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Now, yesterday we were considering together the individual spirituality, and we considered how important it is, however much progress we may have made in that direction, from time to time and constantly to return to the gospel, to make sure that our advances in spirituality are in fact in accord with the gospel and are not in any way compromising its truth. In particular, that will mean constantly coming back to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the key to all spirituality. We shall never get behind or beyond him to any other vision of God. And the exhortation of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians rings still in our ears. If you would go forward in spirituality, the secret is to come back to Christ. As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him and not outside him. Tomorrow, God willing, we shall consider life in the church and our activities in the church and the attitudes that we express in our fellowship with one another and with the Lord in the church. There too, we shall see the urgent exhortation of the apostles that we govern our activities in the church, we control them, and if need be, critique them by the foundational principles of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, however, with God's help, I would like us to consider this same theme back to the gospel, but in the area of our Christian freedom. And for that purpose, let us read briefly in the New Testament, first of all, in the epistle by the Colossians, uh, to the Galatians, the epistle to the Galatians, and chapter five. uh And with that merry interlude, let us back to serious things. Now we hear the word of the Lord from the epistle to the Galatians in chapter five. Galatians chapter five and verse one: With freedom did Christ set us free. Stand fast, therefore. Be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage. And secondly, the verses in two Peter chapter two. Two Peter chapter two. Beginning in verse eighteen: For uttering great swelling words of vanity, they entice in the lusts of the flesh by lasciviousness those who are just escaping from them that live in error, promising them liberty while they themselves are bondservants of corruption. For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. And God give us good understanding of his word. It seems to me, and I hope you agree with me, that one of the chief glories of the gospel of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is the multi-splendid freedom into which that gospel introduces us. Record it in your heart again this morning with thanksgiving to God and rejoice. Freedom from the chains of the guilt of past sins. The very word for forgiveness in Greek, meaning release from the terrible chain of guilt that bound us to our past. Freedom and boldness upon forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Freedom of direct access unto the Father, and glorious encouragement with boldness to draw near and pass through the veil into the holiest of all, and lay our hands by the throne of God. Freedom to come to Christ without e- to God without any intermediary, save only our blessed Lord Jesus. Freedom promised, and the promise continually being fulfilled of, of the, from the domination by sin, with a glorious and stimulating encouragement, sin shall not have dominion over you and keep you down, for you are not under law, but under grace. Freedom from the fear of death. Seeing our blessed Lord Jesus died, that through dying he might destroy him that had the power of death, deliver them who all their living time were subject to bondage through fear of death. Just let me pause at that moment to make myself clear. Sometimes we preachers are too rash in our terms and cause confusion thereby. Sometimes this verse is interpreted to mean that if you are a true believer, you will not fear dying. And since many of us fear dying, then with some there arises another fear that perhaps they're not believers at all because they fear dying. When I hear of folks thus distressed, I feel in my more wicked moments like taking the preachers who preach thus carelessly and putting them in the middle of a field, a hundred-acre field preferably, with a roaring wild bull six feet behind them, and see whether they fear dying or not. Most of these preachers would run for their lives. They can't help it, you know. For the reason that God himself, the creator, has put fear in our hearts, just like he's put it in the dickie bird. It is a necessary preserv- preservative mechanism to keep us alive. And it is not good to tell people that if only they are true believers, they will not fear dying. What the Bible is talking about is not fearing death. You may see dying if the Lord doesn't come presently. It may be difficult, it may be swift and painful. What our blessed Lord promises, you will not see death. For the sting of death is sin. It's not the dying, it's what will happen after death to those who die without Christ. The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. No good hoping that after death somehow sin doesn't matter. The strength of sin is God's immovable law. Oh, the wonder for the believer that we need not fear what happens after death. We shall not indeed see death to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. One day, the glorious promise that along with nature and long before it, we shall be delivered from bondage to corruption and be given glorious bodies like unto the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. The glorious freedom then, and you could think, I'm sure, of many more into which we are introduced by the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Now I have to remind you of a thing so strange that if you didn't know your history very well, you would nearly find it impossible to believe. You might think it is instinctive in the human heart to love freedom. We tell ourselves that the last thing on earth we would do is to give up our freedom. That isn't true. And in the spiritual realm, it is often very untrue. And history has been the witness consistently down the ages that freedom is a thing that God's people alas will often begin by compromising, and then by forgetting, sometimes in the end losing it altogether. Let me take some examples of this. The ancient people of God did it, turning what was meant by God for their freedom into a bondage. You will recall the incident in a synagogue that Luke records in his chapter thirteen, where our Lord was teaching in the sa- on the Sabbath in the synagogue, and there came in a woman bent double with knees to nose, whom Satan had bound these eighteen years. In she came, shuffling her difficult way to listen to the Savior. And the Savior, in his infinite compassion, stayed his preaching and delivered the woman and made her stand upright. Whereupon the ruler of the synagogue was filled with dismay and resentment, and preached the people a very vigorous sermon that they should not come and be healed on the Sabbath day, but wait and come another day to be healed. Our Lord rebuked him, of course. The poignancy of the situation will come home to our hearts if we remember what, according to God and his Old Testament, the Sabbath was meant to celebrate. In the book of Deuteronomy in chapter five, the reason for the celebration of the Sabbath would be this, that once upon the time Israel had been slaves under the yoke of Pharaoh, and God, in his goodness and power, had broken that yoke and brought them free. In the book of Leviticus, God has a most beautiful description of what he did for Israel when he broke the Egyptian yoke and set them free. This is how it reads. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their bondmen. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you go upright. What a lovely metaphor drawn from human anatomy, isn't it? I broke the yoke that burdened your neck and kept you bowed down with a stooping stance of a slave. I broke the yoke, bid you stand up straight and hold your head high and look the world in the face, look God in the face. As God's idea of manhood, of a physical anatomy from which the metaphor is here drawn, reminds us that we of God's creatures, alone among the primates, stand upright. A glorious philosophy of man has the Creator, giving us in our very posture, a posture of dignity, the posture of free men and women, made in the image of God, to walk upright, to look the world in the face, and all the marvel of it. Sinners though we be, God's redemption is geared to this purpose still, to break the yokes that sin and Satan have placed upon us and cause us to go upright. Able, my brother, my sister, worms of the dust though we were, and sinners to boot, but freely forgiven by God and begotten as his children, made to go upright, to have access to God and look at God in the very face and know ourselves accepted. Oh, what a glorious God we have. Of course, some of us, feeling our arthritis, are beginning to be- develop an uncomely gait, aren't we? And tend to look down. But the spirit remains free, does it not? I made you to walk upright. And it was Sabbath day in the synagogue. And here comes this daughter of Abraham, heir to the promises of God and to the great redemption of Egypt. And Satan has bent her double and kept her bowed down like some shuffling slave. And God incarnate in his mercy speaks the word and breaks the bonds and sets her free to walk upright. And the ruler of the synagogue? Oh, not at all, please. That's not what Sabbath is about for him. Somehow for him, Sabbath, the celebration of freedom, has become an observation so crowded with his rabbinical rules that the rules have to be kept, even if it means leaving people bent double. I'll show you if the thing is religion. You may take another example, now from the Christian church. In Acts chapter thirteen, Paul in the synagogue at Antioch preached the glorious message of justification by faith. Oh, what a stirring message it is, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all who believe are justified from all things, which could not possibly be done through the law of Moses. Presently, with great honesty, the historian Luke tells us, the Christians gathering together in Jerusalem to talk over the doctrine of salvation, found among themselves, if you please, certain of the Pharisees which believed, they stood for this. These Gentiles who had turned to Christ and been justified by faith could not be saved unless they observed the rite of circumcision and kept the law. So quickly did men's limited understanding seek to restrain the God-given freedom that the gospel was designed to promote. And very sternly did Peter, and he could be stern when he chose. Very sternly and roundly did Peter rebuke them. Why tempts you God, said he, to seek to put upon the neck of these Gentile believers a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. Would to God that had been the end in Christendom of all attempts to restrict and compromise the liberty that we have in Christ. But history shows otherwise. Oh, how soon were freedoms compromised. Partly through misunderstanding and failure to comprehend. Some of the early Christians got hold of the Jewish Old Testament and read it, but not understanding what Bill McDonald would call dispensationalism. And finding that Israel had a priesthood separate from the laity, ordained and with a high priest, thought it would be a good idea to bring that into Christianity, thus restricting the liberty of all God's people in their priestly office. Finding in the Old Testament the tabernacle with its layout, its holy place, and its most holy, and the wall of the veil separating the two, they thought it would be a good idea to build Christian meeting places on that beha- on that pattern, and throughout Europe, and throughout Asia, and to this day, you will find many a church building, and particularly in the East, where if you enter, halfway down the church, you'll find a wall, a wall stretching from one side to the other. In the middle there is a door and a veil. On each side, a door. Behind that wall is the holiest of all, deliberately built after the form of the tabernacle. Through that door and into the most holy place, only the priests may come. The people must always stand outside. Sometimes the door is open that they can see a little bit of what's happening inside, and sometimes it's shut to impress them that God is not too pleased with them. And all the sorry results in the hearts of millions, who by their very architecture are constantly taught that it is not possible for the ordinary person to enter into the most holy in the presence of God. Only the priest can do it, and he poor man can only do it in this special bit of ground on earth. It's no wonder, is it, that those millions kept out from entering this special little area in a building on earth find it very difficult to grasp the glorious freedom of the gospel, that through Christ the veil has been rent, and we have access into the holiest of all, and not merely when we go to heaven, but in spirit now, can enter hand by the throne of God and know ourselves accepted. These, my brothers and sisters, are not trifling matters. And if we would fulfill the commission that our gracious Lord has given us, we must prepare ourselves carefully, must we not? And with compassion, the compassions of our Lord Jesus, that we may be used of God to help these many millions to find the glorious liberty of forgiveness of sins and justification by faith and acceptance with God and certainty of his heaven. Now it is true in the present climate, there has been a ferment of thinking and of change, so that many of the hitherto sacramentalist churches now have modified many of their doctrines. And it is possible to hear people who, twenty years ago, were deeply imbued with sacramentalism, now speaking evangelical language, and God be heartily praised for everyone for whom that language represents that they have genuinely found the freedom of salvation. But in our compassion, we must be careful. For if we would help them, we must try, mustn't we, to make sure that they have understood the language that they use. For nowadays, evangelical language can be used sincerely by people who have not yet grasped what the language really means. And you may think that they have had one experience, and all the time, perhaps, they haven't. Some years ago, I was involved with a study, a Bible study in the private home of a group of people, most of whom came from a sacramentalist background, though not all. Many of them had had some charismatic experience, and I was invited to conduct serious Bible studies in their homes, and gladly did so. I found that, uh, when I tried to speak about justification by faith, they constantly would change the phrase they preferred to talk about sanctifying grace. So, feeling my education lacking, I inquired about a book that would help me understand this concept of sanctifying grace. And the book I was eventually given, when I began to read it, rejoiced my heart. It said, you know, that, uh, forget all the trappings of religion. Sanctifying grace is personal experience of Christ. It is to have God himself dwelling in you. That is sanctifying grace. And as he dwells in you, and you have personal encounter with him, gradually you are being transformed into his image, so one day you'll be like him. I thought this is marvelously wonderful, and so I read my book. So I came to the chapter entitled What Happens When We Die. And that informed us that, of course, when we come to die, we shall not be fit to enter the presence of God forthwith. He then had two propositions to make. He said that when we come to die, of course, few of us will feel that we ever did anything worthy of being damned. At that point, I put the book down to ponder this. Few of us will think that we've ever done anything worthy of being damned. I said, well, I'm in that too, anyway. For doing things worthy of being damned is precisely what I have done. How can you, I said, Mr. Author, tell me? That few of us feel we've ever done anything worthy of being damned. But then I began to think of his presupposition. You see, his idea was that he was born into this world under the taint of Adam's sin. But when as an infant he was baptized, the taint was washed away. And somehow a miracle took place, and he became a child of God. Since then, he feels he's never done anything really worthy of being damned. peccadilloes by the score, of course, and moderately serious sins, but none that would qualify for being damned, will he? On that he rested his hope that one day he would be in God's heaven. And I said to myself with some horror, oh, but my good man, I heard you just now talking about personal experience of Christ and God dwelling in you. I said it was wonderful, but there's something wrong here, isn't there? In your very foundation, for you have bypassed repentance. Why, what is repentance? And in the apostle's language, the conditions of being saved are these. He went and found preaching repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus. Repentance does involve agreeing with God that stealing and lying and mistreating your mother-in-law are bad. Repentance is something far more fundamental than that. Let's get it into our hearts. It's repentance towards God. It is agreeing with God and his verdict against myself. And God's verdict is what? Here it comes. All have sinned in the past. And all do come short of the glory of God in the present. That is God's verdict. We stand, says God's word, before God's law with our mouths shut, every one of us. For we know what things soever the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that every mouth might be shut, the whole world become liable to the judgment of God. That is God's verdict. And to turn around and base your hopes of being accepted into God's heaven by the fact that since you've been baptized, you've never done anything worthy of being damned. That is a fatal mistake and misconception. We do need to get hold of it. We must face not only God's holy law, but God's holy wrath. According to the Apostle Paul, the glory of the gospel is this, I'm not ashamed of it, he says, for it, it is the power of God to salvation. And pray, Paul, why do I need to be saved? Because the wrath of God is revealed. If I need to be saved, first the wrath of God against my sin. God's verdict is from first to last, from the past to the present to the future, until I die. His verdict on me and my efforts are that I come short and deserve his curse. But many who speak evangelical language nowadays have not perceived it. It's not their fault often. We could illustrate it to ourselves, perhaps, by an analogy. Here is a young gentleman, and he has the most superb Cadillac car you ever did see. But he is of the stupid variety. Doesn't bother to fill it up with oil. Going at seventy miles an hour forward, he puts it in reverse to see what will happen. Drives it under the power of alcohol, and one day, being almost drunk, he smashes it into a concrete post and reduces it to ruins. In the cool night air and the shock of it, he realizes what a fool he has been, this lovely Cadillac reduced to a shambles. While he's contemplating that disaster, another thing hits him. The car wasn't his anyway. He borrowed it from the co- owner, owner of the car, and panic nearly seizes him. What on earth will he do now? How shall he meet the owner? He resolves upon a plan. For the time being, he'll keep as far away from the owner as he possibly can. Hope he doesn't manage to get into his presence soon too soon. He must find some skillful car mechanic or engineer. And with the engineer's help, he'll begin to reconstruct the old Cadillac. And granted, he only has time enough, perhaps he'll be able to get it, well, it's not perfect. Well, near enough, so that when he has to meet the owner and can't avoid it, the owner will say, well, you oughtn't to have done that to my Cadillac, but you've made a good honest effort to put it right, and we'll overlook the shortfall, my dear good man, you're a friend of mine. And you know, my good friends, there are a lot of people that think of Jesus Christ like that. They come to see they've wrecked their lives. It dawns on them that as creatures, they are not their own. One day they must meet the owner. How shall they meet him? Their instinct is they hope they don't have to meet him too soon. But they hear of Jesus Christ, that he's good at putting lives right, and that's what the preachers say, isn't it? So they apply to Christ all reverently and sincerely, but their concept is that Christ is in the business of helping you to mend your shattered life, so that given time, you may mend it sufficiently well with the help of the Lord. But when you meet the owner, he will of course say, well, you've not succeeded, you know. You're certainly not perfect, you've still come a bit short, but you haven't done anything worthy of being damned, and he might accept you. I have to tell you that our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is not in that line of business. You say that's cool. You know, that is why people don't like the doctrine of the wrath of God. They're doing their such big best to put their lives right to meet God. They have no assurance in their heart that they will be accepted, and if you insist that they have broken God's law and are under his wrath, they naturally resent it out of fear, if not out of pride. And they don't like the preaching of the wrath of God. My good friend, the wrath of God is one of the most marvelous and beautiful things that you could possibly preach. Preach it with sensitivity and love. But the very jewels of heaven rest for their untarnishable glory upon the divine wrath and displeasure against him. Oh, my brother, my sister, thank God for his wrath. It's one of the most beautiful things in the universe. When the angels come with the seven last plagues to pour out the wrath of God, they come not dressed in funereal garb of black, they come dressed in garments so brilliantly white that they are overwhelmingly beautiful. The preservation of the glory and the beauty and the jewels of heaven depend on God's displeasure and determined opposition to sin. And how can I meet him? Oh, hear the gospel, how it rejoices our heart to come back to the gospel, doesn't it? What is the gospel? Not that you have to seek Christ's aids to patch up your broken down old Cadillac, hoping one day it might, uh, pass inspection. The gospel is you can come and meet the owner right now. As you stand amid the wreckage. If ever things are going to be put right, that's how you'll have to begin. Or you can come and meet the owner. How can you come? Because if you will face his judgment, if you will repent and acknowledge you deserve to be damned, then God has a savior for you, right there and then. If you put your faith in him, God will accept you, for Christ's sake, and justify you, guarantee that he'll never cast you out. Oh, you've heard it ten million times. I hope you've not heard it too many, lest you should forget to say hallelujah in your heart. Accepted by God as I stand amidst the wreckage, that peace. Of course, it must be followed now in company with Christ to put the wreckage right. But the acceptance is not dependent upon that progress, but upon that initial repentance and justification. Friend, it is not, it is not being unkind. It's the most compassionate thing you can do if you would set people free to bring them to face this route of repentance. And then the root of faith in the Lord Jesus. To say when we really believe the old bad book said this other thing, few of us will believe- think we've done anything worthy of being damned, but uh then, of course, mm, few of us will feel worthy to enter the presence of God forthwith. In fact, when we first see God, we shall be terrified. At that point, I nearly put the book in the fire, except I'd paid for it. And where is faith in that, says the Bible, when we see him? We shall be like him. All the wonder, faith to respond to the gracious invitation of God, boldness to enter into the very holiest of all now, in spirit, as one day we shall be in body. If then we would be true friends to these people, what must we do? I turn to some attitudes that we must learn to confirm, or if need be, develop in ourselves. And I refer to Paul's discussion of these things in the Epistle to the Galatians in chapter two. We must, according to verse fourteen, walk uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. You get the phrase? Walk uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. Here Paul charges Peter himself with hypocrisy. Now there are two kinds of hypocrisy. One is pretending to be what you are not, and the other is pretending not to be what you are, or pretending not to believe what you do believe. And Peter was on this occasion guilty of that kind of hypocrisy. He had been at a conference at Antioch where Jews and Gentile believers ate their food together, as we do in the Hyatt. And Peter enjoyed the meal until there came some down from James, and Peter got up and he said he didn't feel well and he had a stomach ache and was going to his room. Oh, no, you don't, says Paul. No, you don't, Peter, my man. There's no stomach ache you've got. Could be a fit of nerves, maybe. You're going, aren't you, Peter? Because there are some people that would hold it's not fit even for Christian Jews to eat with Christian Gentiles because the Gentiles aren't per- aren't circumcised. And Peter, in your heart of hearts, you don't believe it. You don't believe that circumcision is necessary for salvation. You don't even believe that circumcision contributes to salvation, do you, Peter? In your heart of hearts, you believe that those Gentile believers are as saved as you are. Peter, you mustn't pretend not to believe what you do believe. You must not fudge the gospel like that, Peter. Nor must we. We must not engage in ceremonies, ladies and gentlemen, that would give the onlooker the impression that we don't believe what we do believe, or that we believe what we don't believe. We must walk consistently with the truth of the gospel. Secondly, we must make sure we understand our liberty to come direct to God's holy word. At one stage, there came a gentleman to me, asked to come by his friend. He was proposing in the bad, bad old days to enter a monastery, and he asked me what I thought. I said I found that difficult because his particular church cursed me. Whatever for, he said. I said, for being sure of my salvation. Oh, yeah. Well, he said, you shouldn't be, should you? I said, why not? He said, well, it depends on works, doesn't it? I said, I didn't know it did. Well, he said, it does, of course. So I read him the lo- glorious verse from Romans chapter four, that to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness. Oh, he said, I don't know what that means. He said, I didn't know that was in the Bible anyway. The trouble with you people, he says, is you think you can interpret the Bible yourself, Jose. You can't do that. It was the church that gave you the Bible, and you must let the church interpret it. You must take it to a priest, he said, and let the priest tells you what it means. I said, that's very interesting. I said, if I had been, my friend, in Arabia when Paul the Apostle was in Arabia, and I had gone and found him, and I said, excuse me, are you the Apostle Paul, sir? And he said, yes, I am. I said, well, look here, I want to find God, no fussing around. I want to find God like you talk about. How do I find salvation, sir? And he had told me by word of mouth what he here writes in this chapter four of Romans. Could I hear what Paul said? Understand it, believe it, and be saved? Or would I have to take it to, to, to the, to the church, the other apostles at Jerusalem? He said, you'd have to take it to the church in Jerusalem, my boy. I said, no, I wouldn't, because Paul tells me in this very chapter that even when he went up to Jerusalem, the other apostles added nothing to him. Herein is our charter of liberty. Actually, the church did not give us the Bible. The church was given the Bible through the apostles and prophets. And our glorious liberty is this, that while we take advantage of every God-given teacher that there is, in the last analysis, we are free to come, read his inspired word, understand it and believe it, and be saved. Let's hold on to our liberty, and in that particular, let us stand by the canon of the Old Testament that our Lord Jesus himself authorized and authenticated. For many centuries, sacramental churches and others have given the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, if not altogether equal, then semi-equal status with the Jewish canon. For many centuries, evangelicals have resisted it. Now I notice that evangelicals are giving in to it. One can respect their motives. They say, but if we want to get our sacramentalist friends to read the Bible, they won't read it if it hasn't got that apocrypha with it. So we do it simply out of tactics. I'm not a judge of God's other servants, but what a dangerous thing it is. You give a person a Bible with that apocrypha in, you must prepared, be prepared for him to believe what it says at the end of second Maccabees, that sacrifices for the dead are right and necessary things, and unrepentant sinners in their lives can be saved after their death by your offering of sacrifices for them. Then you'll have to meet the scorn of your unbelieving atheist scientific friends for all the sheer nonsense and silly little stories that there are in some of those apocryphal books. Oh, my dear Christian friend, let us not fluff the gospel, not even in our strategies of evangelizing. And finally, the microphone in front of me has given me two minutes in repentance and penance for its former Mr. Hagar. When it silks about five minutes from me, and I, I, it's, it's now going to repent and give me two minutes back. The other side of the story is this, that as we stand for true Christian liberty, according to the gospel, we must beware of false liberty. Very early on in the church, there arose teachers preaching liberty, but it wasn't true liberty, it was permissiveness. And we read together Peter's denunciation of those false teachers. They have turned from the right way. And the very term reminds us of our Lord Jesus' description. The way to life, what is it? It begins with a gate, and it's a narrow gate. But it is followed by a way. There is a gate and a way. Neither is optional. Enter the gate, justified by faith, you have peace with God and acceptance. You will be expected to follow the way. We must here very carefully emphasize the difference between the conditions of salvation and of eternal life, and the evidence that we have eternal life. They're two different things, aren't they? I've always thought it must be a spectacularly moving moment when the midwife delivers a newborn baby, and apparently their custom is to hang the thing up by its hind legs, uh, upside down and deliver a slap upon the appropriate part of his anatomy, whereat the youngster protests with a vociferous yell, and for the only time in life, mother and everybody else are delighted to hear it yell. The reason for it is this, of course. The baby doesn't get life by yelling, as anybody knows, even I know that. But the yelling is very important. It's the evidence that the thing has life. And if a baby doesn't start crying, it's very gloomy news. It could be that it doesn't have life. The condition of salvation is it is a free gift, but God himself will require the evidence. But the person who claims it is a believer, has repented, and does have life. And in our modern day, permissiveness as in Peter's. The great danger is that the doctrine of the grace of God will be turned into license and permissiveness. But so long as you say you believe, you can get away with it even if there's no change in your life. And you can go on in the permissive ways of the world. That is not so, my Christian friend. That kind of permissiveness is not freedom. It is a lie. Said the Lord Jesus, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Those ugly, rebellious passions that are within us, oh, my dear young friend, they're not your friends. They are your jailers. They are your prison warders. Listen to the Lord Jesus. He'll tell you the truth about them and make you want to be free, and then he will set you free. That is true freedom. May God then give us an ever clearer understanding of these things. I am aware that I have been preaching to those who know them better than I know it myself, except there might be someone here who has been Christianized, but not yet a believer. Listen to God's word, dear friend. He has a wonderful salvation for you. Make sure you have it. But I have dared, my Christian brothers and sisters, to broach this topic with you now. Because if in our compassion we are to help people, we must be ourselves clear as to the fundamentals of this gospel and see to it that by word and by behavior we stand firm by the truth of God and do not compromise its glorious freedom. And may God bless you indeed.