We take the Bibles in terms of the book of Galatians, again, we're in chapter six. Galatians, chapter six. So we continue on. Talking about the crux of the Christian's commission, which is the restoration of the sinner, we're going to begin to talk a little bit about the believers self-watch as well. Let's begin by reading the text together again this morning, Galatians, chapter six. Verses 1-6. Scripture says, Brethren, if any man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he in actuality nothing. He is fantasizing about himself. He is deceiving himself. But let each one examine his own work and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load. Would you join me in a word of prayer? Father, we come before your Word this morning. We are thankful for it. We are thankful that in your Word you have revealed to us all that we need for life and godliness. Father, I thank you for the song that we just sang, that it is on the merits of Christ and on Christ alone that we stake our eternal salvation. As the psalmist said in Psalm 16, my goodness is nothing apart from you. Father, there's nothing good in any one of us to commend us to you. It is Christ and Him alone. Father, today, as we once again look into these verses, I pray that your Spirit would open our understanding, that we could not only understand ourselves and our own faults, but that, Father, we would understand how that we can be involved and more effective in helping to do the work of restoration when you give us that opportunity. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. That restoration to fellowship is summarized well in the words of David's prayer in Psalm 51, when David is praying unto God after his repentance from his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. And he says, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. And David exclaims in that prayer, he says, A broken and a contrite heart, These, O God, you will not despise. And so we examine the concept of restoration, seeing it as the central teaching of God's Word, the restoration of the sinner, all for the glory of God. Because the greatest thing in it all is to bring glory to God through the restoration of the sinner. I was, in my scripture reading this week, I was thinking, you know, there was really no more beautiful story in all of the Scripture of God's sovereign hand in the restoration of sinners than in the story of Joseph and his brethren in the book of Genesis. Those brothers were filled with hatred and jealousy and it rose up in the ten to scheme and to come up with a diabolical plot to try to destroy the lad Joseph. Eventually he is sold into slavery in Egypt. And God preserves him through many bleak episodes in Pharaoh's prison to eventually rise to where he is a prince in Pharaoh's court. And God used a famine to providentially drive the brethren to Joseph's side and in the end to restore them to peace and fellowship with one another. After the death of their father Jacob, grieving and in fear. They come to Joseph one more time seeking his forgiveness. And I want us to listen again to the words of comfort that Joseph speaks to them after having been reconciled to them. He says, Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you intended evil against me, but God intended it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. Now, therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones. And he comforted them. And he spoke kindly to them. What a beautiful story of restoration. And so in the scriptures we've been studying, we see the crux of the Christian's commission is this work of restoration. You know, I was thinking and studying again this week, and I was thinking how in reality, one entire chapter of Jesus's gospel teaching in the book of Matthew is devoted to this theme. And I want us to turn there for a few minutes this morning. I want us to go over to Matthew chapter 18. Turn over to Matthew chapter 18 as we think of these concepts of restoration. We're not going to take all of our time with this, but we need to look quickly at this chapter this morning. This entire chapter is focused on the subject of forgiveness. Just like 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is what we call the love chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is the resurrection chapter, Matthew chapter 18 is really the forgiveness chapter. Beginning in the first verses, the Lord begins to talk about forgiveness. And He establishes in the beginning of the chapter the need for forgiveness. In fact, if you look in verse 7, He says in Matthew 18, verse 7, Woe to the world because of offenses. The word offenses there could easily be translated with the concept of sin. Something that makes someone to stumble. He says, Woe to the world because of offenses. For offenses must come. But woe to that man by whom the offense comes. If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And so he establishes in these first 14 verses the need for forgiveness. Secondly, we see in these verses, that really beginning in verse 15 and going to verse 20, he really delineates the means of securing forgiveness. And in this passage of scripture, we have that well-known, kind of famous, three-step process that Jesus teaches, where he says to us here in Matthew chapter 18, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. Secondly, he says, if he will not hear you, take with you one or two others that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. If he refuses to hear them, then tell it to the church. If he refuses to hear even the church, let him be to you like a heathen or a tax collector. And then he goes on, he talks about binding and loosing. He goes on and talks about prayer in the church, and how if two or three agree on earth at touching anything, and they agree in prayer before the Father, they have that request that they have sought from the Father. And then he makes this famous statement in verse 20, for wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them. That is almost what we would think of as the church body in its nugget form. Down to two or three. And then he goes on, and later in this chapter, he illustrates the importance of forgiving others. And he begins this in a parable in verse 21, going on to the end of the chapter, where he just tells a parable about two debtors, one who owes an astronomical debt and the other a mid-sized debt. And the man who owes the astronomical debt goes to the creditor, who is his master. He says to him, would you please forgive me? I do not have the wherewithal to pay this debt. And the master freely forgives him. And then that debtor, who is now forgiven, goes and finds one of his fellow servants who owes him a little bit of money. And he says, pay me now or I'll cast you into prison. And the Lord is showing us the unjustness of if we are forgiven all of our debt by the Father, if we hold a debt against our brother, that is totally contradictory with a life transformed by grace. And so Jesus even taught on that in Matthew chapter six, didn't he? When he says, if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father in heaven forgive you. Now, before we go back to Galatians chapter six, I want to take a brief hiatus and run through church history for a moment. And I want us to think about some concepts having to do with forgiveness and how the church is to restore a repentant sinner. You know, it's very important we understand church history. Next to the Scriptures and your study of Scripture, you should work to learn church history. It is important we understand the battles and the issues that have come along in the history of the church. There was a guy named Augustine. We know him as Saint Augustine. He is many times called Augustine of Hippo. He lived in the 300s A.D. So we're going back to kind of the time of the patristic fathers. We're thinking of a time when the church is just moving out of persecution and into a time of tolerance under Constantine. And so they're in a transition. And this is the time in which Augustine lives. He is involved in dealing with a multitude of heresies that have crept up in the early church. We're going to deal with one of them this morning. There's three of them that he dealt with and he wrote on extensively. You know, you can still read the writings of St. Augustine and I would commend them to you. The confessions that he wrote, the city of God, in many ways, St. Augustine is really one of the fathers of the Reformation because many of his teachings really led Martin Luther into the book of Romans and eventually to the recapturing of the gospel of grace through faith alone. There was a guy named Manicus, and we call it Manicheanism, which was one of the big issues in the church that day, which was really the predecessor of what we think of as rationalism. And this guy taught that you could come to know God through your intellect. And Augustine confronted that and he said, no, if you want to understand the scriptures, you must believe first. And if you believe first, then your understanding will be open. There was a guy named Pelagius, we call it Pelagianism, which is still rampant in the church today. Pelagius was teaching a denial of inherited sin from Adam, and he really was the one who began to employ a teaching that man, through his own ability, could save himself. And there's still Pelagian teaching in the church today. There was another group, and this is where we're going to look for a few minutes this morning, called Donatism, or the Donatist movement. And I want to explain it to you because it's very pertinent to what we're talking about with restoration this morning. The time of the Donatist movement was right at the close of the greatest persecution that the church faced. There were 10 great persecutions in the first 300 years of church history, basically beginning with Nero. Diocletian was the last one. And then shortly after that, Constantine ushers in a period of tolerance towards Christianity, which brought a whole different set of problems into the church. But anyway, this was the time of great persecution. During that time, there were bishops in the church and priests who, in order to save their own neck, recanted their faith and turned the scriptures over to the civil authorities to be burned. That's a big problem, isn't it? We would call that probably apostasy. This brought up a whole set of problems in the church. What do we do with this? Because as soon as persecution ended, what do you think those bishops did? We'd like to have our church membership back, thank you. We would like to be reinstated to our pulpits. The Donatists saw this as a huge sacrilege against Christ. And they were working devotedly for a pure church. In fact, the emphasis of the Donatist movement was the purity of the church. That was the emphasis. And so what the Donatists were saying If you were baptized by a bishop who apostatized, your baptism is now invalid. And other things like that. And they began to say that if the sacraments were administered by someone who apostatized, then those sacraments were invalid. And so this brought up a whole set of issues in the church that Augustine begins to deal with. And here's the interesting issue, because this is where it goes. Let's go together to about 335 A.D. to a church in Carthage, for instance. And let's sit in the pews. And you come in this morning and you're a woman and you maybe have four or five kids with you. And about 15 years ago, your husband was fed to the lions. And you come as a broken family. And now all of a sudden in comes, through the same back doors, a family that is whole. And there's mom and dad and there's kids and they're all together worshiping the Lord in the same church. And the only reason dad is there is because he chose to recant his faith. This led to a... Can you imagine being in that scenario? Seriously? This led to an interesting scenario in the church. Can someone who apostatizes to the degree of recanting their faith be restored to fellowship in Christ? And if they are to be restored to fellowship in Christ, how is the church to do it? Do we just say, the guy comes in, he says, I'm sorry, I recanted Christ, I repent of my sins, would you forgive me? He even does it publicly. Does the church just say, well, that's good enough, come on back. You're open to communion and you are a part of the fellowship. What does the church do? And so this raised a very interesting question in the church. And that's why this is important for us today. How does the church bring repentant sinners back into its fellowship? Now, this is what this led to. If you go through the Dark Ages, really up until the time of Martin Luther, When the Reformation happens, this is what happens because of that. There are some heretical outgrows that come about because of how the church dealt with that scenario. The first thing is this. It led to classifications of sin. If you know anything about Roman Catholicism, you've maybe read things written by Roman Catholicism, you will know that in Roman Catholicism, as an outgrowth of this period of time, there is teaching concerning venial sin and mortal sin. What is a venial sin? A venial sin is a minor sin. A mortal sin is a sin that will take you to hell. Now let me ask you, my friend, are there any minor sins with God? You break the law in one point, you broke it in what? All. But this led to that idea. And I want to read you some, if you ever want to know some things about Catholicism, kind of from the writings of a Catholic scholar, I would commend you this book. This is a book called, Why Do Catholics Do That? Why do Catholics do that? It is written as kind of a primer on the Roman Catholic Church for new Catholics. So if you were going to go and take a Sunday school class perhaps, and you were new to the Catholic faith, they may use this book. I had a Roman Catholic once tell me to read this book. It would really help me to understand Catholicism. I want to read to you what they teach about venial and mortal sin. It's not very long, but I think it's pertinent when we think about how we are to restore brethren. This is on page 52. It has to do with the cycles of redemption. Listen to what it says. Anyway, hell is for mortal sin. But there are degrees of offenses. And then he quotes from Saint Jerome. He says, Saint Jerome summed it up like this. There are venial sins and there are mortal sins. It is one thing to owe 10,000 talents. It is another thing to owe but a farthing. We shall have to give an accounting for every idle word, no less than for adultery. But to be made to blush and to be tortured are not the same thing. If we entreat. Now, this is an amazing statement. If we entreat or we pray in the confessional, if we entreat for lesser sins, we are granted full pardon. But if for greater sins, it is difficult to obtain our request. Is it difficult to obtain that request for a great sin from the blood of Christ? No, it is not. There is a great difference between one sin and another. If you die with some of these minor sins on your soul, or with your sins forgiven but unatoned for, that is what purgatory is for. Okay, so that's the teaching on classifications of sin. Now here's another thing that grew out of this. This also led to a belief that we would think of as kind of a penance-based forgiveness. Now, this comes out of this idea of classifications of sin. So we have a confessional and we go and we make a confession to a priest who is the vicar of Christ, standing in the place of Christ. And when we do that, we are then given specific acts of penance. to atone for that sin. And they may include the purchasing of indulgences and things like that. And so it is a sacramental system where there are things that we can do that will atone for our sin. Now, I want you to listen to some more things that the fellow writes on page 49 when he talks about penance. He says, you can make up for your sins and take your licks for them, either in this life or in the next. In this life, there are sacramental penancies, nowadays usually just token acts like the familiar five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys, that may be prescribed after reconciliation for remission from punishment. And then he says this, in the old days, the really grave sins, the ones that get you on talk shows today, used to get public penance involving things like sackcloth and ashes, standing in front of the church for a few weeks with a sign around your neck detailing your sins, or walking to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and back. Even today, now this is where it gets interesting, even today the church offers guidelines for optional sacrifices and penances too. Almsgiving is as important now as it ever was, and so is fasting. You can turn your need for penance to good account with things like giving up a meal during Lent and sending money that you have to foreign missions that use it to feed the truly hungry. In fact, seasons like Lent and Advent were set up to remind us of the need for acts of penance to serve as punishment for sins and acts of charity to make up for them. So what are they teaching? You do something as a penance for your sin or you do something good to kind of buy God's favor. And then he makes this remarkable statement. Basically, the idea is to do good things to balance out all the bad as well as avoiding more bad. That's the system. Now, let's ask ourselves a question for a few minutes this morning. When we think of restoration of the sinner, especially in the fellowship of Christ, is this what the Bible teaches? Does the Bible teach a sacramental system of doing things in order to win God's favor or to be restored to fellowship in the church? How does the church bring a repentant sinner back into its fellowship? I want to just show you some verses in 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Perhaps you want to go there so you can see the larger context. 2 Corinthians chapter 2. We don't know exactly what the situation was. You can go to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. And let's just look there together, 2 Corinthians chapter 2. But the church has had a man in its midst that has committed some sin. Many people tie this to the same man in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that it had in a moral relationship with his father's wife. We don't know for sure. But I want you just to notice what Paul tells the church to do for this man. He says in verse 5, if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but all of you to some extent, not to be too severe. In other words, he says, this very public sin has impacted the entire body. And then he says, the punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man. The discipline that was placed upon him to bring him to restoration when they turned him over to Satan, that he would learn not to blaspheme after they had walked through the steps in Matthew chapter 18. And so they have walked through the steps of Matthew chapter 18. And this man is now repentant of his sin. And notice what it says. This punishment, this discipline which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient. so that, on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and to comfort him, lest, perhaps, such a one would be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore, I urge you, reaffirm your love to him. For to this end I also wrote that I might put you to the test whether you will be obedient in everything. Now, whom you forgive anything, I also forgive For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices." Now, when Martin Luther finds the great Reformation teaching in the Scripture, those men really restored the concept that it is through grace alone, through our faith alone, upon the merit of Christ, That the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner. And thus our sins are cancelled and they are removed from us. And so as David says in Psalm 103, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. And so it is upon that repentance that the man is restored. Not by acts of merit that he can do. It is by grace through faith alone. And I would just draw your attention to one story that Jesus told in Luke chapter 15. The story of the prodigal. He leaves the father's house. He goes and he lives a prodigal lifestyle. He spends all the father's inheritance on riotous living. And he gets himself into so much carnage from sin that eventually he is eating the husks which the pigs are eating in the pig pen. And while he is sitting in the pigpen, he comes to himself, the Scripture says, and he says to himself, I will return and I will say to my father, I have sinned. And so he gets up out of the pigpen and he runs for home. And the father sees him a long way off and the father runs to him. He throws his arms around him. He kisses him on the neck. He brings him into the house. He puts the best robe on him. He says to everyone in the house, Slay the fatted calf. Let's have a feast for the one that was lost is now found. And the elder brother has the response of perhaps what some had in the church in the 300s. Let's turn the screw a little bit more. And he goes out and pouts, doesn't he? But is that the biblical response? It's not. Forgiveness is on the merits of Christ. And so when we think about forgiveness, let's go back to Galatians chapter 6, but let's just briefly talk about forgiveness and some concepts concerning forgiveness. Because all of us are called upon to forgive. And I would even go one step further and say all of us in our life will have the necessity of being forgiven, won't we? We will need to be forgiven, for we will wrong others. So when we think of forgiveness, there are two words in the New Testament which really bring out the concept of forgiveness. The first one simply means to cancel a debt. It's the Greek word leuo, which simply means to release. It is illustrated well in the Old Testament with the concept of the year of Jubilee, how on the 50th year, all the debts were to be canceled. in the land of Israel. And it was a teaching concerning forgiveness. And so when we think of forgiveness, when God forgives our sin, he is really loosing us of a debt that we owe to him. We owe to him our life for we have sinned and the wages of sin is death. And yet he looses us from that debt on the merits of Christ. Secondly, The second concept in the New Testament concerning forgiveness is the word to send away or sometimes we could think of it as the word to banish. And it really is illustrated well in the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement with the scapegoat. How that on the Day of Atonement, there were two goats that were taken from the herds and on one of them was laid all the sin of the nation. On the other, the one was sacrificed and his blood was anointed on the altar in the Holy of Holies. But the other one, the nation's sins were placed upon it. And that goat was taken outside the camp and it was banished and it could no longer return. And if anybody found it in the wilderness, they had to stay away from it because it had a mark on it. And it was then the scapegoat. It was sent away. These picture forgiveness. It is the cancelling of a debt that we owe to God or to others. And it is when God chooses to send that sin far from His presence and remember it against us no more. When we think of forgiveness, I think it is important for us to realize That forgiveness is not a passive forgetting. We've all heard that saying sometimes, right? Forgive and forget. That is only true if we are talking in an active sense. That we choose to forget. We choose to hold it no longer against us. But we don't just forget things, do we? We only forget things that we want to remember. But we don't forget things when someone's done a wrong against us. Those things we can remember easily, can't we? And so it is not a passive forgetting, but it is an active verb of sending something away. And essentially forgiveness is when we surrender our right to get back at someone else when they've hurt us. That's really what forgiveness is. We're saying it's over, it's done, it's released, it's cancelled. So whenever there's a restoration, there are two active parties. The one who is being forgiven, and then there is the one who is being forgiven, and the one who does the forgiving. And we are to do this work, it says in Galatians 6 verse 1, we are to do this work of forgiveness gently, aren't we? He says, brethren, if a man is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual, that is the believer, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. As you consider yourself, lest you also would be tempted. We are to do it with gentleness. We've already talked to that concept, and humility as we look to ourself, and we begin to talk, and these really coalesce with verses 3 through 6, where he talks about the believer's self-watch. We are to look to self. Now, I want us to consider two truths as to why we are to consider ourselves. When we think of this reality that when we have to confront someone else, whether it's your children because of sin in your home, and you're dealing with disobedience amongst your kids, or it's another believer that you know and you've seen them going astray and you need to talk to them, and you want to help that person, we are to approach it in gentleness, considering ourselves. Let's consider two truths as to why. The first reason is this, if I am honest. If I am honest with myself, I know I have fallen in the past. Right? If I am honest with myself, I know I have fallen in the past. I'm reminded of two verses. One is in Psalm 25, verse 7, when David prays this prayer. He says in the 25th Psalm, Lord, do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. Remember me according to Thy mercy. You see, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that we have fallen many times in the past. And many times the Lord has dealt with us graciously. I'm also reminded in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 21, it's an interesting scenario that Solomon sets up. He says, also, do not take to heart everything you hear. Everything you hear that people may say about you. Lest when you're walking by the window, you hear your servant curse you. For many times also, you yourself know You have cursed others too." He says, don't lay it to heart. Don't hold it against the person. Just forgive and let it go. The second truth is, if I am realistic, if I am realistic with myself, I know I will fall in the future. Right? That's what he's getting out of those verses. If I am realistic, I know I will fall in the future. It is amazing to me to think that God knew our entire life, before it began, He knew everything that we would do, both good and bad, prior to our salvation and post-salvation. And when Christ died, He died for it all. And tomorrow, when you sin, or I sin, it's not a surprise, and He has to go back and look in the books and think, did I pay for that one on the cross? He knew it all. And so if I am realistic with myself and understand myself, I know I will fall in the future. Therefore, I need to be gentle and considerate as I seek to restore others. In James chapter 3, verse 2, the scripture says this, For we all stumble in many ways. If any man does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man and he is able to bridle the entire body. And so, Galatians 6 tells us we are to be actively engaged in works of restoration. As we talked about last week, we talked about cleaning up the mess, didn't we? Remember that? Cleaning up the mess. Helping people clean up the mess. And it's so true, you know this. There are many creative ways today where we can make a mess of our lives, isn't there? There's a lot of creative ways to do that. And we are to go alongside people and to help them in cleaning up that mess. There is so much carnage of sin around us. And we are to be means of restoration. Now the means of helping to heal the hurt is in verse 2. Let's look at it quickly and then we'll close. In verse 2 he says this, bear one another's burdens and by so doing fulfill the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ? Jesus said in the upper room, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another. This is my commandment, that you love one another. And so he says when we bear one another's burdens, we are fulfilling that command of Christ, that we love one another. This is the work that each of us is to do, to work for the restoration of each other. In Romans 15, 14, I showed you this verse last week, Paul said, I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you, he's talking to all of them, all of you are full of goodness. You are filled with knowledge and you are able to admonish one another. And so, like I said last week, this work is not just the job of Pastor Matt or me or even the deacons. This is a work for all of us. It begins in our homes when we work to restore our children, when they fall into sin. It works in amongst us when we know each other in the body and we seek to restore and to gently bring people along. There are three means of doing this. I'll give them to you quickly. Lost the slide so I'll have to give you all the points. The first way that we bear another's burden is we are to do it with compassion. We are to do it with compassion. And Jesus is our example here, isn't He? When He saw the crowd, it says, He saw them just as they were, broken and hurt. And He saw them as sheep who had no shepherd. And He had compassion upon them. And God would have us to have compassion on other people. If someone comes to you, maybe it's one of your children, or maybe it's another one in the pews, and they know you well, and maybe you're kind of a mentor to them, and they come to you and they say to you, man, I'm really struggling in this area of my life. I've got some temptation that's just hitting me in the face. Don't go. You do? I can't believe you're struggling with that. That's not compassion, is it? That's mockery. Is that person going to talk to you again? No. You say, brother, can I pray with you? Maybe I haven't dealt with that exact temptation, but I've sure dealt with this one. And you come alongside and you support him with compassion. Secondly, I would say this. I also think it is important as we work with people in our midst that there is a level of confidentiality. Now, of course, we know that that's not always the case. And of course, we know that there are times that other people need to be brought into scenarios. Maybe there's some criminal activity or some other thing and there needs to be something dealt with. We're not talking about that. But by and large, when someone comes and talks to you, you don't then go to small group and say, I know Johnny's not here, but Johnny really has a prayer request and he's struggling with this sin. Do we do that to each other? We should not. There should be a level of confidentiality. When someone comes to you and shares with you a problem in their life, a struggle in their life, that stays with you unless they say to you, you're free to tell someone else. You know, if people think that you're going to blab their deepest hurts to other people, you just killed your effectiveness, didn't you? You killed it. There should be things. in our lives that people tell us, that in essence go to our graves with us. Because they don't belong to other people to know. The third thing I would say is we must counsel them. So we want to treat people with compassion. We want to deal in confidence with people. We want to counsel them. And when we counsel people, the first thing that we need to think of is, is our counsel biblical? Right? 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it is profitable. My friend, Scripture is sufficient to deal with any problem that any one of us may be struggling with. And if you think of the counselor's tool bag, just like if you're a mechanic and you have a toolbox, Or if you're a carpenter and you have a tool bag, and you have tools in your bag, the counselor's tool bag is the Word of God. And he goes in there and he pulls out the book of Proverbs. And he shows the person who's struggling with sin what the Proverbs say. Or he goes to the book of Romans and he looks in Romans chapter 6 of how we can have victory over sin. And we take people to the Scripture. We need to be practical. We need to be incarnational. In other words, we need to show people how to do it. We need to walk along them, we need to talk along them and show them how to get it done. And so we are to bear one another's burdens and thus by doing fulfill the law of Christ. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this time when together we could come before your throne and study Your Word. Father, we thank You for Your Spirit who opens our understanding. And Father, we just pray that something that was in the message today would have struck a chord in each one of our lives. Father, that we would be more effective in helping our children, that we'd be more effective in helping our brethren and sisters here in the congregation, that we would be effective in our community. When we see people who are broken under the curse and bondage of sin, that we would come alongside to them and offer them the Word of God as a balm to their soul and point them to Jesus Christ. Father, may we be like D.L. Moody who once said, there but by the grace of God go I. Father, may we never think of ourselves as better than someone else. May we never be like the Pharisee who said, I thank thee God that I am not like so and so. Father, may we be like that tax collector, that publican, who would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, and he beat upon his breast, and he said, Father, be merciful to me, the sinner. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.