What You Really Need to Worry About

need to worry about. We're in a series of messages that we've called God only knows. And next week we're going to talk about the difficult question of what was God doing before He created the world. Have you ever thought about that? And really, the way we frame it's not theologically correct, but where did God come from? Is that a question we're allowed to ask? We're going to talk about that next week. And then we will close out the series the weekend of Halloween with a question about spirits, about angels and demons. What is the whole deal with all of that? So that's going to be an eye opening time as well. But today we want to ask a really difficult and challenging question, and it's a question that's framed this way. What happens to people who die who have never heard about Jesus? What happens to people who die who never in their life have the opportunity to hear the name of Jesus that the Bible says is the only name by which salvation is found in. So kind of a conundrum if you think about it, it's only one way to be saved. And if we rack our brains, we can think of situations and people that perhaps die without ever having access to them. Do you go to hell if you never get the only thing that can save you? That's the question today. You can see why we titled the series God Only Knows. And as I can tell, there's only really two categories that we could put this in. This would be opportunity problems and capacity problems. People who never get the opportunity because they live somewhere far away. The way it's commonly framed is the person in the middle of Africa or in Sub-Saharan, the desert, who just no one ever, the missionaries never get there. The U-version hasn't quite cracked the code to get the cell phone in place for this person yet.

What happens to the person who never gets opportunity to receive Christ because no one ever goes to them. And as Scripture says, how can they believe unless someone is sent to go to get to them in time? And if we think about the population groups and the proximity, certainly it's possible someone somewhere has lived and died and never found out that there happens to be someone who loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life. What about that person standing before God on Judgment Day? What are we to make of them? And then of course, when we speak of capacity, we're talking about children. We're talking about someone who never reaches the place before they die of being at a mental capacity to hear and then to believe and to put their faith into God because they die very young. They die in utero, they're born still as it's been said, as it's described. What happens to a person who because of a mental handicap or a syndrome or a condition maybe gets old physically but never reaches the place where they're past a childhood developmental stage in their mind? How are they to be judged? Is it fair for a God of love to doom someone to hell for a message of salvation? They could never come to a place to actually receive. This is what we want to stare down today using this book, these two questions. What happens when a young child dies and what happens when a person who's never heard the gospel dies to stand before God? If you haven't had this conversation with Scripture and with God, you need to. You will. If you haven't had someone bring this objection to you, to your front door, it will happen. It's only a matter of time, whether it's a skeptic or someone you're trying to share the gospel with or someone antagonistic to the faith who's trying to present it as a difficulty that makes it implausible. How am I supposed to believe when there's someone on the other side of the world who

never got access to it? How can I believe in a God of love who never even reaches them yet? Now you see what I'm saying? And we are all given the challenge as Jesus' people to not check our minds at the door as we follow Him. In fact, first Peter puts it this way, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Notice this last part, I love this, but do it, hey, hey with gentleness and respect. Okay, so that's what we're going to do today. Now of course, these issues that we talk about are separate, but they do overlap and what they come down to is soteriology or salvation. How do the mechanics of salvation work? And so what we want to do is ask these two-- note this, justice means a lot more to God than it does to you. We ask the question like we're the ones who thought of fair play, we're the ones who are big justice people, you know, like forgetting and we need to, as we read scripture, when we talk about the whole holiness thing and not loving evil thing and being willing to punish the wicked even though he doesn't want to, we're talking about God's essential character. Okay, we're talking about these essential attributes of who he is. In fact, Abraham, in Genesis 1825, when the idea of accidentally judging the righteous along with the wicked in the judgment of the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, he said this to God, far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay, because that's what we're talking about, to slay the righteous along with the wicked so that the righteous should be as the wicked, far be it from you. For notice, here's a key thought here, shall not the judge of all the earth do right. And of course, the implied answer is yes, the judge of all the earth is going to do right. And I can prove to you that justice means more to God than anybody, any being this ever existed. And the proof of this, of course, is death. If you don't believe and adjust God, just ask the question, did he not keep his promise when he warned that if we brought sin into this world, the consequence would be death, for we were created, Scripture tells, to live in a life in a world without death and without decay, not being subject to any of the infirmity that death brought to this world. Okay, so death is proof that God is just for justice is when we get what we deserve.

And God warned that the wages of sin is death, correct? Romans 5 verse 12, therefore just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death came to all men because all have sinned. Okay, so death in the world shows God's commitment to justice, even when it hurts him, to watch us experience suffering, he never wanted us to experience. So the lack of justice, I would commit, I would purport, I would insinuate, I would suggest, I would flat out say to you, right? The title of this message was what? What you really should be worried about? The problem is not a lack of justice, but that you might experience justice. The real thing you should be worried about isn't the lack of justice, but the presence of justice. Forgetting what you deserve means if you have ever sinned, then you will experience death spiritually in addition to the physical deaths that all of us are hurtling towards, because Adam and Eve began the process of physical death the moment they sinned, but they already were dead spiritually disconnected from the life of God on the inside, the instant that they sinned, for the soul that sins shall surely die. And getting what you deserve, which is the essential definition of justice, fair play, it's not just what God does, it's who he is. So when we talk about does God going to do justice? God doesn't just do justly, he is justice. He is holy, holy, holy. There's no variation or shadow of turning. There's a divine simplicity to him. What you see is what you get. He is never one of his attributes to the exclusion of another of them. So God never ceases to be just and he, the judge of all the earth in the end, will do right. But notice he's not just loving, he's not just just, he's also loving. Okay, I need you to see the second point is that God is not willing that any should perish. This is what we have to keep in mind as we ask these questions. Let's keep in mind that God is just and he cares about it a lot more than you do, a lot more than I do, because we only intermittently care about justice, right? I care about justice when you're going to get away with something. When it's about, when it's me getting in trouble, oh, I don't want justice. I want mercy. When I see a police officer pulling someone over, I think to myself about time they're cleaning up these streets. When I see them behind me, I'm thinking, mercy, mercy, mercy. I want to warn, I don't want what I deserve for me, I just want it for you, right? That's how we all feel. We shift conveniently in and out of our caring about justice. God never does. But at the same time, God is also loving. And because he's loving the justice that's coming, he also simultaneously does not want it to hurt the person who now is

And we told this over and over again, Matthew 18, 14, this one specifically referring to little children. Even so, it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that even one of these little ones should perish. And when we think about perishing, we cannot help but think about what? The cross, where we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not what? Would not perish. It is not the will of the Father that any of these should perish and the cross is proof where God actively went out of his way to send his son to be a shield for us so that the consequences of justice, which were never going to be turned back but could hit Jesus instead of actually hitting us. Therefore, listen, this is so important. God can then be the just and the justifier of those who believe. His justice is not mitigated 'cause it's not like God, he goes, oh, forget it, nevermind, right? 'Cause once he spoke it, it happened. The consequences of death were unleashed but then he sent Jesus to stand between us and those consequences, not willing that any should perish. The consequences remain. The death sentences carried out only it's his neck that's hit by the ax instead of us so that his sense of fair play, his sense of holiness, his sense of justice and his love

could exist simultaneously at the cross. We see this collision of justice and love. Second Corinthians 5, 21, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we could become the righteousness of God. Okay, so the second thing we're gonna keep in our mind as we ask these questions is not just that justice means more to God than us and it's not just that God is not willing that any should perish, the third thing we're gonna remember is that no one gets judged by what they haven't been given. The basis of a judgment, when we all stand before God for our day in court and physically that moment, listen, that is ticking, do you hear it? Ticking, ticking. It is appointed once for man to die and then the judgment and when you stand before God, the basis of your judgment will not be what did you do with what you weren't given, right? 'Cause we ask this question, what about the person who didn't get it? What about the child who never got that opportunity? What will their judgment be about? Never forget, judgment and scripture is never about what did you do with what you weren't given, right? It's always what did you do with what you did receive? God doesn't hold the two talent person accountable for what the five talent person did. That was the two talent person mistake, focusing on what someone else had been given.

And when you stand before God, the basis will be, what did you do with what you were entrusted? Luke 12, 48, for everyone to whom much is given from him much will be required and to whom much has been committed of him, they will ask the more. Now, in the case of the person so far off the grid, so deep down the Amazon, the person without Starlink who doesn't know that there's flying cars now, what about that person? Listen, that person has more to be accountable for on the day of judgment than you might realize. For example, Romans one puts it this way, for the wrath of God, his justice, revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Notice who suppressed the truth in unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse. This is what's known as general revelation as opposed to special revelation. And what Romans is saying is you don't have to have the gospel of John read to you to watch the sunrise and deep inside the signature of your heart know that happened because someone made that happen. To look at the created order,

there's something inside of the human soul that cries out for a creator, cries out for kindness, cries out for his beauty that you see on display that someone did that, right? It's been well said when you fly on an airplane, right? You don't think it just spit that out. You don't look at the airplane go, man, it's amazing this just happened. There is intentionality, there is design, there is order. Romans is saying, when we look at the created world, that's what we get. We get a sense of there is order, there's intentionality, there is design, there's a plan, and if there's a plan, there's a planner. If there's a creation, there's a creator. If there's a hand you work, there's a hand. This is what, and to God, no God, no God, listen, the fool has said in his heart there is no God. That's what Scripture says, and you have to lie against what your soul believes to declare that. So, no matter where you are, no matter what you've been preached to, what you've been told, don't flatter yourself, right? This, we think, oh, I never got to them to tell them. I never got to them. Like God says, I've got the aurora borealis to do my preaching where there's no preacher. Furthermore, in Revelation 14, just before the end comes, there's like a cleanup operation where there's perchance a few people on the earth that didn't get the gospel. So, God just dispatches one angel just to fly, read Revelation 14 to just do one lap around the world and just preach the gospel one last time so that no one ever can accuse him of not having given that opportunity. So, the point is, God has ways of getting his word to those that he loves, that he was willing to send his son to be perished for. You see what I'm saying? If God was willing to go to the extent of having his son die for the whole world, don't you think God is going to do what is necessary to get that gospel to him?

How did Cornelius get reached? A dream. When Peter showed up, didn't even want to come preach to the guy, resistant about the dream. Cornelius was like, I've been waiting for you because I already had the angel do the prep work. I had a dream that happened in the night. You see what I'm saying? God loves the people. Oh, you're asking like, oh, I care about the people in the world. Oh my God, God loves the world so much. He sent his only son to die for them. Do you not think he's going to do everything necessary to get them the opportunity to receive that love before they die? God, day unto day, night after night, is doing what is necessary to get his word, to get his love. And the church is exploding in parts of the world with some of the least Christian witness, right? And maybe it's because we're not involved that it's doing so well. Who knows? Oh, well, poor people, they don't live like us in the West who are miserable, anxious, and suicidal. Yes, we're doing tremendously well in the enlightened parts of the world that now have grown past even the need for God. It's going so well for us. Okay, so let's also not forget here, it's been a while since I've gotten in trouble. Let's not forget this. There is provocative statement. There are going to be lots of people in heaven who have never heard about Jesus. Now they know him now. Don't get me wrong.

They know him now. But how does that work? He's the only name that is saved. I'm going to ask you a question. What about the 4000 years of recorded history before Jesus got here? How did everybody from Adam to Malachi get in? Jesus hadn't come yet. Of course, the answer is because of Jesus. They got there because of Jesus, whom they didn't even know about. The just shall live by faith. They had to have faith in the promise and respond to the creation that they were given in creation. The answer they were given that there is a God and they had to respond to whatever promises or prophecies they were given. However weird they were in the moment, build a boat, whatever it looked like in the moment, they had to respond, get into a house for the red rope and the windowsill, got it. It's like whatever they were believing in a Jesus that they didn't know. They were believing Jesus like I got sheep of a flock who you're not even aware of in John 10. There's people who got saved for 4000 years before Christ ever got here. They were saved because of what Jesus did. He paid for their sin on the cross as he hung there and they didn't even know about him. So the person in primitive, God can use the same gospel to reach someone without them ever even having heard Scripture in their language at that time. And that of course does not take any of the onus on us a way to do what we can to get the word to them. But God's track record, hear me, is that he will stop at nothing to reach even one lost sheep, abandoning the 99 to get to them in the way. So that's in the case of the person off the grid. What about in the case of children? What about in the case of a baby that dies? What about in the case of the untold millions who are murdered through abortion every single

year in this world? They are, this is hard but true, sinners. And they are not saved because of their innocence. They are, along with all of the human race, sinners by nature, yet not yet sinners by action. Okay, here is an important thing to take heart. You can just memorize this now, you'll know it the rest of your life. We don't just sin because we're sinners, we're sinners because we sin, okay? It's nice because it's catchy. We don't just sin because we're sinners, we're sinners because we sin. So yes, the figurehead Adam, he sinned and fell and plunged all of humanity into the state of fallenness under God's justice, his wrath. Yet the sinful nature is not enough to stand before God in his wrath after we die. The physical death is the consequence of being a part of fallen humanity. But only when that sinful nature that's present in all of us is given the opportunity to grow and the person to grow up to where they can and are capable of making that choice, and 100% of the time they do. So how do you know a person's sinner if they've grown up? They're talking and walking. You see what I'm saying? Now again, I'm not talking about the mentally handicapped who never, you can live 40 years but never come to a place where you are capable of choosing between right and wrong. And that's the distinction scripture points out again and again and again. You want to write down a few references, Isaiah chapter 7 verse 15 directly after the Christmas prophecy of the Virgin Giving Birth, there is a statement about knowing the difference between right and wrong. Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 39. The people who have no knowledge, Deuteronomy 1, 39, of good and evil. Jonah chapter 4 verse 11. Numbers in the city who are about to die, who did not discern between their right hand and their left.

So the distinction comes down to original sin versus deliberate sin. Original sin is what every single person from the point of conception, which is always where scripture says life begins, the moment of conception where life begins, David himself said, steeped in sin from inside my mother's womb, all right. But no one when experiencing eternal damnation does so because of the sin someone else committed. That can bring consequences, like end of life consequences and the reason death is part of the whole equation for this whole world is because of original sin, but only deliberate sin will full sin, which is where growing up in this fallen world because of that fallen nature. You have a bend towards depravity, a bend towards evil. And that 100% of the time is what happens should someone grow up in this world on the inside and on the outside. You get to the point of knowing good and evil and the Bible says, no, not one, choose this right. No, not one does good that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So hear me, when a baby dies, there is original sin, but who has not yet made the choice to commit deliberate sin, God in his grace applies the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to that child. And they enter instantly into the eternal life of the paradise of God opened up to us because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. This is what happens when a baby dies. David Jeremiah, pastor in San Diego, put it this way, children, too young to know and understand the gospel cannot willfully reject it. And no one goes to hell simply because they are a sinner in nature, but they go to hell because they grow up and make the choice to sin and reject the means of salvation that God has opened up to us to cross. Those who go to hell go to hell willingly is another way to put it. It's been put this way, this was GK Chesterton. Hell is God's greatest compliment to free will. Hell is God's great compliment to free will.

And a baby is too young, a child, a young child too young to reject the salvation that they don't know that they need. And so the blood of Christ covers them. How is it that a child or a mentally handicapped adult goes to heaven the moment they die because of the blood of Jesus and the cross of Christ. And they never had the opportunity to reject a salvation that God then graciously gives to them at Christ's expense. That's the third thing you need to keep in your mind is that no one gets judged by what they haven't been given. Fourthly, are you still with me? I know it's dense, but it's important. they're central to it and they teach us how to enter it. Children, we ask, like, what about the children? As though they weren't the main course of the kingdom of God, right? Whereas though there's some afterthought, the emus bush or something, you know, it's like, no, no, I don't need the tooth picker the mint on my way out of the restaurant. As though the whole affair, the whole thing, isn't all about, it's a youth led movement, the kingdom of God. You're like, I'm gonna need to do this in the scripture. How much time do you got? I had to cut away a ton of references. Matthew 18, too. He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said, I tell you the truth unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Another time, one chapter later, Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. He went on in that same text to describe the angels who guard the little children, who always see the face of his father in the presence of the Lord's throne in heaven as well. Mark 10, verse 16, Jesus took children up into his arms, laid his hands on them and blessed them. And not one time in scripture does Jesus ever come for a blessing on an unbeliever. Only those who are at that place of being his. God claims children as his. Until they get to a place of being willing to choose for themselves, they belong to him. Then they can choose as they grow to reject that love and reject that protection, reject that grace. Matthew 21, verse 16, when Jesus was being praised by children on the way to the cross, the Pharisees scolded him and said, tell the kids to shut their mouths. And Jesus said, what, quoting Psalm eight, verse two, out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have perfected. God has had a lot of time to perfect praise out of the mouth of babes. Why would that be?

Because it's been possible if you think about the death statistics, especially in the ancient world and in the third world to this day, where there is not the same level of hygiene and care and awareness and access to medical attention, that the birth rate, that being what it is, and the rate of abortion being what it is, and the fact and reality and heartbreaking reality of miscarriages and still births being what they are, and many kids who did not live past 10, even up until a hundred years ago, you have to think about this. It is possible that these little children who are even now before the throne of God, praising God day and night, it could be the largest single sampling or demographic of those who will end up in heaven forever. Those that we think, oh, what about them? Like, God looks around his throat and he's like, "Well, they're doing fine. "They are everywhere. "God has perfected praise. "He's had a lot of experience to perfect praise "out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants "and little kids. "Jesus says, what? "Let the little children come to me. "They're good. "You don't worry about them. "You don't worry about them.

"They're good. "They're with me. "They're here. "I've got them. "I've got them in my arms. "I've got them under my wings, the kingdom of God." Kids are not an afterthought to it. They're the center of it. And they're the only way of accessing it. Listen to me. There are no children in hell and there are no grown-ups in heaven. There are no children, not one in hell. Oh, you get annoyed on an airplane when a baby cries, you're going to hate heaven. (congregation laughing) You don't like the adults. You say, you want to only be at the adults' table. You want the kids' table. You're going to hate heaven. There are no children. Think about it. In hell. And there's not one adult, not one grown-up. In heaven, only those in heaven who have humbled themselves to become like a little child. And if you bristle at the notion of all these kids just getting to go to heaven because it's not fair, they didn't do anything, guess what?

That's called grace. And God's most extravagant demonstration of grace, it could be when history's last tale is told, is that the greatest population group in heaven did nothing, had nothing to do with it and only are there because of what Jesus did for them. Just like we must admit to if we are to have any hope of entering into it, that we must, like a baby say, I have nothing, just grace for other grace, for other mercy be merciful to me. So that's the only way to get to heaven. Number five, be your reason for rejecting it." There's an elder brother lurking in all our hearts who looks at God giving the fatted calf to the one who went out with the prostitutes and wasted his father's inheritance and did all this wild sinning and he gets all that. Don't let, and that story ends with the prodigal son story, by the way, with the elder brother outside the house, not inside it. He's the one who ends up lost, not the one who went out far and got lost. That child ends up safely in home. It's the one who rejects the goodness of God on the basis of, I demand fairness, who ends up outside the house. He rejects the grace on behalf of someone who received grace. What is the problem here, right?

I also think about numbers 14. Numbers 14 is, I just wrote in my Bible, be careful what you wish for. 'Cause you know what the children of Israel say, numbers 14, they will not go into the promised land because there's giants and the scared and whatever. They don't trust God. They've left Egypt to go into the promised land. They don't go into the promised land. Why? They accuse God of not loving their kids. And so they actually say the words, we wish we had never left Egypt. And then they go, this is the part that's scary. They say, we wish we would just die in the desert. God says, amen. God says, if you say so. And so verse 29, the carcasses of you, God answers the prayer, the carcasses of you who have complained against me, she'll fall in this wilderness. All of you who were numbered, this is interesting to me. People say there's no such thing as an age of accountability in the Bible. I would just, there was here, according to your entire number from 20 years old and above. Now I'm not saying that that's the age of accountability. I'm just saying in this moment, God did lay down an age of culpability.

Everyone under 20 could not make the decision for themselves and so were allowed to go into the promised land. Then he says verse 31, but your little ones, and he defines that as younger than 20, whom you said would be my victims, that you can't receive my grace because I don't love your kids. I will bring them in and they shall know the land that you have despised. So the warning inherent in Numbers 14 is don't reject the grace that God's trying to give you on the basis of someone else who might just be on the receiving end of God's grace in a way that you don't even understand or fathom. To turn from God because of some awful situation where you go, where's the grace of God in this? Would be to turn from the one trying to give you grace on the basis of someone who might be receiving more grace than you can possibly even understand. Last point, eternity will be full. Someone say full of redemption that's greater than we can imagine. In the ages to come, he will show us the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness, and it'll take that long. It'll take all of forever for you to even get through the appetizer of the ways that God is using the suffering now to the point that Romans 8 says, we can't even compare how hard it is now to what it's gonna be like then.

T.S. Lewis is the one who said heaven will work backwards. Once we get it, it will almost work back, you have to put your Christopher Nolan film goggles on to even think about it, you get to the back of the movie and then it starts working reverse. We think about how hard this was so bad, this was so awful, but you don't understand, when the glory is revealed, the suffering begins to work backwards. Isaiah chapter 11 says, the wolves shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the young goat, the calf with the young lion, and the fatling together, and look at this, and the child shall lead them. This verse in particular was the greatest comfort to J. Vernon McGee, a renowned Bible teacher who's now with Jesus, who had to bury a baby who lived only a day or two on this earth named Ruth, a little girl, he said it so profoundly moved him to think about the fact that there's a child described as being in glory. His child, he thought of his child in glory, he wrote these words, "I believe with all my heart "that God will raise the little ones such "that the mother's arms who have ached for them "will have the opportunity of holding them. "The father's hand, which never held the little hand, "will be given that privilege. "I believe the little ones will grow up in heaven "in the care of their earthly parents, if they are saved." You go, "How does that logistically work?

"I don't know, but I can't wait to find out." David had a baby die and a grown son die. The grown son gave every indication of wickedness. Now we never know where someone's at because the thief from the cross with one final breath trusted in Christ and was saved, but this son gave David every indication of having died alienated from God. And David was such a mess. He had to be told like basic things like you need to get up and go to work tomorrow. Then he had a baby die. It's completely different. He was a wreck while the baby was sick. But when the baby finally died, David got up, washed his face, went to church, asked for a hamburger. And his team was like whiplash. They're like, what is wrong with you? He explained. Now he is dead. So why should I fast and pray? Can I bring him back again? I look at me, shall go to him. He's covered. He's good. He shall not return to me. There you go. What did he mean by that? We don't know what David means about it. David's pretty clear about what he means about the afterlife. I don't know. Kind of wrote Psalm 23, Valley of the Shadow of Death. Goodness, mercy follows me. Do all in the house of the Lord forever. David knew that's where his baby was. So he could say, it's going to be hard. I'm going to hurt. It's going to take hope. I'm going to have to grieve. But I'm going to go into my child again. And so can you. You can move towards loss. I'm going to say something hard. You can powered by the Spirit. Think of a day when a child who you murdered through abortion is standing side by side with you at the altar of God and the healing that can flow as you're able to apologize. And they're able to extend forgiveness and healing and love and some relationship in the kingdom of God. This child that died that David said that about he was a factor in that baby's death through an affair and the murdering of what would have been that baby's stepdad. It's a messy story. But there's healing and grace because we're sin abouts church. Grace abounds much more. So the title of the sermon. What you really should be worried about is not whether God's doing a good job. I think by opening up the clock a little bit, we see the Rolex ticking on pretty good. The cross, his justice, his kindness, his providence. The real question is an us stand because it sounds good to be like, what about the person who's never. But doesn't that kind of put God in the witness box and you on trial? Are you doing good? Okay. I'd like to see here. Right. Let's not forget. When you die, it's not like God has explaining to do. But you do. What you really should be worried about is yourself.

What about kids who died? What about your kids who are alive? What are you doing to preach the gospel to your children? What are you doing to raise your children in the house of God? What are you doing to see their soul one? Spurgeon said, before a child gets to seven, teach them how to get to heaven. Better yet, the work will thrive if the work is done before age five. What are you doing to reach the youth of this world? What are you doing to reach those in sub-Saharan Africa? You expect God to care about them, but are you giving towards the scripture going out to them? What are you doing with the light you've received? What do you have today in your heart that hurts that you need to offer up to him? I don't have answers. I have more questions, but I know the one who holds it all. I know the one who holds tomorrow. I know the one who held the cross. Father, we thank you for time in your scripture, in your spirit, puzzling at these threads together, but knowing you're working it all together for good. If you're here and you would just be honest for whatever reason enough to say, I needed this message. Could I just ask you to raise a hand up? Just raise a hand up so God can see thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God. Thank you, our babies are your babies. They're your kids. Thank you, Lord. We trust you. We love you, God. You can put your hands down. Bless your people with peace. I pray. Bless your people with grace. I pray. Help us to see ourselves as little children, your little children in need of salvation through Jesus. If as we're praying, you would say, man, I don't know where I'm out with God. I don't know that when I die, I'm going to go to heaven. I don't have peace. I don't have the confidence to stand before God and be judged. You can because of Christ. As we're praying, if you would say, I need to give my life to Jesus, I want to accept his free gift of eternal life. I want to become a child in God's hand. I'm going to pray a prayer. I want you to pray out loud after me. I'm going to ask the church to pray with us. No one praying alone. All of us praying together. God will hear you if you turn to him in faith. Say this to dear God. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. Thank you for sending Jesus. I receive. Be my Lord, help me to follow you in Jesus' name.