Show Notes
Titus 1:15-16
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our God, we gather around your throne and we wish to hear from you as you speak in your word.
[00:00:07] But we confess that like Israel at Mount Sinai, as sinners we cannot be in the presence of your pure and holy word.
[00:00:18] Were youe to speak directly to us, we would be destroyed, for we are impure sinners.
[00:00:27] But we thank you that you have provided that go between your Son, the Lord Jesus, who goes between you and us, and us and you.
[00:00:38] For he draws near to you on our behalf and for the sake of our sins, offers purification through his blood and sacrifice, that you might wash away and forgive our sins, purifying us so that we might be in your presence.
[00:00:58] And we thank you that Jesus is also our go between, so that he speaks to us on your behalf, that we might no more be terrified, but we might hear your gracious and loving words from his mouth.
[00:01:17] Help us then, O Lord, by your spirit, through faith that we might receive your word, that we might be strengthened, edified and blessed, built up in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus, that we might serve you to his glory. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
[00:01:39] Our next scripture reading, including our sermon text, is from Titus chapter one. Titus, chapter one.
[00:01:48] We'll begin reading in verse 10.
[00:01:51] We'll read through the end of the chapter. Our sermon text will be verses 15 and 16, focusing particularly on verse 15.
[00:02:03] Hear God's Word. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.
[00:02:13] They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.
[00:02:25] One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true.
[00:02:36] Therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.
[00:02:48] To the pure, all things are pure.
[00:02:53] But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.
[00:02:59] But both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
[00:03:05] They profess to know God, but they deny Him. By their works they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
[00:03:17] Please be seated.
[00:03:33] Began looking a couple weeks ago at Paul's warning about these false teachers. A warning to Titus pastors, but also to the whole congregation, that there are those who would come along teaching things that particularly characterized by their falsehood.
[00:03:54] These men are empty talkers and deceivers.
[00:03:57] Their speech was false and intending to lead people away from the truth.
[00:04:03] And we saw how the thing it is that makes us susceptible to false teaching is the sin in our own hearts. Among those sins being that the Cretans are always liars, we lie. We have a propensity to be led astray from the truth, even as we lead others astray from the truth. So there was this theme of falseness and lying.
[00:04:27] But now Paul, as he shifts from the warning about the men themselves and explaining how it is that the Christian might be susceptible to this false teaching, he shifts to begin addressing one of the chief errors that they go around teaching, one of their main false doctrines, you might say. And as he does so, he shifts from the theme of falseness to the theme of defilement.
[00:04:56] And as we'll see as we look at it next week in more detail, there's an irony here that those who teach a defiled teaching are themselves defiled. You see that in verse 15 and 16, their minds and their consciences are defiled. And then of course, the things that come out of those that their works are detestable disobedience and unfit unqualified for any good work. So there's a shift from the idea of what's false versus true to now what's pure versus what's impure, what's holy versus what's defiled.
[00:05:36] And as we look at how Paul counters this chief, the central doctrine, false doctrine, he does so by beginning with what's true.
[00:05:48] He starts with the truth about purity before he goes on to expose the defilement of the false teaching.
[00:05:57] And you see that in verse 15, he talks about the commandments of people who turn away from the truth. And then now he's going to explain and then expose and refute the central teaching of these commandments of men that turn away from the truth, this matter of purity and defilement. And he starts with true doctrine, with the truth about purity. And it's that brief statement you get at the beginning of verse 15 to the pure, all things are pure, there's the truth.
[00:06:36] And then he's going to go on having explained the truth, he's going to apply true doctrine over against the false doctrine and then refute, expose and reject the false teaching. So what we want to do tonight is begin with Paul, follow his method as he begins by looking at the true doctrine, the pure teaching or the teaching on purity. Before we go on to consider and expose the the defiled teaching of the false teachers, we got to first understand what biblical purity is and how someone comes to purity before we can go on to expose the problems with the false teachers.
[00:07:19] So we're going to look at this pure teaching tonight under three heads. First, the problem of purity.
[00:07:25] The problem of purity. Secondly, the way of purification.
[00:07:30] And thirdly, how it is that everything becomes pure.
[00:07:35] Problem of purity. Now, purity and cleanness sounds like a good thing, doesn't it?
[00:07:42] Our moms teach us to brush our teeth, to wash our hands, to clean our rooms.
[00:07:47] Purity, cleanness, removing dirt, defilement. This is generally a good thing. We all want this, right?
[00:07:55] But how do you receive this, particularly in the spiritual or the religious context? How does someone become pure?
[00:08:05] How do you get rid of impurity or defilement?
[00:08:10] At the heart of the false teaching that Paul is exposing and rejecting the commandments of men that turn away from truth, referenced at the end of verse 14. At the heart of this is teaching on how someone can become pure.
[00:08:26] How could you become pure?
[00:08:30] That's the central issue that they are addressing.
[00:08:35] They have teaching on how someone can get rid of his defilement and not be further defiled in the future.
[00:08:43] And of course, since their teaching on that turns away from the truth, Paul starts with the truth to the pure. All things are pure.
[00:08:55] So what's the problem here?
[00:08:58] Well, the root problem is why do you need to be pure at all? It's a nice idea. Maybe I don't have to convince you that being pure is a good thing.
[00:09:09] But why does a Christian, why does anyone need to be pure?
[00:09:15] The answer to that is because God is pure.
[00:09:20] We need to be pure because God is pure. And the false teachers were aware of this basic starting point. They knew that we needed to become pure somehow.
[00:09:31] Most false religions to some degree or another understand this. Even religions unrelated to Christianity have ways of getting rid of defilement and getting rid of sin and problems and. And maintaining or getting some level of purity.
[00:09:48] God is pure and holy. And because God is pure and holy, no impurity, nothing yucky or disgusting or defiled can come into God's presence.
[00:10:01] That's the root problem.
[00:10:03] The root problem of the sinner is that God is good.
[00:10:08] The root problem that we have is that God is pure and holy and our impurity can't come into his presence.
[00:10:17] There's a marvelous picture of this. Wonderful. It's just gripping if you've never read it before. And every now and then you go back and you reread it and it grips you again.
[00:10:26] It's a story of Isaiah's call. In Isaiah chapter six, perhaps you remember the vision that God gives Isaiah of himself.
[00:10:37] Isaiah gets this vision of God, God sitting on his throne in the temple. And it says that the train, God's robe had a train. We don't have trains on our dresses or robes very often anymore. It's that tail end of the robe, of the train, of God's glory wove around, wound around, and filled the whole temple.
[00:11:01] In other words, there was God. There was his glory burning brightly. And everywhere around Isaiah, he was surrounded with God's glory, presence.
[00:11:15] And then he saw the angels.
[00:11:17] They had two wings with which they flew, two wings with which they covered their faces so that they couldn't see God in his burning holiness. And two wings with which they covered their feet.
[00:11:31] Not because their feet of angels have any sin, they don't have sin, but because even though they were perfect, sinless creatures, yet they were creatures and didn't approach God in his purity and perfection. And so they felt that like Moses of old, who had to take his sandals off, his dirty sandals off because he was standing on holy ground, even though his feet were dirty, like Moses, they had to cover their feet. Because in the presence of God and his purity and holiness, even the pure, sinless angels feel a sense of inadequacy.
[00:12:08] That's how pure God was. Isaiah sees all of this, and he hears the angels crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Or you might say in the language of our text here, pure, pure and pure is the Lord God of hosts.
[00:12:31] And what happens to Isaiah as he takes all of this in? No doubt, in an instant, woe is me, for I am undone.
[00:12:43] Why?
[00:12:44] Because I'm not pure.
[00:12:48] God is pure and I'm not pure. He says, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. In other words, I'm not pure. The words that have come from my mouth, out of my heart aren't pure. And so I'm defiled.
[00:13:08] And I can't be in the presence of God in his purity.
[00:13:14] Or the psalm that we sang, Psalm 24 this evening says the same kind of thing in a positive way.
[00:13:23] He talks about how only the person who is pure and clean and has no defilement in him can come into God's house, be in God's presence, and have fellowship with God who may ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who may stand in his holy place, he who has clean hands and a pure, holy heart.
[00:13:51] Why does purity matter?
[00:13:53] Because God is pure and only that which is pure. Only men who are pure and women who are pure. And little boys and girls who are purified can enter the presence of God.
[00:14:08] And like Isaiah, we are not pure, we are defiled. We are unclean. We are a people of unclean lips. We have impure hands and an unclean heart.
[00:14:22] And how many of you have made it through Leviticus yet in your annual Bible reading plan? You get started, you're about to hit Leviticus. If you haven't hit it right, okay? If you've made it through Leviticus, you remember there's a whole bunch of laws that God gives Israel. There's laws about what they can eat and what they can't eat. There's laws about leprosy and touching it and whether or what happens if they touch a dead body.
[00:14:48] And then there's laws that govern the purity around their man and men and women, their reproductive organs and systems.
[00:14:57] There's. And then there's a whole system of purification rites, religious rituals that they would have to perform if they became unclean, according to one of these things.
[00:15:10] And if you read them all and you ponder it, you don't have to ponder very deeply. You very quickly realize that these laws, we sometimes call them ceremonial laws, or we call them purity laws, these various kinds of laws about food and what they can touch and what they can't touch and so on, they touched every area of the Israelites life pretty much all day long, every day.
[00:15:37] It affected when they were asleep at night, it affected what they ate at mealtimes, when they went outside of their home, what could they touch? What couldn't they touch? Who could they hang out with? Who couldn't they hang out with?
[00:15:49] Everything was regulated by these purity or ceremonial laws.
[00:15:56] Why?
[00:15:58] What's up with all this stuff that you, chapter after chapter read about in Leviticus and you're scratching your head. The root idea is this. And there's a refrain as you're reading through. You'll see it over and over again. God gives them these rules. And then he says, and you have to be holy because I am holy. In other words, God, who is holy and pure, lived among his people.
[00:16:22] In fact, to show them that they lived among his people, God had Moses and the Israelites build a tent, the tabernacle. And God's holy presence went into the tabernacle. He filled the tabernacle with his presence. And he showed the people that like they lived in tents and he would live among them in a tent.
[00:16:42] It was a wonderful picture for the Israelites that God is in our midst.
[00:16:47] And the laws had to. They went hand in hand with that. I'm living among you, and I'm holy. And you have to be a holy, pure people if I'm going to live in your presence.
[00:17:00] And so the lesson that touched every Israelite all day long, every day, day and night, the whole of his life, from beginning to end, everything having some kind of ritual law about purity.
[00:17:12] The lesson was this.
[00:17:15] We have to be pure because God is pure.
[00:17:19] But we are constantly defiling ourselves with our sin.
[00:17:24] And we need a way of purification.
[00:17:27] That's what it's all about.
[00:17:32] Here's one example. Leviticus 11:44 for I. This is in the middle of the chapter about the food laws. For I am the Lord your God.
[00:17:42] Consecrate or sanctify yourselves therefore.
[00:17:46] Sanctify yourselves therefore. And be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that creeps on the ground. Can't eat any of those insects, those bugs. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
[00:18:10] That was the lesson of all of those laws. It was to teach Israel. I am pure, I am holy. I live among you.
[00:18:17] And you defile yourselves all day long, from morning to night, and even in the middle of the night with your sin. And you need a way of purification.
[00:18:31] Now. We don't need those ritual laws anymore, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because Christ has fulfilled them.
[00:18:39] But the principle is still true.
[00:18:43] We are impure. We are tainted by our sin.
[00:18:47] And that impurity, that uncleanness, that defilement of sin, it's a problem for us. It means that we can't be with God.
[00:18:56] We can't live among Him.
[00:18:59] Sin defiles both the story from Isaiah and Psalm 24 point to this. The source of sin, the sinful heart.
[00:19:10] The words. The sinful words that come out make the mouth unclean. The impure heart, the impure mouth, and the unclean or impure hands. The actions.
[00:19:20] Sin defiles the whole person from the inside out.
[00:19:25] And God explicitly rejects impurity. Isaiah 1:12.
[00:19:31] When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts, when you spread out your hands, in other words, to pray in my temple, when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.
[00:19:46] Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.
[00:19:55] This is the problem of purity.
[00:19:58] You can see how it was important enough that even false teachers and false religions want to do something about it. Now they're wrong about how they go about it, but it's serious.
[00:20:08] We need to be purified, cleansed.
[00:20:12] And that cleansing has to come from God.
[00:20:18] You were made in God's image.
[00:20:22] What does that mean? That means he made you to reflect who he is in such a way that you can be friends with God. You can have fellowship with God. That's how God made Adam. Originally in the garden, he would come and speak with Adam. God would. They had fellowship with one another in a way that no other creature did but man's sin. When Adam sinned, he was put out of the garden. He lost that fellowship with God.
[00:20:54] You can't have a restored relationship with God without the defilement of sin being removed. In other words, you can't be friends with God until you're purified.
[00:21:04] Now maybe you say, I'm not sure I care so much about this purity business. I've not care sure I care so much about being friends with God. I'm living life. It's going pretty great.
[00:21:15] You know, maybe this purity thing doesn't really matter for me.
[00:21:20] Yeah, maybe it doesn't.
[00:21:23] But I can assure you, you will one day be brought into God's presence.
[00:21:32] One day, whether you like it or not, you will stand before God.
[00:21:41] Revelation 20, verse 11. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. That's God sitting on the throne of judgment.
[00:21:51] From his presence, earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them.
[00:21:59] Guess what's left?
[00:22:01] Earth is gone. Heavens are gone. There's the great white throne, God sitting on it for judgment.
[00:22:07] And then I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.
[00:22:14] One day, God will raise you from the dead and he will place you in his presence before his throne of judgment.
[00:22:22] And if you haven't been purified, you won't be able to remain in his presence.
[00:22:29] You'll be cast out into what Jesus calls the outer darkness.
[00:22:33] He also calls it the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, the place of judgment.
[00:22:40] This question of purity matters, whether you think it does or not, because you will be brought into God's presence one day.
[00:22:52] And you need to be purified before you get there.
[00:22:58] So how does one become purified? What is this way of purification? There's the problem of purification. Why even. Even false religions to some degree get that we need to be purified.
[00:23:12] Paul says to the pure, all things are pure.
[00:23:17] Who's pure? How does one become pure?
[00:23:21] How does one become that person who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who may enter his presence and have fellowship with Him.
[00:23:31] Is it some kind of outward cleaning now? Most things, when we want to clean them, we wash off the dirt. We scrub away the mold, maybe even if it's impurities in water, we filter it out, we boil it and distill the water. Right. Is there something we can do to seek purity? Can you take a bath and scrub this filth away?
[00:23:55] Those would all imply some kind of material defilement, a thing having to do with stuff like our bodies or an outward ritual that might cleanse us like a bath.
[00:24:08] But the problem is that the defilement of sin isn't about stuff.
[00:24:14] It isn't about dirt, and it's not something we can take away from ourselves.
[00:24:20] It has to do with guilt.
[00:24:23] We've committed sins and that sin has incurred guilt.
[00:24:29] The defilement or the impurity that's in view here is a moral thing. It's an ethical thing.
[00:24:37] It's a moral defilement.
[00:24:41] So it's not something we can remove with any kind of outward or even inward ritual.
[00:24:48] Furthermore, it's not just a matter of guilt, moral defilement, it's a relational defilement.
[00:24:55] Sin and impurity are the things that we've done against God, and so our relationship with him is affected.
[00:25:07] If you hurt someone, you say something wrong to him.
[00:25:10] Who can forgive what you've done?
[00:25:13] You can't. The other person has to forgive you. The same is true with God. When we've sinned against him, we've ruined our relationship with him. He's the one who has to come and make a way of forgiveness. He has to offer mercy and compassion and forgive.
[00:25:30] It's a relational defilement. It's one like you think of Adam being cast out of the garden. He was taken away from God, and God has to bring him back into his presence.
[00:25:43] It's moral, it's relational, and it's something we can't remove and purify for ourselves.
[00:25:52] Jesus had to come. God had to send his own son to purify defiled men.
[00:26:00] God, who came to you and said, you come into my presence. Why should I listen to you? Your hands are covered in blood.
[00:26:07] He says in the same chapter, come now, let us reason together.
[00:26:12] Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
[00:26:23] God says, I will make a way that you can be purged, purified of your sinful defilement.
[00:26:31] Look at Titus 2, verse 14.
[00:26:34] This is the very reason Jesus came to earth.
[00:26:39] We read there that Jesus gave Himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed, our sins, taking away the guilt and purify for himself his own special people.
[00:26:55] He came to do this. This was his whole purpose in coming, was to wash you clean. It was to purge out that dross. It was to get rid of everything that kept you from God and His holy presence.
[00:27:11] And to do so, he came and hung on a cross bearing your guilt, your shame and your purging.
[00:27:20] He was purged, purified on the cross for your sins.
[00:27:29] He did everything that you needed for purification.
[00:27:34] He did the work.
[00:27:36] And then Peter tells us how this cleansing of Jesus on the cross comes to the hearts of men.
[00:27:44] If you look at Acts 15, 7, 9, Paul talks about how purification comes to the Gentiles. And that's pretty much all of us.
[00:27:54] We're the nations.
[00:27:56] We were separated from God. We were his enemies, living in darkness, full of defilement.
[00:28:06] Peter says this, men and brethren, you know that a good while ago, God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
[00:28:17] So God, who knows the heart, that impure, wicked, defiled heart. So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.
[00:28:30] And God made no distinction between us, the Jews, and them, purifying their hearts with by faith.
[00:28:40] Jesus goes to the cross to make a way of purification for sinners, for the nations.
[00:28:46] And Peter says the way that that purification gets applied to the hearts of individual sinners is this.
[00:28:55] I went and preached the gospel to them. I told them about this Jesus and about the work he did on the cross.
[00:29:03] And God gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
[00:29:06] He took their unclean, wicked, sinful hearts and he changed them.
[00:29:12] And he drew them through faith to Jesus Christ so that they would be forgiven and purified.
[00:29:22] There's two parts to this purification that Peter's talking about.
[00:29:26] One of them has to do with the removal of guilt and the forgiveness of sins.
[00:29:31] And there the relationship with God is restored. We can come into his presence again.
[00:29:37] But there's another aspect of purification.
[00:29:40] He gave them the Holy Spirit, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, he purified their hearts.
[00:29:51] Here's the principle, the issue. There's a matter of guilt, of the offense we made to God, and the relationship being restored with God.
[00:30:01] But then there's the matter remaining of the heart, that filthy, defiled heart that all of the filth poured out of in our words and in our Desires. And in our actions, God comes by His Holy Spirit and He changes that heart and he removes the sinful desires so that now we can have godly good desires.
[00:30:24] He purifies hearts we know from other parts in Scripture he doesn't. And from our own experience he doesn't do all of that all at once.
[00:30:33] But he begins that process when he puts the Spirit on the hearts of believers.
[00:30:42] That's how Jesus purifies sinners.
[00:30:47] And the two main pieces of it. One of them we call justification in our forgiveness of sins and being accounted right before God. And the other part of it we call our sanctification as God by His Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out and makes us pure, holy.
[00:31:12] So the last piece of this doctrine that Paul's laying out for us here, to the pure.
[00:31:20] That's what purity is. That's why we need to be pure. And that's how one becomes purified.
[00:31:25] To the pure, all things are pure.
[00:31:32] The problem of purity isn't about what we eat or what we drink. It isn't a matter of outward rituals and things that we do.
[00:31:44] The matter of purity. The problem of purity is a problem of the sinful heart.
[00:31:50] God, who knows the heart, put His Holy Spirit on hearts and so that he would purify hearts.
[00:31:57] Or as Jesus says it negatively in the gospels, like Mark 7, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, slanders, fornication. The sin flows from the heart.
[00:32:12] And Jesus says it's not what goes into the man, what you eat, that defiles the man, it's what comes out of the man, out of his heart.
[00:32:23] The false teachers were saying that one could arrive at some level of purity by what he ate or what he didn't eat. Some ritual he performed whether he got married or whether he didn't get married. All sorts of external man made rules they said would arrive at purity.
[00:32:41] But Paul answers back vigorously with the truth.
[00:32:45] When God has taken a sinner and purified his heart and given him pure godly good desires, then all those things that they're forbidding or saying have to do with purity. All those things are pure to you.
[00:33:02] Let's think about this.
[00:33:04] The things in themselves, food, drink, marriage, they're all good things that God made and they can be used well or they can be used poorly.
[00:33:16] Food can be eaten to the glory of God.
[00:33:19] Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it to the glory of God.
[00:33:23] Food can be eaten to the glory of God, or it can be indulged in in a gluttonous fashion.
[00:33:31] Marriage is a wonderful gift of God. But we can also fill it with all kinds of sin. And we can break it.
[00:33:38] We can even break the marriage bond that God made through our sin.
[00:33:43] We can make it miserable.
[00:33:45] We can defile it with our sin. But God made all of these things, and he made them good and pure. And when by God's grace, through the power of his Spirit, we are enabled to use these things now to his glory in right and good ways, they become pure to us.
[00:34:05] That's what Paul is saying here. I know it took us a long time to get here, but. But that's what he's saying.
[00:34:14] When God has come and indwelt you by his Spirit and taken away your sin, restored your relationship to God and given you a new heart, now you can use these things in a way that's pure and honors the Lord.
[00:34:28] 1st Timothy 4:4. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.
[00:34:40] What makes things impure is the sinful heart.
[00:34:46] The sinful heart is like a muddy river, like a polluted fountain, like a poisoned well. Everything that flows out of it is tainted, defiled.
[00:34:58] But the heart that's been purified, been given new desires, godly loving desires.
[00:35:05] What can come forth from that honors and pleases the Lord in purity to the pure. All things are pure.
[00:35:17] Now in other passages, Paul will and the scriptures will expound this principle of what we call the freedom. Christian freedom. The freedom that Jesus gives us now.
[00:35:30] Freedom from sin, to live a life filled with good things.
[00:35:36] It's not just in food, it's in our. It's more important things in our relationships and how we treat each other. We now are given freedom and godly desires that drive us, coming from the Spirit, drive us to do good things towards one another.
[00:35:52] Paul says in Galatians 5, verse 1 for freedom. Christ has set us free. Free. Stand firm, therefore, and don't go back to slavery. Verse 13. You were called to freedom. Brothers only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. In other words, don't go back to sin.
[00:36:12] You were made free. Why?
[00:36:15] So that in love you would serve one another.
[00:36:19] That's the purity to the pure. All things are pure.
[00:36:23] And then at the end of that chapter, Galatians 5, he lays out the fountain, the source of that wonderful, glorious freedom and purity.
[00:36:33] The fruit of the Spirit.
[00:36:36] The Holy Spirit who indwells you, is the source of all these good things. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self control.
[00:36:51] To the pure all things are pure. Let's pray.
[00:36:57] Our gracious and merciful God in heaven.
[00:37:03] We begin by praising and thanking you that you are pure.
[00:37:10] What a terrible thing it would be if you were impure.
[00:37:16] In fact, it would be blasphemy even to think such a thing.
[00:37:20] But we thank you that you are good.
[00:37:24] That unlike the sin filled world that we have experienced up till now in our lives, and unlike our very own sin tainted hearts, you are pure and there is only good in you.
[00:37:42] We confess our ongoing sinfulness, Lord, even having been forgiven through the blood of your son. We still struggle with sin.
[00:37:51] Impurity still comes forth.
[00:37:54] We ask that you would forgive us.
[00:37:57] We ask that you would quiet our hearts and give us peace. Remind us of what you've done. That you have declared us forgiven and accepted in Jesus, your son.
[00:38:09] Help us then, O Lord, to live in this purity and freedom that you have granted us in Jesus Christ, Lord our God. We thank you that you have given us the gift of the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit who indwells us is pure, for he is God himself.
[00:38:30] We ask, O Holy Spirit, that you would continue to purify our hearts, uniting us evermore to Jesus, our Savior.
[00:38:39] O Lord.
[00:38:41] We ask that you would take away the dross, take away the filth, take away these evil desires, things that would lead us astray, lead us into sin, lead us into false teaching.
[00:38:54] Purge them all, O Holy Spirit, and in their place guide us in the way of life, in this freedom that the Lord Jesus has purchased for us with his blood.
[00:39:07] We ask that you would do that for us, not only as individuals, but as in our marriages.
[00:39:15] That we would have pure holy desires for one another.
[00:39:20] That we would be filled with mercy, compassion, kindness and forgiveness.
[00:39:26] That we would build one another up. We pray this would be true for our whole families, and indeed we for this whole congregation here.
[00:39:35] That you would knit us together in the bonds of love and fellowship that we have in Christ Jesus.
[00:39:42] That our body here would be marked by the pure fruits of the Spirit.
[00:39:49] And that that would happen to your praise and glory and to the conversion of the lost.
[00:39:56] Hear our prayers for Jesus sake. Amen.
