Good morning. Happy Sunday to you all. We're going to be in John chapter 5 today. And we're working on a series going through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. And in a kind of a summary fashion, looking at what he really accomplished, what he came to do, what we know, and why we know it. And it's important for us to frequently come back to this ministry, to this life of Christ, as far as the narrative of the Bible and the history of our salvation. the ministry, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is the central activity in all that we experience in Christ. And so in John chapter 5, we're going to look at a very profound and important teaching that comes from the words of Jesus here as recorded by a servant John. And it's important for us to understand this one thing is we're going to look at a lot of details today a quite a bit of his text and we're going to go from verse 18 all the way through verse 47 a piece at a time. But I want you to understand this as we go. Here's the main point. that Jesus Christ claims to be equal with the Father in every way and he proves it by the testimony of many witnesses. So it's important, it's foundational to the teaching of Jesus Christ, and to understanding him, and to being able to follow him. It's important for us to understand this great lesson, because many people will argue, and many people do, that while Jesus was certainly a good person, and he was a good teacher, and he certainly changed things, but he wasn't really God, and he never claimed to be God. And in fact, we're gonna see here very plainly, he did. And the interesting thing is his opposition understood very clearly that he was claiming to be God, and for that reason they killed him. So if you do not believe Jesus Christ to be God incarnate, you have to side with the Jews and say that they were right to kill him for blasphemy, for claiming to be equal with God. And I think that today you'll see that's not a side that you want to be on. And so we're gonna start in verse 18 here, and I'm gonna read through verse 30 initially, and listen very closely to Jesus' flow of his argumentation. Context is that he is already stirring up trouble, having healed a man on the Sabbath. And the leaders perceived that he had broken their Sabbath law by doing so. And so Jesus was already meeting a great deal of resistance in his ministry for these reasons. And so Jesus is now going to assert his authority to do these things. And that's why I start with verse 18. All this had happened in this healing of this man on the Sabbath. And he says, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing, and greater works than these will He show Him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Let us pray. Father God, let he who has ears to hear, hear these words. Let them be received as they truly are, the very Word of God. And Lord, let us understand these things and how they apply to our lives, how it is that they ought to shape the way that we build our days, how it is that they ought to shape the way that we worship you and know you and relate to you. and Lord, how it is we ought then to serve you. We pray that you be glorified in this reading of your scripture, and Lord, I pray that you will work past the weaknesses of the messenger and even the receivers to make yourself known. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen. While Jesus claims equality with God, by claiming equality to many things in this passage, that I've enumerated in your bulletin. I've been trying and making an effort to include more notes for you in your bulletins and also to be able to summarize each and every sermon that I do with a singular sentence so that you can take it home with you and remember indeed what was taught. So if you did not get a bulletin, it's a good excuse to get up and stretch your legs and get a little relief and kind of keep yourself awake for a few more minutes. But I want to show you how he claimed equality with God. He claimed equality with God by claiming equality to, first of all, God's power and works. If you look at verse 19, he said this. He says, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. So he's claiming to be able to do everything that the father does, he does likewise. There is no man that could do everything that God does. He is claiming equality then with God. You look at verse 20, he also claims to have knowledge of everything that the father is doing. For the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. What human being could handle and a revelation of everything that God is doing. Do you realize we couldn't handle a revelation of everything that God is doing just in this room? We could not possibly comprehend everything that he's doing in every life, in every hearer of this message today. No mere man could even keep track of what God is doing in the 12 disciples that he chose. It would be impossible. Only God could know all the thoughts of a man. And only God certainly could know all the ways in which he's dealing and working in the world. Verse 20 is a clear claim that he indeed is equal with God. If we look at verse 21 and also verses 25 and 26 and down to verse 29, it comes back through, it kind of recurs through the passage that Jesus claims equality with God by claiming equality to God's resurrection power and authority. This is the power and authority to grant eternal life. And I want to point out that he says, to whom he will. In other words, he didn't just designate Jesus as the vessel through whom eternal life would come to people, but he grants to him the right to give it to whom he will. That is really important to understand. No human being even filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and even sinless from birth, if that were possible for a human being, could handle that responsibility. Jesus doesn't have to ask permission. He is not a blind servant. He is not some kind of a discompassionate force. He's a person who happens to be God, he is the decision maker. He claimed equality with God by also claiming equalities to God's authority to judge mankind. Now that's kind of implicit in the idea that if God gives him authority to give eternal life to whom he will, well then he's also got to be able to judge. Judge he will he says in verse 22 that you know as the father raises dead gives him life So also he does to whom he will and then if you go down to verse 27 it says this he has given him authority to execute judgment because he's the son of man and He says don't marvel at this don't be surprised for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and Come out Of course, he speaks of a time, and this happens in a way when he resurrects the dead during his earthly ministry, but it happens ultimately when at the voice of Jesus, all the dead will rise. The dead in Christ and those who are not, and they will rise to a judgment, and then he will appoint on that day eternal life or not. to those who have done good, the resurrection of life, to those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. Jesus has this authority in himself to do this. In verse 23, and I think this would be overlooked, that all may honor the son just as they honor the father. He's claiming equal honor with God. The highest king The highest priest in all the history of Israel, the greatest of the leaders among them would never claim to have equal honor with God. This by itself is blasphemous. Even an angel shows up at times and people will try to worship the angel and he goes, no, no, no, save that for God. What is an angel? Well, an angel that serves God is a created being. It's a great being. They appear in many ways to be more powerful than we are. And the interesting thing is none of the angels that are still serving God have ever sinned. And they show up and people are afraid. And the people, they don't know what to do, so they bow down maybe to worship the angel. The angel's like, no, no, no, you're not gonna do that. You saved that for God. But here Jesus is saying, no, you give me equal honor with the Father. Any one of these alone, any one of these statements that we're studying all by itself is enough to show that Jesus was claiming equality with God. But He chains them together one after another and in rapid fire manner spews them out at us so that there can be no doubt. Look in verse 26. And this is amazing to me, for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. In other words, He is claiming here to have life in Himself. He's claiming then to be able to be the author of life. He is claiming a self-existence. No one made him to be. There was never a time when he was not. And there'll never be a time when he will not be. That's why we read from Revelation earlier, because it's clearly speaking of Jesus in that passage, and he is the one who was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the eternal self-existent God. These things simply cannot be assigned to men. It's beyond the capacity of men or angels to do what he's proposing here. And they are no less than absolute equality with God. And it's okay if you disagree with me on any one of these points. But you still have to wrestle with the others. If you can find some way to contrive that, well, he's not really claiming equal honor, he's not really claiming self-existence or the right to judge, if you can x out any one of these, you've still got all the others. And I'll challenge you that they hang together. If you believe that a mere man can do these things, you greatly overestimate man, or you greatly underestimate God. who is described as indescribable. Now the Jews got it. They understood this claim. They were seeking to kill him even before he said these things because he was claiming equality with the Father in the previous passage. They understood that Jesus was trying to make himself equal with God. Now, were they right to condemn him? Or were they wrong? Well, clearly he was claiming equality with God. That would be a crime if it were not true. The Jews understood it. Later in the book of John, we're going to see this surface again and again, and it's a recurring theme through all the Gospels. I just looked through John and look in chapter 10, verse 33, the Jews answered him, it is not for good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man, make yourself God. So they're still on about this, you're making yourself God thing. Chapters later, after Jesus has had all this opportunity to explain himself. and they're still making the charge. In matter of fact, they're going to send him to the cross for it. Look in chapter 19, verse 7 here at what they say here. So after he's been arrested and he's been taken and he's been tried, and then they're about to deliver him over to be crucified. In chapter 19, verse seven, it says, the Jews answered him, we have a law. They're explaining to Pilate why he has to crucify Jesus. We have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God. Make no mistake about it. He did not leave us the wiggle room to suggest he was just a good teacher. He was one of many ways. No, he claimed to be God himself. And this is very, very important teaching. And you might say, yeah, I know I've got this, but the question is, can you teach it? No longer shall you listen to things in such a way as just to understand, but you need to listen to things in such a way as a believer in Jesus Christ, having the ministry of reconciliation commended into our hands, we have to learn everything as if we're going to have to turn around and teach it that next day. Because we may have to. And God might use that in order that someone would be saved. See, we all have friends that are Mormons. The Mormons claim that Jesus was a created being, that there was a time when he came to be. But here is Jesus, and he's claiming equality to God before being crucified, before being raised from the dead by God, before being exalted by God to his right hand. He's claiming equality with God. Well, that kind of puts another nail in the coffin of the Mormon's deadly doctrine that Jesus was a created being. But then Jesus sums up and clarifies his relationship to the Father in verse 30, which is why we went all the way through verse 30 here in chapter 5. It's kind of a summary verse. He says, I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just. Because I seek not my own will, but the will of him, who sent me, that they are perfectly unified. He's equal to God, but he's not a rogue. He's not another God. He's in perfect unity with the Father all the time. And that's why through the centuries, Ever since the formulation of the New Testament, the Apostles' Doctrine being assembled together, that the Church has formulated the Holy Trinity to be a singular God distinct in three persons. And Jesus is a distinct person within that singular Godhead, Father and Son and Spirit perfectly united in purpose and will. Jesus is not the Father. And this is important for us to understand because it's also not a oneness Pentecostal modalism. All of us have friends that hold to the idea that, well, there's just one God and sometimes he's Jesus and sometimes he's the Father and sometimes he's the Spirit. But there's many, many problems with that idea. One of them being the fact that Jesus speaks of the Father and of the Spirit. He speaks of them in the present tense, and he speaks of them in the third person. Now, grammatically, you know what that means, right? Speaking of them in the present tense means here's Jesus in the present saying, the Father, who is in heaven currently, presently. Why would he say that if he indeed was the Father? And then he begins to teach his disciples about the Holy Spirit and he speaks of the Holy Spirit in the present. And much in the future as far as what the Holy Spirit's ministry will be to them. But he also speaks of them in the third person. In other words, that's another person. Speaks of the Father like he's a distinct person from Jesus himself. He's not your weird friend that speaks of himself in the third person. Anybody ever have one of those? Yeah, it's kind of odd. But that's not what Jesus is doing. He says, I am, many times. Read through the Gospel of John. Circle every time he says, I am. It's okay to circle it in your Bible, or use a highlighter or something. But circle every time he says, I am. And he says, I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the living water. He says all these fantastic I am statements. But he never says I am the father or I am the spirit. Jesus is equal with God. And now he calls to himself after verse 30 here he calls to himself various witnesses to this great truth. In verse 31 through 36 here, he talks about John the Baptist. And this is important to understand. In verse 31, he says, If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true. Now when he says true in the range of meaning for that word, What he's really referring to here is he's referring to the law given to the Jews that says that all things should be established by two or more witnesses. So he's not saying that he would be lying about himself. He's just saying that legally it would not be a valid testimony if it were only him. He's not saying he wouldn't be true. He's saying it wouldn't be a valid testimony, so let me call some witnesses. Look what he says in verse 32. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he is born witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John." So he calls John the Baptist, and we talked about him a great deal last time, so I'll not spend a lot of time on him. But again, notice woven into this, and we talked about last time with John the Baptist, when you deal with John the Baptist, you have to deal with the Old Testament scriptures that predicted him. And you have to deal with the event of when Jesus went to be baptized by John the Baptist of the voice from heaven of the Father and the Holy Spirit visibly coming down to rest upon him that was revealed through John. And so this is important. You also have in John the Baptist the life of a holy preacher of truth. Just like the other Old Testament prophets who stood up to kings and stood up to false prophets and stood up to the people of their day and declared the truth and declared this is what God was saying. Here was John the Baptist in the flesh right there with Jesus doing the same thing. And just as the prophets brought news of the details of what would happen in and through and eventually to Israel, and it all came to pass, so John the Baptist came in the same way to say, one's coming after me who's greater and you had better listen to him. He goes to a greater one. He says in verse 36, he has a greater witness than John the Baptist. He says, the testimony that I have is greater than that of John, for the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I'm doing bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. The works that Jesus did form all by themselves a very primary appeal to his identity. And in other places, including prior in this chapter, Jesus healed on the Sabbath purposefully to bring up the topic, that he indeed has authority over the Sabbath, and to furthermore show that they themselves had misunderstood the purpose of the Sabbath. And then there's a time, very interestingly, in Matthew 9, And Mark 2 and Luke 5, three times it's accounted in the Gospels, that people bring to Jesus a friend of theirs that was paralyzed. And they couldn't get through, so they cut the hole in the roof. You remember the story, right? They break through the roof to lower this guy down to Jesus to be healed. And there's so many great lessons in that, including there's great friends, and including things like you better get Allstate. Repair your roof in case you're having a Bible study and someone just got to get in. But Jesus is sitting there and he says to the man who's lowered through the roof, quite obviously being helped by other people, obviously infirmed with paralysis of some kind, and he says to him, your sins are forgiven. And the guy's gotta be thinking, that's great, but I'd really like to get up and be able to walk to work on Monday. But no, Jesus says your sins are forgiven. Why does he say that? To prove a point. And right away, the Jews jump on him. He's blaspheming. And the reason they said he's blaspheming, because they knew that only God has the authority to forgive sins. So Jesus brings this up as a teaching moment, and he says, which is easier? For me to say your sins are forgiven, or for me to say rise up and walk? And he says, but so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, says to the man, take up your mat and walk. He proved who he was by his great works. And those signs continued with the apostles. but ceased after the apostles, so that the apostolic message, which we have recorded in the New Testament, the apostolic message was endorsed by the same kind of signs, proving the source of those signs and the source of the gospel itself. The gospel, folks, is proven. So he appeals to the works that he's doing, but then he also appeals to the father himself. Look at verses 37, 38. The father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you've never heard, his form you've never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. Now he's saying, and now he's speaking to, you have to understand, he's speaking to the opposition leaders here. And he says to them, you haven't heard his voice. Now some that were with him, I think heard the voice when he was baptized. John the Baptist apparently heard it. That a voice from heaven. They didn't hear it because they weren't there, because they were hardened of heart, and they weren't listening to John, and they weren't following John, let alone Jesus. But he appeals to the testimony of the Father and by mentioning the voice, he is in fact appealing back to that voice. And there are three times in the ministry of Jesus that a voice comes from heaven and speaks that this is his son. It happens at his baptism when he says, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased. It happens again at the transfiguration. When the three disciples go up on the mountain with him, and Jesus transfigured before him, and Moses and Elijah are there, a voice says, this is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased, listen to him. And then in John chapter 12, where Jesus says, Father, glorify your name, then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The testimony of the Father. And the Father, of course, sending the Holy Spirit and providing the scriptures that Jesus was fulfilling and assigning to him the works to do are all an endorsement of the Father. But then Jesus appeals to what? Yet one more. He appeals to the scriptures themselves. Look at verse 39. We'll read through 47 here. He says in 39, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my father's name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you'll receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? The entire Old Testament is about Jesus Christ and he is there continuously. He is there in concept, being the Lamb of God that was the first sacrifice because of sins, for the covering of sin. He is there in the typology of many of the faithful people of God, including Joseph and his namesake Joshua and his father David. He is there in a typology of many of the laws and things that God gave the Israelites. He's seen in the tabernacle and in the cities of refuge and in the feasts that were arranged for him to fulfill. He is seen in the work of the high priest. He is seen in the design of the mercy seat. He is seen in the very mission of God. And he is typified in the mode in which he would function as king and prophet and sacrifice. And he is even there in detail of how he would be rejected, how he would be crucified, and how one day he will have total victory and rule over all the nations with a rod of iron. The scriptures have it covered. And it's interesting, he points all the way back to Moses because the leadership here was kind of a mixed bag of people. There were some that only accepted the Pentateuch. There were some that accepted the entire Old Testament. So he goes back to the least common denominator, goes back to the Pentateuch. That's why if you're in mixed company, go ahead and pull out the King James. You don't know who you've got. So he goes back to the Pentateuch. He goes back to the Old Testament so that he's got everyone covered. And he says, Moses spoke about me. Now some of you are like I was the first time I ever heard that. What does he mean? Moses spoke about him. In Deuteronomy chapter 18, Moses says, look, one's going to come after me. He's going to be kind of like me, but not, and you need to listen to him. Now the interesting thing is many prophets came after Moses, and indeed the instruction that Moses said would apply to them. They came after Moses. They were a prophet of God. They proved themselves by their words. And so they ought to be listened to but this one in particular that was pointing to in a very special way. So the scriptures indeed bear witness to Jesus. By implication, of course, then that brings the Holy Spirit into it, both in the works that he was doing and appearing at the baptism and empowering his ministry, but also in inspiring the scriptures themselves. And indeed, the Holy Spirit was in John the Baptist, from the womb even, and the Holy Spirit filled Jesus, was the power behind his miracles. This is how the Father, even today, communicates to us. and reinforces to us the truth about the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is one, and we must not deny. The implications to this teaching are very practical, and I know that's a lot of stuff, but you'll get it all when you read over it again. And remember, the one point is this. The one point is that Jesus claimed equality with God, and still does, And he proved it with all these many witnesses. And what does this teach us? Well, it teaches us, first of all, that Jesus is worthy. He is worthy, first of all, of our obedience. Now, obedience is part of worship. Worship is not just when we get together and sing songs together. Worship is all that we do to put God at the center of things. And when we proclaim the word, this is worship. When we pray to him, that is worship. When we serve him in the ministry that he has for us, that is worship. And Jesus is worthy then of our obedience, and he is worthy of worship. And this is important. He is so worthy that he is not an option. He is none other than the eternal almighty God. He has entered into his creation. He has declared what he was doing for his creatures. And he has called us to himself. And who are we to turn away? He is not an option. And he is not a co-pilot. Did you hear what Jesus just said about himself? And we want to say that he's our co-pilot, that he's our guide, that he fixes up our life, that he gets us through the day. He's worthy of more than that. Give him the wheel. Put him in charge. Because he is worthy of that position. We dare not put him on a shelf alongside the Buddha, and alongside Allah, and alongside the ancestors people worship, and alongside the Dalai Lama, whoever else comes along claiming some thing. Jesus is not anywhere near them. He is far and above and over them. He is worthy of worship. In Revelation 5, verse 12, there's a glimpse of you and me in heaven. And you know what we're doing there? worshiping Him. We are singing, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. He deserves it all. That's how this applies. It also applies that you may know that your faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ is sure. He claimed to have all these things and he proved it. And his resurrection was the ultimate affirmation that everything he did was right and true. This applies to us also to understand and to reinforce the fact that there's no other name under heaven by which to be saved. Jesus said all these things, he proved all these things, and then he goes on to say, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. That is proven by him. But some would ask the question, what sign do we have today? What do we have to look to, to point to, to prove these things? We don't have the benefit of standing there hearing Jesus say these things to them. We don't have the benefit of being at the baptism with Jesus and hearing the voice of heaven or being at the Mount of Transfiguration. We don't have the benefit of seeing him heal the sick and raise the dead. We don't have those privileges. What do we do? How do we know? Well, we've got two things. that are more than sufficient. We have the Word of God. We have the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God, I believe, is even more important than the Word of God, though they work together and so it's really hard to separate the two. But the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that work together is our witness. And Paul reinforces that the Holy Spirit is important to us because he says that he gives us a spirit that cries, Abba, Father, that testifies to our spirit, that tells us, yes, indeed, you are a child of God. And sometimes in the dark times, and sometimes in the lonely times, and sometimes in the times when maybe we haven't walked with God as we should have over the months or even the years sometimes, that we have a stale time without him and apart from him. we have trouble hearing that voice. But if it was ever there, and we turn to seek him, we are promised by Jesus that those who seek, find. You ever really ponder that issue? If you're really seeking God, you'll find him. And if you are His and the Holy Spirit of God indwells you and He's dealing with you or He has called you and He has saved you, you will find Him. There He'll be. He's faithful. We are surrounded by the Word of God. We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God to remember these things, to write it on our hearts, to convict us and guide us and teach us. But we're also surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. I love that phrase, because you know what a cloud is made up of? It's made up of tiny, microscopic droplets of water. So when we say we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, it's to suggest there are so many that they just form a cloud. We can't even pick out the individual ones. And who are they? Well, they're the heroes of the Old Testament. When a book of Hebrews uses that idea, it brings that forth. Then look at all the heroes in the Old Testament. It goes to list them all. But we also have almost 2,000 years of church history to look back on. Who were these people that stood at the stake and burned just because they wouldn't denounce Jesus? And who are these people that face the lion's teeth because they wouldn't denounce Jesus? And who are these people that risked their lives and lost their lives just to get the word of God into people's hands? Who are these people? They're you and I. by the circumstances of life, but filled with the Holy Spirit of God to bear witness. And everywhere Jesus uses the word witness in this passage is from the word martyrio, where we get our word martyr. He bears witness to these things at the cost of blood. The blood of Christ, the blood of the martyrs, And the Holy Spirit of God bears witness to these things. By way of invitation today, I want to give you one of several invitations here. First of all, if you don't believe that Jesus is equal with the Father, if this is new to you, if you kind of thought, well, maybe these people are right about the Trinity, maybe it's not right, maybe Jesus was a man, this is your opportunity in prayer to repent to God about your false understanding of Him. and to ask him to show you the truth through his word and through his people. It's opportunity to repent of idolatry because anytime we have a false view of God, we're holding up an idolatry and all of us are idolaters to some point that we lack understanding or we make a false assumption about God. So every opportunity when the word corrects us is an opportunity to come to God and repent, Lord, I haven't thought of you right. I've been worshiping something you're not. So fix my heart anew and show yourself to me true. So that's my first part of the invitation. The second part is this. Take your faith then to the next level. This is who you've got behind you. This is the one who paid the price for your sins. This is the one who's called you into his church. He's worthy of everything you could lay down before him, including your very own life and blood. Give a little more to him today. Ask him to take the next chunk of your life that he wants. Is he worthy of it? And let me ask you this, with all this and all his goodness and all his kindness and his profound love for us, will he be a good steward of it? Can you give anything to God that he'll waste? Can you give anything to God that he will not reward you a hundredfold for in the life to come? You can't out give him. But just give the next thing. I'm not asking you to lay your life down from now on, get up at 5 o'clock every morning the rest of your life, and worship him all day, and do nothing but testify to every single person you meet. No, no, no. Just the next thing. One step. Baby steps. Every Sunday. Baby steps. And then finally, and most importantly, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ might be the first time for someone. It might be that you're not certain that you really believe in him and you've been coming and you're interested in him and you enjoy it, but the question is, will you be one of those resurrected to eternal life? And if so, if you were to be asked why, what would your answer be? See, Jesus gives an account of a bunch of people that came to him. in that day, the day of judgment, and they said, hey, Lord, look at all that we did. We did these good things, miraculous things, wonderful things in your name. And Jesus says, away from me, I never knew you. See, it would appear that Jesus had their attention. It would appear that Jesus had their service. It would appear that all their good works came up before Jesus and were known by him, but they themselves were not. He did not have their heart. Turn from your way of doing things and throw yourself at the feet of Jesus for mercy. And get to that point where you can say to Jesus, do with me what you will. He'll be faithful with it. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you today for your word. We thank you for Jesus Christ. For Lord, he came to us Not just in our need, but he came to us in our death. That we were found to be dead. But by your great grace. The voice of Jesus calls out. And the dead. Come to life. And I pray Lord this day that if anybody should be hearing these words. that are in the category of those who do not know you, Lord, I pray that this day that you would grant them to see your face, that they would have the faith to repent and to turn to you. Lord, I pray that you would take their heart of stone, give them a heart of flesh, that they might become new creatures, that they might be risen to eternal life right now at the hearing of the words of Jesus. We thank you for your ministry that you've given into the church. This ministry of reconciliation, Lord, bring to ponderance the importance that we take the words of Jesus to everyone, because it is by those that a great number will be saved for your glory. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.