It's good to be here with you,
and I pray that the Lord will bless us this morning, for it's
his blessing we need and his blessing we seek. If you'll look
at the book of 1 John 1, we'll start reading in verse
5, though the message this morning will come primarily from verse
7. 1 John 1. This then is the message we have
heard of or from Him. From Him, that's what He means
by that. We've heard from Him and declare unto you. Now what
a good definition of what constitutes a faithful ministry. The same
message we hear from Him we declare to you. We aren't interested
in what comes from men, are we? What good is it? There have been
so many different messages from men. The messages of men, and
I mean the religious messages of men, they change with the
winds of culture, They change with the changes of times. The
apostle says, the fashion of this world passes away, and that
includes the religious fashion of this world. Now, there's no
question that churches over time, they undergo some changes. The people dress differently. They sing different songs. That's
just the way things are because We aren't quite like they were
100 years ago, or for that matter, 30 years ago. But the thing about
God's church is this, its message never changes. I remember reading
from time to time when I would bother to read religious periodicals,
you know, things like, well, what message should the church
have in the 21st century? Same message it had in the first.
The same message it had, if you follow a strict biblical chronology,
the same message that was given four thousand years before Christ
was revealed in the flesh. What we preach today may have
more detail than what Adam and Eve heard on the day that they
sinned, but it's not any different. Some black spots may have been
filled in over the course of God revealing Himself, as the
writer of Hebrews says at various times and in various ways, filling
in more and more of the truth. But it says in these last days,
or the last of these days, these days of revealing, God has spoken
to us in His Son. And that was the end of the book.
God had written for roughly 4,000 years, or spoken, And then later
on had men write down for a period of 4,000 years. And when he was
when the son spoke, that was the end of the story. And what the apostles have left
us in scriptures is merely a recording of those things that the Lord
Jesus Christ said and did and how they applied to the organizing. I almost hate to use that word,
but there's no other word for the organizing of his church
in this world. That which we received, which
we heard from Him, we declare unto you. And it's simply this.
And this is the message. Here it is summed up. God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. Now, two heresies met the church
early on. The first one was the Judaizing
legalism. And that simply hit the church
first because the gospel was first preached to the Jew. And
the unbelieving Jews reacted by trying to either, they either
just utterly rejected the message of the gospel or they tried to
infect it by dragging the law into it. And that was the first
great theological contest of the early church. The second
one, and it came second because after the gospel went to the
Jews and went to the Gentiles, and so a very Gentile heresy
crept in called Gnosticism. And it was a product of the philosophy
of Plato. And they would try to take the
words of the Apostle Paul, primarily as he spoke of flesh and spirit,
and Plato also spoke of flesh and spirit, but they meant different
things by it. But they tried to drag Plato's philosophy into
Paul's theology And they developed this idea that there were certain
Christians who had a higher standing and achieved a higher state by
virtue of some kind of special connection they had with God
than nobody else did. And they utterly rejected anything
that had to do with the natural world as we see it, including
our bodies, and thought they dwelt on a superior plane of
spirituality. That's why John starts out by
saying, that which we have seen with our eyes, and we've heard,
and our hands have handled of the word of life. These Gnostics
says that the man Jesus was just a man, and the Christ Spirit
entered him after his baptism, at least some of them said this,
and then left him just before his crucifixion. And John retorts to them and
says, no, we're declaring to you a person, a real eye, stand
on his two feet. You could see him with your eyes.
You could hear him with your ears. You could embrace him with
your arms. And believe it or not, if you
were in glory right now, you could still see him with your
eyes, still hear him with your ears and embrace him with your
arms. Because there's still one God and one mediator between
God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. He's as much a man now
as he was the day he came into the world through the womb of
Mary. He's glorified man, but he's
still man. But these fellows thought they'd
got into new life. These Gnostics thought they'd
achieved higher understanding than the simple believer did.
And John says that which we receive from him, from God revealed in
human flesh, seeable, hearable, touchable human flesh. That's
what we're telling you. And in him, God in human flesh
is light. And in him is no darkness, no
deception, no error, no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship
with Him, and that word translated fellowship, you find it in other
places called partnership or sharing. It simply means to have
something in common. And if we say that we have fellowship
with Him, if we say we've got something common with Him, and walk in darkness, in the
darkness of self-righteous sense of superiority, over others,
in the darkness of work salvation, or the darkness of corruption
and filthiness. Some of those Gnostics argued
this way, well, you know, the flesh is altogether evil, spirit
is altogether good, and therefore we can just ignore what we do
in the flesh. We can just give ourselves over. to the lust of
the flesh, it doesn't matter. The flesh will die someday and
we'll all die with it. Well, we'll find any excuse to sin,
won't we? We will. We can make any argument to justify
our sin. Do you know that the gospel never
excuses sin? It forgives it, but never excuses
it. The gospel never diminishes it. The gospel never says it's
okay. If there was a way to make sin
okay, then Jesus wouldn't have died. He wouldn't have had to. The gospel does not change the
nature of sin. It simply provides a legal basis
for God to forgive sins. And as it works through time
and unto eternity, it changes us. It doesn't change the nature
of sin, it changes the nature of us. John says it's not yet been revealed
what we're going to be. We can thank God for that. When
I look at you, when I look at me in the mirror, I'm glad this
ain't what we're going to be. But if we say we have fellowship
with Him and walk in darkness, we're just liars. I like that, you know. Well,
I believe the truth. Well, do you do it? What do you
mean, do it? Do you walk according to it? You know, one of the most ridiculous
things in the world, though I'm afraid it happens a lot, a true
oxymoron that actually exists is a proud, sovereign grace man. Now there are those who believe
the doctrines of grace, but do not do the truth, for they walk
in pride. They walk in the pride of their
orthodox theology. That's just one example of what
it is to know the truth, believe the truth, but not do the truth. But if we walk in the light as
He is in the light, We have fellowship one with another in the blood
of Jesus Christ, His Son, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Now, what is it about this verse
that arrests our attention? I say our, I'll just say what
arrested my attention. I hope that it will arrest yours
too. Whenever we read something, say
some kind of letter that's written to a lot of people, what do we
generally do? Maybe I'm telling on myself.
Maybe you've grown out of this. I just, I scan it first to see
if my name's in there anywhere. And if I find my name, I'll figure
that the rest of the letters may be worth reading. If there isn't something about
me in it, I'll scan and say, that's nice. And as we look at this verse,
We're in it. Our name is in this verse. It's
the very last word. Sin. You know, whenever you read the
scriptures, I know people say look for Christ, and they're
right. But look for yourself. See if it has anything about
you in there that you can identify with. So that you can say, this
scripture is to me, for I find myself in it. Until our sin is acknowledged,
there is no value in the gospel. That may sound, I don't know
what would be the word, ridiculous to say. There's no value in the
gospel? Not for the man who doesn't know
his sin, something about it. None of us know it completely.
We may think we understand what a sinner we are, but just wait
until God pulls the rug out from under you. He can do that. All of us are self-righteous
to some degree, and God tolerates it. Sometimes He doesn't. Sometimes
He says, you think you're something? Let me show you what you are.
And He withdraws the props and supports by which He holds you
up, and you fall flat on your face. and do things that you
proudly thought you'd never do, things which you had judged others
for doing. We're just that way, aren't we?
But, oh, if we can find ourselves, He cleanses us from all sin. You might have thought that us
was what I was talking about. Well, no, you don't know who
us is until you get to the last word. God wrestles with Jacob. And when Jacob thinks he's going
to gain the upper hand, God reaches up and just grabs
him in the hollow of his thigh. And oh, the pain. The work of
God is painful. Painful. Oh, the pain. And he said, let go. Jacob said,
I'm not going to let you go until you bless me. He said, okay. What's your name? Oh, my. You can see Jacob. Jacob, he'll
grab her, cheat, scoundrel, ne'er do well. He'll do whatever he
can to get the advantage over you. I tell you this, if you
lived in between Jacob and Esau, you would have given Jacob a
wide berth and barbecued with Esau. He'd be bringing home some
good stuff to put on the barbecue. Jacob was the one to watch out
for. Before God would ever call him Israel, what did he make
Jacob do? Own up to his name, his name of nature, Jacob. Once he did that, he said, all
right. I won't call you Jacob anymore. You're Israel. You're one who prevails with
God, a prince with God. Quite a name, not a name Jacob
earned by any means, but a name given to him. And throughout
so much of the Old Testament scriptures, when it would give
a word of promise to the house of Israel, what does it say?
Hear ye, sons of Jacob. I the Lord, I am the Lord, I
don't change. Therefore, you," Israelites,
because they weren't acting like those that prevail with God.
They weren't acting like those that were blessed by God. He
says, you sons of Jacob, you are not consumed. I love the promises to the sons
of Jacob because I can identify with that name. The most difficult, yea, it is
the impossible work of a preacher to convince the world of sin.
Only the Holy Spirit can do that. I can tell you you're a sinner.
I can drag out the law and prove it. I can appeal to your conscience. But a man will not convict himself.
He will not own up to the verdict until the Spirit of God. convinces
him that he's a sinner. Sin so encompasses us that we
cannot separate ourselves from it or know ourselves apart from
it. What did the old fellow say?
I can't remember exactly who I'm quoting. But to thine own
self be true, be honest, You can't be honest with yourself
if you leave out sin. It's more a part of you than
anything else is. You may describe yourself as
so tall and what color eyes you've got, what color hair, if any,
you've got, but you have not described yourself
aright until you say, oh, what a wretch I am. Oh, what a wrench. Sin is all the way around us
from the top to the bottom, from the back to the front, from the
inside to the out. There is not a part of us which
has not been corrupted and overthrown and rendered useless by sin. There's not a thing we can boast
about in ourselves. Not a thing in which we can take
any confidence in the sight of God. Not one work, not one thought,
not one particle of our consciousness is good. Paul said it, but folks still
won't believe it. I say Paul said it. He was quoting the Old
Testament. There's none righteous, though not one. There's none
good. None does good. Man dies, and
if he's been what we might call a positive force in the community,
they'll write an obituary that'll take half a page in the newspaper
and talk about all the fraternities he belonged to and all the social
organizations and community organizations and all the works he did. And
it's okay. I mean, I'm not saying they shouldn't
do that. But they write it up and say
he's a good man, and I guess among men he's a good man, but
that's setting the bar pretty low. Being good among men ain't
saying much. There's none that does good.
There's no one that understands. Preacher, I can open up the Bible,
I can see for myself. Yeah, you can get an intellectual
understanding of it. You can get your doctrines straight,
but you can't believe God. You can't actually perceive yourself
as a sinner who can't help himself without hope and without God
in the world. You just can't get there. We've
always got some kind of hope. We always think God's on our
side, but we're on His or something. There's no one that seeks God. Oh, I've been seeking the Lord
all my life. I remember a lady came up to me, I think it was
Brother Donny Bell, and said, I've been a Christian all my life. Well, he said, I've
loved God all my life. He said, that's too long. That's
too long. He loved your God. We loved our
God, didn't we? We didn't love the God until
God made Himself known. And love wasn't our first reaction
when He made Himself known. Before we were born, the guilt
of sin was upon us. Paul says, and if you read it
from any of the translations I've looked at, it says, there
is no difference, for all have sinned. We need to drop out the
word have, because that gives us the sense that there's no
difference in us because all of us have committed sin. Technically
speaking, it should be, there is no difference for all sinned.
Referring to an individual event. Before I got a chance to choose,
somebody chose for me. Yeah, I believe in election.
I'm not talking about that choice. I'm talking about Adam's choice. He made a choice and a horrible
one. And he did so as a representative
of all human beings. And when Adam sinned, So did
I. You say that's not fair. Well,
even if it's not, I don't care for two reasons. Number one,
that's the way it is. Fair or not. You know, sometimes people
got to grow up. Sometimes we got to grow up and
deal with things as they are, not as we think they're supposed
to be. But God says when Adam sinned,
so did I. And it's not a wise thing to
argue with God. I'll tell you this, if you want
to throw out the imputed guilt of Adam, then you will also with
it have to throw out the imputed righteousness of Christ. If you
don't want to take Adam's blame, you're never going to be able
to take Christ's credit. They go together. I was under sin before I was
anything else. We are born with its power infecting
us. The story is told that Benjamin
Franklin, who was quite the humanist, decided
he was going to improve himself. And he condensed all sin down
to thirteen virtues or vices, depending on which way you want
to look at it. I mean, the whole moral issue. He decided he'd
spend a month on each of them. And so he'd tackle one of those,
and he'd get rid of one vice or so he thought, and then he'd
move on to vice number two. And he'd start working on that
one, and about the time he made some progress on that, here comes
vice number one again. You can imagine what happens
as he gets to vice number three, and one is already bearing fruit
again, and two is well growing and rooted. Oh, we can chop off
the top of the plant of sin, we try to mow it down like we
do our grass, but it just keeps coming right back up. I was brought up in a way that, I don't want to
say they taught me this because actually it's already in us,
just some religion reinforces it, but the idea that somehow
or another I could put away sin. I've tried, and I can't get over
trying, I'll be honest with you. I keep trying to do it, and I
keep failing at it. But that's because its power
is inside. Sin's not what we do, it's what
we are. Its power is in us. It's just
as if it's part and parcel of being a descendant of Adam. Adam's
guilt was not only transferred to us as a legal transaction, but his nature has
been imparted to us because we're his descendants. Why do I have
two legs? Well, because Adam did. That's
why I've got two eyes. Why am I a sinner? Because Adam
was a sinner. And sinners can give birth to
nothing else. And that's why you may, by the
grace of God, have been regenerated in your spirit, been born again. But still, the only kind of person
you can give birth to is a sinner. Because giving birth is a matter
of flesh, and the flesh is still just flesh. God hadn't done anything
to it yet. We were born with His power infecting
us and overpowering us. People say, well, you know, when
a man's saved, sin no longer has power over him. I beg your
pardon. If it doesn't, why do we sin?
Are you telling me that sin's weaker than you, but you just
simply choose to do it anyway? You tell me that God has saved
you and you have the power to not sin and you go on sinning. All that can mean is, is that
you choose to do it. You can't join with Paul and
say that which I would not, I do, because evidently you would. How can it be that a man can
say that which I would not, that's not what I or that is what I
do and what I want to do, that's not what I do. What can that
mean except that there's a principle that's stronger than him? We're still infected and polluted
to the point that we can't avoid sin, even in the state of grace. And our lives are characterized
by its practice. If we are without Christ, then certainly all there is to
us is sin. Every activity is sin. Every work is sin. And once Christ has made himself
known to us and opened our eyes to see, It is still true that
we sin. And I believe that here, in the
experience of our sin, we find what puts us in this
verse. We can find a way to excuse ourselves
for Adam's guilt. I mean, according to, you know,
concepts of human justice, you can't blame one man for his father's
sin. And so you say, yeah, well, I'll
accept the theology of the imputation of Adam's guilt. That's the rules of the game?
Okay, I'll accept it. We won't take the blame for it,
will we? And we can say, yeah, I realize
that I am by nature a sinner and it's an overwhelming power
in me, but hey, I can't take the blame for what was passed
to me. It's just the way I was born. And we'll try to excuse ourselves.
We'll say things like, well, you know, I'm a sinner. Brethren,
that's not an excuse. That's a confession. See what
I mean? Men think they can hide from
the judgment of sin simply by confessing that they're sinners.
That would be like a man coming to a judge and he's been found
guilty of murder. You have anything more to say?
Well, judge, I'm just a murderer. Is that a defense? That's not
a defense. Well, we're all sinners. Yes,
we are. And that's why we're all condemned
by nature. We cannot take refuge in imputed guilt. We cannot find
an excuse in our nature. Those things merely serve to
emphasize the point that we are truly lost, helpless, and hopeless
sinners. And the way we live proves it. So why don't you talk that way
to folks that came out on a Sunday morning to go to church? Because
it's true of you. That's why. Oh, yeah, but we
know that at this church, do you? And I'm not saying this
is a rebuke from me to you, I rebuke me in this just as much. We are
all of us so infected with the most corrupt of all sins, self-righteousness. We think that somehow we've elevated
ourselves above what we were when God saved us. It hasn't
happened. Thank God if he gives us grace
and holds back some of our most egregious offenses against decency. But if there's something that
you used to do that was bad and you no longer do it, you can't
take credit for it. God just said, I'm not going
to let you do that. And all that it would take for you, even as
a believer, all that it would take for you to do that is for
God to say, okay, I'm going to have your way. I'm going to let
you go. All the sins we do, the ones that break out You and everybody knows
about it. We all got a certain level of
sinfulness we put up with out of each other. But there's a
bunch of them we do that truly, thank God, nobody knows about. The only way to ever be safe
for the truth about you to be known is if the truth about everybody
were known all at the same time. Then nobody could point a finger. I heard a preacher once say,
and I understood the point he was making. It's a pretty good
point. He said, the best thing that could happen to you is for your deepest,
darkest secret to be revealed on the five o'clock news. Well,
I'm willing for that to happen if the same thing happens to
everybody else. But oh, we hide what we are. And maybe we should. Or hide
what we've done. But I'll tell you, there are
the sins that are public. There's the sins that are private.
And then there are the sins that never make it out of our minds. But brethren, what's nurtured
in the mind is as much guilt as what breaks out in our actions.
Now, breaking out in our actions may cause more destruction, but
it doesn't cause any more sin. The Lord illustrated it by one
particular transgression that evidently the Pharisees pride
of themselves and never committing. He says, he that looks on a woman
to lust after her has committed adultery already with her in
his heart. And you can apply that to any of God's law. He
that looks upon a man's goods with covetousness in his heart
is already a thief. He that gets angry at a man to
the point that it even flashes through his mind, it'd be better
for the world if he wasn't here. That's murder in your heart. Sin. Well, I'm in this verse. It's
not a very noble place in it. It's not one I want to brag about,
but I'm glad it's there. I'm not glad I'm a sinner, but
I sure am glad the gospel's for sinners. I wish I weren't a sinner. I mean, in reality, I wish I
weren't a sinner, but I am. And inasmuch as I am a sinner,
I'm sure glad that the gospel is spoken in the language of
sinners. For it says here, and here's
the next term to look at, and these next ones can go quickly,
having laid that foundation, cleanseth us from all sin. And
when I am filthy, there's nothing I like more than a bath. I hate going to bed dirty, don't
you? I mean, and I'm talking about,
you've been working all day, you got sweaty, and you come
in, you sit down, and the sweat dries, but all it does is leave. And you might be too tired from
your work, and you sit there and watch TV. I sometimes do this.
I just sit there and watch TV, and then it's time to go to bed,
and I think, I just don't want to get in that bed feeling this
way. So I wash up. Take a shower,
whatever. And while we as believers still
find that sin is powerful in us, we hate it. Find a person that doesn't hate
his sin, you find a person that's never been cleansed of it. It's just so. We can't boast
in anything good about us. Because we know there's nothing
good in us. And in some measure, that makes
us hang our heads in shame. And like Job say, I abhor myself
and repent in sackcloth and ashes. All to be cleansed. Nothing can
cleanse sin with the blood of Christ. But oh, it can cleanse. It can remove That guilt passed
upon us before we ever existed. There is no difference, said
Paul, for all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We
all sin in Adam and in our lives we fall short of the glory of
God. And he said there's no difference
this way too. All are redeemed through Christ. Not every human
being, but anybody that's redeemed is redeemed the same way every
other redeemed person is. We're redeemed. The blood of
Christ redeems us from that curse laid upon us by the guilt imputed
to us. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
us, and oh, what a joy this is to our soul when we're made to
know it. cleanses us from the filthiness
of what we do. I don't mean so much that we
quit doing those things. In fact, this is put in a present
tense. It's an ongoing affair. Why does the blood of Christ
keep on cleansing us? Because we keep on sinning. We
keep on being in need of it. I asked Martin Luther one time,
the members of his church, he says, how come it is every time
we come here, you preach the gospel to us? He says, because
every time you come here, you look like people that need it. And we do, don't we? Oh, the
blood of Christ of a reality cleanses us at all times, but
it is the blood of Christ preached to us over and over again that
gives us the knowledge and the confidence that it is so. When our Lord took off His robe
there, it says He left His place, took off His robe, a picture
of His incarnation. He made Himself of no reputation,
took upon Him the form of a servant. They say He went down to the
ground with the disciples and washed their feet. And it says He put
His robe back on and went back to His place, which is exactly
what Christ did. Clothed Himself in glory and went back to the
right hand of the Father where He came from. But here's what
He told the apostles. Those men who would be charged
with setting up the church and preaching the full-blown, fully
revealed gospel. He says, you don't understand
what I just did. They understood they washed their feet. That's
why we know that he wasn't establishing foot washing. He says, what I've
done, you do. You don't understand what I've
done yet. Obviously, he wasn't talking about washing feet for
real. What was he talking about? You know what the job of a preacher
is? So many preachers think their job is to make people feel bad.
It's their job to point out sin and make folks feel bad for what
sinners they are. Well, I suppose to those without
Christ, that's what we do. But to every one of God's people,
we wash their feet and we say to them, your sin is paid for. The blood of Jesus Christ. Now,
we don't say that to particular individuals. We just preach the
gospel. And the gospel tells believers
that truth. Your sin is gone. You have received
from the Lord's hand double for all your transgressions. It's the preaching of the blood
of Christ that makes us aware of this. Why is it that the blood
of Christ will cleanse the soul from what
nothing else could cleanse it? Why not the blood of another
man? Because the blood of another man is just as filthy as anybody
else's. My blood can't wash you clean because my blood has all
the... It'll never wash me clean. That's why hell goes on forever. God could shed my blood and it
wouldn't even put away my sin. Why can Christ's blood put it
away? Because of who He is. Now, who is He? Well, those in
His hometown said, you know, isn't this Joseph and Mary's
son? The carpenter's son? We know his mom. She's still
living here. We know his brothers and sisters. Where'd he get all
this? Where does he get off doing this
kind of stuff? But the believer doesn't see him as the son of
Joseph and Mary. He sees him as he rightly is,
the Son of God. It says the blood of Jesus Christ,
he is, that is, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. We are cleansed
from our guilt before the Judge by the shedding of the blood
of the Son of the Judge. And we don't give that blood
its due honor, but I'll guarantee you God does. Our conscience
may not fully answer for that blood yet, because our conscience
is still fighting with our flesh about what's true. But God knows
what that blood means. That's the blood of his son,
and I guarantee you, the judge will justify everyone
for whom the blood of his son was shed. I guarantee you, if my son died
for the guilt of another man, I would seek to attack that man
and set free. I wouldn't let my own son's blood
go unanswered. And if I could have that attitude,
think what the father has to the blood of his son. It's the
blood of the son of God, and it's the blood of the only perfect
man that ever lived. The only one who never sinned.
It says he knew no sin. To know sin means not only that
you do it, But the law has convicted you of it and brought you under
sentence for it. He knew no sin because he did
no sin. The law could put its searchlight
upon him and find no defect. And that made him a suitable
substitute for those that the law could find nothing
but sin about. But he who knew no sin on one
day was made to know sin. For our sin was laid on him.
And what the law would quite naturally do to us, it did to
him instead. There are things about Christ
bearing our sin that I don't know, can't explain. But I know this. In a very real sense, my sin
became His. He was charged with it. And it
was a righteous imputation or charging because He was willing
to receive it. And when it became His, the fierceness of the law fell
upon Him. And He was made to know my sin. When you're a little kid, if
your mama told you, don't you take any of those cookies out
of the jar there. They're for after dinner. But you being full
of sin, if nothing makes you want a cookie more than the fact
that you're not allowed to have one. I'd probably even eat a
cookie with a raisin in it. I can't stand raisin cookies.
If my mama said you can't have one, then I'd have wanted one
right then. Well, if you go over there and take one out, all right,
you've done sin, but you don't know sin yet. You've got your
hand in the cookie jar. You know what you're doing is
wrong, and you're doing it anyway. You still don't know sin. You
know when you know sin? When Mom walks in and catches
you with your hand in the cookie jar, and all at once, you know
sin. And in explaining or trying to
illustrate the work of Christ, here's the best way I've been
able to come up with it. Christ got caught with our hand in the
cookie jar. And when he did, blessed be his
name, our sin was put away. It is gone and cannot be brought
back. We are cleansed. If we walk in
the light, God has given us the knowledge of his son and the
truth of the gospel. We can with confidence say in
the sight of God, I bear no sin, though I am horrible in every
way I can imagine, though I still do things that embarrass me to
no end and would bring shame upon the gospel of Christ were
God to allow it to become public. Yet in the presence of God, I
bear no guilt. For my substitute bore that guilt
before God once and for all, and it is gone." Do you see yourself in that verse?
Oh, if you ever see yourself, then you're going to love everything
else about that verse. You will find the whole verse
in all its context and the whole book worth reading because you
found yourself in it, and that enables you to find Christ in
it. May God add His blessing to His Word.