Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 3:1-22
There's an outline in the bulletin, if you'd like to follow along there. If you have your Bible, or pick up one in front of you, in the chair in front of you, you can find the Gospel of Luke chapter 3. We're going to be beginning in verse 1 this morning. Our series is a study through the Gospel of Luke. The theme verse for the Gospel of Luke is Luke 19-10. It's the title of our series, "The Son of Man Came to Seek and to Save the Lost." And we're going to jump in this morning with the big idea of Luke 3, 1-22. Here it is. "God used John the baptizer to prepare the way for Jesus the Messiah, and I'm calling him this morning, the baptizer, instead of the baptist, because for most of us, baptist is a loaded term, either in a good way or maybe in a bad way. That word for us carries a lot of baggage, and I just want to remind you that in no way shape or form was John the first baptist as we use the word today. But he was a baptizer of people who repented of their sins and put their faith in the Messiah to come, and so we will call him John the baptizer. God used him to prepare the way for Jesus the Messiah. You notice in that big idea that John is not the subject of the sentence. God is the subject of the sentence. I want to be very careful as we go through the Gospel of Luke and as we talk about John the baptizer, as we talk about Peter, as we talk about some of the other disciples that we don't make these characters the center of the story, the hero of the story, but that we keep God at the center of the story. Even when we're talking about John, what we're really talking about is how God used him to prepare the way for Jesus the Messiah, who was coming to seek and to save the lost. And so that's the big idea. If you have your Bible, find John chapter 3, verse 1, we're going to put the words on the screen, and we're just going to read through this passage together. John 3, verse 1, this is the Word of God. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, Tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trakhanitis, and Lasanius, Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Anas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness, and he went into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his past straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. He said, therefore, to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham, even now the acts has laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, and the crowds asked him, what then shall we do? And he answered them, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than your authorized to do. Others also asked him, what shall we do? And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation and be content with your wages. As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, I baptized you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not unworthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people, but Herod the tetrarch who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done added to this them all and he locked John in prison. Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized in was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your grace and your mercy this morning and as we open to the book of Luke, we are reminded that it comes through Jesus, the Son of Man who came to seek and to save what was lost. Father, every good thing in our life is a result of what Jesus did for us at the cross. We acknowledge that. We believe it. Father, we pray this morning for those who are here, who have never entered into a genuine relationship with Jesus, they have never turned from their sin and turned in faith to your son. We pray that today your spirit would begin to work in their life and that today would be the beginning of a new life following after Jesus Christ. Father, give us ears to hear your word this morning. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Start off telling you a story about a preacher and my guess is most of you have never heard of this preacher. He was born in 1785, so that's a long time ago. His name was Peter Cartwright, 1785 Peter Cartwright. He was born in Virginia. He was saved at about the age of 1516 in a revival meeting, part of the second great awakening. He was in Kentucky and went to a camp meeting, put his faith in Jesus Christ, turned from his sins. A year later, he began preaching, so saved in about 1801, 1802, he begins preaching and he is a well-known evangelist, part of the second great awakening in the United States of America. One interesting thing about his life is he liked to dabble in politics. In fact, in 1846, Peter Cartwright ran for Congress and he ran against this man. I'll put a picture up. That man is Abraham Lincoln in his early thirties. It's the earliest known picture of Abraham Lincoln taken about the time when he ran against Peter Cartwright for Congress and defeated Peter Cartwright. You know Lincoln, he went on to have a prolific political career. Peter Cartwright, you've never heard of, he was just a preacher. He was an interesting guy though. His territory as a Methodist circuit writing preacher was the Wild Wild West. In his days, the Wild Wild West was Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. Those states were his territory and he would ride around and he would go to a town and he would preach and he would try to gather people into groups, churches and start these method campuses of Bible study that would then turn into Methodist Church. And so he traveled all around. So he had to ride horseback everywhere he went, traveled thousands and thousands of miles during his life, had to survive without modern conveniences or luxuries and in his day, it really was the Wild Wild West. When Peter Cartwright on his horse rolled into town, people didn't just line up to hearing. Nobody was really excited that a new preacher was coming to town. They didn't want anything to do with him and so sometimes it was hard to gather a crowd and sometimes he just had to preach to whoever he could get to listen to him. And so there's all sorts of stories about Peter Cartwright out on the frontier preaching to a crowd half of the crowd might be drunk. And you can imagine what a crowd of drunk people would sound like and act like during a sermon. They were rowdy and they were loud and they were obnoxious and so there's stories about Peter Cartwright having to stop mid sermon, get down and physically escort people outside of the church because they were so rowdy during the sermons and it was a good thing that he was a tough guy. He was a man's man because there's also interesting stories about Peter Cartwright breaking in the middle of a sermon, going outside, getting in a fist fight with somebody who was distracting the congregation, knocking them out and then he comes back in and he finishes the rest of the sermon in peace. This guy was the real deal. He was tough. He wasn't scared of anybody and there's a great story told about Peter Cartwright and he's getting ready to preach at a service somewhere and someone comes to him. He doesn't know this person and the person says, "I am part of the entourage." They probably didn't use that word, but I'm part of the entourage with President Andrew Jackson. President Jackson is here and he's going to be in the congregation. We know that you are prone to do some flamboyant over the top things. We're asking you that since the President of the United States is here, would you please tone it down? Would you be guarded in your comments? We don't want to offend. Just please be careful. So here's what Peter Cartwright did. He walks up to the platform. This is how he begins his sermon, quote, "I understand Andrew Jackson is here. I've been requested to be guarded in my remarks. Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn't repent." Andrew Jackson spoke to him afterwards and said, "Thank you. Thank you for speaking the truth. Thank you for not being afraid to be bold." And when you look at a guy like Peter Cartwright and you think he's a man's man. He's a tough guy. He's a bold guy. He's not afraid of anybody. You get a glimpse of what John the Baptist may have been like, and we see this picture of John the Baptist, this old ancient picture. I assure you that he did not have biceps, that skinny. He maybe had hair that long, but John was a tough guy. He was a bold guy. He was a fearless guy, and we'll talk more about him as we go through the Gospel of Luke. He comes back up, but you think about John, and you say, "Okay, here is a guy according to the Bible who ate strange food, locust dipped in honey." And he wore strange clothing, camel hair. You say, "Well, ancient people, they wore anything. They didn't wear camel hair. It was strange. It was weird. He lived in a weird place. He lived in the wilderness." Luke says the Word of God came to him. Where was he? In Jerusalem, in Rome, in some big important city? No. He's in the wilderness. So he eats strange food. He wears strange clothing. He lives in a strange place. Let's just be honest. He's a strange guy. But Jesus says, Jesus says, "Among those born of women, from the beginning of the world to now, there's not one greater than John the Baptist." Is he strange? Yes. Is he bold? And is he fearless? Absolutely. And as we look at his ministry this morning, I want you to see how God used him. What did God do in his life and what did God do through his life? And so what do we learn from the ministry of John the baptizer? First idea is this. This ought to be familiar. If you've been here in recent weeks, God delights in saving. Nobody's in using them for his glory. I'm going to keep beating this dead horse as long as Luke beats it. And guess what? Luke talks about it all through the gospel. Nobody's coming into the picture. God's saving them by his grace and using them for his glory. The beginning of chapter 3 is fascinating. Look what Luke says. If you have your Bible, Luke 3, verse 1, he talks about Tiberius Caesar. That's the emperor of Rome. He talks about Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. He talks about Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. He was the tetrarch of Galilee. He talks about his brother, Herod Philip, another son of Herod the Great, tetrarch of Eteriah and Trakhaninus. He talks about Lysanius, tetrarch of Abilene. That's a different Abilene. He talks about Anis, the previous high priest who retained the title for life in Caiaphas, his son-in-law who replaced Anis, who was the current high priest. And in the midst of all those important, powerful, influential people, Luke says what? The Word of God came to John. John, who are you talking about? Oh, John the son of Zechariah, a nobody, didn't come to any of these important people. It came to a nobody who lived nowhere in the wilderness. You can look at that and you could say, well, you told us the first week that Luke was a fine historian. You said that he had done his research, he had dug into the past, he's writing the work of history. Maybe he just wants to set the ministry of John in the context of history. Fine. He could have done that by saying in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, that sets it in history. We know when it is. And instead he says, there's Caesar, and there's this Herod, and there's this Herod, and there's this high priest, and there's this tetrarch, and there's all these important people in place, and the Word of God comes to John. A nobody in the middle of nowhere, and God saved him and God used him for his glory. There will be times in your life where you feel like a nobody in the middle of nowhere. And when you read through the Gospel of Luke, you are reminded that you are the kind of people that God delights to save and to use, not just for your own good, but ultimately for his glory, and we see that in the life of John who was a nobody that God saved and God used. Number two, this is a big one. The Holy Spirit uses preaching to produce repentance, which leads to faith, which results in salvation, which is expressed through baptism. It is not a typo on your handout. I filled in most of those blanks for you because I love you so much. I didn't want you getting writer's cramp. I didn't want you pen running out midway through the sentence, but I do want you to think about this important statement. The Holy Spirit uses preaching to produce repentance, which leads to faith, which results in salvation, which is expressed through baptism. Listen to me, all of the links in that chain are important. You've got to have all of them, and you've got to have them in the right order, or you get off track. And not only do you have to have all the right links in the right order, but you've got to have the right prepositions holding all those links together. Everything in that statement comes from Luke 3, verse 3 to 6. You can find it all there. You can find this idea throughout the gospel of Luke, throughout the book of Acts, which is part two of the gospel of Luke. The Spirit uses preaching to produce repentance, which leads to faith, which results in salvation, which is expressed through baptism. Preaching is important. It may look like this, somebody standing on a platform speaking to folks. It may look like you and one other person out in the middle of the oil patch, and you sharing the good news with them. It may look like you and your neighbor talking over the fence. It may look like you teaching a children's Sunday school class, but preaching the truth of God's Word is important. And the Spirit uses that to produce repentance. Repentance is a turn. It's a turn from sin, and a turn to Jesus. There is no person on the planet who can turn to Jesus unless they are also turning from sin. Repentance is not optional. It's not like you can say, "Well, I'm going to have Jesus as my Savior, but I'm going to pass on the Lord business for a while, and maybe I'll get that house in order later." No part of the gospel message is repent. Turn from your sin and turn to Jesus. It's necessary, but it's not repentance that leads to salvation. It's faith that leads to salvation. You turn from your sin to Jesus in faith, that results in salvation, and your salvation is expressed through baptism. It's not obtained in your baptism. It's not extended to you through your baptism, but you're expressing it. You're showing it. You're proclaiming it through your baptism. Now, again, I filled in some of those words for you. The one that I asked you to fill in is the word repentance. And I want you to think about repentance for just a minute. Let me share some thoughts about repentance with you as you think about John the Baptist. Here's the first thing. Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of life. A change of mind that results in a change of life. Literally, the Greek word means to change your mind. That's what it means. We would like to detach that in the United States of America and say, "Okay, I'll change my mind, but my life, eh, maybe, maybe not." Listen, in the Bible, repentance is most certainly a change of mind, but it is always a change of mind that results, that leads to, that drives you towards a change in your life. A change in mind that leads to a change in life. Here's the second thing you need to see about repentance. It is more important than genealogy and ritual. And John hammers this home. He says, "Repentance is far more important than your genealogy, and it's far more important than some religious ritual." In John's day, people were baptized other than the people that he baptized. Gentiles, non-Jews who wanted to put their faith in the God of Israel, would be baptized as an expression of their faith, as an expression of their joining the community. And so now all these Jews come out to hear John, and he says, "You need to repent and be baptized." And they say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." That's for Gentiles. That's not for us. Abraham is our father. And before they can even say the words, John fires back and he says, "Don't tell me who your dad is." I don't want to know. I don't care who your mom is. I don't care who your dad is. I don't care what your DNA says. None of that matters. You need to repent and you need to be baptized. And if he was here today, he would say, "Look, I don't care how many Sunday school classes your mom had taught. I don't care how saintly your great-grandmother was. I don't care if your daddy was a deacon or a Sunday school teacher or a pastor or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is you and have you repented of your sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ. Yes or no? John looks at these people coming to him to be baptized. Luke says, "They were coming out to be baptized." And what does he say to them? First words out of his mouth. You're a bunch of snakes. That's a way to grow your church. Some visitors were glad all you snakes could be here with us this morning. You're a bunch of vipers. You're trusting in baptism to do something that it can't never do. I'm calling you to repent and to express your repentance and to express your faith through baptism. So John says repentance is far more important than genealogy, far more important than ritual. If he was here today, he would probably look you in the eye and say, "You know what? And only do I not care who your mom or your daddy is, but I don't care if you got wet up there." I don't care if you walk down this aisle or that aisle or that aisle or if you came the long way or I don't care which aisle you walked. I don't care if you have quote unquote "invited Jesus into your heart." I'm not asking you to invite Jesus into your heart. What I'm asking you to do is repent. Repent and put your faith in the Messiah. That idea about repentance, it looks different for different people. It is not different in its nature, but it looks different in its application. You understand the difference in those two statements? I am not saying to you repentance can be whatever you want it to be because it can't. I'm not saying you take this idea of repentance and you just dream up whatever thoughts you want to have about it. What I think for me it's like this, for you, that's not what I'm saying. Repentance is always a turning from sin and a turning to Jesus. It's always a change of mind that leads to a change in life, but it looks different in my life than your life. And John understood that and so people say, "What do we need to do?" You say repent, tell us John, make it black and white, make it simple, make it plain, put the cookies on the low shelf, what do you want us to do? You've got enough food, give some to somebody who doesn't have any. You have more clothes than you need, why don't you give some away? Somebody somewhere that needs some. And the tax collectors come and they say, "What do you want us to do?" He said, "I want you to be honest in your job, I want you to stop cheating, and I want you to just be honest in the work that God's called you to do." And the soldiers come and they say, "What do we do?" You want us to quit being in the army? He says, "No, I just want you to be just, I want you to be fair, I don't want you to abuse people, I don't want you to take advantage of people, I want you to be honest, I want you to be people of integrity, turn away from sin and turn towards a relationship in Jesus Christ and repent. It looks different in your life than it's going to look in my life. I don't know what sins you struggle with. Odds are, there are sins that you struggle with that not one other person on the planet knows that you struggle with. And I don't know what they are, but I know that you struggle with sin, I know that I struggle with sin, I know that we all face the temptation to believe that some sinful thought or word or action will bring us more pleasure than a right relationship with Jesus Christ. And what John is saying to you is this, "It may not look the same in your life and my life and her life and his life, but whatever sin you're struggling with, turn from it, turn to Jesus and repent." It's a funny thing in life that we have a tendency to reduce well known, famous people to one category, to one idea, and I'll give you a few examples of what I'm talking about. If I put a picture up on the screen of Billy Graham, most of you in this room automatically think evangelist. He's the greatest evangelist of our generation, no denying that, no questioning that. But it's funny because he's been involved in many, many, many things over the course of his life, other than just preaching the gospel and evangelism. He's been involved in politics, he's been involved in writing, all sorts of things. But we sort of pigeonhole him as, "Oh, he is the evangelist." And then I put another picture up on the screen, somebody that you know, George Washington. First president of the United States. Know who he is? See him on the $1 bill. He is our first president, did a lot of other things besides being president of the United States. He was a general in the military long before he was president of the United States. Put another picture up on the screen of a well-known person. You see that picture in your first thought, don't say it, don't say it. Put another picture up on the screen, you think of John the Baptist and you immediately think, "He's a crazy guy out in the desert wearing funny clothes, eating funny stuff, all of them people sinned out, he's a wild man and he's out there dunking people in the water and we pigeonhole him as that guy." The thing that dominated his life and his ministry more than anything else is the idea of repentance. There's not baptism. Baptism was only an expression of the repentance that had taken place in somebody's life. All of the crazy things that he did and said and all the, none of that matters, the most important thing about John is that he called men and women and boys and girls to repent. Turn away from your sin and turn to Jesus. Have a change of mind that results in a change of life. Repentance itself is a funny thing, not just the man who preached it but repentance. When I say repentance, I'm guessing that most of you don't just well up with warm fuzzies. It's a word that in the English language, at least in our day and time, has a negative connotation. It sort of makes you bristle, it sort of makes your spine stand up straight and you say, "Oh, repentance. I remember as a child one time at our church we had a public repentance service. It was the most miserable hour of my life sitting in there. It wasn't fun. It wasn't pleasant. You hear the word repent and you just think, "Ah, it's just a negative word. It's a confrontational word. You're getting in other people's business. You're meddling. It just doesn't sound enjoyable." Look at the things that John talked about in verse 3, he says, "Repent." Verse 7, he calls people snakes. Verse 8, "Repent," verse 9, "The axe is laid to the tree and there's fire and there's judgment." Verse 11, he exposes greed. Verse 13, he talks about abusing power. Verse 14, he talks about greed and being content. Verse 16, "There's more fire and there's judgment." Verse 17, "It's unquenchable fire." Verse 19, he's rebuking Herod for his adulterous relationship with his brother, his brother's wife. And in all of that, here's how Luke summarizes John's message. Luke chapter 3, verse 18, "With many other exhortations he preached good news to the people." Some translations say he preached the gospel to the people. Some translations, the King James and the new King James, leave out that word, good news or gospel, but the meaning of the verb is he preached, he proclaimed good news. And I read that this week and I thought, "That's not how we think about repentance." Here's a guy who said, "Repent, repent, repent, repent, repent, repent, repent." And Luke says he just walked around preaching good news. And I say, "Wait a minute, we don't think about repentance as good news. We think of repentance as the bad news, but Luke is saying repentance is the good news. Everything that John said when he talked about repentance and fire and judgment and you need to change your life and you're a sinner and you're snakes, Luke says all of that is good news. And so this morning we just need to step back for a second, we need to recalibrate what we think about good news because there's a lot of churches. I think most churches would say, "We are preaching the good news. We are here to preach the good news." But you understand that there's a lot of churches today who have made the intentional decision to say, "In our preaching the good news, we don't want to talk about repentance." If somebody came into our church and they were, that might make them uncomfortable. We're not going to talk about sin, we're not going to call this sin or that sin. There's a growing number of churches that will not even say the word sin from the platform. And Luke would say, "You're missing the good news." According to Luke and what we see in Luke 3 and throughout the gospel of Luke and throughout the book of Acts, here's the good news. Good news is that the one true living God in heaven is a holy, holy, holy God. You and I, on the other hand, are not. We're sinners, sinners, sinners, sinners. Our sin separates us from God and our separation from God and the sin problem of our life is a problem that we can never solve on our own. And the good news comes in and says that God has done for you and for me what we could never do for ourselves. He sent the Son of Man to seek and to save what was lost and in Jesus' life he earned the righteousness that you and I have not earned and in his death he took the punishment that you and I should have received and the call on our lives is very, very simple. Repent and believe. Turn away from your sin and turn to Jesus. Have a change of mind that results in a change of life. When you do that, there's forgiveness, there's salvation, there's new life that God promises to you. And if you've never done that before and you do it for the first time, Luke and John the baptizer and Paul and all the lot of them would say the next step for you is to be baptized. Not because it's some kind of magical ritual but because that's how you express your faith. That's how you proclaim your faith to the world. That's the good news. And if you leave any of that out, it's no longer good news. John is saying before you can be ready for Jesus, your heart has to be grieved over sin. And until your heart is grieved over sin, you are not ready for Jesus. So he talks about repentance. Two more ideas that we will cover quickly and we'll wrap up. Number three, gospel ministry always points people to Jesus and sometimes it results in earthly suffering. I'm not talking about quote unquote gospel ministry that the preacher has called to. I'm called to the book of Ephesians kind of ministry that all believers are called to. Following Jesus always means you're pointing others towards Christ and sometimes it means that suffering is going to come into your life because you're pointing others to Christ. You think about John, you can read verse 15, 16, 17. He had an opportunity to make a name for himself, to build a ministry, to raise up an empire. John the Baptist ministries, it has a nice ring to it. And instead of pointing people to himself, he said, I'm not the guy, but he's coming and you need to get ready. Please be aware of any preacher, Sunday school teacher, author, preacher on TV, televangelist, anyone who would point you to themself rather than to Jesus, who would make a big deal about them and their ministry rather than pointing you to Jesus. And be aware of anyone who promises you some sort of pie in the sky, health and wealth gospel because John didn't believe it, verse 18, 19, 20, John suffered because he called people to repent and because he pointed people to Jesus. And there's a little interlude there about John being thrown in prison by Herod. We're going to come back to that in Luke chapter 7. We're going to talk about what happened to John and how it was all worked out, but understand this morning that serving Jesus, following Jesus means pointing others to him, not to yourself, not to a manual, not to any church or building or denomination but pointing people to Jesus and get ready because sometimes doing that very thing will mean that you suffer. Last idea is this, number four, Jesus of baptism, father, son and spirit confirmed the divine plan for Jesus to seek and save the lost. Luke has a brief account of Jesus' baptism. He doesn't spend much time talking about it, but what he tells us is that when Jesus was baptized, the Trinity was in action. The father was there and he spoke a word of affirmation over the son, "You are my son and with you I am pleased." And the son was there, not needing to repent, not needing to be baptized, but identifying with you and me, the people that he came to seek and the people that he came to save. And the spirit was there descending on Jesus to empower him and to prepare him for the ministry that lay ahead and the temptation that lay ahead and ultimately the suffering that lay ahead. And at the end of this passage, we're reminded that the stories about John are really not stories about John. He's there, he's a character, he plays a role, but Luke 3 is not about John the Baptist. And if you leave today wanting to be more like John the Baptist, you've missed it completely. It's not about John, it's about Jesus, it's about the son of man who came to seek and to save the lost. And God used a nobody who he had saved by his grace to prepare the way for Jesus, the son of man, so that he could come to seek and to save the lost. This morning we're going to call you to respond and we're going to do it boldly, like John the Baptist would, and I'm just going to say to you that some of you for the very first time in your life need to repent. Maybe you have been around church, you can answer the questions, you say, I've always believed in a sense, but I need to repent, I need a change in my mind that leads to a change in my life. I need to turn from sin and I need to turn to Jesus. Some of you of you this morning need to put your faith in Jesus for the very first time. Have you been trusting in, well I was baptized, well I walked the aisle, well I shook hands with the preacher, well I invited him, you need to put your faith in who Jesus is and what he accomplished for you on the cross. Others of you need to celebrate. You need to celebrate the fact that even though you are a wretched sinner like me, that God began to work in you, that he used the preaching, the teaching, the proclamation of somebody to open your heart to the truth, that he gave you the gift of repentance, that he opened your eyes to put your faith in Jesus Christ, and that he poured salvation into your life that you never deserved. I'm going to ask you to bow and we're going to pray, guys are going to come and lead us in music and we will respond in a way that would honor the Lord. That's our hope, that's our prayer father. We're grateful for the Bible. We're grateful for the passage that we've looked at. We do thank you for John, for who he is, for how you used him. Father, we pray that we would learn lessons from his life but that we would look to Jesus as the hero of this story. Father, we did not deserve, we do not deserve, we will never deserve the Son of Man coming to seek and to save what was lost. But our hope is on Jesus, on his blood, that was shed for our sins. Father, we believe that he is the cornerstone of our faith. We're excited about the fact that he reigns today in heaven and that he's promised to come back for us, his church. Father, there's people in the room who need to meet Jesus for the very first time today. Father, they need a change of mind that leads to a change in life. There are things that they need to turn from and there's a person that they need to turn to. Father, others of us have done that and we need to do it again today. We need to confess our sins believing that when we do that, you are faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us. Father, we need to renew and confirm our faith in your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, we want to respond through worship, through prayer, through repentance, through public proclamation of what you have done or what you are doing in our lives and Father in all of the ways that we respond this morning. We want you to receive the glory and the honor. We do not want to point people towards us, but we want to point people towards Jesus. Be honored as we sing, we ask it, in Jesus' name, amen.