Sermon Transcript:

You all are too kind.

Since we're on that subject, I

just want you to know

I don't take this lightly, what we are doing here in this in between time. And I'm honored that some of you have asked, Why can't you just be our permanent pastor? That's not my call to be here. My my call to be here is to make sure that while we're waiting for God to bring us a pastor, that we still have effective ministry. I mean, we have a worship team that sang the songs this morning, that we've got us into the echelon of of worshiping God. I mean, and all the activities that you're able to volunteer for, it makes my job a lot easier to come but I just feel like my call. I have a full time job, believe it or not, I'm actually pastoring about 85 churches and the association, and I help events and church plants, and so this is just something that I feel called to do, because I think this in between time is so valuable and valid and important so that the Church continues to grow, that the Church continues to stay together, the church continues to be fed, but, but so thank you so much for those things. But I am the interim pastor, so I'm here just for a short time until the Lord calls the right person. So I

always get nervous when I talk about that.

I want to talk about the promised gospel. We've been going through the book of Galatians. If you're new here today, or you haven't been in church for a while, they actually video record all of these. Sometimes I wish I want to go back and erase some of it, you know. Sometimes you go, Amanda, did I say that? You know? But you can go back and listen to the other sermons that get us to this point. However, each sermon that I try to preach stands on its own. So you don't have to, but if you want to have an entire overview of the book of Galatians, it would be good to do that. One of the things I also like to do is, you know, some people say, hey, you know, can

you share your notes with me? I'm

happy to share my notes with you. I'll send them to you. Just meet me after after work, and I'll get your phone number, and I'll text them to you or email them to you or whatever. I have no problem doing that, because this is what I say. I'm not the first person to preach from Galatians. The they've been the sermons have been preached before. My notes may be a little bit different, but they may help you in your walk, and I want to help you, and that's fine with me. So when you hear the word I promise, what's the first thing that goes through your mind?

I would say it probably depends on who's saying I promise, right?

I hope that you're not one of those people that say, I promise and you don't deliver. You know, in in my days, we had a story called The Boy Who called cried wolf. You know, they just stopped listening to him eventually, right? I promise, I promise, I promise. This time it's actually going to happen. I promise. I promise you it's going to happen this time. Listen, if you're going to do what you say you're going to do, you don't have to convince anybody just do it, because when you say those things, you set yourself up for failure, because something else may come along and it just doesn't work out. You don't promise. You don't deliver on your promise. So this is one of the things that we can do for ourselves biblically, so that you understand what Jesus said about this. The Bible is clear how we should speak to one another in Matthew 537, if you're taking notes, Matthew 520, or 37 excuse me, Jesus said plainly, all you need to say is simply yes or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. So let your yes be yes and let your no be No. You don't have to promise anything. Just do it. Amen. Because when, as we get into this text this morning, I want you to see when God makes a promise, it never fails, it always happens. A matter of fact, it has happened, and we're going to see that this morning. So don't swear or beg anyone to believe you. If you do that, if you do that to me, my family tell you, I just, I just let you rumble on. I'm I've already moved on to what other car I'm thinking of getting or whatever. You know, speak truth. Don't lie. You know why? You don't have to remember what you said. Wow, and that's something. If you don't lie, you don't ever have to remember what you said. We sometimes cast our own we're just our worst enemy. You know, we say something and we know it's not true. There are few times that there are oaths and there are promises that are made that are binding, like the court of law or a court of marriage, you know, I do some marriages and they say, I, you know, I promise to do. This, and I promise to do that, I always wonder if they really mean that as well. During the I do's, you know, right? You go back to those vows, and you go, man, did I say that? Yeah, yeah, that's what you said. You better measure up. The Bible has promises for us, then we can take them and rest assured that they're actually true. So we're going to read from Galatians, chapter three, verses 15 through 22 stand with me as we read from God's Word. I'm going to read from the New International Version you read from whatever version that you read from. But again, I'm glad to see Bibles open, open your open your phone or whatever. I'm an electronic guy too. I like to use electronic version. But the reason I ask you to see it for yourselves, we could have made a mistake on the screen. I could have made a mistake in my thing. And you know, we want to make sure that you're receiving the right correct verb verses this morning. So Galatians, chapter three, starting in verse 15, brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life, just as noone can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established. So it is in this case, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed meeting one person who is Christ. What I mean is this, the law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God, and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depended or depends on the law, then it is no longer. It no longer depends on the promise, but God, in His grace, gave it to Abraham through a promise. Why, then was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed to whom the promise referred had come. The Law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator, a mediator, however, implies more than one party, but God is one. Is this law therefore it is, I'm sorry, is this law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not. For if the law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything until the control of sin under the control of sin, so that what was promised being given through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. And that's a lot to take in. We're going to try to break that down this morning. Let me say a word of prayer before we do that, Father, God, in your name, we pray this morning to receive whatever it has for each one of us and Lord, we receive your promise this morning, right now. We see it in our heart. We promise, Lord, Your promise in our heart. We want it to become truth to us so that we can live our lives with that promise. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen, you may have a seed. So the first two verse verses talk about the promised seed, the promised seed. Now, a seed is necessary in order for to resupply plants and vegetation. Without it, there's no hope, no future for thriving vegetation. It's a continuous life cycle. There was a promised seed given to Abraham in the Old Testament. And our text in Galatians, 15 and 16, Paul says this, did you receive the Spirit? Or, you know, he says, I would like to, I would like to learn this from Did you receive the Spirit? I'm going back to Galatians, three two. Excuse me, Galatians 315, and 16. Actually answer verse two of this chapter and this and Galatians three, two says this, I would like to learn this one thing. Did you read this receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or believe what you heard? So in verse 15, Paul says, I'm going to explain the facts of life concern concerning these covenants that he's talking about. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or do you receive it by what you heard? Nothing in human existence changes the promises of Abraham. Why? Because when God speaks and makes that claim, it's guaranteed, he claims it to his people, and it matters to me and you, who's speaking it. When he speaks, it's for sure. It's a guaranteed thing. You can't change what God has claimed. Nothing you can do. Could ever change what God has already made in promise. It doesn't matter what you think or whether you believe it or not, because you don't believe it, doesn't make it not true. I know that hurts, doesn't it? I don't care if you don't believe the gospel, it doesn't mean it's not true. You can say that all you want. I know the truth. There are a lot of people sitting here that know the truth. Just because you don't believe it doesn't make it untrue. It's absolutely true. We've seen people's lives change and transform the seed of Abraham. Abraham is. Jesus in the Greek language, covenant meant agreement, or will it meant we're going to make sure that this happened. And human covenants, I don't know if you know this, but human covenants were never meant to be broken. So be careful when you get into a covenant, when you get into an agreement. That was the idea behind verse 15. Paul said of a human COVID, covenant is binding. How much more binding is God's covenant? Have you thought about that? You make these covenants all the time. You promise to pay your car off. And used to be five years or four years, now it's six or seven or eight now, right? So you can afford the payment. You make a covenant with your house, and you promised to pay it in 30 years. Man, a lot can happen. And then God has made this covenant so long ago, and he says, I promise to deliver on what I said. His covenant is for sure. Paul means this. Those that are trying to disaffiliate themselves with God in his holy Word, listen, it's impossible to undo what God has already done. You have a lot of young people today doing this thing called deconstruction, and you know what I'm talking about, they're taking their faith and they're tearing it apart to see if really what they're saying. And they do, they really believe what they said they were supposed to believe when they were young. It's called a deconstructive faith. And then go, Well, I don't know if I still believe those things. It doesn't matter. God has already promised it. You can't undo it. So you can deconstruct all you want. That's your personal journey. But the journey that God wants you to be on is the one that absolutely say I believe that, and it's true. He wants you to go forward and say, I believe your promise. You cannot undo what God has already done since the atheism movement is one so popular today, this understanding is important for us, to those who are seeking to believe that you may be here today and not have a real relationship with Jesus, and you've been seeking, you've been wondering, because you're hearing all this other garbage Baloney, whatever's out there that's not talking the truth about the gospel. There's a lot of it out there, even people that supposedly used to be believers and followers. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.

They never once were

okay. God can never undo a promise that He gave you already. You can't undo your salvation. That would mean that you would have to resend Him to the cross, re crucify Him, and make him bleed again for the death of your sins. It's impossible because he's already done it. He's already went to the cross. It's already been done. So you can go ahead and deconstruct all you want. The Gospel can never be changed. It can never be without a promise, and that promise is Jesus. I want you to believe it this morning, when Abraham was promised the seed, not seeds, but the seed. It was the Christ that he was for telling and our verse tells us that 430 years before before that promise came to fruition. So I'm going to move on to verse 16. I'm going to explain from 15 in an illustration just a little bit verse 16, the promises that were spoken to Abraham said to his seed. Scripture did not say seeds, but seed. The promise was made to one seed, and that was Jesus, not many seeds. Listen, Paul made this distinction, since you can interpret many seeds, like children, descendants, but it was about one offspring, the promised seed, Jesus. And so here's an illustration, and Abraham's day, I know, sometimes confirmed with a ceremony where there was an animal sacrifice. The tip these type of rituals would were really pop wouldn't be popular today, because we don't want to be considered an annual somebody that's cruel to animals, right? But they did this back then, and so this type of ritual would be what they would take many oaths, and they were taken seriously. And there was an animal that they would separate, going down the backbone and separated into two pieces. And they were set them in a row, and the people would go between those two to make an agreement and a covenant listen. The two parties would walk together in that space and speak promises to each other as they walked between the two pieces of the sacrifice. The oath was sacred since there was bloodshed, and remember that in verse 15, no human covenant was ever meant to be destroyed. This ceremony, sacred covenant is what Paul was talking about. So in Genesis 15, in Genesis 15 is where the Abrahamic, Abrahamic Covenant takes place, is where God promises to him that one seed would come from his offspring. And so I want you to catch this illustration. This picture, God is the one that walked between those two animal sacrifices and promised to us this. Seed that would be given in Christ, Jesus. And that's what Abraham's trying to explain. Because, remember, Galatians was written to a group of churches about 15 years after Jesus left this planet. So it was very early on in the church's history, and they were already believing all kinds of things. And so he's trying to tell him, remember what God said, remember what God promised. The promise didn't depend on any condition, but it was fulfilled by the promise he gave to Abraham. This is the promise of what we call justification. Oh, there we go, Pastor using one of those big churchy words, right? Justification broken down. If you take the word and you break it down, youth ministers like to do this a lot, just as if I'd never sinned. Justification, when Jesus Christ went to the cross and He forgave your sins, it's almost no it's not almost. It's as if you never sinned. That's the promise of justification. You give him all of your sins, and He says, I don't remember them anymore. What sin? I've cast them into the sea of forgetfulness. So when he gave this Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 16, it's as if you've never sinned. Wow. Do you not want that promise in your life this morning. Do you not want that for yourself? And say all the stuff and garbage that's going on around us, and here we have this promise made so long ago, and it's still valid today. You can receive it today.

Faith

first made by Abraham, made permanent in Jesus Christ, if a human covenant can't have anything added to it, then the promise of a seed can't be altered. Either. It's God and God alone that does the work. Do you have the promise of Jesus in your life?

It's a lot to consider when you think about it,

would you be so boldly today to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life? Say, Pastor, that's a lot of stuff to think about this broken animal and walking between it and talking promises. Listen, that was the way you had to worship God back then. Aren't you glad we have a lot easier today. It is. I mean, I'm telling you, I read the Old Testament, I go, I don't know how they did it. I just, I don't understand how they did it. They had to do so many things to get in right relationship with God, and today we get to say, Jesus, be my Lord. I confess my sins to you. I believe in you. I receive you into my life. It's so much easier because of this promise made to Abraham, isn't it great? I think it's a wonderful Secondly, you have a promise inheritance. Verses 17 and 18. There's this inheritance that he talks about. Verse 17, this 430 years defines the period between Abraham and Moses. It's between Abraham and Moses 430 years. There was a very this was a period of slavery of Israel under Egyptian control. What's sorry I forgot to turn up my notifications, and they're getting in my way. My adult add is kicking. And would you bear with me, please? So the 430 years is that period between Abraham and Moses, and that was when there was a lot of slavery. And then, get this, the law which came through the promised seed never did away with the Abrahamic covenant. It didn't do away with it. It's the same for me and you. Nothing that we can do can ever do away with the promise that God has given us. No law, no covenant, no oath, can ever be taken away from what God has done. It's the only way he's it. That's his promise through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's called the promised gospel. You see, sometimes we think Man, it took God so long for him to send Jesus to fix this world, didn't it? And then he came and he sent Jesus, and He fixed the world. And now it's been 2000 years since that, since he went to the cross, and we go, God, when are you going to return? When's the next promise coming? Right? Listen, he's given you opportunity to get your life right. Could you imagine if Jesus came back today? How many people would not go to heaven because they're still deconstructing their faith or wondering or deciding or seeing if really what grandpa said was true. Don't believe your grandpa. Believe the Bible. I hope your grandpa was true. I hope it was right. But listen, what does that mean for me and you? It this is what it means. You have nothing, nothing standing in the way between you and Jesus, except you. You're the only one keeping yourself from coming to a relationship with Jesus. He's not. He's made the promise already. He says, Hey, I'm on I'm for you. I'm for you. I want you to be with me. So listen,

I wrote this list down and I want to read it,

because I think people like to be the victim, even when it comes to coming to Christ, Pastor, you just don't know what I'm going through. Well, good. I probably don't want to know no hardship that you've ever gone through is standing in the way from your relationship with Christ. No bad experience that you had in church because somebody didn't like the way you dressed or looked or said or SAT or whatever. You have to get over that stuff and come to Christ. No sin. Anything that you've ever done is able to be forgiven. It's not forgiven until you come to Christ. You carry that weight. Go ahead and see if you can handle it. No amount of hate, not your parents, not your siblings, no bad friendships. Nothing is standing in the way from you, from coming to Christ, you make it about you, so you're the one standing in your way to come to Christ. I know I'm being a little hard this morning, but sometimes we need to hear that the only thing that you need to do is say yes to Jesus this morning. You say, Father, I'm Would you forgive me, man, I have been arguing and looking and listening and trying to do my own thing, and it's time for me to just say only Christ. He's the only promised seed. He said, I give you eternal life. Paul's nobody knows what he's talking about. Not even the 10 Commandments were ever made for you to be able to reach God. You read those commandments and you just, might as well just put them on as if nobody's going to be able to do those. You know, you know, the first four are our relationship with God, the last six are our relationship with each other. We only serve one God, no false idols. Don't bear false witness and keep the Sabbath holy. And the rest of them are made you if you get those right, then you can move on to the relationship between us. Love Mom and Dad. Don't steal, don't cheat, don't lie, don't commit adultery, don't covet, all of those things that that that they listed in the 10 Commandments. But did you know that when Moses brought those 10 Commandments off Mount Sinai and he gave them to the people, even then, if they read them, they go, Oh, that's all I gotta do. Then I can do that. But tomorrow comes and you just break another one of them. So they were, they were not even the one. What was our way to God? They were not even the way to God. They were all they were was to point out how sinful we were, to be able to say, I can't live up to those. And God said, I know.

I just want you to know

how holy I am.

Have you ever looked at that list and thought about how holy God is? That's what should really get to us and go. How in the world does he want to have a relationship with a sinful me? Why? What would he ever want to do with me? What I mean? What do I have to offer God? You got nothing to offer God. He has everything to offer you and His Son, Jesus, and when you come to Christ, and then you have a lot to offer God, because now he calls you to his service. He comes calls you to his side and to his service. You see the 10 Commandments were just in order for you to see that we needed God more than we ever thought we did, he could provide the promise of life within him in verse 18, what a beautiful verse. We have the eternal inheritance isn't dependent on the rules that you think about or what you have to follow. God saved Abraham through the promise, not the law. The promise was given to us so that we can have salvation through the promise. The original seed promise is the only way to salvation. Booker T Washington described his ex slave from Virginia in his book called Up From Slavery, I found this man had made a contract with the master two or three years previous from the Emancipation Proclamation to affect the slaves was to be permitted to buy, to be to be to buy himself by paying so much per year for their body, you can actually buy yourself out of slavery. And he was paying for himself. He was determined he was permitted to be in labor, to have to be to be able to work for him, whatever owed to that person that that he owed the money to finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master, some $300 he's $300 we said, Man, we'll just give it to him today. Right back then, that was a lot of money, not withstanding the Emancipation Proclamation, freed from any obligation from their master. They didn't have to pay it back. But this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to his old master in Virginia and placed that last dollar with interest in his hands. In talking to me about this, the man told me he knew that he did not have to pay the debt. So. But they had been given his word to his master, and His Word had never been broken. He felt that he could not enjoy his freedom until that last dollar had been paid. Listen, Jesus has paid that freedom for you, and he paid the eternal sacrifice, the price that me and you could never pay. You know how much money we owe God,

all of it,

all of it, everything that you make, he allows you to make. But you know what he does? He just said, I'll just take 10% of that so you can show your obedience to me. I'll let you keep the other 90. You see, if we served an unloving God, he would say, give me the 90 I'll let you keep the 10. Do you ever want your 90% to be blessed? Give him your 10% then, I promise you, when you listen to the guidelines of financial freedom in the Bible, you will never be in need again, you'll never be in want. Now, I can tell you the first time I heard about tithing, I thought, Man, these people are a cult. I got saved when I was 25 I was into my eyeballs and dent we lived to the edge. You know, you got none of you were here to live to the edge, right and beyond of what we make. We met, we spend so much money on dumb things, you know, $7 for a cup of coffee with some foam on top. I'm like, where have we gone? You know,

I buy those too, so the same.

But it wasn't until

my good friend and my wife that really fell in love with Jesus said, I don't care what you do with your money, but I want you to tithe my money. And it challenged me, because I didn't know how I was going to do it. And so I said, Man, how am I going to do this? I started at 1% 2% I got rid of some debt, moved some things, shoved some things, got rid of some things, sold a car. I started getting my life prioritized so that I can be obedient to God. We have tithed ever since. We've been Christians for over 30 years, and we've never been without. Have there been hard times? It does not negate the hard times, but because of the promised seed that Jesus Christ came, you can live that life of freedom by giving God all of who you are. And listen, if you're young, here you got your first job. What a great way to start. You're still living with mom and dad. Great. Now you have money to tithe instead. Right? Start, I only made $10 last week. Pastor, good dollar for God. $9 for you. It's an easy, it's an easy, easy process, and you can be in in God's graces. Lastly, the promise of Messiah. The last three, four verses, 19 or three verses, 19 through 22 at verse 19, Paul asked questions. He likes to ask questions. He makes us think about what we believe. He challenges our faith. He wants us to have conviction for our faith. Why did God give us the law? What was the purpose of it? Remember, he's talking to people that have had their lives dominated by laws. You see, the language can seem a bit offensive, if you will. But those who truly believe, and they believe that they have to follow all these laws, they have expectations of God. Well, if I do this, he'll do this for me. That's not what the law says. The law says you could be in relationship with me if you do those things. It says Paul says in verse 19, that the law was added until Jesus would come to fulfill the promised gospel. It was added because of sin. See, it was given to the angels by Moses. And the law's purposes exposed our sins. Do not commit adultery. Don't covet somebody else's belongings. Don't lie. Don't bear false witness. You know, we all of those things that we don't hold up valuable. Expose our sin for who we are. It was temporary, so the law never could save people. Did you know that in Jewish times, when you went to temple, there was one day out of the year that you got to bring your sins to the priest or or the the rabbi and the rabbi would go into what they called the Holy of Holies. So they had a temple, and then they had this other place where they did all the sacrifices, and there was only one person that could go into what they called the Holy of Holies. And so you brought all of your sins to the priest, and the priest took it to the rabbi, and the rabbi went in there, and they observed. All of your sins for the year. Wasn't that? Wouldn't that be awesome, that we could just do that? Hey, here they are. But you know what happened when they walked out of that temple and they started arguing with their mom, and they started bad mouthing this, and my neighbor this, and they started piling up their sins for the next year, and they walked around with those until they could go and get them absorbed again for one day, but for 364, days, they walked around with all those sins. You see, wouldn't it be wonderful? We could just be absolved of our sins. We say those sins are no longer in your life. We're going to get rid of them. You can you bring them to Jesus? You see Jesus walked into the Holy of Holies, and he tore the curtain in two, and he said, No longer will it only be one person that can go in there, but the Holy of Holies to get intimate and inside with God. All are welcome now. All can go before a holy God and say, Forgive me of my sins every day so we don't have to walk around with them year after year and day after day, we get to give them to God, and he absorbs us of our sins. He says, You're forgiven. You're forgiven. You see, if we didn't have laws to govern our society, we'd be living chaos, wouldn't we? We were driving to church this morning, I was doing almost the speed limit and but this car just went. Lucy said, how fast you think they were going? I looked at my speed arm, and I go, they're probably doing at least 80. Listen, I know that we don't absolutely follow the laws all the time, but our lives would be chaos without them. See the law, all it does is reveal sin. If you don't do 60, like they say, I don't ever see anybody driving 60 on I 10, unless it's 20 miles an hour during traffic jams, right? If you don't do 60, there's an opportunity for you to be given a ticket, you break the law, you committed a sin. You pay for that sin. How much is a speeding ticket today? 300 and something dollars. Now, my day is like 40 bucks. Don't do that again. I ain't get it on your record. Keep it for your insurance. It just it. Listen when we break the law, we pay. And Jesus said, never did a law ever give you freedom to sin. It was exposing your sin, telling you how much you needed God. Verse 20 is a head scratcher, if you call it. God used Moses as a mediator to humankind. Therefore the more than one party comment. He says God was the mediator. Abraham, therefore he's one. No one else is needed. And he talks about this, well, there was somebody else in there. There was an there was a witness, and all that listen. The seed met Jesus Christ, and Him alone in verses 21 and 22 Paul's speaking to the legalistic minds of the day. Do we have any in the house? Any Legalist here have to do everything a certain way. We'll call them perfectionist, you know, OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. I got some of that. Why is that spoon there? Why is that sock there? Why is that you know, that's me. Paul's speaking to the legalistic minds. They exist still today. He says, follow these rules and God will be happy with you. You see, that's what happens when we think about legalistic we want to follow what God ever tells us so that we can be happy. Paul's not saying that the law is bad. It is not. It's a good thing. It's simply the principles still apply. But you can't be saved by your act of obedience. You can only be saved coming into a faith relationship with Jesus. Our sin nature doesn't allow us to follow the rules. We don't want to follow the rules. I was not driving 60 miles an hour this morning coming to church, and I know Neither were you, because I saw you next to me. Our sin. Nature breaks the law. Naturally, that's who we are. We don't want to we don't want to be told what to do. And God said, Finally, he said, Okay, let me make it easy for you. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, and I'll give you rest. I'll give you freedom. You see, we gotta fix our eyes on the Promised Messiah. We believe, then we obey. We love God, then we love others. We see the law, and then we realize it points us to Jesus. We receive Jesus, and then we receive the law of love. Listen, some of you are trying to obey God before you come to Christ, I have a news flash for you. It's never going to happen. You cannot clean up yourself. Only Christ can clean you up. Does that make sense? You see, stop trying to clean yourself up. Just come to Jesus this morning and say, You know what, I'm done playing this stuff. I. Want Jesus to clean me. You can't go fishing and bring a fish out of the water that's already gutted. It doesn't happen that way. You go fishing, you bring the fish up to the shore, whatever, and you take your knife and you gut the fish and you clean the fish. Could you imagine bringing a gutted, clean fish out of the water. That's what you're trying to do when cleaning your life up before you come to Christ, let Jesus gut you. Let him remove all that stuff from your life. The next time you promise something to someone, remind yourself there's a real promise that you can give, and that's the promise of Jesus. And say, I want to share Christ with you. The Promised gospel is good news. Is it not? It's good news. I know this morning was a little here and there, but I wanted you to see how much long time ago God promised the seed through Abraham, and he says you can partake this morning.

So right now we're going to have this song that will be called invitation.

And I know sometimes it's difficult to get from where you're at and to move to one of these kneelers and say, You know what,

you were talking to me, Pastor,

really, I wasn't me talking this Holy Spirit talking to

you. Listen, you can come to Christ and be free today, and the only thing you have to do is say, Father, would you forgive me for the things that I've done? And you, you open your mouth and you say, I confess You as my Lord, which means he's now in charge of your life. And nonetheless, hard I was, I was just like you. I didn't want anybody to control my life. I wanted control of my life, but it wasn't until I gave my control of my life over to Jesus that I truly become free. Did you know that Paul, out of the 13 letters that he wrote in the New Testament, wrote most of them from prison, and he talked about freedom, and he talked about how much more freer he was behind bars than many of you are when you're free out in society. And he says, You have no idea what freedom looks like. It looks like Jesus. So this morning, as we sing, the song is called, oh, come to the altar. Would you come? Listen? I know there's some of you that have been have walked away from Christ and you said, I don't know if I believe anymore. Pastor, would you believe today? You can't obey your way to God. You have to believe. Your way to God. You can believe, and then you obey. We say, I'll go and then Jesus will give you the details. Reconnect with God today. Listen, we have a baptisms coming up, november 17, and you may have been pondering that in your mind, but listen, we don't baptize people that aren't saved. What I mean by that is you have to first come and encounter Christ, because that water is the same water that comes from the city of El Paso. It's not going to clean you. It's an act of obedience for what Jesus has done on the inside of your heart. So if you want to be baptized on november 17, get your right life right with Jesus today and say, Pastor, I'm getting ready for november 17, but today I'm going to give my life to Christ, and I'll walk you through that process. What that looks like. Come to Jesus this morning. Reconnect with Jesus. Maybe God has a call in your life for something else, ministry. Maybe he's calling you to a unreached people group across the ocean. Say, I don't even know the language good, the more you can be used, the more you can be used by God. Come to Jesus, this morning, whatever your woes are given to him. Give them to him, and he'll clean you, Father. We, thank you for this time. We,

thank you for the loving us. We, thank

you for your word. And I pray this morning, as we move forward in this invitation, that you would lead us, guide us, and Father, that for those that need to come to you to have a saving relationship with you, God, I pray this morning that you would give them strength to come in Christ's name. I

pray Amen.