We're going to look at some other Old Testament Messianic prophecies. Again, kind of skipping across the top of things there. Can you move us forward? So we're going to look at 12 here, okay? And I won't read all the scripture passages for all of them because it would just take us way too long. So we'll point out the highlights of what they say, and if you want to scribble down the passages and look them up later, if you want to do your homework, you're welcome to do that. Okay? So you can have a look at these. But here's the first one I want to draw forward. The Messiah, the one spoken of in the Old Testament, who Jesus is claiming to be, the Messiah would descend from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. This is a family line, right? Abraham, Isaac, his son. Not Ishmael, but Isaac. And then Jacob, not Esau, but Jacob. God was very specific about each one who he chose. And on down the line through David. Not all of his other seven brothers, but David, the youngest. God chose and predicted in advance that the Messiah would be the descendant of this very particular family line. We've already seen some of that. We have this in several passages in the Old Testament. We have Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1. So here we have Isaiah writing 700 years before Christ saying that the Messiah is going to come from this particular family line. We have Jeremiah doing likewise, Jeremiah 23, 5. And again, he talks about it in chapter 33, verses 14 and 15. He lived 600 years before Christ and wrote about these things. The very specific family line of the Messiah. Well, we see New Testament fulfillment. Jesus descended from Abraham. He came directly through that family line. We have both in Matthew and Luke. We have the entire genealogy there showing that both through Joseph, who was really just his adoptive father, but that was his legal parentage. So legally, he was a direct descendant of this family line, a direct descendant of King David. He was royal blood. Legally, through Joseph. And through Mary, organically, As well, she was a direct descendant of this family line, a descendant of King David. And so we have that established clearly for us that Jesus Christ fulfills that specific prophecy about the Messiah. Oh, but he probably wasn't the only person in that category, right? Still, that is something. Now let's look to a second prophecy. Old Testament told us that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, known as the city of David. Micah wrote about this Micah chapter 5 verse 2 he was living 700 years before Jesus as well and wrote about this and and said in you Bethlehem Ephrathah and talks about the Messiah being born there so now we're right down to now and it's not like saying in Sydney or in Los Angeles or something like that Bethlehem that's like saying he's gonna be born in Mount Druitt It's kind of one of those often overlooked, not always fully appreciated neighborhoods. It's the little village of Bethlehem. By the way, we live adjacent to Mount Druitt, so no slander intended there. We drive there all the time. We're fine. but but this is kind of what it was you know because you all look and you know yeah you know home andrew you know there was a big expose and everybody got upset and everything you know this last year and so on but that's kind of what bethlehem was like you know as a controversial place by this time it was that you know where david was from but that's kind of kind of this run-down little old village he plays now that's just kind of full of shepherds and you know they're the the the the kind of the lower rungs of society the people who live and work around there now interesting that the Messiah would be born there. And yet we see very clearly, of course, that's what happened. We have the record in Matthew and Luke and confirmed by many other sources. So we go to the third prophecy then. The Messiah would also be announced by a particular messenger. Someone would be like the forerunner who would announce, you know, and of course in many ancient traditions you would have that, right? Someone who would run ahead of royalty and announce that the king or the queen or the prince is coming, you know, so that everybody could properly, you know, line up along the sides of the street and be prepared to scrape and bow and stuff like that. Show their respect and make a lane. So there would be a forerunner for the Messiah. And we see that mentioned and explained in Isaiah chapter 40 and Malachi chapter 3 as well. Malachi lived and prophesied 450 years before Christ. We see the New Testament fulfillment in Jesus's ministry as it was announced by John the Baptist, as recorded for us in Matthew, Luke, and John. Through the four Gospels, we have very clear records of John the Baptist coming and saying, the Messiah is here. And even being very specific when Jesus came around, right? Look, that's him. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, that's the one. I'm not even worthy to undo his sandal straps like a servant because he is so much greater than me and he came before me. Jesus was born literally after John the Baptist. What was he talking about? Why did he say that he's so much greater and that he was before me? So we have yet another fulfillment that's very specific. How many other people have people wandering in the desert and not just calling attention to themselves but calling attention to this other person. Many false religious leaders would try to get people to follow them. John said, no, no, no, no, it's not me. I just want you to not miss that it's him. How likely is that to happen? All right, so a fourth one. Messiah would heal many, including the blind, and I mentioned that earlier. This was never done before. And so that was a very specific prophecy we saw in Isaiah that he would, even the blind would see when he came. Impossible. But that was a big, big, big red flag when Jesus came and healed blind people. That should have triggered for everybody's memory. He's got to be the Messiah. We see that the account of those things being fulfilled, fulfilled all kinds of ailments, physical, spiritual, I mean, being crippled, having blood issues, diseases, every type of ailment, Christ healed. And we have that recorded for us in several passages. Here are a couple of prime examples that I just plucked out of many. A fifth prophecy, Messiah would be betrayed by a friend. There are some things a person might try to do. If they had this image of a great anointed one out there that everybody's been looking for, that everybody's excited about, and a person decides, you know, I'd like to be that person. There would be some things that they would do to try to appear to be fulfilling the prophecies, right? Well, I can dress that way and I can, you know, I came from Bethlehem and, you know, so you might be able to try to do some things, right? But when we put some of these things together, it's impossible for one person to have all these things, especially when they're things you can't really control where you're born. And you can't really control when one of your closest friends is going to betray you. And yet that was one of the specific prophecies. Someone very close to him would betray him to his death. We see that in Psalm 41 written a thousand years before Christ That he would be betrayed by a friend And we see the New Testament fulfillment in Judas and his betrayal is recorded for us in all four Gospels in detail a Sixth prophecy Messiah would be betrayed and for 30 pieces of silver. So now it goes beyond just the fact that a friend would betray him. But the more specific detail, this friend would betray him for 30 pieces of silver, the price of a human being, basically, in their society. A slave was bought and sold for 30 pieces of silver. So, blood money of 30 pieces of silver, we see Zechariah 11, 12, written 500 years before Christ. The fulfillment, we see Judas, rather, receiving 30 pieces of silver specifically for betraying Jesus recorded for us in Matthew 26 verses 15 and 16. A seventh prophecy, and this one I'll expand a little bit, these ones after this I'll show you some of these verses because we're getting even closer, we're getting into the death, burial, and resurrection. Number seven, the 30 pieces of silver would be thrown down in the temple and used to buy a potter's field. Now that's getting really particular, isn't it? for something written five hundred years before the event a friend is going to betray him the price of the betrayals would be thirty pieces of silver he's going to change his mind that he's going to take that money and throw it into the temple on the floor and then that money is going to be taken and it's going to be used to purchase a field that's owned by a potter little more than coincidence when that's exactly what happened in Christ's life. So here we are, Zechariah 11, 13. We have the verse up here on the next screen. Now the Lord said to me, throw unto the potter the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter. This was a situation where we have a number of these things in the prophecies where God had the prophet act something out to deliver the prophecy. where he would have them do real-life, real-time things now to portray to the people what was going to happen in a different way in the future. And when you read the whole context of the prophecy, you see that that's the case, that it's not merely recording just the events of that prophet in his life, but that he was drawing a vivid picture for people of something that was going to happen. I mean, that's why God told the prophet Hosea to go and marry a prostitute. And all the drama that's carried out in their lives is a portrayal of how Israel is unfaithful to God, and God continues to love Israel, and he keeps bringing her back, and he redeems her. And so there's a drama, a pageant that's carried out as a part of the prophecy, and that's what we have here. Well, we see that fulfilled in the New Testament, of course. We see in Matthew 27 the record of Judas throwing the 30 pieces of silver on the floor of the temple, the priest shaking it and saying, well, we can't do it. It's blood money. We can't put it back in the treasury of the temple. What are we going to do? I've got an idea, completely separate from the fact that Old Testament prophecy says we'll do this. I've got an idea. Let's go buy the field of the potter with this money. All right, eighth prophecy. The Messiah would be silent before his accusers. Now who, in the face of a flogging with the cat of nine tails, and the most hideous, horrendous form of execution, of crucifixion, who would not try to argue their case? who would not try to defend themselves in some way. But the Old Testament Scripture said that the Messiah would not. He would be like a sheep being led to slaughter. They become silent. this is as i say a fifty three verses six and seven this i would be silent before his accusers we see that i've got the verses on the screen here all we like sheep have gone astray and have turned everyone to his own way that's a simple condition as humanity and the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth is speaking at in past tense because it's so certain that seven hundred years from the time it's written this is going to happen This is the vision that Isaiah sees, and he says, this is how it happened. In reality, how it's going to happen. He was oppressed and afflicted in the worst of ways, and he didn't even argue. He didn't even try to defend himself. Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that is before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. We see this fulfillment, of course, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all four Gospels recording the accusations brought against Jesus and him, just quietly allowing the false accusations to fly around him and saying nothing to defend his own case. We come to number nine. The Messiah would be whipped and pierced. Once again, that's rather specific. And part of what Jesus had to point out to these people on the road to Emmaus, because they thought the Messiah was going to be the great conqueror. And now he's pointing back to Old Testament prophecy and said, no, the one you're looking for, the Messiah, it was prophesied that he would be beaten, that he would be whipped, that stripes would be laid on his back, and that he would be pierced. And in fact, there are in Old Testament passages, especially here, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, so 1,000 years before and 700 years before, description of details that can only be attributed to execution by crucifixion. And yet the interesting thing was, they hadn't invented crucifixion yet at the time that these were written. That wasn't used yet as a method of execution. That wasn't developed until the Romans came along. Or at earliest at the very end of the Greek Empire, but it was really a Roman thing. so they're describing very specifically uh... uh... a crucifixion and and it can't be just talking about something that's happened in somebody's real life in that time there and that because it just wasn't done yet some twenty two and i say fifty three the whole chapters just full of great details and so again i'm just talking a little bit here some twenty two verse sixteen on the screen dogs encompass me a company of evil doers encircle me they have pierced my hands and feet Isaiah 53 5. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed. So it's not just the suffering, but it's the salvation that's predicted in advance by the prophet. We see the fulfillment, of course, in the fact that Jesus was whipped with the cat of nine tails, the stripes were laid on him, those wounds, and he was nailed, he was pierced as he was nailed to the Roman cross. Again, the details recorded for us in all four Gospels there, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Number 10, Old Testament Messianic prophecy, the Messiah would have no broken bones and his side would be pierced. Now, Psalm 34, you can put those, yeah, Psalm 3420, Zechariah 1210, we'll look at those for a moment, but outstanding that this would be the case because, again, even though crucifixion hadn't been invented yet when this was written. They wouldn't know the details, of course, then how it would go. But in reality, as crucifixion developed in real time in history, it became their tradition, their regular procedure, having nailed this person to whatever configuration. There were several different cross configurations that they did. And sometimes, just for kicks and giggles, the Roman soldiers would literally nail someone to a tree. And they would try to see how strange of a position they could possibly put that person on that tree. and nail them up there. But the thing was that they would have to use those points of contact where the nails were to alleviate themselves. Because if your arms are stretched out, you try that for a while and try to breathe, you can't open your ribcage. And so a person would slowly begin to suffocate. So they would have to pull on the nails to get a breath. and as the pain and the loss of blood and the fatigue would settle in over hours and sometimes even days, they would finally lose the ability to even raise themselves up to breathe and they would just suffocate. But when the Romans wanted to hurry things up, because somebody was, you know, we're ready to be done with this, all right, we've had our sport, just finish them off, they would take a club or a mallet and they would smash their limbs Whatever they were using to support themselves often a leg to push up on the you know from the feet Those are your strongest muscles and so on so so they would just come and they would just shatter the shin bone So they could no longer push up and then they would just suffocate much more quickly This was normal practice. This is part of a crucifixion You would expect a person who's been crucified here to look at their you know do an autopsy afterwards you would expect to find broken bones and yet this prophecy says Not a single bone will be broken But instead, he'll have a pierced side. Instead of doing the regular thing, smashing the bones, they're just gonna shove a spear between his ribs and pierce him to the heart. We see that detail. Psalm 3420, he keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Zechariah 1210, I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on me, That's what people do, they would look up to the person being crucified. When they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, again reference to the crucifixion style execution, they shall mourn for him as one mourns an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. There are many other passages that give us more detail of the piercing and so on, but again, we have to keep skipping along forward. So we see fulfillment, especially in the stabbing and the piercing in John 19 verses 31 through 37, as opposed to the bones breaking. Number 11, prophecy out of 12. Messiah would be killed alongside of real criminals, thieves. Isaiah 53 12 therefore I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered among the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors there are others passages to support that but here we have the numbered among the transgressors and we have the account of Jesus being crucified between two thieves in all four gospels. And of course in some cases we hear the dialogue where they say, you know, we deserve what we're getting. But this man is innocent. He should not be numbered among the transgressors, but he was. Number 12, Messiah would be raised alive from the dead. Psalm 1610, You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your Holy One see corruption. Now that seems like just a simple statement there. How do you know that that's talking about Christ and His resurrection? Peter expounded upon that in Acts, the second chapter, when he preached his marvelous message which accomplished essentially the same thing that Jesus did with these people on the road to Emmaus, where he pointed out how the prophecies in the Old Testament scripture was all pointing to Christ as the sacrificial lamb, and the satisfaction, the Messiah who came to save people from their sins. And he did a wonderful job of lining that out, and he looks at that and he quotes this passage and he says, now, if it was David who wrote this, if he was saying, you will not let me rot in the grave, to be very, you know, literal in today's language uh... it peter said if it was david then that wouldn't account for the fact that we still got david's grave here in his bones are in it peter points out he has to be talking about something else and and he brings in someone ten and so on and points out very clearly that messiah was predicted to be crucified and to rise again and this jesus is the one who did that We see God the Father raise Jesus back to life as witnessed by hundreds and these accounts are in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and even referred to in 1 Corinthians by Paul. And we'll look at that in just a little bit. But now that brings us into the New Testament and how do we know, some people say, that these events that are described and all these details in Christ's life, how do we know somebody didn't retrofit those details to match the prophecies? Okay, we can't get away with saying the prophecies weren't real, that those things weren't really written before Christ, so now what we'll say, the cynics, you know, go this way, is that now these things were written by frauds who just said that Christ did these things and said that these things happened to try to match all those prophecies to make it look like they're real. And so they tried to say, you know, you can't really trust the historicity of the Gospels. Well, let's look briefly at the verification of the New Testament books, as we did with the Old Testament books. First of all, the New Testament historical books, the Gospels and Acts, are excellent, mutually verifying, first-century records of the life and ministry of Jesus and of the establishment of the Church. They agree with one another. And they agree with what is known absolutely from history. All the extra-biblical archaeological discoveries, historical discoveries. And again, we have a situation where people claim, oh, we don't have any real proof of that ever happening, and so on and so forth. But those things have come to light since. The proof is there. It's all been verified by extra-biblical sources that these things took place. that argument goes out the window. And in fact, the most serious, even though many of them are unbelieving, the most serious historians and archaeologists consistently go to the Bible for their best information. When they're trying to look for a lead for how to find this lost place or to look into these events of history and so on, the Bible often provides the best material on that stuff. Even when they had found no other information anywhere else, they followed the Bible's lead and they found it to be true. And so it has been considered one of the most reliable things for the historical archaeologists to use to look into the history of this time of the world. Secondly, suggestions that the biblical books must be somehow independently verified. You know, they trust all the other historical records that they dig up as being reliable. But because this is the Bible, they say, uh, you need some other proof. We're not going to take that for what it is. You know, the ones who aren't the serious archaeologists, they've already learned their lesson. But the others are like, uh, you know, just because it says it in the gospel, I'm not going to believe it as history. But all that does is represent an arbitrary unargued philosophical bias. They were just saying we don't believe it just because we don't want to believe it. Because there's really no reason not to believe it. There's absolutely no stitch of evidence contrary to the reliability of these texts. Thirdly, not one detail of the New Testament's historical record has ever been proven wrong. People have tried to argue from an omission of information, and then have later been embarrassed when information came to light. But there has never been any hard, verifiable historical evidence to contradict anything in these books, in spite of a great deal of concerted effort to do so. Fourthly, Josephus again. We talked about him before. He referred to Jesus Christ's life and his crucifixion, and he even talks about the reports of his resurrection. That there were eyewitnesses, people running around saying, I saw Jesus after the crucifixion. Josephus, the Jewish non-Christian historian, writes to this effect. And he's kind of sided with the Jews, so he didn't have any reason to support the Christian story. Many more of the same details recorded in the New Testament texts also are recorded in Josephus' history, as do other extra-biblical letters and reports from the first century that have come to light, all supporting these things. Fifthly, the New Testament documents enjoy far better manuscript support than any other ancient documents. When they're looking at the quality of manuscripts, the number of manuscripts, the age of the manuscripts, how close they are to the time that they happen, so you look at how many generations of copies there might be, the closer you can get to the event and the more that you can get from that time that verify the check against each other for accuracy, that's the better quality manuscript evidence. The Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, far outstrips any other ancient literature that are relied upon and studied without question by secular scholars today. We've got a little bit of a chart here. We'll just look at it real quickly. Some of the favorites. Bring us up to the next screen there, will you? There you go. Homer's Iliad, right? Herodotus, his history. Plato. Caesar, the Gallic Wars. Now look at these things. The earliest copies that you've got there on the fourth column there, where you can see the date written compared to the earliest copies that we have extant. You have the time gap evaluated for you. And then you have how many manuscripts we have available for each of one of those things. Now look at the New Testament at the bottom. We have a shorter time span by far between the event and the written record. in the manuscripts that we have. The time gaps are smaller by far than any of the others. And we're the best. Homer's Iliad is the best supported other ancient document. Nobody questions anything about Homer's Iliad being what he wrote. But of the New Testament texts, as opposed to 643 manuscripts, we have 5,686. At the time of the count that this chart was built, more continues to come to light over time. So it is, again, as I say, an unargued, unsubstantiated, philosophical bias to question the historicity of the gospel's accounts. It's ridiculous, to be quite frank. So look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We'll put it up here on the screen as well. Here's Paul, just a few years after the event. He's gotten to know, he's come to Christ, he's gotten to know many of the people, the eyewitnesses that were there through these events and he's talked with them about it. He's received from them all these events and he writes to the people in Corinth and he says, I delivered to you, referring back to the time that he was there planting that church, I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, namely that that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, in accordance with the Scriptures. Paul is saying very clearly it was a fulfillment of prophecy. It was what was meant to happen, and we have the record of it. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. He was buried. That he was raised on the third day, once again, in accordance with the Scriptures. And that he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, and to the rest of the 12. Then, going on to the next slide, it continues, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. Now there's corroboration for you. 500 eyewitnesses in the same place at the same time seeing Jesus in the flesh alive after his crucifixion and burial. And he makes an important statement here, he says, 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. So in other words, Paul can't just throw this statement out there He's very much in jeopardy of being exposed as a fraud if it wasn't true. So he's saying, look, of these 500 people that were there at that event, most of them are still walking around amongst you. You can ask them. It's easy to verify what I'm telling you, in other words. It's a historical fact. Some have fallen asleep. There are a few who have died in the years past. Verse 7. He Jesus appeared to James then to all the Apostles and last of all as to one untimely born He appeared also to me So This thing that Paul says of first importance that he delivered to them is that Christ died for our sins in Accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day all in fulfillment of Scripture now That's more than an academic fact that we've been looking at here I mean, yes, that gives us security, gives us certainty. It bolsters our faith. It gives us answers for critics and cynics. But this is the most precious and wonderful thing, is that the fact that all this was done in accordance with Scripture, things that were planned, that were prophesied, predicted thousands and hundreds of years in advance, reveals God's tremendous love for us. I mean, everything went wrong with that choice to sin back in the garden. That brought that curse of sin and death on this world. But right from that time, God put together a plan. It was probably planned from eternity before that. But he reveals in that moment, there's going to be one who's going to crush the head of the enemy. And then throughout all those years of the Old Testament, God is working through history, through nations, through kings, through catastrophic events to carry out his plan to provide for you and for me forgiveness for our sins. Isn't that wonderful? And he thought of us at least a few thousand years before we were born. He was carrying out his plan to have a way that we could be reconciled to him. We've offended him by our sin, and yet he's the one who reaches out to us at a great cost throughout history, not to mention the cost of Christ's sacrifice himself. He made a way, the only workable way, that his justice could be served. Consistent with his his nature as a good and righteous God. He couldn't just blow sin off He couldn't randomly arbitrarily forgive sin because that would not be being a good or just God So he had to be true to his good and true and good righteous character But in order to do that and to show his love to us to make it possible to forgive us He carried out this elaborate plan to provide the only way they could work, a sacrifice who was both God able to absorb, to take the wrath of God's judgment for sin, and man so that he can truly stand in our place, unlike a lamb, a man can stand in the place as a representative of a human. And so Jesus is the unique solution. And Jesus didn't do this. Again, he's not a victim, either of God the Father or of mankind. He was a willing participant. We see that he did this by choice. John chapter 10, we see in verses 17 and 18, Jesus speaking, predicting his own death. He says, for this reason, the Father loves me because I lay down my life that I might take it up again. No one takes it from me. But I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down. I have the authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my father. So Jesus, by choice, came to do this for us. And he had the power and the authority to do it. Galatians 2.20, Paul looks back and looks at the change that has made in his life since he recognized Christ as the Messiah. He said, I have been crucified now with Christ. I identify with Christ's crucifixion. is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. That's all for our benefit. Colossians 1, 21, 22 says, And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, utterly alienated from God, in other words, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. He took it on Himself so you can be forgiven, so God can look on you as a clean and righteous person. We use these verses all the time because it's such a great summary of our response to the gospel. If you confess with your mouth, you make this confession because this is what you believe. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you recognize His deity and His Lordship. And if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, that's what this day is all about. That's the fulfillment of all those prophecies, the death and the resurrection, where God the Father said, that did it. That's why Jesus said, it's finished. When He died, the price was paid. And then by the resurrection, God the Father said, yes, that's acceptable. You've paid for everyone's sin. So, if you believe that, that God accepted the work of Christ on your behalf by raising him from the dead, it's simple. You will be saved. That's it. You don't have to crawl on your knees for miles and down the aisles of some church, crossing yourself and burning candles and incense and giving money to the poor and so on. Well, giving money to the poor is a good thing, but you don't have to try to earn God's favor. Christ did it for you. It's all done. All you have to do is believe and accept it. That's it. For with the heart, one believes and is justified, forgiven. And with the mouth, one confesses and is saved. God is ever so ready to provide you with forgiveness. It's already been paid for at great cost and orchestrated over the centuries, over the millennia for us. This is a great thing to celebrate if you've accepted this, if you've enjoyed the benefits of this, if you are already a beneficiary of that, then what a great thing to rejoice and celebrate at Easter time. But if you haven't appropriated this for yourself, if you haven't accepted, if you haven't believed and recognized Jesus for who he is and accepted his work on the cross and his resurrection for you, I don't understand why. I don't understand why not. But don't let another day go past without accepting His grace and His forgiveness. There just is no reason for it. There's no reason to reject the scripture's account. There's no reason to reject this costly but free to you gift that Christ has purchased for you. So I urge you to put your faith in Christ. I urge you to accept this gift. And I urge you who have accepted it already to be compassionate enough to share this news with someone else who hasn't yet. Courage comes with compassion. If you look at what's at cost for this other person, then nothing should stop you from sharing the gospel.