Basic Training -- P.S.

I'd like to call us to pray.

Eternal God, caring Father, we praise and thank you for the privilege we have as your children to come to you in prayer. We love you, Lord. We come to you knowing that you are always and everywhere present in our lives. We know you know our needs before we ask. For the blessings we recognize and for those we fail to notice, hear our prayer of gratitude.

Holy God, we know you hear our prayer to end this global pandemic and we trust you will at the appointed time give us patience, Lord, and strength to adjust to what may be a new normal in the days ahead. Lord, we pray for the people of Afghanistan. We know that is not a normal. The horror and tragedy that is occurring around them in their homes. Lord, be with your people, protect them.

Lord, we know it's not normal for the 7.2 earthquake that occurred in Haiti and has affected the surrounding areas. Lord, we pray for your people, for their strength, for their endurance, and for your intervention by your grace.

Lord, as the schools open and our children and young people return in person to their classes, thank you for moving their anxiety and their fear. Grant them the joy of learning to master new skills and the safe fellowship with classmates.

By your grace, we have the joy of welcoming back to our church family, our church fellowship, our university students. They'll be here in person. And as they return to continue their studies, help them to be discerning, to stay focused. Gracious God, keep them safe.

Father, we are grateful for you as you continue to provide for your congregation here at Christ the King. We release all of our concerns to you, trusting your protection as we again worship in person and have the opportunity to share in the gospel fellowship in this spiritual family. We thank you for the fellowship of being able to connect one on one in our community groups.

Loving Father, as we prepare for the week ahead, guide us, teach us, help us to minister acts of love and grace to each other, as you give your love and grace to each of us. We pray in the precious name of Jesus Christ. As Jesus taught his disciples, together, let us pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Scripture Reading

Well, today we're finishing up our study that's marked this whole summer through the book of First John and I invite you, if you turn to that in your bulletin or look up on the screen behind me. It's our custom to say these words out loud together, to hide God's word in our heart. And so if you will locate that, you ready? Three, two, one.

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin that does not lead to death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who is born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. — 1 John 5:16-21

This is the word of God. Thanks be to God.

A Strange Ending

I don't know about you, but I love going to the mailbox. Anybody else love the mailbox? I do. I really love going and checking the mail and you know, it's not very often that we actually get a real letter. But I do love getting real letters written by people on paper with pens.

And I want you to imagine this week going to your mailbox and getting a letter from a good friend, a letter of encouragement, a letter that's filled with good news. And at the very end, right after they signed their name, it says, "P.S. Don't die." That's what this ending of this letter feels like to me.

I mean, First John is just this incredible letter of encouragement. It's all about who God is, that God is love, that perfect love casts out all fear. There's all these amazing promises of God in this. There's all these kinds of tests to tell, "Am I really a believer? Can I be assured of that?" And these are all throughout this letter.

And then you get to the very end. And remember, John's writing a letter, and it's like, "P.S. Don't die." If you got this as a letter in the post office, would you be like, "Thanks, I guess?" I mean, like, "Thanks, buddy. I'll try not to die." You know, it's a weird ending.

And yet John thinks that this is really super important after this letter that's filled, just packed full of encouragement, to give us a final kind of warning. Warning and encouragement. So two warnings and two encouragements this morning. And if you're going to take notes, this is where I'm going to go from my outline: Sin destroys, family matters, and you can trust Jesus.

So let's look at this together.

Sin Destroys

Now, this passage is really confusing, and I just want to acknowledge that upfront. When you're reading this along, you're like, "Wait, wait a second. There's a sin that leads to death and a sin that doesn't lead to death, and we're supposed to pray for some of them, but I'm not saying pray for the other." Anybody else a little bit confused by this passage? It is a confusing passage.

Let me just back up and remind you, John has been talking in a lot of places in this book about what we do, how we think about our sin, how we think about indwelling sin, how we think about a battle with sin. He talks about sin being lawlessness. He reminds us that we have an atoning sacrifice, Jesus Christ, the propitiation for our sins, not only ours, but for those of the whole world. He keeps pointing us to that. He keeps reminding us, "Hey, if you're a Christian, you don't just keep going practicing sin, you actually learn to hate sin and you want to learn to obey Jesus."

And so he's been talking about this, but now he turns his attention to what do you see? What do you do when you see another person caught in practicing sinning? What do you do with that? And he makes a distinction here about the sin that leads to death and the sin that doesn't lead to death.

Every time I preach on something like this, I know the question that some of you, particularly the more sensitive of you, will be like, "Oh no, is that me? Have I done this? Have I committed the sin that leads to death?" So let me just be really clear and unpack this very simply for you all.

The Bible clearly teaches that all sin is dangerous. All sin is just deeply destructive, and it separates us from God. Romans reminds us:

The wages of sin is death. — Romans 6:23

All sin deserves God's wrath.

Picture a flower in your garden. Susan and I, we love to grow flowers. We've gotten rid of all grass in our front yard—it's all garden. And so you've done this before: you pick a flower and you can put that in a vase. We say we're keeping it alive, but the reality is that's not true. The moment you pick a flower, death is at work. Death has already started with that flower. You've removed it by severing the stem from its source of life.

Now, you can give that to somebody you love. You can put that in a bouquet. You'll smell it. It'll smell great for days and it will look alive and it will smell alive, but it is dead. It's already dead.

You know, sin also—like the flower—cuts us from the source of life. In just a few weeks, just next week, we're going to start a new fall series. We're going to look through Genesis one through 11 and stay through that over the course of the whole fall. And in that study, we will cover Genesis chapters two and three.

Many of you are probably very familiar with this story where Adam and Eve are in the garden, and God commands them:

You can eat of any of the trees, just not this one in the middle of the garden. — Genesis 2:16-17

And the serpent comes along. And remember God's promise:

If you eat of that, you will surely die. — Genesis 2:17

And you guys know your stuff—Satan comes into the garden. Nobody seems surprised it's a talking snake. We'll talk about that in a couple weeks. But Satan comes into the garden and he says, "You're not going to die. Now, if you eat of this, you will be like God. Your eyes will be open. You'll know knowledge of right and of good and evil, right?"

And so they eat of the fruit and lo and behold, they don't die—sort of. Because they're like the flower. And in that moment of eating that fruit, they are severed from the source of life. And so they look alive—parts beating, breathing, pulse, all that—and yet something happened to them spiritually that cut them off from the source of life. So they look alive, smell alive like the flower, but cut off, spiritually dead.

And so this different kind of death, spiritual death, enters the world. Right? Separation from God.

John has been teaching all sin is destructive. All sin is lawlessness. But he's talking here about something more. He's saying there is a sin. All sin is destructive. All sin leads to death, but there is a sin right here. There's a sin that leads to death.

Now, any of you grow up Catholic? It's from this passage that the Catholic Church begins to divide sin into two categories: mortal sins—those are the really bad ones which will kill you—and venial sins, not so bad, will not kill you. But against that teaching, I mean, Jesus says some very striking things about sin.

So for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, He says, If you are angry at your brother, it's the same thing as murder. He says, If you are filled with lust toward another person, it's the same thing as adultery. Like he's saying those categories don't really match up. And we also have a Bible that's filled with stories that show us the heroes of the faith. Here's Moses murdering someone. Here's David committing adultery. So that can't be what's going on with this.

John insists that there is a sin that leads to death that permanently separates you from Christ. And that sin, just to be really clear, is rejecting Jesus and His salvation either in an active way—I don't want this, that's not true—or in a passive way where a person never lays hold of that in their life.

How do I know this? There are bunches of other passages that refer to this in Scripture. So if you flipped over a couple books to Hebrews chapter six, it describes some people who had tasted of life, and here it's a reference probably to the Lord's Supper, had been part of the church and had abandoned the faith. And then Jesus tells parables that elucidate this.

For example, Jesus tells the parable of the four soils. A farmer goes out to sow seed—some of it falls in the good soil, some of it falls on rocky soil, some of it falls among thorns, some of it falls on the path. And in that story, we learn from Jesus that there are real Christians who receive the word and it grows up to life, but there are others that look like Christians, where it springs up and then dies away.

Jesus tells another parable of the weeds and the wheat. He says, there's a farmer that goes out and sows seed and then the weeds and the wheat grow up, but weeds are all in it. And some of the hired hands come and say, should we just cut it all down? He said, no, let's wait to the final day. In other words, there are people who even among God's people look like Christians, and yet that's not really true of who they are.

And John has told us even in this letter, there are some who were among us, the fellowship, who went out from us because they weren't really of us. They weren't really bona fide Christians.

What Sends Someone to Hell?

So what is the teaching? There is sin that leads to death, and it is rejecting Christ either in an active way or a passive way, and that people can look like Christians and not be so truly on the inside. So let's be really clear: What is it that sends someone to hell?

Let me tell you a story. A group of people at work on Monday morning are talking about what they did over the course of the weekend. There's a man talking about his great golf game on Sunday. Just had this incredibly low score and he's bragging about this with his coworkers and he sees the person in the office who's known as a Christian, sort of out as a Christian. And it's like, Oh, I bet you think I'm going to hell because I played golf on a Sunday. To which the Christian rightly responded, I don't think you're going to hell for playing golf on Sunday. I think you're going to hell if you don't receive the salvation that Jesus offers. If you don't want Him, you might as well play golf on Sunday. That's the right answer.

C. S. Lewis puts it this way. I think this is really helpful. He says, It's not a question of God sending us to hell. In each of us, there is something growing up on the inside that will itself be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. And he goes on in another essay to say this: Really there are only two kinds of people in the end—those who say to God, Your will be done, and those to whom God says, Okay, Your will be done. All that are in hell in a sense choose it. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find; to those who knock it is opened.

Deconstruction and Demolition

So let me just add this to my sermon from last week. Last week, I did an entire sermon on and talked from the earlier part of chapter five on deconstruction stories. Something happened with a lot of people who are working through struggles with the church. Maybe it's their upbringing, maybe it was an authoritative pastor that abused authority, maybe it was bad theology in a church, maybe it was rigid, strict teaching that was moralistic. There's a lot of that and that needs to be worked through for many people.

And yet you have to be careful. And I want to add this to what I said last week. There is a fine line between deconstruction and demolition. In other words, you have to know when to stop tearing down. And I just want to add this as a warning that this really matters: apart from Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. You may have all kinds of concerns and upset with the church, and man, we would love to be a congregation that helps you work through that. But don't walk away from the source of life.

You know, this is what's so amazing that's offered to us in the gospel—we see this picture. This is a biblical picture where God takes flowers that are broken off from the source of the light of life. And this is the word that's used in the Bible over and over: graft. God grafts plants that were dead back into a living vine. God makes dead things alive. This is what Jesus does.

And can I just say this: if you're alive today, there is time to repent. If you have never laid hold of the source of life, if you've walked away from it, there is time and space today to come to Him and to repent. God is gracious.

So again, how do you know if you've committed that sin? As long as you're alive, you have a chance to lay hold of the life that is real life, to be grafted into the vine. Your salvation is demonstrated—it's not demonstrated by never messing up or never falling or never failing.

I don't know if you realize this about our church, but we expect people to sin in our church. We expect this church is filled with sinners. You know, one of the big myths that I regularly hear in this church is everybody thinks everybody else has it all together. Can I tell you a secret as one of the pastors here? You don't. I mean, elders do not. I do not. We don't expect perfection. We don't expect sinlessness in this body.

What we're looking for is a group, a church that runs to the cross, that regularly repents of our sin, that does so together. We know we need Jesus. That's the life we want to hold up as a church body.

So let's consider then: if that's the sin that leads to death, what is the sin that does not lead to death? Look what he says here. This is verse 16 again. This is the sins of those who are Christians. And the word is used here a couple of times in this passage: those who are in Christ, those who have laid hold of life in Christ, those who are attached to the vine, abiding in Him.

Idols and Modern Idolatry

Here's the warning to that group. Here it is, verse 21. He says this:

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. — 1 John 5:21

Now what is an idol? It's obvious in the ancient Near East what was an idol. In fact, God has a great passage in Isaiah 44. I love this passage because God says to His people:

Do you know this? Is there any God besides Me? There is no rock I know of, not any. There's no other real God besides Me.

And then He goes on to sort of make fun of how foolish idolatry is. He says, you know, a person takes a piece of wood and they cut it in half, and with one half of it, they carve a little statue out of it, and with the other half, they cook dinner over it. And then they set it up, and they bow down before their god, and they eat dinner, and they say, "Thank you, God, for dinner. Thank you, little god, for providing this."

Now, idolatry in the Old Testament in the ancient Near East—it's very obvious to see. It looks like little statues and little presents, little offerings. And those were set up to do lots of things like, "Hey, you want to be pregnant? You want a family? You want work? You want the rain to come and your crops to grow?" Give these little gifts and you can try to control the world.

Idolatry is no less alive today—it looks different, but it is still very much alive among us. Modern idolatry is not like little statues. Idolatry is when we take something good and make it into something that we use to try to control our world with, to make it work for us. It's when you love something, obey something, and serve something that's not God in order to fix your life.

Idolatry is taking a good thing and making it into a God thing, and it becomes a bad thing. And we do this with the best things in life. We do things like family. I mean, isn't family in general a good thing? And yet when we're like, "I must have. I want. I need a family. I want this kind of family. I'm going to control the heck out of my kids. I'm going to manage my life to make everything work out the way I think it should go."

Let me ask you a bunch of questions. What do you love most in life? What captures your white space? When you're in the shower, you're driving—what do you think about? If only I had that. Idolatry is a lot about our fears and our desires. Like, "If I don't have this, my life has no meaning. If this goes away, I fall apart." It's the things that I want. What do you fantasize about having or terrified about losing? What's the one thing that you would say, "Without this, life doesn't work?"

Is it money? You know, money is such a great one for us. Security. When we feel like we have what we need, we're like, "Oh, I feel like I should be able to rest in that." You know, this is why many people are watching the numbers all the time. Stock market—I'm not checking it once a month, I'm checking it every day. I'm looking at my 401ks. I'm looking at my bank balance.

What are you most faithful to obey? Your desires?

What are your temptations that you cannot say no to? What is your measure of success that you're chasing after? All these things are good things that become God things and become bad things. See, this is what John is warning us. Sin is always destructive. Whether it's the kind of sin that leads to death, like I'm pushing God away, or it's the kind of sin that actually I'm giving myself to something besides God.

You know, and the Bible pictures Satan's work in two ways, two principle ways, the lion and the prostitute. The lion who comes with great ferocity, violence, and just kind of destroys, but also the prostitute who comes with enticement. Enticement to good things to become ultimate things and therefore become bad things. See, John is warning us sin is always destructive, even for a believer who isn't rejecting Jesus, our idolatry is destroying us from the inside. It's robbing us.

The Roach Philosophy

Let me ask you this. What is your philosophy on roaches? I bet maybe you don't have one, but I have one. Here's my philosophy on roaches. Like when I see a roach, I don't just kill the roach, I immediately call the exterminator. A little bit maybe too fast, but I'm like, immediately call the exterminator. Because when you see one roach, it's not the roaches that you see that are the problem. It's all the other roaches that you don't see that are the problem. So I don't like roaches. I want to kill them all. I want to kill their moms and their dads and their brothers and their sisters and their kids and their grandkids. I have no mercy for roaches. And do you all feel the same way? We need to get rid of these, right?

And here's the problem though, idolatry is like roaches. It's an invasion in your life. And yet here's what I'm afraid we do. You're with a friend. You're with a family member. Something happens where your idolatry is sort of revealed for what it is. Maybe you talk away a little bit too long about that pickup truck that you really like, or that person that you're trying to date, like, what's happened is, oh, there's a roach that crawls out, and you're like, right, I killed it. I'm done. Because what are we not like? We don't want people to see our mess. But the reality is that the danger is all the ones you don't see, the invasion. And we're so slow with idolatry and sin in our lives to actually call the exterminator. Like, can I just deal with what's seen? I don't want to deal with what's unseen. And what's crazy about that is we don't realize how destructive that is.

Do you understand how destructive idolatry is in the life of a baptized Christian who loves Jesus? It robs you of joy. It just completely zaps your joy. I think it's one of the reasons that when we come in here on church to church services on a Sunday, we sing songs, Hallelujah to our God. This is how we sing, Hallelujah to our God. Glory hallelujah. Hallelujah. Because we spent all of our week locating our joy in other things besides Jesus that don't give life, and it's just hard to flip that switch and come in here and be like, Yes, Jesus. He's the real source of life. Because we've spent the whole week worshiping everything else but Him.

You know that idolatry robs you of assurance of salvation. One of the reasons that you're filled with doubts and fears, you're like, I don't really know, is that you're giving yourself to all kinds of things the rest of the week. And so you're like, I don't really know that God loves me because you're not living out of this deep relationship with Him, of deep satisfaction and finding your joy in Him. Idolatry robs us.

Listen again to John verse 18.

We know that everyone born of God does not keep on sinning — 1 John 5:18

Meaning not that we don't sin anymore, but we're not practicing this. Some of you are Ted Lasso fans. Season one, you know, one of the great scenes of Ted Lasso is when Ted Lasso, who's the soccer coach, chews out his star player, Jamie Tartt for missing practice. And he goes into a speech that maybe you don't know is from 2002 from Allen Iverson. So Allen Iverson played for the Philadelphia 76ers and wouldn't show up for practice. And so he goes on the press conference, he doesn't show up and his coach is mad at him and they're having this back and forth. And this is what Iverson said. This is a quote, okay?

I mean, listen, we're talking about practice. Not a game, a game, not a game. We're talking about practice, not a game, not the game I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last. Not the game. We're talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? We're talking about practice. I mean, I'm supposed to be there. I'm supposed to lead by example. I know that. And I'm not shoving it aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we're talking about practice, man. What are we talking about? Practice. We're talking about practice, man. We're talking about practice.

We're talking about practice. We ain't just talking about the game. We're talking about practice, man. Now, Ted Lasso riffs the whole thing, and I think the Apostle John would do the same thing with us. I think he'd say, It's about practice, man. It's about practice. I mean, we're not talking about a game, we're talking about practice. What are you practicing? Are you practicing your abiding in Jesus? Are you practicing idolatry? Little children, John would say. He does say, keep yourselves from idols. And then it's funny, John shifts from these two warnings about those who deserve death and those who don't, and he shifts to two encouragements.

So look at what he says here about how family matters. This is where it gets really interesting because John has a really unique prescription for the family of God when brothers and sisters are stuck in sin and are sinning. Look what he says here, and it just sounds so boring, right? Look what he says. Pray for each other. Right? Like, really, John? That's like the Sunday school answer, pray for each other? Pray for the one caught in sin? See, I think this is so profound. John puts this—is how one commentator puts it—he puts the responsibility for the spiritual health of a church on the people in the church.

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin, not leading to death, he will ask and God will give him life. — 1 John 5:16

John clearly values prayer in a way that you and I don't often. How do we pray in our church? Well, we'll pray before a meal. We have lots of meetings. We pray at the beginning of a meeting. We'll pray at the end of a meeting. We'll pray sort of as a formality to get things going. But that's not what's being pictured here. What's being pictured here is like a scuba tank for a diver, or like an astronaut suit for an astronaut. Like, this is life critical. This matters more than you can possibly imagine that the people of God take ownership of one another like a spiritual family.

I remember several years ago, I was preaching at Mount Pleasant Worship and Outreach Center—sister church down in Southeast Raleigh we do a lot of things with—and they get up and one of their songs of worship that Sunday morning, they're not looking at the front, they start turning around to each other and they sing this:

I pray for you. You pray for me. I love you. I need you to survive. I pray for you. You pray for me. I love you. I need you to survive.

And they were like turning around and pointing at each other. It was incredibly powerful. I was like, man, I'm not sure we could sing that song here in our church. I'm not sure we'd mean it like that. Such an ownership of one another like, I need you to survive? That's incredible.

The Sin That Leads to Death

Let me speak really briefly to the elephant in the room of this passage. You know, like John says, there's a sin that leads to death. I'm not saying that one should pray for that. What does he mean by that? Do you mean we shouldn't pray for people who've abandoned the faith? Simply put, no. I mean, the Greek here is hard, and I'm not the greatest Greek scholar, okay? But I looked up all the commentaries on this, and what John is putting forth, he said like, you pray for the sanctification of people who are already Christians. And he's putting a priority here on the church owning one another. He's not saying you can't pray for people who are apostate or people who aren't Christians yet, but he's saying the impetus, the weight he's putting on this—is like, I need you to survive—that level of intensity. Like, we need this level of care for one another. It's not a command not to pray, it's a command to pray by comparison. This is a call for us to be the family of God.

Are We a Spiritual Family?

I want to ask this question. How do we view our church? You know, in the South, we talk about church like an event, right? What are you doing after church today? That's an activity. The Bible holds something very different. The Church is the people of God. Or we talk about, Hey, can I meet you at the Church? No, the Church is not a building. It is a people, right? This is what the Bible affirms over and over again. But here's my question. How do we view our people? How do we view one another? I mean, are we just colleagues? Are we teammates? Here's my fear. Are we just a club? Like there's a club right here? There's a club over there? Or is it really like family?

I was speaking to somebody before the service today, and they shared with me about how their family was taking care of helping them, providing for them, caring for them in a very, very practical way. And I was like, Man, I wish we were like that as a church. In that spiritual sense. Like, do we really view one another as like oxygen tank scuba gear, astronaut suit? Like, I need you to make it. We need one another in that kind of way. Are we a spiritual family?

Here's the call from John, to start living like a spiritual family, to start viewing one another in that way. And look, we can't afford to do anything else. If one thing has been shown over the last year, it is that church cannot be virtual, just doesn't work. Because church is not a show and it's not an activity and it's not an event, it's one anothering. And we need this badly.

I know that for some of you, this is stirring up a lot because you're like, I don't have that. And I certainly don't feel like this is that. So can I ask you if you're feeling stirred up in that way to do two things?

First is to pray. I mean, that's what this passage is all about. John's calling us to pray. Would you pray that our church would be a spiritual family? That just doesn't happen. And if I can be really candid as your pastor, it hasn't happened in the ten years I've been here, where we're really there. But can you pray that our church would really be a spiritual family? That's a supernatural thing we're asking God to do.

Second, would you pray that God would provide that for you? That is a good prayer that God would give you family like relationships with people who know your stuff. They love you, they care about you, and they are praying for you. If you don't have that, I want to encourage you, you can fill out one of our connect cards and this is a good time to connect to our youth ministry or our RUF or to men's and women's ministry to community groups in our church. But can you pray and ask God to provide that for you? We need you to survive.

You Can Trust Jesus

Finally, I want to point you to this: you can trust Jesus. I love how this whole book ends because John points us back again to Jesus as the one who keeps us and provides for us. It's not our prayers for each other. It's not even our merit that in the very end of things is what holds us fast. Listen to what he says in verses 18 through 20.

We know that everyone who's been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who is born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true. In His Son, Jesus Christ, He is the true God and eternal life. — 1 John 5:18-20

Such great promises for us. The power of God in Jesus Christ to keep those who are in Him in Him.

Let me close with this. Several years ago, a man and his wife were caught in a very serious hailstorm in the Midwest. And it went from normal hail size, you know, nickels and dimes, bigger and bigger and bigger. And soon it was getting to the size where these were becoming baseball sized hailstones. And the man realized his wife was kind of delicate and fragile in her health, and he's like, she's not gonna be okay. And so he with his body, he began to lean over her and try to walk and cover her from the hailstorms, and he's getting beaten doing this. As they keep walking, the hail increases in its intensity, and finally he collapses under this. And he's getting beaten about the head and ears and neck and back. And he's got open sores and cuts from this.

And finally, when the hailstorm is over, she calls 911 and he has to be taken into the hospital and sewn up, put back together. This is a true story and on the local newscast a couple days later, the man's wife was asked how she felt about her experience. And this is what she said: "Every time I look at the scars on his head and on his neck and on his ears, I love him more. I love him more because he sacrificed himself to me for me."

Brothers and sisters, we know that we are in heaven with the Lord. There's one body in heaven that will not be perfect, that will bear the scars, that will bear the wounds, that bear the holes in the hands and the holes in the feet. When we look upon Him who was pierced, we remember how He covered over the wrath of God for us in our sin. How He rescued us and ransomed us and redeemed us. And it is that kindness that leads us to repent. It's His kindness that reminds us like, this is life. You can place your fingers in the holes. You can remember the fullness of what He's done for you, and He'll keep you to the end.

And brothers and sisters, this is the great invitation we have to come and lay aside the things that we've chased after even this week at His feet and lay ahold again of the life that is life, Jesus Himself.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank You for Your word. There is nothing like Your word. And Father, we find ourselves in need this morning of Your power in us. Lord, help us to discern life from death. Lord, help us to come to You with everything that we are and lay ourselves before You this morning. Lord, we pray that we give up our idols.

We'd let go of things that have occupied too much space in our lives, in our hearts, that have taken too much of our attention and money and focus and have robbed us of assurance and robbed us of joy.

Father, we thank You for Your grace. We thank you that you always move towards sinners. We thank you that we have this day on which to repent and move toward you.

And we pray, Father, as we sing this song, Lord, we put our hands in His side and remember the put our fingers in the holes and remember the sacrifice of Christ given for us.

It's in His name we pray. Amen.

Let's stand and sing together.