The Beatitudes #1

So this morning, we're going to be starting our next sermon series. If you've been here a while, you know that our habit in our church generally is to preach through books of the Bible. And so I've preached through the Gospel of Luke. I think it took a little over five years. I've preached through 1 and 2 Timothy. And so we've been in sort of an interim phase these last couple of months between the end of 2 Timothy and our next. book of the Bible. And what I decided this time was not to preach through a whole book of the Bible, but rather to preach through the Sermon on the Mount. And that's found in Matthew's Gospel, chapters 5 through 7. And I chose this text for a couple of reasons. And it was interesting. I was thinking about this. I have been thinking about this for a few months now, about what I wanted to preach after 2 Timothy. And I was thinking, well, why do you want to preach on the Sermon on the Mount?

Then as I got closer to this morning and I started reading different commentators and stuff, one of the guys I read was Martin Lloyd-Jones. And in his introduction, he answers the exact same question, like, why the Sermon on the Mount? And it was really funny what he said, which was, I don't know that it's the pastor's job to explain to his people why he wants to preach. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. And then he proceeds to go on for 15 minutes about why. He chose to preach on it. And the primary reason, the first reason he gave, and it resonated with me, so I'll share it with you as well, was that he was increasingly convinced of the superficiality of the church. That that's what he believes the Holy Spirit, why the Holy Spirit had led him to preach on the Sermon on the Mount. And I thought, man, he's saying this back in the 40s and 50s. And if that was true then, how much more so today? That what we need is clear.

teaching from the Word of God, not things that are difficult, not things that require a lot of maturity and a lot of biblical wisdom and theological training to unpack and understand. What we need is very basic, practical instruction in what it means to live like a Christian, and that is what the Sermon on the Mount is. There are other places we could go in Scripture where the work of understanding what's said would be more work. But the Sermon on the Mount is intensely practical and direct. Jesus plainly teaches his people how to live both by word and example. The other reason I chose the Sermon on the Mount is I didn't grow up in the church. If I asked you guys, how many of you guys have heard a sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount? Oh good, not many of you had. But most of you, I guess, who've grown up in the church have heard this is not an uncommon thing for people to preach on.

It's the longest discourse sermon that we have recorded in Scripture from Jesus. We have bits and pieces. Well, he went here and he said this thing. And we know it's not the whole story, but we got this parable or this set of parables. But here we've got this long extended discourse with his disciples. And so I thought, I want to teach on something that the people have heard before. Not because I want something easy and I think, oh, I can just coast for... the duration of the Sermon on the Mount because I really just have to tell them the purposes of salt and that they shouldn't worry and God will provide and be nice to each other and don't be judgmental and, you know, murder and adultery are bad. These are all topics that the Sermon on the Mount addresses. The reason I chose this is because as I've ministered and as I've watched the church, I've observed that a lot of what gets said in churches is...

There's truth in it. And the failure is not that lies are just being spewed out week after week after week. There's lots of true things that get said. The danger is, though, and the failure, as I've seen it, is in the things that are left unsaid. That we would walk through the Sermon on the Mount and never, ever be convinced that we were the ones that were being talked to, or corrected, or that we would never get frustrated. I don't know how many of you this is true of, but I hope as you go on, if this hasn't happened already, it will begin to happen and more frequently that as you read Scripture, you will get frustrated sometimes. And you think, you want me to get mad at what God says? And I say, no, I don't want you to rebel against what God says, but I want you to read in such a way that your heart's engaged and you see the authority of what's being said and you say, I don't like that. He's telling me no. And his thoughts,

And his words are not my thoughts. In my words, his are higher than mine, which means I have to change. That's the kind of thing that might frustrate you. I don't know how not to worry. I don't know how not to be angry. I don't know how not to lust. I don't know how not to lie. All of Scripture is profitable to us. And I think the most benefits that we derive from the Scripture is when we read it with our hearts engaged. And it's not just... The pastor's got this thing to say because he's supposed to have things to say. Or God had this thing to say because that was his prerogative to say it. But that we would come to see that what God has said has authority, supreme authority in our lives. And our impressions of it and our agreement with it has no bearing on it. The reason Martin Lloyd-Jones said that there was a growing sentiment of superficiality in the church was because

The authority of Scripture was gone from the people. They might read it. They might read the Bible, but if they did, they read it in a way that was a checking of the box. I did my Bible reading today. I did my prayer today. But that they didn't consider what was being said. They didn't meditate on what it meant for their lives, that they needed to change. And so one of the things that I hope to be able to do over the next... several months as we preach through this section of Scripture, is that it would cause change in you and me. Because if my goal is not to change you, then you should fire me. My goal is to change you or to be used by God to change you. I want you to be improved for your time here. And if I don't do that, then I shouldn't be your pastor. And if you're not willing to have that done, then why are you here?

I want to see us return to and cultivating always in our hearts the authority of God's word. And so I've chose the Sermon on the Mount because it's not hard to understand and there's not a whole lot of arguing about what Jesus had to say in this sermon. He deals with our lives, our daily lives, and how to honor God as we live them out as Christians. And so my hope as we study the Sermon on the Mount is that from time to time you'll say, you know, I've heard sermons on the Mount before, but God never showed me that part of it. I never was frustrated when Jesus said this. You remember when Jesus taught on marriage? And he's talking about divorce and how it's no good and it ought not to be done. And what do the people say at the end of it? Well, then, this is a hard teaching. I don't think anybody should get married. They were engaged.

That's the sort of engagement or interaction with or frustration that wanting to serve God produces in us. It's not where we stop, but it is where we start. And so I do hope that God will use our time and me to show you the things in the Sermon on the Mount that maybe you haven't seen or heard or thought about before. This morning we're going to be focusing on just verses 1 and 2. And in these verses, Jesus withdraws from the crowd and he preaches this sermon to his disciples. And right after that becomes the Beatitudes. We'll start into the Beatitudes next week. But these first two verses are just the setup. And so my hope this morning, I'll tell you, here's what I want you to learn, here's what I want you to do, so you're thinking about it as I'm talking about it. What I want you to come away with is that you will be like the disciples and not like the crowds. That you'll follow Jesus and you'll pay attention to his words rather than simply gathering for some sort of an experience.

which is the difference between the crowds and the disciples. Our text this morning, and we'll be reading this until we're done with the Beatitudes, is Matthew 5, verses 1 through 12. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the peaceful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now this sermon comes at the beginning of Jesus' life and ministry. If we were to go through Matthew's account of it, you have... the genealogy in Matthew 1, and you have Jesus' birth and his upbringing. And then at the beginning of chapter 4, after his baptism, John baptizes him at the end of chapter 3. In the beginning of chapter 4, Jesus goes away into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And then he comes out. And when he comes out of the wilderness, what he does is he goes into the cities.

surrounding Jerusalem, and he starts teaching in the synagogues, and he starts performing miracles, okay? So he's teaching the Jews, and he's performing miracles. And he goes on and he goes on and he goes on. Then at the end of that, that is what comes right before him retiring up to the mountain. So he's been out and he's been performing miracles. I want to read to you the very end of chapter 4 just so we can get context here. This is Matthew 4, 23-25. He says, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them. Large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. And so Jesus began his ministry teaching the Jews in the synagogues and healing. And what we're told here at the end of Matthew 4 is that the healing, the news of healing started to spread.

And given the list of the places it went to, it started to spread quite a ways. And people were healing. There's a man who's healing everybody. And so their response was much like yours or mine would be, which is, I'm going to go see him. If you had a chronic illness or some problem and you heard there's a doctor who's really actually healing people, and the lame are walking and the blind are seeing, and the mute are talking and the demon-possessed are being freed, you'd say, I'm going to see him. And so that's what's going on. He's teaching the Jews, and people from Greek cities in the surrounding areas are coming. So he's getting this huge crowd of people who are coming to be healed. And the text teaches us that he healed all of them. They brought to him every kind of sickness that could be found, and he healed them all. And so these crowds were following. And they were being healed, and we can presume that as they were being healed, they were going back home.

And so I want you to know from the very beginning who was in this crowd. Why were they there? They were not just Jews, but Gentiles, pagans, unbelievers, Romans, Greeks, whatever it is you want to call them. And they were coming to get healed. And then they're going back home. And so they're coming and they're going. And the crowd's growing. And they're getting healed. And they're going back and they're telling, this is what he did. Look, here I am. Here he is. And so it was Jesus healing ministry, the miracles that he was performing that were gathering the crowds. It's worthwhile for us to note that while he was healing these crowds, he was not teaching these crowds. He was performing miracles. And the people didn't come to hear him teach. They came to be healed. They followed him around saying, fix what's wrong with me. Now, am I saying that the crowds were wrong to come and seek healing? Not a bit. As I said already, if you had something wrong with you,

You would go look for healing. We all do it. There's no problem there. But my point is to draw a distinction and say to come for healing is not the same as to come for teaching. Jesus would not have healed the crowds if he hadn't wanted to. The point of this was to inaugurate his teaching ministry. And that's why we see these miraculous sign gifts. In the scripture, I don't want to spend a long, long time talking about sign gifts and these types of things, miraculous healings. But for a moment, I want you to see the pattern here. Jesus' life and ministry, his teaching is beginning. And it was God's will to perform miracles, to gather people and to interest them in what was going on there. But the gifts were preparatory. They were meant to gather the people and to get them interested in what in the world is going on here. The gifts were not the whole point, but they were meant to confirm in the people's minds, this guy's different.

And not different simply in his ability to heal, but to prepare the people to hear what he had to say to receive his teaching. And this is the pattern that we see throughout Scripture, is that when the gospel is going into a land of previously unreached people, you see sign gifts going with them. You see healing. You see miracles. You see this kind of stuff. So that the people, the hearers, say, oh, tell me more. But once the word is established, you see these sign gifts diminish. You see them go away. And so in Matthew 5, at the beginning, it says, when Jesus saw the crowds, you can presume he's been healing. We're not told for how long, but he's been healing long enough for people to travel a day's journey or more to get to him, to find him. So he's been healing for a long time. And then it says in verse 1, when he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain.

And after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And so you get the impression that Jesus was done healing and that it was changing now. What his work was moving, it was shifting. And so he retires from the crowds. He leaves the crowds. And then we're told that after he goes up and he sat down, that his disciples came to him. And the disciples are not the crowds. And the primary difference is, what were these people here for? The crowds were there for healing. The disciples were there for instruction. This was not a bait and switch. Jesus wasn't, you know, employing some sales tactic, but rather it was a demonstration of power to attract the people to the teaching that was to follow. I think there's often an overemphasis on the attracting, the gathering of people. We say, we have succeeded because we have gathered. But I tell you, Our church isn't, you know, it's not less than 500 people because we scratch our heads as elders and think, man, we don't know how to get people to come to church. That's not actually the problem. If you'll hear it, gathering a group of people is not actually hard. All you have to do is figure out what their felt needs are and meet their needs. They'll come. They will come in droves. That was the whole...

explanation of Bill Hybels and the megachurch movement. They went out and they knocked on the unbelievers' doors and said, what will it take to get you to come to church? And they said, make it not like church. And they said, sure. We will entertain you. We'll watch your kids. We'll have good coffee. And the people came. What they didn't receive when they came, though, was teaching. What they received was an experience. And that was the crowds, as opposed to the disciples. And so when Jesus went up on the mountain, Not everyone followed. In fact, most of the people didn't follow. I think it would be appropriate for us to assume that the original hearers of the Sermon on the Mount was a very small group of people. His 12 disciples and a few more perhaps. Very similar to the Great Commission that we just read this morning in the Scripture lesson. Who received the Great Commission? Eleven men. First.

And they were commissioned with the work of going and building and baptizing and teaching. And so the message was to be carried through them to the nations. And the same thing is going on here with the Sermon on the Mount. You have largely the same group of people coming to receive this teaching, to hear this teaching. This was not for the crowds, but for the few. And they were to take that out. And so it was an intimate gathering of those who wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. Could you imagine being in the crowds? watching the healings and stuff, and then you see Jesus going away. Nothing is recorded about what he said or how he left. It just says when he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and only a few people went with him. We know there were crowds, we know Jesus left, and we know most of the crowds dispersed. He's not healing people anymore. I guess we'll go home. And so you remember, before we read the scripture, I said, I hope that we will become like the disciples, those who follow for the teaching.

not just the miracles and the experience. The end goal of Jesus' ministry here in this section was not to gather crowds, but to teach his disciples. Gathering people, as I said, is not difficult. You just have to know a little bit about them, and you'll gather the type of people that you want. What would it take for us to gather sexual minorities? Do we really have to scratch our head and figure out, like, I wonder what it would do to fill our church with people? with gender dysphoria and lesbians and homosexuals and transgenders. Are you unaware of what it would take to gather a group of them? No. We're all sitting here like, well, you'd have to put a rainbow flag out front, and you'd have to say that you're affirming, and you'd have to start being bodacious and causing some sort of ripple in the society, and they'll come. Is it hard to gather ethnic minorities? Figure out what they want. Figure out what they need.

offer it to them. We can get all of, we've demonstrated, you realize we've demonstrated our knowledge of this in really simple things like an Easter egg hunt and a trunk or treat. Hundreds of people come to those. Did we just happen upon a vein of gold that we didn't know was there? No, we went, people want to have some fun. We'll offer them some fun and some candy. And all of a sudden, all of our neighbors come to the building. Hundreds of them. They come because we have Snickers and Twix and a bounce house. You realize it's not hard to do. And what I've told our outreach committee and told you guys in the past is the goal is not the gathering of people. Getting people to come is not hard. Getting people to desire the teaching, that's something God has to do. That's not something I can do or you can just do. Here's the script and they'll fall in line. The disciples recognized that they needed to be taught and they needed to be instructed in the faith.

They, we, need the same thing. We need to hear and believe. We need to repent and we need to trust. The disciples had an interest in what Jesus had to say and that's why they followed him up the mountain. And so being a Christian requires something more than an experience, a Christian experience, a certain type of worship, a certain set of feelings being cultivated and shown to us. something more than an affirmation of who you are and what you are or what you're like or what you think. To be a Christian, to follow Jesus up onto the mountain, requires that our minds as well as our hearts be engaged and paying attention to what's going on. Now, you and I are different, and you yourselves are different. Some of you are men, some of you are women, some of you are married, some of you are single, some of you are feelings-oriented, and some of you are logic-oriented.

Some of you think, I don't know if I would have followed him up the mountain or not. Some of you think, there's no doubt I would have followed him up the mountain. I wouldn't have had any interest in all those. I wanted the teaching. So some of us have minds that leave our hearts behind, thinking that Christianity is an intellectual pursuit that's devoid of emotion and experience. It's really just a big bunch of stuff to think about and know. Other of us would prefer an experience, a feeling, an affirmation. I remember when I first started going to church up in Chicago. I went to church with a friend that I worked with. They were like, I'm like, hey, I need to go to church. You should come to my church. And I went. I remember writing a letter one time. And in the letters, I said, I don't know what it is, but I just feel so good when I leave here. And that was in the first few weeks of going to the church. What I realized as I went on was that there were sins in my life.

that that church never dealt with and never touched, and it wasn't because they didn't know what they were. Their goal was to make me feel exactly how I felt, which was, these people are really nice, and I really like being here. I just feel welcome and affirmed. I think it's easy for us to recognize that and to despise it. Many of us, I think, especially in the Reformed tradition, look at that and we say, foolishness, immaturity, second rate. What we need is our minds. And what we need is theology. What we need is intellectual debate and stimulation. So the question is, which one are you? So I was thinking about that, and I'm thinking about myself. It would be interesting if you asked my wife which one I was. I'm not sure what she'd say. I think what she would say is the older you get, the more interested in logic and...

arguing and that kind of stuff. I think the older you get and the longer you're a pastor, the more you're inclined toward that stuff. Which is to say that earlier on I was more emotional or more experiential. There's good in both. But as I was thinking about it, I thought, you know, those of you who think that you would go up the mountain with Jesus and you would sit there eagerly, I mean, until you fell asleep and fell out the window like when Paul was teaching. That's just how committed you are. I can't help but think that even the most disembodied brains seek out churches that stroke their egos and make them feel superior to those who aren't so theologically astute. That there is an emotional experience that even they want, which is to be told, you're better than them, but not so directly. Yes, it would have to be more sophisticated to be effective. We are intelligent. So here's a question for you who are theological.

Who think, I would go up the mountain with Jesus. I wouldn't be so godless as to just come for the miracles. Here's my question. When was the last time you read something that exposed your foolish cold heart to you in a way that made you sad or convicted or grieved or kept you from sleeping at night? When did you read something that made you cry or that gave you joy? I tend to find that many men who read theology for a living are not the happiest people I've ever met. And it turns out they're not the most pleasant people to be around. They lack social skills. They lack the milk of human compassion. Their bedside manner is poor. Their marriages are strained. And their children are disengaged. So if you think I would have gone up the mountain with Jesus, just like those disciples, I'm one of his disciples. I'd be right there. I'd say to you, You need a heart. You need a heart. And you need to love Jesus with your heart and not your head. Eric sent me a quote this last week from John Frame. He's a professor, theologian. And so he teaches seminary students, and I don't remember the whole thing, but the main gist of it was, as he said, there's a real danger to seminarians that they spend so much time reading the Bible as a textbook and that their hearts are not engaged. They spend years intensively reading and studying.

And what most men will tell you is that their time in seminary is one of the driest times they've ever experienced in their life spiritually. Because they had no heart for what they were reading. They had no desire to be changed by it and to see the love of God in what they read. It was just a textbook, a compilation of knowledge that they had to get into their head. So there's a real question of whether or not we would have followed Jesus up the mountain. If you're wondering whether you would have followed him up the mountain, my question to you, one way you could figure that out is, Do you go to him now for his teaching? Do you attend to the things that God says in his word? Do you read your Bibles is what I'm asking. Do you pay attention to it or do you thread the words through your eyes or through your ears because you're listening to it instead of reading it? If you read in the morning, could you tell your family in the evening what you read and what you thought about it all day? If not,

then you have similar struggles to your pastor, and you have need of growth, just like me. Because when we do those things, we are not those who are following Jesus up the mountain to sit and to receive his teaching. And it's not for lack of time. We have time. You and I, we have a lot of time. We don't sleep as much as we should. Hardly any of you probably sleep more than eight hours a day, if I had to guess. I know you don't. and I know all of you mothers with young children don't, the amount of time that we spend and squander without following Jesus up the mountain and giving our attention, our mind when it's hitting on all cylinders to his word, which one of us could say, we don't have tons of room to grow? Which one of us can say, I have no doubts about what I would have done? I think many of us.

would have been like those who persecuted Jesus and said, show us a sign. Show us a sign. Show us a sign. Do you not think that someone in the crowd said, aren't you going to heal me so I can go home? And if they perceived that the answer was no, that they wouldn't have just turned around and left. Whatever the particular, you know, configuration of your temptations are, you have to see that the gospel that Jesus is preaching and teaching in this sermon is aimed at engaging both your heart and your mind. And your heart will not be engaged if your mind is not. God's given us a book to read, to study, and it's his chosen medium to communicate all that we need to know to be saved. He chose to give it to us in words, which means that we need to engage with those words. We need to understand those words.

We need to believe those words. We need to submit to those words. We need to speak those words. So as I said in my introduction, what does the Sermon on the Mount address? What's it about? It's not a long theological treatise. We have epistles. We have prophets that give us extended explanations or teachings on theology. But that's not what the Sermon on the Mount is. It is meant, it is aimed right at how we live. We're about to enter into, and I think probably the most neglected part of the Sermon on the Mount are the Beatitudes. Because that talks about life being hard. And our pursuit of happiness or blessing. The King James would say, you know, happier those. Instead of blessed are those, happier those, happier those. Content.

are those. And it talks about all the hard circumstances in which you receive God's blessing. When you're persecuted, when you mourn, when you suffer, when people lie about you. He said it's in those circumstances that you'll be blessed. And I think many of us say, no, no, I don't want those circumstances. I want blessing apart from those. And so Jesus starts with them and says, these are the places where you'll find me and my hand of blessing in your life. As you weep and as you mourn and as you suffer and as you struggle, blessed are you. Then he moves on to talking about the law of God, people adding to and taking away from the word. He talks about murder and divorce, fear and worry, prayer, money, humility, what it means to follow after God and actually be one of his disciples. He warns against judging other people. He talks about forgiveness. These are the things, these are the meat and potatoes of our lives. And many times what we need is simply to be told, this is how Christians live because God saved them.

This is how Christians should think about this. Over and against their own feelings or desires or inclinations or circumstances, this is what God has said and done. You have heard that it was said, but I say to you as a refrain when Jesus is dealing with their abuse of the law and their hardness of heart. The Sermon on the Mount is an extended treatment, the longest in all of Scripture, from our Lord on how to live for the glory of God. And so you should expect that at some point it's going to rub you the wrong way. That at some point when he's talking about divorce, you might actually say, I was told not to ever say that, and you know what? I've thought about it, and I've wanted it. Or when he talks about lust, and you say, yeah, I did that. And I don't like you pointing it out that it was sin. Or when he says murder's not something that's out there, it's something you did this past week. It's not a checklist of tasks or a theoretical exercise in logic. It's a thorough teaching that's meant to engage both our hearts and our minds.

And so here's the question to you. Will you follow Jesus and pay attention to his teaching? If I was asked, I didn't ask, have you or did you, but will you? My presumption is that none of us can sit here with a clean conscience and say, I've done all that I could and all that I should in my following of Jesus. We all have rooms to grow. We all have sins. I'm not asking, will you come to church every Sunday and listen? Though that is a part of it. As you listen to this sermon and you think about it, its application to your life, you should be thinking, why don't I follow Jesus? What better things, what has consumed my heart and my time and my mind that's kept me from sitting at his feet and listening to what he has to say? This is a question not for your mind, but for your will. Do you expect to be convicted of your own sins by an extended discourse from Jesus?

Do you expect to have your ego stroked because you already knew everything? Maybe you'll come to me in a few weeks or a few months and you'll say, good sermon. I already heard all that. Thank you for confirming that I was right. Is that what you expect? Is that what you're cultivating in your heart? I don't have to work hard because I know the Sermon on the Mount. I heard all that before. Do you expect God to use his word to change you? That's what the disciples came to Jesus expecting and needing. So how about you and me? Here's what I intend to do this week. And I think you should do it as well. That you should commit to reading the Sermon on the Mount, three chapters of Scripture, from beginning to end, five times. That's what I think you should do. That's one small practical thing you can do to be breaking up the soil in your heart so that the seed and the water can get down into it and grow.

Okay? You can look. I've told you we're going to be in verses 1 through 12, the Beatitudes, I would guess for at least a month or two. My hope is that you and I, through this work, will kind of almost maybe have it memorized by then. There's a reason I read long chunks of Scripture and preach them like their sermon series. It's so that for the whole time I'm preaching on that passage, you have to hear week after week the whole passage in its context. I could have just read verses 1 and 2 today. Or I could leave verses 1 and 2 off next week. But I want you guys actually to get God's Word into you. And so in our services, we have a lot of Scripture, and I choose my sermon text intentionally. I'm not going to come to verses 10 to 12 for probably a month or two. So you're going to hear it six to eight times here. I'd like for you to hear it many more times at home. And what you'll realize is if you start to, if you say, okay, I'll do that.

You'll start out quick, like a sprinter in a marathon, and then you'll go, I read it already. I know what it says. This is the inclination. This is what happens to all of us. This is Satan's temptation. I've read that before. I know. Okay, I know. Read it. Is it too much to ask? Read it. Pay attention to it. Read it out loud. It will help you. Read it to your family. That's what I'm intending to do. for my own sake, because I've been convicted that I've not followed Jesus up the mountain like I ought. That's one thing I'm going to do. I want you to join me in it. The bar is not too high. If that bar is too high or you think, shame on you and woe to you, because that's what the crowds did. They left and went home, not justified, still in their sins. And I don't want that to be the case for you or for me. Let's pray.