My name is Jordan, if we haven't met, have been on staff here at Veritas for just over five years. And my wife and I recently transitioned up to Urbana, our Urbana campus. It's been such a gift to us and a joy to be with that congregation, those people. I will say, I love this church. I love this people. It's fun to be back with you. One thing that I've learned in the midst of moving, and it's not as profound as you think it is, I've learned how much I hate Facebook marketplace. In the midst of moving, you figure out you have a lot of stuff. And with that, sometimes you pack it, sometimes you throw it, and sometimes you sell it. And I know I look like I'm 16 years old. I'm not. I've been around long enough to remember the day of, like, eBay and Craigslist. And you just expect scams to happen on sites like that. It's like the eBay scam where you buy something and then they charge you $700 in shipping or something. Ridiculous. You expect it, but it's 2024. It's Facebook marketplace. You think things are going to go great. Then you get like 50 messages that say, is this available? Of course it is. Okay. But then you find out there's scammers on Facebook marketplace, right? Okay. My wife and I are getting ready to sell these two coffee tables. I get a message from someone that says, I'll buy them. I want them. Can I have your phone number? And of course, I'm like, sure, let's do it. Right? I give them my phone number, and they're like, hey, I want to pick these up today. Would you prefer cash or venmo? And I said, venmo? I know it's verified funds. So they're like, okay, sounds great. I just need one thing from you. I'm going to send you a six digit verification code so that I know that you are real. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. And they said, here's the problem. I just got scammed recently by a fake post, and I need to make sure that you're not scamming me. I said, okay. So I get this six digit verification code. It's from Google. And I'm like, really? A Google verification code? And so I hop on Google, of course, and I'm like, Facebook scam. Google verification code. It's a scam. It's a total scam where people try and get your phone number and sign it up for a Google voice number so that they can access your phone number for pretty much whatever they want. And so in a nice christian way, as you would imagine, I told this guy to kick rocks and that I would sell my tables to somebody else because it just bugged me. I'm like, dude, literally a pastor with three little kids trying to just move to a small town, and you're trying to scam me over coffee tables. What's wrong with you? Right? And maybe you've never been scammed on Facebook marketplace, but you know what it's like to be lied to. You know what it's like to be cheated, don't you? And whether it's a scammer, a liardeh, a cheater, you've been pulled in. You know, you've been sold this idea or this feeling that somebody is who they say they are only to have the rug ripped out from under you. And you are left feeling what? Frustrated? Hurt? It makes sense. Like there's something in us that just doesn't sit right when we get lied to or cheated. And I think we have to stop and ask a question this morning. And the question is, have you ever cheated God? Have you ever been a phony when it comes to your faith? And if so, how do you think that makes God feel? Right? If we can feel frustrated when we're cheated or lied to, how do you think it makes God feel when we're phony in our faith? I'll give you a quick little hint. Not good. Not good. Today, as we open up to Luke chapter eleven, if you have a physical bible with you, we'd love for you to open up. We're going to be in Luke eleven. We are in our encounters with Jesus series. And who Jesus is encountering today is the religious. Jesus is encountering the religious elite, namely the Pharisees and the lawyers. And something fascinating happens in Luke eleven. Jesus has cast a demon out of a mute man. And these religious leaders are trying to call Jesus a fraud. They're trying to say, this dude is a scam artist. Maybe he cast out demons by the power of Beelzebul, who is a demon himself. And by the time we get to today's text, you see this. Similar to the Facebook marketplace situation, the scammer pointing the finger and Jesus showing up and saying, I'm going to show you who the real fraud is. It's you. You are the fraud. The religious people are the ones who fall in Jesus line as stringed together passionate judgment against the religious people. Jesus, six times in today's passage, uses this word, woe and he's not like, whoa. He's not impressed by him. All right? W o e. Woe. It is Jesus pronouncing divine judgment from God on these people. And like I said, it is one of his strongest statements against sin in his entire earthly ministry. You ask the question why? Here's why. Jesus hates fakes. He hates fakes. Specifically, he hates it when people fake holiness. And so we, as church people who have come here to Veritas on Sunday morning, need to be asking the question. Okay. If Jesus hates fake holiness, hypocritical religion, and we claim to be a people who love God and want to honor and glorify him, the question is, how do we avoid this? What does fake holiness look like? So we're going to pick up Luke, chapter eleven, beginning in verse 37. I told you I'd put your seatbelt on. You guys ready? All right, seatbelt's on. Here we go. The word of God says, while Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, now, you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish. But inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools. Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. But woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe, mint and rue in every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you, Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it. Ouch. All right, what just happened? Jesus just gets invited by a pharisee. One of these religious lead over to his house for a meal. And what you should know is, the Pharisee wasn't being nice. This wasn't a kind gesture. The Pharisee is trying to trap Jesus. He sees Jesus as the fraud. And so what he does, he invites him over to his home. And Jesus does typical Jesus things. He knows how to confront the situation. So as Jesus sits down for this meal, here's what he doesn't do. He doesn't wash his hands before the meal. And you might think, is it just gross? Or, like, what's going on? Why is the Pharisee so astonished or astounded, like, what's going on there? Well, you may or may not know this. The Pharisees were all about rigid rule keeping. Right? 613 rules or laws from the Old Testament that they would say, we need to keep these to a t. And then on top of that, they created more than 1000, what we would call today fence laws, which were these oral traditions or rules to say, hey, but if we follow these other 1000 rules, we won't even get close to the 613 that we ought not to break. One of those fence laws was that you must wash before eating. So Pharisees frequently really worried about their ritual purity. They would sit together and they would wash their hands religiously before their meal. Cause from their vantage point, that's what honors God. And then what Jesus does when he sits down, he says, no, I'm not gonna do it. What, the Pharisee now has a problem, because this Jesus is not living up to his standard of holiness. And here's just a good clue for you. If Jesus doesn't match your standard of holiness, your standard of holiness is wrong. Okay, let's just be clear there. Like Jesus, the incarnate word of God, who is perfectly obedient to the father, has perfectly communicated to his people what he expects of them. And so we know that the Old Testament never commands washing before a meal. And so is Jesus disobedient here, yes or no? No, he's not. But the Pharisee thinks he is. The Pharisees coming undone. And I think sometimes we're so quick to look at the Pharisee and be like, you are ridiculous. Like all your rules and regulations, like, you really think you're going to one up Jesus? Come on. But if we would just pause and be honest with ourselves, it's probably worth asking, do we ever do this? Like, maybe not to Jesus himself, but to his church, to his bride, to look across the aisle or to look across the street and say, oh, if you really follow Jesus, you wouldn't send your kids to that school. Really? Does the Bible talk about that? Oh, if you really loved Jesus, you wouldn't do XYZ for your medical treatment. Really? If you really love Jesus, you would eat organic. What? Okay, church, we have to be cautious of this. The question is, are we looking at God's standard of holiness, or are we setting up our own personal standard of holiness that is extra biblical? Because for the Pharisees, the problem was all of these extra rules and standards and traditions. It created a form of legalism, this form of measuring up to God. And also this external approach, externalism that just says, hey, we just want to focus on what we look like. And so Jesus looks at this Pharisee and says, you have a serious problem. From the outside, you look like you've got it all together. But on the inside, you are a mess. You have cleaned up your life like a teenager cleans their room. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? Tell the teenager, hey, your room is filthy. Go clean it up. And you just, like, blink and you come back and it looks clean. It's like, what just happened here? They swept it under the bed. They put it in the closet. Ta da. It's clean. And Jesus is telling the Pharisees, this is what you're doing with your life. Your life is an absolute mess. And you are out treating the symptoms and sweeping your evil under the rug. You are full of greed and wickedness, man, I've been here. Church. Think of what God saved me from. And being about a year into following Christ and saying, I don't drink anymore. I'm not promiscuous on the weekends. I don't swear like a sailor. I'm good. And God is like, really? You're good, huh? You look like you're good, but what about your greed? What about your pride? Your arrogance? What about that idol of control you just keep bowing down to and worshiping? You want to talk about that? Because your sin is not just external. It is inside of you. You have a heart issue. And he talks about God as creator, right? He says, hey, he who made the outside of the cup knows the inside. And you are an absolute fool if you think you can trick God, right? If Jordan Howell is smart enough to figure out a Facebook scam, God is smart enough to figure out your hidden sin. You are a fool if you think you can trick God. And holiness is fake here, when the aim is all about appearance, you only care about what you look like to other people. You haven't considered what God is seeing inside of you. But holiness is also fake when it is attainable in your own strength. And God here in Christ is confronting three different ways that this fake holiness is showing up in the Pharisees life. I just want to walk through them quickly, together. The first is in verse 42. The first woe of this passage is, you tithe your herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. What he's telling the religious elite is, hey, you know how to do all the nitpicky things you just don't know how to do the main thing, right? He's like, oh, you're tithing. Great. He's not condemning tithing. He says, man, I wish that you would do that also. And I think for us today, it's like, hey, to give your money to the church. Great, I hope you do that. Or maybe it's coming to church, and you're like, man, I feel good because I come to church every week. Great, I hope you come to church. Or maybe you've patted yourself on the back one too many times because you're like, yeah, I checked the box on my reading plan this week. Great. I hope you read your bible. But here's the question. Have you missed Jesus in the midst of it? Are you actually encountering the living God? Are you giving joyfully and sacrificially to say, God, this money is yours. It belongs to you, and this is an act of worship. As you read the scriptures, are you not just checking the box, but saying, God, I need you to speak to me. This is the only way that I can know you and be satisfied by you. Are you meditating on the word day and night? Are you praying to God not just because you're desperate for him to solve your situation, but because you long for an intimate relationship with him? Are you showing compassion to your neighbors? Jesus is trying to say, hey, if we feel good because we're nitpicking all the small things, but we're missing him, that's fake holiness. And he says, woe to you, warning, you're in danger. Here's the second one. Woe. Number two, verse 43. You love to be seen as holy, right? These Pharisees, they would set themselves up in the best places, the best seat in the synagogue, the best greeting place in the marketplace. They were not content with just being seen, though. They wanted to be seen as holy. They wanted people to look at them and say, wow, now that's a standard to live up to. And church, we have this problem, too. We care way too much about what people think about us and not enough about what God sees in us. In fact, maybe our pride has brought us to a place where we are not content with God seeing us and we need someone else to see us. We're not okay with just the approval of our heavenly Father. We want other people to say, look how good they are. Now. A quick word of warning to the church in 2024 is beware of social media. I'm not here to condemn social media. I know that there's a way to redeem it, but I think a problem in the church today is that oftentimes social media can become an outlet for us to project to people something we're actually nothing to say. Wow. Will anybody know that I did my quiet time unless I put it on the Internet? Will anybody know who I just helped in the community unless I make a post about it? Again, I'm not saying this just to you. I've been in the boat with you, I think back a year into following Jesus. I remember this vividly, and I laugh at myself now. I remember taking to social media somewhere around November and saying, hey, I just thought, everybody should know I'm going on a social media fast. And it's like, who cares? Like, honestly, who cares? If any of us got off social media for six months, no one would miss us. Okay? But here was the heart of that post. I wanted people to see how holy I was. I wasn't content with just getting off. I had to tell people I was getting off. And again, social media is not everybody's problem. But another way this can show up is when someone just asks you, how are you doing? I can already tell you what you're going to tell me. Good. Really? You're good? Tell me more about that, because I know how my weekend's gone. You're good, right? It's fronting, it's fake holiness. That we're hiding what's actually going on in our lives to show people that we're better than we actually are. That's fake holiness. And then you get to verse 43, the third woe, and he tells the Pharisees, you're contaminating the people around you. Now, this illustration can be kind of lost on us because we don't necessarily understand the context. The Pharisees believed that if you came into contact with something that was near death, you would become ritually unclean or impure. So what they would frequently do is they would whitewash these headstones, these tombs, so that they would know they're there because they don't want to come near them. They don't want to touch them. Because if they do, they're impure. And not just you become impure if you touch them, you can infect other people. And what Jesus is telling these Pharisees is, number one, you're dead on the inside. You're just like one of those graves. You're dead on the inside. And here's the problem. You're contaminating everybody that comes in contact with you. It's weighty, it's heavy. It's not just that they were a problem. They were creating a problem. They were pushing people away. And again, I think this is not foreign to us either. The case of the grumpy Christian, right? That's the problem with man made religion. Here's what it's missing joy. It's missing joy because joy is a fruit of the spirit, right? And if you looked at the Pharisees throughout Jesus entire ministry, what were they doing? Complaining. Complaining all the time, crying foul left and right. It was not joyful obedience. It was rigid rule following. And the second someone didn't measure up, all they did was cry foul. Who wants to be a part of that? Nobody, right? And I think if we can be honest with ourselves and say, wow, are we giving people an accurate representation of what it looks like to joyfully follow Jesus? Or are we the grumpy christians who are crying foul when things don't go our way can be a sign or a symptom of false holiness, and it can make the God that we claim unattractive. It's a danger. So you look at just this first half of the text, and you've got to be thinking, wow, I'm really glad I came to church today. Right? Maybe not. Okay. The Pharisees thinking, wow, I'm really glad I had Jesus over today. Probably not because he just got beat up. Maybe you've watched a boxing match or UFC before, and it's like someone's just getting the, you know, their snot knocked out of them. And then you hear the bell ring, and it's like, all right, survived a round. All right, I'm here to tell you, you survived round one. Okay, you made it. But here's what you're doing right now. You're going to your corner, you're lifting your head up, and you're saying, okay, I'm about to go back in the ring. And the bell is going to ring again because Jesus is not done. He's ready to throw some more punches. You guys ready? Okay, I gave you the chance to go to your corner. You guys ready? Okay, here's what happens next. Verse 45. One of the lawyers answered him. Teacher. And saying these things, you insult us also. Oh, I'm offended. Good. He said, woe to you lawyers. Also, for you load people with burdens hard to bear. You yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you. For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your father, for they killed them, and you build their tombs, therefore also, the wisdom of God has said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you have hindered those who were entering. Now, your first thought in reading verse 45 is, a lawyer should have a better argument than that which I agree with. But the problem is, these lawyers were not practicing attorneys like we know today. They were students of the law. They would meticulously study the Torah, and their job was to expound it or explain it to the people. And Jesus comes to these experts of the Torah, who are supposed to be incredible teachers, and he says, you guys are fake, too. You're hypocrites, just like the Pharisees. And then he gives them three woes, three more symptoms of religious hypocrisy. Here's the first one, verse 46. You place difficult standards on people, but you won't help them out. As one commentator said, you are quick to point the finger, but slow to lend a helping hand. Now, were the lawyers asking people to do extra biblical things? Maybe not. I mean, what Jesus tells them is not that they're loading people with burdens too hard to bear, but with burdens that are hard to bear. Is obeying Jesus hard? Anybody? Yeah, man. If obeying Jesus is easy, you follow a different Jesus than me. Okay? The problem here, you're putting commands that are hard to obey on them, but you're not helping people. All you're doing is you're pointing out flaws. You're pointing the finger. You're telling them the things they're doing wrong. But here's what you're not doing. You're not actually helping people follow him. This is all too easy to do, to just point the finger. Because the problem with offering a lending hand is it's inconvenient. If you see sin in somebody's life, it's easier just to talk about it than it is to talk to them. It's easier just to point the finger than it is to come alongside them and say, hey, I'd love to talk to you about XYZ. I've seen this in your life. Help me understand what's going on. I want to remind you of truth from scripture. I want to walk with you this week as we seek to follow Jesus together. It's inconvenient. And the question is, if we actually love our neighbor as ourself, we're going to help them follow Jesus, not just tell them ways. They're not following him, not just pointing a finger, but lending a helping hand. Then you get the fifth woe, verses 47 through 51. I'll summarize it for you this way. The lawyers knew how to talk the talk, but they didn't know how to walk the walk. Right. They claimed to be people of the word, people who, you know, stood on the shoulders of the prophets. But what they're doing is they're building these tombs for the prophets whom their ancestors killed. And what Jesus is telling them is, this is just a picture of the fact that you are just like your ancestors who claimed to love God, but then they killed his prophets. He's saying, you claim to love the word. You just don't even know what it's about. You claim to know what it says, but you're missing the point. In fact, Jesus, prophet, priest, and king right in front of him. What are they doing? They're trying to kill him. You would think these studied men who know the word, who would have much acquaintance with the prophets, would look back at people like Samuel and Isaiah and Hosea and Micah, right? They would look back at these prophets who have said, here's what God wants. He wants obedience, not sacrifice. He wants your heart, not just your religious rituals. You would think they would know that, but they don't. They're still caught up in the game of religion, of doing the sacrifice but missing the heart and missing Jesus himself. And this is our problem, right? 68% of America. Most recent Gallup poll, 68% of America claims to be christian. And I'm not naive to think that many in this room would say, yeah, like, throw me in the Gallup pole. Okay, but here's my question to you. Do you know what the word of God says? Because the word Christian actually was derogatory in the book of acts meant little Christ means, like, man. You're supposed to, like, image Jesus in the way you're living. But the question is, do you know what God asks of you? Do you even know what the word says? And then with that right, if the lawyers really knew what the word says, here's what they should be doing, placing their life right under its authority to say, if Jesus is not just my savior but my Lord, here's what I'm going to do as a Christian. Whatever Jesus tells me to do, that's where my heart's at. Are we joyfully obedient to the scriptures? And if not, we know how to talk the talk, but we're not walking the walk. And that leads to one of the strongest condemnations given in this text, the 6th woe in verse 52, where Jesus tells the lawyers, you're hindering people from understanding God's word, you're hindering people from understanding God's word. You're hindering people from actually encountering the God they were made for. Why? Because they did not understand the human condition. They completely misunderstood the human condition. Though their job was to help people understand God's word, what they did was they projected in such a way that people would look at them and miss Jesus. And Jesus does not just tell them, you don't know God's word, though he does say that. He's like, you don't have the key of knowledge. Here's what you've done. You've taken it away from other people again, one commentator said, the lawyers became a better wall than they were a door. Ouch. And here's the problem with the religious. When it came to holiness, they didn't understand where Holiness started. Right? Some of them thought that holiness started with a Bible degree. Just got to know enough. It starts in my head. Holiness starts with acquiring knowledge, knowing the right answers, measuring up academically. But some of them thought Holiness started with their hands. Not just a Bible degree, but behavior modification. Said, hey, holiness starts by following all the rules, dotting all the I's, crossing all the t's, making sure that my life is perfectly buckled up and put together. That's what holiness looks like. And God comes at these people and he says, you're fake. You're fake. Because here's what you need to know today. Holiness is a hard issue. Holiness is a hard issue fundamentally, which means it cannot be fixed by Bible degrees and it cannot be fixed by behavior modification. So what is the solution? If holiness is a heart issue, what's the solution? You get a clue here near the end of the text. You might not have picked this up, but they have such a heart issue. These men do. Here's what happens in verse 53. As he, Jesus went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees begin to press him hard and provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something. He might say, this is hunting language. They're lying in wait, trying to catch Jesus. And what's crazy? What's crazy their heart issue led them to kill Jesus. And you know what Jesus being killed does? It solves the heart issue. Whoa. Because the solution to a heart issue is the good news of the gospel. The good news that Holiness does not start with you measuring up to God, but God coming to you in the person and work of Jesus Christ, that he stepped down from heaven, put on flesh, lived the perfectly holy life that you never could, and you were never actually designed to bear that burden. And what does he do? He takes his perfection. He takes your sin, and he nails it to the tree, the cross. And how does he do that? Joyfully, obediently. Philippians two says that Jesus was obedient even to the point of death, even death on a cross. And he rises victoriously three days later to extend to you reconciliation, to offer this new covenant that was prophesied thousands of years before in Ezekiel, where he would take your heart of stone and he would rip it out of your chest and he would put a heart of flesh inside of you. The heart of stone is gone. You have a new heart. Why? Because you love God? No, because God loved you. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is the good news of the gospel, that we need a God who can change our heart. But God did not just. He did not just die to give us positional holiness. He did do that. He rose again victoriously. And here's what he promised to us. I will not leave you alone. I will not leave you as orphans. I will send the helper, the promised Holy Spirit. So you don't just have this positional holiness, you can practically pursue holiness with God with the spirit's help. It's incredible. So I want to give you guys a little tool on the tool belt, because if you're anything like me and you've sat through this, you're like, I need help. Can I get an amen? Holy smokes. False holiness is a lot easier than we thought, and real holiness is a lot harder than we thought, too. So I want to give you a quick tool. It's a cycle. It's designed as a cycle, which means you never actually get done with it. Kind of love that, too. So here's how we're going to live this out. This is what real holiness, the real pursuit of holiness looks like. It starts step one. Rest in the gospel. Rest in the gospel. To, again, understand that your holiness does not begin with you. It begins with Jesus that you have to look at the cross, you have to look at the empty tomb. And rather than starting with effort. You have to start with surrender and say, wow, the only way that I am holy is because Jesus died in my place and rose again. Rest in the gospel. Secondly, here's what you need to do. You need to rely on the spirit. I alluded to that already. Jesus did not just die and rise again and save you to muster up your own strength. He sent the promised holy spirit to live inside of you to help you be obedient. You cannot honor God apart from his help. And the question is, why would you want to? Right? You have the power of God living inside you to help you be obedient. I love, in Philippians two, this command to work out your salvation with fear and trembling seems like it's, like really on us. And here's what Philippians 213 says, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. God has given you the power you need to practically pursue holiness. The question is, will you slow down and humbly acknowledge you need his help? Say, God, I know that you are calling me to be patient with my kids today. Whoa. I cannot do that in my own strength. But you have been perfectly patient with me and you have placed your promised holy spirit inside me. And because you live in me, I can be patient with my children today. Please, lord, help me by the power of your spirit. Okay. And then number three, close. The loop on this cycle is that you would repent. Because here's what's going to happen. You're going to get to the end of your day and you're going to recognize you didn't do this perfectly. And if you think you did, try again. You didn't. There's this practice that's been used across various forms and fashions of religion, maybe even self help, but I want to keep it christian here. You guys okay with that? I hope you are okay. It's called a daily examine, okay? And all that you're doing is at the end of your day, before you lay your head on your pillow at night, is you're asking God by the power of his spirit to say, I want you to give me a tour of the last 24 hours of my life. I want you to show me where I've been. I want you to show me what I've done, and I want you to show me why I did it. Show me my heart. Right. This is a good place to begin praying psalm 139 with David. Search me, o God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And if there is any grievous way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting to every day. Come back to this and say, God, I just need you to show me where I have been a fake. Show me where my motives were impure, where I was projecting, where I was being a hindrance. And God, forgive me, forgive me, help. Lead me in the way everlasting. And then what do you do? You rest. You rest in the gospel, and then you do it all over again. You do it all over again. Do it all over again. And what this cycle ends up leading us to is just a humble heart posture. The Pharisees had a huge pride problem. They were self made and self righteous. And what this cycle does for us, resting, relying, repenting. It keeps us dependent upon God. It postures us to say, man, I want humble and joyful obedience. And when I fall short, I don't want to hide it. I want to bring it to the light. And I want Jesus to be made much of. And here's what would happen if we would do that. We would be a church that people would delight to run into, not just in here. I'm saying throughout the week that people would be like, wow. Maybe they wouldn't say this, but they'd think it. There's something different about you. They ought to, right? They ought to ask, why are they so joyful? And if they ever would ask us, here's what we can joyfully say to them. Jesus changed my heart. This is a heart issue. But I know the one who can cure a heart. His name is Jesus Christ, and he can change yours, too. Amen. Let's pray together. Father God. Yeah. We confess, Lord, that we have been far too quick to try and take holiness into our own hands, whether that be through performance or pretending. God, we have just missed the need for Jesus that holiness is not just a head problem or a hands problem, it's a heart problem. And, Jesus, we desperately need you. And thank you that you joyfully went to the cross. You paid our price, and you didn't stay dead. You rose victorious. Thank you for your promised holy spirit that you've placed inside each believer to not just be called righteous, but to pursue righteousness. And God, we declare, we proclaim this morning that we need your help to honor you. We don't want to do anything apart from you. So please change our hearts and lead us in the way everlasting. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.