How many of you know any non-Christian people who live morally upright lives? I’m talking about good people who aren’t believers and it could be a friend or a co-worker or a neighbor—any individuals you know who openly admit that they aren’t Christians. Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t negative or rude—they don’t go around bragging that they are atheists or anything. It’s just that the subject came up one day and they let it be known that they don’t believe in God….and that shocked you because you know by experience that they’re wonderful people. In fact, you just assumed they were believers because—well, they’re kind, helpful, hard-working—they are family-oriented. They are fun to be with and keep their lawn mowed. They don’t have a car up on blocks rusting away to nothing in their driveway. They always put out the flag on the 4th of July. They coach little league or serve as a den mother for the brownie troop. They give to the United Way. They run in 5k’s to help end breast cancer. They are in the booster club and always lend a hand at school events.
Suffice it to say that they’re just plain exemplary people in the community.
Well, let me ask—is it hard for you to believe that these non-Christian—but still very GOOD people—is it hard for you to believe the gates of Heaven would be closed to them? I mean, do you ever find yourself thinking, “Somehow—some way—wonderful people like that are going to get in. Surely—God must have made some provision for guys and gals who are THAT good. There’s no way THEY’D go to Hell.”
While you ponder that I’ll tell you that more than once I’ve had a conversation with someone who knows I’m a pastor and they will say something like: “This past week my uncle died. He wasn’t a Christian…but there wasn’t a finer person on the planet.” And then there’s an uneasy silence because I feel like they want me to say, “Hey no problem…I mean if there wasn’t a finer person on the planet, then as a pastor I can tell you to rest assured because your loved one is in Heaven.”
But could I really say that? Does God’s written Word give me permission to give that kind of assurance to someone who is grieving? Is a saving relationship with Jesus Christ necessary for EVERYbody? Does EVERYONE have to embrace OUR faith in order to get to Heaven—or does that only apply to the really BAD people in this world?
This morning we’re looking at Romans 10 and, as Bill Hybels says in his comments on this text [I’m relying on a Bible Study he taught on this chapter several years ago], Paul is going to address this particular “hot topic” issue—but Paul’s going to push it a step further. He’s going to increase the stakes by dealing with an even more difficult question, namely:
“What about the individuals in this world who not ONLY lead an upright life—what if in ADDITION to being an exemplary kind of a person….what if they ALSO have a burning desire to please God and a zeal for serving Him and they actually carry out that zeal in practical works of righteousness each and every day? Now…certainly just because someone like THAT didn’t enter into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ—I mean, since he has all the rest going for him, well, surely HE would get into Heaven—wouldn’t he? Think of it: a righteous life, a love for God and a religious zeal for service for God…what more could God want? Is God really so narrow-minded and picky as to sentence that kind of person to Hell?”
While you ponder all this—let me tell you that the 10th chapter Romans is somewhat of a review of basic information that has been included in prior chapters. I mean, you’ll hear familiar material this morning because Paul DRAWS on some of the lessons he’s already taught in order to give a satisfactory answer to this hot-topic question once and for all—and here it is again: “Is there anyone good enough to be saved without putting their faith in Jesus Christ?”
Fortunately, it doesn’t take Paul long to answer that particular question. Look at verses 9-10 where he plainly says, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead…THEN…you will be saved…for with the heart man believes….resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation.”
Note—Paul says nothing about being a good person or doing good things. He just lists TWO basic conditions for being saved from the separation from God that is Hell—and here they are. Paul says we must:
- …join the church and tithe—nope!
- …teach the 7th grade boys SS class and wash the pastor’s car—nope!
- …walk forward at the end of the service and promise never to sin again—nope!
Paul says to be saved you have to BELIEVE God raised Jesus from the dead and you have to CONFESS with your mouth that He is the Lord of your life.
Now—the word “believe” here in the Greek means, ‘to trust in, to cling to, to rely on, to commit to” so it’s more than just your standard every day belief. The Bible says even the devil has a “normal caliber” of belief. Our adversary believes in Jesus—satan knows Who He is—but we won’t see satan in Heaven. And unfortunately there are a lot of people who, like the devil, only have a head knowledge of God and Paul would say they are going to miss Heaven by 18 inches, because they don’t have the kind of belief that is a foot and a half “lower.” They don’t have “heart belief” — they don’t have the kind of conviction that leads to commitment. I mean, I believe in Hitler but I’m not a Nazi—and people can believe in Jesus and still not be Christians. Commitment is the difference. Based on your belief in Who Jesus is and what He did—you decide to commit your life to Him. You cling to Him. You rely on Him.
And Paul says—this belief that leads to commitment is more than believing Jesus died on the cross. It must include believing God raised Him from the dead because as Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15, “…if there is no resurrection then our faith—our belief—is false.” You see, the fact that Jesus rose again PROVES that He is Who He said He is. Listen—a lot of people died on the cross before Jesus and a lot died after Him. But Jesus died for a specific purpose. He died not for His own crimes but rather for the crimes of all mankind. And then Jesus did something ELSE no one did. He rose again—so if you deny the resurrection of Jesus—you’re not a believer. Well, this caliber of belief-inspired commitment to Jesus Christ is the FIRST step. Paul says the SECOND thing we have to do is to CONFESS our belief. In other words, Paul says you can’t be sneaky about it. You can’t be a “closet Christian.” You have to give witness as to your belief or its DOUBTFUL that your commitment is genuine.
Rick Warren says that some believers are “Arctic river Christians…because they’re frozen at the mouth…” and this is not a good thing because God expects us to verbalize our faith. Okay—look at verses 12-13 where Paul says,“There is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is Lord of all abounding in riches for all who call upon Him for whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Paul is saying it makes no difference what a person’s nationality is…or what their spiritual background is. Their religious heritage is not a factor in their salvation. No—everyone who winds up in Heaven does so on the basis of their individual response to the Person and the work of Jesus Christ—PERIOD. And, I’m talking about the upright people, the downright immoral people, your GOOD friends, your BAD friends….the Gentiles, the Jews—everybody gets to Heaven by going through the same door and the door is the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Now—you may be thinking, “AMEN…but Mark, we’ve heard that before! Been there, done that, got the T-shirt…so let’s move on.” And in reply I would say—not so fast—because to FULLY understand the message God has put in this text..to make sure we “GET” this review of the first few chapters of Paul’s letter, I think we need to answer ANOTHER question so here goes: WHY is it so EASY for us—including those of us who have known the Scriptures for a long time. WHY is it so EASY for us to slip into thinking that an upright life and a zeal for God and service for God is enough to merit a person’s ticket to Heaven? WHY do many of us as Christians tremble when asked if Jews are saved? WHY do we give false assurance to people by saying their moral and upright deceased friends are in Heaven—when we know for a fact they rejected Jesus ‘til the day that they died? WHY is it so easy for us to get fuzzy on this most basic part of the Christian faith—namely what it is that qualifies a human being for Heaven?
I think the answer to these questions is found in the fact that all of us have a difficult time grasping how sinful we REALLY ARE are in comparison to how holy GOD really is. You see, with our minds—minds that are deformed by sin—we tend to look at upright, kind, religious, moral people and think, “Those people are ALMOST perfect. If perfection were a 10 they are certainly 9.7 or 9.8! What kind of God would consign a person to Hell for all eternity for simply lacking a tenth or so on their moral score?”
And friends, when we begin to think like that as Christians—well, I would say we are manifesting a kind of spiritual absent mindedness that is very scary. I mean, even ENTERTAINING that question unveils a caliber of fuzzy thinking that should have no part in the mind of a Biblically-oriented Christian because the Scriptures clearly teach that NO human being is scoring 9.7 or 9.8—not even close. No human on this planet is ALMOST reaching moral perfection. In fact, the Bible teaches that God is so holy—so righteous—that in comparison OUR best deeds of righteousness are like filthy rags.
Max Lucado says that thinking we would work our way into God’s Holy presence with our own good deeds is like someone trying to blow a sailboat across the Atlantic on their own lung power. It’s not going to happen—but it may explain why so many RELIGIOUS people always seem to be out of breath!
Look back at verses 3 & 4 where Paul first brings up this issue that he deals with in verse 10. Referring to the infamously RELIGIOUS Jews he says, “My hearts desire and prayer for them is for their salvation…for they have a zeal for God…but not according to knowledge. Seeking to establish their own righteousness, the Jews did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God, for Christ is the end of the law.”
Paul is saying that the Jews’ primary problem is that they honestly felt that they could muster up enough of their own righteousness—somehow—someway to make themselves completely acceptable to God—without any help from Jesus. They thought they could establish their own righteousness and not need any that Christ would offer. And before we judge the Jews we must admit that without a lot of spiritual discipline it is easy for US to REPEAT their mistake and fall into this kind of absentmindedness that says, “I think good and upright and moral people are almost perfect. They are almost there.”
One thing that helps us embrace this kind of thinking is PRIDE. I mean, no one likes to think they are bad enough to need saving. Ray Stedman says, “I will never forget the startled look on the face of a man who came up to me in a movie theater. The seat beside me was vacant, and he said, ‘Is that seat saved?’ I said, ‘No, but I am.’” They guy frowned and took a seat across the aisle. And we all know that “look.” No one likes to be told they are “lost” and need “saving.” Stedman writes, “It makes us uncomfortable—only when we refuse to face the fact that all men and women are lost…and they are facing an eternity of separation from God. These are the facts as the Scriptures put it.”
Understand—you and I may ACT good; we may DO good; we may LOOK good to the HUMAN eye—but the Bible says we are ALL flawed and fallen—sinful beings who need saving. Let’s take this glass of water. It looks good. I would say it looks like crystal clear. We’d have no problem drinking it. But do you remember your high school biology class? You took a drop of water from a glass like this and looked at it on the microscope and you saw: dirt, sediment, germs, creatures, herbicides—all kinds of contaminants in just a single drop of what APPEARS to be crystal clear water. Now…multiply that drop by all the drops in the glass and you see what I’m driving at. That glass of water is not as pure as you think it is. Well the Bible says that on the day of reckoning, our lives are going to be put under God’s microscope. And when that happens every little piece of dirt—every little imperfection—every contaminant; every improper motive…every impure thought…every devious plan…every self-centered perspective…all of that will be magnified and it will become painfully obvious that in life we were not scoring 9.7s or 9.8s. In fact, we will see that we were way down in the minus area…negative 10 — if that. As the old hymn lyric puts it, we’ll see that before Jesus we were “sinking deep in sin..” far from God.
So—we can spend a lifetime THINKING we can work our scores up on our own but the truth is we’re never going to even get close to a ten. We will never be able to muster up enough personal righteousness to make ourselves acceptable to the standards of a holy God and people who try to are pursuing the WRONG righteousness. Paul says—to get to Heaven we need to abandon OUR righteousness and RECEIVE Christ’s righteousness. This is the central thrust of the Gospel and it’s the message that Paul has been trying to get across in the book of Romans since way back in chapter 1.
Well, now he’s bringing it back up in chapter 10 because he is aware of the fact that most of the Jews don’t believe him. Most of the people in his race think they are still scoring 9.7 or 9.8 and that their own righteousness will suffice in the day of reckoning. Paul says, “No way—you are misunderstanding the whole thing!”
Now—the thing that usually taints OUR thinking on this subject is the irresistible temptation to COMPARE ourselves and our RQ—our “righteousness quotient”—to the RQ’s of other human beings—instead of God’s holy standard. Let me show you how this works. Some of you will be able to relate to this easily because you did this for years. I hope none of you are still doing it! Okay—I’ve got a graph to show you what I mean.
When we start comparing ourselves to the righteousness or unrighteousness of other people—when we start putting a “righteousness quotient” on ourselves…well, we usually start by identifying the dregs of society…the degenerates…drug dealers…axe murderers….those kinds of people. We think—if a 10 is perfection, then those kind of people will be on the bottom rung—but they ARE, living human beings so we’ll give them a score of 1. In comparison of course, we are much better than the dregs of society so that automatically bumps our righteousness score up to about a 5—and we’ve just started! We continue by rationalizing the fact that there are an awful lot of louses loose in society. I’m talking about the people at school or work who lie without batting an eyelash, who are very loose moral people—the people who run roughshod over other people’s feelings…the kind of person who will cheat and cut corners if it serves their purposes…and we think, well, we’re not like those people at all…so if the degenerates and axe murderers get a “1” and that brought the rest of us up to the “5” range—and if these louses maintain their 5 rating…well, that bumps us up somewhere in the mid 7’s. Things are literally looking up! At this point we start tallying up the long list of admirable character qualities that you and I possess. I mean think of it: you’ve been gainfully employed for years and in all that time you’ve have never stolen much from your company—just a few postage stamps and paper clips. Add to that the fact that you are kind to most people you meet. And—you keep your word for the most part…you are faithful to your spouse…at least in a physical sense. You attend PTA meetings, and buy girl scout cookies. You support public television—and let’s face it—not many people do those kinds of things these days. I mean you are clearly, several steps above these other kinds of people. Well, at the least this puts us in the mid 8’s and we’re not done yet because now we begin to list our religious involvements—our spiritual merit badges. Now—hang on to your hats because we go to church almost every week. We plop down 15 bucks in the offering plate.
Every one else will figure it’s a full tithe but how will they ever know? We serve on a committee every so often. We prayed in public after 911..and Hurricane Katrina. And the list could go on and on but suffice it to say we are fairly spiritual people—and when you add THAT to our RQ calculation, well—in all humility we’re talking 9.7, 9.8, or even 9.9! Granted it would be boastful to claim that we are tens but sometimes it’s almost false modesty to claim anything LESS! Right? I mean, compared to all the other people on this planet we’re 9.8 or 9.9 which is pretty amazing isn’t it? And that’s got to be good enough for God! It’s just got to be! Would a loving God quibble over a tenth?
We chuckle, but this way of thinking is widespread. It is rampant. It goes way back in history and yet it is as modern as today. This mind set is why the Jews of Paul’s day said to themselves, “We can establish our own righteousness we don’t need a Savior. We don’t need Christ’s righteousness when our own will suffice.” This is what Paul is referring to in verse 6 when he says this kind of person thinks he can raise him-SELF up to Heaven.
Well, as I said, this kind of thinking permeates the secular man in our day. This is why many people feel insulted when we tell them they need a Savior. They think, “Who needs Christ’s righteousness when my own is plenty?” But their whole argument falls to pieces in an instant when we realize that God’s Word clearly teaches that we shouldn’t waste our time comparing our righteousness with others’…because our righteousness is going to be measured not by theirs but by the Holy righteousness of God and by that scoring our righteousness will wind up much much different, SHOCKINGLY different!
A few years ago, Daniel and I ran in the Rockville Twilight Run. I think it appealed to me because it was on a Saturday night and most public races are on Sunday morning plus it’s done in the dark of night so no one would recognize me in my running out fit—and I don’t look very “pastoral” when I’m suited up to run and sweating profusely. Well, that 8K was my first real “race” and when I went to the starting line I noticed that they wanted you to line up according to your speed. At the front of the line were the fast guys—the people who could run a mile at 10MPH or better and Daniel lined up with those guys. Behind them was a sign for people who could run those 5,280 feet at 9MPH and so on down to 5MPH. Behind that were the walkers and the people in wheelchairs.
Well, I knew my pace was about 6MPH—but I looked at a couple of the people in the 7MPH area and I thought, “They don’t look so fast….in fact, there’s a lot of gray hair up there and one of those guys looks like he’ll deliver a baby in about a week—what a gut!” Plus—in the 6MPH area there were mostly housewives and a brand new running outfits with shoes to match—an obvious sign that these weren’t serious runners. I mean, they were more interested in appearance than speed. They hadn’t run much or their shoes would be beat up like mine. So I thought, “I must belong in the 7MPH slot—and maybe even the 8MPH group.” Well, that’s where I started—and by the time we reached the campus of Montgomery College I was having a hard time. My speed began to wane such that some of those housewives passed me…and when I was finally able to see the finish line—I looked and there was that guy with the beer gut ahead of me. I finished the race—but let’s just say it was a very humbling experience.
I share this because a far, far, greater humbling realization hits people who finally GET IT—They stop comparing themselves to other sinners and begin to realize just how HOLY God is. To keep with the “running illustration” —when they begin to grasp God’s perfection—they begin to see how far behind they are—how woefully insufficient their own righteousness really is. God’s holiness is so pure—so blameless—that our meager little attempts at impressing Him with our little noble intentions and deeds of service—well we see that they fall so short.
I have met a lot of church-going believers in my life—hundreds…maybe thousands…and do you know how I have learned to recognize TRUE spiritual maturity? I can tell if someone enjoys a truly intimate relationship with God by how humble they are—because the closer we get to God—the more we understand how sinful we are and that realization HUMBLES us! We see this principle of maturity in the Scriptures when individuals came face to face with God because when that happened they weren’t prideful…no—they were mournful! The prophet Isaiah—perhaps the greatest prophet of the Old Testament—when he had that vision in which he stood before God’s throne…he cried out, “Woe is me, I am a sinful man. I am undone. Depart from me…I am unclean!” Once Paul—this Pharisee of Pharisees whose sole focus was personal righteousness—once he met Jesus, Paul began to refer to himself as, “the chief of sinners.”
Here’s what I’m driving at—Until men and women subject their righteousness to the measuring rod of God’s holiness they will wrongfully rate themselves in comparison to other people and will wind up with a score way higher than they deserved. When a person is thoroughly convinced that he is a 9.7 or a 9.8, then we are all wasting our time talking to them about their need for a Savior because in their own minds they just don’t need one. Who needs Christ’s righteousness when your own is plenty?! And Paul is lamenting about the fact that this is the mind set of most of his fellow Jews. The are counting on their own righteousness and its not going to work. They think they are easily in the 10MPH group—but they are only dreaming! And they are going to face a night mare on the day of reckoning.
Well, what’s the SOLUTION to this problem? Paul gives it to us in verses 14-15 where he asks,
“How, then, can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of Whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
In other words Paul says the solution is for Christians to get the truth out about God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness. We have to TELL people that when we come to the end of our lives the measuring rod is not going to be the feeble righteousness of others but rather God’s perfect holiness. We have to tell them the good news that Jesus Christ lived a perfect, sinless life—and then He died in the cross in our place.
As we said back when we looked at Acts 3 & 4, the only way to get to Heaven is to clothe ourselves in Jesus’ righteousness. We have to let people know this! I mean, how can we expect them to believe in Jesus and confess their faith in Him if they’ve never heard the truth about these matters?
Well, that is our mandate. This is message we have to get out. We have to be messengers for those who are giving themselves 9.8 or 9.9. We need to let them know that they are pursuing the WRONG righteousness—they need to know this because a day is coming….when they will stand before our loving HOLY God…and on that day we’ll see how WRONG our righteousness really is.
Steve Hugo has written the following story:
“For as far back as I can remember, I always treated Old Man Jones, my neighbor, in the worst ways. Each April 1st, I pulled the ‘burning paper bag with dog stuff in it’ tradition, and even though Old Man Jones never fell for it, he still had a gross pile to remove from his front stairs! He always knew that it was me, and always said, without anger in his voice, ‘Someday, you’ll be sorry.’ His driveway was next to ours and in the winter, I always shoveled our snow onto his drive, giving him twice the work. He never did get a snow blower, but when I was 12, just before a blizzard, one appeared in my driveway, with a note saying, ‘You might need this!’ I could now delight in blowing all the snow from my driveway, and most of my front yard, onto Old Man Jones’s car. I would even cut a wider-than-needed path for my mom’s car just to put more snow on the dinosaur’s driveway. (That’s what my mom always called him: ‘the Dinosaur.’) He always knew that it was me and always said without anger in his voice, ‘Someday, you’ll be sorry.’ I keyed his car more than once. When I discovered the mint 1969 Mustang Mach series car that always stayed under a thick canvas cover, kept for someone, I quickly sought to learn how many pumps of my BB rifle it took send the metal orb through it’s windows. It took ten pumps. He knew that it was me and said without anger in his voice, ‘Someday, you’ll be sorry.’
Between my BB gun and slingshot, most of his home’s windows had to be replaced at one time or another, not to mention the battered aluminum siding that still bears the myriad of little dents. He never complained about the shattered bird feeder or the constant supply of dead squirrels, sparrows, cardinals, and whatever else winged its way into his yard. I do remember the tenderness that he buried the vermin with, though. I can’t recall how many times he had to take his cat to the vet to remove a pellet from an infected wound, but I do remember that he always knew that it was me, and always said, without anger in his voice, ‘Someday, you’ll be sorry.’ At Christmas-time he used to set up lots of lights around his house that looked like virtual BB magnets, which they were. A plastic manger scene was the prime target one year, and stayed on the relic’s front lawn until I shot the baby’s face off. He knew that it was me and said without anger in his voice, ‘Someday, you’ll be sorry.’
There was this room in his house that I would look into sometimes when the old man was away. It was the kind of room that I would have loved to have, if my mom could ever get a real job. It was just like one of those ‘Good Housekeeping kid’s bedrooms that everybody is supposed to want. I always figured that Jones was on the loony side, and this ‘keeping a cool room for a kid he didn’t have thing’ was the final proof that I needed of his senility. But I never shot that window out.
My mom and I never had much in the money department, but every year, on Christmas, a couple hundred dollars worth of cool stuff was left on my doorstep with, ‘Merry Christmas’ and my name written on each carefully wrapped gift. (That’s where the BB gun came from, along with a great target setup, which was never needed with the shooting range next door.) My mom, too hung over each Christmas morning to get me up early enough to meet the Gift Bearer, said that the stuff probably came from my grandfather, whom she hadn’t cared to talk to or see since long before I came around. There had been some long remembered fight over his ‘interference’ in her affairs. I had never seen him and really didn’t even know or care where he lived, so long as the goodies came.
One Christmas, I got up early on my own because I thought that I might want to see what my ancestor looked like, not to mention that I was hoping for BB’s from my benefactor, ’cause Old Man Jones had just gotten a new bird feeder with ‘unbreakable’ glass in it, and my Daisy was calling my name before the sun was up. I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes, when I heard a soft shuffling on the porch. As I quietly opened the front door, the rising sun reflected off of an armload of carefully wrapped presents, in silver and gold paper, each with ‘Merry Christmas’ and my name written on it. The arms were still holding the gifts, but the face was hidden by a tall package. The obscured gift bearer was unaware that I had opened the door, until he carefully put the gifts down. Startled, Old Man Jones stood up stiffly and with moistened eyes and broken voice said, ‘Merry Christmas.’ ‘Someday’ had come, and Old Man Jones could have never been more right. I was sorry…”
Friends, our righteous and holy God gives us good and perfect gifts every day—because He loves us. Yet we treat Him poorly. We sin and do wrong in His eyes. Every day every one of us falls short of His holy standard. Perhaps the worst insult we send God’s way is our prideful assumptions that, on our own, we can be good enough to enter His holy presence. But, unless we believe in and confess our faith in Jesus’ righteousness…a day will dawn when we will be sorry for our sin—sorry for our feeble attempts at the WRONG righteousness. That day, there will be a lot of sorry people, who will regret that they ignored God, and believe me, that is not the day that you want to be sorry.
Christians, our hearts must break for the GOOD people in our realm of influence who are pursuing the WRONG righteousness—the people who are GOOD—but still very lost. Personal, relational evangelism must always have top priority in our minds. Remember, Jesus’ first words to His disciples were, “Follow Me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” And His last words were, “You will be My witnesses…Go ye therefore!”
Let me ask one final question. Have you taken advantage of the opportunities God has given you to tell your lost but “GOOD people” friends about Jesus? If not—then hear Paul’s words once again, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…but…how can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of Whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” I hope and pray all of you are taking advantage of these opportunities because how are they ever going to learn of their need for Jesus if you don’t do your job as messenger? Remember, as Paul says in verse 15, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
LET US PRAY
Father God,
This morning I ask that you would heal our blindness…open our eyes so we can see two things very clearly. First, show us our sin—help us all to feel the despair Isaiah felt when He stood in Your presence…help his exclamation to echo in our minds such that we all think, ‘Woe is me…I am undone…for I am unlcean…’ Use that terrible realization to remind us as Christians once again how much we need Jesus…And then with that still fresh in our minds…show us how lost our non-believing friends really are. BURDEN us with that understanding. Make our hearts heavy so that—relying on the guidance of Your Spirit—we will seize every opportunity to tell them the good news of the Gospel message. I ask this in Jesus’ name. AMEN
As we stand and sing, I invite you to respond publically in any way you feel led. Come and profess your faith in Jesus…come and ask to join our church…but come as God leads.
BENEDICTION:
Let the PEACE OF CHRIST rule in your hearts
since as members of one body you were called to peace.
Let the WORD OF CHRIST dwell in you richly
and whatever you do…in word or in deed
Do it all in the NAME OF CHRIST giving thanks to God the Father
through Him.