But God

All right. Well, good morning, Sauldam Church family. Thank you guys so much for being here today and for all the guests that are here with us. Thank you so much for joining us for, man, a great morning of getting to worship the King and gather with our family. So we’re going to come into our time of congregational prayer that we do each and every Sunday morning as we continue to prioritize being a praying church, not just a church that prays. So, if praying out loud is a little new for you, man, I get that. If you’re new to the Sauldam family, I totally get that, too. But what we do, we just want to spend a few moments taking our hearts and our needs before the Lord and calling on Him as a church family.

So, as we come into the Easter season, it would make a lot of sense that we would pray around that or toward that end. So, we have some prayer prompts here coming up on the screen. A couple years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention launched an evangelism initiative called Who’s Your One? That means who’s the one person in your life that is far from the Lord? They may have grown up in the church, but they’ve walked away from it or from Jesus since. They may be somebody you’ve met at a local coffee shop or over at Harris Teeter, something like that. They just don’t, man, don’t know anything about Him. So what we want to do is just pray for that person. That’s year one. So, who is your one? You can either pray for that or just pray for Easter morning at other local churches here in our area. Churches like Adams Run and Calvary, First Baptist of Ravenel and Hopewell, those are some sister churches of ours, but also some others of the area like Charleston Baptist Church over off of 526 and Harbor City over off of 17. What we want for them is the same that we’re praying for us, that God would pack out their buildings so that a lot of people would get to hear the gospel that morning as well, over where they get to worship, not just where we get to worship.

So those are two prayer prompts this morning. Pray for someone that is far from the Lord. That’s your one. Or pray for another local church that God would send them a lot of folks on Easter so that a lot of people get to hear about the good news of Jesus. Y’all take it away. I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Grab a neighbor to pray for those things and then, yeah, we’ll take these before the Lord. Thank y’all.

Holy Father, thank You for today. Thank You for drawing us here this morning. God, thank You for preserving us another week. God, thank You for the work of grace You’ve done in some of our lives to save some of us and the work of grace You’re doing in others to bring them here this morning to hear the gospel. Father, I pray that You would bring a lot of folks to some other local churches in the next few weeks, God, so that they can hear the good news of Jesus Christ, the good news of a Father that so loved the world that He would send His only Son so that anybody that would believe in Him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life. God, I pray for the other local churches in our area that on Easter morning their pews would be packed and there would be a spiritual hunger there. Please, that a lot of people would walk away knowing Jesus Christ personally. Father, I pray for my friend, I’ll call him Matt, a guy that I’ve gotten to meet a few months ago that I love as a brother, that I know he loves me, but I also know that he does not love or know You. He knows a lot about You, but he doesn’t know You. God, he’s my one. He’s the person in my life that is far from You. And I pray You please bring him close to You. Please, God. He knows so much about You, but he doesn’t know You. Father, in a room our size, there’s a hundred of those. I pray, Father, that the people that are on our hearts that are far from You, You would draw back to Yourself. For us this morning, Lord, we’ve experienced another week, another week of temptations, another week of distractions, another week of stuff that would separate us from You. I pray that As we all meditate on Your Word for the next few minutes, You would draw us closer, and Holy Spirit, You would apply this Word to our hearts so that we would leave here a little bit different than we came in. We love You, and it’s in Your beautiful name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, if you have your copy of God’s Word, you are welcome and invited to go ahead and open it up to the book of Ephesians, chapter 2. We’re going to be starting chapter 2. We are, I think, seven weeks into this series in the book of Ephesians, and we finally made it through chapter 1. So, we are here. We are chapter 2 this morning. Chapter 2, verses 1-10.

As you’re turning there, I want to ask you to consider, man, what was the last good news that you heard? What was the last good news you got? Maybe somebody told you about a new medication they’ve heard about. Okay. Yeah, it might be something interesting. Or maybe a friend of yours got a little bit of a pay raise. Maybe good news, right? Yeah. Maybe maybe you heard someone say, “Man, I’m sorry.” All right, so these are some good newses, but what something we all know is that for good news to be good news, there’s got to be some bad news that comes up against. Hearing about new medication doesn’t mean a whole lot except what like what if you just got a terrible chronic diagnosis of some sort of health issue you didn’t see coming and you’re sitting with a doctor in a in a hospital room. He says, “Hey, there’s one more option. I’ve got this experimental drug that you are a good candidate for and I think it could provide you some relief.”

Or that pay raise comes in the midst of an incredible financial issue that you’ve got where your ends have not been meeting for months now and you are just struggling. You don’t see any sort of way out. You’re starting to liquidate assets. You’re selling stuff off. You’re wondering about if you’re having to move, and all of a sudden your boss comes in and says, “Hey, I want to recognize and honor the work you’ve been doing. Here’s a a bump in your pay.” And you would know that a pay raise would mean it would stabilize you and it would mean that your family doesn’t have to go through some of those same issues.

Or maybe you’ve had some sort of fracture in a relationship with somebody, you and a buddy, a family member, y’all haven’t been seeing eye to eye for a while. They call you up and say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking and praying a lot and I just need to say I’m sorry I didn’t treat you the right way.” For good news to be good news, there’s got to be some bad news we’ve heard first. And this morning, we are going to hear some good news.

Now, the thing about the good news I’ve shared with you, from a medical treatment plan to a pay raise, we know that those good newses, they’re good, but there’s going to be more bad news around the corner. Man, life is just kind of this one long marathon of dealing with issues. And if we have this overly optimistic, idealistic take on reality, then the moment some really bad news comes, all of our hopes and dreams just kind of get crushed and thrown to the wayside. We need some good news that can stabilize us and that doesn’t depend on the circumstances of life which just seesaw from the good and from the bad.

My prayer, my hope this morning is to give you some good news that can carry you through whatever life has for you. And that doesn’t come from me. It doesn’t come from my own ingenuity. It doesn’t come from a book I read. It doesn’t come from some sort of denominational structure. It’s just going to come from God’s Word right here. Today’s passage will vividly declare the hope that we can have in this life against the desperate situations we all experience.

You see, here’s the deal. Outside of Jesus Christ and outside of a personal relationship with Him, you and me, we are in dire straits and in a totally desperate situation we cannot free ourselves from. That’s bad. But the good news is that Jesus Christ provides a way out and a way of life. This is the core of the news I want to share with you this morning. If you’re a notetaker, if you need something to talk about over lunch, this would be it. Real life is in Christ Jesus. I want to say that again because man, that’s a good thing for me to say in a church setting, but I want you to really hear me say this. Real life is in Christ. Man, the world will promise so many other ways to get life. From health to financial success to self-help books and even relational management, the world offers life. Man, that’s why marketing works. That’s why so many industries are functioning right now is because you and me, we are all hardwired and designed to crave life. That’s just been written into our bones. We can’t get that out of us. But there is only one way. There’s only one truth. There’s only one life and His name is Jesus Christ. And for us to really get that this morning, we’ve got to see just how bad off we are without Him.

So without any further ado, I’m going to read Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 3. Look at it with me. You y’all, we we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts. And we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. Man, talk about positive and encouraging, right? Man, this is hard.

Immediately we see from this passage that you and me, we are desperate without Christ. Verses one through three shout at us of just how bad off we are. This is the bad news. We are utterly desperate without Jesus. Our desperate situation is shown in three ways across these three verses. We were dead. We were disobedient. And we were doomed. Let’s just take them all one by one.

We were dead. The Bible says that you and me, we are dead in trespasses and sins. A trespass is something that I think people from around here really get the grip of. We all have family family lands. We all have our property lines and our boundary lines. And you understand acutely that someone who is not invited onto your property, once they come onto your property uninvited, at that point they are a trespassor. And if you are the owner of that property, then man, you’ve got the rights to get them off your property, right? And you use whatever means you deem necessary under a court of law.

So God, here’s the deal. God’s got property. And God protects that property with some moral boundaries. You and me through our actions every day. We trespass over God’s moral boundary. We see the lines in the sand that God has drawn. His thou shalt, thou shalt not. And we choose to step over those things. We we trespass God’s boundaries. We were dead in that.

And it’s not just the willful commission of trespassing God’s boundaries. The Bible also says that we are dead in our sin. Now, sin is like this Roman archery term, if you will. It’s a it’s a it’s the idea that there’s a target on a hay bale and you’re shooting at that target and every time you are off the mark. You never hit the bullseye. You never get it in the mark where you need it to be. To trespass is to go over the lines of what God wants. To sin means to fall short, to fail to meet God’s standard. You and me and every person you ever interact with, we are born in a state of going against God’s will and falling short of God’s standard. Indeed, human nature is utterly helpless without God because we are completely dead in our wrongness.

This is what Jesus Christ says about sin. This is what He describes as our human nature. For from within, out of people’s hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person. Anybody else see themsel in that list? Anybody else brave enough to recognize that, man, you are a sexually immoral person? You want bad things to happen to people. You envy what people have. You are prone to slandering others. You walk in pride. That is human nature.

If I have to push the envelope any further, this is what Paul would say in Galatians chapter 5. The works of the flesh are obvious. sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, f factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, anything similar. I’ve warned you about this stuff. As I’ve warned you before, those who practice these things, who make a lifestyle of these things won’t inherit God’s kingdom. This is us in our natural state. You and me constantly step over the line of what God has said not to do and we constantly fail to live up to the standard of what God has designed us to do. We are dead in that.

It’s not just that we’re like flailing on the top of the harbor downtown just wishing somebody would toss us a life preserver so that we could pull ourselves back in the boat. That’s not the situation. The Bible doesn’t say that we were struggling with trespass and sin. It doesn’t say we were like sick with trespass and sin. Look at verse one. What does it say? We’re dead.

Man, not to be too graphic, we like to think of ourselves as mostly good people dealing with badness. So, we’re kind of like somebody that’s about to drown. We’re on the top of the water. We’re flailing. We’ve been making it okay, but now we need some help to get us back into the boat of safety. The Bible says we’ve been at the bottom of the harbor for about 10 days, dead dead, and we can’t do anything to change that. That’s us. We are dead in our sin. Talk about some bad news.

It actually gets worse. Verses two and three say it’s not just that we are dead in our sin, but it’s actually that we are walking according to sin. We live in disobedience. We live in disobedience. Man, that word walk in verse two, it doesn’t mean that we occasionally dabble with disobedience as if like on a passing Tuesday I have a desire just to try a new restaurant. Same way, hey, on some passing day, I have a desire to try some new sin. I was going to go dabble in that. That’s not what we do.

It’s not even that we practice sin like a hobby. Like I reserve some time on the weekends for my sin, right? Like some of you guys might be woodworkers or you might be hunters on the weekend. Whatever weekend warrior you kind of are with your hobbies. The Bible says that it’s not like that either. It’s not even that sin is something we struggle with because to struggle with something means that you’re trying not to do it. The Bible says we are walking in disobedience. We have a lifestyle of disobedience. We have a habitual pattern. We have a a life of sin.

And what Jesus and Paul just said is anybody that lives in sin won’t inherit God’s kingdom. They can’t be saved. They will not live with God forever. We have a desperate situation. We walk in disobedience all the time. And man, we learn this disobedient lifestyle from some pretty terrible sources. Look at verses two and three with me again. Or I’ll say you’re dead in your trespasses and sins. Now verse two, in which you previously walked according to one, the ways of this world, two, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient, and three, we too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires.

The world, the flesh, and the devil are all conspiring against you to keep you from living the life that God has designed you to live. The world with its counter-Christian value systems. Satan who caused the fall of Adam and Eve and now you and me who daily tempts us to sin. And even our fleshly desires, the the the the welling up inside of you to go against God’s way. The world, the flesh, and the devil, they are all pulling you down into further sin together. These things are keeping you in your desperate situation. You are dead in your sin and you are disobedient against God.

And because God is holy and just and we are disobedient, that means that in our natural state, we are doomed. We are doomed to God’s wrath. Man, I know this is hard and I’ve really got to sit in this because for good news to be good news, we have to understand the bad news first. Without Christ, we are doomed. Verse three says that we were by nature children under wrath. You see, the right response of a good and holy God against ungood and unholy sinners would be wrath.

Man, in today’s world, we don’t really like consequences. And we really bow up against authority. We are so set on protecting ourselves and walking according to our ways that whenever we interact with a brick wall of consequence for our actions, we make it seem like the brick wall was at fault. But man, what if you and I, what if we were watching some televised court trial and we see somebody on trial and this person, it was known to have lived a poor lifestyle and you see the video of the person taking someone else’s life. It’s plain as day. You can see it. They even look at the video camera. “Hey, I am such and such. I committed this crime on this date with this weapon.” And the judge looks at the person, the person that we know clearly did it, the person that we know is guilty, and said, “You know what? You seem like a good guy, not guilty.” How would that make you feel? I know I’ve got at least one honest person in here. How’ that make you feel? Angry. Is that what you said? Mad. Mad. Let’s go. Oh, the youngest person in the room is the most honest person in the room. Thank you so much.

We’d be mad at that. We’d be frustrated with that because we would know it’s an injustice. We would know that that is a travesty of the court system. We would know it is not right for guilty folks to get off scot-free. In the same way, we have to hold ourselves or at least be ready for that standard to be applied to us. God is the judge over the world. We are the person that commit the crimes against Him. It would not be right of God to let us off the hook scot-free. Someone has to pay for our crimes. Someone’s got to pay. We are doomed to the wrath of God. We’re dead in our sin. We live in disobedience and we are doomed to God’s wrath. Man, without Christ, we are totally desperate because dead people can’t raise themselves to life. habitually disobedient people cannot turn their lives around with some greater source, some greater power in them. And folks that are doomed to wrath and punishment for crimes they did commit, someone’s got to serve a pen a penalty. Someone’s got to pay for the punishment. That’s us by nature.

Before I proceed to good news, I want to ask you, are you still living in the bad news? I ask it this way. Do you recognize that you’re a sinner? Man, do you are you are you honest enough to look at your life and say, “As well-meaning as I’m trying to be, I constantly overstep God’s boundaries and I fall short of His perfect standard for my life.” There’s a way out of that desperation, and that’s what I’m going to share right now. But you can’t know the joys of the good news of the gospel without recognizing the depths of the bad news of our nature without Jesus. One of the worst things you could do right now would be to think of yourself as good enough before the Lord. No one’s good enough. Know not one. No one is righteous. No one does any good. So, we needed someone to come and be good and do good for us.

The gospel is kind of like a diamond. When Becca and I were going to get engaged, I had the wherewithal to recognize that I would not be able to pick out an engagement ring that would really match what she would want. So, she and I went to the jewelry jewelry store together for her to be able to pick out whatever she would want to get. And I got to make the call or whatever on when I would pop the question, but she probably planned that, too. So, it is what it is. What we saw at the jewelry store is that a diamond’s beauty, though, is best seen not against the glass case that they are held in. Nor is a diamond’s beauty best seen against like a white sheet of paper. A diamond’s beauty, if you really want to capture the contours and the depths and the brilliance, you put it against a a piece of black velvet cloth. For you to understand the cut and the clarity of a diamond, you got to see it against something that’s totally other. That’s the gospel. The gospel is this beautiful diamonds that has different shapes and different components to it. But we don’t understand it against unless it’s against a black cloth. Guess who the black cloth is? That’d be us. For us to grasp the goodness of the good news of the gospel. For us to see the beauty of the diamond, we have to see the badness of who we are. I’ve tried to show you some of the badness of who we are. Now, let’s look at some of the goodness of who Jesus is. You see, here’s the deal. Without Christ, you and me and every person in this world, we are dead in sin, living in disobedience, and doomed to suffer God’s wrath. For us to believe that real life is in Jesus Christ, we must first believe that we are dead without Him. We are totally desperate. But God, but God, but God, He comes to our rescue. Look at verses four through seven for me. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with Christ. Even though we were dead in our trespasses, you are saved by grace. He also raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

This is the beauty of the diamond. This is the good news of the gospel. While we are desperate without Christ, if you’re a notetaker, write this down. We are alive in Christ. We’re—Thank you. We are alive in Christ. There is only death and desperation without Him. But in Him and with Him, we have life, and we can have it abundantly. That’s what Jesus Christ came to do. He didn’t come to condemn the world because why? The world was condemned already. Jesus Christ, though, came to offer salvation and grace and freedom to this world.

God’s incredible character fuels this truly good news. Verses 4-7 say He is merciful, loving, gracious, and kind. He is far better than we could ever imagine. And His character channels all this goodness toward you like a holy funnel centered on you, pointed at you. And He’s got mercy swinging around. He’s got love swinging around, and grace and kindness. And it’s just coming down on you. But what’s He do with all that, man? He makes you come alive. Alive. See, the world, the flesh, and the devil all promise life. And they are all liars. Real life is only found in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. Nothing and no one can give you the life that you were made to have. None of it satisfies. And if you—because you’ve been made for God, you will be restless and dissatisfied with your life until you find your life with Jesus.

Here’s the deal. Substances and relationships, money, none of that can give you the life that you crave. Success, influence, power, comfort, control, approval, relationships, a family, kids, a name for yourself, property. Man, those things all have their different amounts of satisfaction to them, I guess. But before before it’s all said and done, none of that stuff lasts. Otherwise, Jesus wouldn’t have told us not to store up our treasures here on earth where moth and rust can destroy and thieves can break in and steal. What God wants to give you in Jesus Christ can never be taken away from you because you can never be taken away from Him. Real life is only found in Jesus Christ.

Here’s the deal. Because we are all dead sinners who deserve God’s wrath, that means forgiveness and salvation has got to be an act of God’s grace. You don’t deserve the gospel. And say that again. No one, including you, deserves God’s love. Man, what a hard thing to to say and to hear. If we deserved it, that would mean that we can earn it. If we could earn it, then we wouldn’t need grace. If we didn’t need grace, then we wouldn’t really be dead in our sin.

Now, here’s the deal. God has made you special and particular. He designed you in your mother’s womb. From before the day you were born, God set His loving sight on you. And He said, “I love her. I love him.” We don’t deserve God’s love. But God freely gives us His love. And don’t make any mistake. God loves all people whether they love Him back or not. I love my kids whether they obey me and respect me or not. But God has a special love He wants to show all people through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You see, Jesus Christ Himself, God’s perfect Son with whom He was well pleased. Jesus came and lived a life of always following God’s rules, always satisfying God’s standards, things we cannot do. He lived a perfect life for us. And after living a perfect life, you and me were supposed to live but can’t because of our sin. Jesus Christ died A death for us He did not deserve that we deserved. We were doomed to suffer God’s wrath. Jesus wasn’t. Jesus fully satisfied all righteousness. Yet Jesus, the only one who could, steps in our place so that the wrath of God would not be poured out on us, but it would be poured out on Him instead. That’s what Jesus Christ did for us.

So, He died on Good Friday. But make no mistake, Jesus did not stay in the grave. No, on Easter Sunday, He rose from the dead. He rose from the death. He’s resurrected. He’s not in some grave in the Middle East anymore. That’s not where our Savior is. No, our Savior, after arising and revealing Himself to people, went and made His home in heaven where He is seated by the right hand of the Father and He is reigning.

So when Paul says that in Christ we too can be raised and we too are seated, that means that the benefits that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, receives because of His perfection, you get to receive despite your imperfections. So even though you did not deserve to have life, God gives you life. Even though we deserve to stay dead in the grave, God raises us up. And even though we deserve to be under the thumb of a King against whom we rebel, God instead puts us in a position and a seat of privilege and favor.

Does anybody care about this? Man, this ought to excite us. This ought to excite us. How could we not live a life of response to the God who’s done everything for us, but we get so caught up in all the other stuff of life? When am I going to get mine? Why don’t I have that? Why does this person treat me that way? Those things matter, but man, none of that’s ultimate.

Without Christ, we are desperate because we’re dead. But in Christ, we are alive. That means God’s perfect character fuels His saving work. He transforms dead sinners into living saints. Real life is only found in Jesus Christ.

So what now? For those of us who have embraced the diamond of the gospel, who see its beauty and claim it as our own, what now? Paul says God makes us useful because of Christ. Verses 8-10 says that God makes us useful. I’ll read it for us. Verses 8-10, Ephesians 2. You are saved by grace through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is God’s gift. It is not from works so that no one can boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Man, that’s the man, the idea of a gift versus a work. A gift is something you don’t deserve that has been given to you because the love of another. A work, it’s like a wage. It’s a paycheck. It is something you’ve earned because of what you’ve done. The Bible says that salvation is not something you have earned. It is a gift you have been given. Which means God gets the credit for your salvation. There’s nothing we can do to earn being forgiven by God. If there were, salvation wouldn’t be salvation. It would just be self-help. I would not be preaching from an ancient book right now about how we ought to reorient our lives. The best I could offer you would be a little bit of life coaching for you to figure it out on your own. That’s not the way it is. God wants us to have life in Him.

But religious works and self-help can’t save. Like financial giving, putting a little of money or a lot of money in an envelope and putting it in the plate, that can’t save you. Being good, treating people with kindness, that doesn’t save us. Reading your Bible on your own, that’s great. Doesn’t save you. Not cussing, easier for some of us than others. It doesn’t save you. It doesn’t make you any better before the Lord.

We love to think, our flesh loves to think that salvation is kind of like the other end of a scale. And if we just do enough good works, if I read my Bible a little bit, if I put a little bit more money in the plate, if I tell somebody about Jesus, if I go on a mission trip, if I pray before dinner, if I stop being a jerk, if I control my tongue, then man, I’ve done enough good things to outweigh the bad things. And I’ve been put in the graces of a judge who will view me accordingly. The gospel says The scale is eternally set against you because one moment of sin puts you in an eternal debt against a holy God. So it doesn’t matter all the good things you think that you can do, none of it can earn God’s forgiveness. By grace, you are saved, which means what God wants to do in your life is a masterpiece of His saving kindness. That word in verse 10, we are His workmanship. It’s this word for creation, masterpiece, artwork. It’s where we get the idea of a poem. Think about your life this way. God saved you as part of His poetic masterpiece in a universe, lines of kindness and grace that He is writing with your life. Your life is meant to display the greatness and the incredible glory of God our Savior, which means we do good works. God makes us useful in Jesus Christ.

Verses 1 through 3 talked about the bad works we used to walk in. We used to, we used to walk in a life of disobedience. But now for those who have seen how good Jesus is, those who have tasted the kindness of God, our lives are supposed to be filled with a lifestyle of good works. The bad goes out with the old self. The new comes in with the new self. A real life in Christ produces new works for Christ. Real life in Christ creates usefulness in Christ. Man, this is good work, like reading the Bible with someone else who doesn’t know it as well so you could teach them a little bit of what you’ve been taught. Good work looks like stepping forward to help lead VBS or the kids ministry here at Sauldam Baptist Church. Good work looks like inviting people to the community movie night that we’re doing. I, I want to, I want to stop on that one for a second. You might just think we are getting together to roll out some blankets and just blow up an inflatable screen and show a movie. On one hand, that’s what we’re doing, man. On another hand, what we’re trying to do with that night is create a hospitable environment where lots of people from our community that don’t have a church home can come and see that we’re halfway normal and that we would love to see them again on the following Sunday where we can show them a little bit of the kindness of God. A good work for you, a major step for you might literally be inviting a complete stranger at Publix to bring their kids and come to this movie night. It might be as simple as that.

A good work for others of us might be like contributing to the baptistry fundraiser. You know, we mentioned this last week, in the last two years, we’ve had close to 20 people go through that baptistry. And in that time, we’ve discovered a number of what I would call structural inefficiencies. And over the past week, as the renovations have begun, those structural inefficiencies have multiplied, I would say. So we need folks to contribute to that. A good work for you might literally be writing a check to go straight just to the baptistry fundraiser. Because here’s the deal. We’re not going to stop baptizing folks and God’s not going to stop saving folks, but we are going to need a place to baptize them, and we would like it to be right there. What’s the good work that God has for you? If you see the badness of who you are without Jesus and you’ve tasted the goodness of who God is, how could you not give your life to a lifestyle of good works back to Him?

I mentioned a second ago one of the good works that some folks might have in this room would be leading the kids ministry. I got to tell you, the kids that go back there, man, eager learners, young disciples, and the next generation of pastors and missionaries and marketplace leaders that are going to bring the gospel to bear.