Transcription
So you guys were in the book of Hebrews chapter 2 tonight. Hebrews chapter 2 and verses 5 to 13. I hope, I pray we are, but we'll read together and we'll get into our study together. We're looking at Jesus Christ as being the end of scripture. We were in this study a few weeks ago, and I love the title. If you think about it, that alone is a theological declaration. Jesus Christ is himself the end of scripture. That means that it's all about him. That means that it commences with him and it ends with him because he is the fulfillment of scripture itself. Totally awesome and remarkable.
Hebrews chapter two. I'll begin reading in verse five. If you'll pick it up in the even-numbered verses. For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. You made Him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned Him with glory and honor and set Him over the works of Your hands.
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Verse 9. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that He by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.
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Wow. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one. For which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
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Verse 13. We'll end here. And again, I will put my trust in Him. And again, here I am, and the children whom God has given me. Father, we pray that You would be our teacher tonight. In Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen.
Church, you can be seated. And looking at this message, Jesus Christ being the end of, uh, the scriptures. We saw, if you were here in that study or if you were watching, we got into verses five through seven and we just began to scratch the surface on that. And we looked at verses five through seven, uh, making this the answer that Jesus Christ being the end of scripture is because that there's no greater messenger. And, um, I said it today, I think in a Facebook post or something, that, uh, and it bears repeating. Make note of this. No matter what your faith belief system might be tonight, make note of this because what I'm about to say and how this is backed up about Jesus Christ being the fact that he himself is no, there is no greater messenger. Is you can think of, uh, Buddha. You can think of Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Charles Russell, uh, Mary Baker Eddy. What are some, uh, uh, names of founders of cults or religions? David Koresh. I totally forgot about that. Right. Jim Jones. How could we? I'm sorry for forgetting that. Slaughter. That horrible thing. Uh, wow. The life that that man took and deception. The point is this. They all claim some form of authority over the souls of man by the, um, suggestion of of messiahship in some way. If you do this, your life will reach nirvana. If you do this, you will be blessed. If you follow us, we'll show you the way. You know, all the stuff. But not a single one of them had any previous writings in advance of what their name would be, where they would be born, what they would say, what they would do, where they would die, how they would die. And to get 66 witnesses to write 66 books, or I should say 40 witnesses that wrote 66 books over a time frame of some 1,800, 15 to 1,800 years. Most of them never meeting one another, and some of them even on different continents, to have perfect agreement about one person. Just that alone should cause you to stop what you're doing tonight and become a follower of Jesus Christ. That alone. When we talk about Jesus being the end of scripture, this argument stands all by itself. It is actually invincible. The Bible gives you enough in this answer to actually be able to speak to anyone. You should be able to speak to any intellect, anyone of any notoriety. If somebody were to, uh, be some, you know, some big debater or whatever, maybe you cannot, maybe I cannot hold my ground with their debate skills. But if you were to say, how do you explain this book called the Bible that from Genesis to Revelation reveals one man, his ministry, his name, and the fact that he would not only be associated with mankind, but he would be associated with deity, that he would actually be the God-man? This is Jesus. Remarkable.
We saw in verse 5, it says there, and we read it a moment ago, "For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels." Simply this: Jesus is not a glorified angel. Jesus is the creator of angels. The Bible tells us, we'll see this in a moment, but God the Father is not putting the world that He created under the authority of angels. The Bible is announcing that God the Father has given all authority to His Son, who is in fact the creator. A lot of people don't know that. If you've never studied the Bible carefully, you think that Jesus may be a new god, is God, and the Holy Spirit, I don't really get who he is, you know. But Jesus, after all, Jesus is just the Son. And if you look at it that way, then you're looking at the Trinitarian view of God, that God is a Trinity. If you, if you're looking at that in the Western worldview, you, you're thinking that because Jesus is the Son, that he's less than the Father. Aren't all sons less than the Father in the West? We think like that. You know, if we have something going on and maybe, maybe it's a family operation or situation, and you're saying, "I need to talk to somebody in authority. I want to talk to somebody, I want to talk to the owner of the company." "Well, sir, you're talking to the owner of the company. My dad started the company. I'm his son." "No, I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to your dad." Right? Isn't that how we think? Because we're in the West, that's how the Western world thinks. You know, in Israel, that's not how they think. Do you remember when Jesus said to the disciples, soon to become apostles, "Show us the Father. If you just show us the Father, we'll believe you." And Jesus answers and says, "Have I been so long with you, and you still say, 'Show me the Father'? He who has seen me has seen the Father." And it's awesome because again, in Israel, if you want to talk to the authority, you can talk to the Father or you can talk to the Son because they are both co-equal in everything. In fact, probate courts don't do well in Israel. I don't know if you know this or not, but they don't go through this, the stuff that we put our families through when families begin to tear each other apart and stuff over this. Listen, um, at a certain time in Israel, the father who owns everything, he just transfers ownership over to the eldest son, and it goes down from there. That just leaves the attorneys out in the dust. And no wonder, if you think about it biblically, God the Father has commissioned everything to God the Son. And it's not that Jesus is getting a promotion. It's at the aspect they're based upon the aspect that Jesus Christ represents you and I as humans. That's the point. Jesus has always been God. He didn't become God. He's always been God. But when He became man, He did that for our inheritance. Think about it. What, what is the Father's is the Son's. And the Bible says that those who believe and trust in the Son, we become heirs, joint heirs with Christ. And that is a radical thing. I mean, I mean, that is just off the charts. Because if somebody in your family dies and leaves you a thousand bucks, um, it's like, well, that's very cool. You know. But imagine, imagine somebody coming into your life and says, and saying to you, "Oh, by the way, did you know that we're related? I've never met you before, but look, here's the paperwork. We're related. We are related." Imagine that. Oh, and by the way, um, I was left a hundred gazillion billion trillions, and I'm going to give a deal." Isn't that crazy? You don't need to know this, but it's for me. I think of this in a biblical sense all the time. My family, it's a true story. It was in newspapers all across the United States and throughout South America. Uh, you know the story. What, what happened to you? What happened to, oh, I had an uncle who died. He was loaded. You know those stories? Well, I have a relative who died over 100 years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and he hated his family so much that his will could not be opened until it had been a hundred years. And he, oh, and the will was opened up by the Brazilian government and by attorneys, and my mom was the heir to tens of millions of bucks. And there it was. It was, it was crazy. And so, but here's the deal. I can't mention the bank's name because I'm sure they'll sue me for what I'm about to say. But my parents went to a bank here in America and said, "This is our paperwork. This inheritance is in Brazil." And but we don't want to move to Brazil. And they said, "Well, there's some problems about that. The Brazilian government wants to leave that money in the Brazilian economy." And I will get that. Interesting, because this was, this was in the billions of dollars. There were so many recipients. For my mom, it was something like 18 million dollars. So the bank said, "Sign this paperwork, and we will have this money to you within a matter of weeks here in the United States, but we, we get 70% of it." Because, listen, because they said, "What we're going to be doing is not legal to get it out." Literally. And my dad, you would have had to have known my dad. He said a few words to them, and the only option to inherit that money was for us to move, uh, to Brazil. And so, along, obviously, I'm standing here tonight. My parents wound up choosing not to move to Brazil. The point is this. In a way, you might say to me after service, "You should have, oh man, you should have gone down there. You could imagine what you've done with that kind of money." Wait, wait, wait, wait. But if man can do that to and for man, and we can receive the benefits going from one country to the next, how much more can God, who leaves us an inheritance, keep it reserved for you and I, not in some bank, but in heaven above, where when you and I leave this world, there's no 70%. We go direct to heaven, where what Christ has done for us is there. And it's not only that, it is eternal life. It is joy, peace, it is glory, it is, imagine fellowship. Sometimes we get to taste a little bit of heaven with one another. Imagine what it's going to be like when we are free, completely free from these bodies of sin and death, and that we are with Him and with one another in glory forever. Imagine that. The stuff of this world will be gone. That's why Jesus Christ is the better or the greater messenger. God's gospel didn't come through angels. But listen to this. When I say that Jesus Christ is the end of scripture, what I mean by that is this: that He is the very point and reason of the Bible. That's how essential Jesus Christ is, and that's how essential the Bible is. If you're new to this church, you should know this right now. We have it. We have an absolute high view of scripture. This does not contain the word of God. This is the word of God. This book is life. And God throughout the ages has preserved it. And God has put this word in the hands of just about every person on the planet, even, even if it's via a crank-up portable phone or whatever those things that are out there in the world today in remote places. So much so is He preeminent. Look at Colossians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. Colossians 2, 8 and 9. The Bible tells us there, "Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy." Many of us, you take philosophy courses. How many people survive that? Watch. There's going to be four things. So philosophy, this is, uh, worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom. I'm not talking heavenly wisdom. This is the top shelf of what the world has esteemed as what is the best that they can do. So you want to watch out for that. You want to watch out for vain deceit, trickery, slight of hand is the thought with words or with knowledge. Are we not living in an age like that right now, where things that are declared knowledge are not even knowledge? Things that are twisted. I heard, listen, I'm, we'll probably get thrown off of Facebook for this in a moment. Listen, in South Africa, where there is this, the origin of this new COVID strain, all right? Today on the news, they were talking to what is equivalent of their surgeon general down there. You know what she said? She said, "We don't know what you guys are talking about in America. We have it here. It's hospitalized. No one." She said, "Zero. We're telling people to take zinc and to take D and to take C, and no one, no, she said, no one has been hospitalized by this." Yeah, but that's not what you're hearing.
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Ladies and gentlemen, what are we talking about? Vain deceit with the intent for mischief, control. Who knows what? Also, this third warning: watch out that you don't get spoiled after the tradition of men. Don't touch some man's tradition. You could get in trouble for that. "We have always done it this way. It's the way that it's done. Our fathers have done it from generation to generation, and this is the way we're going to do it." Don't you dare. And they make it, they make it the 11th commandment, you know. Watch out after the rudiments of the world, after the plots and plans and the value systems of the world. Watch out for that, and not after Christ. Why? Verse 9: "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." You need to look at that. You got to take a picture of that verse. That verse declares, verse 9, that Jesus Christ is the physical personification of not only God, the Godhead, meaning that what Jesus said, what Jesus did, was all of the Father, watch, all of the Spirit revealed through the Son. You want to know what the Father's like? Look at the Son. You want to know what the Holy Spirit's like? Look at the Son. Jesus is our touchdown. He is our hallmark. This is, this is where we get to know God. It's Him. It's absolutely awesome. But listen, there's more. Titus chapter 2, verse 13. One of my all-time favorite verses. Titus 2:13 says this: "Looking for," by the way, we are commanded to be doing this. I, I love saying this because it always generates a discussion later on. The Bible says to every Christian generation, and this is a generation, if you can hear me right now, you are a generation of believers. Doesn't matter if you're 9 or 99, you are a generation of believers. We are together here right now, okay? What are we supposed to be doing? Oh, well, many things. The Bible tells us, but one of them is that we are to be looking for. And it's the only place in scripture that I can find where you are encouraged to be anxious. Remember what Philippians says? "Be anxious for nothing." Of course, that's those are things negative or things pressing. In this case, the word "looking for" means anxiously waiting for. The Christian of every generation is to be anxiously waiting for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing. By the way, the word "appearing" is, uh, epiphany. Epiphania. His. It's not a coming. It's an atmospheric epiphany. He's going to appear. If you know your eschatology, that jives right perfectly with 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, that there's going to be a trumpet blast, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet them in the air, because it's not a coming, it is an appearing. "We look for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." This is amazing because if people try to deny the deity of Christ, they'll say, "God is coming, and He's bringing with Him Jesus Christ." No, you can't do that. It's strong enough in English. It's stronger in the original Koine Greek language that the blessed hope is the appearing of our God, who is our Lord and Savior. The book of Isaiah says there's only one Lord and there's only one Savior, and that is God. God's coming back to pick us up. His name is Jesus Christ. It's absolutely wonderful. But listen, you missed that. The missing of Christ in His position in the book of Hebrews could cost you dearly. To miss this is to miss the entire revelation of God's word. You don't want to miss that. It's to miss the witness of creation itself. The Bible tells us that Christ is the creator. And it's to reject the advanced messaging. I like to put it that way. The advanced messaging of the prophets. No one fits the bill but Jesus Christ. And so the Bible, there, tells us in verse 5 that "He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels." And I was going to go off tonight on a long thing about angels. Don't know if I'm going to do that with the time that we have. I'll just give you these as references, um, that the angelic world, the, the, the greatest power of the angelic world, uh, is Lucifer himself. And we talked about this last time, that he has a rival who's equally powerful, and that is Michael. Don't ever think that Jesus and, and Lucifer battle it out. They're not equals. Again, the Bible tells us that Jesus is the creator of angels. Read Colossians 1, among other scriptures. But as we look at this, angels, as we've said before, are ministering spirits to us. We don't worship angels. I know it's very hip to go to stores and buy these, all this angelology, stuff about your angel and, you know, and angel this and angel that. You'd listen, angel, no, no, angel. They're the angels are, are the Lord's servants, and they're at work in this world regarding your life and mine, and among other things too. I mean, according to the Bible, the angels in the time of judgment on earth, specifically the tribulation period, the Bible says that a commandment goes forth to one of the angels to take a sickle, a harvesting sickle, and to plunge it into the earth, that many would be struck dead. One angel. Listen, when the Assyrians were messing around with Israel, and Israel thought, "That's it. We're gone. There's no hope for us." They cried out to God, and God sent one angel at night, which is even better, because this army is there, 185,000 soldiers are there, ready to kill and destroy and annihilate Israel on the battlefield. And the sun sets, and in the morning, when the sun comes up, Israel's ready to be slaughtered, and they look, and there's 185,000 guys dead on the ground. And the Bible says, "One angel passed through their camp." One angel. Can you imagine? Oh, so cute little wings. And no, apparently they are gnarly things. That doesn't even thrill us anymore, though, because Hollywood, it's taken all the thrill out of it. Think about that. It's like, "Oh, you mean like the alien movie?" We, we're not even wowed anymore. I thought you guys, you know, it's like, "What? One angel?" "How did he do it?" "How did he?" We, I think we've lost the edge because we see Hollywood movies and they're so fantastic that it's like, "Yeah, of course." 100, 185,000 dead in one night. Was a big deal. Well, in this case, an angel is going to do it. But these are ministering spirits. But you guys can look later in detail. You want to know more about their world? Ezekiel chapter 28, verses 11 to 17. You can look at that. And Isaiah 14, verses 9 to 17. You'll get a clue, you in on Satan, Lucifer, the devil, before he fell, why he fell, what he thought. It's all written down right there in the Bible. And his demise. I like this part at the end. At the end of the millennium, the Bible says in Isaiah and Ezekiel, it says that when he is condemned forever, it says that hell begins to stir beneath to open up its mouth to receive Satan, the devil. Can you imagine? That's just going to be a great day when that exactly when, when that transpires, when that takes place.
And so we look at verse 6. It says, "But one testified in a certain place, saying, 'What is man, that You are mindful of him? Or the son of man, that You take care of him?'" That's David. That's David in the eighth Psalm. David is not only the songwriter, he's not only the great shepherd, he's not only the great warrior, he's not, he's not only the great giant killer. David is a great psalm writer, and he's a, and he's prophetic. We don't often think about that. But when we talk about the Bible speaking about Jesus being pierced in His hands and His feet prophetically, we're going back to a 3,000-year-old prophecy penned by David in Psalm 22. God used that man also as a prophet. But we don't have to refer to him as a prophet. And in the Hebrews, verse 6 here, chapter 2, the announcement is made, and it's about the Messiah. Make no mistake about it. It can, it relates to man. It can, in the right context, it's about Jesus, the Messiah. And the announcement is made way back then, 3,000 years ago, "What is man that You are mindful of him?" This is the Father. "What is, what would the Father have to do with the Son speaking from now where you and I live? What would the Father have to do with His Son who's on earth that He would be mindful of Him?" It's not a denial, it's a revelation of acceptance. It's an announcement to us. When Christ would come, how would we know the Father's grace and love and care would be upon Him? But isn't He just a man? He's a man. But look closely and think about it. In every way, shape, and form, Jesus was normal. When you looked at Him, in fact, remember the woman at the well, is it John chapter 4? The disciples go to buy some food. Jesus is at the well waiting, and, um, for them to come back, and the woman comes, and she has, uh, she's living with her fifth husband, remember this. And she comes, and she, can you, He's God in skin. And I don't know, is He just, is He laying on, on the well? And she comes with her, with her, uh, pots with the furkin, it's a big pot she'd be carrying it on her shoulder to get water. And He says to her, "Can I, I'd like to have a drink of water." And she goes, "How is it that you, a Jew?" Isn't that interesting? She doesn't know who He is, but clearly He's Jewish. "How is it that you, and you are asking me, a Samaritan, for a drink of water? We're not supposed to talk." And He said, "If you knew who was asking you for a drink, you would ask Him for a drink." If you read that carefully, it sounds like the Holy Spirit speaking through Him. "If you knew who was asking you for a drink, you would ask Him for a drink, because the water that He gives is an everlasting water." Oh, she says, she probably thinks this guy's a nut because she says, "Oh, give me this water." And He says, "Why don't you go get your husband?" And she says, "Well, I don't have a husband." Can you believe this poor lady? She's flirting with God. "I don't have a husband." And He goes, "That's true, you don't. And the man you're living with is the fifth man that you've had." "Sir," she says, "I perceive that you are a prophet." And He reveals to her that He's the Messiah, and she runs to her town, Samaria, right? And she tells them. But she was a woman that with a bad reputation, so no, nobody believed her. It says, "And they all came out to see for themselves." By the way, when they came out to see for themselves, the disciples showed up and shortening up that this narrative. Jesus says, "Look at that. I tell you, can you imagine? Look at that. All the, all these people were coming out of the village." He said, "The fields are white unto harvest. Look at all those souls." He's saying, "Look at all those souls ready to hear the good news." And by the way, the Samaritans were very, very known for wearing white. That's why He said, "White the fields were white unto harvest." All these people were coming out because they wouldn't believe her. She was a woman that was a little shady. In fact, they even said, "We, we didn't believe you, but now we've seen Him, and now we believe." And that's why Jesus told the disciples, "You need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send forth more laborers into this harvest." More and more people would want to come to know the good news. It's absolutely awesome. When the Bible says that the Father, why would He care for the Son? That reason is for you. That's why. That the humanity of God, who in their right mind, I put it sarcastically, would leave heaven to come to this pit to rescue people who curse Your name? Who does that? Nobody would do that. Technically, nobody did that. It was God who did it. Some cults teach that Jesus became an enlightened one. Some cults teach that Jesus is actually one of many alien visitors that have been placed here over the thousands and thousands of years. Really? Say what you will say, and I'll say this: the Bible says that God loved this world, not the ball, not the blue ball we live on, it's the people of this world, you and I, that He sent His only begotten Son, His only glorified Son. And that's the good news. Endless. And, and when the Bible announces to us why, why would, why would God care about you? It's to get us to think, why would God care about, about us? And the answer is, His Son Jesus is the manifestation of the love of God. Outside of Jesus, you would not know the love of God. Now, God is love. That, it's amazing because the Bible speaks regarding a blunt, pure attribute of God. We know, we know a few things regarding these blunt attributes. Number one, God is light. Okay. The Bible says God is holy. And the third thing is, God is love. And all of that is represented in Jesus. It's absolutely awesome.
Verse 7 says, "You have made Him a little lower than the angels." That's talking about His incarnation. See, our Savior, as Christians, is that our God became lower than the angels. Angels don't have human limitations. I hope you like this next part. It's fascinating. You can study it later. When it talks about Jesus becoming a little lower than the angels, it's the word, it's the Greek word, and doctrine, kenosis. K-E-N-O-S-I-S. Kenosis. And it answers a lot of questions that you might have sometimes about God. And that is this: Kenosis is for Jesus, too. Because you've had, have you ever had people say, "How could Jesus die on the cross if He's God? Wouldn't the whole universe fly apart?" Well, they fail to recognize the Trinity, for one thing. But the most important thing is they're looking at life only relating to the physical body. Jesus's body died. And by the way, your body's going to die. You can be very happy if you're Christian. You can be very happy that when your body dies, you just relocate. You just move. Think of it. We get so fixated on this. Listen. When, when Jesus Christ died, we need to be more specific. His body died. But if you don't understand biblical theology, you're going to think, "Well, when somebody dies, it's over." Oh, no, it's not. You need to read the Bible. People today, I'm hearing it constantly. Had to deal with a man last Sunday after fourth service whose son in public school was pressured and pressured and told that, "Nope, nope, you're not straight. You're gay. You're gay. You're not straight. You're, you're gay. You knew you're just hammered and hammered and hammered." And the kid began to not feel like he fit in. Can you imagine in our public school system today, you don't feel like you fit in unless you're gay or whatever, whatever "gay" means now? I actually don't even know what it means now. What does that mean? Anything other than straight? If you're, if you're straight, something's wrong with you, apparently, in our new world. And that kid was so bullied and pressured because he didn't feel or think gay, so he became convinced that something was wrong with him, and he took his life. Somebody should be held responsible for this. The authorities that allow that stuff to be pumped into our system need to be held responsible. But here's the, here's the thing.
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This evil in this world, this stuff is from,
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an ancient, I can't say eternal because they were created, an ancient satanic world that's invisible. The kenosis. Jesus comes into the world, born of a virgin, the Bible says in the book of Isaiah. Comes into this world, and you could read about all that in the Gospels. But the kenosis is that He Himself set aside. Kenosis is to empty out. It's to pour out or set aside. Jesus took all of His attributes that He had, and He set Him right here. Watch this. This is as far as we'll get tonight. This is, we're going to, it's going to take us well, the Lord will be back before we finish this book.
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Jesus, watch this. Jesus takes His power to, to know everything, for example, at a particular moment, He takes it and He sets it here. So He doesn't know. Watch this. He knows that it's all right here. He takes it because, watch, He takes it and sets it here. Kenosis. Why would He do that? Watch. Jesus is spit on, and He doesn't spit back. He doesn't get angry. What if somebody walked up to you and spit in your face and said, "Assist you, I hate your guts. You know what? Get out of, get out of here. You're nothing but a, whatever, false prophet. You don't belong here." Jesus, think about you getting, it's one thing to get smacked because you're doing mischief, you know, you expect it. If you're up to mischief and somebody hits you, you, you were expecting it sooner or later. But if you're, if you're loving, if you actually love the very one who is spitting in your face, what kind of can you be? Can you even imagine such love for someone to grab you by the face and to pluck out your beard? Isaiah chapter 50. They plucked out His beard. Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Zechariah 13 and 14. They, they disfigured Him with beatings with the Roman flagellum, cat-o'-nine-tails, that would take out with every pull, meat out when you hit the person. What, you would ask, "How could He do this?" Like, Jack, I can't believe this story because there's not a person on the planet that would take that. Well, first of all, what are you and I going to do about it? We have no power. If we could, right? If we could, we would justifiably kill the person who's trying to kill us. That's normal. But when you've done nothing wrong, and they're doing this to you, and you don't say anything, you don't even tell them to stop. Kenosis. What do you mean? Imagine with the, imagine your back being ripped wide open, you know, in the moment, and you have the power right there, you can just grab it. You can grab kenosis. And with the next breath of your assailant, they, they, they've ceased to exist. He could have, He could have fixed the moment. He could have rescued Himself at any moment, all the time, and you didn't do it. And I'll have to end with this. Remember when we were little kids, and we would get in arguments with each other, and we'd say things like, "I have a bigger dog than you do." "Well, we live in a bigger house." You know, stuff like that. Kids do that. I think, well, they used to do that. I don't know if it's legal anymore for kids to do that. But, but when a kid, and the kid says, "My dad can beat up your dad." "No, no, my dad can beat up your dad." One time, when this kid said, "My dad can beat up your dad," and that kid says, "That's nothing. My mom can beat up my dad." But I'll tell you what, my, my God can take your God. My God is not a statue. It's not, He's not a carved image. He actually talks. He listens. He actually knows everything. Sometimes I feel like that, you know, people who have their gods, whatever those gods are, because everybody has a god, don't fool yourself. Everyone has at least one. And it's just great to walk up, "I bet you my God's bigger than your God." And the greatest thing that you could say to answer in that debate is, "My God came and was born into this world like me. He didn't have to feel everything that I feel, but He allowed Himself to feel everything I feel. He was misunderstood. He was rejected. He was beaten. He was abused." And at any, this is the biggest thing, amazing, at any time, He could have stopped it, but He didn't stop it for you. So that you could turn to this God tonight and say, "I want You in my life because I can relate to You, and I know You know me." I'm going to ask the guys to dim the lights. I'm going to ask the worship to come on out. I'm going to ask you tonight, we're going to pray together right now, and I'm going to ask you tonight to make a decision. Maybe you've never made a public decision for Jesus. I want you to think about what you just heard, and I want you to respond to His love. Jesus Christ said, "If you come to Me, I will never turn you away." Jesus said, "I will wash away your sins." That's what I was doing at the cross, washing away your sins. And so, as we sing this song, I believe that there's at least a person in here tonight that you may be hovering around the area of belief or whatever. You flirted with making a decision. You're not exactly sure where you're at. You're not an evolutionist. You're not an atheist. You're not an agnostic. You just haven't made the step. And I'm asking you tonight to get up and to come forward, and we'll pray together. I'll pray over you. We'll pray together. But as we sing this song, will you do that tonight? If God is speaking to you, everyone Jesus invited into the kingdom, He invited publicly. And finally, really, even Nicodemus finally went public. Will you go public today? Maybe you've never gone public with Jesus, but Jesus said, "If you acknowledge Me before others, I'll acknowledge you before My Father which is in heaven." As we sing this song, don't worry about people near you. They can't help you right now. Nobody's sitting next to you should have one iota of influence over this decision because on the day of your death, they will have no input. They'll have no way of saving you. They cannot help you. Now's the time to pick and to decide. And in that moment of passing, you'll enter into glory because you know that He's your Lord and Savior. Let's sing. You come forward. Won't take long. I'm not going to beg you. I don't believe in that stuff. If God is speaking to you, you respond to Him. You're grown up and you listen to Him. So you come as we sing.
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Don't you think that in the world that we live in, that we've gone through these last two years, this is a profound, I hope anyway, a profound realization among all people on earth that by our reaction to the threat of what sickness, right? The threat of sickness, not even death, has so terrified people that people would wake up to the realization that clearly,
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that the fear of death is overwhelming people. And if the fear of dying is a fear that you have, I want you to know that Jesus, when He comes into your life, He takes that away. You need to know that no Christian's afraid of dying. We will admit that we don't like getting to the point of death. I don't want needles, and we don't want treatments and all that stuff. But for the Christian, it's like, "Is it over now? Can I, can I go?" Is it? I had a, a friend called me on the phone a while back, and he was crying on his way home from Cedars-Sinai in LA because he got the news. He got cancer again for like the, I don't know how many times. He had solely been doing for like 10 years of battling cancer. And he called me and he said, "I'm done with this stuff." And his wife didn't want to, want him to say that. She understands. I understood. He said, "I, I don't want treatment anymore." And I said, "You're going to have to do treatment." He goes, "Wow, I didn't expect that answer from you. What? With all that I've gone through?" And I said, "Because you've got grandkids, and they're going to ask you, 'Papa, are you fighting this for us? Papa, are you doing everything you can so that you can be with us?'" Because we all get it. As a Christian, we get to welcome death because it's a door we walk through into the world that we were created to be in with Jesus. My dear friend, I do not judge you tonight. You may be a Christian, and you maybe you don't understand, but you're fearful of death. Or it could be that you're a religious person, and you don't have the comfort that you should have. Jesus takes away that fear. This will be the last and final moment. We'll sing this through just one time. But if you tonight, or that person in your sin, I, I got to make absolute certainty. Please. And this is the last call. How's that? The train's going to leave the station. Those of you that are standing here, make this your prayer.
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I'll, I'll give you the words, but you've got to make them your own. You've got to mean it.
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Church family, will you pray out loud with them as well?
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Almighty God, I come to You tonight.
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And I ask You to forgive me of my sins. Wash away my past and put a new heart in me. Transform my mind tonight. I proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior because I believe He died on the cross and He rose again for me. And I follow Him now. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
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Amen.