You have heard that it was said
by them of old time, from the ancients passed down from one
generation to the other, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever
looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with
her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee,
pluck it out, cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole
body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend
thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy
whole body should be cast into hell. It hath been said, Whosoever
shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever
shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
causes her to commit adultery, and whosoever marry her that
is divorced, committeth adultery." Here is the second in a series
of six statements that our Savior said, you've heard it said, but
I say unto you. I was talking to Bruce the other
day, Bruce Crabtree. And I was talking about this
and asking him how he dealt with this particular message of adultery. And we began to talk about it.
And I said, you know, when I read the Sermon on the Mount, I remember
I first went and bought my first Bible as an adult. I thought,
you know, it's time for me to straighten up and live right,
do better, you know, get my life straightened out. Start living
good and being a good husband, good father, all those kind of
things. So I bought me a Bible. Started
reading on Sermon on the Mountain. The first thing I realized, there's
no way in the world I could live a life like this. I could not
live this kind of life. I couldn't do it. When I read
it, I seen my utter and absolute impotence and inability to be
anything at all like this. says here on the Sermon on the
Mount. Blessed are the meek. We're in the world of our God.
I'm meek by nature. You? Poor in spirit? Mourning? Hungry and thirsty after a lot
of things, but righteousness wasn't one of them. Merciful? Pure in heart? Peacemakers? No, these are things that And
then when you get down here and start talking about the sin,
that you can commit murder with thoughts, that you can kill a
man in your mind, and God can see that He regarded as if you
had actually done the deed. And then you get down to adultery,
and that you can commit adultery with a look. And I began to think,
oh my soul, how in the world could anybody Face this and say,
well, I lived a good life, and I lived according to the Sermon
on the Mount. If we'd been able to live the
Sermon on the Mount, our Lord would have said, you have heard,
but I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Oh, my. Let me try to deal with
this just a little bit here. And it says there in verse 27,
and you know, again, this is our Lord Jesus Christ. There's
no way in the world But as you view these things, you see just
how poor in spirit you are. And you begin to be meek, and
you begin to submit yourself. You begin to humble yourself
before God, because you see your utter inability. You see your
sinfulness. You see your uncleanness. That's
what I see. I don't know what you see, but
that's what I see. That's what I see when I read these things.
And then when he talked about these scribes and Pharisees having
this righteousness, which is strictly outward, He said, except
your righteousness exceed theirs, because theirs is based on thou
shalt not, but I say unto you. They didn't, but this is what
I tell you to do. They gave all the negatives.
He said, I'm going to give you the positive, what it takes.
They said, if you don't do certain things, you'll be okay. I'm telling
you not only not to do those things, but this is what you
must do. And so he shows us what righteousness, where we had no
way in the world under God's Holy Son ever. ever be able to
attain a righteousness by our deeds and acts in this world
when we view these things. Who in the world has not ever
been angry with a brother without a cause? Who has not ever offended
somebody, called them a fool or a vain idiot or something
like that? We've all done that. But our Lord said here in verse
27, You have heard it said, by them of old time." And when he
says, by them of old time, they pass it down from one rabbi to
another. And of course, that's what the
law says, thou should not commit adultery. You can find that in
Exodus. You want to find the Ten Commandments,
you can find them in Exodus chapter 20. You can find them there,
all of them. So these, again, the scribes
and Pharisees had reduced this adultery just to the to the letter,
just to the letter, the actual act of adultery. Not what causes
the adultery, not what leads to the adultery. So they figured
that if they never actually had relations with a woman outside
the marriage bed, that they had never committed adultery. That
they had never actually, they were guiltless. And they could
tell everybody else that they were guiltless. But our Lord
Jesus Christ said, I say unto you, in verse 27, but I say unto
you, that whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, to
desire her, to want her, to covet her, hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart." And my subject tonight is, I
call it, right eye sins and right hand sins. And so here we are,
but I say unto you, thou shalt not covet. Let me show you something
over here in Exodus 20. Look in Exodus chapter 20. This
is, you know, they just saw the letter of the law. They didn't
see the spirituality of it. And that's what Paul found out.
He found out the spirituality of the law when it says, Thou
shalt not covet. And he found out that he was
coveting it. And that's what this here business of committing
adultery in your heart is. It's coveting. Look at in Exodus
20 and verse 17. Exodus 20 and verse 17. And our Lord, and He'll make
these statements, and then He'll come down and He'll show you
what they mean. Verse 17, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's
house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant,
nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything
that is thy neighbor's. Don't desire anything that belongs
to anybody else. That covers everything. Everything. And so we're brought back again
to this business of sin being a heart issue. A heart issue. God puts up a sign and says,
Thou shalt not. Man will admit it. You tell him
he shall not. The first thing he's got to do is say, I will.
Man covets. He desires what isn't his. What someone else has. You put up a no trespass sign.
Well, we didn't see that sign. So sin is so subtle, so subtle. And I'm telling you, beloved,
when we read things like this and we see things like this,
we see that their sin is exceeding sinful. When it's just with something
you've done with your eye and your heart, and how exceeding
sinful sin is, that all you've got to do, and God says don't,
and we do. God says don't covet, don't desire,
don't have an evil desire, don't have something, don't get hungry
and thirsty after something that ain't yours. You see somebody
else, don't want somebody else's wife. Don't need nobody else's
wife. And yet, beloved, that's what
our Lord said, in your heart if you do that, You've committed
adultery with her. And women do the same thing.
And so we see how exceedingly sinful sin is here. And I tell
you that's something most folks don't know anything about. That
we commit sins with our eyes, we commit sins with our minds,
we commit sins with our thoughts, we commit sins with our intent,
with nobody ever, we commit sins of the most worst kind. You ever
had anything get in your mind and you say, oh my soul, and
then all of a sudden at the most inopportune time, it'll intrude
into your mind. The most abominable things it
ever was. Things will get in your brain,
and you'll say, oh my, how'd it get there? You saw something,
and it gets in your brain. Then at the most inopportune
time, that is when you're praying, when you're sitting in the service,
reading your Bible, and oh, when the law is reduced to just outward
acts, it's easy to say, well, I didn't do that. But oh, beloved,
listen, the exceeding sinfulness of sin here is made known unto
us. He said with you, if your eye If your eye, a vision, if
you let your eyes fall on things it shouldn't fall on, look at
things it shouldn't look at. You know, we put things to our
eyes, and you know, we'll say, oh, I shouldn't look at this.
But we'll look at it, and it gets in you. He said, if that
eye, don't use your eye to look at things, to see things, to
desire, because with that eye, that's how things come into your
mind. That's how it comes into your heart, by looking. And oh,
it's better to get rid of that I. If you don't mean literally
take it out, what he's meaning is, is that mortified, naked
dead, just say, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to
let my body, I'm not going to let my eye destroy my life with Christ. And oh, there's no understanding
of the gospel without knowing what sin is. That's why folks
can read these things here and feel pretty good about yourself.
But oh my, how exceedingly sinful sin is. You read, I should not
commit adultery, but I say unto you, if you look, if you look,
oh my, there's no understanding of the gospel without knowing
what sin is. How do we explain our Lord Jesus
Christ coming into this world? How do we explain who Jesus Christ
was? How do we explain His living
in this world without sin, despised and rejected, a man of sorrow
and acquainted with grief? How do we explain Him dying on
the cross when He had no sin of His own, without sin? Without the exceeding sinfulness
of sin in us? What if God judged us according
to this Sermon on the Mount without the death of Christ? Without
the blood of Christ? Without the sacrifice of Christ?
I see the sinfulness of my own heart when I read these things.
My utter inability. My utter inability. Oh my. See, God will not endure sin. It must be punished. And the
gospel is supposed to be good news, and the only people it's
good news to is people who are sinners! I mean, know what sin
is! Experience sin! That can read
the sermon on the mountain, see that I have not kept that, see
that I failed in the law, see that my heart's deceitful above
everything. Huh? And oh, there's no true
evangelism. No true evangelism. I mean, beloved,
without knowing the truth about sin. You cannot preach to men
without knowing what sin is. You can't tell them all they
need to do is accept Jesus, because that won't do them any good.
Everybody under the sun has already accepted Him, but they've changed
them in it. You've got a superficial message, you've produced a superficial
context. They'll tell me how to live a
victorious life, live life with a capital L, But oh my, you can't
live until you've got life, and you can't have life until you're
dead, and you don't know you're dead until God comes and makes
you know you're sinned. You know, sin's trying to get
somebody to come to Jesus because they can't come. They won't come. They don't need Him until they're
sinners. When I read these things, thou
shalt not commit adultery, but if you live, thou shalt not kill. And I say, if you've been angry
with your brother, I say, oh my soul, God, oh how sinful we
are, how sinful we must be that it takes our hearts and you must
expose our hearts to ourselves or we'd go to hell just like,
oh, it'd be awful. You don't see yourself like that
when you read these things. Huh? Don't kill. But then we'll grit our teeth
at somebody. We'll get hatred. Somebody said,
I told Mary the other day that I heard somebody say, Oh, I hate
that. I said, see how we use that language? Hating love. Hating
love. To hate somebody. And that's
what it says to love. Can only look with your eyes.
And we, you know, we'll look with our eyes and then we'll
get this stuff in our brain. We'll get this stuff in our mind.
We'll get it in our imagination. Watching things, seeing things.
And that's why He says, put a blinder over the mirror, you know, trot
that eye out. And oh my, that's why these fellas
out here trying to win people to Jesus and they don't have
a clue what sin is. If you're going to come to Christ
and be saved, where are you going to be saved from? Where are you
going to be saved to? And oh, without knowledge of
sin, without understanding what sin is, there's no concept of
true holiness. Holiness will be something that
you do. And you certainly won't understand
the holiness of God. You won't understand God's holiness.
Oh, no, no, no. Without a knowledge of sin, you'll
never understand how holy God is. You know what it says on
the book? It says the Holy Bible. They're
called holy angels. Holy Word. Holy God. The Holy Ghost. Everything about
God is holy. They cried, holy, holy, holy.
And yet folks just address Him as the old man. We're going to
get it straightened out. The fellow upstairs. Oh, God's got a sense of humor.
Make ridiculous statements like that. Oh, they don't have a clue.
If you don't, you'll talk about God like that if you don't know
what sin is. You'll refer to Him in the most ungodly, unholy,
un-rhetorical way if you don't know what sin is. And if you
don't know what sin is, you'll think holiness is something you
can do, that you can attain. That's right. And oh, if there's no true knowledge
of sin, there'll be no Appreciation. Without knowing what sin is,
you'll have no true knowledge of what the love of God is. You'll never appreciate the
love of God. You'll never understand the love
of God. You'll never embrace the love of God. You'll never
understand what the love of God is if you don't realize what
sin is. First thing, you'll understand that God loves righteousness
and He hates iniquity. And there's no way in the world
you could love God if He didn't first love you. And there's no
way in the world you could continue to love God if He did not keep
that love going. If He did not flame that love,
if He did not work in that love, if He did not cause that love
to grow. Anybody here disagree with that? Oh, God loves righteousness. God loves holiness. God loves
His Son. And we realize what sin is, and
oh my, oh thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill.
A fellow looked at that and said, I ain't killed nobody. I ain't
killed nobody. I ain't never slept with nobody
besides my wife. So I'm in pretty good shape. God says, you don't know nothing.
They've been lying to you ever since you was a baby. He said,
I'm going to tell you the truth now. That your problem is in
your heart. Your problem is in your nature.
Your problem is not what you don't do. Your problem is the
fact that you can't do what you know is what's right to do. And
you can't keep from doing what's wrong. That's why Paul said,
would I do that that I witnessed? Not I. But it's sin that dwells
in me. And oh, beloved, we love God.
And I tell you, when we realize what sin is and realize the love
of God in heaven, we love God for who He is. For who He is,
not what we want Him to be, not what we think He should be, not
what we hope He would be, but who He is. Holy, immutable, sovereign,
righteous. Oh, and we bless Him. We would
not change Him for 10,000 worlds like this. And there's no use talking about
salvation from sin until we know what sin is. And one of the blessings
of the covenant you see in Ezekiel 36 is, is that, I shall make
you loathe yourselves for the evil that you've done. Now, you
know sins, sins, and that's what we're talking about here, talking
about sins. I say unto you, they say, and I say unto you, they
say, I say unto you. They say, I say unto you. And that's what we're talking
about. Christ said, they said, this is what sin is. He said,
I'm telling you what sin is. And you know what? Sins are just
the symptoms of the disease. When you go to the doctor, the
first thing you want to know, what symptoms do you have? What's
your symptoms? How do you feel? They'll check
your breathing, want to know your symptoms. Test your blood.
And a lot of different people have a lot of different symptoms
for a lot of different diseases. But the symptoms are not the
disease. And they follow the symptoms
to find out what the disease is. Sins are the symptoms. Disease is sin itself. And fellas are always wanting
to thank the thing curing the symptoms, if you're dealing with
something with the symptoms. But it's the disease that has
to be cured. And you know, people say, well,
boy, you know, we can't help it. God made man perfect. The
scripture said God made man upright, and you know what he did? He
sought out many inventions. He sought out many inventions.
And, O beloved, sin so invaded him that had not God. And that's
what he said here. But I say unto you, I say unto
you, you know, sin is so subtle and so deceiving That men and women can commit
sin with their mind, their imagination, and enjoy it. Get it and revel
in it. Waddle it around in their brain.
And they'll say, nobody will ever know. But God knows. And people say, well, it's just
my nature. I can't help it. Don't use your nature as an excuse
to dishonor God. Don't use your nature. And look
what he says in verse 29. And he's talking about what you
look at, see? And if your right eye offends you, cause thee to offend. Cause you
to sin. Pluck it out. Cast it from you. You know, what he's talking about
here says, you know, if you look on a woman, if you've got trouble
with your eye, you want to look at things. And use your eye that
God blessed you to see things with. God blessed you to have
eyesight with. If you want to use that eye that
God gave you, this good, wonderful, blessed member of your body,
if you want to use that, go looking at things that you ought not
look at, see things you ought not see. He said, if that's to
look, to lust, pluck it out. What he means by
that is mortify it. What he means by that is to make
it dead. Make it dead. Oh my, let me show you something
over in Job 31. You know, this is something Mary
and I have already, we've been doing this for years. She'll
know something if she thinks it's going to hurt me or bother
me, she won't tell me. And if I know
something I think is going to bother her, I won't tell her.
Ain't no sense both of us being bothered. And that's the way
it is, you know. And what it is knowing things
about things you know. There's things that I don't want
to know. Somebody said, did you know this? And I say, no, I'd
rather not know it. Don't want to know it. Don't tell me. And what I have to do, I've got
enough to deal with, just with me, and things that people have
real needs about. And you don't want to think evil.
You don't want to think bad. You don't want to think wrong.
But oh my, look what Job said here in Job 31.1. He said, I made a covenant with
my eyes. Why then should I think upon
a maid? I made a covenant. I said, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. To give us these eyes, to use
them to view the worst things. You know what David did? He was
standing up there on the roof of his house and he looked down,
there's Bathsheba down there. And you know how that, with that
right eye, he looked down there and he saw that woman. And what
did he do? The next verse says that back
over here in our text. What did he do? And if you write
him a sin, you cut it off. He took his hand and took another
man's wife. The eye is what caused him to
want her. The look's what caused him to want her. The adultery
was in his heart, but he began to look and said, I'm going to
take her. So he looked and then his hand reaching got her. But
it started with a look. Started with a look. And oh,
my soul. Sometimes you wish you'd just
You know, now you're still on the Pharisees walking around
with blinders over their eyes. You know, a blind man can still
lust. And this is what gets me. You
know, Janet Dishman can tell you this, and them folks up at
where Joe Turrell's at. They got this Netherland Reformed,
and there's Wesleyan holiness in that. And the women won't
wear less than three-quarters sleeves. You know, and they wear
all these long clothes and all that because they don't want
to make men lust after them. Listen, that's the dumbest thing
in the world. They don't understand. You know,
it's with the eyes, with the mind. And that's why He said,
you know, He went to looking. And that's why He says, if your
right hand offends you, cut it off. Cut it off. Just leave it alone. Huh? Look. First you look, and then you
start taking. God gave us these instruments. He gave us the eye,
the hand, and the foot. And sin has so perverted us that
we turn that which is good into our enemies. To be enemies. That, you know, we got a traitor
in the castle and we'll even ourselves open the door and let
him in. Won't we? I don't know if you all ever
done that, but you know you'll, you got an enemy inside of you.
And when he comes walking up and pecking on the door, if he
catch you at the right time, you'll open the door and say, come on
in. Let him in. Look what the apostle said over
here in Romans 7, just a moment, let me show you this. Oh my, Paul said here in verse
12, Romans 7, Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment
holy, and the commandments just. God never did us anything unjust,
and it's good. It reveals the holiness of God,
the justice of God, the goodness of God. If we all lived according
to this law, and it was in our hearts, And it was in our minds,
and it was in our wills. And that's why we look forward
to the day when we'll have that new heart. We'll have that new
will. We'll have everything, when we
won't have to deal with this old flesh anymore. Then watch
what he says, Was that which is good made death unto me? No!
No! But sin did. Sin did. that might uphear sin. Sin were
death in me by that which is good. You know the law, which
is good and holy, it tells us what not to do. And so what we
do is when we look at that law, the law is good, but that which
is good, beloved, causes us to sin. Death in me by that which
is good. That sin by the commandment,
what's this, might become exceeding sinful. The law says don't, but
when we see that don't, what do we do? It starts us thinking
about the very thing that tells us not to do. When it tells you not to do something,
the very thing it tells you, you walk out of your house and
say, kids, don't go in my bedroom. Just try this one of these days.
Just experiment. You leave your kids at home,
they'll never thought about your bedroom. They'll say, don't go
in my bedroom, you won't be out of the house by me. They'll be
in your bedroom, going through your door, going through your
dressing doors, going through your closet. They wonder why
in the world they want to stay out of the bedroom. There must
be something in here they don't want to be. That's the way we
are. Ain't that right? When we see a no trespassing
sign, that's for everybody but us. When we say, don't do that,
that's for everybody but us. And it starts us thinking about
that very thing. It's like that fruit in the Garden
of Eden. It was there. It was there. And she began to look at that
after Satan came to her and said, That'll make me smart. That'll
make me wise. And I don't want that, but it's
good for food. And it'll make me see things I ain't never seen
before. And boy, she done that, and sure
enough, what the Scripture says, and their eyes were opened. And
what's the first thing they saw? That they were saved. Don't you know that they said,
oh my soul, why did I ever look on that? And that's what he says
here. Take and pluck it out. Cut it
off. And maybe I'll deal with that
after Todd leaves on this here mortifying sin. What it means
to make dead sin and to mortify the dead. Let me show you in
Romans. I think it's in Romans. Romans 8, I believe. I don't
know for sure, but let's just look at it just for a moment.
Just say just a minute, say a thing or two about this mortifying
scene. He says in verse 13, For if you live after the flesh,
you shall die. You live according to your fallen
nature. Live according to what you are by nature. You're going
to die. You're going to die without God.
So don't make provision for the flesh. It says in one place,
make no provision for the flesh. Don't make any provision for
it. They answer the flesh minded thing. But if you through the
Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, to mortify the deeds of the body,
you shall live. And that word mortify means to
kill them. to make them dead. And that's why he's saying it's
better to enter into life with one eye, it's better to enter
into life with one arm than it is into hell with both eyes and
both hands. And oh, beloved, who wouldn't?
Who wouldn't part with sin? Who wouldn't part with what they
looked at? Who wouldn't part with sin? Who wouldn't mortify
the deeds of this body? Who wouldn't cut off the right
arm? Who wouldn't want to? Who would
want to perish if they can put sin away, and for Christ's sake,
we don't want Him as Christ and His salvation? That's why David
said, keep me back from presumptuous sins. And that sin that we think,
you know, it's just part of my nature and I can't help it. I
presume that I'd commit this sin because I'm saved by grace.
And then you go on with that sin. That sin leads to another
sin, another sin, another sin. And that's why he says to make
dead the sins, mortified the deeds of the body. And I know
that don't sound like grace much, but it's the truth anyway. That's
what the Bible says. And I'll deal with that real
soon. But now let's look at what the
lust of the hand, the lust of the eye, ultimately leads to. It has been said in verse 31,
Matthew 5. You know, with that look, and
take that hand like David did, he looked at Bathsheba and then
he took the hand. Once he had led to adultery and
committing adultery, one minute left to the death of a child,
left to the death of the husband, left to David being under the
sword all the days of his life. And look what it says here. It
hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give
her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever
shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication,
cause her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her
that is divorced, commits adultery. And that's why David did. That's
why he's talking about starting out with lust after a woman.
You'll end up divorced. You'll end up in adultery. And
you'll end up causing somebody else to go into adultery. That's
just exactly what it says. Our Lord could not make it any
plainer than that. Divorce is epidemic. Absolutely, utterly
epidemic. It's become easy. It's become
cheap. But the moral, the ethical, the
scriptural consequences are enormous. You know what they taught there,
that if you get tired of your wife, You don't like the way
she cleans the house. You don't like the way she deals
with things. You don't like the way she cooks. You don't like
the way this, that or the other. The way she talks or something.
Said all you got to do is just write out a bill of divorce and
hand it in. And she's gone. That's what they taught. But
he said, I'm telling you this. I'm telling you this. The only
way you can ever put away your wife and do it in God's sight
is to catch her with another man. And if you do that, you can. But if you do get rid
of a woman for any other reason, get rid of a man for any other
reason, any other reason for that, that woman that's divorced,
the next time she gets married, that's not her husband. I've
got a couple of friends that they always introduce their wives
and I say that's that woman they're living with. I just don't believe
that's their wives. You say, that's not right, I
know it. That's what the scripture says. I know a couple of people
in that shape. I know, you know, that's what
he's saying here, you know. No, you had a wife back there
and you decided you didn't want to live with her anymore. You
decided you didn't love her anymore. You decided that, you know, she
wasn't the one to suit you anymore. So you got rid of her and you
took you another woman and you're in adultery and she's in adultery.
Ain't that what our Master's teaching right here? And it's the law that causes
divorce. Grace is what makes marriages.
I read an article today by Clay Curtis. Let me give it to
you right quick. Clay was talking about marriage
and how you know that a woman married to the law And the law
goes through and he puts on his white glove and he goes through
the house and he starts, that's dirty. That's nasty. That food
ain't no count. Just makes life miserable for
him. Just strict. Well, that old husband died.
Where'd he die at? He died in Christ. She's married
to another. He ain't got no white glove.
And that's what law does. It makes you put on the white
glove. And you start inspecting everything about your wife or
your husband. Next thing you know, they're
not satisfied. You're not satisfied with them. You've got somebody
else. And that's why the Lord said, go call your husband. Oh, he's not my husband. He's not my husband. I've had
five of them, but the one I've got now ain't the right one.
The only way she could have had five husbands was for them to
die. According to Scripture. So now you see what I mean about
feeling your powerlessness, your inability, the deceitfulness
of sin, the impotence against it? How in the world can we be
clean in light of these kind of things? How can we be clean? How can we be saved? How in the
world can we face things like this, with these eyes and these
hands and these hearts and these thoughts and these feelings and
this subtlety of sin and this exceeding, how can we be clean?
How can we be saved from this awful heart? There's only one
way. Our Lord Jesus Christ Bless His
holy name. His power gives us new heart. His power of His blood cleanses
us from all sins. His power put away all of our
sins. And oh, bless His holy name.
We can come honest. And that's why I can preach like
this and you can listen like this because we know what we
are in God's sight and there's no sense pretending anything
else. Come in here and act like we've
all got wings of angels on our backs. Oh no, God help us. And when we read these things,
that's what I see. I see how desperately I need saving. I
see how desperately I need God to work in my life. I see how
desperately I need to get up every day and say, Oh God, take
my life and do with it what you want. Please don't leave me to
myself. Don't leave me to my flesh. Don't
leave me to my words. Don't leave me to my mind. Don't
leave me to my own imagination. Thank God there's power in the
blood. Our Father, in the precious name
of Christ our Lord, thank you for your Word. And, O Father,
we face these things, we look at these things, and we see and
we cast ourselves on you again. Lord, your Word drives us to
you. It drives us to you and your power and your grace and
your love, your mercy, your cleansing, your forgiveness, your righteousness,
your merit, your work, your worth. For we see we have none of our
own. And O Lord, we bless you for
this great, great, great, great, great, great salvation that you've
given us in Christ. God save you people in this place.
Bring glory to yourself through us in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.