The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here is Grace to you Bible teacher John MacArthur.

It's a little bit rare for me to go a few weeks without preaching.

It's a little bit painful because I love to minister the Word of God.

But more than that, it's especially painful not to be with you. So if I may sound a little

personal this morning, in fact, I'm actually here curious what I'm going to say because so much has been in my heart

and on my mind, but there are some things that need to be recognized that we have all endured in 2020, right?

2020 always signifies clarity. And I don't think in the Church of Jesus Christ I've ever seen

the level of clarity that we're seeing now.

You might not think the forces that have been working on us have been used by God to

create clarity, but that's exactly what they've done.

So I want to run through just a few things.

First of all, the clarity of the love and testimony of this church has never been on display

the way it has been on display this year.

The goal of our instruction, says Paul, is love from a pure heart. Where there are the people of God submitting

to the Word of God, the product is not hard conviction. It's soft hearts. Hard preaching makes

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