In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ. He explains that the gospel is not just about the four spiritual laws, but it is the very thing that generates godliness and heals families. The speaker emphasizes that while there are principles and commands in Scripture, they are not enough unless our hearts are continually encountered by the person and work of Jesus Christ. He concludes by stating that the gospel is the tool, mechanism, and way to become godly, and he references 1 Timothy 3:16 to explain the mystery of godliness revealed in Christ.

Let's open up our Bibles to 1 Timothy, chapter 3, and let's look in verse 14. 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 14. I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long. But in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. By common confession great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. But the Spirit explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. By means of the hypocrisy of liars, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you in the name of your Son. And I know that I have no part with you apart from him. Nothing, without hope and without God in the world. And even now, Lord, I would be stranded, would have gone astray if it had not been through your continued mercy revealed in your Son. Lord, I come to you not in my own piety or in the piety of this people, but in the piety of your great Son, in his name, Lord. Please, I beseech you, help us. Help us, Lord. You know our minds and our hearts. You know how weak we truly are. How much we need your grace, your active power, your wisdom, in Jesus' name. Amen. And before we look at this text, I would like to say a few things. First of all, whenever someone like myself is teaching on family, it's a very dangerous thing. It's dangerous for me to try to present myself as something I'm not. It's dangerous for you to think that I'm something I'm not. I remember many years ago sitting on a panel with very distinguished men regarding the family and homeschooling and all sorts of things. And there were about three, I don't know, 3,000 people in the auditorium and were all asking us questions. And we were waxing eloquently. And I felt such a pinch, such a conviction in my spirit that I just had to raise my hand to the moderator and say this. Now, look, before we go on, I really need to say something. I can't speak for all these other men. But I'm not a perfect man, and my family is not a perfect family. And I don't want anybody here thinking things, at least about me, that simply are not true. I am what I am by the grace of God. And my most perfect day and my most perfect moment is nothing but unrighteousness. My only hope is Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying that to be to present some sort of false piety. There's some of you men that are sitting out there and you know how much you fail. And it's hard for you to sit out there knowing how much you fail looking at someone like me who you may think, man, I'm sitting here listening to this guy. My wife is listening to this guy. This guy seems to have all the answers, does everything right. And then my wife must look at me and think, oh, my goodness. Well, my wife sees many of the same weaknesses in me that your wife sees in you. And although there is progress in the gospel, there is sanctification, there is growth in Christ. And I have known that growth. And I am sure that if you belong to Jesus Christ, you have grown because it is impossible not to grow. But know this, we are all, the best of us, nothing but needy, tremendously needy. So that's the first thing I wanted to say before I look at this text. Now, there's another thing that I wanted to say, and it's this. A while back, I met a man who basically has all but destroyed his family. They're still together, but it is a family that is, well, the modern term is dysfunctional, but it goes far beyond that. And as I was talking to that man, he had come to understand more and more about the gospel. Not rules, not regulations, not some homeschooling subculture, but the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes, and he said, Brother Paul, I have nothing left. I have no hope. And you could see in the man's eyes what he was saying was true. I have no hope for my wife, my family, my relationship, none, except the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, if you don't realize the same truth about you, you are so blind, it's unbelievable. If you think you've done the things right, and you've crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's, and you're just like a homeschooled poster family, and you've just done it right, you dress right, you've had 10,000 kids, you've done it all. I want to tell you something, you are wrong, and you are going down a path that is deadly. The greatest of us, mark them off, the greatest of us, the only thing we have is the faithfulness of God and the grace of God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is it. That's it. And you must know that. You're a new father, a new mother, and you're holding that baby in your hands, and you're scared to death. You ought to be. You ought to be. But that fear shouldn't lead you to despair. A repentance unto death, but a repentance unto life. You should look to Jesus and look to His Word. You're a seasoned veteran. You may have grown, but you have not outgrown your only hope. And that is the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And that's it. Because you can raise a whole bunch of really clean kids with great haircuts and long dresses, and they'll be two full sons of hell without the gospel of Jesus Christ. My desire is a devotion, true evidence of regeneration, repentance, and faith. And I would much rather have a stumbling, bumbling, and yet clinging life, clinging to Jesus Christ as my only hope, than to be a success in absolutely everything. And that success creating me an independence from the only mediator of the grace of God, and that is Jesus Christ. I'll say one last thing. Last year, I was asked to preach a series of sermons, 27 sermons it turned out to be. So I don't know what I'm going to do in the four you've given me, but 27 sermons on marriage in Samara, Russia. And we had gotten through probably sermon number 16, 18, somewhere along there, and I still hadn't mentioned marriage. And people were beginning to say, well, that's this marriage conference. Let me share something with you. You already know so much that you don't obey. You've had some good speakers here. I was almost intimidated to come. My dear friend, Vodie Bauckham, Ted Tripp, others. But let me share with you something. You can know all the principles about marriage and family raising and everything. But apart from the grace of God and the active working of the Holy Spirit, apart from renewing your mind in the word of God, and apart from growing in conformity to Christ, all those principles will do you no good whatsoever. As a matter of fact, you give me a person who knows very little principles about marriage and child raising, but they're filled with the Spirit, and their life is bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and they're loving and growing in love. And I'll tell you what, they'll do all right. They will do all right. Our great need sometimes is not more information. It's a greater recognition of how weak we are and how much we need His power. I sometimes ask myself in prayer, Lord, why? Why do I teach in so many things like this about family when I know my own self to be so weak? Weak as a husband, weak as a father. Why? And maybe it's because of my weakness to tell God's people, you're never so strong that you can walk on your own. I have only one hope for salvation, and that is Jesus Christ. Not my faith in Him, but His faithfulness to me. I have one hope for my wife. It's not my family devotions. It's not. One hope, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's it. And that's what I want you to see, the gospel. And they look at me, they're not going to see a perfect dad, and they're not going to see a perfect father. But here's what they're going to see, a man desperately clinging to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because that's all I have. And that's all anybody has ever had. I have walked with some of the big dogs in homeschool and family teaching, and I've seen them refuse to admit these kind of things, and I've seen many of them fall. Don't think about, I'm not here to create some Christian subculture where you all dress like pride and prejudice. I'm here to tell you, you need the gospel. And your children need the gospel. They need the gospel. And they need to see mercy and grace and forgiveness. Unconditional love. That's what my wife needs. That's what my children need. That's what I need. Well, now that we've said all that, let's look at this. I want you to look at verse 14. I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long. But in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. The first thing I want you to see is that the Apostle Paul was preoccupied a lot more with the church than he was the family. I have seen so many people in their emphasis to have a great family have almost neglected the church. But I want to tell you something. It's not all about the family. There's also a church. There is a church that God has established. And the only way that your family and mine can function in a way that is Christ honoring is to also love the church and be an intricate part of the church. If you start separating yourselves off into little groups because your family is so holy and does not want to be tainted by churches that aren't quite as perfect as you, you are in a great deal of trouble. I say that not because I know you, but because I know what's going on in this nation. Yes, family is extremely important. But know this, when we come to the New Testament, the preponderance of the teaching is on the gospel and on the church and on fellowship within the church and being strengthened in the church. And the only way to have a strong family is to be a part of a local body. Now, another thing that I want you to see here that's very important, Paul says this, verse 15, but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God. First of all, I want you to look at something. Look what he look, how he describes the church household of God, church of the living God. Now, once you think about something, this is not your church. It's not. It's his church. This is not about what you want. Ultimately, it's about what he has commanded. How can you know that what you're doing in the church is right if it is according to what is written? The further you get away from what is actually written, the less certainty and the security you can have that you're actually doing things right. Do you know that? And we see all throughout the world today, what do we see? We see churches being built upon models that are so-called successes. What are most books today on the church? Well, they go like this. There's a man with a great personality, has brilliant abilities and all sorts of things. And through a bunch of things he's done, he's created a 20,000 member mega church. And so he writes a book telling you how he did it. Now, that's wrong. That's wrong. This is God's church. And he said, you're going to do it a certain way. And the only way we can know that we're conformed to that is if we are conforming to what is written. So let's get to the scriptures alone. Now that applies to the church. But there's another institution that you need to see. And it's called the family. It's called the family. God created a church. God created the family. God ordained the church. God ordained the family. This same rule applies, sola scriptura. We are not to take away from what the scriptures teach about family. We're not. But my dear friend, we're not to add to it either. I mean, when I look at the past 15 years of this resurgence on teaching a family, it's amazing the way the roller coaster ride is gone, the way, you know, 15 years ago, a certain thing was important. Now it's not even mentioned today. Certain things are so important. And now there's even a tendency that if you're really spiritual and you're really about your family, you're only going to eat organic food and you're going to use essential oils and all these things. What on earth are people doing? You know what I'm talking about, don't you? And I'm not against organic food. My wife makes us eat healthy. But that's not a part of our gospel. Sometimes I come up to the women in the church and they're talking about all these things. And I told them the other day, I said, you know what? When I come up behind you, ladies, and you're all in a circle like that, the things you're talking about, I expect to find a big pot cauldron and you're throwing like eyes of newt and hair of dog. And so what is happening here? This is not about these things. It's about the gospel. And these other things are so trivial in their fads and they come and they go. But what we've got to do to be biblical families is submit ourselves to what is written, not what some clever exegete has pulled out of this and made a soup with it. What does the Bible actually teach? One of the men that I so admire, and I do, I know him, I just admire him, is John MacArthur. His character, things about him, the kindness he's shown me. There's one thing that he said one time and I thought it was so interesting. You know, he goes, look, if you will teach your children and your wife, your family the Bible. You make that the center of your home, teach them what is written, love them unconditionally and discipline them properly and consistently, you'll do all right. You'll be doing better than 95 percent of the people who call themselves by the name of Christ, by the name of Christian. And so one of the things I want you to see is that the church must submit to sola scriptura. It must do what is written in the scriptures. And when it goes out from that, either taking away or adding to it gets in a danger zone. It's the same way with marriage. It's the same way with the family. Be very, very careful. That you're not building your family on things that have been added to the scriptures. Or at least are not fundamentals, but things that are extrapolated and pulled forth, we must submit ourselves to the scriptures. This is extremely, extremely important. Now, I want us to go on. Look what he says after he talks in verse 15 about the church or verse 15. Yes, he says the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar in support of the truth. It's God's house. It belongs to God and it is about the truth, so that's the context we've got going here when we move into verse 16 by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. Now, a lot of times what people do is think that, well, it's changed now. He's talking about something else. He's not. This all goes along with everything else he's saying, this the thing, the center in the church and in the Christian life, the center of it is what? Well, this mystery of godliness. Now, what does he mean, mystery of godliness? Most Greek exegetes would look at it this way, this mystery that leads to godliness, that promotes God, that promotes true godliness. What is it? What is it that we can do in our own lives? What can we promote in our family that truly, truly promotes genuine biblical God honoring piety? What is the tool, the mechanism, the road, the way? How do we get there? It's the gospel. He goes on and tells us what the mystery of godliness is. He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in the glory. This thing that God has done in Christ, this person that we know of, the more we know factually, biblically, intimately, the person of Jesus Christ and the more we understand what God has done for us in Christ, if we have truly been regenerated, that will work to make us godly. That will work to make us godly. We look at the world today and I want you to know, yes, there are principles and commands in scripture with regard to the externals, with regard to clothing and television and all these different things that have become to be so important. And they are because we live in such a fallen, wicked world and gradually the common grace of God being retracted in this country, being turned over to wickedness. Yes, there must be standards. Yes, we must see certain principles in the scriptures as important, but none of it, none of it will help us unless. Our heart is continually encountered by the person and work of Jesus Christ, the gospel is the power of God for salvation, not just the justification of a man, but the ongoing sanctification of a man. The gospel is the only thing powerful enough to tame a wild man's heart. And cause him to go on following the Lord. And this is so important. Do you know what we've done? And this has been this has been the whole if you want to know what my life is about, what my calling is about, is this we have taken the gospel of Jesus Christ, reduced it down to four spiritual laws or five things that somebody ought to know. They don't understand the gospel at all. And so when I come in and tell you that the gospel is the very thing that generates godliness and heals families and everything else, you look at me and go, how can four spiritual laws do that? My greatest desire is that my children go beyond this. Rudimentary, basic understanding of the gospel and that they press on to know the Lord in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to know God as he has revealed through Jesus. I use this illustration a lot because it does seem to get people's minds thinking. You know, the Chinese say, Japanese say it, too, is a fight over who said it first. That a man who would take his entire life and do nothing but meditate, meditate upon the beauty of an apple blossom, a man who has done that has not wasted his life. Has not wasted his life. To contemplate such beauty. There's a lot of truth in that. There really is. There's enough beauty in God's creation to spend an eternity contemplating it. But let me lead you to something greater. Sometimes people ask me, especially university students, like when I'm on campus, they'll go, you know, heaven's like long time. Well, I said, well, be careful how you measure time, but OK, I'll follow your train of of logic and see what will keep us from getting bored. And I say, well, you're right. You're thinking rightly. I mean, you know, you only walk on streets of gold so long and it's like no big deal. Swing on gates of Pearl, walk around doing all that kind of thing. But pretty soon, you know, a thinking man would think, well, there could be madness at the end of this eternal line. When I've exhausted all beauty and exhausted all new experience and there's nothing left but bland, we see that would happen, that would happen if all you had was a creation. But the fact of the matter is what you have is a God of infinite glory and a gospel of intimate glory. You'll know everything about the second coming of Jesus Christ on the day he comes back. But you'll be an eternity of eternities in heaven and you will not even have reached the foothills of the Everest of the glory of God revealed in the gospel. And it is in that gospel message going deeper and deeper into the person and work of Christ that you find all the motivation you'll ever need. To seek to live a pious life. But now let me step back and redefine piety for you. I didn't say a perfect life. So the pious life. And part of a pious life. Is being a broken person. Who knows they get it wrong, who knows they make mistakes, who knows they sin, who knows they are constantly 24 hours a day needy of the grace of God, that is a pious life, a view of God, a view of the demands of God's law, a view of our failed performance and a view of the gospel of God in the person of Christ. It is the gospel. Now, let's go on and we're going to talk about the gospel tonight in the next in the next session, verse chapter four, verse one, but the spirit explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. You would be hard pressed to find anything. Like this in any other part of the Bible. I mean, I want you to look at Paul's language, the spirit explicitly says you don't get that anywhere else. There's something going on here. Paul is giving us a warning and it is horrific. The thing against which he is warning us, it is horrific, the spirit didn't just mention it, he explicitly expressed it, he drove it home into the heart of Paul that something was going to happen that would be monumental, horrific, terrifying, totally destructive to the church of God and the work of God and the people of God, something would come, something would happen. Now, when we hear this, when we hear this, when you hear this kind of language, one of the things that you automatically think is if you have never read this before, well, obviously, in the next few verses, he's going to talk about the Antichrist, the end of the world, something. I mean, he's going to really just talk about some horrific thing that's going to happen. So after hearing this, we're ready to hear something horrifying. Like the denial of the deity of Christ or or something in that magnitude, but look what he says, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. And honestly, we're sitting there scratching our head, we're going, hold it. He just gave us a warning that seemed to prepare us for some apostasy, apocalyptic apostasy, with demons flying everywhere and the Antichrist sitting there ruling over the world. And then he talks about forbidding marriage and abstaining from food. That just doesn't seem that horrific, does it? And also we look at it as Americans and go, well, this really doesn't apply to us. I mean, after all, most of us get married and just by looking at us, you can tell we don't abstain from much food. So at least we got one thing right. So how is this so horrific? Well, see, what you've got to do is you've got in order to understand this text, you've got to make sure that you don't separate it from chapter three. See, those chapters were put in later. Paul didn't put those in there and they're good because it helps us find certain things. But what I want you to see is you can only understand the horrific nature of what Paul is talking about if you understand correctly, verses 14 through 16. And you listen to me. Because there's a lot of people who are really big into family and really big into homeschooling. That if they're not committing this. Heresy of heresies. They're really close to it, and what is it? If you look in verse 16, he sets forth the gospel as the. The means of godliness, the means of salvation sets forth the gospel as the thing in the church, the thing in the Christian life, in the family, and then he gives us a warning that a horrific thing is going to happen in which some will fall away from having the gospel at the very center of their church and their lives. And what they'll do is instead of centering on the gospel. They'll center on minor issues so that they'll. When they meet you and you come in the church, they go, do you homeschool? How many children do you have? They'll look at you. Well, let's see that dress. How long is it? Those boys, do they know how to shake a hand? And in our house, we just eat organic and certain things become important. And that are not. As important as the gospel, what do you mostly think about? What do you mostly teach your wife and your children and ladies, what do you mostly talk to your husband about or teach your children? What is the emphasis teaching a girl how to do calligraphy or teaching them the gospel of Jesus Christ, teaching them logic. Making sure they know American history, my dear friend, know this, the founders of our country were not the 12 apostles. What is the most important thing? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We should be about the gospel. Our whole concern, everything we think about, even though there is there are practical rules, there are things on clothing, there are ways we should eat. There are all sorts of things. There's the blessing of children, all these things. But they are simply minor things that flow out of the greater thing. And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if your conversation, because don't you sit there and say, I'm all about the gospel. I can tell you, if you're all about the gospel, what's your conversation about? Ladies, when you get together, what's your conversation about? Men, when you get together, what's your conversation about making a stand against culture? Political conservatism. Learning how to dress a certain way or is the primary thing what God has done for us in the person of Christ, the person of Christ, the person of Christ, the person of Christ, and then our piety flowing out of that. Jesus, Jesus. You look at those hymns. That we sing, the ones that are most enduring, why are they most enduring? Because the ones that are most enduring have Jesus at the very center of them, at the beginning of them and at the end of them, the lives, the preachers that have had the greatest impact upon this world have not been moralist. They have been proclaimers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because Christianity is not primarily a moral or ethical religion. Even though it has a morality and an ethic, Christianity is about Christ and about his gospel. About his gospel. And that's what we see here, Paul saying that people will depart. I had a preacher call me years ago. I'll never forget this. And we were we were well, we were parents. We wouldn't call this young parents because we were old even when we started. So we were parents and we had set our mind to homeschool and everything and we were and we do. But this preacher called me in Texas. He said, Brother Paul, I need you to come to my church. I need you to preach. I said, why? He says, I feel like just a great number of people in my church are lost. And I said, what makes you think that, brother? He said, they're homeschoolers. And I said, brother, you homeschool. He goes, yes, I do. Because I've got people that if I stand up and say it's a testimony night, would you like give your testimony? I have people, he said, that stand up and say, I was just wandering through this earth without any kind of compass or anything. And five years ago, I discovered homeschooling for my family. My dear friend, that's not right. It's Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. It is he. Now, I don't know you and everything I may be saying may have nothing to do with you whatsoever. I hope so. But I've realized now as I travel over this nation and I see the wonderful resurgence of people and men, women wanting to be biblical, wanting to do things right, wanting to homeschool their children, wanting to protect them from the evils that is growing like weeds around us. I applaud all that, but I see so many. Who have given themselves to moralism, who have defined a certain time in American history that they call the Golden Age, and they've gone back to it even to the point of dressing like it, that's not Christianity. What is Christianity? It is a clinging to the person of Jesus Christ. And it is seeking to be conformed to him in every way. Now, we have standards in our home, we have standards with regard to what we watch, we have standards with regard to what we wear, we have standards with regard to a lot of things. But the center of our home, what I most want to communicate to my wife. To my children is Jesus, and that's more than a cliche, it's taking them deeper and deeper into understanding what God has done for us in his son. And if you say to me, well, we've done all that already. I'll just have to laugh because even after an eternity of eternities, you will not have done that. You will not have done that if you think that you have taught your children the gospel and they understand it well and that's all they need, then you do not understand the gospel. Now. Let's sum this up. Look very carefully again at verse one. But the spirit explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away from the faith when you study the first even even the first five centuries of Christian history. And you see so many things that are wrong, you see, you see what I believe was you see this external thing called the church that was no longer the church that was apostate. You believe that there's this sense of a hiddenness of the true church. But even in all that, even in the two groups, one of the things that no one can escape. Even in the dungeons of prisons and catacombs and other places, the one thing that you see. Is that the person of Christ and the cross of Christ was center. And those martyrs died. They stood their ground against an ungodly world, not because they wanted to do the right thing or because they thought that morality was the greater end of all things. No. They had allegiance to a person and they loved him and they proclaimed that person. To everyone. I spend a great deal of my time working with the church in China, I have several reasons for doing that. I've spent the last couple of years just preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching to the church in China, and I've met so many wonderful Chinese believers and some that never had the opportunity to study theology and their theology was so minimal. They knew literally they had they didn't fully understand justification as they ought to understand it to express it, even though they were justified because they were believing. But the amazing thing that I see in those who have suffered the most, that their lack of knowledge was filled up by one thing, a spirit created spirit driven love for a singular person that would cause them to walk into hell with a water pistol. That would cause them to do anything. To be pleasing to that singular person, there's a thing online where you can see me teaching two young, a young Chinese couple, it's in black and white, and they've got their back to the camera so no one can see it. And I spent two weeks with them just day and night, just teaching, teaching, teaching. But the girl showed me she had a picture in her billfold. And I asked her, I said, what what is that? I mean, you're standing there kind of on a rock now, take this any way you want to take it. It's not to teach some theology, but it's just to show you her devotion. She said, well, this is the place. Where I'm going to die one day. And I said, what do you mean? OK, she said, I was there, her husband and she they studied in a cave for three months and didn't come out. That's where they were taught. Some Christians gathered together in a cave and they would have these three month seminars in a cave. And she said, in prayer, God showed me this is where I would give my life for his son, that this is where I would die for him. You see, here's what I want you to say. If my children know they don't they don't know all the stuff, even though I seek to teach them theology, everything ethics. But you see, that's not it. I would rather them know nothing. But yet have this heart, this devotion for a person, when I pray for my children, my main prayer is simply this, Lord, I don't care. That there's some sort of success or that they look good or that they achieve anything or there's some shining example to a dark culture. I don't care about any of that. Just please, Lord, grant them a heart that is devoted to your son. That is devoted to him and then everything else, everything else would be OK. Now, to close. Let's back up and not have any extremes. I've come down pretty hard on just teaching principles and rules and wisdom and everything, even when it's biblical. But it's I've come down hard and said it's wrong only when. The center point is absent and the center point is Jesus. It's all about Jesus and it's all about the gospel. And so I don't want you to walk out of here going, well, it's all about Jesus. I'm throwing everything else to the wind. No, no, don't do that. But I don't want you walking out of here and saying, I've crossed every T, dotted every I looked at all the homeschool manuals, I'm pretty much checking everything off, I'm doing good. Looked at how to be a good husband manual. Yep, I'm pretty much going right down the line with that. All that's rot, there's not the devotion to Christ. Do you know that having a good family, having a good marriage can be an idol, did you know that? Be a terrible idol, having a good family can be a terrible idol, having these perfect kids can be a terrible, terrible idol. There's only one thing and it's not a thing that belongs at the center of our heart, and that is the person of Jesus, the person of Jesus. Let's pray. Father, I pray. I pray. Lord, I'm always such a need to be driven. Back. By your compass to the feet of Christ. Oh, Lord. That every sin. Is a horrific thing, not because it brings the downfall of culture. But because it's committed against your son. Oh, Lord, help us, help us, Lord, that Jesus would be the very center of everything. And Lord, I thank you for those men and women and children here in whom you have worked. That are growing, that they know. This truth that the gospel. The gospel is that great mystery. That leads to true piety, in Jesus name, Amen.