00:00: This fall, I will reach my 23rd year as a pastor.
00:06: I've served in three churches in two states, and it's been a privilege.
00:12: I've gotten to see people whose lives have been completely, thoroughly, utterly transformed by faith in Jesus Christ.
00:22: I've gotten to see men and women, boys and girls, who have just been changed from the inside out.
00:29: People whose before Christ and after Christ identities have been so different that to look at them and to know them before and after, it becomes almost hard to believe that we're even talking about the same people.
00:45: It is thrilling to watch someone experience that kind of life transformation because they surrender their lives in faith to Jesus Christ.
00:56: To see God at work in that person's life, seeing them bloom and grow and be set free from fear and sin and guilt and selfishness.
01:08: Sadly, I've also seen people who go to church week after week, month after month, year after year, in whose life there is no meaningful, observable transformation.
01:22: And it's heartbreaking to see that kind of empty, pointless religiosity.
01:30: It's the veneer of Christianity without the substance of Christianity.
01:36: Real Christianity, biblical Christianity, is radical.
01:40: It will transform you from the inside out, through and through.
01:45: Veneer Christianity is a millimeter thick, and there's no spiritual life under the surface.
01:54: Real Christianity will cause a person to love people, not things.
01:59: Real Christianity changes our affections and changes what really matters most to us.
02:07: Veneer Christianity pretends to love people, but really loves self and stuff.
02:17: Veneer Christianity is about faking it.
02:20: Real Christianity doesn't need to fake it because it overflows from the heart.
02:26: I've seen both realities time and again over the past 23 years.
02:32: Not because it's a new or just merely contemporary phenomenon.
02:38: It's been going on since the earliest days of the church.
02:41: And that's what we're dealing with in our passage this morning.
02:44: Try to picture the situation that Luke, the author of Acts, is describing for us.
02:50: Picture this early church setting.
02:53: In Acts 115, we're told that there's about 120 believers, 120 Christians or so, after the resurrection of Jesus, after his ascension before Pentecost.
03:06: Then the Holy Spirit comes on the day of Pentecost, and it fills each believer.
03:11: The Holy Spirit takes up residence in them, empowering them, and then the church just explodes in growth.
03:18: That very day, Peter is in public, and he preaches Christ, and 3,000 people come to faith in Jesus and get baptized.
03:26: I love that.
03:26: They had no plans for that that day.
03:29: They didn't know that was the day the Holy Spirit was coming.
03:31: They certainly didn't have the sermon pre-written and baptism stuff lined up for 3,000 people, but that's what happened.
03:38: Acts 2.41.
03:39: And then from there, we're told that the church continued to grow day by day.
03:43: Acts 2.47.
03:44: Then there's this amazing healing situation where Peter and John, they're out at the temple in public, and they heal a man in the name of Jesus Christ, and they proclaim Jesus, and they get in trouble with the religious leadership, but in the process, a whole bunch more people come to saving faith in Jesus.
04:06: We're told in Acts 4.4 that the church is up to 5,000 men at this point, so 5,000 fellows plus women and children in a very, very short amount of time, just for 120 to 5,000-plus people, arguably, statistically, probably 10,000-plus people.
04:27: And what's going on inside this church?
04:31: You would expect a sudden group of, let's argue, 10,000 people.
04:38: You'd expect a lot of chaos, and there might have been.
04:43: But what we're told, what the focus is on, is that these new believers in Jesus are doing life together, and they're loving each other well and giving freely.
04:56: Look at verses 32 to 35.
04:59: Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.
05:08: And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
05:17: There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
05:30: It's a beautiful picture of what the church is supposed to be, isn't it?
05:34: Now, some folks misunderstand this passion and think, oh, we have to become commune Christians and live in this weird sort of situation where nobody has personal property.
05:46: That's not what this is describing.
05:49: Can Christians do that?
05:50: Absolutely.
05:51: That's a Romans 14 kind of issue where some Christians may choose that path and genuinely honor God by doing so, and some Christians may choose a different path and so honor God by doing so.
06:02: That's fine, but this passage is not prescribing that.
06:06: In fact, I don't think it's even describing that.
06:08: First thing we're told is that they were all of one heart and soul.
06:17: Now, that's unity, isn't it?
06:20: Not a lack of division, but real unity.
06:24: You can have a bunch of folks who are present together and there's nothing really separating them and yet not have unity.
06:31: These are folks who are unified.
06:34: They're on board with each other.
06:35: They're focused on the same thing.
06:36: They're in tune with one another because they're focused on Jesus.
06:42: It's a heart and soul level unity, but it's not a random social phenomenon.
06:47: It's not like, oh, they're in a knitting club together.
06:50: They're in a quilting club together.
06:51: They're in a hunting club together and they just really like that and so that's what binds them.
06:55: No, it's Jesus.
06:57: Verse 32, now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.
07:05: This is about believers in Jesus.
07:08: This is people who have the Holy Spirit living in them whose eyes are fixed on Jesus.
07:14: They're trusting and they're believing in Jesus and that's where this unity comes from.
07:20: What we're witnessing here in the way that they do life together is the overflow of their faith in Jesus.
07:28: Believing in Jesus is no mere intellectual exercise.
07:30: It's not like, oh, I'm a believer in Jesus because I've heard the right theological teaching and I've given mental assent and I'll sign off on that in a theology test and so I'm a Christian.
07:40: No, it goes far beyond what we think.
07:42: It includes what we think, absolutely, of course.
07:46: But it's more than saying, yep, I agree with the historical fact claims about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
07:54: It's about people trusting in Jesus, relying on Jesus.
08:01: The biblical word for believe, as describing Jesus, is not mental agreement.
08:09: It is reliance upon.
08:14: Believing in Jesus, trusting in Jesus, changes everything.
08:19: And it changed these thousands of new believers virtually overnight.
08:22: Notice the rest of verse 32.
08:24: Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own.
08:33: But they had everything in common.
08:35: That doesn't mean that they stopped owning things.
08:38: The very verse says, the stuff did belong to these folks, right?
08:42: But they quit thinking of it as belonging to them.
08:45: They quit thinking like, this is mine, I got to keep this for me.
08:47: They stopped saying it belonged to them.
08:51: They started thinking of it as belonging to God and they were happy to share what God had provided.
08:59: The passage goes on to say that people were selling their land and their houses and so on.
09:04: They still had ownership.
09:05: They hadn't signed over the ownership rights to the new local church there.
09:10: They just said, everything I have belongs to God.
09:16: God's provided it.
09:17: It's his.
09:19: And when they saw a need, they said, I can do something about that.
09:24: And they did.
09:25: They were ready to step up and love and bless at cost to self.
09:31: That's the kind of transformation that we're witnessing here.
09:36: What about their own needs?
09:37: What about what the givers needed?
09:39: Well, they trusted God.
09:41: They believed what Luke 12, 32 through 34 says.
09:46: Fear not, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
09:51: Sell your possessions and give to the needy.
09:53: Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches.
10:01: And no moth destroys.
10:03: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
10:10: That's Luke, right?
10:11: That's the same author as Acts.
10:12: He's already written the book of Luke.
10:14: And he said, this is what Jesus taught us who follow him.
10:18: He said, go ahead, give stuff away.
10:20: Bless people that are in need.
10:22: Don't worry about that.
10:23: God's got better things for you.
10:25: Things of eternal significance.
10:28: And build up treasure in heaven by parting with treasure here.
10:36: That's what Jesus told his followers.
10:39: And these early believers believed it so much that they trusted it to be true and they gave things away.
10:48: Jesus was teaching and encouraging the very reality that came into existence when the Holy Spirit began to invade their lives and take up residence in them.
10:59: Free to trust God to provide.
11:01: Free from the love of money and possessions.
11:04: Free from the sense that they needed to take care of themselves and provide for themselves and make sure everything was figured out.
11:10: Freedom to trust that there were better things worth having than stuff on this earth.
11:17: That this whole kingdom of earth, this temporary reality that we live in is passing by and what's ahead, that's what really matters.
11:26: Do you believe that?
11:29: Do we believe that this life is temporary?
11:33: That it's passing away?
11:35: That God's kingdom has come in part and will come in fullness and that eternity is but a blink away and that's what matters.
11:45: Do we believe that?
11:46: Now I'm not asking if you believe that God's word teaches that.
11:51: I'm assuming that you believe God's word teaches that.
11:55: And I'm not asking if you think that we should believe it because God's word teaches it.
11:59: I assume you think we should believe that.
12:01: I'm asking if you really believe that.
12:05: Because if we really believe that, it will be manifest in our lives.
12:11: It will be manifest in our giving of our time, talents, and treasure.
12:19: It will be revealed.
12:23: Now, we're in a series on the book of Acts.
12:28: Some of you may not remember just a few months back, we finished up a series in Romans.
12:33: It took a little while to get through Romans as a few folks have greatly enjoyed teasing me about.
12:40: Yeah, I'm staring you down, Allie.
12:43: But if you remember back a year and a half ago to Romans 8, do you remember the encouragement that we were given about God's heart for believers?
12:54: Romans 8, 31 and 32 says, what then should we say to these things?
12:59: If God is for us, who can be against us?
13:02: He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
13:14: I don't think that anybody should ever read those verses without awe.
13:18: Whether it's in your heart, mind, or voice, all the above.
13:21: Like, that's amazing.
13:23: If God already gave Jesus, which is unthinkably, unimaginably generous and gracious, what are we worried about the little things for?
13:33: Right?
13:34: It's crazy.
13:35: God's already made the big payment.
13:38: We can trust he's going to take care of the little things.
13:41: Do we believe that?
13:44: If we really believe that God is fully, completely for us in Jesus, then we're free to love extravagantly and to give generously.
13:52: Honestly, we're free to do so.
13:56: We're not burdened.
13:58: Does this passage mean that all Christians need to sell their possessions and liquidate it all and give it?
14:03: No.
14:04: Not at all.
14:06: In the chapter 5 portion of our passage, Ananias and his wife Sapphira sold some property they had and brought a portion of the proceeds to the apostles.
14:17: He only gave a portion of the price he got for it, but he represented as though he gave the full purchase price.
14:25: It's like if I have a car and I sell it for 10 grand and then I say, hey, I'm going to give 5 grand to the church, but I act as though, hey, treasurer, hey, financial secretary, I'm giving the full amount that I got for this car.
14:40: I'm giving the full proceeds.
14:44: Well, that's just hypocrisy, right?
14:46: Notice in chapter 5 verse 4 where Peter questions Ananias with these rhetorical questions and he says, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?
14:57: And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?
15:03: With these rhetorical questions, Peter is reminding Ananias, you had no obligation to sell.
15:08: Nobody was trying to make you sell your house or your land or your property.
15:12: You had no obligation to do that.
15:14: And even if you did choose to sell, you were under no obligation to give the whole thing to the church or to give any of it to the church.
15:23: You could do with that whatever you wanted.
15:26: The issue was not selling versus not selling or giving or not giving.
15:30: The issue was the deceit.
15:33: The partial giving but claiming credit for full giving.
15:37: The people who were saying that nothing belonged to them, remember back to verse 32, they were freely saying that.
15:48: Nobody was saying, oh, that's the new mentality every Christian's got to have that you don't own anything.
15:54: But these people were so transformed by Jesus they couldn't help themselves.
15:58: That's just the way that they began thinking of stuff and they were like, it's not mine, it's God's.
16:02: The problem with Ananias and his wife Sapphira's hypocrisy, they had more love for money and more love to be seen as generous than to be generous.
16:15: More love for money than for people.
16:20: One author explains of this passage, what Luke is describing for us here in this story is the radically freeing effect of true faith in Jesus.
16:29: Christianity is not a matter of external conformity to religious expectations.
16:33: It's a matter of internal liberty.
16:37: It's not a matter of force and law.
16:39: It's a matter of freedom and love.
16:42: Being a Christian means being changed from the inside out so that you fall in love with people and fall out of love with things.
16:53: I remember growing up in a non-Christian home in New England.
16:58: New England has been a very liberal place in terms of Christianity for longer than I've been alive.
17:07: And then somebody invited me to church and shared the gospel with me and God changed my heart.
17:13: And I began tithing quite quickly because I saw other people doing it and I asked, what is this?
17:20: And what's going on?
17:21: And somebody said, oh, well, we're tithing.
17:23: We're giving a tenth.
17:24: And they never said I had to.
17:27: They just said they were.
17:30: I said, well, I want to do that.
17:31: Well, you can.
17:32: And I did.
17:35: And I've done it ever since.
17:37: I don't say that out of pride or bragging.
17:39: I think that's normal.
17:42: That's just normal that I'd want to give.
17:44: It's normal that Christians say, yeah, I want to be part of what God's doing.
17:50: So we give.
17:51: We're glad to do it.
17:53: And then Luke goes and he gives us this contrast between Barnabas and Ananias and Sapphira.
18:03: Or between Barney and Annie as I think of them in my head.
18:07: I know I'm odd.
18:10: Barney is a fantastic figure in the book of Acts.
18:14: Now at this point in Acts, we don't know much about him.
18:17: We're going to end up by the end of the book of Acts discovering that he was advocated he was advocating for the newly converted Apostle Paul.
18:25: When Paul gets converted, Barnabas is the one that steps up and defends him.
18:31: He's also the fellow that advocated for a guy named John Mark and wanted to see him given a second chance after he bailed on a missions trip.
18:39: Barney's going to become a pastor for Gentile Christians in the city of Antioch and he's going to end up being entrusted by that church with the delivery of money from this Gentile church to the poor Jewish Christians in Jerusalem in a time of need.
18:57: He's going to end up becoming a missionary partner with Paul on the Apostle Paul's first missionary journey.
19:03: But at this point in Acts, we don't know any of that yet.
19:06: All we know is how it begins with a generous heart transformed by faith in Jesus.
19:12: 36 and 37.
19:12: Joseph, who was also called by the Apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet.
19:25: That's who we need to know him to be.
19:29: One pastor describes Barney like this.
19:31: Barnabas's ministry began with a demonstrated freedom from the love of things and a heart of love for the poor.
19:38: He sold his field and gave all the proceeds to the Apostles.
19:41: In this story, he stands for the way true faith in Christ creates a bond of love for people and cuts a bond of love for things.
19:55: Ananias and Sapphira, on the other hand, well, they're the opposite.
19:58: They're people who have not seemingly been changed from the inside out by faith in Jesus, but they still want to be part of the church community.
20:07: They don't love Jesus the way that they ought to, but they say, well, we still want to be with these folks.
20:12: We still want to hang with these people, and so we need to act like these folks do.
20:17: We need to pretend to be what everyone else seems to be.
20:20: We'll put on the same show that we assume everyone else is putting on.
20:24: American Christianity is full of this kind of person, and it's tragic.
20:29: Money still matters more than people.
20:31: Praise from others matters more than praise from God.
20:34: Veneer Christians.
20:39: In my study this week in preparation for preaching this, I read something by John Piper contrasting Barney and Annie and his wife, and I want to share that because I thought it was really helpful.
20:53: Of Ananias and Sapphira, he says, they loved their money.
20:56: They made the sale.
20:57: They looked at all that cash, and they couldn't bear the thought of giving it all away, so they kept some back.
21:03: Barnabas, he did not love money and things.
21:05: When he sold his field, he didn't dream about all the comforts and pleasures he was giving up.
21:10: He reveled in the freedom of faith.
21:13: He dreamed about the good that would be done with his gift and the glory it would bring to Jesus.
21:19: Ananias and Sapphira, they wanted to look more generous than they really were.
21:22: They wanted the apostles to think that they were maybe like Barnabas.
21:25: They wanted external religious approval.
21:29: They not only loved money, they loved the praise of men.
21:32: The two almost always go together.
21:35: Barnabas, he did not want to appear more generous than he was.
21:38: He did not need the praise of men.
21:40: He had the approval of God.
21:43: What you saw was what you got.
21:45: He was real.
21:48: Ananias and Sapphira, they lied.
21:50: To cover their covetousness and to give the impression of generosity, they lied.
21:56: If you love possessions and you love the praise of men, your love for truth will dissolve into deception and fraud.
22:05: That is the meaning of hypocrisy.
22:09: Barnabas did not lie.
22:10: He loved the truth.
22:12: He could be trusted.
22:13: His integrity became legendary in the early church.
22:18: Ananias and Sapphira, and this always comes from hypocrisy, they discredited the Holy Spirit.
22:23: Verse 3 says they lied to the Holy Spirit.
22:25: Verse 4 says they lied not to man but to God.
22:28: And verse 9 says they tempted the Lord.
22:31: Barnabas, he brought no reproach on the Holy Spirit.
22:34: He knew that the Spirit was alive and real in the church.
22:37: He knew that his every thought was open and laid bare before the Spirit of truth.
22:42: And he knew that the gift of grace in his life was not the permission of God to keep on loving things, but the power of God to start loving people.
22:51: When I was in high school, before I became a Christian, I had a history teacher that was teaching us about American history and he was talking about the Great Awakening and how people were being taught by these Christian teachers that believing in Jesus got you right with God, made you forgiven by God, and that because of that you lived differently.
23:18: I had no idea at the time that this, as far as I knew, secular teacher was nailing Christianity right on the head.
23:27: That's exactly what Christianity teaches.
23:29: You trust in Jesus, you're accepted by God, and then you live different.
23:34: And I remember at the time thinking, well, that's crazy.
23:37: What kind of message is that?
23:38: If you're already forgiven, given there's no motivation to do anything different, that was flesh, sin, me, speaking at the time because I didn't know Jesus.
23:49: I thought, well, if you can get the good stuff without having to change, why would you change?
23:53: But now that I'm a believer, I want to be different.
23:56: I don't simply want to be forgiven for sin.
23:59: I don't want to be a sinner.
24:01: I don't want to do that stuff anymore.
24:03: I want to live free and joyfully for Jesus.
24:06: I want to love people.
24:07: I want to give generously.
24:09: I want to fly full speed ahead in following Jesus.
24:14: And when my time comes, I want to wipe out full speed and spin to a stop in front of Jesus.
24:25: I don't want to be half-hearted.
24:27: When I read the gospel accounts and I read about Peter, I like this guy.
24:32: Man, he screws up over and over.
24:35: Doesn't he?
24:36: But it's always like, because he's all in.
24:40: Right?
24:40: If that's you on the water, Jesus, tell me to come out and come to you.
24:44: All right, Peter, come on out.
24:46: And he starts, he's walking on water.
24:48: And he kind of gets doubting and starts sinking.
24:51: Right?
24:53: He and John are mad at some Samaritans.
24:56: Hey, Jesus, can we call down fire and brimstone on them?
24:59: Let's smite them.
25:01: Jesus is like, no, dude, no.
25:03: Mm-mm, no.
25:06: Later, towards the end, he says in front of the other apostles to Jesus, hey, maybe these guys will all bail on you because they're losers, but I won't.
25:19: I'm adding the losers part, but that's kind of implied in the context.
25:22: Hey, these guys may not bail or may bail, but there's no way I will.
25:26: Right?
25:27: Or, when Jesus goes to wash their feet, he's like, no, no, no, you can't do that, Jesus.
25:33: I'm sorry, but as soon as you go, no, no, you can't do that, Jesus, you're on the wrong side of whatever that debate is.
25:39: And then Jesus is like, no, if I don't wash your feet, you have no pardon with me.
25:43: And Jesus is like, full body, I'm all in.
25:46: Wash all of me, Jesus.
25:48: He struggles at times, but man, you cannot accuse Peter of being anything less than 100% sold out for Jesus, right?
25:56: Even when he denies him on the night when he's betrayed, it's fear gripping him in the moment and he weeps when he realizes what's happened.
26:08: Peter loved Jesus all in.
26:12: I want to be like that.
26:13: Now, I know I'm going to screw up, but there's no path forward where I don't screw up.
26:22: If I'm going to screw up, I want to screw up while being all in for Jesus.
26:28: When I was a still younger Christian, I was working on my Bible and theology degree and I heard this sin from Martin Luther.
26:35: I didn't know much about church history yet, but I heard that he said, sin boldly.
26:42: I thought, well, that ain't right.
26:45: Right?
26:45: Because we know in Romans 6, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
26:51: Right?
26:52: By no means.
26:53: That's got to be wrong, Luther.
26:55: Well, then I found out what he meant was, be bold in living for Jesus.
26:59: If you're going to screw up, then you will.
27:01: Be all in for Jesus when you're screwing up.
27:03: Don't be like, oh, you're just afraid to do anything.
27:06: Live boldly by faith in Jesus.
27:09: You mess up, mess up while you're living for Jesus and receive the forgiveness he's got.
27:15: He wasn't saying intentionally choose sin, but he was saying be bold and confident in the grace of God for you and Jesus.
27:23: I love that.
27:26: Real Christianity and veneer Christianity, utterly different once you get past that veneer surface, that shallow covering.
27:37: Now, I haven't yet addressed the elephant in the room and I want to end there.
27:43: Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead.
27:47: I don't want you to be concerned when you put an envelope in the offering or in the box in the back like, uh-oh, am I going to have a heart attack if I do this wrong?
27:57: That's not the heart of what's going on here.
28:00: Is it normal for people to die if there's hypocrisy in their lives, if they're hypocritical to some degree in their giving?
28:09: No, it's not normal.
28:11: Common experience tells us that, but even the book of Acts tells us that because we don't see any other story like this in Acts and we're going to later in chapter 8 see a fellow named Simon the Magician who's got this kind of hypocrisy going on and he doesn't die.
28:28: So why does God bring these two people to such a sudden, fatal end?
28:38: I think the answer is implied by the response that it produces.
28:43: Verse 5, great fear came upon all who heard of it.
28:47: Verse 11, great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard these things.
28:54: I think God meant to make people fearful.
28:56: not in the panicked kind of sense, not just terrified kind of fear, but a good kind of fear, a healthy kind of fear.
29:09: One of the things we see over and over in the Old Testament and New Testament both is that we're meant to fear God, meant to reverence and respect and take Him seriously, to have some gravity in how we think of God and living for God.
29:24: And so God was teaching His people that He means to be taken seriously.
29:28: He means for His people to fear and reverence Him and to fear being hypocrites.
29:34: We ought to fear drifting into hypocrisy, going through the motions of Christianity.
29:41: We ought to fear becoming half-hearted in our faith and just doing the Christian thing because that's what Christians do.
29:49: God means for us to fear being veneer Christians.
29:52: with just this thin external layer of outward Christianity but without transformed hearts.
30:00: I'll be honest, we should be horrified at the idea of outwardly faking Christian faith but inwardly being unchanged.
30:11: Point that at yourself.
30:14: We should be horrified at ourselves being that.
30:16: We don't need to worry about everyone else.
30:18: We need to worry about ourselves in this.
30:20: God's love for us in Jesus Christ is so magnificent, so generous, so powerful, so eternally significant.
30:30: It's utterly life-changing.
30:33: Don't be satisfied with the external trappings of Christianity.
30:38: Yearn for, ask God for, pursue the fullness of God's best for us in Jesus Christ.
30:44: Ask the Holy Spirit to help you keep your eyes on Jesus.
30:47: Ask the Holy Spirit to change your heart.
30:50: Ask the Holy Spirit to make you generous.
30:54: Ask the Holy Spirit to grow your faith in the promises of God and to set you free of love of money so that you can love and serve one Lord, one Master, Jesus Christ.
31:08: Anything less isn't worth our time.
31:13: Let's pray.
31:14: Father, we want to honor Jesus not just in the preaching or the prayers or the songs, certainly those things, but we want to honor Jesus from within.
31:30: We want our affections, our loves, our thoughts, even our emotions to be the overflow of our relationship with Jesus.
31:44: Change us from the inside out.
31:45: We don't need behavior modification so much as we need a heart transplant.
31:51: We need to be who Jesus died to make us.
31:57: Brothers and sisters of Jesus, children of God, those who have been born again by the Spirit of God.
32:04: and even those of us who are genuine believers in Jesus and have been born again, we yet recognize there is the old man or the old woman still living in us that we want to see put to death.
32:17: We want the draw and appeal of sin to fade as we fix our eyes on Jesus.
32:23: As we sang, the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
32:29: We want to experience that personally time and again more and more day by day, year by year.
32:37: For His glory and our joy, we pray these things.
32:42: Amen.