"Examples of Faith – Abel" Hebrews 11:1-4
- This message was preached by Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, on August 6, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
Thank you, worship team, for leading us today. We all appreciate that very much. We’re going to be in Hebrews chapter 11 today, but before we go there, we’re going to turn to Ephesians Chapter two, just as a way of introduction. Ephesians Chapter two. We’re talking about faith now for several weeks as we look at examples of faith that are mentioned in Hebrews 11, those examples being Old Testament persons.
And in this, we need to realize that faith has a passive role in our salvation. The active role in our salvation is performed by God. It’s not by our activity, but on our part. We express faith. Faith in order to receive it.
The example I have for this is a surgeon. A surgeon plays an active role in the surgery. Would you all agree with that? I think of our family member, Joe. He’s just had triple organ transplant.
Okay. Only six to eight people in the world have had that. So imagine Joe deciding that he wants to play an active role in his surgery. So he says, don’t put me to sleep because I want to actually place my kidney where it goes, and I want to hold things open for you. You think that Joe did that?
No, he wanted to play a passive role in his surgery. And in doing that, he placed faith or trust in that surgeon, and he allowed himself to be placed under. And then the active role was done by the surgeon to take care of him. That’s what faith is for us in our salvation. We’re saying, lord, I can’t do anything.
I don’t want to do anything to secure my salvation. I’m just. I’m leaving it up to youo, but I trust yout in faith that yout’ll take care of that. We’ve been in the book of Ephesians, and we have this famous verse in Ephesians 2, 8, 10 that I want to read to you. It’s not going to be on the screen, so you either have to listen or read with me.
But it talks about this faith and its importance in salvation. For you are saved by grace through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is God’s gift, not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
I just want to go over a few phrases here, and they’re all pointing out that faith is passive in our salvation. God is the active element. First, it says that we’re saved by grace, not by faith. We are saved through faith, but not by faith. We receive what has been given and provided to us through Jesus death on the cross.
Then it tells us it is God’s gift, meaning it doesn’t come from us, we can’t earn it. It’s a present that he gives to us. Once again, God is the active person. Then it says we are his workmanship, meaning we don’t make ourselves into what we are. It’s all a work of God.
And to emphasize that even further, it says that we are created in Christ, we’re not created in ourselves. Now, all of this is for good works, meaning that after we have received the gift of salvation, at that point, then we can do good things. We can go to church, we can sing praises, we can read our Bible, we can offer gifts and offering. But if you do all of those things before you have faith, they’re completely without any effort, they’re completely without any result. Doesn’t matter how grandiose or difficult those things are for you, they will not produce salvation that only comes from God.
So therefore we need to understand what faith is. And I read one more verse from Hebrews 11, 6 why it’s so important we understand what faith is. Because it says, without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Let’s turn to our passage now in Ephesians 11 that we’re going to be looking at more today. And I begin reading in verse one as it is on the screen now.
Faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. For by this, our ancestors were approved. By faith. We understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did.
And by faith he was approved as a righteous man. Because God approved his gifts. And even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith. May we have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, as we look at your word today, we thank you for it, that it gives us all that we need for faith, how to come to salvation through Jesus Christ.
And it also teaches us how to live our lives in a worthy way. To reflect your son in this world, apply it to our hearts, give its understanding to our minds, Father, and help us to hear with our ears what you have to say today. In Jesus name. Amen. We go back to the first verse.
Faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. Just looking at some definitions here, for faith, reality and proof. The word faith here comes from a Greek word that means it’s a firm persuasion. It’s not a wish like I hope the tooth fairy is going to come tonight and leave me a dollar under my pillow. It is a firm persuasion and it’s a belief in what we know is the absolute truth.
It’s not the outcome of something that we imagined. It’s based instead on fact. And it’s based on the well recorded fact that Jesus is died on the cross, that he was buried and he rose from the dead. So this faith that we have, it’s based on a firm foundation. And that’s what this next word, reality means.
Reality, or in some of your translations it has assurance. The Greek word means the foundation under that which is apparent. Or other words, the foundation under that which we can see. And I gave you this example a couple weeks ago. If you go to Chicago and there’s a beautiful skyscraper, I don’t know how many hundreds of stories you have no hesitancy walking into that skyscraper to go to your favorite restaurant or just shop because you know that there’s something that you cannot see.
And what is it that you cannot see? It’s the foundation under that building. The. That’s what this passage is telling us here. Faith is something that we base on not what we see, but what we can’t see that we are certain about.
It’s the reality that exists under the appearance. It also is the reality that exists under people the way that they look. You can look at me and you might think, you know, what I like to eat and what I like to do and what my personality is like. But what I’m really like is where it’s, it’s inside of me. And in the same way we can’t see God, but the reality of God is who he is.
It’s not in what we can see, but it is in who he is. So faith is reality. It’s assurance. And the word proof here also means that it’s a conviction that we have. We know for certain in our heart that what we believe is true.
Going on now to verse two. For by this talking about faith, our ancestors were approved. Let’s think about approval for a minute. How many of you like approval? You like your spouse to approve of you.
You like your kids to approve of you. You like your boss to approve of you because you hope to get a raise someday or a promotion. People are constantly seeking for approval in other people and sometimes they even look for approval in themselves. They think if I can achieve this certain goal if I can run a race, if I can climb a mountain, if I can build something special, then we feel self approval there. This desire for approval is something that God has placed in every person.
Think what our world would be like if we didn’t want approval from anyone else. We would be so self centered. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. I’m going to do what I want to do. But more importantly than what it does for society, this seeking for approval is supposed to lead us to God because I expect and want people to approve of me today, but there’s no guarantee they’re going to approve of me tomorrow or next week or next year.
The only certain approval that we can get in our life that really fills us is going to come from God. Because we know that once he approves of us, that it’s eternal. He is not going to change. What are some of the ways that we do seek approval? One way is by saying the right words.
We can say the right words, both positive and negative. We can seek approval by complimenting people. We can seek approval by being kind to people in our words. We can also seek approval by boasting and saying, hey, I’m great because I did this and we’re hoping people will approve it. Or even more negatively, we might put other people down and say, you know, I’m so much better than that person, they’re a real jerk and they can’t do this and that.
But our want is for somebody to say, yes, you’re great and I approve of you. So some people seek approval with the right words. Other people seek approval by doing the right things. And they think that if people see them doing these things that they will have approval in their eyes. Some people even think that if I spend enough money, if I buy the right car, buy a bigger house, wear the right sunglasses, that’ll make people approve of me.
And we seek that. But you know, in regard to salvation, people do the same things to seek approval from God. They think if they say the right words, if they pray the right prayers, if they read the right verses or whatever, that that will gain God’s approval. Or they think that by doing something right that they can gain God’s approval. Or they think that if we spend enough money for good things, missions, helping children, whatever it is that we’re doing, that God will give us approval.
But what we’re going to find in the text here is we can’t say enough, we can’t do enough, we can’t spend enough Money to earn God’s approval. It’s all a gift that comes by faith. Real approval comes when we have faith. This approval comes from God, and it’s more important than what any approval any person in this world can give us, because people only give us temporal approval, but only God can give us with certainty and eternal approval. Verse 3.
We come to some examples now of what faith is. It says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. Once again, like the skyscraper, we have faith because we see the evidence. What evidence is there that God created the world? The world is the heavens, the stars, the universe, the beauty of things, the complexity.
All of this is evidence that we see. And it makes us realize that there is something unseen. In this case, it’s someone who was a great architect that put all this together. He was a great biologist because he figured everything out. He was a great horticulturalist because of all the beautiful plants we have.
We see the evidence. We don’t have to see God to know that he exists. We believe that by faith, with confident assurance, God doesn’t ask us to believe in something for which there is no evidence.
An example of that is we didn’t see Jesus Christ. He isn’t still walking around in our world today, but there are multiple records of people that actually saw him. I want to go to First Corinthians 15, 2, 8, where we have a listing of all these people that saw Jesus. I will begin reading there in verse three, for I passed on to you as most important what I also received. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, I.e.
peter, then to the 12. Then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. At the time of this writing, most of them were still alive, but a few had died. Then he appeared to James, his brother, who would certainly know whether it was really Jesus or not. And then again to all the apostles, and Paul said, last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
We have the evidence of over 500 people that testified that they had seen the risen Lord. And I know in my mind that if only one of those people had recanted, that the religious leaders would have jumped on that person. They would have had him on Facebook, they would have had him on tv, they would have been on Twitter all over. Yes, this person says that this is all a lie and a hoax. But the over 500 people that saw him, none of them recanted what they knew for certain.
And so we today place our faith in what we know did happen. That Jesus died. He was buried, and he rose from the dead. Let’s go to 1 John, chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. And this is what John wrote first, John 1, 1, 3.
What was from the beginning, meaning their beginning with Jesus. What we have heard, they heard everything. What we have seen with our eyes, they actually saw all the miracles and things that he did. And. And they saw his death.
What we have observed, what we’ve actually touched with our hands. Jesus was not just some phantom walking on earth. He was physical in nature. And concerning this word of life that was revealed, we have seen it. And we testify and declare to you the eternal life speaking of Jesus Christ was with the Father, and he was revealed to us.
What we have seen and heard, we also declare to you so that you may also have fellowship with us. Just as we see the world and we understand that there had to be a Creator. So when we listen to the testimonies of all these people that has been recorded and kept for us, we know that there is a foundation to it. We have faith and we believe. Now we’re going to go to Hebrews, chapter 11, and we find an Old Testament character here that is a representative of what faith looks like.
And in all the list of characters that we’re going to be looking at, this is the only one that there’s this juxtaposition. There’s a comparison and contrast between a person that has real faith and a person who does not have real faith. Let’s read in verse four there in Hebrews, by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith, he was approved as a righteous man because God approved his gifts. And even though he is dead, he still speaks through his feet, through his faith.
Here we have Abel and we have Cain. Let’s just do a little bit of comparison here. I’ve got two columns up there. Abel’s going to be on one side and Cain on the other. And I go back and I read from Genesis, chapter four.
The man speaking of Adam was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, I have a male child. With the Lord’s help, she also gave birth to his brother, Abel. Now, Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground. And in the course of time, Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering.
To the Lord. And Abel also presented an offering, some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. So at this point, if we don’t know the rest of the story, this is a happy family. We have two brothers who happened to have the same two parents. Parents who were perfect at one time, but they had sin in their life and they’re fallen.
Now, of course, Abel’s the second born, Cain is the firstborn. Maybe there was some sibling rivalry there, but if Cain didn’t have everybody else to play with, I’m sure they grew up being friends, at least that’s my guess. And then as they grew up, they chose occupations. Abel chose to be a shepherd, Cain chose to be a farmer. Both of those were good things for them to be doing.
Both of them were necessary for their families to have what they needed. And both of them made an offering to the Lord. Abel’s was an animal, he was a shepherd. Cain offered fruits and grain because he was a farmer. And at this point, there’s nothing negative in the narrative because God had not commanded what type of sacrifices that they should bring.
It’s not in the narrative. And later on in the law, we find that they brought animals for sacrifices, but they also brought fruits and grains. So what is the problem here? Everything looks normal. Let’s go on and read.
It says that the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering. And Cain was furious and he looked despondent. In other words, God had regard. He looked at Abel’s offering and he accepted it. But he didn’t even look at Cain’s offering.
And we have to ask, well, everything was good up to this point. There’s no indication that something is wrong. Why did God not accept Cain’s offering? We have to wait till we get over later on to figure that out. But the interesting thing here is that Cain, instead of saying, God, why are you not accepting my offering?
What is it that I lack? Instead, his response to the Lord, that he was furious and he looked despondent. I think of the question, how do we respond to God when he tells us that our works are not regarded by him? We present the gospel to people and often we ask the question, why do you think that you would go to heaven? And they say, well, I’ve done a lot of good things.
It’s like this scale thing. I’ve done more good than I’ve done bad. Or they might say, I’m better than other people and I give money to important things. Go to Church, I’ve been baptized. A whole list of things that people say that they do, and they base their salvation on what they do.
And then when we tell them, you know, that’s not going to get you to heaven. Scripture says that you have to place your faith in Jesus Christ. There’s nothing you can do. Some people respond to that, well, great, tell me more about it. But others get angry.
They’re like, no, I’m a good person. I’m going to heaven because. Because of what I have done. And that’s Cain’s attitude here. When God is talking to him.
Instead of being humble in God’s presence, instead he is angry, he’s furious, and he looks despondent. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you furious? God already knew why he was mad. But God often asks us questions in our heart so that we figure things out on our own. Why do you look despondent?
God said, if you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. God is giving him this gracious invitation. You have a chance right here to do the right thing. But if you don’t choose to do the right thing that I’m willing to express to you, sin is waiting right there.
It’s wanting to control you. That’s what it means. Its desire is for you. And God’s warning him, you’ve got to be careful because sin is going to make you do something that is not good. After that, we find out that Cain didn’t listen to the Lord.
Instead he gave into sin that was crouching at his door. And he said to his brother Abel, let’s go out to the field. Abel probably thought, you know, we’re going to go and skip rocks. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re going to go out and have fun, maybe like we have all of our life.
But while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
As with all evil, if we continue in it and we don’t continue, it eventually leads to destruction. So again, what was the difference? What was it that Abel had that Cain didn’t have? We go back to our passage in Hebrews 11, verse 4. It says, by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did.
By faith, he was approved as a righteous man because God approved his gifts. And even though he is dead, he still speaks through, through his faith. What word is repeated over and over there? It’s by faith. If you want your Kids to learn something, you don’t tell them just once.
You have to do what? Tell them over and over again. The scripture is telling us. What you need to see here is that faith is the important thing that we’re trying to point to you. Abel had faith when he made his offering, but Cain did not have faith.
And it was by this faith that he was approved as a righteous man. It wasn’t by his offering. And God shows the approval for his gifts. And to this day, Abel is still, through the Scriptures, speaking to us through his offering. Is that what it says?
No, it isn’t his gift. It wasn’t his lamb that he speaks to us. It’s his faith that he’s sharing with us. So Cain made an offering of fruits and grain that was all good and fine, but he did not have faith. So it was not accepted.
Abel made an offering of an animal, and it wasn’t because the animal was better, but it was because he had faith when he offered up. That is the contrast between the two. Take us back now to Genesis, chapter 4, verses 9 through 16. And what I want us to see here is the grace of God that he continued to extend to Cain. The Lord said to Cain, where’s your brother Abel?
And he said, I don’t know. Am I my brother’s guardian? And then God said, what have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed, alienated from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed.
If you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. If I had been God, what do you think I would have done to Cain? What would you have done? You would have struck him dead.
But God didn’t do that. God does say, there are going to be consequences for your sin here. And those consequences are, you’re not going to be able to farm anymore because the ground just isn’t going to respond to you. Some of you are gardeners and some of you are not gardeners. You know what I mean, right?
Some people just can’t grow anything. That’s what was going to happen to Cain, and he was going to wander around the earth. But how does Cain respond to that? Instead of saying, God, I am so sorry. I was wrong.
Thank you for not striking me dead. Instead, he, through Satan’s influence, takes what God says. He imagines things that God didn’t say, and he twists God’s words and he comes up with this statement. My punishment is too great to bear. Well, the truth of it is, God was not going to give him a punishment that was too great for him.
And then he says, you are banishing me today from the face of the earth. God did not say that at all. And he’s saying, now I must hide from your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth. The wandering is truthful. But God didn’t say, you have to hide from me.
The Lord replied. And then he said, whoever finds me will kill me. He’s beginning to imagine things that God did not say. But instead of God getting onto him about misrepresenting his words, he again shows grace. He says, in that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.
And God placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him. God extended again grace to Cain. But instead of accepting that grace by faith, Cain went out by his own choosing from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Whereas Abel went into the presence of the Lord. Cain went out from the Lord’s presence by his choice.
God had extended mercy to Cain. He didn’t strike him dead. And God extended grace to Cain by giving him the mark that would protect him. But still, what is lacking in Cain’s life? He had the sacrifice, but he didn’t have faith.
By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain. By faith, he was approved as a righteous man. Man because God approved his gifts. And even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith. Let’s look at some statements that are true from this text.
Sacrifice with faith is acceptable. That’s Abel. He made a sacrifice and he had faith. But then we have what is true that is shown by Cain. Sacrifice without faith is unacceptable.
You know, sacrifice in our life today can be any type of work or service that we can do. Sacrifice can be giving up your Sunday mornings to come to church. Sacrifice can be giving to gospel ministries and missions. Sacrifice can be getting baptized. It can be worth walking down an aisle in an evangelistic meeting.
Sacrifice can be building a great church, helping with vacation Bible school, teaching a Bible class. Sacrifice can even be being a pastor or being a missionary. But any of those things, and all of those things, no matter how much it costs you to do them or how much effort or time it takes, if those sacrifices do not have faith attached to them, they are unacceptable for salvation. Cain was upset that God did not accept his very best. And in the same way, giving our very best is not accepted by God.
It’s Insufficient unless faith is present.
The next thing that comes from this is that knowledge with faith leads to spiritual life. But on the other hand, knowledge without faith leads to spiritual death. Both Cain and Abel had the same knowledge of God. They were raised in the same home. They had the same parents.
I’m certain they wanted their mom and dad to tell them the stories over and over again. And they didn’t have thousands of years of stories to relate. The only story that Adam and Eve had was how God had created the world and put them together. And how the serpent had come in and led them astray, and how they had eaten from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, how they were cast out. They had heard all of this.
They had the same knowledge. They even had the gate to the Garden of Eden. The entrance there was guarded by two angels, and that would keep anybody out. They had the same knowledge, but they were different because Abel had that knowledge with faith, but Cain had the knowledge without faith. It doesn’t matter how much you know about God.
It doesn’t matter how much you know about the Bible. What does matter is whether or not you have faith with that. And if we had the greatest, most knowledgeable Bible teacher in the world standing here today, if he lacked faith and only had knowledge, we could be certain that he would go to hell because he does not believe. Knowledge with faith leads to spiritual life, but knowledge without faith leads to spiritual death. Now take us to First John, chapter 3, verses 12 through 13, where again we hear about Cain and Abel.
Unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because Cain’s deeds were evil and Abel’s were righteous. John says, therefore, do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. The two brothers, one represents true believers, that’s Abel.
The other brother is Cain, and he represents the world. When Jesus tells us that we come to faith, he doesn’t promise us that everything is going to be wonderful. He did just the opposite. He said, you’re going to have trials and tribulations and you’re going to be persecuted.
The unrighteous will always be against the righteous. And why is that? The unrighteous, they don’t have any faith. And if you don’t have faith, you’re still under the influence of Satan. And Satan is continually attacking God and everything that God loves and does.
If you have an absence of faith, you’re just going to do more and more evil deeds in your life under the influence of Satan, and eventually you’re going to Have a hatred of those who do have faith. It’s the same hatred that we see between Cain and Abel. Cain could not stand it. He killed his brother. For what to us seems something rather small.
Let’s go to Matthew 23:35. And here we find Jesus, and he is speaking to the religious leaders of his day. He’s speaking, speaking to the very priests that offered the sacrifices in the temple. He’s speaking to the priests that knew the Old Testament, that were the teachers of the law. And Jesus says, this is why I am sending you prophets, sages and scribes.
He’s telling them, I’m sending these people to you to help you. But you, the religious leaders, some of them you will kill and crucify. And some of them you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. The statement here that I want you to get is that the unrighteous, even though they are religious, will always be against the righteous.
So you have people there, there’s no religion in their life and they’re unrighteous, they’re against the righteous people, but they’re also going to be people in this world as there were in Jesus day. They were very religious. They had all the knowledge. They were doing everything that they wanted and thought they needed to do their own works. But they lacked faith.
None of these religious leaders, leaders believed in Jesus. Knowledge without faith. It happens in the church all the time. Throughout history, there have been periods of time where there were church leaders, not in the true church, but in the false church, just the physical church that had no faith in God. And those people that claimed to be believers that had no faith, they had all the knowledge and the right religious practices.
They ended up persecuting throughout history the true believers in the church that had true faith.
Faith is the reality of what is hoped for. It’s the proof of what is not seen. For by this, our ancestors were approved. We come to the final statement. It’s just a review.
Sacrifice with faith is what acceptable, but sacrifice without faith is unacceptable. Knowledge with faith leads to spiritual life, but knowledge without faith leads to spiritual death. So we have to ask ourselves today, are we like Cain or are we like Abel? And I’m not talking collectively, but individually, am I like Cain or Abel? Do I bring my sacrifice of tithes and gifts and song and Praise and adoration and prayer and Bible reading and church attendance.
Do I bring that all to the Lord like Abel with faith in my life? Or am I just bringing it all without true faith? Are we like Cain and saying that all this stuff is what saves me? Or are we like Abel and saying all this stuff doesn’t save me? I’ve received by grace what God has done to save me.
Again, am I like Cain or Abel? Do I have knowledge of God extensive or little of who he is and what he can do?
Am I like Cain and I have that knowledge, but I really haven’t placed my faith in Jesus? Or am I like Abel and I have all that knowledge and I’ve placed my faith in Jesus Christ In Abel’s life, there was no baptism that we know of in Abel’s life, there was no circumcision. In Abel’s life, there was no church building for him to go into. There was no offering plate back there to put an offering in. There wasn’t a tabernacle.
There wasn’t a temple. He didn’t have a Bible to read. He didn’t have any of these religious practices that we do. What was it that he did have, though? He had faith.
And that faith led him to worship in a proper way. So the last two questions today, is my worship accompanied by faith? And hopefully everyone here today can mark yes. Because if you’re just coming to church and you’ve never placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you certainly are not going to heaven because you don’t have God’s approval. The second question is my knowledge accompanied by faith?
Faith doesn’t matter how much you know, how much you read the Bible, how many classes you take, whatever you do. It’s not enough to have God’s approval unless it is accompanied by faith that in Jesus Christ, death, burial and resurrection alone, he is the great surgeon that wants to come in and take care of our need and bring us true healing. But if we try to stay awake in that surgery and do anything ourself, everything is null and void because we’re not trusting him alone. We’re instead trusting either in him and us, or we’re just trusting in ourself alone. And scripture says we have to trust only in Jesus Christ for our faith.
If you answered no to either one of those questions, the way you would make that right in your life today is you would go to the Lord and you would tell him in prayer, which just means talking to him, God, I can’t take care of my problem that I have. I want you to make me right. And I believe by faith that you do that because Jesus died on the cross. He was buried, and he rose from the dead. If you express that to God in your heart or vocally today, and then you’re willing to tell other people, I made this decision now, Jesus is my Lord and Savior.
Scripture says you can know that you have eternal life. And if you need to do that today, I encourage you to talk to me. Talk to Hunter, talk to Matt. There are several people around that would be more than happy to sit down and share with you about that. Let’s have a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you don’t require anything of us other than faith. Because all that we do would miserably fail in your eyes to take care of the eternal need that we have for salvation. We thank you for the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus Christ, that He shed his blood and he gave up his body for us, that we might live with you eternally, starting now, Father, and have a right relationship with you. In his name we pray.
Amen.