Thank you, Mr. Dietert, and thank you, camp organizers, for having me at this camp. I've spoken at this camp a number of times the last four or five years, maybe. And every time it's been at night, which I liked, because I'm awake and you're awake. But you all look like you're awake, so I think we'll manage. As Mr. Dieterich said, our topic for tonight is the word of God is sufficient to define us. You could also put it like this, as you see on the outline, the word of God are amazing, but only hope. And I want to start by reading Hebrews chapter one and a little part of chapter two. I understand you dealt with Hebrews last night as well, so we're sticking with Hebrews at least through this morning. By the way, we hope to be here throughout this day and also tonight at the campfire. So if we can help in any way, I'm sure you have lots of people here you can talk to, but we're here for you. So don't hesitate to come to me if you have questions or I can help you in any way. Hebrews chapter 1, starting in verse 1. One thing you should know about Hebrews, and maybe you heard this last night, is that Hebrews was written to people who were in danger. They had heard the gospel. They had expressed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but they were in persecution times. And they were threatening to leave their profession because it was going to cost them a lot. In fact, it was already costing them a lot. And God sends His servant here to speak to these Hebrews and to say to them, don't leave this path. There is no other saving path. So we want to see this from Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son. whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who, being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty and high, being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels, he saith, who maketh his angel spirits and his ministers a flame of fire, but unto the sun, he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore, God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest, and they shall all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand? until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation? Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his will. I will pause our reading there. So this is the topic here. The word of God, our amazing, but only hope. So, like I said, Paul is writing here to people who are in danger of leaving the path, leaving Christianity, going back to Judaism, which was safer at this time. If you were a Jew in this particular culture, you could do what you wanted. You might not be liked, but you weren't persecuted the way you were if you confessed and professed Jesus Christ. And the author of the Hebrews, Paul is what I believe the author of the Hebrews is, he sounds an alarm bell to people who are threatening to go one way. And he's saying, if you leave this path, if you leave this word of salvation, if you leave this Jesus Christ in the gospel, there's nothing else. There's no one else. And this is very instructive to us. Now, angels are mighty warriors. They're glorious creatures. And they've appeared in many different times. You read about them in the Old Testament. God has used angels in all his redemptive works at different times and in different ways. And God sent angels to appear, for example, to Abraham and to Gideon and to Manoah and different people in the Old Testament and also later in the New. And what would you say if you had a visit from an angel? You're in your room at home and an angel came there and started speaking to you, especially in dazzling light as they often appeared, not always, but often appeared in the Old Testament. And an angel would speak to you and talk to you about your life, about what you needed to do, about your heart, about how things were inside your heart. That would be something, wouldn't it? You wouldn't be the same. You would probably tell your family, an angel spoke to me. You'd talk to your friends. You would stand up in front of your class at school and you would tell them what the angel said to you. How much greater when God himself speaks to us through this book. through the Bible, through the word of which you heard that it has power to enliven you. It's greater. And that's the whole argument of this author to the Hebrews here in the first chapter. Angels are great. Don't be mistaken about that. Look at verse two of chapter two. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, And every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward. The words of angels were serious. Transgression against angels was punished. How much more those who reject the word of God, which comes by the Son, by Jesus Christ. Well, I've organized our time together here under three headings. You can see them in your your camp booklet here towards the end. The word of God, our amazing and only hope. And you'll probably want to take notes because we're going to have 10 things here, 10 ways in which God's word is utterly amazing. And then seven ways in which we neglect God's word. And then five excuses, which I've heard a lot, and which may be in your heart. And we wish with the help of the Holy Spirit to demolish those so that each of us, that's our prayer, each of us knows in our heart the amazing but only word, the amazing and only hope that the Word of God is for us. So look with me at Hebrews 2 verse 3 once again. We're going to focus on different words here, different phrases. We're going to start there at the beginning. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Literally, it says here, such mighty salvation. You know, if the Word of God, which you hold in your hands, if it has one common theme running from Genesis till the very end, it tells us a lot. It gives us a whole worldview. And you'll hear about that this week. But if we had to summarize it in one word, it speaks to us about salvation, about being saved from sin. We were made perfect and upright in the image of God. We communed with God at the first, but we fell. It doesn't take more than two chapters and we see how we fell from that perfect relationship with God. And the rest of the Bible is about how we can and must be saved. And it's a great salvation. It's a mighty salvation. And there's 10 things I want us to know about this salvation here as we start. 10 reasons why it's such an amazing salvation. It's amazing, first of all, when we consider how great our sins are. Our sins? If we could truly see our sins for what they are, it would be the deepest, darkest pit that you could ever imagine. It's bottomless. Maybe you've done some self-examination in your heart and you see the surface sins. Some anger maybe against people around you. Maybe some bitterness in your soul. Maybe losing your temper. Maybe lust, maybe lies you've told, surface sins. But if you go deeper than that, and you see what lives in your heart, the enmity, the pride, the cauldron of lust in your heart, covetousness, maybe you don't experience all these things. And maybe when you compare yourself to others around you, you don't think it's as bad. But if God took his light and shone on your heart, you would see something that you would run from with every fiber in your being. Because even the best person here, the person who has done the least amount of sin in the sight of God, in the light of the pure holiness of God, it's such a dark, deep pit. God must judge. Us, for even the smallest, littlest, tiniest sin, as we think about it. And what is salvation that can rescue me, that can rescue you from this deep, dark pit of sin? This word of God is so amazing, too, secondly, because it not only rescues us from sin, but it rescues us from hell. I just talked about how the justice of God demands payment for sin. A lot of people have a problem with hell. How can a good God send people to hell? The question really should be, how can a just God save anyone at all? That should be the most amazing thing in all the world. And here's the thing. Here are these millions of people that deserve an eternity without God forever. But God rescues them from that hell that they deserve. How can that be? This word is amazing because it saves us from so great a sin. It saves us from so great a hell. But it's great, thirdly, because when you think of how great the person who's thought this out and who comes in his word to us, it's God. It's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and infinite. Good, holy, pure, merciful, loving being. Have you ever spent 10 minutes thinking about who God is? Just by yourself. Just about God. Who is God? By nature, people are big to us. What our minds go to when they're on autopilot, that's what's big to us. Maybe your friends, maybe yourself, maybe your future, maybe your money, your job, your reputation, you're obsessed with that. That's really your God. What your mind goes to when it's on autopilot, that's your God. But if you could think just for 10 minutes, without thinking about anything else, just about God, the holy, the just, the merciful, the loving God, who before this world ever was, God was there. He's infinite. He's always been, and he shall ever be. This world was made by him simply by speaking in an instant. That's how great God is. Think about that. And when you think about how that God, before whom you're so small, so puny, so frail, how he thought out a salvation, and how he wrote it down through men inspired by him in his word, and how he gives that to you, right there in that book that you're holding. And he gives you sermons, and he gives you parents that open the word and teach you the word. He gives you pastors that labor with your soul and who love to do that. But he gives that to you. What a great God. God's Word is amazing because it rescues from sin. It rescues from hell. Thirdly, it comes from so great a God. It's amazing, fourthly, and this might be the one that you write in red. It's amazing because there's a hymn that goes, when I think of God, His son not sparing. Sent him to die. How God would order a salvation that would cost him his son. Romans 8 says he spared not his own son. I wouldn't do that. I couldn't do that. I love all my children. I couldn't give them for an enemy, for a rebel, for a criminal. I wouldn't do it. I couldn't. But God so loved the sinful world in which we live. He gave his son, his only begotten son. He had no other to give. But He gave Him. And the Son did it willingly. He came willingly. It's not as if the Father had to force the Son. No. In fact, we think of it this way. This is human thinking. But when we put the whole Scripture together, we think of it this way, that the Father in the Council of Peace said, Who shall go to pay for the sins of people? who are sinners to the core, who cannot redeem themselves, who cannot rescue themselves, who will go? And the Son says, I will go. There's such willingness in the heart of the Son from all eternity to come for sinners like you, like me. If for no other reason this Word is amazing and this salvation is great, Because it cost the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He came to this world, and this world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. He came to be spat upon. He came to be despised. He came to be afflicted. He came to drink that cup of the wrath of God. of which you could not drink a single drop. He drank the whole of it. He did it willingly. He did it out of love. What a great salvation. What an amazing word. It tells us that. But fifthly, It's not just the love of the son, it's not just the love of the father, it's the love of the Holy Spirit. It's never-ending love. If I can just picture once again that Council of Peace where the father says, who will go? The son will go to lay down his life, but the Holy Spirit also, as it were, says, I will go to indwell the sinful hearts of men and women the world over. I'll come. pure as I am, glorious as I am, and I'll indwell those hearts and refashion them after the image of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. I'll regenerate them. I'll apply the full salvation of Christ to them. I'll bear with them. I'll teach them what they need to know and what they're often so slow at learning. Oh, patiently work within them so they have the fruit of the Spirit pruning away at them, enlivening them. The Holy Spirit of God, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You need every one of those persons of the Trinity. They're so glorious. Every one of them is glorious, but they're glorious in their unity. They do everything together. And there's such a glory in the triune God. If you did nothing else in the rest of your life, but to learn to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three of them, you would have a full life. The Bible says this is eternal life, that they may know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and the Holy Spirit obviously as well. This is life. This is true living. The world is telling you what true living is. Every time it just puts this ad in front of you, it tells you you need this, you need to do this, you need to become this, you need to act this way to really live. Real life is knowing God. It really is. There is an endless life-giving subject there in God, whom to know is life eternal. Salvation is great when we think of the Holy Spirit who comes and works a full salvation in our hearts and lives. It isn't so that God the Father lays the foundation of it in the work of the Son and that you have to do the rest yourself. You have to cleanse your own heart. You have to apply the salvation to yourself and somehow climb up to heaven to get forgiveness of sin on the basis of Christ's sacrifice. No, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes and He does it all. God does it all. Salvation is great and the word is amazing because it's free. Number six, it's free. This Bible, you can buy Bibles, but you can get free Bibles. I'd give every one of you a Bible. I'd give anyone a Bible if they would read it. The Bible is free, and the message in it is free. This is not one of these things you buy on the Internet that there's a startup fee of $10, but as soon as you want to tap into this or tap into that, you have to shelve out another $90, and then, you know, pretty soon, you're poor. I find that with my kids. They'll go onto some app or some website or some game, and it's free, Dad, it's free. A day or two later, well, to get this, you really, you have to pay $100. And then to have this skin, for example, in some or other game, you have to pay more, and then it's this, and then it's that. It's not free, but salvation, God's salvation is free. You know why some of you are not saved? It's because you want to do something. You want to earn something. You want to work for something. You want to be able to say, OK, I did this to be saved, and I climbed this mountain, and I did this pattern of things, and it saved me. It's free. Like the hymn says, nothing in my hands I break. It's so overwhelmingly free. It can be yours. It's that free. You have nothing to bring to God. And he says, come thirsty one and drink. Just come. It's free. God's word is amazing. Seventhly, because it's full of everything that you need. Everything you could ever imagine that you would need in life, truly. Not our needs, not what we think we need, but what you truly need. The Bible is enough. The Bible is enough to define you, to give you what you need no matter what comes your way. It can give you grace and glory. No good thing will God withhold from those who walk uprightly, from those who trust their God and walk in His way. God's salvation is so full, so free like we just saw, but so full, we cannot add to it, we cannot take away from it. It is an amazing word. And eighthly, it's amazing because it is so secure in God. Once you're saved, you can't lose that salvation. You can't undo it. Satan can't undo it. Angels can't undo it. God himself, not that he ever would want to, but God himself could not undo it. It is secure. A lot of You and grown-ups have the same thing. We're insecure. Sometimes people who act very secure, they act very secure, and underneath they're insecure. And in a way, when we're honest, we have reasons to be insecure left to ourselves. You're not up to life. You can't live life on your own. You have a lot of reasons to be insecure in and of yourself. But when you're with this God, when you know God, when you have his word as your guide, when you walk in his way, there are many things that will try to come after you and make you to lose your hope and lose your faith and lose your security, but you can't. Kept by God. by the almighty hand of God. Salvation is fixed in him. Ninthly, God's word is amazing and God's salvation is great because God will turn whatever afflictions come your way, whatever trials, whatever griefs, whatever adversities come your way, he will turn them for good. being a willing father, merciful father. Heiberg Catechism says he will make whatever evils he sends upon me in this valley of tears turn to my advantage. You need this. You don't know what trials God has in store for you and life will bring your way. Some of you are having trials right now. Relationships, your own soul, Depression, anxiety, difficulty in how you relate to your parents or peers or even just in yourself. You may be all tied up in a knot. How are you going to deal with life if you do not have this savior? God is someone who says every single thing that people devise against your hurt, I will turn for your good. I will be with you in it. I will help you. I'll hold your hand. I won't let you go. That's my promise. But I'll make it turn out for your good and for the good of others around you. Yes, you need to trust me. There'll be times you won't see this. There'll be times when you doubt it. But that's my promise. I guarantee it. All things work together for good. To them that love me. That's a great salvation. That's an amazing word that tells you that. And then tenthly and lastly, this word is amazing because God's love will never leave you. It's connected with my previous point, but he'll turn trials for good and his love will never leave you. A lot of you have good friends. A lot of you are looking, at least down the road, for a spouse, for a husband, a wife. Godly spouse, I hope. I trust that's the main thing. But even the best person is a sinner and will hurt you, will do things that you don't like. And you'll do that to other people as well. And even if you had the best relationship, the best marriage that you could ever imagine here in the world, the time will come when you'll have to leave each other, when one of the two will pass away. Human love fails. It will. And that's why we need this divine love that never fails. Paul says, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creatures. It's as if he thinks of every possible force in this world. But none of these things, he says, shall separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, if you're his, if you belong to him. What an amazing salvation. As we close this first point, I say just even for these 10 reasons, and you could multiply these. You could come up with 100 reasons, I'm sure, if you thought about it long enough. But for these 10 reasons, when you think of so great a salvation, such an amazing Bible that gives you the salvation, what could you put on the other side of the weight scale that would even measure up slightly? Nothing. Why would you trade a good life, the honor of people, possessions, riches, powerful position in this world? Why would you trade it for this? When you have this, you have everything, even if you have nothing else. So great is salvation. This brings us to the second thing, which is how we neglect God's Word. We've seen really a great salvation. Now we want to talk just a few minutes, a briefer amount of time on a great crime, if you will. A great crime. Neglecting salvation. Neglecting. The word neglecting means to count it trivial. To kind of just say, That's not that important. That's what it means to neglect. It's the same word here that's used in that parable of the people who were invited to the feast. They got an invitation. Someone knocked on their door and said, listen, there's a great banquet. Come. You're invited. You are invited. And it says they made light of it. They're like, oh, OK. But inwardly, they just set it aside as trivial. They made light of it. How and why do people make light of salvation? Why do they neglect salvation? Someone put it like this. Why do people do, why don't people do what they're supposed to do? They want to do something else. That's true, right? When your parents ask you to do something or your teachers or whatever, you need to do this. And instead you do this. Why do you do this? Because you want to do this, and you don't want to do that. You see, it's an issue of the will. And when it comes to salvation, too, to neglect salvation is a problem with your will. Now, all of us have neglected some things. If you drive a car and you see the gas gauge going down towards the E, it's like, OK, I probably have about 20 more miles to go. And there you are. You're talking with your friends. And you're neglecting the gas gauge. And all of a sudden, there you are on the highway or wherever, no gas. How did that happen? You neglected the warning sign. You neglected the gauge. Sometimes if you have to pay a bill, for example, or your taxes, there's that deadline, right? April 15. Or with a bill, pay this by this and this date, or you get interest, you get a fee, you get all kinds of things happen to you. And I've had it happen where you just neglect it. Credit card statement comes due, and you're usually pretty good at paying this, but you get busy, and the 19th of every month is when my credit card is due, And there you go. You forget it. You got busy. You neglected it. We all neglect things. We know to neglect this salvation is the greatest crime in all the world. To pass this salvation up, to leave this word of salvation closed and your heart closed to it is the greatest crime. If you neglect to pay your taxes, you're in trouble with the government. They'll let you know that. But that's something small compared to neglecting the offer of grace, neglecting the salvation that God extends to each and every one of us. Well, how do we neglect salvation? How does that happen? What do people do on a path of neglecting salvation? Well, the first thing is, They cleave to sin. They cleave to sin. Sin blinds us. The longer we go on in sin, the more it robs us of our eyes. You know Samson's story, where he coddled up to sin, to lust. He went his own ways and he lost his eyes. That's a picture of what happens when we sin. It blinds us. And by nature, we love our sins. Sure, we may feel guilty about them. We may want those sins in a certain sense to be gone in this sense that we don't have to deal with the guilt. We don't have to deal with the consequences of them. But by nature, we're welded to our sins. We're bound to them like a prisoner to his chains. And so often, so many times, we've all done this. We've neglected salvation. because of our sins. Something in us says, you know, if I were to be right with God, I'd have to give up this. I wouldn't be able to do this anymore. And in our mind, we go to that thing, that idol, and we neglect salvation. Second way in which we neglect salvation is we busy ourselves in the world. Scores, millions, billions of people are lost for this reason, is they just keep themselves busy in the world. The rat race, the hamster wheel of this life, going, going, going, performing, performing, performing, striving to get greater pay, higher status, more and more and more pleasure. And they just busy themselves in the world. Is there a person here who has never caught themselves scrolling on their phone or on a computer and just going from the one thing to the next thing, news articles, stocks and investment, whatever it is, and you look back and you say, you know, I just wasted time. I just totally wasted time. You see, technology is huge with this. The people who are behind this technology want you. They're programming this so that you do exactly that. And that is waste time. Waste these precious hours of your life that you'll never get back. And it doesn't take technology, though that certainly makes it a lot easier to do. But your mind can just carry away in fantasies, movies, just ungodly books, all these things, just a dream world, just a bubble. And time is gone, neglecting salvation. But you know, there are some people who neglect salvation by being very religious. by busying themselves in religious duties. I've known people like that. They never miss a church service. They never miss a duty. But it's all doing, doing, doing. And they think that that's salvation. They think that their identity is in doing all these religious things, even talking religion. They have all these things at the tip of their tongues and they can talk all this day. They can give themselves to causes, religious causes, and yet neglect salvation. You see, religion is no substitute for a relationship with God. And it's one of the most dangerous ways in which people neglect salvation. Connected to this, fourthly, people neglect salvation by by giving pious excuses. I can't repent. I can't believe. I can't save myself, can I? And they tell themselves that. So they neglect salvation. There are other people that neglect salvation by having wrong doctrine. Let me warn you young people against that. I'm glad you're at this camp. I trust you're all in solid churches. Don't go a path of wrong doctrine. Don't drink the Kool-Aid that the world and that false churches are going to give you. That there is an easier way, that there's a better way, and that the doctrines of the scriptures, you can take some, leave others, and they come with newfangled, novel things. Don't go down that path. At the time of my life, I was tired of the way I'd been brought up. And I went to a liberal school, and I was drinking in the Kool-Aid of liberal doctrine. And mercifully, God spared me and saved me from that, and turned me and converted me. If he hadn't, I don't know where I'd be. I'd probably be in hell today. or I would be spouting false doctrine to others and becoming twice the child of hell in the process. Don't go the path of wrong doctrine. Don't. It's not worth it. It's grievous. This book is truth. And if it's not according to this book and the whole of this book, don't go there. Don't go a step in that direction, to the right or to the left. Stand alone if you have to, but don't abandon true doctrine. For every true church, there are hundreds of false churches that are teaching falsehood. I have to be blunt. And watch against that. People neglect salvation by going into wrong doctrine and false churches. Sixthly, People neglect salvation by playing fast and loose with the means of grace, becoming haphazard and attending church, reading sermons, reading good books, prayer, Bible studies, just simply living kind of easy. Oh, I don't feel so great today. Let's miss church. Oh, I worked so hard today. I'm not going to read the Bible. And they just neglect the means of grace. They used to pray fervently, zealously, but they don't feel like it now. Or it doesn't seem like God's answering prayer. And so they neglect the means of grace. Maybe some of you are doing that now. Even at this camp. Sure, your Bible's open. Sure, you're listening. But inside, it's just hard. It's just cold. For young people as well as older people, a great way to neglect salvation is to have bad friends, bad company, nurture bad friendships. The fear of man brings a snare. You will have the pleasure of this world and the company of this world cannot have the company of God. In your own mind right now, think about who, who among your friends raises your spirits towards God and those who take away the blessing of God's word, take away the truth of God's word. Do that in your mind and pray God that you would nurture godly friendships and you would go with godly people, godly friends and that ungodly friends, that you would pray for them. You would tell them the truth, but you wouldn't nurture that friendship if it's pulling you away from the Lord. Seventhly and lastly, people neglect salvation by delaying salvation. Delaying salvation. Agrippa, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. Festives, come back at a more convenient time. Delay, delay, delay. We've all done it. Even God's children here. We've heard convicting sermons. We've heard the overtures of grace. We felt in our conscience, this is real. This is true. This is God speaking. We pushed it away. I'll have another church service. of another opportunity, probably a better opportunity. Now, now, now is not the best. You might even think this about the camp, you might think, okay, this is a good opportunity to hear the gospel, but we're here to have fun, too, and we're here to have friends. I can't busy myself with the salvation of my soul, can I? My friend, you're wrong. You're wrong. Now is the time. Now is the day of salvation. Don't delay. We come lastly here to some excuses, and we've really kind of started this already, but I want to just wrestle with you. I pray the Holy Spirit would wrestle with you just to uncover some excuses that people use as they consider these things. Here's excuse number one. You know, maybe God is just going to be merciful in the end. Maybe when I come to the end of my life, I come to the throne of God, God will just say, you know, let's just have mercy on him or her. My friend, God is merciful, but he's also just. And if you come to the judgment seat of Christ, unclothed with the righteousness of Christ, God will not be merciful. God cannot be merciful without the blood of Christ, without his shed blood covering you. Bible makes this very clear. Who shall stand when he appears? Don't believe the lie that the world is eager to tell you that, well, God in the end will have mercy. from countless people, unless you're like Hitler or Stalin or people like that. You know, God is a merciful God. That's a perversion of the truth. God is merciful. He sent his son, but he calls people to hide in his son, to come to union with his son, to believe the record that God has given concerning his son, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Another excuse. Maybe I'll simply be overlooked in that great day. I mean, there will be millions, billions of people. And who am I? I'm just a little person. Maybe I'll be overlooked. Maybe I'll just be able to follow a few people there into heaven. No. God's all-seeing eye sees you now and will see you then. And unless you're hit, Under the blood of Christ, you'll cry for the rocks to cover you and they won't. You won't be overlooked. Thirdly, maybe being part of a good community, a good church, having godly parents, having godly pastors, Maybe they'll take it up for me. Maybe that'll count. Maybe my religious works will somehow at least mitigate the judgment. I'm not here to needlessly frighten you, but I do want to speak honestly with you. Of all the people that will stand before the judgment throne of God in that day, I'm most afraid of you. Why? Because you've heard it, most of you, so often. You've been taught in churches and in your families so much. And the Bible makes clear that it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah and for people like you. When we ministers speak, I'm sure my brother has the same thing, we are aware that we are adding to the guilt of the unconverted. What I say today to you, unless you're saved, will actually add to your punishment. Because you've heard about Christ, you've heard the gospel, you've heard there's a way of escape. You heard that Christ is willing to receive sinners and to turn away from that. renders you more guilty. I want to speak to someone else. There's another excuse. Sometimes Satan loves to work despair in our hearts. You know, you, that's exactly right. Just what that minister said. You're guilty. And you've heard this a lot and you've pushed this away. There's no hope for you anymore. You might as well despair. You might as well just leave this all behind and just live in despair because it's not for you. It can't be for you. You're too bad. You've sinned too much. Look at you. Satan has a way of arraigning all your sins in front of you, but for the purpose of despair. Maybe there have been even people in your life, sadly it happens, who tell you you can't be saved. John Bunyan once thought he committed the sin against the Holy Spirit, and the minister told him, you probably did. Very, very malicious minister. Don't listen to these whispers. Don't listen to these screams and these shouts of Satan to get you to despair. The Bible makes clear there is a savior for the worst. Though you've often resisted his calls to you, Today, you can be saved. You could have walked into this place unsaved, lost on your way to hell. You can leave this place saved, covered by the blood of Christ, an heir of heaven. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's willing. He's able to save you right now. Repent of your sin. Tell God how bad it is in here. Tell them how you will not and you cannot ever save yourself, but fall on mercy. Say, God, if there's mercy for me, the word of God says there is, then save me today. God, don't let these lusts, don't let these sins, don't let even the memory of sin keep me from being saved. Save me, Jesus, or I die. One last excuse. but I've neglected him so long. I've had many convictions, even as a child, even as a toddler, young child. Just last year, I was greatly convicted of eternity, of salvation, but I pushed it away and I went back to my sins. Okay, you've neglected salvation, but will you neglect it again? Will you get neglected today? Will you get neglected while the Lord Jesus Christ and his word is standing before you? It's not me. It's none of the ministers or none of the chaperones here that are speaking to you. It is Christ who is speaking to your soul. And he's saying, come unto me with all your sin, with all your shame, with all your hesitancy, with all your doubt, come unto me and I will give you rest. Friends, the word of God is sufficient to define you, each and every one of you. I know some of you. I see lots of familiar faces here, but I don't know most of you. I don't know you well, but God knows you. God sees you. And in this moment, he's calling you. The word of God is sufficient to define you. And your life will be the best life with this God forever. Amen, let's pray. Dear Lord, I was come close in thy word to each and every soul here today. Eternity is great, but this salvation is so, so great, so marvelous, so rich, so full, so free, so defining. I pray, Lord, in this moment that by thy spirit that was convict, unto faith and righteousness, to a fleeing to Christ, that this room, this camp, this time, would be a time when thy spirit would reign through grace, by faith, all for thy glory. In Jesus' name we ask this alone, amen.