Holy Work

[0:00] We're going to come now to a time where we're going to just come before God in prayer. So if you want to pick up on your conversations afterwards, we'll have community lunch afterwards.

[0:11] So please invite someone to come for lunch with you and carry on those conversations right afterwards. But what we do now is in our service, we do what we call the pastoral prayer, which is it's not just me praying.

[0:26] What I want you to do is I want to lead you in praying together. So that means I want to pray and I want you to just be in your heart or even under your breath, just be amen, just praying with me as I pray.

[0:41] Okay, so let's just bow our heads and ask our Father to just hear our petitions before him. Father, amazing, loving Father, may we see you in the splendor of your holiness.

[1:02] God, your glory is above the heavens. You created galaxies. You stand far beyond the universe. Heaven is your throne. The earth is just a footstool for you.

[1:14] And yet you're the God who says, I come close and I'm with you. Thank you for the depth of your love for us. Thank you the only way we can come is because you sent Jesus to be our great high priest, to be our intercessor, to be the one who pleads for us, broken, sinful people, to draw us to yourself so we can come into your presence.

[1:36] We thank you, Father, that you are a good, good Father. Thank you so much for the gift of life. Thank you for Eric and Justine and Judah, their little baby, Father, this morning.

[1:49] Well, thank you for the gift of life. It's just so exciting to see how you're working both in their lives and also how you're working, Father, through them in the life of the church in the bridge.

[2:01] Lord, we pray for Justine. We pray give her a swift recovery. We pray that you would strengthen them in these coming weeks and months to know how to parent the little Judah with wisdom and with a deep sense of courage and strength and trust knowing that you're in control.

[2:20] We pray for the bridge church. We pray that they will be a church that really supports them. We pray that in that church, they not just have physical babies being born, but spiritual babies being born, Father.

[2:30] We pray that you would awaken life in that church in Tongchong, Lord. And we pray, Father, that as we think about even this city and we think about the need for new life in this city, which feels so broken at times, Lord, we ask that you would awaken your church.

[2:48] You would awaken your church to see the needs of those around us. Father, we pray as a church in Hong Kong, let us not be a church which is defined by busyness and activism, but which works hard for your kingdom out of a deep sense of rest in you.

[3:05] Lord, we live in a culture which pressurizes us to try and prove ourselves all the time, to just try and fight for survival. But we pray that as your church we'd be different, that we would know that our survival is in your hands, not in our hard work.

[3:20] We pray, Lord, that as local churches, as international churches in this city, particularly at this time, where there's so much tension, would your grace be what fuels everything we do?

[3:34] Would your people be a light in a dark world? Would you teach us what it means to walk with you and to be the hope, Father, the people who point to you in any and every situation we face, even in this week?

[3:51] Father, forgive us where we dumb down your word to suit our own lifestyles, where we're not ruthless with our sin, where we only see sin as things we don't do rather than a call of holiness to live lives of love and of compassion, of courage and of grace to those around us.

[4:12] Father, we need you. Change our hearts, we pray. I pray, Lord, even in this city, I pray for those, and in our church as well, those who are single.

[4:25] Father, our society places so many pressures and expectations on those who are single. Father, would you just lift up the eyes of all those in our congregation and beyond to see a vision for how you want to use their singleness for your kingdom, not just for their own comfort, Lord.

[4:43] Show them their value is not in what other people think about them, not in their relational status, but it's found in your deep, abiding love. Father, we pray that we would be a community which walks alongside those who struggle in their sexuality, those who struggle in loneliness, those who struggle with the pain of relational breakdown.

[5:04] Don't let us be so busy that we fail to love, fail to see those around us. Change us, Lord, we pray. Thank you that you're a good, good Father who longs to change us and make us more like your Son.

[5:17] In Jesus' mighty name. Amen. I want to invite Echo to come and read God's Word to us this morning. The scripture reading comes from Haggai, chapter 2.

[5:34] Please follow along in your bulletins or on the screen. On the 24th day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai, the prophet.

[5:47] Thus says the Lord of hosts, ask the priests about the law. If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?

[6:04] The priest answered and said, No. Then Haggai said, If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?

[6:16] The priest answered and said, It does become unclean. Then Haggai answered and said, So is it with this people and with this nation before me, declares the Lord.

[6:29] And so with every work of their hands and what they offer there is unclean. Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, how did you fare?

[6:46] When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were about ten. When one came to the vine vet to draw fifty measures, there were about twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil, with blight and with mildew and with hail.

[7:03] Yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid.

[7:18] Consider, is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the wheat tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.

[7:30] But from this day on, I will bless you. This is the word of God. Thank you, Echo. That's great. It's great to see many of you.

[7:43] I know there's some familiar faces, unfamiliar faces this morning. So, if this is your first time, if you've been with VBS, or your kids have been with VBS, or you're just passing through, we just want you to feel just really welcome this morning.

[7:56] We're going through a series in Haggai, which is a book in the Bible where no one knows where to find it, but it is in there. So, trust me.

[8:07] And we've been going through this series looking at the prophet Haggai, who preaches four sermons over a period of four months to the Jewish people who God had brought back from the land of Babylon in exile.

[8:24] He brought them back to their homeland in Israel to rebuild the temple. And the temple was the centerpiece of worship to God as a community. It's where God's presence dwelt.

[8:36] And what we've seen over the last couple of sermons that we've had is that people had got very keen to start with and then they'd just grown busy with their lives. And God's temple had been neglected.

[8:48] And Haggai came the 29th of August, 520 B.C. to them with a sermon telling them to start getting on and getting back working on the temple.

[8:59] And we'd seen that they'd responded well. And so the people had started working and working and then last week we saw they got to October and in October they were getting discouraged because the temple wasn't looking as great as they thought it was.

[9:15] It should be. It didn't look as great as the previous temple they'd had. And they were wondering whether this was really worth continuing or not. And Gary preached to us last week and showed us that actually God encouraged them through Haggai don't give up.

[9:28] Keep working because God is with you and he's doing something far more glorious than you realize right at this present moment. So don't give up. Keep working. And so now it's the 18th of December.

[9:43] So Haggai as a career he only has like a four month career. So it's not a very long prophesying preaching career and you'll see maybe why. But Haggai comes again his third sermon and his time he comes to the priests the religious leaders who are basically like community adjudicators as well on matters of the law.

[10:08] And so he came to them with a question about holiness. Now I don't know about you but let me give you a little bit of background on holiness because when I say the word holy I mean what comes into your mind?

[10:26] Anyone? God do you say? Okay. Nothing comes into your mind clearly. Okay. So but holy is one of these religious words like how often do you go around using the word holy like to your boss oh that was a very holy moment.

[10:45] I don't think you do. But this word means set apart. But the problem with the word set apart is it sounds very cold very distant like kind of God's a bit too cool to hang around with dirty sinners like us.

[11:02] And we have this kind of impression that holy is actually a kind of negative word really. It kind of feels a bit like the right thing but just a bit like bright light that you don't want to look at really because it's too shiny.

[11:14] But actually when the Bible talks about God as holy he's saying that God is the creator of everything and we are created.

[11:25] God is infinite and we are finite. We have to sleep at night. God is always awake. It's like he is self-sufficient.

[11:36] We are dependent. He is the sun and we are the earth which depends on its rays for our very existence. This is his holiness. He is the source of everything.

[11:49] And yet I watched an advert a while back. I think it was for toilet paper. But in this advert I'm not going to name the brand but in this advert there was a woman and a guy sitting at a restaurant opposite each other on a beach.

[12:05] It was a very romantic scene and there was a and the woman was thirsty and there was a coconut like palm tree next door and so the guy reaches up gets a coconut cracks it against his head with just sheer power as if nothing had happened opens it up gets a straw places it in the coconut and then gently hands it to his beloved across the table.

[12:29] And the caption line went something like like this strong and gentle everything you could ever want. and I thought about that and I thought I mean they're talking about toilet paper but actually isn't that what we really desire in our lives because if you think of people who are very strong and bold and courageous aren't they often not very gentle or not very compassionate or not very kind and you think of people who are very compassionate and very kind and very gentle aren't they often not really very bold and courageous and strong right?

[13:12] And so who here has unshakable courage and strength and perfect patience and love and compassion? Anybody? I don't see many hands okay do you want to be like that?

[13:30] Okay okay five people do we'll work on it okay but actually do you know why we want to be like that? That is a longing for God's holiness because you see like the sun rays point back to the sun our longings for these things are a longing for a God who is perfect in love perfect in power perfect in strength perfect in compassion perfect in gentleness perfect in awesome majesty everything you could ever want he is and he's the source of all of those things that is the beauty and holiness of God that is how he is set apart and you know in the old testament anything that is related to God associated with him is holy so what you have you see Moses Moses comes along and he's walking along and he sees this burning bush and he starts walking up to it and he hears a voice saying Moses take off your sandals because the place that you are standing is holy ground why is it holy?

[14:42] because God's presence is there the temple that we have been talking about it is the holy temple of God why is it holy? because God's presence is there there are priests who are called to be holy because they're set apart to serve and worship him you know in the bible there are holy days there are holy cups there are holy meetings there is holy bread there is holy steak because there is meat that is offered in worship to God and that becomes holy because it's for him and devoted to him all of these things become holy and God's people were also called to be holy a holy nation a people who belong to God we are his so when I got married to my wife I became holy to her set apart for her and she for me that is the image of being holy but in the book of Leviticus in the law there was a problem because ever since the fall of Adam and Eve sin entered the world sin where we sought to find our life anywhere outside of God himself and sin brought death it's like an oil slick that brings pollution into all of creation it made us unclean it made us dirty and Leviticus has lots of laws which say anyone who releases bodily fluids like menstruation the things related to the life death cycle anyone who touches a dead body any of these things become unclean and need cleansing and you know touching a dead body wasn't sinful because actually you've got to bury dead people but actually it's like when you touched it you now had the smell of death on you you had the stain of the pollution of a broken world on you and you needed to be washed and cleansed before you could come into the presence of God that is the background to this passage in Haggai so are you with me still?

[17:05] good so if you've got your bulletin open we'll be going through just some of that passage together so first of all Haggai comes and in verse 11 he says this he kind of asks the question if someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or any other kind of food common food does it become holy?

[17:36] and the priests go no what is he asking? he's saying is holiness contagious like a virus so if I am clean and I touch you I've had a bath and I touch you do you become clean?

[17:52] and they go no of course not and so he says okay if you stand it's like if you have a holy garment that's touched holy meat and then does it kind of pass off holiness to something else?

[18:06] he goes no and he says the same idea you know if you were to stand next to a holy person would the holiness kind of rub off on you? his answer would be saying no because you know in church history a lot of people have actually thought they've kind of forgotten this so they think that if you go into a holy building like a church building you suddenly become holy or they think if you go and get prayed for by the holy pastor suddenly you become like the spiritual holy zapping from God comes upon you and Haggai and the priest are going no no no that's not the way holiness works and then he switches the question he goes okay not the clean thing if I'm dirty and I touch you do you become dirty?

[18:59] yes good answer that's the priest's answer they say if someone who's unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these things does it become unclean? and they go yeah it does is uncleanness contagious?

[19:13] yes so it's a bit like this I want you to imagine like who here is who's thirsty? I know some of you are thirsty anyone thirsty?

[19:25] anyone? okay Dan is thirsty okay so what I'm going to do Dan I've got a drink of water for you here we go here we go drink of water hold on a sec don't drink it just yet I just want you to know that just before I did a urine sample and a poo sample in that cup I washed it out afterwards so it's probably about it's 99% clean feel free to carry on drinking if you'd like would you drink it?

[20:03] Lorna would drink it would you drink it?

[20:18] I think most of us would go no I think I'll get from somewhere else because it feels defiled right it feels unclean even if you told me it was 99% clean 1% is enough to make you go I don't want to touch that right?

[20:42] this is what Haggai is saying and Haggai brings home the point to the Israelites he then goes that's exactly what you are like he goes you're not even 99% clean you're way more dirty than that and everything that you are offering in building this temple this holy place is actually unclean and you go wow Haggai that's a bit hard they seem to be doing all the right things but you're supposed to be this people who are for God's eyes only to honour him with all of your life that everything set apart for him so his glory shapes who you are and what you do and he says outwardly you guys have been starting building this temple you've been doing a lot of great religious activities you've been going to church you've been praying you've been listening to what Oscar said and you've been giving money you've been working in the kids ministry you've been busy actively on the outside you appear to be doing everything

[21:46] God says of you but what Haggai says is the outside of the cup may look clean but inside your hearts are impure you're selfish you're defiled and you're like Haggai's not the kind of guy you'd invite around to your house for a meal he's pretty strong and what he's saying is when you touch my holy temple and you are impure what happens you're defiling my temple your dirty hands are getting muddy even the good things that you think you're doing and God's saying do you think that I would touch anything that you're offering when I know where your hands have been when I know where your heart has been when I know where your thoughts have been this week it's a hard message that Haggai is actually bringing to this people because you know for myself I realized this is really striking for me because I can come to church and I remember I've

[22:48] I've come before to church and my wife and I were just having a big argument in the car in the taxi on the way here and so we kind of come out and then you come into church and you're all kind of happy and I was preaching that day I said it's fine hi praise the Lord you know all that kind of stuff and I'm getting up to preach and it could have been the most amazing sermon ever but if my heart is filled with bitterness and anger with my wife do you know what God would say I don't want to touch that because I want your heart I don't just want your outward actions and I think this is just such a challenging thing for all of us don't we often walk into church into our community group and we're nursing grudges against our bosses we're nursing all kinds of offenses that we we're angry we've got all kinds of things and then we start singing and then we start praising God and then we do all these things thinking that that is what holiness is but God says no

[23:56] I look deeper than that I look down here which is one of the reasons why when we take communion we say don't just kind of come up and take communion as if it's just a nice religious ritual that you do because actually that's a moment for you to stop and say God where is my heart right now because you know Jesus says if you've come to the altar and you've got an issue with your brother or your sister don't come and just quit everything you're doing right there and just get right you see holiness is not about just externals holiness is about the heart and in psalm 24 it says this who can ascend the hill of the lord who can stand in his holy place that's the temple who can come he who has a clean hands and a pure heart who's got clean hands and a pure heart this morning who's got kind of 75% clean because don't we sometimes say well

[25:08] I know I'm not perfect but you know I've got a 75% and God still says the same that's I don't want to touch that if it's just you coming with your own sense of holiness and the right response to that isn't to go oh well then if that's the case then I won't even bother doing any of the praising God I won't bother doing any of the other things that's not the right response the response God is looking for is he wants to draw you to himself and say I want to call you to repent and to turn back to me so that's the second thing I want to talk about the call of repentance second thing Haggai says from verse 15 to verse 18 Haggai uses three consider he says consider from this day on consider from this day on consider and that word consider it's the same that he said back in chapter 1 verse 7 when he told the people listen consider where you're going consider your ways and the ideas so that you can turn back to me you see in this passage behind the scenes is actually a reference to

[26:29] Deuteronomy 28 it's where Moses is about to take the people wants to call the people to go into the promised land he won't go but he says to them listen guys you have a choice before you you've got a decision either obey God run to him love him and he will bless you or run away from him and you'll receive curse because if you try and go away from the son and get it by yourself you'll have no life so he says this I set before you today life and death blessing and cursing now choose life by loving the Lord your God obeying his voice and holding fast to him for he is your life do you see what he's saying I want you to come to me because I'm life for you and what he's saying Haggai here is he's saying to the people you guys have turned away from me and what did you get you've got curse you didn't get the harvest you were looking for you got death on your work death on your crops because when you walk away from

[27:39] God that way it always affects that way horizontally and the call is come back to me not tomorrow but today today but he doesn't just say kind of look back at the past he also says look forward to the future this is verse 18 and 19 he says from the day you started building the temple until now you've sown your seed for the next year for the harvest it's in the ground and you're hoping that you're going to get past and God says listen though your past has been bad and the harvest has been bad because of your sin right now it's not too late because now I want you to come to me because I want to bless you I want to bless you he says just watch from this day on if you run back to me just see how I'll bless you just see that's my heart because don't we often think

[28:44] God's holiness is about telling us to say no to everything like don't sleep with your boyfriend don't be nasty to people don't do this don't do that and it feels like a whole list of rules that's God's holiness we think and that never attracts your heart to ever want to run back to God because the moment I say no inside you're going yes right you know when I was a kid during the holidays me and my friend we wanted to play tennis and our school had tennis courts but we weren't supposed to use them during the holidays but no one used them so we would go and there was actually a hole at the side under the fence so we would kind of creep under the fence and we start playing tennis together and I remember one day the caretaker of the school came out and he started shouting at us and telling us to get out of there and we just ignored him we kept playing and then what he did he brought out a camera and started trying to take pictures of us and we started taking off our shirts over like this so they couldn't see us it was a bit of play tennis at that point but we carried on but then he wouldn't go away and so we just started reasoning with him we said hey listen if you let us play here we are doing harm it's fine there's no one else here we'll help you clean up different things if you let us play and we started trying to reason and justify why we should be there and he wouldn't have any of it so we had to you want to have those in your school those kind of teachers you just think they need to get a life

[30:31] I think that's often how we actually deep down view God's holiness we know we're doing wrong things but we kind of feel God's a little bit unreasonable because he wants he's just spoiling our fun spoiling it and he just doesn't seem reasonable and so what we try and do we try and negotiate our way with God we kind of justify ourselves we try and cover ourselves up hide ourselves even hiding our own little sins through trying to do a lot of good things you ever done that you know that you should be actually dealing with an area in your life with somebody else but what you end up doing is you start serving really hard in kids ministry or in somewhere I don't want to stop Kristen having volunteers for kids ministry but we do this isn't actually a lot of the busyness that actually we do a way that we try and cover up ourselves because we know deep down there's something that's not right with us we don't feel valuable we don't feel approved but

[31:32] God looks at the heart and the whole of the rest the history of the Old Testament is after Haggai has spoken this message the people continually refuse to turn back to God they choose curse and curse and curse after curse all the time and it shows us something it shows us the Bible story is written very clearly to show you that you cannot get holy by serving you cannot get holy by just coming on a Sunday you cannot get holy by just praying a lot or helping the granny across the road you cannot get holy by any of those things because you know the only way to get holy is to have a touch from the holy one himself and that's my third point we've looked at how holiness is not religious activity it is a call to repentance but really what we need in that is this touch from the holy one this passage 400 years later the people have failed again and again and then

[32:47] Jesus comes to a man who has a demon in the bible it's called an unclean spirit notice unclean and the spirit sees Jesus approaching and he says have you come to destroy us we know who you are the holy one of god the only one who embodies everything who god is his love his strength his power and his compassion and he knows that as an unclean spirit Jesus can say one word and in his presence he would be destroyed but as the story goes on in Mark chapter five Jesus then is walking along and this man comes to him who is a Jewish leader and says my daughter is dying could you come please lay hands on her and she will live and Jesus goes with her and he is surrounded by this crowd and in that crowd there is a woman a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years in the

[33:58] Levitical law someone who has been bleeding like that for 12 years is unclean and she has been looking everywhere for every doctor that money can buy and none of them have been able to help her she is just imagine the whole of her life in that culture trying to hide the shame and the guilt of just this uncleanness that just clings to you and she comes and she hears that Jesus is in town and do you know what she says she comes fearful ashamed and desperate and she knows that Jesus is her only hope and she says this if I can only touch his garments just the fold of his garment then I will be healed and the word healed is actually the word saved and she reaches out to him she's like I just need him he's the only one who can help me and she touches him what does

[35:03] Haggai say should happen if an unclean person touches something that's holy it becomes unclean right what happens with Jesus power life giving power flows out of Jesus heals her cleanses her restores her completely and Jesus goes who touched me and this woman who's been so shamed she's fearful she's trembling but she comes out before Jesus and she tells her story and Jesus says your faith has made you well you came to me now go in peace restore that word peace the shalom the wholeness the peace that I give you and you know what Jesus then does next that guy whose daughter was dying some of his servants come to him and say hey don't bother Jesus any longer she's dead your daughter's dead and

[36:04] Jesus turns and says listen don't listen to them just trust me and he walks down to the house where this daughter is and there's the mourners there and he says to them don't worry she's just asleep and they laugh at him and Jesus walks into the room and he could have just stood at the side of the room and kind of said be healed because what happens if a holy clean person touches something that is unclean like a dead body what happens they become unclean but God Jesus is not the kind of holy distant God that kind of clicks his fingers and then walks away no what he does he walks towards her he touches her he reaches out to her cold lifeless hand and he says get up and power comes in and he raises her from the dead but in that moment of power do you see what he also does he then says to her listen she's hungry get her something to eat incredible compassion because

[37:19] Jesus is the holy one who combines everything that you and I wish we were if we really could do it in our own strength and we cannot and here's the point you and I are like that woman you and I are like that corpse unclean before a holy God we should be destroyed from his presence but instead God wants to come to you and to me and he says I want to bless you and the only way I can bless you is through my life giving presence with you you know in the temple access into God's holy presence was only brought through the death of an animal taking the impurity the uncleanness of people's sins being placed on them and it died so that the high priest could walk into

[38:27] God's presence and we know that on the cross where Jesus died our sins were transferred our impurity our shame all of those things were transferred onto Christ the holy one the only one who didn't deserve it so that your heart and my heart can be cleansed you know he's the only one who can transfer holiness to you to shame filled broken people like you and me he's the only one and you know how the early Christians used to preach the gospel in Acts chapter 2 they said this Peter says this he says his sermon 500 years later he says to a group of Jews who were at the temple he says you denied the holy and righteous one

[39:35] Jesus and you asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life who God raised from the dead again he's saying if you think you can get clean by serving by being busy even busy for Jesus forget it because our sin is too great the only way you can get clean to stand before a holy beautiful dazzling God is when you come in repentance to see that Jesus has done everything for you that he is the source of life giving power for you right now wherever you are right at this moment and by opening your hands and saying God I recognize I need you I have nowhere else to run life giving power of the cleansing work of Jesus his blood can wash over you and cleanse you completely that's why it says repent therefore and turn back that your sins may be blotted out that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord do you want to be refreshed by God do you want the presence of

[40:58] God in your life do you see what he says he says we need to come like that shame filled woman desperate to Jesus seeking his forgiveness in repentance before him and that is where his blessing of his presence is found maybe you're not a Christian this morning maybe you think you're a Christian but actually you're just a religious Christian maybe you're living with shame with guilt with a whole load of things in your life that actually as you hear us talking about holiness you know you cannot stand before God and you've been running but today the message of Haggai is that today there is a decision that God wants to bring to you today is a decision don't run away any longer run to him because there is nothing you have done there is no sin so great that his life-giving power through the cross cannot cleanse there is no thought you have thought there is no word you have done there is no action too bad but he doesn't want your religious actions he wants your heart he wants you a hundred percent because he wants to clean you not just ninety-nine percent but a hundred percent but many of us have been in church for a while you know this message you've heard it a thousand times before you could probably preach it back to me but if you stop and think about your life you wonder am I really as desperate as that shame-filled woman do I really see my absolute need for

[42:53] Jesus you're busy doing a lot of things for Jesus but you know how much you need him I was listening to a podcast by a guy who was a pastor and a seminary professor and he was saying that one day he and his wife had been about to go to bed he'd been married for 20 25 years and they get to the bottom of the staircase and his wife turns to him and says do you love me and he's completely shocked because it's like of course I love you and he comes out with all the reasons why he loved it you know every morning I get the kids up I make them breakfast at night I do this for them and this for you and this for you and then they just keep walking up the stairs they get halfway up the stairs she turns around to him again and says do you love me and at this point he's kind of thinking what on this okay have I done something wrong is there like what's going on he's pretty freaked out by this and you know he comes up with another list of things that he's done to kind of justify himself gets up to the top of the stairs about to get into the bedroom his wife turns to him a third says do you love me at that point he stopped and he said that was actually the pivotal moment of his life and his marriage because at that moment he suddenly stopped and thought do I know what love is he's been married for 25 years he's a pastor who's preached on

[44:44] God's love all the time but at that moment God arrested him and he went on this journey over this next few weeks and months and he got into the Bible and got into looking at the person of Jesus to go how does Jesus love anybody because I'm not sure I even know how to love and as he did that he saw the holiness and the beauty of Jesus Jesus and what that did it began to change him to be more attentive and present with his wife than he'd ever been before in his life their marriage became enriched and he started learning the beauty of holiness I think that's a question God wants to ask us as a community I think we do a lot of serving we've got a lot of amazing stuff going on but do we love Jesus do you love him do you love him the answer to that question isn't an answer to condemn you the answer to that question is a call to go

[45:55] I need to stop all my justifications in fact I need to stop maybe I need to start not just repenting of the bad things I do but even repenting of the good things that I do because the good things often make me feel justified so that I don't start chasing after Jesus desperately knowing only he can help make me holy only he can make me the loving courageous person that I want to be only he and he has arms which are wide open and he wants to come to us he is not distant so will we come to him this morning in real repentance and if you know I don't really know what that means then I want to give you just a second right now to just bow your heads and just do business with God I do these