The following message by Alistair Begg is made available by Truth For Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. As in each of these studies, and tonight we come to the third one in our series of Foundations of the Faith, we could turn to a variety of passages of Scripture to use as a basis for what we're going to discover, and also, as in each case, we can only begin to pull back the curtain of discovery in that each of the subjects we tackle are fairly vast in their scope and in their significance. We looked on the first evening at the authority of God's Word, and then on the second evening at how we might understand the Bible, and this evening we come to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. and seek to answer the question, at least begin to answer the question, who is Jesus Christ? Now, we're going to turn, therefore, to Matthew chapter 16 and to verses 13 to 20, where we have, in fact, that very question posed, first of all, by the Lord Jesus himself. Matthew 16, reading from verse 13, to verse 20. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But what about you, he asked. Who do you say I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. Amen. Shall we bow in prayer for just a moment? O Lord, our God, I pray that you will be pleased to take my words and speak through them. to take our minds and help us to think through them, and then to take our hearts and fill them with love and obedience for your Son, Jesus, whom we consider tonight, and in whose name we pray. Amen. In a remote province of Galilee, at the high point of Roman power, There appeared a man dressed in peasant garb with the calloused hands of a labourer who awakened unprecedented interest by his astonishing words and works. He was a young man of about 30 years of age. He had only the elementary schooling of the local synagogue. He had no political or financial backing. His itinerant ministry of teaching and healing was of short duration, about three years, and then he was crucified at the hands of the religious and political authorities who feared his growing popularity. Rather than scatter his followers, his death was followed by a movement of revolutionary impact and power. The effects of that spiritual explosion remain a major factor in our world today, the strongest influence for God and for good that this world knows. But the question is, what do we do with this man, Jesus? If he is not the Son of God and Savior of mankind, then let us get down to the bitter business of adjusting to a grim and hopeless world. If he is, then let us give him the full measure of our loyalty and our love. Who is this man, Jesus Christ? We need not turn only to the pages of scripture to read of him. Secular history is riddled with his existence. In about A.D. 90, Josephus, a Jewish general, wrote in the historical writings of his day, and there arose at the time of Pilate's governorship, Jesus, a wise man, a doer of marvelous deeds, a teacher of men who received the truth with pleasure. He won over many Jews and also many Greeks. This man was the Messiah. When Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the instigation of our leaders, those who loved him from the first did not cease. For he appeared to them on the third day alive again. And even now, the race of Christians so named after him has not yet died out." I like that statement. He was writing in A.D. 90. We are fast approaching A.D. 2000 and are able to add a quite hearty Amen to the very objective comment of a Jewish historian. And this race, known as Christians, has not yet died out. There seems almost in his statement the inherent possibility that they may yet die out. But they haven't yet died out, nor will they ever die out. They cannot die out. We cannot be defeated. We are in Christ, the one who is the person he claimed to be. Now what I want us to do tonight is take these four points that are on the outline and give our attention to them each in turn. and perhaps briefly with each, perhaps not, time alone will tell. But noticing first of all the question Jesus asked. I want us to pay attention to this and realize first of all that his question was what we might refer to as tellingly realistic. The question he asked, in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a beautiful area of the country, with the mountains, especially Mount Hermon, snow-capped all the year, towering above them, a place of seclusion, of tranquility and of beauty, that he gathers his disciples away to, and he asks them this outright question, who do people say the Son of Man is? Now, why do I say it was tellingly realistic? For this reason, Jesus was aware of the fact that there were divergent views concerning his identity. Jesus knew that he was the leader of a very small band of people. A very small group in the midst of the day and age in which he lived. There was only a small nucleus out of the many, many people who were beginning to come under the influence of his teaching. There were crowds who gathered around when he taught the disciples. Crowds of people, some of whom were interested, others who were intrigued. But out of that vast crowd, only a few were in touch. Only a few knew the answer to this question. And Jesus, realistic as he was, says to his disciples, what's the news on the streets? What's the word in the towns and in the villages? Who do people say the Son of Man is? Now Jesus used that designation of himself frequently. The Son of Man. He chose it for himself. As his ministry developed, it was only later that he explained the distinct nature of his being. But he loved to refer to himself in that way. He'd already taught his followers, and we have it recorded for us in the Sermon on the Mount, earlier on in Matthew, that he wasn't the leader of a huge group. He didn't come to begin a mass movement. He didn't have thousands and thousands and thousands walking in his tracks. He had said very clearly that there was a narrow gate with a narrow road that led to salvation and few, he said, there will be who find it. There is a broad way with a broad entrance that leads to destruction And he said, it will be filled with people. So if we're looking for a majority movement, we don't look to the followers of Jesus Christ, rather to the minority, to the offscouring, to the castaways, to the people who prioritize their life in relation to Jesus. The question he asked was tellingly realistic. The same thing I want you to notice is the question that he asked was timelessly relevant. Indeed, the question before us tonight presupposes this. Our question is not, who was Jesus Christ? There are plenty of people who are prepared to ask the question, who was Jesus Christ? But it is a different question to ask, who is Jesus Christ? Who was Buddha? Who was Muhammad? Who was Krishna? But who is Jesus? The difference being that they are all has-beens. Jesus is. He is now. You see, man's greatest need tonight is to know what his greatest need is. And man's greatest problem is that he does not know what his greatest need is. So that that which he regards as irrelevant may well be timelessly relevant. So that many thousands of millions in America today have never darkened the door of a church. They may have used the name of Jesus Christ, but only as a curse. They have never considered, they have never taken maybe an hour in their lives to ask this question. Why? Because they've regarded it as irrelevant. In many cases, the church has turned them off. They've hit established religion, and they've found nothing there to scratch where they itch. And they're gone, unable to scrape, as it were, through all the layers of religiosity which have enshrined the person of Christ since he walked so freely with the disciples to whom he addressed this question. Who is Jesus Christ? Who do people say that I am? It's as relevant tonight as it was then. Because our time tonight is very akin to that description given by Charles Dickens in his book, A Tale of Two Cities. You'll perhaps recall it. He says it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. There's almost a timeless quality about his description. And into that timeless description comes a timeless question. Who do men and women say? That I, says Jesus, the Son of Man am?" Well, that's the question that he posed. Let's look secondly at the answer he was given. They replied, verse 14, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. They were perhaps kind enough not to say that some people were actually saying that he was Beelzebub. that he was a prince of darkness himself, that he was a demon, he was a devil, he was something quite horrendous. Now, the disciples don't mention that in their list. In point of fact, I'm sure they only mention a small sampling of the reaction on the streets. What does the answer reveal? It reveals essentially a state of public confusion. And when you take each of these examples here in verse 14, you will discover that they have two things in common. Each suggestion has two things in common. One, there is an identification with an historical figure, and two, it contains a misleading half-truth. Identification with a historical figure and a misleading half-truth in every case. Let me explain that to you. First of all, some say John the Baptist. Now, what do we know of John the Baptist? We turn forward to John's Gospel, and we read of him there, just in the midst of the prologue, following on from where we began our worship this evening. We read from verse 1 to verse 5 of John 1, and then the very next verse says, There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. Now notice carefully verse 8. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. So you see the danger of identifying Christ with an historical figure with whom there are some parallels. In other words, John the Baptist prepared the way for men and women to receive the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ was the only one who enabled men and women to receive the kingdom of God. John the Baptist, if you like, stood on the threshold of the kingdom. Jesus Christ came and declared himself to be the door into the kingdom. Secondly, some said he was Elijah. Now again, you look at Elijah in the Old Testament, you look at Christ in the New, and you discover that Elijah was a man of prayer, and so was Jesus. Elijah was involved in healings, and so was Jesus. Elijah was a man who saw great victories in battles. Christ was one who was to come and fight the ultimate battle and know a great victory. But the victories which Elijah saw in battle were as a result of the shedding of other people's blood. The victory which Jesus Christ was to know in the ultimate battle came about as a result of the shedding of his own blood. Thirdly, some say Jeremiah. Now you read Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, And you discover that he went through a great deal of suffering in his life. So too did Jesus. Jeremiah prophesied about the new covenant. The covenant that God would write on the fleshy tablets of men and women's hearts. He looked forward to the day when sin would be dealt with once and for all. Only Christ could bring it into being. So he wasn't John the Baptist. He wasn't Elijah. He wasn't Jeremiah, and he certainly wasn't just one of the prophets. I mean, that's the kind of, for everybody who doesn't know, I mean, that's on the thing that's given out to people, take A, B, or C, and D is, or any other suggestion you may have floating through your head. And by and large, what was true then is true tonight. Who is Jesus Christ? Who do people say in Cleveland that Jesus is? Oh, one of the prophets? An historical figure? A teacher? A good man? A guru? Now, what we have here in verse 14 are probably some of the most thoughtful, sensible reactions of his time. This is not some kind of flip answer. This is the answer that is genuinely given. Now, it's not surprising that there would be such confusion. The very area in which Jesus asked the question, Caesarea Philippi, was littered with the temples of Syrian gods. From the vantage point of which he stood, doubtless he would be able to look out to temple areas where Syrian gods were worshipped. And towering over Caesarea Philippi, Its name being given from Caesar himself was a gigantic white marble temple in which people worshipped Caesar himself. Now, people would say tonight, well, we don't have any gigantic white temple in which people worshipped Caesar, and we don't have shrines to Syrian gods. Well, maybe we do, maybe we don't. But we still confront from the vantage point of life the same littering array of possibilities that create the confusion with which we live today. One of the greatest barriers to faith in Jesus Christ is confusion. People are confused. People are confused by the name The Chapel. People are confused by the name Episcopalian, Methodist, Protestant, Catholic, Baptist, whatever it is. There are a clue in the world what all this stuff means, by and large. And our responsibility is to say to them, well, let's set those questions aside for the moment, and let's stick with the major question. Who do men say that Jesus is? Who is Jesus Christ? In 20th century America, Jesus Christ Has, in the 60s, become a superstar who made it onto Broadway? He's become the feature in Godspell? He's been sung about by Mary of Magdala and Godspell in those immortal words that sung and sung and sung in the late 60s and early 70s? He's just a man. Just a man. And I've seen so many men before in many different ways. He's just one more. And friends, that became the chant of a generation almost. So people who have no other input to their lives, no other input to the question, assume that somewhere along the line, that's as good a suggestion as any. That's fine. It was just a man amongst men. A good one, a prophet, a religious leader. Hardly surprising that Jesus should say in John chapter 5 to the Pharisees who rejected him, listen to what he said, I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not. Now listen to what he says, If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. Do you see what I mean about Jesus being telling me realistically? He says, here I am folks, up front, I am the incarnate Son of God. I come in my Father's name and you reject me. Others will follow me and come in their own name and vast hordes will walk behind me. Let me give you an example from the 20th century, 19th, 20th century. From Mormonism. The only cult that is able to take over almost a complete state of America. There's a stranglehold on business life. There is no minority there. And what has happened? Jesus Christ has become subservient to Joseph Smith. Oh no, say the Mormons, that's not really true. Oh yes, say the Christians, that is really true. Listen to the president of the Mormons speaking of Joseph Smith. There is no salvation without accepting Joseph Smith. If Joseph Smith was verily a prophet, and if he told the truth when he said that he stood in the presence of angels sent from the Lord and obtained the keys of authority and the commandment to organize the church of Jesus Christ once again upon the earth, this knowledge is of the most vital importance to the entire world. No man can reject that testimony without incurring the most dreadful consequences, for he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Listen, no man or woman Quoting President Brigham Young, no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. Now behind that notion and the most incredible mind-boggling nonsense, unsubstantiated historically, march millions of Americans and thousands more throughout the world. Now is that a surprise to Jesus? No. For listen to what he said again, I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. In other words, take the essential truth, make it a half-truth, and the evil one is able to delude countless people who believe that they have embraced reality. What is the result of this confusion? The result is that men and women are lost. Men and women tonight are in a situation of helplessness, of hopelessness, of guilt, of fear. Aldous Huxley, that great British atheist, on his deathbed said, it is a little embarrassing to have been concerned all my life with the transformation of human existence, and at the end of it all, all that I can say to you is try and be a little kinder." He never answered the question, you see. He answered it wrongly, and he lived with the emptiness of it. You see, it matters, knowing the answer to this question. In John chapter 4, it's recorded for us that Jesus met a woman. She wasn't a woman that would be invited to all the nice parties in her area. She really had messed her life up something dreadfully. Her morality was questionable at best, and she used to make her way to the well at a time when no one else did. The reason being that other women in the area just didn't like being with her. And to the men, she was an object of their lust. And on one occasion, Jesus, sitting by the well, encounters this woman, and his conversation continues. Listen to what he says to her. If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, give me a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you living water. What's he saying? If you knew the person of Jesus Christ, your life would be transformed. I'm speaking to some people here tonight. I know for sure. And you're agnostic. You're at best in the great don't know category. You're happy to respond to an invitation to come to church. You really don't want to get too involved. And deep in your heart, you've never settled this issue. And you're a part of the public confusion of our generation. as surely as these people were of Christ's. Let's look then, thirdly, at the confession that Peter made. Confession given to us in verse 16. Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now this came in response to a further question from Jesus, which is posed in verse 15. It's easy enough, you see, to voice the opinions and theories of others. It's a very different story when Jesus meets our gaze and confronts us directly. The response is, are you asking me? I can tell you what the word is on the street. We've told you. Jesus says, that's fine. But who do you say that I am? Now he narrows the question right down to the group immediately before him. He uses you, the second person plural, not you in the singular concerning Peter, interestingly enough, in the Greek. He addresses it in a general sense to this group. So he's asking the whole group. He's saying to them, now you're the guys who've been with me. You're the fellows who've seen my miracles. You're the ones who've heard my words. These were the people who were going to write later that he taught with authority such as the scribes and Pharisees never knew. He spoke with such boldness. And he says to them, who do you say I am? Can I suggest to you tonight that the Lord Jesus comes through the pages of scriptures and he addresses the congregation here in the chapel. And he says, I know that you could answer for Cleveland. I know that you could answer broadly for America, but I'm not here tonight to ask you about America or even Cleveland. I'm here this evening to move from pew to pew, from seat to seat, and to ask you a very specific question. And the gaze is not the preacher's, the gaze is my gaze into your heart, and I'm asking you, says Jesus, who do you say that I am? Not your husband, not your wife, not your parents, not your children. Who do you say that I am? What are you going to say? Peter answered, on behalf of the group, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now when he used that word Christ there, the word that he was using was Messiah, the Anointed One, the one who had been prophesied of all the way through the pages of the Old Testament Scriptures, the one for whom the Jews looked, the one who would come and usher in the kingdom of God. The Jews, sadly, when he came, rejected him. choosing to look for someone who would come as a conquering political authority. And suddenly they have this little baby born in a dirty little manger somewhere in Bethlehem. No trumpet fanfare that they could hear. Oh, they missed the angels. They didn't see the star. They were preoccupied with who they wanted to rule them. Some of us tonight are prepared for a Messiah, but my Messiah Many of my friends are quite happy to get involved in all kinds of Eastern religions because they don't need to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Many of my friends are happy to be involved in cults because they can still have a morality all of their own. But it's a different thing to embrace Christ, the Anointed One. When Peter made this statement, he spoke, in a sense, words that he was even later to discover the fullness of. He spoke as a Jew who understood the ceremonial rites of the Old Testament. He knew what it was for the high priest to come in and to offer the sacrifice of animals again and again and again for sin. He knew what it was, that on the day of atonement, the high priest would come in and make that great annual sacrifice, and drive out the scapegoat, and kill the lamb, and go through the whole ritual again. And as he came out from that inner sanctuary, he was able to pronounce forgiveness, but only for a limited time. And the people would walk away in the awareness that within 300 days or so, they would be back outside of the tent for the man to go through the ritual all the way over again. And some of you are still living in that kind of system. You long for forgiveness? A consultant in a psychiatric hospital in Northwest London on one occasion said, I could discharge 50% of my patients if someone could rid them of their guilt. Some of us cannot face a Monday and a new week. And we have all kinds of reasons as to why it is, but deep in our hearts there is that which we know is wrong, that which we know is unforgiven, that which we have no assurance for has been dealt with, and we plod on into the emptiness of a night without the living Christ. So when Jesus listened to Peter here, he would embrace this with great joy. And later the writer to the Hebrews dealing with this very issue would write concerning this fact of Christ's Christ-ship, Messiah-ship. Let me read it to you. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one. He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood that is not his own. then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Do you hear that? How do I deal with a lying tongue? How do I deal with a jealous heart? How do I deal with my immoral thoughts? How do I deal with my life as I know it? Is there any answer? He is the Christ. And just as man is destined to die once and after that two-faced judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. And He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him. History is not cyclical. We are not deists. We are not lost in a solar system going nowhere. History says the Scriptures is moving towards a destination. The time of which is destined by Almighty God. And this man, Jesus Christ, is the one who has taken our calendar and halved it. That's why it's 1985 tonight. From where? From what point? From the existence of this man, Jesus. And as surely as he has put that down as a fixed point in the calendar of time, he will come again and put another fixed point down. This time he will not come to offer a sacrifice for sin. This time he will come for those who are ready to meet him, to bring before his bar of judgment all who have ever lived and died. We might summarize it by saying this in the words of a little chorus I used to sing as a boy. of Jesus, He did not come to judge the world. He did not come to blame. He did not only come to seek. It was to save He came. And when we call Him Savior, and when we call Him Savior, and when we call Him Savior, then we call Him by His name. Who do you say that I am? Peter said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Will you notice finally the instruction that Jesus then provided? Simon Peter, blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, or son of Jonah. For this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven." Let's just stop there. How does anybody ever become a Christian? How is it that we can come to church, and some of us have known this experience, and we've come along, and we've come with a friend, and the friend has invited us. We've had conversations with them at the office or over our breakfast table. It's maybe a loved one. And they seem to have spoken with such incredible assurance about who this person Jesus Christ is. And yet, for us, he remains remote. He remains, at best, a figure of history, a great man. And we wonder, why is it that we remain in the way we are? And then, someday, the eyes of our understanding are open. And in our hearts there shines a light such as we've never known before. And in our minds there comes a conviction such as we've never experienced before. And suddenly as someone shares with us again, or as the Word of God is opened, or as we sit and listen to Christians sing, or as we encounter something of the reality of Jesus, something deep inside us says, this is absolutely God's truth. You are not dealing in the realm of unreality. You are dealing in the realm of truth. And in our hearts there is brought about that beginning of a transformation that gives us the ability to respond to say, Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Christ. Become my Savior. Now when that happens, that is because God by His Spirit is at work in our hearts. And I say to you, dear people, tonight, whenever you know that strange warming in your soul, do not play around with it. For you may never be guaranteed another day to feel that same way. Another moment when reality and quest meet one another in Jesus. Tonight, it may even be that God speaks in your heart, saying, I am revealing myself to you. You see, becoming a Christian is not some kind of emotional pump-up. That can come and go. It is not on the basis of our intellectual ability. If you had to have a certain IQ to become a Christian, many of us would fail, either at the top or the bottom end. God, by His Spirit, reveals to us the truth of His Son. How does He do it? I don't know. I just know He does. The hymn writer says, I know not how the Spirit moves. Convicting men of sin. Revealing Jesus through the Word. Creating faith in Him. Nobody ever became a Christian, you see, without being first confronted with their sin. But if I do not acknowledge the sin which holds me in its grip, then I will see no need of a Savior who came to liberate me. If I do not acknowledge that tonight I walk in darkness, then I will not respond to an invitation to walk in the light. If I do not know that tonight I am spiritually dead and unable to transform myself, I will not respond to the word of Christ. I am come that you might have life and that you might have it in all of its fullness. And then he went on to explain to Peter the place that he and the apostles would have in the founding and establishing of the church. And that is outwith the spectrum of our study tonight. Let me conclude. Have you answered the question? I mean personally now. There was a little man who wanted to know the answer to the question. We read of him in Luke 19. And with this little scenario, we close our time in our study tonight. Verse 3 of Luke 19 tells us that this little man wanted to see who Jesus was. Now, we don't know whether he was just intrigued or whether there was an intense longing in his heart. But some perhaps are here in church tonight, and you want to see, you want to know who Jesus is. And I've got news for you. you're going to discover what Zacchaeus discovered, and that is that Jesus knows who you are. You might not know who he is, but he knows who you are. And as Zacchaeus was there up that sycamore tree in Jericho, and Jesus was coming down in the midst of the crowd, Jesus reached the spot. What spot? The spot. And looked up And people must have said, what are you looking up in the trees for? They didn't know what he knew. Zacchaeus is up there. You see, I look out on a group like this tonight. Faces, some I know, many I don't. Irrelevant, really, how I may assess the situation, but Christ reaches the spot and calls your name. And says as surely as he says to Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. As you read the story on, you discover that Zacchaeus' life was transformed. The people on the outside said, goodness sake, look what's happened now. He's gone to be the guest of a sinner. We knew he was up to no good. No good Pharisee, no good scribe would be in there with that little man. You see, they didn't understand who Jesus is. I used to have a man live across the road from me. For six years I asked him, come to church. Oh no, he said, the church will fall down if I come in it, Alistair. Why is that? I'm too bad to come to church. Many people live with that notion. As soon as they clean their act up, as soon as they transform themselves, they'll be there. And Zacchaeus, in his little life, walks out his door as a transformed person, and Jesus gives the assessment in verse 9. He says this, Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abram. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. Who is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, very God and very man, the Savior, the only Savior, the only way to God, The only way of forgiveness, the only hope in a hopeless world. Do you know if I could take people and make them Christians, I'd be prepared to go to jail for doing it. But I can't. But I beseech you men and women tonight, that you may come to Christ and you may cast yourself upon his mercy. and acknowledge your need of him, and reach out the hand of faith and say, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, Lord Jesus. You are my Savior. Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? All kinds of things. Who do you say that I am?" And upon the answer to that question rests our life and rests our eternal destiny, said Jesus. Let's pray together. In these final moments of our worship tonight, and before we sing, just a lovely hymn of praise to Christ. I want to give each of us just a moment to respond in our hearts to the word of truth. And as Christ would speak very clearly to some of us, confronting us with our avoidance of this question, and our neglect and our disinterest, and our rebellion, and our failure and our inability to make it all happen for ourselves and for our families. We see ourselves and we see our sin. When we come to Christ tonight and just admit it for once, believe in him that he is the person he claimed to be, consider the cost of Him being enthroned as Lord and Master of our lives, and open wide the door and say, Take control and take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Father, hear our prayer as we hear the voice of Your Son in our hearts, that we might answer the question and that we may be able to go out from here to help others with the same matter. For Jesus' sake. Amen. This content has been provided to you free of charge by the generous supporters of Truth For Life. For additional information about how you can support Truth For Life, please visit us online at truthforlife.org. There you'll find free message downloads from Alistair Begg, as well as links to our podcast, mobile apps, and other resources to help you grow in your Christian faith. Again, the website is truthforlife.org. 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