of Mark chapter 15. We're reading the second half of the chapter this morning. We'll begin with verse 15. This is Mark chapter 15 beginning in verse 21. This is the word of the Lord. Let's give it our attention. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Gilgatha, which means place of a skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, the king of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. and those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, come down from the cross. So also the chief priest, that's my microphone, I apologize. So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him to one another saying, he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down from the cross, and we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. In the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sebastiana, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from the top to bottom. And when Centurion, who stood facing him, saw in this manner he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the Son of God. There were also women looking from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the younger, and Joseph and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him. And there were also many other women who came with him to Jerusalem. When evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph brought a linen shroud and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of a rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where they laid him. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Now normally I would pray and you're expecting me to, but I'm not, I will in a minute. I'll explain why. Let me explain something first. I think that the Christian life is a little like a freight train. Let me explain what I mean. So on a freight train, behind the engine, you have cars, right? And so imagine your life is like that. So we'll just take one train car. You're young, you're single, and you have only so many obligations in your life. But if you, imagine pulling one train car. That would be quite a feat, right? So that's a task, okay? But then you graduate college and you get a career. Cha-chunk, we got two train cars. Twice the load. And then you get married. Cha-chunk, you have a third one. All right, now we have a spouse and then some kids. Cha-chunk, cha-chunk, right? So you get this long train car. And then career and conflict. You're getting the picture, right? You get this long string of train cars, okay? Now I want you to imagine if you've ever seen Thomas the Train, a little wooden train. I don't know if you guys have, we still have one. It's a little train set and he has a AA battery in him and he barely pulls the other little wooden cars around the track, right? Imagine putting that little toy car in front of that freight train. I know it's a ridiculous picture, but I think many people do this with a crucifixion. They have a Christian life that has quite some burdens to it. And then they take a little toy car. The crucifixion is nothing more than a Bible story, right? A little cartoon Jesus on a cross. And then they expect that to pull this long freight train. I hope you see the picture. You need a very robust understanding of the crucifixion. to persevere in your Christian life. It is weighty, and the longer you go, there are more and more challenges, right? Your body begins to hurt. You have all these challenges. There's deaths. There's lots of hard things, right? You need a robust understanding. Okay, so that's why I haven't prayed yet. I want you to pray with me that God, this time, as we study this passage, would give you a more robust understanding of the crucifixion. You need it for your Christian life. Will you pray with me? Father, please do that. Lord, please hear their prayers now silently in mind. Lord, that you would give us a deeper understanding of something so familiar, something we've seen in Bible stories hundreds of times. Lord, may it sink in. Holy Spirit, that's what you're good at. Please do that right now. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen, amen. As Brandon said, you know, one of the greatest events of history, really there's two, right? So this week we look at the crucifixion, next week you need to enjoy Brandon, he's gonna preach on the resurrection. Those together are the greatest two events in all of human history. One weekend, it changed everything, right? And so we look at that today. Look at page seven, you see the outline. As we encounter Jesus today, dying on the cross for your sins, here's the question we're answering. What do you do with the crucifixion of Christ? Very simple question. What do you do with the crucifixion of Christ? Three answers. What I'm gonna do is use a paradigm called think, feel, do. If you've never heard of that, it's often used by preachers. How do we apply things about how we think and then how we feel, our hearts, and then what we do with it? Very simple paradigm, and that's what we're doing this morning. So first, you need to understand substitutionary atonement. This is a mind thing. This is your thoughts. And then second, you need to feel the suffering and the love of Christ. Third, please cross out, take action, and write this. Live like it's real because it is. Live like it's real because it is. That's the do, so think, feel, do. Okay, so let's begin with that first one. Think, understand substitutionary atonement. I mean, what is the meaning of the crucifixion? I mean, what is the universally, kids, what's a universally recognized symbol for Christianity? The cross, right? Isn't it a cross? Now, what's strange about this is this would be like saying the symbol for a religion is the guillotine, a noose, or an electric chair. you do realize that the symbol for your religion is one of the most horrific forms of execution known to mankind ever. Why? Why? Why would this be the symbol for our religion? A form of execution. Martin Luther said Christianity is a theology of the cross. He's right. So that's what our task is. You need to understand in your mind, why is that? Why do I follow a religion? Why do you follow a religion that has a form of execution as its symbol? Look at verse 33 and 34. Right in the heart of our passage, right in the middle of the crucifixion, Jesus has been hanging on the cross for hours and it says the sixth hour, which is noon, it says there was darkness over the whole land. What in the world? Then he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What in the world's going on here? Jesus is saying God has forsaken him? In John's account of this, he says, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. What is finished? You see, we must understand what is theologically and spiritually going on in the cross to make any sense of the crucifixion, okay? This is where we're starting. So two words for you, substitutionary atonement. Okay, kids, can you repeat after me? You get to actually talk, okay? Say it together. Substitutionary atonement. All right, let's try again. Substitutionary atonement. Excellent. Okay, now what do those words mean? Okay, let's start with atonement. Atonement is to cover over something or to pay the price for something. All right, then substitutionary is on behalf of someone. Okay, so on behalf of someone, a price has been paid. Okay, that's what substitutionary atonement means. Now what it's atoning for is our sins, and we'll come back to that. This, it's been said that the doctrine of atonement is central to all Christian theology. So I want you to understand it. Kids, it might be like this. Your sibling is about to get a spanking and you walk in and say, Dad, I'd like to take that spanking for him. I know that's a ridiculous thing to say, but you say, I want to take it for him. Your dad says, serious? And you say, yep. Okay. So he paddles your bottom, and you have taken what your brother deserved. Do you understand? Now that's not exactly substitutionary, but it's pretty close, okay? That you're taking a penalty that someone else deserved. Are you with me? Make sense? Okay. So that's the basic idea. This is not just a New Testament idea. It comes from the Old Testament. For Old Testament Jews, substitutionary atonement was central to the whole sacrificial system. What's that? They would take, I know this sounds really sad, but it's true, they would take a little cute lamb, perfect lamb, nothing wrong with it, they'd take it to the temple, they'd put their hand on it, and then they would kill the lamb. Isn't that weird? What it was was that lamb was like their substitutionary atonement. They were placing their sins on that little lamb and then killing the lamb so they didn't have to die. that Old Testament Jews understood substitutionary atonement, that something else, someone else would die because I sinned. They had this idea all through the Old Testament. Why a little beautiful lamb, you might ask, why must it die? Well, that question gets even exponentially bigger when you get to the New Testament. And now we say, Jesus, the Lamb of God, had to die. He was executed. How in the world could that be? Two things you have to understand, okay? So now let's explain this. The holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, all right? Two things, holiness of God, sinfulness of man. Said another way, God is holy, you are not, all right? So let's explain that. Psalm 5.4, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness, evil may not dwell with you. Did you know that no sin, no sinful person can ever be in the presence of God, like in heaven? Only perfect people can be there. Okay, that's a problem. God is so holy. Okay, so let's talk about us. Romans 3 11 says, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. That's all of us. Somehow we hear that and we're like, no, I'm basically a good person. You aren't hearing me, but that's okay. You'll get it in a second. You're not basically a good person, neither am I. If you know me well, you know that's true. A theologian once said, Our sin is against an infinite, holy God who cannot even look upon sin. Atonement must be made in order for us to have fellowship with God. Because sin touches every part of us, even our best acts. So even the very best things you do, we are incapable of making sufficient sacrifice. Even our sacrifices are tainted and would require further sacrifice to cover that blemish. What he's saying is this. He's saying, okay, you do something bad and you're like, I better do something good to make up for it. So I'll do something good. The problem is your good is tainted with sin. So you're gonna have to do something else good to make up for this, the good thing you did that was still tainted with sin. Do you get the point? And then over here, you just, you'll never get done, right? And this isn't even the system that works. We'll come back to that and explain that in a second. Think, imagine, okay, imagine I have a cup of water. I might have used this before, a cup of pure water, and I put one drop of food coloring in it. Would that one drop of food coloring stay on the surface? No, it wouldn't. What would it do? It would spread out in just a few seconds. It would taint every ounce of that water, right? Sin is that way. It has tainted every part of you. You can do nothing. I mean, you help a little old lady cross the street and you're prideful in your heart, right? You just, there's no way that we're capable of doing anything perfectly good. So this is where we are. Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Most of you hear these verses and still somehow think that you're not that bad. Okay, let me try again. Okay, kids, we're gonna do some rough math, all right? This is called, I don't remember the name for it, it's estimating. All right, so imagine you only sin three times a day, okay? Morning, afternoon, and evening, okay, three. How many days in a year? 365, okay, multiply three times 365, and it's about 1,000. We're doing real rough math here, all right? So you have 1,000. Now multiply 1,000 by how many years old you are. So if you're 8, that's 8,000. If you're 12, that's 12,000. If you're 43, that's 43,000. That's a lot of sins, and that's only three a day. But the problem is, it's sin, not only what I do, but what I think and what I feel. We're in big trouble. It's not only just what I do wrong, it's the things I neglected to do. I'm a husband and a father of four. Man, you better believe I've neglected some things, right? We all have. Right? And so maybe a hundred a day. I mean, if even all my good thoughts and my good deeds had sin in them too, right? So I did the math with a calculator and if it's a hundred sins a day, if I have a hundred thoughts, actions, feelings that are not right, which I'm sure I do, that's in 43 years, that's 1.5 million. That's a big number. I mean, can you imagine that every one of those, what's the penalty for every one of those? Each and every one of those. Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. It's not talking about just dying, it's talking about eternal death. So every one of my 1.5 million sins has the death penalty. Okay, I'm going to go into the judge and say, judge, I've been a really nice guy. Could you let go of that 1.5 million death sentences I have? It's just ridiculous. But people think this. My good deeds are going to outweigh my bad deeds. Like, what kind of math are you doing? Not very good math. Galatians 3.10 says curses everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and does them. I must obey everything, you must obey everything in the book of the law. Now I hope you're seeing we have a very, very holy God and very, very sinful humanity. You see it? And every one of our wrongs had a death penalty attached to it. A death penalty attached to it. Now the other thing is, not only is it not like a balancing act, good works, bad works, a good work does not weigh out a bad work. You know what Scripture says? It says, without the shedding of blood, this is Hebrews 9.22, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin. So for each of those sins, all 1.5 million, blood had to be shed for each one of them. Okay, not a good work, but blood. Does that make sense? That's what Scripture says. This is the math that Scripture has. Good. The only thing that outweighs sins is perfect blood. Where are we going to get this perfect blood? A lamb. You know, the Old Testament, they had some idea. This little furry lamb is not going to atone for me. We're not equivalent here. Right? And so they knew there was something greater. Where are you going to get this person who's perfect? Right? They're not taking a spanking for you. They're paying. All those sins, the only person is Jesus. Okay, so you're starting to get substitutionary atonement? That we have this enormous debt and we need someone to pay it. The only one that could conceivably pay it is Jesus. He became a curse for us. He became a curse for us. Galatians 3.13, Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law. I was under a curse, so were you. Becoming a cursed force, as it's written, curses everyone, hanged on a tree. Jesus hung on that cross on a tree. So why did Jesus have to be on the cross? It was my fault. It was because of the things I did and thought and said. It was that I got impatient with my wife last night. I just apologized during the last song. It's better to clean your conscience before you come and preach. Right, that Jesus had to pay. I mean, do you understand this is, this isn't like theoretical, like this is very real life. Jesus had to pay 2,000 years ago for my bad attitude last night and yours too. You have to make this connection. But it is fully paid, you are fully free. Substitutionary atonement means your bill is paid in full. Have you ever been in a restaurant and someone paid your bill? Had a handful of times, it's a wonderful feeling. You just get to walk out and you didn't pay a dime. That is what substitutionary atonement is. Jesus paid your bill in full, and what a cost it was. It was completely paid. If you are a believer, if you have placed your faith in Christ, you have no more bill to pay. That's really, really good news. Okay, so hopefully you got that in your head, but now let's work on our hearts. That brings us to our second point. to feel the suffering and the love of Christ. So we have this theological foundation to build on, but now let's look closer at the details of what happened. Now let's rewind and figure out what has Jesus already been through? Okay, this is midday Friday. Let's rewind to Thursday, okay? Thursday, he went out into a garden. He knew what was coming, and he had such anguish in his prayers that started, best I understand, breaking blood vessels in his forehead, and he started to bleed in his sweat. Such anguish. His disciples, they fall asleep. Then after that, he's betrayed by one of his twelve-boned disciples, by Judas. Then between 1 and 3 a.m. on Friday morning, he's drug in before the Jewish religious leaders for this fake trial where he's falsely accused of all kind of things. Then they cover his head. They begin to punch him and say, prophesy. Who punched you? This goes on. Then at daybreak Friday, he gets drug before Pilate. The Roman, they see a huge crowd screaming, crucify him, crucify him. They know what it means. They want him to be under the curse of God. Curse is everyone hung on a tree. They put a, they scourge him. You remember that? They take a whip with bone and metal in it, with all these strands of it, and they whip him and rip it through his back over and over again, through the skin, through the muscles, down to the bone. It was just unimaginable. They put a crown of thorns on him and beat it into his head. Then they take him out to crucify him. He tries to carry his cross. He likely collapses under the weight of it. This is where we pick up. After all that, verse 21, look there, it's on page seven. And they compelled a pastor by assignment of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry the cross. They brought him to a place called Golgotha, which is place of the skull. They offered to him wine which was myrrh to try to ease the pain. He refused it. He did not take it. And they crucified him. Just three words. They crucified him. Do you know what crucifixion is? I mean, I'm sure you have some idea. It is said that those who die by crucifixion die a thousand deaths. It was just such an awful way to die. They would take huge spikes of nails and drive them through their hands and through their feet. I mean think about it, just the torn tendons. Remember his back is still just torn to shreds and he's hanging on those spikes. It's making him suffocate, he can't breathe unless he lifts himself up on those spikes. What's going on while all this is happening? Is he surrounded by a crowd of supporters weeping and wailing? No. He's got Romans dividing up his stuff. He's got Jews just walking by because he's on the road and some people are just going into town. They recognize him probably. Like, oh, that's that miracle worker. Look what they say of him. They say, aha, you would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself, come down from the cross. They're saying he's a fraud. They're saying, yeah, you could do miracles, but you can't even save yourself. What a failure. The Jewish guys, they don't even have the respect to insult him to his face. Look at that. It says, he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ come down from the cross. Did you see that repeated? Come down from the cross, come down from the cross. That would have been the greatest temptation for Jesus. He could have called angels, popped off the cross, killed them all, but he didn't. What was holding him there? It was not the spikes, I guarantee it. It was love. It was love for you. He knew all those sins. He knew what you had coming for you. Thousands upon thousands upon millions of sins. Death penalty waiting. That's what held him on the cross. It was love. All this that he suffered is nothing compared to what's about to happen. Look at verse 33. When the six hour came, so now it's noon. So for three hours, he's hung there, slowly weakening from nine to noon. And then at noon, it says, darkness was over the whole land until 3 p.m., until the ninth hour. Darkness in scripture is a picture of God's wrath. Why, why is God's wrath? Why is he crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We've already looked at that, right? It is those sins, it's not just, remember the math, right? We maybe have anywhere from 43,000 to 1.5 million sins just for me. Okay, you add in all the sins of all the people that have ever lived. It's Old Testament and New Testament that believed in Christ. All those sins were concentrated down onto Christ, at least in those three hours. Maybe it started before, but definitely in those three hours. When the sky darkened from 12 to three, I mean, every one of my sins deserved hell. What is hell? Hell is a place of eternal burning. Many of you remember a few weeks ago, I told you my embarrassing story when I got second-degree burns on my hand. Do you remember that? This space right here, that night, if I took ice off it, it immediately had excruciating pain. I mean, I can't imagine having your whole body burning. But in the second day, after the resurrection, people are given bodies that never die. One mercy God has is if a body burns, if all your nerves eventually burn and you die, it ends. Not in hell. You go on forever burning. That's what I deserve, okay, for all my sins. God concentrated, me and every other believer concentrated all that down onto Christ. in those hours. I mean, can you imagine? I can't. I have no concept. I can imagine spikes. I can imagine some of the other stuff ripping your back open, but I can't even imagine the wrath of God, all that poured out on him from 12 to three. You remember what he said? He said, it is finished. What's finished? It's the full cup of God's wrath. Remember he said that in the garden. He said, take this cup from me, Father. That was the cup he's talking about. How big was that cup? It was really big. He drunk every last drop of it. And then he said, it is finished. And then he died. Why? For love. It was love. It was love for us. The song, How Deep the Father's Love for Us has a line, it was my sin that held him there. This is not like other historical events. This is very personal because it was us. This was about me. I mean, he did not want to go to heaven. Jesus did not want to heaven without you there. That's why he came to earth and died, because he did not want heaven specifically for you. And you either fit into two categories this morning. Either you have placed your faith in Christ and you know it, and you're absolutely certain that you're going to heaven, or you're not sure, or you are sure that you are going. Those three categories. If you're in the latter two, I'm not sure or I know I'm not, just that description of what scripture says about hell, that is not a surprise you want after you die, right? to realize, oh, I wasn't actually a Christian, I was just playing church. Jesus died, so you don't have to, but you must place your faith in Him. So it should elicit two emotions. It should give us deep sadness, that anyone would go through that for me, for you. And it should give us great joy, profound joy, profound gratitude. It was love, it was that He loved me, that He went through that. It should fill us with love. Those are our emotions. So we come to the third and final point. We have a head full of understanding of substitutionary atonement. We have a heart that understands with sadness just what Jesus went through. And with joy that he went through it for you. And we come to last. Live like it's real because it is. Live like it's real because it is. The reality is, is if you think and feel deeply about the crucifixion, you're naturally gonna do the right thing. That's the battle, is your head and your heart. When those are aligned, I can really stop now. Because if you are thinking right, if you walk through your days thinking about substitutionary atonement, when you're tempted to sin, you're tempted to lie to your parents, you're tempted to be mean, and you remember, I often do this, sometimes more than others, that Jesus will have to pay for this. Well, that's a big deterrent, right? Well, I don't know that I wanna do this. Jesus is gonna have to bleed because of this. It's true, it's absolutely true. There's a couple people in this that I wanna draw out as we close. One is the Roman. There's one Roman soldier. Most of them were jeering and hated him, but there's one in verse 39. He said, truly, this was the Son of God when he saw how Jesus died. People respond differently to hearing about this. Some continue to jeer today, but others say, truly this was, who is Jesus to you? Is he a good teacher, or is he the son of God who paid the price for your sins? There's another one who defected from his group, Joseph of Arimathea. He was a respected member of the council. Now we've heard a lot about the council, haven't we? Right, the Jewish religious leaders, but it's all been bad, right? They've done bad stuff the whole time, but we have this one guy who's respected, and what does he do? What does he say, look at the text. It said he took courage and he went to Pilate. You better believe it took courage, didn't it? I mean, this isn't a time you really wanna go to Pilate and say, hey, that guy you just executed, I wanna show him some respect. Not the wisest move. Even more so, what about the Jewish council? They were the ones that were behind the murder and now one of their own members is going and asking for his body. There goes his career on the council, right? But there's something he cared about more, honoring Jesus. He really wanted to honor Jesus in his death and burial. He took courage. He was looking forward to the kingdom of God. These two defectors, we had one of the Romans, one from the Jewish religious leaders. When you really encounter the love of Christ on the cross, and hopefully you're encountering it this morning, it does something with you. It messes with your head and it should. It should mess with our affections, our heart. It'll get out into your life. As we wrap up, Hopefully, your head is full of knowledge about this and understanding what it means that Jesus had to die. You feel the weight of the cross. You feel with deep gratitude that you have eternal life because Jesus died. What action should this produce? Like I said, I really don't have to tell you, but I'll give you a few suggestions. One is, is there anyone else you know who needs to understand this, that you are pretty sure they're going to hell if they die today? We probably should let them know, huh? What is to come? Another is, do you ever get discouraged? Remember where we started this morning? Remember kids? Parents, what have you ever done for me? Right? Don't we all get discouraged sometimes? God, where are you? Why are you not answering my prayers? Why is this, this is miserable. Remember this passage and it will encourage you in that moment. You say, no, I know, I know Jesus loved me. He died on the Roman cross. Romans 8.32 says it so well. It says, God did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also graciously give us all things? You can jot down that reference, Romans 8.32. Romans 8.32. Look that up next time you're in a hard spot and think about the crucifixion and say, no, I know. If he did that, I know he'll take care of this moment, this trial, this suffering, this physical ailment. It should bring us great comfort. We already said the application of when you're tempted to sin. Just remind yourself, Jesus is gonna bleed for this if you're a Christian. It connects those dots. You also need it as you read your Bible. Did you know this story? In the Old Testament, what was the story that everything was hooked to? The Exodus, right? Always, God's always saying, hey, I'm the God of the Exodus. In the New Testament, what are things hooked to? It's this, isn't it? Over and over. And if you have a little Thomas the Train crucifixion, a little small thing, yeah, yeah, I know that Bible story. If it's trivial to you, most of the New Testament will be trivial to you. It hooks itself to it. Does that make sense? Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's meaningless if you have a little toy train, right? Until you understand the grief, the horror of it, then it has some substance to it, doesn't it? There's so many verses, Philippians 2, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ who humbled himself and became beaten to death. Meaningless if you have a small crucifixion. Hebrews 12, let us run the race. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus. You want to be able to survive with that freight train you feel like you're pulling around? The Christian life is hard. The older you get, it only gets harder, amen? You need a robust understanding of the crucifixion, either to be saved, or to persevere in your Christian life. I want you to persevere. Kids, it's gonna get harder. It's gonna get harder. Your parents, just ask your parents. They can tell you lots of stories of hard, hard times and God carried them through. Jesus suffered more than we ever, ever will because He loves us. He deeply loves you. He does not want heaven without you. Make sure you're going there. Amen, let's pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you that that story is as true as every other historical story you read about in a history class. You did it. You did it because you loved us. Thank you, Jesus. Even studying this for a week, I still can't comprehend it. I pray that in 30 minutes that you would enable them by your Holy Spirit to comprehend it just a little bit more for the good of their souls. That they would have more joy, more gratitude, a deterrent from sin, a motivation to speak to others. And Lord, I can almost guarantee in a crowd this size, there's at least some who don't even know you. Oh, Jesus, let these words sink in. Do not let them be stolen by the evil one. Lord, I pray that today before the day is over, they would be on their knees before you and do business with you and plead with you to pay for their sins. Thank you that you promised to. And you've never turned anyone away who came asking. Lord, I pray that you would use this in all of our lives. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ.