The Second Beast (Revelation 13:11-18) | Pastor Jake Sweetman

In this sermon from Revelation 13:11–18, we explore the “second beast” and how Satan uses ideology, propaganda, and cultural pressure to lure people into idolatry. Building on the earlier vision of the first beast (Revelation 13:1–10), this message shows how the dragon (Revelation 12:9) forms an “unholy trinity” of dragon, sea beast, and land beast—a dark parody of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19; John 14:16–17). 

We consider how the second beast looks “like a lamb” but speaks “like a dragon” (Revelation 13:11), echoing Jesus’ warning about “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15) and Satan’s pattern of masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13–15). The message unpacks how false gospels and cultural ideologies—ancient and modern—promise liberation and flourishing while leading to bondage and destruction (Jeremiah 2:11–13; Romans 1:18–25). 

Key themes include: 

• The land beast as a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit, inspiring allegiance to idols instead of to Christ (John 16:13–14; Revelation 13:12–14; Revelation 16:13).  
• How ideology sustains oppressive powers—from Rome’s imperial cult (Revelation 2:12–17; Revelation 2:18–29) to modern systems that redefine personhood, identity, and freedom (Genesis 1:26–28; Psalm 139:13–16; Isaiah 5:20).  
• The “mark of the beast” on hand and forehead (Revelation 13:16–17) as a symbol of identity and allegiance, contrasted with the seal of God on His people (Revelation 7:3–4; Revelation 14:1; Deuteronomy 6:6–8).  
• The universal vulnerability of “great and small, rich and poor, free and slave” (Revelation 13:16; Romans 3:9–23) and the equal need for salvation in Christ alone (Acts 4:12; John 14:6).  
• Wisdom and discernment in “Babylon” (Revelation 13:18; Revelation 17:9; Proverbs 1:7; James 1:5) and the call to resist syncretism—mixing the gospel with the world’s ideologies (Galatians 1:6–9; 2 Corinthians 6:14–18).  

The sermon closes by contrasting the beast’s number, 666—symbolic of broken, finite humanity (Revelation 13:18)—with Jesus, whose name in Greek totals 888, a picture of new creation and resurrection life (2 Corinthians 5:17; Revelation 21:1–5). 

Through Revelation 13, we are called to:  

• Patient endurance under pressure (Revelation 13:10; Revelation 14:12; Hebrews 10:36)  
• Spirit-led wisdom in a world of deception (Ephesians 5:15–17; 1 John 4:1–6)  
• Undivided allegiance to the Lamb who was slain and now reigns (Revelation 5:6–14; Revelation 12:11).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

It's awesome to be in the book of Revelation. Turn to Revelation chapter 13. We are going to begin in verse 11. Open your Bibles to Revelation 13. We're beginning in verse 11. I'll just read the first couple of verses to get us going. The Apostle John says, This, then I saw a second beast coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed. Remember, we talked about last week how that healed wound is a parody of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So last week we talked about the beast. It turns out there are two beasts in Revelation 13. And so today we are talking about the second beast, ladies and gentlemen. There's my very original title for you. In 1949, George Orwell released a novel called 1984, in which he imagined a totalitarian future. The government, which was called the party in the book, controlled everything, what you could say, what you could think, even what you could remember. There were cameras everywhere, there were informants everywhere, and if you stepped out of line, the consequences were brutal. But almost 20 years prior to that, a man named Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. Same basic premise, a future society where human beings are controlled. But in Huxley's version, there are no cameras, there is no torture, there are no informants. Instead, people are given everything they want pleasure, comfort, entertainment, distraction. They are so satisfied and so sedated and so entertained that the thought of resistance never even occurs to them. They don't need to be controlled because they have been conditioned to love their captivity. As I reflected upon Revelation chapter 13 as a whole, with its vision of two interrelated beasts, it occurred to me that while elements of both Orwell and Huxley are represented, it is Huxley's vision of a conditioned captivity that resounds more loudly for us today. And in some ways that was true in ancient Rome as well. You see, as brutal as the Roman Empire could be, its universal promise was peace, so long as you assimilated to its cultural norms. Now, many of us today would say that the vision of 1984 is the more frightening one, and we feel secure as long as such a vision is held at bay. However, both Orwell and Huxley's visions lead to death. 1984 may be a firing squad, but Brave New World is a carbon monoxide leak in your living room. And without the right sensors, you aren't even aware that you are breathing deadly poison. And that is exactly what the second half of Revelation 13 wants you to see. Our text picks up exactly where we left off last week. There we learned of a beast who arose from the sea, and that beast is representative of all evil and idolatrous empires or regimes who oppose God and oppose his church in all places and all times throughout the church age. Another way to say that is that antichrist systems and rulers are not limited to a single person or government in the biblical worldview. Rather, as the language of Revelation 13 suggests, they are universally pervasive throughout the entire church age. Now that's not to say that the Bible doesn't have a category for an ultimate Antichrist at the very end of this age. That very well may be the case. But the larger point is that antichrist powers are already at work in this world. And as long as you are always looking for one in the future, you will miss all of the ones in front of your face. We learned that the primary way the sea beast opposes God and his people is not with the sword, but with speech. His primary weapon is words, and his aim is to deceive, which is no surprise, because the sea beast is empowered by the dragon, by Satan, whose aim it has been to deceive humanity from the very beginning. We see that in the story of the garden in Genesis 3. And so that tactic of deception brings us to the second beast. Our text says, who arises not out of the sea like the first, but the second beast arises out of the earth. We'll call him the land beast. And with the introduction of the land beast, the unholy trinity of evil receives its final form. Remember from last week that one of Revelation's consistent patterns is that evil parodies God. That means that it mimics him in order to mock God and in order to deceive humanity. And that mimicry isn't just of God's activity, what God does, but also of God's nature, who God is. So just as God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, one God in three unified persons with one unified purpose, so also the dragon assembles his own trinity, three persons, one unified purpose, dragon, sea beast, and land beast. And their purpose is the destruction of everything that God loves. And boy, are they busy. Now, for us in America, this is often a point of confusion because we look around at the church and we we survey things in our own context and we think, man, everything kind of seems fine. No persecution, no pressure, no obvious threat. And so we conclude that there is not one. But this misses the point that the apocalyptic vision aims to make that the dragon does not always come with violence. In fact, that's rarely his first move. More often he comes with a vision. A really compelling picture of paradise that is fueled by ideology and promised through empire, that is, through human-centric rule. This ideology is where the land beast comes in. He is the propaganda machine of the dragon and of empire. The key word to associate with him is ideology. He has a religious quality to his message, which means that he does not just aim to inform people, he aims to convert them. And to convert them into worshippers of kingdoms that serve the dragon instead of serving God. The land beast generates a kind of devoted sacrificial allegiance that should belong to God alone, and he redirects that allegiance from humanity towards idolatrous power, and he is very good at his job. How is that? Well, John says that the land beast has a has uh two horns like a lamb, though it spoke like a dragon. And so immediately we see a contrast between the land beast and the sea beast. The sea beast was obviously beastly. He was a hybrid of lion and leopard and bear. He had ten horns and seven heads and a scar from a grotesque wound on one of its heads. The land beast doesn't look anything like that. The land beast looks almost unassuming, as if approachable and reasonable. Now, a lamb with two horns may sound a bit unusual to us, but John's language is important the way he describes it, is that it had two horns like a lamb, as if to say that it looked exactly the way that we would expect it to look. And the point that we are meant to take from this aspect of the apocalyptic vision is that the lamb doesn't seem so threatening. In fact, it's only as the second beast speaks that it betrays its identity to those who have ears to hear that it is in fact not a lamb, it is an agent of the dragon. It's worth saying that plainly so we can really know our enemy here, that the source of the land beast, just like the source of the sea beast last week, is Satan. It is the dragon who empowers him. Whatever shape and substance the propaganda of the land beast takes on, we know that ultimately that propaganda is generated by the devil. As it turns out, the land beast has two horns instead of ten, like the sea beast, not merely because that's the way he happens to look, but because he parodies the other prominent use of the number two in Revelation, which is the two prophetic witnesses empowered by the Spirit back in chapter 11, who are symbolic of the spirit-empowered prophetic community of the church. And so while the church prophesies the truth of God, the land beast utters inspired speech of its own, except its speech is not inspired by the spirit of God, but by the spirit of Antichrist. So while the slain and healed sea beast is a parody of the sun, the land beast is a parody of the Holy Spirit, inspiring proclamation that calls people to trust in false plans of salvation. The Holy Spirit inspires the church to proclaim the true Lamb who gives his life for the world. The land beast proclaims the opposite: that you can have the garden without God, that you can have life by taking it instead of receiving it. The land beast is the prophetic mouthpiece of the dragon. In fact, later in Revelation, the beast is simply referred to as the false prophet. And he represents all ideologies in all places and at all times that promote allegiance to idols who claim the authority of God for themselves. Now it is extremely important to recognize that the second beast is not acting independently from the first. Rather, the two beasts are very connected as a parody of the Son and the Spirit. That is why the text says that the second beast, the land beast, exercised the authority of the first in order that the earth would worship the first. In other words, just as the spirit's role is to glorify Christ, so the second beast's role is to glorify the sea beast. And through that glorification, to ensure and secure the allegiance of humanity towards human-centric powers. So in John's immediate context, in ancient Rome, the sea beast is the Roman Empire. And the land beast is what's referred to as the imperial cult. It's basically the organized religious system that promoted the worship of Caesar and that made participation in Roman civic and economic life only possible if you gave yourself to that allegiance to Caesar. All seven of the churches that John writes to in Revelation all had centers of imperial worship in their cities. They had temples to Caesar. So they could see the presence of the land beasts really clearly. The chapter is making a broader point than that, that the land beast is at work in any place in time where people and institutions give voice to false gospels that justify and necessitate the existence of idolatrous power. And the deeper an ideology takes root in a culture, the more allegiance the idol it supports can command. And that is never a harmless reality, even when the idol seems to be benevolent, like in Brave New World, because every idol eventually demands human sacrifice in some shape or form. So one scholar, James Rezegui, says that the second beast is the ideology that enlivens and emboldens the first. The second beast is the economic, social, and religious structures that cause ordinary people, just everyday people, to mistake evil for good, injustice for justice, and self-aggrandizement for noble good causes. So, like, you know, because the social forces and the religious beliefs and the economic principles of Rome, for example, have taught us that this particular thing is good, that justifies that the bad thing I have to do is okay. So, like our view in Rome is that weakness is shameful, therefore mistreatment of the weak is okay. It's approved. And so what the dragon does is he feeds these ideologies constantly into the culture. Because without the ideology, the empire loses its grip on power. Let me make it plain. At the end of the day, a Nazi party only rises through Nazi ideology. Communist regimes only grow in soil that has been seeded with Marx's manifesto. Slavery only survives in a culture that capitulates to the lie the ideology that some people are less than human. Abortion only endures in a culture that's been persuaded that personhood is a matter of convenience and autonomy trumps existence. Gender ideology only advances in a culture that's been convinced that identity is self-created rather than received. Pornography only saturates a culture that's been persuaded that human bodies are products for consumption. Every single one of those things is downstream from an ideology that promised paradise and delivers destruction. Let me say it to you like this: behind every 1984 is a brave new world that eventually fails to hold itself together with perversion disguised as pleasure. And when that happens, it has no choice but to try and hold itself together with suffering sold to you as salvation and murder disguised as meaningful progress. That was essentially the Roman Empire. The promise was pleasure and peace. I did not warn you guys about this sermon. I am so sorry. My apologies. I really should give you guys a heads up when this is gonna happen, shouldn't I? No, it's better that the element of surprise is night. This is essentially the Roman Empire, right? The promise is peace, the promise is pleasure. Literally, they had a phrase, Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. That's what we give. As long as you submit to Caesar as Lord. But if you resist that perversion, then you will meet the power of Rome's sword. Your brave new world will become 1984, just like that. What is the point that God is alerting us to? He's alerting us to the fact that the agenda of the land beast is he lulls people into idolatry. He wants to comfort you into compromise so that you are happy to kneel before idols, the idols of your day, so long as the comforts keep coming. What Revelation 13 is exposing is that it is not a matter of if people worship, it is simply a matter of what they worship. And it is our misplaced worship that perpetuates our bondage to idols. You see, humanity, hear me, humanity will never dethrone idolatrous powers, be them the empire or otherwise, if we do not reject the idolatrous ideologies that give those idols life. You can never come out from under Roman power if you do not dethrone Roman paganism. Ideology perpetuates idolatry. And idols always aim to oppress their worshippers. That's all idols are good for. I know some of you like your idols. I promise you they are oppressing you. All idols are good for is deception, oppression, control, and destruction. That is why a postmodern pluralistic society, with all of its sensitivity and pearl-clutching to God's rightful claim to sovereignty and its preference for respecting everyone's idols, will always be in chaotic and tempestuous disarray because you cannot have a genuinely pluralistic society that does not eventually go to war with itself. Rival gods don't keep the peace like that. Flourishing comes from submission to the one true God, not from a marketplace of truths where everyone gets to pick their own truth. Rival selves don't keep the peace like that. Now, the church's calling is not to systematically dismantle that kind of society. In fact, Revelation seems very content to convey that this is the world we're living in. And we do not battle the beast. That's God's job. Our calling is to be a faithful witness within the world, to be known by our love, as Jesus said, to live so visibly and joyfully under the reign of the true king that the bankruptcy of every rival kingdom becomes apparent by contrast to what God is doing in our lives. I'm just trying to explain to you the reality of the world that we live in, not because I'm inviting you to go to war with it, but because I'm trying to help you to see the power of propaganda in the hands of the dragon in order to enslave. So the dragon loves the algorithm. It is his best friend because he can use it to distribute all kinds of lies that lead people what? To be fearful and therefore to misplace their trust, misplace their religions, in other words, to become worshippers of idols. See, people are very quick to point the finger at empires, but we are less quick to point the finger at the ideologies that gave rise to them. In fact, we'll even do this we'll even repackage and promote the ideology that fed a previous failed empire. And we think we're being resourceful and thoughtful, but in reality, we are falling prey to the dragon's constant strategy of giving the world idolatrous regimes reborn. And so you will hear, just for example, a Marxist say something like the problem isn't with Marxism, it's just the way it's been implemented before. It's been done incorrectly. Give us another try. No. And so the ideology gets repackaged, it gets an academic rebrand, it gets softer language and a more sophisticated vocabulary. It goes from gathering in the streets to a long march through the institutions, through the universities, the media, the courts, the seminaries, and through the institutions into the culture, and through the culture into the church. The universities may call it critical theory, the church may call it liberation theology, but it's the same beast who begets them both. And both manifestations sound convincing. Why? Because as one scholar said, the work of the beast has most of the hallmarks of truth. So we can easily deceive. You see, false gospels don't just reject the true gospel, they consciously replace it by including enough of it. Same story arc, same promise of liberation in paradise, no God, no Jesus, no cross, no resurrection. And so in the case of Marx, the fall becomes exploitation, the sinner becomes the oppressor, the savior becomes the revolution, the church becomes the party, and the kingdom of God becomes a classless society achieved by human effort alone. That's not a political theory, that's a false gospel. That's the land beast breathing dragon fire through the academy, through the media, through the culture, and even through the pulpit. And it looks like a lamb. It speaks the language of justice and dignity and liberation, words, by the way, that are native to the church. But if you listen carefully, you will hear beneath the vocabulary of compassion the voice of the dragon. Because any gospel that offers you salvation, the garden without the cross, liberation without repentance from sin, and paradise without God is not good news. It is the oldest lie, simply dressed up in the newest clothes. Every totalizing power in human history has had a propaganda arm that made it sound like the only reasonable option, like progress, like justice, like the right side of history. The ideology always looks like a lamb. And that deception does not stop at the culture. Jesus warned us about wolves in sheep's clothing for a reason. Because from the very beginning, the serpent has been intent on infiltrating God's garden and corrupting God's priesthood. So it is no wonder that the seven churches to which John originally wrote the apocalypse to, for them, the primary issue that John has to address is not persecution from the outside, it's false teachers on the inside who are promoting compromise with Rome's version of flourishing. Just pay a little tribute to Caesar. You'll get to keep your job, you get to flourish, you get to prosper. Sounds like life, sounds like good news, but it denies the lordship of Christ, and so it is a deception. But I got a lot more passionate things that I could say, believe me. How y'all doing? You cannot be casual about your pursuit of the truth. Because the land beast, the demonic power of ideology, is not being casual in his pursuit of you. Look at verse 16. This is what the land beast does. It also forced, forced, it made all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their forehead so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. Just first of all, notice the list great and small, rich and poor, free and slave. The universal nature of this list underscores that every stratum of society is vulnerable to the persuasion and captivity captivity of the land beast. No one is exempt. And that exposes the deepest lie of every false gospel. Because false gospels usually promise liberation to one group at the expense of another. The poor rising over the rich, the rich ruling over the poor, the oppressed overthrowing the oppressor. But the mark falls on all of them equally because the beast promises liberation to some, but it doesn't actually liberate anybody. He marks everyone. The true gospel proclaims that so long as any group rejects Christ, they are equally enslaved. But if any man comes to Christ, that man is set free. Salvation does not come from swapping your social location with somebody else's, it comes from Christ. Salvation does not come by submitting to Caesar and his version of flourishing, it comes from Christ. Any other attempt at salvation is to walk in the way of the dragon and therefore to be marked by the beast. Either on your right hand, which culturally for them was the hand of business transactions, the hand of honor, the hand of taking oaths, or upon your forehead, which is where they wore religious symbols to denote which God or goddess they were committed to. In other words, the mark of the beast is not a barcode, not a vaccine, not a microchip. It's definitely not Bitcoin. The mark of the beast is identity. It is a mark of allegiance. It is not anything literal, just like the seal of God's name written on the foreheads of God's people in the very next chapter. By the way, is not literally God's name written on your head. It is a mark of your allegiance to God. The mark of the beast, like The seal of God is the middle of the leaders to which in which kingdom you belong. And there is no middle ground. There's no gray zone. There's no in between. You either have preaching the text. In Revelation, you either have the mark of the beast or you have the seal of God. You either follow the dragon or you follow the lamb. The point is not that you need to be on the lookout for some new technology. The point is that you need to run allegiance to crimination. Here's the threat of the beast, the threat of the beast. Sometimes that price is severe. For our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, the Middle East, it may be violence, maybe death, it may be imprisonment. That's not hypothetical for them. That's Tuesday. For us in the West, the conflict is different, less dramatic, but no less real. And no less compromising if we try to avoid the cause. You see, in every case, if fidelity to Christ means that you call a vice, whatever the beast calls a virtue, there will be a cause. When the beast says that gender is self-determined, and you say that gender is a gift from God, that may come with a cause. When the beast says that the unborn are not persons, and you say every life there's the image of God that may come with a cause. And please I must say, because I recognize who I'm preaching to, that we may have histories with these very things. And I talk about these things not to cast any judgment upon any person in this room. I say these things just to open our eyes to the fact that the dragon is very much at work in our society who likes to spread lies that will take us captive. I've been taken captive by the lies of the dragon before. And every single one of us has a story of our own. So there is no judgment in this. I'm just trying to help us see the way that the beast operates. When the beast says sexual freedom is the highest good, and you say no sexuality needs to be ordered towards covenant love between one man and one woman, that may come with a cost. And the temptation is always to avoid the costs of commitment to Christ in whatever forms those costs may come. The way that that temptation takes shape in a pluralistic society is to synthesize your Christianity with the values and practices of the beast. There is a word for that. Smart people call it syncretism. I'm not smart, so I just quote smart people. Syncretism is when you try to take the claims of Christianity and make them compatible with the ideologies and the false gospels of the world. And so, in a heartbreaking attempt to keep yourself from being excluded by others, you cobble together a gospel that actually makes them excluded from Christ. Don't be like me, okay? No, really. Please, please don't. But also please don't claim to be a Christian out in that world. And simultaneously water down the truth of Christ's lordship. Don't try to find ways to make it work for them. Because it doesn't work for him. Lovingly present to people that Jesus Christ is Lord and there is no other. And then let the Spirit work in their lives. And just continue to be a faithful person. Continue to love and serve and honor them as your fellow image bearer of God. You cannot invite people to wear the seal of God's name and simultaneously help them keep the beast marked. Neither can you yourself wear both. Choice is a choice of allegiance to the Lamb in his kingdom or the dragon in his with all choices, verse 18 or last verse. This calls for wisdom. That number is six, six, six. What direction do you guys want to go? We can go anywhere. Gematria is when they uh assigned numerical values to letters. So they had that for both the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet. And that's probably what's going on here. When you pull on the Gematria thread, uh, what you find out is that both the word beast, when transliterated into Hebrew, equals 666. So also does the first Roman emperor who systematically persecuted Christians, Nero, his full title transliterates into 666. Wherever the mathematical adventure lands you, what John absolutely intends to say through the use of 666 is that the mark of the beast ultimately rests upon those who give allegiance to any structure of power that claims the authority for itself that belongs to God alone. Either because that power structure rejects God, or because they seek to make God equal with a host of other gods. Either way you slice it, it is that that finite man reaching to become infinite, that which is penultimate, striving to be ultimate. My concern is that we don't miss the calling because we get overly caught up in the calculation. And the call, the call of the church, we read it, is wisdom. And that's a huge call by Revelation standards, because the only two figures who are said to have wisdom in the whole of the narrative, besides this moment here, are God and the Lamb. So we are in good company when we strive to be a wise people. We are not being called here to exercise human intellect, we are being called as the community of the true spirit, not the parody, to discern the wisdom of God. Now, biblically speaking, wisdom is the art of living well. Contextually, we would say that wisdom is the art of living well in Babylon. Because you fear God instead of Nebuchadnezzar. Wisdom is to rightly perceive reality and to live skillfully within it. And of course, the epitome of God's wisdom, according to the Apostle Paul, is the cross. Cross is how he redeems humanity, it's how he overcomes evil. And so wisdom for us means that we take up our cross, we walk in the way of the Lamb, and here's the deal: we help one another discern the activity of the dragon, which is present through the beasts of empire and ideology in the world. We do not beat the beast with better branding. We beat the beast not with a more convincing pitch. And the way that we beat the beast is by being a community of the spirit who live together in the sacrificial love of God, and in this way we shine the light of Christ in the midst of a dark world. Our concern is not to go hunting for heresies, not interested, though we call them out when they make their way into the church. Our concern is to be a spirit-filled people who seek out God's wisdom as we navigate the age of the wilderness together. That's who we are. And of course, I would be remiss not to encourage you, my own self, to be at Holy Spirit Conference, where we experience a collective filling of the Spirit, which is not just powerful, it is also aligning. Where we discern what God is doing in our community and we begin to discern what our future looks like as a church. It's power in being in the room. At the end of the first beast description, remember from last week, we are called to patient endurance. At the end of the second beast description, we are called to wisdom and understanding. Two beasts, two callings. Sometimes it might feel like the teeth of the first beast is sinking into you. The acute sting of a world that wants to chew you up and spit you out. And in those moments, what you need is you need patient endurance. You need the community of Christ to come around you, to walk alongside of you, to pick you up and say, hey, let's keep going. We can go together. You need patient endurance. But other times it feels like the smile of the second beast is inviting you. The lure of a pleasure that ultimately enslaves. And for that you need wisdom. You need the spirit-given discernment to tell truth from deception before your allegiance winds up in the wrong places. Sometimes, as the church, we help one another navigate 1984. More often than not, we help one another navigate a brave new world. Near the end of that novel, the protagonist finally gets to confront the man who runs the system. That man essentially admits everything that in their world they have traded God for comfort, they have traded truth for cultural consensus, and they have traded freedom for unbridled pleasure. And in response to that, the protagonist of the story makes a shocking demand. He says, I want the right to be unhappy. I want the right to know God. I want the right to be free, even if freedom is harder than the comfort of captivity. And this is the wisdom that Revelation 13 calls us to. Patient endurance when things get hard, yes. But also the discernment to see the smile of the second beast inviting you into a life that is supposedly easy. And then to have the courage to reject it. So calculate the number of the beast carefully. Because the point is that it is still just a man's number, and what he offers cannot save you. The number of Jesus' name, however, happens to be 888 in Greek. And 8, biblically speaking, is the number of new creation, of all things being made brand new, and that includes every single person who calls on his name.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Let's all stand at our feet.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Give me two minutes. Please don't use the restroom right now. This isn't the moment to go get your kids or leave.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Just let's respect the presence of the Spirit here in this room and guard the atmosphere against distraction.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

I'm gonna hop down from this platform in just a moment. But before I do that, I want to invite every single person in here to lay down any idol that they have submitted their life to and to come and submit themselves to King Jesus. He doesn't just promise life, he offers his life for the sake of the world. That is what the cross is all about. This is how Jesus rules.

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This is his display of power. It is wrought with love and humility and generosity.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

And every single person in this room who has given their lives to the Lord knows what a wonderful leader, lord, and ruler he is. Some of you, you can't say that Jesus is the Lord of your life. And I would like that to change for you today. And so I'm gonna invite you to respond in just a moment. I'm gonna have us bow our heads in prayer. And I'll count to three. And if you want to give your life to Jesus, then I'm just gonna ask you to lift your hand just right where you're standing. And when you do that, you're saying a few different things. You're saying, um, Jesus, I repent of my sin. I'm turning away from my idolatry. You're saying, I trust you to save me, and you're saying I'm committing my life to you. That's what you're saying in this moment. You're repenting of your sin, you're trusting in Jesus, that his work of salvation on the cross is enough for the forgiveness of all of your sins, and you're committing to follow him, to give him your life.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

So every eye closed, every head bowed right now across this room. And I want to ask you to do that.

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To give no regard whatsoever for the opinion of anyone but God in this moment, and to come before him boldly and honestly.

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If you'd like to receive Christ into your life, would you do that right now? Are you ready? One, two, three. Just lift up your hands, AJ. That's me. Wonderful. Wonderful. Praise God. Who else is there? Thank you. Wonderful. Who else? Would you lift your hands now? Just lift it nice and high so I can see it. Very proud of you guys. So beautiful. Is there anybody else just gonna wait 10-15 more seconds? These are holy moments. Awesome. Thank you. Praise God. Wow. Let's pray this together. Those of you who lifted your hands, I'm gonna give you the words for this prayer, but this is your moment to talk right to God. And because of the good news of Jesus, believe me, he hears every word. His ear is inclined to you right now. Let's pray this out loud. Say, Father in heaven, thank you for your grace.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

I confess I need you. Thank you for sending Jesus to take my place, to go to the cross, and to pay the penalty for my sin. I confess Jesus is enough for me. I ask now to be filled with the Holy Spirit, with true power, to help me live in victory against the forces of this world.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

In Jesus' name. Amen.