This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Good morning. It's great to be here. I'm grateful to be hiding behind this thing as well. It's great to be, I'm actually your campus minister at UCF. It's a privilege to be here. The reason Scott didn't leave is because I'm here. This thing is actually wired. See that thing in this hand? It's a pager to zap me if you need to. You could have left, man. I'm not that dangerous. God's big. God is big. I was actually thinking about the pukets the other night before I start. I have to say this because I've been thinking about it since. What are the pukets known for? Big family, lots of kids. We had a student over on Friday night. One of our students in our UF is, I didn't know he was doing this, but started the conversational hour thing at UCF. Anyway, I just had this impromptu movie night. Kelly is out of town. That's why she's not here. She doesn't hate anybody here or anything like that. That's my way. So it's like impromptu movie night. Who brings this guy from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and we're talking. He's a student learning English at UCF. He was saying how the average amount of kids that they have, it's gone way down. It's really sad. It's awful tragic in Dubai to now families only have like on average seven kids. So he's normal. Leave them alone. Okay, he's normal in Dubai. This semester in our UF, we've been looking at why the gospel is good news. And this morning, if you wonder why Psalm 51, why not? What we're taking, what I've been doing is we've been going through and taking these kind of things in the Bible that you hear a lot, you hear a lot about, but often you don't know much about them or they're not defined a lot or they end up meaning nothing. And I think that's one of the things about the gospel. There's different types of good news, right? There's good news that's like, that's all right. That's good news. Like for example, I would, you know, what'd be good news? Like your TV show came back on a couple weeks ago. That's good news, right? If you guys have TVs, if anybody has TVs, that's good news. But like, then there's good news like, I was thinking the, you know the guy, did you hear the story about a month ago where the guys were out in Texas fishing and they were gone for a week. They called off the search, three guys, and they called off the search and then the next day, like five million miles away. Like a Coast Guard boat spotted them on top of their boat. I mean, then, you know, if you're the family and you hear that news, that, you know, your dad or your brother was, that's a whole different level of good news. That's good news. I think the gospel tends to be just kind of okay news, good news, but it's actually really good news. But I come here today with you, a sinner who needs Jesus to save him. Our text is Psalm 51. It's already been read. Let me read it again. This is God's Word. And I'm reading from the ESV. So if you don't have that or if it's a little confusing, I apologize. This is God's Word to choir master a Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bishiba, have mercy on me. Oh God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. And my sin is ever before me. Oh, sorry, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and encended my mother conceived me. Will you pray with me one more time? Let's pray. Lord God, I thank you that you have revealed yourself to us. I pray now or there's so many different places in which all of us come here. Some, as we just sang, ruined wrecked by the fall, some broken families broken, some rejoicing over good news in their lives, some weeping over bad news, some board burned out, cynical of everything, maybe the church, maybe you, or will you come and meet us this morning. We open the eyes of our hearts that we may see you, that we may grow, that we may be transformed. We cannot do it. We you do it, Lord. In Jesus name, Amen. So if I was going to ask the question, which I'm going to, what is wrong with the world? This kind of rhetorical. You don't have to answer that. What would you say? Someone came up to you and asked you that question. What is wrong with the world? What would your answer be? If you don't think there's anything wrong with the world, I don't think that's probably a problem, right? Just look at the headlines from this week. Can you guys think of some headlines from this week? Just this last week? That's not rhetorical. Do you know any headlines from this last week that you can think of? Big things in the news? Alworth murder? Yeah, has been shot his wife. What are some other things? The guy from Iran, I cannot say his name. The A word. Thank you. Right? He's like shooting missiles and talking smack. He's like whatever. But you know, it's all over the news. What are some other things, some other headlines? I think today there was like a hundred and I heard 120 people killed in the Philippines because of storms or something like that. The Yale student who, I think her funeral was yesterday, who was found. There you go. Thank you. Someone knows the news. I've had insomnia all week, so I've read every news article, no demand, including the ones that are really dumb and funny. We can talk about this later. But you know, we can go on and on. The Kanye things kind of died down, right? A little bit. I think it hasn't. Okay, never mind. I'm wrong. There's other, you know, there's also good headline. Oh, T-bo. That's a headline from last night, right? Which is unbelievable. Like this people like T-bo worshipers are like. I mean, it's horrible. He got it. I mean, Tim T-bo had to go to the hospital, which, you know, I won't even say anything about that because I don't have to. It'll sound really bad and then, you know, probably you have worshipers. I will get killed. What, here's another question. What are your headlines from this past week? If I was to ask you what your headlines are from this past week, what would you say? You don't have to answer that because you can answer it to yourself. I can tell you mine. Pretty much everything's broken. It seems like my wife in downtown, you know, like they that you're like, you have all the stuff to do and get done. And like, I won't even get into it. But like everything broke yesterday. Every plan I had was destroyed Tuesday night at large group. Like right before I was about to talk, right before I was good to go up and speak. I get a call from Kelly saying she's in an ambulance because one of our students had hit a girl on campus with his car. I got a call Friday night from a parent looking for their son, who someone called the grandparents, saying it was the son, and one of $3,000, they were stuck in Alaska. I'm just like, what? This is my life, by the way. The life of a campus minister. I was like, what? And then they call back and know that they don't know who called the grandparents and one of the $3,000. But what would your headlines be? Too busy to breathe. Lonely. Maybe running out of money. Not sure what is going to happen next. Maybe your headline would be my family is falling apart. Maybe your headline would actually be something really good. What would your headlines be? When I asked the question, which I asked sometimes, I wouldn't say all the time, but when I asked students that question, what's wrong with the world? A lot of times the answers I get would be things like, probably what you would probably be thinking, pride, racism, religion, the media, it's always the other political party. But what is wrong with the world? Why are we so proud? Why are we racist? Why? I mean, you see, that's another headline. All the terrorists that have been like the plots that have been uncovered. Why are terrorists' plots being uncovered? Why are they terrorists? What's the answer? Hopefully, from our text today, we can see a little bit about the answer to what's wrong with the world and what God is actually doing about it. The story actually in Psalm 51, you can tell by the introduction is, it's a story about a guy by the name of King David. If you guys heard of King David, if you don't know King, I love this thing by the way. It's so awesome. I feel like totally per-safe up here. Like totally protected, I'm sorry, I should not have said that. A little bit of a background, right? King David, the story Psalm 51 is taking place and it says right in the top of our text, that when Nathan the Prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bishiba. So this is when David's life, when King David royally screws up, he goes after another man's wife, right? Do you guys know this story? Covers it up, we don't have to tell the whole story. Covers it up by actually having her husband murdered. I mean, it's just an awful, awful, awful story. Nathan comes to him and says to David, he tells him the story about a guy who owns some cattle, a poor man, and how this rich man came to this poor man, he tells him this parable and takes his only livestock, sheep, whatever goat, ram, which one it was, but who cares. And takes it out from this poor man that's all he has, the rich man takes it, and David, here's the story, and he gets outraged. Like outrage, this is like just so mad, and Nathan being, you know, it's just brilliant. What a great friend, right, says, oh yeah David, you are that man. And David is almost, it's like the gut punch, you know, I don't know the soul punch, I guess you could call it, I don't know what you would call it. Realizes that he is the guy that he hates. He is the man that he hates. You know, when you look at people like David and the Bible, even background, before he even gets this place where he realizes he's the, you know, the man that he hates. He's done the thing, the most despicable thing, and he's sitting there in the ashes of his own stupidity, whatever you want to call it. David, you know, was born to a guy by the name of, do you know his dad's name? Jesse, you guys are awake, just make sure you're awake. Right, he, David, he was small and right, I think he was kind of like, he was kind of the man, wasn't he? I think of him like Noah from the notebook. I'm allowed to say that, have you guys seen the notebook? Just make sure you're there. Okay, good. Like, but he's the youngest, right, he goes and there's this giant guy named Goliath, you guys know the story. And David goes and with a stone, kills one of the greatest warriors of that time. I mean, the man who everybody feared. And so you can imagine David as, you know, he becomes king and we don't, you know, we don't have to get in all the background story. He was the man. Like, I don't know his, his, you know, presidential kingly rating had to be much better than, than what Americans would see. Right, the, the ladies had to think he was the man. The guys had to think man, that guy's the man. And the kids probably thought, I want to be like David. But the Bible, you know, and I think what's great about our story today and one of the great things about the Bible is, is my mic working right? A little bit, is it? Sorry. You know, when we look at the Bible, we tend to think of the Bible as a book of heroes and conquerors, right? It's a book about all these great heroes. Or the Bible is this book of good moral examples of how we should live.
Well, one of the things I love about the story and I love about King David is the Bible, it just isn't about heroes and good people. It's a story of the hero who would come to rescue his broken people and not just his broken people, his broken creation, his world where things are wrong, where people are wrong. A people who couldn't rescue themselves, including the greatest heroes of the Bible. King David, one of the greatest men in the Bible, needed a savior. He needed a rescuer. He needed someone to come and pick him up and do what he could not do for himself. And this is good news. It's good news for you if you're a kid and you feel like I'm hopeless and helpless. It's good news if you're a parent, if you're a husband, if you're in a relationship. Because the Bible is about a hero, a savior that would come, that his come. His name is Jesus. No matter how unnormal you think your life is or how. How weird do you think you are? Jesus has come for you. He has come for his people. The reason that so many of us, including myself, have a small view of God, is because we have such a small view of sin and brokenness. In the reason why I and so many of us are afraid of brokenness in us or outside of us is because we have a small view of God's power and his grace of his mercy. What do you guys need rescued from this week? I could probably think of a million things that I need rescued from. What do you need rescued from today? Is it your job situation? Is it your life? Is it your loneliness? Is it your sickness? Is it the rebellion of people against you or relationships broken? What do you need rescued from today? Well, real robust view of sin. Andy, why are we talking about sin? My initial reaction is that it almost makes me tense up. Last week, I shared this in RUF and I was talking about how much I hate scales. I hate scales. But the things you stand on and lie to you. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Thank you. So I went to the doctor last week and after I had shared this with RUF and I had to get all the 50,000 test done because my body's broken. That's another headline. She weighed me and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, you didn't even let it stop. I could have another half pound that way. I felt like she stopped when I was like, you know what I'm talking about? Then I walked into the room. This is not broken, I am. This is how much I need a savior. I walked into the room by myself. I'm sitting there thinking about how much my jeans weighed and my belt and my wallet. And I'm like, my hair doesn't weigh anything so I couldn't have that. I tend to avoid the things that I don't want to know the truth about. The great news, I think some of the great news of the gospel is we can actually go and look at sin because real robust view of sin leads to a real robust savior. A shallow view of sin leads to a shallow savior, a small savior. In my hope isn't that, you know, as we walk away from here today, if I say tonight, it's because I always teach at night. If I've done that yet, okay, good. I always do that and I'm like, I'm just catching myself before I do it. Okay. But my hope is as we walk away from here today, isn't that you'd walk away from here saying, oh my goodness, I'm wrecked. But you'd walk away from here saying, oh my goodness, Jesus is amazing. David had a much bigger view of sin than I did. You know, when I think of sin, typically, what do you think of when you think of sin? It's doing something bad, right? It's like the other week when I was driving with Kelli, you know, and in the guy, it was probably somebody here. When I made a legal lane adjustment with an indicator light. And I got the bird from the guy for doing it, who was pulling out, like, I had to, you know, whatever. And I'm like running, like, so we're driving down the road. And like, my arm is out the window. So my wife and my son can't see what I was doing. You can take it. I wasn't doing really bad. Don't worry. I was just waving. I'm just kidding. I remember, like, thinking, like, why did I have to, like, get, like, why did I have to be right? Like, even though I was right, why did I have to, like, attack this guy and people that I did not know? But when I think of sin, it's normally something like that, right? Something I do wrong. It's something I did bad. And I think the Bible has a much bigger, broader view of sin than we do. And I think it's, believe it or not, I think the Bible is really, really helpful. You know, one of the things we've been, as we've been talking about this in our UF, one of the things I've just realized more and more is that the English language is very, we basically make everything into one thing. Kind of, like, everything's just like, I guess we're just fast. You have to have everything fast. Like, you know, like, the Eskimo. Have you guys heard that with snow? Like, Eskimo's have like 600 words for snow or something like that. It's not true. It's like 15 or something. Did you guys know that? How many words we have for snow? One, it's called snow. But, you know, like, they have a word for, like, icy snow and soft snow and snow. You, like, throw on your face and giggle. Maybe not. But, you know, we kind of do the same. It's kind of what we do, I think, with our language. And there's definitely strengths, but there's also weaknesses. I think we kind of narrow sin down to something and it's not helpful. It doesn't give us a bigger picture of what sin is. It doesn't give us a bigger picture of what, of who Jesus is. Well, what is sin? Tim Keller says this. And this is a great definition. It says, he says, sin is the misery of making anything in your life more important to your hope, identity, meaning or joy than God. Sin is the misery of making anything in your life more important to your hope, identity, meaning or joy than God. J.I. Packer says this with what sins essence is. He says, sins essence is playing God, acting as if you and your pleasure were the end to which all things God included must be made to function as a means. So you can say, what is wrong with the world? And I would say we have the wrong king, the wrong saviors. Everybody wants to be king. In the book of Judges, I did this last semester, over and over again, you see that the problem with Israel with us, which we are Israel, is we are like they had no king. Everyone wanted to be their own king. And it led to mass destruction. But David says this in our text. He uses these three words. He says, have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me. And it sounds a little bit like excess 34. When I heard when I read this, for the first time I was thinking immediately I went to excess 34, which I don't know why, but it's not like I'm, anyway, in excess 34 it says this, the Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and a bounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands for giving iniquity and transgressions and sin. So you see there's three words that David goes, when he goes to God, when he goes to God because of his mercy with this confession, he uses these three words for sin, which I think are so valuable to us. And the way I kind of want to break it down is I used, I made, what do you call it when you use letters to help remember something? Huh? Stake, cross-stake, I'm just kidding, I don't know what, I just could not hear, I feel like I was on the prices right right there. But no one yelled. But anyway I had three Rs that aren't really Rs, so just go there with me to help you remember. The first one, like what is sin? First, this is what we normally think of, right, but it's rebellion. First R is rebellion, which David uses the word transgression, which comes from the Hebrew word, I know I'm not supposed to do this, Pasha. And this is sins of commission. This is sins of commission. And what rebellion means is to willfully rebel against someone to whom you owe allegiance. If it's your parents, it would be saying, no, I'm not going to clean my room, right? You kids are like, I've never done that. This one's kind of easy, this one we think a lot about, it's me yelling at the people, but ultimately what rebellion is saying, I want to do it my way. I'm going to do it my way, I don't care what you say, I'm going to do it my way, however I want to do it. So it's rebellion. And this can play out in a lot of different ways, right? It could be blatant rebellion or it could be really subtle. So it could be, I'm going to go here to get intimacy where I know I won't find it. It could also be rebellion could also be feeling really guilty for a long time when you confess sin. As if you're going to pay for your sin when Jesus says, I'm going to pay for it. I paid for it all. And you saying, you're not enough. I'll pay for it with my guilt. That could be rebellion. So the first R is rebellion. The second R is racked, so there you go. They're not really ours, but just go there with me. Racked. And this is the word translated iniquity in our text. Wash me thoroughly for my iniquity. And this word comes from the Hebrew word Abba, which means to be twisted out of shape. And Tim Keller defines it this way says, just as when a bone is dislocated from its socket, it causes great pain and damage. So a heart not centered on God is filled with deeply distorted beliefs, self-use, God views, worldviews, and drives an ordinate and slaving and misplaced desires. It's not just rebellion. Sin is not just rebellion. It's wrecked. It's a condition. It's a condition. We are racked in our hearts or about our own glory. Even sometimes when you don't even think it, even when you think you're doing something really good, we're racked. David goes off. And he kind of spells out. And these are all important. We'll see that in a second. And the third R is righteous, not like college students don't know the not jokes. Do you guys know the not jokes? Do any of y'all know the not jokes who are like born in the last 20 years? Or are they so bad? Like, I'm actually one of the things I'm one of my main goals at UCF is to bring back the not joke. Like, you guys know it, like, hey, look, they're Scott Puckett, not. You guys help me. This will be the application for today. Next time you're in Waterford, say, hey, look, it's Scott Puckett, not.
What was that? Sorry. But this righteous not, it means missing the mark and come from the Hebrew word Chathaw, which is sin. It's a sin of omission, not keeping from bad things, but keeping from doing the right thing. So it's one thing to be in rebellion, but you're also sinning when you're failing to love and to live, to serve and bless other people. When you lack to fight for justice. When you lack to serve the person and inconvenience yourself, it's not just the things that you've done bad. Sin isn't just that, but it's also failure to do what's righteous, what's good. And this is, this one kind of blows apart a lot of categories. And it comes from the word Chathaw means to miss the mark. So it's not just, you guys got me on that. Now, you can see if you have a narrow view of sin, if you kind of misplaced any of these, if you have, like, which I'd say most of us in this room this morning, have a view of sin that says that sin is doing something bad. Now, I want you to think about if that's your view of sin, how that could affect the way you love God and the way you love the people around you. The way you love your kids, if you think it's sin is just as rebellion, right? Then you're going to be all typically probably about, about good behavior. Probably about, and this could play out a lot of different ways, but it's pretty easy to save yourself, maybe, maybe. You just pace good fruit on a dead tree. This is kind of how if your view of sin is just rebellion, right? All you got to do is do good stuff and you'll be all right. If you view that with other people, right, like, think about it if that's how you view it, view sin with your kids. Then everything's going to be about being, like, you're not going to love them in their reckiness. You're not going to move towards them where they're broken. You're going to think, why are you doing bad things? The only reason you're doing bad things is because you're a rebel, not because you're broken, not because your heart has been destroyed. So you'll be all about do, do, do, do, or do what I want you to do, and you'll fail to move towards heart issues, typically, not always, typically. Now, if your view of sin is just wrecked, then what you do is you say, hey, man, I'm a guy. That's what guys do. Or I'm a woman. That's what women do. You know what women do, right? They shop, and I'm just kidding. They coupon. That's for Kelly. Whatever it is that women do, or I don't have the quote, but there was the woman from, I forget her name, from, I will say, desperate housewives, because that was the most recent thing. If I read this article about her, she got cancer, and her whole article was just blasting the tobacco industry, and saying, she blamed like four or five different people, like the people she looked up to when she was a kid, the tobacco industry for lying to her. But nowhere in her like this little quote, nowhere in her, this article that she ever say that I'm a rebel that I chose to smoke cigarettes. And I've seen this on a college campus where parents will say things like, if they think it's just rebellion, the way they parent is they say, I've had parents get upset that their kids are following Jesus and not going and partying, like literally. Because this is your chance. If your view of sin, if it's narrow, and all of these are connected, that's the thing. They're all connected. You have to own sin as rebellion, you have to own it as reckoness, and you have to own it as unrighteousness. If you're, if you guys following me, you awake, I know I got to go because God will start zapping me. Well, David not only calls his, his evils, like to move on from that, in verse four, he calls his deeds evil. He doesn't just call it evil though, he says, God, you are right and just, I deserve judgment. And this is amazing to me, because what David does in this text, he doesn't go and say, look at my past, look at, you know, the pressures of being a king. You know, hard it is to be me. No one appreciates me. He doesn't, he doesn't blame anything. He says what he has done. He calls it what it is. It's evil that he is evil and that God, you are right to judge him the way he does. I think ridiculously, I don't want to say crazy in, in verse four, he says against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And what's crazy about that is, if you're still with me, is what we're getting there is. What, like, could you imagine if you were a bishiva in that statement, what about me, what about the guy who's dead, what about the family that's wrecked. But David does something crazy and he goes to God and he says against you and you only have I sinned. I think there's so much in that that is to learn so much in it that is so vital to why my life's a wreck. You know why I hate sin? I hate sin because of its consequences to me. I don't hate sin because it's core is relational rejection saying God I don't want you. Yes, was it sinning against her? But primarily what's wrong with the world isn't just, it doesn't start with pride. It starts with I'm going to be God. Martin Luther said that you cannot break any of the 10 commands without first breaking the first commandment. Without being your own God or having another God besides God. David could only commit adultery if he made himself his own God, a, made himself his own God assuming he was wiser than the God who made the laws. Or b, make the shiva into an idol more important than God. Which ultimately believing that he could not, if he could not have her, he could not be happy. Does that make sense? Are you with me? Just to kind of move on and so you guys can go and think about your headlines together. Ask, that's even a better question. What are the people around you's headlines? I think this is kind of the nature of sin, right? Like we don't even know the people around us headlines. Maybe yet today go and ask the people around you what their headline is. Ask the people in this room that you don't know. Hey, what's going on in your life this week? What are some of the major events? Well, where's the good news in this you might ask? It's a good question because you want to go home, you don't want to be totally depressed. And I think the good news in this is what David gets. He doesn't run to God because God is going to kill him. But he runs to God because he understands his mercy, his grace alone can restore him, can save him. He understands that God alone can rescue him from his ashes. That God alone could restore what the Locust had eaten. And so David goes to God knowing God you are just to do whatever you're going to do in here because I am a rebel. You have given me everything I've said, I don't want it. I don't want you. He runs to him because he knows that God can redeem him not just from his bad behavior. But from his reckiness, from his failure to love people perfectly well, to move towards people who are broken. He knows God is right to judge but he runs to him because he knows he's gracious. And if you don't know that God's gracious, you say, I don't know that. I don't know what God's like. It's God really like that. Romans 5.6 says this. You say, well, Andy, I'm really a mess. And one of the songs we just sang that said, if you carry till you're better, you'll never come at all. I love that line. Like part of y'all are here this morning, we're about to take communion and you're thinking, I probably shouldn't do it. I probably shouldn't come to the table. I'm wrecked. My life is wrecked and I'm wrecking people around me. Listen to this from Romans 5.6. It says, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we are also rejoicing God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have now received reconciliation. This is amazing. This is amazing. David runs to God because God's gracious, but in this we see that Jesus runs to us in our brokenness, in our rebellion, in our recordness, in our utter rebellion saying, God, I don't want you. It doesn't stop God. He runs towards us. Jesus comes to us even when we don't cry out. Now, He comes for His people to redeem them, to save them, to restore them. This is amazing. The Jesus comes for rebels who are racked. You know, when you think about it, like, you know, I want to give like a great illustration, but there's no greater illustration than what we're about to do. If you don't think the gospel is good news, you do not know how serious sin is. You have not looked at the headlines. You know, one of the things that the Westminster Diviners did, and I love the definition, if you don't know the Westminster Confession of Faith, it's okay. One of my favorite things in there is the definition for repentance, because I think there's two problems when we look at sin. The first, what it says in the Westminster Confession, it says that repentance is a saving grace, and this is a paraphrase. Whereby, and it's going to sound worried to worry to be a paraphrase, because I might throw that out in there or something, so a quasi paraphrase. We're a sinner out of the true sense of the odiousness of their sin. We're a sinner out of the, they're understanding a true understanding that what their sin is, is actually like a rattlesnake, not a teddy bear. So the one side is repentance is understanding your sin for what it is. It's gross, it's broken. But don't stop there. The other side of that is with a true understanding of that, but with also a true understanding of the mercies of Christ. So if you stop with, this is it, I'm broken, I'm wrecked, I'm a rebel, like, whoa is me, you'll walk out of here just feeling like junk, right? It's not the point. And the Westminster Diviner say it, no, if that's all you have, you're done. But it says more so, if you understand the mercies of Christ, and out of your understanding of who Christ is, you turn from that, which is a rattlesnake, to him who will rescue you, with full purpose of an endeavorance after new obedience. This is the call of the Christian life. The way you grow is a Christian, you're thinking, how is my family going to be healed? The same way you become a Christian, is you turn to Jesus with faith and repentance. It's not, you know, like, you've probably heard that before, it's not the step one, it's a disease, but it is the Christian life. The daily today that I, Andy Johnson, who is wrecked, is called to run to Jesus for salvation. And whatever way I'm running against, and away from God, I'm called to run to him. So, as we come today, to protect together in the Lord's Supper, like, don't get lost, don't get stuck in a moment. Don't get stuck in a moment that is, well as me, look what I've done, or like, I want you to see in the Lord's Supper as you protect today, that the Lord's Supper isn't just about, it's not just about rebellion. It's about reckoning. We need communion, we need God to heal us from the inside out. We need to see and taste and touch how good the God of the Bible is. He's given us, no preacher could give a better illustration than the bread and the wine, that you have a God who's come for you, for your family, and for your creation. So, as we protect together, will you go to him with faith and repentance? Let's pray. Lord God, I thank you for your mercies, which are new, even today. I pray, Lord, for those here today who are broken, who are tired, who are worn out, or I pray today, that you would encourage them, that you would pick them up. Do you put people into their lives to walk with them, that you would put your body into their lives to walk with them? What I pray is, we even protect now, Lord, that we would be encouraged as we see how true your love is, that you have come not for the righteous, but for the sinners. And Lord, may we go out of here praising and worshiping you. And Jesus, amen.