Believers Rejoice - Revelation 19:1-10 - In The End

We're gonna be in Revelation chapter 19 together this weekend and as we come closer to the finish line of the book of Revelation, we have a few weeks left in this series, but as you get closer to the end of the book of Revelation, the real telos, the telos of everything, the end of everything, the purpose of everything really begins to come into view pretty, pretty good, okay? It's kind of blurry, fuzzy, and then as you, as you move forward it gets a little clearer and a little clearer and the answer really that we get at the very end is that there is something that God is doing.

There is a purpose for everything that we go through, everything that He has called us to do for our very lives and that purpose of course is for the praise of His name and for His fame and for His renown. That really is the end game. I mentioned this a while ago. Guys, you remember the illustration I used about the end game, so that movie Avengers End Game, okay? Highest grossing movie of all time until it wasn't because Avatar came out again, okay?

But it ended up being 2.8 billion dollars that it grossed worldwide. Now, I mentioned that and I want to mention it again because I, look, I'm not, man, fine, movie, maybe good movie, I don't, I don't know what your jam is with movies, but here's what I would say. If I just walked up to you and asked you what's like your favorite movie, I'm betting there'd be other movies that come up. It probably would, I don't know that it would be in like your top three. I mean, if I just kind of went out to everybody and if it is in your top three, don't throw rocks at me, okay? You may be a very shallow person, okay? But no, I'm just kidding.

I'm joking, joking, okay? But, you know, other movies come up, I don't know, Remember the Titans, you know, like, I mean, Braveheart or something like that. Somebody might say Titanic.

They should get kicked out of the church, okay, if that's them. But, you know, you know what I'm saying, like, my point is this, other movies come up, right, that are like, where you're like, oh, you're talking about like the best, my favorite movie. Why did this movie, you know, garner $2.8 billion? I'm going to tell you why, because whoever named the movie named it pretty good.

You got 21 movies over 10 years and they named it like this. You want to know what all of that was about? This is the end game. And I think that, I mean, it kind of, it's supposed to tie it all together where you kind of get to the finally, you finally get to the end, right?

Well, here's what I want to show you here this weekend. There is an end game to what God is doing and that end game happens to be the big idea of our message today, which is, y'all, God will be worshiped in the end. Why are we here?

Why is there anything rather than nothing? He would be recognized as the famous one, that he would be revered, that the earth would be filled with the open enjoyment of God. This is what he's after. This is us praising him as we behold his glory. That's what it's all about. And so what we saw in Revelation 18 is this idea, come out of Babylon and rejoice over its falling.

Today we get a deeper dive and a look at that. What does it look like to be in celebration over the fall of Babylon because it ushers in God's end game and we are called in Revelation 19 to begin that party. And that party is to worship God. What are you celebrating? What is the object of affection in your life? When I use that phrase, it's not unique to me. The open enjoyment of God. What is it in your life that everyone can see the open enjoyment of X?

Right? This is what it's about for us. Would we turn our heart today to the Lord and say Babylon has fallen, that Babylon will fall, that ushers in your ultimate purposes and we will praise you for that.

That's what we're called to do. Look at Revelation 19. After this, I heard what seemed to be a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out hallelujah, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God for his judgments are true and just for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her blood and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. Once more they cried out hallelujah.

Look at this. The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. You know when the smoke goes up from something forever, it never gets rebuilt, right? It's a forever fallen. That's what's going to happen with the prostitute of Babylon and with the rebellion of the world and the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne saying amen. They assent to this and they say hallelujah. They're praising the Lord over it. Now what we see in Revelation 19 is a shift from sort of the events of earth to the events of heaven. What's going on in heaven is praise over what God is doing. Well what is God doing? God is overthrowing the rebellion of the world, the wickedness of the world, the sinful nature of the world, the brokenness of the world and he is overthrowing it.

Remember just if you're newer, I want to kind of recap a little bit here. Babylon is the rebellion of the world that will be overthrown in the end. You know Babylon, is it a place? No, it's sort of a spirit of rebellion that sits on many waters is what we read right earlier in this series. It's sort of wherever the rebellion is, that's where Babylon is and what the Bible is calling us to do and this may have been a source of tripping up a little bit last week.

I want to dive into it a little bit more today is this. We are called to praise God. Look what he is saying. They cry out hallelujah because the smoke of her goes up forever. The 24 elders say amen to her destruction. Hallelujah, they cry out. I think it might be easy for us to get tripped up here because we might be thinking to ourselves how in the world could someone rejoice over the destruction of the world, the destruction of the rebellious systems of the world, the destruction of the rebellious nations of the world. How could we rejoice when so much of the world is going to be overthrown? Well it's very simple actually.

It doesn't mean it's easy but it is simple and it's this. Their destruction leads to the ultimate end game. God's purposes, a new heavens, a new earth, a world where there are no more tears, no more famine, no more abortion, no more abuse, no more trafficking, no more fraud, no more disease. That's why we rejoice.

Remember what I told you. It's not like hey the world lost, the church wins or God is one in the end so we gloat like a victory dance or something. Somebody wants to pull out the cigar because we won. It's the football game that you win and everybody's got the victory dance.

That's not the idea here. The idea is there is a freedom that the world will experience because Babylon has been overthrown. I want you to imagine the emotion that you would have. You look back and the armies of Egypt are being swallowed up by the Red Sea. It's not that that's not sad.

There are probably teenagers in that army. It's very serious. It's not that there's no sadness in it but at the same time this is a freedom song. We are free and that freedom to enjoy God in an open way, that freedom to live in His kingdom, in His place, under His reign, His people. That is something that we celebrate.

Look what it said. Hallelujah. Salvation and glory and power belong to our God for His judgments are true and just. Now this is judgment. For He has judged the great prostitute. What is judged? He has found her wanting. He has evaluated. He has seen her sins. We saw this last week.

They are glued together quite literally. It would be a literal translation. They are they are heaped all the way to heaven and God has judged her for that. Who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of His servants. It wasn't just immorality. It is the persecution of His precious sons and daughters.

It's the persecuted church around the world and there will be a judgment that comes. Y'all, I don't know your background. Okay, I don't know how much Bible you have or whatever. I'm gonna tell you. There is a picture of Jesus that we get if you walk in old church buildings.

It might be a white Jesus or a black Jesus depending on where you went to church. Okay, but here's the deal. You look at those pictures. They all have the same thing in mind.

You know what they are? You look up and you see a soft, mousy, small, sometimes effeminate, mealy-mouthed dude. The type of dude that when he was a kid, he was scared of the baseball and wouldn't stand in the batter's box. That's who you see.

The type of guy that is scared to drink out of a hosepipe because it ain't filtered. That's the Jesus that we get in pictures. Probably a vegan, no offense.

Okay, probably a vegan, no offense. Okay, and I'm just saying like, man, the Jesus that we see in Revelation is the warrior lamb whose hands are trained for war. It's not the picture that we had in Sunday school.

It's a little more of a picture like this. The storm of God's wrath is coming. No one will escape it. Every one of us have participated in the rebellion of the world and either we will be sheltered by the blood of Christ or we will stand on our own and we will face the storm. And what happens as we see is overthrowing. The sin of Babylon will cause it to be cast into the sea and we deserve to sink right along with it. Every bit of evil in the world, every martyr, every abuse victim, everyone who has cheated, it will all be repaid.

This is not just doom that is coming to the world. It is justice. Let me ask you something, man. We love justice. We like justice for everybody else. We want mercy for ourselves. We're very justice oriented people. Okay, but what about which side of this justice are you on today?

Which side are we on? Because if we're outside of Christ and we stand on our own and I would ask you, have you not participated in the sins of Babylon? I know that I have. I have no standing on my own. All that I have is my hope in the gospel.

What did we sing earlier? I love this song, my sins they were many, but his mercy is more. That's the only hope that we have, church. It's the only hope because our sin deserves to be judged. That is what is just. What the Bible has told us is that for every sin, the wage is death.

This is what we deserve. Revelation 19 is not just look at the doom that's coming to the world. Justice is being restored and the shout of praise that comes from the church, the shout of praise that comes from heaven is a shout because we see that justice is being done. And look what it said in verse three. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah.

Why? The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. The warrior lamb whose hands are trained for war, he brings justice, overthrows Babylon and that justice will be eternal. In the very end, there will be an eternal justice. In other words, you could say it like this, Babylon will be forever fallen.

It will be forever fallen. Now here's the thing, I know that we have a lot of people at Mercy Hill every single week, pretty much at every service, all of our campuses, all right? And here's the deal, you come in and you're a little bit like, man, I'm just trying to figure this out.

We have people like that all the time. You might be like that right here today. And here's the deal, if that's where you are, the modern skeptic really hates the idea of a forever fallen Babylon. We're talking about hell, okay? I mean, we're talking about eternal death. And people really struggle with that, right? They're like, man, how could there be a torment, a flame? How could there be an eternal destruction? But I want to point out something to you because a lot of times the modern mind can also hold a bunch of contradictions, okay? And sometimes we've got to just tease them out because here's what I've seen. You might be a college student at UNCG or A&T or you might be at High Point or one of our smaller schools.

You might be a young professional that has moved in from somewhere and you're just trying to figure this out, okay. And here's the deal, you struggle with the idea of God's eternal justice. A lot of people say it like this, I can't believe God would create hell, but here's the problem with that. Most modern people would also say, okay, I've got a problem with hell, but I do think Hitler is there. Think about that for a moment. The problem isn't eternal destruction because we see things in the world that we're like, oh yeah, that deserves that. Slavers who might just throw someone overboard on the Middle Passage because they're sick.

Someone in the Cultural Revolution in Mao's China, man, just because you believe in a God, just because you were a professor, now you're on the chopping block and your kids are told to out you and all this kind of stuff. We look at those types of evils in the world and what we think is, well, yeah, there should be justice for them. See, the problem isn't justice. The problem is we don't understand that that justice includes our sin. That's the real issue. The real issue ain't justice. The real issue is we don't understand holiness. And we don't understand, and I hope this is a wake-up call for you today, man, stop judging your sin against others in the world and judge it against who it's against, against the holy God, the holiness of God. That's where we've got to get. See, Babylon falling is like, man, we, yeah, okay, Mao's China, Hitler.

No, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's think about this. The Bible tells us that our sin deserves death. That's because he is that holy. We will not stand before him and be united with him in the marriage supper of the lamb that we're going to talk about in a minute.

If we have our sin, if we're standing, holding our sin, we're not worthy to be in his presence. So it's not just about Mao's China or Hitler this or whatever. What about our gossiping lives?

My daughter sometimes will say, man, at school, the tea is hot. Okay. I don't really know exactly what that means. I think it has to do with the gossip. Okay.

And then, you know, we're talking to her, how do you navigate that in a high school and all that kind of stuff? What about the lust of your eyes? Why would we say, well, yeah, some people deserve, but not, I mean, not that, you know, like I'm not... You understand what I'm getting at here? It's like, man, it's not about just your sin. It's about who your sin is against. You know, as we grow in our Christian life, we begin to love what heaven loves. We love what God loves. You know, we hate what God hates.

Let me ask you a question. You know, there's not going to be a game of thrones in heaven. Do you like that or not like that? You know, like things that we see, you know, the things that we see, I mean, even the soft pornography of our day, it's like that stuff's not going to be there. Do we like that or do we not like that?

Do we love heaven or do we love hell? For all of those things in our life, the way we take pride in our social status, man, the drunkenness that can be in a very middle class, nobody knows it, but every single week, man, it's over and over and over. And people are drunk with alcohol or they're drunk with other illicit drugs or prescription medication or whatever it is. Here's my point.

I'm trying to hit a bunch of different angles, okay? We want to say, yeah, the big stuff deserves, but what about when it's against God? You know, I've shared this before, but I want you to think about this analogy with me, okay?

I want you to think about who it's against, all right? If you were to kick a rock, nobody cares, okay? But if you kick the fish, there'd be a couple of people that care, all right? If you kick a dog, now everybody cares, right? You kick a cat, now we're sort of back to hell, nobody cares. Okay, you know, so now we're... Okay, but if you kick a... I'm kidding. Okay, don't email me, all right? It's a joke, all right?

Okay, but you understand. You kick a kid, you kick a teacher, you kick a police officer, you understand what I'm getting at? You kick someone with authority, you kick a president, you kick a king, you kick a dictator, you get what I'm getting at?

Like, the authority of who it's against, that sort of matters when you're talking about what the offense is. What about God? What about the supreme holy ruler of all that is, the creator of everything that is? See, our sin is against Him, and our sin deserves justice, and we deserve to be on the wrong side of that, but in the gospel, man, we get what we don't deserve, and that's where this passage turns. Many of us, as you were a kid, man, you have longed for this day, the marriage supper of the lamb. Others of us are like, man, that's really weird.

I don't even know what that is. Okay, we're gonna explain it, all right? But it's this idea of God's people coming fully into the consummation, the full relationship with Him that we were born for and destined for, and every single Christian will have. Look what it says in verse five. And from the throne came a voice saying, praise our God, all you servants, you who fear Him small and great, and from the child all the way up. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and the sound of thunder, mighty pills of thunder crying out, hallelujah for the Lord our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him glory. Now, here's what I want to show you, okay? We're giving Him glory and praising because Babylon has fallen, but Babylon falling has also opened the door.

See, don't you understand? The prostitute is thrown down and the bride is ushered in. So we're not just praising Him for what is being thrown down. We're praising Him for this moment, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen. It was granted her.

It was given to her, granted, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of those saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

Here's what I want you to see this weekend, all right? This whole thing is driving toward worship. This whole thing is driving toward praise, okay? We praise God, hallelujah. We exult Him. We praise Him for His glory. We do those things for two reasons in this passage. Number one, Babylon is going to fall, but number two, we see the marriage supper of the Lamb. Let me try to explain this. We're gonna have to fill in some cracks theologically here, okay, just to make sure we're all on the same page.

But here's how I would say it. Y'all, the gospel is imaged as a marriage. Marriage is very important in the Bible, okay? I don't know if you realize it, but now you know, Revelation chapter 19.

You know, we talk about this a good bit. Y'all, the Bible begins with the marriage and it ends with the marriage. And there's marital themes that go through the entire thing. I mean, for example, and this is kind of the thread that I want to pull on here for just a minute. In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel is alluded to as being a bride or being the betrothed, okay? And Exodus 24 is a really good example of this idea of God's people coming into covenant relationship with Him. Now, I don't want to put too fine a point on this, we're all adults here, okay?

But here's the deal. It is seen as a marriage. What happens? What does Moses do? He sprinkles blood on the people.

Why? Because it is the blood of the covenant. It is imaging a marriage. It is imaging even the idea of the consummation of a marriage and the blood that is shed in cementing that covenant. All right, so you have the people of God sort of being alluded to, the children of Israel, as a bride or betrothed to God. But what happens in the book of Ezekiel? What happens in the book of Jeremiah?

They are called what? They're the faithless bride. They are wandering from God.

I mean, the whole book of Hosea is based on this metaphor of God being married to His people. But this covenant, what we see, what happens in Christ? What happens when we get to Jesus? What happens at the very end, right before Jesus is crucified? We do it every time.

We take communion. What does He say? I want you to write this down. I meant to have it on the screen.

It's not on the screen. So write this down, all right? Matthew 26, 27. And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, listen, drink of it, all of you, for this is My blood. Remember, shedding of the blood, covenant. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now, this is a massive theological expansion from Old Testament to New.

And what do we learn here? What we're seeing in Christ, and we see this throughout the book of Acts as the apostles are trying to work this thing out, but this is where they land. The gospel invites anyone into the marriage with God. The gospel is you admit your sin, believe in what Christ has done for you, that His blood is sufficient for you. You confess Him as the Lord of your life, and it doesn't matter if you're Jew, Gentile, it doesn't matter.

Why? Because in the end, there's going to be a people that are worshiping God from every tribe, from every tongue, from every nation, from every people. This is the idea, that there is this great theological expansion coming in. I want to make sure you understand, okay? Because I've gotten, you know, some questions around this and all of that. Man, people are trying to understand things that are going on with Israel right now, and Christians are trying to figure that up. And depending on what kind of background you came from, you have a lot of thoughts on that issue, and I have a lot of thoughts on that issue. But here's what we got to do sometimes in theology, okay? This is a good analogy.

You got to sort of climb up the ladder until you grab onto a rung that is rock solid. And here's what, here's why I say that, okay? Here is what we know that is rock solid, okay? In the end, there are not different groups of people. There is one group of God's people. There is one. They're made up of every tribe, nation, language, tongue, people.

They all come in. There is but one group of people. Now, some people have a lot of thoughts about how we're going to get from here to there, okay? Some people have a lot of thoughts about Israel and land promises in the Old Testament, and does that stuff still apply? And other people are like, man, I see that all as the church. And in a church like Mercy Hill, that is a matter of debate.

That is a matter where we say, man, you can agree to disagree on some of that. What we're not going to agree to disagree on, though, is that in the end, there is a group of people who God has called and he has sheltered by his blood. You know, from Revelation 18, 19, I mean, you keep reading all the way to the book of the church, the nation of Israel never comes up again. The only time that it comes up is when the nation of Israel is sort of imaged as the city that's coming down.

And here's what it says. It says that the gates of the city are inscribed with the tribes of Israel. But guess what the foundations of the city are inscribed by? The apostles. So how we get from here to there? Man, I got a lot of thoughts on that.

You probably do too. But in the end, what we're going to see is that God is bringing together one group of people, and that group of people is imaged as a marriage to him, the marriage supper of the lamb that we are finally coming in to this relationship with our God. And I know, listen, I know this too, okay?

Let me read this. It was granted her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. People get tripped up on this because it's like, wait a minute, there's a bride and we're called like the bride of Christ, but who are these people? The ones that are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb and said to me, these are the true words of God. I want to try to make a bigger point for our church by mentioning this, okay? All right, so you have the bride, but then you have these friends.

How does this all work together? Guys, I've got five or six of these in my office. These are the three that I've been following a lot, okay, through this series.

Not exclusively, I've been following some others, but these are good commentaries that I trust. Dennis Johnson, George Elden Ladd, John MacArthur, I've got others in my office, okay? I pulled these three for this reason.

Here's the question. Well, how do you reconcile who is the bride and who are the friends? All three of these commentaries say exactly the opposite thing. And that's why I brought them.

I want you to see them, okay? Learn the people, people that we can trust, people that pastor churches and have lived their whole life exegeting scripture, and all three of them have something different to say about all this. Well, the bride is this and the friends are something else. Or maybe it's all just supposed to be one thing.

Or maybe there's actually no bride and we're all friends. I mean, that really is the views of all of these different things. Here's what I want to try to tell you.

Man, sometimes we start talking about Israel, we start talking about the bride, and we start talking about all this stuff. And all of a sudden, what happens is, man, we see somebody on TikTok that is very convinced. And what they say is, I know exactly what this means. I'm going to tell you something. That person on TikTok is somebody you need to watch because they will lie to you about other stuff too. If the idea is, I know exactly what every single image is supposed to be here, man, you better watch that person. What I'm going to tell you is this.

At Mercy Hill, you climb the ladder until you grab onto a rung that holds. And the other stuff, I'm not saying don't have an opinion on it. The Bible tells us, be convinced in your own mind.

I have opinions about all this stuff, that's fine. But I want to climb the ladder and I want to grab onto something. And what I want to say is, wait a minute, the bride is granted her clothes.

The friends are given an invitation to the party. You know what I take from all this? God has to move in your life. He's got to extend an invitation to you. Is he standing at the door and knocking for you today? Man, the scripture says, whosoever will may come. Would you come today? It is open for every single one of us that would respond to his invitation. Man, would you come to him today and be a present at the marriage supper of the Lamb? Well, guys, fall of Babylon, marriage supper of the Lamb, what's the end game of all of it? Y'all, the end game is for what God is going to do in overthrowing evil and for the kingdom that he is going to usher in and the relationship that we get for all time, man, we worship him.

So here's the application for this weekend. Y'all, worship the worthy God. Worship him today. And I want to ask you the question, man, we look at the world, we see how broken it is, man, we think about all of these different things. What is it bringing up in our hearts? Does it bring up a complaint and a grumble?

Or can we see through that into the rejoicing that we should have that one day this world will not stand and God will usher in a people who live in the new heavens and the new earth with him? Is it grumbling and complaining? I mean, I hear it, y'all. Man, I go to the YMCA and you just like, you know, people are standing around and you know, you got Gladys and Betty over here. Okay. And you got Harold and Cecil over here.

Okay. And what are they talking about the whole time? I can't believe this world the way that it is. Can you believe the politics situation or something like this? Do you believe kids these days?

Look what they're wearing here in the, I mean, you kind of hear this and I'm like, we want to throw rocks at them. And I'm like, wait a minute, am I any different than that? How much do I grumble and complain? Man, I grumble and complain about the world all the time. And you know what needs to happen in my life? I need to look through that stuff into the end and realize, wait a minute, this world is broken, but God is not going to leave it that way.

And what I have tasted now and seen through a mirror kind of darkly, one day I will taste in fullness and you will as well. What does that do in our life? Man, does it bring up worship in us? Does it bring up the idea of, I want to give to God everything that he is due and everything that he is worthy of? And that is my best praise. And I want to do that.

And I hope that you do as well. Man, is that what's coming up in our heart or is it grumbling and complaining? Man, God's worthy of more than that. You know, we've told this story before, but you know, there's a story that's told quickly here about a couple of Moravian missionaries during the Moravian missionary movement 150 years ago. And there was no way to get to the slave islands. There was no way to get to the places where there was sugarcane and all of that. And they wouldn't let any religious people in. And the story goes that these two young people, Moravian missionaries, they sold themselves into slavery in order that they would be able to go and share the gospel with these people. They were never seen or heard from again, but people remember the day that they left. Because as the ship was leaving, they held up their chains. And one of them said, may the lamb who was slain receive the reward of his suffering.

Think about it. Lamb who was slain received the reward. What is the reward of the suffering of Christ? It is the praise of his church. It is people who are coming to Christ and worshiping him with their lives. It's not less than a Sunday gathering, but it is more.

It's worshiping with him with our entire lives. And so here's what I want to do. Y'all, I want you to jot this down, okay? April 26th, again, I should have this on the screen, April 26th, we're having a worship night. And we do this every weekend, but man, these worship nights, they're an opportunity for us, man, to come into and just have our minds set on this.

And I want to ask you, man, would you come in and think to yourself, there's two things we talked about today, okay? I want to worship. Why? Because the evil of this world is going to be thrown down. And because I'm going to taste in fullness what I sort of get a chance to see through a dark mirror now. I'm going to understand what it means to fully be in the family, stand before God, no sin, live in his kingdom, the marriage supper of the lamb. All right? So I'm motivated by those two things.

I hope you are. I think about the brokenness of the world. I think about the overthrow of Babylon.

What comes to my mind is my daughter. You know, there's, I mean, certainly it was not Faye Bands sin. It was not her birth mom's sin.

It was not our sin that you don't draw lines like that. The guys in the new heavens and new earth, there ain't going to be something called down syndrome. There's not going to be disorders that way. And you know, I think about the struggle. I think about, you know, my wife didn't sleep through the night for four years. Maybe I could count on two hands, literally, you know, and she has to deal with things.

And a cold for her is a three week deal. And she weighs 30 pounds and she's got a lot of struggles and she doesn't talk. And we're praying that God is going to move.

She's seven years old. God's moving through all that. And we have huge dreams for her, huge prayers for her. God is going to do some stuff in her life.

He already is. Right. But one day in the kingdom, like I said, there will be a full restoration. That is on the back of Babylon falling. Babylon's overthrown. And with it goes all the disease.

And with it goes all the brokenness. What comes up in my heart is a willingness to praise and sing. I want to worship.

That's Babylon falling. But then also I think about this. Y'all think about just the gospel and think about where God has you.

Let me ask you a very serious question. Where would you be if it wasn't for Jesus? What kind of brokenness would be in your family?

What kind of relationship strife would there be? What kind of sins would be wrapping you up so much right now in this moment? No purpose destined for hell. No hope. But that's not where we are today if you're a believer.

Right? And if you're not a believer, we want to invite you in, man. Today is the day of salvation for you.

Man, today is the day to grab on to that hope. Come to Him today. Admit your sin. Believe in what Christ has done.

Confess Him as Lord. But for those of us who are believers, how could we not but want to praise and worship God for what He has done in our life? Let's pray. Father, we come to you now, Lord, and I just pray right now across campuses, people that might hear this on the radio, podcast. Lord, I pray that we would be motivated to worship. The evil of this world will not stand, so we worship. And one day we will experience our relationship with you in fullness with no sin. Our forgiveness, God, that we understand now, we believe now, but Lord, it will come into its fullness as we are given our resurrected bodies. We will live with you forever, and that should push us to praise. God, I pray that it will now, and I pray that it will on April 26th. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.