Forsaken

Introduction

Well, good morning!

If you have your Bible and I hope that you do, open ‘em up with me to the Gospel of Matthew…Matthew chapter 27.

This morning, as we get a little closer to Easter, we’re gonna start a 4 week series digging into some of the statements Jesus made during the crucifixion. And listen, if you pay attention over the next couple of weeks, we’re actually gonna follow the “Best News” strategy that I use when it comes to teaching and communicating the gospel.

Remember we have the bad news, the worse news, the good news, and the best news.

Our passage today, its gonna really highlight the bad news of the gospel. And listen, this passage, it’s one of the most profound, heart-wrenching moments we have in Scripture. As we read it and as we dig into it, we’re confronted with the reality of sin…we’re confronted with the consequences of sin.

The bad news of the gospel, its that ever since the fall, in the garden, back in Genesis chapter 3…everyone of us, by nature and by choice, we became slaves to sin. Paul says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and all fall short of God’s glory.” We’re all sinners…we all walk in rebellion to what we know is good...In the same letter, Paul says, “No one is righteous…no one seeks God” (Romans 3:10-11). And listen, the reason for that…its because of this reality of sin. We can’t escape it…we’re slaves to it.

And as a result of our sin nature, its created this divide…this separation between us and everything good…which of course, as the Bible lays out…God is good! And so, there’s a divide between us and God. And listen, if we really reflect on our lives…we don’t need the Bible to tell us these things…we know who we are…we know the mistakes we make.

Sin it can feel insurmountable…it can make us feel like there’s no way out…like there’s no hope in our circumstances…which of course, starts to make us question our own worth…or our own value…it makes us question our place in God’s plan.

And yet, amid this darkness, we see a glimmer of hope. Genesis chapter 1 to the last chapter in Revelation, the point of Scripture, it was all inspired…it was all written down, to get us to the person and work Jesus.

You see, in Genesis chapter 4, God, as He’s talking with Cain…He warns him, “Sin, its crouching at your door; and it desire, it’s for you.” But He says, “You must rule over it.” Sin, it’s not just something we do…its a noun…its a thing that has power…and as Scripture shows us, we’ve turned ourselves over to sin. We allow it to control us. And as a result…we experience the same punishment as sin; which is death!

But listen, being made in the image of God…He wouldn’t allow sin to consume those He chose. And so, before creation ever came into existence…He devised a plan (allowing us still to have freewill; being made in His image) He devised a plan to send Himself, through His Son, Jesus to redeem humanity.

Guys, as we reflect on these different statements over the next several weeks…my challenge for you, don’t tune me out. I know you hear the gospel constantly…I know its easy for you to sit back and think, “Well, this isn’t for me…I’m a believer!” And praise God for that! But we should never tire of hearing the gospel…we should never forget who we are and what God saved us from…we should never forget what we deserve.

Paul Washer said this, “[If we] downplay the doctrine of the total depravity of man [or in other words…if we downplay sin and the fact that all are consumed by sin], if we downplay that, we’ll downplay the glory of the gospel!

I really believe, the idea of sin…it needs to be our foundation as Christians. We can’t forget who we are and we can’t forget why we needed saving.

That’s why Jesus says in Matthew 5, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are those who mourn…blessed are the meek or the humble.” Poor in spirit, it means we’re poor because we recognize and we acknowledge our sin nature (and we’re blessed because of that)…we mourn because we acknowledge our inability to do anything about that problem (and listen, we’re blessed because of that)…and we’re humble because we realize its only by God’s grace are we saved from that (and guys, we’re blessed because of that knowledge).

And so again, don’t tune me out this morning…Remember who you are and remember where you came from. You were dead in your sins…and God breathed live into your soul (Ephesians 2:1).

And so, if you’re there with me this morning…our main passage is Matthew 27:46, but let’s go back a couple of verses and read this in context. If you would stand with me as we read this together.

Matthew 27:45–50 ESV

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani (sah-bak-ta-nee)?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

Thank you, you can be seated.

[Prayer]

If you’re taking notes, our points this morning…number 1, The reality of sin…number 2, The cost of sin…and then finally, number 3, The hope we have in sin.

And so, if you’re there with me, let’s look at what Jesus’s statement here teaches us about the nature of sin.

I. The Reality - Sin Causes Distances Between Us and God

Point number 1, The reality…Sin causes distance between us and God.

Let’s look at our passage again…I know we’re focusing on verse 46, but let’s read the entire account in context again.

Matthew 27:45–50 ESV

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani (sah-bak-ta-nee)?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And so again, we’re talking about Jesus’s final moments throughout this series…and focusing on specific statements He made.

Listen, when Matthew 27, verse 45 picks up the narrative of Jesus’s life…He had already been betrayed by Judas…He had been falsely condemned by the Jewish and Roman authorities…He had been beaten, He was flogged, He was mocked, and ultimately, He was nailed to a cross and crucified. It was a horrible way to die…the worse kind of sentencing a person could receive.

And if you know the story, Jesus was crucified around 9 in the morning…And so, from 9 to noon, He hung there in the light of day. But at noon, the text shows us that there’s this miraculous darkness that covered the land. It wasn’t a sandstorm, it wasn’t some kind of eclipse. In fact, Passover always occurs near a full moon and there can’t be an eclipse at a full moon…those things take minutes to pass by anyway…This darkness, the text says it lasted over three hours. It was as though all of creation was sympathizing with the Creator, who hung there on the cross.

And listen, if you wanna go a little deeper with this…during the Exodus accounts, there were actually three days of darkness in Egypt before the first Passover event. And so it makes sense here that there’s three hours before the Lamb of God died for the sins of His people.

But listen, this darkness, it was supernatural…it signified God’s judgment on sin. Jesus didn’t die for the sake of dying…He died because that’s a just punishment against all sin. We’re gonna talk about that in just a moment when we move into the next point.

You see, death might be sin’s punishment…but separation, that’s sin’s reality.

Jesus cries out, in verse 46, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus isn’t just quoting Scripture here…Guys, this a cry of anguish. He was in the “outer darkness.” You see, what was happening physically, Jesus was experiencing spiritually. For the first time in His eternal state, Jesus was separated from the Father.

In his pain, Jesus, He reached up to heaven…and yet He felt His Father’s distance…and so he said “My God”…notice He didn’t say “My Father.”

The cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it comes from Psalm 22:1 and it perfectly fits Jesus’s situation. At the moment when Jesus bore our sin, the Father was distant…He was separated from Jesus because the Father was too pure to look upon sin. In those moments, Jesus was forsaken.

Listen, when we think about Jesus’s sacrifice…we tend to focus on His death. But guys, the greatest sacrifice Jesus made that day…it wasn’t with His life…it wasn’t the pain He felt…it wasn’t the limits He took on by putting on flesh. Those were absolutely sacrifices…but those things, they weren’t the greatest sacrifice Jesus made.

The greatest sacrifice He made, it was taking on our sins…and as a result of that, it was willingly being removed from His union with the Father.

If you know the story, in the garden, the night before these accounts we’re reading about…it says in the Gospel of Luke that Jesus sweats blood, right? He was stressed about what He knew awaited Him. And it wasn’t the death He knew would come…He preached about that constantly…He knew death wasn’t the end. It wasn’t the pain He knew He’d endure…He knew that was temporary. Guys, it was the one thing He had never experienced in His eternal state…Jesus was anxious about taking on sin…He was anxious because He knew the reality of sin.

Let’s read the accounts in Luke 22, verse 41:

Luke 22:41–45 ESV

And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow,

Guys, the greatest thing that burdened Jesus…it was experiencing sin. And the reasons for that, it was because Jesus knew the consequences of sin…He knew that sin meant separation from His Father. God’s good, He’s holy…And holiness, the word…it literally means to be set apart…Apart from what? From sin! And so, for the Father to remain holy and good, and for Jesus to take on His people’s sin…Jesus for a brief moment had to sacrifice His union with the Father and take on man’s unholiness.

You see, its hard for us to wrap our minds around Jesus’s struggle here because our concerns, it’s always on ourselves…Our concerns are the pain pieces of the story…its the physical sacrifices Jesus had to make…its on the death He experienced. We can’t wrap our minds around His anxiety because we’ve always been separated from the Father…and our sin, its always created a divide between us and God…We don’t know life any other way. And so, that’s the reason Jesus had to come.

We can’t wrap our minds around reconciliation or restoration…we can’t seek God in this way because our minds can never dream of something we’ve never experienced. And so Jesus, loving the Father so deeply…loving us…Jesus did what we couldn’t…He became sin for us.

Paul says in 2 Cor 5:21:

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

When Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” For the first time, He felt what we feel…He felt what it’s like to be rejected by God…He felt what life’s like without God. For the first time in His eternal state, Jesus was no longer connected to the Father.

When the hour became dark, we have to remember that Jesus was separated from the Father…He laid aside His privileges as God and He willingly experienced the sorrows of mankind. We have to remember the omniscient God, with His eternal wisdom, He experienced ignorance as He took on man’s sin. We have to remember the omnipotent God, who’s mighty and strong…He was fatigued and He fell under the burden of the cross. We have to remember the omnipresent God, a God not confined by space or time, He was fixed to a cross and He didn’t leave it. The unchanging God, He grieved and wept.

Because of sin, Jesus was no longer connected to the Father. He was separated.

And listen, this is important to understand, especially for us as believers…that’s where conviction comes from. God didn’t just experience sin on the cross through Jesus…But He does it through His Spirit now. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1, that we’ve been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, right? And so, when we fall into sin, we’re dragging God into that with us. He’s experiencing it all over again. The only difference now, our sins, they’ve been justified through the work of Jesus. And we remain in this constant state of righteousness because of Jesus…but the conviction we feel, that’s the Spirit in us, driving us to turn…to close the distance between us and God.

Guys, our knowledge…and our understanding of sin…its important…because we need to know that sin, it separates us…it widens the gap between us and God. Now, that gap, it’ll be closed fully at the moment of our glorification. But listen, right now, we’re being sanctified…we’re being perfected…and sin, it still has consequences…and it still separates us. Guys, we might have freedom in Christ as Paul says in Romans…there might not be any condemnation for those that are in Christ…but with the Spirit in us, we should see sin differently. We should be like Jesus in the garden…Death shouldn’t scare us…pain and hurt and disease, none of those things should scare us…our concern, as people who’ve been set apart…it should be any separation that might still exist between us and God now…And through the empowerment of the Spirit, we turn from those things…we repent from those things…we grow in righteousness and in the fullness of Christ.

That’s the first point…the reality of sin, it causes distance between us and God.

II. The Cost - Sin Demands a Just Punishment

But listen, I wanna speak to the unbeliever for just a moment this morning. Maybe you don’t believe in God…maybe you think some of the things we’re talking about sounds crazy…its’ unbelievable. It’s hard to wrap your mind around separation from God, because there’s really no acknowledge of sin in your life. You think there’s good there…you think its possible for us to do good. And part of the reason its hard for you to believe, its because you’ve only experienced what an earthly happiness feels like.

You see when you experience the goodness of God, you start to realize what it is you’re missing…what you’re separated from.

And so, let me talk to you about the cost of sin…sin demands a just punishment. That’s our second point this morning. And listen, sin’s not prejudice. It comes after every single person made in the image of God…and every single person, according to the Bible…we’re all sinful!

And maybe some of us don’t really feel that separation between us and God right now. We’re enjoying life…It’s fun! Maybe we’re too young to think about it…Maybe we’re too old and rooted in traditions to see the gospel for what it is…Maybe some of us, we’re too wrapped up in sin and we’re enjoying it too much to see God past ourselves.

Guys, I want us understand this morning…God, He created us to live! Death was never in the cards. When He created man, in His image, He created us with the intentions of living forever with Him. That was His Plan.

But listen, being made in His image, He gave us freewill…He gave us the ability to choose good and evil…He gave us the ability to choose love. And we chose ourselves. We chose our own pleasures…That’s what Genesis 3 was all about. Adam and Eve, they chose rebellion against God. And God tells ‘em there in that chapter, what the cost of sin would be.

And listen, you can choose not to believe in God…you can hate the idea of God…you can ignore the gospel…But there’s something that will never change…you’ll never escape from. Every single one of us, we’ll all die! And again, that’s not God’s design. God created us for life. Life with Him. Sin, its in opposition to God…and sin, it takes everything God created good and it distorts it.

Paul says in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin, its death,” right?

Look at our passage again…Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then verse 50, “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.”

I want you to think about this for just a second. Consider the scene there in Jerusalem…The mockers, they stare at Jesus’s corpse with satisfaction. The chief priests and elders, they’ve slain their enemy. The soldiers, they begin to gather the tools of their trade as the work they started is coming to a close.

We know from other accounts, the temple veil, it tore…there was an earthquake. And in some of the other statements we’re gonna look at over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about these elements a little bit more. But the thing I don’t want you miss right now, its that at the right time…, “Jesus yielded up his spirit.”

Sin, it required a just punishment. Sin requires death…and without His own death, Jesus couldn’t pay for man’s sin.

Before Christ came and gave himself as a ransom, we know from the Old Testament, priests, they had to offer sacrifices over and over again. Hebrews tells us, “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices.” You see, the sacrifices in the Old Testament, where the Jews would kill livestock and offer them to the Lord, it was a temporal removal of God’s wrath on their own lives…but sacrifices had to be made in order for sin to be justified. Sin requires death because its a just sentencing. But when Jesus came…and when Jesus yielded His spirit…He “offered for all time one sacrifice for sins.” And when He was done, “He sat down at the right hand of God” (That’s Hebrews 10:11-12). And listen, when Jesus sat down, the task was finished. There was no need for more death because the God of the universe who was good and righteous, He took on flesh…As a man, He paid for man’s sin…And as God, He justified His own wrath against sin.

By His own life and by His own power, Jesus defeated sin.

If you read the Old Testament, nothing is more detestable to God than the loss of life, life made in His image…that’s why we as Christians are so against things like abortion. God went through such drastic lengths to save us because God despises death. He died so that we wouldn’t have to.

And Jesus’s cry here, it reveals the excruciating cost of sin. This isn’t just a theological concept…its has real and painful consequences. This historical moment, where Jesus yielded up His spirit…where He died on the cross…it shows us the gravity of sin. Jesus was forsaken…He was cut off from the Father…He died on the cross, not because of anything He did but because that’s what OUR sin deserved. He took our place, He experienced our rejection, He died our death.

But listen, there are those that’ll hear the gospel…and they won’t understand it…they’ll continue living life just the way they were before. There’s no repentance…there’s no turning…there’s no change…And listen, I want you to see this…Jesus’s death, its not for those people. Instead, those people, they’re still gonna experience a permanent death, separated from goodness and righteousness and joy.

And not because God’s mean…In fact, its the complete opposite…its because He loves us so much. If that’s us, He’s gonna turn us over to our own desires.

The costs of sin, its death…that’s the second point.

III. The Hope - Sin Received a Righteous Sentence

But listen, if that’s where the gospel stopped that would be some awful news, right?

Point number 3, the good news of the gospel, sin received a righteous sentence…and because of that, there is hope today.

Listen, it might be true that sin separates us from God…and it might be true that the cost of sin is death…but it doesn’t mean we’re without hope.

The point of this passage…yes, it highlights the reality and the cost of sin…but the point of this passage, the reason Jesus is the centerpiece of this story…the reason Jesus is the one on the cross, it’s all about hope.

Even though Jesus cries out in despair, His cry, its not without hope. The separation He experienced from the Father…the real death He experienced…all of that stuff was temporal. We know the Easter story…and we know that Jesus wasn’t just a man…Jesus was the Son of God…He was in fact, God Himself according to John chapter 1. Jesus knew that He would rise again.

Guys, the point of Jesus’s life…the point of Jesus’s death…it was to glorify the Father by overcoming and defeating the very thing that drove a wedge between Him and us. The point of the Easter story, it was to defeat sin and to usher in a path of reconciliation.

That was always God’s plan…from the foundations of the earth. Jesus was always meant to take on flesh and He was always meant to die for the sins of the world.

We’ve studied this passage before but that was God’s promise to Adam and Eve back in Genesis chapter 3. God says to the serpent in verse 15:

Genesis 3:15 ESV

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

“Satan, it’s gonna look like you’ve won. You’re gonna look victorious…my Savior, He’s gonna look defeated…but by golly He’s gonna crush your head.”

When Jesus died on the cross, don’t think for a second that Satan didn’t think he had won. He did!…But when Jesus rose to life again…and when the Holy Spirit descended on believers after Jesus’s ascension…Satan realized in that moment, he had been defeated…He realized sin was coming to an end. He was bound at that moment, waiting for his own demise…Sin had been defeated.

And listen, the Bible’s clear…we see over and over again, throughout the New Testament…how we come to Jesus, how we receive salvation. It says over and over again, “Repent and believe.”

Mark 1:15 ESV

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Acts 20:21 CSB

I [Paul] testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.

Acts 2:38 ESV

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 3:19 ESV

Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,

Listen, its the same message all through the New Testament…Repent and Believe!

And listen, when you do that…when you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and when you believe in your heart, that He raised from the dead (Romans 10:9) the Bible says, “You will be saved.”

You’re saved from the separation that sin creates…You can actually experience the goodness of God again…You can experience joy, even in your darkest moments…When you turn to Jesus, the gap, its closed. There’s less separation.

And listen, when you turn to Jesus…you’re saved from the cost of sin…you’re saved from death. You’ll still experience a fleshly dead…but like Jesus, its promised, by God Himself, that you’ll raise to life in the same way.

That’s why it says 1 Cor 15:55

1 Corinthians 15:55 ESV

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Just as God promised…Satan and sin, it was all defeated at the cross. And when we place the entirety of our trust and faith in Jesus Christ, we reap the benefits of Jesus’s death. He took our sin, He took the punishment we deserve…and in turn, He gives us His Spirit and His righteous…its imputed to us. And so, even when we fail sometimes, we’re not met with God’s wrath…all He sees is Jesus’s righteous in us.

What an amazing gift!

Closing

Listen, as we close…for the believer here this morning…for some of us, we’ve acknowledged truth…but there’s still some repentance that needs to happen. The gospel, it’s centered around grace…but the point of the gospel…the point of Jesus’s death here, its about the transformation that occurs in the life of a person.

And listen, we live in a culture today where there’s this radical push, even for people inside the church, to think purity and holiness is not that big of a deal. There’s this idea that because we’ve been saved by the grace and the mercy of God that we have liberty (which we do!)…But yet what we do is we pervert the message of liberty (the message of the gospel) and what we do is we change it and we make it into what we want it to be, to basically say, “I can live however I wanna live because I’ve been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

You see, what Satan does…what sin in your life does, it might not actually attack the message. It may not attack the gospel. But what sin’ll do, it’ll attack our belief of the gospel.

And listen, some of you are thinking, “This Easter sermon series, its just for the atheists out there! It’s not for me…I know the gospel!” You see, as your pastor, I don’t preach the gospel for the unbeliever, I preach it for you…My calling its to you. Sure, as a believer, I care about the Great Commission…I care about reaching people…But as a pastor, I worry about you.

And guys, in some ways, the people in the church, we’re more deceived than the people outside the church.…at least they know they don’t believe in God.

Guys, its a false assurance to believe in Christ while we actively engage in sin. Again, salvation…there’s repentance and there’s belief, coupled together.

Will you fall sometimes? Absolutely! But it’s ongoing repentance that happens as the Spirit of God reveals sin in your life.

Are you actively repenting from your sins.

And listen, again…I know I say this all the time…Repentance isn’t about forgiveness. What Jesus did in this account, THAT purchased our forgiveness for past, present, and future sins…Repentance, its a turning…It’s us acknowledging sin…and its us choosing to turn from that sin. The Spirit, part of its purpose, it’s to empower us with the strength to turn from something we were powerless over before.

Your salvation, it’s not a one and done deal. It’s not just something you do and then you go and live any way you want. I think a lot of times people hear the truth about how God perseveres us…I believe in the truth of our salvation being maintained by God…But people hear this and it gives ‘em this idea that we can live anyway we want.

Guys, salvation, its always been about transformation. An ongoing transformation…that purges sin from our lives.

And so listen, as we close this morning…one of the things that I didn’t talk about during our spiritual discipline series, its the idea of repentance, constant repentance…and what that looks like in the church.

James 5:16 ESV

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed (Not just healed physically.…but spiritually as well, from the power of sin). The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

That’s the point of confessing to one another in the church…so that we might overcome sin, together, through the Spirit of God.

You see, when we see our main passage in context…when we understand the great gravity of sin, the power and control its had over us…this idea of repentance, it becomes our lifestyle.

And so, as we close this morning…I just want you take a moment…and I want you consider what your own repentance looks like. Do you take time to identify your shortcomings? Do you seek God’s Spirit in this way? Is there a constant practice of repentance in your life? Because guys, if you believe sin to be what the Bible says…if you believe it took Jesus’s death to overcome it, you better believe that it has real power over you if you’re not living in the Spirit of God constantly, and if you’re not constantly choosing to turn from it.

Every head bowed and every eye closed.

And so, that’s what I want you to reflect on this morning…I want you reflect on your own belief of sin…I want you to reflect on the gravity of sin. And ultimately, how you’re managing that sin in your own life.

1 John 1:6 ESV

If we say we have fellowship with Jesus while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Verse 8:

1 John 1:8 ESV

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Guys, how we approach sin in our own lives…it reveals the fruit or lack of fruit in our salvation. Its not perfection I’m talking about…It’s our action and our motivation toward sin.

And so, if you would…take this time to reflect on this idea of repentance in your own life.

But listen, if you’re here and you’ve never turned to Jesus Christ. Hear all the things I’ve been saying…The Bad part of the gospel, its that every single one of us, we’re all sinners…we all fall short of God’s glory. And as a result of that, we’re separated from God…and every one of us, we’ll all experience a very real death because of that sin. And listen, the Worst part of the gospel, its that no matter what you do, there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about that problem on your own.

Which is why Jesus came…its why He died in our place…its why He took on our sin. The God of the universe took on flesh…He became man in order to die for man’s sin. That’s the good news of the gospel. And the best part of that, its that, its all a free gift. You’ll never be good enough because sin’s real…and because it has real power over you. But when you turn to Jesus…when you acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior…the Bible says, “You will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

And so listen, if that’s you this morning…that’s what I want you to do as we close. Repent and believe in gospel of Jesus Christ!

And so listen, the praise team’s gonna play…I’m gonna be down front. Whoever you are, whatever’s on your heart, you to take this time…and I’ll close us in just a moment!

[Prayer]