Online Text Sermon - Suppressing the Resurrection!, Matthew ch.28 vv.11-15
| Date | 07/11/1999 |
|---|---|
| Time | 18:30 |
| Preacher | Rev. Maurice Roberts, Inverness |
| Sermon Title | Suppressing the Resurrection! (End Missing) |
| Text | Matthew ch.28 vv.11-15 |
| Sermon ID | 41 |
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"Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers. Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day (Matthew 28, 11-15).
This chapter, clearly, being the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, speaks very much about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection of Christ is something which can be explained so that even a child can take in and understand what is meant. Jesus Christ is a person with two natures; He is the only person with two natures. He is both God and also man. What happened when He died was that His human nature became, as it were, divided into two: His body and soul were separated. This is what happens to us all in death. Death is exactly that - that the soul leaves the body; and it was true with respect to the Lord Jesus Christ. When He died He suffered this disruption, this breaking between His body and His soul. His soul went to glory at once, just as the souls of believers go to glory at once - as soon as they die. His body was placed in the tomb and there the body was in the grave until the third day; what we today call Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week. When that day dawned our Lord's body and soul came together again. Of course, this is unique to Christ, that being the God-man, His body did not see decomposition. There was no decay or putrefaction in His body as there will be with the rest of us when we die. Furthermore, His divine nature was holding His human soul and also His human body in union with His person during those days of His death.
On the resurrection, the soul and the body of our Lord came together again within the grave and He rose again by the power of God on that third day after His death and appeared to His disciples. That is what is meant by the resurrection. You may ask why this is important for us to understand. The answer is, for many reasons. First of all, because it proves that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. Another reason is that it proves that what our Lord did on the Cross was and is, fully and completely acceptable to God the Father. If our Lord had died and remained dead it would be a sign that the price that He paid for our sins was not enough, there was still more to be paid. But in that He rose from the dead, it is the proof and the reassurance we need that the price paid on the Cross by Christ for our sins, was and is sufficient. All our sins as believers are blotted out. What Christ has done is acceptable - He rose again, says the Bible, for our justification (Romans 4, 25).
There is yet another reason. If Christ rose from the dead and we have Him as Lord, we all have the same hope of resurrection to glory. The Bible says He is the first fruits from the dead; "the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15, 20). Meaning to say that as He rose in glory, so all of us who believe in Christ, at the end of the world, will also rise in glory. He is the first of many, many, many brethren who believe in Him. Of course, there is yet another reason why the resurrection is so important. It proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Christian faith is the true religion of God: it is the faith of God's elect. It is the one and only true religion. There have been many religious leaders in the course of history, men like the Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed - and many others. How do we know which religion to follow? The answer is Jesus Christ is the only one who has come back from the dead. These other religious leaders have lived and taught and died and remained dead. Christ is different from them all; He lived and died and came back from the dead. The others died and didn't come back; He died and did come back. He has told us these things and revealed Himself to His disciples, approved, with evidence. His resurrected body is the evidence that He is alive again from the dead and sits now at the right hand of God waiting for the end of the world to come.
That is the background to my text which is to be found in verses eleven to fifteen. In these verses we are given an insight into what happened in the Jewish Sanhedrin when the news occurred of Christ's resurrection. We are told that there were soldiers at the grave. Roman soldiers had been stationed outside the grave. Remember the story - there was a huge circular stone at the mouth of the cave. The Jews did not bury vertically down as we do, down into the soil; they buried into caves. Outside the stone were these soldiers, on guard, in case anyone should tamper with the grave or with the body. Not that anyone did or would or intended to, but you could never know. So the soldiers were there. What happened next? We are told at the beginning of this chapter that a great earthquake occurred - everything was shaken. The stone at the front of the grave was rolled from the door. What by? Well, we are told in verse two: "the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" (v. 2). What was he like? "His countenance (or face) was like lightning, and his raiment (or clothing) white as snow" (v.3). What happened to these soldiers who are called 'the keepers' in verse four? "For fear of him the keepers did shake, and become as dead men" (v. 4). You understand that these men were hardened, experienced, Roman soldiers. They had doubtlessly been on many campaigns; they knew all about war and its barbarities. They were hardened, worldly men. They were not primary school children, nor children from Sunday School. However, when they saw the angel with a face like lightening, they trembled and shook, they quaked and shuddered and became like dead men so terrified were they at this supernatural visitant from heaven who appeared in glory and splendour. "The angel of the Lord" (v. 2) appeared with all authority and power to open the grave, not of course, to let Jesus out - that was unnecessary, He could come out anyway; but to let the disciples in, so that they could see for themselves the evidence and the proof that He was risen from the dead.
What did the soldiers do? We are told in this chapter that they ran to the city of Jerusalem: "Some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done" (v. 11). What did they do? They immediately gathered together a Sanhedrin meeting - the Jewish Sanhedrin: the supreme religious Council of the Jews; what today we would call the General Assembly of the Church. It was evidently a special emergency meeting; it wasn't one of the regular stated meetings. In our own language, we would call it today a 'pro re nata' meeting, which means a meeting called because something unforeseen has happened, an emergency has taken place. An extraordinary thing had happened which was threatening their whole church and their whole religion. Accordingly, they called this meeting together. The high priests, chief priests and the elders are there. They take evidence from the soldiers. The soldiers are invited in, no doubt, and invited to tell their story. The story is this. As they were on guard with their swords and spears, there came this earthquake and strange apparition of an angel from heaven. The stone rolled away; the angel sat upon it, and to look upon, he was like lightning.
Then we are told in this passage what the agenda was. We can work out what the agenda was for this extraordinary meeting for the General Assembly of the Jewish Council. What was it all about? Obviously, the agenda was to take account of this narrative and this story from the soldiers. What are we to make of it? What are we to do in the light of it? We can imagine that just as it was in the days of Gamaliel, there were various speakers from the floor of this large Council. There would be a Moderator or Chairman with men filling the entire gathering. They would stand up and give their opinion. One would say, "We should do this!" and another would say, "We should do that!" It is altogether likely that some of the men who were there as Councillors would suggest that they must take suitable action because of this astonishing story. They would have to revise their opinion about Christ: "Maybe this Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah after all"; "It could be that we have made a terrible mistake and we must revise our judgement and our action." If there were such speakers we are not told about them but what we are told about is exactly the reverse. The General Assembly as a whole came to this decision, which we are told about: "And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you" (v. 12-14).
The policy adopted, as we are told here, is the policy of suppression of the truth. It was that whatever happens, we must find some way of stopping the truth from getting out to the nation; we must put a 'spin' on everything that's happened. How are we going to do this? We are going to give money to the soldiers; not simply money but "large money". That is to say they had to give a handsome bribe: a very large amount of money. Why? Because the lie they were telling was an extremely great one. It wasn't a 'white lie' as some people speak of. It wasn't a little childish fib. It was a massive fabrication! It was an invention of an enormous kind. They were obscuring the fact that the angel had come. They were obscuring the truth concerning Christ's resurrection. They were suppressing the facts and they were distorting the truth. Not only that, they took steps to see that if the story were to get out and Pontius Pilate were to hear that the soldiers were said to be sleeping at their posts; "We", they said, "will go to the governor and make sure he does not take any punishing action against the soldiers." Whatever they did to Pontius Pilate we do not know. My imagination suggests to me that they would have gone to Pilate and they would have stroked him like this. They would have said, "Sir, we never had a governor as good as you before. We have never had such wonderful government. You have done this nation of ours a massive service. You have got rid of this pretender and apostasy man. You have rid the nation of this scourge of Christianity - Jesus of Nazareth, an impostor. You have buried this lie and deception once and for all. Sir, if you hear something of the soldiers sleeping at their posts, don't listen to it. We have witnesses to confirm they were fully in the way of their duty and did everything possible to prevent the disciples coming to the grave. Furthermore, sir, we have ordained that there must be a massive banquet in Jerusalem so that you will be honoured. All the citizens of any importance will be there and it will be a public function." In that, or some such way, they would keep Pontius Pilate from causing a disturbance.
That is the picture. This is what they did. The General Assembly of that Jewish nation - their Sanhedrin or Synod - they ordained that the truth must never come out but that the lie must be spread and money sent in all directions in order to stop the truth from ever circulating amongst the people.
You and I are called upon to notice and to learn from this extraordinary decision. It is not enough that we should simply comment on it. My friends, I am going to suggest two or three basic, fundamental lessons, as I believe them to be, which we must learn from what they did; lessons, which come home to us all in the light of what is happening here in this Jewish General Assembly.
What lessons are these? The first one, obviously, is this: the terrible nature of man's heart; the extraordinary corruption in the heart of man. You must understand that these are people who were not pagans or heathens; they were not Gentiles without any knowledge of the truth. These religious men were extremely learned in the Bible. Of course, the New Testament had not yet been written but they knew their Old Testament backwards and forwards, through and through; they had taken it in with their mother's milk. They knew their Catechism. They knew very well the doctrines of the Old Testament religion. They had the Ten Commandments - one of which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Yet, in spite of all of that, that is precisely what they decided to do. "We must falsify the facts. We must not allow the truth to come out. We must suppress everything to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Any possibility of a resurrection must be concealed from the mass of the people." You understand their method of doing this was to tell a very crafty lie: 'the soldiers fell asleep and whilst the soldiers were sleeping the disciples came by night and stole away the body.'
In the passing, let me say to you, they had already had their fears about such a possibility because we are told at the end of the previous chapter that that's why the soldiers were placed at the grave (Matthew 27, 66). They had taken this precaution. They had gone to Pontius Pilate and said, "Sir, you remember how that deceiver said when He was yet alive - "After three days I will rise again." In order to prevent any such thing circulating among the people, and to prevent anyone coming to the grave and stealing the body and telling a lie about the possibility of resurrection, we want you, sir, to put soldiers outside the grave." So, they themselves had been instrumental in getting the soldiers there - to protect the body of Jesus Christ.
Now, here is this terrible fact of the resurrection. What are they to do? As I said, they have a concerted plot to suppress the truth, to spread lies and deception. Notice how they do it. They say the disciples have come by night and stolen away the body. I am going to suggest to you that that was impossible, absolutely impossible for three reasons. First of all, the disciples had no courage, nor had they the craftiness to do so. Peter was the most courageous of them all; he was always the one to speak first, yet, we know what he was like at this time. He was defeated. He had denied our Lord three times. He had no heart for stealing the body of Christ. Even supposing he was corrupt enough to do so, he had no courage for it. He was a man who was broken with sorrow and remorse for what he had said and done.
Another reason why this was impossible is because, my friend, Roman soldiers never did sleep on duty; they daren't. The penalty for a Roman soldier sleeping at his post when he was supposed to be on sentry duty was almost certain death.
A third reason is this. Even supposing some of that is credible, how do you account for the angel and the earthquake? You see, it was a case of the corruption of the human heart, the deceitfulness of man - even the most religious men alive at that time.
What have you and I to learn from this? We must learn that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We must learn, my friends, never to trust in man; never believe that man is above doing the worst of things. Never suppose that human nature in this life can be beyond the possibility of lies, deception, corruption and deceit of the most categorical kind - even suppressing the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. These were not, as I have said, worldly men; they were profoundly religious men. They were not converted men, to be sure, but, nonetheless, they were profoundly religious men. I think that is the first lesson we must learn - never to trust in man and never to forget that the best of men are men at best.
The second lesson is this. It shows how far fear and prejudice can carry men to do things that are not right. Why did these men in the Sanhedrin act as they did? They gathered in their wonderful hall - probably with beautiful pillars, colonnades, ceilings, porticos and windows; a beautiful building no doubt, like the House of Lords - learned, brilliant men, not fools but the aristocracy of the country: princes, chief priests, the most outstanding academics, intelligentsia and intellectuals in the land. Why then did they tell this terrible and dreadful lie? - because they were acting under the pressure of fear and prejudice. Let me explain why. They saw, all too clearly, that if what these soldiers were saying were true, it would mean that the consequences for themselves were dreadful. It would mean that the way they had treated Jesus Christ was absolutely wrong and blasphemous. Their rejection of His claims was a religious crime of the first order. If they had crucified somebody who had risen from the dead, then they had crucified the Son of God. The thought of that was so dreadful to their eyes and ears they are prepared to do anything to prevent the truth from coming out. They had engineered His death; they want to do everything, therefore, to prevent the progress of the truth. The truth, they said, must not get out. What these soldiers had witnessed and seen and heard with their eyes and ears, must never be known publicly. They had to find some way of stopping the people from hearing it.
I say again, it shows how far prejudice and fear may carry even religious persons in the interests of protecting themselves, their own cause and their own position. Indeed, they become, as you can see, far worse than pagans. Pontius Pilate, their governor, was a pagan man; he was a heathen Roman man. He had no interest in God, or in the Bible, or in religion at all. He was a secular man, a worldly-minded man. He cared for none of these things, except only his own pleasure, enjoyment and comfort. His philosophy was - let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Like the rest of the pagans, he had no care about his soul or the souls of others. His only interest was in this world and in the ways of the world. But, Pontius Pilate, evil, wicked man that he was; he was not as evil or as wicked as these religious men at Jerusalem. They excelled him in wickedness. It was not Pontius Pilate who dreamed up this hypothesis or explanation against the resurrection - it was these religious men. You see, my friends, how fear, prejudice and self-interest can act in the lives of men. They saw all too well that if the resurrection were true then their religion, as a whole, was worthless. All that they had done was blasphemous and criminal in the sight of God and of men. If the story from the soldiers' lips was true, they had crucified that Lord of glory. They said it must not be true because, if it were, then their religion was built upon the sand and all that they taught in their synagogues was wood, hay and stubble - worthless, empty and vain!
Let me come to the third lesson that I think this passage brings to our attention. This is the dark side of it all and it is the consequences of their lie. We have no reason to doubt for a moment that what they did, and the lie that they told, was extremely harmful. Their lie was extremely harmful. When religious people commit a sin, it is extremely harmful to the souls of men and women. When lies are told by religious people, then it creates havoc in the lives of men and women; it brings confusion into the world; it confounds heaven and earth and hell so that people do not know what truth is any more. They are confounded and astonished and amazed. My friends, we need not doubt that millions of poor Jewish people are in hell tonight because of this one lie of these evil men. They are in hell because they were taught to believe that Christ was an impostor, the truth of His resurrection was never made known to them but suppressed, stamped upon, concealed, covered over and lies were substituted for truth.
Of course, in its own way, the same thing is being done every Sabbath day of this nation of ours. There are ministers, so called, who go in to pulpits everywhere and they tell their people things that are not true. They don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, of course; they are modern men, twentieth-century men. They don't accept the resurrection; they say it is a myth. They don't accept the virgin birth; that was something our great grandfathers believed in but we are now educated. They don't believe that Christ died for the sins of men on the cross and ascended to glory. They don't believe in the resurrection, or in the day of Judgement, or heaven or hell. "It's all a legend," they say. That is what has gone wrong in Britain today. People are confused; they don't know that there is a heaven for the righteous and a hell for the wicked and that if they don't escape by believing in this Saviour who is risen from the dead, there is no hope. The same wickedness is being perpetrated today by men in pulpits in this country as was done by Jewish religious leaders in the Sanhedrin. People are ignorant of the truth - and not only ignorant but deceived after the truth, not only by the pagan world out there but by the religious world; standing in pulpits and claiming to speak for God and yet suppressing the facts and calling truth - lies, a myth, deception and an old fashioned conceit.
Let me just touch, as an application to this, on what is happening in Germany just now. It illustrates perfectly what I am talking about. I don't know whether you noticed this in the Christian press but on the 31st October 1999 - just about a week ago - there was a gathering in Germany of the Lutheran World Confederation on the one hand, and also representatives of the Roman Catholic Church on the other hand. They came together - Lutherans and Roman Catholics. What were they gathering for? They were coming together because they had found some way of reconciling Lutheran views of justification with Roman Catholic views of justification. It was being portrayed that Martin Luther and the Reformers merely misunderstood and were misunderstood by the Roman Catholic Church. It was just a question of people on this side and people on that side misunderstanding one another. They really both believed the same thing, of course, is the argument. Yet, when it came to the sixteenth-century Reformation they imagined that they were saying different things. They are finding some way of glossing over the truth. It can't be done! The Roman Catholic view of justification is anti-scriptural and unbiblical. It says that faith plus works is the way of justification. The Lutheran Church, in its best moments, had always said with Martin Luther that justification is by faith and faith alone - and nothing else. We are saved by faith alone in Christ. The Roman Catholic Church has never said that. You see the deception; you see the corruption; you see the way in which all this is glossed over and mixed up. The people are confused and the consequences, as I said, are that thousands and thousands and tens of thousands end up in a lost eternity because they don't see the clear teaching of the Word of God. The same is being done in many areas even closer to our own home than Germany and Rome.
Fourthly, and finally, let us also see this. Not only does this episode tell us of the terrible nature of the heart of man, it doesn't only show the way prejudice and fear influence men, it doesn't only show us the harm done by this kind of deception but, fourthly, another great lesson surely is this. Let us see how God confounds the foolishness of men. God confounded all of this. Sooner or later, God will always confound those who seek to stand up against His truth. You can't stop God or His purposes. You might as well try to stop the rain by putting your hands out to stop the drops from falling; it's impossible. You might as well put your hand up to stop the north wind blowing; you can't do it. Man cannot stop God. You might as well try to put your foot down and insist that tomorrow morning will never dawn; you can't do it. All the scientists in the world have never devised a way of stopping tomorrow morning; you can't stop the sun rising. You can't prevent the summer, or the autumn, or the winter coming - these are God's works. What these men were trying to do was to frustrate the purpose of the eternal God. Doesn't it remind you of Psalm 2? Psalm 2 is quoted in the Acts of the Apostles in connection with all of this, as you may know. They recognise that Psalm 2 was a commentary on what this Jewish Council had done. The early church recognised it and commented on it like this. In prayer they say, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee" (Psalm 2) - the resurrection of Christ in Psalm 2. The great advice that is given at the end of Psalm 2 is to "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little" (Psalm 2).
You see the folly of these Jewish Councillors in the Sanhedrin: you can't stop God! The resurrection of Christ was a fact and it is still a fact - whether men like it or not it is a fact of history. We see him here in this very chapter; there he is. Whom do these women meet who go so devoutly to the graveside but the Lord Himself. Jesus comes and says, "All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him" (v. 9). They stroke His feet and kiss Him, no doubt; and they show their love to Him. How glad they are to see Him back from the dead.
We are told at the end of this very chapter that Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee. "Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (v. 18-20). What a picture of love. What a contrast there is between the treatment of the Sanhedrin towards Christ, and the treatment of His disciples. These women, these disciples in Galilee; how they loved Him, how they rejoiced to see Him. How gladdened they were to see His blessed face again and to speak to Him, worship Him, adore Him and show their love to Him. That is the difference between the Christian and the world: the Christian is glad that Christ is risen from the dead. The very last thing a Christian wants to do is to suppress the resurrection of Christ - He is our life, our hope and our glory. Our life is bound up with Him and all that He has done in death, resurrection, ascension, intercession and in His coming again. Our whole hope is Jesus Christ. He is our life, He is our Lord, He is our Husband, He is our blessed Saviour; He is everything and all in all. What stupidity this Jewish Sanhedrin was guilty of.
Let's go on a few days to when Christ ascended to heaven and poured out the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Remember that mighty sermon preached by Peter. What a transformation in his life. What made the transformation? It was the resurrection; He saw the resurrected Christ. He was filled with the Spirit of Christ, and on the day of Pentecost he lifted up his voice to the three thousand or more in Jerusalem; the effect of his sermon was such, that three thousand were converted to Christ in one day, baptized into the name of Jesus Christ, Whom they crucified and Whom God had raised from the dead - then the beginning of the Christian Church, then the collapse of paganism. It wasn't many years before the whole Roman Empire was tottering under the power of the gospel. The gospel hit the Roman Empire just like a battering ram, smashing down the walls of paganism. These pagan buildings became Christian churches where praise was given to God and the Psalms were sung by these converted Roman people in their day. All over the Mediterranean world and even here in Britain, even as far as Caledonia which we now call Scotland, our forebears in these islands worshipped God because Christ was raised from the dead. As the early Christians were marched away to be thrown to their terrible deaths by burning or being thrown to wild beasts to be torn apart, they greeted one another - "Hail, brother, as we go to death! Remember, He is risen! He is risen!" "What do we care for Roman power? What do we care for death or anything? He is risen!" You see how stupid it was to suppress the truth concerning Christ's resurrection. Look at the joy and the comfort of His people. It was given to them because Christ was their life, Christ was their hope and Christ was the firstfruits of the resurrection. They knew that to die was to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. They knew too that He was coming again to judge the world.
O, my dear friends, every revival of true religion is the fruit of Christ's death and resurrection. Every revival of true religion in the history of the world is a reaffirmation of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. How dead our country was in the 1720's and 1730's. In London, children, it was said, imbibed gin with their mother's milk. The public houses had a notice in the window. These notices said - "You can be drunk for a penny and dead drunk for tuppence, and you can have free straw so you can lie down outside and sleep it off". The world had become beastly. Then, what did God do in the 1730's? He touched the lives of one or two young men - John Wesley and his brother Charles, the great George Whitfield and others in Scotland. These brave men went all over the country preaching Christ. The crowds came up to jeer and to throw stones, dead cats and all sorts of rotten fruit at them. These men stood there pelted by the crowds for ten or twenty years. Then something happened - converts came out of these crowds: tens, hundreds, thousands. When John Wesley came to the end of his long life, wherever he went people lined the streets and took off their hats - "Sir, you have been our messenger from heaven. We wee in our sins, dead and ignorant, and you preached to us Christ. God has made you an instrument of blessing to us."
That is what Scotland needs today - more than a new parliament, more than political parties; it needs a fresh baptism of the power of this resurrected Christ. It needs the gospel to touch the lives of the entire nation. No doubt, because Christ is raised from the dead, this will happen in its own time. God will do this all over again in His own good time. Maybe we stand on the threshold of the millennium when God will do great things, far beyond anything that we have seen or heard or can imagine.
What is your attitude to Christ? Are you hoping He is dead and gone for ever? Are you like the men of that Sanhedrin? What stupidity and madness it is if you are. I appeal to you tonight to change your mind. If you have been indifferent to Christ, if He means nothing to you, change your mind. If you have been living a lie, change your mind. Give your whole life to Him. Worship this resurrected and exalted Saviour. When you do that you will know the glory and the peace of heaven in your heart. This is the lesson which all of this brings us to - to be born again and begotten "unto to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1, 4). Will you tonight put your trust in this Saviour? As you leave this building, will you, in your heart of hearts, cry to God to make you a child of His?
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