And so we'll be praying about that. Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17. And I told Brother Jim I'd read the text tonight and give him a little rest. His voice, you know, it's weak. Oh, there you are. I didn't know you were in here. Actually, what I, no. I'm kidding. Acts 17, look at verse 19. Let's stand for the reading of the Word of God. We'll just read a few verses here, and I'll have some prayer with you, and then we'll move on. Acts 17, verse 19. And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. We would know, therefore, what these things mean. Oh, we're not gonna. We're just reading. Sorry, I didn't give you the memo. My bad. For all these Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. And I'm gonna stop there tonight and we're gonna look at these few verses. Father, thank you for the wonderful day today. Thank you for the evening and for the good spirit. I thank you for the testimonies of your faithfulness in every life that's here. And I'm thankful, Lord, if we would close up here tonight and you never did another thing for us. Lord, you've already have done too much. And the joy is that we know that you're not done. And there's more that you are going to do and the more that you want to do through us and through this church. And we just thank you for that. And we love you tonight. Lord, we just pray that through your word here, you do a great work in our heart and encouraging us and reminding us of the reason that we're here and in the reason of our joy and the reason that what we have in Jesus Christ. And so Father, as the word goes out, would you do your work in Jesus' name? Amen. The Acropolis, you can be seated, I'm sorry, the Acropolis, jutted up from the base of Athens, juts up about 500 feet, and there's these iconic buildings that's full of temples and such, but there's that iconic temple up there, the Parthenon to the goddess of Athena, There's also the Temple of the Athena at Nike, which is that wingless victory that you have on those pagan tennis shoes you buy. I'm just teasing, I'm just teasing. That's what Nike means, it's a Greek goddess, but I'm not, I don't preach against Nike shoes, but maybe I should, no. You have the temple of Rome and Augustus. I mean, you have all of this idolatry here in Athens. One historian said that there were more idols in Athens than there were people. There were more idols in Athens than there were people. Idols of wood and stone and gold and silver and all sorts of things like that. And this was the emptiness that moved the Apostle Paul. The ignorance of their devotion that they had. The emptiness of the dedication that they had. And really there's just this hopelessness that they had of the desires that they had. Thousands upon thousands of people clutching, clutching, visibly clutching to nothing at all. Nothing at all. Emptiness. And the system here in Athens, the system of higher learning, the systems, let me say it this way, the systems of our higher learning today are still built upon the foundations of the philosophers of Athens. Think of some of these names that were in Athens of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, and that's P-L-A-T-O, not P-L-A-Y-D-O, U-G-H, okay, Plato. Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras. How many remember the Pythagorean theorem and geometry? Yeah. Let me find another one here. Herculitis, Epicurus, Zeno. There is all of these philosophers that were known there in Athens. And when Paul arrived in Athens, there were still two men whose schools were still alive and well. there in Athens. That was the school of the Epicureans, who was of Epicurus, and the school of the Stoics, whose founder was Zeno. Now it's funny because they called Paul a babbler. What does this babbler have to say? You can see up above our text where we read, they called him a babbler. It's funny. That is the, that is the Greek words, spermalogos. It means picking up seed or a seed picker, but it was, it was used of those who lounge around the marketplace and do nothing but talk all day long, right? They just, how many know, how many are from a small town? where the old men went to the gas station and just sat there and talked all day, right? Every time I go into the, I won't say it by name, but that nice little cafe between Highlandville and Spokane, I might swing in there early in the morning if I'm heading down south, and there they are lined up on that one table. This is their table over there, and they've been there all morning, right? Well, they had them there in Athens as well, and they called them babblers. They just sat around and talked all the time. That's what they said Paul was, just a babbler, and just sat around and talked. It's where they found him, right? Here he is. Here's what Paul did. He looked around and he said, where can I start a conversation about Jesus? Oh, I guess I'll go to the marketplace. That's where the whole town was, right? Sometimes we come back from visitation and go, boy, maybe we ought to go find somewhere else where the town's gone because they're obviously not home. Door after door after door after door. Let's try Saturday morning. Nope, now let's move. It's summertime. Everybody's out Saturday morning. We'll do Thursday nights. You know what you find out Thursday nights? Well, they're all gone from home too. I don't know where everybody's going, but they're not at home. And you know what, time to find a marketplace, time to find a park, time to find somewhere where people are. And this is exactly what the apostle Paul did. And so he made his way there, but eventually Paul made his way to the synagogue. He loved to do that. That was his domain. I mean, this guy, these people in Athens at this synagogue and all of the synagogues that he'd go into, they had no idea who had walked into their synagogue. They had no idea of the background of Paul. I mean, a Pharisee, a council of the Sanhedrin, trained under Gamaliel. I mean, this guy had probably the equivalent of three PhDs in Utah. A Hebrew of Hebrews, a tribe of Benjamin. They had no clue who they were getting ready to tangle with, right? He was a high power, and he made his way to the a synagogue and he went there to preach the gospel. Well it was here at the synagogue in Athens that Paul was heard by people other than Jews, right? So in this synagogue were some philosophers and some others that they said, hey we just read it, they said we want to hear you again. We want to hear you at another time. This is interesting to us. We have all of our idolatry. They didn't call it that. We have all of our gods. We have all of the things that we have known. We've not heard of this before. I want to hear you again. And so Paul is going to make his way here to Athens. He's gonna make his final plea here to the people of Athens. Now in verses 19 and 21, I've read this, we just read this here in a little bit, and we're looking here, this was Paul's platform, right? Paul is brought here to the Areopagus. That word Areopagus, it's kind of a compound word, compound Greek word of the word Areos and Pagos, which just means a hill of acres. That doesn't sound that exciting, does it? But we have weird words too. So, a hill of acres. The Greeks have been using this outcropping that you've seen in the photos, the big, the jutted up rock and the flat place and the the Pantheon there at the top with all of those pillars. They'd been using that for close to 600 years when Paul showed up. We live in such a young country. I mean, we're infants, absolute infants. And when you consider the other parts of the world. And it was this part of Athens that really was the high court of the day. Just like our Supreme Court meets in the Supreme Court building facing the Capitol, right? Those nine members of the Supreme Court, The nine members are actually called the Supreme Court, right? That is the Supreme Court, those nine members. Well, the Areopagus is not only the location of this type of a court here in Athens, but it's also the name of the court itself. That's the Areopagus. And so there are 500 men who were members of this Areopagus. And so Luke gives us the name for it, verse 22. He gives us the Roman name for this Areopagus. They just called it this, Mars Hill. Mars Hill, after the goddess Mars, or the god Mars. Was God, was Mars, Jim? Okay, I knew it. The God of War. I forgot if it was a God or a Goddess. And I knew you'd know that. Thank you. And so this is Paul's platform. This is his pulpit. This is where he's going to present what he has here to the people. It's his finest moment. It's his magnum opus. I mean, this is the place to be. His audience is comprised of the greatest minds in the world. I mean, listen, Paul standing before these people is a musician standing before Beethoven, and Mozart, and Chopin. It is an artist standing before Michelangelo, or Rembrandt, or Monet. It's a scientist who's standing before Newton, or Faraday, or Einstein. I mean, Paul is a brilliant mind in his own right, and here he is, he has the floor in all of the greatest minds. Their eyes are right on Paul. I mean, what an opportunity that he has here. This is his platform. But notice his message. I mean, this is a different crowd now, right? This isn't Antioch. This isn't Cyprus or Crete, right? This isn't these other little faraway islands. This isn't Ephesus of Turkey. I mean, this is the citadel. This is the ground zero of intelligence and academia. and everything that has to do with the wizards of smart. Here's Paul, he's got an audience with him. Verse 22, then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, ye men of Athens, and I love this about Paul, you don't ever have, he does not beat around the bush. I perceive, I perceive that in all things, in all things, ye are too superstitious. You know, he says, I am perceiving, what's his perception? Well, he's looking around at him, at all of the idolatry, at all of the pagan temples, at all of these people and their ideas and their thoughts, and the way they present themselves. He says, I look around, and he says, there is more than enough. There is an absolute excess of superstition. Right off the bat, the Apostle Paul, he says that you have an excess of religion, and they did. And that's all it was, it was religion. It wasn't true religion and undefiled, right? It was just pure out idolatry and religion. And so Paul draws their attention to one of their very own altars. He's like, look at this, look at verse 23. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription. to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." So notice what Paul does. He's not going to deal with all of their other gods. It's pointless at this time. Listen, they've been arguing this for thousands of years. Why start arguing against the ability of their gods? So what he did, he took the one that they didn't know, he took the one that they called the unknown god, that they were worshiping. What is worship? Time, energy, and money, right? They were worshiping, they were showing worthship to this thing, and Paul says, I'm gonna tell you who this is. I love this. Now, be careful. Don't do this. I've heard people say, well, Allah is just an Islamic name for God. No, it's not. That is a different God. And we don't do that. Be careful with that. I know people mean well when they do that, and it sounds like, oh, yeah. No, it's not. It's a different God. But Paul's not doing this. They don't know who this God is. And why do they say this? Well, can I remind you of John 1, where the Bible says, Jesus is that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world? Why is it that they thought there was another God out there? Why is it that they thought there was something unknown? Why is it that there was something in their soul that thought as they had these thousands of idols that they were worshiping, and the statues and the buildings that were built to them for thousands of years, why is it with all of the religion that they had, that there's something in their soul that said there's something else and let's make an altar and we'll worship that also. Well, because it was Jesus Christ. Just like John said, he is that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And so here he is, and he's bringing their attention to the unknown God. He said, I'm gonna preach to you, I'm gonna show you who this unknown God is. At Arlington Cemetery, there is a tomb of the unknown soldier. There is a body in that tomb, but nobody knows whose body it is. maybe somebody in some annals of history they've recorded who it is, maybe not, I don't know, I don't know enough about that. But there is a body there, unknown, and that body represents every other unknown soldier who has given their life in battle. Now Arlington of course is filled with those graves and those crosses and the names on them of the soldier, but it's the tomb of the unknown soldier, that one unknown soldier who is the representative head of all the other unknowns that have died in war. They've been cast out to sea, or sunk with ships, or however it may be. They never were found. They never were known. They never got a marker. This is who they represent. And it memorialized soldiers, watch, who actually existed and gave their life. It memorializes soldiers. Catch this. They existed and they gave their life. He existed and he gave his life. I mean, this is, this is, this is, I mean, you see it a mile away, right? And, you know, it's, it's, this is, Paul is drawing off of this same type of a thing, a memorial of what he is going to show, something that existed, and he's going to show them somebody who gave their life. And to the Athenians, this was a monument to a God that might exist. They didn't know. It was the unknown God. They're going to worship it just in case. And they cannot be sure that he is knowable. Right? But they think there's something there. Right? Because you know why they think there's something else there? We just said it, right? Because there is something else there. And Paul's gonna show this. Notice what he presents to them. To the intelligentsia. It's like, okay, Paul, how do you gear your message for this crowd? What do you preach to this crowd? Have you ever knocked on a door and got somebody and go, oh boy, what do I do with this one? How do I start with this one? Paul's gonna give you a little hint of what to do here, you ready? And a little soul winning... lesson right here, verse 23. He said, I found an altar to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship Him, I declare unto you, verse 24, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath, in all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring." Their own poets have written something of this unknown God. And if you'll notice, Paul presents God as creator. He presents Him as Lord, this unknown God, as creator. The one you're worshiping, He's the creator. He made everything that there is. He is Lord. He is the one who is worshiped. He is the one who is knowable. He is the one, Paul says, who is our very life. Right? He's our life. If you'll notice now, as he presents this unknown God, without doing it, he is actually shown here, he is presented here that God is opposite of the understanding of the Athenians. God is opposite of all of their idols. God is nothing like what they're worshiping. He didn't even say, this is wrong, and that one's wicked, and this one means that, and this one's no good, and I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong to do those things. I'm just saying, at the right occasion, but I'm just saying this is not what Paul did. What he did is he kind of like when you learn what counterfeit money is he presented what was real and they could from their own their own ability because these are smart folks realize that's nothing like what the other ones were worshiping This is nothing like our gods that we think we know of, this unknown God. This is very interesting. See, their gods had made nothing. Their gods rule over nothing. Their gods cannot receive worship. Their gods are unknowable. Their gods are not givers of life. There's no way. Yeah. And so he presents God as somebody who's completely opposite of who they're worshiping. Hey, this God of ours, he doesn't even need a temple. We don't need idols. Actually, it's wrong. Do you know we don't need a little figurine? We don't need statues. We don't need statues of Mary, and we don't need statues of angels, and we don't need statues of saints that have gone on. We don't need any of those things. Why? Because I know He lives, because He lives in me, and He lives in you. I don't need a statue to remind me of what's in me, who walks with me and talks with me, tells me I'm His own. I don't need a statue for that. No. They didn't understand that. Look at verse 24. See that? God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. I don't think I'm off base here. If I can, I mean, correct me, but later, quietly, not around everybody. No. I don't see where God ever really wanted a temple built for Him. That was David's idea. He allowed it, but he didn't allow David to build it, but he allowed Solomon to build it. Can I tell you in all of its grandeur, in all of its beauty, in all of its magnificence, in the way they approached the worship of God at the temple, that even made the Queen of Sheba go, whoa, this is incredible. Still couldn't keep them right. You know what the only thing that God did command for them to build was the tabernacle? Because there's a picture. There's a picture that there was a temporary tabernacling, right? God was dwelling with us as he did in the tabernacle for a finite period of time, but eventually he was gonna dwell in us eternally. That tabernacle was a beautiful picture of a physical human body. The three layers of skin on the outside. The skeletal inside of the wood, like the skeletal figures, as you go in deeper into that tabernacle, the, what's that stuff called? You know, those hanging down things, the fabrics and all of the curtains and all of these things, the material gets finer and finer and finer until you get into the Holy of Holies. It's a picture of a human body. It's a picture of Jesus Christ. Get into the innermost sanctum of that place where that finest material is and that softest, tenderest material is the heart where God dwelled. It was a picture. He's gonna dwell in you. Jesus told the disciples, the one, the comforter that is with you will be in you really soon. He's coming up, right? And Paul said, listen, God doesn't live in a house made with hands. He doesn't live in temples made by men. He doesn't do that. The only temple that God was gonna dwell in was us. And he does. He absolutely does. And I love this. Because this is what Paul was preaching to the Athenian Areopagus. That unknown God, that unknown God is the one who created everything, watch, and that creator is knowable. He's knowable. He's the source of everything. Not only is he knowable, he's the source of everything. He is life, the ability to move about, our very being. that we are actually living creatures. It's because of this unknown God who isn't unknown. He's not unknown at all. Do you know what this must mean? He didn't have to say it. It meant that their idols were dead. It meant that their idols were just the works of their hands. They're actually the works of their hands. They're taking the material that this unknown God made to make things that they thought were knowable that really represented not anything that was knowable. Yeah, did you follow that? I didn't even follow that. That's all right, I think you followed it. I mean, I love, listen, I love how Paul didn't have to go after their stuff. He didn't have to go after it. If you present Jesus, the obvious comes out because the world is living opposite. Right? He's living opposite of it. And so to those, of all of the idols of, if all of the idols of the Athenians are dead, and the God of the Bible is the Creator God, here's another thing you're left with. Those of Athens needed to change their mind. No, they're trying, they're worshiping something. Remember when Jesus told the woman there, well, you worship, you know not what, right? They were worshiping, but they needed to change who they worshiped. They needed to repent, because judgment's coming. What Paul said, judgment's coming. The world's gonna be judged by Jesus Christ. And the assurance that God has given the world that this judgment is coming, the assurance that he gives is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 29, for as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold. And see, there's the Bible word for Trinity right there, that's the Godhead, okay. That's a good word to have, to memorize when the Unitarians come at you. Trinity's not in the Bible. Well, Godhead is. Like a gold or silver or stone graven by art or man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." Paul's telling these Athenians, God is this unknown God, He's commanding you to change your mind. Change your mind about what? Well, everything that's not the knowable God that I just presented to you. All of these unknowables, all of these idols, all of this stuff, whatever is not Jesus Christ, repent, put them away, and turn to Jesus. It's that simple, right? And because, look what it says, because, verse 31, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. Who is that man? Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. Well, I guess who was raised from the dead but Jesus Christ. Yeah. judgments come. Paul is telling them, listen folks, this unknown God that you don't know who He is, He is knowable and it is Jesus Christ. He is risen from the dead and God commands you, this unknowable God, commands every one of you to turn from your idolatry, to turn away from what you are thinking is the tangible representation of your God and turn to the knowable, the knowable Jesus Christ. This was his message to the greatest minds of their day, even some of the greatest minds that would still exist today. This was the message. Your idols are dead. Your unknown God is actually the God of the Bible. Judgment's coming. And the proof of this judgment is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Boy, when they heard that word resurrection, they're like, huh? That kind of, that threw them off. They didn't like that. But think about this. If Paul is right, the smartest people in the world are worshipping things that are dead. The smartest people in the world are worshipping things that don't exist. Have you ever looked out and seen some very intelligent people who are Mormons? And you go, how? You're not a dumb person. You're not like gullible. You're not like, you know, just kind of off in left field, right? You haven't fried your brain on drugs or anything like that. I mean, it's not like, how did you get here? Well, can I tell you, they're not the first and they won't be the last. Intelligence, intelligence doesn't give us a direct understanding to the Almighty. It does not. It does not. Aren't you glad for that? It's a good thing, because we'd all be in trouble. Michael wouldn't be. He'd be all right. He'd be. There you go. What exactly is Paul? If we could reduce this to one word, what is Paul presenting that is so offensive to the world? What is he presenting? It's one word. Well, yeah, it is Jesus. That's one. Truth. Change. Change. Yeah, that's good. I'm going to dig deeper here. I'm going to separate it even further. Exclusivity. Exclusivity. The exclusivity of Christ. The way. Absolutely. I. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. The world hates that. I was talking to a Mormon one day, a nice fella over here, and I've told this before, I'm sure. I've told so many times the same one, I don't even remember it anymore. So just act like it's Groundhog Day and it's new, okay? So he said, well I just kind of think it's like getting to Springfield, there's a lot of roads that lead to Springfield. I just think there's a lot of roads that lead to God. And I told him, I said, that's fine if that's what the Bible says, but it's not what it says. Jesus Himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. They get squirmy. Why? Because they want to do it their way. And this Paul was telling them, take all of the thousands of your idols, take your pagan temples, take all of the thousands of years of what you have here and put it in the trash and take Jesus Christ. I mean, this is who they are, right? And this is the trouble we have with people with the gospel. You get up into the Northeast and Catholicism that is just in the mid-Atlantic, sorry, mid-Atlantic, and I would want the differentiation too, the mid-Atlantic, and you get up where it's heavily Catholic and it's tied into their lineage and their heritage and their grandmother and their great-grandmother and all of their history and all of this. I told you about a guy, some guys I knew at a gym I trained at, they were witnessing to this guy who was Catholic, and man, he was right there, and they were saying, you know, Mary can't save, the Bible says this, and this says this, and this says, and he's just listening, and he's just listening, and finally he says, but what would my mother say? He couldn't get past that. Listen, it's no different today. I mean, this is where they were, here in Athens. I mean, there's this connection. And Paul says, he says, no, nothing but Jesus. I was witnessing to a Catholic down in Exeter. She spoke Spanish, and her daughter had to translate for her. This was several years ago. And at the time, we were having a missions conference at a church we were at, and there was a missionary there to, where was he? Where'd that guy go? I can still see him. Well, he's probably not young anymore. This was a long time ago. tall, blonde-headed kid down South America somewhere. And I told him, I said, boy, she just didn't get it. You know, she prayed, but I could tell, gee, and the girl was trying to, the daughter was translating and this and that. And she's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this missionary young guy told me, he goes, oh no, in the Catholic South America, you have to tell them, no Mary, no, no, Jesus only, Jesus only. He goes, that will divide them. That will divide them. A lot of times they'll say no to that. He said they're fine to add anything on to Catholicism. They'll add anything. If it's religious, they'll throw it on. Exclusivity. So this is what Paul's presenting. This is what he's presenting. And because of the exclusivity of Christ, here's what we see in our text, the gospel doesn't change based upon the audience. The message doesn't change based upon who's listening. The need for the gospel doesn't change based on the audience. Oh, well, they don't need the gospel, they're smart. They don't need the gospel, they're not smart. They don't need the gospel, they're little. They don't need the gospel, they're too big. No, it doesn't change at all. And intelligence doesn't determine the ability to know or to receive truth. Who would say hallelujah for that? I don't think there's any Stephen Hawking's types in here, right? Okay, maybe Micah. But anyway. I'm not, okay? Look at verse 30. Commandeth all men everywhere to repent. All men. All men. Verse 32, you know what happened? Some mocked. But I like this. Some did believe. Some believed. And some said, eh, I want to hear more of this. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Yeah. I would have loved to have seen that. I would have loved to have sat in the crowd. I'd have been the weirdo being like, heaven! You know, like, oh, this, yeah, that wouldn't have worked. So anyway. Exclusivity. That's what bothers the world about Jesus. Acts 4.12 really rubs them wrong. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. The unknown God to the Athenians, He was revealed by the Apostle Paul. And the unknown God to the world today needs to be revealed by us. We have the same ministry as the Apostle Paul. Well, I'm not smart like Paul. It doesn't matter, you know Jesus. Well, I can't, I can't, I couldn't stand before a crowd like that. You could with the Word of God and the indwelling Holy Spirit of God like Paul had. Yeah, absolutely you could. Well, I just don't know, it's what they need. Could you imagine if something so dire and necessary for somebody's eternal existence that only if, could you imagine how crazy it would be that only a certain subset of people could adequately present it so that the world could understand it? I mean, that's terrible. Let me remind you of something. The seed has all of the power in and of itself to bring forth fruit. You know what you do? Just get it out. That's why we pass tracks out. We don't always have time to sit down with somebody for 30 minutes or an hour or two hours going over the Word of God. It's wonderful if you do. We don't always have that opportunity. But I know this, the seed of the Word of God has all of the power. If you'll get it out there and somebody gets the Word of God and they can read the Word of God, the Holy Spirit will take the Word and it'll do a work and a heart. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to do that. So what do we need to be reminded of today? Here it is. No matter, or regardless I should say, probably a better word to say, regardless the size of the crowd, preach Christ. Regardless of the intelligence of the crowd, preach Christ. Regardless of the age of the crowd, preach Christ. Regardless of the perceived need of the crowd, I don't know if they really need this, well listen, just preach Christ crucified and risen again and coming again. Just preach Jesus. Preach Him. Preach Him. You know, just like you, and like many of you in here, the Lord's allowed me to witness to all different types of people. It's really interesting. Sometimes if you just look back at all the different walks of life that God puts in your path, that comes along your way, that door's open to have a conversation with them about the Lord Jesus Christ. All different walks of life. From super smart and somewhat famous to just and a hillbilly like the rest of us, right? All different types. And I can tell you the subject has always been the same, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Isn't that simple? That's so simple. Do we believe in the exclusivity of Christ? Yes, yes. Why? Well, because the idols of the world are dead. The idols of the world, they're dead. And He's knowable, right? They'll say, well, how do you know he's noble? Because I know him. I know him. Yeah. When did that happen? I was 27. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. Even our hymns are exclusive. Amen. He's knowable. Let me ask you, let me encourage you. We've been talking about the gift of encouragement in Sunday school, and because I really doubt I have it, I'm gonna try it out here. Jesus is noble, right? We've established this. I wanna encourage you this week. to ask God to put it upon in your radar and put the people in your path that you can make him knowable to those that don't know him. Make him knowable. Oh, no, they're worshiping something. They're worshiping someone. A majority of it starts with the worship of self. But they're worshiping. But like Jesus told that Samaritan woman that you worship, you know not what. They worship. They don't know what they're worshiping. and what they need to be presented with. Not necessarily everything they're doing wrong, because you present Jesus, and listen, you'll hear them, well, that means, I didn't say that, I guess you deduced that, I mean, that was pretty good. Just preach Christ, preach Jesus. Ask God to give you opportunity this week. He is knowable and you know Him and if you know Him, it is our responsibility and it should be our heart. We went back to the heart this morning, right? It should be our heart to desire that we make Him knowable to those who don't know Him. May God help us to do that. Father, I'm thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm thankful that the message is so simple. It doesn't matter the crowd, it doesn't matter the type of the crowd, or the size of the crowd, or the intelligence of the crowd. It doesn't matter any of that. It doesn't matter any of that. You have placed us where you have placed us. You have put us where you have put us, where people will cross our paths, and the one thing that they need from us is Jesus Christ. I'm so thankful that we know him. And I'm thankful that you drew us and your Holy Spirit drew us unto him. And I'm so thankful that, as you said, all that come into me, I'll in no wise cast out. And we have all found that to be true here tonight. That when we came to you, you did not say no. It was your idea, you wanted us. It was your plan. You'd never say no. And I'm thankful for that. Now God, would you help us to make the thing that was made noble to us, that we would take up that mantle and go out and make you knowable to those that you've placed in our path even this week. Well, thank you for that in Jesus' name. Amen. Why don't you stand tonight? The piano is going to play here. The invitation is open. He's knowable Could be somebody's, somebody's maybe watching online, I don't know, and you just don't know the Lord Jesus. You've never known Him. You don't remember a day or a time or an hour. You don't even know a time or an hour, but you don't remember the day. You have no memory of a day or no recollection of a day. When you approached God on your own, between you and God alone, admitted that you were wrong and He was right, you admitted that you were a sinner and He was holy, you admitted that you believed what Jesus did, and you believed that what Jesus did was enough, and that you accepted it, and the blood was sufficient to take away all of your sins. You've never approached God and ask for the forgiveness of sin and eternal life that Jesus offers. Would you write us? Would you call us? Would you email us? Would you text us? Whatever it is. We can show you how you can be saved. Maybe you're here tonight and you just need to be encouraged again to get out and preach Jesus Christ. It doesn't have to be super deep. It doesn't have to be this great work of intelligence, all you have to do is say, Jesus was born of a virgin, he lived a sinless life, he gave his life on Calvary, he shed blood that God, the Father, accepted. He presented that blood on the mercy seat and it's available to whosoever will, whosoever will. And if you just go to him, he'd take that blood, and he'd put it on your ledger, and he would clear every one of your sins, and you would be right with him, and have an eternal relationship, a child of God forever. Oh, just, it's that simple. It's that simple. May God help us to be about our Father's business. Mm-hmm. You want to sing that? I think we can sing with it. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Amen. Thank you. Too high. Wow, that was a...