80 | Holding Leaders Accountable: Justice, Truth, and Church Leadership (1 Timothy 5:19–21) Pt. 2

Can a church pursue justice without becoming harsh?

Can it show grace without compromising truth?

In 1 Timothy 5:20–21, Paul answers both questions.

When the sin of a church leader is confirmed and remains unrepentant, Scripture doesn't call the church to silence.

It calls the church to courageous accountability.

Not to shame. Not to seek revenge.

But to protect Christ's church and call sinners to repentance.

Yet Paul also warns against the opposite danger: favoritism.

Justice cannot depend on personality, popularity, or position.

Whether confronting sin or extending grace, God's people must pursue the truth without partiality because every decision is made before the presence of God.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

✅ Why public rebuke is meant to protect the church—not humiliate leaders
✅ The difference between accountability and vengeance
✅ Why repentance changes how the church responds to sin
✅ What it means to lead and judge without favoritism
✅ How Christ calls His church to pursue both justice and grace
✅ Why every leadership decision is made before the presence of God

Healthy churches don't choose between truth and love.

They pursue both.

Because Christ protects His church when His people steward leadership according to His design.

🎧 Listen now to Episode 80: Holding Leaders Accountable: Justice, Truth, and Church Leadership (Part 2).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there and welcome back. If you have been listening to Sunday Renewal for any length of time, you know preachers can get long winded. And last week, I will be honest with you, I got long winded. I had every intention of walking us through three verses in one message. By the time I worked through the first verse, I realized we needed more time. We stopped at the verse nineteen and today we are picking up exactly where we left off. So I am not going to take up much time on the front end of this episode. You came here to keep working through 1 Timothy 5, so let me give you a quick reminder of where we are and then we're going to jump right back in. This is week two of our three part series The Stewardship of Church Leadership. The series anchor is one we are going to keep hearing every week. Christ protects his church when his people steward leadership according to his design. In week one we learn the first part of that stewardship honor. Faithful leaders who rule well deserve recognition, esteem, and tangible support. Every faithful under shepherd is a gift from the chief shepherd. Last week we began the second part, accountability, and we walk through verse nineteen together. Paul's first principle of accountability is simple but profound. Truth before conclusions, evidence before verdicts, no charge against an elder admitted without two or three witnesses. The pursuit of justice that God has commanded since the days of Moses. And we ended last week with a question hanging in the air. What happens when the truth is established? What happens when the witnesses confirm what the rumors merely whispered? What happens when sin in the life of a leader is no longer a question but a confirmed reality? That is exactly where Paul takes us in verses twenty and twenty one. And what he says next is some of the most courageous, weighty and protective teaching in the entire New Testament. Settle in, open your heart and your Bible, and let's get back into the text. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. Now watch the progression Paul is making. In verse nineteen, investigate carefully. In verse twenty, when the investigation confirms continuing sin, act decisively. These two verses are not in conflict with each other. They are two halves of the same biblical commitment. Verse nineteen protects accountability from being weaponized by rumor. Verse twenty protects the church from accountability being avoided when sin is confirmed. Both are necessary. Both are God's design, and both come from the same apostle in the same paragraph. Now I want you to notice something critical about how Paul phrases verse twenty. The English Standard Version, which we just read, renders this phrase those who persist in sin. Other faithful translations like the New International Version and the New Living Translation, and some others, King James Version, I believe, render it simply those who sin. So you may be reading from a version that does not include the word persist at all. That is not a translation problem. Both renderings are faithful to the underlying Greek. But here is what every translation is trying to capture. As a matter of fact, some versions would say of those who are sinning. The grammar Paul uses describes ongoing, continuing present tense action. Sin that does not stop, sin that continues despite warning. Sin that is not interrupted by repentance. Paul is not describing the elder who makes a mistake. He is not describing the elder who stumbles and gets up. He is not describing the elder who sins, is confronted, repents, and is restored. That's not who he's describing here. Paul is describing the elder who knows what he is doing, has been confronted and continues anyway. That distinction is everything. Every elder sins. Every preacher sins. I hate to burst the bubble you may be living in, but if you didn't know, now you know every elder sins. Every preacher sins Romans three twenty three. Every faithful shepherd in the history of the church has needed grace, repentance, forgiveness and restoration. If the standard for eldership were perfection, guess who would qualify? Nobody. But there is a difference, a vast difference between the Christian who walks in repentance and the Christian who walks in unrepentance. The Bible has different words for both. One the word calls humility, the other the word calls hardness of heart. One welcomes the correction of God, the other resists it. And the difference between them is not whether sin has occurred, but what the heart does when sin is exposed. So what does Paul tell the church to do? When sin in an elder's life is confirmed, continuing and unrepented. He says, Rebuke them in the presence of all. Now stop and feel the weight of that command. This is not a private conversation. This is not a quiet meeting in the back office. This is not a discreet adjustment that nobody else needs to know about. This is public, visible in front of the congregation. And before any of us flinch at how heavy that sounds, we have to understand why Paul commands it. The answer is in the second half of the verse. Paul says so that the rest may stand in fear. The word rest there refers to the other elders, the other leaders, and by extension the wider congregation. And the fear Paul is producing is not the fear of being caught. It is not the fear of public embarrassment. It is not the fear of human consequences. It is the fear of God. The holy reverence that comes over every congregation when they see the seriousness with which their God treats sin in his own house. The sober awareness that the one who calls men to lead his flock also calls them to walk worthy of that calling. The trembling recognition that leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ is not a position of immunity. It is a position of greater accountability before a holy God. Public rebuke is not about humiliation. It is about warning. It protects future leaders from drifting into the same patterns. It protects the congregation from believing that leadership exists in a category above accountability. And it protects the integrity of the office itself. Because when sin in leadership is hidden, the office becomes a refuge for hypocrisy rather than a place of trust. Someone asks, why public? Because leadership influence is public. The teaching is public. The example is public. The damage of unaddressed sin is public. So the correction must also be public. This is one of those places where the Bible's wisdom cuts directly against our modern instincts. We want everything handled quietly. We want everything kept inside the inner circle. We want to spare embarrassment, protect reputations, and minimize disruption. But Paul says when sin is established, continuing and unrepented in the life of a leader, the church does not have permission to keep it quiet. The same visibility that made the leadership platform powerful now requires the accountability to be visible to. Now this is the moment we have to be honest with each other about something. Because this is the verse the church has often refused to obey. Let me speak plainly to the wounds many of you are carrying. Some of you have watched in your own churches or in others, leaders engaged in real and continuing sin, confirmed sin, witnessed sin, undeniable sin. And instead of being publicly addressed, the matter was buried, quietly settled, handled in ways that protected position, that protected platforms, protected reputation, and protected institutions. The leader was quietly moved, quietly retired, quietly recommended to another congregation, quietly absorbed back into ministry somewhere else, and the people who were harmed were quietly asked to keep it to themselves. That is not Paul's vision. That is the opposite of what Paul is teaching and commanding. The recent decades of church history across denominations, traditions, and movements have produced patterns we cannot ignore. Patterns of abuse covered, patterns of finances mishandled, patterns of doctrine compromised, patterns of authority misused, and in too many of those cases the people who knew were silent or silenced. The witnesses who came forward were dismissed and the public rebuke that Paul commands here was replaced with private maneuvering. Some of you have lived inside those patterns. Some of you have been wounded by those patterns. Some of you have lost faith in the very idea of church leadership because of those patterns. Hear me carefully. The God who inspired Timothy five verse twenty is not on the side of those patterns. The Christ whose authority stands behind every word of this apostolic instruction is not the Christ of cover up. The Lord who said so that the rest may stand in fear is not pleased when the rest are kept in the dark. If the church you have known has been categorized by hidden sin, protected position, and silenced witnesses, that church has not been obeying Christ. That church has been disobeying Christ. And the God who searches every heart, who judges every leader, who weighs every congregation is not silent about that disobedience. Now I have to address the other errors too, because Paul rejects more than one extreme. Some churches go in the opposite direction of cover up. They rebuke too quickly. They publicize too fast. They do not wait for verse nineteen's witnesses. They do not establish the charge. They do not give the elder the opportunity to repent privately before the matter becomes public. They turn accountability into a spectacle and the gathering of Christ into a courtroom of constant suspicion. That is not Paul's vision either. But there is a third error, and some of you in this audience have been wounded by it as deeply as the others, because some of you have watched a different kind of failure entirely. You have watched an elder confess his sin, watched him show evident repentance, watched him weep before God and before the church, watched him own what he did, name it as sin, and walk in genuine sorrow over it. And then instead of receiving grace from the body of Christ, you watched that elder be publicly torn apart by people who were not satisfied with repentance, people who wanted humiliation, people who wanted vengeance, people who used the public part of Paul's command as cover for personal vendetta, settled scores, our institutional and our personal ambition. That is not Paul's vision either. Paul's stated purpose for public rebuke is so that the rest may stand in fear, not so that the wounded may have vengeance. The goal is holy reverence, not the satisfaction of grievance. And when public rebuke is weaponized against a man who has genuinely repented, the church has stopped obeying Paul and started using his words for its own purposes. The repentant heart is not the target of verse twenty. The unrepentant heart is. So Paul's vision is measured, evidence-based, courageous accountability, pursued only when the charge is established, persisted in, and unrepented. It is not cover up. It is not premature spectacle, and it is not weaponized humiliation of the repented. To treat a dangerous infection, who watches it spread, who tells the patient, Oh, don't worry about it, who covers it with the bandage and walks out, that doctor is not compassionate. He or she is negligent. They are failing in their calling, and the patient pays the price for that failure. But a doctor who amputates at the first sign of a scrape is also failing in his calling. He is practicing malpractice. He is reckless, he causes harm when no harm was warranted. And a doctor who keeps cutting on a patient who is already healing, who refuses to acknowledge that the body has begun to recover is not practicing medicine either. He is causing fresh injury where healing was already underway. The faithful physician does what the situation actually requires no less, no more, no sooner, no later. That is what Paul calls the church to. So let me press the application of this verse on three groups. To the leader listening today, and I include myself in this, Paul's command lands as a sober warning. No office exempts us from holiness. No platform protects us from accountability. The man God calls to shepherd his flock is not the man who is above sin. He is the man who, when sin is exposed in his life, repents quickly, visibly completely. The greatest protection against the public rebuke of verse twenty is the private repentance of an honest heart before God. Keep short accounts with God. Deal with sin the moment you become aware of it. Walk honestly with the men and women around you. Stay humble before the Word. Continuing in sin is not destiny, it is a choice. And the cost of that choice is greater than any of us imagine. To the congregation listening today, never confuse accountability with hostility. The elder who is being faithfully called to account is not being attacked. The leadership structure that confronts continuing sin is not being divisive. This is what Christ wants his church to do. When godly courage is exercised in the face of confirmed unrepentant sin, that is the church functioning the way God designed it to function. To the entire church listening today, faithfulness requires courage. Cover up is not love. Silence is not peace. The quiet preservation of position at the cost of truth is not unity. It is in fact the death of the very thing we are pretending to protect. Leadership is not immunity from accountability. Leadership is a call to greater accountability. Because more is entrusted, more is at stake, and more is required. As our Lord Himself said, from everyone to whom much was given, much will be required. Luke twelve verse forty eight. This is hard ground. I know it. Some of you are still working through the wounds of what you have witnessed or experienced, and I want you to hear me clearly. God sees. He sees the leader who has hidden in the dark. He sees the institution that has protected the platform. He sees the witness who was silent or silenced. He sees the harm that was buried. None of it has escaped his attention, and none of it will escape his judgment. But he also sees the faithful congregation that handles accountability rightly, the elder who repents honestly, the witness who comes forward in love, the leadership that has the courage to obey verse twenty even when it costs them. The God of first Timothy chapter five verse twenty is not absent from his church. He is at work in it. And one more word before we move on. If you are an elder, a preacher, a leader, and you are hearing this message today carrying real sin that has not been dealt with, hear me. The same Christ who commands accountability also extends grace to the repentant. The door of repentance has not been closed to you. Listen to what the apostle John promised. He said If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That promise is not for the man hiding in the dark. It is for the man stepping into the light, the man who confesses, the man who names his sin honestly before God, to that man, even if he is an elder, even if he is a preacher, even if his sin has been ongoing, God is faithful, God is just, and God will cleanse from all unrighteousness. The way back is not through hiding, it is through honesty. The path forward is not concealment, the path forward is repentance. But Paul is not finished yet, because the question still remains under what authority is all of this being done? Whose courtroom is the church actually answering to when accountability is exercised? Paul tells us next, and what he says next is one of the most weighty sentences in all of his epistles. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. This is courtroom language. The apostle Paul has been giving Timothy clear practical instructions about how to handle accusations and confront persistent sin. And now at the climactic moment of his instruction, Paul places Timothy under the most solemn charge in this entire letter. He does not say try to be fair. He does not say do your best. He does not say use good judgment. He says in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you three audiences. Look at what just happened. Paul has expanded the audience. When the church handles accusations against an elder, that decision is not made in front of the elders only. It is not made in front of the congregation only. It is not made in front of human witnesses only. Every decision is made whether the church recognizes it or not in the presence of three audiences. First in the presence of God, the one who searches every heart, weighs every motive, and judges every act with perfect righteousness. He searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts Chronicles twenty eight verse nine. He is the one whom Scripture says all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. He weighs the spirits of men and the motives of every leader Proverbs sixteen verse two, Corinthians four verse five. He sees what every congregation cannot. He knows the truth even when the witnesses are confused, even when the accused is silent, even when the elders are conflicted, God sees. Second, in the presence of Christ Jesus, the one to whom the church belongs. Paul reminded the Ephesian elders themselves that Christ obtained, purchased the church with his own blood, Acts twenty, verse twenty eight. He is the one who walks among his congregation as Lord and judge, the same Christ whom John saw in the midst of the seven lamp stands, his eyes like a flame of fire, evaluating every church by name. Revelation chapter one verse thirteen and fourteen. Every leadership decision is made in front of the Christ, whose church it is, and he has not stopped walking among his people. Third, in the presence of the elect angels, the heavenly host that observes the unfolding of God's purposes among his people. Paul told the Corinthians the apostles had become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men, Corinthians four verse nine. The spiritual significance of church leadership extends beyond what we can see. There is a heavenly courtroom and it is watching. Now I want you to feel the weight of that. When elders meet to investigate an accusation, God is in that room. When a congregation considers how to respond to confirmed sin, Christ is present in the deliberation. When leadership decisions are made about who to protect, who to confront, who to defend, who to discipline, the elect angels are observing it all. There is no such thing as a private leadership decision in the Church of Jesus Christ. Every act, every choice, every silence, every defense. All of it happens in the presence of God, Christ and the heavenly host. Paul places this charge here for a reason because he knew exactly what would tempt Timothy. He knew exactly what tempts every eldership, every leadership, every congregation that has to handle hard cases of leadership accountability. The temptation is always perhaps the same. The temptation is favoritism. Listen to what Paul commands next without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. Two phrases both critical without prejudging, meaning don't make up your mind before you've heard the evidence. Don't decide who is guilty or innocent based on who they are, who they're connected to or how you feel about them. Investigate with an open mind. Weigh the evidence honestly. Let the truth shape your conclusion, not your existing loyalties or your existing suspicions. He says do nothing from partiality, meaning no favoritism, no politics, no personal loyalties shaping the verdict, no double standards, the same God, the same word of God, the same evidentiary standard apply to every person, regardless of their position, regardless of their popularity, their relationships, regardless of their usefulness to the institution. And here is what we have to be honest about. Favoritism is the most natural sin in any human leadership structure. We excuse the people we admire. We protect the people who benefit us. We overlook sin in people we love or people we serve under or people whose downfall would be costly to us personally. We give the benefit of the doubt to the elder who has been our friend for thirty years and withhold it from the elder we have always found difficult. We extend grace generously to people in our circle and apply scrutiny harshly to people outside of it. Hear me, that is favoritism, and it is the natural posture of the unconverted human heart toward authority structures, but Paul says not in Christ's church. You may have seen the image of Lady Justice standing in courthouses across the country. The blindfold across her eyes is meant to symbolize impartiality. She cannot see who is wealthy and who is poor, who is connected and who is unknown, who is liked and who is dislike. She weighs only what the evidence places on the scales. That is a noble human image. But Paul calls the church to something higher, because human justice at its best operates under the gaze of human institutions. The church's justice operates under the gaze of God Himself. If a human judge can be impartial because human institutions are watching, how much more should the church be impartial because the Lord of Heaven is watching? If Lady Justice removes her blindfold for no men, because the law demands it how much more? Should the leaders of Christchurch refuse to play favorites because the King of Kings demands it? When leadership is evaluated before God, favoritism has no place. So once again, let me press this on three groups one more time. To the leadership listening today, fear God more than Than public opinion. Fear God more than institutional pressure. Fear God more than the loss of a friendship that should never have shaped your judgment in the first place. The God who was watching every elders meeting, every leadership conversation, every decision about how to handle the hard case, that God is not impressed by relational loyalty when truth is at stake. He calls for impartial obedience and the elder who fears him will give it. To the congregation listening today, love truth more than personalities. The faithful church is not the church where leaders are protected because they are charismatic, gifted or beloved. The faithful church is the church where truth is honored because God is honored. When a leadership decision needs to be made, the question is not how will this make us look? The question is what does God see and how does that reflect on his glory in his name and his word? To the entire church listening perhaps today, remember whose church this is. The church does not belong to its elders. It does not. It does not belong to its preachers. It does not belong to its prominent families, its largest donors, its long tenured members or its institutional history, the church that we read about in scripture belongs to Christ. He purchased it with his own blood. He is its true Lord, its true shepherd, its true judge. In every act of leadership stewardship, including how the church handles accusations and confronts sin, must answer ultimately to him. That is the heart of verse twenty one. Not just be fair, but act as if God himself is watching. You know why? Because he is. Not just don't show favoritism, but act as if Christ Himself is in the room. You know why? Because he is. Not just do the right thing, but act as if the heavenly host is observing every decision. You know why? Because they are when leadership is evaluated before God, favoritism has no place. Here is the truth that ties this entire passage together. Underneath everything Paul has said in these three verses, every instruction about accusations, every command about confronting persistent sin, every charge about impartial accountability sits one massive theological reality. Christ protects his church when his people steward leadership according to his design. That is the second time you have heard that sentence today. It is the heartbeat of this series, and in these three verses you have just seen what it looks like when the church actually obeys it. But there is one more dimension of this passage we cannot leave unsaid before we move toward the close of this lesson. Because Paul's threefold invocation God, Christ Jesus and the elect angels points us somewhere. It points us upward. It points us toward the one who is not just the judge before whom every accountability decision is weighed. It points us toward the only leader in human history who needed no rebuke at all, and it points us to the cross. Paul has just placed Timothy under the gaze of God, Christ, and the elect angels. He has commanded impartiality, He has demanded courage, he has required truth, and in so doing he has held up a standard that no human leader has ever fully met. Think about it. Every elder has failed in some measure. Every preacher has fallen short. Every faithful shepherd in the history of the church has at some point been the one needing rebuke rather than the one giving it. There has never been a human leader who has handled accountability with perfect truth, perfect courage, and perfect impartiality every single time. Except one. There is one leader in all of human history who never abused authority, one leader who never required rebuke. One leader who never showed partiality, never excused his friends, never punished the inconvenient, never traded truth for politics, never hid sin behind position. His name is Jesus the Christ. He is the one whom Peter said he committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth, first Peter two, verse twenty two. He is the one the Father called my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, Matthew chapter three, verse seventeen. He is the one who could stand in front of his enemies and ask which one of you convicts me of sin John eight forty six and receive no answer. He was the only leader who deserved nothing but honor, the only shepherd who could not be charged with persistence in ever, the only judge whose impartiality was perfect because his heart was perfect and holy. And yet, and this is the staggering truth at the heart of the gospel, he took the judgment that every other leader deserved. He took the verdict that every congregation in history has earned. He took the rebuke that every persistent sinner has refused to repent of. He took it all willingly, deliberately, sacrificially, and bore it in his own body on the tree. The only leader who never required rebuke received the judgment we all required. The only judge who was perfectly impartial bore the impartial verdict against our sin. The only authority who never abused his office laid down his life to redeem the ones who had abused theirs. That is the cross, and that is the Christ before whom every leadership decision in his church is ultimately weighed. So we come to the close of this second message. We open today by naming two dangers that destroy churches leadership failure on one side and the mishandling of accusations on the other. Paul has now answered both. He has given us three commands in three verses Truth Investigate carefully. Do not believe what cannot be established. Courage. When sin is confirmed and unrepented, do not look away, confront it visibly and faithfully. Impartiality. Do all of this under the watching gaze of God, Christ and the heavenly host, without favoritism, without prejudgment, without preference for the connected or scrutiny of the unliked. Underneath all of it sits the series anchor we have heard again today. Christ protects his church when his people steward leadership according to his design. Last week we saw the first part of that stewardship honor. This week we have seen the second accountability, and the two work together. Honor without accountability becomes idolatry of leaders. Accountability without honor becomes cynicism towards leaders. Christ requires both because both are how He protects his church. Next week we move to verse twenty two, where Paul takes us one step further because accountability is often reactive. It deals with problems after they appear. In Sermon three, Paul will teach us how many leadership failures can be prevented before they ever happen. He will show us how careful examination of future leaders before they are entrusted with spiritual authority is one of the most loving things a church can do for itself and for the men it appoints. But for today the call is clear. Pursue truth, exercise courage, refuse favoritism, and do it all before the one true God who is watching. But before we close, we have to say one more thing, and I have to say it directly. This sermon has been about accountability, about truth, about courage, about a holy God before whom every leadership decision is weighed. But many of you listening right now know that you are not just hearing a sermon about church leadership, you are hearing a sermon about yourself. Because the standards Paul holds up here for elders truth, courage, impartiality, life lived under the gaze of a holy God, those are standards every human being will one day be measured against. Not just leaders, every soul. And every one of us has failed. Every one of us has favored those we admired and dismissed those we resisted. Every one of us has known the truth and chosen the easier lie. Every one of us has been confronted by God's word and continued in sin anyway. The standard Paul applies to elders in verse twenty one in the presence of God is the same standard every human being will face on the day of judgment. But hear this clearly. He was made sin for us, though he knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God Second Corinthians five verse twenty one. And he stands today alive forevermore calling sinners home. Come to Jesus. Hear the good news that God loved you so much, loved you enough to send his Son. Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose on the third day. Repent of your sins. Turn from the life you have been living. Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord the Son of the Living God. Be buried with him in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life. Live faithfully to the one who is both your righteous judge and your righteous Savior. As Paul wrote, at the end of his own life, henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing Second Timothy chapter four verse eight. The day is coming when every leader, every congregation, every soul will stand before Christ. For some of you that will be a day of welcome. For others it will be a day of judgment and punishment. The difference between the two is what you do with Jesus today. If you have never come to him, come now, while the door is open, while the invitation stands, while the same Christ who will one day judge the world is still calling sinners home.

unknown 1:02:53

Come.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

Let us pray. Holy Father, we have heard a heavy word today. You have searched us through the apostle's pen, and we have felt the weight of your gaze on your church. We confess that we have not always pursued truth the way you have commanded. We have repeated stories we did not verify. We have rendered verdicts before we heard the other side. We have damaged reputations with words we should never have spoken. Forgive us, Lord, for the rumors we have carried and the witnesses we have refused to hear, and forgive your church, Lord, where your church has failed, for the cover ups that have shielded sin from the light, from the institutional protection that has chosen position over people, for the silent and silenced witnesses, the dismissed concerns, the patterns of harm that have been buried while the world watched. You have seen all of it. None of it has escaped your notice, and none of it will escape your justice. But we ask also, Lord, for those wounded in the opposite direction, those who repented and were not received, those who confessed and were not extended grace, those who were torn apart by people seeking vengeance under the cover of your word, bring healing to every heart that has been wounded by either failure. Restore what only you can restore. And for the leaders listening today who are carrying hidden sin, meet them, Lord. The way back is not through concealment, it is through the honest confession your word commands. Grant them the courage to step out of the dark and into the light where your Son still cleanses every honest heart. Strengthen the elders, the preachers, the teachers, the shepherds in any form who are seeking to walk faithfully before you. Give them courage where courage is required. Give them wisdom where wisdom is needed. Give them grace where grace is asked, and let them feel even now that their labor in your name is. Is not in vain. And for the one listening today, who has never come to Jesus Christ, let today be the day. Show them that the same Christ who will judge the world is the same Christ who bore the verdict against sinners in their place. Let them feel the weight of your love. Let them hear the call of the righteous judge who chose to become the righteous substitute. Open hearts, soften hearts, and give them the courage to come. Lord, we thank you that you are not absent from your church. We thank you that you see what we cannot see, that you judge what we cannot judge, that you protect what we can never protect on our own. We thank you for the cross, where every standard we have failed to keep was kept perfectly by your Son and where every verdict we deserved was carried by the only one who deserved no verdict at all. And we thank you that the Christ who will one day stand as righteous judge over all the earth is the same Christ who stands today as a righteous Savior to every soul who comes to him in faith. In his name, the name above every name, the name before which every knee will one day bow. The name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and judge and savior, we pray. Amen. Thank you for spending this time with me on Sunday Renewal. My prayer is that today's episode encouraged your heart, strengthened your faith, and reminded you that God is still at work, redeeming, restoring, and shaping your story for his purpose. If this message spoke to you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone in your life, a friend, a family member, or a coworker, because God often uses one simple conversation to bring renewal to someone else's journey. And if you have a moment, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts truly helps others discover messages of hope and faith when they need them most. Before you go, I want to invite you into a deeper journey. I've created a free five-day devotional called Renaming Your Story from Pain to Purpose to Legacy. In just 10 minutes a day, it's designed to help you walk through healing old wounds, breaking false labels, and stepping into the fruitfulness and legacy God intends. If there's someone you love who needs encouragement, healing, or direction, or if this journey is for you, this resource is available now. Just click the link in the show notes to get started. Remember this God is present, your past does not define you, and your story is still in motion. Until next time, walk by faith, stay open to God, and trust Him with the next step. God bless you.