The Gospel of God

This is the First Mustang Pulpit Podcast, a podcast of the weekly preaching and teaching at First Mustang.! Thank you for joining us.!

So many, they're able to join us for an evening of singing and preaching and Lord's Supper. And then this morning, for a lot, some are perhaps with the Sunrise Service and are back at this service.

Others go to that service and then may go out of town or go to the churches to be with family. But we had about 350 who were here this morning at 645. It was an unbelievable morning.

The people just kept coming. It was interesting because we talked in staff meeting this week that what we did not want to do is have to get chairs out and be pulling them out with people there.

We wanted to set up plenty of chairs where we wouldn't have to worry about that. That lasted until about 640. By 645, we were dragging chairs out by the dozens because people kept coming, which was a good problem to have.

And so, we've already had just a wonderful weekend of worship. And we are delighted that so many of you are here at our 9 o'clock service to worship the Lord with us.

And as Joey's already mentioned, if you are a guest with us, let me just especially thank you for coming. And as he shared, if you would take a minute and complete that guest card, it would mean a lot to us because we want to know that you are here.

And we'd love to be able to serve you and pray for you by name. Of course, when you drop that guest card in the giving box on the way out, please, if you're a guest, please don't put any money in there.

You'll see our members giving financially. If you're our guest, we do not want your money. We don't ask for your money ever and at all. Just your presence here today is all that we want you to know that we're thrilled about.

We've got so many things in our church that we'd love for you to be a part of. If you're looking for a church home, we want you to know that we've got a place for you and we want to serve you and minister to you, whatever your life stage may be.

Next Sunday is a big day for our church, April the 24th, because we've got our information meeting for the Men's Institute. That's for men who are interested in joining our Men's Institute.

That's a two-year Bible training program for men. You don't have to be a member of our church to do it. It's open to anyone who would like to be a part of that. You give us two years and we're going to take you deep.

And we're going to take your knowledge wide. And then you're going to graduate in two years and be more prepared and equipped to lead your family, lead your home, lead your ministry, whatever the Lord may call you to do.

Some of you may have been Christians for decades. And you wonder, is there something here for me? And the answer is yes. We've got men in the Institute in their 70s and 80s. We've got men who have been through the Institute who have seminary degrees.

Some of you may wonder, am I too young? Do I not know enough? The answer is no. You're not too young. We'll take you right where you are. We've had a couple of different teenagers who have been a part of the Institute, a couple that are in there even with us this year right now.

And so if you are a new believer, a young person, an experienced believer, or you've been around the block a while, any of that, we want you to know you're invited to be a part of the Men's Institute.

There's information right out here in this lobby. You're going to see a sign that says Ministry Connection. We've got a question-answer sheet for you. There's a program overview of the two years where you can see the classes and what all it entails.

There's a registration form out there. And so, gentlemen, if you're interested, I invite you next Sunday at 4 in our fellowship center to come to the information meeting.

It's not a commitment meeting. You can come to the meeting and decide not to do it. That's okay. But we would love to invite you to come and be a part of that. We have already graduated around 50 students the last couple of years.

In two weeks, we've got our graduating class for this year that we'll be having a part of our morning service on May 1st. We've got 27 more men who are set to graduate, had their last final exam last week, and they are ready to graduate in two weeks.

And so, we want to invite you men to consider that. Ladies, for you, I want to ask you to make note, in just a couple of weeks, Tuesday, May 3rd, is our next Ladies' Night of Theology.

If you're new to our church and wonder what that is, every couple of months, we have an evening of theology just for our ladies. We meet right here in the sanctuary. I teach that from 6.30 to 8.30.

We had about 250 ladies that came out last time. More and more people are just wanting to be trained and equipped, which we love. And so, ladies, for any of you, you are welcome to come bring someone with you.

That's Tuesday, May 3rd, 6.30 in the evening, right in here. And we would love to have you join. So, there's no cost, no sign-up. You just show up.

And again, if you wonder, am I too old or too young? At our last one, our youngest was 8, and our oldest was 97. So, if you're somewhere in between there, you're going to have someone that looks like you.

All right? And so, we would love, ladies, for you to come bring someone with you. No one has to be a member to come be a part of that. Just an evening of learning more about the Lord and His Word.

All right? Let me invite you to open your Bible with me to Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 1. As a church family, we are in the early weeks of walking through the gospel of Mark.

And I rested a little bit with whether we should jump outside of Mark with it being Resurrection Sunday. But I actually think the passage we are in is perfect for what we remember and celebrate on this Lord's Day.

And so, we're going to look in verses 14 to 20 at a message I've entitled, The Gospel of God. Mark 1, 14 to 20.

It says, Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. And passing alongside the gospel of God, I want to put before you this morning two headings.

If you are a note taker, two things I'd like you to put down and consider with me in this passage. Number one, let's look at the gospel call to salvation.

The gospel call to salvation. And number two, we'll look at the gracious call to service. All right? Let's look first here in verses 14 and 15 at the gospel call to salvation.

Now, one of the things to remember, and if you're new to church or maybe the gospel of Mark's not familiar to you much at all, that's all right, let me help you with it, when Mark is writing this gospel, it's not his intention to record every single detail of the life of Christ.

None of the Bible writers try to give us every single detail. In fact, John himself tells us in his gospel it would take up all the volumes of the world to try to put into words everything that Jesus did and everything that Jesus accomplished.

Instead, what Mark is going to do is he's going to move quickly and rapidly. You see the term immediately used to put in front of you in very rapid succession the important elements of who Christ is.

And so, the book is not written chronologically all the time. This is an example of it. We looked last week in verses 9 to 11 at the baptism of Jesus and then verses 12 and 13 at the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

What happens now is he says in verse 14, after John was arrested.

And so, what happens is Mark does not go chronologically. He's going to skip over quite a bit of time here. Jesus is going to be baptized sometime in the summer and then a few months later he begins his public ministry and he'll minister in the south in Judea.

He will go up and pass through Samaria and then he'll go to the northern area known as Galilee. That's about a year after his baptism. And so, when you get from verse 9 now to verse 14, we've gone fast forward a number of months in the life of Jesus.

And it says, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee. Let me just stop for a minute. This has a lot of significance.

Galilee is a region with a lot of people that live there. People from a lot of different neighboring nations lived there in Galilee. It was known as Galilee of the Gentiles because so many different nationalities were represented.

There were two large highways that intersected there in Galilee, which meant there was an international mix of people in the region.

It's been estimated by first century scholars that as many as three million people lived in this area. And so, Jesus, when he starts his public ministry that Mark does not cover here, he starts in the south in Judea.

He's going to meet Nicodemus, if you're familiar with that story. He's going to cleanse the temple for the first time. John the Baptist is going to be arrested.

And when that happens, soon after that, Jesus leaves. Mark will come back to that in chapter 6, verse 17, by the way. Jesus is going to pass through Samaria, where we get the story of the woman at the well in John 4, if you're familiar with that.

And now he enters into this region known as Galilee. Now, what does Jesus do? He has begun his public ministry.

What does Jesus spend his time doing? What's the focus of his ministry? Go back to verse 14. After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.

Caruso. It's a word that means, I preach or I proclaim. Jesus comes into Galilee and he's preaching.

That's what he's doing. He is proclaiming, teaching, preaching the message, it says here, of the gospel of God.

This was the usual way for people in the Scripture to instruct. They would preach. They would proclaim. And even though, admittedly, in our culture today, for many, even what I'm doing right now feels antiquated, and for many it feels strange and bizarre.

Why do you get up on Sunday morning and go to church and you watch some guy stand up and talk and teach the Bible? That seems so strange to many in our world.

But this is precisely what the message in the New Testament is of what those who know God and believe in his promises do. They go and preach.

They proclaim the word of God. Jesus does it as he came here proclaiming the gospel of God. It says in Matthew 9, 35, Jesus went throughout the cities teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.

It says in Luke 8, 1, that afterward he went on through cities and villages proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. Speaking of the disciples in Acts 20, 25, now I know that none of you among whom I have preached the kingdom will see my face again.

Jesus preached. The disciples preached. Paul preached. 2 Timothy 4, 2, he says simply to Timothy, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season.

This is what the Scripture calls us to do. To proclaim. To preach. To declare the truth of the gospel of God.

And what is the message that Jesus preaches? It's the good news of the gospel. Look at the text again. He was proclaiming the gospel of God.

The gospel is a message about God. That's true. But it's also a message from God. And the message from God is that He has made a way for us.

Here's the problem for all humanity, including every one of us this morning. All of us were made in the image of God. All of our lives have inherent value and meaning because you've been made in the image of God.

And you need to understand that. And it may be that you've been through some very painful events in your life that at times have caused you to wonder even about yourself, does my life really have value?

You were made in the image of God. God, your life has value. And I know that for some of you, you've had an employer call you into the office and say you're not needed here.

For some, you've had a spouse tell you they no longer want to be with you. You may have had a rebellious child tell you that they want to run away and get out of your house.

You may have had friends who have told you that they no longer want you in the group. I know, life can be really, really hard. And you wonder sometimes, maybe, do you even matter?

But here's the truth. You were made in the image of God, knit together in your mother's womb by the decree of God Almighty.

Your life has value. What is also true of all of us in this room is that we have sinned. We have fallen short of the glory of God.

We have failed to live as we should. My guess for most of us, perhaps even all of us in this room this morning, is that you want to be a good person.

You want to be a good spouse. You desire to be a good parent. You try to be a good child. You work hard to be a good student. You want to be a good teammate.

You do everything you can to be a good employee. So the question is not, do you try to be nice? The question is not, are you a law-abiding citizen?

I'll hope and I'll just give the benefit of the doubt that's true for all of us today. But the problem is that even though you may be kind and benevolent and generally obey the laws of the land, all have sinned.

All have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us stand in need of a Savior.

And the gospel of God tells us that God has promised that He would send a Redeemer and Jesus is that Redeemer.

Genesis 3.15, the very first prophetic mention of Christ, says that God will send His Redeemer. And it's Jesus.

And while we were all made in the image of God and all have value, we have all sinned and we all stand in need of a Savior. And the Bible says the wages of sin is death.

So this sin problem is no small thing. We are separated from God in a relational sense.

And if not for the grace of God, we would have no hope. But Jesus came proclaiming and preaching the gospel of God.

The good news that God has made a promise to send a Savior and the good news that in Himself the promise has been kept.

Now what we are blessed to know on this side of the cross is that Jesus not only laid down His life as a payment for our sin, but on the third day He was raised back to life.

And that's what we celebrate this morning. That we do not serve a Savior who was kind and noble and courageous and laid down His life and stayed dead.

No, we serve a risen Savior who laid down His life as a payment for our sin and was brought back to life to prove and demonstrate forever and forever that He has power over sin and death and the grave and that in Christ we have a Savior.

And when Jesus is preaching the kingdom of God, what He is preaching is that eternal life is found in Him. He will say in John 4 to the lady at the well that He is living water and that if you know Him, you'll never thirst again.

His whole message, His whole proclamation is that yes, you are made in the image of God and yes, your life has value, but you are a sinner and as such, you need a Savior because spiritual death is your condition.

But the good news of the gospel of God is that in Christ, salvation is offered. And the empty tomb stands as the forever assurance.

That those who belong to Christ have everlasting life. And so He came proclaiming the gospel of God.

In verse 15, what did Jesus say as He did that? He said, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. A little behind the scenes for you this morning here.

When He says that time is fulfilled, I want you to understand what He is conveying with this. The usual word for time in the language of the New Testament, chronos, we get our English word for chronology.

Chronology, it's a sequence of events. That's the usual word for time. That's not the word that is used here when He says that time is fulfilled. It's kairos.

Kairos meaning not a chronology of a sequence of events, but meaning a season. A specific season of time.

Not just A, B, C, D, but a time in which something significant is taking place. Jesus says the time is fulfilled.

It's a kairotic moment. It's a season of accomplishment that's happening here. The emphasis is not that it is 946 in the morning.

That's not the time He's talking about. He's talking about a time in history has occurred. All of the Old Testament prophecies about a time when Messiah would come has now been fulfilled in this moment.

The time is fulfilled. And the word fulfilled means to completely fill something up. Just a quick example.

When you, for you coffee drinkers, by the way, if you did not know this, it's required for churches to offer coffee on Sunday morning. I made the tragic mistake about five years ago.

We didn't have coffee. And I was like, who cares? People can bring their own coffee. Well, I was nearly run out of town and killed. I learned my lesson. The church, I've not found the verse.

It's in there, I'm told. The church must offer coffee for all of you addicts. A few of us that don't have vices, don't worry about it.

That's a different sermon. When you fill up your coffee, if you do it right, you leave a little bit of space at the top, right? A little bit.

So that when you're walking down the hallway, it doesn't automatically spill over. If you fill your coffee cup up to the very, very, very top, if you try to take a drink, you would immediately spill it all over yourself.

So you don't really fill your cup of coffee. You just almost fill it. You get close to it, or else it doesn't really work. The exact opposite is the idea behind the word fulfilled.

The time, the season of time, is, and the word here means to be all the way full.

It is all the way here. In other words, when Christ arrives on the scene, you have everything you need.

With Christ, you don't have most of what you need. You don't have a big part of what you need. All of the promises of God and all of the gospel of God is fully fulfilled in Christ.

The time is fulfilled. And He says, the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus offers a kingdom. Jesus comes offering a spiritual kingdom.

Now, it's true, after His second coming, the Lord is going to usher in a physical kingdom here on earth. He will have an eternal kingdom in the eternal state.

But what He's offering at this point is a spiritual kingdom. He's not here to build a physical kingdom. He didn't come to be a king in a physical sense at His first coming.

We know that from His own words. John 18, 36. Jesus said to Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I would not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world.

Jesus comes, and the kingdom of God is at hand. He's offering a spiritual entrance into His kingdom for those who would believe in Him.

So there's two kingdoms. A kingdom of darkness and a kingdom of light. So what do you do in response? Jesus, what did He do?

He was preaching. He was proclaiming. What was He proclaiming? That the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God was at hand. Now, what are we supposed to do?

In the text of verse 15, though there's several phrases, there's only two things that we are given to do. And it's at the end of verse 15.

Repent and believe in the gospel. The preaching of the good news calls for response.

Jesus went around preaching the gospel of God and He was calling for a response. He told the people they are to repent and believe in the gospel.

Let's look at these words briefly here. First, repent. What does that mean? Well, repentance carries several components to it.

One is it includes a recognition of the truth. 2 Timothy 2.25 says, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

So repentance includes knowing the truth. Second, repentance includes a sincere heart response. 2 Corinthians 7.10 says, Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Look, everybody feels ashamed when they get caught doing something wrong. Everybody feels embarrassed when they get found out to have lied or to have stolen something that wasn't theirs.

Everybody has regret when they get pulled over for driving too fast. We're not talking about merely regret. We're talking about a sincere heart response based on the truth.

And then the third thing that repentance carries with it is a change of the will and change of intentions. Acts 8.22, Repent, therefore, this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible the intent of your heart may be forgiven.

So when Jesus says repent and believe in the gospel, to repent means to know the truth, to have a sincere heart response to the truth that actually changes your will and the intention of your heart.

So we could say it this way, repentance is a change of the mind, the heart, and the will. He says repent. Let me make sure you're tracking with me this morning.

Every single one of you are made in the image of God. Your life has value and your life has meaning. But every single one of you have sinned. And because of that, you stand in need of a Savior.

God has promised to send a Redeemer and that Redeemer was the Lord Jesus Christ. And He Himself went to the city preaching and telling people that it was the time.

And He was preaching the gospel of God, letting them know that He is the Savior. And He called on people to repent.

And the second part says, and believe in the gospel. So it's not just knowing the truth, it's loving the Savior. Understand this.

The Bible itself teaches us that in this world there are demons and those demons know the truth.

The book of James in the New Testament says, even the demons believe that there is one God. Even the demons know that's true. But they do not love the Savior.

And what we are commanded to do is repent, we hear the truth, we believe the truth, we respond to the truth, and we are to believe in Christ.

To have faith and love in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ. And by the way, as you just study the text here in verse 15, the two verbs here, to repent and to believe, are both in the Greek what's called the present tense, which means it's an ongoing continuous action.

It doesn't mean you need to get saved over and over again. What it does mean linguistically here is that true salvation, true believers, keep believing in Christ.

They keep loving Christ. They keep turning from their sin over and over to proclaim over and over that their trust is in Jesus.

So, if I were to ask you today, do you know for sure that you are going to heaven when you die? The most important answer you could give me is that this day you are trusting in the work of Jesus Christ.

If you say, well, I took care of that 20 years ago, or when I was a teenager I used to love the Lord, or when I was a child my grandma told me about Jesus and I felt kind of good when she did and it made me kind of happy.

I don't really love him today, I don't love his word today, I don't really have a relationship with him today, but 20 years ago I did. Just understand that the message of the scripture is that true believers continue to believe and love and live in this relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we all sin, all of us. The Bible tells us that when we sin we have an advocate in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So if you're a true believer you don't need to get saved over and over again. If you're a true believer you're his for all time. Just understand there's a lot of people who are highly religious that never truly believed in the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior.

Repent and believe in the gospel. Romans 10 9 and 10 says if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.

For with the heart a person believes resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. So I want you to understand today that no matter who you are and no matter your background no matter what's been a part of your life you were made in the image of God your life has value you are a sinner and you are in need of a Savior and the good news is the gospel of God that Jesus himself preached tells us that salvation is found in the name of Jesus and if you today would repent of your sin and call upon the name of the Lord you will be saved.

You don't come to church four weeks in a row in order to earn salvation you don't have to start giving money to the church in order to become a Christian you don't have to change your wardrobe and your vocabulary and start to act and talk and look and speak just like everybody else and that's what makes you worthy to be a Christian none of us are worthy of salvation it's grace it's a free gift of God but my dear friends understand real salvation is going to show you're never saved by your works but by your works grace we will demonstrate if we truly believe in Christ this is the gospel call to salvation repent and believe in the gospel and then secondly

I want to show you quickly in verses 16 to 20 the gracious call to service it's very interesting right after this in verse 16 Mark says passing alongside the sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen now Jesus already knew these guys John chapter 1 35 to 42 speaks of this what you have is before Jesus was publicly on the scene you have John the Baptist who was pointing the way to Jesus but before Jesus arrives in a public sense John the Baptist is preaching repentance same thing and John the Baptist had disciples and Jesus meets some of the disciples of John the Baptist and some of those guys are who's talked about here in verses 16 to 20 so as months and months ago Jesus had met these guys and now he sees them again apparently what happened was these guys were disciples of

John the Baptist John the Baptist is arrested put in prison these guys that were his disciples some of them returned back to their fishing business that's what they did for a living and they were fishing on the Sea of Galilee sometimes called Gennesaret Gennesaret is a word harp and if you look at a picture of the Sea of Galilee it's shaped a little bit like a harp that's why it was called that if you're in the land of Israel you've got the Sea of Galilee and then coming out of the Sea of Galilee is the Jordan River and at the bottom of that is the Dead Sea so Jesus is up here at the Sea of Galilee and he sees Simon and Andrew and these men are working their fishing business Sea of Galilee is about 13 miles long it's about 7 miles wide to give you an idea it's a lake really and he goes up to them and he says follow me and

I will make you fishers of men instead of casting their nets for fish he says come with me and I'm going to call you to preach and call men to repent follow me a literal reading here is here behind me that's what Jesus says to them you get here behind me me and you follow me and if you follow me we're going to trade your life of working to catch fish and I'm going to train you to preach the gospel of God and catch men for salvation get here behind me one of the amazing realities of the Lord is that after you receive this incredible holy spirit given gospel call to salvation as his child you also get this gracious call to service which is staggering

I mean the fact that you sit here for 35 or 40 minutes and listen to me who am I in case you don't know me if you're new let me just help you out here I'm nobody impressive you may be disappointed to hear that if you're new in town maybe thought hey nice church big building I bet they've got some really impressive preacher no why in the world am I here week after week teaching and maybe a better question why does anybody show up here's why because God in grace saved me and God in grace called me to go and preach the gospel of God the only thing impressive about me is my savior that's it but isn't that your testimony too that

God in grace saved you and God in grace says you come follow me and with your life you want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and miracle of miracles the Lord uses weak people like we are to do the amazing work of preaching and teaching and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ the message of Jesus is not only to repent and believe it is to repent believe and follow him that's what conversion is it's to live your life following Jesus Christ and do you notice when the right time is to follow him let me read it again verse 16 passing alongside the sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and Jesus said to them follow me and

I will make you fishers of men and immediately they left their nets and followed him and going on a little further he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother who were in their boat mending the nets and immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him when is the right time to respond to Jesus say it with me immediately when is the right time to follow Jesus immediately today if you are not a believer if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior today is the day of salvation immediately call upon the name of the Lord and if you are a believer the time to get serious about your Christian walk and the time to begin living your life in such a way that you are invested in the work of the kingdom is today!

There's no doubt there's no doubt there's many people in this room who are believers of course and there's no doubt with this many people in this room there's plenty in here who are not believers and some in that category undoubtedly think to themselves maybe one day people here seem kind of nice I thought y'all would be kind of weird but you're kind of nice and maybe you think to yourself I wasn't too bad maybe even think to yourself this kind of makes sense because I do kind of feel like the world has pushed me aside and I do kind of have something in my heart that lets me know that something is missing and after all maybe it is Jesus maybe the gospel is what I need and for some you're thinking maybe one day

I'll do that the right response to the preaching of the gospel is not to one day call upon the name of the Lord it is two day call upon the name of the Lord today understand I get mathematically odds are in your favor that you've got plenty of days ahead of you I get it but I want you to understand how presumptuous and honestly how arrogant that mentality is to think to yourself I have heard the gospel and the very God who offers me salvation I will just presume he owes me another year or ten or thirty listen the very

God who sustains your life does not owe you tomorrow do not arrogantly presume that you will one day repent and believe you are not promised one more day immediately is the time to respond today is the day of salvation and please understand if you're tempted to think to yourself pastor I don't feel worthy I need to clean my life up a bit and then I will repent and believe just understand you can't get clean enough Jesus did not come to help you save yourself he came to save you himself repent and believe in him and for those who are

Christians do not arrogantly presume that one day you'll get serious about the Christian life one day I will one of these days when the kids are out of the house and when the kids are through with sports and when the kids are through with homework and one of these days when I'm through building a career and I'm through establishing the business and one of these days when I'm retired listen if you live like that you're going to come to the end of your life and have wasted your life Jesus calls out to these men and says come follow me get here behind me and they do not say but I've got so much business affairs to take care of or I've got so many things I haven't wrapped up or I don't know what tomorrow is going to hold or what's our income going to be or what's my job assignment or what's the success going to be like he just simply says this why don't you come get right here behind me and follow me and they immediately left what they were doing and followed

Christ you can't miss this Mark is making it crystal clear that the time to trust in Jesus is today and the time to obey his call unto service is immediately so if you are not a Christian I encourage you today to repent and to believe and I want to make my sermon exactly what Christ preached so you know that what I'm saying is right and I will say to you precisely what Jesus himself said repent and believe the gospel right where you are right how you are broken as you are angry as you are fearful as you are repent and believe the gospel and for those who are believers

I want to call you to do exactly what he called the disciples to do and that is to live your life doing the things he's called you to do and I want to invite you to immediately this day you make whatever changes in your life need to be made for it to be clear to yourself that Jesus is your priority not someday not one day but this day Jesus is your priority so if you don't know Christ as your savior repent and believe the gospel in your heart in prayer no special magical words but in your heart would you just cry out to the Lord and admit to him what you already know that you're a sinner in need of a savior and ask him to forgive you and become your very own savior and if you're a Christian and you've been living your life for worldly things this is the day to say I confess and repent of that and I will immediately make the focus of my life the things of

God now it's very possible that wherever you are in that you need some help and you need some encouragement and our church stands ready to do that we do not want to leave you without hope or direction we want to walk with you through whatever that response may be and so for you member or guest Christian or one who is not a Christian either way if you would use that connection card and let us know your need here's our desire it is not to simply minister to you one day it's not just simply to preach to you one day we want to sit down and help you and walk with you and shepherd you as long as it takes we are here to work with you and partner with you and help you we do not want to say to you to just follow Jesus and leave you alone or just obey the Lord and leave you alone we want to be able to shepherd you through that as long as it takes whatever it takes so member or guest

Christian or non-Christian you use that connection card and you tell us your name you tell us your need you tell us your prayer request you tell us your question you tell us where you're struggling you tell us where you need help and we will partner with you and walk with you and shepherd you through all that is going on in your life until you come to the place where you can know with confidence I belong to Jesus Christ and today I am living for the gospel of God that's our hope that's our prayer we are not here to impress or wow you on one Sunday we are here to shepherd you home unto Jesus Christ on that great day so if we can pray for you or serve you please know we want to do that nobody came to this church today to try to impress you we did come to church today to try to call you to repent and to believe and to immediately follow the

Lord Jesus Christ we hope for nothing less than for you to say today this is the day that I embrace the fullness of the gospel of God Lord we do love you today and we are so thankful for all that you have brought to this place this morning I do pray that your word has been clear that the gospel has been clear and I do pray people would respond Lord we are excited we've been able to see baptism this morning we'll see that in the next service the next several weeks a number of new believers who are going to be baptized we rejoice that you are still saving souls we pray that would happen even now and we'll give you the glory for it all in Jesus name amen real quick before you're dismissed if you're looking for a church home we'd love to help you we're not the only good church around we're not the only biblical church around we're not here to try to make life all about us but if we can help you in any way we want to do that communicate with us that connection card how we can serve you let us know how we can help your family if you're looking for a church home we want to welcome you here anytime and invite you to be with us anytime all right for our church family

I love you so dearly I'm so thankful for our don't like you so like you have on your family what they're what or they're going what they're going on