to you and welcome to everyone. Whether or not we have our opinions is fine. However, we need to get on with the business at hand. And so we have this month our memory verses. Let's work on those. Matthew 16, 16 through 17. If you don't have a bulletin with you, go ahead and grab one. If you do, it's going to be on that third panel in there on the front side of the paper, October 1st. And let's do it together. Here we go. Matthew 16, 16-17. And Simon Peter answers and says, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Matthew 16, 16-17. Let's spend a few moments gathering this in our brains. I'm not saying that I don't ask questions. I'm just saying that I don't know what I'm looking for. Questioner speaking in Korean. Okay, let's work on this together now. Matthew 16, 16 through 17. And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed unto thee, but by the Father which is in heaven. Matthew 16, 16 through 17. The course of this conversation, they get together, and Jesus says to them, who do men say that I am? And they answered various things. You're Elijah, you're that prophet, you're someone else. And then Peter, who is known for sometimes blurting things out, says You're the Christ the son of the Living God He nailed it he got it, right so Jesus answered him and said Blessed are you? Flesh and blood didn't reveal it no argument of men showed you this My father which is in heaven told you this So you got from the right source God doesn't lie So when Peter gives that testimony, he was giving the testimony from God the Father. He is His Son. And we recall the baptism of Jesus, a voice from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Yeah, the testimony, it's all one, it all comes together. And this is what we see, this is who we see. Well, we've been talking the last several weeks about God building his church in Christ. And Christ said, I will build my church. It's his church. He established it. He put the foundation. He is the foundation. And so we have him as our foundation. And he owes us nothing. Now remember, we had talked about building principles. We had talked about God is never late. Now we move on and realize that God owes us nothing. We want to say, oh, wow, please give us this, please give us that. Well, God doesn't really owe us anything. He gave us the whole business to start with. Genesis 1, what? In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. If he didn't do that, we wouldn't even be here. So, the practical lesson is, he started the whole thing. He began it all. And as the creator, he owns it. He chooses how he does things. We don't choose for him. He sets in order the things and how they should go. He owns. the whole thing. And he doesn't owe us anything. In reflection, we owe him everything because he started the whole thing. So in Genesis 1, we have it right from the beginning. But I want to read you also Psalm 24 1. So if you have your Bibles, you can open to that. Psalm 24 verse 1. And David is actually giving voice to what we all recognize from Genesis 1. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. Everything, everybody, it's all his. And David states that in Psalm 24.1, talking about a pure heart, and how God set things up. He began and He owns. In Psalm 50, we read it again. Psalm 50, verse 12. Psalm 50, verse 12, says, and God is talking here. He goes down through, and actually, Let's start with verse 8, because this leads up to 12, and it gives us a sense of what God is saying. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is lining the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field. They're mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee. For the world is mine and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? What's he saying? I don't need this. But why did he say, bring a calf? Bring turtle dubs? He was establishing a symbol, an order, where we would understand that sin demands a sacrifice, and that something has to die, and that blood has to be shed. We go to Hebrews 9.22, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. And we have this from the beginning, because Adam and Eve, once they sinned, what did they do? They covered themselves with fig leaves. They had this sense of terror about them. That's what sin does. God came along and said, those are not sufficient. He kills the animal and clothes them with the proper sacrifice. And in that act of providing the animal hide instead of the fig leaves, he says to them, this is what has to happen. And see, when Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices, Abel recognized and followed the pattern, for he offered the sacrifice of a lamb. Cain rejected that. He said, no, I'll offer the fruit of the land. I will not offer a proper sacrifice. They had to know, because their parents were clothed with the skins of the animal. which suggested to them the shedding of blood was necessary in order for recovery. And so they had that testimony. The way things are set up, God set them up. And that was his choice. He could have chosen the fruits of the field. Instead, he said, blood must be shed, something has to die. And that pointed to the awfulness of the sin. Oh, they only took the fruit out of the tree. But what does that mean? That means that God's order is broken. What he set up began to be destroyed. And he said, I will not let this pass. There are penalties. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Death was upon all men, for they all have sinned. Coming from that first man, Adam, the reflection of the nature of man, not a pleasant thing. We don't want to hear that. But the fact is, that's how it is. So when we surrender and say, I'm a sinner. I need to be saved. Please save me. And we depend on Christ, his shed blood covers that whole thing and takes it away and does for us what we need. God owes us nothing, but he gave us everything. How does that strike you? How does that make you think? If God gave us everything, though he owes us nothing, we certainly owe him something, don't we? Really. In the end, that's where we come from. Psalm 89, 11 also says another word about this. Psalm 89, 11. The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine. As for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them. Creation, ownership. They go together. You make something, it's yours. You can smash it, you can sell it, you can use it for some purpose, it's yours. God made the universe. He owns it. He could have destroyed it. He could have embellished it. He could have recreated it. And we read in Revelation 21, what does he do? He takes the old universe and replaces it with a whole new one by his choice. That's his prerogative, that's his way. And that is all fine and good, because he started the whole thing, he owns it. When the universe is corrupted, he gets to rebuild, and he will. I teach a Bible course, I tell my students, he's going to take us back to the original condition, a perfect universe, a perfect world, a perfect home to live in. as we had before sin. And so that goes full circle, comes right back around to what we had in the beginning. And we get to experience that. We weren't there. Adam and Eve, they were. But they were the only two humans that lived in a perfect universe. Everybody else after that suffered along with the rest of creation. But we all get to enjoy that perfect place according to God's promise and His ways. And He owes us nothing. This ought to make the heart to sing and rejoice. God doesn't owe it, but He gives it. That tells us something about God, doesn't it? Okay. Genesis 2, verse 7. Moving on to the next point. Genesis 2, verse 7, gives us another picture. Now, recall that God made man out of the dust of the earth. By the way, later on in the same chapter, he created the creeping things on the earth out of the dust of the ground as well. But herein lies the difference. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. That part, he did not breathe into the nostrils of a buffalo. or the giraffe, or the elephant, or the hippo, or any of the others. But he breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. Man became a living soul. No other creature enjoyed that kind of treatment. He focused his attention on humanity from the very beginning, forming us of the dust of the ground, reminding us where we came from, which is not glorious by any means, But he breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. He gave us that soul that will live beyond our physical health, that will live beyond our physical being that we know now, that goes down and not improves, but decays instead. And the glory that we have to be revealed in the future being a glory not of our physical bodies that we pay so much attention to, but of our spirit and our soul that God gave to us in the beginning, and will revive and take us to his perfect place. Verses 21 and 22, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh and stood thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made me a woman and brought her unto the man. So he uses the same flesh now and makes woman. Out of the dust of the ground, he forms Adam. Out of Adam's rib, he forms woman. One step removed from the dust of the ground. But this is all creation from God. How he does things is his business. And this is how he set things up. Remembering again, he owes us nothing. But when Adam sinned, this is astounding. In the midst of the curse, in the midst of the judgment being passed upon the serpent, and Eve, and Adam, all actors in this, what does God say in verse 15 of Genesis 3? I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. He's speaking to the serpent. We all get to hear it. I'm gonna put opposition, I'm going to put enmity, a sense of an enemy between the serpent and the woman. Between I seen and her seen, there's going to be a war. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. The promise of Christ, he will come, he will bruise Satan's head, Satan will bruise his heel. And what do we see? We see the crucifixion. We see the agony in the garden. We see the false trial. We see the crown of thorns upon his head, and the robe, and the marking, and the reed, and the bleeding back, and nailing to the cross, and the cross dropped in the hole. And Christ said, it is finished. After all these things, it is finished. What? He bruised Satan's head. And when he rose out of that tomb on that fateful morning, Satan's head was bruised forever. The works of the devil were put down, Christ was exalted, the Father approved of the Son, and His work was sufficient for every man. And we can all benefit from that today. When he rose from that grave and he made a way for us To go to his heaven. He bruised Satan's head. The promise was fulfilled and not fully Because we yet have to go to that place But Jesus made the promise. I Go to prepare a place for you that where I am you will be also He's going to fulfill that as he has fulfilled every promise up to this day He's going to do that and he owes us nothing But this makes God really big really important special Nobody else does this for us Genesis 126 to 31 he gets to the end of the first chapter He looks back at his creation and in verse 31 of chapter one, God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good in the evening and the morning of the sixth day. At the end of day six, he looks upon all of it and pronounces it very good, perfect, his creation, before sin, no death, no disease, no sorrow, no crying, None of the stuff that we are so familiar with today Was there? So God could pronounce that very good and by the way at the end of day six that includes us God pronounced us very good before sin perfect That's God's way and James 117, what does it say? James 117 Okay, I go to James. And there's a discussion on trials and patience and how it all works. In James 117, Scripture says, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and coming down from the Father of lights, with whom is no burial, neither shadow of turning. Every good gift. You enjoy life? Every good gift. James 1, 17. Yes. Every perfect gift, the gifts of God, good, perfect, comes down from above. The Father sends it to us. We can enjoy it. Hey, did you eat today? Guess where I came from? Every good gift, every perfect gift. You had food to eat? Praise God. You lived in a house? Or did you have to live out on the street? Everybody I see here in this auditorium this morning had a house to live in. You had to, you know, get on the train or the bus or walk over here, but you had a place to live. Praise God. I notice you're all wearing clothes today. What's that? The goodness of God. Every good gift and every perfect gift, he provides so we can have. He doesn't owe us anything, but he gives it. This is really good. With whom is no variableness. I think about light. I teach about light. You take a light, you put a pencil in front of that light, If you so much as wiggle that pencil, the shadow moves. If you leave the pencil in one spot, the shadow does not move. This is the picture. Not a shadow of movement. No variableness. Steady as she goes. No change. And you look at God and you realize from day one, in the beginning, God created heaven and the earth. to this very moment. What variableness? Now he deals with us in different ways, but his character, his works show this is a God that doesn't change. He didn't change his mind about sin in the early days, he hasn't changed his mind about sin now. He doesn't change. But that's good for us, because now we have a foundation. We have someone to work with that doesn't change his mind every five seconds. Have you been with people that change their mind so often? Oh, man, they're driving me nuts. First, this is OK. Now it's not. You know, no, no, no. God, as steady as she goes, right down through, he does not change his mind about things. And that makes it. Good thing for us because we can know This is what God likes. This is what God doesn't like. This is what God loves. This is what God hates and we know that It's well established by his character God provides good things Well, what else? Genesis 321 now I mentioned this after man's sin God provided the covering of Verse 21 is the one that gives us that covering. Animals had to die. Blood had to be shed. But that covering was perfect for that time. And it gave the beginning of the sacrificial system and how we understood things had to be. He gave the details later, Exodus, Leviticus, of how the sacrifices were to be done, who was to do them, when and where. But we had the image of the sacrifice from the beginning. And so, after man's sin, God provided a covering. So he covers us. We're not left unprotected. You feel vulnerable sometimes, God is your protection. In Old Testament times, sacrifices were the covering. Hebrews 9 goes through this and discusses it in verses 19 through 23. For sake of time, I won't go there, but you can read that. And of course, if you study it out, the sacrificial system is quite thorough and shows you the various offerings that were made and how they all point to Christ. We were instructed from the very beginning how God would do it. And what? Genesis 15. This is before the sacrificial system was given in detail. But Abraham was given messages by God. You'll have a son. You'll have all this land. Your descendants will be like the sand on the seashore, or the stars in the night sky. Look up in the sky. Count the stars. You ever try to do that? That's insane, right? James Webb telescope shows us so many more stars than we can see. And the night sky is loaded with stars. We can't even begin to count how many there are. And I still chuckle. Just one. Ah, he made the stars also, like it was nothing. And we have trillions of stars out there. Incredible. And the space in between one star and the next It takes light years to travel from one star to another at the speed of light. Wow. This is God. This is who we're talking about. So this is where we are. This is what we have. Old Testament sacrifice is a picture of Christ. Again, Hebrews 9, we keep on going, 23 to 28, shows us Christ, the author of Hebrews, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us guidance. The sacrifices were to point to one, the ultimate sacrifice, who only one time had to offer himself a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind forever, one time. He does not have to be re-sacrificed every week. No, just one time. And in that one act, he covered it all. He took care of it. 1 Timothy 2, let's turn there. 1 Timothy. Chapter 2. Verses 5 and 6. And this points to our mediator, perfect sacrifice. For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. And in 1 John 1, 7, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. We have the sacrifice of Christ. We have a mediator, someone who stands in between us and God, and whenever an accusation comes against us, there is Christ, our advocate, our mediator, pleading our case before the Father. And he's able to do that because he was the perfect sacrifice accepted by the Father, and now he stands between us and great peril. We could be destroyed, but Christ stands for us. He covers us. God protects us going back to that animal. But 1 Corinthians 2 gives us a glimpse into another aspect. 1 Corinthians 2 Paul is talking about the preaching of the cross and how it works. And in 1 Corinthians 2 verses 4 and 5, this is how Paul's speech came across. My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Whatever we use, whatever device we have in our hand, points to how we end up. My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. I didn't try to show how smart I am. Hey, Paul, you got it right. He got it right. He didn't try to show off his education. This is a person who sat at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the premier teachers in his day. There were young men who looked to sit at the feet of Gamaliel. That was a special privileged place. Paul got to sit there and be educated by Gamaliel, one of the premier teachers in all Israel. And what does he say? My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. I could have argued eloquently. My points could have been established by wisdom of men. But what does he say? In demonstration of the spirit and of power. Not because I'm so smart. Because the spirit of God uses my words and works on the hearts of the people. Not because I'm so intelligent. We get a picture of Paul here. He was a pretty smart guy. He understood a lot. But he said, no. The spirit of God, the power of God. Now why? That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. If you're gonna believe, I don't want you to believe because I'm so smart. I want you to believe because the spirit of God is convincing you. And by the way, what did Jesus say to Peter? Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in heaven, whose spirit worked in these who heard Paul. It's the spirit of God. We can stand up here and pontificate and be all religious and be all smart. It amounts to nothing. But when the Spirit of God convinces people, we have staying power. Faith that will not be moved. Why? Because it's in God, not in men. Take a look at the works that are built on men. They fall. Hey, I know people that were popular. They had 3,000 people in church this morning. Wow, yeah. Where are they now? But the work that's established on the Spirit of God stays. It has staying power. And this is what Paul's aim was, not that the faith should be standing in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. God protects us. God keeps us. When Jesus said, I will build my church, it was on Christ, that testimony. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And that testimony rings true thousands of years later. After Paul and his generation, passed off the scene, and those he taught, and those that they taught, generation after generation, were passed off the scene. We're here today because of the testimony of the Spirit of God, not the wisdom of men. And we have to be convinced of that. He for Texas, Psalm 121. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." At three o'clock in the morning, where are you? You don't have to answer me. I think we all should, you know, know where we are. Now, if you're restless and you gotta get up and get a drink of water or something, I got that, okay? But you're not out there with a sword in hand ready to protect It's time to sleep. It's time to get your rest. But who is standing guard over you at 3 a.m.? He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. God does not need that rest. On the seventh day when God rested from His works, it wasn't because He was tired. It was a pattern he established to help us understand. Six days labor, one day rest. And that pattern followed, blesses every nation on earth. He never sleeps, he never slumbers. 1 Corinthians 10, 13, here and there. 1 Corinthians 10. Verse 13, there hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above which you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear. He knows what the temptation is. He knows when you're going to be tempted. He knows how powerful that is, and he makes a way to get out of there. What did Joseph do when Potiphar's wife approached him? He jumped and he ran. He got out of there. God makes a way to escape. Yeah, Joseph ended up in prison because of all that mess. But again, we see God's purpose even in that. Through that medium, through that exercise, he became second in all of Egypt. Does God know what he's doing? Let me put it this way, if God doesn't know what he's doing, we're all in trouble. Let's be honest about it. 1 Corinthians 10, 13, a way to escape. God protects us, even in temptation. And 1 Thessalonians 5 24 Faithful is he who calls you Who also will do it? Hey, wait a second. He gave me that job right and He enables you and through you he does that You pass out gospel tracks. He's using you he's working through you to reach somebody else and You speak a word of encouragement, He's using you to do that. Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it. So He protects us in many different ways. To do His will. To get out of temptation. To stand guard over us. And consider this. After Adam and Eve sinned, what did God do? He blocked the way to the Tree of Life. He put a flaming sword between Adam, Eve, and that Tree of Life. Imagine if they were able to access that Tree of Life after sin, living on and on and on in sin forever. Would that be a good thing? I think not. Instead, God in his wisdom puts the flaming sword in between. You will not access this tree of life. I have a better way. When Jesus came, died, was buried, and rose again, that tree of life is Christ. He brings it a far better way. And He gave us the promise, he that believeth in me shall never die. That beats going to the tree of life, doesn't it? He made a way for us. It takes care of the sin, it takes care of the penalty of sin, and it takes care of the presence of sin. We don't even have to be in His presence. But if they went to that tree of life, they would be in the presence of sin forever. But instead, God in his wisdom said, no, that's not the way. I will deal with the sin. I will take care of it. So you're free from the penalty and the power, and finally, from the presence of sin. You can live in a perfect world again. And this is the wisdom of God. God protects us. God protects us in amazing ways. Consider Paul. He was chosen by Jesus on the road to Damascus. Here he is. He has a letter from the chief priest. He's going to go, and he's going to arrest Christians and draw them in to prison or death. And as he's traveling the road, a great light shines in his face, and he drops to the earth. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It's hard for you to kick against the bricks. I'm directing you another way. That goad, that stick with the sharp point. Now, I grew up on a farm. And we had this great big long stick and a metal casing. It had two prongs on one end. We would put big batteries inside that thing and close it up. And there was a little switch on the end. If you twist it, Electrical power would go from one point to the other. And if you touched the cows behind, the cow said, yes, sir. No cow resisted that. And you could direct this great big huge 900 pound animal and steer that animal however you wanted her to go. It's hard for you to kick against the pricks. What's he saying? I'm getting you to move another way here. Well, aren't thou Lord? Paul got his answer. Paul got his answer that day. He was called Saul then, but you know what Paul means? Little. That's how he saw himself. That's why he says, not by man's wisdom, but by the Spirit of God, I'm little, I'm nothing. But God is everything. And this is the view we must take. God protects us. They led him. He couldn't see for days. So they had to take him by the hand to Damascus. He couldn't find his way. Isn't that like us? We lose our way. We have to be led by the hand. God does that. While he's there in Damascus, God restores his sight. Ananias, go to this house and tell Saul what he's going to do. How he'll be a minister to the Jews, to the Gentiles, and the kings. You know what he's done? He's dragged us Christians into jail and had some of us killed. Go and nice goes. And when he gets there, he does that. And the scales fall off of Paul's eyes and he can see again. This is what happens when God does his work. That which we cannot see, how we can see. Once I was blind, but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. God restored his sight. And he was rescued away from his murderers. He was in the place. There were 40 Jews that said, we're not going to eat a meal until we kill Paul. His nephew hears. He passes the message along to the captain of the guards. Captain says, we'll escort him. But there's another time he's led over the wall in a basket to escape his murderers, those who had vowed to kill him. God protected Paul. The churches had wrested from trouble for a time. They were edified. They grew. All this is in Acts 9. And in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul testified of the times he could have been killed, but he was spared. We'll end with this. 2 Corinthians 11. Let's go over to chapter 11, 2 Corinthians. Here he is, verse 16, I say again, let no man think me a fool, if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me that I may boast myself a little. I'm gonna talk about what I went through. Verses 21 to 33 gives us the whole thing. I'll not read the whole thing here, but he goes through, and he says, I was educated. Are they Pharisees? I'm a Pharisee. Are they Israelites? I'm an Israelite. Seat of Abraham? Am I? I'm a seat of Abraham. Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am more. People who would brag against me, I'm a minister of Christ, like they are. And labor's more abundant, stripes above measure, prison's more frequent, deaths soften. So I go through all this. When he gets down to the bottom, through a window and a basket, was I led down by the wall and escaped my oppressor's hands. Yeah, God protects us. God covers us. God owes us nothing. When God said, I will build my church, this is how he does it. I challenge you to consider how God builds his church. That we should be in line with that. That we should follow along and work with God, not against him. For he said, I will build my church. Let's pray and wrap this up. Lord, we praise you for today. We thank you for your kindness. You've been good to us so long a time, owing us nothing, giving us all things. Help us to remember that in our days ahead. In Jesus' name, amen.