Message from Grace Bible Church of Phoenix.
good morning welcome to grace bible church or possibly welcome to the live stream from grace bible church this is our second week doing this last week it was kind of cool to see all the different people commenting and logging
in or tuning in or whatever you call it i’m not sure and we had a lot of obviously our own people tuning in it was nice and very cool to see people throughout the country a lot of our churches from california which is that
direction that we go to camp with in the summertime Anaheim good to glad to see some of you guys joining us Salinas we had people from Kentucky Tennessee Michigan Washington all kinds of Monica peeling wow it’s good to see you on
there and this week I’m sure we’re gonna have a few more I think we may even have some folks from South Dakota you know who you are and you guys are the best and glad you guys are there you know I really honestly believe that one
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of the ways in which we are created in the image of God is that we have the ability to do music we can sing we can do harmony we can compose we have the ability to create instruments and I really do believe that when we sing
about God to God that not only is that honoring to him but he likes it I think it’s enjoyable to him he is musical and I think he likes our music so whether you are in the building which there aren’t really
isn’t anybody here or whether we’re spread across the country looking at a computer screen or a TV screen or your phone feel free to sing along listen whatever you want to do remember we are singing to God about God I know that
says Steve and Michelle McDonald said they were singing along last week to the point they were singing so loud that their neighbors were complaining of course we’ve heard Steve McDonald’s sing so we know why the neighbors were
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playing but Steve Michelle you keep singing we don’t care about the neighbors Mike Thompson whenever you are ready Oh Lord I said
I see this then sings my song son my stairs and sings my soul my right now
seems my soul now when Christ shall this out Josh I shall bah
my soul seems my sword right now traditionally this is a time where we will tell you to turn to your neighbors and greet one another so at this time
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why don’t you in the comment section write a comment say hello to someone you think maybe you usually sit next to because we all know you have assigned seating and you do that so if you could comment to someone Rachel say hi to your
mom there you go alright and we’ll continue to sing our next song why the bizarre
he will never with being a stronger and up our eyes you are my tea is no and strong
thus far our God is fighting for is fine son is fine for your
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indoors for forever I enjoy our dad is fine our God for
is by we’re on weird I heard broken within all the web
have you seen Jesus his car have you come to do you thirst for a dream Jesus is called come to the altar the father’s arms are
forgiveness was what we the precious blood of Jesus behind stays that’s the reasons way
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Jesus is Cyril for Jesus his car you’re sure for was
precious Jesus what a saint you’re he’s in here Singh
Christ is is Lord Christ is Christ is risen your turn there’s eyes
open wide for was bought me the blood of Jesus Christ you cross as you wait for the crowd tell the the transition
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you unravel me with a melody you surround me a song of the ring so my Shyne no longer
no longer amen Lord we love you we just sing your praise this morning thank you for being with us in this time of worship as we truly testified to how great you are that we will come together no matter
what is in front of us that we set priority to be with you with each other we ask that you continue to be with us now as we listen to the words that you’ve laid on pastor Josh’s heart that he will be able to communicate them to
us in a way that we receive them and we we receive them with open ears and hearts and we pray that you’ll be with us now also as we give back a portion you four are offering you pray these things in your son’s name Amen
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we’re gonna have a time of announcements before we get into the message we have something special especially for you children it’s it’s been a long time since we’ve done something like this but we have a special guest and so right now
I want to introduce you to someone special you know him you love him boy okay well that was the inauspicious start young people but kids I have something special for it today I want to
talk to you about three things three big words the first word is quarantine how many of you know that word quarantine you ever heard that word I didn’t think so well what that means is that you are taken away from someone else so you do
not get sick or so they do not get sick that’s why you’re watching this from home another big problem is another big word coronavirus how many you know what that means that means somebody’s getting sick you know we have a big problem not
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only in our church in our country and our world but it’s in the whole world and that is that people are getting sick and that’s why you’re watching from home this morning that’s why you’re watching from home so you’re protecting
yourselves but you’re protecting other people too now how can you help with this big problem that we have where people all over the world are getting sick well you’re helping right now by staying home when you stay home it’s
important that you do it without complaining or grumbling you know the Bible says in Philippians 2:14 that we should do everything without grumbling or complaining and then the next thing you can do is you can obey the Bible
says in Ephesians 1:6 obey your parents for this is right so obey your parents do what they say even though you know you may not be able to go out and play with your friends or do the things you normally do but you have to stay home
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don’t complain but obey your parents and finally the most important thing you can do kids and everybody can do this is you can pray the Bible tells us that we need to pray for our leaders we need to pray for them we need to pray for President
Trump we need to pray for all the Senators and the congressmen and congresswomen we need to pray for them that they would lead this country in the right way and we need to pray for all those who might be getting sick that
they would get well and that this thing would be over soon so let’s bow right now and let’s pray and ask the Lord for these things okay let’s pray father we just thank you for being able to just come to you in prayer
thank you Lord that though we have these big words and big problems you’re a big God you’re bigger than any of this Lord and we know that you can solve all these problems and we just trust you to protect us and to keep us safe and we
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just pray these things in your name amen all right thank you Dan I don’t know if you saw this online but Dan had a big bag of they’re kind of you lost your marbles didn’t you I keep my age and you lost your Marberry gloves gloves okay
now well comparable you to a glove but they’re all over the floor so they’re just like a it’s like a war zone up here but anyway hopefully I don’t I don’t fall down all right well this is this is week number two again I don’t want us to
fall down on all these things and I have to I have a confession last week I was I was a little nervous before the service and I think most of the praise band and Adam Skelly work in the sound board we were all nervous and so this is kind of
a unique experience and I knew that we were going to learn new things as we went along but the first thing that it dawned on me or which was kind of strange from last week is when the praise band word they were done they all
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went and they sat back right by the camera right by where were you where I’m looking right now and the first thing that all of them did is they did this they sat there and they were just looking at their phones like a bunch of
teenagers and I thought this is this is obviously a little bizarre situation and it dawned on me what they were doing they’re reading your comments they’re watching what you’re doing and and we’re about 25 seconds ahead of you there’s
like a 25 second delay so right now I am speaking to you from the future and everything that you hear right now is in the past I’m already onto something new okay but I’m thinking this is this is such a unique situation that
we’re in and this is a different setup when all this is done when everyone is back here at the church we will continue to livestream from from Facebook and then we’ll post it on YouTube but for the time being because
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this is so different I want to try something different I hope this doesn’t get out of control but what I want to do is I want to utilize the comments section on Facebook and so a couple of different times during the message I’m
gonna ask you to respond okay and again here’s kind of a warning let’s let everybody be nice alright don’t let this get too far out of control if it does I’m gonna pull a dad move I don’t don’t make me take down
the comment section okay so hopefully this will all be appropriate and and you’ll you’ll do this the right way but the first thing I want to do is I want to ask you a question I want you to write this in the comment section I
asked this question of my small group about about a month ago one of the businesses that is in major danger right now of closing its doors right now our local restaurants and so I’m sure most of you have a favorite restaurant that
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you hope is going to survive this crisis and so in the comments section why don’t you write the name and maybe like part of the address or maybe you can I don’t know if you can put a link in the comments maybe not but why don’t you do
that and tell us your favorite restaurant and I’m doing that for a couple reasons now you might not be able to read all of those comments during the message and you can always go back you can always
scroll back but you might find another restaurant that you’ve never been to and you might go and try them and so here’s a couple really neat things that can happen if you find someone else’s favorite restaurant that they put in the
comments section of the sermon you can go to that restaurant this week and you can say guess what I heard about you guys your restaurant because someone mentioned you during the sermon that might church livestream and so there’s a
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couple of things you could do number one is you’re gonna get some good food hopefully depends on I guess whoever posted this them as your favorite restaurant you’re also going to be helping out this restaurant and then
also you might be indirectly sharing the gospel with someone because someone might check us out because of that so if you’re not in Arizona and you’re watching please go ahead do that too there might be some more
people close to where you live but as you’re typing I’m gonna tell you the name of my favorite restaurant in the last couple weeks we’ve already been there twice and we went there for Kristen’s birthday meal this last
Wednesday but one of my favorite restaurants is a little Vietnamese restaurant called banh my Bistro it is phenomenal it’s on Belle and I 17 pretty close to I 17 it’s in this it’s in the same parking lot as Lamar’s Donuts so
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for those of you familiar with that but it is awesome and I want them to survive and so go ahead try them out in fact I follow them on Instagram and they’ve already closed down Sunday Monday Tuesday they’re only open Wednesday
through Saturday so this is this is kind of the reality that we’re in right now before I get to the to the message I do have a couple announcements that I want to go through the first is make sure you are utilizing our Facebook page you’re
obviously on there right now but during this time you know we do have our website it has some announcements on there but Facebook is a way that we are going to be in there able to interact with each other you can post pictures of
yourselves Angie I think made sure everyone can see the area where they can post you can post pictures of yourselves and so this is one strange way that we can stay in contact with each other the other announcement is we have a new way
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to give at least for right now there’s only two options the first is automated giving you can sign up for this online at our church website in fact a lot of you did this 13 people signed up for automated giving just this
last week so thank you for those of you who do that you can also mail your offering to the church peal box and again thank you so much for everyone who’s supporting the church financially at this time third thing I want you to
know is we are going to be doing I am going to be doing a midweek devotional series I’m planning to do it Wednesdays at 12:15 p.m. every day at least for probably the next several weeks or however long this lasts and what I’m
doing is I’m going to be talking about Noah’s Ark they are the extreme social distance or the originals and what I want to do is I want to look at this and see how there are some similarities between what they went through
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and what we are going through there is danger out in the world for them they isolated themselves but they knew that it was eventually going to be done and so I’m going to be doing a series I’m also going to make it so it can be
interaction some interaction can be involved with that and then also it’s really great for discussion so you can actually have some discussions over the lesson maybe a dinner time during the night and last announcement is this is
kind of an important one next Sunday is Palm Sunday here at church and we will be having communion okay now I’ll be here and you’re gonna be there which means that you need to be supplying your own bread and juice for
communion now understand that when we participate in communion the bread and the juice are merely symbolic so technically you can use whatever bread in whatever juice you would like to do however here’s a couple options or
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suggestions for you you might make this more meaningful maybe you want to go to your grocery store and go to the ethnic section and you can buy some matzah bread some unleavened bread or maybe you’ll go online you go google communion
bread unleavened bread and maybe you can download a recipe and you can make your own bread and this might actually be pretty meaningful and significant for you if you choose to do this kind of like the Israelites had to make their
own unleavened bread before God led them out of Egypt and so that’s something for you to know about we will be having communion next Sunday and so I let you know so you can be prepared alright we’re gonna get into the message but I
want to first just open in prayer let’s pray dear Lord um thank you for the means to do this the technology that’s available even though we’re not able to all be here at the same time we can connect even though it’s online and so
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father thank you for this ministry that we have thank you for our church my prayer is not only for our church but all churches everywhere people are wanting to be together but we can’t and so father through this method and
through this means I pray that your name will be praised and that the message of salvation will spread even further and faster than ever before so Lord just be with me right now as I preach the message for today amen
well we are going through the book of Philippians I’m sure most of you and our church family you know that but I this week inspiration hit me okay so I am going to push pause on our series in Philippians until after Easter and today
the message is topical and it’s about something that you and I do all the time whether we realize it or not and that is risk assessment or risk management all right so out there in the world right now is a
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disease that we’re all very aware of and everyone is calculating the risk and reward of changing our behavior and the likelihood of being infected with koba 19 and not only being affected with it but the likelihood of dying from Cova 19
and I don’t say this lightly because this is a serious situation but purely from a risk and mathematical standpoint we have to ask the question how risky is this I mean truly how risky is this and so I put together some numbers I’m going
to put these up on a slide and these numbers are accurate as of yesterday Saturday March 28th 2020 I know these numbers change on a daily basis but I had to make these slides so I made them last night I didn’t even check the
numbers for today but I know it’s higher but right now in Arizona because we’re in Arizona there’s about 7.2 million people who live in Arizona if you google it it says seven point one seven two as 2019 but you know there’s there’s more
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people now and right as of yesterday confirmed cases there’s seven hundred and seventy three confirmed cases obviously there’s more we don’t know how many more is it two times the amount is it 10 times the amount we don’t know but
unfortunately here in Arizona alone 15 people have died because of kovat 19 and so we look at these numbers and why want to look at these and we have to ask how risky is this now I’m not minimizing how risky this is I am 100% in favor of us
doing what we are doing so I don’t want you to misinterpret what I’m about to go through okay don’t say Oh pastor Josh doesn’t take this seriously that’s not at all the case but for the sake of my topic in the sermon today I want us to
take a view the view of it from a statistical and a mathematical standpoint only okay so what I want to do is I want to look at some percentages because when you’re looking at risk and reward you have to deal with numbers and
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percentages and so here are the numbers and hopefully I did this right I’m pretty sure I did I’m a pastor not a mathematician but I put these up here not to insult your intelligence I think you understand this but sometimes it’s
nice to be able to look at these numbers and these figures so here in Arizona we have 7.2 million if 10% of the population gets Cova 19 we’re looking at seven hundred and twenty thousand if one percent of the population
it’s 72,000 okay on and on all the way down to the last line you’ll notice 720 is point zero one percent of the population that’s one out of every 10,000 people and that’s right about where we are at right now in Arizona
ten thousand that’s still a large number okay so we’re looking at this and the risk is low I think it’s fair to say that the risk is low all right so here are the percentages in Arizona of seven hundred and seventy three
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people that are infected that means that point zero one zero seven percent of the population has Cova 19 and with the 15 guess only point zero zero zero two zero eight percent of the population has died from this now I don’t want to UM to go
too far off track but here in the United States these are the numbers as of yesterday 331 million a hundred and five thousand are infected which is 0.03 percent of the population seventeen hundred deaths
which is point zero zero zero five percent of the population so in Arizona the risk is lower and thank the Lord for us who live in Arizona it’s just warmer here it’s gonna be in the mid 80s next week so I think we’re a
little bit safer here but if we compare Cova 19 to other other diseases those are much more deadly much more dangerous like an example the Black Plague back in the 15 1600s the death rate of the Black Plague was
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between 30 and 60 percent and so if you and your neighbor got the plague one of you is going to die so that was extremely contagious and extremely scary so when we look at these numbers it is fortunately it’s very unlikely
that you will get Cova 19 and it’s very very very unlikely that you are going to die from it but people are getting this and people are dying from it but from a statistical standpoint it is unlikely and so we have to ask the question so
because it’s unlikely should we then just take the risk and live our lives normally should we just do that should we forget the social isolation from a risk reward standpoint what you have to do is look at the risk and you also have
to look at it from the reward standpoint our answer depends on the reward this needs to be looked at from this this at this point of view in this situation the reward of not isolating ourselves does not outweigh the risk by practicing
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social distancing the loss that many of us are going to experience is probably going to be financial jobs are going to be lost wages are going to be cut but you can make up for lost wages over time you can recover financially from what
we’re doing on the opposite end of the spectrum is this what we lose if we do not lower the risk is people we lose people people die and that’s what we’re trying to prevent and so this obviously is not like a financial loss death is
final you cannot recover from that obviously so I think we all agree that people are more important than money so there is virtually I guess in this scenario there’s really no reward for acting like there’s not a problem and
going about life like normal so that’s what we’re doing we’re changing we’re lowering the risk and we are preserving lives that’s why we’re doing what doing okay and that’s kind of a serious subject now I want to look at this kind
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of from a light-hearted standpoint look at another couple situations on some level all of us are always doing risk versus reward in our life but how about a couple different scenarios okay common everyday scenarios that you and I face
how about this scenario you open up your refrigerator you pull out an item of food and the expiration date has passed okay risk reward do you go ahead and eat the item or do you throw it away all right and I want to get specific with
this next question and I want you to comment okay I want you to comment one of two words you can comment cut or comment Chuck okay you’re gonna cut or you’re gonna chuck and so here’s here’s the scenario you open up the
refrigerator some of you might know where I’m going with this you pull out a block of cheese and it has all that green mold all over the cheese what do you do okay I want you to write in the comment section whether you cut the
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cheese sorry I had to do that you knew that was coming or do you Chuck the cheese all right what do you do now this is good I’m definitely gonna look at the comments I want to know what you do because this is
gonna be kind of like a sick and twisted window into your soul I ain’t gonna who’s a chucker and who’s a who’s a cutter alright now how about a little more serious situation all of us are dealing with this how about the risk and
reward when it comes to our money and investing the stock markets down roughly 25 to 30 percent is it a good time to invest your money risk reward some of you might say absolutely now is an incredible time to invest your money
how about is it a good time to withdraw your money and try to save it and protect it from falling any further I actually had a person call me this last week last Sunday about an investment opportunity and it’s pretty risky and I
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get if I invest I could lose everything but if it hits if it does well I could gain a ton of money so I’m trying to decide what I’m gonna do with that or how about one last example then we’ll get into the to scripture how about big
purchases many people have been planning on making purchases in their life large purchases risk/reward is now a good time to make those purchases or is now a better time to hold on to your finances because we
just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future if we were to know how long this was going to last and what the future of our employment would be I think I’d probably bring a lot more clarity to the numbers and the
percentages that we look at when we’re dealing with risk and reward but that’s what makes risk assessment so hard because we never know all the information we don’t know all of the variables but that’s what we do every
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day we do risk assessment so now I want to switch gears and talk about something that is very important is there a risk reward situation that is common to everyone on the planet and that is equal for everyone because typically when we
look at risk reward the risks are not equal and common to everyone but is there a situation where the numbers are fixed and they are set and they will not and they cannot change where the risk for everyone is 100% and the reward is
100% well you know what there is there is a risk that exists that’s out there and it’s good for us to know at a time when people are looking at risk in this world it’s good for us to know what the greatest risk and reward there is in the
world now listen some things are worth risking right if you drop food on the floor and is it worth risking you just you pick it up and eat it is it worth risking in an risky
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investments listen but there’s something that we should never risk and that is we should never risk our eternal lives and I say eternal lives on purpose because all of us know that at some point our lives in these bodies on earth are going
to come to an end but God has made us eternal beings and where we spend eternity is not some thing that we should risk now to understand this risk what we need to do is we need to open up to the beginning
of the Bible and if this is true it reveals to us what our risk is and so in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 even if you’re not familiar to familiar with the Bible you probably know what this verse says in Genesis 1:1 it says in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth listen there is a God and it doesn’t matter what people’s opinions are it doesn’t change the facts there is a God if this is true if the Bible is true there is a God and what I want to do is
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I want to highlight two very important attributes of God that in this discussion they appear to be contradictory okay and that is the holiness of God and the love of God when we say that God is holy what we mean is
that God is completely pure and without sin and God cannot be in the presence of sin and as an all-powerful holy being God must punish sin God is holy you know we are not God is holy now you might be thinking okay God is holy well there’s a
problem with that because we are sinners the Bible is very clear on that in Romans 3:23 it says for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God all have sinned looking at this from a risk reward from a percentage and a
statistical standpoint it says all have sinned every single person that has ever lived has sinned there’s one exception to that and that’s Jesus Christ and that’s because of the virgin birth and that’s another subject not for today but
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we don’t become soon as we are born we don’t become sinners we are sinners we are born with a sinful nature a famous preacher used to call babies seven pounds of sin and if you’ve you ever had a child you know how true that is
especially when they turn 2 but this is the problem we are sinners so we cannot be in the presence of God because of our sins our sins must be punished but not only is God holy but God is also loved he is 100% pure love he loves us God
created us so that he can love us that no one can ever love us more than God loves us now this is a problem but thankfully there is a solution so what we’re trying to figure out as part of the creation is how do we overcome our
sins so that we might be able to enjoy the love of God and there are basically two options I want to go through those right now some of you might have printed off the sermon notes we’ve been emailing goes out so I’m going to get into the
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two options okay this is the risk that we face the first option for overcoming our sins is to try to earn our own salvation we try to do it ourselves okay and how do we do that some people might think well if I just do a little bit
more good than bad at the end of life then maybe God will say okay I will forgive you and you will come and spend eternity with me some people have this idea that there’s a giant scale and God puts all of our works on the scale and
if you’re the good outweighs the bad then he lets you in some people might think well you know in the Bible there’s a whole bunch of rules if I just can follow these rules if I do what the rules tell me to then I could earn God’s
favor because God loves us he tells us this is not how it works we can’t do this in Galatians chapter 2 verses 15 and 16 it says now we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners yet we know that a
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person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ so we also have have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will
be justified and maybe the most important of this phrase this last verse for our topic today those two words this phrase that we see over and over again these two words that say no one this is all-inclusive
okay no one means 100% it doesn’t mean that almost no one will be justified it means no one a hundred percent not 99 percent not 95 percent no one on earth is going to be right with God because of their works trying to earn your own
salvation will lead to 100 percent failure and so if you’re trying to do this on your own your risk is 100 percent that’s option number one the second option fortunately God continues to teach us us in the Bible
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the second option to overcome our sin and to enjoy the love of God is to put your faith in Jesus Christ God made it possible for our sins to be forgiven by sending Jesus to die as the perfect sacrifice for our sins Jesus died listen
to pay for all of our sins every single one of our sins that means that Jesus is the only way that we can experience the love of God forever in John chapter 14 verse 6 Jesus makes a very exclusive claim about himself jesus said he said I
am the way and the truth and the life he didn’t say that he’s a way or one of the truths he says I am the way the truth the life no one there’s a phrase again no one comes to the Father except through me and so how many people can
come to the Father in a way other than Jesus Christ no one no one can come to the Father except through Jesus Christ but the nice thing about this verse is it also says that everyone who goes through Jesus will come to the Father
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you know Romans tells us what we know what we need to know I appreciate that there’s no ambiguity in us in Romans 3:23 says for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God but then it continues and it says and we are
justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ now justification is in some senses it’s a mathematical term it’s used in accounting and kind of this idea of a ledger justification means that all of
our sins than forgiving but it’s more than that if that’s all it meant all of our sins are forgiven then you and I would be neutral okay we wouldn’t be bad we wouldn’t be good we just be neutral but
justification means not only did God wipe our sins away he paid for our sins but he also took the righteousness and the good works of Jesus Christ and he credited them to us so that when God looks at us and when he thinks of us and
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when he’d use us he doesn’t see someone who’s a sinner he sees someone who is sinless and as good as Jesus Christ himself and you think wait a second that doesn’t make sense that’s not fair that’s why this is called grace we’re
getting what we do not deserve grace means we don’t get what we deserve we get something better and the Bible is very clear the only way you and I can be saved is through grace Ephesians 2:8 9 says for by grace you have been saved
through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God not a result of works so that no one can boast there’s our phrase again listen no one will be in heaven and be able to say you know what I’m here because I did these
things no one will be able to say that everyone who is in heaven will have to be able to say the only reason I’m here is because God’s grace and what he accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and there
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are other passages that confirm that this is guaranteed that the reward in the risk and the reward is 100% I love what Jesus says in John chapter 10 Jesus says my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me I give them
eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand in a time like this where things are
just crazy in the world that’s such a blessing to know that if you put your faith in Jesus Christ nothing no one there’s no situation there’s no scenario no person who can take you out of God’s love
I think another element that goes into us assessing risk and reward a scenario like that is our confidence in the facts okay our decisions are only based on the information that is given to us so how can we know how can we know that Jesus
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is the only way how can we know there’s not some other way how can we know that Jesus Christ his death and resurrection is the only way that we can have eternal life part of the answer is seen in the fact that before the New Testament was
even written before Jesus even was born – to the Virgin Mary hundreds and hundreds of years before that took place God told us that this is exactly what he was going to do 1st Corinthians 15 verses 1 through 4 it tells us how to be
saved it says now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached you unless you believed in vain for I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and so
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what this teaches us is God told us in advance about the death of the Messiah God also told us in advance about the resurrection of the Messiah and so for those of you who doubt this and maybe some of you are watching this and you
might doubt this look into this there’s nothing more important in your life than to know the risk and reward of putting your faith in Jesus Christ you can even Google verses that predicted the death and resurrection and you can find out
that hundreds of years before this happened God told us he was going to do this so in God’s great love for us not only does he provide for our sins the payment of our sins but he also proved that he would do it by telling us he was
going to do this hundreds of years before he did you know in the next couple weeks we are going to be celebrating the events surrounding Christ’s death and resurrection we refer to these dates here in America and
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around the world as Palm Sunday and Easter but the original terms were Passover and firstfruits and so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about in the in a couple weeks to come but if all of this is true about Jesus Christ and I
believe it is then why would anyone why would you or anyone else take the risk upon themselves when the creator tells us you can’t do it I will not accept your works I will only accept the works of my son Jesus Christ now I realize for
those of you who are watching this if you’re part of our church or your part affiliated with the church you’re thinking I already know these things I know about jesus’s death and resurrection I’ve placed my faith in Him
but guess what the world that we live in not everyone knows this and not everyone believes us right now in the world that we live in people are trying to distance themselves from the people who are sick but the thing is we don’t know who’s
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sick and so we’re distancing ourselves from people because we don’t want to spread it but listen if you know this truth about Jesus and if you have this hope this is something that you should make sure you are spreading to others
and sharing with others if you have this hope this is what our calling is in life so here’s a scenario for you let’s say you wake up tomorrow morning and you have a temperature and you think I just I don’t feel very good and you start
having some symptoms of Cova 19:00 and you go and you get tested you go to a lab you get tested and the doctors say I’m sorry to tell you but you do have Co vat19 what do you do well I hope what you would do all of us hope what you
would do is you would isolate yourself and make sure that you don’t spread it to anyone else and if you care for people you might say okay who have I come in contact with in the last few days and you might call them and say
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just so you know I’ve tested positive I want you to know in case you start seeing these symptoms listen we would do that because of our concern for other people but listen there is a greater risk out there in the world today that
people are trying to earn God’s favor through their own works or they are denying who Jesus Christ is and what he did for us if you have this hope of eternal life you need to spread it well how can we
spread this you know in this day and age this is incredible what we can do I’ve never been able to say this but to spread this hope you can take this message and you can just send it on to somebody else and say hey why don’t you
watch this message okay not only our message but probably thousands of churches around the world or you can invite them to our church now we can truly invite people to our church right now but you can invite them to watch
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this or you can simply have this conversation with someone ask hey if you if you developed kovat 19 and this eventually were to take your life are you are you prepared for this do you know what’s going to happen to you
afterwards you know I think all of us are now understanding this and I think our our realization of what’s taking places is becoming more broaden and deep but this is such a unique time in history when we’re gonna look back on
March and April of 2020 we’re gonna remember this but this reminds me of another situation that we go through from time to time just like when people attend a funeral everyone is thinking about their own mortality just a little
bit more and that’s the case right now people right now are thinking about these things more than ever before and so now right now is the perfect time to share and spread the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and so if you are
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watching this right now and you’re taking all of this risk upon yourself why why would you do that when God says first of all you can’t but secondly he says I’ve done this for you I’ve paid for your sins through the death and
resurrection of my son and to have this hope and to know that you will come to the Father and no one will be able to snatch you out of his hand all you need to do is do what the Bible tells us to do in Romans 10:9 in chances very
clearly I love clear answers in politics you kind of get these vague obscure answers but this is crystal clear to us it says because if you can that’s with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved for with the heart one believed and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved this is how we’re saved and so if you have never done this
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before you can do this right now you can simply confess to God to God I know I’m a sinner I cannot earn your your love and so I place my face in the death of Jesus Christ as payment for my sins and I place my faith in his resurrection
that gives me the hope of eternal life you can tell God that you are putting your faith in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation and if you’ve done that if you’re watching this and you did this I would sure love to hear from you
a couple ways you can do that you can go through our Facebook page or our website and you can just message me and say hey I made this decision and if you have any prayer requests you can contact me I would love to pray pray with you I am
here for you if you would like to discuss any of these things well here we are it’s the end of March April is right around the corner we’re dealing with kovin 19:00 the good news is Cova 19:00 crisis is going to come to an end and
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then something else is going to come up right the student never-ending cycle the covet 19:00 is going to end but listen the greatest risk to mankind will not it’s never going to end and this is why we exist church family
Grace Bible Church of Phoenix this is why we exist to take this message of the reward of Christ the gift of Christ and to share it with the world that’s why we exist and that’s what we need to do so let’s just do that let’s
close in prayer dear lord I thank you so much for this hope that you’ve given to us I thank you so much for loving us that you clearly tell us we are sinners who cannot earn your love the Lord and your great love for us you sent Jesus to
die on the cross so thank you for letting us have that hope and father my prayer is that even though we’re not able to to socialize with people we’re kind of limited in our contact we do have the ability to share this hope so
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Lord give us wisdom give us boldness give us courage to spread the message of our greatest need and our greatest hope Lord thank you for providing that for us we pray this in Jesus name Amen well last week on something happened at
the very end of the service there was kind of gave me some chills at the close of the service I gave the benediction and and what I did is right after the service was done I went home and I will got on you two or not yeah no Facebook I
got on Facebook and I watched the service and it was pretty neat I I’m glad that I was able to do that I got my cup of coffee and I noticed that at the end of the benediction when I said Amen I noticed a whole bunch of people typed
Amen at the same time and when I saw that it really it literally gave me chills and so we’re not all here together but we can all agree together that’s what Amen means it means I agree and so maybe we can do all this together
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at the same time you can comment Amen and so I close of the benediction may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all and all God’s children commented
amen alright stay safe order takeout and for goodness sakes wash your hands all right we will see you soon goodbye
Scripture References
Study guide available upon request.