Frankincense

The world changed, history changed. Eternity changed when one angel stopped a bunch of shepherds and said these glorious words from Luke 10. Behold I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people. For today in the city of David, there’s been born to you a savior who is Christ the Lord. But there’s just one catch. When the first century Israelites heard the word savior, they’re thinking, yes, we need to be saved from our oppressors. That’s what the Messiah was supposed to do. They were hard under the thumbs of the Romans before them, the Greeks before the Greeks, the Persians, throughout their history, they had been an oppressed people. Most of the farmland was owned by foreigners who cheated the Israelites, made them work so hard and gave them so little for their labor. They thought the Messiah would come to save them from their oppressor.

But God saw something else they needed to be saved from. And that’s told. When the angel spoke to Joseph in the gospel of Matthew and he said this, you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save their His people from their sins. This understanding what you think you need to be saved from determines your attitude toward Jesus. So let me ask you this morning, what do you think you need to be saved from? What do you ask God to save you from? Is it financial challenges, health crises, relational breakdown? Those may all be valid needs and God may well address them, but he has a way of pinpointing our fundamental need. And that fundamental need is to be saved from our sins. In the first century, it was this, we need to be saved from what others are doing to us. And Jesus says, no, I’ve come to save you first from what you’re doing to yourselves.

Continuing our series on the gifts from the Magi. This week we’re looking at Franken sense. Frankincense is a resin found in a tree that grows in South Arabia. They collect it from the tree. It creates this nice incense. And it’s first mentioned in Exodus chapter 30 as part of the sacrificial system where they were sacrificing animals and goats and bulls and all of that. And if you just pause for a moment and go behind the pages of scripture to imagine what that was like, a sacrifice is a really smelly business. Animals are being cut up, they’re being burned. When I was going to high school and college, I would work in the summers as a meter reader. I’d go everywhere and out in the county. I read the meters on this slaughterhouse. If anything could tempt you to become a vegetarian, it was that. It was a disgusting, smelly, dirty place.

And frankincense was God’s way of taking an ugly business and making it swell, smell sweet. So throughout history, frankincense as a gift has been seen as a prophecy. Speaking of Jesus’s priestly office. So how does priest intersect with the fact that Jesus came to save us from our sins? The priest’s primary role was to deal with sin. Without sin. There’s no need for a priest. There won’t be priests in heaven. They’ll have worship leaders. Myron’s job is gonna be safe. <laugh> and may have teachers, I don’t know. Some have said that, but there’ll be no human priests because Jesus is the final great high priest who sacrifice has dealt with our sins. And there will be no more sins in heaven. Priests were the ones you went to when you had messed up and you had sinned and you needed that guilt and you needed that shame lifted from your shoulders.

Now, this is so key ’cause some of you come from different backgrounds, different homes, and, and you see God as this condemning person, or Jesus is the one that’s just there to judge you. You don’t go to a priest to get judged. You go to a priest to freely admit and explain your sin so that he could offer a sacrifice to remove the guilt of that sin. And that’s exactly the spirit that the Bible presents Jesus coming from. If you look at John chapter three, verse 17, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Everybody here this morning, everybody watching online, please hear me. Jesus came to save you. He came to forgive you. He’s our priest to save us from our sins. The challenge is a lot of us don’t think we have anything that needs to be forgiven.

I was on a flight earlier this year. I was traveling without Lisa. And so there’s two seats next to me. I was right by the window and a mother came in with her 4-year-old daughter. I had my computer open. I was looking at a manuscript I’d been asked to endorse, and the little girl was being a little girl. And the mom said, honey, just please leave the nice gentleman alone. He’s got a lot of work to do. And I looked at the mom and I said, Hey, she’s exactly the age of my granddaughter. I’m predisposed to find her adorable <laugh>. She’s just gonna remind me of one of my favorite people on the planet. She really can’t bug me. She said, oh, great. So we started talking and Lisa has traveled so much along with our kids. I’m always trying to help parents. And so the mom pulls out this big thing of yogurt and the little girl goes, yay, yogurt.

I’m hungry. And she goes, oh, we don’t have a spoon. Well, part of my love for my dear precious wife is to carry spoons in my backpack. You guys know she’s a healthy eater. She doesn’t do fast food. And so she’ll stop at Whole Foods or natural food store. And she creates her own. It’s this green goop stuff, which she has seeds and things. I don’t know what it is, but because it’s from a grocery store, she would always forget to have a spoon. And I realized, well, hey, I can love my wife. It’s my goal in life to just always carry spoons with me. So I shocked the mom by saying, I have a spoon. She’s like, what? That’s kinda random. I go, well, it’s a long story, but here you go. And I gave her a wrap spoon and the little girl was so happy.

And then because I’m one K on United, I get free snacks. I didn’t really want one, so I just opened up the page. So mom, what do you think she would like? And her brother was a couple rows back. They got some gummy stars or something like that. So we were getting along great until the mom asked me what I do. And I, I, you know, I’m not trying to be content. I’m a pastor church in Denver. I write Christian books and marriage and parenting and, and she wasn’t being contentious either, but you could tell she saw a line drawn in the sand. She said, well, have you ever heard of? And she mentioned an author I legitimately had had never heard of. She said, well, what I love about our books is it’s a focus on us understanding the goodness we have within. We just have to understand how good we are.

And our problem is we don’t recognize how good we are. And the key role of parenting is to help our kids understand how good they are, that goodness that they have within ’em, and just get them to release that throughout their life. I think that’s a crock to be honest. I just, I’m like, but I’m like, okay, we’ll see how that goes. I’m not gonna fight somebody on the plane. We stayed polite and then they got up, the plane landed and the mom got up and she says to her daughter, all right, and I need you to carry your backpack out into the terminal. I says, no, I don’t wanna carry it. She says, well, look, maybe brother will help you when we get out to the terminal, but, but you gotta carry it until we’re off left. No, I won’t. And then she let loose that kind of piercing sound that only a 4-year-old girl in distress can make.

It kind just goes straight into your ears and sort of scra. I mean, it, it was piercing. And the mom pretty much had to walk her up the jet bridge, I should say, drag her up the jet bridge screaming. Now, I don’t ever judge a parent when their kid’s having a tantrum tantrums happen. And I actually admire a parent that doesn’t give in just because it’s public. But part of me really wanted to say, yeah, teach her to enjoy that goodness. Help her to understand how good she really is. ’cause everybody can hear that goodness coming from her ’cause she was asked to carry her backpack. See, I just think human experience exposes that that’s a lie. I think God’s holy word tells us the truth. Paul, the men I admire most in history admits in Romans seven. He lived with an entirely different view of himself.

He said, I do not understand what I do for what I want to do. I do not do, but what I hate, I do for, I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out for, I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil. I do not want to do this. I keep, I’m doing. Can’t we be honest? Isn’t that where we all live? Even those of us who know the Lord and have received salvation and the spirit, whether we are for or 40 or 84, we don’t graduate completely from this reality. We never stop needing forgiveness. So we never stop needing a priest. So we never stop needing Jesus. That’s the only thing that helped Paul admit that he was a sinner because there was a remedy. He says in Romans 7 24 through 25, what a wretched man am and how can we not be wretched?

Why did I do that again? Why won’t I do that when I wanna do it? He says, who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Not just physical death, but spiritual death. Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We can admit we need forgiveness because we have a priest who offers that forgiveness. Jesus is the priest. Now that points to the Old Testament sacrificial system. I know it seems bizarre in modern times that they would sacrifice animals on a regular basis to affect forgiveness. The book of Leviticus explains why it’s repeated in Hebrews chapter 9 22 says this, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. They might kill birds, might be goats, it might be bulls. But if somebody sinned, an animal died, this could be annual sacrifices, monthly sacrifices. They could be momentary sacrifices, as you just admit, your most recent sin.

But the reality is that priests were first and foremost butchers in fancy clothes. And I don’t mean to to ridicule that, but that’s really what they did. They cut up animals, they burn ’em, they filet ’em. They sprinkled the blood here and there. But we know now through the New Testament that it was all to symbolize what Jesus would eventually fulfill. Hebrews 10, one through four, the sacrificial system is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves for this reason, it can never by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect. Those who draw near to worship otherwise would they not have stopped being offered for the worshipers, would’ve been cleansed once for all and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices get this are an annual reminder of sins far from God really saying that they remove their sins.

The sacrificial system just reminded Israel, you are sinners because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. So the sacrificial sin was system, was God saying sin is a problem for every one of us, but it was only a temporary solution. Why? The world was waiting for Jesus. The Levitical system was never intended to be permanent. In fact, it completely evaporated within a generation of Jesus’s death and resurrection for 2000 years, the Jewish people have not continued to offer sacrifices. And we saw, if you were here earlier this year, we did a series on Nehemiah, how for a thousand years people would attack Jerusalem. The temple would be destroyed. God would bring people to build it back. And the time a Nehemiah, it was Ezra who built the temple. Nehemiah built the wall. God kept bringing it back, kept bringing it back because he wanted people to be ready for when Jesus came.

When Jesus dies and is raised from the dead, and in 80 70 the temple is raised and sacrifices cease, God lets it stay dormant because it’s fulfilled, its purpose. Jesus isn’t just the great high priest, he is the final high priest. Hebrew seven 11. If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood and indeed the law given to the people, established that priesthood, why was there still need for another priest to come? But Jesus was an entirely different kind of priest. He didn’t cut up animals. Jesus offered himself. Jesus didn’t cut up goats and, and bulls and, and, and birds. He offered his own body. He shed his own blood to be the final sacrifice in that sense, this is what, this is how wonderful Jesus is. He’s the sacrifice and the priest. He’s the whole system. He fulfills the entire covenant. Hebrews nine 11 through 14, when Christ came as high priests of the good things that are now already here, he did not enter by means of the blood of goats and bulls and calves, but he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

This most holy place he refers to here was behind the curtain in the temple. It was called the Holy of Holies. And only not every high priest, only the great high priest could go back there. And that only once a year. And it was terrifying. They literally tied a rope around his ankle so that if he died from being in God’s direct presence, they could pull him out. I mean, it was a fearful place. If you tried to sneak into it, they would kill you. And Jesus is one who opens it up. It was the most exclusive place on the planet. I I, I mentioned I fly one K on United. I’ve flown about 2 million miles on United alone. So I’ve never paid for first class, but I’ve flown first class dozens and dozens of times. And if you’ve ever walked past first class on your way to economy and wondered if it’s nice, it really is <laugh>.

It’s just not the bigger seats. It’s not the fact that that, you know, you have somebody who actually pays attention to you. It’s the hot towels and the warm nuts. They’re just little things. I don’t know what it is, but that hot towel when you’ve been traveling and then this little dish of deluxe nuts that they warm up, it tastes so delicious and you get your own private bathroom. And, and because I’ve done that so many times, I just, it just hurts when I’m put back in the economy with everybody else <laugh>. And you know, the flight, she snaps that curtain shut. Don’t you even think about coming back here, right? This bathroom up front is for these 12 very important people, you 150 of you, you go back to those two smelly bathrooms in the back. You know, you don’t belong up here. And I think, well, I used to belong up there, but I, I don’t, but but sometimes, sometimes, you know, the beverage cart is blocking the aisle. And so you go up and she says, well, go ahead and go up to first class. It’s okay. And I hate doing that because I, I feel like they’re probably judging me going past the curtain. The reason I feel that is because when I’m in first class, I do judge the people who are, what are you doing? You don’t belong here. That’s ours.

It’s so exclusive. It’s the exclusive you. And Jesus says, I’m pulling back this curtain and everybody gets to come forward. Hot towels, warm nuts, clean bathrooms for everybody. Hebrews four. And and it is the glorious place. Hebrews four 14 through 16. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who is ascended into heaven, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we confess, let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence that so key. The high priest was so terrified he had a rope wrapped around his ankle. But we, because of Jesus can approach God’s throne of grace, the real throne of grace with confidence. So that instead of receiving condemnation and death, we receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. The only thing we have confidence in is Jesus, not our obedience. We can’t be so good or better than a number of people that we can get up there. It’s only ’cause of the goodness of Jesus.

For Sacred Marriage was published, I helped support my family by doing a lot of collaborative books with famous people, politicians and athletes and famous Christians. A couple books were with Michael W. Smith. Just a great guy, very talented musician. A lot of you have probably heard him. And we were a much younger family at the time. We had young kids. And um, I was on the speaker phone with the publisher explaining what’s going on. He said, okay Gary, we’re gonna fly into Nashville. Michael lives in Franklin, just outside of Nashville. Just spend the day at his farm getting his diction, how he talks, how he thinks. The next day he’ll work at his office. We’ll do this and that and whatnot. And my wife’s eyes, ’cause I have it on speaker for they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I get off the phone and she goes, you know, honey, I I think it might be wise to bring an assistant along on this trip.

I said, why? I don’t think you’ve ever thought I needed an assistant before. She goes, I know, but, but this, this book could really make your career and it’s really helpful and I’m sure I can find somebody to watch the kids and I can just make sure you get everything right and everything’s working in. And I, I realized at that time that Michael W. Smith and I had something in common. If you’ve ever seen pictures of him, it’s certainly not the hair. If you’ve ever heard me try to sing or to play an instrument, it’s not the musical ability. I realized way back then that what Michael W. Smith and I had in common is that both of our wives were in love with him. <laugh>. But he’s a great guy, right? If she’s gonna be infatuated with somebody, it might as well be him and married 39 years.

We’re not insecure about that now. But it was so funny, it led to one of her more embarrassing moments. I don’t think it’s that embarrassing, but she’s told that it a dozen times or so, I was with Michael, came into Seattle, we were up in Bellingham. So we came down to Seattle to see him, to work with him. And um, he wanted to go to Barnes and Noble to get a Christmas present for one of his kids. And I was talking about Lisa said, well, is Lisa near nearby? Go? Yeah, she’s working at a coffee shop. We’ll bring her down. I wanna meet her. So I call Lisa, Hey hun, Michael wants to meet with you. Me, Michael. He wants to why? Why? He just wants to meet. What should I do? Well, I just think you should come to the Barnes and Noble and you’ll meet him.

So she rushes in, she comes in and she’s just making a beeline toward us. And Michael figured it out. He’s so gracious. He goes up to Lisa, hi, you must be Lisa. And Lisa just kind of starstruck and says Hi, you must be Michael <laugh>. I’m like, what? But it, it was so fun. He was there in Seattle to do a Christmas concert. And so we got backstage all access passes, which was really fun. It’s a whole new world. I was with my brother and his wife and my brother is just the perfect older brother. He’s better than me at at everything. But I got to go backstage, right? And so it really kind of builds you up as a little brother and it’s a new world. Um, Lisa and I were talking with Michael. I turn around and Amy Grant’s right there, a suite of person as you could hope to find.

And I was amazed at the wardrobes they have to carry on these things. ’cause Amy was wearing something different for the meet and greet. She’s wearing something different when she came out for the concert, changed during the concert and then had something different on the after party. I thought, man, how big of suitcases do you need? But I found out because when I was with Michael, he had, it’s just, it’s just great. He has like this six by six foot closet and all his clothes and shoes are hung up in there and they just move that closet from venue to venue so he can go night after night. It’s great. Lisa was off out front while I was, um, back with Michael and, and Point of Grace was there. Some of you may remember them, a great Christian group and they were our youngest daughter’s favorite group at the time.

And Lisa Gary is so cool. I mean’s just like a family. One of the singers from Point of Grace was actually nursing her baby before they went out. And they, they were so kind and gracious. But if I tried to go to that concert this year, I couldn’t get one step past the backstage. Security would be all over me. Who are you? You don’t belong. And he’s right. I’m not musical. I’m not a techie. I’m not a roadie. The only reason I could go backstage is ’cause Michael said he’s with me. It wasn’t that I had to become a better musician. It wasn’t that I had to find a job is I’m with Michael. And because of him I could go anywhere. Now I’m gonna admit backstage of a Christian concert. It’s pretty cool. Doesn’t even begin to compare to the Holy of Holies. And I, I I I promise you, you know, we, we worship God, we talk about heaven.

But I believe this from the bottom of my heart, if you’re watching online, I just know this is true. There will be a day when everyone who can hear me is face to face with Jesus in his glory. You say, Jesus, I worshiped you. I didn’t know anyone could be that beautiful, that holy, that you, you’ll just be amazed. And over his shoulder, you will see the holy of Holies. And more than you have ever wanted anything in your life, any pleasure, any luxury, any relationship, you’ll want to be in that place. And you’ll say what I need more than anything what I’ve ever needed, more than I need forgiveness so that I can get to, I need mercy and grace. And saying that you’re saying I need Jesus. ’cause He’s the only one. He’s the only way. He’s the great final high priest that can welcome you back. There’s no Christmas gift like this. The mercy and grace we get through Jesus that gives us confidence to approach the throne of God, that we can look forward to our death. We can look forward to heaven. ’cause it’s better than here. Because since Jesus came as the final high priest, salvation is no longer ceremonial.

It’s personal. It’s not based on what you’ve done. It’s literally about who you know. Hebrews 7 21 through 28, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant. Such a high priest truly meets our need. One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens, unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people he sacrificed for their sins once for all. When he offered himself your ticket to the throne of God, the holy of holies. So you’ll want more than you’ve ever wanted. Anything is based entirely on what Jesus did 2000 years ago. And it’s based on this. You recognize, I need a savior. You need a savior, I need a priest. You need a priest. And Jesus is that priest. Your good works laughable.

It’d be like trying to buy a Southern California mansion with monopoly dollars. The bank would laugh at you. That’s no good here. The fact that you’re less evil than Adolf Hitler or the worst neighbor you can think of, it doesn’t matter because only Jesus is blameless, spotless, and pure. And only his sacrifice counts. So here’s what it means to be a Christian. And this is the best Christmas gift I can give to you. It’s the most precious thing you’ll ever know. And it’s very simple. I’m a sinner. You are a sinner. We do what we don’t wanna do. We, we don’t do what we wanted and we have to admit that. But then Jesus is our priest. We can bring our sins to him and he can remove the guilt of that. Here’s what I want you to know. Your sins are a bigger problem than you realize.

It’s one of the first big roadblocks to salvation. We try to gr on a curve. We think it’s about what others have done to us. And God says, no, you need to be saved from what you have done. But we can look at that honestly, because Jesus is a more perfect priest than we could imagine, who will take our sins, apply his sacrifice, and welcome us into the holy of Holies. Now, with that, I wonder why everybody isn’t a Christian. I wonder why everybody isn’t breaking down the door of every church. Tell me what I have to do. This sounds too good to be true, but we just have this tendency and it’s our sinful nature that pushes us away from the very one who could save us.

Dr. Greg Bledsoe is a good friend of mine. He was a surgeon general in the state of Arkansas for I think like eight years. He’s run any number of emergency rooms. He’s a fantastic Christian and human being. His blog, he talks about one time when he was working and he heard the phrase, doctor, blood cell, you’re needed in room four. And I didn’t know this till Greg told me, but when they say to a doctor, you’re needed. It’s like, get there right now. Drop everything you’re doing needed means everything. This matters more than anything else. So you rushes to room four. There are three people on a stretcher. They’d just been brought in by an ambulance. There’d been a car crash. Greg walks in and there’s a dad with his two daughters. The dad seemed to be okay. He said, doctor, I, I think I’m fine.

Please take care of my girls first. And so Greg goes to the oldest sister, she was seven. Immediately saw that she was special needs, she had down syndrome. And as he approached her, she started crying and Greg felt for her, she’d just been in a car accident. Then she was put in an ambulance. And now here’s this doctor in a white coat that she had never seen before. Who knows what he’s gonna do? And he’s just got a great bedside manner and he’s a born to be what he is. And he’s, it’s okay, honey, I’m just gonna check you out. I’m not gonna hurt you. And the crying went to sniffling and Greg was able to check her out and clear her, and he helped her down from the stretcher. Then he went to the four-year-old sister. And she saw him and she was terrified and her cries became whales.

And she’s screaming. And Greg tried every pediatric medicine trick. He knew soft words, kind tones don’t invade her space smiles, friendly gestures. The more he tried, the more she wailed. And he looks at the dad says, I gotta examine her. And he said, look, just do what you gotta do. So Greg took out his stethoscope, expecting to have his eardrums blasted. I mean, I never thought of this until Greg explained. Imagine being a doctor and you’ve got a patient that is screaming and you’re about to put a stethoscope on their chest. He thought, man, this is the last time I ever used my ears. But he’s gotta do it. So he puts it in and he, and he’s flinching. He’s looking back to try to concentrate and he hears nothing.

Normal breathing, normal heart tones. He’s like, wait, wait, what? What? And he looks up and that older special needs sister had walked around to her sister’s side and she’s looking in her face. She’s lovingly stroking her hair. It’s okay, sissy. He’s a good doctor. He won’t hurt you sissy. Just let him do what he’s gotta do. It’s okay. He’s a nice doctor. It’s okay sissy, he won’t hurt you. Greg has seen more patients than he could count, but he’ll never forget that one. Here’s what he said. I’ve seen tens of thousands of patients over the course of my medical career. I’ve worked in four states, numerous foreign countries and taken care of any number of interesting celebrities from drug addicts and murderers to presidents and celebrities. And I’ve seen all manner of curious medical cases. I remember many of the absurdities, the frightening presentations, the surprises, the shocking injuries, the near misses.

But the honest truth is that these are still just a sliver of the total number. The vast majority of cases, I just don’t remember. They’re simply too many. Too much of the thousands of patients I’ve seen only a small percentage do I recall in vi vivid detail. But I remember that little special needs girl, even now I can see her standing there bravely and lovingly encouraging her little sister, stroking her hair, telling her it will be okay. And I can see the expression on the little girl’s face, total trust, courage, that everything was good. Now that her big sister was with her. And I can hear her voice. It’s okay. Sissy, people reject Jesus for all sorts of reasons. I don’t think any of ’em are good. Maybe they think they need their sin more than they need the love of Jesus. ’cause they haven’t experienced it.

Maybe they’re afraid that living for him won’t be as fulfilling as living for themselves. I don’t, I don’t think they could be more wrong. Maybe they wanna hold on to hatred or or prejudice or something that is a compulsion within them. Maybe it’s spokespeople like me. They look at somebody like me and say, I don’t want anything to do with what he’s selling. But I I, I wanna make this clear, I’m not the doctor in that story. Kurt Taylor is not the doctor. Cherry Hills is not the doctor. We’re the special needs sister trying to look into your face. Don’t resist him. He’s the only one that can heal you. He’s a good doctor. He’s an incredible savior. He’s the perfect priest. He’s the very one you need. Why would you resist him? I said at the start that that frankincense takes an ugly business and makes it smell sweet.

Our sin is an ugly business that we do what we don’t wanna do. We don’t do what we wanna, it’s ugly, let’s admit it. But the sweetness is that Jesus comes as the great and final high priest to remove the guilt and the shame of that sin. Not to condemn us, but to save us. Somebody just say, if you are here and you’re a believer and you’re overcome by the reality of Romans seven, rest in Jesus as your high priest, that’s your Christmas message. It’s where we all live and we go to Jesus. We don’t make promises we go to Jesus. But if you’re not a believer, can I just say your sin is a bigger deal than you realize. But there is a priest who remove the guilt of that sin. And why would you spend Christmas without the greatest gift you could have? The Holy Spirit is a deposit in this life, the Holy of Holies as your inheritance. In the next, there will be a day when you see that glory and you’ll think back to this moment and you’ll want nothing more than the mercy and grace offered in Jesus.

So I’m gonna ask us just to pray for a little bit. For those of you really distressed as believers, I just want you to receive Jesus as your high priest. For those of you that feel like you’re doing well, would you please pray with me that God would give the nonbelievers who don’t know this release, the grace and the courage to go to Trailhead? We’re gonna light it up right now. Right off to my left is Trailhead. If you are thinking, what does it mean to know Jesus? How do I trust him? How does he become my great I priest? They’re waiting to help you and they’ll tell you. Let’s, let’s pray.

Father, thank you for being honest with us. Our sin is a bigger problem than we realize. But thank you for making provision for that sin. And we do pray that you would give the grace and the courage for anyone here that doesn’t know that whether they’re in the balcony and they need to come down, whether they’re here and they just need to go to their right. Lord, I pray they wouldn’t pass up this moment. They wouldn’t just dismiss it. This is your gift to them. This is your moment to call them to a new life and a new eternity. Lord, don’t let them miss it. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen.