Transcript:
Alright, Psalm number 51 tonight. You wanna go ahead and get ahead of the game? You can go to 2 Samuel chapter 11 as well. Psalm number 51. We're gonna go ahead and read the Psalm, and then we're gonna go to 2 Samuel. We're gonna spend a fair amount of time tonight reading, which is not something we often do, but sometimes when you're studying a passage of scripture, the context calls for a certain familiarity with the surrounding events so that you can get a better understanding of what is happening in the text before you. So that's where we're at in Psalm 51. The subtitle here says, "'To the chief musician, a Psalm of David, "'when Nathan the prophet came unto him "'after he had gone into Bathsheba.'" Verse one. "'Have mercy upon me, O God, "'according to thy loving kindness, "'according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, "'blot out my transgressions. "'Wash me throughly from mine iniquity "'and cleanse me from my sin. "'For I acknowledge my transgressions "'and my sin is ever before me. "'Against thee, thee only have I sinned "'and done this evil in thy sight, "'that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest "'and be clear when thou judgest. "'Behold, I was shapen in iniquity "'and in sin did my mother conceive me. "'Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts "'and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. "'Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. "'Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. "'Make me to hear joy and gladness "'that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. "'Hide thy face from my sins "'and blot out all mine iniquities. "'Create in me a clean heart, O God, "'and renew a right spirit within me. "'Cast me not away from thy presence "'and take not thy holy spirit from me. "'Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation "'and uphold me with thy free spirit. "'Then will I teach transgressors thy ways "'and sinners shall be converted unto thee. "'Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God. "'Thou God of my salvation and my tongue "'shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. "'O Lord, open thou my lips "'and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. "'For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. "'Thou delightest not in burnt offering. "'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, "'a broken and a contrite heart, O God, "'thou wilt not despise. "'Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion. "'Build thou the walls of Jerusalem. "'Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices "'of righteousness with burnt offering "'and whole burnt offering. "'Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.'" Would you pray with me? Our Father, thank you for Psalm 51, how it has been useful to us and profitable to us so many times in our Christian lives. And Lord, as we study these things and the surrounding events that have led to Psalm 51, please give us understanding and wisdom. Speak to us, teach us, help us to see the scriptures and the truths and principles found therein in a way that we can apply to ourselves. Lord, guide me and help me to say what you have me to say in our short study here tonight. And Lord, give your people, give us all hearts that are open and receptive and inclined to receive the word in Jesus' name, amen. Now, as I said, we're gonna go back to 2 Samuel chapter 11. So if you'll turn back to 2 Samuel chapter 11, we're gonna go back to 2 Samuel chapter 11. Now, the reason we're gonna read these two together, Psalm 51 and 2 Samuel 11, is because 2 Samuel 11 and 12 give us the narrative of David's sin and surrounding issues or surrounding events with Bathsheba. Psalm 51 gives us David, the inner working of David's heart during those events or shortly after those events. And by comparing the two, we get a rare insight both into what God is doing in David's heart and in how David is responding to his sin. And there are so many, this particular Psalm is just full of truth, full of truth that will help us. And I want to point out those things to you, but in order to do that, you have to understand the narrative. You have to understand what brings David to Psalm 51 and what, because a lot of Psalm 51 is hinges on these events. And you compare the two and you can learn a great deal. And it's a good principle in Bible study when you try to get the context. You can do this also with the book of Acts and the epistles. You can compare one is a personal letter, one is the narrative of those events, the history of those events. And by comparing them, you can draw, you can get insight. So chapter 11 of 2 Samuel says this, and it came to pass after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him in all Israel and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabba, but David carried still at Jerusalem. The first warning is you will stay, I will stay out of sin by doing your duty. That has nothing to do with sin. By doing the things and occupying yourself in the good duties that you have, you reduce the opportunities to be involved or to be tempted that otherwise you would not be tempted with. David should be out at battle. In other words, he should be at work, but he's not, he's sitting at home. David has duties before him, but he's shirking his responsibility. That's the first danger. Verse 2, and it came to pass in the evening tide that David arose up from off his bed and walked upon the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. Some people have criticized Bathsheba. What is Bathsheba doing, bathing on top of a roof? Well number one, in this time roofs, roofs, somebody help me, Ms. Lynn is it roofs or roofs? Well you say roofs and roofs. She was going to give a nuanced, a nuanced. Roofs yeah, who's from Michigan? Did you say roofs? Does your mom say roofs? She's probably going to text right now. So some people criticize Bathsheba because she's on the roof. Well number one, the roofs were flat. Number two, and you think well she's bathing, well it's in all likelihood the lady is clothed. Because did you know in places where they don't have indoor plumbing, they would wear something while they bathe. That's the true thing in Cambodia. A lot of places they do that. So you can't look at well what is Bathsheba doing out, no what is David doing out there lusting after a woman he had no business lusting after. Don't blame the woman, it ain't her fault. She's just, that's probably where she took a bath. It's probably the most private place in her house to truth be told. Anyway I'm going to get on there. I don't give them on a hobby horse here. Everybody in this room knows that there's something behind what I'm saying that's kind of the force behind it but it kind of annoys me when people blame women in cases like this. And I've heard it personally and it's, anyway. All right. And David verse three sent and inquired after the woman and one said, Is not this Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers and took her. And she came in unto him and he lay with her for she was purified from her uncleanness and she returned unto her house and the woman conceived and sent unto David and said, I am with child. And David sent to Joab saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah to David. And when David was coming to him Joab demanded of him how Joab did. David demanded of him how Joab did and how the people did and how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house and wash thy feet and Uriah departed out of the king's house and there followed him a mess of meat from the king. You might say, well why is he trying to get him to go home? He's trying to cover his tracks. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and went not down to his house. And when ...

Transcript:
Matthew chapter 18, and we will add the second part of what we looked at this morning. Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. And we'll begin reading in verse number 21 tonight. Now this morning we were talking about the issue of a trespassing brother. That is someone who has sinned against us and sinned against God and then also caused harm to us as a result of their sin. And the response, the biblical response to that person, and we looked at the various, at least some of the facets and reasons why the Lord says that this is the way to handle it. But it is natural when you're dealing with this issue of a trespassing brother that you come to the question of forgiveness. That is a natural outcome to the issue of someone that has sinned against you. Now in verse 15 and verse number 16 and 17 we see the progression where it's the issue or the sin and the addressing of that starts between just two people. And then it rises to three or four and then it goes to the whole church. And if still that person who is in sin refuses to repent and confess his sin, then he's to be of course disfellowshipped. But and that's of course the worst case scenario. That is not what the desire, the Lord's desire or it should not be our desire for sure when trying to address these kinds of issues. But that is sometimes the case. But what we address starting in verse number 21 is not the case of the man who refuses to repent, but the man who does repent. The man who does acknowledge his wrong and the man who does confess his sin. Because just because that happens, just because the person acknowledges what they've done and has confessed it does not mean that all of a sudden it's going to be simple for you as a person who has been hurt to just get over it and to forgive that person. And so that's why I say it's natural that the question of forgiveness is addressed by the Lord. Actually, it's brought up by our brother Peter immediately after this. But it follows directly with the question of trespasses. So we're going to start in verse number 21 and read down through the end of the chapter. Verse 21 says this. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. Verse number 23. So Peter asked the Lord about how often we must forgive someone. And then he and so the Lord in response to Peter's question, after he answers a question, he gives Peter a parable. Now note, like in many cases, the parable is directly interpreted for us in the last verse of the chapter. So you don't have to really you don't have to understand. You don't have to like figure out what the purpose of the parable is because the Lord tells you in the in verse 35. But verse 23 says this. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, he was one was brought unto him which had owed him ten thousand talents. But for as much as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made. You know, I won't take a long time here, but there's something to be said about the mention of not only the man, his wife, his children and his property. In other words, this man is in debt to God. And what is happening? It is affecting his whole family, right? His sin in the sight of God, because this is the picture of a man who does not who is who is not a believer, who is in great debt to God. And God debt in the obviously in the form of sin and how that sin has so dreadfully impacted his whole family. Verse 26. The servant therefore fell down and worshiped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him in hundred pence. And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou o'est. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet and besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servant saw what was done, they were very sorry and came and told unto their Lord all that was done. Then his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me. Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his Lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father also do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. Let's pray together. Lord, in heaven we thank you so much for your word. Lord, we thank you for the sustenance and nutrition, spiritual nutrition that your word gives us on a regular basis. Thank you for your people that have gathered here tonight. And I pray, Lord, as they are ready to hear from your word that you, Lord, would be the speaker and the teacher and that you would help us to have a clear understanding of this truth of forgiveness and how you present it in this passage. Please guide me to help your people, Lord. Our eyes are upon you. In Jesus' name, Amen. I want you to note the word trespass. Note the word trespass in verse number 35, the last verse of the chapter. I'm trying to connect it to what we read this morning in verses 15 to 20. Because verse 35, the Lord gives the interpretation of his parable, but he uses the word trespass and the last word of the chapter, he says, If ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. So again, that's the same idea is a sin in the sight of God, which is affecting another. So we're actually, whether we're talking about forgiveness or whether we're talking about dealing with a trespass in verse 15 to 20, we're actually talking about the same issue. We're actually talking about the same issue. Now in this parable, there are two debts that are in view. There's what you might call a vertical debt, that is a debt between the servant and the king. Verse 24 says this, And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. So that's the vertical debt. It has to do with God, ourselves in God. And then there's what we might call a horizontal debt. That's just my term. Verse 28, But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him an hundred pence. So this man also, there's a debt here between two servants. So there's this way and then there's this way. Now if you notice in verse number 24, the debt between the servant and the king or Lord is ten thousand talents. And the debt between the two servants, the one servant to the other is one hundred pence. Now we won't go into all the details about a pence, which we've studied it before, but the idea of a pence was you got one of those for one day's labor, sun up to sun down. So essentially 12 hours of work got you one pence, a British, obviously a British term. But it's just a pence is a reference to what in history is called a denarius, which is a Roman piece of money. So I'm just going to throw out some numbers because I want us to really understand the difference and the comparison between these figures of ten thousand talents and one hundred pence. So if you take one day's wage, which is one denarius, one pence, and I'm going to just put forth, say you work for twenty dollars an hour, just throw in a number out there, a nice round number, and you work eight hours a day, that would be a day's wage, one hundred sixty dollars. So you ear...

Transcript:
Matthew chapter 18 this morning, Matthew chapter 18. Lord willing, this morning will be the first part of a two-part study in the second half of Matthew here. And the reason I say it's not actually two separate, it's not actually one message that's divided into two, but the two parts are intimately related. And so what we'll study tonight, if the Lord is willing, is directly related to what we'll see today this morning in Matthew 18, verse number 15. Matthew 18 verse 15. The Bible says, moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, and go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. And if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. That should be familiar to all of us, a recent study we've gone through with that. Verse 19. I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Would you pray with me this morning? Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your word. Thank you for the truth that it contains. We pray that you would help us to, you give us grace, that is, to live up to it, to do what your word says, to obey your voice. Because we know your way is the best way. And Lord, you have good motivations for everything that you tell us. It is for your glory and for our good, for our benefit that your name might be glorified through us in this world around us. Lord, help us as we study your word. Guide us each one. Help me, Lord, to say the things that your people need, Lord, because you alone know the needs of each and every person. And so Lord, just like we come every Sunday, Lord, we acknowledge that we can't do anything without you. And Lord, that you are the one who is able to meet our needs, spiritual and otherwise, you're the one who is able to direct our steps individually. Our eyes are upon you, Lord. So help us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Notice in verse number 15 that this, 15 to 20, this section begins with the word moreover, which indicates to us that it is a continuation of sorts from the previous section that we studied last week, which is the section of Scripture dealing with offenses or stumbling blocks. And it's no surprise that this section, which deals with a trespassing brother, we'll get to that in a minute, is related to offense because oftentimes the very thing that causes us to stumble is the sin of another. We can think that we have this hyper atomized view of ourselves and we think, well, what I do, it doesn't affect anybody else. That's their problem. And the Lord says, that's not the way it works. We affect each other, both in our families, in our church, at our work, whatever the context is, what we do affects other people. Sometimes that causes a stumbling block. Sometimes it encourages others. And sometimes it causes situations where there's a trespass. And so it's no wonder that these two sections are connected by the word moreover. Notice what it says in verse 15. Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee. So I want to set the context of these verses because it's very specific. I know that sometimes these verses are used and applied more generally and that's good. That's fine and right. But I want us all to see specifically what the Lord's referring to in this passage. The first indicator is the word brother, the word brother. In other words, the spiritual connection is what the Lord is primarily referring to. If you keep reading, he mentions brother in verse number 15, trespass against thee. Verse 16, there is a mention of two or three witnesses, one or two more. And then in verse 17, there's a mention of the word church. So the idea is there's one or two more, two or three witnesses. And if that fails, then it goes to the church. And then if the person in question neglects the church, then the person is treated not as a part of the group anymore, but is treated as someone outside of the group. So that sets the context of this. What's primarily in view is not necessarily personal relationships like you might have at your home or your work or your job or whatever. Although the principles here definitely apply. But what is specifically being referred to here is the relationship that might exist in a church setting. That's why the brother, the witnesses, and then the church is mentioned. So in this case, the main thrust, the main truth that the Lord is aiming at is this situation in which we find ourselves on a weekly basis. That is, the church meeting together. The church is not just the church on Sunday. The church is the church every day. But we meet on Sunday and we have relationships, hopefully with one another outside of our meeting. That's the hope. That's the goal. Sometimes there are problems that arise within people in the church. But again, we're not even talking about just personal problems. If you and I as individuals, if we have any kind of relationship with another human being, there are going to be problems. Right? It is inevitable. It doesn't matter. They could be your blood brother and sister. Sometimes the biggest problems that we tend to have are with people that are closest to us. Husband, wife, children, parents. Brothers, sisters. But then anytime you have coworkers, you have friends, you have extended family, you have church folk, brothers and sisters in Christ, and it goes on and on from there. Anytime you have two people that are rubbing together like this, there's going to be sparks from time to time. And the Lord obviously has principles to deal with that. Let me show you one that we've already studied. And I want to show you a contrast. Go to Matthew 5. Don't lose your place here because we're coming right back. Matthew 5 verse number 23. Matthew 5 verse number 23. You see the same terminology, although it says something different. Matthew 5, 23. Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberst that thy brother, same term, hath ought against thee. Now, the word ought, we've already looked at this, but the word ought just means anything. So, ought is not a thing. It's a container that contains anything. Okay? Leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way. First, be reconciled to thy brother, then come and offer thy gift. Notice the context of this is worship. Right? This is temple, in the temple is what this is talking about. But the context is worship, which is kind of similar to a church setting, is it not? Verse number 25. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him, lest in any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. So, in verse 23 and 4 we see that in this case, unlike in Matthew 18, this is a case where I'm going to worship and I remember that someone has a problem with me. Not the reverse. Not I have a problem with them. Not that they have harmed me, but I remember that they have the idea that I have harmed them. I'm to leave my gift, go to that person, and reconcile that problem. Of course, to the best of my ability, and then offer the gift. In other words, there's not supposed to be, where it is at all feasible, there's not supposed to be outstanding issu...

Transcript:
Alright, well we are going to try and conclude this morning our study on the aseity of God, which is? What's that? No beginning or end? Self-existent, they're actually related, exactly. The idea of aseity is something that exists independently of any other cause. It's a word that we can use to describe God. We say, to put it easily, it's God's self-existent. So this is a series we're doing in our Sunday school called Our Great God when we're looking at the attributes of God. And again, I want to reiterate to you that my desire and my goal and hope as we go through the attributes is not to just give you theological terms or even theological truths, although we want to cover those. But to also look at it, look at these truths from a practical perspective as they relate to us in our lives practically, as they relate to the Lord Jesus Christ and as they relate to the gospel. And that's what we're going to do today. So let's pray and then we are going, we'll do a brief review and then we are going to get into the section about the practical aspect of God's self-existence. So let's pray together. Father, we thank you that you are a God whose attributes exceed our understanding. Lord, you're not a God that we can put our brains all the way around. You're not a God who is comprehensible to us. Lord, we know some things according to the ability that you've given to us when you created us. But Lord, there are many things that exceed our understanding and we are so glad for that. Lord, help us to truly stand in awe each one of all of your attributes and of this attribute in particular. And Lord, help us to to really give you praise and live like you are the God you describe yourself to be. And so Lord, we look to you now as we look in your word in Jesus name. Amen. All right. So what we saw last time is in God's self-existence, the primary kind of go-to verse for this is Exodus 3 14 in which God speaks to Moses. He says when Moses asks what God's name is so that he can tell the children of Israel, the Bible says and God said to Moses, I am that I am. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am, hath sent me unto you. And I am as we saw is just the be verb, which is the statement of God's existence. So no matter what point in what we would call history, whether it's past, present or future, God can always say I am at that moment because he exists. That's that's what that describes. Then we looked at Isaiah several verses in Isaiah. We looked at Revelation chapter one. I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end. And then the two things in particular that we we kind of derived from this truth is that God has no original cause. The fact of God's existence means that that God pre-exists everything and nothing brought God into existence. He is his own cause. And in fact, he has no cause. And that he is the original cause of all things. And so whatever came into existence came into existence dependent upon God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. And then this quote from from Tozer, which we're going to look at this book, several quotes from this book today. Just some good things. Tozer has a way of putting things in a very concise and powerful way, unlike many other authors. And so I just want to share some of those quotes with you today. But this is one quote of his. He says, God has no origin said innovation and it is precisely this concept of no origin which distinguishes that which is God from whatever is not God. The second thing we looked at also was because God is self-existent and does not had no original cause. So before anything was God already was therefore God is not dependent upon any thing. I'll read these verses again just as review. Job 22 verse 2 and 3. Can a man be profitable unto God as he that is wise may be profitable unto his self unto himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous or is it is it gained to him that thou makest thy ways perfect? Psalm 16 verse 2. Oh my soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord my goodness extendeth not to thee. Act 17 five. Neither is God worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. So one of the primary identifying characteristics of the true God if he is laid beside everything in this world that is called God is God is self-existent. He depends upon and needs nothing whatsoever. I want to be honest with you and we'll see it in just a minute. That fact bothers some professing Christians. That fact bothers some professing Christians. The reason it does is because some people have been taught to think God needs them. But that's not the God of the Bible. You know what? The Lord's not concerned to be honest with you. I don't think he's concerned one wit that his attribute bothers us. I don't think that worries him at all. It doesn't. So it is upon us to look at the scripture and to read how God has described himself. He says this is the way I am. This is who I am. This is how I am. And if we have a right view of God himself then that sets everything else in the right view as well. So we have three things. Remember every one of these attributes what I want to do is go through each one. I want to go through the theological part which is what we did last week. I want to look at the practical part. I want to look at, so relate, I called it in my notes for those of you that take notes, Ms. Brenna. Relation to practice, relation to Jesus Christ, and relation to the gospel. That's kind of the three ways I'm looking at it. So how does this attribute of God, God's aseity or self existence, relate to our practical life? Our practical life. As I said, this attribute bothers not only Christian, professing Christian people, but this attribute is directly contradictory. It is one of the primary attributes that contradicts some claims of so-called science. Now, you might think that the primary attribute of God that contradicts what might be called science is the fact of God's being a creator. God is creative. That might be one, but actually kind of at a lower level, this attribute really is diametrically opposed to the God of science. Now, I love science. I'm a science person. I like, read the encyclopedia for fun. So I like science. But the Bible says that there is no wisdom or counsel or knowledge against the Lord. And so science, the word science means knowledge. That's what the word means. And yet the worldview that has at its top, at the very peak, that has science as God is going to be in conflict with the God of the Bible. There can only be one. And science is not it. Now, why do I say that science has, that mankind, secularists, if you will, atheistic types, agnostic types, have science as their God? Because they would not say that. If you say, oh, you believe in science, so science is your God. They'll, I don't believe in God. Science is not God. Science is just facts. But here's the thing. You know, remember, in Acts 17, we saw that Paul used the aseity or self-existence of God to identify him among the other gods. Remember? Did you remember seeing that in Acts 17? So if we label something as self-existent, we are giving that thing or person, as the case may be, an attribute of God that identifies him as deity. And that is exactly what science has done with itself. Okay? So if you ask someone who has science as their God, or maybe a person who has science as his or her God, asks us, okay, you believe in God, then where did God come from? And we say nowhere. Right? We say nowhere. He is self-existent. He is, there's never been a time that he has not existed. He is Alpha and Omega. He is I Am. Right? To the materialist who worships that, and that's the term, that's the Ten-cent term. For someone who believes only in the material universe and does not believe in anyt...

Transcript:
Then turn with me to John chapter 17. John chapter 17. Turn this on. All right, thank you Isaiah. I should be on here. We're going to be going through this chapter and take some time to look at first a very high level overview and then we're going to dig into a couple thoughts of what the main point of this chapter is and then also how can we can apply this to our relationship with the Lord. This is Jesus praying for you. So, John 17 set the context here. This is during the time right before he died that he was praying for his disciples and his disciples who were yet to come which includes you and me and the ones that have not yet come to Christ. The ones who he is seeking are far off. John chapter 17 Jesus prays, these words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and saying, Father, the hour has come. Glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. What I'm going to do just so you know is I'm going to go through several verses and we're going to stop and we're going to talk about and see how this applies and once we get to the end of going through this chapter on an overview we'll get more into some of the lessons we can learn. We're going to go through verse three here. As thou has given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou has given him. And this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ who I am sent, whom thou hast sent. So it's important when we set the context here Jesus Christ is, John is a portrait view of Jesus Christ. It's not so much focused on his doings though it does talk a lot about that. It focuses on the person of Jesus Christ and it is here that we see eternal life is a person. It is not a process, it is not a procedure, it is not a series of steps that you have gone through, it is not a checkbox that we make. Eternal life, if you will have eternal life you will have Christ and all of him and nothing else because eternal life is not something where we work out something, it is something that Jesus Christ worked out for us. In verse one we see God is worthy of all glory and honor. Jesus through his life glorified God and God's power, grace, and justice was glorified through Jesus. Eternal life we see in verse three and this is life and this is life eternal. That's equivalent. Eternal life is not based on your performance, it is based on the work and person of Jesus Christ and your participation in this is based on your location not the series of steps you take and are you in Christ. See God sent Jesus Christ and we must be clear on who Jesus is in order to be in him. Verse four says, I have glorified thee on the earth. This is Jesus speaking of his father. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And one of the things I love about this in verse four is he says he's finished the work. Jesus hasn't died yet and that's because God is not in our time, he's not confined to our dimensions as we would say in physics. God is outside of time, he's outside of dimensions so when Jesus Christ speaks of realities for us that we are dead and risen with Christ and we are seated in the heavenlies that's already happened in his mind because he's there at the beginning and the end. Time is not linear moving in one direction so Jesus Christ can speak of things that have already happened or have not yet happened as if they were there. And that is very encouraging when we realize that Christian life is not about trying to work things out so much as it is resting in something that Jesus Christ already worked out. See God is outside of time but we are confined to time and before we get all metaphysical here it's just important to realize that we can claim those realities even if we have not yet experienced them because remember our Christian life, our experience, our eternal life, it's not based on something we work out, it's based on something we lay hold upon by faith that he did for us. How simple, how glorious it is. Jesus finished this work, he glorified God and everything that was necessary to please God Jesus accomplished. Consider this, Jesus was successful in this mission that he finished. Our eternal life and our life here on earth hinges on this, not what we do. If Jesus had not succeeded we would have no hope. We have hope because he did succeed, he did glorify the father, Jesus did please God on my behalf, he did pay for our sins and we are in him. And now God views us the way he views his beloved son because of what Christ did. Moving on to verse five, and now oh father glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were and thou gavest them me and they have kept thy word. You see God gets glory when we are with him, when we are his family. It's interesting God wanted a family, he wanted friends and neighbors and that's why he came to earth to die for us. Note that Jesus repeatedly references his deity, he didn't hide who he was to the people who believed him and wanted him, that would be his disciples. But he was quite coy it seems and it seems confusing about people who did not want him. Christ is found of those who want him and he is very obvious to those who seek him, to those who he is drawing to be clear, it also speaks of that. But God is not looking to impress anyone and we see that in parables that he tells, if they will not believe Moses and the prophets neither will they believe me. But it is not as if God has left us without a witness because he is seeking and he is going after that lost sheep we see in the parables earlier in the gospels. He is coming unto us but he will be found of those who diligently seek him. He that cometh God must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. God has used Jesus to bring people unto himself. We know all things that God wants us to know through Jesus Christ. Being in Christ we keep his word and in verse 7 we understand the riches and all things, the riches of all things that we have being in Christ. In Christ we have all things and that is in 2nd Peter 1 we see that, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ grace and peace be multiplied according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. So here we see the sufficiency of Christ that all things that we need for doubts, for fears, we'll talk about that later, are found in Christ. That is a very radical idea and a very radical promise and one that we have to lay hold upon again by faith because there are many many times that I do not feel perfect and complete in him as the word of God describes us and that's where we choose to believe what God has said about our lives instead of looking and leaning onto our own understanding because God is outside of time and perhaps he has given us all things in a way that we have not yet, not perhaps but for sure he has given us all things in a way that we might not fully realize. Verse 8 says, for I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me and they have received them and have known surely that I came out from thee and that they have believed that thou didst send me. You see the people who are in Christ we're now learning more about what they are. Their location is in Christ. They have received the words of Christ and have believed Jesus. We are confronted with the word of God. We don't believe it to make it as true. We don't have to go through a series of steps again in order to, you know, I was actually listening to some Christian songs on Spotify whatever and then there is this song that came on and it started was calling Liking the Scriptures, Liking the Scriptures Unto Me and the first verse started talking about Noah and then I was like...

Transcript:
Second Kings, chapter six, verse 24. Let's pray and then we'll begin reading in that verse. Our Father, thank you so much for the testimonies of your people here tonight. Thank you, Lord, especially, but that behind the testimony is the work of the Lord, individually, with one sheep who was gone astray, with one little one, with one whose soul you did not want to see perish. Lord, as you said this morning in Matthew 18, it is not your will that any of these little ones should perish. Thank you for the testimony of your work in each person here. And Lord, we pray that you would do it over and over and over again among us. Lord, I think of these little kids that are here, Lord, in our church that are growing up, learning, growing. Lord, give them a testimony like this, of salvation, not only of salvation, but also of a great work of God in them. And we ask that to an individual, to the individual, Lord, that every single child would be affected by the gospel and by your work in their lives. Bless our time in your word now in Second Kings. We pray that you would guide us and help us to receive the truth in Jesus' name, amen. Second Kings 6, verse number 24. And it came to pass after this, that Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, gathered all his hosts and went up and besieged Samaria. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this story, this narrative of Ben-Hadad and his siege of Samaria as an illustration to get to a certain point, because this story provides kind of a ripe illustration for one truth, as I said, that I want us to take away from this. So Ben-Hadad is the enemy of Israel, okay? He is, he really shouldn't be, but he is. He's the enemy of Israel, and he is coming against Samaria to besiege it, that is, to surround it and let no one in and out, okay? And the result, this time, the result of a siege was that the city would go into a famine, where people could not, you know, eventually everything in the city is exhausted, nobody's bringing anything in, taking anything out, and so eventually you're gonna run out of water, you're gonna run out of food, you're gonna run out of everything that you need, and then it really starts to get difficult, and the siege can last for quite a while. So this is what he's trying to do, and he represents Satan. Now, I will show you why in just a minute, verse 25. And there was a great famine in Samaria, and behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for four score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver. Yes, exactly, what you're thinking is what I'm thinking too, that's disgusting, all of it. Verse 26, and as the king of Israel was passing upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king! And he said, If the Lord do not help thee, when shall I help thee, out of the barn floor or out of the wine press? And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give me thy son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him, and I said unto her the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him, and she hath hid her son. This is a terrible, terrible place to be. You think, well, the things they used to do back then, oh no, it's not back then. This is what humanity does when they're in dire straits. In 2025, we have not progressed. In fact, in many ways, we've regressed. But here's the thing. So you have Ben-Hadad, who represents Satan, has, through his power and temptation, has brought humanity into this place of depravity. Now, not directly, just like Ben-Hadad had not attacked the city, but as a result of his siege, humanity is now exhibiting these terrible indications of depravity, so I'm just trying to, just as an illustration. And so these people are doing what sinners do. They're sinning, they're depraved, they're wicked, they're eating their kids, all right? And the illustration to that is that the depth of human depravity, it knows no bounds. You can sound it and you're not gonna get to the bottom. There is no echo. It's deep. Humankind is full of sin. And that was all started originally at the prompting of the devil. When the devil tempted man, and of course he continues to tempt man, but originally he tempted man and became what is the first cause of man's wickedness and depravity. And this is what Ben-Hadad is doing to them. And as a result of the famine, so think about the famine, picture the famine, or think of the famine as an illustration of man's depravity. Where has it brought them, right? These people are, at the end of this siege, are completely destitute. They have nothing, right? And this is a degraded spiritual state of destitution. And this is where these people are right now. Verse 27, notice what the king says kind of inadvertently. He says this. And he said, if the Lord do not help thee, when shall I help thee? Out of the barn floor or out of the wine press? And this is the thing we need to remember, thinking of the famine, thinking of the human condition, thinking of our sin. There's only one person who has a solution for that. It's not a man. It's foolish to trust in the arm of man. It is God himself. And the king kind of reveals that unwittingly when he says, if the Lord doesn't help, there is no help to be found. Is that not true of salvation? It is true. There is no help for the sinful condition of man, except God himself provides it. Now he goes on to say this, verse 27, out of the barn floor, out of the wine press. So this is the king speaking. The wealthiest man around, he is the king of Israel, right? He is the top dog. Not even the king has the wherewithal to help this lady. The king himself is destitute. How then can a man who is also destitute from the famine help another who is likewise destitute due to the famine, starving because of the famine? And the king in this case kind of reminded me of the religious leader, kind of the religious gurus of our day, the popes of the world, the imams, who want to tell others the way that they can be delivered from this famine. They can be delivered from their sinful condition and keep the laws and the rules and all that, but they themselves can't keep it. You know why? Because how can that person save someone when he himself is also destitute? That's the fundamental problem. And this is why when our savior came, he had to be sinless. There is no savior that has sin, for he has his own sin, how can he help another? But we continue, verse 28, or let's continue, go through verse 30. And it came to pass when the king had heard the words of the woman that he rent his clothes and he passed by upon the wall and the people looked and behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. Then he said, God do so and more also to me if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on him this day. But Elisha sat in his house and the elders sat with him and the king sent a man from before him, but ere the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, see how this son of a murderer has sent to take away mine head. Look, when the messenger cometh, shut the door and hold him fast at the door. Is not the sound of his master's feet behind him? And while he yet talked with him, behold, the messenger came down unto him and he said, behold, this evil is of the Lord. What should I wait for the Lord any longer? Now we get to verse number one. Now we know that Elisha is a prophet, that's key, verse one. Then Elisha said, hear ye the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel in the gate of Samaria. You know, Elisha, being a prophet, the one through whom God speaks, he has a message. God has given him a message and here's the message. It is a message of salvation. It's a message whereby the condition of these...

Transcript:
Amen, let's go to Matthew chapter number 18 this morning. Matthew 18. To be honest with you, one of the benefits and one of the challenges of going through a book and covering each passage and trying not to skip too much. We have skip to verse here and there. But one of the benefits and challenges of our method here is that sometimes you come across passages that don't really make a whole lot of sense in the context of the book. In the context of like, Lord, is this important? That you put it, you spent 14 verses, basically half of a chapter in your word on this one subject. But the answer has to be, obviously it is. Obviously it is that important. And so we're gonna read verses one through 14 of Matthew chapter 18. And we'll see what the Lord has for us. We're just gonna plow through it. And I know for a fact there are some very important truths in here. And probably a lot more than, no doubt, a lot more than I see that I have written down here. So Matthew chapter 18, verse number one, the Bible says this. At the same time Jesus came, at the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him. And set him in the midst of them. And said, verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. So there's no way for any person to get through the pearly gates. No way for anyone to be forgiven of sin and receive eternal life unless they come to God like a child. Lord, I don't have anything, I don't know anything, I can't brag of anything, I'm weak. You have to do it all. That's the only way, that humility that a child knows innately. We've already covered that last Sunday. We continue in verse number five, the Bible says this, or verse four, whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the same as greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Now I'm gonna pause here and say one thing. I dare say that most people, even with the Lord's exhortation here in verse nine, verse eight and nine, if it really came down to brass tacks and that was what was required, it was either your hands, your feet, your eyes or heaven, probably 95 out of 100 people would choose their hands and feet in their eyes. That's just, I think that's just a fact. Verse 10, take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven. Such an interesting verse, is it not? Verse 11, for the son of man has come to save that which was lost. How think ye? If a man having 100 sheep and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the 90 and nine and goeth into the mountains and seek of that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the 90 and nine which went not astray. Even so, it is not the will of your father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Would you pray with me? Our Lord, thank you once again for the opportunity to look into your word. Lord, we confess that we only scratch the surface of your word, but Lord, we do desire to do that today. So Lord, would you help us? Would you be our instructor and our illuminator? Would you help our minds and our hearts to be inclined to your word, to be ready to hear? Lord, take away, I pray, all distractions from your people, things that are put there to take our attention from you, Lord, for what you have to say. And Lord, I pray as well. Lord, there is satanic activity all around us that is invisible. And I ask you, Lord, to protect your people. Protect everyone here from the attacks and wiles of Satan that try to get into our mind and our heart to dissuade us, even as we read in this passage from you, from your will and from your word. So help us, protect us, and guide us in our study this morning. Lord, if there be a person among us who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ and does not have eternal life as a sure fact, prick the heart of that person, I ask you, Lord. Help us now as we look at your word in Jesus' name, amen. The topic of these 14 verses is, you can pull it down to one basic thing, and that's little children, little children. Now we've already covered the first four verses in which the Lord takes a little child and sets the child in the midst of the disciples, which is the disciples are the big dogs, the big shot, the big shots in this world. They're the people whose names are actually written in scripture. They're bigger than any president or any governor or any king. The names of the disciples, and we're not even to the Lord Jesus himself, whose name can't be compared to anyone else, but these are some of the greatest men in history as far as in God's estimation. And yet the Lord takes those and sets a child right in the middle of them to serve as an example, a humbling and humiliating example of faith and an example of what is required for a person to come to Christ in the right disposition. And you know, little kids have an advantage that the Lord points out here, and just to reiterate a little bit from last week, and this is why the Lord uses children as examples to adults, children have the right disposition and the right view of themselves that makes them kind of ripe already for Christ, if that makes any sense. And I mean that in kind of the natural way. In other words, they haven't yet developed the hardened heart and the firm wrong convictions that adults often have over time. And you know, if you have children or you've ministered to children, there is absolutely a difference in disposition from a young child as they age, their attitude and tone towards spiritual things changes naturally, I'm just referring to naturally. They have this kind of naturally kind of sensitive and humble disposition, and this is what the Lord is describing here. But once they lose that, you don't get it back. Once you lose that, once a child loses that, it's very difficult to regain. In fact, it is so difficult that the Lord uses this to adults who must somehow get that disposition back in order to come to Christ in the right heart. So basically you can't come to Christ as an adult, you gotta come to Christ as a child. You can't come to Christ with all your knowledge and wisdom and all your righteousness and all your experience and all those things that we boast to one another of, you can't come to him with any of that. You come to him empty, you come to him as a child. And that's why the Lord uses it as an example. But once a child loses that, that is a difficult thing to regain. And it is actually a huge stumbling block and hurdle for many adults when they are called to come to Christ. Because they don't wanna humiliate themselves in that way. They don't wanna put aside all the things they've learned in their life and all the ideas they've entertained and accepted that might be wrong. They don't wanna do that. They don't wanna acknowledge that they're sinful and that they're hopeless ...

Transcript:
I have to say, last week when we started, we began our introduction of our new series in Sunday School that we're calling Our Great God. I told you last week that the, you know, one of my favorite things to study and talk about is the person of God Himself. Sometimes we get bogged down in doctrinal things and, you know, doctrinal truths, and all of that is important. If it's in the Word of God, it's important. But as we saw last week, the Word of God is first and foremost about God Himself. There's a little bit of a ring. Pull that down just a hair. Because I'm ahead of the speaker here. So that's what we're doing here. We're going to go into the first attribute of God today. The first one just I picked. There's no way to tell which one should go first. But as I've studied it, it's just so rich. And I really hope that as we study these things, you have an opportunity to really meditate on these things. Even as I read the Scripture and try to explain it and help us understand it, that you would also take the time to meditate upon these things and see what the Lord says in the Bible. The Lord did not give us the Bible in such a way that it is formatted as a book of doctrine, of systematic or elemental theology. That's not the way He did it. He did it through narrative. He did it through His commands. He did it in other ways. So the intention is not to know facts about God. That is not the purpose. If we come away from the Bible thinking that all that is required is to know things about We have missed it entirely. The purpose is to know God personally, to know the one which is eternal life. And so that's what we're going to try to do. So let's pray. And then I'd like to introduce you to the first attribute of God that we're going to look at this morning. Our Father, we thank You so much for the opportunity to meet together Your people. I pray, please incline our hearts to Your Word and to Your will, but especially, Lord, to Yourself. Lord, give us a heart that is so polar opposite than what is natural to us. Lord, that aversion to You, like when Adam and Eve hid from You in the Garden of Eden for fear of You because their conscience was defiled. Lord, give us, I pray, a heart that would run to You. And as we think upon these scriptures and these truths, Lord, they're profound. Help us to see them even more deeply than the things I have prepared, but not just myself, but also each and every person here. Help us to engage our heart and our mind on what is the highest thought that a man can think, to think upon the true and the living God. And so, Lord, we look to You, guide our study, not just this morning, but also the study as we move forward and look at the different attributes. Lord, please reveal Yourself to us personally. Help us to understand and illuminate our mind on these things that we might truly stand in awe of who You are. We pray also for the kids downstairs who are right now, Lord, they're hearing the truths of scripture. They're being reminded of those things. The memories are being built. Please bless them. And Abbey, as she teaches them, give them understanding and grace. Lord, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, the first attribute we're going to look at, we're going to begin, I don't think we'll finish if history is any guide anyway, is God's self-existence, God's self-existence. As Sam pointed it out, the technical and theological term for that is called the a-see-atee, a-see-atee. A, if you're writing it down, it's a-se-i-t-y, a-see-atee of God. And here's just a simple definition. I know you all know what self-existent means, but I'll just give you a definition to go through the paces here. Self-existence is the existence of a being, person, et cetera, by virtue of intrinsic nature, independent, independently of any other cause. Now what's so interesting and ironic is that when I looked that up, because I'm a word person and I looked it up because I wanted to see what the dictionary said about the term self-existence, is that the definition applies to a single person in existence. So they could have just put God and just left it at that, and that would have been right because it can't apply to anything or anyone, anything else whatsoever. The existence of a being. Which one? There's only one that this applies to, so I thought that was kind of ironic. So I want to introduce this to you in the most obvious passage that would touch on this, which is Exodus chapter 3. So let's go there and look at these verses, Exodus chapter 3. This is when the Lord introduces Himself to Moses. Exodus chapter 3. Now just as a side note, if you look at verse 2 of this chapter, it says this, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed. Now this same angel of the Lord that is appearing to Moses is going to speak to Moses. So don't get confused. When you see the word angel, it's not always referring to a ministering spirit like we read in Hebrews. Sometimes God Himself is referred to as the angel of the Lord, and so when you read that in the Old Testament, you need to put that in your mind. Here God is called the angel of the Lord, but we know that it is He identifies Himself as Jehovah, as the one true and the living God. And so just keep that in mind as we go. So Moses stops to look at the bush that is burning but is not consumed, and verse number 4 says, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here am I. And he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And from verse 7 on, the Lord describes what He knows about the plight of the children of Israel in Egypt. Verse 10, come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt. Ye shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said unto God, behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers had sent me unto you, and they shall say unto me, what is his name? What shall I say unto them? Now pause here a second. Verse number 13 is telling us Moses poses a question to the Lord and says, essentially, who do I tell them you are? Who are you? That's essentially what he's asking. Now he's asking for a name, but a name is a label to identify the identity of a person. So Moses is asking God, and this is key to understanding what we're going to see in just a minute. Moses is essentially asking God, who are you? Who do I tell them you are? And in that context and in answer to that question, the Lord says, verse 14, and God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I am, had sent me unto you. Now what's interesting is the Lord doesn't give his name, you know, Jehovah, the capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, the reference to God's name. He doesn't tell him that. Now they're related, the words are related in Hebrew, but it's not directly, he doesn't tell him directly, my name is the Lord, like he says in other places. When the Lord answers the question concerning his identity, he does so by saying, I am. I am. Now that's hard to understand. That's profound. There's a lot of depth to that. Now you think about the term I am, and basically what you have her...

Transcript:
All right, we'll go to Psalm 50 tonight. And what we will do is we will read the Psalm as we go rather than all at the beginning. Psalm 50. Psalm 50, a Psalm of Asaph. So you can divide this Psalm basically into three parts and then a tag on the end. The tag is verse number 23. And the three parts are verses one to six, verse seven to 15, and verse 16 to 22. And then you have the tag on verse 23, just in case that's outlining as something that you enjoy doing, dividing it up. It's not something that comes naturally to me, but sometimes the scripture just kind of flows in that way. And so maybe that'll be a help to you. So before we read, let's pray and ask the Lord to bless our study tonight. Our Father in heaven, we look to you. Lord, our eyes are upon you. You are the God who is the God of judgment. Lord, you are a God who is a consuming fire. You are the Almighty God. You are the great God. You are the everlasting God. And Lord, we in anticipation look forward to the day that you come and we meet you face to face. Lord, we fear not for your coming. Lord, we say even so come Lord Jesus. But there are many, many in our world who should fear, even as this Psalm talks about. Lord, please help us Lord to live in hope of your return in the constant expectation of your return. And Lord, help us to take the things that are written in this Psalm some 3000 years ago through your servants. And that they would, Lord, just as they're alive, then as they are now so that they would give us and quicken us as we read your word. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Psalm 50 verse number one, the Bible says, the mighty God, even the Lord, had spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Our God shall come and shall not keep silence. A fire shall devour before him and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above and to the earth that he may judge his people. Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare his righteousness for God is judge himself, say la. God is judge himself, say la. And the judgment is one of the key themes and subjects in this Psalm, judgment. It's mentioned in verse four, it's mentioned in verse six, it's mentioned in verse seven, in verse 21, and in verse 22, judgment. So it skips a portion in the middle of the Psalm where it doesn't really talk about judgment as much, but judgment is a major theme in the Psalm. And in verse number one, notice what it says, God has spoken, now notice to whom or about what God is speaking. He's speaking, he has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. What does that cover? That turn of phrase, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, what is that talking about? It's talking about, huh? But it's referring to the circuit of the sun, right? It's for everywhere the sun shines from the rising of the sun to the going down, it's referring to the entire world. And I know we scientific types will say, well, I mean, that's only the portion of the sun, the earth, the sun, but this is a turn of phrase that refers to the entire world. And so the Lord speaking, the context of the events that we're reading in the first six verses is the whole earth from the rising of the sun to the going down of it, verse number two. Now, this is important because this is God's message, this is what he's telling in the context of the whole earth, everyone in the world. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined. Now we know what Zion is because it hasn't been too long previous that we studied Zion. Remember we looked at the Psalm that spoke of Zion in chapter number 40, let's see, verse number, rather chapter number 48, Psalm 48 talks about Zion. And we saw, remember, we saw Zion, there's two layers of meaning in Zion. You have the earthly Zion, which is Jerusalem, and then you have the heavenly Zion. And in this case, when we go back to Psalm 50, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined. Now you could look at that in a way and you could say, well, out of Zion, that's referring to Jerusalem, the city of God's people. So you could say God's people shine. And you could, by extension, refer to the church, like a city on a hill. And that would be a valid way to look at it. But I think the primary meaning of this is I think it's referring to the heavenly Zion because of the next verse, it says this, for our God shall come. So you have this idea of the Lord is shining out of Zion. He's coming from Zion. And he's coming to us, verse three. He's coming to us with fire and all that. So the idea is the Lord is coming from Zion to us. And we're, you know, speaking to Israel here, we're in Zion. We are, figuratively, we are Zion, and here the Lord is coming. So I think it's talking about God's leaving heavenly Zion, where he abides, where he dwells, and he's getting ready to come and judge. That's what the first six verses are talking about. So he's leaving his heavenly Zion, and when he leaves, he's shining. That's what we talked about last week on Wednesday night, which is the glory of God. Well, actually, that was on Sunday when we talked about the transfiguration. And the idea of glory, what is the primary representation of glory that we see in scripture? What is it? What is it that God has represented in the physical world? By light. And here it is in verse number two, God hath shined. Now listen to this verse. Matthew 24, verse 30. This is, Matthew 24 and five are speaking reference to the coming of Christ, right, in his advent. Here's what it says. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Great glory. You know what that's talking about, right? That's talking about that light, right, that they saw, the glory of Christ. Now here's what's interesting about the coming of Christ in the second advent. When the Lord Jesus comes to judge, and he comes to take his kingdom, it's kind of a difficult thing to fully get our brains around, because the information's a little bit sparse in scripture, but there appears to be a period of time in which the Lord Jesus appears in glory, and all the world sees him before he actually begins, he actually descends to earth and judges. And that's what you see in verse number of Matthew 24, verse 30, is there's a sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and they see him in the clouds, there's a shining. And so you have this idea, what's interesting is when you compare the two, verse number two, it says God has shine. So everything you read in this psalm about God coming, it's actually Jesus, which tells us who Jesus is. But you have Jesus coming, but before he comes, as he departs his heavenly Zion, and he appears, he shines in glory before he descends. Then you get to verse number three. Now remember, we're talking about the coming of God to earth, so this truth of God's coming to earth is something that goes way back in scriptural history. This is not a New Testament doctrine, this is an Old Testament doctrine, which is the foundation of the New Testament doctrine. So even in the Old Testament, God said, I'm coming, you just wait, I'm coming. And that's why the Jews got so messed up and so deceived is because they misunderstood the coming of Christ in his first coming, because that coming was foretold also, but it wasn't the one they were really interested in because it had no glory and it had a cross, and they weren't interested in that part. Not even the disciples were all that interested in that part, right, because they didn't understand it. B...

Transcript:
Alright, Matthew chapter 18, Matthew chapter 18 is where we will be tonight. Matthew 18. Starting at verse number one tonight, Bible says this, At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Accept ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Now if you look back at Mark chapter 9, I'm gonna read just the parallel passage in Mark, Luke also has one, but we're just gonna stick to the Mark passage tonight. Get a little bit more information in Mark chapter 9 concerning this discussion, which I think is helpful for us to see exactly where the disciples are. Now keep in mind that as we read this story here of the disciples and asking who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, that we're talking about the disciples here. We're talking about the inner circle of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're talking about the cream of the crop. We're talking about those who will be and are, even at this time, the most useful. The ones who understand the most of all the disciples of Christ. The ones who have just, three of whom have come through the transfiguration, have seen his glory. And yet they are the ones asking these questions. They're the ones having discussions between themselves on something like this. Mark chapter 9, verse number 33 says this, And he came to Capernaum, and being in the house, he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? Now note verse number 33, the word is disputed. That is not a word that's found in Matthew 18. That's different. Disputed. So they were talking about, the disciples were talking about this question without being in the presence of Christ. So just by themselves. The twelve talking amongst themselves. But it was a rather heated discussion. You see that in the word disputed. It was not exactly what you might call a humble discussion. It was a rather heated discussion. Verse 34 says, But they held their peace. For by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be the first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. Now sometimes I wonder when I see the twelve, the Lord mentions the twelve, I think of Judas Iscariot. What was Judas thinking as Jesus was talking about this? Probably, you know, Judas was a man who had no spiritual appetite. He was a fake all the way. He was a hypocrite from start to finish. Never was, obviously never was a believer. Was a devil from the beginning, right? That's how Jesus identifies him. Sometimes I wonder just my mind wanders a little bit. And I wonder what was Judas thinking as Jesus taught all of these things? Like he was sitting in church all the time hearing these things. I just wonder if he sat there and just listened and it went in one ear and out the other. You know, never found any good ground. I don't know. This is just amusing here. Verse 36 says this, And he took a child and set him in the midst of them. And when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receive with me. And whosoever receive with me, receive with him, not me, but him that sent me. So if you'd like to put a mark in Mark chapter 9, and then go back to Matthew, we will flip back there a little bit tonight. Would you pray with me this evening? Our Lord, we are, we acknowledge that we are, we are, we are in need of great help. Lord, we are like, if we are honest, if we examine ourselves in light of your word, and especially in light of your glory and who you are. Lord, we are just absolutely destitute of goodness or wisdom, of righteousness, of any good thing that we might boast of. We do need, though, a good dose of the humility that you are telling your disciples that they need. Each one of us here, Lord, we need to see ourselves in the right light, in the right understanding. Not only as we see ourselves in light of who you are, but also Lord, that we might see ourselves aright in relationship to one another. So Lord, would you please help us and guide our study tonight? In Jesus' name, Amen. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? That's the question that they're discussing. And, but that question, I think, is problematic. Well, it is problematic because the Lord actually says it's problematic in Mark chapter 9. But this question, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, as I mentioned, is a question that even though it's problematic, is being discussed by some of the Lord's closest disciples. And I'll say more about that in a minute. But what is implied, what is implied in this question is the problem. And what is implied is obviously, I am the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Right? That's the obvious implication. And the fact that they're disputing it and they're arguing about who is the greatest, each person arguing for himself, each person stumping for his own place in the election of the greatest of the disciples, each one of them filled with the persuasion that he is the greatest. Now, that's to start with, that's a big, big issue. That is a big, big problem. And I do want to turn right back to Mark real quick and look at what it says in verse number 34 and 5. So if you're still there, look back at Mark once again. And what I want to pose to you is this, that the disciples are asking the wrong question. The disciples are asking a question that, you know, sometimes teachers say there is no wrong question, there is no bad question, there is no dumb question. Well, there is a dumb question. This is a dumb question. This is a question that should not be asked by the disciples of Christ, because it reveals something about them and where they are with the Lord. Mark 9 verse number 34, notice what it says, or let's look at 35 again. He sat down and called the twelve and saith unto them, if any man desire to be first, the same, I read verse 35, I apologize, verse 34, but they held their peace for, by the way, they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. So they're having this conversation, they're having this, we might call it lively discussion about who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, each one of whom is saying, you know, it's probably me, of course, and as they walk by the way, but Christ isn't with them, you know, immediately with them and that ends in the conversation. And so they get to the house and Jesus asked them, what was, what were you talking about? What were you disputing about? And notice their reaction, they're quiet. Why do you think they're quiet? You know, a few minutes ago, they're walking by the way and they were giving reasons why I'm obviously the greatest of any of the disciples. I mean, anyone with two eyes can tell that I'm obviously, you know, I'm among the top three. I mean, look, Peter says, might have said, look, I was chosen to go and see Jesus in his transfiguration. Actually, he couldn't say that because he wasn't allowed to talk about it until after the resurrection. But he was probably thinking it in himself, right? You know how this goes. And so Jesus asked them about it and they held their peace because in them, they knew that this was probably not a discussion that they should have been having. But yet here they are, the preachers having their discussion, having a discussion that they have no business having, asking a question they have no business asking. Verse 35 says this, and he sat down and called the twelve and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, note the word desire. If y...

Transcript:
We're going to be in Matthew chapter 17 this morning. So if you'd get your Bible and go there together. Got some bad news though. We're going to be talking about taxes. Taxes this morning. Matthew chapter 17 verse 22. We'll begin reading verse 22 and go down to verse number 27. Matthew 17 verse 22. The Bible says, and while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, the Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men. Now keep that in mind. We know that the Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ would be betrayed into the hands of men. It says in verse 23, and they shall kill him. And the third day he shall be raised again. And we know that's his main goal. That's his mission. That's the primary purpose for which the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world. He did not come into the world to start a religion. He didn't come into the world to teach a bunch of good things, although he did those things. He came into the world to save sinners. Now the next time he comes, it will not be to save sinners. It'll be to judge sinners. But he has come to save sinners and he died upon the cross to save sinners. That's the chief point. That's the reason he came. And that's an important point when we look at the following verses that we'll see in just a minute. Verse 23, it concludes and says, and they were exceeding sorry. And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, doth not your master pay tribute? He sayeth, yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him saying, what thinkest thou Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Of their own children or of strangers? Peter sayeth unto him, of strangers. Jesus sayeth unto him, then are the children free? Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea and cast and hook and take up the fish that first cometh up. And when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money. That take and give unto them for me and thee. Would you pray with me this morning? Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the scriptures that have been written to help us to know you. Lord, thank you for the life of the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, who was buried, rose again. And thank you for the good things that he did in his life. Lord, we're looking at this example where these people ask him about this tribute. We ask you to please teach us and help us to understand. Lord, what a great example that the Lord Jesus Christ has left us and has revealed to us a great truth about his priorities. Help us, Lord, to mimic those priorities in our own life. And have the right heart and mind toward people around us especially. Lord, you know what your people need this morning. You know the lesson that needs to be taught, the reminders that your people need. So Lord, I ask you by your spirit to please do the work that I certainly can't do, have no power to do. And you can meet the needs of each person here. Lord, our eyes are upon you. In Jesus' name, amen. Now you notice in verse number 24, it says, and when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, doth not your master pay tribute? And then in verse 25, the Lord Jesus mentions the kings of the earth taking custom or tribute. And so what we're talking about here is we're talking about what we would call taxes. Now the word tribute is used, but it's essentially a tax. And this is the only, this portion of scripture about the tax is only found in Matthew, which is interesting to me because even though this, all the narrative before this and after this is found in Mark and Luke, yet this part is the only part that's not mentioned in the other two. And that's interesting because Matthew was a tax collector. So Matthew was one who was familiar with this subject and was, this would have been something kind of near and dear to him at least in familiarity. But there's actually, when we look at verse 24 and verse 25, there's actually several things going on. And I want to point it out to you because it's important if we're gonna understand the whole of what Jesus is saying, we have to understand kind of the details in the background. Now in verse 24 it says, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, doth not your master pay tribute? And then in verse 25 again, there's a mention of the kings of the earth taking custom or tribute. Now the thing is that there are various words being used here to describe different kinds of taxes. The word, in our text we have the word custom, we have the word tribute in reference to the kings of the earth, but we also have this tribute in reference to these that came to receive it, right? In verse 24. Now just like we have in our day, and we so gleefully and gladly have, multiple layers of taxation, how many of you appreciate that? Say amen. See, I almost got you there. A few people let it slip out. Nobody appreciates taxes. And we know that there are many kinds of taxes, and I know this is true because when we were missionaries, sometimes we got into conversations about taxes, and so trying to explain to the foreigner, someone not from our country, what our tax situation is like, sometimes it's kind of difficult. You could say, well we have taxes, but that doesn't give you the whole picture, does it? Because you have federal income tax, and you have state income tax, and you have property taxes, and you have taxes about the roads, and you have taxes about, you have unemployment tax if you own a business, and you have duties, and excise taxes, and you can go on and on. I mean there's just so many, corporate tax and all these different, so you can't just say, well we have taxes, because there's so many different kinds, and it was true in this day as well. In this day, in these two verses, there's at least three different kinds of taxes being mentioned in these three verses. Look at verse 25 to begin. Verse 25 says, of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? So that gives us a hint. These are taxes taken by the kings of the earth. In other words, these would be kind of like secular taxes. And the word custom and tribute are two different kinds. So custom would be something similar to like a sales tax, or a tax for someone traveling. This would be, we call it in our modern vernacular, the indirect taxes, right? That's what this is. And Rome, as the kingdom that ruled Israel at this time, Rome had these kinds of things. So if you travel from place to place, you might get stopped and have to pay a fee, pay a tax for your traveling. And if you, based upon the goods that you buy or sell, you might have to pay a custom on those taxes. That's one way they tax. And of course, that money went to some level of the Roman Empire. But you also have, in verse 25, in reference to the kings of the earth, a tribute, which is another kind of tax. And a tribute was what we would call a poll tax. This is the kind of tax that you would get, like we find in Luke chapter two, when Mary and Joseph went back to Bethlehem, so that they could be counted in the census, and they could be taxed based upon the counting. Their property would be assessed. It would be something like, I guess like property tax a little bit, but that would be per person. So it was a different kind of tax entirely. And so when you read it, sometimes you can miss that, but there's a little indication of what's happening here based upon the mention of the kings of the earth. So this would be what Rome did, which is also what we find in Luke chapter two. But then you go to verse 24. Verse 24 is a little bit different, even though the word tribute is used, which is just a tax, you know, so it doesn't really specify what kind of tax. But there's a hint in verse 24. Because it says, they that received tribute. Now our fr...

Transcript:
What I'd like to do this morning is I've been thinking and praying about the next step as we finished up our study of our church, the study when we went through various aspects of our church last week. And so I've been thinking about what direction we might go this week. To be honest with you, the lesson I have for today is kind of a skeleton lesson. It's not fully developed because I want to use it as an introduction to our next study. So what I'd like to cover for the next however long it takes is what I'm calling our great God. That's what I want to call it. And it's based out of Psalm 95. If you would look at Psalm 95, it's actually in the bulletin too if you happen to pick up a bulletin today. Psalm 95, Psalm 95 and verse number 3, Psalm 95 and verse number 3 says this, says this, And so the study we want to begin today is a study called our great God. And what it is, is a study of theology. Theology. And by theology I don't mean it in the broad sense where we study spiritual matters, but the doctrine of God. And if we look at the different subjects, scriptural subjects that we can study in the Bible. We can study prophecy, we can study history in scripture, we can study, of course we can study the cross, the gospel, and those kinds of things. And those are all good things and we've studied them all. We even have studied practical matters as well. But the one subject that in my view is the most enjoyable thing to study is the subject of God himself. And that's what I want to focus in on for the next little bit in our Sunday School class. Is I want us to take some time to just look at who God is and how God is and his various attributes. And I of course don't want to do it in a way that's dry because if there is, when I was praying about this, I was talking to the Lord about how you study these different attributes of God and make them so that they're not dry. If we study the doctrine of God, if we studied who God is and how God is and his various characteristics, and we came out of it with a dry study, we have done something wrong. We have done something wrong. In fact, when you consider heaven, a lot of our songs talk about heaven and what heaven is and what we're going to do in heaven and all these things. But really, heaven, as we'll see in just a minute, the thing that will make heaven so it never gets boring is God. Right? The only thing that matters about heaven is God. Right? The thing that makes heaven worth being there is the fact that God is there. And that because of these various attributes of God, it is utterly, even in a glorified state, even after we've met the Lord, we've been resurrected in a glorified body, no more sin, no more limitations as far as human limitations down here go. Yet, being in the presence of God and every moment discovering new things about our God who is himself inexhaustible, that is what makes heaven heaven. Right? That is what makes heaven the blissful place that it is. So it's not about streets of gold and it's not about gates of pearl and walls of jasper and all of that, those kinds of things, although we know those things are all true, it's about the God who is there. And we should all stand in awe of God. And to do that, we have to understand him. We have to know him. Now, pretty much everybody in the world has a concept of God, but most people in the world view God basically, you could fit him inside of one of these cups right here. Right here. Basically, God could fit inside this little cup in most people's mind. And that's the extent of his character. In other words, they can just rattle off maybe a few things about God and he fits inside the cup. But the truth is that we can spend all of our time on this one subject and never exhaust it. But more importantly than that is just the reality that when we study this particular subject of God in the Bible, we study who God is. It is the most rewarding subject that you can study in the Bible. It really is. This is what it's all about. And what I want to do for the introduction today is I want to go through the scripture and I want to show you what the Bible is all about on this topic. And just kind of do a very brief overview of it. Because we have to have the right focus and the right understanding of the text of scripture if we're going to be able to understand and see God in the text of scripture. Because the Bible is all about the Lord. It's all about God. But before we do that, first of all, let's pray. And then I want to give you a challenge. I want to give you a challenge to open up our study here. Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, that you are a great God and a great King above all gods. And there is none like you. There is none similar. You stand alone. And Lord, we use human language to try and describe you according to your revelation in scripture. We do a poor job. We acknowledge that. We admit that. But Lord, you have put in our hearts at least some measure of a capacity to know you and to understand you and to stand in awe of you and all of your attributes, Lord. We look to you as the greatest thing that could ever be. There's nothing greater that could be on our lips than the truth of who you are. And we say those things and sometimes we say those things and we don't necessarily feel them as we should. But Lord, it is still true. There is no greater subject that could be on our lips than our great God. Lord, through our study this in our Sunday school class, I pray that in each and every person here and myself included, that you through your word and your revelation of who you are, that you would cause each one of us to truly stand in awe of your greatness. That we would not just listen and receive information, but we would be awestruck. That we would be stupefied. That we would truly have a glimpse of your glory through our study here. Lord, open up, we pray, your word to us as we examine it over the various weeks and look at the various characteristics. Make your word come alive to us that we can truly know you better. And Lord, also please help us to know how to apply these truths. These things would not just be information or points on a doctrinal statement, but these truths would affect us in our personal lives and our walks in our daily life. So Lord, help us. We just look to you. Bless our study. Reveal yourself to us in a plain way, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so for our exercise to begin, I want to give you an opportunity to, as a group, to list every attribute or characteristic of God that you can think of. Every attribute or characteristic of God that you can think of. So who's going to be bold enough to start us out? Joseph. Immutability. Immutability. What does that mean? Right. All right. Yes, sir. God is just. Holy. All right. What's that? Creator. He's the creator. He's creative. All right. Yes, ma'am. Loving. Omnipotent. What does that mean? All powerful. Yes, sir. Longsuffering. God is longsuffering. Anybody else? That's it. Yes, ma'am. Forgiving. God cannot lie. I don't know the word for that. True, maybe. Maybe. Truthful. All right. Yes, ma'am. Merciful. You stole it right out of his pocket. All right. Powerful. Right. That's like omnipotent. Did you say omnipotent? All right. That's right. Omniscient. What does that mean? He knows everything. So you're telling me he knows things that haven't happened yet. All right. We're going to get into that later. Yes, sir. What? Faithful. All right. Okay. He's a friend. How would you? That's sort of like faithful. It's sort of like loyal. Kind of like loyalty. Yes, sir. Triune. What does that Tencent word mean? All right. Very good. Our father. So he's a father. His fatherhood, you could say. Anybody else? Gracious. It's one we haven't covered. All right. Anybody else? All-knowing. That's omniscient. Yep. That's all together. Yep. Our refuge. All right. The onl...

Transcript:
Alright, Psalm 49 tonight, we are going to, let's just read the Psalm to begin. Interesting Psalm, different. It's so interesting when you read through the Psalms methodically like we've been doing, what you find is there's a lot of things that repeat. But then you also come across some Psalms like we see tonight that are nothing like the rest of the Psalms. They kind of stand alone. The Psalm tonight, Psalm 49, is more, if I were to just read it, you would think it's refer, you would think this Psalm would be found in the book of Ecclesiastes. Because it's nothing like the other Psalms in its content. And it is a Psalm, verse four mentions that the Psalm is a dark saying upon the harp. So this was written to music originally. But anyhow, it's more like the book of Ecclesiastes. So Psalm 49, verse number one, the subtitle says, To the chief musician, a Psalm for the sons of Korah. Hear this, all ye people, give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world, both low and high, rich and poor, together. My mouth shall speak of wisdom and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. I will incline mine ear to a parable. I will open my dark saying upon the harp. Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about? They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of their soul is precious and it ceases forever. That he should still live forever and not see corruption. For he seeth that wise men die. Likewise, the fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever and their dwelling places to all generations. They call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless, man being in honor, abideth not. He is like the beasts that perish. This their way is their folly. Yet their posterity approve their sayings. Like sheep they are laid in the grave. Death shall feed on them. And the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. And their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave. For he shall receive me. Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased. For when he dyeth, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him. Though while he lived, he blessed his soul and men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself. He shall go to the generation of his fathers. They shall never see light. Man that is in honor and understandeth not, he is like the beasts that perish. Let's pray. Lord as we come to your word again, thank you first of all for your word and the truths that are herein that set us aright, that give us a right perspective, a right worldview, a right understanding of this life, this temporal life. Thank you for this song. Lord let us profit from it tonight by your help, by your spirit, by your instruction, because we look to you Lord in Jesus' name, amen. So as I said, this psalm is as I've read it, you probably noticed it sounds more like Ecclesiastes than it does the Psalms, right? And notice it is a psalm that unlike many of the psalms that have a very Jewish, very Hebrew flavor, you know, a lot of covenant language regarding the Jewish people, this is not that way. In fact, it is directly addressed to everyone. It says, hear this all ye people, give ear all ye inhabitants of the world, both low and high, rich and poor together. Now that's gonna be important, especially the rich and poor, low and high, because of what's in the psalm. So this is a psalm that is universal. In other words, the truths in it are universal for every person. The struggle that you see in this psalm, the warning is true of us, is true of every person living. The cautions that the Lord gives us are universal. So we come down to verse number five, which is where the real meat of the psalm begins. Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about? Now one of the things that drives a lot of what you see in this psalm, one of the themes in the psalm is repeated over and over and over. I've been studying in preparation for the first Bible Institute class, which is going to be how to study the Bible. And as I've been studying, one of the things I've noticed is one of the principles of studying the Bible is to look for things that repeat. And one thing that repeats in this is the mention of wealth, the mention of money. And it's over and over, four or five times in the psalm. In fact, this is the theme of the psalm, really it's the primary theme of the psalm. And one of the reasons that people concentrate so much on wealth and on how much money they have and where it's going and how they spend it and what they're gonna do with it, one of the reasons they concentrate so much on it, especially as they get older, is the fear of evil. In other words, the unknown, what might happen, right? As you get older, that becomes more of a significant question, because you know that, especially when you go into the age of retirement, you know that that's a fixed amount, unless you're maybe really, really well invested, but even that's not really sure at all. But when you see that amount dwindling year by year, that can cause a little bit of anxiety, can it not, when you don't know what kind of evil might be around the corner. And people really are bothered by this. They really are, people are really bothered by this. Younger people don't think about that, because we have, those of us who still have the ability to work and things like that, we work and we think, well, we'll just get a job and we'll just work it off, but when you get to a certain stage, that's not as easy as it used to be. It's a real concern. What are we gonna do when fear strikes in the days of evil? Look at verse six. They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches. Now here's the problem with money. The problem with money and wealth, now let me say this to start with, and we'll see a scripture verse that'll prove my point. Having money and having wealth and having material possessions is not a sin. The Bible does not describe it as a sin. Now you can go to a few verses, which we've already covered in Matthew, and you can see verses where there's a lot of warnings attached to it and for good reason. There's warnings attached to it for good reason. And sometimes people have taken those warnings and have kind of taken them a bit further than the scripture allows and have pushed for, and I'm talking about over the years now, over the centuries, have pushed for a kind of Christian asceticism, a kind of Christian poverty that the Lord enjoins. He tells us to be that way. And a lot of times when we look at the Lord Jesus and we see, well Jesus did not, he didn't have a place to lay his head, right? The foxes have holes and that kind of thing. And we take that, but the Lord did not command that of us. He did that as an example to us, right? And really it was more of an example of his debasing of himself, leaving the glory that we talked about on Sunday and coming down to earth where he had all things in his possession to where he has nothing, right? That's indicative of his humility, right? But the Lord never says, he never tells us in proper context to live in poverty. He doesn't, now there are verses that say, sell all thou hast and give to the poor and take up your cross and follow me, but in the proper context he's speaking to a rich man. So, but those are the kinds of verses people take and they kind of extrapolate out as a general command when that's not what the Lord does at all. But there, that nevertheless, there is a real warnin...

Transcript:
All right, we're gonna be back in Matthew chapter number 17. And this evening, we're gonna look at verse number 14. We're also gonna be looking at Mark. So if you wanna get Mark chapter nine, we'll go back and forth a little bit because of course this portion of scripture has parallel passages in Mark and Luke in particular. So let's read 14 through verse 21. Matthew 17, 14 through 21. The Bible says this, and when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man kneeling down to him and saying, Lord have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed. For oft times he falleth into the fire and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil and he departed out of him. And the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief. For verily I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove. And nothing shall be impossible unto you. How be it, this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you again for the chance to meet together with your people at our church meeting. Thank you for those that have come out, those listening in as well who can't be among us today. We pray for your grace to be upon them who are suffering ailments and are just having affliction right now. Give them grace, give them patience. And Lord, give them healing, if that be your will to do. Lord, we look to you. Even as we study the word, we acknowledge that without you we can do nothing, not even understand and certainly not benefit from your word. Lord, we need your spirit to teach us individually, personally in our heart for our particular situation. It might be Lord that we need these words of scripture, not for right at this moment, but for later for something that might come up. Lord, but help us and grow our faith as we look at these things tonight. We just acknowledge our need of your help. Lord, I need your help. So please help me to say the right things that your people need to hear from your word. In Jesus' name we ask, amen. Now you'll notice in verse number 14, this man brings his son to Jesus. The Bible does not say anywhere, not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in Luke, that this son was a child. In fact, there's an indicator that this man's son was actually an adult because Jesus asked him, I think it's in Mark, Jesus asked him how long it had been that he was afflicted with this problem. And the man said of a child, which indicates to us that he's probably no longer a child. And so this is apparently a grown man and he's had this condition a long time. And verse 15 says this, the man says, Lord have mercy on my son for he is lunatic and sore vexed. Now notice that word lunatic. That's kind of a bad word these days. And it's one of these words, it's kind of politically incorrect and it is becoming more and more politically incorrect. Compared to what you used to be able to say, you can't say anymore. I know words, I've kind of had to curtail some of the words that I used growing up because they have gone out of favor. Not necessarily because they're evil in and of themselves, but because of the associations with them. And all of us, as we grow old, like I don't grow old, but like all of you do, those things change, vocabulary changes. So this word lunatic, but let's look at it from the scripture. We wanna look at it from the Bible. Remember our Bible was translated in 16, finished in 1611, so 400 years of history. Sometimes definitions change. And so that's not a surprise to us. We're not shocked by that. But the word lunatic, let me give you the definition of the word lunatic. It does not mean what, as it's commonly used today to just insult somebody where you're a lunatic, it's not that at all. It means this, a person showing signs or symptoms of serious mental illness. Well, that's helpful, as we'll see in a minute. In early use, which is where we're at here, 1600s, specifically of a type characterized by periods of remission and relapse, attributed to the phases of the moon. And so I don't know that that was very helpful, but what's, so basically what you see from this is it was thought, now this is not what the Bible is saying. The Bible's using the word, okay? But it was thought typically that these episodic issues of what would be called today mental illness, it was the fact that it was episodic like the phases of the moon, because it was thought that the moon affected people's mental health because of the way it pulls the ocean tides. That's how it was assumed. This is going back to like shortly before Christ, Aristotle and the Greeks and things like that. But anyway, that's where it comes from. In fact, the word that is translated lunatic is the word that means moon struck, moon struck. That's where the word comes from. That's the etymology of the word. Now what's interesting is that word is put directly into English, in the English equivalent. Luna is the word for moon, tic means moon struck. They actually took the word from the original language, Greek, and put it directly into English in the exact English equivalent. Now why does that matter? It matters because if you consider the other words, for instance, the ESV puts this word as seizures. The New King James version and the American Standard version put the word as epileptic. Okay? What's also interesting though is that the New American Standard version of 1977 and the New American Standard version of 1995 have lunatic, which is interesting. If it's such a bad, terrible, old, outdated, old, outmoded translation, why did they put it in there in 1995? It's a perfectly fine translation. It's a perfectly fine way to put it. In fact, the word seizure or epilepsy, or epileptic in this context is a problem. Here's why. Because if you look at verse number 18, look what it says, and Jesus rebuked the devil. So what was the true cause of this, I'll say young man, this young man's problem? It was an influence, it was a satanic influence, a satanic possession of some kind. And so by putting the word epilepsy or putting the word seizure, it doesn't state it, but it implies that somehow people that are afflicted with an actual physical neurological condition like epilepsy, that is being caused by the devil. But that's not the case. And I'll show you the distinction in just a minute. Now in the book of Mark, and we'll go there in just a minute, in fact, you might already be there. So if you can flip back to Mark, I wanna show you what Mark says about this young man's condition. Mark chapter nine, verse number 18, or verse 17 to start, Mark 9, 17 says this, and one of the multitude answered and said, "'Master, I have brought unto thee my son, "'which hath a dumb spirit.'" Dumb meaning can't speak. But notice he uses the word spirit. So from the beginning in Mark, he identifies the cause as this is a matter of demonic activity, verse number 18. "'And wheresoever he taketh him, he tarreth him, "'and he fometh, and gnasheth with his teeth, "'and pineeth away.'" So this is a description of these episodes with this young man. Now in Luke, in Luke chapter nine, verse 39 says this, "'And lo, a spirit taketh him, and suddenly cryeth out, "'and it tarreth him, that he fometh again, "'and bruising him, hardly departeth from him.'" All right, so this is a description of, this is a craze, this young man is thrown to the ground, is in a fit of some kind, foment at the mouth, crying out much like the demoniac of Gadara. No...

Transcript:
All right, let's get our Bible. We'll go to the book of Matthew chapter 17 this morning. Matthew 17 verse number one is where we will begin. We will also take a peek at Luke chapter nine. So if you'd like to get it a little bit ahead and you can turn to Luke chapter nine because we will flip there just a little bit. I'm going to read the account of the transfiguration. The transfiguration. Matthew 17 verse number one, the Bible says, and after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias, that's Elijah, talking with him. Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man save Jesus only. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead. Would you pray with me this morning? Our fathers, we come again to look at your word and to open our hearts to what you have said. Lord, we want to see the Lord Jesus clearly. We want to see him in all of his glory, in his true identity. We want to see him, Lord, as he deserves and should be seen. And Lord, please guide us in our study of your word. Guide me as I try to speak the things that will help and encourage and strengthen your people. And I pray that your people's hearts and minds and ears would be attentive to your word. Lord, we need you. We need you to help us to get a clear and unobstructed view of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only then can we respond in the right way, as Brother and Sister Yarley sang, that we would see the need to bow the knee to you, Lord, to own you as our Lord. And so Lord, guide us in our study of Matthew 17 today in Jesus' name. Amen. So this is the account of the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse one says that the Lord took Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. And Peter, James, and John are a group of three that are distinct. So that's a quarter of the disciples being 12. That's three of them would be a quarter of the disciples. They were on a number of occasions separated off from the other nine disciples for special purposes. You see them, I won't read every one of these, but in Mark chapter five and verse 37, when Jesus went in to heal the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, he invited only Peter, James, and John into the room and the parents of the child. And that was it. So he wanted to reveal and show something special to these three men in particular. In Mark chapter 13, verse number three, it was Peter, James, and John that specifically asked the Lord Jesus about his second coming. That's the parallel with Matthew chapter 24, but in Mark chapter 13, it was actually Peter, James, and John who were asking the question about when the end of the world would come. In Mark chapter 14, verse 33, it was Peter, James, and John that the Lord took into the Garden of Gethsemane further out than he went with the disciples, the rest of the disciples, in order to pray. So they were nearer to him when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest. And of course you see them here, which is the fourth time. You see Peter, James, and John only are taken up into the mountain to see the Lord Jesus transfigured. So they had information about the Lord Jesus Christ that none of the other disciples had. Here's what's interesting. All of the disciples, maybe with the lone exception of Judas Iscariot, believed that Jesus was the Son of God, believed that Jesus was God manifest in the flesh, and believed that Jesus did and would receive, had and would receive glory. All of them believed it, but only three of them saw it. Only three of them saw it. And so this is one thing you see with these three disciples that you don't see with the others. Now keep in mind that, and we'll see this later in just a little bit, but the book of John was written by one of these men. So John, that's kind of the context of the book of John is John having seen the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ with his eyeballs, wrote the book of John, and he actually mentions it in a few places. We'll see in a minute, but also Peter wrote first and second Peter, obviously, and a lot of people think that Peter was the source of the information for the book of Mark, which is where this is also covered, which I don't have any problem with that as well, because Mark covers most information about Peter than any of the other gospels. But so you have this eyewitness account of this miraculous event. And what's interesting is Luke though, if you'll look at Luke chapter nine, there's a few differences, I say differences. There's more full information given by Luke of the account of the transfiguration than Matthew and Mark give us. And in Luke chapter nine, we're given a little bit more in verse 28, the reason that they went up into the mountain aside from the Lord's transfiguration is given in verse 28 of Luke nine, it says this, and it came to pass that about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. Went up into a mountain to pray. So that's the occasion. You know, you see the Lord Jesus praying, spending major periods of prayer, or you see him praying in isolation, often in association with major events. Did you know that? This is one of them. This is during the transfiguration of Christ, he's praying. Of course, you have the Garden of Gethsemane just prior to his arrest, betrayal arrest and crucifixion. But right before the Lord chose his disciples, what is he doing? You find him praying. You also often find him before a major event or right at a major event, the Lord Jesus is goes away from everyone and prays to his father in secret. Mark, just listen to these verses. You can note the references and look at them later if you wish, Mark 1.35. And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. Mark six, verse 46. And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. Luke six, verse 12. And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. Matthew 14, verse 23, which we've already covered says this. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray. And when the evening was come, he was there alone. You see it as a practice of our Lord. You know, it was the Lord Jesus himself. He says, but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet. And when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father, which is in secret, which is what he's doing. He's just not in a room. He's going out into the wilderness by himself. You see him doing this repeatedly. And that's only the times that the scriptures record him doing it. There were no doubt many other times because he was known for being one who spent time in prayer. The Lord Jesus was. And he says, pray to thy father, which is in secret. And thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. You see our Lord lived the example of prayer. He didn't just tell us to do it. He lived the example, which is why the disciples came to the Lord Jes...

Transcript:
Well, let me give you a, not a caveat, but just say this off the bat. I'm going to try my best not to bore you to death today, because today is the one day that we have the potential of, I say one day, I mean you might think I'm boring every week, but today is one day that is more, more likely to be boring. So we're going to, we're going to try to make this as interesting as possible. We've been talking about our church constitution, so I want to read a few parts of it that are relevant to our study today. Hopefully we can get through the entire thing, not the entire constitution, it's 54 pages I think, but the entire part of the constitution that I would like to get to and just make a few comments on it. And hopefully wrap up our study of, on our church altogether and then be praying. Please pray for me to know what the next study we need to go into for our Sunday school, our adult Sunday school. And there's a lot of different directions, different things. And I have received a few suggestions, a couple of suggestions, but if you have something that's on your mind and on your heart, we might could, if you let me know, we might could look into that and see if that's a study we could do. But I just want to be a help as we study the Bible together. And so let's pray and then we are going to again try to finish up about our church's constitution. All right, let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity to meet together once again. Thank you for the good fellowship yesterday and the opportunity to spend time with one another and to enjoy one another's company, to share a meal together and all of those things. We thank you for the beautiful weather. Thank you for the beautiful colors that you put before our eyes here where we live and this time of year. Lord, thank you for the breeze. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for your goodness shown to us, especially though, Lord, we give you thanks for the Lord Jesus. None of those things would matter for they would be fleeting and brief and unenjoyable knowing Lord that we were under the wrath of God, but we had been freed from the wrath of God by the gospel, by the cross. Lord, we give you thanks for that. I pray that you would strengthen us and help us as we look at these things today. You would help us understand, help us to look at these things in a practical way and to just grow from it. As we look at our church, Lord, we want to be fully integrated, fully involved with both feet, with our arms, our legs, our head, our mind, our heart in our local church. So Lord, help us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so last week we talked about the church constitution and why we need a church constitution and the biblical basis for it. We looked at Matthew 18, Acts chapter 6, 1 Corinthians, various verses there, Titus, Revelation. We saw that the church is not only at the power of binding and loosing, we saw that as well both in Sunday school but also on last Sunday or the Sunday before last, and we saw how that was not only given that authority and power to make judgments, but also we saw that in practice in the book of Acts. So we're following the pattern. We're not making this up as we go. We do have to fill in some blanks about what we do, but we have power to do that as a church given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ to fill in those blanks, but we're still following that pattern as seen in Scripture. That's what it means to be a biblical church is we're following the pattern, the directions the Lord has given and the pattern we see that his church set for us in the book of Acts and in the epistles. So that's our guide. We looked at practical reasons. We have as far as church constitution, I gave you three things to three parts. The first one is the biblical basis. The second one is the practical reasons for having a church constitution, and we looked at that and what that was is primarily the necessity to articulate what we believe because remember everybody in Christianity, and I mean that in the broadest sense possible, everybody in Christianity uses the Bible to support what they believe. So you can't just say, well, you can, but you could just say, well, the Bible is our constitution and our doctrinal statement. Well that's all fine and good, but what do you do when somebody who claims to use the Bible comes in and starts saying things that do not agree with what we have come to understand the Bible to mean? And so that's why we articulate it. But the Bible is the basis, right? The Bible overrules everything, and that includes the doctrinal statement. So the doctrinal statement is supposed to rest upon the Bible. So that's why it's important that we make judgments about various doctrines, like we saw in the book of Acts, making a judgment about the purpose of the law and those kinds of things. And so with the doctrinal statement, just by way of review, our doctrinal statement or our articles of faith, which is what it's called in the constitution, essentially say this, having examined the relevant verses prayerfully, we believe the scripture teaches this doctrine. So it's not meant, the articles of faith are not meant to be the final authority on everything, and they're not meant to answer every question or every verse or every objection. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to state what our belief is. And then that's after careful consideration of the truths of scripture, because the scripture of course is the basis. So what I'm saying to you is, it is not incompatible to have a doctrinal statement while at the same time your final authority for your faith and the basis for your faith be the Bible. They're not incompatible. They're actually complementary. They go together. And one depends on the other. The third reason that our church constitution is important is our legal reasons. So we have the biblical basis, number one. Number two are practical reasons, and number three are legal reasons. Legal reasons. Now due to the fact that each local church, now I'm referring to right now where we live, so I'm not trying to extend this to other countries or other cultures. I'm not trying to do that. That all has to be applied, and that's a difficult thing to do in other cultures to apply these same things in every case. But that's why we have flexibility to make the judgments that we must make. But in our world where we live, each local church is a legally recognized entity. It is a legally recognized entity. It's part of statutes in our state. It's part of statutes in our federal government. Now that doesn't mean that we have to be recognized. That is, a local church has to be recognized by the government for it to be legitimate. That's not the case. There are many periods in history where churches existed underground, though not literally underground. I used to think that underground meant they met underground. But just by that meaning, they were not recognized or permitted to exist, but yet they existed. Because remember, we ought to obey God rather than men. And if that's what it comes to, that's what it comes to. We don't want that, but that has happened many, many times over the years, and still happens to this day in some places. Because our church is a legally recognized entity, we are required as a matter of practice and necessity to articulate who we are and what our practices will be from a legal perspective. Because we are legally recognized, there are certain legal obligations. And with that recognition comes privileges, and with privileges come some responsibilities. So, if you're going to be legally recognized by the authorities that be, that you are a church, there are probably going to be some responsibilities that go along with that recognition. Now there's benefits, too. It's a give and take. And I would say the benefits outweigh the downsides. But there are both be...

Transcript:
Let's get our Bible, go to Psalm 48. Psalm number 48 tonight. Our next installment in our study of the Psalms, getting close to the third, the third of the way through point. How do you call that? 33.333 percent. Alright, Psalm 48. We will We will read Psalm 48 together. I would like to draw your attention to something as we read it, because we're not going to spend a lot of time in the Psalm, in this particular Psalm. I want to kind of use it as part of a study. And so we won't spend a lot of time here. But while we go through it, I'd like you to pay attention to and try to find out as you read what the theme of the Psalm is. So what is the main subject matter that the psalmist is speaking of? And he repeats it over and over and over in different ways, because that's really a key thing to what I'd like us to study tonight regarding this Psalm. So Psalm 48, a song and Psalm for the sons of Korah. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. Verse 3 goes on, God is known in her palaces for a refuge. For lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. They saw it and so they marveled. They were troubled and hasted away. Fear took hold upon them there and pain as of a woman in travail. Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God will establish it forever. We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple. According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth. Thy right hand is full of righteousness. Let Mount Zion rejoice. Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of thy judgments. Walk about Zion and go round about her. Tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks. Consider her palaces that you may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death. Amen. What's the theme? Did anybody notice a particular theme that's repeated over and over in the psalm? Zion. Zion. Zion. This psalm is mostly about Zion. So I want to look at that tonight and just look at it from, of course, the point of view of the psalmist, but also a point of view from our point of view as well. So let's pray together and then we'll get into our study. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity, Lord, for meeting together and studying your word. Thank you for the people of God. What a blessing it is to be with your people, to fellowship, to share good times together and to pray for one another and to see one another's face and study your word together. We know, Lord, that we will be with you in Zion for all of eternity, with one another, and be able to enjoy one another's fellowship forever without the burden and the hindrance of sin at all. We rejoice in that fact. Lord, we also rejoice that you protected Nathaniel and that you kept him, Lord, and you were watching over him. Thank you, Lord, that we have good news tonight. And Lord, we just pray that you bless our study now. We ask you to meet with us and teach us. In Jesus' name, amen. So this psalm is about Zion. And this is not the only one, but where the psalmist is really going on about, he talks about counting the towers and walking about, notice what he says in verse number 12, walk about Zion, go around it, walk around it, tell the towers thereof, and that's the count. And so the emphasis is on Zion. Now why is Zion so important that a psalmist would write a psalm about Israel? Now we know that, I'm sorry, write a psalm about Zion. Now we know there's an association with God because that's mentioned in verse number one, it's also mentioned in the last verse, and there's a connection between God and Zion. Now that's clear, we'll see that in a minute. But in the mind of the psalmist, Zion is an important place. It is an important place to the people of Israel. Now I want to look at a few verses and I want to kind of get a definition of what we're talking about when we're talking about Zion. Second Samuel, second Samuel chapter 5, second Samuel chapter 5, verse 7. This is of course when David will read verse 6, second Samuel chapter 5 verse 6. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, which spake unto David, say, Except thou take away the blind and lame, thou shalt not come in hither, thinking David cannot come in hither. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion. This is the first mention of Zion as a place. And this is before Jerusalem was occupied by the Hebrews. And so this is the first mention of Zion. He took the stronghold of Zion the same as the city of David. Now before there was a temple, before there was a temple, the Solomon's temple, there was of course the city of Jerusalem already existed at the time of David. And David invaded the city of Jerusalem and took it. But the city of Jerusalem was not centered around the temple mount like it is today and like it was later. And so David took the stronghold of Zion, which actually if you look at a map, you have the city of Jerusalem is kind of like a square. And at the top right, mostly the top right, you have the temple mount, but that didn't exist. But you go south of that and there's a ridge that runs down. That ridge is where the city of David was. This was called the city of David to this day. It's called the city of David. And it's a particular section of Jerusalem because that was the original part that David conquered. There was a fortress there. But that was the original location of Zion. That the city of David, that place south of Jerusalem. Now look at look back in the psalm, psalm number nine, psalm number nine. Psalm nine verse 11 says this, Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion. Declare among the people his doings. So here God dwells in Zion. Look at Psalm 132, psalm 132. Psalm 132 verse 13. Psalm 132 verse 13. For the Lord hath chosen Zion. He hath desired it for his habitation. Now you remember in the history of Israel, there was a big thing. Remember even in the law, the Lord said to Moses, you remember in Deuteronomy and in Numbers, he said when you go into the land, paraphrasing, when you go into the land and I choose a place to set my name there. Do you remember that verse, those verses? There are several occurrences of it. The Lord said this is when they were outside of Canaan, before they had gone in with Joshua. The Lord says when you go into this land, I'm going to pick a place and I'm going to set my name there. That place that God picked was Jerusalem. That place that God picked was Zion. Because that's the place where God would dwell. That's the place where God would have his habitation with his people, which is a reference to the temple. Look at the next verse, verse 14. The Lord goes on, this is my rest forever. Will I dwell for I have desired it. So here's what, think about what God is saying here. God is choosing a physical and geographical location on the face of the planet that he will call his habitation. Everybody with me? This is, and of course we know that would later be the Tabernacle and then the temple once Solomon built it. And that would be the place where he would place his name there. And that is the place that God has chosen even to this day. Even to this day. The end of the history of Jerusalem has not happened yet. There is more to come about that city. That's why it's such a hot bed right now and has been for a long time. Look at Psalm 147. 147. You'll see a little bit of a nuance about Zion. We're looking at what is Zion. Psalm 147, look at verse 12. Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Praise thy God, O Zion. This is what's called a...

Transcript:
All right, thank you for being here. We will go right to Matthew 20, chapter 16 rather, Matthew 16 and verse number 24 tonight. Matthew 16 and verse 24. Matthew 16 and verse 24. All right, let's read verses 24 to 28. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Let's pray together. Our Lord, once again we come to your Word, Lord, with of course needy. We need you to teach us. We desire you to teach us. And Lord, we ask you to teach us. Lord, teach us these truths. And Lord, not only teach us the intellectual part and knowing the facts of Scripture, but also how we might apply them to our lives and see your presentation, to see your demands, and to see what it means to follow you and to be unashamed. Lord, help us to do that as we look at this chapter 16 and finish it up tonight. You'll help us and we just look to you. Lord, help us to learn more about you in Jesus' name. Amen. Now remember the context. Before we get to verse 24. Verse 24 is the tail end of a series or a conversation, a series of verses that really began in verse 13 in Caesarea Philippi when Jesus says, Who do men say, the I, the Son of Man, am? And in that context, the Lord, of course Peter answers, thou art the Christ, Son of the living God. And of course the Lord blesses him for that, blessed art thou. And then he says that he gives them authority over the keys of the kingdom of heaven. We saw that as well. And then he turns straight to that. And of course you had the issue with what we saw this morning with Peter, as the Lord begins to explain that he's going to go to the cross, Peter begins to rebuke him. And that's where the Lord says, Get thee behind me, Satan. And obviously the idea is Peter was not, Peter was, as I said this morning, Peter was interested in the glory, but definitely was not interested in the suffering of Christ. And you can't blame him from a human perspective, but that was the whole problem, is that it was a human perspective. It was a carnal perspective that was not most concerned with the things of God, but the things of men. All right, that's what we've seen already. But the Lord brings up suffering in verse 21, specifically not the suffering of the disciples, but the suffering of himself. When he says he would suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised again the third day. So the Lord, as always, anytime the Lord brings up suffering, well, most of the time anyway, when you see that, he brings up himself to begin because our Lord is our example. There's nothing that our Lord Jesus calls us to do or endure that he has not first done and endured before us to set an example for us. And so we can always, that's why the Bible says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, our eyes should not be set upon our brothers and sisters to our right and to our left, but they should be set to our Lord. That is one of the keystones of the Christian life, is you have to keep your focus on the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Whether it be things that happen to you or suffering or persecution or interpersonal issues or whatever the case might be, we keep our eyes upon Christ and that's like the North Star and it keeps us going in the right direction because our eyes are upon him. Okay, so the Lord is the one that brings up suffering in verse 21, his own suffering. And then on the heels of that, not separate from that, but in the same context. And he begins in verse number 24 and he applies these same truths to the disciples. Notice what he says in verse 24. He says, then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Now we're okay with the idea of coming after Christ, we're okay with the idea of denying ourselves to some degree anyway, but when we get to the word cross, that's like a bad word, especially when you know what that means. The word cross is a very dreadful word in scripture. To be honest with you, for me personally, I don't like the cross as far as the symbolism of the cross. I don't like that. I've told you a few of that in our kind of passing conversations. A part of that is having been a missionary and seeing people that venerate images and that kind of thing. And I've seen and heard of people doing that. They think there's power in the symbolism of the cross, like that down there. There's just none. It's just a piece of wood that's cut in a certain pattern. But the cross of Christ, of course, it reminds us of what our savior has done, but it's a dreadful symbol. It's a dreadful symbol of death. And the reason it's so dreadful is because it is what our sin required. So we understand what it means and that kind of thing, but the cross is a very dark period in history. And so when the Lord says the word cross in verse 24, especially to those who live under Roman rule, that's like a shutter. He's only ever said it one other time. Matthew 10, we saw it this morning. He says it here, right on the heels of what he said. Now, he doesn't say that he's gonna be killed by the cross in verse 21. Notice that? He just says he's gonna be killed. But verse 24, he hints that it's gonna be on a cross, because he says to follow him, take up his cross and follow Jesus. So again, in the context of suffering, Peter wants to, he's looking for the glory. He wants to avoid the pain and suffering, and he has a desire for glory. But just as with our Lord Jesus, just as it is with our Lord Jesus, suffering must come before glory. And that's a biblical principle that you see throughout the New Testament. Suffering must come before glory. It was true of the Lord Jesus, and it's true of us. Suffering is first. Romans 8, 18 says this, "'For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time "'are not worthy to be compared with the glory "'which shall be revealed.'" 1 Peter 4, 13, "'But rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers "'of Christ's sufferings, "'that when his glory shall be revealed, "'ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.'" And 2 Timothy 2, 12 says this, "'If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. "'If we deny him, he also will deny us.'" Now, if you keep that verse in your mind, we're gonna kind of circle around that verse a little bit, though not directly. And then also verse number 27 in our text here says this, "'For the Son of Man shall come in the glory "'of his Father with his angels, "'and then he shall reward every man according to his works. "'But there is no Son of Man coming in glory "'until the Son of Man first suffers and dies, "'and then rises, ascends back to his Father, "'and then he returns.'" So it's embedded through, the Lord Jesus is consistent throughout his ministry that it is necessary that he suffer first. We all know that. That's a New Testament truth. That's an Old Testament truth. And so that's the order. And this is why the Lord brings it up because he is shaking the disciples out of this idea that they're gonna somehow get glory without suffering because it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. Now notice what he says in verse 24. Now verse 24, we're gonna have a little hermeneutical lesson tonight. So if you follow me, maybe we can learn a little principle of hermeneutics. But this context, 24 thro...

Transcript:
Let's get our Bible, if you would, and go to the book of Matthew, chapter 16. The Lord helps us today. I'd love to finish Matthew 16. Seems like we've been in the book for a month or two, but we're going to try to get through 21 to 28 today, part of it this morning, part of it tonight. This morning we're going to look at verses 21 through 23, but the good part about going through it slowly like this is that, and this is a perfect example of that, is that when we get to a passage of Scripture, the context of the passage at hand is fresh in our mind because we've spent time in what's above it already, and that is especially important this morning. So verse 21, the Bible says this, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offense unto me, for thou savrest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Would you pray with me this morning? Our Lord, thank you first of all for your Word and the truths of Scripture. Lord, we're thankful for, especially for the real life of Peter. Lord, how often we see ourselves in his place. Just a regular man who had faith in Christ, who had little faith in a very powerful Christ. Help us, Lord, in our study of Scripture. Help me, Lord, to help your people and to say the things that they need to hear and guide my every word and thought and motivation, Lord, that your people might be strengthened. But Lord, we know that even outside of the things that I say, there might be other portions There might be other things going on in the hearts of each person here that you might use to speak to them and guide their steps and help them to draw close to you. There might be someone among us who has not yet put their faith in Christ and his gospel. Lord, if that's the case, prick the heart of that person. Do not let them leave in peace and comfort. I pray that you would just strengthen us, guide us, help us. Lord, we look to you. Lord, we look to the subject of this passage and we want to see the things that you'd have us to see from it. Be our teacher. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen. You'll notice in verse number 21, from that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised again the third day. We might assume that, especially knowing the whole story, the beginning from the end, as we do from Scripture, that the subject of Christ's suffering on the cross is a subject that would have been topics of his conversation from the very beginning, but it wasn't. But it was not. And the Lord waited until this point, Matthew chapter 16, until this point to begin, notice what it says, he began Jesus to show unto his disciples. He waited until this moment to begin to teach them something that they were not at all expecting. In fact, in the Jewish psyche, and we've seen it over and over in Matthew, in the Jewish mind the Messiah, the Christ, was someone who was primarily a political leader. In the salvation, when Jesus spoke of salvation, what they heard was not salvation of the soul, but deliverance from earthly powers that were oppressing them and those kinds of things. And we've seen that over and over and over. And that philosophy is also part of the disciples' thinking as well. But it is at this point that the Lord begins to rain on their parade and let them know that his end is not what they expect. It's interesting to me that he waits until this point because we've spent, again, in Matthew so much time building upon the foundation of, like we saw last Sunday, the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ. That has been something that's been driven home over and over and over, from the miracles to the healings to all the different teachings of Christ. Everything he did, it seems there's somebody that's saying, who is this guy? Who is this guy? And that's what we looked at last Sunday. But that's an important foundation to be laid because the truths of the cross mean nothing unless we first understand who it is that's on the cross. If Jesus is just a guy that's on the cross, even if he's a really good guy, like again last Sunday, that's not enough. He must be the very unique Son of God or else the cross means nothing. His identity is the foundation of that. And that's actually what, again, the context above this passage is what we saw, this establishing once and for all, this historical confession of Peter, of who Jesus Christ is. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. But you know, many people ended up rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember the cross? And again, I know I'm repeating myself a little bit, but bear with me. You remember at the cross, there were people who walked by and wagged their heads and sneered at the Lord Jesus Christ and said specifically, If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross and we'll believe you. Remember that? So the question of his identity was already there in their mind and to them, the Son of God, to them, let me say it like this, Jesus of Nazareth hanging on the cross was proof positive that he was not who he said he was, right? Which is ironic because it's actually the reverse. In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus said the sign of the proof of his identity would be the fact that he died on the cross and was buried and rose again. That is the one great proof that Jesus would give of his identity. But as it is, the people walked by and mocked him because he was on the cross, and that very idea is a part of the disciples' thinking as well. But by this point, in contrast to the multitude who would walk by the cross and sneer at the Lord Jesus, at this point, as we saw in verse 17, or verse 16 rather, in the same chapter, the question of who Jesus is has been settled. Among the disciples at least. It's a settled question. And so he waits until that is a settled point. They get it. I know who this is. Now they don't know what's going to happen with Jesus in the future, but they are convinced of who he is. They are absolutely convinced of who he is. So whatever he does from this point on, they might not like it, they might not understand it, but they know it's right because of who he is, and that's something that has been settled among them. You see the work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, his rejection by the elders of Israel and his being nailed to the tree was the cause for many to turn from him because he would not rule as they expected. And so right on the heels of this great confession is the Lord Jesus goes into the next kind of phase. Phase one, who am I? Settled. Phase two, here's what I'm about to do. Man, you look at verse number 21, Jesus began to show what he was going to do, how he was going to suffer and die on the cross, be killed, raised again the third day. And what's funny is when you look at the previous chapters to this point, you look at early part of Matthew, I do want to look at several of those, but when you look at it, it's not there. There are no clear passages of scripture where the Lord tells anything about what's going to happen to him prior to this. Let's look at a few. There are a couple of hints. I want to show you those. Matthew chapter two is where we'll begin and then we'll be at Luke for one passage and then back in Matthew. Matthew two, verse number 11. Now Matthew two is probably familiar to you because that's of course talking about Jesus' nativity, but in Matthew two it says this, verse 11, talking about the wise men. And when they were coming to the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Now we know from other passages of scripture that myrrh was a spice that was specifical...

Transcript:
Alright, we are going, we're going to be in actually several passages of scripture today starting in Matthew chapter 18, so you can go ahead and turn there. I'll say a few things to introduce our subject here. We have, when we've gone through this Sunday School series about our church, we've looked at various angles, various issues, various matters. Most recently we've considered our church's music and why it is the way it is. Most recently we looked at our church's music and we examined that subject from a number of different directions. We've also considered, at the beginning we looked at corporate decision making and so we've looked at that. Some of what we'll say today and over the next couple of weeks we'll overlap that a little bit. We also looked at various aspects of our church regarding, you know, just sundry doctrines that are important to our church and there are still a few that are left that we want to cover. Maybe they're not a whole lesson but just part of a lesson. We've looked at church membership. We've looked at, let's try to think off the top of my head because I don't have my notes in front of me, but anyway, we've looked at a number of things and the majors, at least the majors, that are important questions as it regards our church, our particular local church. Now we understand that not all local churches have the same position and viewpoint on everything and this is exactly why what we're looking at today is so important. I know there's a tendency to look at other churches, you know, we might look at other churches or hear of other churches and think, why do they do that? And the liberating thing is we don't have to answer that question. We don't have to care, right? Now we all should care what's going on in our church but what's going on in other people's churches is their business and they will give an account to that for good or for bad, hopefully for good and that's their business. But as far as our church, this is where our focus is on. So we're not trying to be in the business of trying to be busybodies and criticize everything that's going on. I mean we might have a position and an opinion on it but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to try to put our oar in for that church when we have enough things to consider in our own church. So when I say these things, it is not to make it sound like that our way is the only way and there's no other way or anything like that. We want to hold scriptural positions but there are times when churches do things differently than us and it's still scriptural. That is a possible thing. Don't stare at me blankly. It is possible to hold a different position in some ways. I mean of course when you start getting into some things we'll talk about today then there might be issues but again this is honestly the paradigm and the way the Lord has described it in scripture that churches, individual local churches are answerable directly to God. This is the independence principle behind our church. We don't have a denomination that is dictating anything to us whatsoever either directly or indirectly and so with that comes liberty of course. We can do as the Lord directs us but with that also comes responsibility like everything And so what we're going to look at today is we're going to start to look at, don't worry, we're not going to go line upon line in the church constitution but we do want to look at the church constitution. Now the Bible says we should go line upon line in the scripture but we don't want to bore everybody with line upon line in the church constitution because it's not the same as the Bible. We do want to look at it and cover a couple of points, a couple of salient and important points regarding our church constitution because it is a significant doctrine regarding our church and why some things are there and some things aren't and why we even have it. That's what we're going to look at this morning. So let's pray and ask the Lord to guide us and help us in our study. Our Father we thank you for the chance to study your word once again. I thank you for those that have come out and thank you for the weather Lord. What a beautiful day. The leaves are changing and Lord we're just reminded of the beauty that you put in nature for our benefit, for our joy and Lord we do thank you for that. We thank you for the crisp weather but the warm weather later in the afternoon and we thank you for the opportunity to fellowship together with your people and to love one another and to encourage one another. Help us to do that this morning. I pray that as we meet together not only in Sunday school but also in the services that you would meet with us and you would help us to grow, you would help our hearts to be inclined to your word and to your will. Lord bless the kids' class as well as they learn the Scripture. Help them to learn it well and I pray that it will profit those kids also in their life as they grow. We ask these things all in Jesus' name. Amen. So the question I want to pose to everyone is this. Why if we have a Bible, one of the things we covered in our church is what is independent Baptist? What does that mean? And part of that is part of the Baptist part of that means that we have and accept only one rule for faith and practice. Where do we get what we believe and do? We get it from Scripture, the Bible and nothing else. So the question, the follow-up question to that and the logical question to that is if that's the case then why do we have a constitution at all? If we have a Bible, what's the need for a constitution? Is a church constitution necessary? Why don't we just use the Bible? And why do we have a church constitution if we do not see church constitutions in the New Testament? Right? That's a, that's a, I think a valid question. If the Bible is our basis for what we do in our church, why then do we have something and use something in our church that is not in the Bible? There are many things in our church that we use that are not in the Bible. The easiest and most handy of which is this. And these and those and these and these, a multitude of other things we use and we don't say boo about that but all of a sudden with some particulars we get a little bit ornery about it, do we not? And so, but these are, I think these are valid questions especially about our church constitution. Why is it necessary? So basically I have for this, I have three things. I have a, I want to show you a biblical basis, I want to show you practical reasons and then I want to look at just very briefly legal reasons. We won't get to the third one today. So I want to look at the biblical basis for a church constitution. Now you might, I just said I might have contradicted myself or you might think I contradicted myself which is this. If church constitutions are not in the Bible then how are we going to study the Bible to find out about church constitutions? And I admit there are no church constitutions in the Bible but there are principles of scripture that definitely allow and I would even say to some degree call for something similar to a church constitution. So let's just go through the New Testament starting in Matthew 18 verse 15 and just look at a few examples of how, what the Lord says and then how the New Testament churches operated to help us to get a better view of what is, I believe, a biblical basis for something like a church constitution, okay? Matthew 18 verse number 15. This might be a little bit familiar to you from last Sunday. It says this, moreover, if thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. So a witness is someone who knows the ...

Transcript:
Alright, let's go to Psalm 47. Psalm 47. I just want to look, basically, take a kind of a devotional view of Psalm 47 tonight. I'll kind of give you some background of the Psalm. It's a very brief Psalm, only nine verses, but we'll just look at basically one thing that's kind of a running theme throughout the Psalm and use it kind of as a devotion this evening. Psalm 47, the subtitle begins, The chief musician, a Psalm for the sons of Korah. O clap your hands, O all ye people, and shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord most high is terrible. He is a great king over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us and the nations under our feet. He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved, say la. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises unto our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth. Sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen. God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham, for the shields of the earth belong unto God. He is greatly exalted. Would you pray with me tonight? Our Father, we thank you for your word and the truths that your word constantly reminds us of. Lord, indeed we grow by the sustenance that your word gives us. Lord, I pray that you would bless our time in your word and you would help our hearts to be receptive and willing to hear and to see what your word says. Lord, help me to say what your people need tonight. Lord, we trust you. We look to you. Our eyes are upon thee. In Jesus' name, amen. So you have this you have this song, just so you know, verse number two, for the Lord most high is terrible. That sounds sounds terrible, doesn't it? The idea being the Lord strikes terror. He produces, incites terror in us. That's what the word terrible means. The thing I want to point out to you is I want you to see this this frequent mention. There's three times, maybe four, depending on how you count, of the mention of God as a king. Did you notice that? In verse number two, for the Lord most high is terrible, he is a great king over all the earth. In verse number six, sing praises unto sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises unto our king, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth. Sing he praises with understanding. And then the fourth partial mention is God reigneth over the heathen, implying a kingdom, implying that God is a king. Now when you read this, you know, there's actually at least two different ways that you can view this psalm, that you can read it. Okay? The first way is just to look at the psalm in its context, written, you know, about a thousand years before Christ. So right around maybe the time of David, David's name is not on the psalm, but if we assume that it's written around the time of David, you're talking about a thousand years before Christ about. Now at that, let me ask you a question, I want you just to think think this through with me. At that time, there was basically one nation that recognized and acknowledged God as their king. Right? There was just one nation, and that was the nation of Israel. Now, obviously Israel was not the only nation on earth, so on earth there were many, probably thousands of nations at that time in various parts of the world then that that had their own gods and their own religion and their own faith and their own all of that that did not, some of them probably didn't even know about God, at least as he's revealed in scripture, but they definitely did not recognize or acknowledge God as king. Everybody understand what I'm saying? So the question I have for you is how then can the psalmist say in verse number three, or verse number two, he is a great king over all the earth? Or in verse number seven, for God is the king of all the earth. Because in the time in which this was written, there were many many places in the earth that did not acknowledge God as the king. So here's what I want you to, this is the first way to look at it. This psalm has a prophetic element to it. Right? It has a prophetic element to it. Like many of the psalms, like Psalm 22, Psalm 23, Psalm 24, definitely all have a prophetic element. In other words, there's a way that you can look at it in its time, thousand years BC, right? And then there's also, it speaks to that time, but it also has a broader meaning that speaks to a time in the future. Because when you take this psalm not devotionally like we're gonna do tonight, but when you take it literally, and I think there's grounds to do that, when you take it literally, there will actually be a time in which the Lord rules and reigns over the heathen. Not only that he rules and reigns over them, but they acknowledge and submit themselves to his rule. The scriptures are replete with different verses and passages that deal with that. That God is not just going to be the God of a small group of people like he is now, where we acknowledge him and worship him. Or in the Old Testament, like Israel acknowledged him and worshiped him, but no, he will rule over everyone. He will rule over everyone. Now that's one way to look at it, right? That's one way to look at it. So there's a prophetic view. In other words, it's pointing to something future, a greater, broader fulfillment. But there's another way to look at it, and this is where the theology kind of, your theology really matters. Because of course we hold a pre-millennial position. That means we take the scriptures literally in almost every case. And that means, and I say that not to say, well we hold the pre-millennial position and so because we hold the position it's right. No, no. The pre-millennial position is the position that seeks to, where possible, interpret scriptures literally in their grammatical and historical understanding. In their basic understanding. So that's the reason why we read this psalm in other places like it. We take it at face value. We don't spiritualize it automatically. But you can do that. You can read this in a way and draw from it principles, which we're going to do tonight. But these principles, the fact of this psalm tells us that even though this was not literally fulfilled at this time, yet there will be a time when it will be fulfilled. Where Christ will literally reign over this world. And I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to that day. I'm looking forward to that day. But sometimes people that that tend not to take the scriptures literally come to a psalm like this and find trouble. Because it says, God reigneth over the heathen, and there's a seeming contradiction. Because when you read it you know he doesn't. So what kind of the default reaction to that is to spiritualize it. And to say, well this is God's spiritual reign over the world. This is God's spiritual reign over the world. Now the truth is there are verses in scripture where you can see that. Where the Bible does say that indeed. That God rules and God reigns. I mean just because people do not acknowledge God, that doesn't mean he doesn't reign. It doesn't mean somehow that because I thumb my nose at God and ignore him that somehow he doesn't rule. No, he rules. But when we talk about God is king, the fullest expression of that is not only that he holds the position but that we acknowledge that. Right? That's where they go together. And one day again that will be fulfilled. That will come to fruition. But without a question, God is king now. God is king. There's never been a time that he's not been that. He's king by virtue of his reign, by virtue of his creation. And he does rule. He does rule from heaven over the sons of men. Whether people acknowledge it or don't acknowledge it. He does his will whether people...

Transcript:
Let's go back to Matthew chapter number 18. Matthew 18. Matthew 18, we are going to look, we're gonna continue in, Matthew 18, Matthew 16, I apologize, I was looking at the wrong number. Matthew 16, and we'll just begin, we'll just read back over our text here, we're gonna pick up in verse number 18, and kind of finish this out, and go into what I think are just really interesting, interesting truths that we don't often cover just because they're not super frequently mentioned in scripture, but we wanna look at them tonight. Verse number 13, the Bible says, when Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And they said, some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias and some others Jeremiah's, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto them, blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. It's interesting to note here that he uses all of the, basically all of the names of Peter in this passage. The only exception is the name Cephas, which is a different language, it's Aramaic, which actually he probably said Cephas when he actually spoke it, and then Matthew recorded it when he recorded it in Greek, which is the language of the New Testament. Then he put Peter because that's the Greek equivalent of the word Cephas, the name Cephas. But anyway, he uses all of the names in verse 17, and then he says, Simon, which is his Hebrew name, now this is his given name, Bar-Jona, which means Son of Jonah. And then he says in verse number 18, and I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. I will give unto thee the keys of my kingdom, the keys of God's kingdom, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be loosen and I will give unto thee the keys of my kingdom, The ourselves who renew theうん by God, and the things that we have made amint us. So we think let us pray in the Bible, let us ask there now, where they should put down the sand, Oh, how we need you, Lord. Every day, every moment, Lord, we need your help. As we meet together, as we study your word, Lord, we're ignorant. We really do need you to teach us. Lord, we need you to give us grace, not only to learn and to get knowledge, but also to act and live according to the knowledge you give us. So Lord, we just entrust this time to you. We ask you to work in our hearts in Jesus' name, amen. All right. What we want to do is look at verse number 18. And as I said, it says here, and I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now we saw this morning how the Lord uses a play on words. I don't think it, and you'll see in a minute, but I don't think this, I don't think at all that, and I'm going to mention Catholicism here several times because this is the primary go-to passage for basically, this is the foot in the door passage that swings the door open for every doctrine that has come to pass since the three or four hundreds until our day in Catholicism. So I'm going to mention it several times, but this passage is sometimes, basically, sometimes interpreted to say this. Jesus says to Peter, Peter, your name means rock, and you're the rock upon which I'm going to build my church. And then he goes on from there. But that's not what he says. The Lord says, thou art Peter, and we saw this morning, scripturally speaking, that the name means stone. We saw that in John chapter 1, verse 42. And then playing off of that name, which remember, that name was given to Simon by the Lord. In other words, the Lord surname him Peter. Peter was not a name given to him by his friends or family. It was given to him by Jesus, probably, my guess, for this purpose right here. Because he's going to bring it up and use the name to tell a truth. And that truth is this rock, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now notice, we saw some things about the church this morning, but there's a couple more things I want to point out to you about the church. The first thing I want you to see, and these are just good practical reminders to remember about the Church of Christ. And I don't mean the denomination. I mean the Church of Jesus Christ. Number one, the church belongs to Christ. He calls it my church. My church. The Church of Christ is his possession alone. It's not my church. It's not your church. I know we call it that colloquially. We say my church. At my church we sing this. My church we do that. But in all truth, in the absolute sense, the church belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, and anyone who touches it will give an account to him. It is his special possession. And there is no pastor. There's no spiritual leader that owns the Church of Christ. Right? The spiritual leaders are only overseers, are only guides, and serve only as examples. But the church itself belongs to Jesus Christ. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 1, listen to this verse. And you're very familiar with this, I know. Peter is speaking to the elders, to the spiritual leaders of the church. Here's what he says. The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. To the elders now he says, feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. Here's the key. Neither, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock. Neither as being lords over God's heritage. A lord is an owner. That's the one who holds the deed. And it says, neither being lords over God's heritage, but in samples to the flock. A heritage is your property. Right? That's what your heritage is, scripturally. I know that's not how we necessarily use it. But that's what the word means. It's a heritage. It's the same word as lot, referring to a parcel of the land. So this is God's heritage. The Church of God is God's heritage. Now I just say that just to reiterate. Listen. Spiritual leaders in churches, and this includes myself, have limits on what they're allowed to do. Right? We do not have a blank check. No spiritual leader, not a deacon, not a pastor, or any member for that matter. I mean, no person in a church has a blank check to do with the church whatever that person wishes. There are limits to it. And those limits are imposed by the Lord Jesus himself. So we all must keep that in mind. In everything we do, it's about we must ask the question, Lord, this is your church. What do you want? Right? This is your church. We are mere stewards of what the Lord has given us. The second thing I want you to see is this. The building of the church, he said, I will build my church. The building of the church, and by this, I don't mean this building made of brick and two by fours. I'm not talking about that. And I'm not even really talking about this particular local church, which again, we saw this morning, is a local, visible manifestation of the body of Christ. But the building of this church, which is the body of Christ, is the responsibility not of us, but is the responsibility of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. I will build my church. So it is not our responsibility to build the church. Let me say that...

Transcript:
Alright, let's get our Bible and go to the book of Matthew. We're picking up from our study in Matthew, and we're in chapter 16 this morning. Matthew 16 will begin in verse number 13. I have to admit this passage, verses 13 through 20 is where we'll be this morning, is one of those famous passages in scripture. It is just extremely significant in the whole of the book of Matthew. It could be called, it could even be called the theme verse, some of these verses in this passage. And so as I come to them, I feel like I need something more substantial to say to you guys that's equal to the importance of this verse. But we're going to go at it. We're going to see what the Lord shows us anyway. Verse 13 of Matthew 16, the Bible says this, When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah's, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. Would you pray with me this morning? Lord, we come to you as a needy people. Lord, we know that we have needs sometimes, and other times you know that we have needs that we're even unaware of. We certainly need your word. If we're going to grow as your people, Lord, we're going to have to grow by the word of God. And that's what we come out to look at this morning. We come to your word. Lord, open our eyes and our heart that we might behold wondrous things out of thy law. Give us understanding, Lord, and teach us by your Spirit these truths. Guide me, Lord, to say the things to help and strengthen your people in their faith, in the truth, in the Scripture. But not only that, Lord, help us not to just go away with more knowledge or a knowledge that's been strengthened, but Lord, that we might apply the word of God and use it to help us to live uprightly and to walk before you unto all pleasing. So Lord, we just acknowledge we need your help in every way in Jesus' name. Amen. Now you've seen in the book of Matthew as we've gone through it, I do want to look at several verses starting in Matthew chapter 1. We'll just take a brief, very brief walk through various verses in Matthew. We've seen a recurring theme that's recurred and has been brought up a number of times in Matthew. And the theme is, who is this Jesus? Who is this Jesus? And that we've seen it over and over. The identity, the question of the identity of the Lord Jesus is a major theme in the book of Matthew, is a major theme in the book of Matthew. Now to you and to me, that question might seem like a settled issue. But if you peer beyond Greenville, South Carolina, you know, because we do get kind of a small world mentality, we do, we think everybody thinks like us and has the same beliefs as us, and that's just not true. When you leave even this area and you go to another part of the country, or especially when you leave this country and go to another part of the world, there are literally billions upon billions of people that have not settled this question. Who is this Jesus? Many, many people, you might be surprised to know that most people in the world have heard of Jesus. So I know we go to Romans 15 about, you know, striving to preach the gospel where Christ is not named, right? But there are actually few places on earth where the name of Christ has not at least arrived in some form or fashion, where people know the name of Jesus. Now I have met, as a missionary, I have met people who had never heard of Jesus, had no idea who Jesus was at all. So they exist, but by and large, even in Cambodia, which is definitely kind of on the fringes of that, most people are familiar with Pré-Jesu, they know who Jesus is, at least in broad terms. But the question of his identity is still an open question. And that's true in most of the world. And in Matthew it's true. When Jesus arrived on the scene, if you put yourself in that place, in that time period among those people, that's an open question. Here you see a man who is just a regular man, a regular Jew, no doubt, just an average guy by all accounts. He hath no form nor comeliness. There's no beauty in him that we should desire him, is what the scripture says. Probably a short man based upon the heights of the skeletal remains of people in the first century, probably about five foot three, just in all ways average. And so there's a lot of reason for questions regarding who he is to be in people's minds. Look at Matthew 1, even going all the way back to his birth, verse 20. But while he thought on these things, this is Joseph now, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. What is this angel Gabriel telling Joseph? He's telling him who this baby is. That's what he's doing. He's addressing the identity question. Right? Now let me say this, and we'll see it in just a minute, but the identity question regarding Jesus Christ is still a question in our day. And the identity question is, if you want to boil down the body of Christian doctrine, you want to boil down eternal life even, it is based upon this first kind of initial question. There's probably another one about who made the world, you know, where we come from. That's probably even more basic and elemental. But on top of that, the question of who Jesus is, is a foundational question. It's the foundation of the cross and the resurrection, because you can't properly understand the gospel unless you understand who this person is. You have to know his identity before you can understand who's on the cross and why that's so significant. It is foundational. You know, a Jehovah's Witness can believe that Jesus died on the cross for his sins, and because he has his identity wrong, it is ineffectual. He has the wrong Jesus. Right? He has a man parading around as Jesus with a mask that looks like Jesus, but it is not Jesus. No more than if a man put on a Donald Trump mask, like you probably will be seeing at some point in the next several days. You'll probably see some people with Donald Trump masks knocking on your door, ringing your doorbell. That doesn't mean they're Donald Trump. Say amen. That's right. That doesn't mean they're Donald Trump. So this identity question is very important. Let's look at Matthew chapter 3, as we just take a stroll through Matthew, chapter 3, verse 11. John the Baptist is speaking here. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Right? This is, who is this one? And of course, we know later John the Baptist will say, behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away to the sin of the world. But again, even John the Baptist had questions. Who is this? How will I know him? This one who is sent from God. Look at chapter number 3, verse 17. And lo, as John baptizes our Lord, and lo, a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. This is the testimony o...

Transcript:
Alright, let's get our Bible and go back to Romans chapter number 12. Romans chapter 12. What we're going to do this morning is I'm going to make every effort to finish up this study on our church's music today. We are going to kind of circle back around to something that I covered two weeks ago. And to kind of go over that a little bit more from a different angle because I think the principle is important. And then we're going to cover one more thing to kind of conclude our church's this topic of our church's music. Now, we have already covered the idea of the we've examined the concert atmosphere. And so we've looked at that and how that affects the difference between spectating and participating. And we've looked at the use of our hymnal and how that involves participation and not to not to denigrate or downplay the importance of people who are skilled playing and singing special music. That's, of course, that's allowed and seen in scripture. But seeing that the church of the living God is primarily a participation sport, not a spectator sport. And so as much as we can do to promote that rather than the other, that's what we're going to try to do. And so we're trying to as a matter of principle, we're trying to avoid we want to avoid a concert atmosphere in the church. That's not what we were going for. So that's done that's done on purpose. It's not like, you know, well, we can't find anybody that can play the drums or the guitar or run the smoke machine or the you know, it's not like that. It's it's we are intentionally choosing to do what we do. OK, so and that's that all has to do with with kind of a combination of principles that come together. Then we looked at Romans 12, too, which is what we're going to go back to this morning. But before we do, let's pray and just ask our Lord to meet with us and and be our guide and teacher as we look through the scriptures today. Our father, thank you for the opportunity to meet together in the in the Church of God and Sunday School. Thank you for the people that have come and the hearts that are ready to hear Lord work in us and teach us, help us to understand your truth, not only that, but to apply it honestly and truthfully, both in our personal lives, but also in the church. And, Lord, we just want to follow the scriptural principles and examine them with a sincere heart. So help us to do that today and give us understanding and wisdom that your people might be edified because we look to you, Lord, in Jesus name. Amen. Romans 12, one and two. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies of living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We looked at verse two as it relates to music. It is not is not very often that verse two, specifically the part that refers to conforming to this world, It is not very frequently that you see this verse applied to music, but there's definitely really anything, this is just totally and universally applicable to any matter in which we would take our cues from the world in our worldview, in our way of thinking, in our value system, in our actions, in our words, and of course in our music, in our entertainment. We could go on and on, conforming to the world. In other words, molding ourselves after the pattern they have set, okay, the pattern they have set. But before we can really get into that, I have found in the experiences that I've had on this subject, specifically on the subject of the world, or we might say worldliness. That's kind of a charged word, has a lot of emotional response to the concept of worldliness, but it is a scriptural truth, right? It is a scriptural truth, absolutely, and we'll see it. But sometimes one thing that gets a little confusing is what is the world? What things are considered worldly? In Scripture, there's an example in which the temple is actually called a worldly sanctuary. I think it's in the book of Hebrews, it might be Colossians, or it might be 2 Corinthians, one of the three perhaps. The worldly sanctuary, and that doesn't have the negative connotation, it's just one that exists on earth rather than in heaven. But when we talk about worldly, the question automatically comes up, especially when we're talking about entertainment, or things in very practical matters, perhaps dress, perhaps music, perhaps places we visit, our philosophies. What defines worldly? Worldly is obviously in Scripture negative, it's not a positive thing. And the reason that is, is because the world is viewed negative in Scripture. That's what I want you to see. So I'm not going to try to define that for you. What we're going to try to do is we're going to try to look through the Scripture at what the Lord says about the world, and let you, with an honest heart, examine and evaluate what the Scripture says on the matter. And then each one of us, and this is true of our church, and it's true of you and your life personally, each one of us must take these principles of Scripture and sincerely and honestly apply them to every area of our life. We must do that. Because we talk about the world, well let's just get into it here. Look, if you would, we're going to look at, to start with three passages. Look at John 11 and Matthew 16. John 11 and Matthew 16. John 11 and Matthew 16. So when the Bible refers to the world, it has several definitions, and they're all related, they're all related, but there's several kind of emphases that we see that it's a little bit different, a little bit nuanced, and it's important for us to understand that. Not everything in the world is evil. In other words, the sun and the moon and the stars in God's created world, that's not evil, right? The plants, that kind of plant is evil, but the plants that God made are, well technically he made those too in as much as, but anyway. But those things are not evil, but they're of the world. So obviously there's different facets to this term. John 11 verse 9, look at what it says if you would, it says this, Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleeth not, because he seeth the light of this world. What's the Lord talking about when he says the light of this world? Well in this case he's using an example, talking about men stumbling, he's referring to the sun, right? Which lights the earth, right? So in this case the world just refers to his created, his material creation, alright? Now we know that has been tainted by sin, we get that, but in and of itself is not necessarily evil, okay? So that's one way you can look at what the word world means. Look at Matthew 16 now. Matthew 16, another definition is found in this verse, verse 26. Matthew 16 verse 26, For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? In this case the word world is also a reference to God's creation in some facet or way, but it's specifically referring to possessions, alright? He gained the whole world, everything that is to be possessed in the world, that's what he's referring to. So the world in that case refers to material possessions. That's not really what we're looking at for our study in Romans 12. Alright, look at a couple more passages. Look at John chapter 3 and Mark chapter 16. We'll look at Mark first, John chapter 3 and Mark chapter 16. And this definition or this facet of the word world is the one we're going to be looking at today. Mark 16 verse number 15, And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. In this case the word world refers to all of humanity, okay? All people, humanity. John 3, you're famili...

Transcript:
Let's go ahead and pray. Heavenly Father, thank you Lord for the opportunity to be together, to be in your Word, in your house. Lord, we pray that you would give us something from you that you would open your people's eyes to your scripture. Lord, nothing that I have to say but that your Word would not come back void. So Lord, we pray that you would be with those that hear and be with your Word as it goes forth. We pray also for Pastor who's away preaching your Word. Lord, we thank you for him. We pray for the many prayer requests and those who wish they could be here but aren't able to. So Lord, we thank you just for your blessing us, blessing us with your Word because the opening of your Word giveth life and light. And so Lord, we thank you for just being with us and being so good to us and we pray that you would guide and direct everything that happens tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. So if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter one, Psalm one, blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water who bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous but the way of the ungodly shall perish. So for the sake of alliteration I've used a couple of Tencent words, they're biblical words, but I wanted to point out first of all blessed is the man blessed in his eschewing. So eschewing is a wonderful word that the Lord used with Satan and Job when he said, you know, one that feareth God and escheweth evil just means to put it away. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. So again blessed in his eschewing. So first of all blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. He talks about the walk here and I've subtitled this the path of convenience. Walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. It's easy to do wrong. It's often harder at least in the short run to do right. And so when you have the the world's way is the path of convenience, the easy way, the way the accepted way, the way in which you are not weird or strange or ridiculed. It's what is comfortable. So it feels right. It's conflict avoidance. It amazes me every day. There are so many people who go so far and work so hard not to have a conflict. They'll go around and I look at them. I say, you've done all this work not to just say no. Sometimes that's true. But it amazes me the propensity towards conflict avoidance which ends is just delayed conflict. You know the conflicts don't show up but they're just delaying it. The worldly wisdom I used to have I was being explained in I believe it was one of my ethics courses in school that a pension for police department is determined on the last it's an average of the last years that you would have and what people would do is they would get their others to call out so that they could work overtime so that their last few years would be the highest grossing years which their pension would be figured out. Of course that's dishonest but that's worldly wisdom right. Jesus said the children of this generation are in their the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light and sometimes that's what people do. It's the easy way. It's the way of convenience. Satan always comes along with a flashy convenient alternative for a genuine human need usually right before the Lord has something for you. And so if you're walking not in the Council of the ungodly you're not going to be susceptible to that. You're not going to accept what Satan brings to you as an alternative for God's will. And you're a judge things by the Bible. What does the Lord say about the situation not what do I feel and what do my peers say. What is easy. So walking not in the Council of the ungodly. The Lord has has a plan. He brings bring forth his fruit in his season in Ecclesiastes 311. He says he's made all things beautiful in his time and then he is the one that brings the good gifts. Turn with me quickly first to Matthew 6 31. I thought I had my Bible in the car and turns out I didn't. So I'm using Robert's Bible. So bear with me as I find it here. The Lord says take the note therefore take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or wherewith all shall we be clothed for after all these things to the Gentiles see. Here's the key for your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things. God's not surprised that you need something to eat today. God's not surprised that you need something to wear. God's not indifferent to our human frailties and needs. Remember he was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. And so every good gift and every perfect gift James Chapter 1 16 17 do not air my beloved brethren every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above from the father of lights with whom is no variable and neither shadow of turning. And so the option that is presented to you that is easier that seems like it's the more convenient that seems like it's the conflict free option yet requires you to compromise that's walking in the council of the ungodly. So blessed in his eschewing is blessed that he doesn't walk in the council of the ungodly the path of convenience nor standeth in the way of sinners sinners. And I'm calling this the point of curiosity standing the way of sinners lingering loitering loitering lusting falling. So if we were to say that the path of convenience walketh not in the council of the ungodly were the lust of the flesh you need these things your father knoweth that you have need of them. Point of curiosity is less the eyes. What's going on here. Hey that's interesting. I've never seen that before. The original temptation I want to know right has to know I have to know the Lord would have a simple concerning evil. I would get up but what would I have you wise into that which is good but simple concerning evil. Romans 6.19 I like to say when somebody asked me a question that I'm pop cultural illiterate I don't know the mutant the movies the music the current theme of the world. I just don't know it. I also tell them I'm full of useless information which is also usually true. But I am pop culture illiterate because I don't need to know what the world has to know. I'm not going to stand in the way of sinners. So when you're standing in the way of sinners I mean there's even more peer pressure as soon as you stop and stand as soon as you allow for the possibility that you are going to engage in what they want you to do. That's where the pressure is going to be brought to bear. If you're just if you're stopping and standing then they think that they can get you to fall. It says wherein they think that it is strange that you run not with them to the same excessive riot speaking evil of you. First Peter 4.4. We used to have my brother and I when we used to work as regular officers we used to have they would do things they would stuff our lockers full of bad material so that we'd open them so they could make fun of us and all sorts of things which was very fun then when I became promoted because it all stopped. But they used to do these things and they would they would ridicule hey your brother said he was coming to the club with me if you would. You know that's not happening. But they would do those things there's all that peer pressure. I remember somebody stopped and said to ...

Transcript:
Alright, well we're going to be in two different passages this morning primarily. If you would, open to Psalm 23, Psalm 23, and then we're going to be in John 10, John chapter 10. Can anybody hear me okay? I can't, okay. Psalm 23 and John chapter 10. Of course this is a very famous, probably the most popular Psalm in all of the book of Psalms. A lot of people quote it for a lot of different reasons, mostly a lot of times during funerals and things like that, which is obviously totally appropriate. I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the Psalm and kind of expose some of the ideas that David was referring to when he wrote this Psalm. Of course David, we know, was a shepherd of his father's sheep in Israel. He's of all people probably the most, the best person to write this Psalm. But I kind of want to dig into it a little bit more and kind of open it up, maybe some of these ideas you've never heard about. And I want to just use John 10 to kind of build on that as well. So again, we'll be in John chapter 10 and then Psalm 23. We're going to start with the first phrase in Psalm 23 is, the Lord is my shepherd. We think of that, we're very familiar with this passage, but what I want us to think about is the relationship between a sheep and a shepherd. Why is it significant? Of course, there's a lot of shepherds. The Bible talks about a lot of different shepherds in scripture, but it's so significant that this Psalm is the relationship between the Lord and a Christian and a believer, one of his sheep. And Jesus is not an ordinary shepherd. Jesus is not somebody who is just kind of a higher link like the Bible talks about. He really does care for the sheep. And I want us to turn to John 10, John chapter 10 verse 12 and 13. John chapter 10 verse 12 and 13. So I'm just going to read the passage here, starting in, I'll just start I guess in verse 7. It says, then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture. The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am calm that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is in higher link and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The higher link fleeeth because he is in higher link and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. I'll just end there. I want to focus on just the fact that, like again, the Bible talks about in higher links. Higher links are inferior. They are obviously paid to do a job, but they don't care for the sheep. They don't have the intimate, they didn't pay for the sheep. They didn't go to the market and inspect the sheep. They didn't, they don't care for it on a day-to-day basis. They are just there to do a part-time job kind of thing. The Bible says in Jeremiah, just quickly I'll talk about this, Jeremiah 23. Jeremiah I notice talks a lot about shepherds. Basically God, Jehovah is reprimanding the shepherds, the previous shepherds of Israel. He says, Well be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people. Ye have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not visited them. Behold I will visit upon you the evil of your doing, saith the Lord. Of course there are other passages there, but basically also in verse Jeremiah 10-21 it says, For the pastors are become brutish and have not sought the Lord. Therefore they shall not prosper and all their flocks shall be scattered. It says in John chapter 10 verse 8, it says, All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers but the sheep did not hear them. Jesus is the good shepherd. He cares for the sheep. He knows them and they know his voice. That's the important part. Of course a hireling will do his job temporarily. He'll have to fill in, but they don't really recognize the voice of the shepherd. He can feed them and all that, but he doesn't walk among the sheep. The sheep don't hear his voice. They don't recognize him. That's one of the attributes that makes the Lord being your shepherd so much different. If you're one of God's sheep, you will actually hear his voice. If you don't hear his voice, then God says that you're not one of his. Jesus is a good shepherd. He calls them all by name. Middle Eastern shepherds would actually do this. They would call their sheep one by one individually. Each sheep had an individual name a lot of times. They would call them out. That's how intimately they knew their sheep. It wasn't just a whole flock of sheep. They knew each one. That's amazing. It says in John 10, he leads them out. He brings them in. He's the door of the sheepfold, but he will also lead them back out to the pastures. Just one quick note on the door is that the Bible says, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Jesus is the door of the sheep. If you don't come through the door, then you haven't come to Christ. You have to come through the door. Of course, we have people in church. There's a lot of people in church, not necessarily here today, but just that a lot of people have religion. They think they're a sheep, but if you haven't come through the door, which is Jesus Christ, you are not one of his. You need to make sure that you come through the door. The Bible says in John 10, it says he lays down his life for the sheep. This is the kind of shepherd that he is. That's why the Lord being a shepherd is so much different. No other shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep. That's just one thing that I wanted to highlight. Also being a sheep, we think about this, we don't like to think of ourselves as sheep because we're independent, especially as Americans. We want to be independent. We want to do things for ourselves. We don't want to have people telling us what to do or that kind of thing. We think we can make it on our own. If we say the Lord is my shepherd, that means we have to assume the role of a sheep. We have to be that sheep, which means that we have to recognize God as our owner, as our manager, as our leader. We can't just have our own way on things. We belong to Christ, not only because he created us, but because he bought us. Just with the shepherd, he goes to the market and buys a sheep. We are bought with a price, the Bible says. We have that specific relationship. It's not just going to the pig pen. We don't live in a pig pen. We're sheep. We live amongst the flock. We have a sheep fold, but we get led out and actually into a lot of freedom. We get to walk around and we get to be led by our shepherd everywhere we go. That's the picture that's being presented here. To be one of Christ's sheep is to belong to a flock, the most exclusive, well-loved, well-taken-care-of group of creatures in the entire world. We're so much different. We're not better than other people, but we have exclusive access to the Lord God Almighty. We are one of his sheep. That's just a really amazing thought. I want to go to the second part of that verse. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, which means to lack. It doesn't mean not wanting anything like I don't desire anything. It doesn't mean that God will give us everything we want or could wish for, but it just means that we won't lack anything that the Lord ...

Transcript:
Alright, Psalm 46, what we're gonna do tonight is, is we'll read the Psalm, and we're gonna do something a little bit different than probably what we normally do in the Psalms that we've covered. We're gonna spend a lot of time turning different verses. I say a lot of time, we're just gonna turn to different verses and say less, but I wanna show you some things because of the nature of this particular Psalm. And so let's read it to begin. Verse number one, the subtitle reads, To the chief musician for the sons of Korah, a song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Say la. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Say la. Come, behold the works of the Lord. What desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Would you pray with me tonight? Our Lord, thank you for this Psalm. The reminders, Lord, that we have here to be still and know that you are God and to trust you and to rely upon your great power. And Lord, help us as we look through this Psalm, especially this particular viewpoint of it. We pray that you'd give us understanding and wisdom and broaden our perspectives on your word because Lord, we know that your word has so many layers of truth and we could spend all of our time just digging through them and recognizing them. And so Lord, help us tonight in our study. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, as I said, we're gonna do something a little bit different. Normally when you come to this Psalm, most often what you would do is you would look at verse number one primarily and you would look at verse number 10 because those are kind of the go-to verses and they're good. They're good verses for us to remember to trust in God and not fret, right? To be still. And there are absolutely times that we just need to stop trying to do things. And as they say, let go and let God and that has its limits. But the idea being that there are absolutely times when the Lord doesn't want us to do anything but to trust him to do something, right? And that's kind of what's being described here, especially in, you'll know once we get through it, you'll see the context especially is true of that principle. And then of course in verse one, we see that God is our refuge and strength, the very present help in trouble. And the best example, recent example of that is when Peter was sinking in the water. Jesus was present, he was not only present, he was very present. And when trouble came and he started to sink, the Lord Jesus was there to help him. And you gotta remember that even in the midst of trouble, that it's not a matter of timing. Like you're in trouble and you're calling out to God, there's not a time delay when the Lord sends help, help's already on the way before you start asking. And there's scripture for that in Daniel in particular. Excuse me. But that's not what I wanna look at tonight because what those things are, are actually applications of verse one and verse 10. Those are actually applications. Like we do with all scripture verses, we look at it and to apply a verse means that we use it. We use it in a practical way. And so we take a verse, we take a truth understood in this particular context and we use it for ourselves to encourage ourselves to understand some truth about the Lord even though that's not directly what it's written about. For instance, as an example, you take something as simple as Noah's Ark. The story of Noah's Ark was not about us, it was about Noah, obviously. But you take the truths in Noah's Ark, they can be related to judgment, they can be related to salvation, they can be related to God's deliverance, all kinds of different truths and you can apply them to yourself. That's the difference between interpreting the Bible, knowing what its meaning, intended meaning is from the author in its context and using it. Because you can use the Bible in all kinds of ways as long as you're faithful to the truth of scripture. What we often do with this psalm though is we use the application of it and we never really understand the interpretation of it. What I wanna look at tonight is the interpretation of it. What I think this psalm means. Now, as I was reading a commentary that I sometimes read with the psalms, what I noticed is there's a strong tendency and a strong pull to just not mention, not ask what is this talking about? It talks about there is a river, what river? What river are we talking about? How many of you have read this psalm and thought what river is this talking about? Yeah, exactly. I know when different times you read parts of the Bible and you just kinda keep reading because you don't even know where to begin to look. It's just, you don't know what the interpretation is exactly talking about. So what do you do? You get what you can and you just keep moving. And that's okay, that's okay. But I wanna look at the interpretation of it. This psalm is divided into three parts. Verses one to three, verses four to seven, and verses eight to 11, each of which ends with the pausing word, say la. Verse one to three say this, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Who is the speaker? The our, God is our refuge and strength. Now I know when you read it, right? I know when you read it as a Christian, and this is perfectly fine, you read it and you see our and you think me, right? And that's good. That's a devotional view of the Bible. And it's okay to do that so long as you don't go off, you know, over the edge in some unscriptural thing, which happens sometimes. But the our in this case is not referring to me and you. In context, it's referring to Israel, right? Because first of all, it's because it's a psalm, but there's several indicators through this. He talks about the tabernacles, the Lord of hosts, the God of Jacob indicating that this is all talking about Israel. All right, with that in mind, let's keep reading. But what I'm trying to present to you is I think this psalm is prophetic in nature. I think it's prophetic. Let's read verses one through three, and I'll show you what I mean. God is our refuge and strength, the very presence of help and trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Now those are quite the event. Now we can look, I'll be honest with you, we can look at verses two and three and the mountains being removed and the earth trembling and shaking and the waters swelling and all of these things. We can look at that and we can say, devotionally as a Christian, we can say, when there's trouble in my life. Okay, and that's okay. But it's also kind of weak if you consider what it's saying. Because what it's saying is very, very much more significant than we got a flat tire at work or on the way to work or we have a financial need or we're sick or something like that. We're talking about the earth trembling, waves of the ocean, r...

Transcript:
All right, let's go and return back to Matthew chapter 16. This evening we're gonna look just at two verses as our main text tonight. And I'd like you to also look at Matthew chapter 13 as well. So we're gonna be mostly in Matthew 16, although we're gonna go a few other places as well. But to begin we'll be in Matthew 16 and also we'll take a peek at Matthew 13 as well. So let's go to 16. And we will begin reading verse number six. And we read of course this passage this morning but we're gonna look at something different in the passage. Matthew 16 verse number six. The Bible says this, and then Jesus said unto them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves saying, it is because we have taken no bread, which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, oh ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember, the five loaves of the 5,000 and how many baskets ye took up, neither the seven loaves of the 4,000 and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread that ye should be aware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Verse 12, so we're looking at verse six tonight and verse 12. Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. All right, let's pray together and then we'll look at Matthew 13. Thank you Lord for the opportunity to meet again together and for the assurance that where two or three are gathered together, there you will be in the midst. And Lord, we trust you, though we know that now you are invisible to us. One day you will come, we will see you visibly. But now we trust in your promise that you are here present with us, not only in us but among us, as we meet together as the saints of God. We once again want to commit the time to you where we are studying your word and let it be profitable to us. Help us to grow by it as we look at the scriptures and see what you have spoken in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Matthew 13. The reason I wanna read Matthew 13 is that what we're covering tonight, we covered not too very long ago, actually in, let's see, July 13th. We had an afternoon service. I look back in the record and July 13th, we covered this same passage in the Matthew 13. But I wanna go ahead and read it again because it is actually just one verse. It's in the midst of the parables, of course, and it overlaps a little bit with what we want to talk about tonight, but not entirely. So I wanna kind of build off of what I said in Matthew 13 in verse number 33. Another parable spake he unto them. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leaven. Now you'll remember that when we looked at this verse, we kind of paired it with the parable of the, I just lost my train of thought here, the parable in verse 31 and 32, which is the mustard seed. And the idea here is that the lump, that is the dough, is unleavened because of course that's the picture, that's the symbology from the Old Testament. Of course the Jews had developed or had developed a negative view of leaven due to the fact that during the feast of unleavened bread and Passover, they would have put it out. So it was considered to be, not that they couldn't eat bread that was leavened, but it had a negative connotation as far as in prophecy and things like that and their laws. And so we saw that in this parable, the woman took the leaven and the Bible says she hid it in three measures of meal. And then of course that leaven spread. And we saw how that the leaven represents a certain kind of evil, that it starts small and then it spreads throughout the lump and it corrupts the entire thing, though it starts small. And so we saw that. So go back if you would to Matthew 16 and we're gonna build off of that because we did talk about the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees in July. And we also referenced chapter 16, which is what we're looking at in detail, more detail tonight. So Matthew 13 has the first mention of leaven in the New Testament and the first mention in Matthew. And then what we're looking at tonight is the second mention of leaven in the Bible. So you have this idea of leaven, or rather in Matthew. You have this idea of leaven is symbolic of corruption. And the lump refers to the people of God and the idea is corruption is spreading through the people of God. And we looked at all kinds of references, especially in the epistles where Paul talks about and he foretells that as we approach the coming of the Lord, so Christianity, we saw it in scripture where Christianity will become more and more corrupted with false teachers and false doctrine. And so that's what the Lord tells us is going to happen within the church. I hate that term, but you know what I mean when I say that, within Christendom. And that's actually what we observe happening. And so here though, there's a little bit more detail and I wanna look at a few other verses based upon this. Look at verse number six again. The Bible says, and Jesus said unto them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. So notice there are two groups mentioned here. You have the Pharisees, the leaven of the Pharisees, and you also have the leaven of the Sadducees. Then in verse 12, then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. So you got two categories, but when we refer to leaven, we're talking about doctrine. Now don't misunderstand. Doctrine, although it includes the things that are written on a doctrinal statement, that is not the sum total of doctrine. Doctrine includes a body of faith that we believe, truths that we hold as scripturally accurate, yes. But doctrine also includes any kind of teaching. It's just a word that means teaching. It's sometimes translated the same way, teaching and doctrine. The idea is something that someone teaches. And so what you have here is you kinda wanna pull back the Lord is referring to the characteristic elements and features that were taught by the Pharisees and that were taught by the Sadducees. And there's one other group. So I wanna put forth to you that there's three categories of leaven. Now we did cover this in July, but we're gonna dig a little bit deeper. There are three categories of leaven in scripture used in this symbolic way, this corruption, this false or erroneous doctrine. The first one, if you would look at Luke chapter 12, it's already, it's here as well, but Luke 12 gives us a little bit more information. This is a parallel passage to our text here tonight. Luke 12 verse one. Look at Luke 12, if you would, and verse one. The first one we're gonna look at is the leaven of the Pharisees. Verse one says this, in the meantime, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trod one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples, first of all, notice he's speaking to his disciples here and also in Matthew 16. He's speaking to his disciples. At the end, I'm gonna come back to that, okay? But just keep that in mind. Here's what he says, the Lord says, beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees. Now notice, he doesn't mention Sadducees, he doesn't mention anything else. He only mentions Pharisees and he defines it, which is hypocrisy. So when the Lord said, going back to Matthew 16, when the Lord says beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, he's referring to a specific thing about the Pharisees. Here's what you have to understand. The Pharisees on paper were doctrinally sound. They would have checked all the...

Transcript:
Alright, let's get our Bible, go to the book of Matthew chapter 15. This morning we'll be in Matthew 15 and Matthew 16. We'll start in Matthew 15 verse number 29. Matthew 15 verse 29. Matthew 15 verse number 29. The Bible says this, and Jesus departed from thence and came nigh into the city, the sea of Galilee, and went up into a mountain and sat down there. And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others. And cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. Notice the word cast. I don't know about you, but when I was reading that I kind of picked up on that word and thought to myself, man, how violent. Because it doesn't say set them down or laid them down, it says cast them down, which is what you do with a rock. Just threw them down at Jesus' feet. Not exactly compassionate, I would say. Verse 31, in so much that the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb to speak and maimed, to behold, the lame to walk and the blind to see, and they glorified the God of Israel. You know yesterday when we were out at the Fall for Greenville, one person, I can't remember who it was, had a conversation with someone, I think it was Ben, if I'm not mistaken, with an atheist type who said that he liked Jesus, and what he meant by that is he liked the humanitarian part of Jesus' ministry, and everybody loves that. Everybody loves the blind to be healed and the lame to walk and the dumb to speak and all of that. Everybody loves that. That's the part, Jesus giving us the things we want to make our life better is the part, and we all enjoy that. I'm not knocking that at all, but really the part that people are not so much interested in is when he starts talking, because that's when there's usually it rubs a little bit. Everybody wants to be healed and everybody wants to be successful and have a bunch of stuff, but when Jesus starts talking is when people start to find other things to do sometimes. Verse 32, And his disciples say unto him, Does that sound familiar to you, to our study in Matthew? Verse 34, And they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full, and they that did eat were four thousand men beside women and children. And he sent away the multitude and took ship and came into the coast of Magdala. Would you pray with me this morning? And he said unto them, And he sent away the multitude and took ship and came into the coast of Magdala. Would you pray with me this morning? Our Father, we just come to you and want to just once again offer our service to you this morning. Offer the word that we've read here and will read further in just a minute. We just want to offer it to you, Lord, that you would bless even as the bread that was given by the disciples to you, and you blessed it and gave it back. So Lord, we want to offer the bread, the word of God to you. We ask for your blessing as we take it back from your hand that it might help us and bless us, Lord. We need your help and grace this morning. Help us to grow this morning. Help us to know you better. Help us to learn to fellowship and trust you more. As we look at these passages of scripture, Help us, I pray, to see ourselves and our patterns in the disciples that are so clearly spelled out in Matthew here. So Lord, would you guide our study this morning? We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Now this should sound very familiar to all of us. This is the story of the feeding of the 4,000. And the feeding of the 4,000, it's difficult to pin down exactly how much time had elapsed between the feeding of the 4,000 here and the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew chapter 14. What we do know, we do know some events that occurred between the two. In Matthew 14, after Jesus fed the 5,000, he crossed the Sea of Galilee, and then he heals a man. And then later he has a conversation with the scribes and Pharisees regarding tradition. We covered that pretty recently in our study. And then after that there was this Canaanite woman that has a daughter who is healed from a devil. And then we just read verse 29 through verse 31 where Jesus healed people, and the time is not clearly given. But what we do know is it hasn't been that long. Well Jesus' ministry was only a few years to begin with. But we're talking by a rough estimate, maybe one month to three months period of time. They crossed the Sea of Galilee a few times, going here, going there, teaching. And some of that time, it takes time to do that kind of thing and to teach and such. And so from one feeding of the 5,000 to the feeding of the 4,000, which has only been a couple of months probably, and the feeding of the 4,000 is when you read verses 33 down to verse number 37, 38, it's almost exactly the same. The words are almost the same. The activity, the process is exactly the same. The difference is there were 5,000 beside women and children. Now there's 4,000 beside women and children. Before there were five loaves and two fish, and they took up 12 baskets full of leftovers. Here there's seven loaves and some fish, and they take up seven baskets full. But the fact that Jesus had them sit on the ground was the same. The fact that he took it from them, gave thanks, break it, and then gave it to the disciples who then gave it to the multitude is the same. They were all filled exactly the same. They didn't let anything go to waste exactly the same. And when I come across passages of Scripture in my own personal Bible study that say the same thing twice, and I know these are two different events, and therefore it's recorded twice, and it's two very significant miracles. But when I see that twice and the Lord just puts the same thing again, it makes me wonder, why did you tell us this again? That's what I ask myself. And I think the reason is found in chapter 16. So let's start in chapter 16, verse number 1. The Pharisees also with the desadducees came, tempting him, desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. And he answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning it will be foul weather, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, can ye discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of the prophet, Jonas. This is again another portion that is repeated in Matthew 12, from Matthew chapter 12. And he left them and departed, verse 5. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the desadducees. Now the reason he says this in verse number 6 is because they had just come out of a conversation with those two same groups, the Pharisees and the desadducees. So that conversation had just happened, and so that was fresh on their minds. And so when they got back to private, got back private and they got to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, that's when Jesus brought it up. Because he's still thinking about it. He's still thinking about the fact that these Pharisees and desadducees had asked this tempting question, which was a question with poor motives, but we'll look at that later. Verse 7. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. Which, when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Now pause a second. If there is anything that the disciples should understand at this moment, given the recent past, is that lack of bread is not a problem. There were 12 and 7, 19 baskets left over beside the 9,000, not counting women and children, that had eaten the bread and the fish. There were 19 baskets f...

Transcript:
We are going to, we're gonna be looking at, I don't know how far we'll get, I'm hoping maybe we can finish this section on our church regarding our music. So the title of what, this is part six, six weeks, we've been looking at our church's music. And in this section, I'm hoping, as I said, to finish this section, and what we've been trying to do, for those of you that are visiting or are new, we've been going through, kind of methodically, going through different aspects of our church and why the things are the way they are. And we've been looking at different categories or different aspects of our church. And right now we're looking at music. And so last week we talked about Ephesians 519 and Colossians 316, which both are the main go-to verses in the New Testament regarding songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, and we looked at that in some detail. We also examined how those things, the use of music is related to being filled with the Spirit of God. And we also took some time to examine what it means to be a, when a song is a spiritual song. And we saw that a spiritual song is set in contrast to a carnal song. It's not, the Lord is not giving us a genre of music, he's describing a kind of song, which is a spiritual song, which relates back to Galatians chapter five and the fruit of the Spirit versus the works of the flesh. And so that's one way we can judge music. And that's one way that we, in our church, judge our music. So these things kind of overlap, that overlaps with our personal music, as well as the music that we use in our church. So we also examined and looked at our hymn book, and we examined why we use the hymn book, and why we have chosen to use it. And we saw how that hymns in a hymn book are generally speaking, rich in doctrine. And we saw also in Colossians how the songs are supposed to be, include the word of Christ, which is designed to admonish us and to teach us in song. And so that's where the hymns need to be substantial, and they need to affirm our faith and strengthen our faith. Not only that, but we also saw how the hymns, because of, primarily because of their age, provide a vital connection with the past work of God to generations gone by. And that's, I know it was definitely true in my generation, but the generation after me, like my kids' generation, there is definitely an element that seeks to dismiss prior generations and the wisdom, the accumulated wisdom, as if we just came here and everything was, we did it all. Our generation was the first one that ever was born on the earth. And so what the hymn book does is, and this goes along with church history. One of the reasons that church history is so important is because it provides that connection. We did not start this thing called Christianity. We did not start it. It was started by Christ. Well, you can even go further back than that with the Old Testament, but it was started by Christ, and then those who believed carried it on through the generations, and that's why we're here. We're here because of the word of God that was carried to us. So we're not islands. We owe a great debt to those who came before us, and we can't just simply wave our hand to dismiss that. And part of the hymn book is that the hymn book and specifically the songs in it provide that connection. When you can read a song that's 300 years old, or in some cases 500 years old, and it's saying the same thing that you believe from the word of God, that's significant. That's not something that's minor. The other thing we talked about, again, we're just looking at practical matters, is, looks like I got my notes mixed up here. We looked at the practical use of the notes in a hymn book, and why that's important, because it enables the congregation to sing as a congregation in parts with greater skill. That's why we have, that's why the hymn books are written in four-part harmony, that's why. They're designed to be sung as a congregation, and that's why they have them. So that's not something we're gonna get rid of, that's not something we're gonna change. I would like to see us move more in that direction of using that and singing with skill to the Lord as a congregation. And so that leads us to the question of congregational singing, congregational singing. So let's pray, and then I would like you to turn to 1 Chronicles chapter 15. 1 Chronicles chapter 15 is where we're going to begin this morning. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the opportunity to meet together as your people. Thank you for your people that have gathered here today. Lord, there's beautiful weather outside, crisp mornings and warm in the afternoon, and we're just so thankful for that. And thank you for the opportunity to share the gospel with people yesterday. And all the people that got witnessed to, got tracked, and we were able to speak to, and even just be counted to be present, Lord, but we know it's not by our own goodness or power, we're just weak, but the grace of God is what enabled us to give out the gospel, Lord. And as we go into Sunday School now and our service to follow, where we try to meet together and give you praise, we pray that you would oversee everything that's done, that Lord, we offer this time to you and ask for your guidance and your help. Lord, I ask for that directly from me, that I might be able to help your people, and also for your people, that we all might receive the word of God in great meekness. For we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so while we're talking about hymn books, we're talking about congregational singing, which is the primary purpose of having a hymn book. And so, 1 Chronicles 15, verse number 16, and I could go to a number of passages. I'm not trying to be exhaustive with this, so you know, you could, of course, you can, when you have opportunity, you can look up the different references regarding this, but in the Old Testament, David, being a man who was a musical man, he was a man who was skilled with instruments, so skilled, in fact, that he was actually called to go play music in the king's court. I mean, so he wasn't an average music player. He was skilled in the harp, and so he was a musician himself, and so it's no wonder that once he rose to the throne and was established, those things were in his heart to do, and you know what he did? He established skilled musicians among the Levites to sing praise to God for the people of Israel, and he did it, and I mean, if you think about it, this was, a lot of things that David did were things that came straight out of his heart to God, just this overflow of his love for God, and this is one of them. And so he organized the Levites, because by the time you get to David's reign, about 1,000 years before Christ, by the time you get there, the Levites are, there's many, many Levites. They have courses, because there's so many. They have different jobs they're doing at different times of the year, because they multiply. Same thing with the priests. And so because of that, he organized them into musicians and singers. Look at chapter 15 of First Chronicles, verse number 16. The Bible says, and David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, sultries and harps and cymbals, sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. And so that's what they did. So what I'm trying to establish here is there is a clear precedent in scripture for having skilled musicians, not what I am, but a skilled musician to lead the praise and the singing of God's people. And that's what you have here. There were skilled musicians who were appointed for that purpose. You might say it's a choir. You might say it's an ensemble. However you wanna put it to kinda translate it into our day, but you do see it in scripture. So that is a clear precedent. These were people of skill who could play inst...

Transcript:
Psalm 45. I just actually want you to hold your place in Psalm 45 and we're gonna just spend a little bit of time this evening in Hebrews chapter 1 as well. So if you'll hold your place here and go to Hebrews chapter 1 and kind of hold both places because I want to read both places together. Okay Hebrews chapter 1 I guess we can go ahead and go to Hebrews chapter 1 first and get a kind of a background. This is a very interesting psalm and by interesting what I mean is that it is different than the other Psalms, the other 44 Psalms, most of the other 44 Psalms that we've studied because the content is just totally different. It's prophetic from start to finish. The psalm is prophetic and so there are parts of the psalm that are not exactly easy to understand if I can put it that way because of the prophetic nature of it but you'll see why I say it's prophetic in just a minute. In Hebrews chapter 1 if you would look at verse number, let's just start in verse number 1 to pick up the context. The Bible says, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son whom he hath appointed heir of all things by whom also he made the worlds who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Notice that these are these are characteristics that alone belong to deity, right? The scriptural deity that is he who is God alone that is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't understand how somebody could read Hebrews chapter 1 honestly and come away thinking that Jesus is anything else than very God. It actually says the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. You know what that say? Jesus is God. I mean it's it could not you know you can weasel out of it you know linguistically if you want but it is clearly stated and if that was in doubt at all he goes on to say he upholds all things by the word of his power. So those are characteristics of deity the fact that he is the creator. Verse 4 being made so much better than the angels as he had by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they for under which of the angels said he at any time thou art my son this day have have I begotten thee and again I will be to him a father and he shall be to me to me a son and again when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world he saith let all the angels of God worship him so to which of the angels did God ever say that to? None of them none of them. Verse 7 and of the angels he saith who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. Okay so that's that's the first part now we pivot to the second but unto the son now let's stop here a second who is the speaker we see so we see who he's talking to but who is the speaker if you would look at the context again but unto the son he Who is the he? Who is the he? Huh? God is verse 1 and you follow God spoke and then you go down to verse 5 you follow the context verse 5 unto which of the angels said he that's God and again when he God bringeth and of the angels he saith that's God of verse 1 then you get to verse 8 we're still talking about the same he God now listen carefully read very carefully what God says to the son but unto the son he God saith thy throne O God is forever and ever a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom thus loved righteousness and hated iniquity therefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows and this is still God talking to the Sun this is nuts this is God talking to the Sun he goes on and thou Lord in the beginning has laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of that works of thine hands they shall perish but thou son he's still talking to the Sun remainest and they shall all wax old as the garment and as a vesture shall thou fold them up and they shall be changed but thou son art the same and thy years shall not fail again attributing the characteristics of deity to the Sun Jesus but in verse 8 the thing I want you to point out to I want you to point out is when this where this verse says unto the Sun he saith thy throne O God so this is God telling calling the Sun God okay now I want you to put that in your mind as we go back to Psalm 45 Psalm 45 and look at verse starting in verse 1 Psalm 45 verse number 1 it says to the chief musician upon Shoshanim for the sons of Korah my skill a song of this is this is a love song but it's not a love song in the sense of the love of a man and his wife but this is a love song within I hope I don't lose you here within the Godhead this cut this is kind of stuff that they don't mess up your theology all right so in this Psalm you'll see verse number look take a peek at verse 6 ahead of time look at verse 6 ahead thy throne O God is forever and ever a scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter so what we read in Hebrews 1 was quoted out of Psalm 45 everybody follow that but what do we know from Hebrews that is not initially readily apparent in Psalm 45 is that the speaker is God and he's the person to whom he is speaking is the Son that's what Hebrews tells us Hebrews 1 8 says that the recipient of these words in verse 6 is the Son so what you do is because you know that from the New Testament you take that truth and you if I can say this word extrapolate it and start at the beginning of the psalm knowing that knowing that so we're gonna start at the beginning of the psalm knowing that the person to whom the psalmist is speaking is the Son of God Jesus Christ now let's start with that in mind let's move forward verse 1 my heart is indicting a good matter you know what indict means it means to compose like you're writing something I speak of the things which I have made touching the king my tongue is the pin of a ready writer thou art fairer than the children of men now let's stop this that's where we begin thou you that's second persons second person singular so the writer of the psalm right is the author of the psalm is writing to this person this person is identified in Hebrews as the Son of God in verse 6 thou son of God Jesus Christ art fairer than the children of men grace is poured into thy lips therefore God hath blessed thee forever I'm gonna keep reading I'm gonna come back to verse 2 in just a minute because this is really gonna it's really gonna get crazy here in just a minute gird thy sword Jesus upon thy thigh O most mighty with thy glory and thy and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness and thy right hand Jesus shall teach thee terrible things thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies whereby the people fall under thee thy throne O God is forever and ever the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter thou still talking to the Sun Jesus Christ love is righteousness and hate is wickedness therefore God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows mark that verse or note that verse as well because we're gonna look at that verse with verse 2 in just a minute all thy garments still talking about Jesus smell of myrrh and aloes and cast you out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad that's where the song comes from out of the ivory palaces into the world of woe and you know what is thoroughly scriptural right Kings daughters were among thy honorable women upon thy right hand did did stand the Queen in gold of offer okay now let's go back to verse 2 for fun all right look at verse 2 thou art fairer than the children of men grace is poured into thy lips therefore God hath blessed thee forever now follow me in verse 2 and also read verse verse while we're here read verse 7 becaus...