It’s like Absalom, you know.  As soon as David, his father, had kissed him and embraced him, he went out and plotted treason against His father.  So, the sinner eagerly takes the kiss of God that God provides in the created world, and embraces God’s graces and God’s mercy, and then betrays Him by being the friend of God’s enemy, Satan.  Sin is serious ingratitude.  It’s damning ingratitude.  And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against that ingratitude.  Sin is defiling.  It is rebellion.  It is ingratitude.  Well, a few more and a few more questions next time, then we’ll start to look at the text.Father, tonight we’ve just really begun our study in what is such an unhappy subject to be considering, and yet so necessary.  We have to understand the heart of man.  We have to understand our own hearts, have to understand our sin, its severity, its incurable power from the human perspective.  We have to understand its pervasiveness, its deadliness.  We have to understand sin because it’s the defining element in our universe.  It’s why things are the way they are.  It’s why the creation is no longer very good but very bad.  It’s why everything dies.  Father, we have to understand sin because, most of all, it’s why we need a Savior.  And You’ve sent Him, even the Lord Jesus Christ.  We know that sin is humanly incurable, but You have sent Jesus to save His people from their sins.  And You save sinners who repent and ask You for forgiveness.  What an amazing reality, that as bad as sin is, as defiling, corrupting as it is, as openly rebellious as it is, as ungrateful as it is, You still forgive it when the sinner comes and asks, even as we heard give testimony to in baptism tonight.  We want to understand the world and we want to understand it the way it needs to be understood and that’s the way You see it, and we are able to if we follow Your Word.  And we know what’s wrong in our world.  We know what’s wrong in the lives of people.  We know what it is: it’s sin, and there isn’t any human solution.  But there is a divine one.  May You bring many, many sinners to repentance and salvation.  Use us to that end, we pray in the name of Your Son and our dear Savior.  Amen.