Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 13:1-9
Take your Bible out, find the Gospel of Luke. There's an outline in the bulletin. If you'd like to follow along, our Sunday morning series is a study through Luke. We are in chapter 13, verse one to nine. Next week, we're going to take a break from Luke. And for four Sundays, for a month, we're going to talk about maturity in Christ. And the series I told you last week is called Grow Up. And that is intended to be as subtle as you think it is. We want to learn what do we need to do to grow up as followers of Jesus. We don't want to be satisfied to be infants in our faith or to be children in our faith. And so we're going to talk about how do we grow up, how do we strive for maturity in Christ. At the end of those four weeks, we'll pick right back up in Luke chapter 13, verse 10. Do we leave off in verse nine this morning? Remind you that the theme verse for the Gospel of Luke is Luke 19-10 that says, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's you and that's me. Not only did Jesus come to seek us and to save us, but having done that, he makes certain demands on our life. And sometimes people get uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus would demand that we do things, but Jesus demands that we do some things. And one of the things Jesus demands that we do is repent. And that is, in a nutshell, the big idea of our verses this morning, the Son of Man calls sinners to repentance. Son of Man calls sinners to repentance. Now we're going to read the verses in just a minute, but before we do, I want to make sure we're all on the same page about repentance. Because sometimes that can be a confusing word that maybe you've never heard, defined, or explained. Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of life, right? The Greek word is metanoia. You can break it down in half. The first part, the prefix means change. The last part, the root of the word means mind. Literally the word means to change your mind. And when your mind truly changes about something, your life will change. And if you look at your life and your life has not changed, then regardless of what you say to me or how many times you say it, you really haven't changed your mind. Let me give you an example, a personal example of what this looked like in my life. A change of mind that led to a change in life. Any of you guys, picky eaters when you're growing up, anybody? Maybe it's just me. I'm telling you, I was the pickiest eater ever growing up. That's what I ate for about 15 years of my life. You think I'm exaggerating? You think I'm, oh, no, seriously. That's what I ate, chicken strips, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, jelly sandwich. That's it. You say, well, all kids like pizza, I hated it. Kids love hot dogs, no way. What about a hamburger? Absolutely not. I ate my first hamburger when I was a senior in high school. It was a picky eater and my mom just spoiled me and she made me this every day. So I grew up, chicken strips, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly. I was the kid at camp who goes through the line, if you're getting food at camp and you say, I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that. Where's the peanut butter and jelly line? I go over here and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is all that I would eat. But somewhere along the way, I had to change a mind. My mind changed about certain foods, about what I liked and what I didn't like. And it changed my life. So when I take my family out to eat at Jason's deli, I don't walk up to the counter and say, I'll take the kids PB and J, please. Not what I order anymore. My life has changed. I say, give me the salad bar. Or I say, give me the, have you seen the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with ham and onions on it? It's delicious. Delicious. So good. As a kid, not in a million years. Scrape that stuff off, give me the PB and J. But it's changed me. When we go eat, we went and ate with some guys this week, we went to China Max. I don't say bring me the plainest, barest, not wettest chicken you have in the restaurant. I say, give me the lomaine, give me some egg rolls, give me this, I want all of it. My mind has changed and my life has changed. That's what Jesus is talking about for you with the idea of repentance when it comes to sin in your life. He wants you to change your mind about sin, meaning we quit explaining it away, we quit justifying it, we quit making excuses for it, we quit pretending that our sin really isn't that bad and we confess it as sin. We acknowledge it as sin before God. We change our mind. I'm talking about sin in general, the fact that you are a sinner and I'm talking about specific sins, individual things that you struggle with. You change your mind about those things and your life changes as a result. That's the idea of repentance, a change of mind that leads to a change of your life. Here's another way of thinking about repentance and this is one of the reasons I read the Psalm that I read earlier, Psalm 32. Repentance involves three things. Confession, contrition, and change. Confession, meaning, you confess it. You acknowledge it before God. You say, God, in my heart, I'm broken. I'm a sinner, I've fallen short. God, in this specific area of my life, I haven't lived up to your standards. You confess your sin to God. Secondly, contrition. This is the idea that you feel bad about it. Now here you run into a problem, if you're honest, because some of you may say, okay, the three Cs, confession, contrition, change. I can confess it and I might do my best to try to change, but what if I really don't feel that bad about it? What if I really don't feel grief over my sin? The Bible describes people who got to that point in their life where they committed sin and their conscious was so hard that they didn't feel bad about it. And you can read that that usually doesn't turn out well when you get to that point in life. Where you know that there is sin in your life and you don't feel bad about it. But I'm realistic enough to know this morning that some of you may sit here and you may be thinking about specific sin in your life and you may, if you're honest, just say, you know what? I don't feel bad about it. Maybe you even say, I know I ought to repent of it, but I just don't feel contrition. If that's you, I would ask you and beg you to beg God to change your heart. God, you confess that, right? I'm admitting God, the fact that you don't feel contrition for your sin is itself sin, so confess that to God. He knows it anyways and say, God, I'm not broken over this. I need you to break me over this. My heart isn't lining up with your will. I need you to line my heart up with your will. You confess it, you feel contrition, and then lastly, you change, right? That's what we're talking about when we talk about repentance. And the big idea of the verses that we're about to read is the Son of Man calls people, sinners, to repentance. It was interesting the last couple of days as I talked to some of my pastor friends, as I scrolled through Facebook and saw some of the things they posted as you saw the tragedy in South Carolina this week, a lot of my pastor friends were changing the passage that they were gonna preach on today. And more than one of them said, I'm changing it to this passage. Loop 13, one to nine, because it fits perfectly with some of the things we experienced in our country this week. So look in the Bible, you can follow along on the screen. As we read God's word, Luke 13, beginning in verse one. There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he, that's Jesus, answered them the crowd. Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or the 18 on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. He told them this parable. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, look, for three years now I've come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none, cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down. Let's pray. Father, give us wisdom, give us understanding. The things that we read about Jesus and from Jesus in these verses are not complicated. And so we pray that you would help us not only to grasp them, but to apply them to our life, that you would show us this morning as we think and talk about repentance, that you would show us areas of our life where that needs to be dealt with and needs to be done. We pray that we would hear the call of Jesus and respond appropriately this morning and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Our fourth grade teacher in school was a lady named Miss Redshaw. And in my mind, Miss Redshaw is the meanest woman who has ever lived on the planet. She is scary, she is mean, she is grouchy, she is tough, she is intimidating. And I got to thinking about Miss Redshaw because I was gonna mention her this morning and I thought, I wonder if she's on Facebook? Of course she's on Facebook. I found her on Facebook. She looks like a really nice lady on Facebook. In the fourth grade, she's mean and she's tough. And the one thing I remember more than anything from Miss Redshaw's fourth grade class was a saying that I bet she said 20 times a day. Here was the saying, life's tough, then you die. All day, every day, fourth grade. (congregation laughs) Miss Redshaw, I think I broke my leg on the playground. Life's tough, then you die. Okay. Miss Redshaw, I need to use the bathroom. Please, can I go, please, can I go? Life's tough, then you die. Miss Redshaw, you didn't tell us that question was gonna be on the, or that word was gonna be on the spelling test. That's not fair. Life's tough, then you die, okay? I have no idea if Miss Redshaw loves Jesus, but I do know that her favorite saying is biblical. You understand that? That's biblical. Life is tough and you are gonna die. That's straight out of the Bible. I don't know if that's where she got it or if she got it from life experience or heard it from somewhere else, but that is straight out of the Bible. Life is tough and you and I are going to die. Think about some of the tough things in life. This list could go on and on and on. I just picked a few and I'll put a few pictures up on the screen. Think about natural disasters. You remember 2004? The earthquake and the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. You remember that? Right after Christmas 2004, 230,000 people killed almost instantly. Quarter of a million people killed. Think about war. I watched a video this last week about World War II. Some of you may have seen this and it is a sort of a info picture little video. I wanted to show it this morning, but it's 18 minutes, so I don't have time. But it explains to you in 18 minutes, it's worth your time. World War II, what do we mean when we say over six years, 75 million people died? That's a number that we can't understand. You can say it, you can maybe do the math on it, but you can't comprehend that number. And in the video, they just try to help you sort of wrap your arms around that a little bit. Six years of war, World War II, 75 million people died. Life is tough. Thought about disease. Read this week that in the sixth century, the bubonic plague broke out and 40% of the people of Constantinople died of the bubonic plague. At the time, the largest city in the world, 40% of the people in the largest city of the world died. One outbreak. That same outbreak spread over the next months and years to Europe and half of the population of Europe died as a result of that plague. Hundreds of years later, this is about the 14th century, another outbreak killed a third of the people in Europe. A third, one out of every three people on the continent of Europe died from this one disease. Thought about human beings and the suffering that we cause. Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, 2,403 people killed. There's a man in our church in Kentucky who was at Pearl Harbor in the military the day of the attacks, Herman Horn. And it was amazing to talk to him about being on one of these ships in the harbor when the Japanese flew in and started bombing. Amazing, but a great tragedy. Closer to our personal experience, September 11, 2001, 2,977 people killed. What about accidents? Those two examples are intentional things, but what about accidents? Thought about the Titanic, April 14, 1912, Titanic hits an iceberg, kills 1,503 people. I'm throwing out big numbers to you, right? Numbers that are hard to wrap your brain around. What about something that's very, very personal? We had a lady in our church in Oklahoma, her name was Rosa Avila. It's one of the sweetest ladies I've ever met in my entire life. One of the most amazing personal stories, not only of just life experience, but how she came to faith in Jesus Christ. You sit and you watch it and you say, why has no one made a movie of your life? Amazing. Now, while we lived in Kingfisher, she was driving from Oklahoma City back to Kingfisher. She had been in Oklahoma City to take care of an elderly woman who she helped for free. Driving back, had an accident, flipped her car paralyzed. You look at a tragedy like that and you just sort of shake your head and you say life is tough. It's hard. The events I mentioned earlier, and Charleston this last week, somebody walks into a Wednesday night prayer meeting and does something absolutely senseless. You look at that and you say, how do I wrap my mind around this? As someone who believes in a God who is all powerful, he can do whatever he wants and who is good, how do I wrap my mind around some of the things that I see in life? Here's a couple of thoughts before we jump into the text. Three simple thoughts. What's the biblical view of tragedy? Number one, specific instances of suffering cannot always be connected with specific sins. In other words, what you cannot do is every time a tragedy takes place on a large scale or a small scale, you cannot step back and say, well, they got what they deserved. That happened because they did X, Y, and Z. You can't always do that. And if you want examples, you can look at the book of Job and how Job suffered in the first few chapters of the book, incredible suffering. And his friends made the mistake of coming to Job and saying, well, you've done something to deserve this. He hadn't. There were unseen spiritual forces at play that no one knew about. You couldn't connect the two. You can read in John 9-2. Some of Jesus's friends came to Jesus and said, hey, this guy's blind, who sinned? Him or his parents that he was born blind. And Jesus says, neither. The question is ridiculous. You can't always connect suffering and sin. Secondly, though, sometimes specific instances of suffering can be connected with specific sins. Sometimes, not all the time. And you and I certainly are not the ones to connect all of those dots, but sometimes in the Bible, we read about instances of suffering that are directly connected to the sins that people have committed. And maybe that looks like somebody has committed a particular sin and then a certain experience of suffering comes their way. Or maybe that looks like somebody commits a particular sin and because of that sin, suffering comes onto someone else. But sometimes there is a connection. You can look up these references yourself. Thirdly, the Bible is clear about this. Suffering in general is connected to sin. The Bible makes that clear in Genesis three after Adam and Eve sin. They introduced this new rebellion into the world. Suffering is the result. It happens immediately. On a personal level, on a relational level, on a family level, on every level. You can read about it in Romans five. Paul talks about this. That sin and death and sickness and disease, they all came into the world through Adam's sin. So there is a general connection here. But none of that really touches on the verses in our passage this morning. And so let's talk about the two stories. One, Jesus has asked about. One, Jesus mentions himself. Luke 13, one to five. Jesus stresses the urgency and the necessity of repentance. When he's asked about tragedy, and when he talks about tragedy, he stresses the urgency and the necessity of repentance. First of all, a group of people come to Jesus, and they don't even really ask him a question. They just sort of bring up something that had happened. And what had happened is, you can read about it in verse one, that there were a group of Galileans whose blood pilot mingled with their sacrifices. In other words, a group of Jewish pilgrims from Galilee traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices. Maybe it was the Passover. And they're there offering their sacrifices. And Pilate, who had a tense relationship with the Jews, especially some of the Jews in more rural areas like Galilee. Pilate, for whatever reason, whatever the situation we don't know. But he kills these pilgrims, they're to worship and offer sacrifice. And he mixes their blood with the blood of the animals that they had brought as a sacrifice. And these people come to Jesus, and it's almost like, hey, did you hear? Have you heard what happened? These people went to worship. If you want a comparison for this to understand what it might be like, imagine being here on a Christmas Eve, and we gather together for a Christmas Eve worship service, something special, something that's a once a year kind of thing. In income, the police, and they start shooting people. That's what happened. They're there to worship, and the government comes and kills them and mixes their blood with the sacrifices. And it's a tragedy. History doesn't record this. Of course, if you were Pilate and you are in charge of recording history, why would you record this? But it does fit with what we know about Pilate. He was the fifth Roman prefect over the province of Judea. And you can read about him from different sources in history. He was a jerk. People try to look back into his life and figure him out and analyze him. I think it's safe to say he was a jerk. Whenever he could, he went out of his way to offend Jews in their religion and in their preferences and in their customs. It would have been very easy at times for him to sort of guard himself and hold back. He went the extra mile to offend them. He took revenge in a martial sense on these people. They would protest. They would question his rule or his decisions. He would respond with beatings or murder. One time he needed to build an aqueduct into Jerusalem. He didn't have the funds. So he went to the temple. He raided all of the money in the temple. Money that people had been given to the temple, to the priest, to worship the Lord. And he took that money and he built his aqueduct. He was a jerk. And in this instance, he comes to a group of people who are only in Jerusalem to worship and he slaughters them and he goes the extra mile of mixing their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. And so these people say to Jesus, did you hear? Have you heard? And Jesus responds in such a strange way. He tells another story and he talks about in verse four, there were 18 people on whom the tower in Siloam fell and it killed them. Now again, history doesn't tell us anything about this. This is all we know about it, what Luke tells us. But apparently in Jerusalem, by the pool of Siloam, there was a construction project. And you can see this is ancient Jerusalem. The big red circle is the temple, where the massacre of these Galilean worshipers would have taken place. The bottom red circle is the pool of Siloam. And apparently down by this pool, they were building some sort of tower. You can see where it's at in the city. So maybe it was for defense. Or maybe it was to sort of scout out and advancing or an approaching army. But they're building some kind of tower and whatever happens, it collapses. And 18 people are killed, were they construction workers? We don't know. Were they in the market area, walking back and forth, just going about their daily business? We don't know. Were they lepers? This was a place where lepers sometimes gathered. Close to this pool, the lepers or the lame or the sick, were they there, were they the ones killed? We don't know, but it was 18 people. And apparently it was an accident. No one set out to do it, it just sort of happened. And Jesus responds to their tragedy by mentioning this tragedy. I got to think in this week, I wonder what the people wanted Jesus to say. They come to Jesus and they say, sort of, have you heard? You know the news about what Pilate did. What did they want him to say? What did they expect him to say? Maybe there were people in that group who wanted Jesus to say something like, well, they got what they deserved. They shouldn't have rebelled or they shouldn't have done this or they shouldn't have done that. God was judging them for their sin. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe some of the people wanted to provoke Jesus. And by provoke, I mean to provoke him against Pilate. The Jews hated Pilate. Jesus is reasonably popular at this point. Maybe they wanted to bring up this atrocity in the hopes that Jesus would lead a rebellion and say, I didn't know that. Now that you've told me, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Everybody grab your sword and let's go. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe they just wanted some sort of answer from Jesus, the rabbi on why do bad things happen to good people. Or maybe, thought about this this week, maybe they're warning Jesus, right? Galileans murdered by Pilate in Jerusalem. Jesus is traveling with disciples 11 of the 12 or from where? Galilee, where's he headed? Jerusalem. Maybe they were just friendly saying, you may want to rethink this trip. Whatever their motivation, Jesus responds with a story of another tragedy. And he makes the same point twice. Verse three and verse five. Look what he says. Unless you repent, you will perish. Verse five, the same thing. Unless you repent, you will perish. Jesus saw a teachable moment here. And I don't think he really touched on the issue that was on their minds, but he saw a teachable moment and he took it. And what he said to them is, listen, if you don't repent, you too will perish someday. In other words, you understand you are living on borrowed time, right? You understand that you might die someday at the hand of a despot like Pilate. You understand that you might die in a tragic accident like a tower falling over in the middle of construction. You understand that you might die of cancer someday. You might understand that you might die of old age someday. But you are going to die and you may have a lot of years left or you may not have very many at all. And what you need to do is repent. We want Jesus to get into the wise and the speculative questions. And he's very, very practical. And he says to these people and he says to you and he says to me, don't worry about that. What you need to do is make sure to repent because you're living on borrowed time. There's a woman who died this week. She was 88 years old. Her name was Elizabeth Elliot. Some of you may have heard of this woman. Her first husband was a man named Jim Elliot and Jim, that's Jim and Elizabeth up there on the top left in their younger years. Jim and Elizabeth left the United States to be missionaries in Ecuador. And they took over an old oil company complex compound and they sort of turned that into their mission station and they had a plane and they would fly from this compound out to a group of Indians known as the Alka Indians. And they would go out and they were trying to make contact with these Indians for the first time. And Jim had several missionary partners. It was Jim Elliot and Nate Sainte and Roger Eudarian and Ed McCauley and Pete Fleming, five of them down there on the bottom. And they were trying to make contact with these Indians and eventually they went out and they made contact with these Indians. They wanted to share the gospel with him and the Indians killed them, murdered him. And Elizabeth Elliot stayed in Ecuador and she continued to look for opportunities to share the gospel with those people. And eventually she shared the gospel with the very men who murdered her husband and saw them come to faith in Jesus Christ. It's an amazing story. You ought to, if you have time this summer and you need a good read, look for the book, find the book through the gates of splendor. She's written many books, but that's probably her best known through the gates of splendor by Elizabeth Elliot, Elizabeth with an S. And it's her story of how her husband passed through the gates of splendor. And this last week, she passed through the gates of splendor. She died, 88 years old. Very different than her husband, right? Husband dies in this great tragedy, unexpected, young, prime of life. She dies full of years, full of faith. They both died. She had a great quote that I came across this week. Here was the quote from Elizabeth Elliot. You ready? When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die. Whether you're 88, whether you're 27, whether you're somewhere in the middle. When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die. I think that's what Jesus is trying to say to these people. They wanna get into some sort of debate or maybe they wanna provoke Jesus or they wanna scare him away from Jerusalem. Who knows what their motivation was? Jesus says to them very practically, when it comes time to die in a building collapse or at the hands of a despot or of disease or old age or whatever, make sure that all you have to do when that day comes is die. Be ready. And if you're gonna be ready, that means you need to repent now. Then Jesus tells one more story. This is Luke 13, six to nine. And this story is important. It goes with what we just talked about. In Luke 13, six to nine, Jesus explains that repentance is positive, not just negative. It's positive, not just negative. The story is very simple. There's a man, he owns a vineyard. In the vineyard, there's a fig tree. The fig tree year after year after year does not grow figs. So he decides to cut it down. And the man who works for him in the vineyard says let's give it one more year. One more year to see if it will grow figs. And if it doesn't at the end of one more year, then we cut it down. The lesson here is very, very simple. Jesus is saying I expect you to bear figs, to bear fruit. Repentance is not just about what you give up. It's also about what you embrace. Do you understand that? It would be a great mistake if you leave here today saying man, I got a lot of good things in my life. I guess I need to repent of. I need to confess and change and get rid of this and this and this. And I got to quit doing that. And I got to quit talking about this. And I got to quit watching that and repent negative, negative, negative. That's part of it. To confess it, to feel contrition and to change. But when you change, you're embracing something far, far greater. The New Testament talks about this in Ephesians 4. Paul says, look, if you're a thief, quit stealing and start working so that you have something to give. There's the negative part, quit stealing. Here's the positive part. Work so that you have something to give. He says the same thing, my paraphrase. Quit talking like a fool with your mouth in the gutter and start talking in a way that builds people up. You give one thing up negatively, you embrace something else positively. And Jesus is saying to these people, you do need to repent, you need to do it now. It's urgent and it's necessary. But it's not just about giving up a bunch of stuff. It's about embracing something far, far greater. It's about changing your mind and saying that the sin that I used to pursue is worthless and Jesus is supremely valuable. Really, you're not giving anything up of value. You're getting rid of garbage and you're inheriting a great treasure. That's repentance. You turn from this negatively and you embrace Jesus positively. And he's talking about this in this parable. He wants you to bear fruit. Now let's be honest, one last time. You and I are not very good at that. You and I are not very good or very consistent as seeing Jesus as more valuable, as more beautiful, as more desirable than sin. And it's a constant battle for me and I know that it's a constant battle for you to change your mind and to remind yourself, Jesus is better than all this garbage. And we have this tendency deep in us to say, "I like the garbage." I like it. Understand this as a final point. Jesus explains that repentance is possible because of the patience of God. And this is where you and I say, "Thank you Jesus, amen, amen, amen." When you read this short parable about the man with the fig tree and his vineyard, he doesn't cut the tree down after the first year of no fruit. And he doesn't even cut it down the second year or the third year. He gives it one last year. You look at this farmer and you say, "He's not eager to cut the tree down." The Bible never describes God the Father as quick to punish. It describes him as slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. You and I understand that it is God's patience that moves us and that gives us the opportunity for repentance. You can look up the verses that are on your outline. Romans 2 and 2 Peter 3. Verses that talk about God's patience and his kindness moving you to repentance. But again, if we're honest, we look at this story and we say there is an end to the farmer's patience. No, he doesn't rush to chop it down the first year. Yes, he gives it a second year. Yes, he gives it a third year. Yes, he's even talked into giving it one last year. But at the end of that year, that's it. It's over. Jesus is saying this very simply and very plainly. When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die. Be ready. That means you need to repent now. It's necessary and it's urgent. Change your mind about sin. Leave the garbage behind and embrace Jesus Christ as supremely and uniquely valuable. Understand that the only reason you have the opportunity to do that today is because God is patient with you. And thank God for his patience in your life. But don't assume that you have another 50 years. Don't bank on the hope that you have another decade. Don't assume that you have another year. Be ready. Repent. Let me pray for you. Okay. Father, our experience is that life is at times hard and tough and confusing and perplexing. Father, there's things that happen that we can't make sense of. And we see these people talking to Jesus and we see the same questions being asked, the same issues being wrestled with. Father, we pray that we would trust you to do what is right, even when we don't understand. We pray that we would see what our sin has introduced into this world. Father, we pray that we would be ready to meet you. And I pray for those who are here in the room and I know they're in different places in life, different stages in life, different points in following you and their relationship with you. But Father, for all of us, every last one of us, I pray that today we would repent. That we would change our mind about sin. That it would change our life in a real way. That Father, where we don't feel contrition for our sin that you would break us for our sin. Father, I pray that we would understand that you're not just calling us to give up and to put away, but that you're calling us to give up and to embrace something that's so much greater than anything we leave behind. Father, I know there's people who are here who have maybe tried to change on their own power. Maybe they have tried to be religious on their own power, but maybe they have never replaced their sin with a genuine relationship with Jesus. And I pray that they would do that today. Father, again, we pray that you would convict us. We pray that you would strengthen us and give us assurance. Father, that by your patience, we would repent even this morning. Father, as we sing and as we lift our voices, accept our worship. Continue to work in us. We love you, we pray in your name, amen.