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There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, There is music in my soul today, Someday the silver will break, Someday the silver will break, And I know more as thou shalt see, And I know more as thou shalt see, But how the joy when I shall be, But how the joy when I shall be, Within the palace of the King, Within the palace of the King, And I shall see him face to face, And tell the story saved by grace, And I shall see him face to face, And tell the story saved by grace, And tell the story saved by grace, Speed it up a little bit on the second. Someday the earth will fall, Someday the earth will fall, I cannot tell not the truth of it, But I know my little, And I know the place in heaven for me, and for me and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace Someday we'll face the broken sun beneath the loaded fields in west My blessed Lord will swing upon and I shall enter into rest and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace Someday we'll face the broken sun beneath the loaded fields in west My blessed Lord will swing upon and I shall enter into rest and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace Amen. Alright next up we have song number 402. This one's a little slower so it'll be a little easier to sing. Song 402, Our Best. Song number 402. Sing it out on the first. Here came the Master's call. Give me thy best. For me and great are small, that is his best. To them the best you can, love for reward. Love for the praise of heaven, love for the Lord. Every word for Jesus will be blessed. What he asks from every heart is blessed. Our talents may be few, these may be small. But unto him is to our best our own. Song number 402 on the second. Wake not your hands, you are, king of this life. Waving the smile of God, praise his divine. To think the good and true, there goes our best. All that we think for to be the best. Every word for Jesus will be blessed. What he asks from every heart is blessed. Our talents may be few, these may be small. But unto him is to our best our own. Excellent singing. Good evening. If you don't already have a bulletin, you can lift up your hand nice and high. One of our ushers can come by and get you guys a bulletin. We're working on Matthew 28 verse 9 for our memory verse. On the inside are service and soul winning times. Make sure you're also turning in your soul winning stats to our group chat. Also the maps so that way we can mark those. On the right we have the list of our expecting ladies. And then we have a giving statement that we're emailed out. If you have a question, please just see Brother Fur. Also some church reminders there below on the back is our prayer list. We'll go over this quickly. So we have the names. We've been continuing to pray for their grandmother and Miss Charlotte's recovery. And then we've been praying for the Carlson's mother, Miss Rebecca. We've been praying for the Miller's friend's mom's cancer treatments. We've been praying for Brother Scott's parents for both the father and mother for cancer and nerve pain. We've also been praying for the Garcia's for their daughters expecting pregnancy, which it's very soon. So we'll pray that that goes well. Also continue to pray for Brother Tony for his work and health. We've been praying for Brother Sam for his fiancée and hopefully we'll have some good news soon on that. I will pray for Brother Alex, which we were praying for his work situation and that's actually a praise report that has turned into an answered prayer. Also the Warners prayer request for the brother of Chalmer also has turned into a praise report and he's doing much better and so she wanted to thank everybody for prayers on that. Also the Hernandez, we're praying for their grandmother. We're praying for the Goodwins for their friend Sarah and also praise report on the test that went well. And then down below we have the brother Nick's mother. We've been praying for her. We've been praying for Brother Suhail's father-in-law and also praying for Brother Billy. He has a couple there if you've been praying for his friend, his father, and then also a co-worker's son. And so we have a couple there. Also if you pray for Brother Rich's father and hopefully things are doing better in California I think, right? Okay, good. Also Brother Ferrett asked for prayer for a couple of family members there for his brother and also a niece. And then also down below Brother Evan had asked for prayer for a convert that he was discipling. So make sure you're praying for our church family throughout the week and we'll go ahead and say a church prayer together now. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for our church. Thank you so much for all the ladies that are expecting in our church. I pray that you be with them with their pregnancies. Please also give them a timely birth. Thank you also for those that were recently delivered. I pray that you just continue to be with those children and help them as they continue to grow and be healthy. I pray that you would also just help our church family that's been struggling with sickness or illness, that you'd help them to recover, that they would be able to be in church and that they would be healthy for their job and for their family. I pray that you'd also help those that have these serious issues, these health issues like cancer and some of these more terminal issues. I pray that you would please just give them favor. Please give them a full recovery. I pray that you just give them comfort during this difficult time. I pray that you would also just bless our church family that is needing help with either travel or their work. Please just give them favor. I pray that you continue to give us wisdom. I also pray that you would just motivate us this year to take our soul winning more seriously and to work really hard this year to have a great harvest for you and for your son's honor and glory. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. That's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We'll go ahead and sing our Psalm of the Week, Psalm 147. Psalm 147. Alright, that's Psalm 147. You should find it in your binders. Psalm 147. He gathered together the outcasts of Israel. He healed in the broken and modified in the big and bruised. He dealt in the number of the stars. He followed them all. He followed them all by their names. Praise the Lord and the big crowd. And His understanding is infinite. The Lord did give help, the King He cast to go. He did go to the ground. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving. Sing praise upon the heart, what you are not. Who calmer in the heaven made, with clouds will he bear. Pray for the earth, who may be fast, press to go upon the mountains. He gave in to the east is blue. And to the young great is great is fire. He divided not in the strength of love, for to take not pleasure in. No thanks of love that the Lord gave him. Pleasure in them that fear Him it goes back. Oh, praise, mercy, praise the Lord, O Jehovah's Son. Praise thy God, Lord of Zion. Praise the Lord, Lord of Jerusalem. For He hath strengthened the past, of thy gates He hath blessed. I shall live with Thee, He may give peace within, thy glory's been filled with Thee. With the finest of the reading, sent them forth His commandment, for on earth is worth running, very swiftly giving. So I fully scatter them forth, by cashless, scatter them with the wood-crossed by cashless. He cast it forth, His eyes light blue, so that you can stand before His flow. He sent it down His way, unto where He caused His wind to blow. And no one else, while we sure will live, we're going to take up His cash, to send His judge, which come to Israel. He hath longed elsewhere, any nation, and as for His justice, they have not yet received the Lord. Great singing everybody. As the offering plates are going around, would you please turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter number 8. Matthew chapter number 8. piano plays softly Matthew chapter number 8. The Bible reads, When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand and touched him, saying, I will, be Thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, I will, be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home, sake of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. And when Jesus was coming to Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid in sick of a fever, and he touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose and ministered unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick. That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sickness. Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain scribe came and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him, and behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves, but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us, we perish. And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds in the sea, and there was a great calm. But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him too possessed with the devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fears, so that no man might pass by that way. And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good way off from them and heard of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou castest out, sufferest thus, to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine, and behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down its deep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told everything, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for Matthew chapter 8. Thank you for this church. Thank you for the souls that are being saved. I just pray that you bless Pastor Shelley, fill him with your Holy Spirit, help him to preach your word unto us, and to us to receive it. Praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. The Bible says here in Matthew 8, verse 1, When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And so in the early parts of Jesus Christ's ministry, you have to notice that a lot of people were following him. A lot of people were interested in hearing what he had to say. And so the early parts of his ministry is very popular. A lot of people are kind of following him. And it's based on what's going on. If you think about this chapter, there's a lot of healings and a lot of miracles that are being performed. And honestly, a lot of people love that stuff. It always makes me laugh when I see this billboard. I'll drive through Houston, and as this huge billboard, it says, miracles are done here with this huge arrow. And it's pointing to some church building over there. And it's like, if you were performing miracles, you wouldn't need a billboard. I mean, they don't even have technology, and great multitudes are following him wherever he goes because he's actually performing miracles. If you were performing miracles the way Jesus was, everyone's going to bring their sick family down. And in fact, the Bible makes it clear he healed them all their sicknesses and all their diseases because if there's a miracle worker out there just curing everybody, then everyone's going to go see him, and they're going to get cured. It's just going to happen. So of course, he has lots and lots of people following him. It says in verse number 2, And behold, there came a leper and worshiped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. So here Jesus is healing someone of arguably one of the worst diseases. Leprosy is an extreme sickness and illness. In many cases, they were put without the camp, and him being without the camp asked for Jesus to make him clean, and he makes him clean. Notice the attitude of the person that's clean. He says that if thou wilt. He's not even saying that, like, demanding anything of God or expecting anything. He's just simply asking and requesting and saying, I know you're capable of doing this, and if you want it to happen, it can happen because with God, all things are possible, even healing of great sicknesses and illnesses and diseases. And it is up to the Lord's will if he delivers us of sicknesses and illnesses when we pray. It says in verse 4, And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. So even after he healed this person, he's kind of trying to keep everything on the DL. He's trying to keep it on the down. He's not making a billboard about it. In fact, he's actually kind of doing the opposite. He's telling people, like, hey, don't go around telling everybody this. Just go to the doctors of the law and have them examine you. Make sure you're clean. According to the law of Moses, offer your animal sacrifice, offer your gift that you would have to do, and just enter back into society. Notice that this is also a legitimate healing because it's not like these tricks where these people go down the street and they're saying they're having pain on their arm, and they're like, all right, move your arm this way, and they're like, oh, it doesn't hurt anymore, and then they just leave. Now, he's actually saying go to the doctor and have them examine you and make sure you're actually cured of your leprosy before you even go back into society. So he's not even necessarily downplaying the medical industry. You know, it's not like he's saying the medical industry doesn't have their place. He's saying even let them examine you and make sure you're medically cleared before you can come back into society. So they have their time, they have their place, and he's having them follow the law of Moses as well, following the law, because Jesus was there to follow the law and to fulfill the law. A lot of things that we could learn from this. One question I think a lot of people ask and they kind of get confused on is they say, well, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so if he's willing that this person would be healed, then that means he must be willing for every single person to be healed in every single situation, and I don't believe in a religion where God would never heal somebody of their sickness or illness or something. And this is really coming mostly from Pentecostals and your charismatic type crowd where they would suggest that God would never not heal somebody and that it's basically just us not having enough faith or something or that every single time God is willing to heal. But, you know, if that was true, then we would never go through the experiences of sickness. We'd have no idea what that's even like. And think about this. Everybody would want to be a Christian just from this aspect alone. Like, people just want to be a Christian just so they're not sick. I mean, everybody that's sick would be like, well, I guess I just want to be a Christian because then I'm not sick anymore. And it'd be pretty obvious if the Christians were just never sick and everybody else is sick, people would be kind of thinking, like, this is interesting. Plus, at some degree, I mean, we all got to die. Like, at some point, we just all have to die. If God just always delivered us, then we'll just never even die. I mean, at some point, we're all just going to eventually die. In fact, many people that are elderly will sometimes even die of simple illnesses, just common colds or lower-level type illnesses just because their immune system is weakened, they're frail, they don't have the same ability to fight infection or other diseases or illnesses that you can when you're younger, and so they many times just die from simple, typical fevers and colds and all that kind of stuff because it's their time. It's their time, and so we have to understand that God, obviously, at this point in history, in this location, He's healing everybody. But this is a special, unique thing. It also wouldn't really stand to reason if God could just give every minister this ability because then again, like, everybody's just going to follow Christianity and those ministers based on the miracles and not based on the truth. But at this time, it's also important that Jesus has some signs to rally a bunch of crowds so that He can preach and get the gospel out very effectively and very quickly. Him and the apostles have this special healing ability of going out and just healing people so that they can just garner huge crowds quickly and get all the information to them and then move on. I mean, how's the apostle Paul going to effectively go out and preach the gospel to a foreign area if he doesn't have some ability to just gather a huge crowd quickly? And you and I both know, if you've gone soul-winning, I mean, imagine if I just drop you off in the middle of some town of 100,000 people. How quickly is it going to be for you to just get everybody's attention? I mean, it's going to be one person at a time because nobody really cares who you are, but if you're walking through town healing everybody, well, pretty soon everybody's going to show up and want to hear what you have to say. And so it's just God just giving these people a special ability to just garner huge crowds quickly, have that message confirmed that they're truly of God, and so that way those that are going to get saved can get the opportunity to hear the gospel and get saved. There's no Internet. There's no newspaper. There's no way for them to necessarily garner these huge crowds quickly, so of course He's allowing them to have that. In our era today when we have social media and we have newspapers and we have cars and we have all these different opportunities to travel, He's not going to do this because if we all, if every Christian could just lay hands on people and just heal them instantly, well, everybody would want to talk to us, and we would all give them the gospel in less than two weeks or something. We would basically just reach the entire world in two weeks, and then everybody's fate would almost be decided. But for some reason God doesn't want everybody to decide if they're going to go to heaven or hell in two weeks. He wants it to typically be a lifetime, and they have these long-suffering with people, and there's all this work out there that we're supposed to be doing, and it's the people that are going to actually labor. I mean, how are we going to be rewarded? Because it wouldn't be as rewarding. It's just like, yep, I went out there for a couple weeks, laid hands on people, told everybody, and it's over. It's a lot more of laboring every day, every week, every year, like a tree producing that precious fruit, some 30, some 60, some 100, that takes time, takes effort, takes prayer, takes faith, takes commitment, takes dedication. And so the Lord can actually reward those who were steadfast in their faith, actually going out and yielding results day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and say, this is a faithful Christian, not the guy that did it just for five minutes or something or did it for two weeks, because probably all of us at some point had a two-week honeymoon phase with Christianity, where we were just so excited and it was fun and everything was good, but that doesn't really show that you have a lot of character necessarily, because you can be excited about something for two weeks pretty easy. Doing something for a lifetime shows character and commitment and dedication, and God is going to reward those who are doing so. So I believe these stories. I got a guy at the door today. Oh, do you believe in healing? Yeah. And it's like, well, but do you believe in healing today? Yeah. I said, hey, the Bible says this. And he's like, yeah, but do you believe it? Yes, I believe it. And you know what? We have a prayer list where we pray for people to be healed. I believe it. You know, the factual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, is what the Bible says. I believe it. But you know what I don't believe, is I don't believe that I have a special ability to walk around and smack you in the forehead and you're healed, okay? If I did, I would do it. I would love smacking somebody in the head, all right? But I'm not going to do that, okay? And, you know, these Pentecostals, they're lying. They're lying and they're not even saved, because they typically teach that you can lose your salvation. Almost every Pentecostal church, almost all the charismatic churches teach that it's salvation by faith and works, and you can lose your salvation. You say, how do you know that? Because I knock on their door and they tell me. That's what they believe. And that's why they're goofed up on a lot of doctrines. That's why they pretty much never use the King James Bible. That's why they're wrong on most everything in the Bible, as far as doctrine is concerned. And, you know, you even have oneness Pentecostals, which are even worse. I mean, these people are raging heretics. But they love these stories and they love this idea. And look, I love it too. I love that Jesus healed these people, and it's cool, but you know what makes it special? That it doesn't happen all the time. It's called a miracle. If it just happened all the time, then it wouldn't really be a miracle anymore, would it? Because a miracle is like superseding that which naturally occurs. If you're healing people regularly as Christians, it wouldn't even seem like a miracle. It'd seem like a natural course of life. Everybody just... Because right now, when you're sick, where do you go? The doctor, right? If Christians could heal people, you wouldn't go to the doctor. You'd go to the Christians. Oh, I'm sick again. I'm going to go to the Christians so I can get healed real quick, and then go back on their merry way, and then they just go to the Christians, and they wouldn't even think it's a miracle anymore. They would just think that's just how life works. You go to the Christians and get healed. That's what they do. They're like the new doctor in town. But you know what? God's not going to do that because it's not special anymore. You know what's special is that you read this stuff in the Bible and it doesn't happen. What's special is you read about things that only God could do, that we don't see in our natural life. So when we live in a world that's full of sickness and we see people that are struggling and in pain and people that die and have horrible issues, we realize what a blessing it would be if someone could just say you're healed and you were healed. We realize that's an incredible miracle, and it kind of baffles the mind how people could see Jesus literally performing these miracles before their eyes and not believe in Him. Wow. That's a spiritual blinding, to be able to see the Son of God in the flesh, healing people on command of incredible diseases like leprosy and then thinking that not even believing in Him, not even still trusting Him. But that just goes to show you can show someone John 3.16 and they just still think it works. You can show someone Acts 16, 30 and 31, and they still think it works. And you're just like, it just says believe, man. And that just goes to show you there's a spiritual eye set and there's a carnal eye set. And for some reason, they're not the same. People can see things with their eyes and have no understanding spiritually. And it's the same here where they can see these miracles, but they just somehow don't perceive them. It says in verse 5, And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home, sick of the palsy grievously tormented, and Jesus saith on him, I will come and heal him. So this guy's saying, hey, I got a servant, he's sick, and Jesus is like, hey, I'll come, I'll heal this guy. Verse 8, The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldst come unto my ruth, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers unto me, and I say to this man, go, and he goeth into another, come, and he cometh, and my servant do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them, that followed, verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. So this centurion is obviously representing not the children of Israel, someone probably a Roman, and someone that's of a Gentile heritage or background, yet he comes unto the Lord Jesus Christ, asking for healing, for it's just his servant. Seems like a pretty good boss, when you go all the way out of your way, just to heal your servant. This servant must have been a pretty good worker, you know what I mean? This guy was getting the job done that his boss cared so much for him that he's going out of his way to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to heal him, and he understands that this being the Christ, he has so much power and authority, all he has to say is just say it, and it's going to happen. He doesn't have to perform some special miracle or do anything. Just by the power of the tongue, just by saying something, he can heal him, and when Jesus sees this, he says this guy has the greatest faith of anybody I've seen. Now, it's going to kind of foreshadow into this next point, but he's almost implying, hey, I'm going to see greater faith in people like this than the people in Israel. And what is it foreshadowing? It's the Gentiles, and how the Gentiles are going to have greater faith than the children of Israel. In what way? Here's a really important way that the Gentiles had more faith than the Jews, is the Gentiles never saw Jesus. The Gentiles, by and large, they never saw Jesus. They didn't see the miracles. They didn't see him walking. They never saw the crucifixion. They never said the resurrection. They are not the apostles, and yet they believe in him, whereas many Jews saw Jesus, saw him resurrected, saw the empty tomb, and they yet still didn't believe. And so it's even greater faith to believe. You know, Thomas doubts, and he's thinking like, man, you're doubting. There's many people that have believed in these things, and they haven't even seen them. And this is the type of action this guy has. He doesn't even have to see Jesus come and lay hands on this guy. He just knows he's going to be healed. He just says, hey, I know if you say it, I believe it. And you know, that's how we should take the Bible, that if we just read the Bible, we just believe it. We don't have to see something. We don't have to have someone come down from heaven and show us. We don't have to be physically experiencing it. We can just see the Word and believe it like the Roman centurion. Hey, if God said it, I believe it, and I know it's true. And you know, that's the type of faith that Christians need to start having. That's the type of faith that this Gentile, which we follow like suit, we're kind of Gentile, we should have a similar faith. And of course, what does God want to do? He's going to replace people that don't have faith with the people that do have faith. And he mentions that here in verse 11. And I say in you that many should come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness. There should be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So east and west, what are you talking about? Gentiles. Many of the Gentiles are going to come and they're going to literally sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Jews are going to see that in the day of judgment. They're going to see all these Gentiles hanging out and they're thinking like, those are our guys. And they're like, no, we're not with you. And they are yet children of the kingdom. They are literal the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet they're going to go to hell. And the many of the people that were not the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are going to be in heaven with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And notice, I like this, he says in verse 11 that many shall come. So hey, the Gentiles, a lot of people are going to get saved of the Gentiles and we see that. We see the Gentiles by number, outnumber the Jews as far as those who get saved and end up believing in Christ. And it really changes the course of history because for history, prior to Jesus Christ, there's only one nation that worships the Lord. It's Israel. Israel is that one nation. It's that one country, it's that one area where people worship the God of the Bible. And after his death, the resurrection, the gospel spreads. And then you have many nations making Christianity its official religion, many nations accepting Christ, many churches being spread out throughout all the world, which is a unique thing to history. There was not times in the past where you're having this religion permeate all other countries and all other nations. The other nations are pagan and heathen. You have the Greeks. You have, prior to that, you have the Babylonians. Prior to that, you have the Assyrians. You have a lot of just paganism and idolatry and heathenism. And it's not until after the gospel is spread that you have Christianity as a religion coming into many nations and multiple nations. So this was kind of a mystery that was hid to Israel. They thought, we're just going to be that one nation that's with God forever. But because of the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, he ended up dissolving that nation so that many nations and that the Gentiles as a whole could have Christianity and could have churches everywhere. This is contrary to virtually most churches today, what they teach on Zionism. But, you know, it's just what the Bible teaches. And, you know, the nation of Israel was discarded because of their lack of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now he has a spiritual nation that he cares for, not a physical nation, a spiritual nation of all believers. And we are part of that spiritual nation. And, like, that kind of seems weird when you say that because you're thinking, like, what's a spiritual nation? But think about this. When we go to the Bahamas, we're not in America, but we're still Americans. I mean, most of us, I think, are Americans. I don't know. Don't tell me if you're not. But I assume that we're pretty much all Americans, you know. And so when we're in Bahamas, we didn't stop being Americans. We're just there sojourning. And here's the thing. We are citizens of Israel but the Israel which is in heaven. And we're all just sojourning on the earth. But we are part of the nation of Israel even though we don't live in a physical Israel because there is no more physical Israel anymore. And those who live in the Middle East in what's called modern-day Israel, it's just fake, spiritually speaking. It's not, obviously, it really exists and there's really a nation and there's really people there, but it's not the Israel that's mentioned in the Bible. It's a fake Israel in the context of the Bible. And so what we have to understand is there is no real place physically and so we are God's chosen people. Now, of course, that place is still considered, I think, holy in God's opinion just because in the end times the Bible does say that the Antichrist is going to stand in the holy place and declare himself God. So I think that Mount Moriah is still special and that God is going to literally perform a lot of end times things in that geographic location of the world. But I do not believe that he wants us as spiritual Israel to live only there or to just try to build a nation there or care, frankly speaking, who even lives there. The Bible says that we should go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. So our mission is not to build up a kingdom in Israel. Our goal is to preach the Gospel to every nation. And that makes sense being in America because as Americans we pretty much have the best rights when it comes to traveling. We pretty much have the most privilege when it comes to using our passport to go into all kinds of countries, all kinds of areas. We're probably the richest nation by most metrics and so by being in the richest nation we're going to have more resources given to us. If you work in the richest area you're going to make the most money and if you make the most money then you have that much more resources to be used for the kingdom of God, for building the church, for doing missions trips, for going out and preaching the Gospel. I should want to maximize all the resources God has given me, living in the area where I can do the most for the Lord, living in an area where I can maximize my potential, the skills and the seeds and the things that God has given me and make as much money as I can for the kingdom of God and use the children that God's given me and use the wife He's given me and the church and the missions opportunities and just everything that I have. I think as Americans we are pretty much setting ourselves up in a position to accomplish this goal the best by going out into all the world and preaching the Gospel to every creature. And you know what? We will be those people who sit by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob while we watch the fake Israel cast out into outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. Look at verse 13, and it says, And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee, and his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. So even when he goes back and checks, he's like, hey, what time did you get healed? It's right when Jesus said it. It's the same hour. It's like, man, that's crazy. Verse 14, And when Jesus was coming to Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid and sick of a fever, and he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto them. When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirits with his word and healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. So in Isaiah 53, probably the most famous Old Testament reference of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the book of Isaiah, chapter 53, it tells us that He's going to bare our sicknesses and our infirmities, but that's in a couple contexts. Number one, this, about how when He came for His ministry, He healed everybody. Everybody that came unto Him, He healed everybody that had the devils, everybody that had sickness. And I think this is important because verse 1 to verse 17 is all about healing. And we see in this chapter a couple things that are really important to point out. Number one is He heals leprosy, then palsy, then a fever. And what I think you kind of see is it says like the most extreme illness, then kind of like a middle, and then kind of like the most minor. And I think that what He's trying to illustrate is that He even cares about the most minor sicknesses, illnesses, and discomforts that we go through. Like He's not only willing to heal big sicknesses, but even little ones, and not only just little ones, even big ones, so it's kind of a spectrum. You kind of have major, moderate, minor when it comes to sicknesses and illnesses. Another thing that you have to notice is that every single person got healed. Now what is the significance of this to us today? Because this is what the Pentecostals would say, let's go around and heal everybody of every sickness. But that's not the context I believe for us today. But I do believe this has a modern-day context. And you know what that is? It's called spiritual healing. It's the spiritual healing. Now what do we think about this? Jesus heals people spiritually speaking when we preach the gospel. And all they have to do is just simply believe. They just believed and it was done unto them as their faith was. They believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and they're saved. What kind of people? People with a lot of big sins, people with moderate sins, and people with even minor sins. He heals everyone. And He heals every single person that comes unto Him. Whosoever believeth shall have everlasting life. So we see these parallels of when we go out and we preach the gospel, those that have big illnesses, moderate illnesses, and minor illnesses from a spiritual perspective, they get healed when they put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and they're saved. And that's the important message here. That's the thing that we need to realize we need to go out and we need to do. And of course the Lord Jesus Christ wants us to all be healed. He wants us to all receive that salvation. There's healing in His wings. And of course that's what Isaiah 53 is ultimately pointing to is not a physical deliverance, not just a physical healing, but a spiritual healing that comes when we believe on Jesus Christ and He heals us of all of our sins and He heals us of that position that we were in. Now let's keep reading here. It says in verse 18, Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave commandments apart unto the other side. A certain scribe came and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee with a sword of thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes and the birds of deer have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me and let the dead bury the dead. So you have a couple people that want to follow Him. You get a couple people that are excited. Not only they want the healing, they want to follow. And first of all, he's saying like, you know, this journey is not really that comfortable. It's not that exciting because I don't even know where I'm going to stay. We don't have this thing mapped out. I don't even know where I'm going to go. I'm just going to enter into a village. We're going to ask who's worthy and we're just going to stay with those people. Are you sure you really want to follow me because we're not just going to go stay at the Ritz-Carlton. We've already got tickets or something. You know, we don't know. Now, it doesn't mean that he always stayed in a humble abode, but it's just saying there's no certainty. He doesn't know where he's going to go. He's just traveling and wherever he stays, he stays. The second person says, Hey, I want to follow you, but I need to first go to my father's funeral. Now, I don't know, this is a really interesting thing because of any excuse you could probably give, this is like one of the best excuses, I think. Like if there was any reason to like not follow Jesus right away or to just put it on pause for just a second, I would think your father's funeral is about as high as it's going to get. Now, maybe there's other ones too, like your wife's got to get birth or something. I'm not trying to make a competition here. I'm just saying this is arguably one of the most important things to some of us, to all of us and in life generally. It's not something you should miss. I don't think Jesus is saying miss your father's funeral. I think what he's trying to illustrate is following Jesus is so important that you should be willing to even sacrifice your own father's funeral in the pursuit of following Jesus Christ. And I don't know what that really looks like practically speaking, but maybe it's someone's in a foreign country or foreign land or they live somewhere and to serve God, they need to travel or they need to go somewhere else. And by being that far away from their family, they could miss important events like this in their life. And by missing important events like this in their life, it is a sacrifice. But he's saying if you're going to follow Jesus, you have to sometimes even be willing to make sacrifices of some of the most important events in your life, like a father's funeral. Now again, if you have opportunity to go to your father's funeral, I'm saying go to your father's funeral. I don't think that the Bible is saying don't go to your father's funeral. I think what the lesson is here is if there was a push come to shove and I need to serve Jesus and that's going to cause me to miss out on important life events, or I need to go to these important life events, I should be willing to follow Jesus, whatever that looks like. And that can be really difficult for people. I get it. But notice he says, let the dead bury their dead. What does that mean? Well, I want to look at a couple of verses. Go if you would to 1 Timothy. Keep your finger and go to 1 Timothy 5. I think this is important to think about what this could mean because what is following Jesus really mean? What does it look like? What is the point? Jesus said in his disciples, if you follow him, he's going to make you a fisher of men. He says if you're abiding in the vine, you're going to produce fruit. So the reality is following Jesus and abiding in the vine, all these different things, being a disciple is about getting people saved, folks. That's what it really means. It's about producing fruit. And if you're not producing fruit, then it's dead. I mean, if you're not really doing anything, then it's dead. That doesn't mean you're literally dead. It means it's just dead in the sense that it's not producing any fruit. If I have an orchard and I have all these trees and there's a tree that has no fruit on it, I'm like, man, this tree's dead because it's not producing anything. Whereas the tree that's producing fruit, you're not going to say that that's dead. So what does Jesus want people to do? Jesus wants people to just get plugged in to being a follower and a disciple, meaning that they're producing fruit in their lives. Now, some people get confused on this. They think that if they go to church and they read their Bible and they pay tithes and they're going to their job, that they're not dead, even though they may never preach the gospel to anybody and may never accomplish anything. You know what? That's not true. If you're just not going to preach the gospel, if you're just not going to reach anybody, I mean, I would argue if you're giving money to the church and that money's being used for preaching the gospel, maybe you have a little bit of life in you. But if you're not really doing anything, you're pretty much dead. And the Bible says in 1 Timothy 5 about widows, look at what it says in verse 6. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. Someone that's living of yourself, living of pleasure, living of what you want, living of the world, you're not doing anything. You're just dead in that sense. So we need to make sure that we're not dead. Go to James chapter number 2. Go to James chapter number 2. Is it true that you could have a family where they're all saved, but some are just not living for God, they're living in pleasure, and they would be dead? And you that are actually living for God and serving God and getting people saved and doing the work, you're alive. He says, hey, why don't you let the dead brothers and sisters go bury your dad, and why don't you actually keep producing fruit? Don't get distracted and start doing nothing again and being dead. Let the dead bury the dead. Why can't they take care of it? And I mean, that's the emphasis of James chapter number 2. Look at verse 17. Even so, faith that if hath not works is dead, being alone. Just believing in the Lord Jesus Christ does not produce works. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ gives you salvation. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ gives you eternal life, and you're saved. But then you have to choose every day to walk in that faith. You have to walk according to the Spirit. You have to choose to be alive. I kind of use this analogy with other people, and I say, I could hand out free phones, and I could say, hey, every single one of you that wants this, all you have to do is come down and ask me, and I'll just give you a phone. But here's the thing. If you don't charge it, it's going to be dead, and you can't use it. So if you want to use this thing, you've got to charge it. And that's the reality. God is just handing out eternal life to all of us. He's giving us a new spirit. But if we're not charging it up, we're not using it, then it's kind of meaningless. As far as for other people, at least, as far as using it, it's not going to really accomplish much. Obviously, you still have it. You can still get into heaven because you've got that ticket of eternal life, but if you're not charging it up, and if you're not using it, it really doesn't burn. It's not trying to talk to me or something. All right. It's not dead, folks, okay? So we need to make sure that we're actually doing something for the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it was kind of meaningless. It's kind of meaningless if I just hand people stuff, and they just don't use it, right? What if I say, hey, here's your car back, but the battery's dead? What are you going to do? Hey, I have a car. It's dead. It's on the phone, but it's dead. Hey, I'm a Christian, but I'm dead. Well, then you're not going to really do much for the Lord Jesus Christ, are you? Okay. And what does it really mean to be a follower? You're producing fruit. You're producing fruit. And that's what he wants you to do. So when he says, let the dead bury their dead, he's saying, hey, let all the dead people do stuff because I don't really care. They're not stopping production. If you're dead, there's no loss in production by you continuing to be dead. But if you're alive, if you're actively following the Lord Jesus Christ, don't get distracted in dead activities and stop producing fruit. No, continue and stay in producing fruit and do what's right. And there could be people, hey, they get plugged into a church, they get plugged into soul winning, they're doing right, but then something important happens, maybe even a family thing, and they decide, you know what, I'm going to just go and do that for a while now. I'm not going to stay plugged in church. I'm not going to keep preaching the gospel. I'm not going to still do what's right. And that's really the question. If you really want to follow me, you have to be willing to even sacrifice really important events to you, even family events. And it's not like you necessarily have to always skip your father's funeral. That's not what the Bible is saying. Go back to Matthew chapter 8. It's just saying if push comes to shove, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. And you really, this is what you would have to say and be honest. You cannot do everything that the world's doing and be an active producer of fruit. You're not going to be able to go to every funeral of all the family members, every wedding, every basketball game, every graduation. I mean, I only have so much time off. Who gets unlimited time off from their job? Oh, yeah, no one, right? I get limited time off from my job. You get limited time off from your job. What are you going to pick? I'm going to pick, okay, I'm going to pick all the family events. I'm going to go to all my uncles' weddings and cousins' weddings and family's weddings, every quinceanera, every whatever event. I mean, if I go to every quinceanera, I'm never going to go soloing on the weekends. I mean, they have one every weekend. If I'm going to go to every birthday party and every funeral and every wedding and every just hangout and every reunion and every holiday, and some of us even, not me, praise God, but some of us have mixed families where we have, you know, step-parents and in-laws. I mean, you have like eight Christmases to go through or something like that, and you don't even want to go to any of them. And I'm just saying, like, if you're to just do what the world does and be involved in every family event and every activity, then it would be like, okay, can you go to the Bahamas for a week? No, I can't get that much time off because I got to go to all these other things. Or, hey, can you go to Mexico with us? No, I can't do that. Hey, do you want to go soloing on Saturday? No, we got this quinceanera. No, we got this thing. And look, I'm not saying don't go to these events. I'm not saying don't show up at someone's wedding. I'm not saying don't go to the baseball game. Hey, if your kid's playing a soccer game or a baseball game, there's no problem going to it. I'm not saying don't invest in your family and your life at all, but I am saying this, you can't have both. You can't do all of the events that the world's going to do and you could do and also just be a consistent follower of Jesus Christ and constantly producing fruit. And at some point, Jesus is saying, hey, just let the dead bury their dead. Why don't you just—Jesus is sitting here preaching to people, and he's like, hey, your mom and brother want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to them. I'm talking to who I want to talk to. I'm hanging out with who I'm going to hang out with. I want to hang out with the people that are going to produce fruit, and we're going to do the work of God together. And if other people don't want to do the work of God with us, well, let the dead bury their dead. And sometimes we have to make that tough decision to say, hey, I want to be a disciple. I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And very few people are going to choose that. Very few people are going to want to be a disciple, want to be a follower, and yet that is what Jesus wants us to do. Jesus wants us to make those difficult decisions. And, of course, He will reward us accordingly if we make these kind of sacrifices. You know, the Bible talks about giving up father and mother and wife and lands and children for the gospel's sake. What does that mean? What does that look like? And, again, it's not to say we should neglect the duties and the responsibilities God's given us. We should be the best fathers and husbands and wives and children and everything. We should make sure we're good workers on the job. We want to make sure we have certain obligations we have to do no matter what. And we want to do those great. But then we all have free time. We all have some extra time. We all have that extra ability to do something. And you get to choose what that's going to be. Are you going to choose to put that extra time being a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ? Or are you going to go to the funeral? I don't really like funerals anyways. I'm not saying, look, obviously when my dad dies I'm going to go to his funeral. But if there was some reason I couldn't, you know, because I'm involved in some spiritual thing, then I can't. And the right decision would be to just serve God no matter what the situation is. Go if you would to verse 23. It says, And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves, but he was asleep. And the disciples came to him and woke him, saying, Lord, save us, we perish. And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? So we kind of transition to another aspect where the Lord Jesus Christ is traveling with them, he's trying to get away from the crowds, they go on a boat, he's asleep, and there's this terrible storm. They're afraid of literally dying, and they wake him up and they ask him for deliverance. But he kind of gets mad at them, and he's like, O ye of little faith. And of course, I mean, I can't blame them, because I don't really like water. Like, I'm not a big person on water, I'm not that interested in it. And if it was like storming, and you're rocking, and there's ocean, I guarantee I'd probably be hugging the center of the ship, or being like, hey, pssst, wake him up, or like throw a rock, and be like, I don't know. You know, I'd be like, hey, you know, it's raining, you know, like, what's going on? I'm sure I would be, like, thinking the same thing. I'm sure I would be terrified. But Jesus is actually mad at them, saying like, hey, why are you so afraid of the storm and the rain? And logically, it makes sense. You think God's going to spend this much time and effort and energy to put the Son of God on this ship, and then you're all going to die, and it's just a storm? You know, it probably doesn't really make that much sense. But just, you're in the moment, and you start getting nervous, and you know, that's just kind of how life is. I think sometimes we don't trust God in circumstances or in situations, and you're thinking, like, why would God bring me to this point just to let me just die some weird way or something? Like, that doesn't really make much sense. And so a lot of times we need to just trust God and just say, hey, you know what? This might look bad, or this might be difficult, or it might be a time when people will be afraid, but I'm just not going to Google WebMD, okay? And I'm not just going to look and see, like, what every scary, weird thing is, and think that my children have every infectious disease, and think that we're all going to die, and just kind of be, like, sometimes irrational. This is a pretty rational fear. Sometimes we can even be irrational, can't we? And so I have to do it myself. If we Google, it's never going to be, like, everything's fine. Like, I've never seen that article, right? You never Google, and it's just like, don't worry, no problem, nobody's ever had an issue with this, it's great. Hey, you're a Christian, don't worry about this. It's pretty much just like, you're probably going to die, and most people have serious illnesses, you're probably going to have a brain tumor, you probably will become mentally handicapped after this, and it's just like, you're like, we have to freak out, go to the hospital now, call 911. And look, if you have a legitimate medical condition, please call 911, right? If you have serious issues, you know, if a giant spider bites you, figure out something, right? But I'm just saying, sometimes we can be a little bit more fearful than we need to be about life circumstances, about life situations, and we need to just trust God, and we need to realize that sometimes it seems like that storm's never going to end, but it will. And again, this is the problem, verse 26, why are you fearful? God just doesn't want us to live a life constantly in fear. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. And I think this is so easy to say and so hard to do, is we just need to have the serenity to just accept that whatever happens is what God ultimately wanted, and we're just going to be okay with it. And I think a lot of times we're afraid of hypotheticals that never even happen. We're afraid of situations that weren't even a legitimate concern or legitimate fear. And I think that God just doesn't want us to live a life of paralysis, being paralyzed, being fearful, being intimidated of things that are just not going to happen or not really happening. We should be more concerned with things that are happening than things that haven't even happened, and then even things that are happening. Sometimes we have to just step away from it and say, you know, I don't think we're in trouble. We've got Jesus on the boat. And as a church, I think we've gone through some storms, and we should have been like, hey, I think we're going to be okay because we have Jesus on board. Hey, we're just going to do this, and he just doesn't want us to be afraid. And look, I think that fear, you can't necessarily stop yourself from having a natural inclination of danger. Like, when danger is approaching or there's a dangerous situation, you're going to be a heightened sense of awareness. You can be like, okay, I need to do something or be cautious here. But what he ultimately wants us to do is just, when we feel afraid, just go to him and say, you know, help me to not be afraid, and ask him to encourage us and to give us peace and to give us comfort. And, you know, even though they were fearful, at least they went to him, and he healed them, right? I mean, he healed the situation, he fixed the situation. He rose, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. I think that there's a foreshadowing here of the end times, of that, for Christians, there's going to be a time of great storm and tribulation and difficulty, and what he doesn't want us to do is be fearful. And I think, you know, even in Revelation, the Bible's telling him, like, some people are going to die, but he still doesn't want them to be afraid. He's just saying, be thou faithful in death. So, like, to me, you just kind of have to accept, like, hey, if I'm going to die in this storm, I'm going to die. But I probably won't, so I might as well just, you know, go out of the bank. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We're not careful to answer the endless matter. We know he can deliver us. I don't know how confident they were. Obviously, it's got to be, I mean, there's got to be a little bit of just, like, I'm about to be thrown in the fire, and you're kind of nervous about that. But they were willing to do it. They were willing to go through that. They weren't going to bow down. They have enough courage and enough bravery to just not bow down. And I think that's the kind of courage that we need to have as Christians, to say, you know what? I don't, I feel uncomfortable. I may not like it, but I'm just not going to bow. I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to allow the enemy to win. I'm just going to keep doing what's right. I'm just going to stay on the course, and, you know, we're just going to trust God. And usually, then the storm dissipates, and we're like, okay, yeah, I didn't need to worry about it. When you are afraid, obviously, we should still go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help us. But notice, I mean, He can command the winds and the sea. You know, this is a different sermon. I'm not going to belabor this point, but you kind of notice a theme in the Bible that all the weather patterns, God's somehow, like, directly involved. Like, either He's allowing it, or He's just directly causing it. He could be allowing it by allowing the devil to bring a whirlwind and break down the house. He could also be directly causing it, like, literally the hail and the fire coming out of heaven and destroying Sodom. The great flood. You just kind of see a consistent pattern of God controlling the weather. And, you know, I believe that God still today can control the weather. And, you know, we have to just somehow trust Him. There's many battles and all kinds of things about history where weather really impacted the outcome of that particular conflict. And so, you know, whatever's happening, if there's global warming, it's just God getting a little bit angrier every day. Every year, He's just getting a little angrier. But I don't even believe in global warming. It's kind of a scam, in my opinion. But that's, again, another sermon. I do want to go to one other place, though. Go to John 14. Just keep your finger and go to John chapter 14. Life can be scary, because this is a very dark world. There's a lot of evils. There's a lot of present dangers. But God doesn't want to give us that spirit of fear. So, here's another verse that I think is important to think about. Verse 24. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost whom my Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. So, Jesus is saying, I want to give you a special comfort, and that special Comforter is the Holy Ghost. And He says it's not the same comfort that the world has. The world's comfort comes through riches. It comes through a private security team. It comes through having the best doctors on your staff. It comes through just the carnal things that we have in this world. And He's saying, I'm not trying to give you that comfort. I'm trying to give you a peace that passes understanding. I'm trying to give you a Comforter, and that Comforter is the Holy Ghost. When I go through difficulty, when I'm nervous, when I'm afraid, how am I going to comfort myself? And let me explain it. It's this. It's this with the help of the Holy Ghost. And I'm just, like for me personally, I've had a lot of just like times where I'm pretty anxious or frustrated or nervous about things. And I just like start reading Psalm 1. This is what I always, I just start reading Psalm 1. And I'm telling you, by the time I get to about Psalm 10, it's usually my attitude's changed. And, you know, the Psalms have a lot of just comforting verses in them, especially about enemies, about difficulties, about problems, about trusting the Lord. And, you know, I think that section's a lot about enemies. There's other sections that are about other issues of life. I think that Psalms is just a good place to go to. And we allow the Holy Ghost to comfort us. You know, Psalm 23 is a great, is a great Psalm. And I mean, think of the disciples. They're sitting here on the ship. It's stormy. He's like, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. That could be a comfort to them instead of having to necessarily go and bother Jesus. And look, I'm not saying, you can't, we can't really bother Jesus. If we are afraid, we should still go pray to him. We should still ask him. But he gave us another comforter, and that comforter is the Holy Spirit. And he comforts us through bringing to remembrance the things that Christ commanded us, and it's through the word of God. And so we should read our Bibles when we're afraid, when we're nervous, when we're stressed, when we have problems, when we have issues. We should go to the scripture, and we should allow the Holy Ghost to comfort us through his word. And that'll give us a comfort that the world can't offer. There are comforts that the world offers. Painkillers, and pleasures, and chocolate cake. I mean, that's a good comforter, okay? And it can relieve you some, some issues. And you know, we need some of those things. Hey, if you're hungry, eat food. That's a great comfort, okay? There's even comfort food. Alright, this is southern food. I like comfort, who likes comfort food? Look at all the Sade people in this room, alright? There's actually a place back home that I love, and it's like southern comfort food. And I just love it. We visited our families last Christmas season, and we ate there, and I love that. I love, quote, comfort food. And you say, what's comfort food? It's stuff cooked in butter, you know what I mean? Okay, it's got butter, alright? Rolls with butter, yeah. Mashed potatoes with butter, okay. It has pot roast with gravy, yeah. That's the good stuff, okay? Now, you know, we have to work that off in the spring season, but it was a comfort. It was a comfort. Dieting is not much of a comfort, okay? And the reality is, you should realize that comfort food, this is comfort food. Now, and I'm trying to say Psalms. That's the comfort food. Leviticus is like your carrots, okay? It's like celery. It's like, hey, I'm kind of going through a hard time. You probably don't want to just only feast on carrots and celery. Maybe you should go to some comfort food, okay? Let's go get some salt. Let's get some gravy. Let's get some butter on our bread or whatever, and let's kind of get some of that. You know, the Bible talks about even singing Psalms when you're sad. And then when you're happy, you know, when you're sad, you're praying. You know, when you're happy, you should sing a Psalm. But, like, we can even sing some Psalms, and they can bring us, you know, a different mood, a different attitude. Maybe you're not happy, and singing the Psalm will bring you to that joy, will bring you that comfort. Go back to Matthew chapter number eight. Go to Matthew chapter number eight. You know, and a lot of things I'm saying, this is what people say. This is the Sunday school answer. This is what I always hear. It's just like, oh, you're just saying the Bible's the answer to everything. It's just like, but it is. Sometimes you just have to be reminded that, you know, we just got to keep going back to the manna that he gave us, and it's that daily manna. And that's what really does give us that comfort, though, and gives us that joy. It says in verse number 28, And when he was come to the other side in the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils coming out of the tombs, exceeding fear, so that no man might pass by that way. And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good way off from them, and heard of many swine feeding. So the devils saw them, saying, If thou castest out, suffer us, to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine. And behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told everything, and what was befallen to the possess of the devils. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts. You know what I like? This is way different than your Pentecostal meetings, when they have all these healings, and all these things. Notice how quickly Jesus is able to heal people. Go. That's it. Yeah, but they have to do these, like, two, three hour long sessions, and all these long prayers, and all this stuff. It's because they don't actually have any power. If you actually have power, you're just like, Go. And it happens. Now, he heals two men here. Other places, it just brings up one of note. One of the specific men in the story, who has the legion. Okay, so like, this is the story where you have the legion, and we realize he's possessed with many devils. It's like, we are many. And this is the same story, but there's another guy, apparently. One that maybe didn't have as many devils, or we don't know as much about that other individual. But there's two men here. They are possessed with devils. They recognize Jesus. Which I've always found fascinating. You know why I think that they recognize him? And again, this is my personal opinion. I think they recognize him because that's what Jesus looked like in heaven. Because it's like, a random guy just shows up, and there's like, Oh, I know him. That's Jesus. Obviously, he wasn't glorified. He's not in the glorified version of himself here. But obviously, I believe Jesus has always looked the same. And so, he just shows up. They're like, Well, I know who this guy is. This is Jesus. This is the son of the most high God. Just like Nebuchadnezzar. He sees Jesus for the first time. The form of the fourth is like the son of God. It's just like, Man, this is like the son of God. It's just like somehow you just instantly recognize him. You've never seen him, but somehow you just know. But at the same time, I think that these people had actually seen him. Obviously, these people hadn't seen him. It's the demons inside of him that have seen him. And so, they're the ones that can recognize Jesus. They recognize him, and they're begging him not to torment them. Because he has the power to torment them. Now, he tells them to go out into these swine in another parallel passage. It tells us it was about 2,000 swine that were feeding. They all run violently into the sea and die. Lots of lessons we can learn from this. Number one, Jesus cares way more about people than animals. Way more. I mean, he's willing to kill 2,000 pigs just to heal these guys. It wasn't even a matter of life or death. It was just a matter of healing. And he's willing to sacrifice all these animals. These animals, by going into the sea, they're not going to be useful anymore. They're not going to be used for meat. They're basically ruined. It's just a complete ruin. I was just thinking about, like, how much money is this? Now, I looked online, and prices vary. But a lot of farms offer you a whole hog. You can just buy a whole hog online. So, I was like, how much is a whole hog? Many of the sites were saying $700. Some were more, some were less. Just throwing out a number. $700 for a whole hog. Times 2,000. You know how much that is? $1.4 million. $1.4 million. Now you might understand why these people said, hey, get out of here. But notice that God is not putting a price tag on salvation. Money doesn't matter to him. He's willing to literally ruin $1.4 million for these two guys. That's $700,000 a head. You know, I've been talking with Evangelist Fur about this. We were wanting to calculate how much it costs us to get a salvation. And, you know, praise God, we don't have to spend $700,000 to get one salvation. We don't even have that much money. That's more than our budget for the year. But, look, Jesus says, hey, I'm willing to spend $700,000. On just one person. That just tells you how much Jesus actually values human life. That he just cares about people that much. That he'd be willing to just ruin all of that money, all of that work, all of that effort. Just on these guys to get healed. And they were kind of the lower guys of society, too. They're not like the best guys of society. These are people that are outcasts. People have given up on. People want nothing to do with. And yet he's willing to come and heal them. And, you know, a lot of our soul winning, especially in this part of the region of our metroplex, we're going into areas where people have kind of given up on the people we're going to talk to. They've given up on them. They're the outcasts of society. Nobody really likes them. Nobody really wants them. Yet we can go in there and preach the gospel to them and give them salvation. And we shouldn't care about material possessions and about money. And notice the people that come out to hear about this. They're not excited a couple of guys got healed. They're disappointed that they lost money. And, you know, a lot of people, they're not interested in seeing people saved if it costs them money. And especially if it's going to cost them a lot of money. They're not willing to give up money for the things of God and for salvation or to go to the outcasts of society or to go to third world countries or to go to places that people, you know, maybe it's a difficult area to go or not a fun place to go. Look, you know, I mean, this is my personal opinion, but I just love America. Like, I just love America. I think it's the best place to live. Maybe there's better places and I just don't know it. But I'm just saying when I visit other places, I want to get back home. I just like it here. I just love it here. And there are places in this world that are just not that much fun to be in. I've been in a lot of places and I'm just like, man, I just not want to live here. You know, there's places that are just very destitute, very poor, impoverished. You know, when I lived in, when I went to Fiji and I'm going to these people's houses and they have zero furniture. I'm just thinking like, man, that's rough. Obviously the weather's nice, but I just like, I don't want to live here. I wouldn't want to live in these kind of conditions. You go, I go into Mexico. People are living very impoverished lives. You know, you walk into the house, they don't have a living room. The first room's a bedroom and the second room's a kitchen. And then that's it. You know, most of us probably have a nicer dwelling place than most of these people. Yet we should be willing to spend our money and our effort and energy to go to these places and to reach these people and get them saved and not just sit on a bunch of cash and not use it for the things of God. I mean, how many Christians are sitting on $1.4 million and they're doing nothing? You know, I don't have riches. I don't have a ton of money that I'm sitting on. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a ton of money. I don't think there's anything wrong with making tons of money. But boy, I wish I could so that I could just invest even more into the things of God. I wish I could take more money. I wish I had a million dollars to give away. I wish I could make that kind of money or have that kind of funds and just say, hey, let's sell the flock and let's just get another couple of people saved. Let's go out and do even more for the things of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, and again, I'm not saying that we can't still have a house and still have cars and still take trips and do things for our family. We still need to live our lives. But I'm just sitting like there's no point in just laying up treasures on earth, just having millions and millions and millions of dollars that I don't even need that have no purpose. Obviously, if you're saving money for a purpose, maybe a church is saving money to buy a building or something so they can get more people, more soul winners, or maybe you're saving money for I don't know, there could be a legitimate reason to save money. But if you just have no legitimate purpose for that money, you know, you save money to buy a house, save money to buy a car. There's reasons to save money. But if you have all the things you need and then a one point four million just sitting in the bank doing nothing. What would be the most spiritual thing to do is probably say, hey, maybe I should just use that for the thinking of God. Yet this this city is upset. Oh, we wasted all this money, we wasted all this effort, we wasted all this energy and they're mad. And they don't want that type of Christianity. They want a Christianity where they get to keep their one point four million dollars. They want Dave Ramsey to come in and make them another one point four million. And look, I'm not against Dave Ramsey's methods of getting out of debt or making money. But at the end of the day, a lot of times his goal is just to sit on a bunch of money at the end of the day. Take that money and use it. If you use the Dave Ramsey method, just get it to the point where you have the money and then use it for the kingdom of God. If that's what his message was, then I'm all for it. But I don't think that's what he usually says. And these people got upset. Now, I just want to make one last kind of comment about this this chapter as a whole, because I think there's this interesting theme in Matthew chapter number eight. I think that Matthew chapter number eight kind of signifies the Christian life as a whole. Because if you think about it, verses one through 17 is talking about that sickness being healed, which is like spiritual salvation, which is like getting saved. So in the Christian life, step one, get saved. Step two is you have to become a disciple. And to become a disciple, you have to start forsaking some family relationships, potentially family life circumstances. You have to make difficult decisions. That's what it means to be a disciple. And when you do these things, when you get saved and then you choose to be a disciple, you know what's going to happen? The storms of life. Then you're going to enter into parts of your life where you're going to actually have storms. You're going to tribulation. You're going to have difficulty. You're going to persecution. The Bible says, Yea, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Hey, if you're going to live godly, you're going to suffer persecution. Now, if you don't want to live godly, you may not be persecuted. You're going to be punished. Okay. If you don't live godly, you won't be persecuted. You'll be punished. And this is what's so funny to me. There's so many Christians out there that are constantly attacking us or, you know, our friends or other Christians. And I'm thinking like if you guys are so much more godly than me, where's your persecution? Right? I mean, if you're just so much more godly, where is all of your enemies? Where's all your persecutors? Where's all the things that come with actually being a disciple and a follower? Because if you're a follower and a disciple, you're going to have persecution. Yea and all. Did you know what the word all means, Calvinist? It means all. So if you are the most godly, God-fearing disciple, show me your persecution. Show me your enemies. Show me all these people attacking you. Why is it that you can't get censored off YouTube? Why are you prospering on YouTube? Why do you have no enemies? The only enemies you have are the people that you're constantly poking in the eye and they respond every once in a while. Well, it doesn't sound like you're actually following the Lord Jesus Christ. Because yea and all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. You will have the storms of life. And you know what? Don't give up. Don't be afraid. Don't quit. Just be comforted by the Holy Ghost. And then probably the ultimate test is going to come when it says, okay, but are you willing to give up the financial things in your life? How about your money? And really that's kind of the ultimate test. And you know a lot of people, if you look at the sower sowing the seed and you kind of see all those different layers, what was that last one that stops people? What's the one that comes in choking the word? The deceitfulness of riches. The deceitfulness of riches entering in choking the word lest it become fruitful. And you know a lot of people, they're going to get saved. And look in the story. Lots of people got healed. Not as many people followed. And then of the people that want to follow, not everybody got on the boat. And then of the people on the boat, some of them got afraid. And even on the boat, some of them weren't willing to give up the money. His name is Judas, okay? Because Judas is concerned more about money. He wasn't even saved. He skipped all steps, okay? But there's going to be people. Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. Not everybody is willing. Ananias and Sapphira kept back part of the price. They were disciples in a sense, but you know what? It's kind of the full package. Can you get saved? Can you start making changes where you're going to make family sacrifices and relationship sacrifices? Are you able to go through difficulties of persecution and affliction and enemies? And at the end of the day, where's your heart at? Are you going to spend your life serving God or mammon? Do you want the riches? And I think that Matthew chapter 8 is just a really great example because you think you're coming off of the Sermon of the Mount. He's giving you all these instructions. Then what are you going to do? What are you going to be like? Which person are you? Are you the person that got saved and walked away? Are you the person that asked to bury the dad and then went to the funeral? Are you the guy that got in the boat? Are you the guy that stuck with Jesus? Or are you Demas who kind of got distracted with the money? Where are you at? Who are you going to be? Well, that's for you to decide. And let us that have a desire and that new man to be a true disciple and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ You know what? I do want to stay with you. I do want to go to the end. I don't want to put my affection on money and treasure. I want to put my heart and affection on the treasures of heaven, the souls and the people that I can drag with me to Christ. You know, some people you have to drag to Christ. You've been at that door. I've been at that door. Hey, he still got saved. He's still going to be in heaven. And you know what? Sometimes we have to save with fear, even pulling them out of the fire. Let us have a desire to walk with a new man and to be the true disciples of Jesus. Let's close in prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for your word. Thank you for this great story. Thank you for all the miracles that you did in the Bible to give us great faith. I pray that you would help us to make the difficult decisions and to be true disciples and followers of you. I pray that you would help us to not be afraid when we go through the storms of life. And I pray that you would help us to not have a deceitfulness of riches enter into our heart, but rather we would desire to see people saved, no matter what the cost is. And I pray that you would help our church to produce more fruit this year, that you'd help to prune us and help us to just purge whatever issues that we have in our life or distractions, so that we can have even better fruit. And I pray that you would help bless this church to be used for your honor and glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. For our last song we're going to go to song number 415, Victory Through Grace. It's a great song to finish off the sermon with. Sing it out with heart on the first. Now it's time to conquer, who is this wonderful King? There's what we are, He's preaching in it, of His glory they sing. He's our Lord and King, He's dear and one, our divider. Hail the stars that forever, bright in His kingdom will shine. Not too strong is the battle, not too safe is the race. Thanks to the true and the faithful, victory is not missed through grace. So out of this last verse, everybody's singing really, really great. Let's do it a cappella. On the first. Carving out ends, still to conquer, Jesus our ruler of all. Drones and their sectors all shall perish, crowns and their splendors shall fall. Yes, shall the armies thou leadest, faithful and true to the last. Fighting thy nations eternal, rest when their warfare is past. Not too strong is the battle, not too swift is the race. Yet to the true and the faithful, victory is promised through grace. Excellent singing. We have a baptism this evening. Since the grace is coming for a baptism, have you trusted Christ your Savior? May I baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, buried in the likeness of His death, raised to walk in the image of God. Let's congratulate our baptism. God bless you. You