Romans 1:18-2:4 • Justice and Mercy Kiss
Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.
Sermon Notes
Transcript
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Our Scripture text this morning is Romans 1 verse 18 through Romans 2 and verse 4, which if you look at it will appear to be a monster passage, not only for its length, but for many in our culture and society for what they will consider to be ugly in this portion of God's Word.
After all, where it begins, if you just look at verse 18 of Romans chapter 1, is with these words, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man."
And then the end of the passage, the end of verse 4 of chapter 2, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.
You begin with wrath and somehow you get to kindness. The question for today is how do you get from here to there?
And secondly, how do you deal with the issues in between?
Let's pray and ask God's help. Father, the passage that you have put before us by the Apostle who penned these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit meant to teach us what is right for our souls and our lives.
So we submit ourself to Your Word but plead for the work of Your Holy Spirit to teach us and to enable us to hear what You would teach. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
My daughter's softball game.
A pitch gets past the catcher, rolls all the way back to the screen, and her coach throws his clipboard to the ground and shaking with rage shouts, "When is Amanda going to get serious about the game and what it means to be a winner?"
He yells at his teenage coaching assistant to replace Amanda, and we all as parents look on in horror for a number of reasons. One, it's the ninth inning.
The game is about to be called for darkness, and our team whose catcher is being yelled at is ahead 24 to 3.
And you think, "What possible reason is there for this wrath?"
And beyond that, what possible good could it accomplish?
They are the same questions, of course, we have for our God. When we read about the wrath of God and then somehow that leaning to a good result like kindness and repentance as a consequence. I got to understand, you have to understand, because if we do not understand the wrath of God, we cannot trust the heart of God.
And so the Apostle helps us to understand as he begins to describe the basis of God's judgment in the beginning of this passage. He writes in verse 18, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." Now what is the truth? It's what the Apostle has already been talking about in verses 16 and 17, the tiled verses of the whole book, that God has given a gospel that reveals His righteousness.
It's good news about the righteousness of God that includes His holiness and His justice,
but also an extravagant love and an amazing mercy that allows human beings who are guilty of dishonoring God to nonetheless have eternal salvation by faith alone in the work of Jesus Christ.
But now Paul says there are those who suppress that truth, that very truth that's meant to save people eternally is suppressed by those who are ungodly, that is they act as though there is no God, and unrighteous as though the standards of God have no application needing our salvation.
As a consequence, God actually is furious, says the Apostle. And to understand that, if you have to put it in the right context of the moment, it's as though God sees. There are people who have the life preservers, and they won't talk about it. There are people who have the Epi-Pens, and they won't explain where they are. There are people who know the path out of the burning building, and they hide the truth.
And God says those who suppress their truth by their ungodliness and their unrighteousness are deserving of His wrath. They know better. Now whenever we are faced with the wrath of God for something we ought to know, the first objection of course is, "Well, I didn't know." Or they didn't know, or it's not possible to know everything that we should know, but the Apostle just won't buy that argument, that people don't know what they should know about the righteousness of God. Verse 19, "For he says what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them." Wait a second, how has God shown it to them? Not everybody has a Bible in front of them. How has God shown us what people should know? Verse 20, "For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived." Now if it's invisible, how is it clearly perceived? The end of verse 20, "Ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse." Those who are suppressing the truth, living as though there is no God or there are no standards from God, the Apostle Paul is saying, "They are without excuse because the things about God, His eternal power and His divine nature, are clearly seen, made evident in the things that are made."
Like what?
How is God's eternal power known?
They're just observably, even by our scientific world, trillions upon trillions of stars,
many of them larger than our entire solar system. There is a magnitude of vastness to the universe that unfolds before us, and at the same time there is a complexity, a fine-tunedness to that universe that's inexplicable by chance so that if Earth's axis is off just by the slightest degree, Earth as we know it ceases to exist.
And it's not just the creation, but the creatures themselves are revelatory of the power of God.
Every one of us here has to have the coordination of 20,000 proteins in our bodies to draw the very next breath.
The understanding that this could be chance, random, happenstance just defies logic.
Yet in 2014, a group of British scientists wrote this, "The entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we inhabit, popped into existence from nothing at all, because nothing is inherently unstable."
Now that doesn't just sound irrational.
That sounds like you are evading the obvious, that you are suppressing the truth by saying things just popped out of nothingness because nothingness is inherently unstable. What?
You begin to understand verse 22, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools." This does not make sense, but it's not just God's power. It's His divine nature that's supposed to be on display in the creation, even in the creatures.
If you're any person in the world, you love being loved.
You hate being treated unfairly.
You deeply appreciate mercy for the undeserved.
Love, justice, and mercy are hardwired into us as things that we appreciate, which says, if that's part of who I am, part of my being, it's not what amoebas feel. But the God who made me, that somehow must reflect His own nature. Some of your Bibles actually don't use the word divine nature. They say God's eternal power and Godhead. In the relationships of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is the nature of love, justice, and mercy that is not only dealing with the economy of the Holy Family, but dealing with us as well. So as we begin to examine our hearts, we begin to recognize love, justice, and mercy, which the Apostle said is the law that is written on our hearts.
So that our own consciences begin to say, "Somebody put this in me." If everybody experiences, if everybody expresses that, that is some evidence of the nature of God. And as a consequence, when we begin to understand just by the observable creation and creatures, God's eternal power and His divine nature, the Apostle's conclusion is, into verse 20,
those who are hiding the truth are without excuse.
We don't like that because if there truly is a God who is powerful, just, loving, and merciful, then He is owed thanksgiving and worship.
And to worship Him means that we have to honor Him above ourselves. We don't like that, however, verse 21, "For although they, those who were suppressing truth knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened."
Their hearts are darkened by turning to anything but God rather than honor and worship Him who is righteous, just, whose wrath would require obedience and worship. What do people do? Verse 23.
"They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." And I think, as I hear that, our minds too quickly run to last week when we see those cultures that worship snakes and birds and elephants and…forget a culture where people worship crystals or bank accounts or the very first thing that was on the list, "Did you catch it?" Verse 23, "Images resembling mortal man."
We worship ourselves, first of all.
I put myself on the throne. I don't want to honor God. I want to be first in the list. And so I'll trust anything. I'll turn to anything rather than turn to the God who has rights above my own.
These truths remind me of the observations first of G.K. Chesterton who wrote, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe nothing.
They will believe anything."
That God-made hole in us has to be filled by something. And so people turn to strange things, to their horoscopes and the stars and everything but God.
Because we want to stay first on the list, our greatest tendency is to substitute ourselves for God, which means the root sin behind every sin is to substitute the creature for the Creator.
Behind everything is a small God and a big me.
I will be first. I will decide what's right. I will determine what ought to be done. But there are consequences of putting ourselves on the throne of our own existence. And as Paul begins to discuss that in this passage, it is so hard for us to read in this day and age. What are the consequences of suppressing the truth about God and putting ourselves on the throne so that we put the creature above the Creator? Verse 24, "Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."
What's the consequence of the creature being put above the Creator? It's first we just have our own pursuits that make us unclean. When we read the words "impure lust" in verse 24, just because of the word "lust," our minds run to sexual immorality. But it's not the only thing being described. It's those desires that make us dirty, filthy, wrong before God. It certainly includes sexual intimacy outside of marriage. But it's other things that we need to think of as well. It's the entertainments that darken our minds and pollute our homes.
So that sacred space that God intends to be the place we're raising family becomes the place where we introduce things that we know will pollute our family for our own entertainment.
And so we become a culture in which 50 shades of grade become so popular and Game of Thrones becomes the most watched TV program in our culture.
There are those things that darken our minds, that pollute us. They are filthy language, unethical prophet, lies for our own advantage, anything damaging our worship so that God is not receiving His due honor because we have something else that has to take priority over His worship in our lives, in our sports, in our pursuits, in our desires to please ourselves or our own children.
What's behind all of that? Those impure desires, that unrighteousness, that uncleanness that comes from our own pursuits. Paul is so clear about it. It's because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. There it is again. The sin behind the sin, the root cause of all sin, it's putting the creature above the Creator. It's not giving God the place of honor that He deserves. And as a consequence, dishonorable passions result as well. What are those? Verse 26. "For this reason God gave them up," those who again suppressed the truth, "to dishonorable passions.
For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." Here for our culture is where the Apostle Paul is just plain ugly.
Because when people read words like the end of verse 26 that there were women, and women and men of course get equal time in this passage for same-sex attraction, we are told that their actions, their relations are contrary to nature.
And there is no phrase that will result in more bitter response than our culture which says, "No, that is not right. Those who have same-sex attraction are not pursuing anything contrary to their nature
because after all this is the way that they were born.
And therefore because they are born this way, it is unjust, unrighteous to require anything that they be allowed who have the same-sex attraction to pursue what was a biological determined status."
No mystery to you. As a consequence of the loss of a Christian consensus in this culture and the erosion of biblical understanding, these are words that are difficult. In fact, anybody who even repeats the words in today's culture is almost perceived the way a racist would have been perceived 25 years ago.
You're racist, you're bigoted, and you're homophobic, and those are the terms that clearly should put you on the periphery of our society today.
For the reason that I know all of that and you know all of that, I'm going to try to speak lovingly but precisely. And so it's not my pattern, but I'm going to read to you a little bit because I want my words to be carefully chosen and I want you to hear in a way that you're not distressed because I say something inadvertent.
What is contrary to nature?
In this passage, it is not a reference to what people feel, but to God's created order.
Our Creator is the one who said, "It is not good that man should be alone."
And to that lack of goodness, He responded by saying, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh."
Marriage was designed by God to be the union of a man and a woman in selfless love that makes them one despite their differences.
This is God's way both of complementing the differing nature of both a man and a woman in a family and representing the gospel that reconciles us to God despite our differences with Him. This is what the Bible is describing as God's natural design.
Yet when sin entered the world, as the Apostle Paul will describe in the chapters that are following, there was a greater consequence which was everything got messed up.
Our Catechism, particularly question 18 for those of you who are memorizing, says simply that when sin entered the world by man's sin, it led to the corruption of his whole nature. That's not just the nature outside of us. That's the corruption inside of us that every single person experiences.
I do not have any question. Actually it's essential to understanding Scripture that every single one of us now has a corrupted nature that presents itself in many different variations. For some it makes them prone both by nature and by nurture to things like pornography
or sexual pursuits outside of marriage or the need to satisfy insecurities by flaunting one's body or one's wealth and achievements or hiding one's fault in lies, boasts, or fruitless passions of escapism.
All of these are what the Apostle is describing as those impure, unclean pursuits and desires that we establish to put the creature in some good place despite what the Creator says.
But for others, the corruption of our nature results in same-sex attraction and no one has been able to say definitively, "Is that because of genetics?"
Or is that because of your background or some combination of the two? I honestly think it's because of some combination of the two. After all, the corruption of our entire nature is what the Bible says has occurred. And it seems to me some people have certain genetic tendencies and they are emphasized in families by lack of care in various ways. But honestly, science has not solved that problem. That's not really the Apostle's point, however.
The Apostle's point is that what we are prone to do is not what we are permitted to do.
We do not say to a married heterosexual, "Well, you're just prone to lust for others. It's the way God made you so your affairs don't really matter."
We do not say to a single heterosexual.
God made you to desire the opposite sex, so he clearly does not expect chastity prior to marriage.
We know the consequences of sexual abandon on our ultimate sense of self-worth, on families, on children, on future marriages.
So we know that real love for others requires that we order our friendships and our relationships so as to protect ourselves and to protect others and their future families as the creator of our souls and our marriages and our families and our society designed knowing who we are and what we would struggle with.
Finally, we do not say to the person with same-sex attraction, "God made you this way," or "Your background wired you this way," so you have no choice about how you will live, which by the way is a different issue than what you may desire.
It's saying you have no choice about how you will live. That is not what we say in the church.
The notion that because you are wired, pre-wired, either by biology or background, so that you have a sort of biological fatalism, there is no change, there is no other direction that you could possibly have, I hope you recognize our own culture is growing increasingly impatient with that perspective and distasteful of its conclusions. Not only would it mean that all our efforts at helping people with other aspects of brokenness, their addictions, their anxieties, their compulsions, are just fruitless because they're born that way, because it can't be corrected because that's just the way they are. Such fatalism also denies the power of the gospel.
We believe the Holy Spirit brings power and the love of Christ can change people's direction so that they can make progress in the things that they struggle with. They may struggle all their lives with those things because of the corruption of our whole nature.
But it does not mean that we have no choice in how we will live, even if there are difficulties in what goes on inside of us. Now, listen, I know and you know.
Someone who has struggled with a significant sin in life knows that when you hear a sermon like this, your initial response is, "I cannot imagine a life without this passion or this lust or this addiction or this habit or this way of thinking.
Pastor, you just don't get it.
What I get and profoundly believe is the hope of the gospel."
When we sing in this church, "No longer a slave," we mean it, that we have been released from the dominion of sin, that hope is possible, that change is possible, that progress is possible because the gospel is real. And we don't say to people, regardless of what you've been through, whatever you're struggling with, whatever is your background, whatever is the struggle, the genetics, whatever, there's just no hope. That's just who you are. We actually say the opposite.
We say the gospel is real. And while maybe all of your life you may struggle with something I don't struggle with, and I may struggle with something you don't struggle with, real progress is possible because the gospel is real.
If that just sounds like a bag of wind, realize that every person who commits their lives to the restorative professions, whether that is adopting someone or counseling or psychology or education or social services or ministry, every single person in one of those professions believes that they can help people make progress from where they are to a better place.
We are not just assigning people to say whatever you're born with, that is simply your fate.
It's just this one area that is our sexuality that the political correctness of our culture forces people now to say, "Your birth and background are unbreakable chains and cannot be challenged."
I hope you recognize that one of the great challenges right now to the gay community's mantra for the last 25 years, born this way with the implied, so asking anything different of me is unfair and impossible. The actual great challenger in the culture right now is the transgender movement to that very claim.
As the transgender movement wants us to believe that our sexual choices are entirely fluid
and unchangeable at any time by our choice.
So the movements of secularism begin to war against itself, but for Christians, Bible-believing Christians, the choice hasn't changed.
The choice is, will we remember that the sin behind every sin is putting the creature above the Creator in order not to suppress the truth about God so that we discern His standards of righteousness? Good for us, good for families, good for those around us, good for our society, good for our families.
And so then we order our lives accordingly despite the struggles of our brokenness, of the corruption of our entire nature, which we share in different ways.
Three of the people who say this best in my mind, I've put a little resource bulletin inside your bulletins, are Von Roberts, Wesley Hill, and Rosaria Butterfield, who are all strong Christians and yet talk honestly about their same-sex attraction, which in some churches has gotten them in a lot of trouble.
But what they are saying is this. They talk honestly about how they have received God's help to honor Him by deep, caring, and chaste relationships that satisfy their hearts without compromising their bodies or their testimony.
They simply have refused to accept the lie that life will be empty, lonely, and futile without sexual commitments outside of God's design.
Actually, the Apostle Paul says the real futility is same-sex relationships that can never be all that his advocates suggest.
Paul describes in verse 27 in front of you there, "Men committing shameful acts with men receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Some," I want you to hear me say this clearly, "wrongly have tried to read the contemporary AIDS epidemic back into the Apostle's words."
The Apostle could not possibly be thinking about that. Remember his subject is what causes people to suppress the truth and therefore create futility for their own lives as well as for others. The penalty he is discussing is the futility of trying to find your soul's deepest satisfaction
while your body is actually sinning against God. That becomes futile in terms of the soul's ultimate happiness.
Ultimately, the sin behind the sin is not different for anybody. It is serving the creature rather than the Creator leading to the final ultimate consequence which we have to talk about after discussing the impure lust and the dishonorable passions. I hope you recognize that's not where the Apostle ends. He says finally if you're suppressing truth, if you're not honoring God, he says what that will lead to for everybody, not just those who are struggling with a gay lifestyle. For everybody who is not honoring God in their lives, the ultimate result is verse 28, "And since they," that is those who are suppressing the truth, "since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." Now the word debasing is tough in this culture. If we just kind of take it to its root, it's helpful. It's those who are living on a different base than the truth of God. They have come untethered from the foundation that God intends for the life of satisfaction and soul delight that we actually are intended to have. And God says there are those who have a different mind and it's not built on the base of what God intends. And what is the consequence of that? Verse 29, "Those who don't have the base proper, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice."
Wow.
Not only a poor list, but recognize He says this is what is filling people, filling to the brim so they become fully deserving of the wrath of God. Well, what is on that list? This apex body of sins that is going to cause the ultimate wrath of God. Continue in verse 29, "They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness." They are gossips. Interesting on the list. "Slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." That is a long list. It's not the length that should bother you.
What should bother you about the list of everybody that has a debased mind? That is they're building their lives, their happiness, their satisfaction on another base than the righteousness. What should trouble you about the list?
We're all on the list.
The web that we would cast to condemn others actually catches everybody. That is actually the point that the apostle is going to make, that not only has shown the basis for God's judgment, but the baselessness of any human judgmentalism, that ultimately the sin behind every sin that anybody commits is the same thing.
We put ourselves on the throne of our own lives and spiritual destinies. We put the creatures' priorities above God's. And so chapter 2 and verse 1 says, "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you the judge practiced the very same things." The apostle knew what he was doing with that list. He knew that people would point at some and he said, "No, no, listen. You're all without excuse. And the excuse that you want to make is, I didn't know that doesn't work or they're worse than I am. That doesn't work because the sin beside the sin for everybody is you are willing to put yourself above God."
That sin behind the sin, that root cause catches everybody.
It's more than just, you know, what we do. You know, if you point at anybody, you know, judge them, you've got three fingers pointing back at you, you know.
It's actually saying, anytime that you point at someone else, without remembering you are part of that same sin, that same weakness, that same difficulty, you are forgetting you are not your own redeemer.
You are not your savior.
If you believe that you are better or different, then you ultimately condemn yourself because you the judge practiced the very same thing of putting the creature above the Creator. That's what your own sin is about. That's the root behind everything that we do. So what's the consequence of that? It ultimately says, not only do we have no human excuse for our judgmentalism, it means verse 2 of chapter 2, "We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things." Here's where our culture struggles. It knows it's wrong to be judgmental, and therefore we conclude it's wrong to judge.
No, if the judgment is saying, "Is this wrong before God?" That actually believers are called to do.
It's wrong to do it in such a way that you say you're better than somebody else.
That's where judgment moves to judgmentalism. And so we begin to recognize that we know the judgment of God, verse 2 of chapter 2, "of God rightly falls on those who practice such things," which means we know we would stand before God, condemned if we stand alone on our goodness, on our righteousness, on our judgment. What's the consequence of that?
Verse 3, "Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?" Now quite a passage. No excuse and no escape.
Because everyone who has any sin in their lives is guilty of the root sin of putting the creature above the Creator. So why does God go through all this?
Hasn't this been pleasant today?
Because of chapter 2 and verse 4, where's all this leading? If you stand condemned, if you stand alone, then what are your alternatives? Verse 4, "Do you presume on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" What would it mean to presume on God's kindness? Once you recognize this long list of sins that binds us all in the community of unrighteousness,
we can presume on the kindness of God by saying, "Well, if He hasn't judged me yet, it doesn't matter to Him. I'll just keep going the way I'm going."
That should presume upon the kindness of God. But what if you said this instead?
"If God has not judged me yet, I still have time to turn to Him because there will be a judgment." That's verse 5, "Because of your heart and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to His works. There is an accounting to come. And if you know that, what would be kindness of God to you now? It would be, say, "I'm going to give you time to wake up.
I'm going to give you time to face the sin, the rebellion, the distance from me in your own life. The kindness of God, far from saying, "I'm just going to presume that because He hasn't judged me, I'm going to keep going the way I'm going."
That the kindness of God would lead us to repent, to say, "There is judgment to come. I am storing up wrath for myself and the path that I am pursuing. And God is giving me time to acknowledge the righteousness of God, which is His amazing holiness and at the same time His wondrous grace to save people if they will trust in Jesus Christ so that we who trust in Him would know our sin could be put away and we could live now a life that is so satisfying as we walk with Him." And God is giving us time to do that. So if you are here today in this church hearing these words, if you're on the radio, if you're in a distant place, if you're listening on the CD three weeks from now, God is saying, "If you can hear, you have the time." That is the kindness of God being made available to you.
I sometimes in my own pride have thought the goal of the preacher is to get people to face their sin and if I'll speak with enough passion and rigor and care that I can get you to face your sin. Like, it's my job.
The more I preach, the more I recognize people only hear the truth of God.
I think of how I was caught up short one time after a particular conference and what I thought I had done such a great job of convicting people of their sin.
And in Ireland, a young man whose name was Mez McConnell came to me afterwards and somehow he'd seen into my heart and knew that I was trusting me to change other people.
And he said, "Brian, I don't need you to change me. The Holy Spirit can do that and has." And he told me his story. A young man who was alcohol addicted while still in his teens, who made his way on the streets with filthy language and hard fists and selling drugs until God got through to him.
How did that happen? He said, "When the gospel began to get through to me, the book of Romans," what we're reading, "got ahold of me." I had to face this. Mez, you are a sinner and you are going to hell. You have lived a rebellious life of disobedience to God and you can claim innocence.
But actually, secretly, you know you are responsible.
I couldn't find a way out because I knew deep in my soul it was true. As the truth of the Bible came into focus, I had this overwhelming sense of impending doom. I felt I'm going to hell and I need to get right with God. I didn't say any prayer. I didn't know what to say. I just said, "God, I'm a sinner. I am going to hell. I need Jesus. Help me."
You can pray that prayer.
You may not know the right words, how the people in the polite church do it, but this you can say, "God, I know my heart and you know my heart and I'm a sinner and I'm going to go to hell if you judge me."
So God, give me Jesus and help me by His work.
It's the prayer I hope everyone here has made or will make.
God, you know my heart, I know my heart.
I'm just storing up judgment unless you help me.
So I believe Jesus. He died on the cross for my sin.
He's my way out. I'll trust Him and walk with Him. God, help me.
Father, I pray for the people who are here. I recognize that the forbearance and patience of kindness of God is on display even right now because the people who have listened to these words from your apostle are even now experiencing what it would mean to call out to you for help.
Father, work in our hearts.
There's anyone here who needs to say, "How do I get out of this, this overwhelming weight of not being right with God?" Teach them what that means.
Yes, you're righteous, but you're overwhelmingly merciful so that they would say, "Jesus, forgive my sin.
Take it as far as the east is from the west away from me. I want to walk with you now."
And in that, they would experience your grace now and forever. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Folks, we are going to sing, but when we sing, there's going to be a prayer team that comes forward. If someone just needs to say, "I don't even know how to say help me," then come pray with these people. And if you can't pray now, you can stand. If you can't pray now, call me during the week.
Stay with the people after the service. Tell them what you're thinking.
"God, I'm a sinner.
I need some help. Tell me how Jesus will help." Let's sing.