It's a humbling thing to stand up here. So I don't know how much Pastor Owen told about what happened this afternoon, but I got a really good reminder of the grace of God and the goodness of God. We were coming back on Route 3 and there was a pile up in front of us, pile up behind us, and I managed to just drive through a hole and didn't even get a scratch. They called in a helicopter for somebody else though. So, yeah, never forget that God has your life in the palm of his hand. You can cease to exist anytime. Yeah, I understand. So anyway, so Pastor Owen's been encouraging me get a message for quite some time, and I've been trying. And finally I just realized, you know, I should just keep it simple. The verse comes to mind. It says, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. That's 1 Peter 3.15. So I guess today I just want to talk about what is the hope that I have. And I think there's a big lack of understanding today what the hope that we all have, what that is. A lot of people will tell you that it's just a ticket to heaven. That's it. And you get this ticket punched and you're on your way and there's nothing to worry about. but there's a lot more to it than that. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be anywhere where I don't deserve to be. Can you imagine being told like, hey, we don't care about your physical state, but now you're a Green Beret. Go out there and fight with them. No, I don't want to be there. I want to be where I deserve to be. So I guess the next verse I'll go to we're gonna start off, is Colossians 1.12. So it says, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So this is a verse that I was reading years ago, and just something spoke to me, and it made me so thankful. To go off on a tangent first, this word meat, this is one of the reasons why I love the King James Bible. It has such, there's so much more meaning in every verse. You know, the word meat, there's nothing like it today. It's almost like the word fitting. That's probably the closest word you could think of to the word meat. If something is meat, it means that it is so right in and of itself that it should be. And when you start to think about what does it mean if something happened to you that you should be grouped with the saints. What would have to happen to you? It's not a ticket. It's not a ticket to heaven. Something else happened. So this might end up being a short message, but anyway, I'll turn to Ephesians 2.1. Okay? Okay. Let me try to get you some value. Sure. We'll try this. If this don't get it, we'll get another microphone. Okay, clip this on your belt. Okay. I'm the only guy deaf in church, but that just... I'm going to put it up there to try to catch you. Okay. Is that better? Thank you. That's okay. Ephesians 2.1, And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in time past you walked according to the course of this world. According to the prince of the power of the air and spirit, thou workest in the children of disobedience. I can't remember how far I was gonna read. I think that's enough. All through the Bible, there's this contrast between life and death. And I was thinking about the nature of that. Why is our soul compared to life and death? And I was thinking about what sin does. Sin kills every good thing. Sorry. Yeah. I was thinking about just naming some sins I've heard in the past. You think of all the examples I've heard of. Somebody takes their parents and shoves them in an old folks' home, uses the power of attorney, and takes all their money. Okay, you've gained a little thing, but you've killed that relationship you could have ever had with that parent. It's dead. It's gone. They'll never trust you again. You know, you think about, you know, a family man, some ways that he might err. You kill that trust. It's gone. It's dead. It's never coming back again. One way or another, sin will kill some goodness. And I was thinking about the nature of life. And life has this property where it's like, it just keeps on going and going. You take, I was thinking of like a good analogy, if the earth was just a ball of mud, and you threw a shovel of sod onto it, within time, it would be green all over, forever after that. You know, goodness just begets more goodness. Life just keeps getting more life. You think about how two brothers in the church, one might encourage the other, the other one goes home, he has a spirit of prayer, he starts praying for somebody, that somebody gets saved, that somebody starts coming to church. You think about all of us, we're an unbroken chain of people witnessing to each other all the way back to the time of Christ. Somebody planted a seed, that seed grew up, planted another seed, And this is gonna continue even in heaven forever and ever and ever. So this is what's happened to us that made us meet to be partakers of the saints in life. God changed us somehow. And he has, what he has done to us has made us such that the right thing to do is to group us with the other holy people on this earth. I'm going to go back to my first verse because I forgot a point I was going to make. When it says, it has made you meet to be partakers of the inheritance of light. Do you inherit anything when you die? Nobody does. This inheritance is not that ticket to heaven. You didn't inherit that when you died. You inherited that when someone else died. Your inheritance starts right now. Thank you. So how do we get there? What do we have to do in order to be quickened? And I'll go back to Romans 7.24. It says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? There's death again. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's as far as I'm gonna go there. And then there's Romans 10.13, we all know that verse. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I guess to make the point quickly, I wanted to read Mark 10.46. This is the story of the blind man outside of Jericho. So I thought, how exactly should you call upon the name of the Lord? And I think this blind man is mentioned in the Bible for this reason. And it says, and they came to Jericho, and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highwayside begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And they charged him that he should hold his peace, but he cried the more a great deal, thou son of David, have mercy on me. So my message is if you feel that Jesus is near, call out to him. Call out to him like he's not gonna hear you. Call out so loud that you can drown out everybody else around. Don't listen to anybody that tells you to shut up. And God will save you. and he will deliver you from that body of death. Well, that went a lot quicker than I anticipated. But that's my message.