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[ Silence ] [Music] Guess who passed this way? Guess who it was?

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♪ Guess who I saw today ♪ ♪ And he showered me with his love ♪ ♪ He changed my life ♪ ♪ He made me brand new ♪

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♪ He knows all my secrets too ♪ ♪ Know it was Jesus ♪ ♪ That he would do the same for you ♪ ♪ Guess who ♪

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♪ Guess who ♪ ♪ He passed this way ♪ ♪ Guess who it was ♪ ♪ Guess who I saw today ♪

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♪ And he shall with me with his love ♪ ♪ He changed my life ♪ ♪ He made it brand new ♪ ♪ He knows all my secrets too ♪

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♪ Oh, it was Jesus ♪ ♪ And he will do the same for you ♪ ♪ I read about the woman ♪ ♪ That Jesus met at the well ♪

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♪ He gave her living water ♪ ♪ And her story she did tell ♪ ♪ She ran back and she hoed hoed the whole town ♪ ♪ Said what a savior, what a savior I have found ♪

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♪ And if you will only get in his way ♪ ♪ He'll do the same thing for you ♪ ♪ Guess who ♪ ♪ Guess who ♪

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♪ I saw today ♪ ♪ Guess who it was ♪ ♪ Guess who I saw today ♪ ♪ And he showered me with his love ♪

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♪ He changed my life ♪ ♪ He made it brand new ♪ ♪ He knows all my secrets too ♪ ♪ Oh, if it was Jesus ♪

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♪ Then he would do the same for you ♪ ♪ Now let me tell you ♪ ♪ When he passed my way ♪ ♪ All of my sins were washed away ♪

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♪ There's something else when he passed my way ♪ ♪ The man brightened up my darkest day ♪ ♪ He fixed my feet for running and ♪ ♪ My eyes he opened wide ♪

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♪ He's preparing a place ♪ ♪ He's pleading my case ♪ ♪ He's right by his father's side ♪ ♪ Guess who, guess who ♪

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♪ I passed this way ♪ ♪ Guess who it was ♪ ♪ Guess who it was ♪ ♪ Oh, guess who, church ♪

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♪ Guess who I saw today ♪ ♪ And he showered me with his love ♪ ♪ He changed my life ♪ ♪ He made it brand new ♪

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♪ He knows all my secrets too ♪ ♪ Oh, it is Jesus ♪ ♪ 'Cause Jesus ♪ ♪ I'll tell you he touched me ♪

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♪ Yes he did ♪ ♪ I know he touched me ♪ ♪ He touched me ♪ ♪ And he showered me with his love ♪

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♪ Oh he changed my life ♪ ♪ He made it brand new ♪ ♪ He knows all my secrets too ♪ ♪ Oh it was Jesus ♪

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♪ Was Jesus and he will do the same for you ♪ ♪ Oh it was Jesus ♪ ♪ It was Jesus ♪ ♪ And he will do the same for you ♪

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Amen. Let's all say amen. Amen. Our scripture is in 2 Corinthians, the fifth chapter.

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2 Corinthians, the fifth chapter. beginning with the 17th verse. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us

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to himself, our Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the of Reconciliation. Subject of the message, the chance to start over. Oh, how wonderful it would be if we could do some things things over. How different they would be if we could just do it

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over. But we only have one life to live, and that one must be lived fully. I like to think sometimes if I could go back and say to my mother some things I wish I had said that I didn't say. Or to say to a friend some things that I did not say and some things I wish I had done. But the Creator

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Spirit is the one who can make our life over, give us the wonderful opportunity to begin again. We are not talking about rehabilitation. You may rehabilitate your house. You may make certain repairs, enlarge the bedroom, enlarge the kitchen, whatever, make repairs to the roof, but it's still the same old house.

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But here the Apostle is talking about reconciliation, being made new, an an experience that is unique. It's different. Nobody like you.

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In fact, someone said God threw the pattern away. He made you and then he made me. Here now we're talking about cloning. Wouldn't it be something if you had a whole lot of us just like us?

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[laughter] Somebody just like you? [laughter] Ten of them, you know, sitting here this morning?

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[laughter] I hate to think about what would happen [laughter] if I had a lot of people just like me.

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[laughter] Cloning is something that we are discussing and they tell me that it's becoming a reality. They've succeeded in cloning sheep and that's not too far from cloning human beings. So they say.

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But we're not talking about the same old you, same old me being made over. We're not talking about a duplication. We're talking about new creation. God created something out of nothing.

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Now that is so profound. It just blows my mind. As to how God creates. creates something out of nothing.

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We say he stepped out on nothing and brought worlds into existence. He created a new order before there was no order. God gives orders, He gives direction, He gives meaning to our existence. Now the church in Corinth was in disorder.

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They don't know who they are. - Well, they have an identity crisis. The church is divided. Some are followers of Reverend Simon Peter.

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Some are followers of Reverend Paul and some are followers of Reverend Apollos. And some call themselves followers of Christ. not in any of these groups, they're just followers of Jesus Christ.

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There was spiritual bankrupt and immorality was rampant. There was a need for the new creation. Their existence is really meaningless. They are submerged in guilt and sentenced to tragedy

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apart from the new creation. The members of the Corinthian church have confessed Christ. They've been baptized. They are church members, but they are not new.

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And there is a vast difference between the old and the new. As a lad, I had to have a lot of things second-handed. My mother would bring home a shirt from where she worked and that was to be my shirt, second-handed.

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Sometimes it would pair of pants. And then we would go down on what we called Deep L in Dallas. And you could buy second-handed things.

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And I'd get a second-handed suit and get some second-handed shoes. But those second-handed shoes had already been somewhat shaped by the one who wore them the first hand, by the first-handed person, it already.

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So the apostle isn't talking about Satan. And I don't need to belabor the point of what it means to be a second-handed citizen. We know that all too well. We'd be a second-handed citizen.

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That's the way we've been treated. But here Paul is talking about something new that raises life to a new level. And this means new, new, newborn, altogether new, different, unique, new.

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There was a man who became converted, he said. And he joined the church, and soon after that one of the brethren came and said, "This brother hadn't been converted." He had been an alcoholic beforehand and he said he still has his Mule

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hitched to the same old hitching post at the saloon He hadn't changed

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So to be new is to be liberated from bondage from bondage to the old The problem in the church is that They are glorifying pastors rather than God

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They're carried away by false wisdom rather than divine wisdom They do not understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. They are lifted up in pride. So Paul's message to the

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Caribbean's is a message of reconciliation. If you have the right relationship to the Lord you will not act as you do toward each other for the love of Christ controls us. Once we reach the conclusion that one man died for us all, we can't boast about our salvation. One is not above the

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other because we get our salvation from the same source. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We share a common salvation. Christ unites us. Christ brings us together. I'm not talking about that kind of togetherness that we often have when we've been hanging out here tonight, you know, early in the morning, we get together. "Oh, we get together, together."

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[laughter] And we can hardly get out of the place. I'm not talking about that kind of togetherness. I'm talking about the togetherness that brings us into unity.

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It is the togetherness of the Spirit of God. It unites us. It's the Spirit of God. So that's Paul's message. That once we accept it,

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the old order is gone. Worldly standards have ceased to count. We are united in Christ. And the ground is the same.

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The ground is level at the foot of the cross. So Christ establishes a new order and anyone united in Christ is a new creation. A new being, Paul Tillich in his theological discourses

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refers to it as a new being, a new creation, a new being, a new person, a new you. Oh, how wonderful it would be. If every one of us could have that experience

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in our world today, how different it would be. The new order, Paul says, is already begun. And if we think we can produce this change ourselves, we will never have it.

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No, it's not a change that we bring about in ourselves. It is a change God brings in our life. A change in the way we walk. Change in the way we talk.

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It's a change in the way we feel. It's a change in the way we look at the world. For anyone united in Christ. Christ makes the difference.

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Christ brings unity. Christ brings peace. Christ brings love. So whatever happens,

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different times a couple stand before me and they say they want to exchange wedding vows. They're in love. And then God, through his providence,

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has brought them together. They want to be joined together, to live together. And then after they've been together for a few months, the same comes--

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Reverend, I don't love him anymore. [LAUGHTER] You know, that unity, you know. Some people think love is sort of like a faucet

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that you can turn on and off whenever you desire to do so. But this is not what Paul is talking. He said, if you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, there is a growing unity.

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In other words, you become more and more like him. There's a growing experience of unity for anyone united in Christ among you. Deacons, missionary society, brotherhood,

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anyone from the pulpit to the door, anyone united in Christ is a new being. Now, God has reconciled us unto himself. to himself. In the Garden of Eden, the human family became separated from God,

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became estranged from God. And God through Jesus Christ enters into the world as a babe and identifies with us in our sinfulness and brings us to himself. That's the message. That's the message. Experience God. It's a strange experience. Oh, I'd been in church a long time as a boy. I was in the Sunday

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I listened to the teacher, I listened to the preacher. But I remember my mother gave me a storybook of Jesus, a child's storybook of Jesus. She gave it to me for Christmas and I read it. I couldn't put it down.

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It was the first time I had read the entire life of Jesus. And it gripped my heart. I shall never forget how I felt, how God spoke to me through it.

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You know, God doesn't have to speak to you in a sermon. He can speak to you through a song in the choir. He can speak to you through some action that occurs. It may be on the telephone, it may be anywhere.

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We can't restrict God. And God is in Christ. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. So he speaks to us through the life of Christ.

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He creates and makes new. He is at work now in our lives, creating and making new. And he enlists us through his ministry of reconciliation.

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He's at work bringing us together in him. So God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. He comes through Christ to a world of nothingness

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and makes us somebody. Oh, I can hear my grandmother talking about, oh, he ain't gonna be nothing. Oh, it's the sentence of death.

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Say you ain't gonna be nothing. but to recognize that the whole human family is nothing without Christ. - Yes Lord.

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- Yes Lord. - In other words, it means that your life has no meaning without Him. He causes the light to shine in darkness.

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He is the one who says, "Let there be." And it happens. Others say, "Well, he ain't gonna make it in." But if he, if God says, "Let there be," that's enough.

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That's enough. But all the world against you, if God says, "Let there be," that is enough. He creates and makes new.

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He speaks through life. As a shepherd boy in the hills of Bethlehem, he speaks through David and says, "Let there be." They put him off. He's the youngest in the family. He doesn't matter. He's not old enough for the army. He's not this. He's not that. But God speaks!

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And God sends his prophet and makes him king. He anoints him as the next king of Israel. Others have ignored him. Oh, don't you have another son around here?

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Oh, yeah. But he's just a lad. But God speaks. And that makes the difference.

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God is in Christ reconciling the world unto his feet. And God creates and makes new. And really what that means, brothers and sisters, is that God brings into existence

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that which has not previously existed. So when God is working wonders and making miraculous changes in your life, just remember that God is creating. Yes sir. He didn't stop creating in the Garden of Eden.

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He hasn't closed his book on Revelation. God still is at work in the world. Creating and making new. And he wants to do that in you, he wants to do that in me.

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Some people wanna close the books, they get a certain age, they wanna close up. Well I've done it, I've done it, no, God is still creating. And making new, God spoke to a man

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who was an enemy of the church, and he was persecuting the church, but God spoke to him, called him by name, changed his life,

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made him the outstanding missionary to the Gentiles. So God reaches out and touches people and God is always doing something. Every time you find a mountain

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that is too high for you to climb And somehow the strength comes and enables you to get over the hill. God's doing something new. Every time you walk through a dark, dismal valley,

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and you get on the other side of that valley, God is creating you. He's doing something new. He's doing something new in your life. God is doing something new.

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Every time the sun rises, God's doing something new. Every time we go to bed at night and we get up in the morning with the right use of our minds, God is doing something new.

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Every time, every time we walk and talk and have fellowship one with the other, God is doing something new, I tell you. He's doing something new, something new.

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He's always waiting to do something new in our lives. Every time we see a flower bloom, or we see a tree budding, see grass growing, God's doing something new.

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He's doing something new. So God has a history of doing something new. The Bible is the written revelation of God doing something new.

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So we see him under the leadership, you see Moses following the leadership of God and he's out there in the mountain keeping watch over his father-in-law's flock,

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and he sees a bush that's burning, and he hears the voice of God, and he draws nigh, and decides to take a closer look at that site, and God says, "Go set my people free."

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God's doing something new. - Yes, Lord. - And when Moses stands before Pharaoh, and the people are set free,

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and they go across the Red Sea, God is doing something new. They get into the wilderness and they cry for bread. God gives them bread and a starving man.

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God is doing something new. They cry for water to satisfy their parching tongues and God gives them water in waterless places. God is doing something new, I tell you.

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Start doing something new. Well, there's a very familiar poem of a boy who comes to the desk of his teacher with a quivering lip.

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The lesson is done. He says, dear teacher, I want a new leaf. I'll spoil this one. The teacher took the old leaf

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and it was stained and blotted and gave him a new one all unspotted. And into his sad eyes smiled, do better now, my child.

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And the story is that he says, I went to the throne with quivering soul. The old year was done. Dear father, has thou a new leaf for me?

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I've spoiled this one. And he took the old leaf, stained and blotted, and gave me a new one, all unspotted. And into my sad heart smiled,

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better now my child. He just is doing something new. New Year's, when we had a new year coming in and old year going out, he's doing something new all the time. He reached out one day, I can't forget it, how he reached out one day and took me as a boy nine years old. Oh years old.

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Changed my life, set me on the right course, lifted me up. From the muck and mire, set my feet on a solid rock. God's doing something new, head stops. It's been a long time since I was nine years of age,

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but God is still doing something new in my life, and he wants to do something new in your life. Thanks be to God that we have this ministry of reconciliation. That as we grow older physically,

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that God is at work in our lives spiritually, drawing us closer and closer to him. And we can say, oh, for a closer walk with God. Come and heavenly frame, the light

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will shine upon the road that leads me to the land. As we come now to the hymn of invitation, we extend the pillar to the church. [MUSIC] It's an open door he sets before us.

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It's invitation he extends to every one of us to do something new in our lives. Something new, something wonderful, something saving and redeeming. I invite you to come.

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By letter, by Christian experience, or on professional faith, come. ♪ The cross upon which Jesus died ♪ - There's room at the cross.

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♪ Is a shelter in which we can hide ♪ ♪ God is grace so free ♪ ♪ His provision for me ♪ ♪ And deep is the fountain ♪

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♪ And wide as the sea ♪ ♪ And room at the cross for you ♪ ♪ There's room at the cross for you ♪ ♪ Though millions have come ♪

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♪ There's still room for one ♪ ♪ Yes, there's room at the cross for you ♪ ♪ For millions have found Him, our friend ♪ ♪ And have turned from all sin's bare hands to Him ♪

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♪ The Savior still waits to open the gates ♪ ♪ And welcome us in ♪ ♪ Before his tomb ♪ ♪ There's room at the cross for you ♪

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♪ There's room at the cross for you ♪ ♪ Oh, here's the cup ♪ ♪ There's still room for one ♪ ♪ And the promise for you ♪

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♪ The hand of my Savior is drawn ♪ ♪ And the love of my Savior is won ♪ ♪ Through such a long way ♪ ♪ Through loss or in pain ♪

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♪ The blood flows from Calvary ♪ ♪ To cleanse every sain ♪ ♪ There's room at the cross for you ♪ ♪ There's room at the cross for you ♪

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♪ Though years have gone ♪ ♪ There's still room for one ♪ ♪ Yes, there's room at the cross for you ♪ - That's wonderful.

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That's good news. - Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]