a road to damascus sort of conversion maybe you've grown up in the church but you think whether whether you grew up outside the church or you grew up inside the church has there been a time in your life when you came to repentance some knowledge of your own sin and i ask you how did god work that out what was the conduct and the demeanor and the speech of the people that he used to bring you to repentance is it not overwhelmingly

Their kindness and their gentleness and their long suffering with your stupidity that God used. What did their love look like? Did you know that they loved you? How did you know? You knew because of the way they spoke to you. They didn't speak words of uniform approval of everything you did. They didn't say, that's great and if you feel that it's true and we love you and you don't need to worry about any of the problems. No, that's not what they said. but they did speak to you with love. I'd have you also know that repentance precedes knowledge of the truth, right? Paul lists knowledge of the truth being one of the fruits of coming to repentance, okay? I want you to understand that arguing with people, running your mouth at them, doesn't deal with their real problem. They have a moral problem that's greater than their knowledge problem. We are moral, you and me.

We have sins. We lack knowledge, yes. But knowledge is often not what brings us to repentance unless God convicts us of our moral failing and our moral culpability for our lack of knowledge and what it's produced. And so repentance is a moral thing. When we speak to men and women about their sins and about their need of Jesus, we're not speaking to them about theology proper. We're not speaking primarily about the attributes of God at that point. We're speaking to them about the truths that they know and suppress in their heart because they don't know what else to do with them. And they're afraid of them. And they try to suppress them and they try to erase them. And so repentance is not a coming to the knowledge in such a way that you go, oh, I'm convinced by the facts of this truth or that.

Truth is hidden from those who are perishing. Do you hear me? It's hidden from them. Jesus said, I speak in parables so that hearing they will not understand, seeing they will not believe. Otherwise, they would repent. Knowledge does not bring us to repentance. Our understanding of what's actually true flows out of repentance. When we come to Jesus Christ and we say, forgive me, a sinner. You, the truth giver, the one who all truth proceeds from, then they can see the truth, but they couldn't see it before. And so in our interactions with the lost, we shouldn't be simply trying to impart truth to them. Did you know this is what's true? Did you know the Bible says all of those things are necessary and we should in due course come to them? And they may be useful in getting to Their sin and our holy God. But repentance is a moral thing. They have to see their sins and then they see the truth. When their eyes are opened through repentance, then the lights come on. And they go, oh, now it makes sense. The Bible puts to words what I have felt and seen in my life. In 1 Corinthians 2, 12 and 14, Paul says,

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but of the spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. And then he says this, but a natural man does not accept the things of the spirit of God. Why? For they are foolishness to him. and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. They're spiritually appraised. That truth can be as pure as the driven snow, and the natural man cannot understand it. Why shouldn't I do what I want? Too often we spend our time thinking and talking about what's true with the lost, and we never get to the heart of the issue, which is, as I've said, That we're sinners who will stand before a righteous God and give an account for all that we've done. And we don't do that because we decide to. We do that because God made us. And every man and every woman and every child will stand before God and give an account, whether they want to or not. Some of them will run and hide like kids do these days, trying to get away from discipline. They run in the closet. They turn the light off and they close the door and they hide. And what do you do with that child? Mom? Or dad?

You go after them, don't you? And you go into the room and you open the closet and you flip the light on and you say, you come here. We have some business to take care of. And the kid goes, but I don't want to. And the parent goes, that's not up to you. And this is how God will deal with us at the last day. Even if we run, the scripture tells us that the wicked will cry out for the mountains and the hills to fall down on them. to hide them from the justice of God. They're going to do their level best to run away, and it will not work. These are the truths we have to get to. Until God awakens us or them believers to this reality, his truth just rolls off our backs like water off of a duck. It doesn't have any ability to soak in because they're spiritually dead. We spend too much time, I think, Trying to develop or cultivate a way of presenting the truth, the gospel, the need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ in a winsome way, in a desirable way, in a popular way, in a way where the wicked say, yeah, yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I'll come to church. We'll hear you again on this topic with kindness and patience and gentleness. It's our job and our first priority to see the lost be found and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

through repentance and faith. And so we speak foolishness to them unless God gets a hold of them and then the very wisdom of God to them. If perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been held captive to do his will. These are, Paul pulls back. You realize this is a man who's dying. Or about to die, I should say. He's not dying at a good old ripe age. He's dying under Nero for his faithfulness. Under Rome, he's about to die. And so he doesn't have the luxury of time. And he's under the thumb of those who fit this description perfectly. Those who are held captive by Satan to do his will. Being an unbeliever means that they are a slave of Satan.

in bondage, chained to his will, unable to be free from it in any way. Sometimes that's easier to see. Sometimes it's more hidden. I think with poor people, it's easier to see when a poor people is not a believer, poor person, because their sins are just kind of unable to be veiled or hidden or covered over or paid for. So there they are. They feel the consequences of their actions. because they can't afford to cover them up or make them go away. But the wealthy unbeliever is no less a slave of Satan. His bondage just isn't as apparent to us, but it's really no different. He is chained like the poor man and every other man to his lusts and sins without any hope of getting free of them. When you think or hear about the people that in our society we look up to, maybe they're in Hollywood, maybe they're sports athletes, How many of them are the kind of people that you would look up to morally and say, not I want to play basketball like them, but I want to be like them. I want to have their life. For all of their money and all of their circumstance, they're slaves of Satan. Slaves. Morally debauched. And no role model for Christians. Nothing to aspire to. How many of them?

end up on drugs? How many of them end up committing suicide? Slaves of Satan, captive to do his will, which is not only to destroy them, but to raise them up for the purpose of leading others to death. Slaves of Satan, whose only purpose is to wreak havoc and destruction and to find their eternal home in hell. What a terrible situation. What a terrible situation for them and for those that they lead, those that listen to them and aspire to be like them. Instead of fawning after them, we should grieve when we face these realities as we consider their end along with ours. And all the more so, we should grieve for them when we remember how merciful God was to us, lest we be just like them, except without the comforts of this world, in many cases.

You may look and say, well, at least they have a comfortable life in this world. And I say, yes, it is true that some of the wicked have a comfortable existence in this life. They have their treasures, their good things in this life. But there are many poor sinners who will go to hell. And where would we be without God's kindness to us? We have to be trained to think this way, to see things this way, to see souls. to see heaven, to see hell, to see Satan with his chains. And if you open your mouth, speak to those realities before you speak to our society's conflicts and sins and political agendas. You know how churches have unity? Most of the time, churches say their unity is around Jesus Christ, but it's not around Jesus Christ. It's around some other thing. It could be around The Constitution. It could be around a certain type of music. It could be around education. Some certain type of education. Whether that's we send our kids to be missionaries in the public schools or we homeschool our kids and we never let anyone else talk to them. Education. And you become the classical education school church. Or you become the home birth church. Or you become the second amendment church. Or you become the abortion church.

or the anti-abortion church. Do you know why those things are so appealing to churches? Why we fall into those? Why those things are attractive to us? It's because we don't think about people having souls. And we don't unite under the cross of Jesus Christ and go, you know what, you and I are very different, and we have very different sins. But the thing that actually binds us together is Jesus Christ. Instead, we forfeit that, we sacrifice that. Heaven and hell, your soul and mine, the souls of our kids are the lost. We put it in the closet and we say, here's the thing that we all rally around. Because we don't think about people and their souls. And we don't think about heaven and hell. And we're content to be comfortable with familiarity. And so we find something and we say, this is what's important to Christians. And it's what brings people. But it's not the cross. It has to be the cross. We don't need people to repent and become homeschool moms and dads.

That's not the chief end. That's not the goal, actually. I remember saying to a guy recently, a few months ago, I met him at Jimmy John's. He butted into a conversation I was having with someone else, kind of rudely, talking like he knew what he was talking about. And I ended up telling him, you know, I'm a pastor at church, you know, it's right around the corner. I was at this Jimmy John right over here. So anyway, I get together with the guy a few weeks, you know, a week later or whatever. He comes over and we talk. And he's a mess. He's kind of crazy. Life's kind of crazy.

Spends a lot of time dealing with drug addicts and the police and the utilities because they get turned off when you don't pay your bills, that kind of stuff. That's his life, right? And so he and I are talking and I say, you should come to church. We can sit and talk and we did for a while. But I said, you really ought to come to church. And I said, I just want you to know, you're going to come to church and you're going to look around at all the people here and you're not going to think you fit in. because there's not people who are coming down off of a bender, and there's not people who have tattoos all over their faces, and there's not people who smell because they haven't showered. We're all pretty clean and put together. And I just told them, I said, I just want you to know you're no different than we are. The only difference between you and me is that God's been kind to me for longer.

then he's been kind to you, and he's brought me to repentance in more areas than he has for you. So I want you to know, if you come to our church, I don't want you to look around and think, I'm not like these people. I want you to know, however hard they try to convince you otherwise, that they're sinners just like you, and they need Jesus just like you. So come to church. Now, he didn't come, right? You never met the guy. But that's what I said to him. And I wasn't saying that to him because I despise you or I think that you have to be ashamed of God's grace in your life. But I want you to have those kinds of conversations. Because how is the single mom supposed to come to a church where it's just expected that you'll be a homeschooling mom? But how is she supposed to pay her bills? Because she's had some sin in her life, and it has introduced very real realities in her life, meaning she doesn't have the options available to her that you have to you. Would she be welcome?

Or would she come and would there be just silence about the differences between her life and yours? There shouldn't be. Every one of us should be able to talk to a visitor that comes through the door or the person at the gas station or wherever you're at. And you should be able to speak about things you have in common with them, namely your sin and God's kindness. Whatever color your skin is, however much money you have, whatever your life circumstances are, we all share that. And we as Christians ought to think about these things and talk about these things as much as we're able. It puts all the other stuff in its proper place, which is not first in line. So what's the application of our sermon? Have you thought, have I told you what the application is yet? It's a joke. You all should be laughing. The whole sermon's been application, right? We've been three weeks leading to this point where I'm saying, please love the lost. Please speak to them and stop fighting.

Please, they have souls. For the Lord's sake, please think of them that way and speak to them that way and speak to one another that way. They're caught in the snare, Satan's snare. It's as if they're drunk. It says they'll come to their senses. Like all of the drunkenness of the world, all of the lies will finally come out of their system and they'll see clearly. Do you reason with drunk people? Have you ever tried? Do you know how stupid it is? I'll talk to you in the morning when you've sobered up. I'm not drunk. I remember before I was a Christian, they're crying and stumbling and I go, you're drunk and an idiot. And I'm not going to talk to you. I'm going to take you home and we'll talk later. That's what you do with a drunk person. You make them safe. You take them where they can't hurt themselves or anybody else. We'll put you to bed. That's love at that point.

And there's a correlation between what you would do with a drunk person who's out of their mind, not in touch with reality, a slave to their lusts and Satan, and say, I'm going to do what you need right now, and we're going to talk about these other things later. Can we love sinners that same way? Can we do it for more than two conversations before we're like, why aren't you a believer yet? How many times did you invite the same person to church? Do we do it once? Even once? And then they don't come. Or maybe, maybe worse, they do come. And then they don't come again. And then you're like, oh no, what do I do? What can be done? They came. They hate me. They think I'm crazy. What can be done? Are you still a sinner? They still a sinner? Do you have anything to say to them? Yes, you have plenty to say to them. Might you feel a little uncomfortable saying it? Only for a while. You get used to it.

And they'll get used to it. And you know what? They're not actually as opposed to you as you think they are. And if they are, they'll tell you, stop praying for me. But it's as likely that they came to church and no one spoke to them about their own sins and they went, man, I don't fit in there. You guys are, they think more highly of you than they should. And it would do good for you to come and speak to them and say, no, I'm sorry. It wasn't our tell the visitor about our sins Sunday, so. Come back again and we'll do better. We ought to love the lost, brothers and sisters. We ought to love them. It should be evident to them that we care about them and that we want good for them and that we can endure their slowness on the uptake because, after all, we're similar to them in that regard. So you should be thinking about your own life by now and thinking, who am I going to talk to?

You don't have to go find a stranger on the street. There's probably half a dozen people that you are going to interact with this week that you interacted with last week, and you could say something helpful to them, loving to them, and you should. You should. Let's pray.