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you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I He died on Calvary, mercy there was great and grace was free, and there was most of mine to me, there my burning soul found liberty at Calvary. By God's word at last my sin I learned, then I trembled at the law I squirt, till my guilty soul and glory turned to Calvary. Mercy there was great and grace was free, heart and there was most of mine to me, there my burning soul found liberty at Calvary. Oh, beloved through starvations plan, oh, the grace that brought it down to man, oh, the mighty hope that God did spend at Calvary. Mercy there was great and grace was free, heart and there was most of mine to me, there my burning soul found liberty at Calvary. Now I give to Jesus everything, now I gladly own it as my King, now my rapture soul can only sing of Calvary. Mercy there was great and grace was free, heart and there was most of mine to me, there my burning soul found liberty at Calvary. Let Calvary. Amen. Brother Kevin Nodie, you might open us up with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this church, Lord. We thank you for this opportunity to be here. And Lord, we thank you for the soul that was saved this afternoon. And Lord, please bless the singing, bless the service. And may the call say it's your song. And it's not pregnant. Amen. All right, for our next song, we're going to sing song number 303. Song 303 in your song books. My faith looks up to thee. Song number 303. Singing out on that first verse. My faith looks up to thee. Now live of Calvary, save your divine. Thou hear me while I pray. Take all my guilt away. Oh, let me from this day be holy thine. May thy wish-raising heart sing to my fainting heart. Thine still inspire. Lest thou best sign for me. O, pay my love to thee. You're more than Jesus, be a living fire. While life's dark days are dread, and dreams around me spread, be thou my Calvary. In darkness heard today, white sorrow seers away. Lord, let me ever stray from thee aside. When is life's crazy dream? When death's false solace dream shall hold me home. Let's savor that in love, fear and distrust renew. Oh, bear me, save a cup of ransomed soul. Amen. All right. This time, we're going to go through our announcements. So if you don't have one of our bulletins, slip your hand up real high, and one of our ushers will get one out to you. Be grand raised, please, until they get one over there to you. And if you open up to that first page, you'll notice the service times there. As always, Sunday morning at 1030. Sunday evening, again, at 5 PM. And Wednesday night seven is our Bible study. We're going to be in Psalm 89. Brother Carter, do you mind grabbing the microphone for me? I believe I might have left it in the office. Soul winning opportunities are listed there, as well as the salvations and the baptisms for the month of January. Thank you, Brother Michael. And then the offering total is down there at the bottom of the page received through the month of January. In a way, the soul winning time this afternoon. So let's go ahead. If you had any salvations to report for today, just lift your hand up real quick, and we'll get those counted up. One over here. One here. And we have one also. Did I miss anybody else? All right, amen. Praise the Lord. Four people calling in the name of the Lord this afternoon. Is there anything else to report outside of today? I know we counted up this morning. Great. Great. Keep up the good works. All about preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you are not familiar with our ministry here, going out and preaching the gospel, I recommend, encourage you to join us. We have four scheduled times here in our bulletin, as well as any other time. If you would like to come out with us and join us in the mission to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, you can see how we do that. We present the gospel to people and show them how they can be saved through faith in Christ. So this is what our church is all about. I encourage you to join us and participate with that. On the next page, we've got a prayer request here. So as I mentioned this morning, I've not received another update from Brother Alex, but his wife Natalie had a C-section this morning. So 9 o'clock, she had that C-section. I'm assuming everything went well. I haven't heard anything, so please just pray for her recovery. Pray that everything will continue to go well. I don't know. I just take the approach that no news is good news. I'm going to assume that things went as they should there. So please continue to pray. And if you want to, we'll start our meal train for Mrs. Kubara. If you would like to help assist the family with some meals, you can either drop that off if you need an address. They live closer to South Carolina when you go up to 85. They live that direction, kind of up north. So if you want to help out, you can either drop it off for them, or you could bring some meals to church or just contact my wife so we could coordinate so we don't get too much all at once. But we can help to deliver those meals to that family. So just let us know if you're going to be helping out with that. Please continue to pray for the rest of our ladies who are with child in church. There's quite a few of them. And then, of course, please continue to pray for all of the rest of the people here, many of which have some very serious diseases, a lot of cancers, very, very serious problems individually here for many of these people. And then we added Brother Jess, whether it be this morning, for his family. He had a brother that just recently passed away unexpectedly, a young man. So the good news is that he says he didn't get a good chance to really go through the Gospel, I think, in great detail, but he did give good answers about being saved. So that's great. Obviously there's nothing you can do about it now, but hopefully he was saved, and that makes the partying a little bit less sorrowful. But please pray for their family and their grief and their mourning. And let's see, I think that's it. Oh, we did receive another prayer request this morning as well for Mariana Munoz. This is, I believe Liliana submitted this one, and it says that she's 82 years old, and she has a broken hip and shoulder, but she can't be operated on, I assume, because of her age as well. As it says here, she has osteoporosis, so not a great situation to be in. I'm sure it's a lot of pain, 82 years old. So please pray for Mariana Munoz. Please add her. We'll add her to the list as well in print next week. And let's see, that's about it. Anyone have any updates for the prayer list as it stands right now? Anybody? Anything new to update? Okay. Please, please, please take this seriously. Pray for people on this list. Very, very important. On the next page, January is our, the challenge for this month, challenge to start the year, as we historically have done, is to read the entire New Testament within the month of January. So if you are keeping up to date with this, where should we be? Is it the 21st? Is it like 2 Thessalonians? Who knows the exact chapter we should be at? I don't know. Somewhere around-ish, 2 Thessalonians is where, if you're keeping pace in that range. I know I'm caught up. I just don't know exactly where the number is for today. But it's nine chapters a day. You get two grace period days. So if, even if you're just getting into this, maybe you didn't even hear about this challenge, I'll challenge you to just increase your Bible reading and try to do a lot more and do more than you normally would. We do challenges every month to try to just hit different aspects of your spiritual life that will push you maybe to do a little bit more than you're used to doing in various areas. This is Bible reading, so what a great start to the year to get the entire New Testament read within that very first month. So that's our challenge here. Hopefully you'll join us. New Church Plant is still scheduled for Greenville. We're looking at places. I just was talking to Brother Carter a day or two ago about expanding our search criteria to try to get some more options. We may end up spending a little bit more money than I had originally budgeted for the plant. That's okay. We have the means to be able to do that, but it should hopefully bring in some more options. Just pray that God will lead us to a place that's just going to be really good. And Brother Carter, as I said this morning, I'm hoping that we're not finding some of the smaller places because God's going to bless the plant where we're going to have a greater need sooner with a larger number of people going there to have that space. So I'm hoping that's the reason why we haven't been able to find anything so far to date that's looking that great. So maybe we'll be able to find something more that's just a little bit more than we were planning, but it will be good. I know there is a lot of interest here. So if you know anyone that lives in that area that would be excited about a church plant like this getting started there, have them register on our website to let me know that they're interested in their plant and they'd like to come and want to stay on email announcements about this. If you register on our website, under the events tab, you will get updates on what is going on with the church plant there. So it also helps me to know and to plan for approximately how many people plan on attending that plant. So we already have a good response and I think it's going to be a great success. So just continue to pray for us there. Hebrews chapter 10. So this is the last week you have to memorize verses 23 through 39. It's the latter half of this chapter. If you can quote this passage out loud, word perfect, to another person who checks your work, then you will receive a prize for being able to do that. And then the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries are listed there through the end of the month of January as well as the beginning of February. And lots and lots and lots of birthdays coming up. February is one of our most populated months of birthdays. There's a lot of people have birthdays in February. So if I miss your name, I apologize. Just let me know and we'll add your name to the list. On the back, upcoming events. The men's preaching class is February 10th. I apologize I did not update in the bulletin. I had this last week as the third. This week it says the third. It's not the third. It's the 10th. So one week later, I had to push that off a week. February 10th, 1030 right here. All men are welcome to attend. You don't have to preach if you want to attend. You can still come and just observe and listen and just see what it's all about and get some extra teaching on preaching. So it's also an opportunity if you do want to preach to get behind the pulpit and get a little bit of time here and kind of learn how to improve on that skill of preaching. So we're really looking forward to that. We've got a lot of men that are interested. And February 10th is that first one for our year. February 18th, we're going to have a baby shower in between the church services. It's a Sunday for Miss Courtney Taylor. And then of course our church camp is May 13th. If you want to attend that, please register for that. It's already getting close to time to being too late to sign up for that. So that is about it for our announcement. So we're going to turn to our next song. We're going to turn to song number 392. Did I miss anything, Leslie? I missed something this morning. Did I miss? No. Okay. I always forget something it seems. Song number 392, A Soul Winner for Jesus. Song number 392. Singing out on that first verse. I want to be a soul where for Jesus every day he does so much for me. I want to make a lost set to leave his every way and be from bondage free. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus oh let me be each day. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus he's done so much for me. I want to be a soul where every lost request that save his grace may know. I want to live for Christ that renews my sin will because he loves me so. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus oh let me be each day. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus he's done so much for me. I want to be a soul where still Jesus calls for me to lay my burden down. I want to hear his say, servant you gathered many streets, receive a sorry prayer. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus oh let me be each day. A soul where for Jesus, a soul where for Jesus he's done so much for me. Amen. Great singing this evening. This time we're going to have the ushers come forward and please receive our offering for us. While the play continues to pass around please open up your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1. I'm going to ask brother Jake to come up and read the passage for us. We're going to read of course as always the entire passage. You can follow along silently while brother Jake reads for us 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter chapter 1 the Bible reads, Simon Peter servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to them have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord. According as his divine power is given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness to the knowledge of him that had called us to glory and virtue where they are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust and beside this giving all diligence add your faith virtue and the virtue knowledge and the knowledge temperance and the temperance patience and the patience godliness and the godliness brotherly kindness and a brotherly kindness charity for these things be in you and abound they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ but he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see it far off and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins wherefore the rather brethren give diligence that you to make your calling and election sure for if you do these things ye shall never fall for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things though you know them and be established in the present truth yeah I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance knowing that surely I must put off this my tabernacle even as our Lord Jesus Christ had shoot me moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my deceased to have these things always in remembrance for we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ or eyewitnesses of his majesty for he received from God the father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from an excellent glory this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased and this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the holy mount we have also a more sure word of prophecy wherein do you do well that you that you take heed as in the light that shineth in a dark place into the day dawn and the day star rise in your hearts knowing this first that no prophecy of the scriptures of any private interpretation for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost let's pray Lord I thank you for letting us all be here together in your church I just pray that you may give Pastor Burson's spirit to teach us that we may all learn from it and have ears to hear Lord I just pray that you may help us all get home safely after the service is done we love you and it's in Jesus name we pray, amen. Alright so the part of the passage I want to focus in on here in 2 Peter chapter 1 is kind of the ladder portion we're going to start I know we just read the entire chapter I want to start reread just this last few verses starting in verse number 16 the Bible says for we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were eyewitnesses of his majesty and of course the apostles and these epistles here are all made by eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ or eyewitnesses of his ministry they're eyewitnesses of his resurrection okay and this is how all the New Testament is delivered to us by people who were literal eyewitnesses to the events that took place and especially of course of the resurrected Jesus Christ now let's keep reading here verse number 17 says for he received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased and if you remember from the Gospels when God made that statement he says you know like you can hear the voice of God from heaven about Jesus Christ saying this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased and he goes on to say in verse eighteen and this is of course from the apostle Peter and this voice which came from heaven we heard so we heard this voice I was there when God spake this to Christ and I could hear this voice from heaven now if you put yourself there I mean what an amazing experience that must be what a cool event what what how awesome that must be to just hear this voice come out of heaven about you know our Lord Savior Jesus Christ not only just to be an apostle and serving with him and everything just being around Christ so much being so close to him but then to just hear this voice come out of heaven I mean it's just like amazing right but what I find amazing is then what we read next as we keep reading this passage he says when we were with him in the holy mouth so we were with Christ we heard this voice verse nineteen says we have also a more sure word of prophecy now they heard this with their own ears they were in the presence and they hear a voice and then he goes on to say but you know what we have a more sure a more certain and more like we we have a foundation here we have a more sure word of prophecy than even what we heard with our own ears a voice coming out of heaven and that this I mean this kind of blows me away because if you were to put yourself in those shoes what what an awesome thing what a great experience I'm sure the apostle Peter never forgot about that experience where he heard God speaking from heaven but he still has the understanding and the wisdom through the Holy Ghost to be able to say but you know what we still have a more sure word prophecy and what this teaches us what we're going to see we're going to look a lot more into this is how God truly operates with us on our faith and this more sure word of prophecy the only way you can have that knowledge and understanding by faith even understand that it is more sure this word of prophecy the word of God than just hearing what you can audibly hear with your own ears because things you know a lot of people will claim oh but if you know if I have this experience if I hear the people want to put God to task and say well if he shows me and I want to have this proof and I want to see this and I want to hear this it's been proven throughout history and we have the record in the word of God that you know what that doesn't change people's minds think about how many people rejected Jesus Christ himself when he was performing miracles he was healing I mean he was raising the dead he was doing things that people could see with their own eyes yet many people still in spite of all of that rejected him and even when some of the people witnessed Lazarus being brought forth out of the grave instead of dropping on their knees and going wow the power of God here what they do some people ran back to the Pharisees and said what are we gonna do about this what are we gonna do hey there's this great miracle that's being done how are we gonna stop this how are we gonna silence this so people saying well if I were to see this or if I oh you prove this to me it's not gonna do anything and even in Luke chapter 16 we see with the rich man in Lazarus what was the answer from Abraham to the rich man remember rich man is burning in hell right he dies the beggar dies the beggar goes to heaven rich man is burning in hell and he says you know first he asks for a little bit of relief from being in torment and asks for Lazarus to dip just the tip of his finger in water and put that in his mouth because he's tormented in the flames of hell but then he says I've got five brethren just send him back because I don't want them to come to this place and look my friends this is what every person every soul that's in hell is going to be thinking about their loved ones this this attitude of people that want to say like I'm gonna I'm gonna go to hell and I'm gonna be in charge you know I'm gonna be one of Satan's you know like no no you won't that's not the way it works right you need people need to wake up to reality when it comes to hell nobody is ruling and reigning in hell other than God Almighty Satan isn't ruling hell hell was created for Satan to be tortured and tormented and punished in not to be in charge of the underworld or something no he's going to be tortured tormented just like everyone every other soul that's going to be burning in hell and it's so bad no one's going to want their loved ones going there which is why the rich man is going hey send Lazarus back and he says well they have Moses and the prophets let them hear them and he's like no no father Abraham but listen you know if they if they if someone came back if Lazarus goes back I know they'll believe that this will be enough for them to see and understand and then and then they can escape this place and then they could be saved and they could believe and he says you know essentially the answer I'm paraphrasing you know if they if he does if you don't hear Moses they won't believe even if even if you know one is brought back from the dead you know he came back you know the infallible proof the Bible tells us the witness of John tells us that by many infallible proofs when Jesus was seen of many afterwards hey he came back to life I mean ask Thomas right I mean we can't right now but Thomas was able to put his plunges hand into his side and feel the holes in his hands like look it's me I'm back he touched him handle and they ate with him but for some people that's still not enough and you know there's a whole mindset there of people who don't want to believe will never believe you don't want to and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is and look our faith isn't blind there's plenty of evidence for our faith the difference though is that it still is faith it has to be faith faith is is the evidence of things not seen right we don't see we haven't seen the Lord Jesus Christ we haven't we haven't talked to him in a in a human sense right of course we talked to him through prayer and and and we hear from especially through the word of God but in a physical sense in a way where someone might want to have this well no no no you know I need to see this or you're not going to have that but this is how God wanted things to be this time God made salvation it's by faith there's no amount of proof you're not going to get if you're demanding some certain level of proof you're not going to get it we see the faith of the apostle Peter here and those are with him he says look we have a more sure and this is the attitude and the mindset that we need to get to truly be spiritually minded in this world because if we rely too much just on our physical senses that's not always going to lead us the right way we need to be able to learn to make decisions we need to learn to to form our path going forward being spiritually minded as opposed to being carnally minded jump turn back if you were the Genesis chapter 27 I want to show you a story here about Esau and Jacob with Isaac when he was old many people are familiar with the story probably because it's in the first book of the Bible when anyone sets off to do Bible reading start off with Genesis and usually get through that and then by the time you get to numbers it turns into well I don't know and it's unfortunate but either way a lot of people do get through Genesis and we'll be familiar with the story look at verse number 15 in Genesis chapter 27 Moses and Rebecca took Goodly Raymond for her eldest son Esau which were with her in the house and put them upon Jacob her younger son and she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands upon the smooth of his neck and she gave the savory meats and the bread which he had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob now all of this was being done because Jacob was Isaac was going to bless Esau and Isaac's favorite was Esau and Rebecca's favorite was Jacob just the way it was and Rebecca hears this and she wants Jacob to get the blessing so much so that she's willing to deceive Isaac into Jacob receiving that blessing so in order to do that though she needs to dress up Jacob to fool Isaac into thinking that this really is Esau it's not Jacob and of course one of the main differences between Jacob and Esau is that Esau is a hairy man so he was one of these guys that just you know takes off his shirt and they got all the hair on the back and all the hair coming out you know all this stuff right a lot just a really hairy man and Jacob was not the Bible says he was a smooth man so in order to fool he literally got they got the skins of goats and just and just kind of attach that to his arms so he could feel like wow you know this this is my son Esau and of course they were twins so there's going to be some other familiarity I'm sure some similarity between the two of them but there's definitely some differences so he's getting all prepared to go in unto his father and receive and steal this blessing is really what he's doing he's going in it's intended for Esau but he's going in at Rebecca's request to go in and get this get this blessing so he approaches his father he brings in this meat because of course Esau was sent to go and hunt he was a hunter to go bring in some meat for him and he brings in this meat look at verse number 18 and he came unto his father and said my father and he said here am I who art thou my son so right away Isaac's asking wait who is this and the reason why he's asking is because his eyes were dim for age the Bible says so he was an older man and his eyes were starting to fail him so he's going blind right he's experiencing a lot of the problems that people have when they get much older in age and he's not able to see that great and and he's just maybe a little bit confused too because he just sent him out and he's going like wait who is this and Jacob said unto his father verse 19 I am Esau thy firstborn I have done according as thou betest me arise I pray thee sit and eat of my venison that my soul that thy soul may bless me and Isaac said unto his son how is it that thou has found it so quickly my son so his first question is well wait like I mean I just sent you out how did how were you able to get this done so quickly because that's not adding up in his head but he says and he said because the Lord thy God brought it to me so he's saying well God just blessed me I mean I went out here it is it's right there great right God blessed me and now I'm bringing you that meat and then but but but his doubts still he's not satisfied in his head I mean that's an answer you could say well okay I could see maybe that happening verse 21 says and Isaac said unto Jacob come near I pray thee that I may feel thee my son whether thou be my very son Esau or not so obviously he's having some doubts on whether or not this is Esau because he's asking him to come forward and be like let me just make sure this is you get a little bit closer so I can feel that this truly is you and Jacob went near unto Isaac his father and he felt him and said the voice is Jacob's voice but the hands are the hands of Esau and he discerned him not because his hands were hairy as his brother Esau's hands so he blessed him okay and then and of course the story goes on and on but what I want to point out here is that Isaac relied too much on his physical sense right on his sense of touch he was he was relying too much on that the voice he's saying wait I know this voice but he put that aside for what he could feel and oftentimes see we have we have the voice of God right here we have the word of God we have this voice that we could use to guide us that we could use to direct us that when we're trying to make a decision we're trying to understand something that hey we should be listening to this voice and say wait I hear what this is saying but I feel like I should do something else and look the feeling leads you astray the feeling led Isaac astray in this regard into not discerning not knowing not knowing that hey this is really Jacob who's deceiving you into thinking you know into making you think this is this is Esau and it's not and this reliance on the word of God again we're in this body right now we're in this flesh so we know the the way the with us and and anytime though when you get any type of contradiction between what our body is saying versus what the word of God says we got to go with the word we got to go with what we got we got to go with the more sure word you may have an experience you may feel something but what does the word say this is really important if you ever witness to Mormons especially people who are the Latter-day Saints Mormons I did a lot of this out in Arizona I know there's not as many of this here but this can be applied to other people too because lots of people will claim lots of different experiences and when people experience it becomes very difficult to speak to them about things that are true because they rely so much on some emotion some type of experience that they've had it's hard to because look how can you if someone says hey I had this experience how could you tell them that they're wrong because they say well I had this experience you can't tell me or you weren't there you don't know right and that's going to be faulty and look we shouldn't rely on just experiences as much as the apostle Peter was saying look we got a more sure word of prophecy he had an experience too it's a great experience it is true and it's awesome but he wasn't just putting all the stock in that experience of hearing a voice it lined up with the word of God already anyways he had that scripture to back that up and when it comes to Mormons what they do if you're not familiar with this is this is I've talked to so many of them they all have exactly the same testimony when they're when they're brought up the younger kids when they're brought up into Mormonism okay and you try to bring up me you're talking to them about the Book of Mormon say well look we know the Bible is the word of God and thank God they'll use the King James Bible right so that's good for us when we're trying to show them the word of God from the Bible they know the King James now they don't think it's perfect but they'll still at least use it which allows you to get the gospel easier but you say well you know the Book of Mormon that's not scripture and they'll say well yeah it is say well how do you know it's scripture well you know I was I asked that question before you know I and we were taught to question whether or not this is the word of God so I prayed to God to give me the answer to know is this your word is this is the Book of Mormon scriptures is the word of God and they all say it which is kind of creepy they all say exactly the same thing well I had this burning in my bosom when I prayed about this and that confirmed to me that this is the word of God and if you and if you've spoken with them you know what I'm saying is 100 percent truth is 100 percent accurate you have I've had enough experience with this but they do the same thing because they've all been trained to say the same thing which it's almost seems like a mass hypnosis effect or something to where I don't doubt the sincerity where they feel like they've had an experience and they've probably been trained enough growing up to actually feel something right it's just been subliminal just just kind of put into their heads that when they do this thing now they're going to feel like they have this experience I mean I can't explain all the reasons why they have that experience but you know what I don't need to know all the ins and outs of why they have the experience because we have a more sure word of prophecy that will tell us that the Book of Mormon is false there's plenty of evidence of contradictory statements in the Book of Mormon compared to the Holy Scripture that's going to let us know that that is a false witness there's enough false prophecies there's enough plenty of indicators between that book but for people who are interested in the truth you've got you've got to be able to receive the word of God without relying on the physical without relying on the flesh without relying on these other things these other experiences other feelings you might have turn if you would please the second Corinthians chapter number five when you think about it if there's anything we could be sure about in this world it is the word of God it is the word of God there are so many books that have been written in this world that you can't verify the truth the truthfulness of all these various books who knows right the Bible says let God be true with every man a liar we don't know if you can't confirm something can't verify you read about history you read all these other things and I'm not saying they're all just lies but I'm just saying you know the trust of just is this true is this a lie the longer you're around here in this world the more you see just how the world works you start seeing how history books are written you start seeing how you know news is spun and put out into the world and the more you see that why would it be any different now than it was in the past so you start reading about things like well this is what's been passed down over the years well how do you know how true what you're reading about the past is we don't know we don't really know but what we do know God is true and we know that the word of God is true we know that this is as believers as people who have received the word of God this is how we ought to be comparing everything against so and here's where I'm going with this right if we we know for certain this is our rock this is our foundation we know this to be true so if people are going to come out and I don't care if they call themselves scientists I don't care how many letters they have after their name PhDs and this or that whatever they want to claim and whatever they want to say if it's contradictory to what the word of God says I'm going to stand on the word of God as being the truth because I know that this is true you know people want to say oh here's our model of how the earth's going to be destroyed and this you know through global warming and everything else you know what I've got a book here that says that people are going to be marrying and giving in marriage just as it was in days of lot when the destruction actually comes from God out of heaven when that time comes hey things will continue as they have there's not going to be some great catastrophe on this earth through global warming or any other man-made thing until God pours out his wrath on the earth that's what's going to happen so we know that look there is cataclysm coming but I'm not going to get sucked into what the world is putting out there as these you know what when it's contradictory to what the Bible says we know how the world's going to end this is given to us and in so many ways we can we need to just be sticking with the word of God to guide us when you hear things you're like wait that doesn't quite sound right well don't rely on your feelings don't rely on these other sources rely on the word of God to guide you in the sermon did I have you turn to second Corinthians chapter five look at verse number one Bob reads for we know we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God and house not made with hands eternal in the heavens amen I like that strong statement we know well I know this hey do you know if you were to die today you're going to heaven amen I do I do know that well that sounds very arrogant how could you possibly go I do know it's not it's not arrogance it's because God showed us the truth he gave us the Holy Scriptures I know my faith is in Jesus Christ and that's what the Bible says we have to do to be saved amen I know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God and how it's not made with hands eternal in the heavens for in this we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked for we that are in this tabernacle be grown being burdened not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life now he that has wrought us for the self same thing as God who also have given unto us the earnest of the spirit therefore we are always confident knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by faith not by sight we are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body to be present with the Lord so he goes into this this whole portion of scripture here and saying that look God has given us the earnest of the spirit it's the down payment God's purchased us he's bought us he's redeemed us we belong to him those of us who are and when you put your trust in Christ he's put the earnest of the spirit inside of you into your body you have the Holy Spirit living inside you as I preach this morning on fornication hey look our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost right so God has given us that great down payment that great earnest of the Holy Spirit within us and you know of course we know that we're children of God that our our spirit the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and we have that comfort we have that assurance and we also have that guidance can help us to continue to be always confident and just knowing that hey while I'm while I'm here at home in the body while I'm still alive on this earth I'm absent from the Lord as long as I'm here I'm not having but guess what I'm confident and willing rather to be absent from the body to be present with the Lord so that it seems like I'm ready you know what whenever God's got my time done I'm ready to part this body because I know I'm confident that I will be with him he's given me the earnest of the Holy Spirit I know that I'm going to go to be with him amen and we could have that confidence and we know why because we walk by faith and not by sight this is critical in the Christian life we need to be able to learn increasingly to walk by faith and not just by sight not what you see not what you touch now we feel by faith there's a lot of actions that believers will do and in ways in which you live your life and the rules that you put in place in your life that the world's going to call crazy and it might sound counterintuitive because the world's going to tell you hey try to make as much money as you can and and buy the most things and be the most successful person you can have by having all this money but the Bible's telling you no look you can't serve God and mammon it's not about money it's not about riches it's not about the pleasures of sin for a season look your best life and the most blessed life and the best for you in this world has nothing to do with the money has nothing to do with the riches has nothing to do with the sin live for God live for others be a servant follow Christ do as Christ did and look you will receive the peace that comes with the walking in the spirit the fruits of the spirit the love the joy the peace the comfort the gentleness the goodness the faith that is living a best life that is when you start walking in the spirit and you walk in the spirit more and more because you realize this is way better than anything the world has to offer but you will never know that until you start stepping out by faith and sometimes it gets uncomfortable you know when Jesus is telling people hey look take no thought for the morrow for the things of the morrow should take thought for the things of itself and he starts telling you hey seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you and all these things there is referring to hey wherewithal shall we be clothed and what are we going to eat right how am I going to like how am I going to have money to eat how many money he says you know what don't worry about that just seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness first just worry about serving God and you know what that stuff comes later that stuff will get added unto you God's going to protect you God's going to take care of you don't worry about that but you have to start by saying you know what I'm just going to put God first but first I'm going to step out by faith and start doing what's right now oftentimes what also happens is people start getting fired up maybe they just newly get saved or maybe they just get newly you know kind of stirred up fervently in the spirit like you know I need to get back to serving God maybe even the backside you want to start doing what's right either way when people start making changes and they start getting right oftentimes what happens is that's when you start seeing the attacks coming and that's when you start questioning going like well why am I having all this problem all of a sudden why does everything seem to be going wrong when I just start trying to serve God and do all the right things why all these bad things now starting to happen that doesn't make sense well you know what you need to continue to walk by faith because the word of God is going to tell us yea all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution and will live godly means you want to you're trying to you're striving to live godly so when the persecutions come when the hard times come when the bad things start to seem to happen you know there's a good effort by satan and the devils to try to keep you from doing good because you don't want you out there doing good you don't want you serving God so if he could cause some bad thing to happen to just be like oh this will just get him out of the race of course it makes sense that he was going to try to do god might want to be trying you to say hey are you really in this and you know what that trial is going to be good for you you're going to learn patience you're going to get experience right then you get hope and you go through the cycle of going through some hard times that is going to make you better but especially at the beginning you have to take it on faith you have to be able to say no what no I know in the long run this will be good for me and like standing on God standing on the word of God standing on the things of God making a stand for righteousness here's a good real world example you know people that get afraid well I don't want to lose my job we live in a cancel culture right it happens all the time it's happened to me I've been there and I know many others have to it's not just me but you're like well I know homosexuality is a sin but I don't really want to say anything because I might need a job well how about what God tells you in the house tops we have trust knowing that hey it's not my word it's God's word who am I to censor the word of God who am I to decide well I don't think you know I don't know I don't like what's going to happen to me if I actually say some of these things out loud well what happened to Jesus are you better than him he was nailed to a and as a Christian and so it's going to be a follower of Christ look you ought to be ready for the same if you're going to speak things that are true and just say hey this is the truth this is the word of God it is what it is so I'm just going to preach it because it's not my job to say what am I going to preach well I'm not going to preach it's the word of God you just be faithful to his word you preach his word and hey let the chips fall where they may and if you get fired from a job what do you think God can't take care of you and bring you somewhere else or take care of you some other way of course he can but you need the faith you need the faith you need to stop thinking in terms of the flesh you need to stop thinking in terms of what you could feel you need to not be like Isaac was when he was trying to discern Jacob from Esau he heard the voice you should have stuck with the voice that was guiding him right you never see in the word of God obey my commandment do what I'm told you do unless it's going to cause you some discomfort then I understand then you could just back off a little bit and just no discomfort we have it easy look even if you lose your job we live in like the richest place in the world we live in the world we have the most opportunity oh I lost my job get another one and thank God we still have that blessing on this country where you could just go out and get another job and like I'm sorry if you can't find work you're lazy bottom line that's a bottom line if you can't find work you're lazy I'll tell you the story of the of the convicted felon that I helped out once he got out of jail he didn't have identification didn't have his social security number found work the same week if he can do it why can't you and look it wasn't the best job it wasn't the you know the nine to five in a nice conditioned office and everything else but he's working and he's providing for himself amen so don't worry about where I might lose my job you know what the apostles had to worry about being arrested and being killed they were beaten physically and what happened when they were being physically they were rejoicing they were like oh man praise the Lord that God accounted me worthy to receive this suffering for his cause for his name amen that's being spiritually minded that's walking by faith and not by God hey when you suffer for Christ sake God will bless you for that and I'm not even talking about here on this earth there's going to be a judgment seat of Christ one day where the things that you did that had eternal value are God's going to pay you for that highlighting the fact that our salvation of course was free to us and had nothing to do with our works God highlights that by paying you for what you do that's good no no no don't you think that anything that you did any sacrifice that you made has anything to do with you going to heaven because that's all Jesus but what you did that was good here you go well done now good and faithful servant and the sacrifice that you make here what God gives you is eternal so you sacrifice a carnal job oh but I'm making six figures oh but I'm making this so what it's all going to burn up you can't take it with you what are you going to do with it the the streets of heaven the streets of New Jerusalem are paved with gold what does that tell you about the value of gold if it is walking on it underfoot now look it's going to be beautiful amen but what does God really care about yeah it's going to be what you're walking on we got plastic in my house walking on plastic so what right who cares that plastic is just plastic that's the value of what the world puts in gold all silver all it's so great walk by faith not by sight this won't lead you astray it won't but don't lean under your own understanding please turn if you would to Hebrews chapter 11 its last place we'll turn to this evening Hebrews chapter 11 we'll see this just many examples Hebrews 11 is commonly known as a hall faith many great people from Bible people who have served the Lord who have made their own sacrifices have gone through various trials and tribulations are being recognized we're talking about that more sure word of prophecy that the only way you know it's more sure is because of the faith that you have because you know hey we could trust the word of God more than anything else that we see or feel experience we're going to trust in the word and now we could read stories and read what people did that had that faith that knew that even if everyone around them is knocking them or making fun of them or is calling them crazy or it's not conventional to do things this way but if it's God's way it's the right way and they get recognized here in faith now look at verse number 1 of Hebrews chapter 11 the Bible says now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen for by it the elders obtained a good report through faith we understand that the words were framed the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear and again going back to well what are you going to believe and what are you going to trust in you know a lot of modern scientists will tell you that everything came from nothing but there was nothing else involved it's not God but everything just came from nothing was really really small and then it blew up and now we have everything and the Bible is saying here look the things which are seen what we can see all the physical things around the world were not made of things which just do appear everything was made through the word of God God created the world through his word it's the truth so when you have people trying to tell you convince you otherwise they're wrong it's not true there's no you know don't get caught up and thinking oh but it's science no that's science falsely so-called I love science science is great science you know the pursuit of the truth and conducting experiments and trying to see how things work and how the physical world works the natural world awesome love it all for it when you find the truth but when people just want to push their religion of a godless world and we just get here without God well that's false sorry there's no evidence for that there's another religion that's their own faith I'm not going to get in that story I was talking to someone who claimed to be an atheist and said oh that's your religion I was like you have a religion too but we didn't get a chance to get and I didn't want to have them either but it is true it is true first number four by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his gifts and by it he being dead yet speaking able offered up what the animal sacrifice the blood atonement that sacrifice for his sins as opposed to Cain bringing the works of his own hands right and it's the faith it's not my work it's the shed blood and that speak to this day being recorded in the word of God you know he's long dead but you know what that testimony still exists of God receiving that sacrifice and that great truth but let's keep reading here because there's there's a lot more that we're going to get into verse number five by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found because God had translated him for before his translation he had this testimony that diligently seek him verse seven by faith Noah being warned of God seen as yet moved with fear prepared an ark to the saving of his house by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith Noah got this word from the Lord hey look I need you to build this boat I need you to build this ark and you can only imagine it's not recorded in scripture you can only imagine what people must have been saying to him when he's building this great prior not at all like there was in all recorded history of Noah's day you know people are living long times hundreds of years and you can say like look this is just not what are you thinking what are you doing Noah didn't matter to him and it took him quite a while to build that ark that was a big big big boat big structure to be able to get all the animals and stuff and say that's a crazy idea what are you you're going to get animals on this boat how are we going to get all that you know doesn't matter he's following what he heard the word of God not trusting in his own intellect not trusting in what he can see every day oh it's sunny everything's fine things are going to continue just this everything's great I don't have to worry about it no he trusted the word and this is why he's being recognized here because by faith Abraham when he was called to go out and he went out not knowing where they went Abraham heard the word of God hey I need you to go okay let's go where am I going I'll tell you I'll tell you along the way just okay here we go look that level of faith this is why he's being recognized Abraham is known as a father of faith we ought to be able to have that in our life too and be sensitive to the word of God and really be in God's word and be ready to receive God where do you want me to be what do you want me to do well God's going to tell you a bunch of things in this word I know he wants you to preach the gospel of a creature I know he wants you abstain from fornication you're listening this morning serving about that but this is the will of God right even your sanctification now you got possess your vessel in sanctification and honor you start reading through things like that what do you want me to do just God lights the steps for you he's not necessarily going to shine the whole path all the way down to the end so you know exactly how it's going to get there but he gives you enough to make your decisions every day based on his word and you keep using the light of the word to shine your path and what's great about that is then you can look back it's a lot easier to see in height wow this is how God led me down this path but you don't even have to know about it at the time I had no idea 10 years ago I'd be in Georgia ever seriously but when I look back I can see all of the events that brought me here and just say hey praise the Lord God led me here this is great but you have to be open to just being able to say hey I don't know where I'm going to end up I'm not going to just be tied to just one place or one thing if God has a need somewhere and he wants me to go here go there let's do it and that's the faith that Abraham had here and he's being recognized by faith he's sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob the heirs with him of the same promise look that's not comfortable by the way either just going out where you're going I'm not really sure well should we be building a house here no we'll just we'll bring the tent you know it's easier to kind of be mobile and move around with this and we'll go where God's going to have us go okay that's not easy but he did it there's no way he's looking for heavenly Jerusalem he's looking for a place to be ultimately and moving through life with that in mind the eternal destination verse 11 through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised and look we see here the word of God is saying that Sarah gets a little bit of credit because of her faith in the word of God for being able to carry that child be able to carry Isaac even though she was well past the time of being able physically normally to be able to conceive and have a child she's already been through menopause she's already gone past that state of her life but you know what if God says it then I'm just going to believe that he'll be able to make this happen somehow and Sarah believed that because the word of God's telling us here that she so we get a glimpse into her heart she believed that and then God strengthened her for that to be able to happen she received strength to conceive that seed she was delivering a child when she was passing and she was able to lose that child it's amazing and we see what's capable of what we think and you know that's only capable through faith science isn't going to can't make that happen they're trying to do all this nonsense and play Frankenstein with men having children all kinds of abominable things but they can't do it they can't do that even with an older woman be able to nurse and feed a child and conceive and have all science can't do that God therefore sprang there even of one and him as good as dead so many as the stars of the sky and most of these all died in faith not having received the promises but having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth so we see all of them had the mindset they didn't receive the promises yet but they believed it they had faith they knew that it was coming they knew that God is true they knew that they're getting the word of God and they say look we're just pilgrims here we're foreigners we're just passing through this isn't our eternal home this isn't where we're going to stay there's things that are much better so we're going to obey God we're going to listen for the word of God and we're going to act on the word of God and live our life by the word of God because we know there's something better we know there's more verse 14 for they they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country and truly if they have been mindful of that kind of thing when they came out they might have had opportunity to return but now they desire a better country that is and heavenly wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he hath prepared for them a city by faith Abraham when he was tried offered up Isaac and he that had received the promises offered up whose only begotten son of whom it was said that an Isaac shall thy seed be called accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from whence also he received him in a figure so remember that great story where where Abraham was was being instructed to offer up Isaac it's the son of promise right to go and to offer him up as a sacrifice unto unto the Lord and we see here we have this extra insight that that when he because he went he was faithful he brought him up but even in that story if you remember we're not going to turn there he told his servant that that the latter night we're going to go and then return again he never thought for a minute that he was going to go in and come back alone when he was being instructed to offer up either he wasn't thinking he's going to murder his son and he's this madman having delusions like you know atheists want to rail on the word of God no he knew the promises of God he already knew that God was going to bless him and that he was going to build this great nation of him and that Isaac was the seed of promise he knew all of this stuff and he knew the gospel preached before unto him he knew that God was able to raise him again from the dead because God doesn't fail on his promises so since God had already promised that that all the nation will be blessed through his seed through Isaac then he had he can't just let him die he's going to have to at least raise him again from the dead he knew that his savior was coming and everything that he did pictured that savior from the wood being laid on Isaac's back like the cross of Jesus Christ being born to the to the ram being caught in the in the thicket like the crown of thorns on the head of the Lamb of God and again you go on and on and on looking at all the symbolism of that and his only begotten son being offered up by the great picture of Jesus Christ and Abraham already had that faith knowing hey even just going through this God's able to raise him from the dead and he has to because he can't just let this pass he promised and was willing to give everything to the faith to put ourself aside and say if this is the will of the Lord then let's do it and it will make you uncomfortable of course it will it's not going to be just a cakewalk and you could just live in this blissful land of like oh no problems on you know everything's great everything's fine but if you're following Christ you better believe that the hard times come because if they don't I would start the question he suffered quite a bit so he suffered like that I mean like I said before I mean are we better than Christ well I'm not really suffering at all well okay well how close are you following then let's keep you know I'm wrapping things up here almost done I just want to read through a few more of these examples verse number 20 by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come by faith Jacob when he was a dying blessed both the sons of Joseph in worship leaning upon the top of the staff by faith Joseph when he died made mention of the departing of the children of Israel and gave commandment concerning his bones he knew what was going to happen he says look don't be leaving my body here in Egypt I don't want to stay here I know what's going to happen I know God's going to lead you out so when you go here's my commandment take my bones with you don't leave my bones what a great testimony they're saying that this is going to happen this is what the word of God said here's my commandment when this comes to pass you do this because I know this is going to happen he's already just making commandment saying like like it's not if this is going to happen I know this is going to happen it's not if Christ comes back one day Christ is coming back one day there's 23 by faith Moses because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king's commandment king's commandment to kill the the male children no I'm not going to follow them I'm going to follow the word of God and not kill my babies they were supposed to kill them at birth but how different is that than killing them at like 6 weeks or 12 weeks or 20 weeks or 3 months or 4 months or 6 months but believers should say no the commandment of God is not to be a murderer I'm not going to go to the abortion doctor whether it's legal or not verse 24 by faith Moses when he was come to years refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect under the recompense of the reward position to live a comfortable life I mean he was Pharaoh's daughter right he was a child of Pharaoh's daughter he could be raised up in Pharaoh's house he could have whatever he wanted and he said no but your people are being afflicted that's not a life you want to live is it you know what I'm going to go be with my people I'm going to serve the Lord with my people okay if I'm going to be afflicted so be it why because he knew he knew he had respect under the recompense of the reward you know I just love this by the way that says he esteemed the reproach of Christ from the Old Testament he knew there was a Savior to come he knew there was a Christ this isn't some brand new approach of Christ greater riches than the treasures need to see those that follow the Lord and will follow the word of God walking by faith is to say hey even though this is going to happen I know that this will work out in the end better temporally short term short sightedness physically speaking the flesh is going to tell me don't do this I don't like this this isn't comfortable but if you walk by faith and not by sight you're going to say you know what no I'm going to do this I know this is right I have this sure word of prophecy I'm going to trust this above what senses are telling me twenty seven by faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king but he endured as seeing him who is invisible through faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them and again there's another example of people doing things that what in the world are you doing why are you putting all this blood on your door you're talking about like it's not Halloween what are you thinking you're putting blood on your doorway yeah I don't want to lose anyone I don't want to lose my firstborn my firstborn son I want him to stay alive when that death angel comes by you know we're going to be covered by the blood and those that acted on faith did that because they knew and guess what they were protected and they were safe because they acted on the faith and those that didn't they suffered twenty nine by faith they passed through the Red Sea is by dry land which the Egyptians are saying to be the ground by faith the wall Jericho fell down after they were compass about seven days by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believe not when she had received the fight and you know of course the Bible continues here saying you know time would fail me to tell of of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the property like there's so many stories the Bible is full of stories of men who acted on faith and we see the outcome time and time and time again don't get scared don't fear it may seem weird people might call you strange and that's all right we have a more sure word of prophecy it's just trust in I mean if when all else fails you've got the word of God and when all people fail and if your preacher fails and if the people around you and your family what everyone else fails you look God will never fail you ever ever trust in the word of God use this as a light in everything you do you don't have to know every single way how your life will go for the whole rest of future every day every decision base it off of the word and when scary things happen in the world trying to tell you no no no you got to do this and you've got to hedge this and do all that use this in your determining factor in what you're going to do what's right all those decision making points the decisions turn you one way or another even if it's just ever so slight make a decision here make a decision here it's going to lead you one way it's going to lead you down this path use this it'll be the right path you're not promised much later that's way down at the end for now take one day at a time using this word of prayer to your Heavenly Father thank you so much for all of the wisdom that is contained in your word I pray that you would please help to open up our understanding give us discernment dear Lord help us to learn and to grow and understand more about your will about what we ought to be doing in our life I pray that you would please also bring to remembrance through the Holy Spirit your your word when we do have these decisions to make when we are trying to decide how we're going to live our lives and what we're going to do that you would bring your word to remembrance in our minds so that we can continually be reminded of what the right way is and strengthen us Lord to to choose the right way I pray that you please help us to strengthen others and to to to help as many people as we can along this path as this world gets darker and crazier dear Lord help us to be able to stand firm on your word and that we can walk by faith and not by sight Lord we love you we pray all these things in Jesus Christ blessed name Amen all right we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed this evening we're going to sing a song number two song number two right here in front of your song book glory to his name song number two sing it out on that first verse down at the cost where my Savior died down where preventing the sin I cried there to my heart was the blood of life glory to his name glory to his name glory to his name there to my heart was the blood of life glory to his name I am so wondrously saved on sin Jesus so sweetly abides within there at the cost where he took me in glory to his name glory to his name glory to his name glory to his name there to my heart was the blood of life glory to his name oh precious mountain that saves us sin I am so glad I have entered in there Jesus saves me, keeps me clean glory to his name glory to his name glory to his name there to my heart was the blood of life glory to his name come to this mountain so rich and sweet cast thy poor soul at the Savior's feet plant him today and be made complete glory to his name glory to his name glory to his name there to my heart was the blood of life glory to his name amen church we're dismissed thank you all so much for being here tonight amen amen