Another legacy is given to us, found in 2 Timothy, and it's chapter four, verses six to eight. 2 Timothy, and this is the legacy of Paul. He says, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future, there is light up for me, the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all those who love his appearing. God has laid up for us a crown of righteousness, which is awarded to Paul is what he's saying. This is what he knows is going to happen. This is his legacy. and it will be given to us, all those who are waiting and looking towards the love of his appearing. Is that a part of your heart and mind this day? That you look forward to, and you have this love of the reappearing of the return of Jesus Christ. That he is going to fix what's broken in this world. Like in my prayer, I said, you know, Lord, we look forward to you returning. and repairing what's broken in this world. Do you have that love of His appearing? Are you looking with an anticipation, eager anticipation, or are you looking with fear? Because there are going to be people in that day, that faithful day of judgment, where the Lord's gonna say, but I never knew you. And you're gonna say, but Lord, I did great things in your name. I prophesied, I preached in your name. I cast out demons in your name. I did miracles in your name. And he's gonna say, but I never knew you. That's a scary passage over there in Matthew, I think chapter seven. You know, you can know God in your head, but you don't know him here in your heart. As I heard one preacher say this, 18 inches between heaven and hell. Because you can know God in your head, and I know God, and I go to church, and I've always gone to church, and my parents always brought me to church, and I've been a Christian since I was a kid. and you know everything up here in your mind, but you don't know Him in your heart. You've never come to that point in life where you said, Lord, it's me. I'm the sinner. I have need of salvation. Lord, Break me. Lord, reveal to me the sin of my life. Show me this. Forgive me, Lord. I've sinned against you. I am tired of going my own way. See, that's repentance. That's changing your mind about who you are. There's many people today, and you talk to anybody in the street, hey, are you going to go to heaven someday? And they say, well, I hope so. You know, I've been pretty good. I've been pretty good. See, they don't have an understanding of God's righteousness, God's holiness, God's plan of salvation. They don't have an understanding because they think that it's what I do in order to bring salvation into my life. It's not what God has done, but what can I do? Every religion in the world says, what can I do to please God? Every religion in the world says that, except Christianity. It's backwards, or it's the correct way. And that is, what did God do to save his people? God gave his son that day on the cross as a sacrifice for your sins and for my sins. God did that. It had nothing to do with us. By grace, you have been saved through faith. All you have to do by faith is turn and look to the cross and you will be saved. That's it. It's by faith. It's all what God did. All we do is say, thank you, God, for doing what you did. Lord, I'm a sinner and I come before you. Jesus, your blood that day was poured out. Your sacrificial life was for me that day. You did it all, God. I didn't do a thing. There's nothing I can do to bring salvation into my life. That's the difference between Christianity and every other religion in the world. What will your testimony be? What will your legacy be? What was Paul's legacy? He said, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith. There are so many people that I know that have not kept the faith. They live their lives, but they have not finished well. This is a story, original story, of someone who was rehabbing an old graveyard that they found. And they found this tombstone that had been buried deep in the grass, had been pushed over, and they were straightening out this graveyard. And the gentleman straightened out the stone and cleared away the weeds, and it says on the stone, it says, pause, stranger, when you pass me by, for as you are, so once was I. As I am now, so will you be. Then prepare unto death and follow me." And then he saw somebody had inscribed with a crude instrument of some sort into the stone below this epitaph. And it says, to follow you, I'm not content until I know which way you went. We have a decision to make today, whether or not we're going to change direction. And that's called repentance. I had the opportunity of doing a funeral a couple weeks ago. About two months ago, I was in Lowe's and you know the home improvement store Lowe's. I live to that store. I love that store. I'm always in that store. And one day, actually, the phone rang, and I heard my son say, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, and hang up the phone. And I said, who was that? He says, oh, it was Lowe's. They were wondering why Dad hasn't been in today. He was joking. But I was in Lowe's a couple months ago, and there was this guy in back of me, and he was really, really upset. And he was pacing, and he's swearing, you know, and he's just angry. that this line that I was in was going a little bit too long and it was this little older woman cashier and her name was Bev. I started on her tag and I always try to catch the cashier's names or the bag boy or whoever they are's name so I can call them by their name rather. It's more personal. It's making them real people rather than just a cashier person. And so I saw this guy in back, I mean, he's swearing, he's angry, he's got boards, he's trying to check out and he must be a contract or whatever. And so I just stepped out of line. And he said, oh, no, that's all right. I'm already late. And so he, and I said, no, sir. I said, really, I don't have anything that I'm rushing to. Go ahead. Go ahead of me. Obviously, you have a lot to do. And I understand that. I've been in that situation before. So he, oh, thank you. Thank you. He gets up the register. And he was complaining loud enough that this woman, this cashier, could have heard him. He checks out, he's angry, he goes flying out the door and he's gone. And I said to the cashier, I said, I don't know how you do it. Day in and day out having people like that treating you that way. And she said, well, you know, the customer's always right and that's how we make money and this and that. And she said, very quietly, she said, I really appreciate what you did. That was very kind. She said, you don't see many people do that. And I said, well, I'm not really in a hurry. I said, there's other things in life that are more important to me than waiting in line. She also didn't realize I lived in Latin America for many, many years and waiting in line was just part of your job. your life. But two weeks after that, I was back in line again. And Bev was the cashier. And she said, oh, are you an electrician? And because I was buying electrical switches, I said, no, ma'am, I'm not. And she said, oh, do you know any good electricians? I said, good ones? No. And she said, Well, because, you know, I said, why? And she said, well, because I have a problem with a switch in my kitchen. And I'm thinking to myself, just a switch in a kitchen. I said, it's not that big of a deal. I'm just thinking that to myself. And I said, well, there's nobody at your home that can fix that. And she said, well, my husband started to fix it. He pulled the switch out of the wall, but he doesn't know how to repair it. And he's too weak to go up and down the stairs to shut the circuit breaker off. He's just too tired. He can't do it. He's had 30 some odd blood transfusions in the month. That's one to two a day. And she says it's what's keeping him alive. He has leukemia. And he just doesn't, you know, of course my heart is breaking now. Here's this little cashier who we have no clue what's going on in her life. She's just a cashier. But to us, she's just this person that we have no contact with. We don't know her. She's not part of our life. Yet she's suffering terribly because her husband's dying of 50. How many years? 56 years, I think, of marriage. Her husband's dying and she's working just to make ends meet. You know, my heart breaks. And I said to her, I said, I said, Bev, I said, you don't know me. I'm in here all the time. I said, if you want, I'll come by the house and look at the switch. I do a lot of electricity. And she said, well, what do you do for a living? Because I'm there every day. And I said, well, I'm a preacher. And she said, oh, well, I could never have you come in my house. And I'm like, no, no, seriously, let me come over and look at it. I've done a lot of electricity. And so I had an opportunity. I gave her my number, I said, give me a call if you feel comfortable, if your husband's okay with it, I'll come by the house. So we lived in the next town over, I drove over, she called me, and I went over to the house, I brought my meter with me and a couple other things, and I looked at the switch, and coming out of the wall were these wires. Just, it was a mess. And unfortunately, it was a three-way switch. I don't know if you guys know what three-way switches are. They're not fun. They're never fun. It's a switch there and a switch there that turns on the same light. They have travel wires. They're no fun to do. And to make it worse, none of these wires are marked. He had just cut them off. So I have no clue what anything went to. And I'm like, oh man, you know, I'm looking at this mess and I go downstairs and shut the circuit breaker. I'm like, Lord, I need your help here because I don't know how to fix this. And the Lord heard my prayer and miraculously I fixed the switch, got the lights working. But I had two hours after that time to sit down with her husband and talk to him about eternal life. For two hours, I sat there and talked with Billy, and we talked about life. We talked about where he was going. It was a fearing death. What was his greatest regrets in life? What was his family life like? And we just got this bond right away just talking and just having a good time talking in the living room. I went back because he didn't have a Bible that he could understand. I went back with an easy read Bible for him with large print and I told him to read the Gospel of John and told him to write his questions down. And then I went back a second time and his wife said that he couldn't have visitors and all that. But then I got a phone call from Bev about three weeks after that, which was just like two weeks ago, whatever. And Jane and I were up in Maine, and I got a phone call. And it was Bev, and she said, Billy wants to see you. He's not doing well. Hospice is here. He's done. All right, so we drive home from Maine, and I go to visit Billy. How you doing, Billy? Good. And he said, but I'm done with the medicine. I'm done with the transfusions. He said, I'm ready. And so I said to him, I said, well, what about your questions? Are you ready to meet Jesus Christ face to face? And he said, there's just one thing that I kind of wish I had. And that is, I kind of wish there was somebody who died and then came back and told us what it was like. And I said, oh, well, somebody did. I said, he came back after three days and he said, you know what? I'm leaving here and I'm going to prepare a place for you in heaven. And he smiled. He says, I believe in Jesus. I said, amen, praise the Lord. So that Wednesday, that was Monday. I said, I can't come back on Tuesday, the next day. I said, I'll be here Wednesday. And he said, okay, thank you so much. And he said, oh, before you leave, he said, can you do my funeral? And I said, sure, I'll do that. So I leave, and so I get a phone call the next morning, Tuesday morning, and Bev said he passed away. And I'm like, okay. And she said, would you come over to the house? So I went over to the house and did the, you know, the preparations for the burial and all that stuff. And then I had the opportunity to preach the gospel message to the entire family at the funeral. And Bev and I, needless to say, have become very close. And people at the funeral said that they were amazed at the story of Lowe's. and how this guy out of nowhere, all of a sudden, is in their life. And I brought up the point in the funeral message that God orchestrated all of that because he desires none to perish, but that all come to repentance. And he knew the heart of Billy. He knew that Billy was at the end of his life and that he was going to meet him face to face and God gave him another chance. And Billy heard the gospel. He trusted the Lord. And because of that, you're going to meet him someday. He had a beautiful legacy. His kids were at the funeral and they all talked extremely highly of him. And I could tell it was genuine. It was genuine. The first thing we need to do is repent. Change our mind about the direction that we are going. In Jeremiah 31, 19, it says, I repented. And after I was instructed, I smote my thigh. I was ashamed and also humiliated because I bore the reproach of my youth." This is a testimony of a man who truly understands repentance. He came to that point of being ashamed, smoting his thigh, and humiliated because he had the reproach of the sins of his youth. He felt it come upon him. Have you ever felt that point in life where you've recognized your sin? Where you've recognized your sin, Lord, it's me. Lord, I don't deserve your grace. Have you ever come to that point? That's true repentance. Recognizing who you are and where you're coming from. It's humbling to say you're sorry to your children, to your wife. And sometimes it doesn't work. It's humbling to go back and reflect on your life and say, wow, I made a mess of it. Like I said last week, God is a God of second chances. He is able to restore unto us the years that the locusts have eaten, as we read in Joel chapter two last week. God is able to repair your family. I have seen marriages healed, I have seen young kids reunited with their parents, I have seen people's lives transformed by the gospel. It is the only thing that will change your life. You can go after money, you can go after seances, you can go after all the luxuries of this world, whatever the world has to offer. Nothing will bring true joy or peace. Nothing can. And God made it that way. God is a jealous God. He will not allow you or me to find pleasure, true pleasure, true happiness, true peace in anything except himself, his son. He won't allow that to happen. You can go off into sexual immorality, you can go off into drugs, you can go off into booze, you can go off into all these things, or selfishness, putting yourself on the throne, And none of those things are gonna bring true joy and true peace into your life. It won't happen. It can't happen because God will not allow it because he's a jealous God. If you don't take love and joy and peace in his son, you're not gonna find it anywhere else. That's a true understanding of repentance. But the things, it says in Acts 3, 18 and 19, but the things which God announced beforehand by mouth, through all the prophets, and his Christ would suffer and he would thus fulfill, therefore repent and return so that your sins may be wiped out in order that a time of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. See, repentance, after we truly repent, We truly say we're sorry for what we've done in the past. It's really just an act of faith. That's all it is. It's an act of faith, of just saying, that's the way I was, that's what I've done. Lord, I recognize it. It wasn't of you. Then, times of refreshings may come from the presence of the Lord. See, now the Lord moves into our life, and times of refreshing can come. This is the hope. This is what Jesus says, I've come to give life and life abundantly. We're not supposed to be living lives of drabness, of brownness, of grayness. We're supposed to be living lives of color that God has promised to come and give to us. Jesus says it himself. Do we have that? If we don't, we might need to reflect on what's holding us back from that. Are we putting anything in front of him in his presence? I recently had an opportunity to disciple a gentleman who was a self-made millionaire. He had everything. He had the big beautiful home. He had the wife and the kids and the picket fence in his front yard. He had everything that most people would dream of having. Businesses, money coming in. He's all set for life. He retired at, I think, 42, 43 years old, and all of a sudden, his heart started giving him problems. And all of a sudden, he was broken, and he realized that he could die. That's what the doctor said. And all of a sudden, at this one time in his life, the Lord brought him to his knees, and he said, I need to find out more about God. And I had the opportunity at that time, coincidentally, God, brought me into his life, and we had an opportunity to do mentoring together, and I was a disciple to him and his wife. And his son made an interesting confession. One of his sons said to him, Mom, I don't even know that man that's living in our house. He had changed so drastically from that man going after the almighty dollar, that man, that self-made millionaire, that man who had everything and nobody told him what to do. He was the head honcho in everything. He was strong, he's powerful, and in the presence of men when he stands there, and yet he had nothing. His children didn't even recognize him when he changed. Who is that man living in our house? That's what the gospel can do, can change. He said, Walter, it was like a two-by-four hitting me in the back of my legs and bringing me to my knees. He said, that's what I feel. And he says, now I preach. And he is unbelievable. Now as he's teaching other men now, he's saying, now I preach. If you have not been hit by that two-by-four in the back of your legs, you have not been broken. You have not come to that point of repentance, of saying, Lord, it's me. And that's what he kept saying. He kept saying this over and over. He said, Lord, it's me. It's not my wife. Lord, it's me. It's not my kids. Lord, it's me. It's not my business partners or all those other people. He finally bowed his head before the Lord. D.L. Moody had another statement that I like. It says, if I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself. I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself. And in 2 Peter 3, 9, the Lord is not slow about his promises as some counsel on this, but is patient towards you, not wishing any to perish, but that all come to repentance. Genesis 15, six says, Abraham believed the Lord and was credited to Him as righteousness. God is asking us today to simply trust Him. Just trust Him. Are you tired of trying to do it yourself? Give up and let Him take your life. Trust Him. I'd like to end with this, Jesus's legacy, the legacy of Jesus. found in John 17, four to six. I have glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you've gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of this world. Yours, they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. As we think back on hearing God's word today, it would be wise for us to think about the legacy that we're leaving. Some of you have some bridges to cross. You're gonna have to go back to your children, go back to your wives, back to your family members, back to old bosses, back to whatever the situation. Bridges that you've burnt. Bridges that you've burnt with others. And you have to repair those bridges, at least on your side of the bridge. You have to go back and say, Lord, I want to repair this bridge with my son, with my daughter, with my mom, with my dad. Why? Because you're a godly person made in the image of God, and he is calling you to do something that is difficult, yes, but that will bring true freedom into your life. He doesn't tell us to do these things because he wants us to go through difficult times. He does these things so that we will be free. We'll be free. from hurts that we're carrying on our shoulders. Some of you are carrying hurts with you. I know that because we're human. We're all in this together. We all have had things happen in our life that hurt. And we need to lift these things and give them to the Lord and say, Lord, take them from me. Show me how to repair these old bridges that I have built between me and my mom, me and my dad. And they might not accept it, and that's okay. That's between them and God. But are you doing your part? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you. We thank you for this time. We thank you for the opportunity to open up your word. It is my prayer, Lord, you know this is my heart's desire, that we walk away from here encouraged, not burden laid with more weight on our shoulders. Please, Lord, I pray that that's not the situation, but that we are liberated, that we are freed from the burdens. You say that your burden is light. and that you're willing to take it on yourself. You did it that day on the cross. Oh, Lord, I come before you today and pray. We ask that you take our burdens from us, that we would walk free from here, that we would be the lights in the testimonies, because it says in Psalm 51, Lord, that as we confess our sins and we give them to you, our burdens will be lifted, then we will be able to share the gospel in a new way, and that we will be the lights in our community, in our families, in our jobs, that people will say, what is it about you? Lord, we want that. We want to be a light in our community. We love you, Lord. We truly thank you. And may it start today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you.