Right as we're beginning here, I wanted to give you something of a road map. I don't think I did that yesterday. Just where we're going, there's going to be four messages, including the one yesterday, on the conference proper. And again, the theme of the conference is relational apologetics. And what we're doing is we're kind of focusing on and looking at the subject of defending the faith or giving a reason for our faith. structured on different relationships that we find ourselves in, and the first and most important one being the fact that we have to have a relationship with God before we can defend the faith. Before, you know, the kind of corny analogy I've used, before you can know that ice cream tastes good and defend that, you've got to have tasted it yourself. So you have to be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. to ever be able to give a defense for the faith. You can't talk about Christianity in the abstract. You've got to experience a relationship with God yourself before you'll be good at defending that relationship with other people. This morning we're going to talk about, not necessarily our relationship, but we're going to talk about the unbeliever's relationship with God. I think it's important that we know where they stand with God and what kind of relationship the unbeliever and the mocker, the atheist that comes and tells you you're stupid for believing what you do, we have to understand what kind of relationship they have with God. The next one this afternoon, what we're going to look at is the relationship that we actually have with the unbeliever. How are we to be with them? How are we to interact with them? So we'll talk about that relationship, our relationship with an unbeliever, and then Lord's Day tomorrow afternoon, we're going to talk about our relationship with each other and the important place that we play in the apologetic endeavor just by how we live with each other and function together. In fact, the passage that DJ read this morning for our devotional, we're going to read that in the service tomorrow evening or tomorrow afternoon. precisely because we're called there to have this mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus, that we're supposed to live with each other with humility, counting others higher than ourselves. That becomes a powerful witness to the world of the truth. that we believe. And so, those are the four relationships that we're looking at. Our relationship with God. This morning, the unbeliever's relationship with God. Then this afternoon, our relationship with an unbeliever. And then finally, our relationship with one another as Christians in the church. All of those are massively important when it comes to defending the faith. I want you to turn to Romans chapter 1 this morning. Romans chapter 1. And we're going to consider, again, their relationship with God. And you need to have that outline in front of you, and you need to have your Bible in front of you, because we're going to be basically just working through Romans chapter 1, verses 16 through 32. So we're going to pick up the reading in verse 16. And right before I read, I'd like to bow in prayer and just seek the Lord along the lines of what we were singing right there in Psalm 119, that He'll illuminate His Word to us so that we might know it better and that we will walk with Him and love Him. So let's take a moment in prayer. Father, we have your word open in front of us now and we will be reading it and we pray that you might grant us understanding your words are our spirit and they are truth. They are the source of life for us, and we pray that this morning, as we look at Your Word, that You might draw us nearer to Yourself. We pray that You would grant us of Your Spirit to give us understanding so that we might come to understand our faith better and how You relate to mankind. We pray ultimately that we might be drawn and driven again to Christ, that we would come to rest upon Him, to see how we need Him, and how perfect He is for us and for all people. And so we pray that you'll draw us to Christ afresh this morning. And it is in His name that we pray. Amen. Romans chapter 1, verse 16, and I'll read on through to the end of the chapter, verse 32. Please follow along as I read. Paul writes, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. That is a very heavy passage. In fact, if we were to go on reading the heaviness of the subject that Paul is dealing with right here in the beginning of the book of Romans, it goes on for another two chapters. And Paul shows over these next couple chapters, starting right here, how every single human being who has descended from Adam and Eve, and that means that's every one of us, that's every single person who's ever lived except the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is proving that every single human being, you, me, everybody that we'll ever meet, everybody who's ever lived, again, other than Jesus, is in dire need of the grace of salvation. And yet, I think it's important to note that Paul is not going into depth here about how bad humanity is to be morose or to just try to freak everyone out and bum everybody out and make us depressed or something like that. But Paul has a conviction that unless somebody knows their true condition, and unless they know what their real need is, They will never grab hold of God's solution, God's answer for their problem. And so Paul has an agenda, in fact, by the time he gets to Romans chapter 11, and I think I might have quoted, or no, I don't have that there. When he gets to Romans, you might want to jot this down, Romans chapter 11, verse 32, Paul says that he, and what the law of God does is it condemns everybody under sin, So God has condemned everybody under sin under His law, but it's for a purpose. Why does God, does anyone know, why would God condemn everybody, put everyone on the same plane under the condemnation of sin? He has a purpose in mind. Is it so that everybody will just be bummed out and kick around in the mire of their depravity? Paul says in Romans 11.32, it's so that he might have mercy on all. Again, Paul's agenda is that unless you understand what's really your problem, you're never going to grab on to God's solution. And you're never going to understand why it has to be received in the way that it is received. In other words, if you don't think you're that bad, you might think you could earn your way back into God's favor. Unless you realize that you're really, really this bad off, deserving of death, you'll never seek total mercy, totally by the grace of God. So Paul has this agenda that he wants to consign all under disobedience so that God might have mercy on all. Now, in this, again, this message, we're picking up this subject. called relational apologetics. And what we're trying to show is that ultimately, the only real ground for true belief in God is an actual relationship with Him. And therefore, the gospel must be the thing that ultimately is the thing on our tongues and is what we talk about with unbelievers. If our defense of the faith and if our reason for the hope that is within us, in other words, if our apologetics is going to be biblical, and if it's going to be effective when we talk to other people, it has to comport, it has to be consistent with the truth of a reconciled relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And therefore, I think we have to be able to talk to unbelievers and we have to be able to communicate to them what their real need is. But here's the other thing. I think sitting here today, you have to realize what your condition is outside of Jesus Christ. If you want to come to be convinced of the truth of the Christian faith, if you're struggling with your faith, if you're struggling with belief, you have to come to recognize this is your condition. What Paul is going to talk about here is your condition outside of Jesus Christ. And this, ultimately, hopefully, if you're not yet laying hold of Christ for your salvation. My hope is that what we go through this morning will actually spur you and convince you you need a Savior so that you'll lay hold of Christ for your salvation. Well, Paul has an agenda here, and he's going to tell us ultimately about a person outside of Jesus Christ. And the first thing that Paul is telling us here, as we begin in this passage, is that everybody in the world actually knows of God generally. You might have people who claim to not know Him, or they might mock you for believing in God, but Paul says here that they know of Him generally. kind of a saying out there that people say a little knowledge is dangerous. I know this firsthand. I've been to China quite a few times and I know a few Chinese words and whenever I try to fake it with somebody and I'll greet them in Mandarin Chinese and say one or two words. All of a sudden they start talking to me really fast and I'm completely lost. I don't know anything. I don't know what they're saying. So I'm a perfect example of how little knowledge is dangerous. Don't do that if you know a little bit of a language. But there's no truer words really that have been spoken When it comes to the subject of the knowledge of God, a little knowledge is dangerous when it comes to a knowledge of God. Paul says here that there are four things that are true about unbelievers and God, and particularly in relation to their knowledge of Him, what they know about Him. And the first is, this first thing to fill in is, He has shown them the truth. The first thing that Paul says about the unbeliever and their knowledge of God is, number one, he has shown them the truth. That is, unbelievers actually know that God exists. And Paul says here that they know He exists precisely because he has shown them that He does. And if we ask, well, where has God shown this? How has He shown everybody in the world that He exists? The answer is right there in verse 20. Notice, in the things He has made. That's what we call, and this is what we call general revelation. In other words, God's revealed Himself generally to everybody in the things that He has made. In other words, both in themselves, both in us, and in creation, all mankind has been given the general knowledge of God's existence. Does anyone have a guess of how has God made Himself known within us? Anybody have a thought about that? How does God make Himself known to us inside of us? What is an evidence He's put inside of us of Himself? Anybody have a thought about that? Yeah, awesome. His love, that's a great answer. His love, the capacity to love. That's outside of us, but that's also a proof. We talked about that yesterday. It's a word that starts with a C. Yes, conscience. Have you ever done something and you don't even have to necessarily have a rule for it, but you've done something and all of a sudden you feel bad. that you've done something wrong. What's going on is that's your conscience. That's something inside you telling you that what you just did is wrong. God put that in you. God made you with a conscience so that you'd have evidence that there is actually a rule, there's actually a right and wrong out there. And so Paul is saying that not only in the things that are made in the creation, but inside of us, God has given us evidence. Notice as well, though, that this is not something that man has to work at to understand and to get. It's not that man has to think through this and it's a tough matter, but rather Paul says right there in verse 19 that God has shown it to them. He's given this. He's shown it to them. And so the actual state of things is that mankind actually has to work to not keep that knowledge of God. In other words, mankind has to actively shut their eyes. They have to plug their ears to not hear His revelation or see the evidence for Him. Paul says that God has shown it to them clearly. And so you actually have to work at not seeing it. That's the true condition. This then brings us to also say in the B here, that they can then, they can clearly see it. They can clearly see it. Paul says in verse 20 that what can be known about God from creation, in other words, His invisible attributes and His eternal power and His divine nature, it's plain to them. Let me go back though. What is an attribute? an attribute, like a characteristic of God. What would an invisible attribute be? Something about God that you can't see. Can someone name one? If I asked you to go to the cupboard and grab God's wisdom out of the cupboard, something like that, could you do that? No, that's an invisible attribute of God. How about God's goodness? That's another invisible attribute. Paul's saying that those kinds of things are known about God and what He's made. Those are clearly seen. His wisdom, His justice, His power, His goodness. So, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divine nature, that's plain to them. And this is because God is the creator And mankind is part of His creation. Another way to think about this is to say that all mankind, all men, know God by way of His general revelation in nature because they were made by Him to see it and understand it. That is, all of mankind, unbelievers included, they're still created image-bearers of God. In other words, when God made dogs or horses, He didn't make them with the capacity to have a relationship with Him. They are part of the creation, but He made humanity, He made human beings with a special capacity, and that capacity was to actually be able to know Him and have a relationship with Him. That's simply how we're made. Everybody walking around has the capacity for a relationship with God. That's the unique thing, and that's why Paul can say here, they understand those things because you're made to understand that. That's how you were created. That's part of being human, is that you're able to have a relationship with God. And therefore, as we see in every single civilization that we know of, all mankind, every civilization has always had a sense of the divine, we might call it. Not necessarily the true God, but everybody, all over the world, there was never atheist cultures back in ancient history. Everybody had some concept of God. In other words, they knew that there was a God. They knew that there was something out there that they sought to worship in some kind of a way. And so, even though there are today really loud atheists, there's guys writing books, The majority of the world, by far, believes that there is a powerful, divine something out there, because that is what creation and that is what conscience tells them plainly. But the unbeliever does not like the fact of God's existence. And so, this brings us to the third point. This is another thing that's true about every unbeliever. And if you're not in Christ, this would be true about you. They suppress that truth. They suppress the truth. In other words, everyone innately knows that there is a divine being out there who is invisible and powerful, beyond comprehension, but that is not comfortable knowledge. And therefore, mankind suppresses this truth and tries to get away from it. Sometimes this is done by false worship of made-up gods, and sometimes this is done by outright rejection that there is a God at all. But unbelievers attempt to get away from the fact that there is a God. But here's the irony with all unbelievers, and this is going to get maybe a little bit more complicated here. You can't suppress the knowledge of God without also being in contact with Him and acknowledging Him. The best illustration of this I've heard is the game, I don't know if it's even a game called this, but if you're in a swimming pool and you've got a ball and you're trying to hide the ball, you've got your hands up in the air and it's like, who's got the ball? And you've got the ball and you're sitting on it and everyone's wondering who has it. The only way you can ever keep that ball underwater is how? you have to push it down. The ball won't stay under the water unless you have contact with it. And so you've got to be in contact with the ball to keep it under the water. The unbeliever has to actually be in contact with God in some way. The unbeliever has to use God's truth to be able to suppress it. So, the unbeliever will say things like, There's no existence of invisible things. Everything is really just material. We just evolved from matter. And yet they'll talk about how stupid. it is to believe in God. And yet, language is an immaterial thing. Mind, they'll actually think about it. They'll use things like the laws of logic. They'll use reason. But they don't have any basis, ultimately. If everything's just material, those things actually don't exist. And so they're having to use something that they say can't really exist to suppress and push down the truth that they say isn't there. So they have to assume these things in order to say God doesn't exist. But in doing this, this gets us to D, they have become foolish. They have become foolish. Now, I want you to notice here in verses 21 and 22 that when Paul says that they have become futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. Paul's not using the word fool here in a name-calling way. He's not trying to engage in name-calling, saying, oh, those guys are just fools, and saying that in the way we tend to sling it around like an insult. In fact, what he's doing is he's making a statement of fact that when men reject God, when somebody rejects God, they actually have no longer any basis to think, to love, to live on. If God didn't exist, men have basically cut off the whole basis for their life. Think about how this becomes a foolish thing. Unbelievers know, Paul just told us, that everybody in the world knows that God is incomprehensibly powerful. In other words, He can do whatever He wants. He can speak the world into existence. Like that all of our lives are Held because God and we're given our next breath because God has willed us to have our next breath Paul says that unbelievers actually know that God is incomprehensibly powerful and that he is invisible and then They go on and they craft idols to worship and which they can both see, and then they can control. So what they know of God, they know God is incomprehensibly powerful, and they know He's invisible, and yet in their worship, I'm talking about like a pagan, in their worship, they go ahead and they make an idol, and they say, this is God, and they can carry that thing around with them, they can do whatever. So they make a visible, manipulatable, Idol, which is inconsistent with what they know the truth to be. That's foolishness, Paul says. That what they know of God, they end up doing something different. So the fact, they don't live their lives in light of what's true. The unseen God cannot be represented in the form of an idol. and the all-powerful God cannot be controlled. Unbelievers know that things like love, like Watson was telling us, we can love. We love one another. Husbands and wives love each other. Unbelievers know that things like love and laws and logic and language are not things that can be touched, tasted, handled. But then they will assert that there's nothing but that which is material. There's only things that we can touch, taste, and handle. That reality, in other words, they tell us that by using things that can't be touched, tasted, and handled, they tell us that those things can't exist. Again, it's a logical problem that they have. Have you ever heard someone use that statement, there are no absolutes? What's an absolute statement? Can anyone give me a quick definition of an absolute statement? You're all here. If I use the word all, then that means it's absolute, like everybody. So this is true everywhere and of all things. If I say there are no absolutes, I'm contradicting myself to make that statement. Does that make sense when I say that, use that illustration? If I say there are no absolutes, then that statement can't be true. And yet I just made a direct statement. These are the kinds of things that unbelievers find themselves falling into, specifically because what they know of God, they go ahead then and say those things can't exist. And so Paul is saying here, claiming to be wise, they became fools. And exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals. All mankind then knows God. We know Him because we live in His world. We know Him because we were all created by Him to know Him. And therefore, we all have some type of a relationship with Him. He has shown Himself to us clearly, both in creation and in our consciences. And therefore, every unbeliever that you might talk to has a relationship with God in a general way. In other words, they know just enough to put themselves in a dangerous position. Because knowing God in a general way, being just in that creator-creature relationship with Him, and not honoring Him, or being thankful to Him, means that they are without excuse, and thus, this brings us to the second main point this morning, it means that they are under His wrath. that they are under His wrath. Whether a person believes it or not, the general story of reality that we have in the Bible is actually a very consistent story. And what I mean by that is that it's not hard to understand and it's not hard to make sense of. If you start at the beginning of the Bible, whether someone believes the Bible or not, the story hangs together. If God created the world and God created all of us, as His creatures, to love Him and to serve Him. And if we rebel against Him, then that's a dishonor to our Creator. That's not a hard story to understand, and therefore, that would put us in a bad position with God. And that's what Paul is saying here, is that everyone is under His wrath. He makes this point here in verse 21. Notice what he says, Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. And so a basic fact about everyone outside of Christ, a basic fact about every unbeliever, every atheist, and I'm not meaning to be mean, but it's a fact about you if you're outside of Christ this morning. It's true of you. A basic fact about every atheist, every unbeliever is they have dishonored Him. They have dishonored Him. And again, that's not a hard point to get. It follows perfectly from the premises. If you accept the biblical view of the world, that there's a God who made all things and who made mankind in His image, and therefore if mankind has rejected God as Lord, has rejected His right to rule over them, then that's very, very dishonoring. It's dishonoring specifically because look at verse 25. It states that they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. And so, in response to mankind's dishonor of God, this brings us to that second sub-point. What does God do in response to mankind dishonoring Him? He gave them up. He has given them up. I want you to look at three verses real quick here in Romans 1. Notice in verse 24, and in verse 26, and in verse 28, you see a phrase that shows up in each of those. Can someone see it in each of those verses? If you see it, can someone just yell it out or say it out? God gave them up. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity." Verse 26, For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Verse 28, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up. That is to say that if we dishonor God, He gives us over to our dishonorable passions. As Paul says there right in verse 26. Could someone turn to Proverbs 1 verse 31 for a moment? Someone turn there and maybe read that passage. Anybody brave enough to read? Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and have the fill of their own devices." I'm going to read it again. You read it perfectly clear, but I think it's worth hearing again. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and have the fill of their own devices. What's being said there is that when one does not honor God and follow the path of truth and wisdom, is that God will give them over to what they want. In other words, it's as if God is saying, if you do not want to live in the manner that I created you to live in, then you will live how you want to live. If you think you're wiser than me in the way that I created you, I'm going to let you go ahead and live then how you think you should live." And what happened then when man fell, and what we continue to see going on in everybody, we see it going on in cultures that man sets down a path of death, In destruction, man continues to fall into greater and greater depths of depravity and the darkening of their mind and thinking, and that's what Paul describes throughout this passage. But although the mind of the unbeliever is affected, we must see that their unbelief, and this gets us to the C point here, their unbelief is not intellectual. It's moral. Their unbelief is not intellectual. It's moral. That is to say, mankind's real problem is not that they need a good, scientifically sound argument so that they can get over some intellectual hang-up that they have. That is not mankind's problem. That's not your unbelieving friend's problem. That they have some scientific hang-up, or intellectual hang-up. Mankind's real problem is that they love sin, and God is a problem in light of their love of their sin. And so they need to push God out of the picture, so that they can freely do whatever they want to do. They don't want to deal with the unpleasant thoughts of being under God's wrath and judgment. I don't know if you guys have spent enough time reading, and I hope you haven't, actually, some of the famous atheists of the past and even of the present. But many atheists, it's really interesting, in their own journals, and sometimes when they write about their own journey, many of them say straight up and they admit it, the reason why we worked at atheism and wrote so much in that way is because we wanted to do whatever we wanted to do. We didn't want to have a God that was there threatening judgment upon us. And so, Paul writes here and he says that they don't want to deal with these thoughts of God, and so they try to suppress it. And yet they do this because they know that what they're doing deserves death. The unbeliever actually knows that the way that they live is actually a lifestyle that's deserving of death. Notice what Paul says there in verse 32 at the very end. They know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. In fact, because they cannot escape the thought of God and His reality, because they cannot refute the truth which He has shown them, which is everywhere around them and even within them, they try to get others to join them in their sin because, and this is our final sub-point here, they think that there is strength in numbers. They think that there is strength in numbers. Again, notice what Paul says there as he ends the chapter here. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them. Misery loves company. And as a last ditch effort of further rebellion against God, unbelievers try to get others to participate in their sins as well. In other words, sinners are never satisfied to keep their perversions in the closet. or their atheistic thoughts to themselves. And so their lives are lived with an agenda to take as many down with them as they can. And so they write books that try to mock and destroy mankind's basic sense that there is a God. Unbelievers will work with a religious fanaticism that often puts us to shame to have their sin and their perversions legalized. They show an evangelistic zeal, again, that I think makes us look like we don't care about our faith. They have an evangelistic zeal to convert others to their way, because again, foolishly, they think that they can get enough fellow creatures together to finally overthrow the Creator. It's part of that foolishness that sin has wrought within them. They think that if they could get enough people to rebel against God, they can finally overthrow God. That the creature can finally destroy the Creator. And so, Paul is saying, everyone actually does know the truth about God's existence, but this is a very inconvenient truth, in that they know that God's wrath is revealed against their sin. And so, outside of Christ, we do everything we can to suppress His knowledge and to rid our minds of Him. And therefore, the unbeliever that you encounter, you need to know, actually does have a relationship with God. It's not a good relationship. It's actually a very bad relationship. They know deep down that God exists. And this knowledge is damning to them because general revelation only reveals to mankind that God exists. It doesn't reveal to mankind that God saves. And that is why when speaking of the general revelation of God, Paul says that in it the wrath of God is revealed. Notice there in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. As we conclude this morning, I want you to notice verses 16 and 17 of the passage, and so please put your eyes back there, Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, because you need to see that before Paul launched into this section on the unbeliever's relationship with God and what they know from his general revelation, Notice that he said in verses 16 and 17, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. In other words, mankind needs that good news. There's two kinds of revelation of God. One is what everybody knows of Him by way of being a creature. They know of it by walking in the woods or by their own consciences. And that revelation, that understanding of God that everybody has, that everyone you meet knows God in that general way, But that revelation is always and only a damning revelation. By that, they know that they're under the wrath of God. But there's another revelation, we call it a special revelation, and that's the revelation of the Gospel. And that's why Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, which means good news, because in it, For it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, because in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. So mankind needs that good news. Our apologetics needs to focus on, ultimately, the gospel. What we need to be telling the unbeliever is not that, oh, believing in Jesus is intellectually defensible, but rather we need to be telling them that there is actually an escape from the wrath of God, that God Himself has provided. The Gospel reveals that there is a righteousness that comes by faith. And that's good news, that you can actually escape from the penalty that your sin deserves, and it itself is the power unto salvation. And therefore, your unbelieving friend, or your family member, or you, this morning, you need to hear the gospel. Because it's the only thing that can bring them, it's the only thing that can bring you into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. To know that God has provided a Savior for sinners. Let's go ahead and pray together. Father, we thank You that You would care enough to make us and to desire a relationship between mankind and Yourself Father, we also acknowledge that we have sinned and we have fallen out of fellowship with You. You have shown Yourself to us clearly in the things that You have made. Indeed, You have given us a conscience to tell us when we are doing wrong. But Lord, we know that in that we can never be brought back into Your favor. We know what we have done wrong, We don't know from those things how to be made right with you, and so we thank you again this morning for the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you would send your Son to take on our flesh, and you would send Him to die in our place, taking the penalty for our sin. And we pray that you might make us, even all these young people, revel in the glory of the good news of the gospel, that there is salvation for sinners. And we pray that as we speak with our unbelieving friends and family members and even strangers, we might get to that main matter with them, that they need to be reconciled to you. and that we might be quick to speak of the good news of Jesus Christ, that you have provided salvation for sinners. And so, Lord, enable us to love those who we speak to and to have a better understanding of their relationship with you, that they are currently under your wrath and need the gospel. So we pray these things and ask for your help and your aid as we live our lives and seek to be a godly witness for you. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.