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Well, good afternoon, Browns fans. It certainly is exciting to have the Browns here in Columbus having their scrimmage. So we'd like to take this opportunity to proclaim to you the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ our Lord. and I want to tell you about a great God and a great Savior a God who humbled himself to the point of becoming a man so that he could die on a cross for sinners like you and like me let me read about him to you from the book of Philippians in the New Testament.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only on his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So we're here today to proclaim to you Jesus Christ is Lord. And as I just read, every knee shall bow to Him one day.

The question is whether you will bow to Him in this life when you still have a chance. If you will repent of your mockery and your scoffing to the God who gave you life and breath and turn to Jesus Christ, and bow your knee to Him in this life and trust Jesus Christ as your Savior. As I just read, Jesus Christ cared enough about you that He came into the world, humbled Himself becoming a man, lived a sinless life, and then died on the cross, died a criminal's death that people like you and I deserve.

But Jesus Christ is full of mercy and grace, and He loves sinners so much that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Many of you probably don't think you're a sinner or don't think that you're worthy of God's damnation. If you would take a brief view at God's law, at God's Ten Commandments, which are written on your heart, you will see very quickly that you are in desperate need of a Savior. that there is nothing that you can do to make up for the gulf that's between you and God because of your sin.

The fifth commandment says to honor your mother and your father that you may live long in the land. How many times as a child did you dishonor your parents? How many times did you lie to them or disrespect them or disobey them? every single time you disobeyed your parents, you were also disobeying God's law. And you are rightfully condemned for that, as was I.

How much of your life today are you dishonoring your mother? Would she be proud of what you're doing? Even as an adult, you have a responsibility to honor your parents. This is such an overlooked commandment nowadays. How about stealing? You ever steal anything?

Have you ever taken anything that's not yours? If you take something that's not yours, it's called stealing, and in God's eyes, you're a thief. There's no amount of paying it back or giving it back or giving somebody else something that makes up for the fact that you've stolen from one of the people that God's created. God is not a thief and He won tolerate thieves in His kingdom He won tolerate thieves in heaven This should be very concerning Has anyone here ever told a lie?

Even just one lie? God's never lied. God is perfectly holy and righteous. And God says in the Revelation, But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. If you've lied one time, your portion is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. but God is full of mercy and God is full of kindness and he has sent his son Jesus Christ into the world to die for your sins for my sins so that you can repent of your sins and trust him as your savior we're here to tell you of his mercy and his grace and his great love for people God loved the world so much that he sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ that whoever should believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life and this is eternal life that you would know Jesus Christ the one who was sent by the Father and if you will turn to Jesus Christ today if you will repent of your sins turn from your sins and trust Jesus Christ trusting His death, burial, and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins.

He will send His Holy Spirit to indwell you. The third person in the Trinity. He will send that person to live within you and to guide you into all truth which is revealed in His Word, the Bible. He has preserved His Word for us. And if you live in the United States in 2015 you have so much access to Bibles in your language it's crazy. And you will be held accountable for your ignorance of it on the day of judgment if you will not turn to it.

If you will not repent and turn to Jesus Christ. Jesus said that unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. A man responded to Jesus and said how can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? This man wants to almost make a joke of what Jesus is saying. This man wants to rely on the flesh.

He wants to rely on natural man to be able to accomplish something. And Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. continuing in the same chapter where Jesus said that again he says for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life and he adds for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world that sounds real good doesn't it he didn't send him to condemn the world But listen, he says, in order that the world might be saved through him. Saved from what?

And he adds, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. God didn't send Jesus Christ to condemn the world, and he didn't send me here to condemn you. What he said is that you're condemned already in your sin. my goal in being here today and proclaiming God's righteous law to you and God's holy attributes to you is to let you know that you are standing under His anger under His condemnation and wrath but because of His great love He sent Jesus Christ to be the propitiation for our sins that means that Jesus Christ because He is God when He became a man also fully God and fully man, that he was capable of satisfying the full wrath of God on the cross.

And when he was on the cross, it says in the book of Isaiah in a prophecy, that it pleased him to crush him. It pleased God the Father to crush his son, because he hates sin that much. And what God commands of you is that you repent of your sin and that you trust in his son righteousness and not your own It is an insult to God for you to say that you are going to stand before Him and impress Him with the works of your hands that He gave you that you used for sin and evil and wickedness when He sent His Son to die.

Jesus Christ is of such infinite worth that He could pay for all the sins of everybody who ever lived. so that is why I can freely say that every one of you may turn to Christ today you may turn to Jesus Christ today be born again in the spirit and you may have eternal life with Jesus God commands that you obey His law and what He writes to New Testament believers He writes that His law is not burdensome to those who love Him if you love God you will not find His commandments burdensome you may have trouble but if you really love God you would not find it burdensome to want to do his law you will want to do his will we live in a day and age when thousands of human beings are being murdered and dismembered and discarded daily in our country and many of you turn a blind eye to it because you just don't want to see it, or you don't want to believe it's really happening, or you don't want to face the fact that you are a murderer because you've been a part of an abortion. And we are here to proclaim to you that God hates murderers. God hates those who shed innocent blood.

And He will have vengeance on the wicked. And if you are here today, and you have been a part of a murder of another human being through abortion or even just through hatred in your heart for somebody that God made, God is prepared to forgive you of all your sins you ever committed and to lay the punishment on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who loved you so much that He came and He died and He makes an offer of forgiveness of sins.

Jesus Christ, The most righteous who ever lived. The only man who was ever righteous. Anybody else who's ever been righteous in the history of the world was righteous because they've had the righteousness of Christ through a fancy word called imputation. And if you will die to yourself today and you will trust Jesus Christ as your Savior, you can have His righteousness and He will take on your sin. and everything that you've ever done wrong that has offended God, that has made Him angry and brought condemnation upon your own head, that has put you on the path to the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, every one of those things can be placed upon Jesus Christ on that cross and He will forgive you because He's loving and He's merciful and He's kind and He's gracious and He deserves your worship.

And everybody here has life because He's given them life. The whole world is held together by Jesus Christ. The mere fact that any part of your body is still working is because it's under His complete control. And yet you use the breath He gives you to blaspheme His name, to scoff at Him and to mock Him and His word, and even mock the preacher He sent to preach the word to you.

I'm here to tell you that we have a great God, a great and merciful God, a gracious God, A God who is so full of love that instead of leaving you to your own devices to continuously fail to achieve righteousness, He sent someone to do the righteous things in your place. And some of you are hearing what I'm saying, and you're walking by and you're mocking in your head or even out loud, but some of you are just afraid to look. You don't want the people you're with to know that the words are getting to you.

Whatever it is, pick up a Bible. Don't take my word for it. Pick up a Bible yourself and open to the book of Matthew or the book of John and read what Jesus said when he was here. Because he has ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father because his work is finished. There's no earthly religious system that can help you, that can save you.

There's only Jesus Christ. And if you will turn to Jesus Christ today, you can have life. and you can have life abundantly, he says. In the book of Galatians, Paul writes a statement that is in effect a promise. The promise is that if you are a Christian and the Holy Spirit indwells you as a result of being born again as a result of repenting of your sins and trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior the promise is that you will have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, meekness, and self-control in your life. your periodic interest in people who are not your spouse, the lust you have in your heart when you're watching pornography or even dirty TV shows or movies, God will take away those bad desires and He will replace them with the desire to love Him and to love your own spouse.

We have natural desires for things in this world that God gave us. we have a desire for companionship and some people have abused that to the point of doing things that are outside of the context of their marriage some people have taken God's good gifts of work where we can make money and supply our family and they've turned it into greed and covetousness so that they can get more things for themselves and some people are even willing to take things from others in order to do that, they're willing to steal I promise if there was an article in the paper tomorrow or a news program about some major corporate American guy who stole money from a bunch of people that you'd be outraged you would demand justice and the reason why you demand justice is because you know the difference between right and wrong because you know God's law is written on your heart you know what it is to steal and you don't want people stealing from you. But once in a while, you steal from other people. And you take something that you think is so small it shouldn't matter.

Yeah, the stealer, we don't like them. Go Browns, right? But go Jesus. So we've got a Steelers fan here. That's just whack, man. People think I'm looking for a fight.

You're going to get it first. God bless you, man. Look, we want you to know that the Lord is good. In Psalm 34 it says, Taste and see that the Lord, Yahweh, is good. He's talking about Jesus Christ, the righteous God who came into the world and was the only good man who ever lived. The Bible also says that no one is good.

No one is righteous. We all fall short of God's plan. We all fall short of meeting His laws. And because of that, you're condemned already, it says. We all stand in condemnation because of our sinfulness and our love for our own flesh, our desire to please ourselves and to not please God, our covetousness when we take from others and we steal, for when we lust after somebody.

That's considered adultery according to Jesus. You're guilty of adultery simply for watching pornography, simply for thinking about a person that's not your spouse sexually. You're guilty in God's eyes. And the whole excuse, everybody does it, doesn't work in the courtroom. Mocking God, mocking his preacher. That's a cowardly act, and the cowardly and the detestable and the faithless will have their portion in the lake of fire. so repent of your sins and trust the non-coward who showed up and died so that you could be saved Spielman why don't you be a real man and trust God with your life that's what real men do but it takes God's power to even turn you into a real man you need to beg God for mercy in your life if you're here today I don't care who you are God is willing to forgive you of your sins He has sent Jesus Christ who already paid the penalty for sinners and what He commands of you is that you believe the gospel the first words recorded by Jesus are repent and believe the gospel in His public ministry what Jesus is saying is to trust Him when you stand before God and you stand before Him completely naked and alone, and all of your sin is before Him.

He will either judge you for those sins committed, or He will judge you because of what Jesus did on your behalf. Trust Jesus Christ today. You must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven.