I'll be honest, and that's rare for a preacher, honesty. I don't know how this is gonna work, thanks for getting the joke. I don't know how this is gonna work out. I left my sermon notes in the back, I left my bullets in. So I'm gonna say, that's two strikes. One more thing I forget, I'm just sowing this thing up, and we're gonna go home, all right. So let's hope I don't forget Jesus in the text, and we won't. All right, Revelation 2, chapter 18 through 29. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira right, the words of the Son of God who has eyes like flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first, but I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food, sacrifice to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works, but to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you, I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast to what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my work until the end, to Him I will give authority over the nations. And He will rule them with a rod of iron, and as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father, and I will give Him the morning star. He who has an ear, let Him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen. Amen. I have mentioned a friend of mine several times from this pulpit, and I realize that that's always kind of a dangerous thing to do, because I don't know Him, and you don't know the story. And to me, the story is very stark and clear in living. And so I felt like today would be a good day for me to tell you the whole story of my friend and mentor, Steve. Steve was a universally loved, great guy. He went into the ministry. He worked on a campus that I would eventually work on. He started his ministry at Delta State University. He had a great ministry there. Left to go to Auburn when he left Delta State. I came in, so not only did I work in the same ministry that he worked in, I worked on the same campus. I was very close to him. He used him a lot to find out information and to kind of get the lay of the land. And he had a very vibrant ministry at Auburn, hundreds of people coming to his ministry. And he went from there to planted church in Birmingham. And that church has some things about it that you might find familiar. They had communion every Sunday. They had a worship service that some would call relaxed, and others would call it liturgical, kind of a mixture between the two. They would sing contemporary music and old words, old hymns, such as new tunes. We used some of the songs that were written for his worship services. They started out meeting on Sunday nights at 6 o'clock. Things like that that we just so happened to do as well. Everything that I started when I started this church, I started it because it worked for Steve. And because I wanted to be just like him. Steve recruited me to come plant a church in Birmingham. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to be the 17th church in Birmingham. So I came to Tulsa. Sorry for you. But I stayed in close contact with him. And I was a good friend. I was very influenced by him. Steve always had one Achilles heel. We knew it. Everybody who knew and loved him knew it. He resented his wife. He did. He just, I don't know what it was, but it's a very... An early point in his marriage, he kind of started resending her. And he didn't kill that. And it grew and it grew. And I didn't know it at the time, but toward the end of his ministry in Birmingham, it started affecting his teaching. You see, not only did he start resending his wife, but he started loving another woman in the church from a distance at first. And his teaching got further and further away from... You know, that truth in Scripture, the truth in Scripture is we're not saved by our works. But we are saved by Jesus Christ from our sin. Not for sin, right? We're saved from it because as we have its relationship with Christ, we are holy and we belong to him. And we understand now that sin leads to death. And we are thankful to him that he's rescued us from these sins. And Steve kind of got away from that message. And there began to be more and more immorality in his church. Couple started divorcing. The woman that he fell in love with divorced. And Steve went off and we all knew he was thinking about it. And friends pleaded with him and pleaded with him. But he resigned from his church so he could divorce his wife and marry this other woman. Rectus family. Rectus church. And he would never repent. He would never say that he was wrong. And his personality started changing. It really became very different at that point because friends of his and friends of mine, we would meet with him and try to pull him back. And you see when you're doing something that you know is wrong, that you know the Bible says is wrong and that all of your friends say is wrong, it takes a special kind of hardness to just go, no, I'm right and everybody else is wrong. It's a kind of line that once you cross, it's very rare if ever does anyone come back. And Steve crossed that line and assisted that his life was better than it had ever been. And he kept influencing the people who had been in this church. That he was right and that the PCA and the fundamentalists and people who believe the Bible, they foolishly thought that God had stopped revealing truth when he finished with the Bible. And truth is continually being revealed. And God doesn't care about these little things. We need to go into deeper things. And God threw Steve on a sick bed. He really did. His diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And his heart hardened more and more. And he began writing a blog about how everything he had believed in the past was silly and for children. And that he knew better now. And that God was calling us to a higher form of self fulfillment. And his friends kept pleading with him to repent and he would not do it. And the doctors told him he had a short time to live and he would not repent. A good friend of mine who had been converted under Steve's ministry went to see him. And his new wife would not let him in the room. And he said, but I'm a friend and she said, Steve's made it very clear. He wants no PCA ministers in that room. But you tell him who I am. He knows who you are. And he says, well, I'll pray for him. And she said, no. Steve wants no PCA elders to pray for him in any place. He died. He died in that state of hardness. And I tell you that story because I want this text from the Bible to be living and real to you. Things have not changed very much in 1,960 years since God wrote this word. Things have not changed. The Lord is the same and we are the same and the world is the same and churches are the same and hearts are the same. And the way God deals with those hearts is the same. It doesn't change. We still have temptations at haunt us. We still have false teachings out there ready to justify our temptations. And we still have the same Jesus ruling over us. As we look at this text today, I want us to see the twin threat. It's a twin threat. They're very close together. They're probably much more intertwined than you would ever have thought. A twin threat of false teaching and false living of immorality and heresy. The two are intertwined. They're never separate. That twin threat. And then I want you to see the protection that our king gives us and the life of protected submission. The twin threat of immorality and false teaching. The protection that our king gives us and the life of a protected submission. So first let's look at love with no protection. Let's look at this church. When Sherry, my secretary, who had a baby on Thursday, thankful Lord, when she was doing the bullets and she asked me, she said, is there no good churches in Revelation? That's it. There are good ones. You know, their bow preached about a good one the other day and filled out, oddly enough, the two churches that get like the most praise or the two Sundays I'm not going to preach. I don't know what that is. Well, the harbinger of darkness strikes again. But there are goings. And all the churches are pretty good, right? Thyatira is a good church. Look at what he says about it. I know your works, your love, and your faith, and your service, and your patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. I mean, that's a good praise. And that's praise from the right source, right? I mean, if Jesus is saying that about you, if I came up to you and I said, hey, man, it looks like you're doing pretty good job. You'd think, well, you don't know me. But if Jesus says this, I know you. I know that you have love. I know you have patience. I know you have good works that are exceeding the works you had at first. That's pretty good. That's really good. This letter is like going to the doctor for a checkup. And she comes in and she's just lavishing praise on you. And your cholesterol is down. Your heart is healthy. Your weight is perfect. Your everything about you is just great. Except, you know, you're 95% healthy. And you've got one cancerous tumor. If that was the case, what would you want the doctor to spend the rest of the meeting talking about? Well, let's talk about my heart. Let's ignore that bad bit of information. No, you'd want to focus on that, right? You would want her to show no mercy in getting that tumor out. Because you know that that one little tumor could kill the rest of you. Well, in the same way, Jesus looks at this church and says, you're pretty good. You're 95% healthy. But you've allowed one thing to live and that one thing's got to go. Or to kill the rest of you. What were they like? They were a church. It was in a blue collar town. The most notable thing about thyroid is there's nothing notable about it. I understand that. I'm from West Tennessee. People ask me all the time. Now, where are you from? Northwestern. You don't bother to say Dresden because they've never heard of that. What's that near? Nothing. It's near Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois. It's nothing. Was that in the mountains? No, that's Eastern Tennessee. Is it near Memphis? Not really. But that quadrant. So that's kind of how thyroid thyroid was. There was no way to even point people's attention to. It was a blue collar town. Everybody worked. It was a part of the trade guild. You know what a guild is? It's like the actors guild, the screen actors guild. If you want to shoot a movie in Hollywood, you can only get actors who are part of this union. If you're not part of the union, you're not going to be in movies. So these tradesmen were all part of these kind of early unions. And if you weren't a part of N1, you weren't going to work so far so good. That's fine. Sorry. The Bible is not condemned unions. I know you want it too. But what it does condemn is paganism. It condemns worshiping idols and making sacrifices to idols. And each of these guilds had their own idol. That was a problem. And so to be a good member of the Carpenters Guild, you had to make a sacrifice to Artemis or whoever they would make a sacrifice to. And so the Christians couldn't do that anymore. And they were under a continual pressure to compromise. Isn't there a line I can walk where I can be a Christian and be part of this guild and work? And Jesus is saying to them, apparently, you're staying faithful even amidst that. Even amidst that. However, you have a lot of fox in the hen house. He's saying to them, I love the way you love me. But I hate the things you tolerate. The church at Thyatira got in two tolerant. They confused love with tolerating everything. And he says this. I have this against you. That you tolerate that woman, Jezebel. Who calls herself a prophetess. Jezebel is an Old Testament figure who kind of she was married to the king. And she exerted a ton of influence over him, even though she was not queen. Israel was never ruled by queens, but she exerted this kind of self-appointed influence. So it's probably not her name. It's a title drawn from the Old Testament illusion. You tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. She self-appointed. It's like actually one of my favorite movies. The Apostle Robert De Niro baptizes himself. He kind of takes himself out into the lake and goes, I baptize thee. The Apostle, yeah, for whatever. Like, I don't think that's the way it works. You know, when I was ordained, I had about 20 men come put their hands on me and pray. And the entire church surrounded me and said, we ordain you. You know, just ordain yourself. Just wake up one day and go, I'm a prophet. I don't need anybody to confirm that. That's what she did. She called herself a prophet. And she is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food, sacrifice to idols. Now, what she was teaching is she called the deep things. We know that because later in the text, Jesus says, for those of you who have not given into the deep things, of Satan, what does that mean? You can imagine what that means, put yourself in the place. She's going, I know what the Bible says. I got to go a little bit beyond that though. It's the deep stuff. The real stuff. The stuff that the Holy Spirit has shown me. It's separate from, I don't need the Bible. I've got the Holy Spirit. God Himself has shown me this. This is the owner's manual. This is the author of the owner's manual. And He's told me this. Deep things. And the deep things that she taught were basically that sexual immorality is not that bad. That idol worship is accepted. God doesn't care. That's all stuff you do with your body. What really matters is what you believe and what's going on with your soul. What a convenient heresy. You need to be able to do a little pagan worship, a little, you know, have a little sex with the temple god every now and then. Make a little sacrifice to an idol every now and then. Go to one of these feasts and eat what's been sacrificed to the idols. You need to do that to practice in this town, to work in this city. And what do you know? God has revealed to me that you can. Isn't that convenient? It works out nicely, doesn't it? Okay, I'm a crashed person. I really am. I know that. I've been repenting of it for a long time. I don't want you to dismiss this because it's crashed. It really is what's going on. When I was in seminary one day, a professor was teaching a class called sanctification. And he said, why don't we have a whole class focusing on sanctification? This process of becoming holy. God making you holy. They should have called the class holiness, but then nobody would have taken it. Because it didn't sound important and hard enough. And he said, why would God this curriculum demand that you take a class called holiness? And I raised my hand because I always knew the answer. And I said, because it's more likely that we will commit moral sin than that we will have false teaching. And he looked at me and kind of smirked and he said, you don't think false teaching is immoral? Is it immoral to teach somebody something that's wrong? And you don't think false teaching leads to immorality? Of course, I was a 26 year old seminary student. So I never said I was wrong. And I was like, no, of course not. But anyway, I'm smarter now. What is he saying that false teaching and immorality are always tied together? Believe me on this. Let me give you a couple of sources. One of the great thinkers and minds of the 20th century. He's got an Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley was a writer, wrote one of my favorite books, Brave New World. It was a great, had a great insight into what the world was like. Had a ton of influence as he rejected all meaning to the universe. He rejected God and that there was any meaning in the universe whatsoever. He died on the same day as John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis. Three real kind of icons of the 20th century died on the same day. Just a little piece of trivia. I don't know why I told you that. But this is what Aldous Huxley wrote. And his own kind of recollection of his life, he called it ends and means. He wrote this in 1937. For myself, as for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a system of morality. Was that me saying we believe this philosophy that the world was meaningless because it was useful. It was useful. It was an instrument to free ourselves from a morality. Specifically what? He says we objected to the morality that was common because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed it embodied the meaning of the universe, the Christian meaning they insisted. But there was one simple method to compute these people and justify ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had meaning whatsoever. This isn't me projecting this onto them. This is him saying it. Look, if we accepted that there was meaning to the universe, the only plausible system out there was the Christian system. And that was going to mean that we could not have our sexual revolution. And we did not want that. And we knew that if there was a God, then sex was important. And if it was important, then we couldn't just have it with whoever we wanted to. And so we rejected the whole thing. That was happening 80 years ago. It was happening 2000 years ago. Gee, I wonder if it's still happening today. Of course it's still happening today. NT Wright, the New Testament scholar, was interviewed by a believes in the historical Jesus. He believes that the Jesus of the Bible is the one who really lived. And this is the state of kind of universities today. He's like the only person who still believes that. He's in the top level of scholarship. So he's teaching at Cambridge. He's not there anymore, but he was. As a dean at Cambridge, he believed that the Bible was accurate and believed in the resurrection. And he was once asked by Christianity today. Don't you feel influenced to give up all that? You're the only person on your level of scholarship who believes in the historical Jesus. And he said this, he said, I know those people. I know that they started studying the New Testament in graduate school. At the same time, they started having sex. And one had to go. He's crashed too. There's this linkage between immorality and false teaching. Guys, if you're in college or if you're thinking about going to college soon, you need to know that. There was a professor at Mississippi State University who taught psychology. And he took great joy in tearing Christianity down. And making it obvious that you were an idiot if you believed in the Christianity of the Bible. I knew his son. I still know his son. It was terribly convenient that at the time that he started tearing Christianity down, it was the same time he started having an affair with the other professor in the psychology department. He just came by that, honestly, didn't he? Heresy is always convenient. Wrong teaching is always immoral. If false teaching always has this allure of convenience. Can you imagine, just imagine if you will, what a church would look like today. If all of a sudden they just started preaching about Jesus as all they did, nothing false about him. But they didn't ever make a single plea for you to be holy. If they never made a single, never even implied that you had to be sexually moral if you believed in Jesus. You know what that church would look like today? It would be packed. I can take you to it. What would a church look like today if they said you don't have to reject materialism? You don't have to reject worldliness as a matter of fact. God exists to meet your worldly desires. God exists to give you the stuff in the world that you want. What would a church look like today to preach that? It would be the biggest church in the United States. I can drive you there. It's true, guys. The idea that you don't have to stop being idolatrous. You don't have to stop being sexually immoral to be in the church. That idea is always going to be with us. It's just, it's popular. It's just not true. The truth is that sin and greed are cancers that will destroy you. The truth is if you reject Christianity and you pursue sexual immorality or you pursue worldliness or you pursue greed, the truth is you'll be really happy for a little while. And that lifestyle will destroy you. It will ruin you. It will leave you hopeless and it will leave you dead. That's what the Old Testament says. That's what the New Testament says. That's what the very last book of the Bible says. That's what the last chapter of the last book of the Bible says. There will be no one sexually immoral in the Kingdom of God. That's the truth. And don't let anyone talk you out of that. And so Jesus doesn't want his church to have this cancer. And so he puts on the mama grisly face. Let's all like a little Sarah Paylon reference. I don't even know if she actually said it. I think she did. Jesus, the mama grisly, the son of God speaks. Look, there's no hiding in here. He doesn't kind of put on any kind of metaphors. He wants you to know exactly who's speaking. He is stressing his authority. These are the words of the son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and his feet are like burnished bronze. The word of God is a word with authority. You can reject it if you want to, but you can't argue with it. You will either submit to it or not. The word of God with eyes of flame, he sees you. He knows you. And with feet of bronze, he is a king who's always going to be king. He's not like the king that Daniel saw who had great and glorious head and body but feet of clay. That clay would be broken up and the statue would fall. He has feet of bronze and he's not going anywhere. And this is what the word of God, the son of God says. He brings out his protection with claws and teeth. He will not allow his children to be destroyed. He said, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart. And I will give to each of you according to your works. I'm not missing it. And if you keep trying to teach what is false in my church, I will judge you. You're going to kill my children and I will bring your death about first. He protects his people. He protects his people the way a father protects his daughter. One of my favorite preachers of African American named Evie Hill. He has this great sermon. He preached his wife's funeral. He talks about, for some reason, it was never really clear how it was connected with Evie Hill, but it was always fun to listen to. He talked about his daughter going out on her first date. What she wanted to go out on her first date. And the boy showed up and, you know, a modern day. You can imagine with the baggy pants and the underwear hanging out and kind of the hoodlum look. And he goes to the door and he says, yeah, it's so-and-so home. And Reverend Hill said, no, she is not. And he said, well, I thought she was going to be here. And he said, well, let me rephrase. She is not here for you. And he said, well, I guess I'll come back. And he goes, you can come back all you want. But she will never be here for you. And her daughter cried and, you know, got all mad and threw a hissing and said. And he just went off on how much, how disrespectful and how obviously pagan he was. And she never argued with that. And she just said, well, I thought he's nice. Years later when she married her law school graduate, very respectful Christian, a husband. E.V. Hill snuck up behind her and said, you know, I think he's nice. She protects his people. Somebody in this church, I can't remember who it is. Somebody in this church is going out on a date. And Mike Dodson sat down with him. The girl's father and read the Bible to him about sexual immorality and ask what his intentions were. I thought that was hilarious story, but I didn't get permission to tell it. Jesus protects his people from false teachers and he protects his people by showing them the destination of their path. He allows us to see the wreckage. There's not a person in here who can't say, I've seen the wreckage the divorce leads to. I've seen the disaster that sexual immorality leads to. He allows us to see it. And we have to know that, guys, you've got to know it. You don't believe the false teachings of your own heart. It all leads to death. Adultery leads to death. Read leads to death. Sex before marriage leads to death. Pornography leads to death. Chatting with people on Facebook that you use to date leads to death. Don't believe the false teachings of your own heart that says, oh, this is okay. This is no big deal. At least to death. Trust the word of God, the words of the Son of God. Trust the word of Him who loved you so much that He came out from heaven and He put on flesh and He suffered every temptation and He suffered every deprivation. He suffered hunger and poverty and shame and scorn. Trust Him. You can trust Him. He loves you. He's not keeping all the cookies back to Himself. He's not like me. I'm a bad father. I've got a secret stash of jelly beans. I don't want the boys into because I want them to myself. He's not like us. He's not like me. He's given everything. He's given you his life. And he says, you can trust me. All of those paths lead to death. If your heart starts telling you, oh, sin's not that bad, then look at the cross. And ask yourself, if sin's not that bad, if a little bit of disobedience is not that bad, then why would God Himself have had to die for you? Trust the words of the Son of God. Trust the cross. Trust your heart. You see destruction and wreckage all around you. Why do you think it's going to turn out different for you? Trust your eyes. Trust what you see. Don't trust your heart. I think I mixed that up. I'll fix it in the tape. Don't trust your heart. The Son of God speaks. And the Son of God rewards. He rewards His church. What does He do? He says, I will give authority over the nations. And He will rule them with a rod of iron. Even as I myself have received authority for my father. And I will give him the morning star. It's a beautiful picture of him giving us the throne with him. You see, it's his to give. Rule is his to give. God Himself, as the Son of God, Jesus was born the Son of the King. It was all going to be his. But if you've read many kind of middle-aged stories about what kings were like, the kings would always wait for the prince to show that he deserved it. And they had to do great works if it was a kingdom that really prized, bravery, then the prince would have to go off and make a brave conquest. If the king prized treasures, then the prince would have to go off and bring back great treasures from some foreign land. If it was wisdom, they would have to go study and show that they had were worthy to be the king. And when they revealed to the nation that they were worthy to be the king, then the nation would surround them and elevate them and crown them with what was already his. But now he's earned. Well, I ask you this, if the king, if his name was love, if at the core of his being, he's a loving, triune God, what would he require before he would crown his son, the king? He would require the supreme act of love. He would require that he give everything away at a pure love, not that he would die for someone who was righteous. He would require for him to die for someone who was still dead in their sins, who are still disobedient. That's what he's like. That's how he won the throne. That's why we surround him and crown him Lord of all. That's why we do it. Because we know how loved we've been. And that's why he shares his throne with us. He gives the kingdom. He just gives it to us. He gives reign. If you know what it's like to struggle with your sin, if you know what it's like to wish you were better than this, then you know what it's like to feel like a slave, to feel helpless. And he gives us the throne. And he gives us a scepter to rule with. And finally, he gives us himself. And I will give him the morning star. That sounds kind of cool, right? I guess I wanted it. Not that I'm ever up early enough in the morning to see the morning star, but I'll assume that it would be cool. But when you read the book of Revelation, what do you find out? You find out that Jesus himself is the bright and morning star. He gives us himself. He gives himself to us. And that's the greatest danger of our heresy. The danger of pursuing a false path is not the death that you're going to experience. The greatest danger is there's no Jesus in it. And he gives us himself. So what do we do? Finally, very quickly. What is the life of love and truth look like? What must the church do? Since I do not lay on you any other burden, only hold fast what you have until I come. What is he saying? You don't have to do anything. You just have to hold fast to what I've given you. And that may sound easy. Like, okay, I'll just take it and hold it. Gee, I thought Jesus required something others. But it's a picture of holding it down amidst a tornado. Holding it fast, making it fast. You have to keep it. You have to believe that what does it mean? It means three, four things. It means we have to receive the truth. That all the work of our salvation has been done. That he has completed everything. That we have everything that we need in him. That he has given it to us. We have to receive that. And that's hard. And most of us believe that what we really need is to be good. And if we're good enough, we're going to iron something. But he says, no. I lay on you no other burden. Hold fast what you've received. Receive the truth. That you're more beloved in your Savior than you would have ever have hoped for. Receive that. And secondly, submit to it. You have to submit to the truth. That was what Jezebel refused to do, right? She was a self-proclaimed prophet. She was teaching her own stuff. It was coming from her own heart, from her own mind. But receiving the Word of God as the Word of God means you submit to it. Let me ask you like this. What is there about the gospel that you don't like? What is there about the gospel that you don't like? What is there about the Bible that you don't like? What do you believe that you don't like? If you have nothing in that category, and you're not believing the gospel, you're just believing yourself, right? I mean, if you throw away the parts of the gospel that you don't like, you're not actually receiving God's Word. You're just kind of taking what you like. You're putting yourself above him. We have to receive it as the Son of God. There's all kinds of things in the Bible I don't like. I don't like the whole sin thing. I don't like the doctrine that teaches that I'm more simple than I would have ever imagined. I don't... My most righteous, the best things I do, the most righteous acts I can come up with. They're like filthy menstrual rags, really? Certainly not. There's other kind of everyday things I don't like. That little sins on the outside reveal deep sins in my heart. No. And mean that. It just means that a bad day. Come on. And just matters of doctrine. Just matters of practice. There's all kinds of things in the church I can improve. It's crazy. Rule by elders? Should be ruled by one. They should be Ricky. That should be the only qualification. Come on. If there's nothing in the church that I disagree with, I believe the Bible teaches it. And I'm not receiving it as an authoritative word. I'm just receiving what I already liked. Thirdly, we have to fight for the truth. This is hard. This is one of those things I don't like. It means we have to practice church discipline. I want you to know that. We don't make a public show of it. We keep it very private whenever we can. But our session practices discipline all the time. There are people right now that we've privately told they cannot come to the Lord's table until they repent. And there's a list of people that we have that we've taken off the rolls. And we have to write them letters and say you're no longer a member in good standing in Christ's church. Which in effect means you cannot come to the Lord's table until you join one. Because you're not being a member. And we have to do that. And I hate it. And I put it off. And I get told on Tuesday night. Second Tuesday of every month. You know, have you called these people yet? I promise I will this month. I hate it. It's hard. But we cannot let sin come into our church. We have to amputate sin. Both corporately as a body. We can't let just anybody teach. And personally, if there's something leading you to sin, you have to cut it off. Because it's cancer. And finally, you have to believe the truth. And that inspires the whole thing. You have to believe that you've received authority. You have to believe that you're reigning now with Christ. You have to believe what Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins. He made us alive together with Christ and seated us in heaven with him. This morning when you woke up, did you feel seated in heaven? You were. And it has to be enough for you. I began this talk with a story by my friend Steve. I want to end it with how another a mutual friend of ours pled with him. He went to him and he said, look, I know you resent your wife. But Jesus has to be enough for you. With her, you have Christ. You have life. You have future. You have hope. You have joy. You have the bright and morning star. You have yourself. And he didn't believe it. And so it wasn't enough for him. Do you believe that you have the spouse that you have because the God who loves you gave her to you or gave him to you? Do you believe that you have the job and the life that you have today because the God who loves you gave them to you? Do you believe this? Believing it will protect you from sin. Please pray with me.