Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.

First Peter, chapter 1; let's pray together. Lord, I remember that when the apostles prayed in the early church in the book of Acts, they prayed, "Lord, you are God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them." And I think it's important that as we pray we begin with that perspective that we are talking to the One who can do anything, who created everything. Because you and you alone understand who you have made, those you have made, the way we think, the way we act. Nothing takes you by surprise.

We're very comforted in the fact that though you are all these things that you are in love with us, you are intimate towards us. Lord, I pray that this message would serve to elevate our thinking and our focus as we live. There's so many distractions in this world, so many things that take our thoughts off of what is true and right, and onto the values of this world that can even steal our joy. So we begin, Lord, just in this simple act of worship, this act of dependence, this prayer, asking you to speak to us, in Jesus' name, amen.

I will forever be grateful to a man by the name of Dave Ellen for saving the life of my son. Many years ago when my son was just a little kid, it was in the wintertime, it had just snowed. He and a buddy went over to a golf course not far away, and they took a sled, and they went down this big hill. And the contest was to see how far they could go and who would get the farthest. Well, my son won the contest by taking it all the way down the hill and onto a lake on the golf course, frozen-over lake.

The ice broke; he was immersed in the water. If you know how hypothermia sets in, does so very quickly, and he could not get out of that lake. Dave Ellen a friend of mine was running his dog up on that hill, and saw what was happening, and came down and threw out a dog leash and pulled him out to safety, and he told my son to run home. Well, I didn't know that part of the story; I just know he was sledding and I saw him come up the drive.

Actually, I heard him come up the drive. [shivers] You would hear it outside. He was so cold, and we got him warmed up. But I didn't know the whole story; I just knew that he was playing and he fell on the ice. Well, years later we are in Israel with a team of people from the church going on a tour, and we're having lunch at a local pizza joint. And I'm there with my wife and my son, Nate, and Dave Ellen who saved him---but Nate had no recollection that was the guy. He just knew some guy saved him---and his wife Cheryl. And we're all talking, and talking about the scariest moments in our lives.

And Nate goes, "You know the scariest moment of my life is when I fell through ice on a lake on a golf course, and I thought I was going to die." And Dave Ellen who was at lunch said, "Did you ever tell your parent the rest of the story, Nate?" And he didn't even know what to say. He goes, "Remember the guy who saved you and threw that dog leash out? That was me." Nate's eyes got real big. Now, I didn't know this story. I said, "Well, tell us this whole story here. I didn't get all this when he was quite young." So, I got the full scoop.

And that's what we have here. In the book of Peter, First Peter, chapter 1, he gives them the full scoop of their salvation. Saving a life is wonderful, but saving an eternal soul is even more wonderful. And it's that salvation that's on Peter's mind as he writes the next few verses of First Peter, chapter 1. You see, his audience has been suffering oppression and persecution and trials. And if you know anything about suffering, it causes your eyes to look downward. You are weighed down. You are looking not at the hopeful horizon, but at the painful path. And you need the encouragement to look up and get your thoughts refocused into the right place. And, essentially, Peter does that in these verses.

He has a theme, a recurrent theme in this book. So far the word "salvation" appears three times. It's the focus; it's the highlight of the book so far. Look at verse 5: "Who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Verse 9, "Receiving the end of your faith---the salvation of your souls." And now in verse 10, "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully." Salvation---there is not a more assuring, more comforting word in all of language than the word salvation.

It appears four hundred times in Scripture---saved, saving, salvation---four hundred times. It is a broad scope of meaning. It can mean anything from being saved physically from harm's way to being saved eternally from sin and death and hell. And just as I that day in Jerusalem learned the full scoop of the story of how my son was saved, so Peter gives to them the scoop on their eternal salvation.

You'll notice in verse 10, "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven---things which angels desire to look into."

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, "Timothy, God desires all men to be saved." That's God's great desire. That's God's great hope, is that people would come to salvation. But we run the risk of losing our gratitude for salvation, the simplest most basic component of the Christian life, and we run the danger of not realizing just how good we have it, just what a great deal we have been given. When you said yes to Jesus Christ, or should I say, when God said yes to you---that's salvation.

I've told you before that when I first came to Christ I was watching Dr. Billy Graham on television, and I turned it off after hearing the gospel. And I went into my room and I immediately thought, "Okay, let me get this right. You gave your Son, your best, you gave all to this world; in exchange you want me, you want me to give you my life. So, you gave Jesus; you want me to give you this broken life." And I just thought, "Excuse me, but, God, you're getting a bum deal. This is not great in terms of what you're getting out of this deal."

But then I immediately thought, "But I'm getting, like, a killer deal. And I'd be stupid to pass this up." And I think from time to time we need to stop and realize what it means to be a saved man or a saved woman, what our salvation means to us. What Peter tells them is, "Not only do you have salvation, let me tell you how great it is. Let me tell you a little bit more about what you may not be realizing."

Sort of like an insurance policy, you know, most of us have insurance policies for life or for home or for automobiles. Most of us don't read the insurance policy, I've discovered. Have you discovered that? You just know you have one. You don't read the fine print until you have to make a claim, and you want to find out if you're going to get reimbursed because you gotta dish some money out. Does what happened---is it covered in the insurance policy?

And then you find out, oh, yes, they cover everything except what you need at that point. [laughter] "Yes, we cover everything for your car, except your drivetrain that fell out on the road two miles back. We don't cover that." So Peter says, "Not only do you have a great insurance policy, this one comes from heaven. It's been going on a long time, and it's so great that even the angels are checking it out. They marvel at it. They ponder it." So that's how these verses divide up, verse 10, 11, and 12.

The prophets predicted it, preachers proclaim it, angels ponder it, and that's what we're going to unpack today as we go through it. First of all, prophets, the prophets predicted it. Verse 10, "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired." That's the Old Testament prophets, by the way. "They've inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied [or predicted] of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow."

Who were the prophets? Prophets were spokesmen. They were spokesmen for God. Look at them like field agents, field reps; they represented God by giving a message from God to a group of people. It's like they came and they said, "And now a word from our Creator," and they gave a message, something that God wanted people to hear. And their messages centered on two things: they proclaimed God's Word, and they predicted future events.

They proclaimed God's Word, they predicted future events, and all of it was anticipating salvation. Think of the prophets like archers, you know, the guys with the bows and the arrows. And the prophets shot arrows of truth up into the air, but they didn't know exactly where those arrows would land. So Isaiah shot up his arrows, and Daniel shot up a few arrows, and Zechariah, and Zephaniah. Daniel shot up some arrows.

They pulled back on the prophetic bow strings, and out launched that prophetic missile of truth high into the sky till it disappeared into the sky over the horizon. And they wondered, "Where's it going? Where is it going to land?" Did you know that about 330 predictions were made about what Jesus Christ would do, who he would be, where he would be born, what would happen to him? About 330 arrows were launched into the sky over a sixteen-hundred-year period. And all of those arrows fell on one person---Jesus Christ.

Here's just a sampling. Trust me; I wouldn't try to go through all 330. It would be a great study, but it'd take us like 330 days to do it. So, here's just a sampling of some of predictions they made: They predicted he would be born of a virgin, Isaiah 7:14; that he would be born in Bethlehem, Micah chapter 5 verse 2; that he would be born into the tribe of Judah, Genesis 49:10; that his ministry would begin in Galilee, Isaiah chapter 9 verse 1.

They predicted he would work miracles, Isaiah 35 verse 5 and 6; that he will enter Jerusalem on a donkey, Zechariah 9:9; that he would be betrayed by a friend, Psalm 41:9; that he would be sold for thirty pieces of silver, Zechariah 11:12. They predicted he would be wounded and bruised, Isaiah 53:5; that his hands and feet would be pierced, Psalm 22:16. They predicted he would be crucified between two thieves, Isaiah 53:12. They predicted that his garments would be torn and those around would cast lots for them, Psalm 22:18.

They further predicted his bones would not be broken, Psalm 34:20; that his side would be pierced, Zechariah 12:10. They predicted he would be buried in a rich man's tomb, Isaiah 53 verse 9; and then they predicted that he would rise from the dead, Psalm 16 verse 10. Now that's just sixteen predictions, sixteen arrows shot up; that's to say nothing of all the glories that would follow, the millennial glories that would follow. Isaiah the prophet, Daniel the prophet, Ezekiel---they all speak of the millennial kingdom, the reign of Christ upon the earth.

Now, let me remind you of something. The sheer odds, the sheer odds of any one person in history fulfilling 330 predictions, it's crazy. The idea that all of those prophecies, all of those arrows would fall on one person, the odds against that are astronomical. I mean, there's certain things humanly impossible to prearrange. You didn't arrange where you were going to be born, who your mother would be, what tribe you would come from or town you would be born in, etcetera.

I have a little book in my library; I pull it out from time to time, called Science Speaks by Dr. Peter Stoner. Peter Stoner was the emeritus professor at Westmont College in science and applied mathematics. And he did a book all about this: calculating the odds of one man in history fulfilling the predictions made about Christ that he indeed fulfilled.

So, for example, he says in his book: "If you were to take eight, just eight of the predictions"---I gave you sixteen---"for one man in history to fulfill eight things foretold about him before he was born, for him to actually see those things come to pass, the odds of that would be 1 in 10 to the 17th power. To visualize that," said Stoner, "You could take the state of Texas and fill it two feet deep full of silver dollars." Now if you could to that, you'd be a very rich person.

But let's just suppose you could do that. You'd fill the state of Texas two feet thick full of silver dollars, you premark one, you send a man in blindfolded---the odds of him selecting the one silver dollar you have premarked is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. And Stoner even got more elaborate, he said, "The odds of one man in history fulfilling sixteen"---we just gave you sixteen---"of the predictions made about Jesus Christ that he fulfilled would be 1 in 10 to the 45th power."

And again, whenever you have numbers, you gotta visualize it, because it's like, "Yeah, whatever, that's a number, so." So this is what it would be like: if you could get enough silver dollars to make a ball so big that from the center of that ball to the circumference edge of that ball would be thirty times the distance the earth is presently from the sun, which is 93 million miles.

So 93 million miles times 30 is the distance from the center of your silver-dollar ball to the edge. You premark a silver dollar, send somebody in that globe, the odds that he could find the silver dollar is 1 in 10 to the 45th power. Then Stoner went on to say, "What about forty-eight predictions?" And it gets so crazy that he has to use electrons, not silver dollars, because there's just no way you could do that.

Now, here's what I want you to know: there are twenty-five books in the world, thereabouts, that claim to be Scripture. All of them have one important ingredient absent from them. All of them, except for one, have something missing---prophecy, predictive prophecy. The Qur'an doesn't have it. The Upanishad of the Hindus don't have it. The writings of Confucius, they don't have it. They're absent from them. The Bible has predictive prophecy.

So, the prophets made all of these crazy predictions, they problem is they didn't understand everything they wrote. In fact, I would even say they understood very little of what they wrote. They shot the arrows out, and they were looking like, "Now, where's that going to land?" Example: in Isaiah, chapter 6, God commissions Isaiah to go proclaim to a nation the desolations that will come, and Isaiah asks a question: "How long, O Lord?"

The prophet Habakkuk says the same thing when the predictions are made about Judah and Jerusalem. "O Lord, how long?" We studied the prophet Daniel for months, Daniel didn't understand everything. Daniel 7 says, "I was grieved in my spirit within my body, because this vision troubled me," and he had to ask the angel who was standing by him what these things meant. So these prophets predicted these things, and then they looked at what was written to try to figure out what it all meant.

And there were two basic things they were trying to understand. Notice what it says, "Searching what," verse 11, "or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow." Now some translations say, "searching what person" or "what time." Basically, those were the two things they wanted to know: Who am I writing about? When will these things happen? What's the timing and the circumstances around the coming of the Messiah?

I mean, imagine Isaiah the prophet writing what he wrote. Okay, so listen to how this sounds, Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son." He'd go, "Uh, what does that mean, God?" I'm sure God would have to say, "Don't worry about it, you wouldn't believe it if I told you." And so it was with Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and Micah and Zechariah and the rest of them. I mean, it's like twenty-five men all trying to put together one of those 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.

You know, every one of them has a few of the pieces, but none of them has all the pieces, and no one has the picture on the front cover of the box. Add to that, most of these guys didn't know each other and lived hundreds of years apart. That's what being an Old Testament prophet was like. David has a few of the pieces, Moses had a few of the pieces, Isaiah had a few of the pieces, Daniel had a few of the pieces, Zechariah had a few of the pieces but no one prophet had them all. But when all of those pieces were put together, the picture on the front of the box was Jesus Christ.

And so Jesus walks from Jerusalem toward Emmaus with two of his disciples, and they're bummed out because they don't know why Jesus died on that cross. And they don't think he's alive from the dead; he happens to be right next to them. And in revealing himself to these two apostles, Jesus says these words, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written! Ought not Christ to have suffered and enter into his glory?"

And then Luke says, "Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in the Scripture all things concerning himself." On one occasion Jesus even said to his disciples, "Many prophets and righteous men desire to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it." Folks, that's why we study all the Bible. If you ever wonder, "Why do you study the Old Testament?" So we can understand the New Testament.

Because you got a whole bunch of predictions made in the Old Testament, you gotta know where they're going. Those arrows were shot up; where they gonna land? In the New Testament. But if you just read the New Testament, it's like you go to a field with a bunch of arrows and you ask, "Where did these things come from?" You gotta read the Old Testament; that's where they shot those things off at.

So, as one scholar put it so beautifully, "The New is in the Old contained; the Old is in the New explained." That is, the New Testament is in the Old Testament contained; the Old Testament is in the New Testament explained. You need both to see who and when those arrows were shot, and how they were fulfilled in Christ. Look at verse 12, "To them"---that is, to those prophets he's still speaking about, "it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which have now been reported to you."

At some point those prophets began to understand that what they were writing about was going to be fulfilled at a distant time far into the future. It wasn't going to happen in their time. Some things they predicted did, but much of it was going to happen beyond their time. And Peter is saying to his audience, "You're the audience. You're it. You're the recipients."

I can just cite a couple of examples: Moses in Deuteronomy 18 made one of earliest predictions of the Messiah, and he put it this way, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like unto me from among your brethren. Him you shall listen to." In the book of Daniel, which we studied at length, in Daniel 10:14 the angel said to Daniel, "I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come."

Daniel 12 verse 4, "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end." I find this extremely encouraging. I find it encouraging that my salvation was never an afterthought. I was never an afterthought. It was all planned in the mind of God who gave a message sent from heaven, given to and through prophets, fulfilled in Christ, proclaimed by the apostles, and received by you and I.

Because life happens---sometimes life happens so suddenly it take us off guard. It's so surprising, what Peter is saying is, "This whole salvation enterprise was not surprising to God, it's all part of his eternal plan, and you're part of his eternal plan." You see, sometimes things happen and we think, "Man, that's so random what happened." Redemption isn't random; it's all part of God's great plan. The prophets predicted it.

Second thing I want you to note is: preachers proclaim it. Oh, by the way, a little piece of trivia: this is the only Scripture where prophets, preachers, and angels are talked about on the same section. The Bible has a lot to say about all three of them, but this is the only place where all of them are put together. The prophets predicted it, but notice, preachers proclaim it.

Verse 12, "To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you, through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." Prophets predicted it, but they did not originate it. It came from heaven to the prophets, through the prophets, and it was picked up by preachers who preached to anyone who would listen.

Now, who does he refer to "those who preached to you." Well, primarily the apostles. In that day and age it was Peter and it was Paul and it was John and James and the rest of them going out and sharing the gospel. It was the earliest apostles who preached the gospel to people. In fact, Peter, the author of this book was the first preacher in the early church. The Day of Pentecost he showed up and preached, thousands of people got saved, came into salvation.

Sometime later Peter and John were going into the temple, there was a man who was lame from birth, he was picked up, healed. Peter preached a message and he said in that message, "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." So, what began with the prophets, and was passed on to Peter and the apostles, was preached to anybody who would listen.

Now fast-forward two thousand years to Albuquerque, New Mexico, 9:30 service, Calvary Albuquerque---here you are. The reason you are here is because of the faithfulness of those who picked up that message and preached it, and others heard it and preached it, and others heard it, and you and you and you and you and you and you and you are all commissioned to take up that banner and to preach the gospel to this generation and to the next generation.

My question to you is: Have you preached it? Have you taken this sacred trust given to prophets and apostles? Have you ever seen yourself as on a mission from God? Isn't that kind of cool? You wake up in the morning---"I'm on a mission from God." No joke, you are on a mission from God. You've received the gospel; now it's your turn to transmit the gospel.

And please don't say something like this: "Well, I would, but I don't want to offend anyone." Oh, really? What do you mean by that? "Well, it's a disturbing message. I could disturb someone and offend them." Well, I suppose you could, but if you had a neighbor's house that was on fire would you say, "I don't want to disturb them or offend them by telling them that?"

It would sound like this: "The other day my friend's house was on fire. I don't think he knew it even though he was inside it. He must have been asleep. I thought about telling my friend his house was on fire, but then I wonder what he would think. He might get embarrassed. Or what if I got all full of soot? And what would my friends who don't believe in fires think? Besides, isn't this the fireman's job?"

You don't want to offend them? How shallow would that sound on judgment day? "Yeah, Lord, I didn't share with them because I didn't want to offend them." Don't you think it's more offensive to end up in hell? So, the prophets predicted it, preachers proclaimed it, and I hope you and I are part of that preaching choir. Now, before you get all guilty, "Yeah, man, I haven't preached the gospel for a long time. I haven't shared with anybody."

Well, let me just tell you something: the onus, really, it's on you to engage, certainly, but the power doesn't come from you. It's not like you have to go through a special class and get a---all you have to do is get plugged into the right source. And I want you to notice this in verse 12. "Reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by"---what?---"the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." Do you know "the Holy Spirit is sent" is mentioned twice in three verses? The Spirit of Christ with the prophets, verse 11; and the Holy Spirit verse 12.

In other words, the Holy Spirit animated the prophets in the Old Testament; the Holy Spirit activated preachers in the New Testament. So the formula is simple: When the people of God receive the power of the Spirit of the God to preach the gospel of God, lives change. It's a winning combination; it still works today. Prophets predicted it, preachers proclaim it, finally, in verse 12, angels ponder it. Look at the last part of verse 12. "Things which angels desire to look into."

The things he's speaking about are the things of salvation. "Things angels desire to look into." The New Living Translation renders it, "It is also wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen. Okay, there's two important words that you need to be aware of what they mean at the end of verse 12. First is the word "desire." The word "desire" means to have an overpowering impulse that is not easily satisfied.

Okay, so what does that mean? It's like, "Man, I really---I really gotta do this. I really gotta have this. Really, really, really, really want this." That's the word desire. Now, the angels have that kind of a desire. For what? Look at the second word: "look," or "look into." The word means to stoop down and take a peek. They really, really, really, really, really want to stoop down and take a peek; literally "to stretch one's neck forward."

Peter is picturing as if the angels are on their tiptoes looking from the ramparts of heaven at us. They're terribly interested in salvation and how it works. That kind of makes sense, right? I mean, who was present at the birth of Jesus? Angels---they announced it. Who was there at the tomb of Jesus when he rose from the dead and told the women? A couple of angels. And now they're still interested as they look down on us.

Now, here's the question: Why? Why are we such a wonder to these creatures? Here's the simple answer: Because angels can't be saved, only humans can. Only human beings can take part in the redemption that comes through believing in Christ. Now, there are fallen angels, and there are faithful angels, there are bad angels, there are good angels, there are elect angels, but there are no saved angels. We can be saved; they cannot. Only humans can experience God's saving grace.

The angels watched as God gave his best to earth's worst, and they're fascinated by that. I think they are fascinated when a drug addict becomes a pastor. I think they're fascinated when a criminal becomes a missionary. When a blasphemer becomes a born again child of God, they ponder it, they marvel at it, and they rejoice over it. Jesus said in Luke 15, "There is rejoicing in the presence of angels over one sinner who repents."

So it seems that in the classroom of the universe God is the teacher, the angels are the students, the subject is salvation, and the illustration is the church. And the angels are looking down and going, "Man, that's interesting, it's marvelous," and they ponder it. One of the reasons I think they're so curious is a little phrase that Paul wrote in First Corinthians 6, that I think has bothered the angels ever since he wrote it.

Paul said in First Corinthians 6, "Do you not know that we will judge the angels?" If I'm on angel, I'm going, "What was that? Excuse me? They're going to judge us? These human beings who are made a little lower than the angels are going to judge us? These Christians who rarely pray, who don't witness much, who don't even know much about angels except they eat angel-food cake---they're going to judge me?" [laughter] But it is true. You're going to, with Christ, even make that final pronouncement for those angelic beings who have fallen. Wow.

You know what? You could do something today that would make the angels marvel. You could do something today that would make the angels rejoice---get saved. Every time one person is in that process of salvation, it's like all the angels they get a little bit closer to the railing going, "Look, look, look, look, look!" And then a person goes, "Jesus, come in." "Wow! It happened again! Come on, guys, let's have a party." [laughter]

You see, a person may go to a doctor and walk away a healthy sinner. You may go to a psychiatrist and walk away a well-adjusted sinner. He may go to a church and walk away a religious sinner. But only when this person comes to the cross of Jesus Christ will he walk away a forgiven sinner. And that is the message of the gospel that game from heaven announced by prophets, proclaimed by preachers for the last two thousand years, received by us, and the angels look at it and go, "Man, how cool is that?"

Father, we also take the time to pause and to marvel at your grace to us, our bedrock salvation, a part of your plan from the beginning---Jesus the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the earth. It was always your plan to save people. It was always your plan to send your Son. That's why you animated the prophets of the Old Testament to write what they wrote even though they didn't quite get it. They looked and searched to find out what it meant; now we know what it means.

We know far more than the prophets who wrote what they wrote, because all the arrows fell on our Savior Jesus Christ---figuratively by prophecy, and literally on a cross. And, Lord, I just pray for anyone who might be here this morning who has never said yes to Jesus yet, never turned to him personally. Good people, religious people, but they have never said, "Yes, I'm going to turn from my past. I'm going to turn from my sin. I'm going to turn my life over to the Savior Jesus Christ."

If you're gathered here and you're with us today, as our heads are bowed, I'd like to pray for you. If you want to give your life to Christ, and I mean really give your life to Christ, sincerely turn your life over to the Savior, and in so doing cooperate with God's plan for your life from the beginning, the message preached for the last two thousand years, and a message whose results cause even God's angels to marvel.

If you've never personally accepted Christ as your Savior, or perhaps you made some decision years ago but you're not following Jesus now, and you want to experience his peace, you want to know his forgiveness. God would love to see that happen, the angels would love to see that happen, and I join with them and say I'd love to see that happen. I'd love to pray for you. I need to know who I'm praying for. If that is your desire to give your life to Christ, I want you to raise your hand up. Just raise it up in the air so I can see it, and I'll pray for you as we close this service.

By raising your hand you're indicating, "Skip, pray for me. I'm going to give my life to Jesus. I'm going to surrender finally right now to him." Raise it up in the air. If you don't know Jesus yet, or if you need to come home to him---God bless you, ma'am; in the middle; and toward the very back; and way in the corner to my left. In the balcony, God bless you. Anybody else in the balcony? Raise that hand up. Anyone else?

Well, Father, we thank you for another time where we rejoice together in your work in the lives of men and women---that's really what it's all about. All of eternity and time and space is really all about this transaction that happened on the cross and is happening right now with those in this auditorium. If you raised your hand up, I want you to say something right where you're at.

Just say something to the Lord, and here's what you tell him: Lord, I give you my life. You say that to him in a prayer. Lord, I give you my life. I know that I'm a sinner. Please forgive me. I trust in Jesus Christ who died on a cross, he shed his blood for my sin, and he rose from the dead---I believe that. And I turn from my sin and I turn to you, Lord, as my Savior. I want to follow you as my Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.