Pastor Jerry Zepnick's sermon, 'The Authority and Power of Jesus,' delivered on Mother's Day, explores the intricate relationship between Jesus and God the Father, emphasizing the theme of Jesus' divine authority, as depicted in the book of John. While acknowledging the significance of mothers, Pastor Zepnick focuses on John chapter 5, highlighting Jesus' miracles, particularly the healing at the pool of Bethesda, and the subsequent sermon by Jesus. This event provokes the Jewish leaders, who, blinded by pride and adherence to human traditions, fail to recognize Jesus' divine actions. The sermon underscores the importance of standing firm in true faith, avoiding the compromises often made for convenience. Pastor Zepnick stresses that Jesus, as the Son of God, embodies three key functions: the giver of life, the bringer of judgment, and the one to receive honor. He urges believers to live without compromise, fully submitted to God's will, while recognizing the potential costs of such a commitment. The sermon concludes with an appeal to embrace Jesus as Savior, promising a transformative and fulfilling relationship with Him.

Morning church family. Good morning. I would like to obviously wish all the mothers a Happy Mother's Day today. And My words come short. I'm going to read out of God's word what it has to say about mothers and and the mothers that I've known in my life and that God has blessed me with and the ones that he surrounds me with now.

I am beyond blessed. Proverbs 31 25 through 31 it reads strength and honor are her clothing she shall rejoice in time to come she opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household, does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up, call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her.

Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised." I thank God for giving me a wife that is a mother like that. And many women like that within our church body. I praise God for that. And I praise God for His Word.

That being said, I'm not going to give a Mother's Day message today. I am in the book of John. I couldn't get out of it. It engulfed me. There's a challenge in the text that I'm working in for today.

And it has been extremely challenging to put a message together. And I've talked with Pastor Rick about some texts as well. And we get to some text and it's like, you read it and you read it, and it's like, I don't know, I got nothing. It's hard to put it together. But this one was hard.

But It's in line with other messages that have been before and will be after. But God is true to His Word and He does give us His Word and His Spirit to work in us. And so The book of John is not a synoptic Gospel. The other three Gospels are synoptic. They are the accounts of exactly what happened.

The book of John is more John just trying to say, Jesus is God. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ. Give your life to Him and things will be okay. Surrender to that.

Live in Him and through Him and you will have eternal life. That is the book of John's message. And so today, the reality is that the text today is a spin off beyond what last week was. Book of John chapter five is divided into two major parts. The first 15 verses are about the miracle, the healing at the pool of Bethesda.

And 16 through 47 are a sermon that Jesus gives. And the sermon is just packed with doctrine on who Jesus is as the Son of God. And that's why I believe John records this so much in detail. And that sermon is in a few parts, but it asks us questions. It draws from us questions.

What are you motivated by? By pride? Are you motivated by honor? Are you motivated by eternity? And so this text takes place, it's in Jerusalem.

And the Israel people are God's chosen people. The Jews are God's chosen people. And this is in the midst of that. And so I want us to have the correct surrounding and understanding of what's actually happening here. And so he's in the midst of God's chosen people that he was brought to save, to redeem.

And so there's a great feast going on. And so everybody at these feasts, for 15 miles or more, you've got to come to them. And so the city is packed out. It is swelling with people. And people are at a feast, so they're wearing all their best clothes and they're on their best behavior.

But also there's this pool that people come to to get healed at this time. And so all these outward people come in and people carry them and they put them at this pool where Jesus heals this crippled man of 38 years. And so I wanna start out next by reading our text and then opening up in prayer. So the text is gonna be verses 16 through 23. John chapter five, verses 16 through 23.

For this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus, sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My father has been working until now and I have been working. Therefore, the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the father do. For whatever he does, the son also does in like manner.

For the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself does, and He will show him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead, and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life, to whom He will, for the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him." Father, this morning we thank you for the word that you've given us, Lord God, and I pray that you would unravel this in our minds today to the point where it works in our hearts and in our lives, Father God, to draw us nearer to you, to convict our hearts of our shortcomings and what your true identity is, Lord God, and how it affects our walk. I thank you for this day and I thank you for the way that your word works, Lord. And I just pray that it would do that today in Jesus' name.

Amen. And so what we have here is that the problem being that Jesus healed this man and the Jews saw no miracle in it. And Jesus broke their laws of the Sabbath is what they saw instead. And so Jesus, the tragedy that I see is not different than what we do today. Jesus worked a miracle in their midst.

Jesus showed them something and they completely missed it. They not only missed it, they rejected it. And so the Jewish leaders over the course of decades and centuries really, they had built their own system of religion And so this was not through getting rid of God's Word and saying, well, this is wrong, so I'm going to replace it with this. No. Just a little bit at a time, their own heart's deceptions would add to it and put on top of it.

And further, the restrictions making themselves God in the end. So this is not unlike the truths of God's Word being adapted and changed today even. The compromises that happened and how we say, you know what, what is okay today ecumenically is that we need to accept this and accept that and accept that. 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, it was unthinkable to accept anything close to that. And so this is the compromise that I'm talking about.

And we have to look and identify some of that in our own lives, I think. And so, it's all for the same reason then as today. It's human pride, but for convenience of our own human pseudo-Christian walk. And so, the fact is that it's hard to stand in the truth. It's not easy to stand where you're supposed to stand in the truths of the Word of God.

It's not easy to not compromise. And that's why most people do it. Because it's easier and it's more simple to raise a child by plopping them in front of a TV and hitting the button and letting them watch that, than it is to actually walk and live with that child and teach and train them in the way that they should go. Am I right? And so we have to be careful not to do the same thing with our Christian walks, that we just take what's the easiest route, most entertaining, and just plop ourselves in front of it, and then just allow our lives to be guided and directed by what the culture and what our hearts tell us to do.

And so this is a dangerous thing to do, but it was told what will be coming today. 2 Timothy 4.3 and 4, for the time will come when they will not endure a sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables." This is foretold that this would be happening today. They heap up for themselves, teachers. They don't just find a person that tells them what they want to hear. They find one.

And then they find one that supports that one. Until they have to heap them up, there's A pile of apostasy is what it comes down to be. There's a pile of teachers that support one another that are out in the world today to teach you to compromise your Christian walk. That teach you what you want to hear, what your body and what your flesh wants to do. There's a pile of them.

And what the text is telling us is to turn away. Get away from those people as far as you can. You have nothing to do with that. And I will be honest with you, there will always be Somebody that will tell you an easier way to do things. That this is what God wants from you.

But this text tells us that we need to turn aside from that. So you see what the leaders laid down as the law wasn't in the Old Testament laws. But do you want to know what was? In Ezekiel 27, 12, it tells us that you are not supposed to commit extortion. That's what they were doing in the temple, right?

They were selling doves and sheep and whatnot. Because they're inspectors when you bring your own animal in. It was, well, I found a speck on your animal. It makes it not worthy to be sacrificed. So that being the case, you're going to have to buy an animal from us.

Oh, you don't have the right change. You've got the wrong kind of money because you came from this land and not here. So I'll trade your money up for you for a fee." And so they had you coming and going. They were committing extortion right in the temple and they were ripping people off. But that's what they were doing.

James 4, 4 lays it down on how this lays out. What adulterers and adulteresses do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." This text divides. There's two kinds of people in the world. There's friends of God and enemies of God.

And as much as you want to say, you know what, I'm working on my salvation and I think I'm in a good spot. No. We read a verse last week, hot or cold. Because you're lukewarm, spit out of the mouth, right? So there's two kinds, there's hot, there's cold, there's friends, there's enemies.

And so without understanding this, we have no motivation to be sold out for Jesus, right? Or we could just ride the fence until we got slivers in our hinder so deep we'll never get them out, right? We could just sit on that fence because then we get the best of both. We get fire insurance, we're not going to hell someday because we love God and we go to church, right? But we get to have our fun in the world at the same time.

And so The text is telling us, and it has told us consistently throughout, no, you're on one side or you're on the other. You love Jesus or you don't love Jesus. You're a friend of God's or you're an enemy of God's. And so today we need to know what we are. Where are we with that?

And so the religious leaders created a standard and then they judged other people by that expectation. And the question is, do we do this? Do we create expectations as if we were God Himself? We take God's Word and we change it and adapt it to what we want it to say, and then we act like we're that, and we use that and we judge others by that standard instead of biblical standards. And so, they were motivated by pride.

People who want to keep their pride, their power, their popularity, rather than looking for the truth, rather than looking for what God would have from them, they look to suppress it. They look to take the truth and suppress that truth, to put that down. And People who care about honor, they look to, they aim at the truth and they know the truth. John, 2 John 1, 6 tells us, "'This is love that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment that as you have heard from the beginning, you shall walk in it.

To walk in that truth. And the fact is that this will cost you. There's no way around it. This is going to cost you. You want to live for Jesus, praise God.

Know that It will cost you. It will cost you. There was this debate that happened in October of 2007 and 2008 at Oxford between two men, and maybe some of you remember this or have heard of it, but one atheist by the name of Richard Dawkins and the other professor, they were both Oxford professors. The other one was an Oxford professor, John Lennox. And so The first debate in 2007 was called the God Delusion.

It was. And so Richard Dawkins and John Lennox, they debated. Of course, Dawkins, like I said, being an atheist, John Lennox, I'm sorry, being a Christian, he was telling evidence for God, evidence for the existence of God and creation. And So as the debate went on, they asked him, how do you know, Dawkins asked him, how do you know? What evidence do you have of God?

And he said, well, other than creation itself and everything that He had already laid out. He said, I've seen God work. I've seen God work in people. I've seen God redeem people, save people. And I've seen new life in people that were lost and dead.

I've seen this. And Dawkins, he said that Lennox is a brilliant man, But he suffers from a kind of intellectual bipolarism, in his words, that's what he called it. And so, the fact is that resorting to insult and tearing down, this is child's play. The truth is that in the end, this is really the best kind of compliment that you can get when you're talking with a person about that, and then they say, Yeah, well, you might be right, but you're a stupid head. Okay, you just won that debate, right?

And that's just what happened here. He just had to resort to that. And so just so some are motivated by preserving their pride. And I remember Ken Ham and Bill Nye, that debate. I remember Mike Gendron and this Catholic bishop that debated.

And in the end, my brother sent me the debate who is a Catholic. And so, he thought it was really that their guy really kind of tore up Mike Gendron. But Mike Gendron's truths were just, they were laid out so clearly on the falseness of the foundation of the Catholic Church. And so when he sent it to me, I watched it again and then I sent it back to him so that he could watch it again. But some are motivated by preserving this pride or this popularity or the authority that they have or this agenda.

And in today's passage, the Jewish leadership was motivated by pride. That led all the way to wanting to kill Jesus. And so they wanted control. They wanted to preserve their pride. So they decided that they would silence the opposition.

They got all the way to that point. And at no time in their train of thought did it come to them that well, what if Jesus is right? And I'll ask you that this morning. What if everything that you've been taught in your mind about God, about the Bible, has been wrong? What if what we're learning today about Jesus is right?

What if there is no other way to heaven? Because Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. What if that's actually the case and you're trusting in something else this morning? These leaders, they couldn't comprehend the idea that maybe Jesus was right.

That maybe Jesus did heal somebody as the Son of God, as God Himself, God incarnate. And so, they never thought that. Dawkins never thought, wait a second, what if this delusional, bipolar guy is actually right and he's not delusional at all? And so We need to understand that what we think sometimes, the system that we've been taught or built up in our lives to now has been compromised. Is that possible?

And then that we stand where we stand looking at and hearing God's word speak to us that that's actually the truth and that the way I've been living I need to adapt and change that or am I just too comfortable where I'm at and so I'm just gonna sit. That's it, I'm camping right here. I'm camping where I've been because this is the best spot. I'm not gonna move. See, I was there for a long time.

See, I will submit to you today that this is the same thing going on. And that we need to stand stronger than ever, and we need to grow. The one question the leaders never asked was that, could we be wrong? Is it possible? They fell back on their own rules because they were blinded by their pride, by what they had accomplished.

And so, do we in the same way, Do we persecute Jesus? Do we do that? Living our own wills and putting His will aside. But in verses 19 and 20, today, the Son does as the Father does. And this gets really kind of busy in here, doesn't it?

Well, the Son does what the Father wants to and the Son does does you know it just gets really busy in there and so we're gonna we're gonna just walk through that the Son does as the Father does. In these verses, Jesus explained that to these leaders, some of the nature of His relationship and His work with God the Father. And because of this, we have a lot of sound doctrine in the Trinity really because of this text here. Like he's saying, he's saying to us today, okay I'm giving you the sermon, I'm giving you this text so you can see how this really works. Okay, he explains that the Son can do nothing of Himself.

And He says He does nothing independently. He was and is fully submitted to the Father's will. And the submission comes by choice. It comes by choice. Not by coercion, he's not getting his arm twisted, not by an inferior nature.

It's not like God is the boss and Jesus is the worker. So Jesus did not tell the healed man to carry the bed on his own authority. He did that on complete submission to God, the Father in heaven. So Philippians 2, 8, it tells us, that's Proverbs. This talks about pride.

Everyone proud and hurt is an abomination to the Lord. Though they join forces, none will go unpunished. That is God's gift to the proud. I don't want that gift someday. But Philippians 2, 8.

"...and be found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death on the cross. And so this is a submission of Christ to God the Father. And what some people think of as the great difference or even a small difference between God the Father and God the Son, as if God the Father emphasizes judgment and like this dictator that's going to discipline. And the Son focuses on love and joy and peace and forgiveness. And we're all one in Jesus.

And we're going to dance in the tulips. And we're going to sit by the campfire and sing Kumbaya. That's Jesus. And then He saves us in front of God the Father. Maybe they think the same way over what they call the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

But this thinking that we have in our mind is wrong. It is upside down. It usually comes from refusing to see the love of God the Father or the righteousness in God the Son. So also showing the mystery of the incarnation that Jesus was born a human being. That God the Son in becoming man ceased not to be God.

And that the personality of Jesus as human is the same as that of God the Son. And so, in verse 20, it tells us that the Father loves the Son. The relationship between the first and the second members of the Trinity is not one of master and slave or employer, employee, but one of father and son, united by love. That the Father loves His Son, that's been affirmed in chapter 3, verse 35 of John. We've been in that already.

The Father loves His Son and has given all things into His hand. That's a lot. And in verse 20, I'm going to read verse 20 again. It says, "...For the Father loves His Son and shows Him all things that He Himself does. And He will show Him greater works than these that you may marvel." Greater works than these.

That You may marvel. That greater work is salvation. This is redemption. This is God's work, the greater works. Because Jesus, On earth, He did multiple miracles.

Amazing amount of miracles, of healing and other ones. But the religious leaders were shocked by what Jesus told the healed man to do, to take up your bed and walk. Jesus told them that they would see even greater works. And they had to almost fall over on that. Ones that they would marvel.

You will see greater works that you will marvel. This is prophesied in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 36, 25-27. And I love it when God's Word comes together in that way from the Old Testament and it marries to the New Testament because this was told and This is what happened. And it tells of the work of Jesus and what will be. It says, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes." To walk that's living in His statutes. And you will keep My judgments and do them.

This is the gift of God in Jesus Christ who is standing before them, who is giving a prelude by these healing miracles of what will be. And so, in verses 21-23, Jesus uses the work of the resurrection as an example of the shared work of the Father and the Son. The Son has the power and the authority to raise the dead and to give life to them just as the Father does. So Jesus appealed to ultimate power. So it's hard to think of greater power and authority than to raise the dead.

But the Jewish leaders saw Him as only a Sabbath breaker. And so today we might see Jesus as something that He's not. And it's really no different than seeing Him as the Jewish leader saw Him as a Sabbath breaker. But verse 21 tells us that he gives life to whom he will. Jesus points out his sovereign power, his independence.

He gives life according to His own will. His own will being absolute and perfect in every case. And it needs to be received. Will you receive that today? All of these truths fall doctrinally right into the reality that our salvation, our sanctification is a work of God.

It is not something that we have done or can do. He chooses whom He will and when he will raise from the dead. Take something dead and make life out of it. Take out a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. We went through John 3.16 not that long ago, and we got a clear picture of this powerful work of God the Father and what it means to mankind.

This shows the love that God... Just a little bit ago I was talking about we get God and Jesus mixed up sometimes. Well, that Jesus is all love and God is all judgment. It says in John 3 16 and 17 That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that Whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." And so, one text I thought of after, and that is because what we come down with is this believed.

Okay, I want to touch on believed for a minute here. Who believes in God here? Every hand is going to go up, right? We all believe in God. And so what do we do with that?

And 6.24 says, it tells us this as it defines us down, and I picked this up at the conference yesterday, the amazing conference yesterday, right here, downstairs. If you miss it, you miss something amazing outstanding preaching and teaching but one of them was on the purity of the Christian, on how God takes out of the world something. And He stands it up. But it says in Matthew 6, 24, it says no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot serve God and this world. It can't happen. And so, never to forget that we are on one side or the other. We can't serve God and this world.

And what does that look like? You've got to bring that to the Lord. It looks like surrender is what it looks like. To what God has for your life. And the fact is that once a person is in Christ, you grow like an acorn in the ground and it starts to come up.

It grows. You put a stone in the ground and it doesn't grow. Remember, He'd taken out our heart of stone. That stone, it's in the ground. That heart, it's not gonna grow.

It's not gonna do a thing. It's gonna sit there. You come back in a thousand years, it's gonna still be the same stupid stone, right? Okay, we grow. A Christian is never satisfied with their current level of growth.

You're never satisfied. God's Word is constantly speaking to you. The truths are constantly hitting you. And you want to be more in Christ. You want to grow closer.

You want to be more like Jesus until you hold Him someday. We become more like Him until He takes us home. And our faith becomes sight, and He holds us in His arms someday. Right? That's what it's like.

We never get there until we're with Him. This unity between Jesus and God is a unity of love, two minds having a single thought. So these Orthodoxy forces were coming against Jesus and the end of Jesus was already sure. He sealed His fate. He did that intentionally.

He knew it. But Jesus was certain that the future was in the hands of God. God the Father, and it couldn't be stopped. It could not be stopped. This is what God had sent Him to do.

And it's no different with you today. God has planned for your life once you sell yourself out to Him. Once you are truly saved, it's no different with you. If you live that sold out life for Jesus, as those speakers at the conference yesterday just reminded to be wholly devoted to Christ. There's no human effort that can take you off that track and confound God's plan in your life.

No human effort that can stop or slow His plan for your life, through your life. There's nothing that can derail that. You live for Jesus and He will guide and direct your steps. With these prideful religious leaders, Jesus would not lower his claims. He would not adulterate his truth.

He would not step one foot to the right or to the left on the purpose that God had called him to do. Why? Because I sinned and I needed to be redeemed. That's why. That's why God sent His Son.

To him it was way more important to be true to God than to fear men. And that's got to be for us. If we call ourselves Christians, that's little Christ. That's what we are. We are a reflection, a representative of Him.

And we can't fear man. Acts 5.29. But Peter and the other apostles replied, must obey God rather than men. Good old Peter. Went from being a coward to being a lion, right?

Ecclesiastes 12-13. When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this, Fear God, keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. Did you know that that was your duty? Every single person here. Fear God, keep His commandments.

And so as I move forward in verses 21-23, we see three great functions that belong to Jesus in this text as God's Son. And so, I'm going to read them quick. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

So we see three great functions, and the first one is that He is the giver of life, Raises the dead and gives life to them. Even so, the Son gives life to whom He will. He's the great giver of life. Not just raising people from the dead, but the fact that no man is truly alive until the Spirit of Jesus is in them and until you're in Jesus. I wasn't alive.

I was dead until God in His mercy saved me and the Spirit lives in me and I in Jesus. There is no life aside from that. You might think you have life. You don't. You ain't seen nothing yet.

He's a giver of life. The man that finds life in Jesus has been made new. And I could rattle off a thousand Bible verses about this, But new relationships, new concepts of work and relations and life, new duties, new pleasure, it's all changed. It's all changed. Relationship to God has changed.

And you know what else has changed? Eternity. Eternity. You will spend forever with Jesus. That has changed.

Eternity has changed. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. The new has come.

So they look different. They're not the same. Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified in Christ. It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. See, the second point is that He is the bringer of judgment.

In 22 it says, for the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son. But I thought Jesus was love! Right? No, He has committed all judgment to Jesus. He's the bringer of judgment.

So here John tells us that God has committed the whole process of judgment to Jesus Christ. The same Jesus that died on the cross, the Jesus that saved me. He committed all judgment to Him. You see, the judgment upon a man depends on his response to Jesus now. You have an opportunity this morning to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

So that judgment then depends on what you do with Jesus now, right now, today. That's what it depends on. And so He is the bringer. You see that judgment depends upon what you do with it. What are you gonna do with it?

It's right there for you. 2 Timothy 4.1 tells us, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead and in view of His appearing and His Kingdom. You receive Jesus, you will find in Jesus the one Person who loves you and you can follow. That you will find solace in, that you can share life with. Can run to in all of life's problems, the happenings, the joys, the sorrows, if you have surrendered to Him.

John 14 and 15, it tells us that relationship that his followers have with him. It says, you are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing, but I have called you friends because everything I have learned from my father I've made known to you. Everything He has made known to us." And the third point is that He is the one to receive honor. The one to receive honor.

That all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Does your life, does my life, honor the God of creation? Does your life honor Jesus Christ? That's the question.

The Bible tells us of an unquenchable hope and an unconquerable Savior in Jesus Christ. The story of a crucified Christ who rose on the third day. God paid for our sins. And that when we're tempted to give up or to give in or to despair, that we would do well to remember what we've learned here, what Jesus says of Himself, and to remember that that salvation of men is the purpose of God in Jesus, His Son. And that nothing in the end can frustrate that will.

Come to Jesus today and be part of that family. Walk in that. You will never, ever be sorry. Psalm 62, five through eight tells us, rest in God alone, oh my soul. For my Hope comes from Him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress. I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor rest on God. My strong rock, my refuge is in God.

Trust in Him at all times. O people, pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. If you know Jesus as your Savior today, I beg you to strengthen and to submit to that walk. If you do not know Him today, I beg you to give your life to Him today.

You will never, ever be sorry. You will never be the same. And you will never be sorry. And you will have a friend that is closer than a brother. Father, I thank you for your word today.

Thank you, Lord, for the power of it. I pray, Father God, for all of us here today, our hearts would be changed and moved. That that new life, Lord God, be pointed to you. And that you would receive the glory that is due to you, Lord God. I just pray for our hearts today, this morning, Lord, to be shaped, molded by the truth, Lord God, that we would walk forward with boldness, love you more than this world and all else in Jesus' name.

Amen.