The Gospel for the Nations

This morning we're coming to the end of our study of Acts and it's quite a remarkable ending. It's remarkable to me in one level because it's not what I expected. It's not what you would expect given what's been built up as we've been going along. Paul has appealed to Caesar. The Jews have falsely imprisoned him, sought to beat him to death, they want him dead, and the Roman court has, the Roman guards have saved Paul, he's appealed to Caesar, and as we're getting closer to Rome, we're expecting this showdown. Paul and Nero. We're expecting this grand court that's going to do what we've been longing to hear. Paul's set free, he's not guilty. That's not what happens. We continue to see Paul's in jail as the book concludes, as we'll read in a moment. We do see this great sea voyage that Patty just read for us, and thank you for reading that. We see this very difficult voyage, and then we see this very small gathering that Paul has with a few Jews in Rome. Now he left Jerusalem, the capital city of Judaism. He's gone to Rome, the capital city of Gentiles, and what we see happening is a declaration of really judgment on the Jews who continue to reject God. This is a very fitting ending, because it brings together the themes of Acts. It brings together the one clear declaration that Jesus is Lord of all. That is what we've been seeing over and over and over again through the book of Acts. That's what we see emphasized here at the end of Acts. Jesus is Lord of all. And if you're gonna write down one thing from today's text, from today's message, it's that. Jesus is Lord of all, and that means he is the one true God who was created. He is the one Savior that everyone must believe in to be saved. And He's not just the Lord of a certain kind of people. He's the Lord of all kinds of people. Every kind of filthy sinner, no matter your race, your gender, your nationality, your occupation, your status of life. He's Lord of all who believe in Him. So this morning we're going to be looking at how Luke is really pulling us back to Acts 1.8. That commission of Jesus that he told to those first Jewish believers, those first disciples, the apostles, you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then the outer ends of the earth. When we see the gospel is going to go out in different regions to different peoples, because God desires for all to come to Him. Every kind of person. Our text breaks up into two very natural parts. There's the journey to Rome, and then there's what happens in Rome. And we're gonna look at this in two points, in that God guides, God saves. That's our two points. God guides, and God saves. And much of our text is about the guiding, but most of our time is gonna be on God saving. God guides, and this is, for the most part, what Patti read to us. We see in verses one to 12 a setting. Luke gives us great detail about this trip. And notice Luke's with us. There's a we, a we, a we. Now, why does Luke give us so much detail about this particular trip where he could have given us detail elsewhere? Well, one, Luke was on the trip and it seemed to be quite a trip. And any time you have a chance to tell a great sea voyage story, you tell a great sea voyage story. But more so, I believe it's him wanting to show us, led by the Holy Spirit, how God guided this whole adventure. How God and Jesus Christ, when he appeared to Paul, you're going to testify about me in Rome. Christ himself revealed himself and that truth to Paul. Now, Jesus Christ is guiding and directing that very trip to get him to Rome. So verses one to 12, really a setting. We see there are three stops along the way that before the trip even gets going, there's numerous stops. Paul has a company, he's cared for well. Luke is with him in the we. There's Aristarchus from Thessalonica. We actually see him also in the letter of Colossians. He seems to be a good friend to Paul. Paul is cared for by friends in verse three. Julius is named, he's the centurion. Whoever sees Paul, the prisoner, They're sailing under the lee wind of Crete, and it was great to look up all these sea terms. A lee wind is a downward wind from whatever location. So the wind was coming down from Crete, and they were sailing along with it. They end up in Fair Havens. This is an unknown location for us today. It was a small seaport. That's why they wanted to find somewhere to winter. This was not an adequate harbor to winter. Luke mentioned the fast in this section. This is usually revolving around the week of atonement. It's showing that this is late October, that the sailing season is coming to an end. It's gonna become more and more difficult to go on a trip to Rome, and this is when Paul speaks. Now, when Paul gives a warning, we shouldn't go, he doesn't say, thus says the Lord. He doesn't say, Jesus Christ appeared to me, like he will later, we shouldn't go. He's simply, I think, speaking from wisdom, based upon my observations, we shouldn't go. And this centurion says, what do you know? You're training as a Pharisee. You're not like Matthew or Luke or Matthew. You're not a trained seaman. They ignore him, and they listen to the captain and the owner of the boat. Well, they should have listened to him. Because it gets so bad, they have to pull in the ship that usually is towed behind, the boat towed behind. They secure the ropes that bind up the ship because the sea is angry, the sea is bringing about great problems. They have to dump their tackle, there's great danger. And let's look at verse 20. Verse 20. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, This is what gives people direction, right? There's no sense of time or direction because there's no appearance of sun or stars for many days. This is how violent this storm is. There was no sun nor stars appeared for many days. No small tempest lay on us. A very powerful thunderstorm continued to press on them. All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. This is the kind of great difficulty that makes for a great story. They have gone, they've started a journey, they have been pushed away from their destination to find Phoenix, to find a harboring point for the winter. They've been pushed out to sea and there's no direction, no sense of time. They haven't eaten for many days. And so they've lost hope. And then verse 13, things start to get interesting. As they're sailing along the shore, they have great temperatures, the wind strikes them down, they have to give up their boat, and then verse 20, there's no star, no direction, and here we come to Paul in verse 21. After they've lost all hope, we come to what Paul says, and listen to what Paul declares. Since they've been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, men, you should have listened to me. Yes, Paul just gave them I told you so. Now, let's just take a moment. Acts is sometimes just descriptive, not prescriptive. This is not Paul justifying your I told you so's. We have to be careful here in realizing that Paul is, he's inspired by the Holy Spirit in declaring I told you so. That isn't always the most helpful thing to say to someone when you were right. So Paul here, he says, I told you so, you should have listened to me. You shouldn't have said sell, and now I urge you to take heart. He turns to encourage them. For there will be no loss of life among you, but only the ship. No one will die, but the ship's gonna be ruined. For this very night there stood before me an angel of the Lord to whom I belong and whom I worship. But Paul's saying that this is a word from the Lord. And he said, do not be afraid. You who have lost hope, do not be afraid. Paul, you must stand before Caesar, and behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you. So Paul says to them, so take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as it has been told. Paul points them to the one true God who has created this sea. He's in charge of the storm. He's in charge of them. He's the God who has committed himself to Paul and the mission of Jesus Christ that Paul will show up before Caesar to proclaim the gospel. So Paul tells these pagan sailors, trust the God that I worship. He is in control. He is going to get us there. Trust him. And then, of course, verses 27 to 38, they demonstrate a great lack of faith. As soon as they come to a little bit of shore, as soon as they could come down from the ropes, the men try to flee the boat, and Paul tells the centurion, we can't, no one can leave this boat. We all have to survive together on this boat. So the centurion, now he trusts Paul. He cuts the ropes, the men all come in, and they sail on, and they land in Malta, and the boat is ruined. It crashes at Malta and two very interesting things happen at Malta. Let me begin reading in verse one. After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Malta. A native people showed us unusual kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all because it had begun to rain and was cold. When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, no doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down, dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a God. Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery, and Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hand on him healed him. And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured. And they honored us greatly. And when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed. After three months, we set sail on a ship that had wintered in the island, the ship of Alexandria, with twin gods as a figurehead. Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three winds sprang up. And on the second day, we came to Petoia. There we found brothers, and we were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome, and the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and three taverns to meet us. And seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. And when he had came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with a soldier's guard. So we have two very interesting events that take place in Malta. You have Paul getting bitten by a viper, And then you have Paul healing a sick man, and then many others were sick. These two stories do go together, and it's interesting that Paul is able to not get sick from a viper bite, and then Paul is able to heal all these who are sick and may be dying. And oftentimes in this era, this time when Luke's writing, there's other writings that are very similar to this. And the purpose of those writings are to make someone look like a God, to show them as greater than life, as those who cannot be defeated, who have amazing powers of healing themselves and healing others. And that's not Luke's point. I believe Luke here is actually showing how God is sovereign, how God is protecting Luke, or Paul, and how God is using Paul. He's actually, I believe, mocking the superstition of these people. Remember, at first they're thinking, well, this viper, it's a sign that he's a murderer, and now he's going to get justice. And then how quickly and fickle they are, they change their mind. Well, no, he's not a murderer who's gonna get justice, he's a God. This is what happens when you're a pagan. You just go back and forth. There's no clarity because there's not one God who you trust who's always spoken the same one truth. And then they show him as a man who heals someone else. Paul is not sick from a viper. He's able to heal those who are sick. He's able to do the work of God as a man of God. And really, I just wanna step back for a moment and show God is sovereign over this very difficult, dangerous trip. God set him on this trip. God did not make it clear as to what was going to happen. Whenever God sets us on a trip, he doesn't promise it's going to be easy. He simply says, I'm going to be with you. Here, it's obvious. God's hand is powerful to save. God's hand is powerful to protect. As Christ has commissioned Paul to go to Rome in Acts 23, 11, he gets him there. And really we can see that we can trust this God who leads us. Now I wanna focus on the rest of our text. Because this is the end emphasis of all of Acts. It's God saves. We've been anticipating Paul's arrival and just as there was a great pomp when King Agrippa came in to judge Paul. We expect great pomp to happen at some point when Caesar himself is going to come in and hear Paul or those who will serve him. But that's not what happens. It's a warm gathering from the brothers and sisters who are in Rome and are in the surrounding regions. But as Paul always does, goes first to the Jews. He wants to receive, rather, because he's in jail, the Jews. Those who are of his kinsmen so that they might hear the gospel and believe. The local Jewish leaders, they come and there's two meetings. The first meeting is verses 17 to 22. That's kind of the first introduction. And it's a bit odd because these Jews claim to not have heard anything about Paul or the charges against him. Remember, the previous governor, Festus, he wanted Agrippa to give him something to write to Caesar because there's no real charge to give him. These Jews have heard nothing, they say, from the Jews in Jerusalem about what's wrong with Paul. They understand he's in chains. Paul states, I want to be free. He wants a just hearing. But more than anything, he wants to tell them about Jesus Christ. Look at verse 21. And they said to him, we have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you. But we desire to hear from you, that what your views are. For with regard to this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against. So this is the first explanation, they're wanting to meet him, they wanna hear about him. And I'm gonna say verse 22 reveals that this conversation is already going to be off on the wrong foot. because they just called Christianity a sect of Judaism. That means they already are misunderstanding what's taking place. And I wanna stop here because Luke has brought this kind of idea in numerous times in what Paul says and what the Jews have said. When the Jews look at Christianity as a sect of Judaism, they're missing the point. Christianity is Judaism truly fulfilled. I want to take a moment and just see here, and this is what Paul's going to do in a moment as he opens up the Word of God with Moses and the prophets. Everything that the Old Testament was anticipating because of the promises of God has now been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. What Abraham longed to look into, what Abraham longed to see Jesus Christ is. The true worship that Moses gave us a paradigm for, Jesus Christ allows us to enjoy. Every promise of the prophet, priest, and king is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who's the king of righteousness, the one and final true prophet, the priest who now lets us go into the Holy of Holies. Christianity's not a sect of Judaism. Christian, I want you to understand this. The Old Testament is more yours than any Jew. It's your book. Because you can rightly understand what it really was saying when you read it in light of who Jesus Christ is, because that's what it was about. Don't be afraid of the Old Testament. It's yours. It's about your Savior. You can look back and you can see how he's been promised and anticipated and prophesied. It's an encouraging book because it tells us who he was going to be, and then we can see he's fulfilled everything God had said. Let's look to the second section, verses 23 to 24. When they appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in great numbers. From morning till evening, he expounded of them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. Now, Luke, why wouldn't you give us a lot more detail right there? Every time this is just summarized, I'm begging, why don't we have some just cliff note versions of what Paul expounded here? But he's opening up the Old Testament and reasoning, convincing them from their own sacred text that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Look at the fruit of it. And some of them were convinced by what he said. It doesn't say they believed, it simply says they were convinced by what he said. They most likely did believe, but others disbelieved. And then a great disagreement broke out amongst themselves and they departed. Now here we're getting down to the end emphasis. Notice what Paul does. He makes one statement. Luke is drawing our attention to this one statement. The Jews have come, the Jews who have been studying the Old Testament, who are supposed to be students of that Old Testament, trusting those promises, when they hear how they're fulfilled, they're supposed to believe, and here many have not believed, and now they're disagreeing. So Paul makes one statement, and it is a difficult statement to hear. Paul makes one statement. the Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, go to this people and say, you will indeed hear, but never understand. You will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull. And with their eyes, they can barely hear. With their eyes, they have closed. Lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them. Paul's just quoted from their own text, from the prophet Isaiah, a word of judgment. You hear, but you're not understanding. You have your eyes open, but you're not seeing. Your eyes are closed. You can barely hear. Your heart keeps you from accepting and receiving the healing that God is offering you right now. This is a great declaration of judgment. Look at what Paul concludes with. Therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. Because unlike you, they will listen. That is a hard declaration. For Paul to declare because he loves his kinsmen, he longs, we know from Romans, for his kinsmen to believe. He is a Jew preaching to Jews, the Jewish Savior, Jesus Christ, and he wants them to believe, but because of their response, he can only do what the Holy Spirit's revealed to him, he's declaring this judgment. You will hear but not understand. You will see but not perceive. Why? Look at the four, verse 27, that's so important. The four, why? hearts. They've grown dull. That's frightening. That is frightening. That is what leads to the ears barely hearing, the eyes being closed. You do not see, you do not understand with your heart that you can turn away from sin. You can turn to God and He will heal you. So the gospel is going to go to the Gentiles because they will listen. Let's make some observations about this robust statement. First, as I've already said, it's a statement of judgment. It's describing someone who's rejecting God. Secondly, there's a statement about a disability. There's an ability problem. The people have been given God's word and they're not getting it. They're not listening, they're not seeing, they're not perceiving. They've been given the ability by God to see and to hear, but there's a capacity problem. It's not working right. Something is wrong. And that leads us to verse 27. It's a judgment, there's an ability problem, and here's the heart of it. Four. Here's the explanation. Why isn't there understanding? Because their hearts have grown dull. This condition is repeated. There is no understanding of the heart at the end of verse 27. You're not turning to God because your heart is a source of love and you've decided to love everything else. And then the fourth observation, salvation is at stake. Look how he ends. God would heal you. God would heal you. That's what God gives, that's what God offers, and that's what is at stake, and that is what's being rejected. Because they're rejecting Jesus Christ. And fourth, the last statement that Paul makes in verse 28. It's short and it's clear. Now the gospel will go out to save the Gentiles. They will listen. And that's a judgment. That's a judgment. You who have the word of God and should be listening, you're not listening. Those who have not had the word of God, they're going to listen to your shame. If we're to think about the three kind of medical terms here as we're thinking about healing, there's symptoms. They're not repenting and they're not receiving. They're not really understanding, they can't be convinced. That's the symptom. The diagnosis that's really behind that symptom is that their hearts are dull. They've rejected God. There is no love for God. What's the prognosis? You will not be saved. The gospel will go out to the Gentiles. Let's focus on salvation. What is this grand declaration that we're ending on of the salvation of God? God has promised to heal us of our affliction. And the confusing part of our affliction that we oftentimes just have the biggest difficulty wrapping our heads around is that it's a self-affliction. Our biggest problem is one that we've caused. And this is hard for us because we love to blame somebody else for any problem we have. This goes back to Adam and Eve. the very first sinners in the very first sin, what do they do? They try to find some way of blaming somebody else, even God. We're not new at this in our culture. We've just become really good at it. We give master's degrees in it. Blame shifting. No, what we have to realize, our biggest problem is a self-created problem. Our biggest affliction, what we need healing from, our sickness is one that we've caused with our rejection of God, our refusal of Him, our resisting Him. And this is who God is. While we're rejecting God, He's choosing us. That's the good news of Jesus Christ. While we are rejecting God and hating God, He is choosing us. And the word there for choose can easily be just changed over as love. That's what love is in Christian terminology. Love is not sentiment, it's not feeling. Love is a commitment and a choice. It's someone who says, I'm going to make a promise and I'm going to keep it. Even while we were sinners, God chose us. He loves the unlovely. No greater love does a man have than this, that he lays down his life for his friend. That love is a commitment that sacrifices. God's salvation is found in His power to make a promise, keep a promise, and fulfill a promise. His power to save is over against our power to reject Him and resist Him. He loves us while we're unlovely. This is the great news of salvation. It is a gift from the most lovely to the least lovely. It's a great declaration of the one who has perfect love that never fails. The salvation we need is one that washes away our sin. It reconciles us to God. It restores us. It realizes that the problem within us is one that rejects God and God comes in and He heals that internal problem and He heals our relationship to Him. If you're not a Christian this morning, there's a simple truth. You are distant from God because you've rejected him. Everyone in this room at one point was distant from God relationally because we rejected him, but God came to save us. The son came to die in our place for our sin so that the sins that keep us from God would be washed away, they'd be healed, they'd be forgiven. And then the Holy Spirit came to apply that salvation to us so that we could believe in Jesus Christ, be forgiven, and be reconciled, and know God once more. You too can know God and His love. You too can do this by recognizing the problem is not something that's been forced upon you, the problem is within you. And salvation is something right now that I pray is being forced upon you. Salvation has to come from outside. It comes from God to heal you and bring you back to Him. Christian, this salvation was not a one-time commitment that you just didn't get to forget. It's an ongoing process of remembering who you are now, living in the grace of God, having identity that's shaped by this truth. We constantly need that nasty knot of our sin untied. It's a lifelong process. Yes, it was a one-time forgiveness. You're declared innocent. But then it's an unraveling of that heart so we can know God. That's the salvation of God. And because the heart is so central, I wanna focus on the heart for a moment, verse 27. The salvation of God is what's at stake. The heart really is the crux of the problem. For this people's heart has grown dull. There's an understanding of the heart, if only then they would be healed. But what is the heart? The heart is the source of affections. It's where our desires come from. Jesus said, it's not what goes inside of you that defiles you. What defiles you is what bubbles out from your heart and then comes out on your lips. See, what we do and what we say shows what's inside of us. And that's terrifying. Think about your worst thoughts. That didn't come from outside, that came from inside. What was really wrong with us bubbles up from that sinful heart that grows dull. That word could be translated as lax feeling, could be translated as stupid. It just doesn't receive the truth. The heart is closed off to the things of God. It's broken, it's misfiring, it's corrupted. The heart that God created inside of us was designed for one thing, to know God and to love him and to know his love. Our hearts were created to be tied to him with a love. And what we decided to do is take that heart and love everything but God. We've decided to take that heart and it becomes dull because we've decided to love everything that glitters that's not gold. We've wrapped it up in sin and self-righteousness. Another word for that that we could translate for that dullness, the heart has become fat. It's so full of sin and self-righteousness, it rejects the great word of love from God that wants to come in and fulfill it. Non-Christian, if you're not a Christian this morning. We have this natural propensity to love ourselves. And that's good. But our primary problem, our primary problem is that we love ourselves too much. We love ourselves because we're afraid that no one else is going to love us. We're afraid that God won't love us. And so the self-love, it really becomes destructive. We seek to do what we think is right in our eyes, and that always just messes us up more. We become that patient who doctors love, who's constantly self-prescribing their own medications. Ask your doctor, that's pretty frustrating. You're constantly looking, all right, here's what my problem is. If I just do this and this, then I'll be better. No. The more you do to try to fix the problem inside, the more you're complicating the problem inside. Here's the beauty of it. You can stop. You can humble yourself before God and you can cry out, God, I have tried so many things to fix my internal order, my internal problems, my relationship with you, my relationship with others. I've tried so many things. I'm just gonna cry out and say, God, heal me and save me. That's when you'll truly receive a peace from God. a healing from God, a salvation that purifies your heart and connects you with a great God who loves you and can fill you with love. Christian, we have such a propensity towards self-love. And it's really ridiculous. It's ridiculous that we have such a tendency towards self-love. And we do it because we don't trust God's gonna love us. But we don't pour ourselves out in sacrificial love because we're afraid that God is not going to love us. The God who laid down his life for us, the God who sent his own son, how will he spare anything good for us? It's a lack of faith that leads us to having a heart that can grow dull. A dull heart is something a Christian can suffer from. There's a couple things that lead us to a dull heart. One's just laziness. Yeah, God saved you as a act of just giving you everything you needed, but then he says, now work out your salvation. And let's face it, we get pretty lazy at that. That is something we do with great fear and trepidation. Worship is not something you can do lazy. The second thing that causes a dull heart is just sin. Just stopping and saying, I found enough joy in the Lord, let me see what sin can do for me. Again, that kind of self-prescription, let me now pursue sin to see if it can add to my joy. It always robs. It always robs. Bad priorities. This goes along with being lazy in that we're just simply saying, I want my social life and my ambitions to have more of a priority over the things of God. or just simply discontentment. And this is really the sickest one. We had certain expectations and certain ambitions, and when they don't happen, we become discontent and we blame God. We didn't actually pray for God as to what our expectations and ambitions should be. We just blame Him for what we don't have. We're blaming God for what He hasn't given us that we thought He should. Again, it's a lack of faith. We can repent and receive the joy that Christ has purchased for us. We need to focus on the salvation of God that comes down to us. We need to focus on the heart that can grow so dull. That heart is to be full of the love of God. That's what has created us. The final emphasis of our story is the gospel will go out to the Gentiles who will listen. Again, we're just fulfilling what Jesus began this book with. Go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, all the ends of the earth. The gospel is going to go out because Jesus is Lord of all. And as we conclude, I just want to give a warning and encouragement and a charge based upon this declaration that Jew, you have not listened. The Gentiles, they will listen and receive the salvation of God. There's a warning here. We could be kind of like the Jews here. The Jews had a Bible. They were around the holy things of God all the time. They were hearing God's word, they were talking about God's word, they were studying God's word, but yet their hearts were dull. Having it, reading it, even memorizing it does not truly affect the heart. It's prayerfully pursuing God, saying, what are you saying? Teach me. Well, we need to be warned that just having a Bible Does it give you a heart of love? Just reading the Bible doesn't give you a heart of love, but those things are essential to pursuing God. We just have to make sure as we have these things, we're not taking them for granted, we're pursuing them with a passion to see God and to know His love. So that's a warning. An encouragement is this, God's word is powerful. His grace abounds where our sin abounds. God has so committed himself and made it so clear he has committed himself to us that he wants to be known by us. He wants us to know him and to know his love. His word does not return void. When we pursue him, he reveals himself. Be encouraged to pursue him, trusting his grace. And then finally, a charge, a beautiful thing we've seen throughout Acts, God uses broken instruments to bring him great glory. That's us. God wants to use each one of us to speak the words of the gospel to someone else so that someone else will be taken out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of light. Who God is calling, they're going to listen. You don't have to be the most, Articulate. You don't have to be able to convince with every single word of scripture. You simply have to be faithful, trusting the power of the gospel to save sinners and the power of the spirit to use your words of faithfulness. So here's the charge. Pray for opportunities to share the gospel so that we might delight in the glory of God's gospel to save sinners. Think of a coworker right now, a neighbor, a family member, Who are you going to pray for an opportunity and pursue that opportunity to share the gospel with them? One of the most encouraging things on our Wednesday night prayer time is when we open up to who's that opportunity to share the gospel. That's what makes those Wednesday nights just really the most challenging time for me when I hear the members, my coworker, my friend, my family member. I wanna charge you, intentionally pray for one person that you'll ask for an opportunity for. Christian, we can have full hearts of God's love. We can have a clear conscience because Christ has died for us. We can delight in seeing others saved. Let us pursue him with faith and obedience. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for this testimony. While it is hard to hear this word of judgment that Paul has given the Jews who've rejected you because of their dullness of heart, let it be a warning to us to have an open heart to you, to want to repent of all the things we fill our heart with so that you, Almighty God, can come in and heal us. Forgive us for our self-medication. Forgive us for our foolishness in thinking we can figure out this life apart from you and your word and your people. We thank you that your grace abounds where sin abounds. We thank you that your salvation has come to us. You've given us ears to hear. Help us, Lord, to repent and believe and follow you and proclaim you and trust your grace and see you in all your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.