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Good evening. If you would go and open up your Bibles to Hebrews 2. That's where our text is going to be focused on this morning. I got Colton and Camden going to be handing out some handouts for us this morning to help you follow along with the message. It's good to be with you this morning, especially on a day it's kind of dark and cold outside.

I'm kind of glad I'm up and preaching this morning because I'm a little bit cold right now. So you'll see me shaking around a little bit since I'm trying to warm up some. Um, but I appreciate the thoughts of the Lord's Supper that Wade brought, uh, this morning and, uh, the songs as well, uh, that Brother Sean led.

Really, uh, I kind of gave Sean some directives and I'm not sure I'm usually the best when people ask me about, uh, you know, how to help them out with what songs to pick. I'm usually kind of give them something, but, you know, I'm not super accurate a lot of times. Um, but, uh, I think Sean really kind of hit, uh, the messages from around the head and, and, and Wade as well in his message.

And so it was really nice. On a Sunday morning when, uh, you know, you're already excited to preach, but you get even more excited when the message, the strings kind of keep flowing throughout all the services and And I think I even heard, uh, Olivia, maybe, or one of the little kids over here, even, singing.

And, uh, she sounded like she was on pitch. So, we might have, uh, uh, got a star in the making here we might need to be on the lookout for. But this morning I want to kind of start with a question before we get to Hebrews 2. And really just ask, uh, what's, what's your biggest problem? What is humanity's biggest problem?

How does that work in your life? What is the thing in your life that totally takes control over you and dictates how you think, how you live? What's your biggest problem? Well, for most of us, we might just say, well, my problem is sin, right? We're really quick to point out, uh, other people's failures, but we're especially quick to point out our own failures.

And so scripture tells us, Paul tells us in Romans, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. And then the next chapter, he says for the wages of sin. Is death. So sin's the thing that kind of messed everything up in the beginning, in the gardens.

That's kind of our biggest problem, right? Well, maybe you say the devil, and in conjunction with our moral failures, we know at the same time that we're wrestling with these spiritual forces and powers that we don't even see, as Ephesians 6:12 says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers.

Against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. Against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And sometimes those forces take us captive, and it's those captors through which, uh, 1 John 3:8 says, The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

And so, the devil, he's the one that's always enticing us to sin, he's always tempting us. He's the one who Jesus came, it says, in 1 John, to conquer his works. So the devil is our biggest problem, right? I think both of these are right. There's no doubt about that. They all have the potential to separate us from God and from his love.

And so we're really, we're right to point out the dangers that sin and the devil have. And we talked about it this morning, the three kind of enemies, uh, that we, uh, that we often kind of, uh, are confronted with. And it's funny, you know, for me in my mind preparing the sermon, uh, I think death, the third enemy we talked about in class this morning, is one that flies under the radar.

And yet, that was the first one that was kind of blurted out this morning. So it kind of, you know, took my legs out from under me before I even got started. But I think we do recognize death as an enemy, but we recognize, uh, while it's an enemy that's been conquered in the past, and that Jesus has, uh, was resurrected and overcame the powers of death, and it's something we look forward to, for, uh, Christ, uh, overcoming for us, uh, uh, through our own personal resurrection.

I think what we don't recognize is how death influences us. on the day today in our lives. As 1 Corinthians 15:56 says, as Wade read earlier, the sting of death is sin. And, like scripture tells us, you know, sin brings forth death, but also death brings forth sin. And so what Hebrews 2 is going to tell us is that death exerts influence over us by creating fear within us.

Read with me in Hebrews 2:14-15. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise, that is Christ, partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who is the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

And so, asking the question this morning, what's our biggest problem? And the point's not to say that death is a bigger issue than sin or the devil is, but it's to say that it carries the same amount of weight. And so this morning, what I want us to do is look at how death influences us and how that often goes unnoticed in our lives.

And I want to use Hebrews 2 to kind of examine that. And we'll look at Uh, as you saw in that last slide, uh, the kind of death is emphasized three times. I want to emphasize, uh, this passage kind of in reverse order. I want us to first look at what does it mean for us to be enslaved by death? How is it that the devil uses our enslavement to exert power over us?

And then thirdly, how has Jesus set us free and how has he called us to express our new found freedom. So read with me again in Hebrews 2:15. Christ came, he came to destroy the one who has the power of death and order, verse 15 says, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

And so, the fear of death, that's the thing that the Hebrew writer says has enslaved mankind. So death has power over us, it can have power over us, and if it takes us captive. And so how does that exactly take place? So I think as you see on the screen, fear of death, it creates within us an inner anxiety that influences us to act out of self preservation.

Let me read it again. Fear of death creates within us an inner anxiety that influences us to act out of self preservation. Let's kind of break this down. And first We want to talk about what does it mean to have fear of death. I think we all recognize, at least in our tradition, we don't believe that we inherit sin from Adam and Eve.

A lot of Christians throughout the world do. We don't believe that, but what we do recognize is what we do inherit from them is a world ridden with death. I mean, you can think about it. So many of us, even in our culture today, experience death before we even get an opportunity to sin. Think about a child in utero who who hasn't even been born yet and maybe they, they die or they're still born and they don't even get a chance to enter into this world before they face the consequence of death.

And so before we're even born, before we have this opportunity to even spin, we're confronted with the possibility of dying. That at any moment we could not exist. And this really, for us, is a super fearful thing. It's kind of scary to think about. And so our fear of death creates within us this kind of fight or flight response.

And to be clear, we're not talking about kind of the just generic biological kind of fear of death, right? Fear of death can be a healthy thing. We don't want to live so carelessly that we just totally live recklessly. Uh, and we, we want to have regard for our lives because life is the most precious thing that God has given us.

And so we need to take care of ourselves in that sense to avoid death in that way. But what the Hebrew writers talk about here in chapter 2 is a fear of death that takes total control over an individual so that we only act out of basic instincts. I mean, think about the term slave that he used. that he uses.

A slave is somebody who loses their freedom. They have no opportunity to choose for themselves or make decision, uh, decisions. But because we want to avoid death, we have this fear of death, there's certain things that we're going to need in order to kind of keep death at bay in our lives. And there's going to be real and perceived shortages.

that we encounter because of the state of our world. And when this happens, that's when we become really anxious. And this is where the fear of death really kind of starts to take control in our lives. And that happens in two kind of ways, uh, in, in terms of basic needs, kind of biological needs, food, shelter, and things of that nature, but also emotional needs.

And think about basic needs for a moment, uh, for the ancients, you know, or most people probably in our world still today, most people live day to day. You think about Jesus and how he taught his disciples to pray. He said, give us this day our daily bread. And he says later in the Sermon on the Mount, therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And so for most people throughout history, the fear of death was an ever present reality. Infant mortality rates were high. People don't live up until their 80s, 90s, or 100s. Uh, there's really no serious medical treatment that people could have. Food was scarce, and people survived on their own subsistence farming.

So, if you had a bad crop that year, if there's a famine a couple years in a row, And you didn't prepare for it, well you may not live to the next time you get to plant or harvest your crop. And so food, uh, food was scarce, and this kind of, and our other kind of basic needs were scarce, and it kind of creates this anxiety within people throughout history.

And James 4, if you want to turn over there, I think kind of makes this point really clear, uh, that the, the passions that kind of form within us because of, uh, our, our needs and our wants. James says to the Christians in chapter 4, verse 1, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. And so, when basic necessities in life like food or water and shelter are scarce, this inner anxiety kind of produces within us a battle over how are we going to act? Are we going to preserve ourselves? Well, sometimes we act in such a way, and throughout history we've seen, that when things are scarce, people often result to violence.

But for us, we don't really, we talk about this in class Wednesday night, most of us don't know what it means to hunger and thirst. We live in such an affluent society, that we're not really constantly confronted with death in the same way that the ancients were. But we may not lack our basic needs from day to day, but we still have a really serious death avoidance kind of culture in, in America and in the West today.

And for us to really avoid death, it's, it's less about physical security and it's more about emotional. security. It's tied to how we view ourselves personally and how the world outside views us as well. And so the way that we're trying to avoid death is that we're trying to create this image, this persona, or this kind of legacy that will ultimately outlive us.

And this kind of gets manifested in two ways. On the inside, internally, We kind of have to keep up this certain level of self esteem, don't we? We have to, we have to push our self consciousness, our insecurities away. And we become obsessed with pursuing perfection and what we think that might be or what the world tells us that is.

And so we begin trying to create and maintain this image so that other people don't see us as weak. They don't see us as needy, hurting, damaged, or broken. And so we create a facade, right, in the world, uh, to the world or to our brethren. And so people come and they ask us, how are you doing and how do we respond?

Fine, right? I'm doing fine. I'm, I'm, I'm okay. I'm, I'm making it, right? But really, we're not fine. On the inside, we're ashamed, we're depressed, we're lonely, or we're angry. And so, think about externally as well. Not only do we have this battle raging inside of us internally, but externally, we're trying to cultivate this image, we're trying to create this image so that we can outlive death.

And so we live lives of ambition, of competition, and of rivalry. Because we want to hit markers of success that we've set for ourselves and for the world, that the world has set for us. And so we're trying to create this identity that not only feels good to me and my own identity individually, but how the world looks at me.

But, At the same time, there's people that come in and they challenge this image that I am trying to create. And so, we compete with one another. And when we lose, we become envious of others. We become jealous. And then when we win, we become contemptuous. We become prideful. We get this kind of air of superiority.

And worst case scenario is when we get into this competition and we're so invested in ambition that we start looking at other people, not as our fellow man, but somebody to be treated with animosity or even violence. Look at and think about how 1 John 3, Uh, this is exactly kind of what happens with Cain and Abel, all the way back in the beginning of Genesis 4.

And this is what John kind of says about Cain, where he's kind of, uh, in this competition with his brother. There's this anxiety, and this anxiety produces murder. He says, We should not be like Cain, in verse 12, who was of the evil one, and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, and his brother's were righteous.

And John will go on to talk about, this really parallels our lives as Christians in the same way, that when we live in such a way that's distinct from the world, we challenge those value systems. And that, that rocks the apple cart, doesn't it? And it causes the world, it caused Cain just as, uh, it caused Cain to react in such a way that he had to preserve himself and he had to look at his brother, not as his brother, but as somebody to do violence against.

And so if we can't keep this illusion going, if we can't keep this facade up, then we're going to remember that we're in fact mortal beings and we're people who are susceptible And when the lie, this lie that we can in fact escape death by cultivating some kind of personal image falls apart, well, it loses its power.

And so trying to avoid death by cultivating our basic needs or becoming secure through obtaining basic and emotional needs, It might work for a little while, but it's something that's ultimately a Band Aid for the problem of death. And in reality, what we're doing is we're spending our life being driven by fear to obtain security.

And a life that's all about slavery or trying to obtain security, that's not something That's free, or that's not freedom at all, but that's slavery. And that's what the Hebrew writer is talking about. And so fear is this battleground for the wars that are raging within each and every one of us. And this is where the devil is coming, he's gathering and bringing his forces in order to beat us into submission to the fear of death.

So look now, uh, in Hebrews 2, the second part of verse 14, Christ has come to partake in the, the flesh and blood of man, uh, and, uh, through, through death, He might, it says, destroy the one who has the power of death. That is death. the devil. And so as you see on the screen, the devil, he exploits our fear of death to entice us to sin.

He sees our frailty because of the anxiety within us, the scarcity, uh, the perceived or real scarcity that's around us. And he takes advantage of this war that's going on within us. And the Satan, he's, he's really a persistent opportunist and he's looking to take captives. Like Job, the accuser comes before God.

And he makes the charge against us, saying like he did of Job in Job 2, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give for his life. That's what he tells God, right? Satan's goal really is to abuse this fear of death that we have, to see How much will this person compromise themselves in order to avoid death?

How much will they compromise in order to keep what they have to keep their lives? And it's not that the devil has power over death in the sense that he controls death itself. Any power he has is granted to him by God. Uh, but the devil himself is just merely taking advantage of our immortal state, of this fear that's present within us.

And so looking for an opportunity to enslave us with death's power, he's, as 1 Peter 5 says, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And James tells us in James 4, you know, the devil will flee from you if you submit yourself to God.

But we know that the devil doesn't give up that easy. He's been doing this for a really long time and he's got a few tricks up his sleeve. John 8:44 says, and you don't have to look all these verses up I've got here, I'm just going to kind of read them in quick succession. But John 8:44 says he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

And as the father of lies, Satan often disguises himself as an angel of light, as Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 11. And he does this to deceive us by his cunning, just like he did with Adam and Eve. He's been doing it from the beginning. He's been doing this for a long time. He doesn't give up very easy.

He's going to come back and use a different angle. And as if that's bad enough, as if Satan wanted to just estrange us from our relationship to God isn't bad enough. Well, He wants to do more than that. He wants to unknowingly make us servants to Him through the fear of death. He wants to make us opponents of God by sneering us, as 2 Timothy 2:26 says, by being captured by Him to do His will.

Those taken captive, like Hebrews 2 tells us, they lose their freedom. But not only do they lose their freedom, but they begin to take on the identity of God. of their new master. It's 1 John 3 says, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

But why is it, why is it that Satan is trying to take us captive? Why is it that he's looking for every opportunity? What's his MO? What's his objective? Why is he trying to exert this power of death over us? Well, it's because he's trying to use our fear to keep us from self sacrificing. Once we get under his control, he changes how we think he changes, he changes our focus of where, uh, where the focus of what our life should be.

And this is why Jesus compared, uh, Peter to Satan as he prophesied his death in Matthew 16. If you'll turn over there, Matthew chapter 16 of verse 21-23.

He, uh, Peter has just reclaimed as we're studying our Matthew class. This the big turning point in Matthew's gospel. Peter has just reclaimed. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus is going to start pointing and going towards Jerusalem. And so He begins by preparing His disciples.

This is what's to come. It says in verse 21, From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.

But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And so Peter here, he's, it's a pretty scathing remark that he's given from his Lord. That he's being compared to Satan because essentially Peter is doing exactly what the devil tried to do in the temptation of the wilderness.

Peter is trying to distract Jesus from his mission of self sacrifice. Peter was so driven by this fear of death and the loss of his own personal image. I mean, he's Peter, he's the apostle, he's the disciple of this great rabbi Christ. And he's saying, you can't die, I'm gonna lose everything. Peter's thoughts were driven by fear, and interestingly, you know, Peter is so blinded by Jesus proclamation that he's going to die and the fallout that that will have for him, he doesn't even hear the next statement where Christ prophesies of his resurrection from the dead.

And his anxiety ultimately, as Jesus said, it caused him not to think as his Lord called him to, but as the devil who tempted Jesus to take the same path of self service. And so in response to this demand that Peter makes of his Lord, the Christ delivers this paradoxical statement. Read it in verse 24-25.

Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, Let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

And so death and the power of death, or the power the devil has over us, Uh, it's, it's able to have that power when we allow our minds to be set on thoughts of ourselves rather than on thoughts of God and others. And when my decisions, or my decisions are driven by fear and the need to secure myself, well then I'm no longer free.

Satan has won the battle for my heart and for my mind, and I've been taken captive. And whether I realize, uh, realize it or not, I'm under Satan's power. But if this is you this morning, if this, if you've been feeling like you're under the fear of death, there's still hope for you and there's security that there is to be found.

But it's not impersonal or worldly validation, but it's through the grace of God's Son. Look with me again in Hebrews 2,

in the first part of the verse again. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise partook of the same things. That through death he might destroy the one who is the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

And so for us, Christ delivers us from death and he liberates us in order that we can live a life of self sacrificial love. And for us, Christ's conquering of death, it's something that's a past and future thing for us, as we've said at the beginning. Christ's conquering of death is our faith and our hope.

As Christians, the foundation of our faith, as Wade pointed out in his Lord's Supper talk, it's the fact that Christ came and died and conquered death, that He was, in fact, resurrected to be proclaimed as Christ and Lord. We believe he was crucified, that he died, that he was buried for three days, and that he was raised from the dead on the first day of the week.

And Peter, he didn't see it at first. He didn't see it when Jesus told him the first time when it slapped him right in the face and he got called Satan. He didn't, he didn't see it at first, but when Acts 2 rolls around, when after Christ is now ascended to the right hand of the Father, Peter, before all of these Jews here, begins And he finally sees it.

He says in verse 24 of Acts 2, God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. This became Peter's faith, and this is our faith too. But it's also our hope. We believe that Christ will come again and conquer death once and for all. Look in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15:24-26. This is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture, especially in the New Testament. This is our hope. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power. Same words from Ephesians 6:12, those, those powers that we're wrestling against.

For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

And so not only is Christ conquering of death something our faith, it's in the past, it's what our foundation of our faith rests on, but it's our future hope. It's what we're longing and looking forward to. But again, we're talking about right now. What about how death is influencing me right now? How is it that I can overcome its power?

It's hold over me. It's enslavement to me. How can I overcome? This power of death. Well, 1 John will tell us, as we'll read in just a moment, that Christ casts out fear of death through love. And right now, between the first fruits of Christ's resurrection and the final end gathering of the saints, we have to wrestle with this fear of death.

But Christ He hasn't put us on the battlefield without any weapons to wage war alongside our faith and our hope. Call, uh Christ calls us to embrace his self sacrificial love as the power to overcome our enslavement to death. Look in 1 John 4. We're gonna be in one John four and three for just a moment.

One. John 4:18 or 18 and 19.

John says, there is no fear. But perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. And so because we have this confidence that Christ will deliver us from this sting of death, We're now free to give of ourselves without fear.

And as we witness in the scriptures, Christ gave of himself. He lived a life of sacrifice. He received vindication from God, and so we have confidence that we, too, can do the same. And in fact, the very presence of a life that's filled with love is a sure sign of the resurrection, God's power over death. is already at work in our lives.

Look back one chapter in verses 14-18. We'll start, we'll stop at verse 16 for just a second. But look at verse 14. We know that we have passed out of death into life. Why? Because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

By this we know, love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives. for the brothers. Okay, so what are you telling me, Preston? I gotta, I gotta be, become a martyr to become pleasing to God, to really truly follow after Jesus? I have to, I have to literally die? Well, well, no, right?

Look, keep reading in verse 17 and 18. Of course, you know, if it comes to becoming a martyr, but probably not going to happen for us, at least in this time, right? 17 and 18 kind of gives us a more accurate picture, at least how we can show this love. He says, But if anyone has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. And so Christ calls us to imitate him and giving of ourselves in small ways that really to the world might seem insignificant, right? We're trying to create this image of our life. We're trying to do something grand, do something amazing.

That's going to help us outlive and escape death. Well, Christ says it's giving, doing something as simple as giving your own goods to your brother in need. That's how you overcome the power of death. And to be Christ like is to put aside the fear of death to find liberation, to find resurrection. by giving freely of ourselves in love.

And so when it comes to those basic needs that we talked about at the beginning, we can give of our finances, we can give food, shelter, hospitality, Anything that we might have to our brothers or others in need. And we can share without fear of becoming destitute because we don't believe Satan's lies about the scarcity of resources.

We seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and we believe that all those things will be added unto us because we have a God who can give more abundantly. Then we could ever ask, we could ever do, or we could ever think. And when it comes to our internal emotional needs, when people come up to each other and they say, How are you doing?

Well, I don't have to say, I'm fine anymore. I can be honest with my brothers about my shame, about my depression, my anxiety, and my hurt. Because my identity is not rooted in how I view myself or how the world views me. But it's rooted solely in Christ. And I don't have to keep maintaining this false image that I put up for myself.

In giving of myself, what's so cool is I'm not only giving myself an opportunity to show love, but I'm opening up the door so that others can love me too. That I can give my brothers an opportunity, as we sang at the beginning of services, to be a servant just like God's Son. Amen. But if I keep myself closed off, if I keep myself enslaved to fear, well then this opportunity for me or for my brothers to show love, well it's never going to be possible.

And externally, my emotional needs, I no longer look at my enemies as people that I need to conquer or overcome, but as somebody that I need to love. I no longer look at all of my opponents and say, Well, they're the other. They're the Republican, the Democrats, they're the liberal, they're the conservative.

I don't look at these people as enemies or people to overcome, but someone made in the image of God, somebody that I need to love, because they are in the bondage of death that I was lost in at one point. And instead of competing with the people who challenge my worldview, I'm free not to set my mind on the things of man, like Peter, but on the mind of Christ.

Philippians 2, if you'll turn there, this is our last scripture this morning. Philippians 2. I feel like every third sermon I'm always coming back to this verse. I absolutely love Philippians 2. Uh, there's so many different ways that we can always come back to this verse. Look in verse 3-8.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, But also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count a quality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

Being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, Even death on a cross.

Christ's example of his self emptying obedience, it not only saves us from death, but it also gives us this new way to live, this new way to look at ourselves and to look at others. I no longer have to live a life driven by fear, one that's selfishly ambitious, as Paul says here, one that's conceited, and one that's constantly grasping for more to keep what I have to keep myself feeling secure.

Instead, I can empty myself. I can count others more significant than myself. Christ's power over death, it sets me free. It delivers me from Satan's influence in my life so that I can love others just as Christ has loved me. Uh, a book that I was reading to kind of stimulate my thoughts, uh, there's a guy by name Richard Beck.

He's a psychologist who's kind of talking about Hebrews 2 and it's titled The Slavery of Death and Uh, he had a statement similar to this, I couldn't find it exactly, but he basically says where there is fear, there is death, but where there is love, there is resurrection, and there is life. And so for us, if we, if you're here this morning and if you want to have freedom from the slavery of death.

And you want to begin a life that's a life of self sacrificial love, well you can do that this morning by doing the, the, an embodiment of this, this whole sermon that we've been talking about this morning in baptism itself. One of the first steps we take after having expressed our faith in Christ, confessing of our sins and turning away and repenting from them, is to follow Jesus into the waters of baptism where we die to ourself Where we give of ourself in order to live a life of self sacrifice.

Christ's power over death isn't something that just happened in the past. It's not just something that's going to happen in the future. But it's something that can happen here right now and it can happen here this morning with you. If you're willing to be baptized and give yourself to Christ to live a life of love and self sacrifice.

And if you want to do that this morning, then we'd love to help you. If you'd come as we stand and as we sing.