The following is a message given at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Worland, Wyoming. Let's begin today with prayer. Father, we thank you for this day that you have given us. We thank you that even though it's cold outside, the love of God that has been shed abroad in our hearts fills us with warmth and joy. Father, we thank you for bringing your people together another week to sing your praises here and all over the world. Lord, be glorified this Lord's Day by your people. We pray that you will feed us in your word. We pray that you will show us Christ. Lord, we pray that where there are hearts that have never heard, truly heard and understood your gospel, we pray that the same God who caused light to shine out of darkness would shine the love of God in their hearts today. And Father, we pray that you will encourage your people. We pray that we will be sustained and fed by your word today. We pray this for Christ's name and for Christ's glory. Amen. Who knows what this is? It's probably hard to see from the back. This is a thumb drive. Imagine on this thumb drive, I had every thought that you have ever thought in your life. And imagine I gave it to Arianna and I told her to put it in the computer and to play it on the screen. What would you do? You would probably push Arianna away from the computer. You would probably try to steal the thumb drive. Maybe you'd try to spill coffee on the computer. Maybe you'd run and find the breaker box and start tripping breakers, hoping that your thoughts would never be seen by us. I'd be willing to bet you would do everything you could to make sure that the contents of that thumb drive never met our eyes. But for the sake of illustration, let's say you couldn't stop us from playing it. Your thoughts are up on the screen. Everything you've ever thought is being played out in front of all of our faces this morning. You know how sinful your thoughts are. You know how sinful your actions have been. And you would want in all of your being to in some way cover the screen or cover our eyes so that we never saw what was in your heart. And of course you would do all of that knowing that our hearts, our thoughts, our actions are no different than yours. We're all really sinful and we're far more sinful than we're willing to let on in public. But in spite of that, you would still want all of your thoughts to be hidden. And if that's true of how we would respond to our thoughts being exposed to each other, how much more should we be seeking something to cover our thoughts? our actions, our words from the eyes of God. If we would want to cover the shame of our sin in front of each other, how much more should we be diligent to be seeking something to cover the guilt and shame of our sin where it really matters in the presence of God? If you were with us last week, you already know we started a short series to try to help each and every one of us identify, am I a true Christian? Do I bear the marks of one of God's people? We started last week by seeing one of the first characteristics of a Christian is that a Christian is someone who is willing to admit and confess that they are a sinner. We saw last week, the Bible clearly shows each and every one of us are by nature and by our actions, not only guilty of breaking all of God's laws, we are also guilty of having just a disdain for the fact that God would want to rule over us and be our law giver. And because of that, every human being in the world is under the curse of sin and they're also under the judgment and the wrath of God. So one of the marks of God's people is that they recognize that. They embrace that. They say, that is absolutely true. But while that's one of the marks of God's people, that's not the only mark of one of God's people, because there's a lot of people who would agree, yeah, I'm a really sinful person, but that realization in them doesn't drive them to Christ, it actually drives them to despair. And so it's not the only mark of a Christian to say, I'm really messed up, I'm really screwed up, I'm a bad sinner who deserves judgment. That realization then needs to drive a person to find the biblical solution for their sin to be dealt with. And so a true Christian is not merely someone who is squared with the reality of their sin, it's also a person who has heard the good news of God's remedy for sin and embraced it as their own by faith. And so this morning we're gonna see two things. We're gonna see a Christian has the right gospel, And then we'll see if Christian has a right response to the gospel. So as we begin, take your Bible and let's turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians 15, one through four, it says, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you now stand, by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. So as you look at 1 Corinthians 15, one through four, you'll notice that what Paul's doing is he's reminding the Corinthians of the gospel that he's preached to them. And the word gospel is really a cool word. It means glad announcement or an announcement of good news. And originally in Greek culture, the word gospel wasn't even a Christian word. So if a army was off fighting somewhere and they won the battle and they wanted to get a message to their city to tell them we won, they would send a messenger and the messenger would come running from the battlefield and he'd stick his right hand up and he'd be yelling, gospel, gospel, gospel. He'd be yelling, good news, good news, good news. And the people in the city would know we've been victorious in battle. And what happened is that word is then brought into religious circles to describe the good news about what Christ has done to conquer sin's dominion in the lives and hearts of his people. And so you have to understand that the problem of our sin is not a little problem in the eyes of God. Your sin is not something God can lightly forgive and sweep under the rug as if it never happened. No, because God is holy and because God is just, his holiness and his justice actually demand that he respond to our sin rightly and appropriately in judgment. And the Christian gospel, the good news of Christianity is that God has done something about that problem. God has actually created a solution in which the sins of his people can be fully and finally and forever forgiven. And notice the first element of the gospel Paul tells us in verse three. He says, I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. We're gonna come back and look at a little bit of verses one and two in a minute, but for now, Notice that in verse three, Paul's beginning to tell us the content of the gospel. He's starting to tell us what is the heart of the good news. And the first thing he tells us is that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. And initially Christ dying doesn't really seem like good news, because let's face it, everybody dies. And so in what sense is this good news? What's unique about the death of Christ that becomes good news for us? But we have to remember that in biblical thought, death is actually something more than simply life and the soul departing from the body. Romans 6, verse 23 says, the wages of sin is death. What is death in biblical thinking? Death is actually the wages of sin. Death is what we deserve for our sin. That's why God told Adam in Genesis 2.17, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. for in the day that you eat it, you will surely die. Ezekiel 18.20 says, the soul that sins shall die. And so death, both physical death as well as spiritual death or separation from God and judgment, both forms of death are actually the consequences of sin. And 1 Corinthians 15.3 is telling us that Christ died. Christ actually endured the consequences of sin. In other words, what verse three is teaching us is it's teaching us what in Christian theology we call the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Substitutionary means it's a substitute, it's in the place of someone else. So if you remember back to when you were in grade school or middle school, high school, you'd get a substitute teacher. And it was always a really exciting time because someone else was standing in the place of your teacher. They were representing your teacher. Often it was kind of a fun day, but that's what a substitute is. It's someone that stands in the place of someone else. They take the place of another person. And the word atonement deals with the satisfaction and the removal of guilt. So verse three is teaching us that Christ died for our sins as our substitute, as the one who took the wrath of God against us in our sins, as he stood in our place. so that he actually bore our sins, 1 Peter tells us, in his body on the tree. That's why Isaiah 53, verses six and 12 say, all we like sheep had gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. Therefore, I will divide a portion with the great and he will divide the spoil with the strong because he has poured out his soul even unto death. He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sins not of himself, he bore the sins of many, and he made intercession for their transgressions. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 also teaches this. It says, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Romans 4.25. who was delivered up because of our trespasses and raised for our justification. Throughout history, there's been a lot of theories about why did Jesus die on the cross? What did the death of Jesus accomplish? Some people believe that on the cross, Christ made a payment to the devil to purchase people back from the devil. Some people believe in what's called the moral influence theory that believes Christ died on the cross to demonstrate just how loving he is with the goal of his people repenting. Other people see the death of Jesus as just setting an example for this is what sacrificial love looks like. But when we look at scripture, we realize the gospel is not about Jesus setting an example. The gospel of Jesus is not about Jesus purchasing us back from Satan. The message of the Gospel is about God making Him who knew no sin to become sin for us. It's about Jesus coming into the world and taking the guilt and the shame and the consequences of our sin on His own shoulders and going to a cross and dying in our place as if He was a condemned criminal. The Gospel is the good news about how Christ came into the world to bear your sins. And so the justice of God demands that God not allow sin to go unpunished. But it's also a message about how Christ comes into the world and allows sin to be punished in Himself. So that we don't have to be punished for our sins because Christ has been punished as our substitute. He's been punished in our place. this is why actually turn over there with me let's turn over to mark chapter 15 verses 33 and 34 mark 15 verses 33 and 34 says when the sixth hour had come There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What's going on is Christ is on the cross. God is forsaking him. And so Christ cries out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what's interesting is that throughout all of Christ's life up until this point, he's had perfect, close, intimate fellowship with his Father, and for the first time in his life, the Father doesn't respond. The Father has abandoned Him. The Father has turned His back on Him. The Father is pouring out the wrath that He has against sinners on His Son. And so on the cross, God is treating Jesus like He should have treated Adam in the garden the moment he took a bite of the fruit. On the cross, God is treating Jesus like He should have treated drunken Lot when he got drunk and passed out and slept with his own daughters. On the cross, God is treating Jesus like He should have treated David when He takes another man's wife and sleeps with her and has her husband killed to cover it up. On the cross, God is treating Jesus like He should treat you for every one of your sins. The Bible couldn't be any more clear about what Christ is doing on the cross. Christ is identifying with His sinful people. and the Father is imputing, He's transferring the guilt of our sin onto Christ and He's treating Christ exactly the same way His justice demands He should treat us. Do you see why the death of Jesus is good news this morning? It means that the guilt of your sins has been taken away from you if you're one of God's people. It's been dealt with in Christ and you will never get what your sins deserve. Without the death of Christ, we are still in our sins. We would still be suffering judgment, but Christ has come and Paul tells us he died. He took our sins in himself and he suffered in our place. This is why we sing, behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has bought my life. I know that it is finished." But the death of Jesus isn't the gospel in its entirety. Come back to 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15.4 goes on and it says he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. So verse four tells us not only about the death of Christ is good news, but also the burial and the resurrection of Christ are also good news. And it's striking that verse four tells us the burial of Christ is good news. That's kind of weird, isn't it? Because I've been to a lot of funerals. I've done a number of funerals, and I've never been to a funeral, even though there's a sense of joy when one of God's people gets promoted to glory, I've never left a funeral and seen people running around going, gospel, gospel, gospel, good news, we buried Susan. Why is the burial of Christ part of the gospel? Funerals are somber times of reflection. There are times of considering our own mortality, eternity, remembering the loved ones we've lost. And so why is the funeral of Jesus good news? I think there's a number of reasons for this. For one, the burial proves that he was not mostly dead. He was all the way dead. If Jesus just hung on the cross and then went unconscious for a couple hours and then they pulled his body off the cross and he wakes up and he's like, oh, hi guys. It'd be really easy to say, okay, he wasn't really dead. He was close, but they kind of pumped some life back into him and he regained his strength and he's better now. The burial of Christ is here on one level to prove to us that Christ was all the way dead, that the wages of our sin were actually executed in him. But the burial of Christ is also here to set the stage for the rest of the good news. Paul tells us Christ not only died on the cross, he also rose on the third day. And so for three days, Christ's body was in the tomb. For three days, he's silent in the grave and is silent as the grave. And there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was really, truly dead. And so the burial of Christ is part of the good news because it's some of the factual evidence that proves not only did Christ truly die, but he also truly raised himself from the dead. So let's focus on the last part of verse four for a minute. Paul tells us the rest of the good news is that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. One of the things Paul wants us to know is that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is a historically indisputable fact, meaning you can't, from history, argue against it. Notice what he does in verses five and eight. We didn't read those yet, but as you look down in verses five and eight, it says that he was seen by Cephas, then by the 12, and that he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the larger part remained present. but some have fallen asleep. After that, he was seen by James, by all the apostles. Then last of all, he was seen by me also as one born out of due time. Why does Paul tell us that after the resurrection of Christ, he's seen by Cephas, he's seen by me, he's seen by the 11 disciples, he's seen by all the other disciples, he was seen by 500 brethren at once. By the way, most of them are still alive. Why does he tell us this? He tells us this because he wants us to know, especially in his original audience, they could have gone around and asked people. There's like five or 600 people still alive that saw Christ after he came back from the dead. He's trying to show them this is historically an indisputable fact. Five or 600 people don't make up the same lie and stick to it. So on the one hand, Paul's telling us about the resurrection of Christ because it is a historical fact. But it's more than that. It's actually a historical fact with a corresponding spiritual reality. Notice what Paul also does in verse 17. Verse 17 goes on to say, if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. So what he does in verse 17 is he tells us, yeah, it's a historical fact, but it's a historical fact with some kind of corresponding spiritual reality. He tells us that the resurrection of Christ is actually vital to the good news because apart from it, Your faith is worthless and you're still living in your sins. And we hear that and we think, wait a minute, I thought the death of Christ was what dealt with my sins. So why is Paul telling me in verse 17 that if Christ isn't risen from the dead, I'm still in my sins? The answer is in Romans 4, verses 23 through 25. Romans 4 23 through 25 says, now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses. And then notice the last phrase of Romans 4 25, and was raised because of, or for our justification. Notice verse four tells us Christ was raised for or because of our justification. The word justification means on one level the declaration of forgiveness of sins, but it also means the positive declaration of righteousness. And so verse four is telling us Christ was raised so that our sins could be declared forgiven and so that we could be declared positively righteous. I take that to mean that Christ being raised from the dead was the Father's declaration that Christ had so perfectly satisfied the wrath of God that was against us in our sin that it would have then been unjust for the grave to continue holding Christ. And so God raises Christ from the dead as a public witness to the reality that all of our sins have been paid for. that in Christ, all of his people can be made righteous. And so the resurrection of Christ is a vital part of the gospel because without the resurrection, we have no declaration from God that our sins are forgiven. If Christ is still in the tomb, the father has not accepted his sacrifice. And that's why 1 Corinthians 15, 7 goes on to say, if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. There's no gospel without a resurrection. There's no good news if Christ's story ends with his lifeless body rotting in a tomb for the rest of time. But there is good news if Christ is alive. There's good news if the father has accepted the sacrifice of his son and is a public demonstration of that, he then raises him from the dead to newness of life so that he can go around and be seen by hundreds of people to prove that he really is alive. Now, all of that is true. We know from the rest of Scripture, all of that is true, but we also know something from the rest of Scripture. We also know that not everybody's sins are forgiven. Not everyone has been declared righteous. And so while hearing that good news, hearing that message is essential to being a Christian, it's not the end of being a Christian. You must not only hear that message, you must also respond to that message the way that scripture tells you to respond. That brings us to our second point. You also know you're a Christian if you have a right response to the gospel. Simply hearing the good news about what Christ has done does not automatically make a person a Christian. That hearing of the gospel also has to be mixed with a right response. That's why Hebrews 4 verse 2 says, Indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard didn't profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it. Notice what Hebrews 4 is telling us. The gospel was preached to us. We believe the gospel, we are God's people, but it was also preached to them, to another group of people. But it didn't profit them the same way it profited us, because the writer of Hebrews tells us it wasn't mixed with faith. In other words, it's not merely the hearing of the gospel that makes a Christian, it's also responding to the gospel appropriately. And so how is it we should respond to the gospel? I'm gonna read a bunch of passages of Scripture, and you don't have to turn there, you probably won't be able to keep up, but as I read these passages of Scripture, be listening for one common theme in all of them. The first one comes from Romans 10, verse nine. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Acts 16, 31. And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and all of your household. Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, for by grace you've been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. Galatians 3 verse 22, the scripture has confined all under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus might be given to those who believe. Luke 13, verse 3, now I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Acts 3.19, repent therefore and turn away that your sins will be blotted out. One more, Mark 1.15, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. As I read through all of those passages of Scripture, they all have one thing in common. They're all telling us there is one and only one right response to the gospel that actually brings about salvation. And it's that the hearer of the gospel respond by repenting of their sins and putting their faith in Jesus. To repent means to turn away. It means to acknowledge that we are pursuing sin, to confess that sin and to turn away from it. We have a biblical illustration of it from Isaiah 55, verses six and seven. It says, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Then notice here's repentance. Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord. He will have mercy on them. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Notice in Isaiah 55, Isaiah is calling the people on the one hand to turn away from their sin, forsake your sin, but not just turn away from your sin, to actually then turn to the Lord. So repentance is to acknowledge that I've been moving in a direction away from the Lord, I've been pursuing sin, and it means to turn away from that and to begin pursuing the Lord. So think about repentance like this. Imagine we had a bus that would hold all of us. And I said, hey, there's this really cool Christian concert tonight in Billings. Let's all get in the bus and we'll drive to Billings and we'll go to this concert. And I get out on Bighorn and I turn left and we start heading south towards Thermopolis. Everyone knows Billings is north, Thermopolis is south. We're going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. And so you guys are all in the back seat like he's lost his mind. He doesn't know where he is. He can't even find Billings anymore. And someone's like, hey, Billings is north. You probably should have turned like you missed the first one. Maybe turn on West River Road. I don't know. Maybe we need to go the other direction. And I'm just like, doo, doo, doo, driving around. And finally, as you guys are getting louder in the back seat, someone has the intelligence to pull up GPS and show me a map and say, we're going south. Billings is north. I'm going the wrong direction. What does repentance look like in that illustration? Repentance looks like me acknowledging I am moving in the wrong direction. I'm going away from where I should be going, but not just acknowledging that, turning the bus around so that I'm no longer moving south and I'm beginning to move north. That's what repentance looks like. It means that I acknowledge the bus of my life has been going in the wrong direction. I've been steering my ship away from the Lord. It means to confess that, to admit it, to look at your biblical GPS and go, yeah, that's true. And by God's grace, to turn away from your sin and to begin moving, following the Lord. And that kind of repentance should always be present in the life of one of God's people. But what does it mean to trust in Christ? What does it mean to believe in him? What's faith? It means to trust in Christ to be who he says he is in the gospel for you. It means to believe and to trust and to embrace what he has promised in the gospel as your own. In other words, saving faith is the act of seeing Christ who died on the cross for sinners and rose from the dead. And it's believing that when he did that, he did it for me. Christ died for my sins. Christ rose from the dead for my justification. In Christ, I have everything I need. That's why we also sing, I need no other argument. I need no other plea. It's enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. I get that definition of faith or that understanding of faith from Romans chapter four, verses 20 through 22. It's talking about the faith of Abraham. And it said, he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but he was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he promised, he was also able to perform. Therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. So in Romans 4, Paul is commending Abraham to us as the father of faith, but also as a model for faith. This is what faith looks like. And notice what it tells us. It tells us Abraham was fully convinced that God had given him a promise. He believed the word of God that made a promise to him, and he was fully convinced that God was faithful, that he was able, that he was willing, and that he was going to fulfill that promise. And so what is biblical faith? It's the confidence that God has made us promises in Christ. It's the confidence that Christ has come to secure those promises. It's the confidence that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was raised from the dead three days later to give justification to everyone who embraces him by faith. And so faith isn't wishful thinking. Faith isn't hoping something will happen. Faith in scripture is confidence in a person and in the work of that person. It's to embrace Christ in all that he has done, in all that he says he has done, as being sufficient is all that I need to have my sins forgiven. That's how good news becomes good news for you. It becomes good news for you when you stop resisting God. It becomes good news for you when you rely, when you trust, when you entrust yourself to the Christ who died on the cross and rose from the dead. One of the difficulties of responding to the gospel by simply confessing your sins and trusting in Christ is that there's something in every one of us that wants to feel like I did something. There's something in all of us that wants to feel like I've contributed at least a little bit to my salvation. I mean, yeah, we want to believe in Christ. We still want to be Christian, right? We don't want to just like totally chuck Jesus. But I also want to feel like I've done something. I want to feel like I've brought some good work, some religious exercise, some amount of Bible reading, some kind of church attendance, some kind of personal self-reform detached from Christ. And the Bible couldn't be any clearer. There's no amount of good works we can do. There's no amount of human effort we can bring to the table to help get our sins forgiven. All that Christ calls us to do is to hear the gospel and to believe it. That's why Galatians 2.16 says, a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. Notice what Galatians 2.16 is telling us. It's telling us we're either gonna be justified simply and only on the basis of faith in Christ, or we're gonna be justified by the works of the law. You can't have both, they're enemies of each other. And then it says, by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. In other words, there's actually not two options, there's one. If you're going to be justified, it's going to be simply and solely on the basis of you embracing who Christ is and what he's done by faith. Here's what that means. It means that at the heart of any true believer, at the heart of any real saving faith, there should be a renunciation and a repudiation of any form of self-effort. At the heart of saving faith, there should be a repulsion that would think I could in any way add to what Christ has done, that I could supplement it. Imagine, this is a really bad illustration, I just made it up, so I might have to edit this out, I don't know. But imagine Christus cooking in the kitchen, And she's following a recipe that's been passed down through her family for generation after generation. It's tested, it's proven. And I come into the kitchen and I'm like, I wanna help. So I get in the spice rack and I'm like, ooh, this looks good, cinnamon, sugar. And I'm just like chucking stuff in. Am I helping or am I hurting? I'm hurting. And the same is true with the Gospel. When we think we can come and bring anything to contribute to what Christ has already done, we don't add to it, we detract from it. We make it void. Because we're either justified by the works of the law or we're justified by faith in Christ. And Galatians says, by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. That's why Isaiah 55 verses one through three says, ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. You who have no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money, without price. Why do you spend your money on what is not bread and your wages for what doesn't satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and let your soul delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. here in your soul will live and I will make an everlasting covenant with you by the sure and steadfast mercy and love of David. What's saving faith? Saving faith in Isaiah 53 is a recognition I'm broke. I have no money, I have no good works, I have no religious devotion. I simply have this open hand of faith and I embrace Christ to fill it. Let's go back to where we started. We're answering the question, how do I know if I'm a Christian? Last week, we saw one of the first marks of a true Christian is that a true Christian recognizes they are sinful and that apart from the grace of God, they deserve God's wrath. But God's word doesn't leave us there. This week, what we see is that a Christian is a person who has heard the gospel and responded appropriately to the gospel. So the good news of the gospel is that Christ hasn't left us in that sinful state we saw last week. Christ has actually imposed himself into this world by becoming a man, taking the liability of our sin on his own shoulders, allowing God the Father to treat him like the vilest criminal in all of human history. suffered under the wrath of God, and three days later rose victorious as the Father declared that He has paid for our sins. That's the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is a message not about what you can do, but about what Christ has done to declare you forgiven and to declare you righteous. But we've also seen this morning that simply hearing that message doesn't make you a Christian. Some of you have heard that message hundreds of times and never actually responded to it the way scripture tells you to. A Christian is a person who is brought by the grace of God as they hear that message to realize that I have been heading in the wrong direction. My life has been going south away from my God and it's been in rejection and rebellion to my God. And by God's grace, I'm going to turn from it. But I'm not going to turn from it anywhere. I'm going to turn from it to Christ. I'm going to turn from it in faith, believing that Christ died on the cross to take my sin. I'm going to turn from it, believing that Christ was raised from the dead to give me eternal life, to give me his righteousness. And so as we bring our time to a close, I want to close by asking you, how have you responded to the good news? Notice I don't ask you if you've responded to the good news. I'm asking you, how have you responded to the good news? Because if you have been at this church for more than 50 minutes, you have heard the good news and you have responded to it in one of two ways. You've either embraced it as precious and true and as your own by faith, or you've rejected it. And that's why 1 Corinthians 1.18 says, the message of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing. but to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. Notice what 1 Corinthians 1.18 does. It says, the message of the cross goes out in everybody that hears it, hears it, but there's really only two responses. The message of the cross on one level is foolishness to those that are perishing. To people still in their sins, they hear the same thing that God's people hear, and they're like, yeah, that's stupid. That's whack. I don't want that. I don't need that cool story. Take it. I don't want it. But that same message goes out, and while it's rejected as foolishness by some, it's also in other people actually the power of God to salvation. They hear the message and the Spirit comes working through the message, and it gives them faith. It gives them a heart of repentance. It brings them to Christ. And so I'm not asking you if you've responded to the gospel, I'm asking you how. Have you responded by calling it foolishness? Or have you responded by seeing it as precious and embracing it as your own by faith? If you've responded to the gospel by trusting in Christ and repenting of your sins, as you ask yourself, am I a Christian? Guess what? Scripture's answer is yes. That's what a Christian is. We're gonna see next week, there's actually evidences of that, but at the very root, that's what a Christian is. A Christian is a person who realizes, I'm sinful, I'm in desperate need of a savior, and Christ has done for me all that I need to be saved, and I'm gonna simply entrust myself to him. But if you've never done that, if you're still rejecting Christ, if you're still living in your sins, if you're still driving south, You've heard the gospel. You've heard the good news. You've heard what Christ has done to take sinful people like you and to actually remove the wrath of God from them and to put in its place His righteousness, His acceptance, His joy and His pleasure. And why would you continue to consider that message foolish? Why would you one more week be like, cool story, we got the church box checks and now we can go on. You can't go on if you reject the gospel. You need today. Today, scripture says, today is the day of salvation. And so come this morning before you leave, come to Christ and confess your sins. Come to Christ and put all of your hope and your confidence, not in your good works, Not in the fact that you've been in church for six months without missing a week. Put all of your hope in Christ who died on the cross for sinners and was raised from the dead. Father, we pray that life will be in this room today. We pray that your spirit will work mightily through the preaching of your word to awaken dead hearts to the beauty of Christ. Father, if there's anyone here still in their sins, I pray, I beg you, Father, please give them life. Please open their eyes to see Christ is precious. He's beautiful. He's glorious. He's worthy of their confidence. Lord, if any of your people are struggling with doubt this morning, Your true people wondering, am I really one of God's people? I pray that they will continue to believe the gospel. Help them to continue to fix their eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faith. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen. We hope you've been edified by the message you heard from Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Warland, Wyoming. For more information about Sovereign Grace Bible Church or to support the ministry, contact them at sgbcwy.org. sgbcwy.org.