Sunday 02 • 02 • 20

Parts of the Bible, and we're not going to read the citations. But as is our custom, we read this aloud together. So I'm gonna ask you to join us, and we'll just go from one passage to the next. You ready? Find your bulletins up on the wall behind me. Three, two, one, go.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. — Genesis 1:26-27

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea and whatever passes along the path of the seas. — Psalm 8:3-8

Now concerning the matters about which he wrote: It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. — 1 Corinthians 7:1-5

Jesus said to the Jews who believed him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." — John 8:31-36

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Content Warning

I need to say this before I begin the sermon. This sermon is rated PG-12 or 13. I'm going to talk about stuff where I'm not going to be explicit, but I will be direct. If you have young ears that you are not ready to have in the sermon, that's okay—no concern. You may take them out to the lobby. The sermon is not being played this morning out in the lobby. I just want to give fair warning. However, I will say, if you have a middle schooler, you should be talking about these things.

Series Overview

We're in a sermon series on the myths of being single. This is sermon number five out of six. Here's where we've been so far. The myths we've talked about that are kind of common in the church: First, the myth that being single is weird. Being single requires a special calling. Being single means no intimacy. Being single means no family. And today, being single means wasted sexuality.

Personal Acknowledgment

I started this whole series with an admission to you. I know it's weird to have a married pastor speak about issues with regard to singleness of which I don't have experience. I just want to acknowledge that and say, that's true. But I'm called not to preach my experience but all of God's word. I'm called to talk about things, and we have talked about things regularly, that I don't experience. And that's actually what I'm called to do. I've tried to be really careful. I've done a lot of research. I've met with a number of single people in our church and read a lot of books for this. So I just ask you to bear with me and give me some grace as I talk about these things this morning.

American Culture and Sexuality

American movie trends tell you a great deal about American values. For example, the Judd Apatow hit machine came out a few years ago with a comedy that did really well at the box office called The 40 Year Old Virgin starring Steve Carell. The premise behind the film is right in the title: it is comedy for someone to be 40 and still a virgin. Throughout the movie, Steve Carell's character is treated like a child, treated as a fool. After all, he's not grown up yet. He's treated like he's not a full person because he hasn't experienced all the things that life has to offer. And of course, I'll give this away, but you know this is coming—the happy moment of the movie is he loses his virginity. So he's in, right? He's in the club.

Another movie, another example. The movie came out a few years ago called Forty Days and Forty Nights. And here's the tagline: "One man is about to do the unthinkable, no sex for forty days and forty nights."

Now think about that—not just the concept, but the statement. Forty days and forty nights. That's our stuff. That came from this book. Jesus was in the wilderness forty days and forty nights. In fact, even during Lent, there are lots of Christians who practice self denial to give up something for forty days and forty nights, like chocolate or social media or carbs or whatever it is you do. But think about what this is saying. All those things make sense, but sex? Unthinkable, right?

Behind the comedy of both those movies lies a belief that is widespread today, which is this: without sex, you can't really experience what it means to be a human being. In this way of thinking, your sense of personhood is directly tied to your sex life. To ignore this side of us, to deliberately go without, that is something subhuman. I mean, after all, isn't sex a basic need like food and sleep? And then to preach something like this to singles and say, to call you to biblical celibacy—I mean, that's almost violent. Isn't this what we hear? Isn't this the water we're swimming in?

The Real Question: Freedom vs. Bondage

But here's my thesis this morning, and it comes directly from Jesus' words there in that last passage we read from John chapter eight where He talks about freedom and bondage. And here's my thesis: There are things that look like bondage that are really freedom, and there are things that look like freedom that are actually bondage. And we are really mixed up.

This morning I want to ask some questions and try to seek out some answers from God's word. To be specific, I want to address these questions: If God made us sexual beings, then how can it be good for single adults if they don't in any way fulfill that aspect of who they are? Or what about this one: If we are to live lives of celibacy, does that mean our sexuality actually has no role, no place in our lives? Doesn't this negation of sexual activity—isn't it like denying a person who's a virtuoso piano player access ever to a keyboard? I mean, what a waste, right?

I want to look at these questions. And here's my outline if you take notes:

Who am I?
What is sex for?
What if my sexuality is wasted?

Who Am I?

Now we're going to start back at the beginning, Genesis one. If you've walked through some of our series over the years—going through homosexuality, going through gender, going through justice, going through race—we always seem to find ourselves back at this first page of the Bible because it is so central to understanding the answer to that question: Who am I?

In this question about being celibate and single, we have to ask that question, who am I? Because this has so much to do with how we define personhood today. As a sexual being—it's very common, this is what we talk about all the time in our culture. Sexual orientation, gender identification. Those are behind so many conversations, and you hear these as being identity terms. People say things like, "This is just who I am. I've always been this way. This is what I feel like I really am on the inside."

Now let's think about that for a second. These categories of identity—sexual orientation, gender identification—these are identity statements. We're not just talking about what a person prefers, like flavors of food or style of dress, but what a person is.

There's been a shift in our language, in the English language, even in our words on these things. Words that used to be verbs are now nouns. "Homosexual" used to describe behavior; now it's a category of personhood. "Trans" used to describe behavior; now it's a category of personhood. Even the word "sex" has now replaced the word for "gender." The verb has now become a noun. And doing so, that's not just a semantic difference. That means something deep and profound.

What we're saying is we are oriented by our desires, and we think that's a good idea. We're defined by our desires—our specific sexual desires, the way we want to be—that actually makes us separate species of people. And I want to ask, is that a good idea?

I call this the fortune cookie phenomenon. It's like every person is born with a secret message on the inside, and they alone can crack open the fortune cookie and discover who they really are. Just who they are.

What's the message of who you are? You figure that out. You determine that. You broadcast that to other people. That's behind all the gender identity stuff. That's behind all the sexual orientation stuff. Because we think sex is what we are, is who we are. Now stop and think about that for a moment. Defined by desires. Defined by desires. Is that something we really want?

There are other labels like that, like alcoholic, like addict, that are also defined by desires that we actually have to have interventions with people to help them own. And yet only sexuality is something that people are like, "Defined by desires, that's a great idea."

See, what's the big deal, you may ask? That's a good question. What simply seems to be like semantic change—no, it's just words, right? No, no, no. Has actually changed the way we look at people and understand self. It changes the way we view personhood, sexual orientation, gender identity. Sex is a category like this. It's supplanted a biblical term for who you are with one that's a fictional term.

Image Bearer, Not Defined by Desire

Genesis 1:26 and 27—this is what we just read a moment ago. It looks at personhood and answers the question "Who am I?" with such a different answer than the world. And with one that's on a collision course with what God says.

This is the definitive statement in all religions, the highest view of humanity out there. We even heard these words in Psalm 8. Remember when we read these? And actually, the words there are gender neutral for human. It says:

God has made you a little lower than the heavenly beings. He has crowned you with glory and honor. — Psalm 8

You sitting in this room, male and female, you are the pinnacle of creation. You are made in the image of God. That is the definitive statement.

See, what does this have to do with the single wife? I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked this question because categories used to define image bearers of the living God—those really matter. You are not what you like. You are what God is like. You are not what you prefer, what you desire. You are made according to what God says He is like. You are in His image, in His likeness, in true holiness and righteousness.

And look, this means we are imago dei—image of God, not imago doggy. An animal defined by animal desires. We're human beings, male and female, given dignity by the fact that we are made in His image. Made in His image. And because He made us, God gets to say how we understand and use these bodies that He has made for us.

I mean, this is true. People agree with this even if they don't understand the theology. They're like, "Sex has a glory to it. There's something transcendent about it. That's why humans make such a big deal about it." Even in sexual immorality, there's something that people can say is glorious, something that points to something beyond just a human experience.

And this is why one of the most pervasive lies in our culture is that sex is life. And on the flip side, the other lie is no sex is tragic. But our culture's answer to the question "Who am I?"—it degrades. It shrinks. It defaces your personhood, your dignity. You're being called image bearer of the Most High God. To adopt the culture's terms on these things is actually to turn you into a bag full of desires and a personhood self-identification mess.

The Zoolander Problem

In the comedy Zoolander, Ben Stiller's character is a supermodel who's not very intelligent. He makes a lot of money and decides at the end of the film to give this money to create a literacy center. It's going to be called the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good.

Somebody brings out to him a scale architectural model to see what the center is going to look like. And this is what he says:

"What is that? A center for ants? How can we expect to teach children to learn how to read if they can't fit inside the building? I mean, I don't want to hear your excuses. That building has to be at least three times bigger than this."

See what Derek Zoolander is doing is what our culture is doing. Shrinking down. This is so foundational that you understand this. When you shrink down the answer to "Who am I?" as a sexual being defined by desires, that answer seems great. It seems to be liberating. Free from a God who tells me what to do. I mean, after all, isn't that what we hear all the time? "It's my body. Nobody can tell me what to do with it."

But in that is a hidden poison because it destroys the imago dei. It downgrades you. What looks like freedom is bondage. It is destructive.

So look, when our culture and your friends say things like this, like they elevate sexual desire to a physical need like sleep, like food, we have an answer for that. Right? You could say, my fundamental identity is not sexual, it's image bearer. That is the highest compliment that you can say. Anything else that you say downgrades and defaces the way God's made you. It shrinks it. And that's the tragedy. We are not just bodies, we are embodied souls. And that is glorious. Who am I? Image bearer.

What Is Sex For?

What is sex for? Now if you listen closely to how we talk about sex, that question seems out of order. Right? What do you mean what is sex for? Don't you mean who is sex for? The way we answer that is me, myself, I. That's what we naturally think. So the question, what is sex for seems weird.

So a little real talk this morning. You know the phrase getting some or getting any. Right? When someone's stressed out, what do people say behind their back? She's not getting any. He just needs to get laid. Right? And listen to that language because it implies that sex is about getting. It's about getting.

In her book, Revelations of a Single Woman, Connolly Gilliam writes this. She says, "What do I do with my sexual desire? What do I do with the fact that I'm not getting any?" And her answer is profound. It is so countercultural. She says that the getting any perspective is backwards. Here's what she writes: "What keeps a person alive as a sexual being is giving of himself or herself. It's not what a person is not getting that matters, but what a person is giving that matters." Because in the Bible, sex is about giving. It's not about getting. In God's calculus, it's about what a person is giving that matters.

This is what we read here in 1 Corinthians 7. Now, I apologize because we read this from the ESV, and I just am like, commentators, y'all are killing me on this translation of this because "conjugal rights"—did you hear that when we read that? That is so cold. That is not helpful to any of us here. So I want to read a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson in The Message. This is so spot on and amazing, and I just want you to hear this read a different way.

Sex drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality. The husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to stand up for your rights. Marriage is a decision to serve the other whether in bed or out of bed. — 1 Corinthians 7 (Eugene Peterson, The Message)

This says at least three things. Sex is so powerful that God designed it for one and only one context: a marriage between a husband and a wife before God for life. That's what he designed it for. And you could find other people who will tell you other things, but that's what the Bible teaches.

Second, sex is not just for making babies. God designed it to be pleasurable. And you know, that shouldn't be that controversial statement, but if you grew up in a Christian youth group, you might not have heard that before. Right? God loves pleasure. Jesus went to parties. There's a book of erotic love poetry in the Bible. God loves sex as pleasurable.

And finally, sex in marriage is a decision to serve the other, not to get some. Now that is such good news. That is not bondage. God's instructions here are actually for our freedom and for our joy and for our good. I know how that sounds.

When I was a kid, we used to play opposite day. I don't know if you all ever played this. In my household we would use language and we'd say left, you mean right. And you'd say up, you mean down. And you say false, and it means true. And it sounds like I'm up here talking opposite day language to say this kind of stuff in this culture. But what looks like bondage—God's design for sexuality—is actually freedom. His restrictions on that. And what looks like freedom in an anything goes culture is actually bondage.

To be more specific, I want to show you there are two quicksand traps that we are falling into, married or single, in our culture with regard to this issue of what is sex for. First is masturbation. In 1992, when I was a college student, the series Seinfeld had its infamous masturbation episode. And this was shocking for a couple reasons. It was shocking first that this—what was a private kind of shameful act—is now on public, primetime TV, and we're laughing at it.

And second, that there's a woman character who talks about her participation in this. It was shocking at the time. Now it's kind of tame if you watch the episode. It doesn't seem like a big deal. But once a source of personal shame, masturbation is now in our culture viewed as a healthy sexual outlet, especially for singles. And this has made its way into the church. There's even a very famous Christian psychologist who has blessed this and said, "Hey, this is just fine." But I'm going to ask this question: Is that right? Is that true? Is it a sin?

I'll be very honest. There's no proof text verse in the Bible where it says "don't masturbate." That's not anywhere in the Bible. It doesn't say don't touch yourself. But a robust understanding of God's design for sexuality, plus an understanding of discipleship, means that really there's no room for this as a follower of Christ. And why would I say that?

Masturbation is, at its easiest definition, sex with yourself. And there are two main bedrocks of Christian theology of sexuality that make masturbation out of bounds. Because of our image bearing, sexuality is always reserved for relationship. It's relational. It's reserved for marriage because it's inherently relational. It's designed to cultivate deep intimacy between two people. It is not just for self.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul's making the point that sex is for other-serving pleasure, other-serving sacrifice.

As a solitary activity, by definition, it's not rooted in a relationship. It's not building intimacy with anyone. It's about self. Masturbation says, "Why should I wait or why should I work if I can have this pleasure right now alone?" That attitude is counter to Jesus' call of discipleship, which tells us there are parts of your life where you need to come and die. You put to death things. God designed our sexuality like every area of our life—where we turn away from selfish desires and turn toward Him and turn toward other people in service. Masturbation reinforces the natural self-focused bend of our hearts that's already there all the time. And if the Lord provides a spouse, a history of solo sex makes it really, really difficult to approach lovemaking with another person in anything but selfish ways.

This is a Gender-Neutral Issue

Can I be so bold to say this? Sexual sin in this area, masturbation, is a gender-neutral issue. This isn't just a guy thing. Kathy Keller—wife of Tim Keller, our Presbyterian father who art in Manhattan—Kathy, who is the brains behind all his research, is sharp as a tack. She came out several years ago in a group like this and talked about how she had been addicted to masturbation when she was younger and how she had repented of that. That was profound because the church needs to talk about this as a gender-neutral issue for men and women.

Let me be very clear. I want you to hear the empathy in this: It is really difficult to live with unsatisfied sexual desires, and I don't want to make that sound easy. We should have incredible compassion for singles who are trying to please the Lord and be celibate in this area of their life and please Him and live for Him.

Many secular therapists and even Christian therapists will suggest that masturbation is fine because it's a form of self-soothing and stress release. I'm just saying that's wrong. That is not biblical. You can find people who would tell you that, but that is not biblical.

God's Design for Comfort

Here's the crux of the issue. God calls himself the God of all comfort.

That's in 2 Corinthians 1.

He wants to meet you in the places of your sadness. He wants to meet you in the places of your loneliness. He wants to meet you in the places of your frustration. He promises to satisfy you.

Psalm 103: with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

Jesus promised—He even nicknames the Holy Spirit the Comforter. God longs to draw near to us and give us comfort. And it's dangerous when we turn elsewhere to satisfy and soothe the ache of our soul.

Jonah 2 tells us this: Those who turn to cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

There's a scene in Inside Out where Bing Bong is reading a sign. He says "A-N-G-E-R. That's his shortcut." I think this is true in this case because when we embrace false and fleeting comforts outside what God has told us, what we're going to find is an empty cistern. Does masturbation ever invite you to praise, to fellowship, to gratitude?

In the places of our temptation, in the places of our deep frustration, can we find ways to turn away from empty cisterns and even other activities that help us move toward God in gratitude, move toward Him in that.

Pornography

Second quicksand. Pornography. The statistics are on pornography use in our country are just incredible. They're just incredible. 30% of all data transferred across the Internet is pornography. The porn industry's annual revenue is more than the NFL and NBA and Major League Baseball combined. It's also more than the revenue of ABC, CBS, and NBC combined. One of the larger porn video porn sites stream six times the bandwidth of Hulu. Porn sites get more visitors than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

And this is not just a male thing. Survey came out this year. 9,000 American women surveyed. 31% of women that were surveyed say they look at porn once a week, another 30% said once a month. Most of that without a partner, just alone.

Again, what is sex for? Sex in Scripture is for others serving pleasure. Not self. Not self pleasure, not self soothing, not for entertainment. And one of the biggest lies of pornography is, and I heard this over and over again, it's like, oh, it doesn't hurt anybody. That is drinking poison. It completely ignores how pornography impacts our hearts, the ways we impact, we interact with other people, the way that porn teaches us to mentally undress another person. It teaches us to view bodies as things. It destroys and degrades your soul.

If you bring this into your marriage, it will destroy your marriage. You cannot use pornography in your bedroom. That will not help your sex life. That's drinking poison. And porn use is tied to the largest wave of erectile dysfunction ever seen in our country, and guess who it's among? Millennials.

You know, this doesn't even mention the justice issues, that the people on the screen are image bearers, that many, if not most of them, are stuck in sex trafficking and sexual slavery. That's not even like me hyperbole. That is established fact. We're looking at image bearers of the most high God, somebody's sister, somebody's daughter, somebody's son, somebody's brother, and using them. This is poison and it's killing us.

And I just want to say this, if you need help in this, our church wants to help. Not shame you, not embarrass you, but to come alongside you. There is a way out from this and it is a hard road. I'm not going to make that might seem like, oh, no big deal. That's a hard road. But you can be free. You do not have to be stuck in these patterns. Your marriage doesn't need to be stuck with this poison in it. We want to help you. This is not what God has intended for you.

We have a slide up here. We have a couple of websites, email addresses that we have made known to our congregation, careformenctkrawley.org and careforwomenctkrawley.org. And these are confidential email addresses. So if you email and say, I need some help in this area, someone will follow-up with you. I don't know how it won't be within the hour, but it won't be a week. It'll be in a couple days. And that will be for men, one of our elders will follow-up with you. If you're a woman, one of the commissioned women will follow-up with you. And we want to help you. We want to help our congregation to be free of this. This is killing us. One of the things that I find in our church that most stifles our worship is sexual sin. It's killing us.

So I know where this, what some of you are feeling right now, like, what about me? I mean, where does this leave me? Where does this leave singles with sex organs? You know, you are holding out celibacy, no porn, no masturbation, no sex as the only option. And then, how am I supposed to live like this? I mean, what if my sexuality is unused in this life? Is it wasted?

Here's my answer for you. No. It is not wasted. It is not wasted. Remember, what looks like freedom is bondage. When I say celibacy, some people think wasted sexuality. But haven't we just talked about a lot of wasted sexuality? We talked about porn and masturbation. Isn't that wasted sexuality? And actually sexuality that's destroying us. I mean, don't you have enough personal data from your own history, history of friends that you could write an encyclopedia on how destructive sex can be? Don't you have that data?

So let's reverse the formula. What if what looks like bondage is actually freedom? What if outside of marriage, celibacy was actually freedom? I mean, how could that be? How could that be? Let me just remind you of where we've been in this series. We started off talking about marriage in this life. It's temporary. It's not ultimate. It will be absent in the age to come. Some of you who are married even in this room will not be married in the next few years. And it is not essential. That's reflected actually in the life of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ came as a single, celibate male. He knew all of the temptations that we face. And here's Jesus who comes as a single celibate male, the most fully realized human being who ever walked the planet, most fully integrated, most emotionally alive person who's ever lived, and he comes as a single man and calls himself the bridegroom because his sexuality was telling a story. He was telling a story: I'm the groom. These people are my bride. This is what the marriage is all about. It's meant to tell that story.

And so being single right now actually bears witness to that reality. Being single in this present moment, celibate and single, says to your own heart: what I have in Jesus is so certain in what's to come, and it's so good that I'm okay being satisfied in Him. That's what that means. It's a way of declaring to a world that's obsessed with sexuality and romance that though those things are good, even better and greater is what is ultimate—what you actually already have in Jesus Christ right now.

See, single Christians who are celibate and married Christians faithful in their marriages actually deploy their sexuality in different ways to tell the same story. We're telling this story. If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, then single celibacy shows us the sufficiency of the gospel. Let me say that again because nobody's gonna say this to you. This is crazy talk. If marriage shows you the shape of the gospel—we are made for Him—then celibate sexuality shows you the sufficiency of the gospel. He is all you need. This is what you're meant to find your soul's delight in.

See, this is another reason why we need single people in our church, not as a supposedly endless source of free babysitting, but as walking billboards—as signposts showing off a greater reality, that there is something greater than what's right in front of me right now in this life.

Our sexual feelings remind us that what we forego in a temporary way in this life, we will enjoy in fullness in the new creation which is to come. So that means your body—we talk about body language. Your body has a language. It is speaking to you all the time. There is an internal GPS that your body is using and is talking to you. It is saying: there is a homing device for God because it says that's what you're designed for. That's what you're made for.

And this is the good news. This is powerful and it's liberating and it's not bondage. It means my sexual feelings do not need to be met for their purpose to be fulfilled. It's never wasted. My sexual feelings don't need to be met in order for their purpose to be fulfilled. Your sexual feelings, your frustration is telling you there is an ultimate rest in God.

And then, you know, we look at this and we're like, I'm so frustrated. Well, sexual sin seems like no big deal. But it feels like an answer to that restlessness. But it's just a shortcut. Danger. It's just a shortcut. Like all of sin's pleasures, it's only temporary and fleeting.

See, celibacy isn't a waste of sexuality. It's a way of fulfilling it. It's allowing our sexual feelings, our frustration to point us to a greater reality. It's allowing our sexual feelings to point us to the reality of the gospel. We will never ultimately make sense of this unless we know what sex is for and who we are.

So look, if you are here this morning and you're celibate single, and you're trying to honor the Lord in this area of your life, I know you feel like a unicorn. I know you feel like just a weirdo and people will give you unicorn-like comments like, "Oh, I've never met one of you before." That is not comforting. Right? I just feel weird. But what happens when you get a lot of unicorns together in the same room? Okay, the punch line of that is not a herd of horny horses. Come on. Now that's good right there. Rather, what happens when you get a bunch of unicorns together? They begin to feel normal. Oh, you're a unicorn too.

What if our church was a place where unicorns felt normal? What if our church was a place where we unmasked the lies? We said it's better. What we have is better. What if we made honoring Jesus with our sexual lives normal? What if we made fleeing sexual immorality and porn and masturbation normal? What if we made being an image bearer the compliment that it really is?

I mean, what if we put sex in its place—in its context—but also, yes, in marriage, but also as a signpost? We allowed it to tell the story that it tells. What if we rejected bondage for freedom? What if we found freedom as a church in the areas where God says there really is freedom?

I mean, do we want to be defined by our desires or do we want to be defined by the desires our God has for us? That's life. That's where life is found.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, I know that these are very difficult words and probably very painful words for people in this room. And so, Father, I pray you who are the God of all comfort would lift up the hearts that feel condemned right now or angry or frustrated or shamed.

Father, we thank you that your grace leads us to repentance. And that you always look upon us who are in Christ as bearing, wearing his robes, as righteous in you, and gives us freedom to actually repent and come to you, throw off things that are not life, throw off things that are bondage.

Lord, I pray for those who are lonely this morning, that you would draw near to them. I pray for those who are frustrated this morning, that you would comfort them. Lord, I pray that you would afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm very aware of those words that I just prayed, that this sermon may