Gateway Church Sermons
Ashley Road Site | 30th June 2024 | Richard Stamp | Impurity and worldliness
felt the need to preach one hand, we are sinners who live in a world affected by sin. We have every one of us in one way or another, and at many times in our behaviors or our attitudes walked away from God, denied God, lived outside of the helpful parameters for godly living that he's put in place, and that's the nature of sin, and this has damaged us. In fact, the word the Bible uses for sin in the Old Testament, it's Qatar, it's a Hebrew word, in a New Testament, it's a Greek word called hamartia, but in both cases it more or less means to miss the mark. I find that quite helpful actually, if God and all that God is, is the bull's eye, if you like, for us to aim at in how we live. Every time we live in a way that misses the mark, we've sinned, we've missed God's best for us, we've missed his plan for us, and the Bible also talks about this word sin interchangeably with other words like trespass or transgression, and all of these words speak of living or straying outside of defined and godly parameters. To sin is to miss the bull's eye that is God, or to stray outside of the safe boundaries that he's given us for our well-being, to trespass, if you like, trespass outside of those parameters, and our world is a world of sin all around us. You don't have to look very far, you'll see it right outside this building, there are situations and circumstances and attitudes and behaviours that we have trespassed, missed the mark, if you like, of God's best for humanity. When you're walking home today or walking to your car after the service, have a quick look around, observe it for yourself, it's on billboards, it's on what's being sold in shops, it's online, it's in how people behave or relate to one another, but it's everywhere, we live in a world of suburban sins, it's the water that we swim in, and it's important for us to notice this and have our eyes open to it, because the other dynamic at play in human experience is the wonderful reality of God's grace to us. Now grace is a, it's the central concept really at the heart of Christianity, I honestly believe that if we had a rich and clear understanding of grace, it would change everything about us and it would transform the world, and God's grace is eternal and it flows and it's ongoing, I've been a Christian for 30 odd years, even last week I just had a fresh revelation of his grace, he taught me something new about his grace, he wants to communicate grace to you this morning, because grace says it doesn't matter who you are, or what you've done, or frankly what you'll ever do, because Jesus loves you and has been to the cross for you and given up his life for you and dealt with sin by removing it from you, now for any person, any person who says yes to him, who holds to him, who places their faith in him, sin has absolutely no bearing on your ability to be saved, you have a completely blank slate before God, in fact when God looks at you now, if you're a Christian, when he looks at me, he doesn't see the mess and the stench of my own sin, my errors, my multiple trespasses, the number of times I've missed the mark, he only sees the perfect radiant rightness of Jesus, it's amazing, it's there like a lens, like a protective shield over us, so the Father doesn't see our sin, he only sees that we have been made beautifully clean because of Jesus and the cross, it's the best news, that's how you and I get to be in relationship with a perfectly holy God, it's because we approach him on the ground that we are now seen as spotless and sinless ourselves because of the cross, grace is amazing, quite literally, it's a stunning promise over God's people and this is important because rightly understood in a world affected by sin, in a world that has drifted away from God, in a world where we're all affected by sin, all of us in one way or another broken or wounded or tempted or angry or anxious or boastful or depressed, grace offers us an alternative to all of that stuff, it says that there is a better way, it's to be in relationship with God and to live for him inside the healthy and safe parameters of his making, grace says you don't have to live outside in the wild and you don't need to carry your wounds and you don't need to spend your whole life hunting down peace and joy because all you need and all you'll ever need is to be found in God and grace says you don't have to be a particular type of person to receive this gift because Jesus has done it all for you on the cross, anyone, kings, street sweepers, anyone in between can now come and find their home and their place and their rest in God and every single thing you've ever done is forgiven and every single thing that's ever been done to you can be healed in God, it's the greatest gift, Jesus' death on the cross for you and I is the greatest gift, Jesus is the greatest gift, that's not just a bumper stick statement, it's not just an election campaign slogan, that's the fundamental reality that underpins our faith and it's completely free for you to receive today, receive his grace to you this morning. We live in a world of suburban sins, things that miss the mark for us, that distance us from God and shrivel up our hearts and wound us but mercifully we live in a world of cosmic grace that provides a way out for all of us and that offers a beautiful alternative away from the pain and the separation that invariably accompanies sin. So consequently we've chosen this as the background verse to the series, it's 1 John 2 verse 15 to 17 in light of everything I've said so far, here is its simple instruction, John says do not love the world or anything in the world, if anyone loves the world love for the father is not in them, for everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life comes not from the father but from the world, the world and its desires pass away but whoever does the will of God lives forever. In other words, don't just blindly follow what looks good to you, this is what happened originally in the garden when sin entered the world, Eve saw that the fruit looked good and she followed what she saw and thought to be good rather than having faith and trust in everything God had said and humanity fell and that has been the anatomy of sin ever since following eyes rather than following God's world, the world affected by sin offers cheap thrills and fading power, they come and they go and none of these things are a substitute for the eternal riches of relationship with God and eternal life with him because the claim that Christianity makes is that all we ever need and all we're searching for in the world can only ever ultimately and fully be satisfied in relationship with God. I was on a train last week to Twickenham to watch my rugby team play and on the same train there were people going to watch Taylor Swift and the Foo Fighters and Royal Ascot and it was chaotic but it was so much fun, people were shouting and screaming and singing and debating on the train and it was a really wonderful day out but it made me think that in us is this inner compulsion to worship something, to shout for something, to lift our hands for something and that's because God's put it there, we're born to worship, we're doxological creatures, we're born to worship God and it expresses itself in all sorts of ways. On Saturday it was expressing itself like that and that's fine, those are good fun things to do. The problem of course comes when we make those things ultimate, when we place them on our hearts and put them in a place where only God should sit. I say this so often but all of our pain and woundedness ultimately comes from our separation from God and the effect of sin in the world and that all we're searching for, that inner ache is ultimately a search for God because we're made for God and it's actually in this tension that we see the lure of suburban sin in light of cosmic grace and it is of where we go, it is in our adverts, it's in our shop windows, it's in how we dress and where we go and what we spend our money and our time on, it's where what we look at, it's in our attitudes towards money and sex and power, it's in the things that we say and the things that we sell and the things that we do, it's literally the cultural water that we swim in, it invites you to spend more money than you want to, to express yourself in ways that are contradictory to God's plan for you to miss the mark, to sleep around as much as you want, all of these things are aimed at satisfying the inner need that God has put in you for recognition and significance and love but all of these things are ultimately only ever found in God and that's the point of his grace and kindness to you that in spite of who you are, you can be known deeply and truly known and accepted and loved and given dignity and significance in relationship with God, that's his grace. Now truthfully, I don't much enjoy preaching about sin, I'd father much rather spend lots of time talking about the goodness of God and his glory and majesty and mercy and helping people to live for him in the same way, I don't much enjoy talking to my teenage girls about the dangers out there in the world and who to avoid but that's actually an important part of parenting, likewise for me to stand here today and highlight the sinful world that we live in and the way the human heart works is I consider an important pastoral responsibility and so let me be that person this morning and perhaps you can extend some grace to me, let me try and care for you and help you by painting a picture of the suburban sins that we so often miss and how they infiltrate our lives, how they crack the door open and find a way in and how they shape our hearts so that we might take a stand against them and instead find all the peace and the joy that we need in the grace that is freely offered to us by King Jesus. One of the important starting points for us to be aware of is the relativization of sin, what I mean by that is that as culture and standards and social norms have shifted over time we have increasingly lost a clear and absolute sense of what is right and what is wrong. The norms of our society have shifted so dramatically in the past few decades that once what was seen to be very clearly harmful or wrong has become so commonplace now that even to stand here and speak out against it feels a little bit weird. Here's an example, there are numerous and countless studies, you'll probably have read some of these yourselves done on the devastating effect of pornography. Now let me start by saying that pornography is addictive and it's harmful and we don't want either of those things for you, Jesus doesn't want either of those things for you and the statistical reality is that this is one of those issues that so many people struggle with. There's possibly even people here in this room, men and women are likely to struggle with this. So let me just start by saying we do not do shame here at Gateway, we are not a community of shame, we're a community of grace. Sin is real, all of us are affected and that's why all of us need a saviour, thank you Jesus. So if this or anything I speak about this morning is an issue for you, we would love to pray for you this morning, we'd love to see you set free of addiction or pain. Just come and speak to one of us elders or our wives or the deacons, it would be a pleasure to walk this out with you and to help you to find freedom. Now pornography, apart from being laced with all sorts of sinful heart attitudes towards your fellow human, is also scientifically proven to be dangerous to your brain function, to your relationships, to your marriage if you're married and to all sorts of other breakdowns in society, I'm not exaggerating, this stuff is well studied and well documented and pornography is so often tied up with all sorts of other exploitation as well, human trafficking, financial abuse. At best it can be said to be exploitative of another person in need because it just views them as a product and it uses them and it chucks them away and so often the object of pornography is someone who just doesn't want to be there but is having to do it for the money or through some other economic or social injustice or imbalance in the world. It is quite literally the opposite of what God created us for. It misses the mark in every single way because what we're made for is meaningful, caring, committed relationship to love and to care for one another, to prefer one another over ourselves, to honor one another, to see one another as God sees us, a precious son or daughter made in the image of a holy God and highly prized. Pornography just demeans and dehumanizes people and it messes up your brain chemistry and your relationships and your attitudes towards sex which by the way is itself a grace gift from God to us. Pornography literally misses the mark in every way for what God would want for us. And I'm using this example because I think it's a good one to highlight the relativizing, the downgrading of sin in our culture. Pornography is not the only issue that's been relativized. It's the same with cinema, it's what we do with our money, it's an advertising standard and how we dress and how we view ourselves and identify ourselves as how we feel about our fellow man. But here's the reality. Once upon a time if you wanted to access pornography let's just go back 20 years or so. You'd have to go through the indignity of going into a shop and locating a magazine which would probably be very tame by today's standards and you'd have to find it up on a high shelf in a concealed bag and take it to the till and others might be observing you and you'd have to pay another human being face to face for it with cash. It was not an easy process, it was a highly secretive and possibly quite shameful process, certainly not the kind of thing that you might want to advertise about yourself on social media. My 14 year old tells me that the boys in her class now routinely get together at break times to view porn together on their phones and it's routine for people to send nude pictures of themselves around the school. It's everywhere, it's on their phones, it's in their pockets all day long. It's on our phones in our pockets all day long. That happened in one generation. What's the trajectory for us? It's not a secret thing anymore. In the UK it's thought there are over 16 million online searches for porn per month. That's a whole lot of people and that's a whole lot of exploitation and abuse and financial misery and frankly a big fat failure to miss the mark for God. It is almost the personification of suburban sin, which is why I've used that example this morning. This is not a comfortable thing for me to be talking about but I think it makes the point really clearly and it should do for us. My point, apart from the stuff being highly damaging to our whole culture, is that it's just become commonplace. It's not even seen to be in the same camp as sin anymore. It's just normal human behaviour. It's relativised and so is every other type of suburban sin. How we look, what we say, how we feel, who we sleep with, who we step on to get to the top, what we do to one another, it's the story of downgrading and relativising sin. In a world where we have free access to all the grace and mercy and fullness of God, all the riches of a banquet that he lays before us and invites us to, we seem to be constantly drawn to eating the sewage of the world and it's on us in this cultural moment to have our eyes open to it and not just to sleep walk into it and preside over the destruction of our lives and our kids and the destruction of our culture. God has way more for us than that gateway. We need to wake up and see this and draw some lines around what we're going to engage with and what we're going to flee from in order to live for God, stay fixed on him and hit the bull's eye. This issue is actually at the heart of the wrath of God, which again is an uncomfortable thing to talk about. God is angry against sin because it damages the children he loves and it's damaged the world he's created. Romans 1 gives us an insight to God's wrath against sin. If you want to have a bad day, go and read Romans 1. God hates sin and what he expresses his displeasure over is like this. Romans 1 describes a culture like hells which has exchanged the truth of God for a lie because when we get these categories wrong, truth and untruth, when we relativize sin and make it kind of maybe okay and maybe not by normalizing it, then what we're left with are no absolutes for determining what is truth and what is a lie and so it becomes easy to confuse and exchange those two things. It's one of the signs of the end of the age that Jesus talks about in the very next clause in that sentence. The consequences of this, Romans 1.25, as a result they worship and serve created things rather than the creator. In a world of relative truth and relative sin, truth and lie get confused and the result is that we worship the wrong things, we pursue the wrong things, we become idolaters. Good and bad get confused and blurry, we lose clarity for what's good and right. Relativizing sin, not having clarity about the danger of sin or the gift of grace means that we exchange the truth of God for a lie. We swap amazing grace for cheap and nasty suburban sin. Right becomes wrong, wrong becomes right to be exchanged. The goodness of God for a lie that you don't need him and that you can find it in all the pleasures and the lures of the world. In this sort of situation, just a few verses on in Romans, we get this pretty bleak commentary on humanity. They do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness and evil and greed and depravity. They are full of envy and murder and strife and deceit and malice. Happy Valentine's Day. This is why Jesus had to go to the cross to deal with sin, to remove it from us because sin, missing the mark, missing God's best for us is literally the greatest problem we face. So grace to us, the free gift of grace is accepting and receiving today that Jesus has dealt with that. He has removed your sin from you, that we are seen as clean and acceptable and lovely by God and that you do not need to live ensnared like a slave by the temptations and the promises of this world, by the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, as John says in his letter, "God has more for you. You don't have to go searching for all the damaging things that this world tells you you need. You don't need to go searching to find acceptance or love by sleeping around. Jesus offers you a deeper and richer acceptance than any fleeting worldly experience. You don't need to go and find escape in a bottle. Jesus offers you healing and patience and understanding. You don't have to amass loads of money and stuff to find security. Jesus offers you safety in him. Eternal safety. You don't have to be. You don't need to be addicted to pornography or drugs or alcohol or to buying stuff that fills that emptiness inside. You don't need to be addicted to anything that harms you. These things are completely understandable. We are broken people affected by sin, but Jesus offers complete satisfaction of soul. If you find yourself in this place this morning, there is help here amongst us. We would love to pray for you if this is your story. Let us help you to re-vector your heart's orientation away from the cheap sins of the world towards the free gift of freedom and love and peace and acceptance and significance and dignity in him. We would love to help you with that. So the question, of course, is how? How on earth in a world saturated with all sorts of sinful, harmful things so cheaply available are we to live? And especially in this age of relativization. How are we supposed to live out the Christian faith when the boundaries between right and wrong are so blurry and sin is so normalized in a world that has exchanged the truth of God for a lie? Let me read you another couple of verses from Romans, the time from Romans 13. This is Paul writing in the first century into the Roman Empire, a not too dissimilar culture to our own, a culture where the fittest survive and the weakest are used for our enjoyment, a culture, a wash with cheap sin and cheap thrills to get them through the daily grind. Surrounded by all of this, Paul writes to this small, fledgling Christian community in Rome, and I think it's very helpful for us to consider what he says. Romans 13, verse 11 to 14, he says, "Do this understanding the present time. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." Thank you, Lord. "The night is nearly over. The day is almost here, so let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. Summary, wake up and smell the coffee. Open your eyes to what's going on around you. Wake up from the matrix and see the reality of the world's relentless pervasive lies, observe the cultural drift towards normalizing sin and throw them aside, drunkenness, sexual immorality, anger and dissension against one another. And this is the summary statement, which I really think we need to get into us today. Verse 14, "Clove yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh." Other translations of the Bible put it like this. I prefer this actually. "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh." Now, I think that's quite helpful because that gives us a framework within which to operate. You can do one of two things here. Either you make provision for the flesh, which he tells us not to, or we can clothe ourselves, put on Christ, which he advises us to do. So to explain that further, to make provision for something means to prepare for it. If you were making provision to go on holiday in a few months, a few months time, but you'd have to prepare beforehand, you'd need to make financial provision for it. You'd have to plan to take steps to enable the holiday. Paul is saying, "Don't plan. Don't do the little things that open the door to allowing the sinful desires of the flesh to get in and grow and take root and grow up and cloud your vision and strangle your view of Christ and your ability to see and receive his grace." So he says, "Don't get drunk." It's not that difficult. Now, you may be thinking, "Well, what's the matter with getting a little bit tipsy every now and again?" But Paul's point is that when you get drunk, you make provision for greater problems. God has given us beer and wine to enjoy. It's all part of his common grace to us, like nice foods and beautiful sunsets and access to modern medication. These are all gifts of God to be enjoyed in the right way. But drunkenness creates lapses in judgment, which could lead to far greater problems. If you're naturally predisposed to, I don't know, self-indulgence or spending yourself into unnecessary debt or overindulging and stuff that's unhelpful for you or self-loathing or depression or anything that you might struggle with, then Paul is saying, "By getting drunk, you're cracking open the door for these other things to blossom in your life." So don't do it. Make no provision for the weakness in your flesh. Close the door on them and don't indulge in sexual immorality, he says. It's not good for you. It has all sorts of relational complications and it will only ever really feed the stuff that I've already talked about so far. And we know, this is a known psychological trait. It's called the hedonic treadmill that enough is never enough. We always want more. It's what the heart does. We think if we just scratch the itch, it'll go away. But it doesn't. It gets worse. That's why people talk about gateway drugs, things that make provision for the flesh in any one of these areas. It's just the thin end of the wedge. You'll want more and more and it'll grow and grow and it'll wrap its tendrils around your heart and it'll block out the light and eventually it'll starve you of life. And don't allow minor dissensions to rise up in you, he says. Squash dissension and argument quickly. Don't let it rise up in your heart to indulge anger or unforgiveness truthfully can actually feel quite nice. It can feel, it can be quite pleasant to feel that you have the moral higher ground because the flesh always wants to be right. It's called pride and it's deadly. By nursing anger and dissension and unforgiveness, you're planting a seed of hatred that you will just keep watering and that will eventually just grow up and take over and strangle you. Make no provision for it. Make no provision for the flesh in this area. Deal quickly with dissension. We are really committed here at Gateway to dealing quickly with that stuff because it's so damaging to a community like ours. Learn instead to lay down your arms to forgive and to receive forgiveness. It'll go well with you. Now, in contrast to indulging the flesh, here's what Paul tells us to do. Put on Christ. In every area of life and in everything we engage with, be that money or work or relationships or sex or our attitudes of heart, the right way to do this is to put on Christ. I love this language, this language of getting clothed in something. I wear clothes that mainly reflect what's going in inside. Basically, our clothing says something about who we are inside. When I was in my teens going through a phase of being really into grunge music, I dressed in torn off denim and grew my hair long. I was a sight. The outside reflected the inside. In the same way, to put on Christ means to live outwardly in a way that reflects the inward change that He has wrought and won in your life. Now, that's worth considering in opening our eyes to. Jesus, in His grace, has sought you out and found you and called you and paid attention to you and removed all your uncleanness from you and embraced you and dressed you in His rightness. He has metaphorically removed all your filthy, sin-stained rags of clothing and He's dressed you in pure white linen and He has pulled you out of the pigmuck where we were all flailing about before we knew Him and He's placed us on a solid rock. Now, even this morning, even right now, He gazes on you with nothing but love and mercy and compassion and He's brought you into His family and He promises that goodness and mercy will follow after you all the days of your life and that one day you'll dwell with Him forever in His house in paradise. Pretty good, huh? So to live, to put on Christ means to live in a way that demonstrates what He has done and this inward change that He has won for you, this inward truth, this inward promise. That's His grace, amazing grace. Doesn't matter who you are, His gift of grace to you this morning means that it doesn't matter who you are. In fact, in spite of who you are, you do not have to live a life of slavery to your flesh anymore. The flesh is always on the hedonic treadmill, more money, more clothes, more sex, more power, more experiences that make me feel alive, more things that promise to satisfy, more ways to heal the inner pain, more, more, more. It's a type of slavery, you don't have to live like that anymore. These things are slavery, live free of them because the reality is that in Jesus you are free of them, that's His grace. So we need to think about ways and how we're going to engage with the things of the world and the areas in which we can inadvertently make provision for the flesh and you'll need to give that some thought. Be careful perhaps and thoughtful about where you're spending your time and your money if it's likely to cause you to stumble in some way, recognize it, close the door on it, make no provision for it. If you send bitterness or anger or dissensions rising up in you, if you're nursing unforgiveness, deal with it before it deals with you. One of the things that Jesus talks about when he preaches this new kingdom that's coming, you see this kind of dynamic at play there, he talks about, he ratchets up grace, doesn't he? He talks about the goodness of the kingdom and he ratchets up grace and at the same time he's ratcheting up expectation of how to live the Christian life. Previously he says you heard that it's wrong to commit adultery, but I tell you now if you even look at a woman lustfully, you've as much as done it. Maybe you've heard it said you should not murder, making provision for the flesh, anger in your heart, you're a murderer, gateway sins, making provision for the flesh. He tells us to close the door on it. One of the most pressing things of our age is for us to consider and be considered and how we use technology because it's so pervasive and so ubiquitous. It's such a huge part of our life. Be careful what you're consuming online. I'm actually very enthusiastic about technology. I like new technology and I think if it's rightly used, it can be really helpful for us as a race, but when you use it, make sure that you're putting on Christ and you're using it in ways that will feed you and help you. Don't become enslaved to it. A little while ago, I was talking to Mark Golip about this at the start of the meeting, I noticed that my social media feeds and some of my sports apps were starting to push images my way. Let's just say they were women who weren't dressed up for winter. I guess the algorithms calculate while I'm a middle-aged man and statistically I'm likely to want to pursue that kind of thing. It just started to gently push some ideas into my head. It was nothing particularly bad. At first, I just carried on using the apps, but after a while, I started to notice them more and I started to ask myself this question, is that helpful for me? Am I happy to allow the normalizing of this thing to just exist in my life and shape my heart and catch my gaze, reducing my ability to see right from wrong? By doing nothing about it, am I making provision for the flesh? I decided that I didn't want to get caught up in all of that, so I deleted all those apps and I've deleted all my social media accounts. I'm not saying that you should, that's just what I needed to do to guard my own heart. I'm not trying to be approved about the stuff either. I'm just aware of my own sinful nature and that once the door is cracked slightly open, it's difficult to close it again. It's never going to help me to see Jesus and to know his grace. The reality is that one day, all these earthly things are going to disappear anyway, because in light of the riches of heaven where we will daily gaze on Jesus and the myriad angels filling up the heavens and the glory of a renewed universe will be able to explore and enjoy forever, they will look pitiful and pale. In light of cosmic grace, suburban sin just does look pitiful and pale, so we should try and develop a heart attitude toward the things of the world that reflect that eternal reality now, put on Christ outwardly in how you live, reflect the inner transformation. We've been set free to live like that now. We don't need to be ruled by our flesh anymore. Grace, freedom. Cosmic grace means that all the riches of Christ are yours to enjoy now. You don't have to be swayed and enslaved by the desires of the flesh. You don't have to live your life constantly battling what you should and shouldn't do far better to consider what has already been done. It was done on the cross. Sinj removed, freedom from slavery, freedom from the flesh, nothing but life and wholeness and love and acceptance and mercy for you in Jesus. Grace, grace and mercy. His grace to you means that you are now free to be able to do that. All the hope and the happiness that you'll ever need is found in him and in living for his purposes within a beautiful world that he has given you with the potential to laugh and to love and to create and to enjoy food and culture and relationships and mountains and beaches and the promise of eternal life in him as well. Amazing grace. Let's put on Christ and receive his grace and enjoy his grace and live in freedom for his purposes. That's what it means to live the Christian life. That's what it means to live as a person of grace. Should we pray? King Jesus, I do so thank you for grace. I thank you that we're not flailing around in a world spinning around in a universe with no hope desperately needing to cling on for dear life to all that we can before we kind of shuffle off. Lord, I thank you that grace means that we have an incredible future, an incredible destiny in you and we have freedom available to us even here and now. Lord, I thank you that we don't need to live under the kind of the whip of a slave driver. We don't need to live under the lure of the flesh. We don't need to live as slaves being whipped around and told what to do all the time and how to think and what to indulge. We can turn our eyes to you and know that you are for us and know that you have loved us and saved us with an eternal love and that now we are free to express ourselves as children of God caught up in your mercy and so Lord, I pray for everyone in this room. If there are people caught up in addictions or caught up in the kind of the lure of suburban sins, Holy Spirit, would you come and do a saving healing, freeing work today amongst us, I pray. Jesus, I pray for all of us, you'd open our eyes again to the horror of sin, to the disgrace of the stench of sin and to the wonder and the gift of your grace. Spirit of God, would you come on us now even as we sing? Would you do a work in our hearts, I pray? Amen. Amen. What do we stand and that's come and respond? Let's come and sing amazing grace. How sweet this end.