Yeah. You.
Did it all by yourself. Isn't it great that we are
learning? Wonderful.
It's a beautiful day outside and we're grateful to have children
that are able to light our candles.
Welcome to the church and welcome to the Christian Church.
I don't have any special announcements.
I know y'all can all read. So if you'll just look at any of
the announcements, are we doing Tuesday night?
Tuesday. Yes, ma'am, Men's.
Night Tuesday, all right, 6:00 the men tonight.
All right, ladies. Please stand turns your number
382. Serve the Lord with gladness.
We'll do the first and second verse.
Have you ever planned something and you wanted to just throw it
out the window? I planned a devotion today and a
little girl, Sophie, just came up to me and whispered.
I'm going to get emotional. Will you tell other people about
God? So you as a congregation, will
you tell other people about God? Coming from a little child, how
old is she? 6 So let us go to the Lord in
prayer. Our Father, we do thank you for
our children, for just the message, the simple message they
give to us. Lord, help us to raise these
children in our church and to dedicate them to you.
Father, we come to you now saying the prayer that you
taught us to pray. Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be gone
on earth. As it is against in heaven, give
us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our deaths.
As. We forgive our debtors.
And. Lead us not into.
Temptation. But.
Deliver us from evil, for thy name, the Kingdom and the power
and the glory forever. Amen.
Please open your handles to #440 Here I am Lord, first and second
verse. as we go to the Lord in prayer
this morning. I do want to let you know that
Miss Patricia is home. Doesn't feel great, very tired,
but it is certain certainly glad to be home.
So just be in prayer for her and Mr. Dan and the girls who were
there with them. Other prayer request.
Somebody else had mentioned someone to me and I don't
remember who it was. Nobody.
Nobody out here mentioned anybody to me this morning.
No. All right, Maybe I dreamed it.
All right, well, let's go. Lord in prayer, Heavenly Father,
this morning as we do, give thanks, Lord, for the
opportunity to worship, Lord, for the opportunity to
understand, Lord, not only who you are, Lord, but how you love
us, how you care for us, Lord, how you desire to have that
relationship was with us where we call upon your name, Lord,
where we seek you. Lord, each day that we have here
on this earth, Lord, that your your desires for us to to live
in such a way that we draw others to you, that they see
your love through us. And Lord, we simply pray that we
can in some way, in some small way touch someone's life to
allow them to see God through our lives.
Lord, we thank you for your patience and your kindness.
Lord, we thank you that even when we fall short, that you are
waiting for us to come to you. Lord, that you offer us the the
opportunity to be forgiven. Lord, for the opportunity to be
dusted off and, and Lord picked up and and ready to be used
again. We just prayed through our
service today, Lord, that we bring glory and honor to your
name, Lord, through the offerings that we give Lord,
through the words and then the songs that we sing that we do
praise you, Lord, as we come to the table to remember the
ultimate sacrifice given by our Savior and your Son Jesus
Christ. Lord, how thankful we are.
And Lord, and as we look into your word, we simply pray today,
Lord, that it speaks to us, that it, even though it was written
so many years ago, Lord, that there is a message for us today
and Lord, that as we leave here, we leave here change, that we
leave here encouraged. We leave here excited about the
opportunity that we have, Lord, to share the good news and to
lead others to that relationship with you.
We do ask all this in Jesus name, Amen.
As we give these. Ties with a joyful heart.
Our communion hymn is number 400.
Jesus at your holy table, of course.
First and second verse. Christ invites to this table all
who profess the Christian faith and who seek the mercy of God.
Jesus said I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes
in me will never be thirsty. No one who comes to me will I
drive away. Because there's one bread.
We who are many or one body, for we all partake for the one
bread. So whether you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do everything to the glory of God.
Father, we come to the table today that you have prepared.
We thank you for the bread and what it means to each one of us
Christians, the broken body of Jesus, thank you for the grace
and the love that you have given to each one of us through Jesus
Christ. Help the Father, we thank you
for allowing us to come to this your table, and we take this
cup. Let it remind us of the blood
that was shed on that cross, that Jesus died so that we can
have eternal life. Now we take this emblem.
Maybe do so in a manner of pleasing unto you.
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread and we
had given thanks. He broke it and said, this is my
body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying this cup is
the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in
remembrance of me. Or whenever you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
All right, before we get started this morning with the message I,
I have, I have the two names that I, I could not remember
earlier. First one is Miss Lisa's mom has
been transported back to Mississippi.
Craig, that went all right on the on the move.
Yeah, the trip went OK. They got it back.
To the nursing home. I think about 5:00 in the
morning, OK, OK. So please continue to remember
Lisa's mom and Lisa and then the rest of the family as they've
making this transition. And the second one I want you to
write down. Her name is Christy Self and she
is the mom of one of Anna Claire's softball coaches.
And she has they have found a mass on on her kidney and just
be in prayer for them. She's a young lady, probably 50s
at at at most, I would guess, and just just be in prayer for
her. I will say this her her daughter
Grace is a just a fine young lady and not only does she coach
softball well, but she loves those girls and and spends time
and prays with them and and just as a really good mentor to them.
So I asked you to be in prayer for them.
All right. This morning as we look into
God's word, we're going to be in Hebrews.
We're going to be in Hebrews chapter 10 and it's going to
we're going to start in verse 19.
But before you, before we start with that, I want to ask you a
question. I want you to think about this
question before you answer. Is God's love unconditional?
Huh.
His love, Yes, His love is unconditional.
OK, so let me ask you this question.
OK, let me ask you this question.
God loved us enough to send His one and only Son, right?
Died on the cross for each of us, right?
Gives us the opportunity for forgiveness of sin, the
opportunity of eternal life. What happens if we reject his
Son Jesus Christ? What happens?
OK, so the answer is yes, God's love is unconditional is what
you're saying. But not everyone's going to
heaven. Not everyone will experience
forgiveness of sin, not by God's doing, but by our own doing.
So my answer to that question is God's love unconditional?
Is yes and no? And This is why I say that there
is nothing that will separate us from the love of God.
There's nothing that we can do. There is no sin great enough to
keep us from God having giving us the offering of forgiveness.
But it is one condition that it can only come through his Son
Jesus Christ and our belief in him and our faith in him and our
acceptance of who He is and what He did on the cross.
So I agree with you, God's love is unconditional.
Here we go. Therefore, brothers and sisters,
since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the
blood of Jesus, by new and living way open for us through
the curtain that is His body, and since we have a great priest
over the House of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere
heart and with the full assurance that faith brings.
Having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty
conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water,
let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who
promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may
spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up
meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but
encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day
approaching. If we deliberately keep on
sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no
sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of
judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of
God. Anyone who rejected the law of
Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three
witnesses. How much more severely do you
think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the
Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the
blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has
insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said it is
mine to avenge. I will repay and again the Lord
will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God.
This morning I want us to grasp the concept of God is love
without a doubt. But we can never separate God's
love from His Holiness, from the fact that He is a just God, from
the fact that He has given us the law so that we would
understand that we were sinners. And God does not accept sin in
any shape, form, or fashion. He will not tolerate it.
He will not look past it. Now, let me say this to you.
This is why I say I have trepidation in saying God's love
is totally unconditional. I agree that nothing can
separate from from the love of God through Christ in Christ.
But if we reject his Son, if we reject the opportunity that we
have to have that relationship with Him, we will receive
punishment. We will be separated eternally
from the God who we say His love is unconditional.
This morning I want us to get in our minds the importance of a
sharing not only who God is and and how a loving God he is, but
also that he is a holy God and that he is a righteous God and
that without Christ we will receive the due punishment for
our sins. When we think about love, Those
of you who have children, grandchildren, your, your child
can, can do anything pretty much, and you will forgive.
You won't stop talking to them. You you won't cut them off.
It would have to be of tremendous wrongdoing for you to
even consider that. And we understand how much we
love our children. But I want to tell you that God
loves us even more. Our love can't even begin to
compare to the love of God. Want to read you a passage from
Romans as one that you know well from Romans Chapter 9.
Excuse me, chapter 8 and verse 37, 38.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels
nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God.
And don't leave this part out. That is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Nothing can separate us from the
love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I want you to understand that without Christ, when He said in
this passage over here that they are an enemy to God.
If we do not have that relationship with Christ, we are
an enemy of God because we have rejected His Son.
There is an idea. That I think that we sometimes
convey that we don't do intentionally, but but we convey
God is a loving God, which he is.
God's love is unconditional, which it is through Christ.
God's love is not unconditional without Christ.
God loves us absolutely, but He will punish us if we do not have
the Son. That love for us comes only with
the acceptance of His Son as our Savior.
Does He still desire for us to come to relationship with Him if
we don't have the Son? Absolutely.
Is He longing and waiting for us?
The God's Word tells us that it is His desire that no one, no
one be lost, no one be punished if they will accept His Son.
But if we don't, He is a just God.
He is a righteous God. He is a holy God.
You remember when Moses came into the place where the burning
Bush was and what was said to Him?
Take off your shoes for the ground which you are standing on
is holy ground. I don't want us to ever come to
the place of that. We convey to this world that we
live in that God's love is unconditional and it doesn't
matter what you do, God is always going to love you because
there will come a time when they leave this earth, if they don't
have Christ, they're going to be punished.
That is what we have to convey to them.
We have to convey to them that God's love is everlasting, that
nothing can separate us from the love of God through Christ.
So when we are conveying to people what it means to know
God, to experience God, to receive forgiveness, it can only
happen through that relationship with Christ.
And now you may say, no bread. Well, I've known that all my
life. How many people have you told
that? How often do we really get to
the point of saying that without Christ there is no hope?
And you say, well, we don't want to go that far.
We don't want to push it on. We don't want to push my faith
on them. Let me tell you that this is the
only way. There is no other way to God
except through Christ. That's what the Word says, and
He has given us the responsibility to share the good
news, that eternal life, forgiveness of sin, the
experience that He has waiting for us in heaven comes through
Christ and Christ alone. If you go back into the
beginning of Romans chapter 1, I have read this past the
scripture before and I will read it again and again and again
because it reminds us of how holy God is.
Romans chapter 1 and verse 18. The wrath of God is being
revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness
of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what
may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it
plain to them. For since the creation of the
world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what
has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor
gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became
futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools in
exchange. The glory of the immortal God
for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and
animals and reptiles. This world is full of people who
are creating, who have a desire to create, who have this idea of
I will make my own God. My God will meet my needs.
My God will do for me what I desire for him to do for me.
I want you to understand this morning that as we came here to
worship today, we came here to worship God and God alone.
Not the God that we desire, not the God that we won't, not the
God that we think that He should be.
We came to worship the God who has been revealed to us through
His Word, and he is a holy God. He is a merciful God, He is a
loving God, and nothing can separate us from that love that
is in Christ Jesus our Lord. What I want you to take from
this today, What do I want you to do tomorrow in the days
ahead? My hope, my prayer, my desire is
for us as Christians to give them the love of God, but to
give them everything else about God.
He's not just a loving God, He's a just God.
He's a holy God. He is a righteous God.
We don't get to conform God to our desires.
We conform to what He desires for us to be.
Let me let me give you one last illustration.
I have three children who I love greatly, who I would do anything
in the world for as much as I love them as much as I would do
anything in the world for them. I cannot save them.
I cannot give them faith in Christ.
I cannot pray it, I cannot hope it.
It doesn't matter how much I desire it.
It has to be that relationship that they come to with Christ
for themself. So often we look at, at, at
people and, and we, we, we, we knew their parents and they will
say things like they had some of the finest parents that I've
ever come across. Those were some of the most
Christian people that I have ever seen.
Their life that they lived was clearly in accordance with God's
Word. As much as we desire for
salvation to happen for everyone, we have to realize
that it's not going to happen. It is being preached from
pulpits around the world, unfortunately, that we're all
going to heaven. God loves everyone so much that
he he is such a loving God that he he's not going to punish
anyone. Everyone's going to be in
heaven. That would be great, but it's
not truth. We as Christians have to stay
true to the Word when it says that we are to hold unswervingly
to the hope we profess. For he who promised his faith,
well, God is faithful, and he has told us that if you accept
Christ my Son as your Savior, nothing can separate you from my
love. Nothing.
But it also says, if we deliberately keep on sinning
after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no
sacrifice for sins is left. What is the knowledge of the
truth? And the truth is that God sent
His one and only Son to this earth to die for sinners, and we
must have a relationship with Him.
If we don't, there is no sacrifice for sins is left for
only, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and
raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
The enemies of God are those who have not accepted Christ as
Savior. Each and every one of them will
be consumed by the wrath of God. Now, I don't want you to leave
here downtrodden. I don't want you to leave here
sad. I want you to leave here hopeful
and thankful that you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
And that's the beginning of this.
It says it is a call to us to persevere in our faith.
And it is also a call for us to share the importance of those
who do not know Christ as Savior, that they need to know
Him and the way that we live our lives.
We talked about last week about our words, our speech, the
actions that we have each and every day, and what is in our
heart, what we convey to people. We need to be conveying the love
of God. We need to be conveying the
truth of who God is. We need to be conveying that
salvation comes only through Christ.
Forgiveness of sin comes only through Christ, and without it
there is no hope. The Lord will judge.
It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God
this morning. My challenge for you is to
simply share the truth. Don't water it down, give it to
Him straight. There is no hope without Christ,
but with Christ there, there is nothing better.
You can walk through this life or whatever this world throws at
you, and with Christ you do not fear leaving this world.
There is nothing in this world that can separate us from the
love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you.
Lord, for the profound and awesome love that is conveyed to
us through your Son Jesus Christ.
Lord, we thank you for your patience and your kindness and
your gentleness and the forgiveness that we have through
Christ. And Lord, we also thank you that
you are a just God. Lord, we are thankful that you
will judge each of us not on our righteousness, not on what we
have accomplished, not on what we have done, but the
righteousness that we attain through Christ.
Lord, we humbly acknowledge that we are sinful beings and that
without Christ we have nothing to look forward to except the
punishment that we deserve, that we have earned, and that you
will give us. But we also thank you, Lord, for
the opportunity to accept Christ as Savior.
Receive forgiveness and have a hope that can never be
diminished by anything in this world.
Lord, I pray that we leave here today, going forth into this
world to share the good news of Jesus Christ and the importance
of having a relationship with Him.
I pray that it is a burden on our souls, the hearts and the
lives of those who do not know Christ, and that we give them
the truth, that we give them who they can place their hope in,
and that's only found in Jesus Christ.
Send his name, I pray. Amen.
Please stand open your handle to #414 softly and tenderly.
We'll do the first and second verse.
Father, you give thanks Lord, for your love and your grace and
your mercy. Lord, I just pray that we
understand how great it is, how important it is to know Christ.
Lord, I pray that we leave this place today ready to share.
It's in Jesus name I pray.