Amen. Well, church, if you would go to Romans 2. Romans 2. I believe we'll have it up on the screen as well. We'll start with verse 12. And I'll read through verse 16. Romans 2. This is the Word of the Lord. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my Gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. Heavenly Father, we come to You again, and we confess that we need Your power. We need Your Word. Lord, we can talk, we can engage in conversation, but Lord, what we need is the authoritative Word of the living God to speak. And I pray that You would come, Holy Spirit, and work through the Word and apply it to our hearts. Give us deep conviction on these truths. And I pray that every destruction would be removed from this room and that we could hear what the Spirit says to the church. And I pray it in Jesus' mighty name, Amen. Probably all of us have heard And I imagine all of us have said something along these lines. I can't do this because my conscience won't let me. Or my conscience just won't allow me to do that. People talk about having or not having a clear conscience. And so it begs the question, what is the conscience? How does it function? Is it different for everyone? Why does one person's conscience feel pricked about doing one thing and another person's conscience feels just fine doing that thing? Is it our feelings? This warrants definitely a thorough discussion. And what is clear is that the topic of the conscience, which is tied to the topic of guilt, or feelings of guilt, has been an important discussion regarding mental health. Because what seems to be clear to those who study behavior, whether doctors or psychiatrists, whether they're religious or not, is that human beings have a component within them that produces guilt. And whether the feelings of guilt are real or not, people have a sense in them that when they commit certain actions, their consciences accuse them and it makes them feel bad. That's agreed upon. So what does all this have to do with the modern self and the denial of reality? Well, Sigmund Freud, who is the father of what is known as psychoanalysis, developed a mental theory in the 19th century that has largely permeated the way Americans think about mental health and largely morality as a whole. Just about everything you've studied at a public school or public university has Sigmund Freud's fingertips all over it. It would be an understatement to say that his writings were not extremely influential on the way that we think in the 21st century as a society. And his system, which is built on the presupposition of evolutionary Darwinism and humanism, says that human beings have innate cravings and desires and passions within them that they want to act upon. They want to pursue. They want to express them. He calls this the id. And for our purposes, we could say the self. And so, in this system, the self is essentially one's cravings and desires. Especially with regard to aggression and sexuality. However, when a person's parents or society or religion or church, whatever outside circumstance, comes upon the person and forces him or her to repress these desires, and influences this person and calls them sinful or bad or wrong, and then this person, against his will, represses these desires, these cravings, these hungers, And for the sake of conforming his ego, or who he is before society, he is forced to become whatever society wants him to become. Not because he wants to, but insofar as he can conform to society. And in doing this, he must suppress himself. He must not express himself. However, the urges are still there. The cravings are still there. The desires are still there. Except now there is this internal struggle within him that we might call the conscience, which is being shaped by what Freud calls the superego. Not that it is a real thing. Not that it is an objective moral standard. But the superego is just everybody else's voice affecting the person's definitions of right and wrong. And so the conscience comes that is being shaped by everybody else around him, and it stirs up conflict within him. Because he wants to act on these desires and express himself, but the society won't let him. Right? And so there's this internal conflict that causes the person to feel guilty. for having these desires and for acting on these desires. And so the theory suggests that the feelings of guilt that people experience, which again, are brought on by whatever constructive morality the society has at that time, produce conflict in people because they really want to act on their desires, but they feel like they can't. So they feel guilty. And they have this conflict within them. And when they do, and they feel this guilt, this internal conflict, along with these feelings of guilt, causes people to become mentally ill. So the problem is essentially this, that people want to be who they think they are, but they can't. And because they can't be who they think they are because of outside factors such as the Christian church, and the Bible, and fundamentalist religion, and all these things keep them from expressing themselves They feel this great internal struggle within them. Because the great need of man according to this system is self-expression. The great mark of authenticity as a person is to be your true self. To express that. To show that. To let everybody see that. And so to oppose the forbidding of being whoever you are, Freud and others have sought to psychologize the self. And so you hear phrases like this, I came out of the closet. Or I broke free of all the shackles from my parents. And I allowed myself to freely throw off the shackles of my church and my religion growing up. And now I'm who I really am. and I'm free to be who I really want to be. You hear this? This is not uncommon. We hear it all the time. And as you can imagine, as we will see in the next few weeks, this gives rise to the sexual revolution and other sorts of unbiblical expressions in movements. And although these ideas have morphed and evolved and manifested themselves with different spins over the years, with different emphases, especially in the field of psychiatry, the treatment to the problem I just described for Freud's system is essentially this. First, you take away all responsibility from the person who feels guilty. You remove responsibility altogether. So anybody who has committed acts that make him feel guilty, it's not his fault. You remove fault. You remove sin as a category because sin is merely a religious construct. And it means nothing. Everything is a disorder in this system or a product of external circumstances. or a product of chemical imbalances. Every sort of problem that you can think of, every sort of bizarre behavior under the sun has a psychiatric label that removes responsibility from the person. That's step number one. Step number two is then to convince the person that his feelings of guilt are not legitimate. You shouldn't feel guilty. These feelings are simply a product of a strict, oppressive society that wants to keep you from being who you really are. You shouldn't feel guilty. They're not real feelings of guilt. There's no such thing as guilt because there's no such thing as sin in this system. And then once you get that far, you have to then help the person erase those feelings of guilt. To kill them. To repress them. Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote in 1976 that what he calls guilt zones must be exterminated, spray-cleaned, and sterilized forever. And his suggestion for doing this is to find out whatever you want to pursue that makes you feel guilty and to just press on headfirst into it. Do it anyway. Even if it means neglecting responsibilities. So if you don't want to wake up and take care of your kids, and you don't want to have a clean house, and you're sick of cooking meals for your family, you just throw up your hands and say, I'm sick of this. I'm going to do what I want to do. And you tell everybody how it is. That's how you break free from guilt. And you press on in whatever behavior makes you feel guilty. You basically defy the cry of your conscience until it doesn't cry anymore. And then lastly, you find safe ways to act and express yourself. You find ways to do what you really want to do. Express yourself, and again, primarily for Freud, this is sexually, however you want, without feeling guilty. Because you're, again, being authentic. You're being your true self. You're being who you really are. The self. is able to be seen for what it really is. And you know what is shocking? That sounds a lot like Romans 1, doesn't it? Except in Romans 1, it's not some catchy scheme that will get you rich if you sell a book. It's not some flashy fad. It's utterly tragic. Look back with me at Romans 1. I know we were here last week, but verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them in nature and in their conscience. Look at verse 24. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity. Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. And then verse 28, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. What is abundantly clear from Romans 1, verses 18-32, is that as people suppress the truth, as people quelch their conscience, and press on headfast into sin. God gives them over in judgment to the lust of their hearts. And He gives them what they really want without the cry of their conscience pricking them any longer. And brothers and sisters, we're going to be addressing a lot of topics and worldviews in this series. But make no mistake about it. This reality that we see in Romans 1, this paves the way for every ungodly system of thought. Every ungodly act. Every wicked movement under the sun. Romans 1, 18-32 is how we get there. the psychologizing of the self, the triumph of the therapeutic, the sexual revolution, post-modernism, Marxism, humanism, and all of this is the result of what men do when they suppress their conscience and exchange God's truth for lies. And this is utterly tragic. And in some form or another, this plagues all of humanity. And this plagues all of us. And it did plague all of us until God in His mercy shined the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ in our hearts and raised us from the dead. But that's why I said in the beginning that this is an important question even for us as Christians to wrestle with, especially in this age of relativism that we find ourselves in. I mean, how is the conscience to operate in the life of a Christian? How do we maintain, as Paul says in Acts 24-16, a clear conscience before God and men? And how does our conscience play into discerning the will of God? We hear that a lot right now, don't we? My conscience. And Paul's argument here, if you'll flip back to chapter 2, seems to be that Gentiles in all of humanity, even if they do not have the Mosaic Law and the Ten Commandments to be their moral guide, show that God has written His law on their hearts. when they do what the law requires. And when they sense guilt over that and then do not do what it requires. They show themselves to have a law to themselves. As it says in this passage in verse 12, it says, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. Then it says down in verse 14, for when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature, Do what the law requires. They are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. So people everywhere, whether Christian or pagan, have some capacity to obey God's commands in a simplistic sense, because of their conscience, because of nature, But yet, more often than obeying, they disobey God's commands, even though their conscience accuses them. And they do what ought not to be done. They're guilty. They are lawbreakers. So guys, when we ask these questions, we must first come to God's Word. as the final and ultimate authority. Because if there is one consistent theme that we will see in this series, it is that the modern self seeks to interpret itself. Make meaning of itself. Define itself. And as it does, it denies reality. But the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview is that God interprets us. God tells us what we are like. He tells you who you are. He defines us. He makes us matter. He assigns us our identity and our purpose. And all of this is revealed in the pages of Scripture. We are hermeneutical beings. We are interpreters. Who's interpreting you? Whose interpretation are you going with? Is it God's? Or is it whatever's inside of you? Or is it whatever the specialist says? We must allow God and His Word to define man. So the biblical testimony of the conscience is not that it's merely this arbitrary thing that we feel within us. that doesn't let us do this thing, but lets us do this thing. That's not the biblical testimony of the conscience. And it's not this outside ego that is making us conform to it. Shaping us and molding us. Rather, it is a God-given component of our humanity. The conscience is a gift and a grace from God because we are image bearers of God. One systematic theologian calls the conscience a barometer of our obedience. And he says people have an internal sense of right and wrong that judges their behavior. So the conscience works to render all men guilty. That's Paul's argument in chapter 1 of Romans, chapter 2 of Romans. All men. Mosaic law or not, Jew or Gentile, all men are guilty of breaking God's law. To say it plainly, for us who are Gentiles and we have the Word, our conscience and the Scriptures render us guilty before God. Now the question arises, are our consciences then, if they're a gift, if they're a grace, are they a perfect moral guide? So if we could just tap into what they really are, can we know how to live perfectly? The answer is no. So although our consciences do work to show us our guilt for breaking God's law, and although they often keep us from being as evil and acting as wicked as we could, The fact is that because of sin, our consciences are warped and do not operate perfectly. Moreover, our consciences can be shaped and informed by society. They can be shaped by legalism and rules and all sorts of things that come from the outside. Our consciences can be trained wrongly You can actually build up a standard for yourself that is not God's standard and feel guilty for breaking your own standard that is not God's. That is a possibility. Or some have suppressed the voice of their conscience for so long that it no longer effectively is working the way it should. And some have made certain issues such a huge priority that their conscience has accused them for certain things, but not for other things that are equally as wrong, or not wrong. This is how you get to the point where people will say, I refuse to look at alcohol on the basis of conscience. And they treat it as an abomination on the basis of conscience. But then the same person can go to a buffet and commit the sin of gluttony and not feel one prick of the conscience. And this is because our consciences, though revealing traces of the image of God, are not perfect guides. And we often inform them wrongly. But here's the thing, even if our consciences were perfect moral guides, the problem still remains, which is that humans are guilty. There is real guilt for sinning against God. It's not just feelings. It's not just oppressive voices. There is real guilt for sin. This is man's problem. Man's problem is not that the church makes him feel guilty for sin, but that there is real guilt for breaking God's law. And we cannot, no matter how hard we try, obey God's perfect law the way that He calls every person to. We cannot. And though I disagree with Freud's system and reject it outright, what is clear is that people experience all sorts of darkness over the feelings of guilt. And this often leads to depression and anxiety, bipolar, because people do not deal with their guilt biblically. And the reality is that there may be some in this room who are Christians purchased by the blood of Christ, but yet the bearing of guilt weighs on you daily. And you feel your conscience accuse you day and night because you have not made a practice of running to the fount of cleansing, which is the blood of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you're like David who says in Psalms 32.4, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. through my groaning all day long, for day and night Your hand was heavy upon me." The burden of guilt can be so heavy on a child of God that the problem begins to manifest itself physically. Stomach issues, and ulcers, and anxiety, and panic attacks may all be symptoms of living day after day after day as your conscience accuses you over sin and the burden of guilt weighs heavy upon you. But I want to encourage us, brothers and sisters, that it does not have to be so. It does not have to be so. God has made a way in His Son for men to be cleansed from guilt over sin and to be purified in their consciences. God has made a way. This is what the author of Hebrews means in Hebrews 9.14 when he says, the blood of Christ has purified our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. See, Christ became the ultimate sacrifice. He was the Lamb without blemish and He came to take away the guilt from His people over sin. To remove it from them. To bear it in their place. To receive the guilt and the punishment for sin. And He died on their behalf. And in so doing, He has removed sin and guilt from His people. And because guilt has been removed, our consciences are clean and purified and washed. Because they are in Christ, they have been made the righteousness of God. By their union with Christ, they are no longer lawbreakers. And if you are not a lawbreaker, you are not guilty. This is how Paul gets to the place where he says in Romans 8, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation. for those who are in Christ Jesus. And guys, this is the message that we preach to ourselves, and this is the message that we preach to the modern self. This is our solution, and it's the world's solution. Christ crucified. It is such a blessing. Such a joy. Such a privilege to live quorum Deo. Before the face of God with a pure conscience. Cleansed from sin. Cleansed from guilt. Cleansed from unrighteousness. Free from the fear of judgment. Now you may be saying after hearing all this, okay, I believe that. I believe I can be cleansed. I believe He's enough. But I still feel the pangs of guilt daily bearing down on me. And I can relate to that. About four or five years ago, I went through a season where I kid you not, minute by minute, I could feel the hand of God on my shoulders. And minute by minute, I felt the accusation of conscience to the point that I was depressed, in a dark place, had very little joy, and it was hard just to keep going. Because the pangs of guilt, the burden of feeling like you're always guilty was so heavy on me, that at times I didn't know if I could keep going. But ultimately, I began to experience freedom only when I willfully submitted day after day, no matter what my heart told me to the testimony of Scripture. And I forced my heart to bend its knee to what God said in this book. And I began to experience freedom So now that we've seen our culture's solution to dealing with the conscience, I want to end by discussing two ways that the Scriptures give Christians for maintaining a pure conscience, because here's the thing, this psychologizing of self and this virtue of self-expression is not just out there. It's not just out there. This has permeated the very fabric of who we are. And it has influenced the church in ways that we don't even understand. Many people, Christians and non-Christians, have adopted these ideologies. They've adopted these thoughts without even realizing it. And we've been conformed to this world in many ways. Because it's in our education system. It's in our sports culture. It's in our literature. It's in our movies. It's everywhere. And if we are not careful, we will be conformed to this world. And it is very possible that many Christians, though they may believe that they are being led by conscience, are actually being led by impressions and senses and feelings that have their root either within us or in some other system other than the Word of God. That's a reality. That's a possibility. And when we do this, we essentially become functional Gnostics. where we elevate to some higher knowledge, and ultimately, self-expression is the ultimate value, just in a religious form. And so, brothers and sisters, we need to seek to see what God says. So I want to put before us, lastly, two points for maintaining a pure conscience. Number one, Christians maintain a pure conscience by maturing their conscience in the Scriptures. Remember what Jesus said in Mark 7, verse 9, when He rebukes the Pharisees and He says, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. And we see all throughout the Gospels that the religious leaders of Jesus' day were bound in their consciences by their own traditions. They made huge emphases on small matters such as tithing, spices, and mint. And they scrupled over what to do or what not to do on the Sabbath. And they failed to let their consciences be bound by the weighty matters of the law. And Jesus took issue with this. R.C. Sproul says that they majored on minors. They over-emphasized minutia at the stake of neglecting what God revealed in His Word. And Sproul has this sermon titled, The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother. And in this sermon, he says that one very dangerous form of legalism is when we add to the Word of God. And we begin to bind one another by rules and regulations. And we begin to make certain things that are not revealed in Scripture rule and law. This was prevalent in Jesus' day. It's prevalent in Paul's day. And oh, how it is prevalent in our day. It is very likely that there may be many sitting in this room for one reason or another, that have consciences bound by regulations and norms that are not revealed in the Bible. Very likely. And it is very likely that you are feeling guilt. Because you are violating a standard that is not revealed in the Bible. Your conscience may be weak regarding many things. As Paul says in Romans 14. And listen, I am not talking about people who choose not to drink alcohol, or choose not to go to a buffet, or choose not to have a smartphone, or choose not to go to movies because they know their sinful temptations. And maybe they have a past with those types of things. That's not being weak in the conscience. That's being wise. That is not what I'm talking about. Having a weak conscience comes from not fully embracing what God has said or not said about a particular issue in His Word. Not fully embracing what He said. So in the New Testament, when their conscience would accuse them for eating meat sacrificed to idols, Paul is saying they haven't embraced the reality of what Jesus did in the New Covenant. They haven't fully comprehended that. We want our consciences to be bound by the Word of God alone. Listen, as a Christian, you have no obligation to feel guilty unless you have sinned against God. That should set some of you free. And you know if you've sinned against God if this book says you've sinned against God. That's where we want our consciences to be. Guilt is only genuine if sin has been committed against God. And your compass to know whether you have sinned against God should not come from some arbitrary feeling within you. It should not come from some religious code from outside of you. It should come from this book. The pages of Scripture. Maturing your conscience does not mean just getting to the place where you can do whatever you want. That is not what maturing your conscience means. Maturing your conscience is like what Paul says in Romans 12. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God. As your mind is renewed in the Scripture by the power of the Spirit, we grow in our ability to discern the will of God. It's building your conscience on the Word, making it sensitive to sin, but strong in areas that God has not spoken to. And the Holy Spirit working through the Word shows us when we have sinned and have real guilt. And He shows us the way to deal with that guilt. Which leads me to the next point. Christians maintain a good conscience by habitually confessing their sins. Christians maintain a good conscience by habitually confessing their sins. If your conscience is bound by the Word of God, and it is functioning healthy, you will experience genuine guilt when you have sinned against God. And you need a way to deal with that guilt. Failing to deal with guilt biblically can produce catastrophic results. Again, we see in Psalm 32, we can experience all sorts of psychological problems such as severe depression, anxiety. People often turn to substances to quench their guilt. They engage in reckless living to quench their guilt because they don't deal with it biblically. On the other hand, we see in Scripture the opposite effect. Rather than dealing with guilt biblically, by allowing their guilt to drive them to Christ, to find pardon, professing Christians can ignore or suppress their conscience and continue on in sin. We see this in 1 Timothy 1-9 when Paul commands Timothy to hold faith and a good conscience. And he says, by rejecting this, by rejecting a good conscience, some have made shipwreck of their faith. pressing through sin, ignoring the pangs of conscience to the point of apostasy. Tragic. Failing to deal with guilt biblically can be tragic, brothers and sisters. You know, I think I've said this before. One of the most tragic things under the sun. You think about the things that cause the most pain and heartbreak. Car wrecks. Unexpected illnesses. Unexpected tragedies. All of these things. You know what's at the top of the list for me? when someone who professes to be a Christian and professes to walk with Christ, appears to walk with Christ for a prolonged period of time, even helps you in your walk with Christ, gets to the point where they say, I no longer believe. I no longer will follow Jesus. The pain and the confusion and the hurt of that, for me, is above just about everything. Some of you have friends or family members who have done this. Maybe former pastors or leaders. We could all name authors and speakers who have helped us who no longer this day are walking with Christ. Told the world, I am no longer a Christian. And for me to be very transparent, I've experienced this in a very bitter way. It's confusing and emotional and messy. And as I've sought to wade through this theologically, there seems to be a common denominator in these types of stories. It's that those who appear to walk with Christ and then turn away have desires and lusts and passions within them that they want to pursue and express themselves. They want to express themselves, but the Word of God forbids them to do so. And rather than coming to Christ and confessing their sins and laying their passions at the cross of Christ and pleading with Christ for forgiveness and receiving His transforming grace, rather than putting off the old self with all its passions and corruptions, and putting on the new self, rather than walking the Christian life faithfully, they press forward in their sins, even though their conscience has accused them. And they silence the cry of that voice within them. Because ultimately they love their sin more than Christ. And they just cannot stand the fact that God would forbid them from doing what they really want to do. And from being who they really want to be. So they sear their conscience by ignoring it. And then what you usually see is that these people will raise intellectual conversations and problems over the Christian faith, and they'll question the authenticity of the Scriptures, and they'll talk about history, and they'll say, well, what about this sin? And what about the church here? And what about this? But all of these things, in my experience, are merely cover-ups for the fact that their God was their belly. And they wanted to sin more than they wanted to love Christ. And they make shipwreck of their faith. How do we avoid this, brothers and sisters? How do we avoid carrying guilt over sin constantly to the point of being paralyzed by it? Useless because we're so plagued by guilt? And how do we avoid ignoring our guilt to the point of making shipwreck of our faith? The Bible tells us the answer in 1 John 1.8-9, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The key to maintaining a good conscience before God is to agree with God about your sin. To agree with Him. To allow the Word to show you who you are. And to confess that to Him. Rather than deceiving yourselves and hiding your sin. To agree with God about it. This is how the Scripture says that we keep ourselves free from deceit. As David goes on to say, blessed, in that Psalm 32, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. And here it is, in whose spirit there is no deceit. Coming to God and allowing His Word to dictate whether you are guilty or not. And confessing that to Him. Acknowledging your guilt to Him and receiving the pardoning, cleansing of Christ by faith. Asking for forgiveness and believing that you were forgiven on the basis of another. On the basis of the Son of God. It's amazing. It's amazing. To hide your sin. To conceal it. To reason within yourself that your sin is not really sin is to be deceived. It's to lie against the truth. It's to have deceit in your spirit. But to agree with God about your sin and to confess it to Him and to be forgiven is to be blessed. Proverbs 28.13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. This is a great gift. This is good news, brothers and sisters. When you are guilty of sin, don't allow the burden of guilt weigh you down for days. And don't ignore your conscience and just wait for the pangs of guilt to leave you. Go to God. Quickly. Don't wait. Make haste to come to Him with this book open and say, Father, I am guilty of sin. You know my heart. You know my ways. My thoughts are ever before You. You know even my hidden faults. I'm guilty of sin and unbelief. I agree with Your Word. Cleanse me, Father. Cleanse me fresh in the blood of Jesus Christ. I receive it by faith. Not because I feel like I'm forgiven. Not because I feel better in my heart. But because He says it in this Word. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive. And not only to forgive. To cleanse. To cleanse your conscience. To restore you. To make you whole. For good works. Amen? I know these sermons often feel like more questions are raised than are answered, so again, we will seek to get really practical and fill in the gaps at Citigroup. But as we continue to think about living in this culture and how to engage it faithfully, this, what I've just described, is our message to it. Whether you're an expert in one of these fields or not, you have the solution for the modern self. God is just. You are guilty for sinning against Him. That you can be cleansed from your guilt. Turned from your sins. Trust in Christ. Be reconciled to God. This is our message. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank You so much for Your Son. We thank You that He came down into an evil world and died on a cross for those who hated Him. And that through the shedding of His blood, He has made many righteous. And that this comes freely by faith to all who would turn and believe in Christ and call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. Lord, I pray that if there are any in this room that are guilty of sin, guilty before a righteous God that You would save, that You would cleanse them, that Your blood would wash them. And I pray for all the Christians in this room who are carrying the pangs of guilt, that You would lead them to the fount of pardon. And that we could be free and cleansed in our consciences and purified. That we might go from this place and serve You and do many good works. that the world would see and give glory to our Father in Heaven. We pray it all in Jesus' name, Amen.