Well,  it's not news that there are wildfires going on all around our country,
 and in Europe the reality is that in France and Spain there's a third of a million people that have been displaced because of these wildfires.
 And this is a story,
 I don't know whether you've ever imagined what it could be like if you were caught up in a wildfire.
 This is Norman McLean, he was a firefighter,
 and he writes a very graphic account of where he nearly lost his own life in a wildfire.
 He says this:
 "I was standing where the fire jumped the trail,
 and at first it was no bigger than an Indian campfire,
 looking more like something you could move up close to and warm your hands against than something that in a few minutes could leave you your remains lying in prayer with nothing on but a belt.
 The fire stopped only for a moment when it reached the trail we were hoping to use as a fire line,
 then it jumped and broke and started up the hillside.
 The fire was in front of me, as well as behind me,
 with nowhere to go but up.
 Above it was little spot fires started by a sky of burning branches,
 the spot fires turned me in my course by leaping into each other and forming an avalanche of flame that went both down and up the mountain." Okay,
 looking for his escape openings.
 "Marked by holes in smoke that at times burned upside down.
 Beside where I behind where I did not dare to look,
 the main fire was shroud and heat a ground noise like a freight train,
 came so close it sounded as if it was cracking bones and minds were the only bones around.
 Pretty graphic stuff, isn't it, really? And not something you'd really like to be able to be in.
 This morning we continue on in the end of Luke chapter 12,
 and we're coming to the last sort of nine verses, last nine verses, sorry,
 11 verses of Luke chapter 12.
 And I want to sort of divide it into two pieces,
 and that's what the NIV does,
 it's got the initial heading not piece, but division, and then interpreting times. So we're going to use those two divisions.
 The first heading I'm going to give is being revealed, being revealed.
 And you have to say these opening three verses are very punchy verses.
 "I have come to bring fire on the earth,
 and how I wish it were already kindled.
 But I have a baptism to undergo,
 and how distressed I am until it's completed.
 Do you think that I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you,
 but division, they're quite in your face, aren't they?
 They're almost don't sound like they're Jesus.
 Is this really the Jesus meek and mild,
 the most loving man on the face of planet Earth? Is this him?
 And so we get these,
 it's almost like you get three things thrown in your face, two of them,
 the first two have got exclamation marks,
 and the third one is, yeah,
 it's kind of very surprising. I suppose more shocking than it is surprising.
 That sort of verse 51.
 So yes, verse 49,
 "I have come to bring fire on the earth,
 and how I wish it was already kindled."
 And then he follows it with another one,
 "But I have a baptism to undergo,
 and how distressed I am until it's completed."
 And here we have to figure out, well,
 what does he mean by fire?
 Is he talking about the end times?
 We're told in the epistles that when the end comes,
 this world will be burned up, rather than flooded as it was the first time, it's going to be sort of burned up and renewed in some fashion.
 Is he talking about that? Well,
 to figure this out,
 you have to understand that these words are actually being used figuratively. Fire, baptism,
 they are being used figuratively to symbolize something else.
 So it's not a sort of a flaming fire that he's got in mind,
 and it's not quite a sort of a water baptism that he's got in mind.
 So how do we understand these two sort of symbols?
 Well,
 fire is something that is understood as divine judgment.
 This is God's way of judging.
 And there's a passage there when John the Baptist is talking about his role and Jesus' role that's going to come.
 This is back in Luke,
 back in chapter 3, verse 16, and he says,
 "I baptize you with water."
 So that's John,
 and that is the literal baptism. That is what you expect. You know, plunging into a river or a lake or something like that.
 But it goes on.
 But one more powerful that I will come,
 the thongs of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie,
 he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit,
 and with fire.
 So he's not exactly going to plunge you into a burning furnace.
 This is not, you know, Meshach,
 Shadrach,
 and Abednego going into a great big furnace in front of Nebuchadnezzar. It's not that.
 Clearly. So we know it's figurative,
 and so we need to just pull out the meaning. You know,
 when you think about fire, ask yourself, well,
 what does fire do? Well,
 the obvious thing it does is it destroys.
 It burns up something completely. It's gone. You know, you've got all your bonfire together, and it's all gone after a while.
 That's not the only thing that fire does in the Bible.
 Fire purifies as well.
 So we know that, you know,
 take gold or silver and put it in the crucible,
 put the flame under it. You know, it melts,
 you take off the drosses about,
 purifying all the impurities, get revealed,
 they come up to the surface,
 and then they get scraped off by the silver smith or the goldsmith.
 Let me take you to a passage. We've got your Bible next to you,
 grab one that's probably some on the side or something in the front.
 Turn through to 1 Corinthians.
 So we've got after Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians,
 chapter 3,
 and verse 10 through to 15.
 And this just tells us to understand this process of refining, this other aspect of fire.
 So 1 Corinthians chapter 3, this is verse 10, it says,
 "Each one of you should be careful how he builds.
 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ."
 Any man builds on this foundation.
 So he's talking to Christians here,
 Christians building,
 on their faith. He says,
 "If any man builds on this foundation,
 using gold, silver,
 costly stones, wood,
 hay, or straw,
 his work will be shown for what it is,
 because the day will bring it to light."
 Now that is the final day that this one's talking about.
 It will be revealed with fire,
 and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
 If what he has built survives,
 he will receive his reward. If it is burned up,
 he will suffer loss. So those are the two things there.
 Either his work will be refined and revealed with the fire, or it's just going to be removed, burned up, and totally lost.
 So the key phrase there is,
 it will be revealed with fire.
 Let me at this point just put in a sort of a sidebar, an analogy, here.
 And that's to do with trials and troubles and traumas, all the crises of life, that crash into us from time to time.
 A few years ago,
 I had a long telephone conversation with a friend of mine,
 a Christian friend of mine,
 who had a possible maybe even probable diagnosis of cancer. Skin cancer.
 He was very worried about it.
 And so I spent a long time just listening to him.
 He was pouring out his own heart about this,
 how he was feeling about the whole thing,
 his worries and concerns and cares. And after a while,
 I passed on to him a side of trials that we often, I think, overlook.
 That they have this sort of uncanny knack of revealing things about us.
 Our troubles and fears,
 they sort of provide a sort of a ready window for what's really going on deep down inside us.
 It's a bit like a sort of a storm.
 When you get these massive, massive storms,
 and then on the beaches,
 suddenly you discover that there was something underneath all the layers of sand, and you suddenly go, wow,
 there's a discovery.
 That's been revealed because of the storm.
 And this is what the storm of trials does for us.
 It shows us, I suppose, how stable we are.
 It shows us what's really inside us,
 whether we're panicking,
 totally,
 about a diagnosis which may or may not be true, or whether we are more stable.
 This is one commentator speaking of this fire. He says,
 "Fire is the spiritual power exercised by the Lord through his word and spirit."
 So the undoing of those who reject him, and to the refining of those who believe in him.
 Now,
 if I was to sort of ask you about the current climate,
 you would say it's pretty hot,
 and probably getting hotter doesn't seem to be cooling down anytime soon.
 And when you look at the climate of this passage,
 of this sort of section we're into, from chapter 9,
 where Jesus is now set off to Jerusalem,
 and he's going to take a number of months to do that,
 but he's going to his death,
 when you look at the climate from this point on,
 9 through to 18,
 it's becomes more and more hostile,
 more and more persecution is arriving at Jesus' feet, and at the feet of the disciples as well.
 Somebody has calculated that there are no less than 22 sections, 22 sections,
 in these sort of chapters,
 these 10 chapters that are all to do with persecution,
 with the temperature rising.
 Now, why do I say that? Well,
 I think it's helpful to understand that fire does reveal,
 persecution does reveal,
 and we're going to say a bit more about that in a moment.
 But let's go on from fire, the fire image,
 to the baptism image.
 What does he really talking about here?
 But I have a baptism to undergo.
 And I'm distressed until it is completed, until it's happened.
 What is he talking about, do you think?
 This baptism. So,
 I mean, let's just look at this baptism word.
 Baptism in the New Testament,
 grief is baptizo, quite easy to remember.
 And it means either to dip or to immerse,
 frequently it's kind of the latter. It's immersing,
 submerging,
 just like John the Baptist taking people and putting them under the water,
 and Jesus comes up out of the water,
 all that sort of thing. It's an immersion, isn't it?
 But it is used in other ways as well.
 This is the Greek philosopher Plato.
 He used it in another metaphorical sense of being overwhelmed with questions.
 Baptized with questions, he talked about.
 And it is this sense of being overwhelmed.
 This is Matthew 26:
38. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane.
 Maybe you remember how he speaks.
 He wants to get the disciples to take an hour to pray with him at this very hard moment of his life. He's going to go and do battle.
 And he says,
 "My soul is overwhelmed. It's baptized with sorrow to the point of death."
 You know,
 the reality was that Jesus knew well enough what he was going to.
 He knew all along what he was going to.
 And he set his face deliberately to go into the furnace, as it were,
 to bear that scorching heat of God's judgment on all of our sin.
 We often downplace him,
 think it's not too bad. We're all sinners.
 We all do a bit of bad stuff here and there.
 We can all be a bit naughty from time to time. But that doesn't go anywhere.
 That doesn't even barely scratch the surface of the rebellion that our sin represents to God.
 We sin against God,
 yes.
 We sin against an infinite God who has been from all eternity past to all eternity future.
 And we have the audacity, the daring, to ignore him.
 You know,
 if somebody important comes in and I just snub them, I don't even look their way.
 If the King of England comes in and I just go,
 just turn my face away. You know,
 that would be a massive snub, wouldn't it?
 I mean,
 it wouldn't be a crime of the century,
 but to do that against the Lord of lords,
 the God of gods, the King of kings,
 do we think that that's going to go unnoticed before him?
 How can we do that? He gives us every single breath,
 every day we open our eyes,
 it's because he ordains it. He ordains the number of days.
 You can't even add a single hour to your life.
 He's set these things.
 He's given it to you as a gift of grace.
 And he has sent his son. What more can God give than his own very son?
 Who is himself God, one in three, three in one.
 You know,
 so we need to understand that Jesus is taking our place,
 and he is teaching the scorching heat of God's righteous holy wrath and anger against all sin,
 all wickedness,
 all the horrible things. That we humans, in the image of Adam, do.
 And he's distressed until it is done, until he can look back on it in glory and say, "The work is finished."
 The door is opened.
 For human beings in the image of Adam to be now in the image of the second Adam,
 the last Adam,
 the image of Jesus Christ, the holy one, the righteous one,
 the thrice holy one,
 who gives his life for others,
 gives his righteousness for us.
 Isn't that unbelievable? What an exchange is that?
 Have you ever seen an exchange like that?
 One time I had a I had a friend when I was a kid.
 And I collected coins. He collected coins.
 We got together. I used to go to his house.
 He'd come to my house, go look at each other's collections,
 which weren't amazing, because we were just kids.
 And but I noticed a coin there.
 And I thought, wow, that's a really famous coin.
 I can see it in a white coin collecting book. It's a really, really rare coin,
 I thought. It was actually a fake,
 but anyway. There you go.
 And I was willing to give my whole coin collection if he'd swap it for me. I'd give the whole thing I had,
 all of it, just to get this coin,
 because I thought, that is so rare.
 You know, that was very foolish.
 I was a kid. Anyway, it never happened. But,
 you know, God has given us everything to save us.
 And to make us righteous and holy in God's sight.
 And so inevitably, yes,
 he is distressed facing that.
 But he's also saying in the first verse,
 "And how I wish it was already kindled."
 It will be kindled soon when he goes through the cross. It will be this fire will be solidly kindled.
 And you see,
 it is a it's a divider.
 He goes on.
 He asked this question to which we're supposed to know the answer. He says,
 "Do you think I came to bring peace on the earth?" The answer, we expected,
 well, seemingly not.
 And he says it. No, I tell you,
 but division.
 I have come to bring division. And you might think, well, that's really weird,
 because Jesus the Messiah,
 Isaiah 9:6, he's what?
 He's the prince of peace. How come?
 He's coming to bring division and not peace in another gospel.
 It says a sword. I come to bring a sword.
 What does a sword do? What does a sword devise, doesn't it? Like that. One after another.
 So he comes in this way,
 there's another verse there in Colossians 1:13, which again,
 emphasizes,
 seems to emphasize,
 the fact that Jesus is one who's going to bring peace. This is Colossians 1:19. It says,
 "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." That is in Christ.
 And through him,
 to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
 By making peace through his bloodshed on the cross. So you might think, that's weird.
 He's come to the cross, to make peace, to make peace with God available.
 But he's saying, no,
 I haven't come to bring peace.
 I've come in reality functionally, practically,
 what you are going to find is that there is going to be division going on.
 There's not going to be peace.
 And he takes it, doesn't he,
 to look at how it's going to be in families.
 Let me read it. 52.
 From now on, there'll be five in one family,
 divided against each other. Three against two,
 two against three. They'll be divided.
 Father against son, son against father, mother against daughter,
 daughter against mother,
 mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
 And we can all understand that. We've all got families,
 I guess. And, you know, in our families,
 sometimes there isn't peace, is there?
 There can be lots of, you know,
 rancor and stress because of different points of view. And all that sort of thing is different preferences.
 And so Jesus here is letting us know that there is division. There's going to be division.
 You're going to get it in the neck if you are a Christian.
 And this is one of the ways that we can be assured of our salvation.
 How do you know? How do you really know if you're saved?
 How do you know? Now, some people say, well,
 I think I've done enough.
 Some people would come down that line. I think, well,
 on the scales,
 I'm doing good things, regularly good things,
 and so they're building up on this side.
 And the bad things are going down on that side. And so this one's higher,
 you know. But it doesn't work like that.
 You can never be good enough for God.
 You can never balance the scales.
 You can never take off the evil from this side.
 Just you can't do it. You can't get rid of the evil.
 You can't get rid of the same as sin.
 Only Jesus' blood can wash away the stem of sin.
 So there's no point thinking about a scale.
 It doesn't matter how much you put on this side, because you can't get rid of the evil.
 You're still evil.
 Isn't that what God's Jesus said to people?
 Though you're evil,
 you try and do good things for your children. Though you're evil,
 that is the reality. We are all evil.
 Until we have the righteousness of Christ, that he gives to us,
 like that robe of many colors that Jacob gave to Joseph, you know, as a sign of his love of him.
 Well,
 God has given us a robe of righteousness. Jesus has given us that through the work on the cross.
 And if you want to be sure about where you stand in terms of faith, just go to the book of 1 John.
 It's towards the end of the Bible, five chapters.
 And that whole letter is all about giving you tests.
 If you really want to know whether you are truly saved, just look at these tests.
 Do you love your brother? If you don't love your brother,
 well, you can't truly love,
 say you love God, who you don't see.
 If you can see your brother you don't love him. Then,
 you know, that's another test. If you say, well,
 I don't have any sins. I have no sins. I'm okay.
 I'm fine. I have no sins. He says,
 you're kidding yourself. That's not reality. You can't say you're a Christian if you think you don't have any sins, and you don't.
 Another way you can know is that as a Christian,
 you're going to get friction.
 You're going to get it in the neck.
 You're going to get it in the neck from your family,
 perhaps.
 You're going to get it in the neck from other people around about you.
 Your work colleagues and all that.
 You're going to get it in the neck for being a Christian. If you stand up,
 put your head above the parapet,
 you are going to get it in the neck.
 And that is a good sign.
 What is a good sign of is the fact that you are not hiding.
 You're not hiding as a Christian.
 You are happy to say,
 and you do say, and unashamed to say,
 unafraid to say, yes, I'm a Christian,
 and I do believe these things.
 I do believe in the Bible. I do believe in God.
 I do believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
 and all these different things.
 I do believe in salvation and sin, and I'm happy to talk about sin,
 because I do believe in it.
 I'm not going to have you silence me. And the reality is,
 you will get silenced.
 Won't you? You will get canceled.
 You'll get friction.
 You'll get disliked.
 You'll get overlooked for promotions.
 And people will misuse you and exploit you.
 And very often,
 just because you are a Christian, they'll say, haha, this Christian,
 right? There's a good target.
 There's a legitimate target.
 And that is a sign for you that you are doing the right thing,
 that you are standing up, and you're accepting, yes,
 there's going to be persecution. Coming my way as a believer, because it happened to Jesus.
 The reality is that this is going to happen because we have nothing in common with unbelievers. Now,
 what do I mean by that? Well,
 let me use the passage from 2 Corinthians 6 to explain that.
 What I mean by that. Yes,
 of course we've got certain things in common with people. You know,
 all sorts of interests in common with unbelievers, if you're a tennis player,
 you can have a very good interest with somebody else who's a tennis player who's not a believer.
 But at a fundamental level, you have nothing in common with an unbeliever. So this is what it says, 2 Corinthians 6.
 15. How start there? It says,
 what harmony? Sorry, let me start just earlier. Verse 14.
 It says,
 do not be yoked together with unbelievers,
 for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?
 Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?
 What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? We are the temple of the living God.
 And as God has said,
 I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God,
 and they will be my people. Therefore,
 come out for them and be separate.
 So he's just underlining, at least five different ways, that we have nothing fundamentally in common with an unbeliever.
 I mean,
 you can try and plaster over that, but it's just the reality.
 When you dig down,
 when you really press the button with somebody about something,
 so I have a brother who's not a believer,
 and everything's fine. We get on fine together.
 But if I ever press the button,
 say, ah, yes, but what do you believe about this?
 If I press anything that has any significance,
 then I know that that will not be a happy occasion.
 At this point, but I pray.
 I pray on.
 So the first aspect is that we are being revealed.
 Christ's work on the cross reveals people.
 When you put the truth in front of them of Jesus,
 then that will reveal things. It'll reveal you.
 It'll reveal other people as well.
 The second thing is,
 what do we do from here?
 What is Jesus' advice?
 The fact that there is a fire there.
 There is the work of Christ on the cross,
 which divides like a knife.
 When you put it before somebody,
 it will divide people.
 It has and will keep dividing families.
 So what's Jesus' advice?
 Well, he simply says, well,
 things are being revealed,
 so you need to get reconciled.
 You need to take some action.
 Let me read verses 50 forward to 57.
 This is, he says,
 he said to the crowd, when you see a cloud rising in the west,
 immediately you say it's going to rain. And it does.
 And when the south wind blows,
 you say it's going to be hot. And it is.
 Hypocrites.
 You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky.
 How is it that you do not know how to interpret the present time?
 Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?
 What is true?
 What is real?
 And so there's not too hard to understand this.
 We all do the same sort of thing. You know,
 we have these sayings about shepherds in the sky. What is it?
 The sky in the morning. If it's red,
 it's shepherds warning.
 And if it's at night, it's shepherds delight.
 We have all these little sayings. We say,
 I don't know whether it's going to be a nice day or it's not going to be a nice day. For them,
 it was kind of like because this is Israel,
 so it was bordering on the west side by the Great Sea, the Mediterranean.
 And so they basically said, yeah,
 if there's clouds there, if there's wind,
 then you know that it's going to rain.
 And that's what happened with Elijah.
 Remember the story of Elijah? 1 Kings 18.
 Elijah there. He goes up, has a great big contest.
 Hasn't rained for three years, plus.
 And then Elijah prays that it will rain.
 And he sends his servant up, right on top of Mount Carmel,
 looking out over the Great Sea.
 Nothing comes back once, twice, three, four, five,
 six times. Still nothing. Not a single thing.
 Lovely sunny day, just like this.
 And then seventh time,
 sends him back.
 There's a cloud the size of a man's hand. Small cloud. He says,
 okay. He says to Ahab,
 the wicked king says, you better get on your,
 hitch up your chariot.
 You better get back to Jezreel, 18 miles away,
 because otherwise the rain's going to stop you. You know,
 that was the reality. He saw the cloud.
 He knew it's going to rain.
 And similarly, you know,
 the desert is south of Israel. The Egyptian desert,
 sort of North African desert. And so,
 yeah, if the wind's coming from that direction, you know, it's going to be hot. It might be downstream bringing all the hot air and all that.
 And so this is the case that now he's saying very clearly to them, look, you've got eyes.
 Clearly you can see these things.
 You've got observation powers. So at one level,
 he's encouraging them, saying, great, this is wonderful.
 You're good observant people. But, and he says, hypocrites.
 You hypocrites.
 You're observant people,
 but somehow you don't seem to observe what's going on right in front of your face.
 I'm doing all these miracles.
 Miracle after miracle after miracle.
 And you do nothing. You don't respond. You're hypocrites.
 So yeah,
 he's saying to them basically, you need to wake up,
 smell the coffee. You know,
 you're just slumbering away there. Now, is he saying to them, well,
 just step back for a moment.
 All things over a bit.
 Perhaps do a bit of reading up. Take a course.
 Something like that. You know,
 put it on your to-do list.
 Tie a knot in your ankle so that you don't forget to kind of give this some consideration. Well, no,
 it doesn't seem to be like that, because then he goes on, doesn't he?
 He says,
 as you are going with your adversary,
 verse 58 to the magistrate,
 try hard to be reconciled to him on the way.
 Or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer,
 and the officer throw you into prison.
 I tell you, you will not get out until you pay the last penny,
 which in reality, you're never going to pay if you're in jail.
 You can't really make any money there.
 So in reality,
 it's going to be a permanent situation for you there.
 So yes,
 we need to be reconciled.
 To Jesus. And so my question to you is,
 are you reconciled?
 Are you right with God this morning?
 Are you right with him?
 Do you know that you are in a right standing with him? For these people,
 I think they just looked at it and thought,
 well, this is,
 it's like going to the circus. It's spectacular.
 He does amazing things. He does tricks.
 They weren't going to change their lives.
 They weren't going to get serious.
 Or listen carefully to what their saying. They needed to take a good long,
 hard look at Jesus, his words,
 because it's John 7.
 Never did anyone speak like him. His miracles, who then is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?
 Jesus is no ordinary person.
 Just take your scriptures. Read through the gospels.
 Read the words of Jesus.
 You have to pick up a Bible that's got it all marked in red.
 The red versions,
 where all Jesus' words are in red.
 Pick it up and read it.
 Understand who this Jesus is that you cannot or should not ignore.
 Unless it be to your peril.
 Luke 13:
26 is how some of these people are going to respond when we come to the final judgment. They'll say this,
 but we ate and drank with you.
 And you taught in us on our streets. But he will reply,
 I don't know you. Where do you come from?
 Away from me all you evil-doers. There it is again,
 the evil that is in all of us through our first Adam, through the first, through our patriarch Adam.
 So Jesus' advice is,
 as it was to them in Luke 13,
 enter through,
 make every effort to enter through the narrow door.
 The narrow gate. It's not easy.
 Because you're going to look at the persecution, and you're going to go, hmm, that's not me. I like a nice life. Life is good.
 You have to make every effort to get reckon-siled.
 So you try and draw the strands together here.
 Jesus says,
 I have come to bring fire.
 How precise it is that this time with so many fires burning all around the world.
 I have come to bring fire.
 It's not wildfires he's come to bring in that sense.
 I don't get me wrong.
 It doesn't necessarily mean because we've got fires burning all around the place that the end is nigh. It might be. We don't know.
 It's going to come like a thief in the night.
 But he's not talking about that sort of fire here.
 It's the fire that discriminates one from another.
 It divides one person from another.
 It reveals where you are with God and who you really are. The fire does two things. It burns up and destroys, or it purifies and refines.
 It does one of those two things on which is it going to do for us today.
 So verse 57, he says,
 why don't you judge for yourself?
 Do some discriminating yourself.
 The urgency is very clear here in this passage.
 The fire will progressively get out of control.
 It'll overtake you if you don't get reconciled.
 And that's what was going on with the judge.
 You've got this window of opportunity.
 You're going with your adversary.
 Sort it out before you get to the court.
 When you get to the court, it'll be too late.
 It's just going to be one of those circumstances that's just going to overtake you.
 And you can't do anything at that point. So this morning,
 let's not be pleading our case with Jesus.
 I read your word. I heard.
 I went to church.
 I was a church goer.
 Don't try and plead your own case.
 Plead the merits of Jesus' blood that washes us clean. Once and for all.
 It was a once and for all sacrifice on the cross. No more crosses had to be taken. There.
 It was done.
 It was complete.
 The work was finished.
 And now the decision is with us to see,
 to look at the cross, and to understand.
 To look at that criminal on the cross,
 that turns to Jesus. In his last moment,
 he had a last, last tiny,
 tiny window through which he could say, Lord Jesus,
 remember me when you come into your kingdom.
 It was a statement of faith and a plea for salvation. And Jesus said,
 yes. Today,
 you'll be with me in paradise.
 I tell you that the truth.
 Amen. Amen. Yes.
 Let's pray, shall we?
 And I'm going to pray a simple prayer.
 And in the quietness of your own heart,
 as you search yourself, you can pray this prayer. If you want,
 our heavenly Father,
 you are a gracious Father.
 You want to be a Father to us,
 not merely a creator,
 but a Father by which we are your children.
 And so Lord,
 I know for myself that I am a sinner.
 I know that I am not good enough to make my way into heaven. That's why I admit,
 confess, my own sins,
 but equally, Lord,
 I confess too that I do believe in the work of the Lord Jesus.
 I believe that his work is perfect. He was the Son of God, and he's always the Son of God, ever the Son of God.
 That he is God.
 And that he has come to save us.
 And that nothing can separate us from his salvation once we apply faith, once we take that wonderful gift of righteousness.
 So, Father,
 I thank you for this.
 And I pray that others will also do the same.
 They will pray this prayer.
 That they will ask you to forgive them. That they will know, yes,
 I am now reconciled with God.
 I've made my peace with God,
 or rather he has made peace with me through the shed blood of Jesus,
 which is effective for all that will simply apply faith, put out their hands, and take that gift.
 Amen.