All right, well let's go ahead and we'll get started up this morning. Good to see everybody. We're all a couple pounds heavier, I think. Maybe, hopefully. And then we can worry about that later. This morning, we're gonna go back into our study of the Westminster Confession. I'm glad to be back in here. I've been bouncing around with our Youth Sunday School and whatnot, but it was good to catch up with what we've been studying here about good works. So, before we begin, let me open up with a word of prayer. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you that you do work within our lives through your Spirit. We thank you for the fruit of faith that we can see because of what you do within us. We pray that as we seek to live for you, that you would bless our efforts, that you would turn us from sin, and that we would bring more praise and glory to your name. We ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So where have we been? If you are like me and haven't been here for the other lessons of the chapter, we can go back and do a quick review of the key points. I gave a little one line summary of each of the previous five paragraphs in this chapter about good works. But maybe before we jump in, we could just talk about why this is so important anyway. Of course, historically, from the time of the Confession, you can think back to the Protestant Reformation and the really important emphasis that the Reformers had to clarify about the role of good works in our lives. We'll talk about some of that in the review in just a second, but of course that was a big shift from the Catholic view of works in the Christian life, in fact earning us some favor with God, and that's always been a struggle, not just at the time of the Reformation, it still remains a struggle today. Maybe In our modern setting, we may struggle with the sense of self-righteousness and legalism, thinking that our works somehow keep us in more favor with God than resting in Christ alone. So, that's a good message for us today, as it has been throughout the ages. The first paragraph of the chapter reminds us that good works are really defined by God's standards and by His Word, because if we put ourselves in that seat of judgment and This is a big temptation for all of us all the time, is to try to define things in our own terms. And what we may think is good, or maybe what society would claim to be good, elevating that to some ultimate standard. Well, the confession is good to remind us that good works are good as they are defined by God and in His Word. And certainly they're not subject to change then, they're not subject to the shifts of personal preference or the views and opinions of our culture, but certainly defined in the unchanging Word of God. The second paragraph really zeroes in on the important truth that good works are the fruit and evidence of faith. So maybe, I'm sure, at some point in the previous lessons, the famous Luther quote was brought into the lesson that we're saved by faith alone, but a faith that saves is never alone. It produces fruit. A true, genuine, saving faith will produce good works. The book of James, that's the big emphasis throughout the book, is that a genuine faith is one that is lived out, that we should see active fruit in our lives as true believers. Our third paragraph is about, really differentiates between two things. One, how are we enabled to do them? Are we able to do good works? And that question of ability was really landed on, we're only able to do them through the work of the Spirit. He enables us to do them. Ephesians 2, we'll go back to the book of Ephesians later today, but Ephesians 2 begins with, we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And so dead people, spiritually dead people, are not able to produce fruit themselves. We have to be quickened. We have to be regenerated. We have to be enlivened. And the Spirit, of course, enables us to do those good works. But We could maybe tip the scales and say, all right, well, let go and let God. I don't have to try. I don't need to put any effort in. The Spirit will just produce this miraculous fruit in my life, like the multiplying fish and loaves, maybe. I'll just stumble across obedience and good works. No, we're reminded we do have the responsibility to work it out, to work out our salvation. We have that responsibility to seek after and developing the fruit in our lives. And of course, remembering that this is only possible because of the Spirit's work within us. Paragraph four tells us that even the best things we do are never good enough. Now this morning, driving into church, there's an old Methodist church, Holbrook Methodist Church. It's right by the Holbrook campground if you're familiar with that. You guys are near there. But every so often, maybe once a year, I see this sign, and they had it up again today. God is not after perfection. And I think we know what they mean there, that certainly God reaches out and shows mercy to sinners. But then isn't Jesus the one who said in the Sermon on the Mount that unless our righteousness is as perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect, we cannot enter the kingdom. And so in God's judgment, our good works are never pure enough. And certainly that relates to the next point, which you looked at last time, that good works, they cannot earn us favor with God. Right? Because they fall short, because as Isaiah said, even our righteousness is like filthy rags to the Lord. We could never, you know, earn some kind of credit with God through our own efforts and through our own actions and obedience. So the whole scale of, well, you know, I offended the Lord with these things, but I did a few nice things too. I helped an old lady across the street or I did this thing or the other thing. we could, if we're playing that game, that's a major error, because it's built on the assumption that my goodness is good enough, that it could actually earn favor with God. And that, of course, historically was a big question in the Reformation, right? Those works of supererogation, that they could somehow stockpile some bonus points and brownie points with God by going out of your way to show kindness to your neighbor or some other good work, probably defined by man, going back to the first paragraph. that we could somehow, if maybe we lower the standard in our own mind, then those good works must be good enough. And so that's a good summary of where we've been, but let's look ahead this morning. So chapter 16, the first paragraph we're gonna consider today is paragraph six. Let's keep going and following on that last point that we could never earn God's grace and mercy. We can never earn pardon for sin. Let's read this paragraph. not as though they were in this life wholly unblameable and unreprovable in God's sight, but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections." There's a lot there. So our previous paragraph said, our works are never good enough that we could earn God's pardon and forgiveness. But then this paragraph says, oh, but he will accept and reward them, those things that which are sincere in our lives. And so the confession reminds us that as we seek to obey the Lord in Christ, that he does accept our efforts. As feeble as they are, as imperfect as they will remain, as though as we are accepted in Christ, God is pleased and does accept our sincere acts of obedience to him. Let's look at the key concept there, though. The key idea, going back to that paragraph, is that we are in Christ. Right? This is a theme. This is what the gospel is really all about. So this morning, we get some great reminders of the basic truths of why the gospel is so good, and how it works. We are united in Christ. Here's a couple of lines. They were in the paragraph we just read, but I wanted to pull them out separately. through Christ, being accepted through Christ in him and looking upon them, our good works in his son, he blesses us and accepts us and accepts our works. And so this should remind us maybe of a passage like Ephesians one. If you have your Bibles, you could go there or you could just read this short one up here. But Ephesians one is a great, introduction to start seeing this concept of being united with Christ in God's sight, right? The doctrine of justification that we are declared righteous, here we are as sinners, and yet if we are in Christ, we're declared righteous. We're also adopted as sons because we're in Christ, we're united with Him. Ephesians 1.4 says, I'll read it out of here, a little easier to catch it, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." Of course, this is a beautiful paragraph that goes on about being predestined in love and that over and over and over. You can underline it. I know my other Bible has all those in hymns, in Christ, in the beloved, underlined over and over because that's how we are indeed accepted. That's how we were predestined, adopted, justified, and even accepted that we would be holy and blameless before Him. This goes back to the subject of our works. right? That we can be considered blameless. That's justified, of course. It certainly doesn't mean, you know, Chris is perfect in all of his ways, but God accepts our sincere efforts to obey him as though indeed we are blameless. Chuck. and our works are accepted in Him. The implication is we can do works, but apart from the Lord, they're worthless. And then think of 2 Corinthians 12, nine, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And man, we're weak. As part of our sanctification, Oh yeah. Yeah. And so when we think of could God ever accept My feeble attempts to worship Him, or even our best efforts to worship Him as He would desire us to do so faithfully. We know there's sinful pride, perhaps, tainting that. We know all the distractions and weaknesses that may come into those efforts as well. And yet, when we do that in Christ, He does accept them. A great example of this would be prayer. I mean, this is, we pray in Jesus' name, in fact, right? There's that same concept of union with Christ, that it's not really, hey, God, hear me, because I'm Jimmy Friday, and I demand to be heard at your throne of grace. No, but Christ stands there as our mediator, and we can go to the Father, praying. Are our prayers perfect? Certainly not, right? Our prayers can be full of corruption, temptation, sin, and yet Christ brings them before the Father. And in the same way, all of our efforts, sincere efforts to worship and serve Him, to obey His laws, to live as would become a follower of Christ, that's brought before God's sight in Christ. Just as when Jesus is on the cross, we were in him in his death, right? So his death is applied to us and credited us, and his perfect righteousness is also ours as well. And so we can have some confidence that God accepts our sincere efforts. But what about this concept of blameless believers? You ever run across passages in the Bible like that? How about Job? We meet Job, he's this guy with no real background that we know of. There was a man in the land of us whose name was Job, and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. You ever wondered about that? Why does it say he's blameless? Does Job, was he a perfect guy? Of course not, right? There's only one of those. Jesus Christ is the only one who's righteous in and of himself, but that's really not what this statement is saying. It's actually a subtle reference that we'd have to unpack all of scripture. And we're just reminding ourselves of it this morning that to be considered blameless isn't because of our own righteousness. It's the righteousness of Christ that's been imputed to us. Here's another one. Noah. I like this lesson with the kids. I teach eighth graders, study our Old Testament in my class. We all, you know, as little kids, maybe you remember doing this too, like, oh, well, Noah was just a better guy. He was better than everybody else. He was obedient. He believed and, you know, God spared him because he was good and the rest of the world was evil. Well, that's not really true, although Genesis 6 says, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. And Noah walked with God. Well, how could the Bible say Noah is a righteous man? We do know what Noah did later. And certainly Noah wasn't a sinless man. Neither was Job. Neither is any man born of woman other than Christ. And so how do we make sense of that? Well, the gospel, right? Let's go back to this basic truth, Romans 117, right? For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous man shall live by faith. How is it that scripture says Job and Noah are blameless? It's not because, well, they were so squeaky clean and they were just, you know, your model human being that never did anything wrong. Noah obeyed and so God saved him. That's works righteousness, right? We need to guard ourselves from thinking that way and recognize the only reason scripture would say Job or Noah or any of us are blameless or righteous is because the righteous shall live by faith." Right? We're declared righteous through our faith in Christ and His righteousness being imputed to us. Chris? It's more like Noah was saved, therefore he obeyed. Yeah. That would be a great way maybe to teach our kids, right? Because that is a confusing one. It sounds, on the surface, it seems like, well, he's blameless. He's righteous. He's such a good man that God saved him. cart before the horse, right? He saves him. And of course, because he's saved, because he's a believer. He's declared righteous. He's blameless and righteous. Certainly not a sinless man. Certainly, like we ourselves, we fall short over and over again. Even our best attempts fall short. So it's a good reminder then of that basic gospel truth that as we consider the good works in our lives, our efforts to obey and honor God, that he does accept them. in Christ. And so that should free us then, we'll talk about some applications with this, but that should free us from the burden of I'm not good enough, I'm falling short, because if we do start to scrutinize, and we should examine ourselves before the Lord, but if we bear that burden of I have to present the perfect gift, we will always fall short. And so we can have great assurance that He will accept our efforts to honor Him in Christ, because Christ's righteousness is the perfect righteousness. We could go back, think about in the Old Testament all the times the prophets, my favorite one, one of them is in Isaiah when he tells the people, stop praying. God is putting his hands over his ears. He doesn't want to hear your prayers anymore. And they're just like, I don't understand. I thought we were supposed to go give these offerings. Don't bring me any offerings anymore. Maybe you've been there before in a human relationship, right? Maybe with your spouse or at some point, You know, somebody's like, just stop. Like, don't say those things because I want you to mean it. Right? And that's what the Lord tells the people in the Old Testament several times and reminds us. that just going through the motions, mere formalism of checking boxes off, you know, church attendance, did I pray enough today? Did I read my scripture today? He's not after just checking boxes. We should be seeking to serve him sincerely. But we should be reminded of all the times when God speaks these good words of even though our works fall short, he does indeed accept them. This is a great passage that came to mind. You may remember the parable of the talents. The master has three servants. He gives them each some talents to invest while he goes away. Two of the servants did well. Remember the one, the foolish one, buried it in the ground and earned nothing. And of course, that's really what that parable is focused on. But there is a nugget here for our study. with those first two servants that stewarded the gifts that God gave them. They did their best. Surely they could have done better if we wanted to dig into that parable detail by detail, but the Master comes and says, well done, good and faithful servant. And I know we would love to hear those words, and we can, again, in Christ. because even though our efforts fall short, in Christ, God accepts our sincere efforts to worship and serve Him. Of course, we're reminded that our salvation was even intended for us to produce good works. This is, I believe, in that Ephesians 2 passage, that we were dead in sin but made alive in Christ so that we would even then go and perform those good works. And he does call them good. Certainly, we're not perfect. Even as believers, we still fall short. Think of how Paul describes it in Romans 7 and 8, the flesh and the spirit. But even our best efforts fall short. But again, here he calls them, they are good works and we were created for them. Hebrews 11. The hall of faith, right? That great passage that is a reminder that it was by faith that Noah believed, right? It was by faith that all of these Old Testament saints were accepted by God. And then chapter 12, so we should run the same race of faith, fixing our eyes on Christ. But Hebrews 11 opens with this line, for by faith, the people of old gained approval. And Christ hadn't even come yet, right? But they had faith that He was coming, had faith in the promise of Christ, the Redeemer. And likewise, we can look back at what He's accomplished. We, by faith, can gain approval by our Creator, who does demand perfection and yet imputes it to us. by faith gives us that righteousness of Christ. And so there is good news, right? We don't have to bear that burden of, am I good enough to be accepted by God? If we approach God that way, one, we'll either go through the meat grinder of guilt and misery because we do fall short, or Maybe we would just gloss over our sins, turn a blind eye to our sin, try to redefine what goodness really is. Well, you know, it's good enough. And somehow lower the bar. But that's not the gospel, right? The gospel maintains he does demand perfection. but he gives us by faith the righteousness of Christ, the perfect righteousness of Christ. And that frees us then to live genuinely and sincerely before him. We can be thankful for God's grace because he does approve and accept our faithful efforts to serve him. Well, let's go on then, our next paragraph, see where we are on time. We're doing okay. Chapter seven, so shifting gears, this is the last paragraph of this chapter on good works. We look at what about the unregenerate? What about non-Christians and things that they do? That's a great subject. That's a great way to talk to people about the gospel, by the way, asking them about if they're good people, and do you ever do things that aren't good, and maybe just having that discussion. But let's read what the confession says. Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others, Yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the word, nor to a right end, the glory of God, they are therefore sinful and cannot please God or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God. Again, there's a lot there. Well, let's just jump in. What about non-Christians and good works? You know any non-Christians that do good things? Sure, John? There you go, right? You have folks that do amazing works of philanthropy. Yeah, and we're very thankful for them, right? Anybody ever been cared for by a doctor or nurse that's not a Christian, right? Maybe even the guy that changes the oil in your car, right? He does a good job. He does great work and doesn't really overcharge you. You think, wow, this is the kind of mechanic I need. Doesn't mean that he's doing it out of faithful service to Christ. Chuck, you had a comment? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And so this is an interesting topic to work through, just for wisdom in our own lives, because obviously we love the body of Christ, But there may be times when, and how about the flip side of the coin? We just talked about some examples of unbelievers that are really nice, kind, philanthropic, generous. Have you ever met a crabby old Christian? Right? Someone that's just hard to be around, maybe in your workplace, and they're like, this is a believer. And then my unbelieving coworker is great. I love spending time with them. And this guy's a jerk, right? Well, we should consider that ourselves. Maybe we're the crabby old Christian. Certainly, the unregenerate may indeed conform to God's law in many ways. They could, at least outwardly, I think the way the Confession said it, in the matter of the works, they're seemingly following in line. They're caring for the poor. They are kind to their neighbors, maybe even more kind than Christians are at times. So they may indeed conform to God's law, and they may benefit themselves and others through it. Like what if someone is, instead of being greedy and materialistic, and maybe just blowing all their money on parties and wild experiences, they carefully save and they save for their families and later generations and well, they're benefiting themselves. They're benefiting others by at least in the outward actions conforming to God's law in some sense. But we are reminded that as great as our neighbors and friends may be outwardly, that those works could never please God, just like our works could never please God, right? So we need to reiterate that and those discussions, if you have opportunity to talk to folks about the goodness of their good works and the goodness of our good works, really we all fall short if it were not for the righteousness of Christ. Wanda. Right. Yeah. And that's where you can have some good discussions if you try to get down to those foundations of how do we define what is good or evil anyway, right? If they're not a Christian, depends on their worldview, right? Maybe they're just kind of your secular atheist viewpoint that's pretty prominent now, just denying that there's any God at all. Well, then there's no standard of good or evil for anyone, which is a self-defeating worldview. Maybe we can poke and prod at that and help them to see where their worldview would fail. And certainly, yeah, how do you know, like if your friends and neighbors, coworkers, they have some concept of goodness, Well, hopefully, it lines up with God's law. We'll talk about that in just a minute of why that could happen. But also, we should guard ourselves from putting our trust in their character, and their quote, unquote, goodness as well, because apart from Christ, they've turned away from the very standard of goodness. Well, let's look at this one. Number four says, it's kind of a weird phrase that, let me go back real quick to the confession. It says, they cannot please God or make a man meet to receive grace from God. Some old language there, but it's kind of that view of like meeting God halfway. Well, if I'm good enough, if I'm trying, then God will give me grace and mercy. But that's just basically slapping a, you know, trying to rework the situation, but it still works righteousness that I have to produce the goodness. And then God would see, yes, indeed, I'm worthy of grace. Well, that whole concept of being worthy of grace, just ruined the concept of grace, right? That's the whole point, is that we don't deserve it. That's what makes grace grace, is that it's undeserved. We are unworthy recipients. And so nothing we could ever do or our unregenerate friends and neighbors, nothing any man could ever do would put them in a position to say, well, now I deserve God's grace and mercy. whether you wanna go back to like semi-Pelagianism or any of these other views, right? There's nothing new under the sun. Maybe even in our own hearts, we may have some sense of this that, well, I'm really trying God, I'm trying to earn your favor. Well, that would, we should recognize our works could never do that. The same is true for unbelieving friends. And then there's the last line of that paragraph. which is a good reminder but a hard truth at the same time. Failing to pursue good works. What if you're the unbeliever who's not seeking even to do the good things? Maybe it's the mechanic that is out to just line his pockets with work that's not even necessary or doesn't even do the work, charges you anyway. Well, failing to pursue good works, everyone, believers, unbelievers alike, everyone does fall under God's perfect judgment. And so saying, well, I'm not a Christian, so I don't have to bear the burden of God's law, certainly doesn't excuse a non-Christian from God's judgment, right? That he is displeased when they don't seek after those good works. Right. That's a term I've heard, like moral pagans, you know, people that are morally stand-up citizens, right? They do good things in human terms anyway. All those good things are still sinful. Arthur Blank's philanthropic, like building a children's hospital, which is gonna bless many children and families, but tainted with sin. Maybe there was some selfish pride. Maybe there's a sense that he could, you know, earn some points with God that way. I don't know. I don't know his heart, but God does, and I know my heart, that even if, as a believer, if we do those things, still tainted with sin, right? And still, if we were just standing in our own merits, God would say sinful and be displeased with even our best efforts. And that's why it's so important that we go back to the gospel. How is it that we can stand before God's judgment? The basic facts of the gospel, that as we stand there, we are in Christ, right? That when he looks upon us, he sees the perfect righteousness of Christ and not our filthy rags. Well, Let's answer this question. How is it even possible, right? How is it possible that non-Christians do good works? And we should be thankful for a few of these basic facts. The law is written on their hearts. Romans 2, I think I have the quote here. The question that Paul's working through in Romans 2 is, all right, there's people, the Gentiles, that did not have the law. When we were on our family reunion this last week, lots of members of that family are not believers, and we did the little light tour through Calloway Gardens, and the first thing that you see is a lighted-up cross on a pond. It's great. And a little four-year-old twins, one of them goes, look, a T, right? No concept, right? So there are sad, I mean, that one has stuck with Amber and me, like, oh my goodness. Like, they just thought that was a T. people without the law, but they do instinctively the things of the law, right? How is it that folks who have no concept of God's Word, which is more and more prevalent, right? That's one of the big shifts I've seen in teaching for the last almost 25 years is that kids are blank slates. Even kids from a Christian home are blank slates, right? They come in to middle school and may or may not know David and Goliath, right? Basic Bible stories and truths about God and truths about man. People without the law, they still instinctively do the law, right? Even maybe your most God-hating atheist out there doesn't just lie, cheat, and steal every minute of his day, right? He may be a pretty kind person and a good neighbor. So how is that possible? Well, they show that the work of the law is written in their hearts and their conscience testifying and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. So this is good news that we all, whether we're Christians or not, we all bear his image. And we all have his law stamped in our hearts. Even as Romans 1 says, there may be folks suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. They may be trying to deny and say, I don't believe in God. I don't believe any of this stuff about the gospel is true or real. I don't need God. I don't need his word. I certainly don't need his laws. But then it's stamped on their hearts, right? They still have a sense of right and wrong. They still think that murder is evil. Why is that? Because they are indeed made in his image. And that law is written on all of our hearts, which is good news. And we could just include that in this bigger concept. God is gracious even to unbelievers. Now this isn't saving grace, right? But we call it common grace. That God shows grace. He gives undeserved blessings to all people. Right? Whether we consider the question of in scripture that's brought out, right? Doesn't it rain on the righteous and the wicked? Doesn't God bless all people everywhere in many different ways? Of course. But one way he does that is by restraining evil. Here's a great quote from John Murray. He did a bigger work on the subject of common grace. And he says this, God places restraint upon the workings of human depravity and thus prevents the unholy affections and principles of men from manifesting all the potentialities inherent in them. He prevents depravity from bursting forth in all its vehemence and violence. God is good to protect us even from ourselves. Because think of those potentialities inherent within humanity. Because our hearts are selfish and evil, we are dead in sin by nature, children of wrath. but we're not as bad as we could be, right? We do believe in total depravity, that sin has affected every part of our being, but we don't believe in utter depravity. We don't believe that we're just as evil as we possibly could be. That's only because of God's grace, though, that he restrains evil. He uses things. Scripture talks a lot about the governing authorities and why God gives us governing authorities. to restrain evil, right? Even if those authorities, like the Romans, they weren't Christian civil authorities in their day, but God gave them those civil authorities to limit the spread of evil in society. And so God is good to stamp his law in every man's heart, restraining evil. And that It's something we can certainly bless him for and thank him for. Let's look at a few applications then. So wrapping this whole subject up in our remaining time, I know I saw musicians leaving already, but let's jump in and do some simple applications here. One, we should be seeking to grow in our faithfulness and pursuit of good works, bearing fruit. That does, as one of the paragraphs, I think it was four, reminded us that we have a responsibility. Of course, it's the Spirit's work that produces the fruit. He gives us the ability, but we also have a responsibility to, in humble reliance upon the Spirit, seek after good works in our lives. It's one of our church vows, right? Do you promise in humble reliance upon the Spirit to live, I forget the whole thing, but to live as becomes the followers of Christ, that we are to seek after faithful obedience. And of course, Christian liberty means we're freed from that impossible burden of being good enough. Right? That we don't seek after good works in order to earn God's favor. Like Noah already had it. He was blameless. He was righteous. The same could be said of any believer in Christ. That in Christ, it's blameless. So that should free us from the burden of guilt to then seek after him all the more with gratitude in our hearts, grateful obedience, not as slaves to the law. Well, we are confident in Christ's righteousness then. What about when we struggle with self-righteousness? Really, we're becoming slaves in a sense, right? We're putting our confidence in, am I good enough? Well, I'm better than Bob over here, right? And maybe in comparison to other people, we start this little scale of measuring ourselves up compared to everyone else. But that would be putting your confidence in you. And the more we scrutinize it, the more we realize, uh-oh, I'm falling behind. Uh-oh, I'm sinking fast because I'm not living up to the standard, whatever standard we've created. But we can have confidence and freedom in Christ's righteousness alone. That should give us great assurance. We talked about this one a little bit earlier, but Think of the gift we've been given, right? Given the Holy Spirit, all the fruits of faith, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, the fruit of the Spirit that God gives us, but we're also to be good stewards of it. Remember the little line, well done, good and faithful servant. In the context, they had been given gifts just like we have. and they invested them, and they were faithful to steward those gifts. And so we should too, right, actively pursuing righteousness, working out our salvation before the Lord. We're called to do that, and we should faithfully seek to grow in righteousness. How about another one? How about praising God for Preventing evil from spreading is worse than it is in the world around us. We can delight that not only has God been gracious to us in the gospel, but that he is even gracious to those around us who don't know Christ. And then, of course, I think our last one is, that should motivate us to really share the good news with others, right? Talking to our friends and neighbors, finding opportunities, because we all have a sense of good works, right? Even the non-Christian has standards of good, and they would judge themselves and others according to those standards. But we can use this topic as a great springboard into talking about the gospel, because our confidence is not in being goody two-shoes, right? Maybe you've experienced that, maybe in your workplace. Have you ever been like the one Christian in a group of people? And they're like, oh, well, grace is just, pray for me. I've heard that one before. Hey, will you pray for me? Because they feel like they're not even good enough to pray on their own. Like, well, you're a good person, and so you can pray for me, because God would certainly hear your prayers. Oh, no. Let's remind them, I'm a sinner saved by grace. And that common grace, though that extends to everyone, His saving grace can be found in Christ. and that we can call others to know him as savior as well. Well, let's go ahead and close. I think we're about out of time. Let's close with prayer. Father, we do thank you for working in us through your spirit. We thank you for the truth of the gospel, that though we are sinners, we can stand before you blameless in Christ because we're clothed with his righteousness. just as he was clothed with our sinfulness and our guilt on the cross, we stand before you with his righteousness. Father, we pray that you would motivate us to seek after good works more and more day by day, not in a prideful way, certainly not seeking to earn favor with you, but simply as a response to the gospel, that we would gratefully devote ourselves to obedience to your word, to your law, that we would find delight in it and not just submit ourselves to it as slaves. Father, we pray that as we go to worship, that you would accept our worship, not because we deserve that, but because we come to you in Christ, our faithful Savior. It's in his name we pray. Amen.