Discover Jesus Series Pt. 3 - Pastor Greg Addison - December 29, 2024

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Gary.

We appreciate you leading us in worship today.

And uh turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 2 as we continue our uh series that we've started, Discover Jesus, where we're going to uh follow the life and ministry of Jesus from his birth at Christmas time uh through his death, burial, and resurrection at Easter.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

So we are gonna walk our way all the way through that in that time period.

We're excited about it.

I hope you had a great Christmas.

I know you enjoyed that with your family.

We did, and uh most of you uh I know uh had Santa visit your house.

I saw a couple of you with hadn't still hadn't gotten the coal off your fingers yet when you were shaking hands this morning, but I pray most of everybody had a good Christmas.

Uh and so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna start to move forward from the birth of Jesus.

Now it's great, as I said before, it's great that we spend this much time affirming the birth of Jesus.

As uh we looked at last week in uh 2 John, there is a very clear statement that those who deny the birth of Jesus are liars and those who oppose the gospel.

And that's not something that's an old thing.

In fact, just last week in the New York Times, uh not a lot of Southern Baptist theologians uh frequent the New York Times these days, uh, but there was another theologian from another uh ilk and another line of thought who had they had a long feature article in the New York Times on how the uh the idea of the virgin birth uh was not accurate, and they posed all kinds of uh historical theories about how uh Jesus was really conceived and born and all this other kind of stuff, including things just completely made up ideas like somehow Mary was abused by a Roman soldier, and uh her family was embarrassed to share that story, and so they concocted this idea of a virgin birth to cover the fact that she was assaulted and abused by a Roman guard or something.

I mean, just completely made-up fabrications.

People looking for some idea to be able to state that the birth of Jesus is not as God had planned it, prophesied it, and accomplished it to be.

It's really important that we affirm that theology.

C.S.

Lewis called it the central event of human history.

And that is really true because as we've looked at through December, without the virgin birth of Jesus, without the lineage and the accomplishment of who he was and his ability to accomplish what he did on the cross, you wouldn't have Easter without Christmas.

It is the person of who he is and how he came and God's identification of him and all of that that points out that he is the Savior that God had promised.

Now, what we see is as we move forward after Jesus is born and he's come, we're gonna look here at a story of two people who were longing for the promised savior.

They're not a part of Mary and Joseph's family or circle or anything else, but they step in to identify that Jesus is the Savior.

And what you now move into is beyond just this movement of the birth of Jesus and that event, to Jesus being recognized by people of faith and people around that he is unique, and because of that, he is the Savior.

I want you to read with me here in Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 25.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

Now, where we what we're going to talk about today is the proper response to the coming of Jesus the Savior.

Because Jesus did come.

It is a historical fact and event.

It is what we base our belief in his qualification as a savior.

But here's the point: Jesus came for a reason.

He came to bring about salvation.

God promised the savior for a reason.

He wants us to be saved.

He wants people to know his salvation and redemption.

And so he didn't just come to prove himself somehow.

He didn't come to just come.

He came for a purpose.

He came to be the Savior and to offer us salvation.

And because of that, we need to be able to respond.

So if y'all will, just for a moment here, if you'll join me in prayer, let's go ahead and everybody bow their heads and we'll have just a moment of prayer here.

Lord, uh, we come and we just ask that you step into this moment.

We know that you are uh in our midst.

We know that you uh are invested in all that we do.

We thank you for being in our services this morning.

The Bible says you inhabit the praise of your people, and so we know you're here with us.

We uh we pray that you'll be with our brother.

Uh we know and love and care about him, and we know you do as well.

Uh Lord, we thank you for how our church folks uh take care of each other in these moments, and so, Father, we pray that uh you'll be with them and be in this moment.

We know that, as we'll see in a moment, Jesus came to be involved in people's lives.

You're great as personal, your greatest present.

And we know that you walk through all of these very moments with us.

And so we are grateful to you as our Lord, as our Savior.

We are also grateful for you as our shepherd.

We are grateful for you as our Heavenly Father, and we are grateful for all the ways that you take care of us in the big and the small in every moment of our lives.

We pray now that you'll direct us to learn that lesson from your scripture as we study your word.

In Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said.

Thank you, church family.

Now let's turn and read this story.

Where we find ourselves here is immediately after the birth of Jesus, the story picks up.

We first find in verses 21 through 24 that uh Mary and Joseph are godly parents.

They love the Lord, they love the Word of God, and they are following the law's instruction on how you dedicate your child, on how you follow the pattern of health codes that are built in the law and all of those things.

So we see again the character of Mary and Joseph that they are godly people who love the Lord and take seriously how they approach being Christians and how they approach being parents.

And then as they go to the temple to do what the law asks them to do with a newborn child, the Bible picks up there and says there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

This man was righteous and devout, looking forward to Israel's consolation, and the Holy Spirit was on him.

It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he saw the Lord's Messiah.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, he entered the temple complex.

When the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for Jesus what was customary under the law.

There was just a series of sacrifices and different things they did to praise the Lord, to commit their family, to raise the child as the Lord's blessing to them and all of that.

So that's what it's referring to.

When the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him up in his arms, praised God, and said, Now, master, you can dismiss your slave in peace as you promised.

For my eyes have seen your salvation.

You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory to your people Israel.

His father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.

Then Simeon blessed them and told his mother Mary, indeed, this child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed.

And then he gives her this thought, and a sword will pierce your own soul.

And then he picks up back in what he's saying, to be a sign that will be opposed, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

And as if that moment wasn't enough.

Then you get in verse 36, there was also a prophetess, Anna, a daughter of Faniel of the tribe of Asher.

She was well along in years, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and was a widow for 84 years.

So she would be a member of our 60 plus ministry, if you can do that math.

She did not leave the temple complex, serving God night and day with fasting and prayers.

At that very moment, she came up and began to thank God and to speak about him to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

So that's an important phrase right there that we're going to pick up on.

But here's the big idea that I want to give you this morning.

Jesus was sent.

These people who are walking with the Lord, who are directed by Scripture, by the Holy Spirit, to affirm this baby as the Savior that was given.

The Savior had come.

Here's the big idea for us.

The coming of the promised Savior demands and motivates a life of deep commitment.

The coming of the promised Savior demands and motivates a life of deep commitment.

If you think about the title today, the coming of a savior, the response that should happen to him coming, you see in the lives of these two people, Simeon and Anna, a life that was motivated by the promise of the Savior, that was affirmed by the coming of the Savior as they recognize him, and that truth that they're clinging to, it motivated a lifelong commitment to the Lord.

First, you see these two folks, they're both elderly in years.

In fact, Simeon, we don't know exactly how old he was, but it is clear he was an age in which he was thinking about his end and his going to heaven to be with the Father.

In fact, he says to the Lord, Hey, now I can go in peace because you have done what you promised.

I mean, he is ready to go at that point.

And she, we saw, the math tells us how old she is.

And so what happened is you have two people here that the Bible describes as deeply religious, as devout, as people of faith who followed the Lord, and they have lived their lives committed to and longing for the promised Savior.

It's incredible when you think about what it means.

These are not long verses, but think about what these two men are, what these two people are.

Simeon, it says in verse 25, was righteous and devout, looking forward to Israel's consolation.

That is a direct biblical reference from the book of Isaiah to the Messiah, and was a common term of the Messiah.

And the Holy Spirit was on him.

Now, if you think about it, man, if I could just have half of that as the testimony that people speak about me, that would be incredible, wouldn't it?

Isn't that be a goal for life that you would love to have right there?

Righteous and devout, looking forward to the coming of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was with him.

And it indicates clearly that this has been going on for a long time in his life.

He was close enough to the Lord that he knew that the Holy Spirit spoke to him and said, Go get to the temple.

It's going to be a special day.

He had been given a promise that the Messiah would come during his lifetime.

How close to the Lord do you have to be that the Lord would speak to that and give that to you?

I mean, this is a man of incredible commitment and testimony.

In fact, when you look at Scripture, there are a number of people who are described as righteous in this story of Jesus' birth.

When the angel comes to Joseph, it says specifically that he was not going to put her away when he found out she was pregnant because he was a righteous man.

John the Baptist, who is Jesus' cousin, was born miraculously to an elderly couple named Zacharias and Elizabeth.

And Zachariah was a priest, and the Bible says that both of them were righteous and took great care to follow the law.

And so you have a number of people who are described as righteous.

And here it says that he is righteous and devout.

So God adds that extra explanation of his character and who he is.

And then we see this incredible picture of Anna.

She was a widow of 84 years, and rather than getting bitter with the Lord or bitter about what was going on in her life or anything else, she trusted and followed him and was so respected in her understanding and walk with the Lord that she is described as a prophetess.

Now we don't know exactly what that means, but we know generally what that means.

It means that she was serving in and around the temple.

She was most likely so wise in Scripture that she was a teacher, that she imparted wisdom.

She is praying, and so people would come to her and she would pray for them as well.

It's incredible the faith life of these two people.

What is interesting is that these are not people who met Jesus after his death, burial, and resurrection.

These are people who made that commitment to the Lord based on the promise that the Savior would come, and it motivated their life to that degree.

It motivated their life to live in anticipation of the coming Savior to such a degree that God gave them the opportunity to see the Savior, Jesus, before he took them to heaven.

It's an incredible picture here.

And so what you have now is people outside the scope and sphere of Mary and Joseph beginning to acknowledge that Jesus meets the definition of the Savior.

He meets the prophecies of the Savior.

He is the person of the Savior.

And they are beginning to recognize that Jesus accomplishes what God had promised.

Now, it's also two thoughts I want to think before I give you just a couple of ideas here.

First thought is this I made reference to that, that Anna is speaking to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

That's another reference to the Messiah.

You have Zechariah and Elizabeth who understood the prophecies of the Messiah.

They may not have understood how God was going to use them miraculously, but they knew what that meant and they knew what was happening.

Joseph, when the angel speaks to Joseph, he understands the import of what the angel is telling him and steps out in faith and obeys.

You also have with Mary, she understands when the angel of the Lord begins to speak to her and unpack these definitions of the Messiah, what's happening.

And so you have Mary who understands what's happening.

There are people in the Jewish faith who are faithful to the Lord and are looking for the Messiah.

You can't somehow get this idea that Jesus shows up on the scene and like nobody understood what was happening, nobody had an idea of what it was, and he's just like this strange character that shows up and all of a sudden it just kind of unfolds over time.

Remember, God gave the promise of Jesus from Genesis.

From the moment of sin, God immediately stepped in with his promise of redemption.

And then he began to unfold that promise.

He comes to Abraham and he promises through Abraham and makes a covenant, and then he's going to make him a nation, and through that nation, he is going to bring the Savior into the world.

And then he makes this covenant with David, and he says, through the line of David, you're going to be used to bring the Savior into the world.

He begins to identify who that Savior would be.

God has been screaming from heaven throughout human history that I love you and I'm going to make a plan of salvation and I'm sending a Savior to do this.

There have always been people who are looking forward and searching for God's redemption.

We live in a world today where sometimes people of faith, any faith, are treated as if they're strange or uneducated or some other kind of a deal.

Then when you get to Christians and our faith in Jesus the Savior, then you begin to get all kinds of ridicule and challenges and everything else.

We know how our culture pushes back on all that.

But listen, it's important to stop and take a moment to recognize it is fundamental to the human spirit and soul to ask questions that are existential to life.

The Bible says in the book of Ecclesiastes, God has put eternity in our hearts.

From the moment that Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and that sin began to affect us, there are certain fundamental existential questions that every person in every tribe, in every language, in every epoch of time has asked.

Death is scary and awful and makes me afraid.

And what happens to me after I die?

Do I have a purpose in life?

Am I alone?

Those questions are asked and repeated throughout human history.

When God makes the promise of salvation and he works throughout Old Testament humankind to show how to worship him, to show his mercy, to create that idea of the sacrifice of the Lamb and a shed blood, and one day the Lamb of God would come to take away the sins of the world and all of that.

God is always reaching into humanity and saying, listen, I know you have that question.

That is a good question that you're asking, and I have the answer to that question.

There were people who were raised in the Jewish faith who didn't understand and they had misunderstandings and stuff like that, but there were plenty of people who understood God's teaching and they trusted in the promise of the coming Messiah and they were looking for him.

And here you see examples of that.

And it's important for us to stop and recognize that Jesus came into the world to answer the questions that people have always been asking.

How did I get here?

What does creation look like?

What happens in the afterlife and how I die?

If you ever go to any museum anywhere and spend any amount of time looking at stuff, every people group in every epoch of time, they all, from the beginning of time, have been trying to answer the question, how do I go to heaven?

What happens to us after we die?

I mean, you know all the stories of Egyptians and everybody else, and they're burying people with supplies for the afterlife, and people are coming up with all kinds of weird ideas about what happens and how you get there, and reincarnation and all kinds of things.

Why are those things ubiquitous across history and humankind?

Because people are asking the question what happens when I die?

How do I live?

Beyond this life, I am afraid of what death means to us.

And so it is important to stop at times and realize that these faith questions are fundamental to life, and people are asking them everywhere, and Jesus is the answer to every one of those questions.

He is trying to point it out.

God is screaming from heaven, I love you, I have sent Jesus to be your Savior.

And you see here, when Jesus comes, they are speaking to everyone, trying to show God has answered those questions and he sent Jesus for us.

The other thing you understand here, when the Bible says that Simeon was righteous, what he's talking about is he was made righteous before God.

His sins have been forgiven.

He is what we would call in New Testament language a Christian.

Well, how can an Old Testament person be saved by Jesus when he hadn't come yet?

Well, you see, again, the consistency of Scripture.

In the Old Testament, people are placing faith in the Messiah that would come.

And in the New Testament, people are placing their faith in the Messiah that came.

It is the same faith and the same provision of salvation.

Simeon is a great person to look at because he straddles that line.

The Bible says that he has been longing for the consolation of Israel, the Messiah.

He has been pleading for the coming of the Messiah.

He is so invested in looking forward to God's plan of salvation that God promises him, I won't take you to heaven until you get to see the Savior.

And then he leads him to the temple and he gets to see the Savior, and he knows that every promise that he has been has placed faith in for salvation has now been accomplished in the person of Jesus.

And in a sense, we are doing exactly the same thing.

He placed his faith in the Lamb of God who would come and take away his sins.

And we are placing our faith in the Lamb of God who came to take away our sins.

He is looking forward to the revelation of the Messiah when he would come, and we are looking forward to the revelation of Jesus when he comes back again and accomplishes salvation.

It is the same faith in the same person of Jesus, in the same plan of salvation to forgive our sins.

And so what you have here is God takes a moment and he memorializes it in Scripture for us, where he puts his stamp of approval through these people and their testimony on this is the Savior that I've provided.

And in discovering Jesus, it is important to understand how much time and how many ways God identifies the plan of salvation that he's given.

Now, the first response that you make is to place your faith and trust in this Savior, as Simeon did and Anna did.

And then as the story of Jesus unfolds, we so see so many other people to do.

Jesus came to be the Savior, and we understand that plan of salvation, both from the Old Testament and from the New Testament.

We understand that all of us are sinners, that through Adam, sin entered into the world.

Again, the virgin birth speaks to us of the importance of understanding that, that all of us are sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice.

I have actually discovered this weekend at Christmas time that Killian actually has a sinful spirit.

I never believed that until this weekend.

I know you think your grandkids are perfect, but they're actually not, right?

And we all understand that.

And we understand that God from the very beginning loves us and wants to provide a way of salvation.

And that's why he's spent so much time pointing out, screaming from heaven.

I am sending you a savior.

He is going to take away your sins.

He is going to be the one who redeems you from your sins.

Look for him, look for him, believe in me, look for him.

And then when he came, he is screaming from heaven through angels and prophets and everyone else.

Jesus has come, the Savior has come.

I have done what I've promised to do.

Trust in him to take away your sin.

And then he took him to the cross.

And there he took the price for our sins.

And he took the full wrath and punishment of God on the cross.

And then he rose again, conquering death and sin.

And then the Bible says that the Holy Spirit entered into us to give us power to go out around the world to be witnesses.

Again, screaming from the power of heaven, God loves you, He's provided salvation.

Trust in Jesus and His plan for salvation.

And so the first response that we give to the Savior coming is to place our faith in him as our Savior.

The Bible says how to do that.

You take your life, everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you confess Jesus as Lord.

And then you believe the historicity of these events that Jesus came because he loves you.

He lived a sinless life because he loves you.

He gave his life on the cross because he loves you.

He conquered death and sin and rose again on what we call Easter because he loves you and he offers you the free gift of salvation.

If you will take your life and give it to him.

Once you're saved, the life of commitment is not over, it just begins.

He radically alters who we are and how we live.

And in our life today, these are also an example of people that even just the promise of the Savior of Jesus should motivate our lives to a level of devoutness and perseverance and commitment that is demanded by the fact that Jesus provided salvation for us.

I want you to just see what you get here real quickly.

Three things.

First, I want you to live in the Word.

Now I'm not a big New Year's resolution guy because I've never won and never kept one to my birthday.

My birthday is January 20, and they've never lasted three weeks.

So I'm not really a big resolution guy, right?

But what I do know is that times in life when you have an opportunity to open up and do something new, that that is a great opportunity to add a pattern, to change a perspective, to step forward in a step of faith and try something new.

And so this new year, as you move in, this is a great time to step out and try something new, to elevate your game, to seize a new opportunity and move forward.

As we do this study of the life of Jesus together, it's a great motivating time for you to elevate your quiet time, spend time in the Word, read and study some things that you haven't studied before.

I'm going to give you just three thoughts here that are important about that should motivate us about the coming of the Savior.

The first is, I want to encourage you this year to live in the Word.

Live in the Word.

How do you become devout?

How do you become righteous?

You trust in the promise of the Word of God.

I want you to see the example of Simeon here.

If your Bible is like mine, when he begins to speak in verse 29 and he makes this pronouncement, it has the references from the book of Isaiah that he references.

In fact, there are at least 13 different references to the prophet Isaiah in this short story of Simeon.

He is repeating over and over again what has been invested in his heart from the Word of God.

Listen, he didn't wake up one day and just be smart enough to know, oh, wow, that little baby over there is different.

He didn't just wake up one day and he's moved by the Holy Spirit and like that just sort of happens as an accident.

This is a man who's been searching the Word of God and he's been walking devoutly with God, and that happens through the investment of the Word.

And it is because of the prophecies of Isaiah, as an example in this passage of Scripture, that he's looking forward to a Savior.

When Isaiah says, For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given, he is looking for a baby who will be born.

He is looking for this process, he is believing that's a prophecy of God.

When he makes this pronouncement to Mary, this child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed.

He understood, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders.

This coming child, this coming Messiah will be will be opposed by the government.

He reads all throughout Isaiah and the prophecies of Jesus, death and his beatings and being claimed that he was a sinner when he was not, that he would be, allow himself to be a sheep led to slaughter, as an example in the book of Isaiah.

He saw all of that and he understood that.

He understood the impact of what was going to be happening.

Simeon had walked up and down the byways and roads of Israel as it's covered by the Roman Empire.

And Simeon had read Psalm 22, and he had been understanding that Psalm 22 is a picture of the cross.

That's how the Messiah is going to die.

That's going to happen to him.

And he's invested in the word of God.

And so the Holy Spirit speaks to him and he works with him and he teaches him and he grows his faith in the promise of the Messiah.

And his faith grows through the word of God, and his relationship grows close to the word of God in such a way that the Holy Spirit speaks to him and guides him in his life.

And then God gives him a comfort and says, Listen, hang on, son, I'm going to let you see the Savior who's born.

I mean, he's not making this up.

This is coming from a deep life, a deep investment in the Word of God.

That's why he is reflexively quoting the book of Isaiah over and over and over, because he is overcome with what he has been reading and what he has built his life on has actually happened.

And if we want to have that kind of devout life, we have got to be invested in the Word of God.

Not five minutes in the morning where you read a verse or open windows or whatever, and that's fine.

I'm not knocking any devotional books or whatever.

What I'm saying is, you've got to spend some serious time in the Word of God.

It's not rocket science to understand that, but it is repeated over and over and over in Scripture, and every person who God uses, just like Simeon, are invested in the Word of God.

And so you've got to live in the Word of God.

And if the Word of God has promised you a Savior, and you have given your life to Jesus based on that promise of a Savior, and now you know the reality of Him as a Savior, and you have trusted Him for your salvation because of the Word of God, why would we back away from the Word of God?

We've got to live in the Word.

Number two, you got to live in expectation.

Now I love this.

He says that the Holy Spirit was on him, the Holy Spirit guided in the temple complex.

You can understand that the Holy Spirit pointed out the baby to him.

All that's happening, he's walking in that, and walking in spirit and relationship is important.

But the question is, how do you walk in the spirit?

It begins with that foundation in the word, but I think the second thing that happens in is living in expectation.

And I think this is powerful that it says as it describes him in verse 25, a righteous and devout looking forward to the Israel's consolation and the Holy Spirit was on him.

His life was driven by the promise of a Savior.

His life was driven by the fact that he believed God would send Jesus.

And if God is going to send a Savior to save him from his sins, then he is going to have to be committed to that God.

If that God is going to send a son to die on the cross, if he's going to pay the price for our sins, if he's going to suffer all that Isaiah prophesied that he would suffer, then I have got to commit my life to a God who loves me that much with that kind of mercy.

He is living in expectation of that Savior.

He is waiting for the Savior to come.

And the Bible tells us who live after the cross that we are to live in the same expectation.

We are to live every day for eternity waiting on the return of Jesus.

We are to be expecting the return of Jesus.

And if we are deeply invested in the return of Jesus, then our life of faith is going to be elevated beyond anything you can imagine.

I believe Jesus is coming back, so I'm going to tell somebody about Jesus.

I believe Jesus is coming back, so I'm going to place faith in this promise.

I believe Jesus is coming back, and I want to be living for him when he gets here.

I believe Jesus is coming back.

I want to take fruit with me to heaven.

I believe Jesus is coming back.

I want to live worthy of that salvation.

I saw and read where Jesus died on the cross for my sins, but he made the promise.

If Jesus is coming back, then salvation is real.

Then the people that I know, they need that salvation, and I need to invest my life in telling them about Jesus.

If we are just treating this as a philosophy or belief system, we're just going to check boxes and we're going to, it's okay if I miss that one because I got most of these right and all of that, and we're going to check that off.

But if we are waiting for Jesus' return, it means that we understand that sin is real, that salvation is powerful, that eternity is coming, and he is coming back, and we have got to hurry up and impact all the people that we can impact with the gospel because Jesus' return is imminent.

We are living in light of eternity expectation.

It is founded in living the word.

We're living in expectation, but then he's living in proclamation.

He's living in proclamation.

He speaks that Jesus is the Savior.

Anna spoke about him to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Israel, of Jerusalem.

There is no picture in Scripture of anyone who hides Jesus under a bushel.

In fact, it's a beautiful picture here.

Verse 32, Jesus is the light for revelation to the Gentiles.

What he's saying is, Jesus is the light of the world.

When Jesus came, he said, I am the light of the world.

Darkness is everywhere.

The picture of light penetrating and eliminating darkness is the picture of the gospel going out.

And so this year we're going to talk more as a church family about how individually we are living in proclamation.

So as you head into your new year and you approach all those things, I want to encourage you to live in the word.

Live in expectation and live in proclamation.

I want you to bow your heads as we close this morning.

We've shared the gospel and we've just talked about proclaiming the gospel.

We've talked about Jesus came and the response of being saved, and we want to give you an opportunity to trust Christ as your Savior.

You're watching online or television, you can do this in your house.

You can just stop where you are and you can tell Jesus, I know I'm a sinner, but I know you love me, and God sent you to save me, and I trust you.

Listen, there's no magic incantation, there's no special words you have to say.

You just have to come to Jesus and acknowledge you're a sinner.

Ask for his forgiveness.

Tell him that you believe he is real.

He did that for you, and you just surrender your life to him.

Call us.

We'll answer any other questions.

We'll help you begin that journey.

You begin a life of living in the word and living in expectation.

You don't have to know all that now.

You just have to know and believe what we've talked about and trust that God will unfold all that.

And friends, there are people here who would give you testimony that Jesus will do more with your life than you could ever imagine if you'll give it to them.

Here in the room, if you've never accepted Christ, we're going to invite you to come and give your life to Jesus.

We're going to stand and sing in just a moment an invitation hymn.

I'm going to pray first, then we're going to do that.

We'll have pastors here at our aisleways.

And if you need to be saved or you have questions about salvation, we want to invite you to come.

Church family, as we sing this invitation, sing it with a heart that you are living in expectation of Jesus' return.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for salvation in your name and all that that means to us today.

And Lord, we ask that you help people to respond, give them the faith and the freedom and the understanding to know how much you love them, how much you love them to unfold throughout human history a promise of a Savior, pointing to the Savior, proving that Jesus was the Savior, and promising salvation through Him.

And give them a freedom to respond.

Lord, the rest of us, I pray as we face the new year and we start thinking about where we're going and what we're doing.

Help us to look at Simeon and Anna in a light of deep, deep commitment and what that means.

Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name, and all God's people said.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.