I Believe in Jesus Christ

Good morning, Salt Church. How are you doing today? Glad to have you with us this morning. Thanks for that nice kiss, Alex, on the way up. It always makes me feel special.

If y'all don't know Alex, he's a kisser. He's a Hawaiian, so he kisses. It doesn't matter if you're male or female. I'm feeling good, though. Welcome all of you who are new with us.

I also want to welcome Clinton Community Church from Clinton, North Carolina that are visiting with us today. Thank you guys. They're on a retreat this weekend and just excited to have you guys with us today. And all of you who are guests, just why don't you connect with us over in the connections area after the church. You can fill out one of those blue cards.

If you're online, saltchurch.org slash card, we would love to connect with you. If you have your Bibles, if you have your digital devices or whatever you have to turn to, we do have a Bible.com. If you download the Bible on Bible.

com, you can connect with our live event and get all of our notes there. Or if you're just a paper person, you can turn to Colossians 1 15 through 19. We'll be dealing with our subject here. By the way, happy Martin Luther King weekend. Yeah, yeah.

So glad that we have, not only do we get a nice vacation day, but it is really just awesome to take a day and reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King, who, against all odds, took up a calling from God, straight from God, to do something powerful. And bring people together of all races, of all colors. I remember the song, red and yellow, black and white. We are precious in His sight.

And in heaven, that's what it's going to be. And this is a day to reflect on that, that we are a diverse church, got many cultures, many backgrounds, many races. We all come together to worship under one God. Amen. Amen.

This is what heaven's going to be like. And this weekend is an opportunity as churches to meditate and think about that, you know, that although there's a lot of tension out there in the world, we don't have to have that tension in here. Amen. In the church and in our family. So praise God for that.

Also, if you're new with us, we do have a guest lunch after the service. Go to our table and you can sign up for that. Let us know that you're coming. Also, next week is going to be a really special week. We're commissioning some elders and we're going to have some of our leadership up here as well.

We've had some transitions in the new year with leadership and elders. And we would love for you to be a part of that process. We were excited about that as well. And I do want to challenge you, you know, to during the series, this is really, it's a heavy series. We've taken time to series just.

I've dug deep. I've done a lot of research. I really believe that God has called us in this Planted series to really minister to some people and I believe it's going to really change some hearts. So be sure to invite somebody, you know, let's invite somebody to church this new year and bring them into the house because I really think that God has something special and that's something I've been praying about, you know, this as we're going through 21 days of prayer and fasting. Some of you are participating.

Some of you may not. Some of you may have just heard about it. You're like, whoa, I didn't know we were in 21 days of prayer and fasting. We're fasting till the 29th of January, but you can jump in right now. Any type of fast you want to do, it doesn't matter to us just as long as you participate.

And one thing we're praying for also is a facility. Amen. Amen. Can I get a good amen for all of our wonderful volunteers and those who set up and break down every morning? Every morning mobile churches is very difficult, but we love that we have a space to meet, but it doesn't hold our vision.

It doesn't hold our vision. Our vision is so much bigger and we need to reposition ourselves this year to be able to reach more people for Jesus Christ. So that's something I want all of us to pray about during this time of prayer and fasting. But, okay, let's get started today. We are in a series called Planted.

Let's look at Colossians 1, 15 through 19. It says this, The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him. Father, help me today to be able to take something so heavy and so deep and be able to communicate it in a 30-minute period. I need your help, Lord.

Thank you for your word. Amen. So the idea of this series, Planted, comes from the Scripture in Jeremiah 17, 7, which says, Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who is like a tree planted by the water where the roots dig in deep. Thank you. and filter into that stream so when the heat and the dryness come that there will still be green leaves, there will still be fruit that will come from it.

And as I was praying about this series, and I kind of introduced it last week, you know, a lot of times we start a series in the new year about new me, new this, new that. But I felt like we needed to go back to the foundational pieces that start off our year. What do we believe? Why do we believe what we believe? And when the heat and when the storm comes and when things happen in life, and when we question God and question his existence, what do we go back to?

Do we have that foundation? Do we have that root system that goes deep into the ground and hits the water source in which gives us life and gives us hope? What do we do with that? So that's my purpose and hope for this sermon series, that perhaps you will get a greater understanding or grab a greater understanding of why you believe what you believe. Why am I a Christian?

Why do I call myself this thing called a Christian? And we're examining what we call the Apostles' Creed, 140 AD that was put together. They felt a need to put some structure in place for the Christian church who were going through persecution. And there was a lot of heresy going around as well, and they needed some structure behind it. And they were building these walls, these weight-bearing walls.

If you understand load-bearing walls, if you're a contractor, you know that those walls have to be in place in order for a structure to stand. The structural integrity of an object or a building has to have those load-bearing walls. And these, symbolically, are load-bearing walls to this very thing we have Christianity. That if any of these fall apart, if any of these pieces in this creed fall apart, these essentials of the faith, we can disagree on certain styles of worship, whether it's power cords or pipe organs, you know. We can have those differences there, right?

We can worship, we can believe and be convicted about certain things, but essentially we fall on these things. We agree on these things. If we steer away from the things that the Apostles' Creed give us, then we have to part ways as brothers and sisters in the faith. But we can stand. The whole church stands on these things.

Essentials of unity, non-essentials of liberty, all things charity. Amen? So we're looking at these things. And here's the deal. There's no mystical value necessarily in the statements that are said in a creed or in this particular creed.

It's very powerful, and my hope is that as we say it, there's some kind of demonstration of God being who He is, and perhaps someone would come to the understanding of Christ. And my hope was that people would be saved and know God. But the purpose of the creed is not an incantation, but a consolidation of everything we believe. There's a million words in the Bible. Where do we start?

Where do we go? So how do we explain? To explain what we believe, we can start anywhere. We can start at any place, but we can condense it down to this very thing, and that's what the early fathers of the church did. They condensed it down to these very things, so that we could hold true to that which we believe.

So, it's important. It's important that we know why we are Christians. So, we're dealing with the part of the creed today. Last week, we talked about the Father. But this week, we're dealing with the part of the creed that says, I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

So, this part of the creed really, really focuses on Jesus, okay? We're dealing with Jesus, and it's a bulky part of the creed. It's a heavy part of the creed. In fact, there's 24 statements in the Apostles' Creed, and 14 of those statements is about Jesus. Why?

Because Jesus is the center. I don't know if that was purposeful. I'm sure it was. But everything hinges on Jesus and who He is. And last week, we talked about the Father and who He was.

And on down the line, we're going to talk about in a few weeks, the Holy Spirit. And this is basically, this creed is a conglomerate of what Jesus taught, the baptismal formula that He taught about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we baptize somebody, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, it's a processing of those particular beliefs that we hold true to. And the thing is, you know, Jesus believed this about Jesus, that He was Lord, that He was God, He was Christ.

And if Jesus believed it, it must be important. He even said it, right? And if we miss this, we miss the whole thing. In fact, Sinclair Patterson said it like this, Take away from Christianity the name and person of Jesus Christ, and what do you have? Nothing.

Nothing. The whole substance and strength of the Christian faith centers in Jesus Christ. Without Him, there is absolutely nothing. There's nothing. Why are we here if Jesus isn't Lord, if Jesus isn't Christ?

And Paul even said it. He said, you know, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, if Jesus isn't God, then let's just, why are we wasting our time? Why are we even doing this? So, why are we Christians? That's the question.

And of any other name, just think about this for a second. There's something powerful about the name of Jesus. Why of any other name? Is Jesus the one used when we use something in vain, or if we debase a name or historical figure? I mean, are we just spouting out, like, when people say, Jesus Christ, you know?

Jesus Christ. Why Jesus Christ? Why not Joan of Arc, or Wright Brothers, or, you know, just spout out some... Other historical name, but it's always Christ, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, come on.

You hear people yell out those names and you just want to respond with some other historical figure. There was one guy that said, you know, every time somebody used the Lord's name in vain, Jesus Christ, he would go, where, where, where? Is he coming back? You know, is he here? I mean, why else would you be yelling out his name, right?

Now, why is it that that name is so powerful? Let's talk about the name for a second, Jesus Christ, and Christ isn't his last name, okay? Some people say, well, Jesus is his first name and Christ is his last name. No, that's not what that is. Christ is his title and Jesus is the name that God gave him.

In fact, when the angel visited Mary, as a popular passage says of the Christmas story, it says, she will give birth to a son and you will give him the name, right? Jesus, because he will save his people from their sin. So he gave him the name Jesus, which Jesus is derived from Joshua, which in Hebrew is Yeshua, which is God is salvation. So he was named the very thing he was going to do, the power of the name of Jesus in which God gave him. And there's something special about a name.

There's something significant about something or someone's name, like your family name or your heritage or wherever. And even with our church and our ministry, we call ourselves Salt Church. And it wasn't just some kind of hip, hipster beach name that we came up with. There's significance behind the idea of salt. When Jesus taught that we are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world, he wasn't just saying it in some kind of figurative language.

He was actually calling us the salt of the earth. We are preservative of the entire world. And he's holding back his judgment because of what? The church. So that many can be saved.

So as many as possible can be saved. That's why we're here. God is actually holding back his judgment because of us. Because we are the salt. We are the light.

We are Jesus' church, his bride here in the world. And that's why we have this hope that everybody possible can be saved by virtue of salt, of us. So there's significance in a name. Names are very powerful. So we have Jesus and then we have Christ.

Christ, his title, which is Messiah or the literal meaning of that, shining one or anointed one. So he is the anointed one. He is the one that in the Old Testament for thousands of years that they were waiting for. The anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, finally come. The one that they were expecting.

It goes all the way back to when the world was first broken. That we live in a damaged, broken world and we see moments of good in the world. The one that we live in a world. And you know, that's God's light just shining through here and there, but we know that this world is hurting, this world is broken, this world is damaged, and this is the one, the Messiah that has come, the Christ, the anointed one, the shining one to bring light into the darkness of this world and to restore everything back. God's promise is that he would send this anointed one and he would bring paradise lost from the very beginning to paradise restored, that he'd bring everything back to perfect intention that he had in the beginning.

And the fact is, heaven doesn't end in the clouds, okay? The reason Christ come is not so that we can pluck a harp in the clouds somewhere for the rest of eternity, right? Heaven is more than just somewhere we go, it is here. We're bringing heaven into this world and Christ's return will bring full structure back to this broken world. It will be restored, it will be renewed with no more cancer, no more strokes, no more hurt, no more dysfunctions, okay?

No more war, no more hatred. Everything will be restored back to what it was originally intended to be. And heaven will come down and we will live paradise lost that was lost in the beginning will be once again be restored completely good, completely perfect in Christ. And that's the hope we have and one day we too will be changed. Yes, we're changed spiritually when we find Christ, we make a decision for Jesus, but we're also, we also one day will be changed wholly, physically.

This world will be changed physically, heaven on earth, heaven and earth together. The beauty of that, the wonder of that, that heaven and earth will come to full restoration. So, and we also learn back that in Genesis that he was the snake crusher, right? He's the snake crusher. That the serpent would bite his heel, but what would he do?

Crush the enemy's head. That's right. So that's the hope we live in. He's going to come back and he's going to do away with all that is plagued in this world. And that's our joy.

So that's, that's who Christ is. That's his name. That's the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. So when we say Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one that was to come, Jesus, the savior of the world, he comes. That's who he is.

That's who he is. So why should we leave this? Let me give you just four reasons. I believe we should hold on to this truth as not just some figment of our imagination or some historical thing that happened a long time ago that the heat is. Jesus Christ, our Lord.

First of all, we see the identity of Christ, of Jesus, the identity of Jesus. He didn't just change Christianity, he changed the world. He changed the world. In fact, Jaroslav Peligen, I know that's a funny name, but he wrote this about Jesus and his identity. He said, regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost 20 centuries.

No matter what you believe about him, he has been the dominant centerpiece of culture. And it is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars. It is by his name that millions curse, and in his name that millions pray. Millions curse and millions pray. That name, that Jesus, what is it about that name?

Why is it that when someone is frustrated, they don't say in the name of Buddha, in the name of Krishna? It's always Jesus Christ. Why does that name bring, for better or for worse, some kind of thing inside people. It's his identity. His savior identity is what brings about that.

Everything aligns. History aligns on the idea. And most people would not even argue one point about him not being a historical figure. His identity, who he was in history. Second thing is his ancestry.

The ancestry of Jesus. Who Jesus came from. He was the Son of God. He was called the Son of God. He was also called the Son of Man.

He came from God and came from man. The creed says this, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, fully God, and born of the Virgin Mary, fully man. Fully God and fully man. How does that work?

How does that even process in our brains? It's hard. The incarnation. We call this the incarnation where God actually put on flesh. God Almighty came down and became flesh on our behalf and he entered into the very story that he was writing.

He said, I'm going to put myself in this story and I'm going to bring my son into this story. And he laid down, Jesus laid down his divine crown, his divine privileges so that he could come to this world and save it. It's just wild. It's not a subtraction of his divinity, but an addition of humanity. He added to who we are.

He added to this whole thing. And fully God, but relying on the Father. We see God relying on the Father. How's thatEM? All right.

Separated Himself from His kingship to become human, to rely on the Father and trust in the Holy Spirit, to teach us how and guide us how to live this world, live this life, and still going through all the human experiences that we all face. Fully God. Fully man. And then we have the virgin birth, right? We believe in the Virgin Mary, virgin birth.

And here's the thing, if Mary's not a virgin, if he wasn't miraculously conceived, then nothing really works. A lot of people say, well, it wouldn't matter, you know, if Jesus was born to Jim and Sandy around the corner or whatever. It wouldn't make any difference, but everything, everything, this holds every belief that we have in Jesus is the fact that it's significantly important. Larry King said this, he was asked, you know, who in all of history, of everybody in history, would you interview if you could? And he said, without hesitation, Jesus.

I would interview Jesus and I would ask him if the virgin birth was true. Because if that's true, then all history would make sense. That's how powerful the virgin birth is. How Jesus entered the world is essential to how he exited the world, because if he didn't enter the world in that foundational principle, then what can we believe about what he said when he exited the world? What he said when he would return?

If he isn't God, he couldn't fix broken humanity. He can't bring us back into a relationship with God. And if he's fully man, if he wasn't fully man, then he couldn't be the sacrifice for our sin. He couldn't be the perfect human to be able to be sacrificed, the perfect lamb of God that was sinless, even though human, sinless and tempted at every, every turn. Hebrews 4.

15 says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin. Not only was he conceived by the Spirit, but he was like you and me. He was God and he was man, and he was preexistent. He always was. As John said, All of you know, so the word became human and made his home among us.

I mean, he became human. He's always been. Isaiah 9.6, For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. Born and given.

Born in that he was human, but given as he was preexistent. He is the preexistent God. And how can all this be? It's a mystery. Some of us try.

I want to understand it. I want to. How do you make fully God, fully man? I thought we were halfies here. You know, things happen in halfies.

But this isn't a halfie. This is a fully God, fully man. The math doesn't work. How does all that concept work for us? It just doesn't make sense.

But it's a mystery that we all have to take note of and take grasp of. You know, there's something special about mystery. Here's what Charles Spurgeon said. This is a mystery we must not attempt to fathom, for it is utterly beyond the grasp of any finite being, as well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, and as a finite creature to comprehend the eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God.

If we could grasp Him, He could not be infinite. And if we could understand Him, He could not be divine. There's an element of mystery in us, by faith, choosing to serve Him, to choose Him, to make Him Lord, planted on faith that God indeed said that He was God, and I'm believing that He is God. It takes an unction of faith. Because without the incarnation, there is no resurrection.

Without the incarnation, there is no resurrection. And without the virgin birth, there is no second birth. There is no second birth. And if there is no virgin birth, then why are we wasting our time? We might as well go out and find something else to numb the emptiness that we have in this world, the hurt that we feel in this world.

We might as well go and find something else. Why are we even doing this in the first place? If there is no virgin birth, no God, no afterlife, no point. But since we do have God in His Son, everything makes sense. Life makes sense.

Purpose makes sense. Everything makes sense. And let me say this too. Mary deserves our respect, but would reject your worship. Mary deserves your respect, but would reject your worship.

See, Mary, I respect Mary. She was called. I mean, God chose her out of, not her will, but chose her to conceive the Christ child. She actually carried the Christ child. Imagine what that would have been like in that culture.

I mean, imagine what that was like telling it to Joseph. I mean, hey Joseph, I'm pregnant, it's God's. He's probably like, okay, how do I get out of this situation? Imagine what the community thought. And the fact that she had to travel and do all these things pregnant.

I mean, just a hard life. And knowing growing up, him growing up, knowing that he would be the sacrifice for people's sins. That she'd have to watch her son die. She'd have to go through that. She deserves all respect, but if she were here today, she would reject.

I'm going to be looking for centuries. That's very long. The worship of her. For some, they would say, you know, some of you grew up in traditions of co-redeemer. And if Mary was here, and it's very apparent in the Bible that she always pointed things back to Jesus Christ.

That she was a saved sinner. She even said at the first miracle of the water into wine, John 2, she said, but everybody was going to the mother, but his mother told the servants, you know, they were like, what do you do? What do we do? Mary, what do we do? Do what he says, you know.

Go back and just do what he says. She always pointed him back to Christ. And she was a saved sinner because she even, out of her own mouth in Luke, she says, how my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. Jesus was her Savior. And we don't need to pray to Mary.

We don't need. Some of you grew up in a tradition that you had to go through Mary and you prayed to Mary. He'll marry all those things. And the co-redeemer aspect doesn't work because we have Jesus. He is our high priest.

We pray to Jesus. He intercedes on our behalf. We have Jesus available to us. There's no need for a co-redeemer. And then thirdly, we have the prophecy, the prophecies about Jesus, prophecies of Jesus.

300 prophecies in the Old Testament. And all of them were fulfilled so that there wouldn't be any coincidence. There wouldn't be any coincidence at all. So that you wouldn't say, it just is a coincidence. 300 prophecies.

Peter Stoner, who was a mathematician and an astronaut, wrote a book called Science Speaks many, many years ago. And he said if only eight of those prophecies were fulfilled, it would be a 10 in the 17th power chance. One in 10 in the 17th power. That's a big number. And I don't even understand what that means, all the zeros on that.

But it means impossible. And what he said in that, to kind of describe it, imagine a state of Texas two feet thick in silver dollars. And one of those silver dollars is marked. And a plane goes over and drops that silver dollar in the state of Texas. And then you blindfold somebody and send them out to just stumble across that one coin.

All the way from Dallas to San Antonio. Somehow you just come across, that's the chances of eight, just eight in 300 of these prophecies fulfilled. That's why I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. It's a miracle that these things have come to pass. Nobody can argue that point, even though they may try.

And then finally, there's the supremacy of Jesus. The supremacy of Jesus. He's the first. The Creed says He is the first. Jesus Christ, our Lord.

He is Jesus Christ, our Lord. Jesus above all. Jesus above everything. Jesus is the supreme of everything. He is the center.

Everything is made in Him, as our scriptures suggest. Everything is in Him, made through Him, in Him, for Him. Everything is Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ. It isn't a part of Jesus.

It is Jesus Christ. Everything was made in Him. He is the supreme. The supremacy of Jesus. And I choose to call Him Lord.

I choose to call Him Lord. Because what we believe about Jesus is what Jesus believed about Jesus. He actually believed this about Himself. That's why He was put to death. That's why the lawmakers of that day said by our law, He ought to die because He called Himself the Son of God.

And He was tried and executed and put on a cross because He claimed to be God. And we believe that. That's what we believe. That's what the early Christians believed. In fact, a lot of you probably are familiar with the little fishies that we put on the back of our car and and we say Christian, Christianity, da-da-da.

What does that really mean? Does it mean, you could think of it as, oh, well, maybe it's because of the loaves and fishes. That's what I first thought when I was a kid and I saw it. It's loaves and fishes. Or the disciples ate fish or they were fishermen or they're fishers of men and all these things.

You know, you can put all those in place. But really what that meant is that Jesus Christ is Lord. Here's why. Because the Greek word ichthus, meaning fish, if you put that in all capital letters, there's this word puzzle, acrostic type situation that takes place. And here's what it shows.

If you'll pop that up. It's it's Jesus Christ, God, Son, Savior, fish that the early Christians, they they they put these fish on on graves to keep them from being desecrated under imperial persecution and and meeting places they would they would chalk them or put them in places where they could meet together and sort of like this language, letting them know Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. You believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Let's gather on that name. Jesus Christ is Lord. And some some you may believe this is myth or this is historical. There's back and forth about this. Some would even say that they were used as a secret code to let another Christian know that they were believers under persecution.

So if they were in a group of people or they were in a public area or they were in a private area, they would just kind of slide over, maybe mark in the ground an arch and the other person would come over and mark the other arch making a fish. Jesus Christ is Lord. They would mark it on walls or whatever so that they had some way of communicating to each other that I'm I'm with you and we're together in this. And although there's persecution, we both believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, Savior, God of all. wonderful.

So it was a shorthand. that we're going to do. It symbolized that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. And when we wear that on our shirts and we wear that on our cars, we are demonstrating that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And that's what Jesus believed about Jesus, that He is Lord. In fact, this whole thing about, you know, Jesus just being a good person, you know, we hear that all the time. I mean, I talk to people all the time and, well, you know, He doesn't have to be God, but I do believe He's a good person. I'm not quite set on the God card yet, but He was a good person, you know. Or these people are like, oh man, I love Jesus, you know, He's so cool.

He's got the beard and He's got the Birkenstocks, you know, those cool Birkenstocks. He's so earthy and He probably eats granola and He probably drives a Subaru, you know. He's like that really cool guy. Man, I just love Jesus and He's so, like, good and so cool. But the problem with only thinking of Him that way, the problem is that you can't make sense.

You can't reconcile the rest of what He said. You can't reconcile the terrible things He said if He was not God. That He walked up to two sisters and said, you know what, your brother died, but he'll be raised because I'm going to be raised. Don't worry. What a horrible thing to say to somebody who's facing, you know, the worst hurt that you've probably ever experienced losing somebody.

Or the fact that He said, drink my blood and eat my flesh, a kind of cannibal term there. And that's the way you really come experience life and that life in my flesh and in my blood. Who says that? What good person says that? They're crazy.

They need to be locked up in a padded room somewhere. If you hear somebody, you would say that immediately. That good person doesn't say those things. A good person doesn't say, I'm coming back to judge all the world. Good people don't say those things.

So what do we have? Well, many of you may be familiar, but some of you here may not. But C.S. Lewis, who was an avowed atheist, had this thing called the trilemma about his faith and what brought him to come to know God as Lord, Jesus as Lord.

He said, you have three things to believe about Jesus and this good person thing. You know, this good person thing. We believe He's a good person. We either have to believe He's a liar because He said He would do all these things and He was God and He was coming back and He's lying. He's just a big fat liar.

He's a terrible person. He can't be a good person if He's a liar. Or, He's a lunatic. He's just crazy. And good people aren't crazy people.

I mean, they're just saying whatever they say. That's not a good person. You have to call him a lunatic. He's crazy because He's saying . Things like I was quoting before.

Or, you must bow to Him as Lord. So He's either mad or bad, or we bow to Him as Christ Jesus our Lord. He doesn't give us any other option. He doesn't give us the option to be a good person. He only gives us the option of Him being God, or He's the other two.

So we have a choice in faith to believe. Is He Lord and Savior? So in closing, why would God do this? Some of you are probably like, why in the world would God send His Son? Why would Jesus come?

Why would this incarnation happen? Because He knows that I'm not a good person. I've done things. I've cheated. I've lied.

I've done things. And my heart hasn't been good. And perhaps you're feeling the same way. You're like, you know what? I'm with you.

And that's not a popular thing to say in our culture. These are not popular statements to say that people are not good people. In fact, the Bible says that no one's good. Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned, and they fall short of God's glory. That's not a statement that a lot of people want to hear about Christianity.

But He hasn't given us any other choice to believe Him as God, and this is what He gives us, right? But He came because He knew that we couldn't make it on our own. And then it gets worse. We're separated from the world. And what does sin do?

The wages of sin is death. I mean, that's even worse. The wages of sin is death, but He gives us the fullness of why He came in this next part, so that we could have the gift of God. It's a gift. It's a free gift.

By faith, you can receive today. You can connect with today. In who? Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is Lord.

He is God. And if we don't believe that He was just a good person, which we cannot, we don't have that option, the only thing we can do is surrender to Him, Jesus Christ, our Lord. He has made that gift available to us. So perhaps some of you are feeling this connection somehow, whether it's through the worship, whether it's through the time you walked in the door, whether it's hearing a point in this message, you're like, you know what? Something tells me that there's more than just what I'm experiencing, this emptiness, this emptiness.

I've always thought of Jesus as a good person, but you know what? Maybe there's something more to this Jesus Christ. As I hear these words, as I contemplate these things, there's more to this than just a man with Mr. Rogers with a beard. That walked this world long ago.

He is God. He is God. And you can make that decision today. This could be your day. This could be the most exciting news.

This could be the exciting moment that you've ever experienced in your life. This can be yours today. And if you would bow your heads with me and close your eyes, if that's you today, if that's you today, would you make that confession with me if that's and all the church be praying with us on this. If that's you today, you can just in faith, by faith. I don't have to understand it all, but by faith, by faith I believe.

I believe, God, that you came to this earth, that you died on the cross for my sin. You were fully God and you were fully man. And you gave your life on the cross. Today I receive you as my Savior. Thank you, Jesus, for what you've done on the cross.

I receive it and I believe it in your name. Amen. Amen. Can y'all give God a hand, clap, a praise? And if you gave your life to Jesus today, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, connect with somebody.

Let us know. We want to get you plugged in. We want to get you down a path where you can grow. And Jesus Christ, do not stop here. Keep going.

Let's do this together. We believe that God's got great things. You are the salt of the earth. You're the life to the world. And salt always makes a difference.

And a little bit of salt goes a long way.