Jesus’ Confrontation with Evil

I invite you to turn this evening to Matthew 12. Please turn in your copy of the Scriptures to Matthew 12.

An hour before Charlie Kirk was assassinated this past week, his wife on Twitter, now X, posted Psalm 46 verse one: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”—an hour before. God is a present help to his people in ways and at times that we might never be able to anticipate.

I want to draw your attention this evening to Matthew 12. We’re going to read from verse 22. Matthew 12 verse 22. Give attention to the reading of God’s Word as we read from verse 22 of Matthew 12:

“Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb; and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.”

Amen. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word. And what you’ve heard is the eternal Word of the living God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. The people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, give help. We do take a moment to pray for those who sorrow, particularly for the Kirk family. We can’t begin to fully comprehend the swirl of emotion amidst this tragedy, and we are humble to see the nation taking time to consider what has happened. We pray in the wake of this tragedy that thou would strangely be at work. We pray the family would be preserved. We pray that the faith of his wife would remain steadfast in Christ in the fullness of the purity of the gospel of Christ. We pray against the co-opting of this by papists and others who have not good intentions. We ask that her church community would be there, be able to comfort and minister to her and to the children.

Lord, we ask, move in our day. Let our streets not be filled with tragedy without a purpose that can be clearly seen as working for the advance of the kingdom of Christ. Think of those days of Reformation, when the fires burned, and the martyrs died, and it pleased the living God to advance the cause of the gospel, even with such tragic loss of life. Lord we pray, leave not America to what she deserves, but send forth Thy Word in power that her sons and her daughters may rediscover that precious gospel brought to her shores those centuries ago.

Help us to know our place and our part, and give the power of the Spirit. We’re glad that the power promised to the church is not a mere has-been experience, but Christ still reigns, the Holy Ghost is still given, and if only there be one or two or many here who will give their heart and life wholly to Christ and beg for the power of the Spirit, there is no telling what good may be done. Bless our time this evening, only for Christ’s sake and only by the power and ministry of the Spirit we pray. Amen.

From the earliest centuries, the church has regularly been, certainly at various times, roused by the death of God’s servants to give themselves, those who live on, a greater earnestness to walk with Christ and put Him first.

When Ignatius of Antioch was marched to Rome to face the lions around A.D. 108, it pleased the Lord through his example to rally Christians to more devotion and to consider themselves prepared to pay the ultimate price for Christ. The same could be said a generation later when Polycarp of Smyrna, though he lived a long life of 86 years, in his death and martyrdom, was used by God to stir up others to the blessed cause of Christ and giving one’s all for him.

Centuries later, when Jan Hus was burned in 1415 for preaching clearly the gospel, elevating the authority of the scriptures over papal authority, his death stirred its own movement. The Hussites giving themselves to this cause: The world must have the full, free, unadulterated preaching of the gospel, whatever the authorities might threaten.

When a century later, Luther would come on the scene, he would declare that we are all essentially Hussites, those of us who preach the gospel. We are following in the train of that courageous man.

When Tyndale followed in the same spirit and was strangled and burned in 1536 for translating the Bible into English—that’s basically all he did. He dared to translate the Scriptures. He too was used of God. His prayer has gone down in history. There in moments before his death: “Lord, Open the king of England’s eyes.” Tremendous perception. The recognition that for a move of God to stick, it often needs to see the infiltration of the gospel to the highest courts of the land.

Revival’s a genuine spiritual work. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit for sure. As you trace history, you see great moves of God. But the ones that reach to the top are those that often function and materialize into some lasting change that benefits the gospel for generations, and advances the cause across those years.

God has been pleased to use from those mentioned up until we may even refer to Jim Elliot, the deaths, the martyrdom of men and women to stir the sleepy in his church. Something to watching someone, knowing someone who lived for a cause higher than themselves, willing to pay the ultimate price for that cause. Most of humanity meanders without passion, at times without any meaningful conviction, with the highest desire to simply be comfortable. “Lord, if there’s one thing you would grant me, permit that I might be comfortable.” And so for many, certainly in the West and these days, God has granted the desire of our heart. He has given us comfort. Oh, what comfort we have.

But as we have sat in our comfort, we have watched, certainly since World War II, a downgrade, a degenerate spiraling of chaos, moral and beyond, unfold across the West, to the point that in some parts of the West, people have come to a point of giving up. I’m just speaking to someone today, referring to a particular nation of the West, not America. The language used was, “It’s lost. Already. It’s over. It’s gone.” Maybe so.

You sit in America, it can sometimes be easy to not see what’s going on in other parts of the world. The erosion of all the legacy of Christian heritage, bit by bit, it is strategic, it is deliberate, and it has been succeeding.

This past week, a young man died. Yeah, not only died, was assassinated. A young man who, when the rest are deciding what college do I want to go to, is founding a vision in the hope that he might make a meaningful difference. From his early years, a passion for free market economics, conservative politics, and decides to give himself to political activism.

And whatever shortcomings may be discovered in Charlie Kirk, and I’m sure they can be discovered—I said on Wednesday night, I did not follow his ministry, his life, whatever you want to call it, his movement. You see him pop up every now and again, conversations, discussions. But whatever his shortcomings, in the 13 years that he gave himself to public, active role of confronting the ideology of his day, he championed a reasoned opposition to LGBTQ+, all that’s involved in that, transgenderism, abortion, Marxist ideology, and more. And as the years passed, as he matured—again he’s beginning at 18, you would expect that you might look at things of a young man 18, 20, 22, 24, and the older might raise an eyebrow and say, “It’s not how I would say it. It isn’t exactly how I would do it.” That may be true.

We say the same about Luther today. We read Luther and we raise an eyebrow. “It’s not exactly how I would say it,” but as he matured, became stronger in traditional family values, Sabbaths, and presented an explicitly evangelical and Protestant presentation of the gospel. Again, I didn’t follow him, but I did see a discussion maybe a year ago. He and another one in that field of work, Michael Knowles, had a discussion. Michael Knowles is an open Roman Catholic. And in the discussion you can see, though he’s being cordial, Charlie Kirk was presenting an explicit Protestant evangelical presentation of the gospel. I would listen to it. I might say I’d like to firm up some of the language there. But in a cave, make them the same thing.

Make no mistake, on Wednesday when Charlie Kirk was shot, I think he had a difficult proposition to deny that he died as a Christian martyr. And I thought about that, I did. I thought about it. What are the qualifications of a Christian martyr? Ultimately God will decide, because He has a category. He has a category of saints known as the martyrs. But I think a reasonable assessment would grant them in charity the same title.

Thus, like Christian martyrs of the past, the best response to those of us who remain is to make it mean something, to double down, to assess where there’s a casual living and not accept that that is the offering I want to present to my Lord, a casual form of living.

In Matthew 12 verse 29, as our Lord in the context is addressing the opposition to His ministry, as the crowd are amazed at what He, the ministry He is exercising, and as the Pharisees of course try to twist the whole matter, He says in verse 29: “Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house?”

It summarizes our Savior’s declaration of war against Satan. It summarizes His courageous and willing giving of Himself to oppose an authority that no one else had the power to oppose. He invaded Satan’s dominion. He subdued him and began to plunder his house. That’s what our Lord was doing, invading enemy territory, saying, “No more. It is over for you. The end for you has begun.”

Our Lord then, aside from many other things that could describe Him, was a courageous man, willing to do whatever it would take to oppose the enemy. And in that, of course, there are lessons for us, things for us to learn, that we as believers may understand that united to Christ. We also are called to arm ourselves and do battle.

Christianity is not a spectator sport. It is not an armchair religion. It is something which our Lord warned repeatedly, may cost you everything.

When I was in Calgary, I preached a series through Leviticus, and I was taking mostly a chapter on Lord’s Day. Around the time that I was hitting Leviticus 18, there were two or three political interns who started to attend the church. They were interning at a political organization in the city of Calgary. One of them, I remember, was studying law. Sharp, capable, professing believer, all intents and purposes, appeared to be so. And he was there the Lord’s Day that I was preaching and denouncing and exposing and revealing what Leviticus has to say about sexual immorality, and particularly homosexuality.

After the service, he said, “Are you not concerned that someone might hear that message?” What he meant was someone who might take issue with it, might raise an issue. And I said to him, I said, “At the very beginning of my Christian life, at the very beginning of my Christian life, I resolved that if it costs me everything, so be it. I am not going to change the message.” That’s what it is to be a Christian. That’s not a higher level of Christianity. That’s Christianity.

Every Christian is a witness. The idea behind the New Testament word witness is martyr. It’s where we get the idea of martyrdom. It’s a willingness to witness if required to death.

I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you. I titled the message, “Christ’s Manly Confrontation with Evil,” His Manly Confrontation with Evil, because that’s what He does. That’s His ministry. Our Savior, the Son of God, took on flesh, and in His humanity, He went head to head, toe to toe with the enemy. And in so doing, He encourages us.

Now, we can’t go toe-to-toe with the devil in the way He did, but we link arms with Christ, and in our own way, we confront the powers of darkness. Every Christian is called to this.

So, five things I want us to think about here.

First of all, note the inspiration—the inspiration. In verse 24 we read, “When the Pharisees heard,” they heard about this miracle that we read of, “they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.” The Pharisees were envious, so they dismiss it by saying it’s Beelzebub’s work.

But our Lord reasons, and you see the argumentation that he uses here. Verse 26, we’re going from verse 25: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I,” brings it right down, he’s going from the general, brings it right down to himself. “If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.”

Do you really believe I’m doing it by Satan? Logically it doesn’t flow. Therefore, if it be that I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, you ought to know what time it is. You ought to know that David’s son has come.

And so he describes his ministry. In verse 29, “How can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house.” And this is what Christ is about. He did not come to bargain with the darkness, but to bind, to plunder, to destroy. His ministry is one of conquest.

He is, as Joshua, facing the walled cities and overcoming. He engages in an aggressive operation requiring courage and commitment at every level. This is what your Lord, my Lord, our Savior did.

It was what was promised from Eden. The Messiah was declared to bruise the serpent’s head. This is it on display. It would reach its culmination in the cross. He spoke of that in John 12:31: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” It’s coming to a culmination. Things are about to change forever for Satan.

In Hebrews 2, verses 14 and 15, we’re told that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus proved the success of his death. “Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

He made a show of them openly. He offered himself, dying under the law, canceling the curse, rising from the grave in victory, and ascending to the throne of God to rule over every power. He triumphed undeniably.

And all their opposition, and all their accusation, and all the way they tried to spin it, it could not stand when that tomb was empty and the crucified Savior stepped out and showed Himself openly and ascended. He conquered.

This then is to inspire us. Our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus is to be the ultimate inspiration for the Christian. The Christian is not to stand and merely admire the Lord Jesus. We are to be inspired by His example. His victory, His courage ought to remove all fear of man. We are not to be brought under fear, living in our places of employment, frightened to death to own Christ or be known or identified as being Christians. He has eradicated that fear. An empty tomb says to you, you have no need nor right to fear.

And that’s what happened to the apostles. These men were frail. They were but men. And so when our Lord conducted His ministry, at times those failures were on display. Notably, of course, Peter in his great boasting. He thought that even if everyone else denied the Lord, he would not. But he is found there, not far away from the Lord, but in proximity to where the whole event of his suffering is unfolding. And he denies. “I know not the man.” And when it’s pressed again. And when someone has the courage to challenge and say, “No, no, definitely thou art one of them,” to deny with oaths, with cursings.

It is that man, it is that man who wants, he sees the victory of his Savior. Yes, on the cross He died, but He rose. He rose. He said he would rise. He did rise. What have I to fear? So on the day of Pentecost, he stood up before all his countrymen, those who’d visited from other lands, and called them explicitly to repentance and faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the one approved of God.

We are to be inspired by our Lord. Young person, you are to be inspired.

Note also the invitation. The invitation. Our Lord Jesus, in living this way, in spoiling the strong man’s house, is not only an inspiring thing, but—again, He doesn’t want us to simply sit on the sidelines as He conducts, even from heaven, this ongoing ministry over His and our enemies. He calls us into the warfare. He asks us to step up into the battle. In Matthew 16, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

Follow me. Follow me into the fray. Follow me into the battle. Follow me into the hardship. Follow me into the suffering. Follow me into the death.

Our Savior is not in the business of recruiting spectators. He recruits soldiers. When Paul addresses young Timothy, it is not language to simply be set aside for pastoral ministry, though it certainly is. It’s pertinent for those who feel themselves and are indeed called to such a position, but we all can learn from it. “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”

Get untangled. In other words, there are things endeavoring to tangle you. There are the affairs of life that aren’t just mere necessity, or let me take away the mere, not just necessity, there are things that encroach beyond necessity. There are things that try to gobble up your energy, take away your attention, divert your affection. Paul’s telling Timothy, don’t let it happen. In so doing, he echoes the will of the Lord.

We are to have the spirit. You, young men especially, listen, you are to have the spirit of Samuel, those young in age, to say, “Speak, Lord; thy servant heareth.” Oh, listen to that language. “Speak, Lord.” That’s what you are. Lord. And I am the servant. “Speak, Lord. Just speak the word. Just speak the command, give the order, issue the commission, my servant heareth.”

Should we not respond as young David in 1 Samuel 17, “Is there not a cause?” Is there not a cause? The tyrannical forces of darkness depicted in Goliath and the armies behind him. Endeavoring to take the very spirit out of the people of God. Leave them sitting there without any heart or desire or energy to go forward. Discouraged, deflated, and feeling there’s no hope.

Oh, there are parallels to our own day. For many Christians are in that place. They think there’s no hope. Nothing can be done. There’s nothing to answer what’s going on today, whether it be the rise of all the liberal ideology and all the influx of false religion or whatever it might be. What can stand? We’re going to just sit back and see these Goliaths run amok in front of our faces until someone stands up and says, “Is there not a cause?”

Inspired by the Lord, seeing him face the enemy, walking in, spoiling his goods and saying, “Lord, I’ll be with you in that battle.”

Our generation is in dire need of those Daniels who will purpose in their heart to not defile themselves with the king’s meat.

Is he not deserving of it, young person? Older person, is he not deserving of it? What more must he do to have all from you? But especially the young. To see your life. To stop dreaming and envisioning something for yourself. And just today, take the pen that’s going to write your story—hand it to Christ, “Lord. You write the story. You know how many chapters there should be in my life. And you know what ought to be the content of those chapters. I will be satisfied if my life is lived for your glory.”

That’s what Saul of Tarsus did, that ambitious, zealous, educated, powerful young man. Young man, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Oh, he invites you, young person, he invites you. He invites you, don’t say no. I think Brother so-and-so over there, I think he would be, “That’s the preacher’s preaching to him.” Don’t do that. Oh, don’t do that.

I see potential in every one of your faces. Because I’m not looking at you. I’m looking at what might be done through you.

What’s the instrument? When our Lord faced the strong man, when he confronted him and entered into his house with the object of spoiling his goods and binding him and spoiling his house, what was his instrument? At the beginning of his ministry, he is led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 40 days by the devil, right into the battle he was thrown. And there in that particular battle, engaged in holy warfare with an instrument, the Word of God.

And so you read of that in Matthew 4, you read of this battle where Satan comes endeavoring to seduce, to tempt, to destroy the whole plan and purpose of redemption right there, almost before it gets started. And his weapon amidst the weakness and frailty of his body and the diminishing strength of his frame, his weapon is the Word of God. That’s how he entered in, that’s how he did devastating work against Satan, with the word of God.

And this young person is what your instrument is as well, you need to know it. You cannot afford to neglect this word, you can’t.

If I said to you that I bought a weapon and I had no weapons training whatsoever. And I communicated to you that I had no plan, no thought to have any weapons training at all. “I’m just going to own a weapon and not know how to use it.” You would look at me, puzzled. And then I hope you’d have something to say to me. “You need your head looked at. Get rid of that weapon unless you’re prepared to learn how to use it.”

And you have, and I have, we have in our hand this instrument, this weapon, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And there are too many of us sitting with weapons in our possession that we do not know how to use. We are ill-equipped. We are ignorant. We are without the ability to harness its power.

It does not bleed from us. It does not emanate from our prayers. It does not naturally descend into our souls as we face challenges and difficulties and problems. It does not easily come to us what word to speak when we’re in front of someone who needs a word of encouragement. We’re empty. We’re powerless. We don’t know the instrument.

And John writes in 1 John 2, verse 14, he says, “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.” Oh, listen. Listen to it. Listen to it. Oh, you see, they’ve come in and they have known what it is to be shoulder to shoulder with Christ, spiritual young men, strong young men. The Word of God was abiding in them. It was in their presence. It was there. It could be felt when they were looking for answers. It was at the forefront of their minds. It was on the tip of their tongues. They knew the Word, and it encouraged the old apostle.

Your distractions are multiplied. They are. You have a choice to make. Succumb to the distractions continually or give yourself with intention and be deliberate about it to the Word of God. To read it. To memorize it. To understand it. To study it. To pray it. To sit under its preaching. Arm your mind. Have Scripture live in you. Attempt not to master the Bible, but that the Bible might master you.

In the fourth place, the integrity. Our Lord Jesus did everything He did with the utmost integrity. The Pharisees tried, oh how they tried, to denigrate his testimony. But all their efforts were struggling to prevent the swelling recognition that you see in the language here. Verse 23, when this one possessed with the devil, blind and dumb, we healed him insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. “And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?” And it drove them mad. How do we diminish his integrity? How do we remove the authority? We’ll try to stain his character.

When our Lord Jesus was a man of impeccable integrity at all times. And it could be seen, his zeal could be seen, his love for the Father could be seen when he cleanses the temple at the beginning of his ministry and at the end of his ministry out of passion and zeal for the Father’s house. When he would stand and denounce the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day in Matthew 23, when he was willing not to flatter but to speak the truth and yet weep over the very ones that broke his heart.

He lived his life summarized in Hebrews 7, “he was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” And that’s the call. Satan, you will never destroy Satan. You will not be a part of the warfare. You will do no damage to Satan and his work and kingdom unless you’re a person of integrity.

There must be in you genuine integrity. And this is a call to, oh, to such high commitment. It costs you nothing, really, in the scheme of things. It costs you very little to turn up here in the Lord’s day. But it will cost you to be a person of integrity at every turn, at all times, in work, among friends, among family. It will cost you to continually be a person of integrity, to have the same life before God as before men, to be the same in secret as in private, or public rather, to genuinely be with those who are pure in heart.

That was Joseph, that was Joseph. You know, he’s away from the Father, you know. He’s away from his brothers. There he is in Egypt. The standard is not the same in Egypt as it was in Jacob’s house. And had the young 17-year-old who, no doubt, is inflamed with his own passions and his own hormones and challenges and difficulties rising up within his frame. Away from the father’s house, he could have been a true prodigal.

And when the master’s wife is throwing herself into his young arms, he might have indulged. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Oh, you see, because though he was many miles away from home, he still was in the presence of the Heavenly Father. He knew his watching eye. He desired his covenant blessings, and he wanted in his life to know the presence of his God, which is why in the record of Joseph’s life, it repeatedly says the Lord was with him.

He was a young man of integrity. That, young men, that is a call that is going to cost you something. It’s going to require determination, sacrifice. It’s going to require that you be different than the spirit of the age, yea, perhaps even different than other young people, maybe even sitting in this building. I hope it be not the case. I hope godly young people in this church are not discouraged by other young people who are too carnal to recognize the value of a life of integrity. Dear God, let it not be.

But that the standards set, we all rise, we all go up, we all say, “Yes, brother, let me join you in that walk of integrity.” “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 3.

So you need to cut the cords that hold you from a life of integrity. Secret lust, false speech, laziness, cut it, be done with it.

Finally, inflexibility, the inflexibility. Lord Jesus in his ministry was inflexible. He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. The battle against the enemy was going to take him there, it was going to culminate there, and so he was not going to turn aside, not to the left, not to the right. He plowed a straight furrow right into enemy territory to lay down his life.

And so when he would address the crowds and tell them of his intention and of what lay ahead in John 10:18, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” “I’m not being dragged here. This is not me being forced into this. I am going there at the will of the Father, and I am laying down my life.”

It was an inflexible resolve, young person. That is what you see in your Lord. And this, this, need more of this. Oh, for that sanctified inflexibility of devotion to Jesus Christ. Oh, to be like those three Hebrew children as they’re known, willing to give it all up. “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” We will not serve thy gods.

What is happening in the church today? I was struck by the observation of someone. Let’s see if I can get this right. I will say right now, I’m paraphrasing, though I’ll endeavor to be as accurate as possible. Someone observing about Christianity today, which always amazes me, because I listen to a lot of Dr. Cairns’ sermons over the years, and some of these sermons going back to the early 90s, and he’s like railing on Christianity today back then. And I’m thinking, everybody’s talking about it as if it’s just gone off the deep end in the last few years. Not according to the men I’ve listened to. It’s been wrong for a long time.

They made the observation, it’s well-named Christianity today, because it’s governed by the spirit of the age. Whatever’s going on today, that’s what dictates, not the Word of God.

See, the bend. It’s what the churches are doing. Just constantly bending. Oh, and they are eloquent to justify it, and they have their platitudes to try and make sure you don’t detect what’s really going on. But oh, for more inflexibility, more of that spirit of the apostles, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

The exhortation of Paul to the Corinthians, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” Oh, you feel the energy there. A general calling you. “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

That language, putting backbone into the believer because the headwinds are real, the opposition is real, and the temptation to compromise is real.

Oh, this does not mean that we’re proud and have a sinful sort of stubbornness. It’s loyalty that is firmed up. It is not a stiff-necked spirit. It is a fixed heart, unyielding, unbending to the truth. This is the call.

I think these things could be seen in the young Charlie Kirk. The vitriol, the aggressive, wicked language spewed out in person as well as online—if you’re paying attention, you can see it even after his death, the demons cheer.

So how will the past week be marked by you? Young person especially, how will it be marked by you? We have a minister in our denomination, now retired. Had a great career ahead of him. And it was the tragic death of someone serving the Lord that turned his whole life around and he surrendered everything to God.

Maybe that will mark your own life. “That event was used by God to awaken me. And from then I determined that I would not live as easy a Christian life as possible, but as devoted as God’s grace would enable me to be.”

We all feel our weakness. Oh, young person, we all feel our weakness. The man who stands before you has never completely gone away or overcome or forgotten a sense of his own utter inability and weakness. But from the first time I heard that quote of C.T. Studd, I made it my own. “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

That’s the Christian life.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Has the Lord spoken to you? Encourage you where you are in the pew. Do business with God. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

Lord, I pray that thou wilt give sanctified intentions, bestow upon each of us a level-headed spiritual response to this Word, recognizing all the glory of the cross work of our Lord Jesus Christ and the call for us to follow Him. Lord, I pray for a deepening work. Start something, even in one young life. Yea, Lord, even start again in an older life. Bless Thy Word. Hear us. Grant this week grace to follow Thee, obey Thee, and that our love for Thee would emanate to a perishing world. Take away our fear and make us fruitful and abounding in every good work.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God, now and evermore. Amen.