by the single most important message in the world. It was the most important message 2,000 years ago. It is the most important message in 2025. To speak it publicly in certain parts of Europe and some cities in this country will likely get you arrested or assaulted. To speak it publicly in Afghanistan will get you executed. It's the most loving, inclusive message ever told. Others say it's words that are the product of ignorance and hate. It's the message billions of people have heard and the message millions of Americans have never heard. It's what the Christmas season was to be all about, God's greatest gift to humanity. And while my hope is that everyone present in this room has heard this message, I'm not going to make that assumption. I also know, and you should know, our messages get recorded and videoed and people are watching and hearing in several continents. And maybe they haven't heard the message either. And so I pray that they'll hear this most cherished message. I pray that you would take it beyond these walls. This message could be stated in very technical theological terms. I want to state it much more simply, or at least describe what it's about. And it's really just this. It's the way to get back home, to be reunited with God. At this point, someone might ask the question, why would that message be hated? Why would that message get you arrested? or killed. It's simple. Because the message claims to be the only way to get you back home. The only way to get you reunited with God. And now having put it in those terms, someone might be prepared to object. Well, preacher, I think all religions are pretty much the same. Who are you to say your message is better than another religion's message? My response is, in a close examination, they're not all the same. And if they're questions or solve specific problems, but they don't all try to answer the same questions. They don't all try to solve the same problems. It's not my purpose to address all religious today, but I do want to tell you about the question Christianity seeks to answer, the problem Christianity seeks to solve. Many people in our culture are saying, why do I even need a God? Why do I need the God of the Bible? Those are fair questions. And the short answer to that is you need the God of the Bible because the Bible identifies humanity's greatest need and God's solution to that need. I can try to summarize it this way. You know, the Bible has a lot of information, but there's a core story there. It presents the blunt, the bleak reality of who we are as human beings. Counterbalanced by a message of hope, the creator God of the universe made humanity in his likeness, in a state of moral uprightness reflecting God's own perfect character. For a purpose, to enjoy fellowship with him, to be his obedient beloved children for all eternity. Those first human beings, those two first human beings, in an exercise of the free will God gave them, rebelled against their creator. They disobeyed him. They acted out of accord with his character and his design and intent for humanity. Their ambition was to be like God. You can read all about it in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. They wanted to be like God in the sense of being his very equal, but their actions departed from the absolute moral purity of God. They rejected his authority. They rejected his authority over them as their creator. And instead of becoming like God, their choices made them very much unlike God. The very opposite of what they intended and expected. Prideful, fearful, manipulative, and with a general propensity to do every kind of evil. And now separated from God, they were something else. They were mortal. They were made for eternity. In Ecclesiastes, we're told that God's put eternity in our hearts. But now there were graves in their future. The communion and the fellowship were gone. They were replaced with difficulties, strife, and conflict. And every human being born after that is born with the same predicament. But with the harsh reality of our condition, the Bible offers a message The way to get back home, the way to be reunited with God, the way to be forgiven for all the wrongs we've ever done, to receive eternal life, to be restored to our original purpose. That at the core is what the Bible presents to us. Now at this point someone might protest, you know, I don't think humanity is quite that bad. prideful, fearful, manipulative, general propensity for every kind of evil. My response to that is that the Bible says these things and they fit the historical evidence. Thousands of years of human civilization have passed and our record speaks for itself. It's an uncomfortable truth, but it's there. I want to read to you what the scripture says about humanity's condition. This is the problem. We need a solution, but we have to understand the problem first. Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 says the heart is more deceitful than anything else. It's incurable. Who can even understand it? The Apostle Paul would share these words in Romans 3 verse 23. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That is the indictment, that is the reality of the human condition. Someone would protest 1 John chapter 1 verse 8. Another apostle wrote these words. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. In days of old, the prophet Isaiah wrote in the 59th chapter of his writings, verse 2, but your iniquities are separating you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen. The Apostle Paul took all of this, all of humanity's condition, and he boiled it down to a sentence in Romans chapter 5 and verse 12. Paul wrote, therefore, just as sin entered into the world through one man, that rebellion I was talking about, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, Someone might say, well, isn't that kind of on him? It's spread to all people because all sin we took after it. What the Bible says is true to life. It's true of humanity at large. It's also true of every one of us as individuals. It's uncomfortable, but the Bible calls a state a state. what skeletons are in your closet? And I won't ask for a show of hands yet, but it had occurred to me that might be a good idea. If we could play up the, you know, bring up the backup tapes of your wife showing all that you ever did, what would they show us? I don't want to think about that too much because I know about my own closet. I know the Bible's words are true about me. I have sinned, and I don't need to see the tapes to be reminded. I think if I were to go around this room and administer a cross-examination of each and every person present, you would do one of two things. You would plead the Fifth Amendment or plead guilty to the Bible's indictment that all have sinned. fallen short of the glory of God. We recognize that. But someone might object, well preacher I've done some things in my life that I'm ashamed of, but I've done a lot of good things. I think I'm balanced. I'm a pretty good person. I think you are too. I do. I think I'm a pretty good person. But you know the problem with that is we're comparing ourselves to other people. The Bible is talking about our condition in comparison to God's absolute moral purity. The very thing we were designed for. The very thing that we no longer are but should be again when we're restored. Every one of us would have to admit that measuring against the character of God we have fallen short. But it's not just that. If you could take all of human history and bind it in a single volume book and begin to flip the pages, you could pick any time in history and any place and open to that page, and what would you find there? I think you would find bigotry, senseless violence, war, slavery, exploitation of children and the poor. You'd find people that are gossips, that's probably the worst on the list. bloodshed and a whole lot more. We wouldn't find that these terrible things were outliers done by a few people on the fringe while all the other people protested. What we would find is a whole bunch of people were doing these things and those who didn't do the same things heartily approved and cheered them on at the same time. That's the fact of it. That's what happened. That pattern never changes. Recent headlines in our own country have confirmed to us and you know that this is the case. We aren't somehow exempt from it because we're Americans by God. We're acting like the Bible said we would act. We've shot down any notion that somehow we're doing better and we've figured it out. The evidence demands a verdict. Humanity has a systemic problem. Humanity has a propensity to sin and everybody does it. All have acted contrary to the absolute moral purity of God and Adam accords his design intent and there's something else. By the nature of who we are, we can't fix it. We can't fix it. All religions are telling you you can fix it, except Christianity says the engines on both wings are on fire here. You can't fix it. The apostle, I'm sorry, the prophet Isaiah wrote in chapter 64 and verse 6 of his writing, all of us have become like something unclean. All our righteous acts are like a polluted garment. Some old translations say filthy rags. All of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities carry us away like the wind. One in a diaper. The Bible says God will admit our justice and a final day of judgment on everyone. Many people find that offensive. Surely if this God is a God of love, there won't be a final day of justice. There won't be a sentence for our offenses. Let's think about that for a while. Does that really make any logical sense? If humanity was separated from God because of its rebellious conduct, will everyone simply get a pardon in the final analysis? Will they all just be reunited with God because He loves them? Is it loving that doers of evil get no consequences for their actions? Think about our innate sense of justice. We all think inherently in one way or the other that certain wrongs have to be punished and in some way the level of punishment should correlate to the wrong committed. Even those few who argue against this and would say, no, no, no, we don't need to punish the crimes. When they're the ones that are victimized for the crime, they want justice. Every nation throughout history, there have been laws enacted, some means to enforce the law, and courts to adjudicate violations of the law, and to dispense sentences. The famous Code of Hammurabi that we might have learned about in history a long, long time ago, it's nearly 4,000 years old. It's a Babylonian legal code. The great scholars who could decipher it looked at it, and here's what they learned. Nearly 4,000 years ago, they thought certain crimes were punishable, and the punishment ought to be commensurate with the crime. It's the pattern throughout history. How did every human being stumble upon this? Because God put it in their hearts. They're reflecting what's left of their reflection of the image of God. They have this sense of justice. This universally recognized principle is that certain behaviors are unacceptable, the punishment should match the crime. Isn't it absurd to think that throughout history with nearly every civilization imposing justice based on their sense that certain behaviors are wrong, that somehow a god of absolute moral purity should have no laws and enforce no justice because he's loving after all? that he should hold none accountable. It just makes no sense. We need to look no further than our own experience to realize if God's a whole lot better than us, he's going to have a whole lot better justice than we have, but there's no way he's going to have no justice. If the God of the Bible is real, And the evidence and the experience of billions of people over a number of years has confirmed he is real. We should expect accountability. It's a logical thing to expect if the Bible makes plain a day of reckoning is coming. This is the kind of thing we don't like to think about, but the Bible holds no punches. It presents the good and the bad, the truth that we need to know. Sometimes the most loving thing is to hear the truth we may not want to hear the Bible says in the ninth Psalm and verse 78 but the Lord sits enthroned forever he's a Listen to this line. He judges the world with righteousness. He's his own standard. It's his moral purity that's the standard. He doesn't have the Code of Hammurabi and doesn't need it. He doesn't need the Texas Code of Criminal Law. He just needs himself. And then he adds, he executes All that said, with all the bad news as it were, there is a message of hope in the Bible that becomes the centerpiece to scripture. It begins back in Genesis 3 and it goes forward all the way to the last page of your Bible. When you read that last page and you're going to see an appeal with a message of hope. The Bible closes with hope. and it has hope all in between. It's the chain of God's grace that binds the whole thing together. The message of hope, the message about finding our way home, is not a message about what we can do for ourselves, but what we can't do for ourselves. That's the point of it. Every religion tells you what you can do. The Bible tells you what you can never do to fix this problem that's identified. We're accustomed to thinking The fact is, we're guilty before God, and nothing we can do is going to change that. Only God can fix the problem, and there's only one way to do it. God's going to tell us what that is. You know, we can't pay for our own crimes. Some people think maybe they could, but even if, hypothetically, you could pay for your crimes, you can't pay for mine, and even after you've paid for years, You're still the same person with that propensity to sin. I mean, tomorrow or next week, you'll do it again. Right? That's the problem. And because of that, you couldn't be reunited with this God of absolute moral purity. The message of the Bible is God had to become flesh. He became a human being. He dwelt among us. He experienced being a Christian. He experienced all the temptations of life with no sin whatsoever. He came for a discreet purpose. The Apostle John announced it. He recorded it in the first chapter of his Gospels. It was John the Baptizer who said it. He sees Jesus coming up over a hill and says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He's going to do what I can't do, what you can't do, God. God is making a way for us. This message is about a historical figure, Jesus. Very few people deny he existed because we not only have records in the Bible, we have records outside the Bible. Roman officials writing about Jesus. No historically informed person believes he didn't exist. Where the rub comes in is the claim that he is God. He is the God-man, fully human. fully God at the same time. He lived a life without sin. He fed the poor, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, helped the lame to walk, raised the dead back to life, shared a message of hope for those who would want to have eternal life, and in response, what did we do? For all those crimes that Jesus had done, humanity murdered him, murdered him through a common means of execution in the Roman empire of the first century, we call it crucifixion. The death was not for his own crimes, for he had done none, he had not violated either the laws or the standards of God, but his death was accepted by God as a payment for the sin of the world. If we were to try to pay for our crimes, We certainly did a capital offense from the standpoint of God, but we couldn't pay for our crimes. He did and he paid it for everybody at the same time. It's what the Bible calls, the big word is propitiation. He paid it in full. He could say it is finished. God imposed justice for humanity's evil. required that justice be done. He couldn't wink at what had happened. He couldn't just overlook it. He couldn't just issue a free pardon, but justice was served. But then he raised his son back to life. Jesus didn't stay dead. He said, I'll lay my life down and I'll take it back up again. God made a way back home for us to be reunited with him. There's nothing for us to do at this point except to place our faith, our trust, our confidence and what Jesus had already done for us. When we do that, we freely receive God's deliverance of the consequences of all wrongs, all what the Bible calls sins. God imputes the very righteousness of Jesus to us. We can't be in communion and fellowship with God while we're still just a bunch of sinners. At some point in the future, we'll have a new Resurrection Body, soon it will be totally absent from us. We're going to enjoy that fellowship forever. option of sons. We receive the forgiveness of sins. We receive eternal life. There's a list of blessings. We could spend 30 minutes listing all the blessings. It all came true at the moment someone placed their faith in Christ. They are in union with Him. If it's true about Him, it's now your truth as well. It's your blessing. And that's what the Bible presents. And so, it's read rightly said, and it's an old hymn, that Jesus paid the debt he did not owe, and we owe the debt we could never pay. The Apostle Paul wrote in the first chapter of this wonderful book of Romans, his Magna Mobius, is chapter 1, verse 16. He said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. That's a technical word. All it means is good news. There's all kinds of good news, but this good news is the message of hope, it's God's gift to humanity, and he gave it to us Christmas morning. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because what? It's the power of God, not your doing, you can't fix it, and we've covered that. We can't fix it because we're, I mean, just watch the news, we can't fix it. We can't fix things going on in our country. We can't get our debt paid off. We're not going to fix this sin problem. It's going to be the power of God or we ain't getting fixed. It's salvation. It's deliverance back home to everyone who believes plus absolutely nothing. People like to add things. We're going to add some more to it, some things I can do. You can't fix it. It's all God or nothing. That's how it works. the power of God for salvation in everyone who believes. Someone might say, well, can it really be just that simple? It's exactly that simple. That's why it's referred to in the Bible sometimes as a childlike faith. It's not complicated. You don't need a bunch of education. You need the message of gold. You set aside the pride that goes along with your thought that you can fix it and you accept it. He's fixed it for you. He put your trust in Christ. Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 15 this message First Corinthians 15 1 I want to make clear to you brothers and sisters the gospel the good news I preach to you which you received and on which you have taken your You've received the message and you're standing on it. That's my hope beyond the grave. And he says this about the historical content. Verse 3, for I have passed on to you as most important. Think about that. These words aren't empty words. There was nothing more important than this. He taught him a lot of things, but this was the most important thing. He says, I passed on to you what I also received. Paul wasn't born a Christian. Paul was a murderer. Paul persecuted people. He was wicked. But he had to come to Christ the same way any of us do. I've passed on to you what I also received. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That he was buried and he was raised the third day according to the scriptures. The swan song of God's love of the scripture. The most famous verse perhaps in the world. John 3, 16. It says that for God loved the world in this way. Love's always action when God's doing it. He could love us in a lot of ways, but he did it in this way. His gift to us, because he says he gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. This would have been a good place to say whoever believes in him plus a whole lot of other add-ons. A little fine print, a little balloon painted on the back end of the loom. All those things that smart theologians with PhDs add on to this stuff. This is a kindergartner's verse. You just have to believe. You'll get eternal life on the spot. You won't perish. That's what the Bible says. The big question is, are you ready? We're going to look at a long parable in Matthew chapter 25. It's a great parable. Let me set it up a little bit. First, there's a background context at the beginning of Matthew 24 or some questions that are being asked of Jesus about when he's going to come back and restore, you know, implement his kingdom and that kind of thing. And so all of Matthew 24, Jesus starts giving people signs that what happened in the future, giving them an idea that he's going to return soon. And that leads up to this parable. This parable is in the context of Jewish thought, and it pictures a wedding. Their weddings were different. They don't do things the way we did. It's not a whole lot different, but you know, we get engaged and people set a date. They know the date. Both of them know the date. They might hire a wedding planner and all this stuff. These people got their trove, and the bride doesn't know the date. No, it's not like she has no clue. She's going to have a general idea that about a year later, or a little more, a little less, she's going to get married at the wedding festival. She's legally betrothed, bound and contracted. What's going to happen is the bridegroom, on a day unannounced, near the evening, and perhaps when it's already dark, is going to show up to fetch his bride and the bridesmaids and escort them to the wedding feast. So if you don't know when it's coming, you just know it's coming, you've gotta be ready. Let's read the parable. Matthew 25, verse one, at that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins, young ladies that are gonna be part of this, they're the bride's page, basically, we would call. Like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the groom. The thing about this as I'm reading it through, parables get misunderstood sometimes. We don't need to look for each piece That's not the point. Don't get hung up thinking about what the O on the lamps represent, the virgins represent. It's an analogy. He analogizes some spiritual truth that's complicated to some familiar imagery everybody in the room understood. So with that in mind, five of them, five of these young virgins, were foolish and five were wise. When the foolish took their But the wise ones took oil in their flask with their lamps. When the groom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, there was a shout, here's the groom, come out to meet him. What happens next, all the virgins woke up, started trimming their lamps because there weren't streetlights at the time, so you're gonna walk and they didn't have flashlights like we do, but it would be like grabbing your flashlights and you can see for this evening, this evening track over to where the festivities are going to begin. The foolish one said to the wise ones, give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out. The wise ones answered, no, there won't be enough for us. And for you, go instead, those who sell oil, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves. When they had gone to buy some, the groom arrived and those who were ready went with him to the wedding banquet. So five of them have already went, they're already at the festivity. And then the door was shut, and the banquet. Later, the rest of the virgins also came and they said, Master, Master, open for us. He replied, truly I tell you, I don't know you. When you come back to that, how could he not know them? They were invited. They're part of the wedding party. They're standing outside. Listen to what he says. Therefore, be alert, because you don't know either the day or the hour. As I said, parables make an analogy. And so the question we always ask when we read a parable, what's the analogy? The analogy here is between the familiar Jewish wedding tradition. Everybody knows the groom shows up unannounced, generally late in the day and even in the evening, and you're just supposed to be ready when he shows up. And that's being analogized to when the Lord Jesus returns to set up his kingdom and then the final day of judgment or reckoning. That's the analogy. And the lessons in that last verse, be ready, be on the alert. Notice what happened when the foolish virgin showed up late. The master said, I don't know you. But they were invited, how could he not know them? Because the thing is, everybody's invited to this wedding, But you have to be standing out there when he comes. What's the idea? You're going to come on his terms, not yours. They showed up late. They came on their own terms. The standard is simple. He says it in the last verse. He says, or verse 12, I don't know you. What a powerful statement. The statement is saying that this standard for judgment's not anything we've done. It's who we know. We know him and he knows us. That happens, the door's open. We don't know Him, He don't know us, the door is closed. Those who receive the message of hope, what the Bible calls the good news or the gospel, and place faith in Christ, have already been reunited with Christ. They're already His children, they're already known by Him. He would never say to us, I don't know you. This being ready is being ready with faith. We don't know how much time we have. We know it's going to draw to a close, and when that happens, we better be ready. That's the whole message of the parable, simply being ready. It's absurd that these young ladies who were in the, you know, they're going to be bridesmaids, it's absurd that they would never have rented the dresses, right? It's absurd that they wouldn't have thought about what's going to happen that day and what they're going to do. of God, this message of hope, would do nothing with it, would just sort of put it aside and rest and slumber and fall asleep. Every human being that we live will eventually stand before the master. And I have to suppose that some of them might say, when they stand before him, that they were good people. They'll stand before him like the five foolish virgins. Others will tell him they went to church. I grew up in church. Some others are going to say to him, I was baptized. So notice when I tell them, I was somebody in the world, a president, a billionaire, a YouTube influencer with millions of followers, a film star. You can fill in the blank with all the things you want to put. I was that person. I was great. And then when we have the religious folks, you know what they're going to say? Carl read it earlier. The religious folks are going to say, Lord, Lord, didn't I prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name? know what he said I don't know you how can that be perhaps others will say they just needed a little more time and they would do something different with this message of a whole and all of these the master is going to say the part for me you workers of iniquity I never knew because you've shown up on the basis of just what you've done, your own work, your own goodness, for whatever that's worth, you haven't shown up as one who's been, you know, by faith has received the righteousness of Christ, imputed to him, and he says, I never knew you. That's what it says. When Carl read that passage from Matthew 7, Jesus was very plain. You've got to do the will of the Father. The will of the Father is what the whole Gospel of Matthew is about, coming to Jesus in faith. That's the will of the Father. He sent his Son and he expected people to come to him in faith. That's what's going to keep the door open. And with that door to eternity swinging closed on those that were not ready, Are we ready? The message is one of urgency. The message of the gospel, the message of Matthew 25 is all about urgency. And that's why the last verse of the parable, he said, therefore be alert. In a lot of translations, be ready. Be ready. You have to be ready because you've already placed your faith in Christ. You don't know when your last day is. You don't know when you'll stand before him. But if you stand before him ready, You're going to hear a lot different message than the one that these people heard. He says, because you don't know the day or the hour. The worst mistake we can make is to be confronted with the reality of who the Bible says we are and the free gift that God offers to us, this message of hope that God provides us through Jesus' death on the cross and then to say, you know, I'm going to put it off for another day. I just don't want to do anything about it today. I worked with someone for a number of years. a Catholic sometimes and went to church once in the Blue Moon. I went to his wedding. He's a very good church. And we had a lot of these deep conversations. about things of God, the Bible. And he was willing to have those, he liked those conversations. And I can just seem to remember him telling me, this is important. I'm so busy with work and family and all these things, but when I retire, I'm gonna pour myself into this. I'm gonna figure this thing out. I wanna understand this message. and what to do with this because he'd never heard it. I hope he has that opportunity. That opportunity is not guaranteed. I had worked with somebody who, I guess they got my connection through someone at their work that was a part of the church I was at. He had all kinds of Really interesting Bible questions about God's foreknowledge and predestination, all this stuff. They sent them to me and we started trading emails. And you know, what I want to do with folks, I haven't answered that question, but we need to be pointing people to Jesus. I know this stuff's interesting, but it's peripheral. And so we set up a time to meet. We met in Waterbury and talked. He didn't show up. I wasn't very happy. But, you know, it was odd to me because his wife was a Christian and he wasn't. She was so eager, pushing him to have this talk. But she insisted, no, no, no, you're going to be home this evening. You can't go meet with this guy. So I'm there sitting there with my cheeseburger and everybody. So we set up another thing. He was going to meet me a week later. And he stood me up again. I was upset. But you know what I found out the next day? That man got struck by lightning on the way to his car after work to come see me. He died on the spot. And I guarantee you, he didn't think that was going to happen. No one ever thinks that's going to happen. things just when they wake up. In general, unless you're already in the bed with all the family members standing over you, this is when I'm going to draw my last breath. Most of us aren't afforded that opportunity. Charlie Kirk didn't think that would be his last day. These things just happen. Whether it's through violence or just natural means, these things happen. You know, 84 years ago today, at about 7.50ish in the morning, AM, a Japanese plane appeared over the horizon near Hawaii. No one was expecting that either, right? 2,400 and something, maybe 2,403, 2,404 military personnel and civilians died that day, the very next day the famous speech was given by the President Roosevelt. He referred to it as a date which will live in infamy. No one thought that was happening on December 6th. No one expected, no one that died there in that attack expected that would happen. My guess is some were ready to be gone and some weren't. I'm just telling you the reality is is that's how life is. And only you know whether there was a time and place that you recognized your greatest need and you personally placed faith in Christ, looking at what He did for you when He died for your sins, He rose again, and so that you can know that you have forgiveness in eternal life. Only you can know if you've done that. Only you can know if you're ready. Will Jesus tell you? Go on, I never knew you. The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. The Bible always presents the gospel message with urgency. It always presents it as a message that needs to be dealt with You can't save yourself, but you can freely receive His gift, and you can do it today. You can be listening to this recording or seeing a video. You can do it today. Jesus said, in John chapter 4, in an evangelistic encounter with a lady that had an interesting Guess what? It's irrelevant to receiving the gift. Irrelevant. She was nobody of high regard. Irrelevant. She wasn't a rabbi or somebody in a leadership position. All irrelevant. Jesus said to her if she was pulling water still there to this day. You can look at it online. It's a real place. He's telling this woman who's pulling that water out of that well, he says, everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. Whoever drinks from the water that I will give them will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give them will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life. She wanted that water quick. You read that whole story. That woman hadn't been to seminary yet, and while the disciples doing nothing, she went back and got the whole village together and convinced them to come and see Jesus. We need that kind of enthusiasm. That's our job, it's an urgent message. If you haven't heard it, it's urgent you deal with it. If you have heard the message and you believe it's urgent, you start giving it away to people. She did. She wanted to give away the water you drink and never get thirsty again because it springs up into a well in front of life. You've never come to a place in your heart where you place that faith in Jesus and recognize what He's done for you. His death for your sins, today is your day. Don't put off acquiring the wall for your lamp. Anyone who hears this recording, make that decision for Christ. Don't put it off for another day. There's not a good reason to do that, but the devil will give you a lot of reasons to put it off for another day for those who know the Savior already. Those who were given the message at some time ago in your past, every one of you Either read it in the Bible or someone shared that message. And for most of you, someone shared it too. I was dumb as a sack of stones when I heard the gospel. I was 11 or 12, 13 years old, right in that time frame. And the family didn't go to church. They dropped me off at church. And this guy, I swear to you, I thought his name was Deacon. His name is not Deacon. He was a Deacon at the church. But I thought his name was Deacon. Well, Deacon presented me this message of hope and said, what are you going to do with it? I said, I'm going to put my faith in Christ. And they threw me in the water a week or two later. But it wasn't complicated. 12-year-old boy could figure it out, even if he couldn't have children too, he'd get four. I mean, not a big deal. You know, you're all on your way to meet the Savior. We don't always think about it. We have all these plans in the middle, what we're going to do with the vacation coming up, and what we're going to eat, all these things, and, you know, retirement, all those things. You're on your way to meet the Savior. And the question is, who's going to be there because you pointed them out to them? Because you passed on this message. I had drawn the shortest straw in the bag one time and was put in charge of middle school boys at summer camp. two years in a row I think they have to have up that way. But we presented the gospel to these boys and one year a number of them came to Christ and it wasn't you know raise your hand if you want to ask Jesus in your heart. We talked about this stuff I'm telling you about. They didn't have a problem understanding it. They didn't have a problem realizing they do some bad things. They lied and cheated and you know, and does these things, and they got it. This one little boy came up to me crying, and I thought he was probably, you know, maybe crying for joy. Some people do that. They sort of see the reality, and they receive the gift, and they cry tears of joy. His tears were because he said, who's going to tell my parents? I don't want to be there without them. See, this message is one of urgency. You're going to tell your parents. You're going to live out this faith before them, and it's one of urgency. Who will be there because you warned them to be ready, to live a fall in their lamps, looking for the Lord's return with great joy? We have a message of hope. Our job is to point people to Christ in our conversations in a very natural way. That looks different at different times. You're not always going to be able to be a deal closer, but sometimes you get that opportunity. In a lot of ways, you know, Billy Graham was a deal-closer. I know a lot of people that would give a testimony that were saved in the Billy Graham crusade because he was a deal-closer. But if you ask them, you'll find out there were a lot of other people pointing in that direction. There were people that might have twisted their arm a little bit to be there. Okay, so it took all the people in the chain having that conversation. Someone's going to be the deal-closer. Someone will say, well, I'm not sure what I'll say. Read Matthew 10. Jesus knew you wouldn't know what to say. He knew I wouldn't know what to say all the time. He said, look, when you get in that situation, God, the Holy Spirit's gonna tell you what to say. Just run with it, it'll work out. You don't have to be that clever. He's gonna give you the words. This message is not that complicated. He'll give you the words. There was this man named Brother Grundy that a long time ago I've mentioned, but I met him late in his life, but earlier in mine, we had one baby, little bitty thing, he was still right up in the basket, and met at Walmart. He ended up coming to our church, which was kind of odd, because I said, well, we just started going to church, you know, and he ended up coming. This man was an evangelist, and what he had done, there used to be a facility around there that was like an arcade, a bowling alley, a laser tag, and all these things for teenagers. Here's a man that's closer to 80 than 70 who gets a job there just so he can talk to these teenagers about Jesus, and he does it all the time. And then he's down there one time on the weekend, he was a carpenter, he was doing some new cabinets in there, and he's boiling water for his coffee and all that. The fire department shows up and says, there's a gas leak around here. It's lethal in here. He ain't got a mask on. He's burning stuff. They don't know why the place hasn't blown up. And he walks them out, and they all got their masks on, and talks to them about Jesus. He evangelized a young lady in the drive-thru line working at McDonald's, and then had a heart attack near the end of his life. Spent a week in the hospital, and several people on the staff of the doctors would be able to tell you the testimony. They're Christians, because he kept telling them about Jesus. It just had become what he does. It wasn't like there was a lot of thought and prayer and fasting. Oh, I wonder if I'm going to tell them about Jesus. If he had the opportunity, he told them about Jesus. Sometimes he didn't have the opportunity. He walked up and confronted people and he told them about Jesus. That's what he did to me. What a model. What a model. Well, we're going to have a short time of meditation and a song. What I would say to you, If you don't have that moment, you don't need to remember the date and time and what color shoes you were wearing, but if you can't remember, there was a time when you placed personal faith in Christ. It wasn't that you just said, went to church or grew up in church. You know, your parents said you were a Christian or they baptized you as a baby. Those are all good things. But there has to be a moment when you place faith in Him. Now's the time you can do it. You don't have to come to the back to do that, but we're going to be at the back. You may have a question. I'm happy to talk to you about it. But do business with God. Don't leave it for another day. No other days are promised. You're already a Christian. Just be reminded of the urgency of this message. That's probably for most of us here, the big takeaway. We can get all enrolled in all the peripheral issues and the political issues and all these things that Satan's keeping us focused on. The Bible says, come back to the main message. Our Father in heaven, you're so good to us, and we recognize none of us would be Christians, none of us would be called your children, none of us would have the adoption of sons, none of us would have the forgiveness of sins, the reconciliation, the redemption, the propitiation you provided for us without what you did through Jesus Christ on the Roman cross in the first century. We recognize it's all of grace and none of words and none of myself, none of my resources, none of my repenting and none of my sorrow in deciding I'm going to be a different person and clean my life up. It was simply that you If you provided the free gift and in a moment in time we have received that gift by faith alone in your Son, the risen Savior, Lord, move in our hearts in a powerful way. If someone here hasn't received that yet and they haven't taken the free gift by simply placing faith and trust in Christ, put it in their hearts. Make this their moment. Somebody in this recording, maybe not even in this convent, make this their moment as they hear these words to choose you and we'll give you the glory in Christ's name. Amen.