2nd Timothy 4:1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, Who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom, I give you this charge:
2 – Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.
3 – For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4 – They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
5 – But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
1st Peter 3:15 – In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
One of the foundational principles of evangelism is the fact that we are never alone when we share our faith with a seeker. I say this because the Bible teaches that God actually goes before us in every witnessing encounter. As Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him.” This should take a lot of the fear out of personal evangelism because it tells us that if we are ever given an opportunity to witness with someone, we know God is already there already at work. In fact, I believe He actually guides seekers to Christians like you and me so, whenever we share our faith we are literally joining God in His great work.
Now these opportunities to work with God like this come at various times and in various ways. For example, God may use a crisis like a sudden illness or job loss to help people see how much they need Him and when they respond to this realization and reach out to God, He sends them a believer like you or me to guide them to faith in Jesus, and the unexplainable peace that relationship brings us even amidst the nightmares of life. At other times God uses the Christ-like service of believers who sacrifice to help an individual with some physical need. Many times a sacrificial act awakens a hunger for God in people prompting them to say to their benefactor, “Tell me why have you helped me like this?” And Christians can then respond by telling them about their own experience of the sacrificial love of Jesus a love that compels them to, ” no longer live for themselves but for Him Who died for them.” Sometimes opportunities like this literally come out of the blue. A few years ago a man named Ken Aronds knew he needed God in his life. You may remember Ken. He and his wife worship in another church now but I first met Ken on the phone. His hunger for God prompted him to go through the yellow pages to find a pastor to talk to. When he finally got to the “R’s” and called our church office he asked me how he could become a Christian and I shared the plan of salvation with him and he prayed to receive Christ right then and there on the phone.
I could go on, because there are indeed a wide variety of circumstances that give us opportunities to tell seekers about the love of God in sending Jesus. I bring all this up because I sincerely believe that Christians around the world are about to have a multitude of these opportunities in the days and weeks to come as they engage in conversations with people who come to them wanting answers to questions about the Christian faith that the recently released Da Vinci Code movie raises in their minds. I mean, people are going to want to know if the claims of this movie are true. I believe God will guide them to us and they’ll ask, “Is this movie accurate? Did the church and did the Christian faith start like this instead of the way I’ve been taught all my life?”
I know when Sue and I have watched a DVD that is based on some event in history the first thing we want to do after seeing the movie is to watch the extra features because that usually introduces you to the real people of the story people who tell you how much of the film was based on actual occurrences. I remember doing this after we watched, Remember the Titans , and A Beautiful Mind . We watched the “extra features” because we wanted to know how much of these amazing stories were really true and in those two films pretty much all of it was!
Well, I think the same thing is going to happen to thousands of people in our area as they walk out of theaters from the Regal to the Rio to the AMC in Germantown. And if we are prepared, if we obey the Bible and are ready, then in our God-given conversations with these people we will be able to take something that men intended for bad and turn it into something that is good as we answer people’s questions in ways that counter the false claims of this silly movie and guide them to understand the truth about Jesus. We can say, “No the movie is wrong but the real story is truly miraculous. It’s amazing. I mean if you think Dan Brown’s story was exciting listen as I tell you what really happened!”
And before I go any further I also want to say that I realize some of you present this morning may have come with questions about The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps you haven’t been to church in a long time, but seeing the movie this weekend prompted you to think about God. And so you’ve come and I’m so very glad you have in fact, I want to commend you for taking this spiritual search seriously. A lot of people don’t. I congratulate you on seeking the truth. The fact is God encourages us to bring Him our honest questions. Matthew 7:7-8 says,
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Now for those of you who haven’t seen the movie or read Dan Brown’s best-selling book, let me give you a very quick summary of the plot along with the story’s main assertions. As we begin, I must say that I am indebted to John Ortberg for much of my outline this morning. The central character is a man named Robert Langdon a part played by Tom Hanks. Langdon is a forty-something Harvard professor who stumbles onto the amazing “secret truth” that Jesus was not at all like the Gospels present Him and in fact was married to Mary Magdalene, a union that produced a child whose descendants may still be alive today. He also discovers that Jesus’ intent all along was for Mary Magdalene to become the head of the church after his death a plan that made Peter jealous. In fact, jealous ole’ Pete squelched Jesus’ plan after his death by cutting Mary out of leadership, and he justified his action by declaring her to be a prostitute. The early church then preceded to engage in a massive cover-up to conceal Jesus’ marriage, as well as his mortality, in order to put men in charge of things. They spread the “story” that Jesus rose from the dead because they wanted a celibate male savior who would perpetuate male rule and keep women in their proper subservient place. According to Brown’s plot line, after Jesus’ crucifixion, Mary and their daughter, Sarah, fled to Gaul, where they established the Merovingian line of French royalty. This dynasty, we are told, continues even today in the mysterious organization known as the Priory of Sion, a secret organization whose military wing was the Knights Templar. Members of this organization supposedly include Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo and for thousands of years now, this, the real story about Mary has all been preserved in carefully hidden codes and symbols in order to avert the wrath of the Catholic Church. One of the central characters Sir Leigh Teabig says, “To this day, the relics of Mary and the records excavated by the Templars are guarded, shrouded in secrecy and mystery.”
Now, according to Brown, the key to this code is found in Da Vinci’s famous painting of The Last Supper where Leonardo supposedly hid clues that proclaim the tenets of the “true” gospel. For example, in the painting John is sitting to the right of Jesus. But John’s features are feminine because, according to this work of fiction, the person to the right of Jesus is not John after all but rather Mary Magdalene. The story also says that Leonardo intentionally did not paint a cup on the table as another hint that the real Grail is Mary, whose womb was even then “the cup” that held the blood of Christ in the form of his child.
Well, in the story as Langdon continues his investigation of all this his valiant search for “the truth” a powerful Catholic organization, Opus Dei, is ready to use whatever means necessary, including assassination, to keep a lid on this secret. Flush with church money, Opus Dei is determined to force the top officials of the Priory to reveal the map that leads to the Grail’s location because if the secrets of the Priory were revealed, the church would be exposed as a fraud built on centuries of deceit.
Another thing Brown’s story asserts is that Jesus was not regarded as divine until centuries after His death, when in an attempt to consolidate his power, the Emperor Constantine suppressed ancient documents that told the truth and had the Council of Nicea convened to put together the New Testament as we have it today.
Now as you can see, this story is a real page-turner. But I believe as they leave the theater and reflect on what they saw, God will fill their minds with questions, questions He intends us to be prepared to answer. In fact since the movie has been out two days I believe that even now people are wondering, “Are there other ancient documents about Jesus besides what we have in the New Testament? Are they more reliable than what we have in the Scriptures? Was Jesus married? Was His wife Mary Magdalene? Did they have a child? Was Leonardo da Vinci part of a secret organization that knew about this? Do we know why the New Testament includes the books that it does? Was Jesus human or divine? What was the Holy Grail, really? And, how much time will it take us to sort all this out?”
Now, there really are answers to all these questions. In fact, here they are. The answers are: “Yes. No. No. No. No. No. Yes. Both. Who knows?” and, “About 25 minutes maybe 30.”
All kidding aside, this morning I want to try to equip you to share your faith by answering three of the main questions this movie is sure to create in people’s minds and the first is this:
(1) “What role did women play in the development of the Christian faith? Was early Christianity an attempt by men to gain control over women as Da Vinci Code teaches?”
The irony of this question is that one of the most revolutionary things about Jesus was the counter-cultural way He dealt with women, and our New Testament records this fact. I mean, according to the Bible, the way Jesus related to women was indeed radical for that day and age. You see, back then men generally held women to be quite inferior. One ancient rabbinic saying was that it was better for the Torah to be burned than for it to be taught to a woman. I’m not kidding! Women were next to nothing in that culture. A prayer given by pious Jewish men of that day went like this, “Thank you God that I am not a Gentile, a Dog, or a Woman.” And it was prayed in order of preference! Dogs were more highly valued! That’s how strong the sentiment was against women. In fact, there was actually a group of rabbis who were so committed to this way of thinking that not only would they not talk to a woman or teach a woman for fear of being defiled by them, they would not even look at a woman. They made a vow that they would go through the rest of their lives without letting their eyes look at a female form. And, if out of the corner of their eyes they accidentally saw a woman come into view they would close their eyes until they were quite sure she would be gone from their line of vision. I imagine they were always falling off cliffs or running into trees or buildings! How foolish they must have looked! But this is true they would rather hurt their bodies than look at a woman.
Now with that aspect of Jesus’ culture in mind listen to this portion of the Gospel of Luke:
“After this Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna, the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household, Susanna, and MANY others.” (Luke 8:1-3)
Now those words would have been shocking to anyone in the first century. I mean, Jesus formed a little community and it was made up of men and women who traveled together studied and learned together and ministered together. Do you have any idea how counter cultural that would have been back then? Can you imagine the kind of rumors that spread? The point I am making is that the Gospels teach that Jesus did not exclude women from ministry. Far from it in fact, Jesus was always surprising His disciples by the way He would speak with, teach, listen to, and be approachable to women.
The Da Vinci Code says that pagan religions such as those of Rome gave greater honor to women than Christianity did because they had goddesses as well as gods. But the reality is that in its early centuries, women flocked to the church because they liked the way believers treated them honored them, which was not the way their culture treated them. For example: In Rome, when a woman became a widow, if she didn’t remarry within two years, she was considered a financial drag and could be penalized. But in the church widowhood was honored and the care of widows was part of the community.
Historian Robin Fox writes, “It is highly likely that women were a clear majority in the early church.” And unfortunately that hasn’t changed. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not putting down women. But men still don’t get involved in the church as they should! Women still set the standard in many churches when it comes to discipleship, evangelism, and ministry!
And, as I said, that is nothing new. The New Testament teaches the women have always been involved in the Christian faith from the very beginning. After one early church in Cirta was seized during a period of persecution in 303AD records tell us that only sixteen male tunics were found indicating that there were at least sixteen men who were part of that early body of believers. But, thirty-eight veils were found, all of which would have been worn by women, plus eighty-two women’s tunics, forty-seven pairs of female slippers and six copies of Oprah magazine. I made up the magazine thing but the rest is true. From the beginning women have found the church to be a place of profound acceptance and the New Testament record affirms this.
For example, the Gospels say that at the foot of the cross there were women and that the first Easter “sermon” was delivered by a woman. No one who was hostile to women and wanted to make men look good would record things like this! And I must take the time to point out that no reputable art expert thinks Da Vinci was secretly communicating this silly aspect of Brown’s story in his famous painting by supposedly putting Mary at Jesus right and not John. I mean, if you look at it closely you’ll see that John isn’t the only one who looks effeminate. That’s just the way Da Vinci and his peers painted back then. If you doubt this look at the way he pictured John the Baptist in another of his paintings.
And he chose not to paint the cup of Christ because it wasn’t his intent to illustrate the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper but rather to picture the moment Jesus told His followers one of them would betray Him. You’ll note that all the disciples except for Judas are asking, “Is it I?” Judas is nervously reaching for another roll. So, there is no secret message in Da Vinci’s painting.
(2) Another question that is sure to come up is this: “Who is Jesus? Was He God?”
Now Brown’s story says that Jesus was just a man and also that no one believed Jesus was any more than a man until 300 years after His death. He says the doctrine of the deity of Christ was “invented” by Constantine at the council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The Teabing character says, “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” Brown’s story also says that the early church knew Jesus was just a man but that they covered that up because they wanted people to think He was divine. The Da Vinci Code goes on to say that in order to further this “false teaching” the men who met at the Council of Nicea purposely omitted any gospels that describe Jesus as a man and only allowed books in the Bible that teach Jesus was divine.
Well, this doesn’t make any sense because the Gospels in our New Testament speak of the human aspects of Jesus’ life all the time. I mean, at Christmas we celebrate the fact that, as Luke tells us, Jesus was born in a manger as a real baby who experienced the same kind of physical birth every human does. The Gospels also teach that like you and me, Jesus wept when He was sad and showed His anger when He was ticked. Our Gospels say He got hungry and thirsty just as we do. He got tired and needed sleep. When the thorns pierced His brow they pierced real skin, drew real blood, caused real pain.
And the real irony is that the later non-eyewitness Gnostic accounts of Jesus’ life the “secret books” that The Da Vinci Code esteems include wild stories, tales that make Jesus look far less human than the New Testament gospels do. For instance, in one of these Gnostic books, the boy Jesus makes some pigeons out of clay, says some magical words, and the pigeons turn into real birds and fly away. Another Gnostic account tells of a time that when the boy Jesus gets into a fight with another boy. Jesus curses the other boy who immediately dies. OOPS! In one Gnostic story, after the crucifixion Jesus comes out of the tomb but now He’s real big as big as Paul Bunyan. And after He comes out of the tomb the cross comes out of the tomb too and it speaks. Imagine that a talking cross it’s like something out of a bad Disney video.
Our New Testament doesn’t tell these kinds of foolish stories. Sure, they present Jesus as God because He was and is God, but they present Him as God in the flesh and they teach it was Human flesh that He indwelt. The Bible presents Jesus as the God/Man Who went through everything we go through. As Hebrew 4:15 says,
“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but we have One Who has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet without sin so we can approach the throne of grace with confidence, knowing that when we do we will receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Another thing the Gospels don’t present Jesus as a single man as a way to cover up His humanity as The Da Vinci Code asserts. No, the New Testament presents Jesus as a single man because that’s what He was. There is no shred of evidence from any document written within a hundred years of Jesus’ life to support the idea that He was married. Browns’ story insists Jesus must have been married because all Jewish men had to get married. But the reality is that there were entire communities like the Essenes where celibacy was practiced. Plus, leading prophetic figures like Jeremiah and John the Baptist were single. By the way, I must point out that since Jesus was indeed God in the flesh, He would never marry.
Don’t misunderstand me there is nothing sinful about marriage. God invented it, which is why we call it holy matrimony. But the Bible says nothing about Jesus marrying first, because as Holy God made flesh it is unthinkable that Jesus would be joined to a sinner in the most intimate physical human bond. Erwin Lutzer says, “If He had married, presumably it would have been to someone as holy as He which severely limited His options.” The fact is, Jesus didn’t have time for marriage. He had a mission to accomplish and He understood this at a very early age. Do you remember His response to His parents when they lost Him in the temple? Jesus said, “I must be about My Father’s business.” Jesus new He had a mission to fulfill, one that would end in His death, resurrection, and ascension.
And then a third reason Jesus’ marriage to Mary makes no sense is that He was already betrothed. Lutzer refers to the day we all get to Heaven and says,
“On that day, along with Mary Magdalene, we will be invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the marriage is consummated, not in a physical union, but in the most blessed and intimate union of fellowship imaginable. Yes, Jesus will be married not to a woman, but to all of us who constitute the Bride of Christ.”
Getting back to the doctrine of Christ, the idea that Jesus was not regarded as divine until 300 years after He died just doesn’t square with the facts. The eye-witness Gospel writers repeatedly told of how Jesus did things that only God could do calm a storm at sea, feed 5,000 with a lunch intended to fill the belly of a small boy, heal the sick, and even raise the dead! The apostle Paul, who most scholars would agree wrote within a few decades of Jesus’ life wrote these words: “For in Christ all the fullness of God lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9)
In the Gospel of John, written within three decades of Jesus’ crucifixion, says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
Later in the Gospel of John, it says that Thomas looked at the Risen Jesus and says, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) So the divinity of Jesus was not invented in 325AD.
Another thing. It is a matter of historical record that many of the first-century followers of Jesus were martyred for their faith. And, to me, trying to say that they knew Jesus was only mortal and that they covered it up, and then were willing to suffer and die for what they knew to be a lie, well that’s the biggest leap of faith of all!
The fact is the deity of Jesus wasn’t some new teaching; it was present from day one. It was the heart of the Christian message. The Council of Nicea met not to “come up” with this new teaching but rather to affirm this teaching that had always been present. And it was affirmed, not by as close vote as Brown’s story says, but by a vote of 298 to 2.
Now, when people ask you about Jesus, you can tell them all this, but I would also encourage you to use that God-given opportunity to tell them what your relationship with Jesus means to you right now. Tell them all the ways that Jesus blesses your life. “Introduce” them to your Savior and Lord.
(3) One final question I want to help prepare you to deal with is: “Can we trust the Bible?
This question is very likely to come up because Brown’s story line says the Bible as we have it was put together to both subjugate women and consolidate Constantine’s power. In the book Teabing’s character states, “The Bible is a product of man, not of God. History has never had a definitive version of the book. The Bible as we know it today was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 325A.D at the council of Nicea.” So if co-workers or neighbors ask you this first question, you need to be able to tell them the truth about how we got our New Testament and here’s the facts to help with your reply.
The New Testament began with the oral teaching of Jesus. In fact, “teacher” is the title given Him more than any other and His teaching His words struck a chord. I mean, people were amazed not only at what Jesus did but at what He said. They remembered and talked about His “lessons.” I mean, Jesus’ unique teaching His words changed lives. Do you remember what the soldiers said who were sent to arrest Jesus said when they came back empty-handed? “No one ever spoke the way this Man does.”
Now of course back then people didn’t have tape recorders. They didn’t have sermon notes with blanks to fill in when they listened to Jesus preach like we do each week. So, at first His powerful teachings and miracles were shared by memory. But after His resurrection and ascension early Christians realized that they would need to write down all that Jesus said and did to preserve it for future generations. When this time came God helped them do this. Men wrote each of the books of the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit of God. As 2 Peter 1:20-21 says, “no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
And this did not come as a surprise to Jesus’ first followers, because He had promised that God would guide early Christians in this way reminding them of His teachings. In John 14:15-16 Jesus said, “All this I have spoken while with you. But the Counselor, The Holy Spirit Whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” So God, through His Spirit, did this His guidance inspired the New Testament writers. So basically this is how the New Testament came to be. Men like Paul and Matthew and James wrote the things God’s Spirit reminded them of things He inspired them to write down. Their writings were circulated among the first churches, and people who read them recognized the fact that these words were not the words of man but of God.
Now, their decision to recognize a gospel or a letter as Scripture was based on 3 basic criteria.
A. First, it had to be connected to one of the apostles. It had to be written by an apostle or by a student or associate of one of the apostles.
The four gospels we have in the New Testament meet this requirement. Matthew is associated with Matthew, one of Jesus’ first twelve followers, also known as Levi a tax collector. Mark was written by Jon Mark a student of the Apostle Peter. And yes, he is the same Jon Mark who was the missionary companion of Paul and Barnabas. Luke was known as the “beloved physician,” a good friend of the apostle Paul. He carefully interviewed eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry as a source of his Gospel. In the first few words of Luke’s gospel he writes, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:1-4) And then, John is the gospel that was written by John the disciple; the one sitting on Jesus’ right in Da Vinci’s painting himself one of those eyewitnesses Luke refers to.
By the way, the other books in the New Testament such as the letters of Paul or the letters of John, meet this same criteria. They were written by actual eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life and ministry, or by people who interviewed eye-witnesses. This conviction is what John was talking about when he began his Gospel by saying, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3)
This is what Peter was referring to when He wrote in his epistle, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)
Another thing it is important to understand that most scholars would agree that all the books in our New Testament were written within maybe 30 to 60 years after Jesus died. In other words, they were written while there were still eyewitnesses around who could challenge every word that was in them. So when these books were written and circulated, they were read by people who were alive when Jesus was. They were circulated around people who would have been able to say, “No. It didn’t happen that way. I was there.” if something was inaccurate.
Now The Da Vinci Code says there were many other ancient books about Jesus’ life and suggests that the church was and has been trying to cover them up for thousands of years now. And yes, there were other ancient books that referenced our Lord’s life and ministry but all of these books were written much, much later. In some cases they were written many centuries after Jesus long after that “eyewitness generation.” In fact, these “gospels” were often given fictitious and misleading names like “The Gospel of Mary” and “The Gospel of Peter” to make them seem authoritative, even though they were written long after Mary or Peter had died.
But, for the church to accept a gospel or letter as Scripture, it had to be written either by an eye-witness or by someone who interviewed one first hand.
And these false gospels referred to as Gnostic gospels just don’t pass this test. For example, The Gospel of Thomas it says this, “Simon Peter said, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'” Aren’t you men glad that one didn’t make it into the Bible? Aren’t you women glad sex changes aren’t required in order to go to heaven? This is just one sample of the kinds of things you find in these books so it’s no wonder that the early church rejected them outright.
C. And then here’s a third criterion that was applied. In order for a book to be included in the canon of Scripture, it had to have widespread influence in churches all over the world, and had to have continuous acceptance and use by the church at large.
At first 2nd Peter and Hebrews weren’t widely accepted because some believers weren’t sure who wrote them. The slow travel of the day also impeded the widespread acceptance of some books. This is the reason the book of Revelation took so long to be included in the New Testament, but eventually all the books we now have were recognized by all the churches.
In any case the Gospels and the other books that we include in the New Testament today are the only ones that fit these three standards. One historian puts it like this; “None of the non-canonical gospels comes close to these criterion in date of composition, breadth of distribution or proportion of acceptance.” None of them comes close! And the idea that we have the New Testament Gospels today because Constantine put them together in 325AD for political purposes is way off the mark. The reality is that by 325AD these books that we revere as God’s Word had already been guiding followers of Jesus for centuries. More than one hundred years before Constantine, a man by the name of Origen said, “The four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the only undisputed ones in the whole church of God throughout the whole world.”
One of my favorite New Testament professors, William Barclay from Edinburgh put it this way, “It is the simple truth to say that the New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them from doing so.” In fact, I would challenge any seeker who comes to you with this question to actually read the Bible. Invite them to study one of the Gospels with you. Challenge them to compare the Bible to these Gnostic gospels because, anyone who reads the Gospel of Thomas or that of Philip will see that it is straw that can be blown in the wind. But, if you pick up the Bible, this book that is, “living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, able to penetrate even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) Well, anyone who reads the Bible will say, “Surely God has spoken.”
Let us pray
Father God, Empower us to be witnesses of Your love and grace in this crucial time. Use this book and movie to awaken an interest in the things of Your kingdom in lost people. Make them curious hungry to find the truth. And then give us the words and the insights to answer the questions that people ask enable us to join in Your Divine appointments and turn even this movie into an opportunity for us to share the Gospel.
And, guide us now in this time of decision. Show each of us the changes we need to make in our lives that will truly acknowledge You as Lord. I ask all this in Jesus’ name. AMEN
As we stand and sing now, I encourage you to respond as God leads.