02 God's Wrath and the Pagan (Romans 1:18-32)

SPEAKER_00: So we are in the book of Romans today, and last week we did an introduction, look at the first 17 verses. We're gonna pick up in verse 18 and go to the end of the chapter. So if you have your Bible, turn to Romans. And if you were if you were going to ask people, if you just walk up to people on the street and you ask them who is God or does God exist, and who do you think he is, have you ever thought about what kind of answers you'd get? It's kind of a two researchers took on that question. Um, Kristen Smith and Melinda Lunquist-Denton, and they are secular scholars. They just completed a study where they asked 3,000 teenagers that question, who's God and what is he like? And they published their findings in a book last August, about a month ago. It's called Soul Searching, The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. And I read about it in this magazine plugged in. I don't know if any of you are familiar with this. It's put out by um Focus on the Family, and it looks at pop culture. Um, and I think the cover says it all. It's choosing their religion. An iPod mentality has teens shuffling their doctrines to suit their personal ideals. And that's really what they found, or their personal tastes, that teenagers tend to take a little here and a little there, and whatever works here. And the scary thing was in their research, they didn't find a statistical difference between teenagers who grew up in a church and teenagers who didn't. They all tended to shuffle their beliefs. Now there was, to be fair, there was, they said kind of what I would call a remnant, they didn't use that word, but there was kind of a core group that had a solid, what we would see as a uh orthodox or historical Christian faith. But the majority of teenagers just had this pick and choose, and they didn't say, they weren't rebelling against their parents' beliefs, they just didn't know better. This is what they were taught. So that was kind of scary. But they summarized their beliefs in what they called moralistic therapeutic deism, as kind of the prevailing religion they found, and it's characterized by five statements, which I want to give you, and then keep these in mind as we study Romans. So the first tenet of this belief they found was that God exists, a God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. Good start. Two, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. So God exists, he wants you to be good. Three, the central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. So God exists. He wants you to be good and he wants you to be happy. And then the fourth one is God does not need to be particularly involved in your life except if you need him to resolve a problem. That's the therapeutic part. And the fifth one was good people go to heaven when they die. So that kind of summarized the prevailing worldview or prevailing religious beliefs of teenagers. And I that sounds familiar to me. I think I've heard that from my neighbors and co-workers. Uh it certainly seems to be kind of the politically correct view of religion that we get in the media. The more scary question is, what if this is what's being taught in our churches? Are we teaching a kind of comforting Christianity so that this is what our children are picking up, you know, offering them spiritual cotton candy. You know, it's sweet, melts in your mouth, no calories, doesn't uh nothing to digest. Um I imagine we're all probably guilty to some extent. Um but because we all hate conflict, no one wants to stand up and be controversial. So it's tempting to teach that. So what I want you to do is keep those five statements in mind as we study Romans, because what you're gonna see in this passage alone is that Paul is going to counteract all of them except the God exists one. So the five statements were God exists, he created the world, God wants you to be good, he wants you to be happy, he's not particularly involved, and if you're good, you go to heaven. What Paul's gonna say is there is a God out there who's a personal God, there is a right or wrong, and it matters. What you do matters. And ignoring what God says is right and wrong has serious consequences. So I warned you last week, I'll remind you again, before we get to the good news of the gospel, we're gonna spend three chapters on the bad news. Paul spends the first three chapters of the book of Romans telling us basically the bad news before we get to the hope. So the first case we're looking at today, he acts like a prosecuting attorney and he's gonna present his case. The first case we're looking at today is his case against the pagan, the person who doesn't believe in God. Next week he's gonna turn his attention to the religious person or the moralist, and then the week after that, in the third chapter, he's going to expand to the whole human race. So he's gonna spend three chapters basically making the point no one can keep the law, no one is righteous. So, which is a direct contradiction of this moralistic therapeutic deism that good people die when they go to heaven. He's gonna argue there are no good people. Okay, so turn to Romans 1. Chapter 18 is where we're gonna pick up. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them, agreing the New American Standard. We're gonna stop there for a minute. We're gonna talk a lot about God's wrath today. And I want to contrast that with I'm gonna give you an overview of the passage and then we're gonna go into the details. And we're gonna start by looking at God's wrath. The first thing to notice is it's revealed in human experience. He starts out and he says, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. So, unlike this moralistic therapeutic deism where God doesn't really care, he's not really involved unless you need him, Paul's gonna say, wait a minute, God's involved, he cares, he has opinions about what's right and wrong, and it matters. So it's tempting to think, you know, well, God just he's not watching or it doesn't really matter. And Paul's gonna argue from the beginning, his wrath is real, it's personal, and you see it every day of your life, and we're gonna talk more about that in a minute. So God's wrath is revealed from inhuman experience. It's personal. Notice this is not, as we go through this, this is not some cosmic force like fate or the force or bad luck or something that kind of trips you up now and then. Paul's gonna argue there's a holy God who has established the holy order. He will uphold it, he will bring judgment against those who rebel against them. And as you see as we go through the text, three times he's gonna use the phrase God gave them over, and that's a legal term. He's dealing out judgment. We're gonna talk about that. So God's wrath is revealed in human experience, it's personal. The third thing to note is it's principled and controlled. I think God's wrath makes us uncomfortable because we think of anger when we think of wrath, and we think of anger as often this arbitrary, explosive, uninhibited kind of loss of control, uh, usually you know motivated by vindictiveness or rage or something. God's wrath is not like that. It's not an outburst of anger, it's a reasoned, principled, justified, controlled reaction. And Paul's gonna make that argument. So it's not an there's no animosity, there's no vindictiveness, there's no outburst, it's a reasoned, principled response. And in fact, Paul's gonna argue as we go on, it's delayed. He's postponing it for a long time. So it's revealed in human experience, it's personal, God's wrath is principled and controlled, and fourth, God's wrath is not prompted by ignorance. As we read the passage, notice how many times he says they are without excuse. That's gonna come up two or three times. He says, we have enough evidence to know, it's right in front of our faces, and um we suppress the truth. So, and Paul's gonna argue from creation, basically saying all you have to do is look around you to see that there's a God behind all of this. The analogy I like to use my father is a uh not a believer, he's an atheist. And over the years we've had lots of discussions about this, and we never really make any progress. He doesn't convert me, and I haven't converted him yet. But one of the times we were talking, I said, Dad, you know, if you came upon the sidewalk and there were a million pennies and they were all lined up in rows and they were all heads up, what would you think? Would you go, Wow, think they just randomly landed there all heads up, or would you assume that someone put them there and arranged them? And he looked at me like I was stupid because he knows he's a smart man, he knows the astronomical odds against a million pennies landing face up. And he said, Well, of course someone put them there. I said, But Dad, look at the world. It's like looking at a million pennies all face up. How can you think that all this creation just randomly happened? Well, I thought that was brilliant. He was not impressed. But I think that's the point Paul's gonna make in here in 19 when he says that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them, and then he goes on to talk about creation. Creation is screaming. There's a God, there is a creator behind this, a designer behind the design. Um now he's gonna go on to say, don't worship that creation. That's not the God, there's a God behind it. All right, so God's wrath is principled, it's controlled, it's revealed in human experience, it we are without excuse, it's and there's no ignorance. And it I would define God's wrath as his just and reasoned decision to abandon us to our sins, and that's the argument he's gonna make in this passage. And I'm gonna give you a little visual for how to remember that. This is something we used with our kids when they were little, and then we taught second grade for a while, and we used to use it with the second graders. So, those of you with young children, you might want to borrow this sometime when your kids reach that age. What the argument of this whole passage, and as I said, this is still the overview, then we're gonna get into the details, looks like this if we were gonna do it visually. If my left hand is us and my right hand is God, and I put them up, we're face to face. For those of you in cyberspace, but I just held up my hands with the palms facing forward. So we start out in fellowship with God, actually Adam did, but we're we won't quibble with that for right now. And the problem is we rebelled, so we turned our backs on God. So I'm turning my one hand back to the other hand. And Paul's gonna argue that there are two consequences to that. The first consequence is now we experience death, and he by that he means more than just we're going to die. So it's the very real consequence of sin in our daily lives. If you skip down to the end of the chapter in verse 29, he gives this long list of evils. Um says they were being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. That's death. All that stuff is that as part of our lives is the consequence of sin in our lives. So it is true that we will eventually die, our hearts will stop beating, and that we will stop breathing. But here and now, our lives are now marked by the results of sin, which are all that stuff: frustration, anger, bitterness, selfishness, um, office politics, uh relationships falling apart instead of growing closer together. If you think about it, that's the natural progression of our lives. I mean, we don't have to plan. How many of you think, okay, the next time in that situation I will lose my temper, explode violently, and yell for four minutes, you know? You don't have to plan on that, right? That just happens. But we do have to say, okay, the next time in that situation, I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to count to ten. I'm going to remain calm. We have to work at that. That doesn't come easy. The anger part, the selfish part, that comes easy. And what Paul's saying is when we sin, when we turn our backs on God, we now experience death in all its forms: anger, selfishness, frustration, bitterness, uh, strife, marriages falling apart, parents and teenagers becoming alienated, friends hurting each other's feelings, disappointments, all of that is a direct result of sin in our lives. Now we're going to get to the good news, just to jump ahead a little bit, which is life, which is the exact opposite of that. And the promise of the gospel is imagine a world without any of that. Imagine a world where marriages automatically and inevitably grew closer together and you didn't even have to work on it, because that's just the way things were. Or parents and children naturally understood each other, or friends never hurt each other's feelings, or let each other down, or disappointed each other. Without sin, that's the kind of life we'll we would have, and that's the promise of the gospel. One day you will be the kind of person that is everyone is better for having met. And you don't even have to try. That's just who you are, and that's the promise of the gospel. Now I'm skipping ahead, we're going to get to that. Right now we're still in the bad news. So we start out in fellowship to God, we rebel, that's what and the first consequence of our rebellion is now we experience sin and death. So we experience all that strife and bitterness and all that long list of things he talks about in 29 through 31. But there's a second consequence which is even graver, and that is God turns his back on us. That's the wrath of God, the just and reasoned decision to say, you want sin, you got it. So it's his decision, it's different than death, and that I experienced sin and death. Now God's withdrawing the offer of life. And that's the term Paul uses in this verse where he says, God gave them over to their sins. That's a legal term. It means to hand someone into the custody of sin and death. It's the term used of what Judas did to Jesus in the garden when he handed him into the custody of the Roman guards. So Paul's argument in this section is God's going to give them over to their sins, hand them into the custody of our sins so that now we are prisoners, trapped in our sin and death. So our rebellion, we turn our backs on God. The wrath of God is he turns his back on us and he says, You want sin, you got it. What we did was not just unfortunate, it was wrong. There's a judicial penalty that must be paid, a price that must be paid now. And that's the wrath of God must be satisfied. So in this position where we're back to back with God, if we could, and I don't believe we can, but if we could turn around, it doesn't do any good. Because justice has to be satisfied. Now you know the end of the story. God satisfies that justice with Jesus' death on the cross. So he then turns back to us and then calls us back to him. So we know the end of the story is coming. The good news is God will solve this problem of his wrath. He will send Jesus to die in our place. Then he can now turn back and offer us life again and then call us back to him. But right now we're we're in this side of the equation for the first three chapters, where we're back to back. So there's two consequences to our sin. First is we experience death, the second is we are under God's wrath. And God is that's a problem that must be solved. So as we go through the chapter, I'm gonna finally read it for you. Notice three claims Paul's gonna make. He's gonna say, and he's gonna make them over and over in this section. We rebelled is the first one. The consequence of that rebellion is we experience death, as I defined it, all that crud and muck and strife in our lives. And the second consequence is God abandons us to that death. He gives us over to that. So well, I'll go ahead and read it. So back up in 18, we're gonna go to the end of the chapter. And just notice how many times he says exchange, and how many times he says God gave them over. 118, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppressed the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through that which is made, so that they are without excuse. That's my million pennies argument or my analogy for that. He's saying, What's out there, God can be known. He's not unknowable, he's been known since the beginning of the world. Now he starts with the rebellion. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. But they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. So they didn't honor God, they became foolish, their heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed animals and crawling creatures. So we rebel, we exchange the glory of God for an image in the creation. Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, there's the rebellion again, and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged a natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, there's the rebellion, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, their gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. And although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also heartily give hearty approval to those who practice them. So you notice what he's going through in this chapter. We rebelled, excuse me, we did not honor God, we exchanged truth for a lie, we exchanged the natural for the unnatural, and God's response is he gives them over. He um hands them into the custody of sin and death. So God's wrath is that judicial decree against us that not only are we now experiencing death, we are slaves of it. We are in its custody. We are we have no way out. Now, he picks on homosexuality in this section, and some people have argued that, oh, it's because it's the worst sin or something like that, but this is not a progression. If you look at the order, it's kind of, you know, it's like, oh, they're murderers, they're haters, they're insolent, and then they gossip too, you know. It doesn't quite work as an order. I think he's picking on homosexuality because it's an argument from creation. He's saying it's not a worse sin, it's an obvious one in that if you look at creation you can see that this is not how the parts were designed to fit. You know, you need a little basic biology, and you can see that this is not the way the world works. God didn't design it that way. So it's easy to look at something like selfishness or anger or pride and say, well, everybody does that. That's just normal human behavior. That's just, you know, lose a little sleep, and um, that's the normal status quo. And so Paul's picking on, I think, homosexuality to say, you can tell from creation this is wrong, you can tell from creation this is not the way God designed the world the world. So it's not a worse sin. All sin is bad, all sin is worthy of condemnation. It just ought to be an obvious one. Now, it's not so obvious in our culture, or at least parts of our culture, but I think that's the argument he's making here. The other thing I want to look at is um notice the progression as we go through here, because I think it's insightful for uh the nature of idolatry. And idolatry is is essentially exchanging the glory of God for something else of no value. So it can be you know career, finances, beauty, money, um, success, fame, whatever. We don't tend to worship trees and rocks and and mother nature anymore, but we have our own idols. And I think using the term exchange here is it gives us an insight into what idolatry is like. Notice he uses it three times, and that's what sin is, really. It's an exchange. We exchange God's place for ours. We say, Oh, I don't want you to be God, I'm gonna be God. I don't want you to decide what's right and wrong, I'm gonna decide what's right and wrong. We exchange truth for a lie, we exchange the creation for the creator, life or death. And as Jeremiah says, we exchange the fountain of living water for a broken cistern that can't even hold water. But notice how it begins. It starts with the eye. In verse 23, they exchanged the glory of God for an of the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man. So we see something and we think, ooh, that looks good. So we exchanged the glory of God for an image of something else. In this case, it was, you know, worshiping birds or trees or or golden calves. But that's how idolatry starts. We see it and we glorify it. We like it. We want it. Then it moves to the heart. Notice verse 25. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. So first we see it and we say, ooh, that looks good, I want that. Then we say, now I'm going to worship it. Now I'm going to serve it. And then again, it starts with the eye, it moves to the heart, and then verse 26, it takes over the whole body. For their women exchanged the natural function for that was in which is unnatural. In the same way, men abandon the natural, and he goes on, receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. So it moves from your eye to your heart to now you're addicted to it. It takes over your whole body. And that's really the progression of idolatry. And it's something to notice because for here he's talking specifically about homosexuality, but it can be any idol, it can be money, it can be fame, it can be success, it can be looking good on Sundays, it can be being the perfect parent. We can put anything in that place and let it take over us. Why does it move through that progression? Because we've been given into the custody of sin and death. I think that's the main point he's leaving, he's making here. God gave them over. There is a second consequence to our rebellion, and that is God has abandoned us to our sin and death. So not only do we experience, we're trapped by it. We can't get out left to our own ourselves. Now think about this, just go back to moralistic therapeutic deism for a minute. And let me review the five points and think about what Paul said in this chapter. The first one was a God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. Well, that's true. God exists, he did create and order the world, and he watches over human life, but he does more than watch over. He's in control. He is Lord Creator, Master, and Almighty. He is not just, you know, the watchmaker who started the watch running and then disappeared. He's here and he's involved. The second one, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Well, that's true to a point. God does want us to be good, nice, and fair, but the standard's a little higher than that. Good, nice, and fair don't quite cover it. And as we're gonna see, especially when we move into next week, Paul's gonna argue that the standard God requires is nothing less than complete, pure, total holiness. Inside, outside, accents, heart, uh, speech, deed, everything. And he's gonna ask, how much of the law do we have to keep? And the answer is all of it. All of it, all the time. One transgression is enough to disqualify you. So good, nice, and fair is true to a point, but it's not really the standard God's gonna hold us to. The third one, the central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. I don't think that's even close to uh the gospel. And I wonder if it's, in a sense, if it's possible in a fallen world, because we are abandoned to sin and death. And we are gonna continually rub shoulders with people who are gonna rub the wrong way. You know, even if it's major tragedies or minor frustrations, when we're dealing with other sinful people, things are gonna go wrong. So as you go through your small groups this year, yes, sometime you will be disappointed. Someone might say something that hurts your feelings, or you might say something that hurts someone else's feelings. It's gonna happen because we're sinful people. You know, and we can keep looking for that church where there aren't sinful people, but the problem is they wouldn't take us. You know we find them, it's sorry, you can't come. Um so all that is to say you will learn and grow a lot in your small groups, and yes, we will disappoint each other, but that's part of the process. God uses even that, as we'll see when we get into chapter 8. Even all the bad stuff God can turn around and use for good. But the goal is not to be happy necessarily. The goal is to have faith and to worship God. So the fourth one, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when he's needed to resolve a problem. That's the dangerous one. Because notice how many times Paul says they are without excuse in this section. God is involved, he does care, he has a standard, he enforces that standard, and there is a judgment coming for that standard. And in fact, if you just look ahead to the next chapter, the very next thing he says is, you therefore are without excuse. He's going to shift the pronoun and say directly, you are without excuse. So it's easy to say, oh, look, you know, those those pagans, you know, those people that are maybe their tree worshipers or whatever, you know, I'm not like them, I'm not like the prostitutes or the drug dealers or the slum lords or the drug lords. That's yeah, throw the book at those people. I'm not like them. They're we know they're bad. And the very next thing Paul says is you are without excuse. So he's not gonna let us get away with that, of thinking uh everyone sinned except me. It doesn't work that way. So there is a God who's involved, who cares, and our actions matter. They have eternal consequences. Then the fifth point good people die, good people go to heaven when they die. What Paul's gonna argue here is apart from the grace of God, there are no good people. And he's gonna, this is his first case. He's talking about pagans. Next week in chapter two, he's gonna look at people who claim to be religious or who are religious and ask the question, what about them? And then in chapter three, he's gonna say, okay, what about everybody, everybody else? And he's gonna argue that we all have the same disease and we all need the same cure. And that cure is faith in Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross. And he's not gonna bring that in until chapter four, but you will know the the end of the story, so I'm gonna skip ahead. So the point is uh the standard is higher than we think. We've all sinned, we're now prisoners of our sin, and being good is no longer an option because God isn't granting us life anymore. He isn't granting us the ability to be good, and we need that problem of his wrath solved before we can have that offer back. Okay, so how would we let me spend the the last five or ten minutes here on application? So what? What it I've told you all about God's wrath, and are you all supposed to go home and be depressed now? I mean what why how we respond to this? The first thinker realizes this is the first part of an argument, and he's building a case for how are you justified? How do you get out of this problem and back to this? So, how do you get out of being in rebellion to God where you're back to back and back to to a relationship with him face to face? And he's first point he's making is left to yourself, you can't. And that's an important point to learn. That's something I think we all need to be hit with now and then. Um and for evangelism, that's a very good starting point to meet people, to try to meet them there. Because we're in a postmodern society, you know, there's a lot of people where you say, you know, Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic, and they say, Well, why can't he be all three? You know? And they're very happy to live with that contradiction. That's kind of the avant-garde, you know, way to think. So what do you do in that situation? How do you meet someone? Everyone experiences sin and death. Everyone knows what it's like to be hurt, to be disappointed, to be let down, to be angry, to say something you wish you hadn't said or do something you wish you hadn't done. And we all feel the consequences of that. And I think that's the starting place. That's where we can reach our culture. Because a lot of people are sick of that. They don't want to be in that kind of existence anymore. So that's the first part of the argument is to realize we have to start with the bad news. The first part of saving faith is knowing I'm sinful and I can't solve the problem on my own. Um, the second warning, as I already alluded to, would be humility is the other way to respond. There's two kind of ways. One is the way to say, oh, yes, well, I'm not like those other people, you know, those drug dealers and those prostitutes, and you know, I'm not like the people that have, you know, been through prison or whatever, walked through horrible tragedies. Um, so yeah, Paul, go throw the book at them, they deserve it. First thing to realize is I'm in the same boat. And the response ought not be self-righteousness, but humility. If we're honest with ourselves, we need to see that we are we're in the same problem. And there are times when that hits you in the face, and it's not very pleasant. You know, you say something or you do something, and suddenly all your friends know you're sinful. You know, you were hiding it for a while, but oh dear, you let that one thing slip and they figured it out. And uh and it hurts because you've hurt them and they're disappointed in you, and and you know, you probably see this with your families and your children and your husbands, where you you know resolved to be a better wife, and then you do the very thing that you said you weren't going to do. Um the response to that is ask for forgiveness, admit it, and thank God that He shows you you're sinful and that you can He's broken your heart, and that's the first step of faith. So, you know, how many times have we sung the song prone to wonder, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the one I love? That's us. That's the situation we want to start from. So facing into that ought to make us humble, and that humility is the first step back toward reconciliation with God. Okay, oh I skipped ahead. I think I did this one. Um God's wrath is principled, it's controlled, it's his just and reasoned response to our sinfulness, and it's his decision to abandon us into the custody of sin and death. It's a judicial decree. There's a penalty that must be paid. And Paul's laid the first burke in his argument, and that is we are all sinful, we're all stand condemned, we're all in the same boat, and we're gonna um uh go from there to he's gonna expand his argument to everyone, and then it's not until chapter four we're gonna get his solution. What is the solution? You all know the answer is faith. Um and our response ought to be humility and compassion. Compassion for our culture, for our friends, for our families, and when other people sin and we recognize it, forgiving them, knowing, well, that could have been me. And next week it probably will be. You know, so that we're all in the same boat. So let me pray and then I'll give you a chance to ask some questions. Lord, thank you that you are a God who doesn't leave us in under your wrath. That in your justice and your mercy and your compassion you respond to our sin, but that you also provide the way out. And I pray that as we go through this year together, and as we study your book and we learn to get to know each other and um love you more, that we would be quick to forgive each other and quick to admit our own sinfulness and to repent when it's when it comes up. And that you would be writing these things in our hearts, making us more people who trust you, who want to follow you and who um live to see your face and to and to follow you. In Jesus' name. Amen.