I will open your lab of the GANS of the 8 chapters of the book, Roman. Our reading begins with 1st 18th tonight. We are reading from verse 18 through verse 24, 25. And then we'll read from verse 38 on down to the end of the chapter. All right, Roman, chapter 8, verse 18, here's a word of God. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Our creation waits with eager slang for the revealing of the sons of God. Our creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of hymns who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning and travails together until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first free to the spirit, grown inwardly as we wait for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is not seen, is not hope, for we hope for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Number 38. Well, I am sure that these are death in our lives, in our angels, in our principalities, in our things present, in our things to come, in our powers, in our heights, in our deaths, in our anything else, in our creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And now tonight we are moving on down towards the very last verse in our study of the 8th chapter of the book of Romans. D. L. Moody used to describe this book as this chapter, 8 as being the chapter that begins with no condemnation and ends with no separation, instead it was like the Christian life. The first blessing in the Christian life is forgiveness of sins, justification, no condemnation. And the final blessing in the Christian life on earth is the realization of no separation when death comes and grad on into the glory of God. Last night we were seeing there is more to it than that. It is not just that in the Christian life, when we come into Christ we are justified and they write on the side of God, it is not just that nothing can ever then again separate us from the very loving presence and person of God, but also between the time we take Christ and the time God takes us to be with him, all through our lives, in between. There need be no frustration for we know that God works in everything for good, for those who love God who are the call according to His purpose. We were looking at that last night. Now in the beginning of the verse 31 and we have been reading that text nearly every night on down to the verse 35, 36, we have Paul asking seven questions, one right after the other. Paul is a user of questions. He asked seven questions, one right after another, he says verse 31, what then should we say to this? Question number one. Number two, if God is far as who is against it, number three, he who did not stare his own son but jade him up for us all, how will he not with him also give us everything. And then number four, we will bring any charge against God's elect, it is God who justifies. The next question, who is to condemn, the next question, it is Christ who died, yes who is raised from the dead. Who is at the right hand of God who indeed intercedes for us and then the next question, who is separating us from the love of Christ and then another question following that? Paul used questions and of course we do, I suppose all of us would be surprised if we really knew how many times we asked questions during the day. Dr. Questions are among the better tools that we have for functioning with one another and and basically the purposes of questions run something like this. We use questions to get information that we don't have and we want somebody else there. You want to find out how to get somewhere, you don't know how to get somewhere, you know somebody who does know how to get there so you go and ask them the questions, how do you get there? And that's a legitimate use and that's a use we put questions to a lot. Another use that questions are used for is not to find out what you don't know but a lot of our questions are about things we do know we're trying to find out if the other person knows so we ask the question. Now teachers use that all the time. When teachers ask test questions of students, it's not that the teachers come to the end of the course and don't know the answers and you're asking for help from the students, they're trying to find out what the students know and so those questions are given for that reason and a lot of our questions are like that. A lot of the questions you ask somebody else or questions you know the answer to them, you're trying to find out if the person you're talking to knows what you know. Now here's our third use of questions. We use questions to make people think. We use questions to stimulate thought, every feature, every creature, everybody who works with others uses questions like that. We ask the question to get the attention and the thought processes and movement of another person and that's what Paul is doing here. Paul is asking questions to make us think. He's given tremendous truth from chapter 1 all the way up now to the closing point of chapter 8. He's given the most astounding amazing truth, facts that are strange as an addition. Now he's asking questions about, do we understand it? What is all this sample? What do we say to all of this? If all of this is true then what do we say about it? Where do we stand? Questions like this. Now we're taking the fourth question. Who will bring any charge against God's delay? Because that question that is asked raises the questions, well what charges can be brought against? That's what charges do. Those who are non-Christians ask about us and Paul gives us data in here that answers the questions that we can think of. They say, well you Christians are going to be different from us because your sinners too. How do we answer that? That's a charge. You Christians aren't any different from us. Your sinners too. We look at that. Yes we're sinners. But we're not like sinners without Christ. God has done something to us. He's brought us to repentance. To hate our sins. To turn to them. He's done something for us. He has paid for our sins in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. He's done something in us. He has sent us holy spirit into our hearts to dwell. And to cause us in a sanctifying, progressively sanctifying, walking life, to learn to follow our great shepherd and Lord. Last night we looked at the question, well you Christians suffered. You saw everybody else. Well how are you different from anybody? You suffered just like I couldn't say people once again, we have to say yes. In a sense we suffer just about everything that unsafe people do in this world. The difficulties, trials, tragedies, disappointments, it strikes the unsafe thing to follow upon us. We admit. But we do not suffer in the same way in those sufferings that those who have no Christ, no hope, no God. Rather we know something. We know that God is with us and that work with a purpose. And it was that purpose of his that permitted him to let it come to us. And he is busy converting it in the good so that no evil ever defaults. God's child. Because God is working everything for good, not evil. Everything is working together for ultimate evil and dissolution by those out of sight. Our creators and redeem them. Working for good for all who are placed in them. Not a night. We face this other question, a charge can be brought to you Christians, aren't any different from us. You dad just like unsafe people, you dad just like non-Christians, you dad just like anybody else. You aren't any different. What do we say to them? Well, we have to say yes in a sense, don't we? We do die. I guess. Fluid to French camp Mississippi today to have a funeral service of an 83-year-old lady who was a great friend in her, a little child, a much loved, wonderful, wonderful woman. And she died. I mean, we had a funeral. So we Christians have to say yes, we're included too. The Bible says it's given unto man what to die. And after that judgment, and we die, so we do. But we also say, but we don't die like those who are out of Christ. We don't die like unsafe people. We die. But not like them. And friends, we don't. That's what Paul is talking about in part in this, this AIDS chapter. We know something about death. Paul talks about it a little here in verse 18. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be comparing with the glory to be revealed to us. And I drop down to verse 28, 24, for in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with it for patience. Paul is using two words here, glory and hope. The Christian faith is death with glory and hope. And that's something that unsafe people can never face death with. We go with a sure hope. Now I want to say something about this word hope in the New Testament because it doesn't mean as it was used in New Testament days and by New Testament writers what it means today. That word is added as changed in meaning. In the New Testament use of the word hope, it doesn't mean it's not a weak word, it doesn't mean something that we wish would be true, but we're not good sure about it. That's what we mean today. So I say, well I hope to go to the ball game next week. You know that what I'm saying is I'm not sure I'm going to go. I really want to go. I hope I can, but you know that I'm not going to be sure about it. Hope the way we use it today speaks of uncertainty, not certainty, but in the New Testament use of it it always was the ring of certainty. It was something that was a sure to happen in the future as that which has already happened in the past has happened. That which God had prophesied to belong to the future to God's people was as absolutely certain in their hope as that which had already taken place. So Paul is saying, look the Christian faces death with a hope that is with an absolute certainty and with an anticipation of great glory. Now the reason we do that is because Jesus has done something good there. The last letter that Paul wrote, he wrote the Timothy, his dear son of the Lord, and in the last letter of the last chapter of second Timothy, Paul tells young Timothy that he anticipates his own death, evidently after this time it seems from Paul's writing, Paul really believed that he'd be alive when Jesus came. Paul wasn't really looking forward to death. He was looking forward to becoming a Christ, but now he's in prison. Paul senses that his life will be taken and that it does appear now. He's going to suffer death before Jesus ever comes. And so he begins to talk about it here. He says in verse 6, for I am ready already at the point of being sacrificed. He was thinking about martyrdom, his life being taken by Rome. Already I'm at the point of being sacrificed. The time of my departure has come. I have fought a good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. His force is later for me, the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge will give me on that day and not only to me, but also to all who love his appearance. I'm probably thinking now about the immanence of his death, but look what he says about death in the first chapter. This piece of the bonus of Paul and I see faces death and death he had looked forward to really seeing Jesus come before he died, that he would be alive when Jesus came and never really had the suffer physical death. But now Paul is beginning to see, he's going to die before Jesus comes. And he's talking about death in the very first chapter in verse 10, listen to this. And now has manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus through abolished death and brought life in immortality to life through the gospel. Now that is a strong statement, isn't it? That's an glorious statement. Paul now is facing death. It's going to look like death has captured him and Paul says listen, Jesus Christ has already abolished death and he's brought life in immortality to life that makes us able to see that. Now in what sense has Christ abolished death? Paul talks about that in this Corinthian epistle, the 15th chapter, he does something that's really amazing. I think Paul is the only person I've ever knew of who did this. He teased death. You know, boys were teased one another, if a boy knows he can lick the other boy you're teasing badly. All right, he knows the other fellow won't fight, he's scared of it, you're teasing. But usually when you tease somebody real heavily, you feel like he got the advantage of it. And that's true. Now Paul pees is death and Isaiah chapter 5 and then first Corinthians chapter 15, he says in verse 55, quoting now a quotation, oh, death, where is your stain, your victory, oh, death, where is your stain? And then he says the sting of death is sin and the fire sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that the Lord Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection has abolished the very power of death over the lives of everybody who believes in him and prays, that's what I want us to see them at it, we've never seen it. If you've never clearly seen that the death of a believer is absolutely different in quality from the death of an unbeliever, I want you to see the difference of the death of Jesus and his resurrection makes to my death. Oh, death, where is your stain, Paul said, the sting of death is sin. That's the hurt of death, that's the danger, that's the damnation of death, our sin. But you see Jesus has done something about that for his own. Now I read it in a book once, the little story I'm going to tell you and I don't know how to, I mean, I don't know what happened to somebody else besides me then but why I'm going to tell you what happened to me, this really happened to me, it brings me up good. I used to, we had folks come in and visit the academy and we had women's groups more and more often than any other thing, they'd come in, they'd go up and see the little children and we'd love to show them all and we'd take them around and let them blind and see the boys on the work program and see the girls on their work program and want them to see the little tiny children take them out and see our dairy and see the calves and things like that, you know, just show everything all. And I learned a lot when I first got there that it's always unpredictable what will happen when you've got a big gang, a young children around and you're showing people around because you can't build it, no telling what a kid will do. They'll usually do something that'll be perishing but sometimes they'll do something that has been perishing. And one day I was taking a group of about 10 or 12 women around and they were just even an odd about everything that we were having a good day and they were seeing a lot of things that blessed their hearts and blessed mine too then because I could see they were making a similar response. And a little boy there ran up to me though while we were walking along just to one of our little fellas he must have been about 8-9-10 years old and he had his hands just like this and he came out up to me and he said, Mr. Patterson, guess what I got in my hand? When I spoke to those ladies, that was the best thing, that blessed their hearts, all they just gathered around, you know, these little boys come up out of Mr. Patterson and he's wonderful to fight and get his teeth and guess what's in his hand, you know, and I knew I could, I knew trouble with him on us. I really thought he had a mouse, I wasn't sure about it but I knew when he opened up thing up and he's winning all here and over there, what might happen, you know. But anyway, I told him I said, I don't know what you got in your hand, what he got in it, he opened it up and he shivered right up in my face and did kind of scare me, make me step back a little bit. It wasn't a mouse, what he had was a great big old red washed, all curled up a line, you know. He was alive. And I did step back and then he laughed and he said, all don't be scared of him, Mr. Patterson, I've already pulled a finger out of him. Now he still looks bad but I wasn't scared of him anymore because the finger had been pulled out. Jesus bore in his own body our sins on the tree. You see, there's no sin in the death of a believer. No. He had a total sin in the life of an unbeliever. And Jesus, 2,000 years ago, drew into his own body all the guilt and downation and judgment of sin for the believer and we bow it up to him because Jesus took you. That's a difference folks, that's a difference, I'll tell you that. And when his resurrection broke the very power of death to hold me so that death can't hold a believer, death cannot hold a believer. It cannot do it. It has to give up it's grip now and I'm going to tell you how that is, it's a Bible teacher. I remember, my mother used to tell stories to me when I was a little boy and a bedtime story. And I remember one of the stories she used to tell me, I've got some of it in, I've seen it got that out of a book, I don't know where this came from. It seems to me that I've kind of read this in somewhere, but anyway she told me a story about a prince, who was a great deliver in a certain land long, long ago. Where the people had their lives completely upset by the arrival of a fiery dragon that had moved into their country. And he taken up his quarters in a cave in the countryside. It had been a beautiful countryside and all the children had been happy there and all the people had been happy there. And it was just a beautiful place to live and all at once it all changed because a big red diary dragon came in and took up quarters there and he lived in the cave there and he wasn't gobbling with the children and he'd be like fire and everybody now was living in fear of death and fear of the dragon and the whole joy of the countryside left and men couldn't work their farms properly on the contrary were free to the dragon and it just looked like everything was going to pass and the land was losing its beauty and all the joy was gone. And they didn't know how to handle it because nobody could handle that big red dragon. And then one day a prince was with white armor on and a white robe been wrapped on a white party. A white banner came riding me and he told the people that he had come to deliver from that fiery awful dragon. And the people scarcely believed that one that looked just like them almost if he's dressed up a little better could ever do anything about that dragon when they couldn't do it but nevertheless anything for a change. And so he told them he was going to be a big black dragon and he's very genius going right into the very cave where the dragon is going to kill him back there. And all the people got up on the rim of the canyon or both that cave they were just like an arena up there. They hardly believed he could do it but they were hoping their heart to somehow that man might be something. And so they were all watching as he rode up to the very entrance of the cave and got off his horse and with his sword entered into the cave. And then a little bit sure enough after he got back in there after a little bit of awful of sounds in the world began to come out firing the smoke shot out screaming and squalling and crying and groaning and growling and every kind of sound came out of that cave and the people up there were just almost sweating in their fever of fear. What's happening back there? And then all it was and then it was open. Everyone and they all fell silent as they just watched that entrance of the cave who's going to come out? They could hardly believe it could be anybody but the dragon but I came to finish with his bloody sword and I cried joy and victory with him. He had really gone in and slain the enemy and friends that exactly what Jesus did when he died. He left Satan and best racked themselves around him for three days and three nights. Until they could just step back and said, now we've done all that can be done to hold him. And like Samson bleak in the car, he broke the bonds of death and just when he said he would he stepped back in this world a lot of risen from the dead. And when he did that, he apologized for everybody who ever believed in him, the power of death to hold him. And David is saying right here when he says, oh, talking about the power and the sting of death, he's thinking in a way, the very thing that David was talking about in that time that he gave, when he said, yes, the one I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. Shadows are scary looking things in a way, but their power, shadow of a gun can't shoot you the shadow of a knife, can't cut you the shadow of a fist, can't knock you down, the shadow of a car can't hurt you. Shadows are dark, but their power. The Lord Jesus Christ has rendered bread down to a mere shadow of Himself, our Christians are concerned. The way I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, that's what David said. What, right through it? He told me, he's written it and I walk right through it. That's what happens to the Christians. This can't hold us. We've got two victories. One is the immediate victory we get. The moment we die, we enter into the first great victory. And when Jesus comes back, we enter into the final and full. This dear lady that we buried today has just entered into the first flush of a victory. There's still a much greater win to come, and even in heaven, she's going to be looking forward to it. But the moment of believer dies, what happens? Well, let me tell you something. Many years ago when I was a pastor in the Delta, Mississippi, we had a woman move in there from another state. Now, very cultured, lovely woman. She and her husband had been a Piscopalians, but he had died a couple of years before and now she had moved into the Delta of Mississippi. There was no Piscopalian church in our town, so she made the Piscopalian church her home, the United was a church. And with her lovely, lovely woman. One day she called me up to study, said, Miss Patisne, you can be down there this morning for a while. I said, yes, she said, I'd like to come down to talk with you, so she came down and she then said, I hope you won't be offended when I ask you some questions and said, well, ask me some questions. And she said, well, in your study in seminary, or even in college, did you do much study in the realm of counseling or psychiatry or psychology? And I said, well, I'll have to tell you the truth, no, because I hadn't. And she said, well, let me ask you this, have you done anything you've gotten out? Have you gone to take any courses, or have you been doing any deep breathing in that field? And I said, well, tell you the truth I had. And I was feeling, you know, like I was showing her that she might as well go somewhere else. I didn't know what she was there for, but it didn't sound like I was coming up to good. And then she said to me, well, then I want to tell you what my problem is. And she said, the reason I put it that way is she said, I'm going to ask you a question now. Two years ago, I asked my pastor, that's where we live, my husband and I before he died. And she said, I want to ask you this question, I'm going to ask you. And she said, he started me on weekly counseling sessions with him, he was out of an amateur psychiatrist, he'd done a little studying around reading. And she said, I have to go in once a week and said, he just about put me in the institution. She said, I just about had an iris break down. Now she said, I just want to get into that again. And I just wanted to talk to somebody who didn't feel like they had any interest in that line, but I said, I've got a question I want to ask you. Well, you know, I wanted what in the world would that question be then? And I said, oh, what is it? And for instance, here's the question. She said, Mr. Patterson, my husband was a fine Christian. He was a detriment in the church, and he was a real Christian. Now, she said, he died two and a half years ago, maybe three years ago. She said, when I want to know is where is my husband, that would be a question. Now, she was a Christian too. And she had some vague idea about what to about it all, but she didn't know the Bible very well. And she just wanted somebody. She loved her husband. Now, he was gone from her, and she just knew he was a Christian, and she knew he was wherever he was supposed to be, but she just wanted to know where he is, so she could think about it right. So, her inner thought, she'd have the right idea about, and not think long about her husband and where he was. Oh, that's important. Friends, do you know the answer to that? Yeah. Does the Christian immediately go? I'll tell you what. Paul tells us here in the faith chapter. He says this. For an either death, he starts out with that. He starts out with the biggest thing that could ever separate. It is death can never separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Friends, that doesn't mean the affection of God. That means the love of God in the very person of Jesus Christ. Death can never separate a person from Christ. You receive Christ into your heart as your Lord is the Savior, and you will consciously, for eternity, have a lively knowledge of him, and he will have a lively knowledge with you, and this will increase that knowledge, not be present. Death will put you closer to him, not alienate or separation. Death can never separate us, Paul, that my time to depart has come. What did he mean? He tells us in Philippians. He said, I desire to depart and be with Christ. In 2nd Corinthians, he writes to the Corinthians there, and he says, look, if I earthly body, if I earthly tabernacle or tent this body in which we live, he has laid down or is destroyed, we know that it is earthly tent in which we live is destroyed, and you know this body can be destroyed. Disease can do it, infirmity and age can do it. We know that it is earthly tent, body in which we live is destroyed. We have a building from God a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we grow in and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting on it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this body, this tent, we fab with anxiety, not that we would be uncle, but we should be further closer, so that what is more to maybe swallowed up with life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. Now he says, we Christians, when we think of death, we realize something is going to happen someday, if it could happen before Jesus comes, that our bodies will be taken away in death. Now then he says, but where we have good courage, we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. In a sense, living in this life, we are separated from God in His true glory. He says, we know, we are in good courage, I say, we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we always make it our aim please him. For all of us say, here is this, that the very moment that, bestily, hold upon the body of the Christian, that personality goes immediately to the great person who is his Savior, the Lord of Jesus Christ, to be with him where he is in that heavenly home and sickly way. That's the truth, that's where our loved ones are, that's right where they are. When you are needing to play in the morning, and you are playing to the heavenly Father, our Father's word of heaven, they are around His throne to Him, joined with Him in play, play this, up there, that's where they are, where the body, yes, their body, yes, that's how it can't give them tells us. Other bodies are even different from the bodies of an unsaid. They may be buried in the same cemetery, they may be buried in the same kind of casket as an unsaid person right next to them, but the scriptures make known to us that even the bodies of His people are united to Christ so that they are held in His hand until He comes to raise them in the universal life and make them a habitation for the New Heavens and New Heavens. For the redeem personalities that have been enjoying Heaven with Him, ever since they came there. So we've got a glorious whole process, look, this is better than what we got now, now God is geared us to what to live now, and we've been commanded to live our lives out of this earth. And God has not told us so much over there about what's over there, as the disenchadish with our calling to live here, but God certainly makes it clear, look, if you belong to me, the very moment I called you from this world, I called you to be with me in all the glory of heaven. Even of Abraham saw these things, they're in a glimmering, they didn't have it very clearly, but in the 11 chapters Hebrew, it tells us that Abraham lived in tents and like a sojourner around all his hundreds and some odd years of life, you know. But the rat of the Hebrew says, really, Abraham had a longing in his heart and a looking in his heart for a city that God has made, and he said, God really has one. And then he says, all the others that have come back to Abraham, everybody who has been of the faith in their hearts had been looking for a homeland that can't be found under, and he was on the face. And God has prepared for them as the head. As you know, the 12 chapters says that city is the New Jerusalem, and there will be found God in his glory, Christ in his wonder, there will be found all the myriads of the angels of the angels that belong to him, and there will be found the spirits of the justified people who have been perfected. That's all the body of believers from Adam until the last one is just bad, whose personalities are in heaven. If you want to know what your soul is, it's your personality. It's ye, gone to be with him, the body is the temple you now live in. So that doesn't all, the glory goes on, even those who are in heaven are protected yet. Even those who are in heaven know that this isn't the completion. They know that they're not yet fully united with all their loved ones, with all their family in Christ. They know that they're in glory, they're enjoying the blessings and benefits of the very presence of the Son of God. They're curious to suggest that that'd be made perfect, but just like down here we know that we're not with them, they know we're not with them yet even in heaven. They're looking anxiously forward, hopefully forward, gloriously forward to the second coming of Jesus. It's not just those of us down here, friends, not just those of us here on earth who are looking for His coming. When that great time when God's people will all be put together, no more separation, every Satan does. It's easier than looking forward and they don't know wings or they don't know when He's coming. Only the Father knows. Jesus said that they're looking forward to that time when the Son of God will begin His move because they know when He does, they're coming with Him. As they come with Him as Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, He says, I want you to comfort yourselves with these words. When that trumpet sounds and the lard begins to come, He will bring with Him those who fall in the sleep. And then those bodies will be raised and make glorious. And those of us who are living when He comes, our bodies will be redeemed without resurrection. Our bodies will be changed as He says in 1 Corinthians 15 and the twinkling of an eye. When that great reunion that never breaks up, the greatest family reunion of all this tree, when the elect of Jesus put it, when the angels and God gather the elect of God from the forecars of heaven and earth, the saints and heaven coming, those in the earth coming, and we meet in Jesus in the air. And so we are ever with the Lord. And we move out into that kingdom of eternal glory that you have in the New earth that will prevail forever and ever in the book of Revelation. Tell us it all. Genesis tells us how hell got its start among humanity and how paradise was lawless. But if you flip back, as often as you opt to, to the last book, you'll find out that it comes out well for those who are in crisis. For everybody who is in crisis, the book of Revelation is written to show. It all comes out to you. That brings me back to my mother and her stories again. My mother was a great bedtime storyteller. Most mothers were back in those days. There was a philosophy behind it. It wasn't just that there was a reason for it. There's been an English flop that reached way back in our heritage. It was you to posit a good, beautiful thought in the mind of a child when they go to sleep at night and does something to their character, does something to their nature. And nobody's proven that long yet. Some mothers used to tell bedtime stories, so that when they're children with the sleep, little children with the sleep, they go to sleep with a beautiful thought. Some of my mother told them, and she got some of them out of books because I've seen some of them since, and she made them up a lot of times, and I thought her made up ones were as good as the others. And I could use to tell when she was making them up. I could just listen, I could tell, and they were just as good as any others. But bedtime stories always began and ended the same way. I mean, it had different things in the middle, but always the first line was once upon a time. And my mother always ended up bedtime stories. And that was because there was a beautiful thought in God and a sweet thing about it. They lived happily ever after. And we say, well, that's called a very time, very story. Real life didn't like that. Real life, that's not what it is. But friends, that's what the Bible is trying to tell us. Real life is like that. Real life, we live happily ever after. You come into Jesus once upon a time, a son of embrace Jesus, and he and she isn't gonna live happily ever after, that's the way it is. And that's not a very story. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will never perish. But they've happily ever acted. Have eternal life. New life, now, never ending with him. I'll tell you, friends, that hasn't got a hold on it. Death is a shadow. In the Providence of God, even yet, death is a fact. But his power has been abolished because of the believe in him. And we have glory and hope. Those out of Christ had none. The picture of the Bible gives, for them is the same Lord Jesus who said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that same Jesus who said those sweet wonderful words also said these. And these are the most awful he ever said. This is the most awful thing Jesus ever said. It's just as true as John 3.16, though. Then he, that's Christ, at the end of age, will say to those on his left hand, the parts for me you cursed, into eternal fire, appears to the devil in his angels. The devil is really dead, unless there's a difference between hell and heaven, there's a difference between the death of the saved, and the death of those who lived their whole life time found in rebellion against their creator, Redeemer, who is God's son, Jesus Christ. But all who embrace him, receive the forgiveness of sins, and the thing is gone, and the power is gone. He lives with us here, and we go to live with him forever, in our blessed glory. I heavenly Father, how we thank you. How wonderful it is. How good you are. Oh God, we deserve hell. Every one of us do. God, there isn't a person here. I know, I don't. What I really deserve to hear from Jesus Christ is the part for me you cursed Sam's Patterson into the hellfire, prepared for the devil in his angels. I know that. What I'm thankful, that because of your grace in Jesus, I'll never perish, I don't deserve it. Oh God, I thank you. You're bringing me to trust Jesus, and I prayed dear God for any boy, or a man or woman who's here tonight. Lord someone may be sitting here who really is in confusion about this. They know they've never trusted you, and then don't even know that it's necessary, and see like that maybe what you're being said tonight is really, it's an offense, and God, I pray for them. Lord, I don't deserve what I've got any more than they do, and I deserve hell just much as they do. But you, I pray dear God, by the same grace that you opened a center like me to see Jesus and trust in Him and find joy in the whole glory, I pray that your grant, that same gift of grace, dear God, to that man here tonight, that woman, larger, who never has yet, honestly, truly, truly, personally, yielded up their last to Christ as their creator redeemer. God, the Son, God's great Son, whole Father, give them hearts to wanting tonight to seem to come to Him. Now friends, we're about now with our eyes closed, now it's about, this is an opportunity for those of us who are in the Lord Jesus Christ to be thankful, not to be proud, but we certainly don't deserve what we have. Finally, Lord, ought to be the song of all of it. What have I ever done that I should deserve one of the blessings I've got? The answer's no. But we ought to be thankful for it. Thank God for bringing us to just no one, trust and love Jesus. But dear friend, if you're here tonight and you know you've never really opened your life up to Christ, never called on Him to have mercy on you, you've never really trusted your life into His care and keeping in His control, believing that that may be the real reason God brought you here tonight. I invite you to come to Jesus who stands right where you are now. He says near as your breath, He said, if you hear my voice, if you really believe that I'm real, that you need me, that I'm able to come in and get you healing and salvation, you really believe that, that open your heart open tonight, I'll come in and live in you till I take you to heaven, call on me tonight, settle it tonight, become a disciple of Jesus tonight. You tell Him right now in your own heart that this is what you do. You yourself are up to Him just now as we pray. Good Savior, how quickly one can pass from death to life, how quickly one can step out of the darkness in the light. Thank you, good Lord. Just in the turning of the heart to You, from prayer, the transaction can be completed. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Heading the Prayer of weak sinners, who had last in repentance and trust and faith come to You. Thank You for taking that man, that woman, that born there, who tonight really did, cry out to You, Lord Jesus, to have mercy on them. To be the Savior they need and don't deserve, fill their hearts with joy and peace and believing, and give them grace to confess to You and the rest of their lives. We pray in Your name, amen. We'll conclude our service by singing a prayer again, in number 221, just the last stand. It's a prayer, let's make that our prayer to Jesus as we close our service, in number 221, let us stand, please, as we say, the last stand. Immediately after the benediction I'm going to be in room 203, and I'll be privileged to talk to anybody here who has some concern about your relationship to Jesus Christ, and you'd like to talk to somebody about it. It would be my honor to do it, and I'd like you to come.