How Can I Know You're Real?

In Acts chapter number 17.

I don't know the most intimidating experience you've ever had sharing Christ.

I find it hard to think of anything more intimidating than the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill here in Acts 17 in the city of Athens.

Bring together all the great minds of the world today.

Every Ivy League professor and president, every mensa scholar, every genius.

Bring them all together, religious leaders, agnostics, atheists alike.

Gather them here on Mars Hill, where Paul will make an attempt, a wonderful attempt, to start where they are and to bring them to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul will be accused in this passage of being a babbler.

He completes his speech here, and they said, What will this babbler say?

I wonder if you've ever been called a babbler.

The word in the Greek is spermologous, sperm, and seed spreader.

He just threw the seed all over the place.

And man just say, the preaching of the gospel is to them who do not believe it is foolishness.

But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.

And I want to hear what the Babbler said, because he he indeed spoke without his voice cracking.

He spoke the word of God.

Acts chapter 17 and verse 23.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him, declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from any one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.

For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold and silver or stone, graven by art and man's device.

And at the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath made he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead.

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.

Hey God, I have a question.

The question we look at today is how can I know that you are real?

We talk today about the existence of God.

Father, thank you for our time together today.

Speak to our hearts.

Teach us to number our days, including this day, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Give us truth in our own soul.

Lord, maybe someone here today has been asking these questions.

Maybe someone down the road under the influence of this message might have been asking this question.

And for all of us who enter into a disbelieving world, help us to have an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in us.

So speak to us through your word today, and we'll thank you and praise you for it all.

For we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for standing, and please be seated together.

Every generation eventually arrives at the same haunting questions.

Is God real?

Why am I here?

Why is there so much suffering in the world?

Does life actually have any meaning?

Civilizations advance and technology increases and cultures even change.

But the deepest questions of the human soul remain forever the same.

Here in our text in Acts chapter 17, the Apostle Paul stood in the intellectual center of Athens, surrounded by philosophers and skeptics and idols and competing world views, and he here declared that the God that they were searching for was not distant or silent or even unknowable.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

This God that he speaks of is the creator who exists outside of the circle of space and time.

He is the giver of life and breath and all things to his creation.

He is the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

And Paul will say to them, this is not a God that you have created in your own minds.

This is the God who created it all.

And so this morning we wrestle honestly with the question that people ask about God's existence.

Our search for meaning and why the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything.

So I want to make three arguments today that answer this question.

If you're writing notes, you should have the handout there.

Someone said they missed the blanks in the bulletin.

So you like blanks.

I've given you lots of blanks today.

And you can either keep up with the sermon or doodle your shopping list for publics after church today.

But I think it would be more beneficial to track along with the message today.

Or the children might make some very colorful caricatures of the pastor, and I'd like to see those just to see what I might look like today.

Number one, I want you to think about the logic of God's existence.

The logic of God's existence.

There are logical questions about God's existence that exists in what we call apologetics.

I knew a man years ago who had gone off to Bible college, and he called his dad and he said, Dad, they have me taking a class on apologetics.

And the dad said, How's it going?

He said, I don't know, but I'm not apologizing for anything.

Well, that's not what the word apologetics means.

The word apologetics means a defense of the faith.

These logical questions about God's existence sound something like this.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

We see the world, the natural world that God made.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

How could there be natural law, what we might call the conscience, without the existence of a lawgiver?

How could everything come from nothing?

And number four, where, if the Big Bang were a reality for argument's sake, where do the elements from the Big Bang come from?

Logic tells us that there must be an uncaused first cause.

If I looked at something that occurs in the world, for example, an explosion, I would not just look at the explosion, I would look at what caused the explosion.

And then I would look at that cause until finally I must arrive at something that is uncaused.

Matter is not eternal, God is.

This is the logic of the gospel.

It was Aristotle, the philosopher, who said there must be an unmoved mover, an ultimate cause to the universe.

And Paul addresses that question here in our passage.

Notice he says in verse 24, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.

Paul had been walking through this amazing city, and here a God, there a God, everywhere, a God, God.

And they even came to the point of naming an unknown God, an inscription to a God that they might have missed in their panoply of deities.

And he says, as I was walking through your city, I saw an inscription to the unknown God.

And he uses that as a starting point to say, this unknown God that is not underrepresented, but not represented in the city of Athens is the creator of the whole world.

He says, this God is first of all, he is transcendent.

He is transcendent.

He made the world and all things, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth.

Now imagine in your minds for a moment that you drew a large circle on your paper this morning, and you labeled the circle the universe.

Everything that exists within the created order would be inside that circle.

Space would be in the circle, matter would be in the circle, we'd have time and energy and galaxies and planets and even humanity itself would exist inside the circle.

Now we have to ask ourselves a question about that circle.

What caused the circle to exist?

Now the cause must either exist, the cause of everything in the circle must exist inside the circle or it exists outside the circle.

But everything inside the circle is dependent on something else inside the circle as well.

For example, matter depends on laws, life depends on oxygen, planets depend on gravity, and time itself depends on a beginning point.

Because everything within the circle is contingent and dependent, the ultimate cause of everything inside the circle has to logically exist outside the circle.

The cause must exist outside of the circle, dependent upon nothing inside the circle.

And if it exists outside of space and matter and time, then it must be independent, it must be eternal, it must be timeless and unrestricted by the laws that govern the universe.

In other words, the force sustaining everything inside the circle must itself, or shall I say, must himself be sovereign and omnipotent and free and uncaused.

And this is exactly what the Bible says, that our great God exists outside of the natural world, and everything is dependent upon him.

He says here, notice in verse 24, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelling not in temples made with hands.

Look at verse 25.

Neither is worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything.

Now I want you, as a student of God's Word this morning, to circle the word worshiped in verse 25.

Worshiped.

Now there's several words for worship in the Greek New Testament.

This word is therapuo.

I'm going to say it again.

Therapuo.

So I ask you a question.

I'm sure I should have a definitive yes here in a crowd about this size.

Has anyone been to therapy this week?

Okay.

Brother Rick's been to therapy.

Okay, very good.

Therapy.

So what is therapy?

Therapy is something that helps to strengthen, it stretches, it rehabilitates therapy, something that makes something whole or it cures.

But Paul notes here that the creating God is not attended to as though he needed anything inside the circle to cure him or to help him or to stretch him or to make him more than he is.

Isaiah 42, verse 5, thus saith the Lord God, he that created the heavens and stretched them out, he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it, he hath given breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein.

Isaiah 42:5

Can I say to you, we did not create this God, and we cannot make more of him.

He doesn't need us to strengthen him or stretch him.

He is God.

Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High God, and call upon me in the day of trouble.

Such a God, such a God is not dependent on His creation, but His creation is desperately dependent upon Him, and can all God's people say Amen.

Matter of fact, the old songwriter said, I can't even walk without you holding my hand.

Such a God may not be enshrined in human temples or be manipulated by a human cult.

It is Paul that says here, all of these edifices of man's greatness, all of these temples and shrines perceive themselves to be holding a God.

But I want you to know our God is not confined to a building.

Our God is not confined to a church.

Our God is not confined to a planet.

He is Lord of all.

Sigmund Freud said, God is a construct born of fear and wishful thinking.

It was Clara Marx who said religion is an opiate of the masses.

Someone said to me one time, Well, your Christianity is a crutch, and I said, No, it's not a crutch.

It's life support.

Our breath, our life, our vital existence comes from our Almighty God.

Nietzsche, the philosopher, pronounced in the 1800s, God is dead.

God remains dead, and we have killed him.

Now, if Nietzsche were right, if God is dead, then morals would become relative.

Mankind would need to self-identify.

In other words, without God, where would meaning and purpose and value come from?

Without God, morals would corrupt.

But Paul says God doesn't need anything from his creation, but creation needs all things from our great God.

In other words, God is the answer for everything inside the circle.

And furthermore, dear friend, there is a God-shaped void in your heart that only Jesus can fill and only he can satisfy.

I ask you today, what's in your life?

What's going on in your soul?

For your life, you're going to need something outside of this circle to invade your life with peace and mercy and meaning and goodwill, and his name is God.

He is transcendent.

But notice the second word here: the word existence.

Existence.

Neither is worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything.

Seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things.

I took a moment with a highlighter to circle the all things in this passage.

Verse 24.

God made the world and all things.

Verse 25.

Verse 26, He hath made of one blood all nations on all the face of the earth.

Existence is a gift of God.

He giveth to all life.

The word here means that he continually gives.

Oh, you're a self-made person, are you?

Oh, you worked and you were educated and you picked yourself up by your bootstraps and built an empire and a kingdom and saved your money and worked hard.

Really.

Deuteronomy 8, 17 says, And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant, which he swear to thy fathers.

Remember King Nebuchadnezzar?

The king spake and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, for the honor of my majesty?

But while the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, Oh, King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee, not until he came to realize that the Almighty God ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will.

He came to his sane reasoning to recognize.

No man rises without the touch of God.

No man lives without the breath of God.

And we cannot sustain ourselves without the providence and the provision of our great God.

Every minute of the day, God is at work in our lives.

At work in our bodies.

As subconsciously your body continued to do all of these functions.

Your corneas bend light.

Your lenses focus light onto your retina, and the retina transfers light into electrical signals to your brain in milliseconds.

Every minute your brain handles 600 million bits of visual data.

Your heart pumps 60 to 100 times every minute, pumping 2.4 ounces of blood throughout your entire body.

I wonder if you thought about making that perform flawlessly since I began preaching.

You breathe 12 to 20 times, one and a half to two gallons of oxygen every minute.

Every hour your nervous system sends out 250 miles of data throughout the extremities of your body.

Millions of cells die every minute and are replaced by new cells.

Around 300 million cells die every minute and are replaced as part of the normal maintenance of your physical body.

Neurons communicate across trillions of synaptic connections, enabling thought and memory and sensation and movement.

Your eyes blink about, protecting and lubricating the cornea 15 to 20 times every minute.

Your kidneys filter roughly one quarter of blood, removing waste and balancing fluids for the sustaining of your life.

Your liver every minute performs hundreds of chemical functions, including detoxification and nutrient processes, and is taking that pop-tart and hopefully turning it into energy in your physical life.

Comedy relief.

Your digestive system continues breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and moving material through your intestines.

Your immune system identifies and attacks viruses and bacteria and abnormal cells.

Bone marrow replaces millions of red blood cells.

DNA replication repairs.

Mechanisms working continuously to correct your cellular damage.

Hormones are replaced and regulated.

To support metabolism and mood and stress response and growth and reproduction.

Your skin sheds tens of thousands of dead skin cells.

Your muscles constantly make microscopic adjustments to maintain posture and balance.

Your tiny hair cells in the inner ear help to maintain equilibrium and your spatial awareness.

White blood cells patrol your bloodstream searching for infectious injuries.

Thousands of proteins every minute are folded and transported and broken down inside cells every second.

And only an embittered and thoughtless and reckless human being would say, There is no God.

His glory is above the heavens.

And Darwin wants you to think that you were the end point of an evolutionary process.

No, sir, I am fearfully and wonderfully made by the mighty hands of our great God.

When he created, when he created the seas, he spoke them into existence.

He said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly, and the fish began to swim.

And he spoke the dirt into existence, and he spoke to the ground, and let the beast cover the fields of the earth, and he looked to the firmament, and let the firmament bring forth all of the birds of the heavens.

But when God made man, he spoke to himself.

Let us make man in our own image.

And the Almighty creating hand of God reached down and he took dirt out of this toil, and he fashioned man out of his own hands, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and we became a living soul.

Our existence comes from the awesome, wonderful, powerful, supporting, everlasting arms of our great God.

It's only logical to say there is a God.

The logic of his existence.

Look at your neighbor and say, Hey, you're a miracle.

Oh dear, I say, you're a miracle.

You were created by God.

Some of you don't have a neighbor this morning.

Why don't you say to yourself, You are made by God.

Let's talk about the locus, the location of God's existence.

Notice Paul continues this argument about the existence of God in verse 26 and speaks about the nations.

He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.

These Athenians, these Greeks felt they were at the top of the ethnic pyramid.

Their progenitors, people like Darwin, invented terms like races.

Racism.

Before Darwin, we spoke of the human race.

Darwin began to speak about subhuman races.

All the nations came from one common ancestor.

All nations on all the face of the earth.

If God doesn't dwell in temples, and he exists outside of the circle, where can we find him?

Well, Paul says in verse 26, we find him in his image-bearers.

Genesis 1 27, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.

Male and female created he them.

Our role as image-bearers is to make visible the invisible God.

He created mankind.

He said to Adam, make me known.

Created the nation of Israel.

He said to Israel, make me known.

Our role as the image-bearer of God is to make visible the invisible God.

No man hath seen God at any time.

Ye are our epistle, Paul said, written in our hearts, known and read of all men.

You are the only Bible someone will read this week.

And he says that all of mankind has been seeking after God.

Notice in verse 27, he hath appointed the times of these nations and the boundaries of their habitations.

Verse 27, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.

Notice these three words.

He says that all men are seeking.

The word speaks of a diligent inquiry.

All men are seeking.

But not only seeking, he said, they are feeling after him.

Notice the word again, if haply they might feel after him.

This is an interesting word.

Did you know that even the atheist is feeling after God?

The agnostic is feeling, groping in the darkness, when the light of full revelation is not available to him.

Feeling after God.

The same word is used of Thomas in Luke 24, verse 39, where Jesus says, Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

Luke 24:39

Handle me and see me, for a ghosteth not flesh, has not flesh and blood, as ye see me.

Handle me and see me.

Groping after God.

The whole world is groping after God.

Now think of this.

The existence of God talk is proof itself of God's existence.

Next time you talk to an atheist and they say, God, God doesn't exist, say to them, How can you be so mad at a figment of imagination?

The Athenians were reaching out, proliferating things to worship, knowing down deep inside there was something eternal, something was transcendent in their hearts the whole time.

They weren't seeking a phantom or groping for a figment of imagination.

It was not a mirage of hope.

They were feeling after.

God had set eternity in their hearts.

People who study civilizations call this the argument from religious longing.

Every known culture has exhibited a form of worship and sacrifice.

Human hearts seem wired to worship, defining something ultimate around which their lives can revolve.

Human desires, someone said it, correspond to real objects.

The desire for hunger is met with food.

The sensation of thirst is met by water.

The desire for relationship is met in human connection.

And listen, beloved, the eternal universal human longing for transcendence and meaning corresponds to a real transcendent God.

This longing that they have, they do not know his name, they do not know his identity, but they carve him out of wood and silver and gold.

They bow down to possessions and material possessions and even ideologies and philosophies.

Why?

God has set eternity in every heart to recognize that there is something transcendent that would add meaning and purpose to our lives.

C.S.

Lewis said, if I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

John said, That which is from the beginning, which we have seen, which we have heard, which our hands have handled.

There's that word again.

We touched him, we held him with our hands.

We found that Jesus Christ is God.

Notice carefully, he be not far from every one of us.

They find him.

In him, he says we live and move and have our being.

Someone said to deny the existence of God is a fish in the middle of the ocean denying the existence of water.

Listen, friend.

The reality of God is in the air that you breathe.

It's in every physical function of your life pointing you to a creator, a cause, a great mover.

And only through pride and foolishness would a man suppress that which is most natural to us to recognize that there is a God.

Where would we find him in his image bears?

Notice the last point here.

Think of the light of God's existence.

The light.

It's in all of us.

It forces us to ask this question hey God, are you real?

And it's good.

But it's just a doorway into the ultimate door, which is Christ.

In Acts chapter 2, Paul, excuse me, Acts chapter 2, Peter was preaching to the Jews gathered in Jerusalem.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 2 · chapter mention

They began by talking about the historical mosaic recognition of ultimately Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who died, was buried, and rose again.

Peter's crowd in Acts chapter 2 accepted the authority of the Old Testament.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

They didn't fully understand the Old Testament or could put two and two together.

And by the way, you can be right in the facts and wrong in the conclusions.

Van Savner said, it is possible to dot all your I's and cross all of your T's and still misspell the word.

They recognized the authority of the Old Testament, and as quickly as possible, Peter took them to Jesus.

But the Apostle Paul goes to the Gentile world who was idolatrous, worshiping every possible thing known to mankind.

Where does he start?

He doesn't start with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Joseph and David.

He takes them all the way back to Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Listen carefully.

Before Paul could preach of the resurrection, he had to preach of God as creator.

And the recognition of Jehovah as God would lead him to the preaching of Jesus as Messiah, Savior of the world, and resurrected Christ.

Now I ask you a question.

Do we live in an Acts 2 world or an Acts 17 world?

Some of you at times seek to give the gospel to someone, and you begin with Jesus in Bethlehem.

And you're speaking to a person who's yet to understand that there's a God who created the world, who is self-revealing and self-speaking, who prophesied his son would come.

In other words, before the knowledge of Jesus is preached, a recognition of God as creator is necessary as a framework of faith.

We ought to be so careful when we preach the gospel to others to recognize the starting point at which they are.

And the goal of evangelism is not to read a script, is to meet people where they are and walk them through the pages of Scripture, ultimately through the doorway of salvation, which is the person of Jesus Christ.

That's what Paul is seeking to do here.

There is a God he created, we're dependent upon him, he sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the Bible says here, when he preached of the resurrection, most of them mocked his preaching.

And some believed.

Now watch this.

Paul says here, this God came to us.

When mankind failed to find God, that's verse 27.

God came to man.

God's ultimate face could not be carved in silver and gold.

God's ultimate expression of his person was found in the man Christ Jesus.

Look at verse 30.

Paul says, at the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he raised him from the dead.

Man's old search had failed, human intelligence was insufficient, and a new search must be based on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Quickly, notice that man, that man, he calls Jesus that man.

Who is he?

Well, he was pre-announced.

The prophecies of the Old Testament told the world the Messiah's coming.

Eight hundred accounts from no fewer than 18 prophets declared to the world the Messiah's coming.

It told us how he would come and when he would come and where he would come.

It told us his name and his forerunner.

But the coming of that man was preserved in manuscripts.

Now, how many of you here this morning believe that a man named Plato existed?

Will you be an honest person?

How many of you believe Plato existed?

Not Plato, Plato.

Okay.

210 manuscripts of antiquity, 210 confirm that he existed.

Primarily two documents written 400 years after he died.

How many of you believe that Alexander the Great existed?

Will you raise your hand?

Awesome.

There are 15 accounts in history of his life.

15.

Genghis Khan, ten.

Julius Caesar, less than ten.

Jesus Christ, over twenty-five thousand.

That man.

Josephus of the first century wrote this.

At this time there was a wise man called Jesus.

Pilate condemned him to a cross.

Tacitus, in the Annals of Rome, 116 A.D., he wrote, Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty of death during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of Pontius Pilate.

They were doing archaeological investigation in Megiddo, which is in the Jezreel Valley, just a few years ago, and found a mosaic in a house from A.D.

230.

The inscription in the mosaic floor from the third century read, the God-loving Akeptus has offered this table to God, Jesus Christ, as a memorial.

That man has historical, prophetical, manuscript evidence for his existence.

Jesus Christ made a mark on the physical world.

That it's not enough to acknowledge that he lived.

We must acknowledge that he died and rose again.

Verse 31.

First, his resurrection was witnessed.

Gospel authors all wrote of his resurrection within the first century of his ascension to heaven.

Ten separate appearances were made by Jesus after his resurrection.

At one of these, he appeared to over 500 people at the same time over a period of 40 years.

His appearances to all of these people were never disputed or called a hoax.

And furthermore, his disciples so much believed in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ that with the exception of John, who died at an old age, all laid their lives down to confirm that what Jesus had accomplished was true.

And may I just say to you, people don't lay down their lives for a lie.

It's been said that other great leaders' deaths brought an anticlimatic end to their lives and work, such as Muhammad and Buddha and Confucius, but Jesus was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.

He never wrote a book, never held an office, never owned a home, never set foot inside a big city, never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him.

His friends ran away.

One of them denied him.

He was turned over to his enemies.

He went through the mockery of a trial.

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments.

His coat was given as an award for their prize money.

When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus Christ is the centerpiece of human history and the leader of columns of progress.

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that one solitary life lived in the person of Jesus Christ.

He increases in the hearts of many.

Though the world is hostile to his message, his word is still the world's best seller.

Paul says here, this resurrected Christ, verse 30, he used to wink at man's ignorance, but now he doesn't wink.

He declares every man, woman, boy, and girl repent of their sin and confess Jesus Christ is Lord.

You remember Larry King?

Larry King interviewed presidents and kings and celebrities and athletes and religious leaders.

Larry King spent a lifetime asking questions.

I looked up how many questions Larry King asked over his illustrious career.

It was suggested the number of questions he asked was incalculable, but I discovered that he conducted over 50,000 interviews.

That's a lot of questions.

Yet when asked what one question he would ask God, Larry King didn't hesitate.

He didn't ask about creation or suffering or politics or the meaning of life.

Larry King said, if I could ask God one question, I'd ask him this.

Do you have a son?

Because if God had a son, whose name is Jesus, dear friends, praise be to God.

If God had a son, that would change everything.

And I go on record to say to you today, God had a son.

They called him Jesus.

He came to love, to heal and forgive.

He bled and died to seal my pardon.

And an empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.

Let's stand together and sing, because he lives I confess to my roof of because I know he holds the future, and life is worth a living just because he lives.

Father, thank you for speaking to our hearts through your word today.

Lord, if there's someone here today who's struggling, I pray they'll reach out to someone here, maybe an usher, one of our workers.

May they not leave this place today without full assurance of their faith in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for loving us and sending your Son to bleed and die for your sins, for our sins.

Thank you for being buried and rising again.

Lord, thank you for proving your existence to us, as patient you are, how ignorant we are, and how blasphemous man can be.

Thank you for the revelation that we have of Jesus Christ.

Help us to serve you and love you and submit to you, because you are Lord of heaven and earth, and we confess you today that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we thank you for it.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you so much to be seated.

Brother Ethan, if you'll give us some announcements.