Practical Living

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast. I pray that through this message, you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us.

As we continue our series together entitled Lifequakes, I would invite you this morning to join me in giving a good strong welcome to all the folks in Frederick and Clarksburg. Good morning to all of our campuses there. We welcome you. Of course, always welcome those who are joining us online as well as we continue the series together entitled Lifequakes.

We're on our 20th message in this series. We started back in January with this theme together. I trust that it has been a blessing. I know that I have certainly enjoyed preparing these messages and they've been a blessing to my heart, and I hope to yours as well. Just a quick reminder of two things. First of all, thank you for all of you that served last week at Sun Fun and all you parents that entrusted your kids to us.

It was an incredible week. Because of your giving and because of your serving, we saw 150 kids give their lives to Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? Absolutely amazing. Your giving and your serving make that possible. Church is not just one or two people doing something; it's everybody working together in both giving and serving. We thank you for your faithfulness in that regard.

Also, just a quick reminder. This year, the 4th of July actually lands on a Saturday, which makes it quite interesting if you have Saturday night church. This is our 250th anniversary for our nation. Aren't we thankful for the United States of America? Aren't we blessed to live in this country? I know that many of you probably have plans for the 4th of July.

Just so that everybody knows, we will not have a Saturday night service this coming week on the 4th of July, but all services will transpire on July 5th, that Sunday. Not that you have a night off; we hope you'll still live for Jesus on the 4th of July, but we just will not have church here on that evening. We hope you'll have a great time celebrating our nation's 250th birthday.

We're talking about dealing with doubt today and how we deal with it. We've been on this topic for the last two weekends, talking about how to actually deal with doubt in your life and the overall theme of Lifequakes. I defined for you what a lifequake is. A lifequake is anything that comes into your world that causes a sudden shock in your life, or maybe a gradual shock in your life, but it shakes you up and knocks you off of your footing in some sense.

Jesus made it very clear that every person goes through shaking moments in life, difficult moments in life. Even as a Christian believer, you're not insured against any kind of problems. Even as Christians, we have problems, and the Bible is very clear about this. Jesus himself gave us a story in Matthew chapter seven where he talked about two men building houses.

He talked about a man building a house on a solid rock, describing this as being the rock of God's word and obedience to God's word. Another man built his house on sand, the shifting sands of society around him, whatever the case might have been that Jesus was referring to. The storms of life came to both men. It came to the man whose house was built on the rock, and it came to the man whose house was built on sand.

However, there's a big distinction between the two. Only the man whose house was built on the rock stood the test of the storm. When life shook him, he remained firm because he was well-established on the truth of God's word, obedience to God's word, and trust in his relationship with God. It makes a difference what your foundation is. This series is about helping us to understand how to build our lives on the rock of God's word so that when things do come our way, we're not destroyed by them.

We talked a couple of weekends ago about doubt being one of these shaking things that has shaken up a lot of people over time. Doubt comes into their system, and they find they're a little shaky in relationship to God, their beliefs, and so forth. How do you deal with this subtle kind of enemy or subtle kind of storm called doubt? I described for you the fact that we should never be surprised by it.

Great men and women of the Bible experienced doubt from time to time. They simply knew how to address it. You shouldn't be surprised if doubts come your way. It's just a part of living life and a part of the enemy's strategy oftentimes against us. I talked to you about the importance of accepting unknowns because some things you're going to doubt because you just don't know.

You're not sure, and some mysteries just belong to God. We'll only understand it when we get to heaven. We have to accept the realities that we're not going to know everything and understand everything. That's just a reality of life, a reality of our limited capacity as human beings and the greatness and the great wisdom of our God. Then we talked about determining your ultimate source of truth.

If you're going to deal with doubts, you have to have something that allows you to go back to a source of truth. We began last weekend talking about these sources of truth that you need to have. I described three of them for you. You need to be solidly confident in the fact that God exists, that God is real and that he exists. You need to be confident in the fact that his word is true and reliable, that you can always count on his word being true.

There's one more that we're going to talk about today. In fact, let me go ahead and give you the main point for today. It's a reiteration to some degree of what I talked about last weekend, although I'm going to add a third point to it. To be confident, if we're going to overcome doubt, you have to be confident in God's existence, God's word, and the third element: confidence in God's Son.

To deal with doubt the right way, you have to have a solid confidence in the fact that God exists, in the fact that God's word is true, and that God's Son is truly Jesus Christ revealed to us in the scriptures. Before we go any further, let's define doubt here for us. It'll be on the screen. Doubt is a state of uncertainty, hesitation, or lack of confidence regarding something that is believed, hoped for, or claimed to be true.

What is doubt? It's a state of uncertainty. I'm just not as certain as I used to be about something. Or it's a state of hesitation. I used to be really committed to this, but I'm kind of hesitating in my commitment a bit, or I've lost some confidence in what I believed to have been true or hoped to be true. Whatever I've claimed to be true, I've lost some certainty about it.

The only cure for doubt, which is uncertainty, is to go back to something that is certain. You have to attach yourself to something that is certain to overcome anything that is uncertain in your life. That certainty comes from a source of truth. What do you rely on as being your source of truth? A source of truth is many different things for people. Sometimes people become their own source of truth.

"I'm only going to believe what I believe, and I'm my own source of truth." Sometimes people's source of truth is what the world around them tells them. "I'm only going to believe what the world says is true." They may not consciously say this, but they're adopting their sense of belief from the culture around them. These things that people are using as their source of truth are really not truth at all.

In fact, they're deceptions and lies, and people are building their lives sadly upon lies instead of real truth. You need to know what is really, really true and believe what is really, really true and be certain of what's really, really true because that's your weapon, your ammunition against doubt. If you don't have this in place, you might have a gun but it's not going to have any bullets in it. You might have a cannon but there'll be no cannonballs.

You'll have no ability to fight back the doubt when it comes your way. As we've already described, there are three elements, like three foundational stones. Number one, I believe that God exists. I'm confident; nobody can ever shake me from the fact: is there a God? The answer every time in my life is yes, there is a God, and it's a fool that says there is no God.

Then I'm going to build my life on a second foundation. I've come to believe and be convinced of the fact that God's word is true. Men lie, culture lies, things around us will lie, circumstances will lie, but God's word is always true. It never ceases to be true. It is reliable. I'm going to always believe God exists, I'm going to always believe that God's word is true, and then I'm going to always add this third stone in this fight against doubt, and that is going to be my faith and confidence in the fact that God's Son is Jesus Christ and he's really, truly the Son of God.

When we talk about God's Son, it's important to dive into that a little bit because we can use that in church regularly and maybe not quite fully understand it. I want to help you to see today that there's an overarching theme all the way through scripture, from Genesis all the way through Revelation. The whole story of the Bible is a story of not only God's creation of man, but man becoming a lost soul because of sin.

Because of sin, man steps out of relationship with God and humanity. When I say man, I'm talking about men and women. Humanity has lost relationship with God. It happens very early in the history of man. In Genesis chapter three, we see Adam and Eve stepping away from God and sinning against God, and sin brought death into the world. We see that God created the world and humanity, but we as human beings rejected our creator.

Because of that, every person has been born into the world with a problem called sin. Every one of us has a sin nature. It's a part of what we are, and because we're lost and we have a sin nature, we need salvation. We can't do it for ourselves. Just like anyone that's lost, they will never get out of being lost unless someone comes along and helps them out of it. If you've ever been lost anywhere geographically, you understand at some point in time, you have to get some directions.

Somebody's got to help you in the process. The same is true for us in our lostness. We cannot get out of it ourselves. We need someone to save us from our lostness. From Genesis to Revelation, God reveals this incredible plan of salvation through a Messiah, an anointed one. That's what Messiah means. Christ, Messiah: anointed one. What does the Bible say about who the Messiah is?

If we need a Messiah and the Bible promises us a Messiah to save us from our condition called lostness and sinfulness, who is the Messiah? Scripture very clearly presents the Messiah as Jesus Christ. There's no doubt about it from scripture. Scripture presents Jesus dying for the sins of humanity, rising from the grave, and the story of Jesus is actually the overarching story of the entire Bible. We might say it this way: the Bible is history, and by that, I mean it's his story.

It's all the story of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. The story is about Jesus. Now as Jesus being the preeminent figure of scripture, let's see what the Bible says about this. Jesus himself described in John chapter five, verse 39, talking to those around him that day: "You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me." Jesus made that clear.

In Luke 24:27, then Jesus quoted them passage after passage from the writings of the prophets, beginning with the book of Genesis, and going right on through the scriptures, explaining what the passages meant and what they said about himself. We see that scripture points us out. How do we know then, if the Bible says that Jesus is the Messiah and scriptures say he's the Messiah, how do we know that the scriptures are accurate in describing him as the Messiah?

How do we know for sure that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah that died for the sins of the world and rose from the grave? I'm going to give you 11 facts this morning that will solidify, I hope, your belief in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. These 11 things are not original to me. I didn't come up with these. I came up with the wording of them, but you can study a variety of different Bible scholars and theologians and biblical apologists, and they're going to all find somewhere between 10 and 12.

These aren't original to me. These are things that have been studied out, but I do want to bring them to you from my perspective and my angle this morning to help you to understand why I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. This makes a huge difference for your life. Number one, the reason I believe that Jesus is the Son of God is because Jesus himself claimed to be God's Son.

If you claim to be the Son of God, you either are lying, or you're crazy, or you're real. There are only three options, right? If Jesus says, "I am the Son of God," he's either lying, deceiving people, or he's second of all just a lunatic. Anybody that walks around and says, "I'm God," we have places for people like that. Or else he has to have the ability to actually prove he is who he says he is. He has to be able to back up his claim.

Notice what Jesus said about himself in John chapter 10, verse 30: "I and the Father are one." He tied himself in that moment with the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. One God, three persons. In John chapter 14, verse nine, Jesus answered, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I've been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." John 20:30 and 31: "Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

The first reason that I believe, not only that the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, but that he indeed is, is because Jesus himself claimed to be the Son of God. Number two, the second reason why I have confidence that Jesus is the Son of God is by the miraculously fulfilled prophecies about Jesus. We could be here not only the rest of the day, but we could actually have multiple messages on this particular topic of prophecies alone.

Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies coming out of the Old Testament that prophets foretold of him thousands of years before he was born, certainly hundreds of years before he was born. Let me give you just a sampling of a few and show you how miraculous they are. Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, Isaiah speaking 700 years before Jesus comes on the scene. He's eternal Jesus, but before he comes in the flesh to Earth: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel," meaning "God with us."

When Gabriel the angel appears to Mary to announce to her that she's going to be the bearer of the Christ child, notice what was said. Mary's response to Gabriel was, "How can this be? I am a virgin." You see not only the prophecy going back to the Old Testament but the fulfillment of that prophecy. That's found in Luke chapter one. Micah chapter five, verse two: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."

This is the prophetic prediction again hundreds of years before Christ even comes on the scene from the standpoint of Earth and humanity. God coming in flesh to us, and he predicts exactly where he's going to be born. What's the city? O little town of Bethlehem. Where was Jesus born? O little town of Bethlehem. It's found in Luke chapter two. Isaiah 53, verse five: "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed."

Peter goes to great length in 1st Peter chapter two to describe this very passage was pointing to none other than Jesus himself. Why do I believe that Jesus is the Son of God? He said he was, and the prophecies were fulfilled pointing to the fact that he was. Thirdly, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God because Jesus performed thousands of miracles, confirming his supernatural nature and power. You might say thousands? Did he really perform thousands? Yes.

Not all the miracles that Jesus performed are in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He performed miracles that the book couldn't contain, the Bible says. Many times not only would he heal one person, but there were multitudes of people that would come to him. We know that one crowd was at least 5,000, so there must have been thousands of people that would come to Jesus to hear him and to come because of their sickness and their illnesses, and Jesus would heal them.

Acts 2, verse 22: "Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know." Jesus not only claimed to be the Son of God, he fulfilled the prophecies, and he performed miracles demonstrating his power as the Son of God. Number four, I'm confident that Jesus is the Son of God because Jesus' death was verified and his tomb vigilantly protected.

Before we get to this point, let me build an awareness of something for you. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, he grew up, and when he was 30 years of age, he entered into ministry having been baptized by John the Baptist. Jesus' ministry starts in Matthew chapter four and following. For about three, three and a half years, Jesus ministered. He taught, he ministered, he healed the sick, he drove demons out of people, he did incredible things: raised the dead, walked on water, all these things that we know about.

All this time, he's making his disciples know, "My ultimate end is to go to Jerusalem and to die for you, die for the sins of the world." The disciples didn't grasp it, they didn't understand it, but Jesus' whole mission was leading him to the fact that he was going to die. Men were not going to kill him; this is important to understand. Men didn't kill Jesus; Jesus is going to lay down his life freely for the sins of the world.

His life will not be taken from him; he will give his life up because he could have been delivered at any point. He could have called the angels down from heaven and been rescued and never had to suffer it, but he's in that moment saying, "No, I'm going to go; I'm going to lay down my life for you." Of course, we know this happened, that there's this moment when Jesus is arrested and he's then crucified on what we know to be Good Friday.

He hangs on the cross, and after he is on that cross and his death was verified, he's put into a tomb that is vigilantly protected. Why is the death of Jesus so important? It's important for our redemption because he's dying for the sins of the world, but it's also important to understand that you have to have death before you can have a resurrection. There is no miracle of the resurrection if there wasn't a reality of a death.

Are you with me this morning? We have to know: did Jesus really die? We can't claim a resurrection if we can't understand that Jesus actually died. Did he really die? There have been all kinds of ideas that have been floated around. Jesus didn't really die on the cross; he just sort of passed out, and they put him in a tomb and he woke up later and everybody said he was raised from the dead.

Or he didn't really die; he was kind of swooning around, and he gets up and the disciples go and pull him out and steal his body and then claim that he was alive again. But did Jesus really die? The Roman crucifixion should be enough to convince you that Jesus died. If you don't understand Roman crucifixion, it was brutal. Their whole purpose was to make you as miserable as possible and to make your death a very strong public reality that everybody saw, that you were put to death and you died as a public example to everybody that would walk by and see you hanging on a cross.

The brutal dimension of just the Roman crucifixion and what you can study historically about it should convince you of the fact that no one could survive something like that. It's going to kill you. Take a look at what happens here in John chapter 19, verse 33: "When they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead." The "they" are the Roman soldiers, not any of his friends, not anybody that's going to make up a story about this.

No, the Roman soldiers came to Jesus and found that he was already dead. They did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. He's already dead, but when you add the additional element of taking a spear and thrusting it through his side so that blood and water come out of his side, no one survives something like that. So Jesus truly died.

Matthew 27, verses 65 and 66: "'Take a guard,' Pilate answered. 'Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.' So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard." They took Jesus' body, they put it in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. The tomb was made available to Jesus' body by this man named Joseph of Arimathea. They lay him on the slab that's there, and they roll this massive stone in front of the covering, and they put a Roman seal on it and they post guards there.

They don't want anyone to make any claims about whether this man that declared himself to be the Messiah is going to come out again. So it's all sealed up. I believe that Jesus is the Messiah because there's verification to his death and there's verification to the fact that his tomb was sealed and vigilantly protected. You can't just walk out of a place like that.

Number five, why do I believe that Jesus is the Son of God? On the third day following Jesus' crucifixion and burial, multiple people witnessed the formerly sealed tomb of Jesus miraculously opened. This is on the third day. By the way, some people ask, "How is that three days if he's crucified on Friday and he rises on Sunday?" It's the way the Jews counted things. Any portion of a day was counted as a day by the Jews. Friday, day one; Saturday, day two; Sunday, day three.

So it is the third day. It's the way they counted days in that age and that perspective. So we see that in fact on that third day, on that Easter morning, Jesus came up out of the grave on that day. Notice here what happens. Matthew chapter 28, verses five and six: "The angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.'" That is where he used to be. He's not there right now.

John 20, three through seven: "So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first." John was faster than Peter. He reached the tomb first. "He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen."

You see the burial cloth of Jesus lying there, but there is no body there because the resurrected, glorified body of Jesus has now come to life once again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Number six, we can be confident in Jesus being God's Son because there are many eyewitness records of experiences and interactions with the post-resurrected Jesus. Post-resurrected means after his resurrection. There are a lot of eyewitnesses that had experiences and interactions with Jesus after he rose from the grave.

When you go to a court of law and you're presenting a case in a court of law, what you cannot bring would be hearsay testimony. Hearsay testimony's never acceptable in a court of law. It's going to get kicked out every time. You can't have hearsay, like, "I heard somebody say that they saw Jesus." That's not testimony admissible in court. But eyewitness testimony is always admissible in court.

"This is what I saw. This is what I heard." So we have to ask ourselves the question: are the testimonies we are about to read hearsay, or are they eyewitness testimony? If they're eyewitness testimony, these are admissible as evidence. Let's see what happens here. Luke 24 describes the very day of Jesus' resurrection. "Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened."

They're still talking about the crucifixion and the pain, the agony of all of that because they were disciples of Jesus. "As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came and walked along with them." Here are two guys that are disciples of Jesus talking about what they've experienced over the last couple of days, and now suddenly, it's not two, it's three. The third one is Jesus himself.

Verse 30: "When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?' They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem." They began to give testimony of their experience with Jesus, the resurrected Christ. Not hearsay. If you've got somebody walking with you, you're an eyewitness.

A passage that you should know as a Christian is 1st Corinthians chapter 15, verses three through eight. Paul writes and says, "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas," that's Peter, "and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

Paul writes and says, "I got this realization of what happened here. Jesus died according to the scriptures, he rose from the grave, and then he appeared. He appeared to Peter, then he appeared to over 500 others, many of whom are still living while I'm writing this right now." Had Paul been writing something that was false, what could those people say? "No, that's not true at all." Because he acknowledges they're still living, he's adding validity to their testimony because dead people can't deny what he says, but living people certainly could.

Paul adds this: they're still living, so go talk to them. "I wrote it, but go find them, talk to them, because some of them are still alive; they'll verify what I'm telling you right now." That he appeared to James and then of course we see that ultimately he appeared to Paul. Number seven, the seventh reason why I believe that Jesus is God's Son is because following Jesus' resurrection, he spent 40 days with his disciples, providing them convincing proofs that he was indeed alive.

Acts chapter one, verse one: "In my former book," Luke writing here, "Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive." Jesus is alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

Number eight, the reason I believe that Jesus is the Son of God is because the weak, fearful disciples were transformed into bold, courageous preachers of Jesus' resurrection, willingly risking their lives to share the message. There's so much we could say about this. The disciples were there when Jesus was arrested at the Garden of Gethsemane. He's taken ultimately to the house of Caiaphas where he's charged and then ultimately before Herod and Pilate and finally the death sentence is placed upon him because the people are saying, "Crucify him, crucify him."

Somewhere along that line, Peter denies him and runs away weeping bitterly, and ultimately all the other disciples desert him with the exception of one. From the record of scripture, there's only one disciple, one of Jesus' original 12 disciples, that was there at the cross with Jesus. It was John. We know that because Jesus said, "John, this is your mother," and, "Mom, this is your son." This is the moment that John is charged with the responsibility of taking care of Jesus' mother. So the only disciple left there was John.

What we see a little later is we see that all those other disciples, and then adding with them John with the exception of Judas who's now the betrayer, he's gone, they end up in an upper room in Jerusalem with locked doors because they're afraid. They're thinking, "If they did that to him, we're next because we've been committed to him, and they know we're his disciples, and they think we're going to carry on this stuff, so we're afraid of what's going to happen to us."

Somewhere between John 19, 20, 21, somewhere along that you'll see the fact that Jesus, while they're in the upper room and it's this Sunday morning that they've gathered, Thomas would not have been there because Thomas will come in the next week after that. Thomas is in his season of doubt right now. But the Bible says that Jesus came through the locked doors and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

And he breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Incredible. And this same group of disciples who were so fearful, locking themselves away afraid that they're going to be killed, it's not long before they're running everywhere preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ without any fear at all. In fact, we will see in the history of the apostles that all of them, with the exception of course of Judas who unfortunately betrayed the Lord and ended up taking his own life and John who lived out a full life because he doesn't die except in old age, all the other disciples will be martyred for their faith.

You don't die for something you don't know to be true. You die for things that you know to be true. Acts chapter four, verse 13: "When they saw," when the Pharisees, the spiritual leaders in Jerusalem, "saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." So this experience of great boldness and courage was attributed to the fact that these folks had seen and been with Jesus. I believe it certainly refers to the resurrected Jesus.

Number nine, why do I believe that Jesus is the Son of God? I believe it because opponents and skeptics of Jesus were transformed from unbelievers to believers. There were people that didn't believe in Jesus before he died and was resurrected that believed in him after he died and rose from the grave. They were skeptics before; they became believers after the resurrection of Jesus. They were convinced of it.

One of those was actually Jesus' half-brother, James. James becomes a follower of his half-brother who was now, obviously, ascended to heaven, and he becomes a believer after the resurrection. We also see Thomas. He was a skeptic, but now he becomes convinced. The greatest story of all in all of this, all these are great stories, but the most dramatic of these stories is Saul of Tarsus himself. Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee.

He hated Christians. He hated them. He wanted them killed. In fact, he's going to be the very one that when Stephen, one of the early leaders of the early church, was stoned, put to death by people throwing rocks at him, Saul was standing watching the whole thing and holding the coats of people who were throwing stones at Stephen to kill him. He hated Christians. He was not inclined to believe in Jesus at all.

He thought it was a bunch of garbage. He thought it was going to ruin people and it was a deception. In his mind, he said, "I've got to get rid of all these Christians." With that backdrop, let's look at Acts chapter nine. "Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way," the followers of Jesus, "whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem."

"As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus.'" By the way, if you're not alive, you can't speak. If you're talking to dead people, you've got a problem. So this is the living Savior right here. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

We know the amazing story of how Saul was converted that day. He puts his faith in Christ. He becomes an incredible preacher both to the Jews and primarily to the Gentiles as well. The story of Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul, the Apostle Paul, is an incredible story of a man who met Jesus after his resurrection. Number 10, how can we be confident in Jesus as God's Son?

The Holy Spirit was sent, the church was birthed, and has endured as a witness to the truth of Jesus Christ for 2,000 plus years, despite extreme attacks and many efforts to silence and destroy it. Why do I believe that Jesus is alive and is indeed the Son of God? Because the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost, and this thing we call the Church was birthed. This church, all those who lay claim to Jesus Christ, was birthed on the day of Pentecost and it has endured for over 2,000 years, although there have been many people that have tried to stamp it out and stop it and push it underground.

The work of Jesus through his church has continued and will continue because Jesus promised one thing: "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades or Hell will not overcome it." People have tried to stamp out the church, push it underground, but the church has still prevailed throughout all of the millennia and centuries of time. Why? Because it's real. The power behind the church is not the power of some man's personality; it's not the power of some great organization; it's not the power of some enduring institution.

The power of the church is the power, the sustaining, enduring power of the Holy Spirit of God. That's why the church exists. And the church will continue to exist until Jesus comes back again one day and he catches the church up together in the sky with him, and we will be with the Lord forever. That day is coming someday, and it's coming quicker than you would imagine. Jesus is coming soon. I don't know what soon is, but it's sooner than you ever imagined in your life.

Number 11, why do I believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Because countless people have encountered the life-changing grace of the resurrected Jesus. If we had all the time in the world this morning, we could line up down the aisle here and have you walk by here, and I could have person after person give a testimony of the day they met Jesus. Anybody in the room remember when you met Jesus in your life? Do you remember when you met him?

It wasn't a figment of your imagination; it wasn't something you just thought of and said, "Well, I think I'll just be a Christian." No, it's a conversion moment when you gave your life to Jesus Christ. It happened to me when I was seven years old. I'd gone to bed one night. I'd heard the gospel message many, many times. My dad was a pastor, and I sat through many of his messages, gone to Sunday school, heard the word of God.

But I'd never personally made a decision for Christ. I was seven years old. I went to bed one night or tried to go to bed, and I'm lying in my bed and I had this amazing, incredible sense of conviction that came over me: "You need to be saved." I wasn't thinking about that; it wasn't even on my mind. But there in that moment, the Holy Spirit came into the room of a seven-year-old little boy. I had this sense, "I don't know if I'm going to heaven if I die. I want to make sure that I'm right with God."

I had this awareness inside of me that I needed to be saved. The only thing I knew to do at that moment was to call my dad. I cried out, "Dad, would you come in my room for a minute?" My dad came in the room and he said, "Son, what do you need?" I said, "Dad, I want to be saved. I need to be saved." Dad took the book of Romans and he walked me through passages on salvation. Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

"Son, have you sinned against God? Have you been disobedient to God?" "Yes, I know I'm a sinner." Romans 5:8: "But God commended his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "Do you understand that God still loves you although you're a sinner, and he demonstrated his love for you that Jesus died on the cross?" "Yes, Dad, I understand that." Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord."

"Do you understand that if you continue to reject Jesus, the ultimate payment of that is death, but there's a free gift that he's offering you?" "Yes." Then he took me to Romans 10, nine and 10. He either read or quoted that passage. "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

And then verse 13 adds to that: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." He says, "Son, do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins? Do you believe that he rose from the grave and that he's alive?" "Yes, I believe in that." And then he led me in a prayer, very similar to the prayer that I pray at the end of every service. The reason that I give an altar call at the end of every service is because I believe the Spirit is always drawing people to Jesus.

Right now, all across Montgomery and Frederick County, the greater DC area, the Spirit of God is at work, pulling people toward Jesus. The book of Revelation says the Spirit and the bride say, "Come." The reason that I give an invitation every week is because if the Spirit is calling, then the bride needs to call too. And who is the bride? We are the bride of Christ. That's why I give an invitation every week for people to accept Christ in their lives.

I found out just the other day there was a man that years ago, a young man that drove into our parking lot—he'd not been in church—drove into our parking lot one service because he was interested in learning more about Jesus. He came back the next week and gave his life to Jesus Christ. I never met him. He went to church somewhere else. I found out later that he had gone on to seminary, and he'd been a missionary somewhere in Asia for like nine or 10 years, and now he's in South America as a missionary.

He walked through the doors and he accepted Jesus at an invitation right here in this building. The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." So my dad led me in a prayer. You need to be sincere when you pray it. It's not some magic prayer that you pray; it needs to come from your heart. But if you will sincerely pray this kind of prayer to Jesus: "Lord Jesus, come into my life. I believe that you died for my sins. I believe that you rose from the grave, and I ask you into my life."

That day changed me. It didn't make me a perfect little boy. I still needed some discipline along the way. But it changed my life so that I can stand here in 2026 and I can look back on that day and I know that that was the day that I met a living Savior. Not dead religion. I didn't commit myself to a religion that day; I met Jesus as my Savior. I met him as a little boy, and I knew he's alive.

He's real. He's not some myth. I have no desire for religion at all. All religion does is patch you down with rules and rituals and regulations. Do this, do this. And then do it a thousand times over for the rest of your life. And somehow you hope that when you die, God measures the good things you've done with the bad things you've done. That's not how it works. Because we can't make our lives right.

Only Jesus can. And he paid the price for me. He did what I could never do for myself so that his righteousness was given to me as a free gift. I don't earn it, don't deserve it, but he's given to me a free gift of salvation because I put my faith in him as the one who died and rose from the grave. 1st Peter chapter one, verses eight and nine: "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

I want to firmly declare today: I believe God exists. I believe the Bible is true. And I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Would you bow your heads with me right now? Lord, I thank you this morning for the important reminder of who you are, that Jesus, you are the living Son of God. I pray that in all of our hearts and lives today, that reality would be strong and real. Not religious, not mental, but let it be in our hearts today. Let us walk out of this place with faith in the resurrected Savior and a relationship with you. Seal this in our hearts by your Spirit, we pray. In Jesus' name.

I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Right where you are, just simply bow your head with me, and I'm going to give you a prayer to pray. From the sincerity of your heart, call upon God, and I promise you that he will hear and answer you. So let's pray together. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Let there come from your heart just the declaration of his name.

Say: Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, that I have fallen short with you. I'm sorry for all of my sins. Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God's Son. I believe that you are the Savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that you rose from the grave, that you are alive today. Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. Give me a new start in you. I commit my life to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Now if you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's word that says that when we call upon God's name, we call upon the Son of God, there is salvation that comes to our lives. He changes us from the inside out, and you become a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new, and that's exactly what has happened to you today. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church and you begin to study God's word.

Get God's word in you, and make sure that you get a copy of the Bible if you don't have one and begin to read it. Spend some time every day in prayer. And I would encourage you also to check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get those into your hands; get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today. May God bless you, and we look forward to seeing you next time.