We're in the New Testament tonight, Romans chapter 10. The epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 10. We'll take time to read the chapter here together. And so Romans chapter 10, and Paul is speaking here and writing to the believers in the city of Rome. And he writes these words, brethren, My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven? That is, to bring Christ down from above. Or who shall descend into the deep? That is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith it? The word is nigh thee. even in thy mouth and in thine heart. That is the word of faith which we preach. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace. and bring glad tidings of good things, that they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Elias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes, verily their sound went into all the earth, and their words onto the ends of the world. And I say, did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation will I anger you. But Elias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not, and I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, all day long have I stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gay and sane people. Amen. We'll bow in prayer just before we bring the word of God together. You pray, believer, that God will help and assist in the preaching of the word. Loving Father, we're glad, Lord, that we've been singing thy praise. Lord, we've been brought, even in the singing of praise, to the fact, O God, that there is a full salvation that is offered to sinners in the gospel. We thank thee, Lord, that it's offered because Jesus paid it all. We thank thee that he paid the great debt of sin on the sinner's behalf. He has satisfied the law and he has discharged all of the charges laid against dear God, the trusting sinner. He has died the death that God required. And God has raised the son from the dead. And tonight there's one in the glory, a living savior, one who is able to save and to rescue and to deliver men and women, boys and girls, young people, from their sin, O that tonight, O God, there might be a turning to Christ and a receiving of him, Lord, as he is offered to them in the gospel. Help, Lord, now this preacher, I pray. Give me every word, Lord, I cry to thee to say. And, Lord, close us in with God, close out every distraction. We commit all things now to thee, and to thy grace, Lord, I now commit myself. Come and fill me with thy spirit, I pray this. And I pray these are my prayers in and through the great and high and glorious name of Jesus Christ, the savior of sinners. Amen and amen. I wonder, have you ever met a burdened man or a burdened woman? Whenever you meet such a person, you come to realize something very, very quickly. You come to realize that that individual, that burdened individual, is a focused individual. They are people who are consumed with just one thing. A burdened man, the Apostle Paul certainly was. And he comes to express the burden of his own heart as he opens this particular chapter that we have read together, Romans chapter 10 and the verse number 1. Brethren, he says, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. It isn't the first time that Paul writes in this epistle about the burden that has been placed upon him by God. In the previous chapter, the chapter 9, he calls three witnesses to the stand in the verse number 1. He says, I say the truth in Christ, and so he brings Christ to the witness stand. And not only does he bring Christ, then he brings his own conscience to the witness stand, because he says, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness. And then he brings the Holy Ghost into the witness stand as well, to witness what he's about to say, whether it is true or not. To witness to the veracity of what he is about to write. He says, I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. I could wish, and I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. Paul had a burden for the lost, a burden for souls, a burden for the salvation of his own countrymen and countrywomen. Now Israel at this particular time, as you know and are aware, was under Roman occupation at this point in world history. Yet Paul's heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel was not that she would experience a political deliverance or that she would experience a military deliverance from the imperial forces of the Roman Empire. but rather Paul's burden was that those within the nation would experience the salvation, the spiritual salvation that is found in Jesus Christ alone. And so, with a heart burdened by the Lord, The salvation of his own people. Paul gave his life over to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and seeking the salvation of all those whom he came to meet along life's road. In this particular chapter, Romans chapter 10, Paul comes to highlight a number of things about God's salvation. A salvation that he preached about, that I want to highlight to you this evening as we make our way through this particular chapter. The first thing that the Apostle Paul comes to highlight in this chapter is where salvation is not found. Where salvation is not found. You see, Paul comes to understand here that he must first He must first dash any hopes. that the sinner might have regarding salvation with respect to their own efforts and their own works before he can then point the sinner to the only source of salvation, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, there was a time in the Apostle Paul's life when he was convinced that he was right with God because of his own adherence to the customs and the rites and the rituals of the Jewish religion. Prior to him meeting the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, Paul boasted about being circumcised the eighth day. That was one of the rites of Judaism and of the Jewish religion. The young men were circumcised on the eighth day, the foreskin was removed. He said that he was of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, he said. In Hebrew, of the Hebrews as touching the law, he was a Pharisee. And concerning zeal, he persecuted the church. Touching righteousness, which is of the law, he was a man who he deemed himself to be blameless. And so Paul, Saul of Tarsus was a man who was utterly convinced that his compliance to the requirements of Judaism had brought him into a right standing before God. There are many like Paul in this world. Tonight, they may not ascribe to Judaism as their religion, but the prescriptions of their own religion, whatever that religion might be, whether it be Islam, or Buddhism, or Sikhism, or Roman Catholicism, or Mormonism, or nominal Protestantism, they believe that their adherence to the prescriptions of that particular religion, if they only but follow them to the letter, that then they are promised by their religious leaders that they will be right with God if they would only but give themselves to the adherence of the diktats of that particular world religion. And maybe that's how you have been approaching God's salvation. Maybe this is how you have been approaching the matter of being right with God. You're of the mind and you're of the thinking that if you would only but simply follow the rules and the regulations of a certain religion, then God will be pleased with your efforts and accept you simply on the grounds of your own efforts and your own works. However, there is a problem that you will come up against if you haven't already come up against it, that all of your righteousnesses are inadequate. that your righteousness is inadequate and it is deficient. Isaiah speaks of them as being filthy rags. There is another problem that you'll also come up against, and that is that nobody within such religions know the sufficient amount of works or righteousness that needs to be reached in order for you to be right with God. And so, Is it 1,000 prayers that you need to pray? Or is it 10,000 before you're right with God? Is it 60 pilgrimages that you need to go on? Or is it 100 pilgrimages? Or is it 50 deeds of kindness that you need to perform? Or is it 500 deeds of kindness? You see, nobody knows. While there might be an acknowledgement on your part that a certain degree of righteousness needs to be reached, in order for you to be right with God, and that your adherence to the requirements set out by that religion is sufficient for you, no one actually knows when the bar is reached, when is it where the standard is attained to. And so what you're doing and what you hope to do is you just keep on doing what you're told to do in the hope that someday, someday in the future, you will accrue enough righteousness, goodness of your own, to be right with God. You see, this is what Paul's fellow countrymen were attempting to do here. In their misguided zeal, we're told that they were going about to establish their own righteousness. Verse number three, these were ignorant of God's righteousness, the righteousness provided for the sinner in the gospel. They were ignorant of that righteousness, a righteousness secured by the life of Jesus Christ. These individuals, they were wholly ignorant of that righteousness, and they were then, in turn, they were going about to establish their own righteousness. They attempted to secure a righteousness of their own devising to the exclusion of the righteousness that is provided for the sinner in the gospel by Jesus Christ. But sadly, their righteousness was inadequate and their righteousness was deficient, falling far short of what God required. And this is what you will come to find. You continue to persist in trying to establish your own righteousness. You're going to find that all of your efforts are in vain. Holy God requires a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and of the Pharisees. In fact, He requires a perfect righteousness. And apart from the righteousness that is in Jesus Christ, there is no other righteousness that comes any close to what God requires. But the amazing thing in the gospel is that Jesus Christ has by his life, has secured a righteousness for his people. He is our righteousness. He has secured in His righteous living a righteousness that He will give credit, impute, place to your account when you exercise faith in Him. The righteousness required to make you right with God is offered to you freely in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So my question to you tonight is this, is Jesus Christ your righteousness? Or are you trusting in your own righteousness to get you into heaven? Well, if you are, let me then encourage you to stop doing that and to build your hope of heaven on the blood and on the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You know, we need to be saved from our sin. We're told that in Scripture. We need to be saved from our sin. But we also need to be saved from our own righteousness. We need to be saved from any hope that we might have in our own goodness, our own morality, our own righteousness. Jesus Christ said, I came not to call the righteous. In other words, those who thought themselves to be righteous, those who thought that they had accrued enough righteousness or goodness to bring them into a right standing with God. God said, I came not to call such people. I came not to call the righteous, the self-righteous. But I came to call sinners to repentance. And so I would say to you, sinner, tonight, do not be duped. Don't be duped by your own evil heart. Don't be duped by the devil, who is the father of lies. And don't be duped by some unsaved member of the clergy into thinking that you can secure salvation by living a righteous life, because such a life can never be lived by you. One preacher said that self-righteousness exclaims, I will not be saved God's way. I will make a new road to heaven. I will not bow to God's grace. I will not accept the atonement which God has wrought out in the person of Jesus Christ. I will be my own redeemer. I'll enter heaven in my own strength and I will glorify my own merits. I pray that there's no one here tonight in this meeting who would have such a mindset and would adopt such an attitude. Oh, tonight may you repent of your sin and cast yourself upon Jesus Christ who is the sinner's righteousness. Righteousness or salvation is not found in our righteousness in our own works. But then Paul, he goes on to speak, having shattered, having shattered the misconception that these individuals would have had with regard to themselves and with regard to the securing of salvation by their own works and by their own efforts, having shattered any hopes that they might have of that, the apostle Paul then goes on to speak about where salvation is found or where salvation and how salvation is secured. Having, as I said, established that we cannot attain to salvation by our own works of righteousness, Paul then presents to his readership that salvation is something not attained to, but something that is obtained, and it is obtained by faith, and by faith alone. Salvation is not attained to. We do not attain to salvation doing this and that, fulfilling this rite, going on this pilgrimage, continuing on in this ritual, and as it were accruing righteousness, for such righteousness can never be accrued, but rather salvation is obtained from an outside source, from God himself, and it is done so by faith. Look there at the verse number four, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Now that little statement is a little elliptical. Maybe he's a little confusing. Whenever the Apostle Paul comes to say here that Christ is the end of the law, what he's really saying is that Christ brings to an end the quest for righteousness by the law. By obeying the law, its dictates, its commandments, its statutes, its laws, its regulations. He comes to say that Christ is the end of the law. This desire to obtain salvation or righteousness by the keeping of the law, that now ends because Christ has brought it to an end. And he's brought it to an end because of his life and his death and his resurrection. You see, there were those that taught that righteousness was obtained by keeping or obeying the law, but Paul here comes to teach that the sinner receives from Jesus Christ his righteousness by faith, and as he does that, that ends the search of righteousness by the law. It's no longer by the law, for the law cannot save us in our adherence to it, but rather it comes, this righteousness does not come by us keeping the law, but it comes to us by faith, by faith in Jesus Christ and in his work. So salvation is not attained by faith in our works or in our righteousness, but it is obtained by faith in Christ's work and in Christ's righteousness. You see, for the sinner to secure salvation, they need to do this. They need to believe on the Son. They need to believe on the Son. This is something that the Apostle Paul emphasizes over and over again in this chapter, the need for the sinner to believe, the need for the sinner to have faith in God. Let me point it out to you. Look there at the verses 9 through to 11. It says there, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved for with the heart man believeth onto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made onto salvation for the scripture says whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Jump down to the verse 14. How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe on him in whom they have not heard? Jump down to the verse 17. So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. There's the word faith and we've read the word believe. Now you may have heard preachers say you need to have faith in Jesus Christ. You may have heard a preacher say, you need to put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ if you are to become a Christian. But what does it mean? What does it mean to believe? What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? What does it mean to have faith in the Son of God? This is how salvation is secured. This is how it becomes ours. It comes ours by exercising faith. But what does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? It means, firstly, that we put our entire confidence in Christ. We put our entire confidence in Christ. You see, this word believe, we find so often repeated in the context of scripture, it means more than simply giving a mental assent to the truth. My believing does involve that. There needs to be an assenting to the truth by the mind. But to believe goes further, to believe the gospel goes further than that. You see, believing the gospel means that a person not only believes intellectually the gospel, but they have become so persuaded of it, they have become so convinced of it, that they are willing to place their entire confidence in the one on whom the gospel rests, the Lord Jesus Christ. They're willing to abandon all other confidence in all other saviors and in all other things, and they're willing to put their entire confidence and faith, so persuaded are they, so convinced are they with regard to Him, that they are willing to give themselves entirely to Jesus Christ. I've given the illustration before, but it's worth the repeating. missionary was once translating the gospel of John into an African dialect. And as he did so, he had great difficulty in translating or finding an equivalent word for a word that finds itself repeated over and over again in John's gospel, and it was that word, believe. He couldn't find an equivalent word with regard to the tribe that he was translating the scriptures for and to put it into his translation for this English word, believe. And so as he made his way through John's gospel, he just left the place blank every time that he found the word believe. Well, one day a native from another neighboring village with a message of great importance came into that particular room in which he was translating the scriptures. He had ran for hours. That man was exhausted. He had ran through tangled under bush or brush for hours. As I said, he was exhausted and he blurted out his message and then he threw himself on a nearby hammock. And as he lay upon that hammock, that native African, he uttered a word in the African dialect that that missionary had never ever heard before. And so he asked the natives who were standing nearby what the runner had said. And this was the reply that he was given. Master, it means I am resting all my weight here. Thank God, said the missionary. That's the word that I need for the word believe. he proceeded to finish the translation of John's gospel. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever rests all their weight on him hath everlasting life. Believing, it is a casting of yourself unreservedly, entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ. It's saying, on thee and on thee alone, I'm resting my soul for all of eternity. I'm depending on thee. I'm depending on thee alone to save me. I'm depending on the blood. I'm casting my all, my life. my heart, my soul, on thee entirely." And so believing then is a relying upon, a wholly trusting in, a placing of one's full confidence in Jesus Christ. It's not the mere ascent to some dogma or the acknowledgement of a fact from the past. It's trust trust in Christ, trust in the one who died for sinners on the cross and a believing that through his merit that he can remove my guilt and he can remove the punishment of my sin. The one who believes the gospel is the one man who is trusting in Christ and Christ alone. Let me ask you, has your believing moved from a theoretical faith in the head to a concrete faith in the heart? The believing one is the one who can say with horrecious bonner, upon a life I have not lived, upon a death I did not die, another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity. Are you doing that tonight? Are you staking your eternity on the work of another, on the work of Jesus Christ? Believing also requires us to appropriate to ourselves what God has promised. Appropriation is just another way of saying reaching out and receiving, to appropriate, to reach out and to receive. Now it's all well and good to know that Christ has done for sinners what is needed to be done in order to reconcile a sinner to God. It's well and good to know that, but it requires a sinner to personally accept to receive what God has done on their behalf, if ever salvation is to be experienced by them. An intellectual acceptance of the gospel then must be followed on by a personal acceptance of the gospel, where the sinner comes to say, I believe, I believe that what Jesus Christ did for sinners, that he did for me, and now I receive it by faith. In 1893, engineer George Ferris built a machine that to this day bears his name. It's the Ferris Wheel. You'll see one at Portrush. You'll see one called the London Eye if you ever head to London on, maybe it's at the south bank of the River Thames. Whenever it was finished, this particular design, he invited a newspaper reporter to accompany him and his wife for the inaugural ride. No one ever had ridden on this particular Ferris wheel before. It was a very windy July day. The breeze was stiff and it struck the wheel with great force as it slowly began its rotation. But despite the wind, the wheel turned flawlessly. And after one revolution, Ferris called for the machine to be stopped so that he and his wife and the reporter, they could step off. In braving that one revolution of the windblown Ferris wheel, each occupant, they came to do something. They came to demonstrate a genuine faith in the Ferris wheel. Mr. Ferris began with simply a scientific knowledge, something that was written down in paper that the machine would work and that it would be safe. Mrs. Ferris and the reporter believed that the machine would do the work on the basis that the inventor said that it would do. but only after they had ridden the ride and after they had been on the ferris wheel that all three had what would be called a personal experimental faith in the ferris wheel. Well, saving faith is like that. Saving faith. It moves a sinner from a mere mental assent to the truth, to a committing of ourselves to that truth. Saving faith is not just believing that Christ lived and died, but faith that saves is the confident and continuous confession of total dependence on and trust in Jesus Christ to meet the requirements on your behalf to give you entrance into God's eternal kingdom. It is a surrendering of your life in complete trust to him who has died for sinners, trusting in the one He has done what you could never have done. Or you may say, preacher, but tonight I do believe. My question is, have you believed to the saving of your soul? Has your faith, has it moved away from a mere consenting to the truth to a personal commitment to the truth? It's more than a mere intellectual believing. is arresting of the soul in Christ, an abandoning of yourself to Christ, to say that, God, I'm giving you my soul, and I'm committing to you the responsibility of bringing my soul into heaven itself. Oh, it's not our faith that saves us. Faith is but the means. It's but The conduit through which we come to saving faith in Jesus Christ or to personal faith in Christ, it's not faith that saves us. Our faith at times is weak, but it's who we put our faith in. It's Jesus Christ. That's what saves us. Faith doesn't save us. It's Christ who saves. Christ alone. It's the strength It's not the strength of your faith that saves you, but rather it is who your faith is in that saves you, Christ saves and Christ alone. A third point to consider is who salvation is for. Paul wrote in the verses 12 and 13, for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's worth noting the extensiveness of the effective efficiency of God's salvation. The blessing of salvation is not confined to a single nation, to the Jewish nation, but thank God it is suited to all who call upon the name of the Lord, wherever they come from. You see, God's salvation is for the whosoever. Look there at the verse 13, for whosoever, for whosoever. Yes, but notice that that word whosoever is then qualified. It's qualified with this statement, whosoever. shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. Well, we must not miss the qualifying statement. It is the one who calls upon the Lord who is the one who comes to experience God's salvation. And Paul here says, yes, it's for the Jew, but it's also for the Greek. It's for the Jew and for the Gentile, for the Jew and for the non-Jew. The same Lord is over all and is rich unto all that call upon him. Oh, there's the requirement to call upon the Lord, to call upon him while he is near. Oh, there were those who saw a distinction between Jew and Greek in Paul's day, but the apostle makes it very clear that there was no difference between the Jew and the non-Jew. God would be rich to all who would call upon Him for salvation, whether Jew and Gentile. And I love the way that how Paul makes this so simple. In the Spirit of God, with regard to salvation, he comes to say how a man can be saved, how a woman, a young person, can know their sins forgiven. He says that if you call on the name of the Lord, you'll be saved. Thank God we don't have to climb some rugged hill in our bare feet like those who do when they climb Croke Patrick in order to try and appease God's righteous anger. We don't have to endure the rigors of Ramadan like the Muslims suggest in order to secure salvation. Well, there is no work of supposed merit to perform. There is no purchase to be made. There's no period of self-inflicted suffering that we need to go and undergo in order to secure salvation. All we have to do is to call upon the Lord, and he will save us. I wonder, have you ever done that? Have you ever asked Jesus Christ to be your Savior? As I said to a young boy a few weeks ago when I reminded him of this promise in Romans chapter 10 verse 12, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I reminded that young boy on that occasion, I said to him, now you have done your part. You have done your part in calling upon the name of the Lord. You have called upon the name of the Lord to save you. And I said to that young boy, now God has to do his part by saving you. God has his part to do by saving you. Will you call upon him? Will you call upon him now to save you? That's your part. And if you do your part, I believe that God will then in turn do his part. For failure to do so would mean that he would be no longer God and that all of his promises were negated. And all of his promises were untrue, but he says here, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Your part is to call upon him, his part is to do the saving. Thank God he will, and he can save you. For what he promises, thank God he performs. There's a final truth to think about in this portion of God's Word that I draw your attention to just as we close. It is the mercy of God and salvation. The mercy of God and salvation. Speaking of a disobedient and again sane or an obstinate people, people who were disbelieving, people who were disinterested in God's offer of salvation, God remarked in the final verse of that particular chapter. He says, all day long have I stretched forth my hands to such people. Now folks, surely it should be the sinner. Surely it should be the sinner who stretches out their hands to God, seeking to be rescued and saved by Him. What you find is that it is God. It is the one who has been offended by the creature's sin. It is the one who has been offended by the creature's transgressions is the one who stretches out his hand to them. And as you know, stretched out arms and stretched out hands, it indicates a willingness on the part of that individual to receive such a one. And so what we have here is the creator stretching out his hands to the creature. This is God entreating sinful man, the offended sovereign, beseeching the offending subject to come to Him. I say this is nothing in short of the mercy of God towards the undeserving, that He is still, still willing to receive those who have long rejected Him. He says, all day long have I stretched forth my hand disobedient and to, again, sane people. I wonder, has God been stretching forth his hands to you in recent times in the gospel? Let me ask you, will you push? Will you push past those hands again as you leave this gospel meeting? Will you disregard those hands that you have done so repeatedly, and as I've done so repeatedly over these many years? If you do so, then hell is what you deserve. Hell is what you deserve. Because all day long, he stretches out his hands, hands that would receive you. hands that would welcome you, hands that would embrace you, and you walk past those hands, night after night, gospel meeting after gospel meeting, I tell you, sinner, hell is what you deserve as you reject and as you despise those lovely hands. Think of those hands. Think of those hands that are reached out to you. They're welcoming hands. They're strong hands. They're saving hands. They're nail-pierced hands. These hands were cruelly impaled to the cross with nails. And those pierced hands, they present to us, and they show us, and they point to the cost of salvation, the price that was paid for the sinner's redemption. What a price it was, the death of God's only begotten Son on Calvary's tree. Those wounded hands, they speak of the love that Christ has for His people. How amazing to think God would still stretch forth his hands to you, the sinner in the gospel, you who have turned from him, you who have despised him and rejected him, time after time, that tonight in the gospel, in the gospel, he holds out his hands and And in that he says, come, come to me. I will receive you. I will welcome you. I will redeem you. I will cleanse you. I will reconcile you to God. Come, come to me. And tonight, he would push by those hands in this meeting, and you would disregard those hands that you have done so repeatedly over these many, many years. Oh, instead of doing that, sinner, instead of doing that, why not run to the one who stretches out his hands to you tonight? Run to him. Run to Christ. Receive him. He will receive you. Oh, may tonight you come to this Christ, the one who reaches out his hand, the one who welcomes you in the gospel, the one who will take you by the hand. When you come to die, having trusted in him, he'll take you by the hand and lead you through the promised land. What a day, glorious day that will be. Come to Christ. He stands with open arms, with welcoming hands, to receive all that would come to him by faith. And so will you believe on him? Will you trust in him? Will you exercise faith in him, casting your entire confidence upon him? Tonight you do that. And tonight you come to the lovely Lord Jesus, whose hands were crucified and whose hands were nailed to that terrible tree. May God bring you to himself just now. Let's bow our heads in prayer together. Our loving Father, In the closing moments of this meeting, we pray that thou will convince the sinner, O God, of their great need of thee. Tonight they'll see the mercy of God. Recognize, O God, that it is a mercy that God would again offer himself to the sinner in the gospel. Especially sinners who have heard the gospel so many times and have rejected thee, walked past thee, despised, he trampled the blood of Christ underfoot, counted it as an unholy thing. And yet he will continue to still hold out his hands as he did to Israel, as he continues to do so. He holds out his hands to a people who would crucify him and kneel him to the tree. He would still welcome them. Oh, we understand, oh God, that there are those who are obstinate, and those who are gay and sane, and those who are disobedient among us. Lord, they care not for their soul. No concern about the welfare of their soul or eternal things. Oh, we pray that thou will convince them about the need of salvation. Salvation is found in the work of Christ and in Christ alone. It'll never be found in adherence to the law of God, the commandments of Holy Scripture, For, Lord, no man can ever adhere and ascribe to every command and statute of God. It's beyond us. Lord, our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, but we thank Thee for the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We thank Thee that Christ has done it all. He has paid the debt. He has secured righteousness for us, and He is willing and ready and able to give that righteousness to all who believe on him when they cast their sin upon the great sin bearer, Jesus Christ. Oh, may that great transfer happen tonight. May there be a transferring of sin to Christ and a transferal of righteousness to the sinner. I pray, Lord, that thou will deal with hearts. And if there be those who are concerned about these things, may they remain even in this building. May they return O God, to this sanctuary and this house, may they make contact with the preacher, and may there be a calling upon the Lord while he is near and the seeking of him when he can be found. Answer prayer and part us in thy fear, we pray, for we offer these our petitions in and through the Savior's great and precious name.