In this sermon, the speaker discusses the trials of Jesus before his crucifixion. He explains that Jesus was tried by both the Jews and the Romans because the Jews did not have the power to put someone to death. The speaker emphasizes that Jesus was willing to suffer in order to save sinners from the consequences of their sins. He also mentions that the Jewish trial had three parts, with two different high priests involved. The speaker encourages the audience to read all four Gospels together to get a complete picture of the events leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection.

These days leading up to the festival, the Christian festival of Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead after having been crucified, we are studying in our morning services what the Gospel according to Mark tells us about the death and eventual resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And this morning we come to a passage, the one that was read for us in chapter 14 verses 53 to 65. Now I'm not going to read it all again, but I hope you will have your New Testament open before you and you can refer to it quite happily as we go along. Now if anybody can't hear me, will you just lift up your hand and I know what you mean. Before we come to this, it may be very necessary to remind ourselves that the New Testament states categorically that the center of our faith, the very center of the Christian faith is found in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and then His eventual resurrection. And the things that happened after His death. Now this makes Christianity quite different from every other religion in the whole world. You think about that. In the Old Testament you have people pointing forward under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the coming of a Deliverer, a Messiah as He is called, the Anointed One. And one of the essential things about Him is that He's going to die. And in and through His death He's going to do something that no one else could do. And then when we come to the New Testament we find that this is exactly what He claimed for Himself and this is exactly what the early church claimed on His behalf, that by His death He had said something and done something that could not be otherwise said or otherwise done. One of the apostles went so far as to put it like this, God forbid, he says that I should glory in anything. Save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. In the cross, glory in His death. The implication you see is this, that in His death Jesus Christ did something that was unspeakably precious and that He could not have done simply by living an ordinary life. Another way of substantiating the truth that I am now declaring is this, when you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you will find that each one of them takes from one half to one third of the space to speak about the things that happened during the last week of our Lord's life here leading up to and including His death and resurrection. So that we might say that really the concern of the Gospels was that we should know that Jesus died and rose again, because the good news is essentially related to the death of our Lord. Now that's why we are studying it. It's not a morbid interest in death as such. If there is someone among us this morning who is not a Christian and to whom the Christian faith is new and you don't know much about it, you might feel that a crowd of people like this gathering on a Sunday morning to think and study the death of someone who died 2,000 years ago, well really we're a little bit crazy. We need our heads read. Well you'd be right of course. Were it not for the fact that the person we're talking about is God, the unseen God come into this world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and that in His death He is doing something and has accomplished something that no one else could do and blessed be His name no one ever need try to do again because what He did is sufficient to meet your needs and my needs and the needs of all men everywhere from east to west and north to south to the very end of time and from the beginning of time. It was as big and as significant as that the death of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth upon the cross of Calvary nearly 2,000 years ago. Now I told my wife that I wouldn't raise my voice this morning and you can't talk about these things without getting excited about them. However I want to look as dispassionately as I can upon the things before us this morning and I would like us to see the truths of this passage in all the clarity that is possible by the help of the Spirit of God. One general statement before we come right down to the text. Jesus was tried before His death in courts under two jurisdictions. He was tried by the Jews and He was tried by the Romans. It was essential because the Jews did not have the power to put a person to death even though they did stone Stephen and murder James. But all that was illegal and and Pilate the Roman power chose to close his eyes to that kind of thing. But strictly speaking the Jews did not have the power of death. It was necessary therefore that Jesus should not simply be tried by the ecclesiastical court of the Jews, the Sanhedrin, but that he should also be tried by the Roman power and that the Roman ruler should concede that he should be put to death if he were guilty of a crime that was sufficiently grave. Now the Jewish trial had three parts to it. The gospels don't necessarily give us a complete picture, that is each gospel does not tell us everything. And we need to read the four gospels together and then we get a fairly complete picture. The Jewish court had three phases or three stages or three parts to it. The first was before a high priest called Annas. The second was before the high priest called Caiaphas and the third was again before Caiaphas. But you say what's the difference? Well now, Annas was the older man and he had been the Jewish choice to high priesthood. And as far as the Jews were concerned the high priest was a high priest for life until he died. But Palestine was dominated by Rome at this time and the Romans had got rid of Annas from the high priesthood for a number of reasons, I don't need to go into that, and they had elevated, if you please, to add insult to injury his own son-in-law whom Annas didn't get on very well with, his own son-in-law Caiaphas. But now Annas, the father-in-law, still had a terrific pull among the Jews. And we find him coming in and immediately from the garden of Gethsemane Jesus was taken before Annas. Now we don't quite know why. Was it that Caiaphas recognized that Annas, his father-in-law, was pretty full of guile and he could trip a man and he could find out the truth? Well, I don't know, I'm asking the question. However, nothing very much happened with Annas. Jesus wouldn't deal with him. Jesus told him what to do because he was tackling things in an illegal way altogether and Jesus was more or less silent and just told him, look, you are asking me to incriminate myself. Everybody knows what I've taught, everybody knows what I've did. Go to the marketplace, go to the synagogues, go to the temple, and you will find people who heard my teaching from the very beginning. Ask them and bring them here as witnesses. Jesus would have nothing to do with Annas. Annas sent him to Caiaphas. But now the first meeting of the court before Caiaphas, again remember taking place somewhere around midnight. Jesus went to Gethsemane in the evening, late evening. All this is taking place somewhere around the midnight mark. And apparently there is here a general gathering, albeit an unofficial gathering of the Sanhedrin. We read in our words this morning that the people who had gathered together, they represented the chief priests and the teachers of the law and the elders, the three main groups comprising the Sanhedrin. But this could not have been an official gathering because the Sanhedrin was not allowed to meet to consider a case such as this between sunset and sunrise. But it was an unofficial gathering nevertheless. Now that is the one we'll be considering this morning, but I want you to see it in context. It's the second phase of the trial before the Jewish authorities. The third stage was this. Early next morning, chapter 15 and verse 1 of Mark talks about it. Early next morning there was an official gathering, and this was a legal gathering because it was after sunrise, a gathering in order to put down on paper and to execute the decisions they'd arrived at during those hours when they met illegally in the night. Now that's the first main part of the trial of Jesus Christ before the ecclesiastical courts. But he also met before Pilate. He was also tried by Pilate and by the Roman authorities. And to this again there are three aspects. First of all, he came before Pilate. He was hailed before Pilate. Then Pilate heard that he was from Galilee. And right at that moment, the ruler, the sub-ruler of Galilee, Herod the Tetrarch, was in Jerusalem. And because Pilate was finding the case a little bit difficult, he thought to himself, well here's my opportunity. Let's send this Galilean to Herod under whose jurisdiction he comes and see what Herod can make of it, and it may save me a lot of time and a lot of face. He sent Jesus to Herod. Then Herod, finding no fault in him, sent him back again to Pilate. So you see, there are two appearances before Pilate and one before Herod. Now, the one that is here in the passage before us today is the second phase of the trial of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Jewish court. It's the trial before Caiaphas, held in the dark hours of the night, illegally, according to the laws of the Jews. Now, the first thing I would like you to notice is I would like us to look at the charges that could not be proved. Look at verse 55, the verse which speaks of the three sections of the Sanhedrin, the chief priests, and the whole Sanhedrin it refers to. I'm sorry, it isn't the verse that refers to the three sections. The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put Him to death, but they did not find any. Now, you will notice that the passage here would unequivocally put the blame, the eventual blame, the ultimate blame for the death of Jesus upon the Sanhedrin. They had plotted His death. They looked for witnesses to testify against Him. Now, it may be difficult for us to appreciate the significance of witnesses in Jewish courts of this time. You see, with us in our Western world, but here in Canada, a witness is important, but not important in the sense in which he was important in the Jewish courts. Witnesses are called into our courts to say what they have seen and what they've heard. They do not prosecute the person who's in the dock. They do not charge him as such. They may, but in certain cases, but generally speaking, they don't. But they've seen something that took place. Here was somebody going out from Knox, God forbid, on a Sunday morning, and speeding through the lights when it said stop. And there was someone standing by who saw it happen, and he or she comes to court and says, I saw it happen. I've got the number of the car. I saw it happen. And perhaps there was somebody else the other side of the road. And the two witnesses, it's the police that would bring the charge, generally speaking, but there would be witnesses. Now, in the Jewish court, it was quite different from that. The witnesses were the prosecutors. You didn't have in a Jewish court what we have in ours, a barrister for the prosecution and a barrister for the defense. You didn't have that. There was no barrister at all. The witnesses who had seen something done that was contrary to the law took it upon themselves out of loyalty to society and their concern for the law. They took it upon themselves to charge this person, to speak out concerning him. And they bore witness, and their witness constituted the charge. Now, in order to have a man found guilty, it was therefore necessary to have at least two witnesses or more. Not only that, it was necessary that the two witnesses concerned, two or more, would not simply say the man went through the lights and we saw him. They had to say much more than that. They would have to give all the necessary details, the approximate speed he was going, the kind of car that he was driving, the weather, and maybe a whole lot of other details. And what is more, the two or three witnesses concerned must have seen everything relative to the charge and seen each other. You see, the Jews were really concerned for justice. And as far as the judges were concerned, the Sanhedrin and the upper court, they were never to interrogate the person who is being charged with a view to finding him guilty. They were to be always in his defense. That is why the witnesses were allowed in court in this way, and they could charge. It was their duty to charge. But the judges, the Sanhedrin in this case, they should never have taken the case for the prosecution. They should always treat the person charged as innocent until the witnesses have agreed in all details that he was really and veritably and unequivocally guilty. Now you see how important it was therefore that they should find witnesses. But you see, it's just gone midnight, and the bulk of the people are in bed. The reason for that is this. Jesus pressed Judas. You remember how he said at the table, what you're about to do, do quickly. But Judas didn't expect it just then. Neither did the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin. Those of you who were here present will remember how I pointed this out earlier on. The leaders said, we must get this man, and we must get this man killed, but not during the feast. Whereas Jesus told his disciples that we are going up to Jerusalem, and during the feast, I am going to lay down my life as a sacrifice for you. They expected it to happen later, and they were hoping that it would pass, it would take part after the feast, without having so many people in Jerusalem who might take Jesus' side. But Jesus has forced Judas to sell his pass, and Judas has gone out, and Judas has led them, and now the whole thing is upon them, and there are no witnesses. So out into the middle of the night they go, and they've got to get some people out of bed, whom they hope are going to say something against Jesus. The contradiction between the witnesses they found is glaringly brought out in, for example, in verses 59 and 60. The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put Him to death, but they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward, many false witnesses came forward. But now, look at this, they came very near to a charge. In verse 58 we read this, a group of people came and they said, We heard this man say something like this, we heard him say, I will destroy this man-made temple. I'm reading from the NIV. I will destroy this man-made temple, and in three days I will build it. I will build a mother not made by hand. Now look at that. They said that they'd heard Jesus say this, I will destroy this man-made temple, and in three days will build another not made by man. Now my friends, wait a moment. My, I'd love to make a, have a test here this morning. Did Jesus say that or did He not? I see some of you shaking your head from left to right, and that means no. I can't see anybody shaking their heads the other way around. Well don't shake too much. The fact of the matter is this, you see, that Jesus said something very near to that, and that is a garbled version, a slightly tainted version of what Jesus did really say. Now if you turn to John chapter 2 and verse 19, you will find that Jesus said this. Jesus answered them. Remember He has cleaned the temple out, and He's played havoc with the money changers, and He's overturned their tables, and He's driven some extortionate people out of the temple, etc. etc. And they come and they ask Him, by what authority do you do this? And Jesus answers them, destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. But it's so much like it, isn't it? Now John was aware of the fact that it's so much like the truth, it could have referred to the temple of Jerusalem that, that, that John goes on to explain. This He said about the temple of His body. What Jesus said was this, look, you are asking Me to prove that I have authority to do these things. Well, this is the ultimate proof, says Jesus, you'll destroy this body. You'll nail it to a tree. He didn't say those words, but this is what He had in mind. You'll nail Me to the tree of Golgotha, and you'll see that I'm there, and I physically, humanly speaking, I am there, dead. But in three days, I will build it again. I will rise from the dead. I will master death. I will confuse and confound you. And that is the basis of My authority, that I am the Lord of death as well as the Lord of life. So the first thing to notice then is that there was a confusion about getting witnesses, and when the witnesses did actually come, their accusation simply would not stick. Now this was a very critical moment, so we come to the second thing, the challenge concerning His person. Caiaphas was bristling with agitation. You see, the time was short. The feast was starting. It was Friday, next day. It had already gone midnight. We were already in Friday. Now then, what are we going to do? Time is short. We've got to get the case against this man, and we've got to get him crucified. We've got to get everything done before a certain set time, a certain set hour. Well, Caiaphas took matters into his own hands, and he proceeded now to do something that he should not have done according to Jewish law. He became the interrogator. And in Jewish law, especially in a capital crime, you had no right to ask the person charged to say anything that would incriminate himself. A self-incriminating statement you must not elicit. But Caiaphas is careless about details. And anyway, this was not, there were no minutes kept of this meeting. This was all out of order, and so you might as well do another thing out of order as convene the Sanhedrin between sunset and sunrise. Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you? But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Now, here they have been coming, and they've been saying such things as that Jesus said that he would tear down the temple of Jerusalem and build it up again in three days. Caiaphas says, look man, say something about it. Respond to the accusations. But with royal dignity, careless of the fact that he was going to die because he had chosen to die, he had willed to die, he had chosen the season, he had set the machinery in motion, he had come to lay down his life for the sheep, and this was the hour in God's plan. Careless of it all, he says, nothing. Now, hurriedly, look at the second part of verse 61 and verse 62. Again the high priest asked him, and now here is the point. Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? I am, said Jesus, without a hesitation. I like the way the Gospels put it. There's no, no, no, no sense of time lag between the question and the answer. The question is asked, the answer is out. And then Jesus goes on, not simply to answer the question, but he more than answers it. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Magus, of the Mighty One, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Now, Jesus' direct answer to Caiaphas' question, just look at it first of all, it was a strategic move on the part of Caiaphas, because you see, if Jesus was the person he claimed to be, well he couldn't other than say so, unless he were a coward. If he were a coward, well, might as well recognize it now. And he puts the question then, are you the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? But what I want you to notice is, when Jesus is challenged concerning his person, without a moment's hesitation, out it comes, I am. Jesus could no more deny who he was than he could cease to be the Son of God. This is what he's been teaching throughout his life. It was on the basis of the knowledge of this fact that he said to Peter, upon this rock I will build my church, because Peter had said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, etc. The fact that Jesus is Messiah is the very basis upon which everything else rests. And so Jesus says, yes, yes, yes, he says, in synagogue and in temple, from the beginning of my ministry right up to now, I have said that I am he, and I say it in this ecclesiastical court, without a shadow of a doubt, I am he. You see, had he said otherwise, he would have put all history in confusion. How could you explain his miracles? If he were not the Christ, the Son of God. How could you explain this compassion unspeakable, if he were not the person he said he was? All the problems do not lie in proving that Jesus was or because Jesus was the person whom he claimed to be. There would be immense problems if Jesus now said that he were anyone other than the Son of God. Being the Son of God, then we can explain his miracles, or we can explain what's going to happen in his death, and we can explain his resurrection in measure, and we can explain his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Things become explicable only because he is a different kind of person from you and from me. But now I want you to notice, Jesus' declaration of his future role goes much further than anything Caiaphas asked. It isn't that Jesus was trying to be silent, but he would only speak at the right moment. Oh, that we should pray for this. I find that it's so easy to speak at the wrong time, don't you? There's a time to speak and there's a time to be quiet. And a mature Christian should be a person who recognizes the time to speak and the time to be quiet. Look at Jesus' perfect timing. This was the time to speak. He's been silent. Now is the time to speak. And he doesn't simply say, yes, yes, I am he. But I want to tell you more, Caiaphas. Oh, I know you have the power of death in liaison, acting in liaison with Pilate. I know all that. But look, he says, I want you to know it nevertheless. You will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one that is of God and coming on the clouds of heaven. This is not the end of me, he says. You've got it all mapped out. You're going to have me nailed on the cross. And you're going to say, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. And you say, full stop, period. Not on your life. In the book of Daniel it is written of me that I am the son of man. Now this is one of the most misunderstood titles in the whole of the New Testament and the Old. We generally use the title son of man referring to the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We say he was son of God, he belonged to God, he had divine nature, he was son of man, he had human nature. Well really, basically that's not what it means. It may include that. And Jesus sometimes used it with that nuance. But the basic meaning, the cardinal meaning, the fundamental meaning coming from the Old Testament is different from that. Listen to these words. Here is the setting in Daniel chapter 7. Thrones were set in place, and the ancient of days, that is a title for God, took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow, the hair of his head was white like wool, his throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were ablaze. And now let me go on a little. Verse 13. In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of the heavens. He approached the ancient of days, and he was led into his presence. And now listen. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and he will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed. Have you got that picture? And Jesus is speaking to people who know the Old Testament, you see. And what he's telling Caiaphas, the high priest, the scholar in the Old Testament, look, look, he says, yes, I do not only claim to be the son of the highest, the Messiah, the son of the living God, I tell you this, there's a day coming when you who think you've got the upper hand will see me coming on the clouds of heaven in my glory as the Lord of lords and King of kings and the one in whose hand the destinies of men and nations rest, and you will be in my hands that day. That's what he's saying. And that brings me to the last thing. I thank you for your listening. I won't be long now. The change that came over the court. Hearing this, we read that the high priest tore his clothes. This is a symbolic act, typically Jewish, and yet it's Oriental on a wider basis than being purely Jewish, but I don't, and I'm not quite sure where it originated, but it certainly was a a well-known symbolic act in Jewish life. It took place particularly when very bad, sorrowful news came, sometimes of a sad news of death. For example, you remember Reuben came back to the pit. He had put his brother Joseph in the pit and had gone away, and he was hoping to do something better for Joseph than that, but when he got back he found that his brothers had sold him, and we read that he tore his garments with sheer grief. So the high priest tore his garment, allegedly in grief, but may I suggest to you that behind that grief there was great joy, that at last he got a charge that he thought would stick, because he turns to the crowd, to the Sanhedrin members before him, and he says, why do we need any more witnesses? Now he says, you don't need to send the scouts out for witnesses anymore. Let the people sleep. You have heard his blasphemy. What do you think? We don't need witnesses now. You are the witnesses as well as the judges. All illegal. He has been heard to blaspheme in claiming that he was the Son of the Highest, that is the Son of God. Now the council responds to the question of Caiaphas, what do you think? In verse 64 they respond, they all condemned him as worthy of death. I repeat at that stage of course it was all informal and not in the records, not in the book, but tomorrow morning they will make it formal and they will make it regular and they will make it stick and as far as they can they will seek to see that he is cursed and that he is nailed to the tree as a blasphemer. And then begins an episode that I'm not going into this morning, which we can only speak of as the beginning of our Lord's gross humiliation before those who were committed with his trial. We read that they began to spit on his face. Now I'm tempted to go very hurriedly over that, not just because of the time but because of the nature of it. But I don't want to go over it so quickly that you don't appreciate what's taking place. This is the most dignified group of people amongst the Jewish nation of that day and age. Or any day and age. They are the highest ecclesiastical powers. They were the intelligentsia. They had the honors and they had the power. And they spat in the face of the anointed Son of God as if he were a scoundrel. Not only did they spit, but they struck him and blindfolded him. And some began, we read, to spit at him. They blindfolded him, struck him with their fists and said, Oh, the magnitude of his mercy. Prophesy, they say. Prophesy. What they mean is this. Tell us who's striking you. Prove to us in some miraculous way who you are. But you see, Jesus would not win people that way. Jesus' use of the miraculous was very sparing when you come to think of it. He didn't so use miracles as some people today want to use miracles to bludgeon people to believe against their reason. Jesus didn't do that. I tell you, it would have been possible to force these people to acknowledge that Jesus was Messiah. And he could have done it if as blindfolded he had given their names one by one. You're striking me now. You're striking me now. You're striking me now. And I know what's in your heart. And if he had done that, he could have proved he wouldn't do it. That's not the way he wins his disciples. He wins his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit, convincing men of sin and of wrong and of evil and of need and drawing men and women to confess their sins to him that he may pardon and cleanse and be their Savior. Oh, he still works miracles, but that's not the way he wins his disciples. I conclude then. What has all this got to say to us? Well, much more than I'm going to summarize now, but it certainly means this. Everything that I have been feebly trying to describe to you this morning and more that is to come is part of the anguish that the Son of God was prepared to undergo to save sinners from reaping the consequences of our sin. He was willing to suffer. This is not the innermost sanctuary of those sufferings. This is not the most important ingredient in the suffering that he's going to undergo, but he's entering into it. This is the physical, largely, and the psychological. But he was willing to take this. And if no one has ever told you that before, my friend, I want to tell you from this pulpit this morning. Guests among us, please let me tell you if you've never heard this said before. My Lord Jesus Christ loved you to the point that he was willing to die on the cross of Calvary in your stead. Now that's love. This is not the kind of queer crooning about some love that we have in the world today, a love which is too sentimental that it is unworthy to bear the name. In comparison, this is real love. This is anxiety for your soul. This is a concern for you, body, mind, and soul, and for all eternity. And he was willing to die for that. And perhaps that's why he's brought you here this morning to hear that. Perhaps for the first time, my friend, don't let it go out of your mind. Think of it for the rest of the day. You see, if that is so, here is someone you can trust. At this stage, he suffered because of his identity, which he insisted on declaring. To be mediator between God and man, to bring God and man together and reconcile God and man and man and God, he must be the person he was, the Son of God, and he must wear flesh like ours and be a real man as well. And he was both. And the last thing I want to say by way of application or expounding a principle is this. I find it very challenging. Religion, which is based on part of the truth only, can be not only the greatest stumbling block but the cause of anger against the truth itself. You see, the Jews had so much truth. They knew the Bible so far. They had so much, and they were right insofar as they went. But the Lord Jesus Christ did not come up to their preconceived notions of what the Messiah was going to be. Therefore, the case was loaded against him from the word go, and they were prejudiced irrespective of what he would do or where he would go or what he would say. There was nothing that could rationally and morally persuade them now to believe that he was who he was. Now, I find this tremendously challenging. You see, it is very easy for us to become bigots, bigots, on behalf of a section of the truth or a part of the truth because we don't know all the truth. And the person who's got a part of the truth, be it a Christian who's just got one or two doctrines, he can object to others because he doesn't see the wholeness, the vast vista of what God has revealed in Christ. A Christian, a professing Christian can be in that category, or a person who is not a Christian, he's got a little grain of truth from some other religion or some philosophy because Jesus Christ is a light that lights every man that comes into the world. And therefore, there is a little light everywhere in God's world. The heavens declare his glory and the firmament show his handiwork. And there is a light that lights every man coming into the world. And Jesus is that light, so John says. But you see, I can use that and say, look, I've got this little bit of a light, therefore I don't need anything more. And I'm so obsessed with a little candlelight that I've got, I shut my eyes to the sun in the sky. I ask you in my Lord's name this morning, what will you do with Jesus Christ, who claimed under threat of death that he was none other than God's only Son, the Lord of the future and of destiny, whose kingdom knows no end any more than he does himself. And I'm going to ask you, trust him as your own. Acknowledge him as your Lord, as he confessed himself before men, you show your confidence in him and confess him before men. And not just that, not by simply by word of mouth, but by living a life that is to his glory, by honoring his laws, by taking his word to the uttermost parts of the earth, and by being what he has called you to be. And maybe some of you this morning who would like to make that decision for the very first time, I have some booklets with me, which I brought here. One of them is entitled, Becoming a Christian. And if this morning you are sure that as yet you are not a Christian, but you would like at least to read something about it, and you feel drawn to a Christ who is as great and as mighty and as gracious as this, then you've only to come to me and ask me for one of these. And if you want to talk to us about these spiritual matters, we are at your service for Jesus' sake. Mr. George Lowe, my colleague, will be going to the vestibule this morning. I will be going into the Winchester room. And we ask all of you who are visitors especially to come and join us there over a cup of coffee. And if you want to speak to me about anything I've said, or if you want one of these, please come to us and let me say again, we are at your service for Jesus' sake. Now we are going to sing to conclude number 412.