In this sermon, the speaker recounts a conversation with someone who fell in love on an overnight ferry. The speaker advises the person to keep their feelings to themselves and not indulge in fantasies. The sermon then discusses the presence of sin and exploitation in the world, using the story of David and Bathsheba as an example. The speaker urges the audience to live a disciplined life and focus on cleansing their hearts and minds with the word of God.

...for righteousness in the whole area of our personal morality. It's good to be able to speak quite openly here this evening about sex. It seems to me that so few churches do, and so few Bible schools, and so few Christian unions in universities. And yet there's no doubt that on the course of this coming summer campaign, 1986, people are going to face sexual problems. I am an elder of a church in England, and I think the most difficult problem that those of us who are elders in that church had to deal with last year was in this whole area. A man in his thirties begins to have an emotional relationship with someone else's wife. We discovered that this had been going on for two years, and the wife of the fellow concerned simply knew nothing about it. And you'd be amazed at the blindness that begins to settle on a person when they start to disobey God in this area. I also work as an evangelist, and probably one of the most common criticisms against the people of God, the churches of God, is in this area of sexual morality. I've just come back from an evangelistic city-wide campaign in Hull, a city in the northeast of England. And just before the campaign began, there were banner headlines in the newspapers concerning a well-known Christian in the city who was on the committee organizing this mission. He had been caught by the police in the red-light area of Hull chasing prostitutes in his car. Again and again, I have had dealings with committees that have been organizing evangelistic campaigns. And if you begin to move out in active service for God, you can expect attacks in this area. As a result of some years now in Christian work, I think there are three most common spiritual problems that Christian workers face. Three major hindrances to the testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ. The first is gossip and stupid talk. Churches get a reputation for being full of people who just gossip one to another. The second area is deceit concerning money. And the third is sexual immorality. You can find Paul referring to these three in Ephesians chapter 5. I could almost... Don't misunderstand me. When I read these verses, I felt I could have written them myself. But there were the three problems lined up one after another. Ephesians 5, verse 3. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure. No immoral, impure or greedy person, such a man is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. I want to focus on the biblical teaching concerning sex and morality. Because problems in this area are extremely common among Christian people. They are a major cause of backsliding of doubt and unbelief. And simply being a Christian doesn't make these problems go away. When a person becomes a Christian, they don't suddenly start to feel differently physically and emotionally. That takes time. Speaking in campaigns in Britain, if we don't address this kind of problem, I know that we're not really touching people where they are. So many people feel, well, this is not really me. But when you begin to dig under the surface, you find that is in fact where their deepest difficulties lie. So we're focusing on the Bible's teaching concerning sex and morality. And there are three aspects, three problems that I want to address. The first is the problem of guilt. That can be a tremendous hindrance to our evangelism. People can go out door to door carrying a book bag full of great literature, but also carrying on the other shoulder guilt concerning a sex problem. And if we are defeated in this area, if we're carrying all kinds of guilt feelings about sexual problems in our own life that have never come into the light, we will have a very weak gospel to share. We will find it difficult to talk about God's total forgiveness if we've got some areas that he has never dealt with. We will hardly have any message at all. And what we have may come over with so little power. We want to know what the Bible teaches us about the problem of guilt in this area. And then there's the second problem, the problem of temptation. What hinders your thought life? How do we deal with the difficulties of lust, masturbation, difficulties in accepting ourselves as we are physically and emotionally? And thirdly, the problem of indiscipline in our lives. Temptation can hinder your thought life. Indiscipline can hinder your team life. The question of guilt is to do with your past. But the problem of temptation and indiscipline are concerning the rest of your Christian life. What help can we, as ordinary down-to-earth men and women, find from God's Word? How can we be helped to speak with those whom we are counselling if this is their area of difficulty? A major reason why people do not become Christians when we share the gospel with them. They don't believe God can forgive them. And in the area of personal morality, they don't want to change. They don't know what God says. And we want to begin to look into Scripture and find first help for ourselves and then have a larger gospel that we can share. The first century was remarkably like our own. Don't be naive about the people who sat on the benches in the New Testament church. Sometimes we think they were so holy because they were the New Testament saints. It's not true. We imagine everybody going around in sort of long gowns, long togas and sandals as if they're sort of, you know, nuns and they never had actual physical problems or difficulties with their imagination. Do you imagine that the difficulties that you have sometimes with your feelings, your drives, are any different from what they used to have in the early church? The Roman Empire and the Greek world were extraordinarily immoral places. Divorce was extraordinarily easy. And remarriage was very common. And the children used to suffer in this kind of merry-go-round. One of the early church fathers writes of watching a man and a woman get married. And he was her 24th husband. And she was his 21st wife. Makes people like Elizabeth Taylor just look like beginners, you know. And the public morality of the leaders of society was appalling. Just as it is in our day when we read the newspapers. In my own country, the standards of public morality of the royal family have been dropping steadily in the last decades. And so everybody thinks, well, that's the thing to do. Messalina, the wife of the emperor Claudius, used to work as a prostitute in Rome night by night when the emperor had gone to sleep. Fourteen out of the first 15 Roman emperors were known practicing homosexuals. And you could see on stage and in the arena, public display that is just the same as you get in movie houses and in plays in our western world. It is into this kind of world that the New Testament writers were writing their letters. Turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and see what Paul says. Paul is writing his letter from Corinth. That place was as well known for immorality. It drew people from all over the world for that purpose, as is London or Paris today. And the people that were converted into the early church came from these kind of backgrounds. Thousands of prostitutes inhabiting the hill of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth. And it is from there that Paul is writing his letter to Thessalonica. Chapter 4 verse 3. Revolutionary message into this world. It is God's will that you should be holy. That you should avoid sexual immorality. That each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God. And that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins as we have already told you and warned you. Paul is appealing to these young Christians that they live holy lives. That they learn gradually what it is to live a self-controlled imagination and body. And that they remember that God is not some blind toothless granny in the sky, but he is a moral God who watches what we do. Now what was the message that turned these early Christians upside down? That made them leave homosexuality, leave prostitution and come to worship and love the living God. Why did they find a reality here in the church and in Christ that they had met nowhere else? The central core of everything God wants to say to you tonight about this whole area is forgiveness. God is a God who can forgive. Whatever may be hidden away in the recesses of your mind, he is a God of forgiveness. Jesus met the prostitute Mary Magdalene. A woman in whom there were seven demons living. A woman who had a tortured life, who felt unclean inside. Unable to escape all that she had done. Driven by forces she could not control. And Christ removed those demonic beings and accepted and forgave and cleansed that woman. She became one of the Lord's disciples. She began to minister to the Lord. Luke chapter 8 says so. She was known in the early church as a person whose life was turned upside down. One of Christ's ancestors had been Rahab the harlot. One of Christ's ancestors, you know, had been Rahab who had been a prostitute. God wasn't ashamed of this. God couldn't say, well, I can't touch that line of people. God seeks out those kind of folk in order to change them. And if people will face up to sin and call it sin, he is a God of enormous forgiveness. It is impossible to go beyond the point where he can reach us with his love and forgiveness. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you were. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And by the Spirit of our God. We have had folks who fit into almost all of these categories, as far as I can see, right here in the conferences. Sitting on those same wooden benches. And they found the reality of this verse in their own experience. God is a God who forgives. People whose stepfathers have abused them. Young men who have been seduced by relatives or folk that they have met down the street. People who come to the conference guilty about the things that they have been doing, or thinking, or reading. People in this tent that I have spoken with, who have been battling with homosexuality for years and hardly anybody knows. People who have been converted. Welcomed into the family of God. Who have begun to experience the reality of these verses in their own life. The Spirit of God gently shining light on their problems. In order that they might open up perhaps to another brother or sister. And come together before our great God and Father. And accept fully and finally the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus. Such were some of you, says Paul. And these people in Corinth would know who he was referring to as they sat there in the church when this letter was first read. But they had become children of the living God. Our God is a moral God. And if we grow up in his family. We are to begin to hunger and thirst for the character that he has to be our character. The Bible says the pure in heart will see God. One great mark that you are growing up as a child of God is this hunger, this thirst begins to appear in your life. You are not passive about personal morality. You want the Lord to deal with you. You want a life that is holy in thought as well as in action. Because God's character is to emerge in us. I was on the phone to my wife and children this morning in England. And my son came on the line, he is seven. I said, Johnny, how are you? He said, not good. I said, oh, what's the matter? He said, it's school. I said, what's the matter with school? Well, he said, it's Monday. And I said, well, what happens on Monday? What do you learn on Monday? He said, I have singing and knitting. Now, my poor little seven-year-old boy hates singing and knitting. And this story came out recently when we were with my grandparents. My parents, his grandparents. And my mother, I only just forgive her. She came out with the whole story about me hating singing and knitting at school. And my son was looking at me and laughing. Because I had to go through the hell of knitting at primary school. You see, the boy, I'm afraid, poor lad, he takes after me. He's not greatly into singing. He won't, Leo, ever join the Belgian creative music team, I'm afraid, ever. Children grow up to be like their parents. This is the same spiritually as it is physically. When I was a boy, my voice used to sound like my mother on the telephone. This was before it came down here, you understand. My father was a pastor and my mother was very involved in the work of our area. Ladies would ring up my mother with all kinds of problems and distress and difficulties. And I would answer the phone. I used to have a most interesting time. My education in these areas took a giant leap forward when I was ten. The ladies themselves were a little puzzled because they'd meet my mother in the street some days later and she knew nothing about all this story. You see, it's inevitable that I must grow up like her because of heredity. I find many Christian young people very prepared to drift along with the world at this point. There's not that real hunger for righteousness and purity of mind that is a mark of a true child of God. They're prepared to have the blue movies running in their own mind. They're prepared to sneak a look at the usual kind of magazines that won't do you any good. We live in a fallen world. When you read the book of Genesis, you can see something of God's plan in Genesis chapter 2. The relationship between man and woman. The beauty of that partnership. The unity and the sharing and the mutual submission one to another. The trust and the respect and the help one for another. Genesis chapter 2. But when you come into chapter 3, you find sin has broken in. It's dirtied people's minds. And the domination begins. And the subservience and the slavery begin. And the critical words begin. How cruel we can be to each other. And then the problem of no words at all which can even be crueler. We live in a world where men are exploiting women. Where women are sometimes exploiting men. Where people are out for what they can get their own personal satisfaction in what they do and they think. And the Bible knows very realistically about that world. And we are to live as children of the living God. Think of the well-known story of David and Bathsheba. 2 Samuel chapter 11. David was sleeping in the middle of the day. The army had gone to war. David was taking his eats. Having a Middle Eastern siesta after lunch that lingered on till 4 or 5 in the evening. David gets up off his bed on the roof of the king's palace. Goes over to the wall and begins to speak. And Bathsheba was having her bath in the garden next door. What a stupid place to have a bath. And David's eyes went... You know we can't help we men what we first look at. You can never help what you see with your first glance. Otherwise you'd have to walk around with your eyes shut all the time. You're in control only of your second glance. David begins to look and gaze. Lust begins in his heart. Begins to calculate. He starts to draw Bathsheba into his own family. And to get rid of her husband with lies and eventually murder. David has only reacted like a normal male. Men are reacting like that from Genesis onwards in the Bible. The Bible knows that's the way men are. Turned on sexually in a very different way from the way women are very often. David begins to fall into lust and then adultery and then murder. And he finds he's lost God in the process. The prophet Nathan comes to him. Tells him a story. David finishes up convicted of sin. He finds that God knew all along. God has waited and then God has confronted him. God had much more for David to do. He wanted to pour more creative psalms through him for the benefit of the rest of us. There were more victories to win. His own family to bring up. David wasn't finished. But David needed the forgiveness of God. David needed to have his ministry restored to him. David had allowed himself to get away from the living God. And when David confessed his sin, the prophet Nathan immediately said, You are forgiven. The Lord has put away your sin. There is forgiveness. I don't want you going out on this campaign with anything lingering unforgiven in your heart. There may well be some here who have come on OM as an alternative to getting forgiveness for moral sin. We think that somehow with our extra activity, with our extra energy in serving the Lord, we can persuade Him not to look at a certain area in our life. God is not fooled. Our extra activity means nothing to Him if He wants to bring cleansing and renewal and refreshment into our spiritual life. We need to take whatever it is that's on our conscience and lay it on Christ. A man in the Old Testament would come to the temple of God knowing he was guilty before God, guilty for specific things. Now get quite clear in your mind the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the conviction of Satan. When the devil convicts believers, it's always general. You feel somehow condemned, but you don't know quite exactly what it is. That's the conviction of the evil one. He makes you feel that you've generally done harm, or you're generally hopeless, or you're not good enough. When the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, it is always clear and specific. You know precisely what He's talking about. Because the Holy Spirit's great objective is to bring you to Christ. If you know where you've sinned, then you can come to Christ and get precise forgiveness for that which is on your conscience. The purpose of Satan is to drive you away into discouragement and depression so you get further and further from the cross. The Jew would come to the temple bringing with him a lamb. He knew what was on his heart. And he would lay his hands on the head of that lamb. A perfect lamb. It had been frisking around in the fields that morning. There was nothing wrong with it. It was healthy. It was in the prime of life. He didn't know what was happening. And that Jew would confess his sin, his fornication, his adultery on the head of that lamb. And the priest who would be standing beside him would probably hand him a knife. And he would take the knife himself. And he would cut that lamb's throat from ear to ear. He did it himself. He didn't give the job over to the priest. When offering that sin offering, he had to understand that it was his own sin that was murdering that lamb. That lamb would die in his place. A man would watch it coughing out its last breath and the blood being caught in a bowl. And that priest would then represent him before God. He would walk in the tabernacle or the temple right as far in towards God as it was possible to go. He would come right up to the great veil. And there some of the blood would be dipped on the altar of prayer and incense. Once that lamb had died, that man was as welcome as it is possible to be into the presence of God. Because the blood had been shed. Once sin gets loose in the world, it will kill. It will kill either you or it will kill Christ. Sin is a murderer. God wants people to understand that from the very beginning of Scripture. Once that lamb had died, the man had been welcomed back. He could put his shoulders back. He could stand up straight. He could walk home with a song in his heart. He was no longer under condemnation for that sin. There was nothing more to pay. He was forgiven. His conscience could now enable him to go home and continue with life. A picture of our gospel. Take your sin and lay it on Christ. The lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Guilt is a terrible thing. I don't know whether any of you have perhaps seen at any time Shakespeare's play Macbeth. Macbeth and his wife have murdered somebody. Not any old person, but the king. And during the day, Lady Macbeth tries to pretend that there's nothing wrong. But during the night, it comes out from her subconscious. And she walks the house, walks the palace, wringing her hands, trying to get the blood free from her hands. Eventually the guilt destroys her. If only Lady Macbeth had known the gospel. Shakespeare's play would have been very short. I would have had left to teach when I was at school. But she could have been forgiven. The woman eventually dies, a broken woman, probably committing suicide. God says, I can cast sin into the depths of the sea. I don't know whether you've ever been on a boat, maybe some of you a cross-channel ferry. And your camera has fallen overboard. You watch it go. You don't watch it for very long. There's a splash and then it's gone. And you know that you will never see it again. God says, I do that with sin. I take it from you and I cast it into the depths of the sea. We can be forgiven. You know, there is joy in the heart when you go out and share God's gospel. I sometimes believe I would like to preach the gospel to this OM conference. Help you again get excited about the grace of God that He forgives us. He sets us free. He has dealt with our deepest problem. But you know, you can't go and share that unless it's true in your own life. I've noticed in my own experience in evangelism how often I do something stupid just before I'm about to go out on a campaign. You know, maybe my tongue just hurts someone. Maybe I say something stupid at home with my wife. And you know, you get those tense kind of moments. You're not talking to each other very nicely. When you go to bed at night, it's the cold shoulder treatment. You become kind of grumpy, you know. The married men are chuckling all around the room. They know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, the sort of situation she started out as the ideal and then it became an ordeal until he wanted a new deal. Don't worry. And so many times I have had to go and repent and say sorry for something that I've done just before going in evangelism. You know what God is doing? He is refreshing my sense of forgiveness all over again. Sometimes we preach forgiveness like an old tape recorder because it's been a long, long time since we were at the cross. The Lord Jesus died and rose again that He might be our Lord. Maybe the Lord is going to speak to you during this week in some area of your life, maybe this moral area. His purpose is that you be forgiven, that you know the joy of salvation restored again. So that when you go and talk to others on the streets, there's life and excitement in what you're sharing. The problem of forgiveness, it's no problem to God. The only problem is the slowness and the hardness of our hearts to come to Him. And then there's the problem of continuing temptation. It's one thing to get forgiven, to have the slate wiped clean, to hear that word from the Lord, it is paid and know that it's true of you. What about those habits that come back again and again? What about those patterns of thought and behavior that so discourage you? What about those temptations that when they come, you find yourself almost powerless to deal with them? Ephesians chapter 5 verse 26 talks about being cleansed with the washing, with the water of the Word of God, so that we have a clean mind and heart. And maybe you say, oh, I love that. I'd love to be cleaned out in my mind, in my imaginations, in my dream life. What can the Lord Jesus say to me in that area? Why don't we ask Him? The Lord came into the first century world. He moved around among people like us with the same sort of problems. He's the author of the whole idea of marriage and sex and our bodily drives and emotions. Sex is not something dirty, it's been created by Jesus. It's not something to be slightly ashamed of. It's part of God's most beautiful creation. Jesus went to weddings, Jesus looked on people as they fell in love with each other and He enjoyed it. Jesus Himself had put these emotions within the boundaries of marriage. Jesus knows how to cleanse our minds and our hearts and how to help us as we live in a fallen world. Matthew chapter 5 verse 27. You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Now, Lord Jesus, what do you have to say? No hands. You know, just one wrong thought and boom, there's an eye gone. I only got one eye left. Oh, oh, oh, there's a second one gone. Blind for the rest of my life. Church is full of the blind people. How could you ever shake hands if your hand's been chopped off? You just... Two mistakes and you're disabled for life. The Lord is not talking literally. You see, fantasies are always hungry. Fantasies want to feed on something. And our fantasies will starve to death if we refuse to feed them. You can be dreaming about the perfect person that's going to come into your life. People think, you know, they come on OM and this might just be the time I'm going to meet the actual one. I can remember an Englishman coming on the overnight crossing across to Belgium for the start of one of these campaigns years ago from England on the ferry. I met him as he arrived in the building. He was looking white and worried. He said, can I have a word with somebody quickly? I said, yes, all right. Sit down. What's it all about? He said, it happened. It happened on the ferry. Last night, just last night, overnight, it happened. I said, what happened? He said, it did. I fell in love. I said, you fell in love on the overnight ferry? He said, yes, yes, desperately, desperately. I said, who with? A girl here in the conference. I said, what's her name? I don't know. I said, have you spoken to her? No, no, not yet. I am going to. He calmed him down and persuaded him to, you know, keep his mouth shut. And within a couple of days, I think the problem was gone. The sun begins to shine. People start to look different. And things start to trigger in your mind. I don't know whether it's the sun on the back getting the enzymes going of the sap rising or something. And the Lord wants to say to you, don't feed those old... We're going to start, says the Lord. I want to start with you on a program of starving them to death. What causes us to stumble? With some, it's pornography. With some, it's particular people. With some, it's certain kinds of situations. With some, it's particular places. And you know. We're all different. You know what causes you the greatest problem. Now, says the Lord, I want you to cooperate with me in the government of your life. God has not made us into little marionettes that walk around with him pulling the strings. He gives us his word. He wants us to understand ourselves and to analyze ourselves and to judge ourselves. And to begin to change our behavior. As we cooperate with the living God. I spoke earlier on about men being turned on by what they see. This is why the hot weather can be so difficult for some men. Because the girls slim down to the most figure-hugging of clothes. And some sisters don't understand what that's doing in the men around them. And some of the men become extremely kind and tender and affectionate and I suppose they even ride you around in their trolleys, I don't know. And it's easy for people to misunderstand what's going on. You know, you're in a prayer meeting. It's a second prayer meeting on your team. And you peep through your eyes as your fingers, as you sometimes do. You want to see who's watching you in the prayer meeting. It's her again, it's her again. Or she suddenly, you know, her heart begins to go pitter-patter, pitter-patter because he's sitting beside her at the meal table again. People start to misunderstand these things. I want to appeal for us all to agree together that we are going to be brothers and sisters, nothing else, during this campaign. I've preached for an hour and five minutes and I got a fellow to agree with me. We are, in the Christian church in the Western world, moving much more into a sort of kiss and touch kind of era. There was nothing like the kissing going on in the Christian church when I was growing up as there is now. And some people begin to like this sort of thing. I don't know where it comes from, California I imagine most things do. And I have known people who are looking forward to going to the meeting because of all the sisters that they are going to be able to kiss. And the word of God says now, stand back and watch your heart. Begin to cooperate with God in the judgment of your own heart. Immorality is so widespread even amongst Christian workers and in Christian churches. And the one who thinks he stands let that person take care lest they fall. Moral temptation so quickly comes, it's like an avalanche or an ambush suddenly when it's least expected. I can remember once being in Bangkok. In a hotel. There on some OM business years ago. I was the only OMA in Thailand at that time. Just passing through for a weekend. I had to check into this hotel. And within a few minutes of landing up in my room there was a little knock on the door. I opened the door and there was one of the girls that was somehow attached to the hotel for the use of businessmen. Beautiful. I was alone. Nobody would have known. You know, that kind of situation can suddenly catch you off your guard. Don't be ignorant of the devices of Satan. There is absolute forgiveness for anything you may be carrying up to this point. But I want to warn you and urge you to live a disciplined life as we go on into the future. Your heart, says the Lord Jesus, is the key. Your heart and your mind. Is it cleansed by the Word of God? We are to set our minds on the things which are above, says Colossians 3.2. Look at each other as part of God's inheritance. Ephesians 1 speaks about the saints being the inheritance of God. The people sitting around you are part of God's inheritance out of this world. So don't do anything that's going to damage another person's walk with the Lord. Don't start to worry about what's going to happen in your future. Trust the Lord to guide you. Many of us think, you know, if I don't start looking around and waiting to see what God has got for me, I might miss her. You know, as if God would play some kind of game with you. That the girl He has prepared for you or the fellow that He has been preparing for you will somehow pass on a 37 bus and if you hadn't got your eyes open at that moment, you missed her. God can lead us into His best plan for us. But first He wants to see that character, His own character growing in our lives. Don't be ignorant of the devices of Satan to steer you away from that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Don't damage God's inheritance by messing their lives, messing their thinking up. There are probably people here at this conference who are hurting inside. Perhaps who have broken up a relationship in order to serve the Lord and come here. Maybe people who are very sensitive and tender in this area. Let us live with one another, seeing each other in Christ. Let us commit ourselves on our teams to a life of moral purity that reflects the glory of Christ. Don't you know, says 1 Corinthians 6, that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your body is a temple of the living God. God come from heaven to dwell within you. Your body is not just an amusement arcade that you can play around with. Place where God dwells. To reflect the glory of God. You are not your own. You were bought with a great price. You know, something that you don't really care for very much, well, you buy it cheaply and you throw it away after a while. Some of the books that you may buy from the bookstore, special prices, just a few francs. Get the benefit from it. Give it away to someone else. Doesn't really matter. But there are some things, you know, that cost a very great deal, that you value. The Lord says, I paid for you. I didn't pick you up cheap. You weren't in some second-hand junk antique shop. I have bought you for myself. You are to be my bride. I want you going on in holiness and purity of life. You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honour God with your body. Now, I want to draw to a close. Because I am well aware that after a session like this, some of you may feel you want to talk to somebody. Simply in order to share with someone what's been lying in your heart and you feel may be a problem for you. Just to get another brother or sister to listen, to understand and to pray with you. Just to agree with one other Christian. They are not going to speak to anyone else. You agree with them, that that is placed on the head of a lamb. That sin is in the bottom of the sea. You are not going to listen to any more accusations from the evil one on that subject. Maybe if we end just a little bit early tonight. Those of you who want some counsel, want some prayer, can hang back a bit. Talk maybe to one of the country leaders. One of those that have been speaking. Talk to me if you think I can help. And we would love just to listen and to pray. In order that you might seal and settle something spiritually this evening. Lord Jesus says, I will make you fishers of men. He says, I know how to do it. You follow me. And I will make you fishers of men. Shortly after Christ said that, He healed three men. One was demon possessed. One was epileptic. And one was paralyzed. All three people had somehow lost control of themselves. One at the spiritual level, the demon possessed man. One at the mental level, the epileptic man. And one at the physical level, the paralyzed man. And the Lord re-established His control in each person. Then He starts to talk to the disciples. Talk to them about those areas in their life in the Sermon on the Mount where they lose control. The emotion of anger. The emotion of lust. The way we speak with our mouth. And the Lord says, you follow me. You listen to what I am saying. And I will so work in your life that I make you fishers of men. If we allow God to govern and control us, if we embrace the teachings of His Word, we will begin to find that we walk with the Lord Jesus and others are drawn to us. People begin to want to know how it is that we live. They listen when we speak. That is the process of Jesus making you into fishers of men as we allow Him to work in reality in the recesses of our heart and our life. If you need help, if you want to pray with someone, don't come to the end of this conference with things where you needed some advice or you needed some scripture and you never went for it, never found it. Allow God to meet you right where you are. Very often we put on a big pretense before the Lord. We can fool many of His people. You can't fool the Lord. The Lord is pleased that you are here. He is glad that He has been able to bring you. He is already making you fishers of men. He wants us to have purity of heart and mind, a conscience that is clean, a life that begins to walk with a much greater measure of discipline in order that He might use you and multiply your ministry and we might grow up to be like Him. Seek help if you need it. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, thank You for Your patience with us and thank You that You are a master carpenter and a great craftsman and that You don't do a lazy or a rushed job with any of us. We think of the many years You took with Abraham and David and Moses. Thank You, Lord, for bringing us to this point. We want purity of heart and mind. We want to be showed where Your Word applies to us. We don't want to live a life that's full of pretense and unreality. We thank You for these words of Paul, these words of Christ. Oh God, continue to speak to us, wrestle with us until we grow more like Yourself. Thank You for that new covenant of absolute forgiveness that we may rely on. For the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that takes away the sin of the world. Where He died for us, we will never be condemned. Thank You for setting us in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to end here. The meeting is over. As I say, if you want to seek out help, do so tonight or tomorrow if you want to wait that long. And there will be in those hot flasks in that white tent over there a hot drink, tea, coffee, when you want to take it. Good night.