Easter 2024

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Father, we thank you for this day that you have given us. We thank you, Lord, for the blessing of Jesus Christ, our lord and savior, for his death, burial and resurrection. And we thank you for the mercy and grace that you extend upon us. Lord, I thank you today that you have provided us this ability to come together, both in a hybrid setting, both in person and apart. Father, I pray that you will be with us as we study your word, as we celebrate your resurrection, and as we investigate the evidence thereof.

Father, I pray that you will hide us behind your cross. Lord, protect our minds and hide us from the distractions of the world, that we may focus on you in this time. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Good evening, everyone, and happy Resurrection Day.

Quick announcements. We have Wednesday at 630, we will be continuing our Bible study through the book of Revelation. We are finally to what I've been calling the good part. We're to heaven. We'll be in chapter 21 this week and 22 next week, after which we will be moving on to the books of first and second Thessalonians.

For those who want to read ahead and then also for everyone praying. And just the updates tomorrow morning, Shawnee has her next ob appointment for the baby. So if everybody would just be praying for that, keep that in mind and lift us up, we would appreciate it. And we will give everyone an update after the fact. On that note, today we're going to do something different.

We're going to break away from the book of John. There are two holidays in particular that I stop what we're doing and we look at stuff based on the holiday and those are Christmas and Easter. So we're going to break away from our normal pattern today and we're going to be looking at the resurrection of Jesus Christ as we celebrate this Easter day, the event that happened some 2000 years ago. We will jump around scripture a lot today. It's not like the normal week where we're in one chapter.

We're going to be jumping around so we will have the scriptures up on the screen for everybody to follow along as we move. And I'm going to move quickly to get through all of the stuff that we have to get through today, beginning with Hebrews, chapter eleven, verse one. The author of Hebrews writes, he says, now, faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of things not seen, or the led. The version we have on the screen says faith is the realization of what is hoped for, the proof of things not seen. I'll be reading from a different version than we have on the screen.

So if it's a little different, that's why. So we need to understand real quick what faith is because we are living 2000 years after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. We weren't there. We did not see it. We most certainly cannot investigate the empty tomb for ourselves and we cannot interview any witnesses.

So we rely upon our faith today to tell us what had happened and to hold us firm to that future hope on which we hold. But we need to understand faith. The reason we need to understand faith before we go any further is because for one, ask any skeptic, any atheist, and their number one complaint about Christianity is that it is based on blind faith. Well, you just believe because you were told to or you just believe because a book says so. It's all blind.

Now, I will not fault the atheist for believing that. Why? Why? Because so many christians believe that. So many Christians or professed Christians of various denominations and religions say, well, you just got to have faith, right?

If you push them. I've even pushed people from my current doctrinal position, which means Baptist. I've pushed them on issues that they don't seem to have a good answer for or can explain. And their answer is, well, you just got to have faith. I've pushed people from other religious backgrounds, especially the one that I was raised up in and came up in, and their answer often is, well, you just have to have faith as if faith is blind.

So we need to understand what faith is for ourselves so that we actually know what it is we believe in. But also for the skeptic, so that when that atheist talks to us and says, your faith is just blind, we can say, actually, no, it's not. So Hebrews defines it as the substance of things hoped for by the evidence of things not seen. So faith is two things. Faith is a hope.

What is our hope? Well, our hope is that Jesus Christ raised from the dead, that through our faith in him, our sins are forgiven, and that we too will resurrect and live in the presence of our glorious God through the eternities. That's our hope. But it's based upon the evidence of things not seen, the evidence. So faith is not blind.

God has never asked any of us to blindly follow. He's never asked any of us to trust in something in which we cannot investigate. Now, with that said, is evidence always a smoking gun? Not typically. Anyone who's watched a court trial will know.

Evidence can suggest that something likely did happen or something likely did not happen. But it is rare for evidence to prove that something happened. So our faith is based on evidence. And what we have to determine is whether or not the evidence that is available to us suggests a higher meaning toward one way or the other. With this established, let's toss up the scriptures.

For one. Corinthians, chapter 15. We're going to pick up in verse twelve, and we're going to read through verse 19, and we're going to examine a problem that occurred in the ancient church in Corinth. Paul writes, now, if Christ is preached, is raised up from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ has not been raised either.

What if Christ has not been raised? Then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. And also we are found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that he raised Christ, who he did not raise. If, after all, then the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised either.

But if Christ has not been raised, your faith is empty. You are still in your sins. And as a further result, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have put our hope in Christ and this life only, we are of all people, most pitiable.

Paul is describing in this small piece of scripture a problem occurring in the church in Corinth. And what has happened in Corinthenne is they are teaching, this is a subset of christians, and they are teaching that there is no resurrection of the dead.

They don't believe in a resurrection. They are Christians. Isn't the christian faith in and of itself based upon the resurrection of the dead? And here's a church of God that says there's no resurrection of the dead. And so Pauldin, he addresses this.

He says, look, if Christ has been proclaimed as risen from the dead, we've come and we've told you he's been raised. We've told you that we've seen him, that we've touched him, we've ate with him. How can you then say that there is no resurrection?

The reason this is critical is not just to weed out falsehood. Paul wants to weed out false doctrines. But the resurrection is so critical to the christian faith that here is what Paul says about it. He first says that if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and so is your faith. In other words, if Christ is never raised from the grave, I should just end the stream right now and church, and we should just go home.

There is nothing for me to preach if Christ is dead. But your faith is vain as well. He says in verse 17 that your faith is worthless because you are still in your sins. You're still in your sins. If the cross is where our sins were knit.

When Jesus died, he paid for our sins. But the receipt of that, when you go to Walmart and you buy goods and you check out, the cashier gives you a receipt. And that receipt is proof of payment. The resurrection of Christ is our receipt. It is proof of payment.

He paid for our sins on the cross, but with no receipt, no goods were purchased. So you are still in your sins if he did not resurrect. So what does this mean? This means there's a lot of miracles in the Bible. There's the flood, there's the creation in and of itself.

We've seen in the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah raised a boy from the dead. Jesus raised several people from the dead, a little girl, Lazarus. He gave sight to the blind, he gave mobility to the lame. He healed the lepers. He did turn water into wine and even claimed to be God.

And all of these things are things that people debate. But here's the thing. What is the greatest miracle of all?

The resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I will submit, based on what Paul says in one corinthians 15, that Christianity is hinged on the resurrection. If the resurrection happened, everything inside of Christianity is true. If Christ could raise from the dead, why could he not have raised other people or given sight to the blind, healed the lepers? Why could he not do that if he could raise from the dead?

And if he could raise from the dead, isn't that universal proof that everything he claimed to be is true? No other man has raised himself from the grave, but Christ has. And if he can do that, wouldn't his claim to deity, to being God be pretty sufficient based on his resurrection? But I will also submit that if he raised from the grave, none of the other debates matter, matter.

He raised from the grave, we don't need to look further. And then finally, if he did not raise from the grave, Christianity fails. If he did not raise from the grave, we don't need to debate the other miracles because whether they happen or not is irrelevant if we are still in trespass. So we're going to look for the rest of this evening, we're going to look at whether or not Christ rose from the grave. Remember Hebrews eleven one says that faith is the substance of things hoped for by the evidence of things not seen.

So 2000 years later. Would we or should we expect that there is evidence of a resurrected Christ? The answer is yes, we should. The evidence is circumstantial because we are looking back. We, we can't, there's nothing tangible for us, no witnesses that we can speak to.

So it's, it's circumstantial, but it's circumstantial evidence still. Evidence. Yeah. It can indicate to us what is most likely to have occurred. Let's throw up our next set of scriptures.

I believe we're going to be in the book of Luke next or no, sorry, we're going to be, we're still in first corinthians. We're just going back to verse one instead of verse twelve where we started. Paul writes, he says, I want to make clear or known to you, brothers, the gospel which I proclaim to you, which you have also received, in which you also stand by, which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the message I proclaim to you, unless you believe to no purpose. For I passed on to you as of first importance that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins. According to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised up on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at once, the majority of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles, and last of all, as it were, to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by grace, by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been in vain. But I labored even more than all of them, and not I, but the grace of God with me.

Therefore, whether I were at those in this way we preached, and in this way you believed. All right, so the very first thing that Paul proclaims at the beginning of chapter 15 is the gospel. This is interesting. So many, there are so many people who are not christian by the christian definition, who believe they have a gospel. And if you ask them what the gospel is, it is this long winded, takes an hour to describe plan of salvation that you can't even follow.

And it's no gospel at all. Who knows what the word gospel means? It means good news. That's what it means. The gospel is good news.

And when you listen to those long winded explanations, you're like, where's the good news in this? But what surprises me more than that is how many people of the christian faith, whether it's Baptist or Pentecostal or Lutheran or Methodist, Presbyterian, if you ask them what the gospel is, they can't tell you.

That's shocking. Every one of us who are a Christian, who are saved by the grace of God have heard the gospel. We had to in order to receive it. But then when asked what it is, we can't tell anyone. So I'm going to summarize the gospel the same way Paul did.

For those who want to see where he did it. He summarized the gospel in verse three and four, and that is that Christ died for our sins according to scriptures, was buried and raised again on the third day. That is the gospel. He died for our sins and rose again the third day. There is the good news that all who trust in him would be saved based on that.

So he tells us the gospel, but we're talking about the resurrection today and not the gospel. And we're going to look at the first piece of evidence of the resurrection. If Christ resurrected, we would expect somebody to have seen him resurrected. Now, the less people who see him. In order for a lie to be propagated, there's a few things that have to occur.

For one, in order for a lie to be successful, you have to have as few people as possible involved in the lie.

The more people you involve in the lie, the less consistent the story stays, and the more likely somebody is to slip up and let the cat out of the bag. If you want to fool somebody, if you have a bunch of siblings and you want to fool your parents, you need to pick a trusted sibling to include on the lie, and you need to keep it as small as possible. Next, the lie in and of itself has to be small. What? The bigger it is, the harder it is to remember all the details.

And finally, the lie needs to be as short as possible. By short, I mean in duration.

The purpose of a lie should be to immediately evade, persuade, or otherwise manipulate a situation. But you can't carry it long term. The longer you carry a lie, the more likely you are to forget facts, forget details, or get caught in it. So when we investigate the first piece of evidence, because some people would just say the resurrection was a lie, the people who said they saw Christ risen from the grave lied. What do we see here?

The elements necessary for a lie. How many people, just according to first corinthians 15, saw the risen Christ. It says, first that he appeared to Cephas. For those who don't know who cephas is, Cephas is Peter. So first he appeared to Peter.

So there's one person. Then he appeared to the twelve disciples. We actually know that's eleven. Judas Iscariot had committed suicide by this point. So eleven people have seen him.

Him. Then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. Then he appeared to James. For those who don't know who James is, James is the half brother of Christ. He is the son of Joseph and Mary.

So he's the half brother of Christ. And then he appeared to Pauldin. That does not count. The woman that he appeared to, he appeared to all three Marys. He had been seen by a few other people.

He appeared to two people on the road to Emmaus. He appeared to a bunch of people, over 530 people that we can count, and we don't know if he appeared to more. But let's look at the requirements for our lives. 530 people. Is that a small amount of people?

Nope, 530 people is not a small amount. Let's look at the scope of the lie. Remember, for a lie to be successful, it needs to be small. Is claiming that somebody rose from the grave a small lie? Not really.

And then finally, the duration, the duration of this account of the story is so long running that here we are, 2000 years later, telling the story.

So I would submit, is 530 verified people who had seen the risen lord. Evidence that he is risen from the grave? I would submit, yes, it's evidence, at the bare minimum, that he's not there in the grave anymore. The bare minimum. But I would suggest 530 people all testifying to the fact that they saw him, that they touched him, that they ate with him, would be evidence that he was there.

Not a look alike, not a hallucination. 500 people at once. Have you ever heard of a group hallucination? I sure haven't.

But finally, this is interesting. Throughout the first century and then into the second century AD, persecution of christians was. It was out of control. It was crazy. They were the apostles.

The eleven apostles were all, except for John, murdered in brutal ways. Some of them crucified, some of them crucified upside down, some of them beheaded, some of them were sawn asunder. For those who don't know what that is, they were hung upside down by their feet, and then from the groin to the head, were sawn in half.

John, who survived the attempts to kill him, was boiled alive in oil. And the one that did not kill him was exiled to the island of Patmos.

Now, I don't know about you, but I do know myself. If I were telling a lie and started seeing people sawn asunder, boiled alive, crucified, beheaded and burned, that if I knew I had not seen the risen lord, I would be copping out right there and be like, nope, not doing this. I'm not being tortured in that way. But look at Peter. Somebody in the morning service brought this up.

Look at Peter, who remembers when, when Christ was arrested, Peter followed him to the trial. And what did he do at the trial? He did it three times.

He denied any knowledge of Christ. On three separate occasions, they asked, do you know this guy? And he says, no, I don't know him. Then they said, someone saw you with him. And Peter says, I had never, I've never been with that guy.

Never seen him, no knowledge of him three times. And Peter was not even being threatened with persecution. They were just asking if he knew them, if he knew him. And now, the same goddess, we know that Peter was crucified, and tradition says upside down. So now the same guy, who, under no threat of persecution, absolutely denied Christ or any knowledge of him, was now willing to be crucified upside down to proclaim that he was risen from the dead.

When you look at the two peters, the Peter before the death and the Peter after the death death, you have to ask yourself, was he really telling a lie? What else? Let's turn to the book of Luke. Let's look at what Luke says here.

We are going to go to Luke, chapter 24. We're going to begin in verse one. It says now, on the first day of the week, at very early dawn, they came back to the tomb bringing the fragrant spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone and had been rolled away from the tomb. And when they went in, they did not find the body.

And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men in gleaming clothing stood near them. And they were terrified. Bowed their faces to the ground. And they said to them, why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised.

Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee? Saying that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of men who are sinners and be crucified. And on the third day, rise. And they remembered his words. And when they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to the rest.

Now Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the others with them were telling these things to the apostles. And these words appeared to them as nonsense and they refused to believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. And bending over to look, he saw only the strips of linen cloth. And he went away to his home wondering what had happened.

Alright, so let's put our minds real quick. In the first century AD, in the jewish mind, if I were to make up a story, and I want that story to be credible, I want people to believe it, will I pick woman as my witness? As my first witness to testify in my story?

No. For anyone who knows jewish customs, women were seen as unreliable as gossips and they were not allowed to testify. In a trial. The testimony of women was always discounted. So if I were to make up a story and I would want everyone to believe it, the last thing I would do is send three women to be the first messengers, the first witnesses of the story.

No, I would pick men. And not just men, but men who were respected, who are known, who are valued. I wouldn't pick women, especially woman, with the exception of Mary, the mother of Christ. Or here it says, James, these women were known prostitutes. I am not going to pick these women, or women at all in the first century to bring this story.

But we see it. So what this tells us is that the evidence here tells us the likelihood of the story being fabricated is actually low because a fabricated story would not start with woman, but a story that actually happened, actually took place. It's actually seen. If the woman were the ones there to see the empty tomb, then in reality, you would expect that it was the woman who went and informed the other disciples. Hey, something has happened.

He's not there anymore. So that's the first piece of evidence we look at here. The next piece of evidence that we're going to look at. In the book of Luke, chapter 24, it says that the woman here, we specifically have Mary, Mary and Joanna, they go and tell the disciples. And what does it say?

Shawnee, will you scroll to verse nine here for me? It says they reported these things to the eleven and to the rest. Scroll again. And it says here. It says the words appeared to them as nonsense and they refused to believe them.

I get this. If someone came and told me that my best friend, my lord, the person I've been serving and walking for three years, rose from the grave after being dead for three days, I would probably think it was nonsense. But look what Peter did. Scroll again. One more time.

Peter got up and ran to the tomb. He's not even casual about it. I'll get there when I get there. There. He runs to the tomb, looks in and sees no body.

Okay, this is a critical piece of evidence. While this alone does not prove a resurrection, it does prove something. It proves there's no body. It proves there's no body. Remember, this story originated in Jerusalem.

Them. Some critics will call the resurrection a hoax or a legend. Right. Legends. Here's what we know about legends.

Legends are always based on real life events. But what makes them a legend is that as time moves on, the story expands. It becomes enhanced, exaggerated as time moves on and it gets so far removed that you no longer can tell that which is true and which is false. Christianity cannot be a legend. And here is why.

The story of Christ originated the day of the resurrection. Not only did it originate the day of the resurrection, throughout history for the last 2000 years, the story has never been expanded or enhanced. It's the same story throughout the last 2000 years. But finally, the claim of an empty tomb was first made in Jerusalem to people who lived in Jerusalem. What does that mean?

Well, that means that anyone like Peter, who did not believe there was an empty tomb was free to go and investigate the tomb. And here's the thing. Nobody ever presented the body of Christ. No one ever said, the body of Christ is here.

So we know for a fact, because the Romans did not see. The Romans never came and said the body was there and they were guarding it. In fact, the Romans were guarding the tomb on the sentence of death if Christ disappeared. So if Christ disappeared, the Romans were going to kill the guards guarding the tomb, and yet they never presented the body.

So the Jews never presented it. The Christians never presented it. So it is a historical faCt. It's not conjecture. It's not even circumstantial.

It's a historical fact that the tomb was empty. Well, if the tomb is empty, there are only three possible explanations. Explanation. One, the Jews stole the body.

When I say the Jews, I mean the jewish jews, not the ChristiAn jews, the PHarisees, the SAdducees, the members of the SAnheDrin. Those who had put Christ on the cross, store the body. Now, why would they stir the body? We need a motive for stealing the body. And here is the motive.

If I'm a jew, I want to steal the body so that when the Christians come and proclaim that Christ rose from the grave, I could let them tell the story for a day, maybe two, and then I can present the body of Christ and tell them, you are liars. Here it is.

Here's my question. Why did that never happen?

We can say that Jews did not steal the body because nobody presented it. And isn't that the easiest way if you want to squash Christianity? The fastest way to have done it was to present the body of Christ, and it did not happen. The second possibility is that the Christians stole the body. Is it a possibility?

Yeah. What is the motive? Well, if I were a Christian and store the body, the motive would be to convince everybody else that he rose in the grave. But one, remember, we have 530 people who saw Christ. That's a lot of people for a lie, don't you think?

Out of 530 people, when the murders and killings begin, that at least one of them is going to take the body and give it back? At least one of them. Right. Or even if they don't, over time, somebody is bound to say, yeah, you know, it was just a hoax or a joke or, you know, but it didn't happen. But it never happened until all of them died.

All of the original people died. Not a single person who saw Christ rise from the grave ever recanted. None of them ever said, no, we didn't do it. None of them said, here's the body, we took it and hid it for the purpose of this lie. It never happened and they died for it, every single one of them.

Now, while that is not a smoking gun, to say they did not take the body, doesn't the evidence suggest that they did not take the body? So there is one final piece of evidence or not evidence, one final possibility. If the Jews did not take it and the Romans did not take it, and the Christians did not take it, and yet it is gone, isn't the possibility that he actually rose from the grave? That's all that remains.

Finally, we're going to ask if we're going to ask ourselves, or especially the atheist, did Christ raised from the grave?

It's the only option that cannot be explained away, every other option today. We're not going to cover every possible solution. We're not going to do it. We're not going to cover every piece of evidence and every theory. There's not enough time.

It'll take hours.

But at the end of the day, every theory, every possibility and solution can be explained away by evidence except for the resurrection.

And here is the problem that people have with that. Who has ever seen a dead person and raised from the grave? I haven't. And so the atheist says it's not possible because it's not natural, it's super natural. And therein lies the problem.

But I want to submit tonight before we leave, that nearly every single atheist who does not believe in Christ or God or the supernatural believes in the big Bang.

And the big Bang is said to be nothing exploding into everything. In other words, all things natural came from an explosion of nothing. Well, how do you explain that it would be a supernatural? Because all things natural came after the explosion. So it would be a supernatural origin of the Big Bang.

So all of you atheists out there who might be hearing this, who mock me because I believe in the supernatural, so do you.

So if we can accept that the supernatural is evident in our life, then we can accept that a supernatural being, God, created the heavens and the earth, and if a being could create all that there is, create life, create our bodies, create the stars and the moons and the planets and the water, everything, could not that same supernatural being raise himself out of the grave? And I submit that if he can do all those other things, he can raise himself out of the grave. This Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not because we hope it happened or believe it happened, but because we know it happened, because it is based on the evidence. Other things that we have not seen, but it is there. The evidence is there.

And I want you to know tonight that Jesus died for your sins.

The whole reason he came here, the whole reason he lived, and the only reason he died was so that he could forgive our sins.

And he does not forgive our sins through work. Baptism does not save us taking the sacrament, which we're going to take communion tonight right after the closing prayer. And I feel especially on this Easter day, it is very important to partake of the communion and the sacraments. But sacrament does not cleanse you or save you. No amount of works or tithing or anything else saves you.

The only thing that saves a you is that Jesus Christ died for your sins. And that is the good news. Any other news? Anything that requires me to do something is bad news. If it requires my effort, it's bad because I fail daily and so do you.

So the good news today, for those who feel unloved, God loved you enough to die. For those who feel hopeless, in and of ourselves, we are hopeless. But in Christ he conquered death. And if he conquered death, what can he not conquer? For those who are addicted, Jesus is the redeemer.

For those who need purpose. If we're just an accident, what purpose is there? I mean, let's be honest, if we're just an accident, what purpose is there? But you can have purpose in God. For those who know you know God is there.

But you're a sinner, and you're so deep in your sin and so overwhelmed by it that you don't even feel like it's worth it. Right? You have a list of things to do and you know you can't do it. You can let it go.

Romans ten nine. Paul writes that if you would confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you would be saved. He says, for whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

I ask you today, don't let the death and resurrection of Jesus be a waste. Don't let it be for nothing. You can call upon us. You can trust fully in him and be sad. And if you're ready to do that here in our closing prayer, I'll walk you through it.

We're going to admit that we are sinners. We can't ask for help if we don't know we need it. So we're going to admit that we're sinners. We're going to believe that Jesus is God like he claimed to be, that he really did live on this earth, but more importantly, that he died and rose again, and we will confess him as our king, our Lord and I. Many people are happy if you ask, who is Christ?

He's my savior. Many people are happy to confess him as savior, but not many as lord. I want you to know as we say this prayer and you repeat it, the prayer absolutely does not, will not, and cannot save you. Repeat in these words are meaningless and powerless unless you believe it. But if you believe it, that is what will save you.

We're going to ask God for this gift. Please, if you're ready to invite God into your heart, repeat the prayer with me if you believe it, and then afterwards tell us of your birth, of your resurrection day today, that Christ is your lord and savior, so that we can rejoice and celebrate with you. Immediately after closing prayer, I'm going to run up and grab my communion. We're going to come down and partake of the Lord's supper together. I invite everybody to stay for two to three minutes after service and partake of this with us as we worship and celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And look back to what he did. And then I will see the rest of you on Wednesday night at 06:30 p.m. to finish our study in revelation. Let's pray. Father, I admit that I'm a sinner.

I admit that I cannot say myself that my ways are not your ways and my deeds are not your deeds. And I believe, Lord Jesus, that you are God in the flesh. That you came down into this earth and took on the likeness of man. That you died on the cross, not because you were bad or guilty or a sinner, but to take my place. And I believe.

I know that you rose again the third day. And I confess you, Lord Jesus, as my God, my king and my savior. I remove my crown no longer to dictate my own life, but to follow you and obey you. And I ask you for this free and precious gift, and I thank you for it. Father, we thank you.

Today as we depart, we thank you that you so loved the world, that you gave your only begotten son. We thank you for what you did and what you offer us. And I pray, lord, that today you will reach somebody and let them know the truthfulness of these things and bring them into your life. And I pray that you will give us the boldness and courage to share your gospel. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Okay, I.