The Curse of Impurity

If you read the Gospels, you might come to the conclusion that Jesus doesn't like religious people. Of course, that isn't true, because he himself was a religious man, but he had some pretty harsh words to say to religious people. Some of the hardest words in the Scripture were words he had to say to religious people. He did this because he was concerned about the appearance of a person's life not matching what was inside of them. And here he talks about the curse that comes from impurity, hidden impurity in a person's life. The language of Jesus is very, very harsh, because we find that he hates this kind of impurity more than anything in all the world. And if his language with regard to the people he's talking to sounds bad to us, it gives us an indication of just how terrible God sees impurity in the lives of people who claim to be religious people. Now, Jesus in this passage has seven different pronouncements of curses on people's lives. And I want to use two of them today, and one of them I talked about last week. But they come in doublets, couplets. There'll be two of these together to sort of describe what Jesus is trying to get at. You see this most often in the Psalms. When you're reading a Psalm, it'll say one thing, and then the next line will repeat almost the same thing. It's sort of a way by which you make something clear. If you have something you want people to see, and you hold it up, and on one side of it you see one thing, and on the other side you see another thing, you don't see the whole thing until you've seen both sides. So oftentimes what God does to make a point is to present to us couplets. And that's true in this passage that I want to read today. Jesus is trying to get at the problem that religious people have of having the inside of their lives not match the outside. And he makes it clear that this is one of the most offensive things that a person can do. Beginning with verse 25 of Matthew chapter 23. Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you teachers of the law, Pharisees, you hypocrites! You're like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people to be righteous, but on the inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness. The first half of this couplet I talked about last week, briefly, he's talking about people who are blind to spiritual realities. You have a cup that's unclean. I think he's talking about ritually unclean. Now the Jews had a system of what they call ritual uncleanness and cleanness, and it simply was that God said, there are certain things you're supposed to do. Like I would pick up something and say, I'm going to put this here on the table and I don't want anybody to bother it. Now there's nothing wrong with picking this up. There's nothing wrong with you taking it somewhere, but when I've asked you to do one thing and you do another, you simply defy what I ask you to do. So whenever God said to his people, I want you to not eat pork, he didn't say there's anything wrong with pork, he just said, I don't want you to eat it. Several of the laws in the Old Testament were just laws given by God designed to direct the lives of his people. There weren't sometimes really reasons for it, except that he said, this is what I want you to do. Now in the wisdom of God, maybe he did have some, but he didn't ever explain those reasons for us. And so when people did something contrary to what God want, did something they weren't told not to do, or didn't do something they were told to do, they were considered to be unclean, ritually unclean, unclean by some act that they did. Now whenever they were unclean, they were not to come into the presence of God. They couldn't go to the temple, for example, and make a sacrifice, because they were disobedient, rebellious, or unclean in the presence of God. And to make that right, they had to go through some action that would show that they were sorry that they did it, and clean themselves up, and then come back and present themselves to God, and be able to stand in his presence. Now here, these people had a cup that was unclean. Maybe they left the top off, and something got in it, and the outside was unclean because it was sitting outside too, and you were supposed to always put a lid on any cup. That was one of God's rules. Always put a lid on one of your cups. So here's one that was unclean. They washed the outside of it, washed the outside of the dish, but the inside was still unclean. And if they drank out of it, or ate out of it, it would make them unclean, and they couldn't come into the presence of God. So what did they do? They washed the outside. Jesus said, that's the way your lives are. You take real care in acting so that people that see you think, there is a real righteous guy. But on the inside, your life is filled with greed and self-indulgence. That is, you can't get enough stuff. You can't get enough things. You can't get enough approval. You can't get enough money. You can't get enough Facebook friends. Whatever it might be that you're so caught up with, and you need to make you feel like you're important, instead of depending on me, you have this driving force inside of you that makes you do whatever your human nature wants to do. So you're driven by your human nature, instead of the Lord, who should drive your life. You violated the first commandment, let nothing in this world be more important to you than God. You blind people. Don't you see that the inside is what needs to be clean? And if your life is submissive and obedient to God, then the outside will take care of itself. This blind attention to the outside, instead of the inside. Now Jesus moves to a different direction, turning this whole story around so that we can see another way in which he's concerned about what's taking place. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you're hypocrites, you're actors. That's what he means by that, you're acting. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you're putting on an act. You're like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men's bodies and everything unclean. Now in the ancient world, the funeral practices were quite different than ours. They didn't often have the ability or the money to be able to embalm people. So when someone died, the very day they died, they were often buried. Their burials were not necessarily in cemeteries like ours, but if they found a place where there was a hill, they would often dig out a place in the hill or a rock ledge. They would often dig out that rock, there's sandstone, it was not terribly hard to do, and make there a burial place for their family. And in those tombs, they would have a shelf on one side or the other and lay the body wrapped in cloth or whatever on the ledge and seal the cover on the front. You know, Jesus was laid in one of those like that. They rolled a stone across the front and sealed it off. And sometimes people, because it was their family burial plot, would decorate them. You've gone to the cemetery and you see a headstone, it has a beautiful picture of a wheat field for a farmer, a picture of an oil derrick for somebody who works in the oil field. And maybe even some I've seen with the actual picture of the family in that tombstone, decorated in a beautiful way. Well, they used to do that too. On the front of the place where the tomb was, they would have something solid and put plaster on it. It may have a painting on it, it may have some kind of etching on it, or may have something sculpted in it, or could even have things attached to it so that it made a beautiful sign of the family burial place. That's what you're like, Jesus said. So when you go by one of those tombs and it's all decorated with beauty, you know what's inside of it? If the person in there died a long time ago, their dried bones or their decayed bones and decayed flesh, quite a contrast to the beauty on the outside and the inside. If the person just died recently, then the body is in a state of decay, rotting inside of it, with maggots crawling around in it. Not before lunch, right? That's his point. The difference between what's inside that's so offensive to us and what's on the outside that's so pleasing to us is dramatic and powerful. That's why he uses the image. Now when I look at you, God says, I see the outside. And some of you have dressed up your life so that I never hear you say a single bad thing in front of other people. Some of you have dressed up your life in such a way so that you always act kind and pleasant in any kind of exchange, but when you turn to walk away in your mind, you're saying, I wish that person would drop dead. Or when you're smiling at people, you're thinking, I wish this jerk would leave me alone. Or whenever you're being nice to someone, you're thinking, I hate doing this and I wish I didn't have to. You see, there's two sides to your nature. There's that outside that's beautiful and wonderfully decorated. That's your act, but on the inside, there is something entirely different. In this passage, he identifies a word with what's on the inside of them. He said, on the outside, you're decorated well, but on the inside, everything unclean is there. Everything unclean. When you look in the Bible and what the Bible describes with these unclean things, you see a large passage of many different scriptures where he indicates what it is that he finds offensive in our lives. In Galatians, he lists a long list of those. In Ephesians, he lists a long list of them. But the unclean things are not necessarily things that we would see as wholesome. But instead, they're things of wicked nature. He's not talking about a person who's just a little bit unkind, but he's talking about a person whose life is marked by serious, serious moral failure. The anger and hatred and resentment and bitterness that comes in a person's life. These things that he sees that mark the opposite of the nature of God. Now the second section of this, the next verse, he says, in the same way, on the outside, you appear to people to be righteous, but you're inside, you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Hypocrisy and wickedness instead of righteousness. Now what the Bible describes as righteous is a person who's obedient to God. Here's the picture the Bible has. God made everything in the world by his own power and hand. And then he said to the universe and the stars, I want you to do whatever he's assigned for them to do. And they move in their courses as they're supposed to. All the animals in this world were made by God to do what he wanted those animals to do. So we can know whenever the geese are going to fly, because the seasons of the year, they do exactly what they're supposed to do. Whenever he created human beings, he had a plan for us. We were to come into this world, live in a community, husband and wife, with a family, and a community of people around us. And whenever he did this, he gave us specific, concrete instructions about how we were to live. That was true in the Old Testament. It was true by the teachings of Jesus. But from the very beginning, people looked at the instructions of God and said, you know, I would rather do what I like to do. I would rather do what I feel like doing. I would rather do what seems right to me than invade all of these things God has told us we should do. Now in the Old Testament, they call these the laws of God, but I think that's a little bit deceptive for us, because we think of laws in terms of legal instructions. But let me remind you of a way in which we use this same term that's different. I don't know if they say this today or not, but when I was growing up, they used to say, when you go home and you're late, your mother is going to lay down the law to you. Now she didn't write it out, and it wasn't taken to court, but you knew when you came in the house and you were late that she was going to tell you exactly what you did wrong and how upset she was with you and the consequences of your behavior. They were rules by which I was to live, and we called it laying down the law, simply explaining the rules by which you ought to live. Now that's what the law in the Bible is. God says, here is the way I want you to live. And from the very beginning, people have said, I don't want to do that. I would rather do exactly what feels good to me, what seems right to me, what I want to do. And so in acts of rebellion, human beings from the very beginning of this world have been living in rebellion against the instructions of God. Like a child that says, I know my mom told me to come home at 5.30, but I don't want to. I'm going to come home whenever I'm good and ready. That kind of rebellious spirit against God. That in the Bible is called wickedness. That's what it's called in this passage. Jesus uses the word here that is actually the word for lawless, a person who does not keep the instructions of God. And here it's simply defined as wickedness. Now the wickedness that God announces he's so angry about. He's angry about this, not just because of the wickedness, but he's angry about it because the religious people are wicked, but they're trying hard to act like they're not. When indeed on the inside they really are. You see, it's easy to forgive someone if you give instructions to your children or a co-worker or people that work under you. And they come to you and say, I know what you told me to do and I just didn't get around to getting it done. Now you may be angry with them and you may be upset with them, but it's far worse if you give them instructions, they don't do it. And then they come to you and said, I did what you told me to do. If you hire someone to fix an electric problem in your house that's dangerous to your house and they come and they spend some time there and send you a bill saying we fixed it and that danger is still there and your house catches on fire and burns, you are really, really angry because they told you they did what they were supposed to do, gave every appearance of doing it, but never actually got it done. You see, God's not so upset with a person who's wicked and acknowledges it and is up front about it. Will he face judgment, sure. Will he face the condemnation of God, yes. For the judgment of God on all unrighteousness and all wickedness will eventually come. But here he's upset with people who have that wickedness in their heart while at the same time giving every appearance on the outside that it's not there. The Pharisees claimed to love God more than anything in all the world, to keep the Ten Commandments and all the laws of the Old Testament. And they were careful to try to do every single thing that was required of them except the one thing, loving God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind and others as themselves, that primary commandment. They gave the appearance of it. They made people think they did, but in reality inside the wickedness of unbelief still ruled. It was this hidden wickedness that generated so much anger and resentment from Jesus to these people. We are the subjects of this story, for we are the people who claim to have Christ in our lives. And if you claim to have accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life, you are the one he's talking about here, all of us. For he's looking at us carefully to see if the profession we make is true or it's false. Now the wickedness that he's talking about is really demonic. It's not just a kind of bad mistake that we might make, and we need to stop using that. I hear people talk about their sin as if it were a bad choice, or their sin as if it's just a mistake that they made. No. When we fail to do what God tells us, we have rebelled against God. We have said to God, I know more than you. You cannot tell me what to do. This is open rebellion against God. Now every person who rebels against God stands before him in judgment, and at the judgment day will be told, I don't know who you are, depart from me forever. A place of hell is prepared for people who do that. This word is used of the devil himself. In fact, in the book of Thessalonians, the devil is called the lawless man. The man who lives without the law of God. He lives not following the instructions of God. Those who have known the instructions of God, and then rebel against them, are far different. And even if you have not known what God wanted for you, and you disobeyed them. If you're an employer, and you have an employee that you asked to do something, and he didn't get the message, you didn't send it to him, you didn't explain it to him, it wasn't instructed, and he didn't do it, you'd call him in, he'd say, well, I didn't know I was supposed to. You'd have forgiveness for him in a way, but if he comes in and sits down, and you explain exactly what you want him to do, and then he goes out and does the opposite, your anger will be far, far greater. So you see, reading the Bible, coming to church, and exposing yourself to the teachings of God lay on all of us a burden far greater than if you'd never knew. These people were experts in the teachings of God's law. They knew exactly what God wanted them to do, but because of their own feelings, and their own power, and their own interest, they simply said no to God. This rebellion was what generated the anger and resentment that God had toward them. In the book of Galatians, he's talking about what it is that marks the nature of these people, this characteristic that is so offensive to God in all human beings. In this part of the Bible, he's making clear exactly what he's wanting and what he's asking for, Galatians chapter 5. He says, I'm going to start reading at verse 13, he's describing the difference between a life controlled by the Spirit of God, inside and outside, and a life controlled by human flesh. Now, a life controlled by human flesh can be on the outside the appearance of a person who's controlled by the Spirit. There was a story in the paper not very long ago about a man in Michigan who was a pastor of a church, and he was engaged to be married to a woman in the congregation, and he had been watching pornographic videos, and so influenced by them, he killed the daughter of the lady he was engaged to. The story in the paper said he was a good preacher, and some of the people in the congregation said he could give a wonderful sermon. They said he was a very nice man, but he killed somebody. They said that the videos fueled his murderous rage. It was there, but fueled inside. You see, the outside, the people in that congregation were shocked. They said, we can't believe this. He was such a wonderful man, but inside, there was something entirely different. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, he's talking about people that fight and quarrel all the time, if you keep on fighting and quarreling like that all the time, you are not doing what God tells you to do. Watch out, or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful human nature. He means by this, that you come to the place in your life where you say, I know that my own human nature is rebellious to you, God. I do the things that you don't want me to do, and I know I do that. I do what I want instead of what you want. If you will say to God, I'm sick and tired of this lifestyle, and the pain that it brings me, and the guilt that I feel, and so I want to say to you, God, I am not doing what you want me to do, confess that to him. Would you please forgive me for this, and from this moment on in my life, I'm going to let your Holy Spirit control me, and I'm going to make the priority of my life, both inside of me and the outside of me, do exactly what you tell me to do. In that moment, God forgives them of all this wickedness that they've had in their lives. It's gone. In the book of Romans, Paul says that Jesus Christ gave himself for us, and we were justified. That means that God looked at our life and said, not guilty, acquitted. Acquitted is different than not guilty. I shouldn't have said not guilty. He said, acquitted. You may be guilty, but your sentence is acquitted. By that act, all of our sinful past, this rebellion, is removed and eliminated. The book of Hebrews, he says, Jesus Christ came, died for us, that our sinful, wicked life might be forgiven. So everyone has entered this state of lawlessness at some time in their life, but God has provided this remedy. And once that remedy is acted on in our lives, and we're forgiven for the past that we have, all this is gone, it's acquitted, and then we start living with God. And then there's this process by which God begins to work in us to make us more and more like himself. Sometimes the Bible calls that justification. Sometimes the Bible calls it sanctification. The word sanctification means to make someone into a saint. If you've received Jesus Christ, he's at work in your life to make you a saint, to make you like Jesus Christ. Now, here's the religious person. Oh God, I give my life to you, come in and take control of me. He forgives me. I start living. But there is inside of me those powerful forces that I still struggle with. I've always had a bad temper. It's always been hard for me to submit to other people. It's always been hard for me when I heard a story not to tell it to other people. It's always been hard for me when I saw a pretty woman or a nice-looking guy to not have sexual lust and thoughts in my mind and heart, and I harbor those. So I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful human nature, for the sinful human nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful human nature. The struggle we have is the sinful human nature is still in us. Even though we've come to Christ. We're not to hide that. We're not to indulge it, but we're to live in conflict with it. They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want to do. You may want to do those things. You may have those thoughts in your mind, but because the Spirit is now in you, he helps you not to do those. But if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. In other words, you're not under some mandate that makes you, for the Spirit is now guiding you. Instead of having something written on a piece of paper, God's Holy Spirit is living with you every day, and he's saying to you, obey your parents. He's saying to you, love your husband or your wife. He's saying to you, do a good job for your boss. All those things the Bible tells us to do. The Spirit of God is with us all the time. Now he said, the acts of sinful nature are obvious. So if you want to see what they are, sexual immorality, anybody commits sexual immorality is lawless. Impurity, that's a word that he uses here in the book of Matthew. Debauchery, idolatry, letting something in your life become more important to you than God or control your mind and will and emotions more than God. Witchcraft, depending on some human circumstance to control your future. Hatred, looking at another person and being so angry with them that you hate them. You don't want to be around them. You don't want to talk to them. You don't want good things to happen to them. And when something bad happens, you rejoice in it. Discord, not being able to get along with people. Having conflicts, always being in conflict with people around you. Everywhere you go, you have trouble. People are mad at you because of what you do. This constant nature means that your human nature is controlling your behavior. Jealousy, always wanting to be first and more important than the people around you. Having angry bouts. Rage, losing control with your anger until you say and do things that you shouldn't say or do. Selfish ambition, desire to be more important than other people, even if you have to tell bad things about them so you'll look more important. Or to get a job, we can get that job by lying about the people who are competing with you. Dissensions, stirring up trouble. Factions, encouraging people to fight with each other. Telling stories about one side or the other. Envy, wanting what other people possess, whether it's things or position or importance. Drunkenness, letting your mind be controlled by alcohol or drugs so that the spirit no longer can control you. See, drunkenness is a sin because it does not allow the spirit to control your life. Orgies and the like. Listen to this, I warn you, as I did before, those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. These are bad things. That in the life of these people was covered up by a wonderful outside. I saw the story of the BTK killer in Wichita, the chairman of the board of his church, in church every Sunday. No one ever suspected this man could do such heinous things as he did, but all the time he was in church, he was thinking and planning of people he might kill. No one knew. No one could guess. The outside was perfectly righteous, but the inside was filled with all kinds of rotten, detestable things. He knew better. He knew the Ten Commandments. He knew what it said. And while the law can only judge him based on what he did, God judges him in a far different way. You not only did these things, but you did them knowing that I didn't want you to and knowing that you were acting as if you were obeying me when all the time your heart was far away. The remedy for all of this, Paul tells us, is very simple. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let's keep in touch with the Spirit. Simple, isn't it? For what Jesus told us is true. What Paul tells us is real. And what the Bible says is that all of these sinful things in your life, once you've asked God to forgive you and take you into his kingdom, all of your past has forgiven you, but today is the real issue. That's what he was talking about with these people. What about today? Have you asked for forgiveness for all those things in the past, but you still live the same way you did before you asked for forgiveness? The same passions inside of you that your human nature drives you to do things that are wrong, you still do them? God did not say that this would cause you to go to hell. Here's what he said, I'm mad at you, not because you did them, but because you hide that you did them. You're an actor. Act what you really are, and if you have those thoughts inside of your mind, and if those things do control you at times, be honest with yourself and with God that you have not received the power of God to be able to overcome them. Be honest with him about where you are in your own life. You don't have to stand up here in front of everyone else and tell us all the bad things that you've done. We're not interested in hearing all those, but God is interested in it. Because he wants you to acknowledge the place in your life that needs transformation. I don't want to do those things, God, then please change what I want. I wish I could long for righteousness as much as I long for those sinful things. And if you ask, and ask, and ask, and ask, he will give it to you. If you keep knocking, and knocking, and knocking, he will change you. That's what he promises to us. But there's no help for someone who's caught in all of those things, but just keeps on doing them and says, I'll just make sure no one catches me. For what you've done is trapped yourself in a position of certain judgment without hope. And if you've made a promise to God to give your life to him and you know that you're not doing that, and you know that there are things wrong with you, you need to be honest with God and with yourself. And you need to say to God, here's what I see in my life, it's been here even before I came to you and it's still here, you haven't taken it away, I don't like it, I don't want it, I want to ask you, God, please change me. Because you see, sin kills you. And sin will kill your relationships with people, your husband or your wife, your children or your parents. It will kill the relationships between you and your friends. It will kill the relationships between you and your fellow employees or your boss or the people that work for you. It will kill a community. The Bible talks about Sodom and Gomorrah, two communities killed because they indulged in the human nature, unlimited passion. And it can kill a nation. And Jesus, when God brought the people of Israel into the Promised Land, he said, I'm going to give you Canaan because the people who lived here were so wicked and sinful that I'm running them out and killing them. Their sin killed the nation. It can kill a church or a family, a community and a world. But God has offered us a wonderful remedy for this, it is the Holy Spirit of God. If you will simply say to God, I'm tired of living this way. I want to live differently. I give my life to you. And you allow the Spirit of God to come in. Then God forgives all your sinful past, everything you've done in the past. And he begins to let the Spirit of God work in you to transform you. Now maybe you've been resistant to that Spirit. You don't want to read the Bible. You don't want to come to church to learn what you should do. God will keep convicting you about that. If you do come to church and you read those things, but you think, well, it won't matter if I do this or that or the other. You have an excuse for what you do. Be honest with yourself and God that you're really not surrendered to him. In your pride, you won't give in. In your arrogance, you want to be right. In your own selfishness, you want what you want. And if you do, God will forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. That's why you need to do it every day. Every day, when you get up, you ought to say to God, today I want you to live my life, control my life, teach me how to live. At the end of the day, you should stop for just a moment before you go to sleep and think back, God, have I done anything today that you didn't like? And he'll bring it to your mind and you say, that's right. I was an idiot. I didn't trust you. I did that. Forgive me for that and give me the strength that if the same thing happens to me tomorrow, I will do something different about it. You may have to ask that a thousand times, but God is interested in you not giving up. What he wants from us is not perfection, but honesty and determination to be obedient to him. That's what he wants. And the worst thing in the world that we can do is to act like we're devoted to him and to act like we're faithful to him, when in reality, we're not. Jesus said this, impurity of your heart will be your doom. Count on it. There is nothing that makes God more angry at a human being than for him to tell us what is right, for us to say, I agree with you, God, and I'll sure do that, and then do the opposite. You don't want God mad at you that way. Let you bow, please, for a moment of prayer. Two things I want to ask you about. One, have you ever said to God, I give you my life and started out that life led by the Holy Spirit? If you've never done that, then it's very critical for you to do it, because it'll erase all the guilt and shame of your life in the past. Every bit of it gone. Every bit of it. Have you started walking with God, but you're not always faithful with that? Have you been honest with him about your own sin? Are you heartbroken about it? Are you asking God to give you his strength to face the things that you're weak about? It's what God wants for you. If you've given your life to him, you've made a promise. I will read the Bible. I will pray. I'll be faithful in church attendance. And I'll let you control my character and shape it. And if you started out on those things, don't let anything in the world distract you from those. That's a promise you made to God. He wants you to keep it. no matter what happens to you, no matter what people do or say or what the world is like. If you're not doing that, then God cannot help you grow. So today, Lord, we know that our lives are transparent to you. We don't hide anything from you. Sometimes we even hide it from ourselves by making excuses. But today, we ask you to lift the cover off, to show us what's inside of that tomb, the filth, the dirt, the shame. Father, give us the courage to let you have that, to admit what we are and what we've done. And by your power, would you change every single one who submits to you. In the name of Jesus, I ask that for this. Amen. We're going to sing a hymn of invitation this morning, and it's an invitation from God, saying to you, if there's any filth or dirt in your life that you want to get rid of, you come to me and I'll simply transform you. If you have a burden of guilt and shame in your life, God will forgive you and start your life over again. If you're living, once having done that, but you've strayed away until you begin to let these things accumulate back in your life, and God is saying to you, get rid of this today. And what he's inviting you to do is to simply come and say to this group of people, your brothers and sisters in Christ, I recommit myself to the Lord, to live in obedience to him. What he's saying to you, if you've never made that promise to God, here others have made it, you come and join this group and say, I'm ready now to live the life controlled by Christ. Jesus invites you. Would you come? Give me your life, with all of its mess, and I'll make a treasure out of it. Would you stand please while we sing?