It's interesting. Earlier, Ed, again, I'm picking on Ed. He's upstairs. He doesn't know this. He's helping with the kids today.

He said, pastor, I have to pray for you today. And it seemed like an urgency, and I didn't understand why until he told me that God had wanted him to pray for me yesterday, and he didn't call me. And so I think it was burning on his heart that he's like, I've got to get this done, you know, or I'm disobedient. And so he just prayed over me. And one of the things in his prayer was that God would give me the permission to change what I had to say if I needed to.

And I don't feel that just yet. But God was telling me something right at the top of this to say, sometimes I think people like me, pastors that get up here and preach, we overcomplicate things sometimes because we feel like we've got to make the message fit a time slot, you know, or because there's a lot of stuff that we had planned to say, you know, like on a paper, you know, I was going to say all these things.

I listened to a few different preachers during the week, and I hadn't done as much of that this week as I normally do. And so I was listening to one of them this morning, and he made something so big and complicated, so simple. He says, when you receive Jesus as your savior, Jesus past becomes your past and his future becomes your future. It's just so, so concise and yet such a powerful statement. Whatever you've got in your past, when you receive Jesus as your savior, you don't identify with those things anymore.

You identify with the holy, sinless, righteous past of Jesus Christ. He puts that on you. We've got theological terms like imputed righteousness and all these things that you don't necessarily have to know. Although this preacher said, if you can learn how to order those things at Starbucks and learn what all those different words and names are, you can learn some of these theological terms, too. The righteousness of Jesus gets placed on us, and the future that Christ has becomes the future that we have.

If you hear nothing else that I say over the next few minutes, know that, but you have to accept it first. You have to receive that. You see, there's no amount of just showing up, just checking the boxes of like, well, I was in church, or well, I gave, or well, I prayed, or, well, I came to the extra things, like a Sunday school class or a Bible study or a Saturday prayer, none of those things matter. You know, Jesus said there's going to be a whole lot of people that end up in hell because they, they thought they had done all the right things, but they missed the point that Jesus said he wants to know them. Jesus says, depart from me, you workers of evil, for I never knew you.

If you don't know Christ, if you aren't walking in fellowship with him, you're sadly going to miss the boat, so to speak. See, God has done everything he can to draw close to you. Yes, our sermon theories is God's plan for humanity. And today the whole point of that message is that God wants to save everyone who will accept this salvation. But you have to do that.

The nice thing is that's the only thing that you have to do. See, God does everything else. God is the one who sent his righteous son to die on your behalf. God is the one who accepts that atoning sacrifice on behalf of you. And God is the one, like the prodigal Son's father, who reaches out, who runs out and welcomes you back in.

God is the one who does all these things. And God is the one who can make you clean and righteous again. God is the one who initiates this. And I don't care if you come from a tradition that talks about those who have been selected to be saved, the elect, the saints that are predestined for salvation, I don't care. We can argue about all those things.

What matters is that right now Christ is reaching out to you. Holy Spirit is drawing you in and saying, this is for you. All you have to do is receive that. I had to talk to my daughter this week. She said, every time I sin, I immediately tried to turn and tell God I'm sorry and repent of that and ask him to forgive me.

And I said, oh, sweetheart, God has already forgiven you. He doesn't have to keep forgiving you. He did that already. The thing is that we don't understand what that forgiveness is, and we have to learn to walk in that forgiveness. As long as we don't realize or recognize the forgiveness of God, we are walking in this error of our thoughts that keeps us far from God.

And what God has wanted all along, what he has done, everything he has done is to draw you into close fellowship with him. Sin is that thing that has kept us far from God and created a barrier or a gap between us and God. What Jesus did was he died to erase all of that and to give us new life. And until you receive that new life, you don't really know God. You know about him.

You know things that are important to him or things that he wants. You know, we have billionaires in this country, guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that runs Amazon and all these things. And we know a lot of things about them because they're in the public eye and they're well known and I can read things they've written, I can look at their businesses, I can listen to them talk at interviews, and I think I can get a good feeling for who they are. But I don't know them. I don't know them one bit.

It's possible to know a whole bunch about God, but to never know him. And the one thing that God wants with you today, the one thing that he wants, is for him to be known by you and for him to know you, which he already does. There's nothing in your life that's a secret from God. You can't hide it from him. Adam and Eve tried it, didn't they?

In the garden, they sinned. They realized, oh my goodness, I'm naked, I should probably get clothes. And so they got some leaves and sewed them together. I don't think those hold up very well in the washing machine. I don't understand all the little symbols on the label on my clothes, but I just put them all in the washer the same, you know, I just, I.

Some of you guys separate lights and darks. I don't understand that. I just put them in the machine, you know, nothing terrible has happened so far except for that time where Amy did that with like some red pants she had and turned some of her white stuff pink, you know, but they have a product for that, it turns out that helps to remove that dye that you didn't mean to put on those clothes. Adam and Eve, they sewed these fig leaves together. They probably wouldn't have done well in the washing machine.

But God comes down and he says, well, where are you guys at? We're naked. He's like, how'd you find that out? Well, we looked, you know. No, how did you realize that nakedness was an issue, you know?

Well, you ate from that tree that you weren't supposed to eat, didn't you? Pastor Ray, im not going to have us raise our hands now. How many of you have eaten from that? Thanks for the honesty. How many of you have eaten from the tree you werent supposed to eat from?

We all have. The Bible says everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But thanks be to Christ Jesus, who has saved us. Amen. The will of God for humanity is salvation for everyone.

Gods not willing that anyone should die or perish in their sins. I want to tell you a story. If you want to turn to your scriptures, you can find it. It's in John, chapter three. You're going to know the verse.

The praise team read it. Good job, you guys. Man, that was. You were almost in perfect unison. It was great.

I didn't hear if you practiced that earlier, but you did. Fantastic.

We're going to start in verse 15 and read through verse 21. John, chapter three. You guys don't know how much of a struggle this is because the print just keeps getting smaller on this. And I didn't bring my readers up.

We're starting in the middle of a verse, but that's okay for our purposes here today. It says, everyone who believes in him, in Jesus may have eternal life. Now, this version, the new english translation, is the one that's in the blue bibles on the racks in the seats in front of you. And it reads a little different if you familiar with this from, say, the NIV or the King James. But I like the way this part reads, for this is the way that God loved the world.

That makes me pause and think for a minute. We usually read it in this way. God showed his love for the world, but this is the way that God showed his love for the world. The ways we show our love are selfish. A lot of times, you know, we try to give a gift that somehow somebody will maybe reciprocate back with a token of affection or another gift later or just a thank you.

We give gifts in such a way that we think of something that somebody's asked for or put on a list, say, at Christmas time or their birthday, we say, oh, what have they been saying? They wanted? I should pay attention to that, and then get that thing for them. That way we checked it off the list and say, okay, I got them that thing they wanted. In other words, now I don't have to buy it again later when they want it.

You know, God doesn't give gifts that way. The way he showed his love for the world before we ever knew we were sinners, he gave his son. Listen to this. This is the way God loved the world. He gave his one and only son.

So that I need you to say it. Yeah, whosoever. Everyone. Yeah, everyone. Whosoever.

So that everyone who believes in him will not perish. But the one who believes in him. Sorry, this is where I need the reading glasses so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned.

I need you to repeat those two words. Not condemned. For the one who does not believe in him has been condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the one and only son of God. Now, this is the basis for judgment, that light has come into the world. And people love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come into the light so that their deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may plainly be evident that his deeds have been done in God. Let's pray for a minute. God, we thank you for your word today. We thank you, holy spirit, for being here.

Jesus Christ, literally, we are eternally grateful for your sacrifice for us. And even as you prayed, Father, if there is another way, but nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. We know that you are willing to do anything that it took to draw us into fellowship with you. So, God, we thank you for that. We thank you, Lord, that we can have that salvation in you.

And now, Lord, we just pray that you would speak to us now that those who need to hear this message, maybe we've ignored it for years. God, we pray that it would be as real today as it can be in our lives, that we would respond in faith and accept what Jesus Christ has done for us. Amen.

You know, there's something about that everyone part, that everyone, that God loves, every single human being. You know, it's interesting. A couple years back in our country, we had some movements that claimed black lives matter. And other people responded, well, all lives matter. And then there was arguing back and forth about what each person, what each group meant.

And I think sometimes we've missed the point when we talk like this. You see, most of us don't truly think that all lives matter. You know that guy on the motorcycle that drives way faster than the speed limit and passes you down the middle of the road or on the side, and you think, be kind of funny if I see him on the side of the road in a couple miles. Oh, come on. You haven't thought that it's just me.

And I think to myself, do I really treat everyone as if their life matters, as if their eternity matters? Or do I create a hierarchy of people that I say, oh, well, he's a suicide jockey. He's got it coming. It's what he deserved. When we see a criminal trying to attack someone and they get beat down, they get beat up, they get shot up, and we think that's what he deserved, we look at people's lives.

Come on. Don't. Don't stare at me like that, guys. Am I. Do I have egg on my face?

Is it just me, or do we all have some work to do when it comes to the department of loving others the way God loves us? You see, God means it when he says he loves everyone. I say it. Sometimes I just have pity for some people. Sometimes I just have disdain for some people.

Sometimes I have outright disgust for some people. But God loves everyone. He loves those who are believers in Jesus as well as those who are atheists. He loves those who are kind of sitting on the fence of faith and those who are holy rollers. He loves people who have adopted orphans, and he loves.

Loves people who have had abortions. He loves people who are super intelligent and people who are a few fries short of a happy meal. He loves the Americans who support Palestine and Hamas and the Americans who fly israeli flags in their support of that nation. He loves people who somehow think it's a good money to allocate money to wars like in Ukraine and people who just wish we would embrace peace talks. He loves citizens who have never jaywalked and convicts who are serving life sentences.

He loves families made up of married husbands and wives, as well as he loves people who are transgender or gay and think that children should be allowed to have life altering surgeries and hormones. You see, God loves all of these people. You know, it's interesting, we have these symbols I was sharing with Elaine earlier, something else that was in this message. And I said, man, I'm kind of angry. I'm listening to this guy's sermon this morning, and I already had part of it in mind, but he just said it so much better.

So I'm going to steal some of his ideas. And so, thanks, Pastor Josh Howerton from Texas. This is fantastic stuff. We have these symbols, like, I'm wearing a wedding ring, and that's a symbol of the fact that I've been married to my wife Amy for almost two decades now. We forget the year, but both of us sometimes, like 1819 years.

I think it's 19 this year. Sounds about right. 19 in December is what we're working towards. And some of you are like, oh, that's cute. You're just getting warmed up, you know, some of you are like, hey, that's a pretty good run.

You know, it took me my second or third try to get to that number, you know? So, hey, you know what? We're in. You know, we're in mixed company here. Good times.

So this ring is like a symbol of that union or that covenant that we have. We have a covenant of marriage, and God uses covenants throughout scripture. He had set up a covenant with, you know, with us as christians who have received Christ. And we call that water baptism. That's a symbol or a sign of that covenant that we've made in our new covenant in Jesus Christ.

And he also talked about this, and this is where I was going, noah, after the whole, like, flood and the ark and all that. They get off the ark and God makes a covenant with them. He says, I'm never again going to destroy humanity as I have done. I'm never again going to do that in that way. And so he says, I'm giving you a sign.

That sign is the rainbow that he put in the sky. And he says, and here's where we miss it. That sign wasn't for you and me. If you pay back close attention to it and you read it, God says, every time I see that, God put the sign there, but he sees it and he's reminded of his covenant. It makes you wonder if God's, like, hovering over the button, like, flooded again.

Oh, nope, nope, nope. You know, God doesn't feel that way. But we do, don't we? We're like, oh, man, is he gonna. He needs to do something.

There needs to be a reset, right? Like some kind of reset needs to happen. No, that's not how God looks at it. And then, of course, Abraham, that God had made a covenant with him. And that sign of that covenant, that symbol of that covenant that the jewish people still live out today is the covenant of circumcision.

Probably Noah was, you know, Abraham was a little bit, like, jealous of Noah. He's like, he got a rainbow. We have to, you know, circumcision, that's painful, you know? And so God has given us these covenants to show us that he loves us, he cares for us. And that rainbow is a sign that God is for everyone, that he doesn't want to destroy everyone.

Sadly, I believe that symbol has been hijacked by a group of people who have an agenda that's different from the agenda of gods in the sense of they are not trying to reach everyone. In fact, it is kind of a bit of a weapon that if you don't side with every demand that they have, they'll use that as a sign against you. If you cross the line of the rainbow flag, you know, that flag that's kind of got like every color combination on it? If you cross their agenda, then somehow you're a hateful bigot. But the truth of the matter is that we believe in the original meaning of that rainbow, that God is for everyone.

That God doesn't just love a certain group or a certain identity or ideology, that God loves everyone. And so we declare that God wants people to be whole and redeemed in Jesus Christ. That is our agenda. Okay. All right, cool.

Simply put, God loves everyone. Not going to beat that into the ground, but the rest of it is, and it says it actually on our sign out here. You can't change that. Like, there's nothing you can do about it. God's going to love you no matter what.

And what he wants us to do is to respond the same way to others.

In the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, it sets this up where it says that God is going to begin redeeming humanity not by the will of any human being or any man or any couple or anything like that. God isn't going to redeem us based on what we want, but based on his will. His sovereign will is that everyone would be saved, and he has set out to do that. I was going to go through a few scriptures that I took a long time to put in this computer, and I'm not even going to bother with it right now. I wanted to make the case through scripture that God's salvation is for everyone.

If you have an argument with me, we'll go through the slides later. You need further convincing that God loves everyone, including you and including me. Then we can go through those scripture references. The truth of the matter is we see it everywhere. The fact that you're here right now means that God has ordained it for you to be here.

God has ordained for you to still be on this earth, that he has created you and he loves you. That leaves us to the point of salvation, receiving the salvation that Christ has. Oh, we don't have to ask him to forgive us. We don't have to say, God, would you please forgive me? We don't have to sit there and cry at an altar and beg God to forgive us, because he already has.

But until we learn to accept that, to walk in that, to receive that, until we have done that and had that moment, you see, I do believe there is what we might call a crisis moment, where you. You have to be able to point back to it. Some of us can't remember that exact day. I was quite young when I received Christ as my savior, and I can't point to the exact day, but I know the time of my life, and I know the things that God was teaching me, and I can tell you that there was a time where I accepted Christ as my savior, and then I had to walk in that salvation after that.

You don't have that point in your life if you can't point back to a time where you say, just like I can say that on December 3, 2005, I had to stop and think for a second. December 3, 2005, was when Amy and I got married. We signed that agreement, that covenant of marriage. If you can't point back to a time in your life within some close proximity, whether you remember that exact date or not, if you can't point back to your life and say, this was when I began walking with Christ, not just knowing him a little bit, not just understanding things about him, but when I actually made a commitment that Christ is now my savior, that his past is my past, his future is my future. And today is the day that you need to respond to that.

If you've been putting that off or if you've been ignoring it and saying, no, I've been pretty good, or, no, I've been. I've been in church long enough. I think it just kind of, like, settled in at some point. That's not true, you see, because you'll never receive the holy spirit of God until you begin that relationship of forgiveness from Christ. Amen.

You'll never receive the holy spirit of God to walk with you, to give you power and guidance in your life, to convict you of sin, and to lead you in the paths of righteousness until you have taken that initial step of faith to walk with Christ. You see, God doesn't have generations of kids and grandkids and great grandkids. Everybody has to accept Christ on their own. You can't live on the faith of your parents or your grandparents or your aunts and uncles or your cousins or any of it. You have to have your own faith in Jesus Christ.

Until you've done that, you are missing out on everything that God has for you. Next week is actually one of those dangerous messages. Next week, I'm going to talk on eternity having two options. There's heaven and there's hell. But I want to give you just a little sneak peek on that.

Just a little bit of the summary of that is that you have that choice of eternity that nobody ends up by surprise in eternity. Nobody ends up in one place or another. And nobody should ever be shocked by that. Because if you've chosen to walk with God on this earth, he will never turn his back on you, not now or not in eternity. But if you have chosen to say, you know what?

I've got more important things in my life than being close to God, than having the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, than the forgiveness that comes through Christ. If you've said that I've got more important things in my life than that, and I don't really care about that, then you've chosen not to walk with God here on this earth, and he won't force you to be with him in eternity. See, that is the grace of God, is that he never forces himself upon you, but he has moved heaven and earth to be with you. Elaine, would you come up and play? I want to have prayer with you, but I want to invite you not to leave if God's speaking to you.

There's a couple things that I want to invite you to. And we're going to, we call it opening. The altars. They're kind of always open. I would never complain if somebody said, well, I'm preaching, that they just wanted to come down and pray.

There's never a problem with that. But I want to tell you that there's two things that you might pray over today. The first one, the big one, the important one, is that you have salvation that is offered to you as a free gift. And if you have never walked in that, if you've never accepted that today is the day of salvation, today is the day that you, even though you're one of the everyone that God died for, you can be part of that elite group of people that calls themselves followers of Jesus Christ whose past is no longer attached to them. They have Christ both in the past and in the future and walking with him each and every day.

There's a second group of people, though, that might need to come and pray.

And there's two subgroups within that. One is you just can't remember when you started that relationship and you just want to, you just want to be there for sure. But the other is a group much like the prodigal son. You may have, you may have said, oh, I'm a Christian. And then at some point you.

At some point you just kind of got bored with it and you just started walking away and doing your own thing. And you said, God essentially. You might not have told it directly to him, but you said, God, you're not important to me right now. I got other things going on in my life. I'll come at you when I need you to do that thing.

Today is the day to commit to Christ and say, I need everything you have for me. I'm not going to talk anymore. Elaine's going to lead us. I don't know if you're going to sing anything or not, but you're going to play. If you feel like singing, you do that.

I'm going to invite you to come up, and if you just simply want to pray that you would have more of the spirit of God in your life, you can come up and pray, too. In fact, you can pray about anything you want.

But now is a moment to commit to God.