You Must 'Preach' the Gospel

Martin Luther said that Romans should be part of the daily feeding of every child of God. I agree with him. Romans chapter 1, I'm going to read actually the first portion up to verse 16, I'm reading from the ESV, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus.

Christ.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all because your faith is being proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you for I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you that is that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith both yours and mine.

I want you to know brothers that I have often intended to come to you but thus far have been prevented in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I'm under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.

So I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. Here we go. For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed for faith as it is written the righteous shall live by faith.

Thus far is the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Father I pray you bless this message today God to your glory to the extension of the glory and the fame of Jesus the Messiah in all the earth. Lord Jesus you came to bring salvation to the ends of the earth and I pray that today you'd get me out of the way God and that you would bring this message by your spirit into the hearts and minds of your people that you would convict, that you would challenge, that you would draw out fire from us God and that you'd put it there in Jesus name, amen.

The Gospel as God's Good News and Our Need to Hear It

So it's interesting in Romans the apostle Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus, a slave of Jesus. He's called to be an apostle and he says this, he's set apart for, listen, the good news of God. So in this chapter you have Paul calling it the gospel of Jesus, you have Paul calling it God's gospel, you have him just referring it to it as the gospel and what we know about the word gospel in English is we get it, it means essentially good news, it means the good message, it's good news, it comes out of my mouth, it's a story that's meaningful to somebody, it's good news, it's a proclamation of God's good news and here's the deal, listen, listen, we should take notice of the message if it's coming from God.

If you consider for a second if you had an invitation from the President of the United States to come and speak with him, it'd be an interesting conversation, right? But if you had an invitation from the President of the United States of America, no matter who it was, and he offered you the invitation to come and talk to him because he has good news for you, no matter how you feel about the man, you want to go because it's the President of the United States and he has something to say to me.

He says he has good news for me. He has a good message for me. He wants me to hear it. Now, I think all of us would actually agree with the fact that if we got that invitation,.

We would go.

If the President of the United States of America said, I have good news for you specifically and I want you to hear it, we would go, we would listen because we want to know what's so good for me. Well, this is, listen, the creator of all things, the creator of you, the one who knit you together in your mother's womb, that God, the one who spoke and the universe came into existence, the God who actually carries everything along to its intended destination.

This God, the God who's spinning Saturn right now and Jupiter, keeping him in orbit, keeping it just the right place to protect us from enough space junk, the God who actually keeps Neptune where it's at so we can have turkey on Thanksgiving, that God has good news for.

Us.

It's actually His good news. Now, that needs to say something to us because it doesn't really make sense that, listen, the God that we've offended has good news for us. It would actually make sense, if you consider the context of Scripture, that God Himself who is the Holy One, the Good One, the Powerful One, the Just One, the Merciful One, the One that is full of love forever, the One whose mercies are new every morning, it would make sense to me if that God actually had some pretty terrible news for me.

It makes sense to me. Jeff, you're a liar. Jeff, you're a thief. Jeff, you're a criminal in my court. Jeff, you're condemned before me because you're a rebel, because you hate my character, because you hate who I am.

That would make sense to me if God actually came to me and said, I have bad news for you. I'm going to judge you. It would make sense. It would be awful to hear, but it would make sense. So, listen, here's the trippy thing about Romans as it opens up.

Paul says that he's a slave of this Jesus, the Messiah, and that it's God's gospel. It's God's gospel. It's God's good news. If you look in the Scriptures, you see gospel used a lot of different ways.

You see gospel of the kingdom. Jesus in Matthew chapter 4 is out preaching the good news of the kingdom. So there's actually a gospel aspect of the kingdom message, that Jesus is Messiah, that He is going to die for sinners, ascend, raise from the dead.

He's going to be seated and bring salvation to the ends of the earth. He's the King of kings, the Lord of lords. That message is good news. It's good news of a kingdom. It's also good news of God's salvation, good news of His forgiveness and redemption for sinners who are unworthy of it.

That's awesome.

God has good news. And listen, you can get, admit it for a second, jaded completely by that term. You can hear it so much, gospel, gospel, gospel, and it can lose its real beauty. It can lose the real effect it's supposed to have on us as Christians and overwhelm.

Us.

Think back to when you first heard the message. Maybe some of you remember, maybe some of you don't. I remember. I was raised in a Christian home, and so hearing the good news of redemption in Jesus was something that absolutely blew my mind.

To think about God as the one I've offended, who's actually provided in His Son redemption as a gift of His grace, apart from works of law, Jesus pays it all, that Jesus gives me His righteousness, that He died as my substitute, and all I need to do is turn from my sin and cling to Him, He's paid it all.

That was good news. It meant everything to me. But the problem is, as Christians, we get jaded to it. We get too comfortable with it. We sort of like start to just sort of accept the fact that God loves me so much, He paid His life for my sins, and it doesn't become so special anymore.

But it's God's good news. And let me tell you, it's all the more meaningful for all of us as Christians when we stand before the throne of our God, and we're covered in the righteousness of Jesus, and it has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with Him.

That message is so much better news then, amen? It's so much more meaningful then. We also get jaded to its proclamation, because we've told people before about Jesus, and maybe we didn't see fruit. We see the world around us as difficult as it may be, and we don't go to it because it looks too challenging, it's too big.

It's a massive thing. It's sort of like a Goliath right in front of us, a massive Goliath, and we get, you know, I don't really need to do it, God's sovereign, He'll take care of it, right? That's the problem with being a Calvinist, you can be a little too Calvinistic for your own good, right?

God's sovereign, He'll take care of it. We're the means of the grace to do it, and here we are in God's field with this massive thing in front of us, this massive creature, and we act much like Israel did at the day of David and Goliath.

They're freaking out because of this massive guy. David's response is, who does this guy think he is? This uncircumcised Philistine, meant a lot, circumcision situation. This uncircumcised Philistine to come against the armies of the living God, who does he.

Think he is?

And the problem we have, listen, right now is this, listen, it's not God's gospel that has lost its power. It's not. You look back in the day, in the last couple of hundred years even, two hundred years, you look at guys like Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening, you look at George Whitefield, you look at guys who would go into a city, proclaim the gospel, and the city would turn from sin to trust in Christ.

That is a matter of historical record, and it's not just simply a peculiar thing to them. It's not. There were towns then that were seeped in sexual immorality. They were actually identified for it in the day.

And Whitefield would go in, this is only a couple hundred years ago, Whitefield would go in, he'd proclaim the gospel in its purity, and this town would turn from sin to Christ, and you would see the effects of it in the world.

It's not the gospel that's lost its power, and it's certainly not Jesus who can't bring people to Himself, and it's not Jesus who loses His sheep. Jesus says in John chapter 6, I hope you know this passage, I want you to put it into your heart.

Jesus says, I've come down from heaven not to do My will, but the will of Him who sent.

Me.

And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given to Me, I should lose none but raise it up at the last day. Jesus says, no man can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up.

That sounds pretty guaranteed to me. What do you think? Sounds guaranteed. Jesus says, I've come down to do My Father's will. Okay, so Jesus is on mission, and He tells us what the will of the Father is, that of all that the Father has given to Me, I should lose none but raise it up at the last day.

Jesus knows who His sheep are. He knows He can bring them, and He says that He will raise up the one the Father draws. It's not the gospel message. It's not God's power in bringing His sheep out of darkness into light.

So what is it? What is it? The problem is solved very simply by looking inward, by looking at ourselves, by looking at our indifference, by looking at our lack of love for the world. The problem is solved, listen, for us in our proclamation of the gospel and seeing its light affect the world around us when we start looking at ourselves.

Because we are the means of God's grace to bring the message of salvation to the world around us. I want you to think back to your own salvation experience as a Christian. If you're in here today and you've turned from sin to trust in Christ, I want to suggest something to you before we get into the real meat of the message.

Nobody in this room is in Christ today without someone suffering as a result of it. Nobody is in this room today who knows Jesus and has been joined to Him by God's grace through faith in Jesus. Nobody's here in that situation without someone having suffered for it along the way.

You and I are in Christ today, and maybe our experience wasn't really something totally stunning. You didn't see the suffering going on behind in the story. All you know is that you read it in a book somewhere.

Someone laid their life down. They spent a lifetime of study and training to write something down for you to see and God delivered it to you. They sacrificed maybe their money and time, and all you know is you read that book, you saw the gospel message, you turned from sin to trust in Christ, God redeemed you, your.

Life was changed.

Maybe you were watching television one day and Billy Graham came on and he called you to repentance and faith to trust in Christ, and you didn't see the suffering going on there and so you just take it for granted.

You see it and you believe and you never really think about the background noise. How did it get there? What happened? How did this get in front of me? Some of you guys are in this room today, and this is where it gets intensely personal.

You're in this room today as a result of a lot of suffering. You came to Christ maybe as a result of the ministry of this church. Maybe you came to Christ at Calvary and you've come here now. This is your home.

Or maybe you came to Christ as a result of somebody in this church preaching the gospel.

To you.

I'm going to say this, so much background noise to this situation. There's so much suffering, so much laying down of our lives that went into this, what you see in front of you right now. This is very deceptive.

This is very deceptive. Some of you guys know. This is nice and beautiful, it's very comfortable, and let me tell you something right now. The fruit of this ministry, of what God has done here to bring salvation is a result of, listen, suffering, suffering, laying down our lives for others to bring the gospel, the good news of salvation to the world around us.

I want you to just hang on to that. Hang on to that truth. Listen, there were many, many years, and I don't like to bring personal stuff into messages as much as I possibly avoid, but I think it would be good to hear, because this is talking to us as a church, personally.

How can we be more effective with our witness to the world, to our families and our friends around us, to the difficult, dark spots around us? You know, there's a lot of years of fruitless ministry that went into what you see right now and all that God is doing in the world around us.

I remember for many years, 1996, 1996, go to the Mormon temple in Mesa, Arizona. I saw a sign, I was a young kid, 18 years old, and I thought I knew it all. I think my hair was even in a ponytail then, so it gives you sort of an idea, you know, where I was at.

It was actually shortly before I went on tour with Mortal Kombat that I was in Arizona and I saw a big sign and it said the Easter pageant for the temple in Mesa. And I didn't know anybody. I wasn't in a church here yet.

I had just gotten here, and so I grabbed my backpack, Bibles, tracts, and all that stuff, and I went out to this temple and I get on the streets and I ran into a 16-year-old pipsqueak named Jerry. And so Jerry and I didn't really know each other, we just sort of started talking to this guy in the street.

We were both preaching the gospel to him, telling him to come to Christ, getting the scriptures for this guy. The guy finally walks away, we looked at each other and said, hey, it was great talking with you tonight, great, shook hands, walked away.

And so there were moments like that, many moments like that, going out to this mission field of the Mormon temple, and I remember for years I had Christians and especially pastors telling me, Jeff, don't do it.

Don't go out to the Mormon temple to preach the gospel. That is way too abrasive. It is way too in your face. That is not the way you are going to win those people. By going out to that place, you need to create friendships with these people, invite them over for barbecue, sit down with them and talk with them.

And I said to him, I do that, but there's 100 ,000 people out there over a week and a half time period that need to hear the gospel. I can't eat with all of them, I can't afford it. But they're there and I know the message of life they need, and so I would go and it was adversity and difficulty and I'd have very few people coming with me, people talking bad about going.

And there were many, many times where we'd preach for a week straight, hand out tracts, talk to people and see absolutely no fruit, nothing. We'd walk away and we'd think I just got spit on, I got my tracts torn up, it was an amazing.

Experience.

Yelled at, I was afraid I'd see people that I would know out there, but go and risk it anyways. And there were times where they looked absolutely fruitless. Planting seeds, gospels going out, planting seeds, gospels going out, tracts, tracts, tracts, hear the gospel, let's talk, can we get to know you, let's go eat lunch together, let me take you out for a drink, something, not coffee, I promise, right, hot chocolate.

And so we would go and nothing. And then all of a sudden, God does something totally unusual. He starts bringing people to me that have come to Christ as a result of that ministry. People start contacting us, this is years later and they're calling our ministry and they're sending us messages and emails.

We're putting the videos up online of our interaction out there and it's going out across the world and all of a sudden we're getting messages from around the world of Mormons turning from sin to trust in Christ, coming to be joined to Him, lives transformed, who are reaching their family members now.

I had a guy once said he watched our videos, he came to Christ and led his entire family to Christ out of Mormonism. But there were years of fruitless ministry, years of just sort of plowing and going and going and nothing's happening.

People telling me, don't do it, you can't get away with it, you're not going to lead anybody to Christ, and at this point I've lost count as to how many people have come to Christ as a result of that ministry.

But it came with suffering, it came with laying your life down, it came with putting into this ministry without seeing any fruit and just the regular sort of humdrum, you just go out and you do the work and you plant the seeds and you stay consistent.

And as a result of it, what happened? The gospel which is the power of God for salvation went out, transformed hearts and lives, eyes were opened and today there is no way, brothers and sisters, to even measure the wake that it's caused, no way.

You have to invest in what appears to be fruitless ministry for the cause of the gospel and people's salvation. I want you to remember three things today, three things, if you're taking notes and you want to write down the major points, here they are.

Number one, I want you to remember God's power in this. Number one, I want you to remember God's power. Number two, I want you to remember that God uses us. And number three, I want you to remember that it's the message of the gospel that counts.

It's the message of the gospel. So, first point, right, ready? Remember God's power. Number one, you already heard it, Romans chapter 116, Paul says this, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. He says, for it is the power of God for salvation.

The word there in the Greek that we get the word power from is the word where we get the word dynamite from. So, if you can think of dynamite, how it just dynamite, pow, right, it blows up. That's the word behind power.

So, the gospel, the good news, the good message, that message that goes out, that good news goes out and it's the very dynamite, bam, of God. When you preach the gospel, it goes out and it brings about the effect that God causes it to have.

You want to be effective, brothers and sisters, in bringing the gospel to the world around.

You.

And you say things like this, listen, Jeff, I don't know what to say, I'm freaked out, like I don't want people to hate me, I kind of like my job, like you know, I like my friends, my sister, my brother, I don't want to lose family, it's okay.

Jesus told us that a natural consequence of preaching the gospel and being in Him will mean persecution at times, but I want to give you some encouragement. This is not you and I saving people. It's not you and I doing it.

Paul, who is the master evangelist, God used the apostle Paul to bring the gospel all across the entire known world in the Roman Empire before 70 AD. Of course, the other apostles were there, but Paul's the master.

And what does he say? I'm not ashamed of it, it's the power of God for salvation. You preach this message, it's God who brings the fruit. He opens the eyes of the blind, He opens hearts. Listen, it is God's power, Romans 116, the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

So, I've got to attack it because it needs to be attacked, are you ready? In our culture today, there's a popular saying that goes around, it's attributed to somebody, I think falsely, and that is preach the gospel and if necessary, what?

Preach the gospel and if necessary, use words. And that has got to be one of the stupidest things ever said. And why is that? Because it's a message, good news, and you can't give a message without saying it or writing it, right?

How do you live the gospel message? It's proclaimed, this is who Jesus is, this is what God has accomplished in Christ. Now, you turn from sin to come and cling to Him, to trust in Him, to be saved and forgiven.

That message has to go out, it's got to come out of your lips, it's got to come out of your hands, it's got to be written, it's got to be handed to somebody. The gospel is good news, it's what God uses.

So listen, it's as simple as this, brothers and sisters, it's God's power, He brings His people out of darkness into light, so what's our role? We preach this gospel, which is God's power for salvation, to the world around us.

It's as simple as telling somebody, have you ever heard about Jesus, what He did? Well, what did He do? Well see, God became a man in Christ and He died for sinners, He took the penalty they deserved and lived a sinless life.

He was buried, He rose again, and He calls people to receive this gift of eternal life. He says to turn from your sin to come and trust in Him. How long did that take? How long did that take? 20 seconds.

20 seconds. I just dropped a gospel bomb, boop, right? And it just goes and just travels out there, just stuck in their heart, just boop, like that, and God will bring the fruition. He's going to bring it about.

But listen, it doesn't have to be you standing sort of on a street corner with like a megaphone or something like shouting like, you know, out at everybody or with a big sign, that doesn't have to happen.

It could just be as simple as you conversing with somebody, telling them the story of Jesus, because this is what God uses to bring them to life. It's God's power for salvation. He does it. Romans chapter 8, I want you to see.

Go to Romans chapter 8. It's God's power that accomplishes this, foundationally. We need to grip this and hold on to it. Listen, listen to what Paul says here. Romans chapter 8, many of us know the passage.

We cherish it at Apologia Church. Romans chapter 8, and look in verse, starting in verse 28. This is a favorite verse, I hope, of most of us. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called.

And those whom He called, He also justified. And those whom He justified, He also glorified. So what do we call this, guys?

We call it the what?

The golden chain of redemption. Now I'm telling us this for a reason, because I'm going to call us to be on mission together as a church more than we ever have before, to have the gospel coming out of our hearts and our mouths as much as possible to those around us that we love and to those around us that we don't.

Romans chapter 8, God says this, He foreknows us. He predestines us. He calls us. He justifies us. He glorifies us. You cannot break that chain. And so what's our role in it with this gospel that's the very dynamite, the very power of God to bring about salvation in a dead person?

It blows them right up and brings them to life. What's our responsibility? It's a dependence upon God and His power and salvation. Listen, what you didn't know when you heard the gospel and you believed in Christ, what you didn't know was the story going on behind it, that you had a loving God who loved you with an everlasting love that can never be destroyed, that will never be removed from.

You.

Before the world even began, you were on His hearts. He didn't just know stuff about you. He intimately connected to you before the world began, knowing all about you before.

He did it.

And He planned to redeem you in Christ. Jesus died for your sins. And what happened when you heard that gospel and you cling to Christ was that you were brought to life. You were born from above. You were born again.

You were granted that ability to trust in Christ. Listen, God foreknew you, predestined you, called you, justified you, glorified you. Brothers and sisters, this is not us. It's Him. It's absolutely Him.

It's an amazing thing. For me, looking at a lot of your faces, many of you guys, I got to watch turn to Christ. I got to see you where you were at in your most broken place and to see where you're at today.

Some of you guys, leading reach groups in your home, leading Bible studies, leading people to Christ today. And I saw you in your mess, in your mess, and you heard the gospel, and your life was transformed.

It's an amazing thing to be able to see a roomful of people, from my perspective, years ago at Calvary, when I was the chaplain at the hospital, just the ugliest, most broken place to be ever. Just depraved and broken and hopeless.

People coming, wandering in like zombies, like to the room, detoxing and hating my guts. People coming in like, you know, despising the fact that they had to sit in this thing. And it's amazing. Listen, I got to share this with you.

I had people in front of me all the time, and I finally gave up trying to figure it.

Out.

I had people in front of me all the time that I would see, and I would say, they got it. Like, the light bulb's on. They understand. Like, they'd be like, oh, Pastor Jeff, the message was so wonderful, Pastor Jeff.

I loved it.

I loved it.

I agree with everything you said. It's wonderful. Praise God. These people are out there. And I'm with you. And it was, you know, when you're first preaching like this on a daily basis to groups of this size all the time, you're sort of like, alright, you're kind of gauging like, oh, I think they kind of got it.

God's probably working in their life there. It is amazing, almost every single time God would surprise me. He would take the hardest person and flip them overnight. He would take the person that was, that from my perspective, was the most without hope and did not get it, and the next day they'd turn to Christ because at night God had woke them up or something.

Or they'd turn to Christ right in front of me. I had people fall down to their knees right in front of me at this place on a regular basis because they heard the gospel, their sin overwhelmed them, and they turned to Christ.

Right in front of me.

It was God's power. And I would see the people that I thought understood it initially go back to a life of sin and all the rest, never really knowing Christ. God loves to make Himself famous, guys, by taking the hardest people and showing the world His glory by saving them.

It's His power. So here's my encouragement to you, as you think about your life and God saving you, but not just saving you for you, saving you so that you can impact the world for Christ and His glory and His gospel, you're part of this whole entire story that God is weaving in history.

I want to encourage you with something. This is not about you. It's the message that God has that we deliver to the world. We say it. We tell people. We write it down. We deliver it to them. We give them the good news of what God has done in Christ.

We tell them, and God uses it to save them. But ultimately, listen, here's the beauty of it, is it's God behind it the whole time with His perfect plan to bring people to Himself for salvation. Even when you and I preach the gospel and we see it looks nothing like oppression, it looks nothing like resistance, nothing but resistance, it's ultimately God's story of bringing people to life.

I remember, listen, I've got to tell you, there are so many times going out to preach the gospel. I remember Candy would be at home, sometimes I'd go out and I'd come back, and she'd go, how'd it go tonight?

I'd be like, oh, it was good. What happened? Oh, nothing really. Handed out a lot of tracts.

That's it.

A couple conversations. Like, there was never like, it wasn't like a nightly basis like, you're not going to believe what happened. I was preaching the gospel, and like 15 Mormon bishops like fell on their knees and turned to Jesus, and they started running around preaching the gospel to Mormons.

It wasn't like that. We did have stories that were kind of close to that, but you know, it's nothing like this amazing thing that would happen all the time. It was just a constant difficulty. And I remember this, I had a point in my life, guys, where after literally hundreds of times going out to preach the gospel in difficult circumstances, I remember I had a moment one night before God where I walked away and I thought to myself, God, what are you doing?

This is just a waste. Maybe everybody's right. Maybe everybody's right.

I'm not supposed to do this. Because all I see is resistance, this guy cussed me out, this guy told me I was number one, and you know, and it just, oppression and difficulty. And that very night I got into a book that I never really read, and I open up the page and it's like, God just delivered this message to me, and it was all about God's sovereignty and salvation.

And here's what it was about. You and I can rest with assurance when we preach the gospel to the world. And here's why. Whether or not people receive it or not, we can rejoice and have joy in its proclamation.

Now watch this. I'm not just trying to be the optimist here, I'm telling you the truth of Scripture. If he calls his sheep out of darkness into light and he loses none of them, if he's actually the God who's sovereign over every molecule in the universe and your life and mine, if he's the God who foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies, that's his plan, then that means that when we go out and we tell the world, look, this is who Jesus is, he's Lord, he's King, he's God in the flesh, he was sinless, he died for sinners, was buried and rose again, he calls you to turn from sin, to trust in him for forgiveness and salvation, come to Christ, cling to him for life, when we tell the world that message, watch, and we have two groups of people, one that says, you're out of your mind, you are nuts, you are a fool, you are moria, foolish, you are a moron.

When we hear that from this side, rejection, listen, we don't know what God's going to do with that person for the rest of their life, tonight, tomorrow, the next day, to draw them to himself, we don't know the story, but listen, if they go to their grave in rejection and hatred towards God, and hearing the gospel, listen, God is glorified in his proclamation,.

Why?

Because he's glorified in his justice, because when we proclaim the gospel to lost people, and they stand before the throne of God, God is vindicated in his justice, because what he says is that even with my love and grace in your life, when I send my people to you to preach to you a message of forgiveness, you hated me.

And when God delivers that person over to what they want for eternity, which is life without him, he is vindicated in his justice, and you are a part of that story. And God is glorified in the proclamation of the gospel when he takes someone like you and me, and he removes a heart of stone, he rips it out of our chest, stony heart gone and fleshy heart replaced, he raises dead people to life, he's glorified because in the halls of heaven with each other for all eternity, we're clinging to Christ, rejoicing in him, saying, amazing grace, God, I shouldn't be here, I got no right to be before your throne, I can only have you, Jesus, why would you save a wretch like me?

He is glorified in his grace. You and I, our role is to preach the gospel, is to tell people the good news about who Jesus is, what he's accomplished, and how to come to him, that's it. And he has the power to take dead people and bring them to life.

Lazarus, awesome story, because it really happened.

Like seriously, you think about that?

It really happened, Lazarus, crazy, Lazarus is dead, and Jesus purposely waits like four days to go get Lazarus like alive again, because there's a superstition going around with the rest of the day where like your soul kind of hangs out like, you know, for a couple of days before like it finally goes off like, you know, into Abraham's bosom or to Hades.

So they had like this superstition, so Jesus purposely waits like to the end of like the superstition stage, right? And where they're like, there's no hope now, Lazarus is gone, it's been four days, like you know, the train came and got him or whatever.