Holy Bodies and Transformed Minds

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. This is the unique program where we have conversations about worldview all through the lens of oneism and two ism. This lens is based on Romans 1:25. We have exchanged the truth of God for the lie, worship and serve creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forevermore. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Amen. [00:00:22] Speaker A: I'm your host, Joshua Guillot. Right now we're going to take a break from our regular programming on the five points of paganism, the five points of the Gospel. The second is where Mary Weller and I are dissecting the Christian worldview and its antithesis of the pagan worldview with a teaching by Dr. Peter Jones. This was recorded a number of years ago where Dr. Peter Jones is preaching through Romans chapter 12, transformed bodies, holy minds. As Christians we live coram Deo. We live before the Lord. But what does it exactly look like to have a Romans 12 lifestyle where the Apostle Paul gives us insight. He says, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And if you're like me, you might be thinking, well sure, that sounds so simple on the surface, but how do I actually live that out? You might start writing to yourself a mental note or a mental to do list that reads something like 1. Stop conforming. 2 Renew mind. 3 Learn discernment. But if you're like me, you might immediately feel overwhelmed by that very small section of scripture, maybe because our minds work this way and so it's liberating. The first time I heard Dr. Jones preach through this the holy bodies transform minds message. And it reminds us that among other things, that our call to holiness is made possible because of Christ's holiness. And so we are delighted to be able to give this out for free. We are asking right now at the end of this year that you would prayerfully consider financially making a support for the ministry of Truth Exchange. Your donation helps support our continued work to equip Christians and to speak the Gospel in the culture around them with that simple beauty of the Biblical worldview. If you would like to give a one time gift, you could go to Truth, the letter X change.com or you can send it to truthexchangepobox416 Escondido, CA 92033. Again, with great thanks for your support of this ministry. Thank you for reading and listening to our content. We pray that it is a blessing to you, not only encourages you, but it equips you to do the good work that we have all been called as Christ, to be a light to the world, to declare the truest beauty of God, the Creator, who is redeeming creation. I'm Joshua Guillaume. Thank you for listening. [00:02:42] Speaker B: At the end of a conference like this, we have to ask the questions, well, what do we do with all this wonderful rich truth? And I would like to interrogate the Scriptures with you precisely on that point. You know, reading the Epistle to the Romans is probably like sitting through a week at the Bible conference here where you hear such rich truth. Of course, in Romans you hear a wonderful beginning statement about the nature of God and then you move to the whole doctrine of justification and then sanctification and then God's sovereign rule over history and eschatology. And somehow it's so powerful you can get indigestion. But you come to Romans chapter 12 and Romans chapter 12 is really a pause where Paul says, after you've seen all this, what do you do with it? What is the response you must make in the light of all this truth? How do we respond? And you know Paul's response. He says, we need to offer to the Lord two holy bodies and transformed minds. Bodies and minds committed to the Lord, transformed by the power of his spirit and the truth of his revelation and the example of our Savior Jesus. In other words, a full bloodied bodied. Excuse me, a full bodied. Sometimes we get bloodied. A full bodied expression of gospel truth. You know, some of the funniest things I say, I never even mean to say, which is sad because I can't make money on that as a stand up comedian. I mean, you know, some Christians think the body is evil, other Christians think using the mind is evil. But the Apostle Paul says what you bring to the Lord, having understood this vast array of truth, is your body and your mind. Amen. You know, everybody understands the importance of adjoining, of a good body and a good mind. Even the Romans in Paul's day had the phrase sanus corpus sanus, a sound mind in a sound body. That seems to go without saying. But Paul, you see, takes that notion here in Romans chapter 12 and puts a little twist on it. He says, we need holy bodies and transformed minds. You know, I was speaking this morning about how human dignity flows out of the character of God himself, really talking about what is true humanity. And in a certain sense, you see, what Paul is laying before us here is indeed that perspective of living out as God intended, our true humanity. Are you ready for it? Are you doing it? Have you done it? Has the Gospel transformed you? Has it made you holy? Has it given you a mind that's transformed by the amazing truth we find in Scripture? I'm sure for many of you this is true. Perhaps there are some here for whom that is not true. You need to listen. It's very interesting. In verse one, Paul talks about holy bodies and every key word. In verse one, you'll find in the Old Testament. It's drawn out of the Old Testament teaching on holiness. The second verse has a number of powerful words that Paul actually heard on Fox News. If there were one in those days, he read those off the newspaper. You don't find those words in the Old Testament. And so you have this wonderful blend, you see, of Old Testament teaching, especially unholiness, blended with a New Testament understanding of the newness of the work of God through Jesus at that moment in time. And they're brought together, you see, in a wonderful unity of this teaching. We need holiness informed by truth. And this is biblical. Listen to this statement of Paul. The sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with goodness. Sound words and goodness or holiness is the very objective of Paul's ministry, as he says so in 1 Timothy 6, 3. So really good news for you. My sermon only has two points. But when a professor says he only has two points, be careful, because there are all kinds of sub points, hundreds of sub points. But anyway, I hope you'll be able to at least catch that. There are two fundamental axes in what Paul is teaching us here. And I want to look first of all at holy bodies. What do we learn about holy bodies? I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You know, our context today makes that sound somewhat demanding. To live holy lives in the world in which we are called to live right now is a tremendous challenge. When I first came to the United States in 1964, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The place was so impregnated with Christian values. And I left in 73 to work in godless France. And I came back in 91, and I was shook by the change that had come across these United States. Now I know the Midwest has remained like it always was. You're not at all like California anyway. But, you know, we do live in a radically immoral culture where pornography is everywhere. I was reading a little article on a website that I go on, and this obviously Christian man was Saying that he cannot avoid pornography anywhere. Even in articles on the news, there are always pictures that appear. And you men know what I'm talking about, that it's almost impossible to keep your mind pure in our day and age, impregnated as we are with this pornography. And this stuff is now being taught in the schools. The feminist movement has declared, and I quote one radical who called her sisters to re sanctify the body in order to re establish the consciousness of the sacred prostitute. That's held up as the great goal. Just a few weeks ago, the United nations was talking about developing the rights of sex workers. Suddenly prostitutes have become sex workers that deserve all kinds of rights. You know, as I think about our culture and even though you're in the holy Midwest, that's with a W. My mind goes back to what I've read about the ancient world. And when Paul was writing this text, the place was just as bad as what our world is becoming. Federico Fellini's X rated movie Satyricon actually used a play based on the work of a Roman courtier at the time of Nero. Nero's dates were A.D. 37 to 68, right bang in the middle of Paul's ministry and life. And he was in Rome at that time. And Petronius wrote a play featuring Roman debauchery, prostitution, orgies, homosexual and hermaphrodite trystes, gay marriage, pedophilia. You know, when Paul was writing Romans, Nero was marrying two men. One is his wife and one is his husband. So when Paul is addressing Christians in Rome with this high standard of holiness, we have to realize that when he asks us to do the same thing, then we can't say, but our time is special. We can't do it. It's too difficult. No, our world is becoming very like the world of ancient Rome. And Paul's address to Christians is precisely the same as he addresses to us. Because in an imploding world, what the world needs is the light of the gospel shining through holy bodies. But of course, this can't be moralism. We cannot simply come over as perfect moral beings who do it on our own. No, that won't work. Paul's exhortation to be holy, you'll notice, is an appeal to fellow believers on the basis of God's mercy, as a response to mercy, as sinners saved by grace. And we never forget that we indeed are sinners. So as we live holy lives, we live it in the full knowledge that we in ourselves can't do it. And that left to ourselves we would be hopeless sinners. I mentioned that Paul's language is drawn from the Old Testament. And I wondered why Paul thought that what he calls the priestly service, the Levitical service, was appropriate for Christians. And the fact of the matter is, I think is that the Levites were set apart forever. And everything they did was consecrated, made holy. And you know, if you're a Christian, you're in it forever. This is full time commitment and it's a commitment to the project of your own holiness. So what does holiness mean as we see it through the spectrum of the Old Testament priest and the Old Testament teaching about sacrifice that the priests give? This is the basis on which Paul is writing this exhortation. Paul says, present your bodies. And in Deuteronomy 17:12, the priest presents himself to minister before the Lord. He says to give a living sacrifice. And in numbers 2939, we read these sacrifices you shall offer to the Lord at the appointed feasts. This sacrifice Paul says we should give should be acceptable to the Lord. And that term we find all the way through the accounts of the sacrificial system that the offering must be acceptable to the Lord. And then when Paul says, this is your priestly service, he's referring of course, to the service of the Levitical priests. The work of the service in the house of the Lord of The Levites says 1st Chronicles 28:13. So we have to understand holiness against the background of a ministry that's full time, that's thoroughly devoted to the specific work of the service of God, bringing sacrifices to the Lord. And of course, the priest brought all kinds of animals and sacrificed them. The problem is for Paul, he changes a little bit his tune now and he says, the sacrifice folks that you have to bring is your own bodies. We bring our bodies as a sacrifice. Now he's actually using a perfectly good word, body. In other words, this physical element is what God demands. And you say, well, how about my dreams? How about my aspirations? How about my higher self? How about my spiritual me? Won't that be enough? And God says, no, I want your body, Lord. How about my imagination, my good intentions, my clever plans, my vast vision for the kingdom? No, I want your body. You see, this is a full commitment and it's an everyday commitment of our physical engagement in the truth of the gospel. There's no way out of that. I wonder why. Well, I ask myself that question. And what I can see is that we all hate hypocrites who say one thing and then in secret do the opposite so that our Body has to be fully committed to what we say, we believe. But the other thing is that our bodies, as we were saying this morning, actually in their physicality, witness to who God is as the creator of this world, of this physical world, and of your physical body. And this is an important witness in the ancient. Well, not that ancient. In the early Church, there was a heresy called Gnosticism which is coming back flooding into our times. And I've written about that. You can go on my website if you want to find some of the books I've written on this kind of thing. And for your use, I guess I'll just say truthxchange.com you can find many books that I've written on these subjects. And it's so important. But the Gnostics denied the body. And the reason why they did that was they denied the Creator. You see, there's a fundamental connection between the Creator and the body. And if we understand that our bodies witness to the world, we're really witnessing to God as the Creator. And I want you to not miss that. The body is absolutely essential. It's by the body of Jesus that we are saved. Jesus says, take and eat. This is my body. Body. At the resurrection, they did not find his body. And then in future times, the redemption which we await is what? It's the redemption of the body. You see, there's no way out of this corporal commitment. And so Paul says, what is done in the body, whether good or evil, is the account that we will give before the Lord. And Paul, when he comes to the end, says, it is my eager expectation that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body. So the Lord calls us, as we come to the end of this Bible conference, to think specifically now about what we do with all this wonderful information as it impacts our giving of our bodies. But Paul is more clear still. He says the Lord wants not just our bodies, he wants holy bodies. There's a lot been said about holy in the new rising generation. We all want to be cool. We don't want to rock the boat. We want to get along. In the past, in my generation, there were folks who sort of enjoyed being holy. My grandmother was in a holiness movement, and I can remember she had this awful hairdo with her hair caught in a bun. And then she had a hemline that went halfway down her calves. And that was holiness. And I shuddered away from that, of course. But that's not what holiness is. The root meaning of holiness is actually something set apart for a particular function in A particular place, in a certain sense. There's nothing moral about it. It's what God does when he organizes the world. You know, when God created the world, he took elements that already existed and he put them in relationships. He separated day and night and the land and the sea and male and female. And he said it was very good. And really as God was creating, he was giving things their special place. In that sense, creation is sort of like the sanctification of matter as things find their rightful places. So when we're called upon to give holy bodies to the Lord, really what's being demanded is that we find our place. You know, the elements in the temple, the plates and the cups were called holy. Now there's nothing moral about a plate. And I have to do the washing up sometimes. And I know that I don't particularly enjoy it. I enjoy a nice meal off a plate, but washing it up, I don't. But anyway, they're called holy, you see, not because they're intrinsically moral, but because they have a specific function. It's the same for the Lord. When Jesus teaches us how to pray, he says, don't pray like the heathens pray, or the pagans, as I like to say, or pray our Father who is in heaven, Holy is your name. You notice the conjunction of heaven and holy there. God is holy because he's separate from us in his own place. That's what makes God holy. He occupies his own place. And I've been describing paganism or oneism where God is taken from his place and merged with everything else. And that is thoroughly and fundamentally unholy. You see the point? So we have to find our place and thus witness to the way God has created the world with distinct specific places. So I take Paul's word as an exhortation to us to find our place. And to do that I have to use a four letter word, submission. I've never been good at math, but you know, in our egalitarian, freedom seeking age, the very notion of submission is to be eliminated. But you know, in the New Testament, I forget how many times, I think it's about 33 times or something, the word submission occurs. And we're called to submit in various ways to magistrates, to church leaders, to employers, to husbands, to parents, to Christ and to God. Because God has created the world in such a way that there are special places and it's our calling to find out what our place is and serve the Lord in that place. But you know, it's very easy to misuse our bodies and Paul himself sees how in a particular way, our bodies are misused in the whole area of sexuality because the body is so important, its unholy, dysfunctional use with regard to sexuality is particularly condemned. Paul says, do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? I read somewhere that 40% of pastors are embroiled in pornography in our time. You can understand how that kind of prurient interest in somebody else's body other than your wife actually destroys your integrity, destroys your sense of true holiness in that specific place that God has placed you as the husband of this wife and only this wife. You see, you've gone over the boundaries of holiness of this place that God has established for you. And so Paul says, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. That's just a warning. It seems to me that, you know, I guess it's like all these obsessions that as you allow yourself to be caught in one of these obsessional activities like pornography, it creates actually physical reactions within your body, and you will be caught up in that kind of sensation within this experience, and it will affect your body in ways perhaps that other kinds of sins don't. That's, I believe, why Paul puts his finger so strongly on it. So that's just a warning in this particularly difficult time that we especially mentioned. Observe this warning, which is not so negative, because if we can see the beauty of the vision of Scripture to give us a rightful place where we can be truly human, then it is not an onerous call to us to deny some of these temptations. It is actually promoting true humanity. You know, as I read, where so many in our world are so involved in these sins, and yet at the same time, I read some of these pagans who are dreaming of a new world and they're going to redo everything. And I think to myself, but where are the people going to come from who will occupy this new world who have already been so twisted into selfish ways of thinking about themselves that they will be incapable of living at a higher level? But that shouldn't be true about Christians because, you see, this is a noble calling. Do you want your life to have significance? You are called to reflect in your life the holiness of God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, says Isaiah. And the whole earth somehow knows that. But the whole earth needs to see that holiness in us. In Christians, we, says Jesus, are Appointed as the light of the world. This is a noble calling. Catch it that way, not as an elimination of your rights, but as a magnificent call to find your place and occupy it with enthusiasm and for love of your Savior. Because, you see, it is also a necessary implication of who you are if you belong to Christ. Here's what Paul says. As he who called you is holy. You also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written you shall be holy. For I am holy. Well, that was my first point. Do we have enough time for the second point? Well, those of you who don't, you can leave now. But I'm going to do my second point anyway. Because it's not enough to just focus on the body. Paul says here in these two wonderful verses that the second thing that we must focus on is transformed minds. Let me read it. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. You know, using the mind in today's world is tough. We are told in our time that we are regressive, backward looking, and that the cutting edge folks are forward looking, that they are full of hope and change and that we are going backwards. Were old school conservative traditionalists. This kind of language can be used to a very powerful extent. I noticed, for instance, that in 2009 when some gay leaders were in the White House, President Obama actually said to them that the foes of homosexuality are holding onto, quote, unquote worn arguments and old attitudes, failing to realize that at the time of Paul, of course, that whole ancient world was freely practicing homosexuality. So what is old and what is new, you know, that's up for grabs. But to dismiss the biblical position as old and worn shows tremendous ignorance of the real issues. The categories of progressive and regressive are misleading and don't get to the heart of the issue because as a matter of fact, everybody goes back in these swanky LA gyms where these cool tan blondes are doing yoga, they're going back to the 6th century BC Buddha. Everybody goes back. So don't tell me that you're forward going and the Christians are backward looking because everybody is doing the same thing, namely plugging into two worldviews and only two. And they've always been here. And that's true. Gresham Machen, who was the founder of Westminster in Philadelphia, in a sermon at Princeton, where he was also a professor before a whole group of them left because of the liberalism in that school, it got worse. As I discovered when I went there. Our enemy, who prides itself on being very modern, is as old as the hills. And from the very beginning, the Christian church has been menaced by all embracing paganism. You see, this claim that this way of thinking is new is really an intimidation factor. And that's where it's very interesting to see what Paul says to Christians. That first line, do not be conformed to this world. You see, we're constantly being bombarded by this world's view of things. And it was true at the time of Paul and it's true now, and especially for our young people who are out there in those university campuses and other places where they go. And once you would raise the issue of the notion of holiness, for instance, you would be left out of court. And so many Christians now live in a fear of the culture, and so they will not speak the truth. It's a whole soft sell approach. Some student ministries now call themselves a hospital for suffering people. They used to bring in evangelists to proclaim the gospel. That doesn't happen anymore. Oddly enough, now they're hospitals. This intimidation factor causes us to seek approval of the culture and thus to modify our message. The culture dislikes us and that must be proof that we have the gospel all wrong, and so we'll have to change it. Any mention of sin, the cross, personal salvation is seen as negative. And this is among young evangelicals I'm describing. And some naively believe that if we tweak the gospel message, eliminate the cross and do social work and rake the leaves of neighbors in the fall, that everything will be fine for the Christian church. Now, there's nothing wrong with helping neighbors, but to not announce the gospel to that neighbor is scandalous. So the sort of assimilation into the culture, fear of the culture, even adaptation to the culture. A radical emergent thinker in Great Britain talks about the essential goodness of the culture. And here's what he says. We need to completely rebirth the church into the culture. We must open ourselves to the culture and adapt to it. We must resist the idea that the main goal of the church is getting people saved. So you see, we let this fallen culture establish the agenda of the church. And that, frankly, is what Paul is warning against. Do not be conformed to this world. He sees it as the present evil age under the dominion of Satan. I suppose we could see some good things in the culture, but the very direction of the culture, you see, does not have as its origin the worship and service of the Creator, but rather of the creature. So how do we resist this temptation of accommodation and assimilation to this present culture? Well, as I'm suggesting to you, let's not be intimidated by it, but let's understand what's going on. And we do that, I think, by trying to figure out what Paul means by the transformation or the renewal of your mind. He's really talking about a massive change of thinking. He's using a term that was used to describe the change in Jesus at the mount of Transfiguration. If you want to know the truth, that's the same verb that he's using. And so he's calling upon Christians to radically rethink everything about the world in a way that allows them to not be intimidated by the world of the Greco Roman Empire and for us, this new world developing around us. But what does he mean by a renewed or transformed mind? I would suggest that the way of figuring that out, and you gotta follow me carefully here, because this is one of these clever sleights of hand that a professor of New Testament can do sometimes. But I think I'm doing the right thing. He talks about the renewed mind, and elsewhere he talks about the depraved mind. And so you have these two kinds of minds facing each other. Paul uses the term in 12, 2, a transformed mind to discern what is God's will. Now, this term discern is used in another place in Romans, in Romans 1:28, describing homosexuality as a matter of fact. And Paul says there, God gave them up to an undiscerning mind. So the Christian has a discerning mind that understands the will of God. And this kind of pagan thinking is undiscerning. It's the same word in Greek, you see, and it's translated as debased mind in some translations. But it's important to see that Paul is using the same basic term, either discern or undiscern. And so that throws us back to his description of what the undiscerning mind, how it functions and what it thinks. And it throws us back really to the subject that I've been landing on once in a While during these four lectures, namely the 18 words that changed the world. This pen of Paul's that was filled with kryptonite, which explodes off the page 18 incendiary words that changed the world of his day. Little wonder the Romans killed him. A text that I have found so useful that. And it's so much broader than any other biblical text I can find. I like to think of it as the equivalent of Einstein's E equals MC squared. Or Descartes cogito ergo sum. I'm overdoing it, folks. But it's the famous statement in Romans chapter 1, verse 25. They exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. You see, Paul is talking about the debased mind here and the discerning mind. There are two kinds of minds. One that understands that the Creator is to be worshiped, and the other that deliberately doesn't want to understand that and worships the creation. That's what Paul calls in chapter one of Romans, a debased mind. And so the mind, you see, has a fundamental question to ask itself. Does the world create itself? Or is there a creator different from the world who created it? And really, they are the only two questions you can ask to be an intelligent human being. That's where you must start asking questions. Does the world create itself? And of course, that's what many people today believe. Or is the world created by an external, alien creator distinct from creation? And that's what Paul puts his finger on here in Romans 1:25. And I've written a number of books about that. I brought 30 books on Friday and we put them out on Saturday morning, and in 15 minutes they'd all gone. And Bruce said to me he'd never seen books move off the table so fast. But I have written a book about this particular text of Romans. And if you want to get that book, write to me at my website and we can send you the book. It's called One or Two Seeing a World of Difference. I love that title, Seeing a World of Difference. And in there I'm trying to develop, to be simple. I know you don't think I'm simple, but I'm trying to be. These two options, either the worship of creation, which I call one ism. Because if you worship creation, you're saying that everything that we know about is all there is that exists. And if we know that and we consider it worshipful, then we've really made it divine. And so everything is one, you see. Everything is worthy of some kind of worship or the worship of the Creator, as Paul says, who is blessed forever. Paul can't stop himself from sort of citing Psalm 8, Blessed forever. He's so amazed by the Creator. And I call that twoism, you see, because God and the creation are separate and they're very distinct. They're brought together because God puts his image on us. And in Christ he reconciles us to himself. But you know, What? You will never become God. It's interesting. In revolution it is Revelation 4:11, you musicians will have a wonderful time in glory creating great music. But there the 24 elders around the throne are singing to God, you are worthy because you created all things. Isn't that interesting? Throughout the halls of eternity, we will still be worshiping the God who is the Creator or blessed forever. We better get used to it now, right? Get our voices in tune with the eternal song. And you see, we will be doing that, singing that song as transformed creatures. But we will not be divine. We will always be creatures. And that's good. God said the earth was good and his transformation of the world and of the cosmos will be even better. So those are the two options of how to think. And you know, I feel the burden of taking this message to our young people who are intimidated by this present world. And when I get this message in front of them and I show them that these two ways of thinking have always existed and that what is coming over to them as really cool, cutting edge, forward looking material and thinking and practice is as old as the hills. And that the Christian position of twoism is just as worthy of their attention and their thinking as anything else. And that they can hold their head up high and say, this is what we believe without feeling accused of being small minded. Because as a matter of fact, the pagan way of thinking is small minded. They only have one circle, whereas we have two circles. We have the circle of creation and the circle of the Creator. That's about as broad a mind as you would want. So this is my challenge to you, dear folks, that we understand what Paul's burden was in Romans to get the Christians to think in a way that is transformative of the mind. But I don't want to leave you with an onerous sense of, oh, one more thing I have to do because, you know, I'm not sure you can take care of your own holiness, your sanctification. I'm not sure you'll do too well at thinking because we're all sinners and we're all not terribly intelligent. And you know, we need help, don't we? We need the grace of God. We need the holy body of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross for us to give us holiness, to create within us that ability to reach out and serve and please him in our bodies in a holy way. We need the mind of Jesus, the mind of Christ, as Paul says, because our minds are not up to the challenge. But you know, when we give ourselves, when we give Ourselves as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. And when we seek the transformation of our minds, the Lord can do great things with us. And I want to leave this exhortation with you dear folks. You know I told you I'd never heard of Cedar Falls. And when I've come here, I realized that you're a flyover country. But unfortunately, the troops are now flying in. The coasts are arriving in Waterloo next week. Somebody told me this morning, next week there will be a gay parade in Waterloo. Who would have thought? Another lady today, this evening, told me that this very day, as she drove around Cedar Falls, she saw what I had shown Yesterday on a PowerPoint, on a car that drove past her. The PowerPoint that I showed Coexist. So the coasts are coming in and you know, this lovely spot that has been unsullied for so long in certain ways, of course, they're all sinners. I know is now feeling the effects of the coasts. And that's inevitable because you all watch the same television. But I want to encourage you, dear friends, that this is the battle ahead of us. And Paul tells us what this battle is. It's both the battle for holy bodies and to shine in that holiness, not in self importance, but just to reflect the holiness of God and to do this kind of transformative thinking as we announce the gospel to those who so desperately need it. Will you pray with me And I'll pray for you, Father. I pray for these dear friends, believers, members of the church to which I belong, your body, that you will bless them, having spent this week of great encouragement that the things that they've learned will go deep into their souls. And then as we come to this last message and the exhortation from the Apostle Paul from the Lord himself, may we hear it and put it into practice. And may we express in our own lives something of that true humanity of Jesus. May people see Jesus in us. And may we show Jesus to this needy world. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, coming back soon, who will reign as the second Adam over all dominion and power and authority, and we will reign with Him. Him. We pray this in his blessed name. Amen. [00:53:50] Speaker A: This concludes our recording of the Truth Exchange podcast. Thank you for joining us. I am your host, Joshua Gilo. Next week we continue our series on the five points of paganism and the five points of the Gospel. One problem, one solution.