All right, if you have your Bibles, let's go ahead and open up to Romans chapter number one. It'll be where we start off tonight. The title of my message or our Bible study tonight is entitled Signs or Scripture. Signs or Scripture, and we've been trying to cover some things about rightly dividing the word of truth and how we can understand the Bible and how that sometimes there seems to be places in the Bible that go against each other, but when you understand where the pieces of the puzzle fit, you realize there's no contradiction at all. And tonight I'm going to deal with something that's very common. It's a common struggle, I think, with believers in all types of denominations, not just Baptist or anything like that. But I think it's a common struggle because there's so much of the miraculous throughout the Bible itself. And so I want to kind of focus on this tonight. Romans chapter one will be our first text, but the message is signs or scripture. In other words, how do we validate or authenticate God in our lives? Now, we just heard some testimonies, and that's what we call experiential, or things that you experience. It's existentialism, really. It's things that you've experienced in your life. I can tell you God is real because I've experienced him in my life. You say, well, that's very subjective. Well, it is. I can tell you what dream I had last night, too, and you can't refute that. Because I had the dream and you didn't. You say, well, it's very subjective. It is. And I want you to understand that. So if you just tell somebody, hey, God's real because I know God's real, OK. That's great, but is that how we authenticate our Christian belief? And so, I think Rightly Divine the Word is gonna help us with some of these things, and we're gonna go through some stuff. We're gonna start off here in Romans chapter number one, because first of all, we understand and we can authenticate our faith. You say, what's your faith? Well, first of all, it's belief in God. How do you even know God exists? Well, look in Romans chapter one, verse number 20. This is what we call general revelation. General revelation. Romans 1.20, notice what it says. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So basically what he's saying is all these invisible things that God's made from the beginning of the world, you can see them by what you see. You can understand them by what you see, the things that are made. The things that are made declare that there is a God. The next verse, you don't have to turn over to it, if you're taking notes, you can jot it down, is Psalm 19. Psalm 19 says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day into day are their speech, and night into night showeth knowledge. There is no voice nor language where there a sound voice is not heard. And so the heavens themselves and the creation itself cries out that there is a designer. If you were to walk down the road and you found this nice watch that my wife gave me on my 40th, it still works by the way, as long as you keep it in sunlight. I thought the thing had died, and we were contacting the company, and it does not have a battery. It's got some kind of solar deal. So I kept it in a drawer all the time, and I was losing time on it. It's a really nice watch. It's a good watch, a great anniversary or birthday gift, 11 years ago. If you were to find this walking down the road, you wouldn't think this thing just evolved out of the dirt. You would think somebody designed this thing. That's exactly what the heart of man sees when he sees the creation. You can't just look at the DNA and RNA of a person and think that that's just happenstance. And all the amazing facts of biology and all of the facets of life that we see, it cries out that there's a creator. We call that general revelation. Societies that deny the existence of God, they've been educated into that belief. They don't come at it naturally. Most societies throughout the history of the world have believed in the existence of God. Not always monotheistic, which is one God, sometimes polytheistic. But even in polytheistic religions, they will have a creator God or a supreme God. That's why in the Bible sometimes when it refers to God and it's dealing with Gentile, pagan nations, it'll refer to God as the most high God. Everybody know what I'm talking about? Melchizedek was the priest of the Most High God, because they recognized that there were other gods, but then even pagan societies realized there's the Most High, there's the Almighty God, there's the one and true God, the one that made everything. That's why Paul will say, God that created all things. And you know who that's who we're talking about, the true God. So that's general revelation. Now we have specific revelation. I'll give you a couple of cases of this. We won't turn because I want to get further on down the road so we can turn a few places. But this would be specific revelation in the Bible where God appears to people. And this does happen. For example, in Genesis 18 when Abraham is dealing with that situation when Lot's down in Sodom. And the angels come up and talk to Abraham and say, hey, we're gonna hide what we're about to do, and well, he's gonna be a great and mighty nation, so let's tell him what we're about to do. And they tell him they're about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham's worried because he knows Lot, his nephew, is living down there now. Well, when you read that passage, there are some angels standing there, but then the angels leave and go, and then the Bible says, Abram stood yet before the Lord. It's an appearance of God. It's an angel of the Lord. It's what he's called in the Old Testament. Sometimes God would appear to people in human form in that sense. It's an angel, an angelic form. In theology, we call it a theophany, that word theos. It simply means an appearance of God. And so you find cases like that. A good one I think I mentioned in one of my messages was Moses and the burning bush. Moses sees the bush burning. It's not consumed. He goes up there and what happens? God starts talking out of the bush. And so you have not just an appearance of God, but a voice of God. What about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? When they sin and they go and hide, they hear the voice of God talking to them. And then you have dreams in the Old Testament. You read about dreams. Abimelech, he was the king of Egypt down there and he had a dream and God spoke to him in the dream and said, hey, you don't need to touch Abram's wife, Sarah. You're a dead man, you're committing adultery. And even though he was a heathen, he knew it was wrong to take another man's wife. That shows you the conscience bears witness to God's law. And so that's a dream. Another good example, Genesis, that's Genesis 20, if you're taking notes. Genesis 31, this is Laban. In Genesis 31, Laban had a dream and God spoke to him and said, hey, don't you mess with my servant, Jacob. Don't touch him. And God spoke also to Jacob, Genesis 31, same chapter, verse number 10. He has the dream, he lays on the, he takes up the stones and sets them up for his pillows. I've never had a desire to have a pillow for a stone. I'm a little more spoiled than that. But he set up some pillows for stones and he lays there and he has that dream and he sees the ladder going from earth to heaven. And then we have Joseph, Genesis 37, he has those dreams and God shows him things that are gonna happen in the future by way of dreams. So we see that in the Bible. Take your Bible and let's go over to, go to Jeremiah 32. Just give you a kind of a couple of generic references to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. So when you think about the history of the world, you can think of it like this, real quick. God makes the whole world, obviously, and he creates Adam and Eve, and they begin to have kids, and before the flood took place, people lived to be a lot longer, so they're able to multiply, and man, the earth just Explodes in population and of course the society is very very wicked God drowns them out except for Noah Shem ham and Japheth and then they start everything over Genesis chapter number nine be fruitful multiply replenish the earth they start over and they start going bad real quick and They go to the plain of Shinar down in Babylon Iraq that area and they want to try to build a tower They want to have a big tower And there's all kind of things behind that. But the whole purpose was they didn't want God to spread them out. God wanted to spread them out and multiply them on the earth. They said, no, we're going to get together. Whenever you hear men talking about getting together, you better watch it. Because every time in the Bible, when men get together, they get together to push God out. God typically bust people up so they find God. That's why he separated the sons of Adam, he says, so they might seek after him, Acts chapter 17. But they all got together, so they said, we're gonna make a name so we're not scattered on the earth, and God said, I don't think so. And then the Tower of Babel happens, where God confounds the languages. And so he spreads them out that way, and he confounds the languages, and they can't talk. Can you imagine working on the Tower of Babel, and you're down there on the bottom, you say, hey, hey, will you take that rope and pass me down a hammer? And the guy says, you said what? He hears something else. So he throws the hammer down, you know. But they start speaking and they can't understand one another's tongue and they begin to go back and forth and that thing falls apart. And God says, forget the nations. And he calls out Abraham. He says, come here, Abraham. I'm going to make of you a great nation. and he takes Abraham, his descendants Isaac, and Jacob. From Jacob come the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob's name is changed to Israel. And that is why we have the Old Testament Bible. The Old Testament is basically a story of the children of Israel. And we have all of that in the Bible and it shows us with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says, I'm going to do some things and I'm going to show the entire world my power. and He does it through this nation. And notice here in Jeremiah 32, just a couple of verses here, the statements about what God did through the nation of Israel. Notice how He worked. Look in Jeremiah 32, come down to verse 20. which has set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this day, and in Israel, and among other men, and has made thee a name as at this day, and has brought forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs, with wonders, and with a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with great terror, and has given them this land which thou didst swear to their fathers, to give them a land full of milk and honey. So he says, look, I brought you out with signs and wonders. So when we think about what happens, we have Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you know, the story of Joseph and they have the big famine in the land. So they all wind up down in Egypt. And then when they're down in Egypt, they begin to multiply and they begin to multiply. And the Egyptians say, we don't like this. So the Egyptians enslave them and they make them slaves. And they're down in bondage and slaves. And God says, Moses, there's a burning bush. And he calls Moses out and he says, Moses, come now. And Moses says, now I'm 80 years old. He goes, yeah, now I'm ready to use you. Come now. And he takes Moses, and he calls Moses to deliver the people out of Egypt. You know how he does it? He says, Moses, I want you to go tell them that I'm God, and I'm going to take them out of Egypt. Moses says, I'm going to tell them you're who? You tell them that I am. You're what? Tell them I am. That's your name? Yeah, I am. That's the only statement a true deity can make about himself. It wouldn't be, I have been, or I was born on March the 10th. I am, he's always existed. He says, I am that I am. And he goes, well, I go tell them that the I am has sent me, they're gonna laugh at me. He goes, okay, I tell you what, stick your hand in your coat. Sir? All right, pull it back out. He pulls it out, it's full of leprosy. He says, stick it back in. He sticks it in, pulls it out, it's healed. He says, take your rod, what you got, a rod? Okay, a rod you use with your shepherding, throw it on the ground. He throws it on the ground, it turns into a snake. He says, pick it up. And he picks it up, turns back into a rod. He says, they're gonna believe you because of these signs. And that's how the nation of Israel begins, with signs. I mean, don't you think you could convince people if you went, you ever been to big places, you ever been to places where there's a lot of people, maybe you've been to Times Square before, man, you walk out of there, it's like, you get off the subway and it's like, people, people everywhere. Could you imagine if you shouted at the top of your lungs, hey, I'm about to prove to you Jesus Christ is true. And all of a sudden, the heavens opened up and Jesus Christ came down. I think that would get some attention. He said, hey, I'll prove to you, you better get saved because there's a real hell. And all of a sudden, the ground opened up and people could see hell. Man, you'd have some believers just like that. Or let's suppose you went to the hospital, maybe the children's ward. Hundreds of kids dying of cancer. And you said, hey, Jesus Christ is real. And you walked over there and started touching them. And every time you touched them, they got up and were healed. You wouldn't have to have a television show to beg for money. Once you did a few hundred of those, you'd have more money than you could hope for. That's how you know all these people on TV are fakes. You ever look at the salaries of some of those guys? 60 million, 100 million a year, and they're ministers of the gospel? I don't think so. They're fakes. And so God, what He does, He starts off with signs and wonders, and we have all these verses, I'm not going to read them all to you, but even with Nebuchadnezzar, and he sees these things because he's dealing with Daniel and the Jews in the captivity, he talks about the signs and the wonders, and God does these things, and that thing goes all the way through the history of the nation of Israel, all the way up to the time of Christ, and the greatest sign of all, Jesus Christ. Here is God Himself born of a virgin. What does it say in Isaiah? Here's the sign, a virgin is going to be with child and bring forth a son. His name should be called Emmanuel. which means God with us. The greatest sign of all here comes Jesus Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes and then He grows up and at 30 years of age He enters His ministry and the first miracle He turns water into wine. And He begins a series of miracles throughout His ministry. He goes up into Galilee and Capernaum and does all those miracles. And you can read about them in the Bible. There are all kinds of miracles but we Know that he did that to validate his ministers. Hey, I'll prove to you. I have power and He does these miracle. He cleanses the lepers. He heals the sick. He raises people from the dead Natural there's no trick to that. You can't just manufacture that when a guy has been in the grave four days John chapter number 11 you say Lazarus come forth and the guy comes out and that's why after that many people begin to follow Jesus and those Pharisees are like oh man we gotta stop this the whole world's gonna go after because that's you talk about validation that's the real stuff turn over if you will to John chapter number 20 John chapter number 20, the last part of the Gospel of John here. John's a great book to try to encourage people to read if they're not a believer because it's written to convince people. have a series of miracles throughout the Gospel of John as in all the Gospels. But John is written for that purpose so people may believe. But notice in John if you will chapter number 20 come down to verse number 30 the last couple of verses. John chapter number 20, verse number 30, and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His name. So there's the reason for those signs that people might believe. Let's look over at John the Baptist and some of the struggles he had. Look at Matthew chapter 11. Look at Matthew chapter 11. This is early on in Jesus' ministry. Jesus is baptized by John. John was the herald. He was the forerunner to kind of prepare the nation for the Messiah. And John got locked up in prison. And John is a Nazarite. He's really the last of the Old Testament prophets. And John's a preacher, a prophet. He gets locked up in jail by Herod. And he knows about Christ and obviously knows what he's doing. And he sends word to Christ. Look in Matthew chapter 11 verse 2. When John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which you do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." How do you validate the ministry? You validate it by the signs. It's all through the book of Acts. 1 Corinthians 1.22 is a good verse to memorize. It's kind of short. It says, for the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom. And so God set the Jewish nation up, and what He did, He would prove to Him that He was God by doing these signs, these wonders and miracles. The greatest sign of all during Christ's earthly ministry was when He pointed to the crucifixion and the resurrection. He said, I'm not going to give you any more signs, but the sign of Jonah the prophet. Jonah was in the belly of the whale, or as we sometimes say it, welly of the bale. You ever mistake and say it that way? Kids, that's kind of a fun way to say it, welly of the bell. He was in the belly of the whale, not the welly of the bell. Three days and three nights, he says, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So he prophesies about his death, burial, and resurrection. He gave 12 prophecies about his resurrection and crucifixion, and they all came true. And so Jesus did those signs, he did those wonders, and did those miracles. Okay? And you see that thing extend over after the resurrection. Look at Mark 16. Mark chapter 16. There are many apostles in the New Testament. There are primarily the 12 that we know of listed in Matthew chapter 10. We know mainly Peter, James, and John, and Matthew, some of the common ones that we talk about, Andrew, But there's 12 of them, and they're listed in Matthew chapter 10, and those apostles are chosen by God to be witnesses of the resurrection, and they had what we call the apostolic gifts, signed gifts. You see it here in Mark chapter 16. Notice what he says in Mark chapter 16, verse number 17. signs shall follow them that believe. In My name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." All of these signs take place in the book of Acts. We see him speak with tongues, Acts chapter two. We see it in Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 18. You see it throughout the book of Acts. You see, obviously, laying hands on the sick and they recover. Acts chapter 10, Peter. You see it there with Paul, Acts chapter 13, I believe. And you go through these different signs, you see them all through the book of Acts. And these apostles and their converts have these signed gifts. What about having a deadly serpent? A good example of that is Acts chapter 28. Paul and the crew are on that ship, and the ship gets in a shipwreck. They go up to the island there at Miletus, and they're sitting around trying to get warm, and they gather up these sticks and everything, and a viper jumps out and bites Paul on the hand. And all the natives are like, oh man, that's an omen. This guy must be a murderer. Vengeance suffered of him not to live. And Paul just shakes the thing off and keeps on working. And then they're like, oh, he must be a God. And Paul's like, I'm not a God, I'm a preacher. And Paul actually heals a guy there of a bloody disease that he had. And he does some miracles there. So we see that in the book of Acts and that thing extends over because God is obviously still dealing with the Jewish nation. And you understand that as you go through the book of Acts, especially when you get to chapter 28, Paul finally says in Acts 28, salvation has gone to the Gentiles and they'll hear it. And so you wanna understand this because when you deal with your Christian experience and you try to match it up verbatim to the Bible, you might have some questions. Because you're standing over your loved one and no preacher or apostle has offered to raise them from the dead. or you have a disease and although we do get some good reports and thank God for those good reports, we don't always get good reports. And so you may compare this and here's my thing tonight is, do you base and validate your Christian experience on signs or do you base it on scripture? And we live in a great day and age because all you have to do as a sinner is to trust Jesus Christ as your savior. and you put your faith in what he did on Calvary's cross for you, he will save you. No strings attached. My faith. You believe on him. And that's the great thing about the gospel, the grace of God, it's God's grace. Grace, G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense. Salvation was hard for him. He had to shed his blood. But salvation's easy for us. So that's grace. But in this age, we live in a different time when you compare it to the majority of the Bible. Because when you go look at the majority of the Bible, you had validation with all kind of miracles. Here's the disciples and there's Jesus walking on the water. Matter of fact, they got to see Jesus. John says, we got to handle him. So who do they call? They call him the word of life, Jesus. Can you imagine laying, like John, I think on the Passover, he's kind of laying there against him, leaning up against Jesus there, because the Passover, they didn't sit at tables like Europeans, they sat on the ground. And John's kind of leaned up against him there, he might even hear that heart. Can you imagine hearing the heartbeat of Jesus? God in the flesh? We don't get to see that. You know what you get to see? You get to see 66 books, 1,189 chapters, right here. Now you have all the validation of all the stuff that's in here. The walls of Jericho, you can go back and start studying history. The histories of the Bible are true. When the archeologists begin to dig things up, they find out, you know what? They said for years King David didn't exist. Well, they kept digging around and then they started finding, oh, there's this place called Zion. Oh, there's this king called David. Yeah, he existed. And they start digging up all this stuff and they start finding out all these histories in the Bible are true. And the miracles in the Bible are true. And you can believe it. But we live in a day and age where we don't look for signs. We trust the scripture. We're not looking for miracles. We're listening to a message. You know, there's always those emotional scenarios, you know, where you have something that happened in your life that seems supernatural. And I'm not discounting that. Don't go out of here tonight and think that I'm some kind of fatalist. I look at things this way. Every gift comes from God. The miracle of life is a miracle. And when you have little coincidences in your life that work out a certain way, I don't call them coincidences, I call them God. There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, the Lord did this. The Lord opened this door for me. The Lord allowed this. But there again, you have to be careful whenever you kind of put God in your little box. Because if you're always looking at miracles to validate the fact that God's real, what about when God doesn't answer your little prayer? You keep driving around and the hot donut sign doesn't come on. So I knew it was a sign because the Krispy Kreme hot donut sign came on and there was a parking spot right in front, so I pulled it in. We can't validate our faith on miracles, we've gotta go on the message. The New Testament is replete with verses about knowing, knowing, knowing. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, Romans 8, 28. I know whom I'm believing and I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which I've committed in him against that day, 1 Timothy chapter one. Look over in 1 John real quick. Signs or scripture? What do you base your faith on? Do you believe God exists because you had some dream or some vision or maybe near-death experience? Or do you believe God exists because there's a supernatural book in your lap? I think we have ample proof. God's a very reasonable God. He says, come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. He gives us a book that tells us about these things, and we can base our faith on concrete evidence. Look in 1 John, chapter number five, here's the personal evidence. Obviously, we have the existential argument. I know that I'm saved, not just because the book tells me I'm saved because I've trusted Christ. I know I'm saved because inside my soul, my spirit, my body, I know that I'm saved because I've trusted Jesus as my Savior, and he's inside me. You can argue with me, you can say all these things, just like one of our testimonies tonight. God's a God to me personally. I know God. I know Jesus. I've prayed to Him. I've talked to Him. That's a personal argument. I know it's very subjective. But boy, this thing right here is subjective right here. These are perfect words God left us. You say, well, I'm going to disprove it. Well, you can't disprove the histories. You can't disprove the science of the Bible. 1500 BC, Moses tells them you need to use running water when you wash your hands. They were not doing that in the 1800s. Modern science didn't even get that in the 1800s. I'm talking 1500 BC. There's all kind of things in here to show you and to validate God's proof. The prophecies of the Bible are just off the map when you consider statistical probability. There's no way the Bible's the product of human intellect at all. There's no way. No other religious book even attempts. They call Mohammed a prophet. You ever heard of that, Mohammed the prophet? He couldn't prophesy anything. He couldn't tell you the day that somebody was gonna eat eggs for breakfast. I mean, he was an imbecile. Nonetheless, he was a pedophile, had an eight-year-old wife. Got millions of Muslim followers that their great founder was a pedophile. But when you think about Islam and you think about the supposed prophecies, where are they at? What about Joseph Smith? Where are his prophecies? He's supposed to be a prophet? The Bible will hazard hundreds of prophecies, thousands of years before they happen, and they happen. The things are committed to writing, you can't just deny it. And so you're not dealing with some book somebody writes after the fact, you're dealing with a book that's already in circulation and the histories are there, and then it comes to pass. Anyway, look at this thing personally, 1 John chapter number, what did I tell you, chapter five? If you're saved, you've been born into God's family by an incorruptible procreation. Not by a natural generation, but by a supernatural regeneration. How do we know we've been birthed into God's family? Look in 1 John chapter number five. Look in verse one. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone that loveth him that begot, loveth him also that is begotten of him. If you keep reading down, come down, if you will, to verse number nine. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God which He hath testified of His Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in Himself. He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son. And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. This is my birth certificate right here. So I gotta go get my driver's license. Well, I'm gonna take my birth certificate down there. Of course, you go show them the Bible and tell them this is your birth certificate, they're probably gonna call the loony farm on you. But spiritually, this is my birth certificate. I'm saved because I believe what the record said. The record said that Jesus died for me. He was buried, he rose again from the dead. The record said, if I trust Christ, he will forgive me of my sin and give me eternal life. I believe the record. Here's my birth certificate. So I'm not looking for a sign, you know, well, you know, I saw the comet. Did anybody else see the comet? Brother Jim set me on to that. I walked out right out my front door, opened the door, and there it is, boom. And then last night or the night before last, the moon was too bright, you couldn't see it. Of course, the new phones take better pictures than your eye does. I took a picture with my phone and man, I got a nice picture of it, A3 comet. But I don't look for some sign in the sky to say, now I know that I'm a child of God. I look to the scripture. and my confidence is based on the scripture. Let me give you the second, two more and we'll be done. The adoption papers. Let me give you Ephesians 1.5. There's several on this adoption thing. Not only have we been, is the tight picture of your salvation by birth, but it's by adoption. So you have an incorruptible procreation, that's our birth into God's family. You have an irreversible promise, that's adoption. Ephesians 1.5. Look in Ephesians 1.5. Talk about an irreversible promise. having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will." There it is. Here are my adoption papers. You can't reverse them. Not in Roman times, you sure couldn't. And then this is our marriage license. I think in Sunday school we talked some about the bride of Christ and the tight picture of believers as the bride of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, he says, I'm jealous over you with a godly jealousy for I've espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. So that's how you get in a family. You get in a family by birth or you can get into a family by adoption. The third way you get into a family is by marriage. And so we're in all three ways. It's an irresistible proposal. Irreversible promise adoption, incorruptible procreation, birth certificate, and we have an irresistible proposal. Here's my marriage license. My marriage license, my adoption papers, and my birth certificate all in one. So I'm gonna validate my experience based on the scripture, not by some sign. When you get caught up into that sign stuff, you know, it becomes, you know, very much a thing to where you're always trying to look for something to validate why you believe what you believe. And if you're not careful, you can get into a trap. Then once you get into the trap where God is good because he gave you a miracle, or he gave you a blessing, whenever things do go south, and by the way, as you get older, you know what's gonna happen? You're gonna have sickness, disease, you're gonna lose loved ones. We have a few ladies in our church, one just passed recently, but they've already buried three children. You live a pretty good while, all of a sudden you realize your kids are in their 60s and your kids are in their 70s, next thing you know you're burying your children. And you start going through life and you start dealing with tragedy, you start dealing with suffering, you start dealing with heartache, and sometimes you don't see the little miracles. You better find a message. You don't see a little sign, you better find a scripture. You better find a promise in the Bible to hold on to that like, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. And you better grab a hold of that because if you don't, you'll get in this cycle and then when things don't seem to line up the way you want them to line up, then you turn sideways with God. And you get upset with God and you think God hadn't treated you fairly because you hadn't been in the Bible. You get in the Bible, you know what you'll come away with? You'll come away with an attitude of, I don't deserve any of these blessings. I don't deserve, if God, and I say this, now maybe I wouldn't feel this way after I went two or three weeks into it, but if God took away all the temporal blessings that I have tonight, I don't deserve nothing else. He's already been better to me than I deserve. I really believe that. I might be belly aching and moaning a couple weeks into that thing if he takes everything away. But when you get in this Bible, you come away with a true picture of yourself and a true picture of his grace and his goodness and his glory. And we know how the thing ends up. We are in a curse world that's headed for trouble and sorrow. And we know one day he's going to wipe away all tears from the eyes. and we can look forward to those promises. I wanna encourage you tonight, rightly divide, don't get sideways, there's a lot of great stories, and sometimes you preach about the miracles, and I love to preach on these miracles. I mean, I love it. I love preaching on when Jesus heals the people, raises the people from the dead, and all those things, and we can get great types from those. But let's make sure we fall back on the message instead of the miracles, the scripture instead of the signs. Do you have assurance in the word of God? That's the question. I hope you do tonight. Let's all stand and be dismissed.