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You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. It's good to have you here. We're in our third week of our new series called Justified, how God mends broken people and a broken world. And it's a journey through this letter of Romans. And we started a couple weeks ago at the end of Romans to show kind of the destination where Paul was taking us. And we found then that Romans was really about power and privilege and how one group in Rome was asserting its rights, if they want to call them rights, over other groups. So it was the Gentiles versus the Jews or Jews versus Gentiles, the weak versus the strong, the free versus the slaves, and even men and women were being divided in Roman society in some type of a hierarchy. And Paul says that has all gone away. The church has brought all of those divisions and mended them through the cross of Jesus Christ. And then last week, we said, how did that happen? It is at the beginning of Romans, Romans 1.16, I am not ashamed of the gospel. And the gospel we found is not only the power of God, but the content of the gospel, the form of the gospel, and the way the gospel works, that it's good news, not just good advice. And we're going to get into some of that good advice talk today, because I think Romans 2 is how we give, quote, good advice to each other all the time, okay? And how do you take advice? Not very good. No. Is there such a thing as good advice? I guess, but it's only when I ask for it. And then if you give it, and I don't like what you say, I don't take it anyways, right? No, it's amazing how we're set up, but somehow we think giving other people, teaching them a lesson, giving good advice actually works. We keep doing it. So we'll look at that today. Before we do that, though, let's pray, okay? And let's pray for our world, our society, our area, for all sorts of things that are going on. Lord God, we thank you that through the gospel, you are mending us, our relationship with you, our relationship with others, and that you will mend this entire broken world again and bring it back together the way you intended it from the beginning. We pray, Lord God, that you would be working through this message today, that your Holy Spirit is the one who's in charge, not me, nor anyone else, that your will is done. We thank you, Lord, that there are many gospel churches across Southwest Florida as well as across the United States, and we pray today, whether online or in person, that your good news gets through and not just a bunch of advice to people. We pray, Lord, that the power of that gospel in our lives does give us that breakthrough to understand more fully who you are and what our lives are all about. Lord God, you know how fractured our society is right now. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of bitterness, there's a lot of pointing fingers, Lord God. There are a lot of alienation and divisions. We pray for your healing. We pray what you can only do. We pray also, Lord, for our leaders, both nationally and locally, Lord, that you would give them both humility to seek you and wisdom in their duties. Lord God, we pray for our first responders and all those in health care and all of our teachers in our schools right now, Lord, that in so many ways are dealing with this COVID-19 pandemic, and we pray that you protect them and guard them and bless them in all of their work. We pray too, Lord, for our children in schools, for our college right now, students who are back in class, and grant to them, Lord, your protection, your peace, your care, whether they are at home, online, or in person, Lord God. We pray that you'd be working your will in their lives. We lift up to you, Lord, those who are going to face a tropical storm or Hurricane Sally, Lord, in the Gulf Coast. We pray that you'd be with them. For those out in California and Oregon and the West, Montana, I mean, Lord, we're seeing so much devastation right now. We pray that you would protect the firefighters, that you would guard human life, and that you would help us look to you and use your church in those circumstances to serve their communities for the sake of your glory and your kingdom. And bless us now, Lord, as we look again at how you have justified us and are mending our lives and mending our society, and we pray that that would be occurring through us here at Thrive into our community. All this we lift up to you this day in Jesus' name. So we've got a couple people at the door looking to get in, so if somebody would help with that, that would be great. It's always good. It's fine. You know, today's one of those rainy days, and who knows when you actually were able to get through all things. So it's good to have you here today. Today, in a sense, we're starting in Romans 2, so this is a 12-week series. We're in week three of it, and each week we're going to be looking at a different ...