Transcript

Take your Bibles and let’s go to Luke 20 as we continue in the Gospel of Luke. Luke 20. As you’re turning there, I’m thinking on the preaching through the Gospel of Luke. I have no idea how long we’ve been there, somewhere under 20 years. I really don’t know. Several years, but some recurring events seem to keep coming up in this Gospel narrative. First of all, and it’s so repetitive, I don’t know, you may get tired of it. You may think it’s redundant but you’ve got to understand the Bible repeats things and Christ does things over and over for a purpose so we see this continuing public rebuke and correction of the Jewish authorities of the day. Time after time after time. You’re talking about a man’s man, you talk about manly courage, Jesus had it. If you understand the context of him publicly condemning and exposing these guys, I mean, these guys had the power of life and death. Christ, the Lord Jesus, had manly courage.

Secondly, not only does that occur over and over but we see the continual correction of the people’s carnal view of the Messiah’s mission and that is when he’s talking to the people in general, he doesn’t seem to have the same condemning and reprimanding tone that he has toward the Jewish religious leaders, but nevertheless, he continues to confront and correct their carnal and base view of what the Savior should be like. They had their personal preference as to what Jesus should be like. He keeps challenging that and giving them the truth of what he’s going to be like. You do understand he’s not your Jesus? I sometimes cringe a little bit when I hear that in songs and I’m not saying it’s evil or wrong. “My Jesus,” he’s not your Jesus. He’s not a rabbit’s foot. He’s not a good luck charm. He is Jesus, the Lord God.

So he’s publicly rebuking the Jewish religious authorities over and over. He’s continually correcting the people’s unbiblical, carnal view of the work and the mission of the Messiah. Then, of course, he’s now toward the end of the Gospel narrative; we’re seeing him progressively unveiling the centrality of his suffering, death and resurrection to his mission. He’s constantly getting them away from the things that, again, they would like to hear him talk about or perform, and he’s pointing them to the foundational truth of why he came and that was to go to Jerusalem, suffer and die and rise again.

So all of that’s been unfolding. Now, we’re in the last week of the Lord’s life and he is continuing and Luke is continuing to record under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the things that we need to be thinking about and understanding. So let’s look at it. Luke 20, beginning in verse 41 and going through verse 47. They’ve all been questioning Jesus, I say they all, primarily the religious authorities of the day, trying to entrap him and discredit him. Now, beginning in verse 41, he gives them a question. Verse 41, Luke 20,

41 Then He said to them, “How is it that they say the Christ is David’s son? 42 For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”‘ 44 Therefore David calls Him ‘Lord,’ and how is He his son?” 45 And while all the people were listening, He said to the disciples, 46 “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, 47 who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”

I call this “The Revealing” because in this first section, Jesus reveals something about himself and his mission that they were not really thinking of yet. He reveals that he has a divine and human nature and he has a divine mission from God. Then secondly, he reveals something of the hypocrisy and the compromise of the scribes, and sect of the Jewish elite or leadership of the day.

First of all, let’s talk about I. The divine human mission and ultimate conquest of Jesus. The divine human mission of Jesus and his ultimate conquest. We’ll begin in verse 41 and, again, he’s posing a question to them. It’s as if the Lord turns the conversation from these ridiculous entrapment questions that these religious authorities keep throwing at him, and now talking back to them and to the people, he says, verse 41, “How is it that they say that the Christ is David’s son?” Well, first of all, let’s talk about the Christ. “The Christ” means “the anointed one.” The Hebrews would use the word “Messiah.” The English would be “Savior.” It’s that Old Testament promised one. The promised and expected Savior God would bring out of Israel and primarily for Israel. That’s what he’s talking about and he says, “How is it that it is taught? How is it that it is understood in your culture that this promised expected Savior is David’s son?”

Now, the great error of this day was that they looked for a Savior, but mostly from the difficulties of living in a fallen world. “Save us from our present problems. We are hungry, feed us. We are diseased, heal us. We are enslaved by Rome, deliver us.” Not that those are not things God is concerned about but, at best, they’re secondary things. That was there error. They had made secondary things primary things. So, once again, Jesus is correcting this low or carnal view of the Savior’s ministry.

Now, let’s make an application for us. That is the exact same thing that as a true Christian or as a true church, you will battle all the time. If you run into people in town and maybe there’s an issue in town and somebody’s hurting or somebody’s suffering and they say, “Well, Jesus would do this.” Well, maybe or maybe not. A woman poured perfume on Jesus that was equal to a year’s wages or so and Judas Iscariot said, “Aha, this could be used to help people who are hurting!” And Jesus said, “The poor you have with you always.” Be very careful before you prescribe exactly what Jesus would do because you don’t know in every case what Jesus would do. He was constantly kind of shocking people with the truth.

Now, that’s not to say that Jesus doesn’t care deeply for those who are hurting. He certainly does, but you cannot just shape Jesus into a social reformer Jesus. He’s got a far higher mission than that. So you and I as individual Christians, myself as a pastor, us as a church, we must fight this continual drift in professing Christendom to minimize, if not neglect, the spiritual mission of the Savior, and overemphasize the material or temporal ministries of the Savior.

I was reading, I think, on Fox News website about the minister at that National Cathedral in Washington, DC. He and his wife have both been divorced and remarried. The things he said were so radically unbiblical. I mean, a seven year old in our small groups could see through the guy. I mean, he wasn’t even trying to act truly scriptural or spiritual. So that’s why I say it begins with sort of a neglect, an out of balance. We lose the spiritual mission of the church and become over concerned with social needs and social grievances in the culture. We have all this equality for everybody movement right now going on and they begin to say, “Well, that’s what Jesus would be all about,” and they begin to lose and then ultimately completely neglect the true spiritual mission of Christ.

In Luke 19:10, Jesus said, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Now, to hear the liberal today, the liberal theologian, the liberal pastor who has lost the spiritual mission of Christ for a social mission, he would say, “Well, Jesus is talking about that when people are lost in the despairs and the miseries of this present life.” That’s not at all what Jesus was meaning when he said he came to seek and to save that which was lost. He means those who are lost from God. Those who are lost in sin. Those who are lost to eternal life. Those who are lost and will be exposed to, or rather be encountering in the future eternal wrath.

Here’s a thought: why didn’t Jesus just stay on the earth and live to be 103? Just stick around and be the wisest and best teacher and social reformer earth has ever known? Why didn’t he do that? He could have done that but he didn’t do that. Why didn’t he just live to a ripe old age and continually just teach people a better way to live upon the earth and how to get along better with one another? We certainly could use some of that. There is a reason for that: that’s because he didn’t primarily come to fix the present earth to be a little better for everybody. That wasn’t his goal or mission. He came, rather, expressly to die because in his death, he can save men from the sinful, condemned, guilty position they have before the one true and holy God. That’s the spiritual mission.

Verse 41 again, he says, “How is it that they say that the Christ is David’s son?” Now, think with me. Use your brains. I understand it’s Sunday morning and you’re full of football. Think with me. Does that help? If Jesus just came here to give us our best life now, if Jesus’ primary mission is just to fix social ills and help us get along better today, then if he was just the physical son of David, that probably would have been sufficient. Are you with me? If he was just of the lineage of David, just a very wise, knowledgeable teacher in Israel in the line of David, he probably could have fixed a lot of earth’s problems just with his wisdom. But if Christ primarily came to save men from sin and from the wrath of God because they all are guilty sinners, that’s going to require more than being just a smart human being. That’s going to require more than just being a physical son of David. That’s going to require divine strength and divine power and that’s what he’s getting at when he says, “How do people say that the Christ is just David’s son?” In other words, if he’s just David son, you’re all in trouble. He might can fix a lot of present ills, teach people how to cooperate and get along better, encourage a new unselfishness, a new start for mankind, a new self-renovation maybe, but if he came for more than that, to fix the sin problem between fallen sinful men and holy God, he’s got to be more than just David’s son, though he truly is David’s son.

So in verses 42 and 43, Jesus follows up this question by saying, “For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord,'” that would be God the Father, “‘said to my Lord,'” God the Son, the Messiah, “‘sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'” Verse 44, “therefore David calls Him ‘Lord,’ and how is He his son?” Jesus is trying to get these guys thinking. Jesus says, “Think with me.” We know the Old Testament prophesied. We’re going to look at some of those in a moment. We know the prophecies require the Messiah, the Savior is born of the line of David, but David himself says, “He’s not just my son, he’s my Lord.” Jesus is saying to these Jews assembled here on this day including many of his enemies, “What was God getting at by this?” So he quotes these verses out of Psalm 110 that are prophetic to the Messiah. By the way, the Psalms is a book of the Old Testament that is full of prophecies about Christ and the coming Savior or Messiah. The Psalms prophesied his suffering. The Psalms prophesied his humiliation. The Psalms prophesied his dying. The Psalms prophesied his rising from the dead. The Psalms prophesy him in final and coming judgment. And the Psalms prophesy his eternal reign upon the earth. So the Jews of this day as Orthodox Jews today, held to the divine inspiration of the Old Testament text and Jesus likewise asserts that he held to the authority and the inspiration of the Old Testament text. Isn’t it very interesting that he is God incarnate and when he speaks he speaks authoritative truth, but yet he appeals to this biblical text. “What do your Scriptures say?” Jesus is saying. “He is David’s son, but David calls him ‘Lord.'”

So the point, I think, Christ is getting at is the only possible way you can make sense of the fact that he is David’s son but David calls him “Lord” is that he is at the same time fully man and fully God. He is the God-man. This is Jesus Christ himself irrefutably, undeniably attesting to his own deity. Would somebody call the rector of the National Cathedral in Washington and tell him that Jesus did claim to be God in the flesh?

Did I tell you I hate liberalism? I love liberals. Yeah, I love them. I hate liberalism. Who gives these guys the right to just rape the biblical text to make it serve their man-centered, low, base, carnal, social agendas? This book is not primarily about reforming culture, that everybody can be equal in our estimation of what equality means and is. This book is about God and God being glorified and God being served and God being treasured and honored for his superior wisdom.

We’re talking about Jesus bringing to their thinking here that Christ is to be both divine and human. He’s both of the line of David but he’s also David’s Lord. Matthew 1:23, “behold, the virgin shall be with child,” that’s Christ born of the virgin Mary, “and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” That’s it. Jesus’ point, of course here, is that the Christ, the promised and expected Christ is both human, David’s son, and he’s divine, David’s Lord.

Just a few of the Old Testament texts that point some of these things out, show us that the Christ is both David’s sovereign and he is David’s son. 2 Samuel 7:12, “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers,” he’s talking to David, “I will raise up your descendant,” that’s singular, there is a descendant, David, coming of your line, “I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.” David, there is coming one of your line that is greater than you. I’ll establish him.

Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” So here’s the son coming but he’s going to be far more than just a typical human king, he’ll be a wonder of a counselor; he’ll be an eternal father. No earthly king fits that. No just mere human descendent of David matches that. He’ll be the mighty God. He’ll be the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 16:5, “A throne will even be established in lovingkindness,” now look at this, “And a judge,” singular. There is a descendant coming. “A judge will sit on it in faithfulness in the tent of David; Moreover, he,” singular, “will seek justice And be prompt in righteousness.” Brothers and sisters, let your hearts take hope that there is coming a leader, there is coming a ruler who will be prompt in righteousness. You watch our leaders in today’s world and you think they are schooled in unrighteousness, but there is one who is coming who will be prompt in righteousness.

Psalm 89:3-4, “I have made a covenant with My chosen; I have sworn to David My servant, I will establish your seed,” that’s singular again. There is one specific one, your seed, and I’m going to establish him how long? “Forever.” No human king could do this. “And build up your throne,” to your generation when you come? No, “to all generations.”

Well, in summary of what Jesus is getting at in verses 41 through 45, Jesus is saying, “I am the divine human Messiah. Humanly I descend from David, but as God I existed before him and I am David’s Lord.” John 8:58, “Before Abraham was born,” Jesus said, “I am.” Wow. He’s truly the King of kings and the Lord of lords. I think what Christ is saying here to these people, “You don’t know who stands before you. I’m not just a reformer of culture. I’m not here just to liberate you from Rome’s bondage. I’m not here just to help you with temporal difficulties and problems. I am God come to do the things that must be done so that I can have a people as my own possession whom I will love and they will love me and joy in me and find pleasure in me forever and that mandates that I am God and human and I go to a cross and make atonement for my children’s sins.” That’s where he’s getting to.

Now, in application, I think I’m going to cut this in half. If not, we’re going to be quite long. But here we have Jesus clearly claiming to be the promised, expected Messiah. Please, again, be discerning. Our men need to be mature in the word, mature in their spirituality and mature in discernment. Be aware of these pseudo-intellectuals who claim to have all the answers and they understand the Bible. They want to bring Jesus down a little bit. Look, when they start bringing Jesus down a little bit and this guy, again, in the National, Cathedral in Washington said, “You know, Jesus didn’t refer to God as God, he referred to him as Father.” What he’s saying there is he wants to take the edge off of the authority of God and, of course, all liberals want to do that because they want to be their own authority. They want to yield to their own lusts. This whole immoral movement that we have in our country about everything, look, it’s all, listen to me, it’s all about one simple thing: I want to yield and enjoy my own lust any time, anywhere with anyone and I want you to approve it and even celebrate it. That’s all it is. It’s just a yielding to lust. It’s a throwing off of all restraints and we better think again in this country before we look at the Judeo-Christian tradition and spit in the face of it and say, “We want all Judeo- Christian morality and restraints stripped away from us.” Are we sure we want that? Buddy, the dominoes are falling. The dominoes are falling.

Do you want me to get on the guilty culprit? Are you listening? The local church. Fifty, 75, 100 years ago, the church decided, “Our goal is to win souls, not to be true to God.” Now, winning souls is a primary goal but it’s not the goal, the goal is to glorify God. And so they decided, “Do you know what? We’re going to lower our membership standards. We’re going to lower the truth of the Gospel so that more and more people can ‘get saved.’ We’re going to lower the aspects of accountability and disciplines within the church because we want more and more people to get in.” Then once the church began to accommodate willful, unrepented of immoralities, first it was a little fornication, then a little adultery, then fornicators and adulterers were just carte blanche welcome in the church. Then the next domino fell. The next domino fell. We got abortion. We got gay rights. We’ve got homosexual marriage. And they keep falling. It all starts with the salt and the light that God has ordained, the local church, and when we threw in the towel upwards of 100 years ago on true biblical standards, then the culture went down with us.

I’m chasing a rabbit. A pretty good rabbit, though, you need to hear it. But Christ here is irrefutably claiming to be God. “I am,” he says, “the promised and expected Messiah. I have fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies. I am fully human, the son of David, but at the same time, I am fully divine. I am David’s Lord.”

You’ve probably heard it many times before but let me kind of circle the wagons with the statement from C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis was a professor at Oxford University. I assume I’m correct in assuming he was an agnostic if not an atheist. Brilliant man. Genius, but C. S. Lewis was wonderfully converted to faith in Christ and he spent the latter half of his life at Oxford defending the Christian faith. And against all of his liberal companions in higher places of learning in the intelligentsia elite of Oxford, of all places, C. S. Lewis faithfully defended the truth of the Gospel. And to those liberal friends who would come along and say, “Well, we all embrace Jesus. He was a great reformer and a great teacher.

He was a new starting point for the human race. We all just learn from Jesus. We can fix a lot of what’s bad in the earth.” And C. S. Lewis responded and said, “Nope, not true.” He said, “You read what Jesus claims for himself in the New Testament text and you can only come to one of three conclusions.” I’m not talking about reading into faith. I’m talking reading the New Testament text in intellectual honesty and C. S. Lewis, the brilliant scholar of Oxford said, “You can only come to three conclusions. 1. He was the Lord God he claimed to be,” just like in this text. “I’m David’s Lord.” “Or 2. He’s just a liar. He’s just a bold liar who walked the earth and claimed divine prerogatives and divine characteristics and he’s just a liar deceiving people.” C. S. Lewis said, “I don’t believe that, but in reading what the Scripture says and Christ claims for himself, you could intellectually say he just lied. Or 3. He’s a lunatic. He’s a lunatic,” in Lewis’s words, “on the level with a poached egg.” Just out of his mind. He just went around claiming this stuff. He just went around claiming, “I am David’s Lord.” Claiming, “If you’ve seen the Father.” Claiming that, “Before Abraham was, I am.” But he said, “None of this high, sophisticated, pseudo-intellectualism of saying Christ was just a great, maybe the greatest moral teacher on earth, he was that but far, far, far more than that. Great teachers don’t go around telling people, ‘Worship me, I’m God.’ He’s either the Lord God he claimed to be or he’s a bold liar or he’s a raving maniac lunatic.” I’m telling you today, Christ is who he said he is. He is Lord. He is God. He is who he says he is. The Scriptures simply give no option of him being just another good or great teacher or leader.

Now, right quick in verse 43 as Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament, he not only brings out his divine human mission but his ultimate conquest because he purposely picks this section of Psalm 110 where in Luke 20:43 it’s translated, “until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” So Jesus says, “The Messiah is David’s son, he’s human. The Messiah, the Savior is David’s Lord, he’s God. And God, the Father, has said to God, the son,” Jesus is saying this quoting Psalm 110, “That God that Father said to God the Son Jesus, sit at my right hand until I make all of your enemies a footstool under your feet.” Wow.

Now folks, do you realize how agitating, confronting, unsettling this had to be to the Jewish religious authorities of the day? They hated this renegade from Nazareth who called himself the Messiah and now all of a sudden he’s saying God the Father calls him God the Son, calls him the Lord of David, God himself and God the Father is working everything out to the end that this renegade from Nazareth they hate will have all of them and everyone else who are his enemies under his feet one day. Brothers and sisters, God is now sovereignly working all the events in heaven and on earth to this one supreme end: listen to me, all of Christ’s enemies will become footstools under his feet. Now, notice that here Jesus is walking here, all these high authoritative rulers are attacking, attacking, attacking, working feverishly to incriminate, if you will, expose, bring him down, kill him, and then he has the audacity to look them right in the face and say, “Yes, and God is working so that one day you’ll be under my feet.” You say, “Well, no wonder they killed him?” I mean, if you took Jesus’ teaching out of the realm that he’s God incarnate and you had any teacher on earth confronting the religious establishment of the day the way he did, you would pull them aside and say, “If you don’t stop, they’re going to kill you.” All of your enemies will become footstools under your feet. Christ basically has five enemies. Now, you might organize them differently but five enemies: Satan, sin, death, hell, and man. Those are his enemies. Basically, those are the five enemies that Christ has and all of those will be under his feet. You see, all men are Christ’s enemies until he wins them in regeneration. In Romans 5:10, “God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:10 says, “while we were enemies,” while we were enemies. Sin, Satan, temptation, would have no power over us if we did not have evil in our hearts to begin with. You see, this is something Jesus did not have. Jesus had no sin in his heart to begin with; no evil within him to begin with. In John 16:30, Jesus said, “The ruler of the world is coming and he has nothing in Me.” Unlike you, he’s got, “I have no part with him. There is nothing alike between us.” Unfortunately, you and I are born in sin and we are connected to Satan from the moment we are one celled human being in our mother’s womb.

The Bible says, “We are by nature the children of wrath,” Ephesians 2:3. And Jesus by quoting Psalm 110 here says, “God the Father is working until his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, has all his enemies as footstools under his feet.” The perfect end of all things in God’s preordained plan is that everything opposed to Jesus will become as a footstool for his feet. What that literally means is they are going to be brought to complete and everlasting subjugation under Jesus Christ. You go out into this world and listen to the talking heads on TV and far, far, far too many of the so-called religious preachers, teachers and theologians of the day, and they don’t view Jesus this way. That means they are his enemies. I don’t care if it gets down to 12 people who are Jesus’ side, it doesn’t matter. God is working everything in heaven and on earth to the end that his enemies will become completely and eternally subjugated to him.

Now, when David used this phrase in Psalm 110 and when Jesus quoted David from Psalm 110, they are using the imagery of the ancient kings and when they destroyed another king’s kingdom, they would take the king and lay him on the floor and they would put their foot on the conquered king’s neck to show, “He’s now in complete subjugation to me.” That’s the picture. You’re talking about bold. You’re talking about courageous teaching. Jesus is saying to all these people who had publicly avowed that they were his enemies, he’s saying, “My God is working everything out. You think you’re getting by with something? You think you’re up to something? You think you’re strategizing something? Do you not understand a holy, immutable, unthwartable, Triune God is working everything out that every one of you enemies and every enemy I will ever have will one day be under my feet”? This Christ is a man’s man. He’s the one true man’s man that ever lived.

You look around this earth today and I know your heart is troubled a lot. My heart is troubled. And you look at things in the world and you say, “Why is this happening? What is the purpose of all of this? Why is God allowing this or that? What is God doing?” Well, I can tell you one thing I know for certain he’s doing: all things are unfolding to the end of Jesus triumphantly defeating his enemies and reigning over them forever. You’d just better make sure you’re on the winning team. Are you on team Jesus? Have you yielded yourself to him as Lord and Savior and King?

Listen to me: there are only two kinds of people in the world, the proud and the truly humbled. Now, I don’t mean false humility, I mean the truly humbled. The truly humbled didn’t humble themselves, God humbled them. God brought them to the place where they began, listen to me, began to see themselves as God sees them. They began to see themselves as the woeful, offensive, sinful, trespassing failure before this holy God and they find no good in themselves and they say, “Oh God, there is no hope in me. How could I be forgiven? How could a wretch like me ever stand before you, the holy God?” And in that humility that God brings through his Spirit, those men turn to embrace Christ and they gladly, listen to me, gladly submit to him as Savior and Lord and strive from that moment onward by his grace to live for him and honor him and serve him the best they understand and that’s always in the context of God’s local church because a local church is the centerpiece of God’s work and God’s glory for time and eternity. The Bible makes that very clear.

Everyone else who remains in pride, who puts on a little religious façade like the guy who is director of the National Cathedral in Washington, trying to please men and fit in and be culturally relevant and hip and progressive and with it, all the other proud, there is coming a day when by God’s might, God the Father will fulfill this prophecy and place them in total, complete, eternal submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. In a sense, you can submit now or you can submit later. You will submit.

Cry out to him today. As a fellow sinner, worthless sinner, Jeff Noblit, I urge you, cry out to him today. Confessing your sin today. Confessing your wretched lost condition today. And I guarantee you, I promise you, the Scripture says if you believe in him, you will not be disappointed. You will not be disappointed. I’ve never seen a true believer come back to me later and say, “I’m sorry I believed in him.” I never had that happen in 35 years of ministry. If you believe in him, you will not be disappointed.

You and I gladly say Jesus is Lord. I fail him often. I struggle. I’m weak, but he’s my Lord and I want to serve him better, amen? That’s where our hearts are. The world says, “I’ll have none of the Jesus you preach.” Now look, they’re always making up one they like, amen? They’re always perverting a Jesus that fits them and their lust and their sinfulness. That’s how you know if it’s the real Jesus or not. Listen, the real Jesus radically contradicts you. The real Jesus rubs you the wrong way. That’s why you have to be broken and yielded to say, “You’re right, I’m wrong.”

He’s mighty to save, though. He’s full of love and compassion and grace and forgiveness. Now look, we didn’t get to it but the next thing he’s going to do, he’s going to take the scribes who are the theologians of the day and he’s going to publicly destroy them. Just condemn them. Just show them to be phony, fake hypocrites and he’s saying this…he didn’t do church discipline right. That’s a figure of speech, okay? Everything he does is right. He didn’t pull them aside privately and do it. In front of all the people, he exposes their rash, brash, wicked hypocrisies. That’s the kind of Jesus he is, but even in doing that, he’s purposing to bring them to repentance. You see, listen to me, listen to me: hardened, harsh, cold sinners need strong medicine to bring them to salvation. That’s why you have to have strong preaching. Weak preaching doesn’t penetrate hard hearts.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, what a Savior. What a Lord. How wonderful. What a treasure. He is our all in all. You can’t write this stuff. I mean, no man could come up with this. Do you know him? If you will turn to him, even if you feel like you have a mountain of wickedness in your life, if you will turn to him and say, “Christ, I am what I am, please save me,” I’m telling you, he will save you. The call of faith will save you. And all of God’s people said, amen?

Let’s stand together.