I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember. a comic who started in Vaudeville. That was Vaudeville for you that are familiar with the term. I think that was in the 20s, the 1920s. But he had a longevity. He lived to be 100 years old. His name was George Burns. And George Burns said this. I found this quote from him. He said, the mark of a good sermon is three things. Number one, very strong opening. Number two, very strong closing. But most importantly, number three, a very short space between one and two. So George Burns would maybe be pleased with the message tonight because of its brevity. However, the bad news for y'all is there's going to be two messages tonight. And I'm not kidding. So, you know, I know you get, you know, Danny and DeeDee Hall, you know, I remember being at a meeting once when Danny took the word heart And he said, I got a message with, I think it was 29 points to it. It's by rearranging the letters in the word heart for different words. He said, I'm not kidding. I was like, it was 27 or 29 points. It was a long one. Anyway, mine's getting longer just by mentioning that. So what I'm going to do is, I got kind of a more, I'm not saying the second message is more serious. But the thing I'm going to do, is take this one lump of clay, and I'm gonna make five separate pieces from it, and I'm going to combine those pieces into what I consider is the most expressive thing a functional potter makes, and that's a teapot, okay? And that's the main message, but instead of you sitting here watching me for 20 minutes, and I might take that advice one of these days, and just make all those pieces, I'd like to preach about something while I'm doing that, and this is what I'm gonna talk about is the words of God, at least the important aspects of those words. Not why they're powerful, not why we know that we have a sure word of prophecy. It's not just the authenticity of the King James Bible. It's not that at all. I want to talk about some of the powerful effects those words have when we spend time in them. And that's the key. Those words are incredibly powerful. But for them to have the total effect that they can potentially have on us, we have to spend time in those words. So before we get started, let's pray one more time. Heavenly Father, again, Lord, thank you for the... the evening you've given us tonight, Lord. Thank you for the opportunity for me to be here and preach to some of your special people. And Lord, you know that I've been looking forward to this meeting for a very long time, even before the meeting was actually booked, knowing I'd try to come back here this year. And so, Lord, thank you for honoring my heart's desire. And now, Lord, I pray that you'd help me to be empty of self, that you might be able to use me as an empty vessel, that you might just, as a conduit that you can use to speak to your people tonight, Lord. Help us understand and take advantage of the powerful effects that your inspired, preserved words, your perfect words, can have on us if we make ourselves available to that power and those powerful effects. And then further, Lord, I ask that when we get into the second message, Lord, you help us to come together in a unified faction and take advantage, this local body, take advantage of the gift that they've been given. So Lord, I pray that you'll give us all ears to hear give us minds to understand, but above all, give us hearts to obey, and maybe rearrange, maybe order or reorder the steps of our life accordingly. So Lord, I pray you'd help us to take advantage of the remaining days of our salvation to honor you, to glorify you, to bring you pleasure. I ask it all in Jesus' precious name. Amen. So it's going to be a while before we get to the Psalms, but let me get started. And I'm going to bounce back and forth. Now, the first thing I want to talk about are the powerful effects of these words. I want to talk about how convicting they are. These words are very convicting. And to give you an illustration of that, I want to give you a little history lesson here with these three kings. And we've got three kings listed up there on the board. And next to each one of those kings is a corresponding bar of color that indicates not the lifespan that they had, but the length of their reign. For example, Manasseh has a very long reign. You can see that that reign is supposed to represent the 55 years that Manasseh reigned. That was longer than any of the kings of Judah. He had the distinction of having the longest reign of any king of Judah. He had the distinction also of being the worst king that ever ruled Judah. That's a bad combination of those people that he ruled over. Longest king, but worst king. Okay. I'm going to make the, the first thing I'm going to make, I'm going to make the handle, or at least start the handle for the teapot. Potters don't usually start it this way, but why not? I can do it, so I will. Manasseh, 55 years. Why did the Bible say that he was the worst king ever? Well, these are some of the things that the Bible tells us about Manasseh. He used enchantments. He consulted wizards. He employed witchcraft. He allowed the people that he ruled over to worship false gods and actually erect different idols and altars to those false gods. He should have known better. But he went ahead and did that anyway. If that wasn't bad enough, the Bible says this, that Manasseh sent a carved image, an idol he made, in the house of the Lord. That was like the final straw. And anyway, You know what happened, though? Ammon came along after Manasseh passed from the scene. Ammon followed in his father's footsteps, which wasn't not a hard thing to predict, really. But then came along Josiah. Very unusual thing the Bible records about Josiah. The Bible says that there was no king like unto him, there was no king before him or after him, that turned to the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might. Almost the exact same thing that Jesus said when he was confronted about what is the first and great commandment, something like that. And he said, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. And depending on which account you look at, he also added, and with all thy strength, depending on which gospel you're looking at. Quite a thing to say about Josiah. What happened to Josiah? Sometime during his reign, I'm not sure exactly when, maybe toward the middle of his reign, which this one was only two years long, Ammon. Josiah's reign, I believe, was 31 years, so kind of in the middle there, a fairly long reign. Well, somewhere in his reign, as I get ready to make the, I'm gonna make what's called the thumb rest, nothing more than a little bead of clay, but I wanna be true to my word, I'm gonna use this potter's wheel and this one lump to make all of these pieces. I could just roll this out by hand, it might be a little faster, I don't know. I apologize for working so small and you guys are so far away. What? What are you going to do? I know everybody's got their favorite seat, so I don't want to rock the boat. Actually, you've got a fairly shallow church, in the right way, in the sense of not very long, very deep, okay? I mean, a church is where the front row is back where the wall is, you know, from the pulpit. And it just goes back from there. So this isn't bad. Shallow. Should I leave now, brother? Boy, I'm moving right along with this teapot, that's the good news. I'm gonna make the lid, that takes me a while. So, Josiah, he's realizing that his father Ammon and his grandfather Manasseh have let the temple get into disrepair, so he sets aside some money and sends some men with the express purpose of repairing the temple, the house of the Lord. And as they're repairing it, they come across a copy of the Bible that they had at that time, which would be called The Law, the first five books of the Bible that Moses wrote. And I think it was Shaphin the scribe that came across it. And when he did, he said, the king needs to hear about this. So he brought that Bible to the king, King Josiah, read it to him. King Josiah, or King Josiah read, I'm not sure which, but then King Josiah thought, man, these words are so powerful. I need to assemble all the people I rule over, and I'm gonna read these words to them. And you know what happened? Virtual revival took place. Why? Because of the convicting power of the words of God. Now, Josiah took things a little further. He made a twofold covenant. And his twofold covenant was this. He covenant with God that he would keep the words of the law of the Lord, and then secondly, he would perform the doing of them. Wow. That's two sides of the coin. It's not just having the right Bible, realizing you got the right Bible, and understanding the doctrine that's in that Bible. What about once you do all that, what about perform the doing of them? I think we hit on that pretty hard this morning. We need to be doers of the word and not hearers only. And I don't mean to come down on anybody. I'm thrilled. Most of my meetings, I'd say more than 90% of my meetings are in very solid Bible-believing churches. Bible-believing churches that we say are in our camp or our circle, however you want to say that, I don't consider myself to be in anybody's camp, so to speak. I went to PBI, okay? I do preach in churches where the pastors didn't go to PBI. I go to churches where people have never heard of Dr. Ruckman. And guess what? They have come to learn to believe the Bible's the Word of God, too. Okay? But, that being said, we need to perform the doing of them. And Bible-believing churches can get over, you know, there is this road that we travel down. And there's ditches on both sides of that road. And you can get so strong on doctrine that you're really kind of falling into a ditch because you forgot about the love and the grace. And kind of these things you kind of see in a charismatic church that's got no doctrine whatsoever. And of course, those people could be, you know, led astray so easily because if they have no doctrine, doctrine is so important. I'm not saying, praise the Lord, I know you got the doctrine. So don't forget the whole picture, which is have the grace and the love, especially as you're out in the community trying to serve in the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, you know, we've got all the good examples in our Bible. He made a covenant to perform the doing of them. Now, I have a little theory, and it's nothing but a theory. I found out some other information about Manasseh, and that information was this. The Bible says, when he was in affliction, this is about Manasseh, he besought the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly. Now, I don't know exactly when that happened, but I'll give you my little theory. I think somewhere up in here, when he was in affliction, he humbled himself greatly. And if he did, that's a picture to me of a lost person getting saved or a saved person that might have been backslidden getting back in. And I think if he did humble himself and besought the Lord, he started praying for his son and grandson. That's my theory. And I think his prayers had an effect on his grandson. You say, well, if that's the case, why didn't Ammon get straightened out? Well, let's put in a little more information here. I'm gonna add Ammon and Josiah, their lifespan, not just their time they ruled and reigned. And I got this dotted line here for a purpose. Ammon was, 22 years old when he began his two-year reign. He saw his father's hypocrisy and his wickedness for all those years, and Ammon, regardless of his father's prayers, took the path of least resistance, which is to do like his daddy did. Josiah, and this is the interesting thing, Josiah was alive for the first six years of his life. He was eight years old when he died, but he began his reign, and he reigned for 31 years. But he was alive for the last six years of Manasseh's life, however you want to say that, and the first six of his life. And I think those prayers might have had an effect on him. I like to think that, because I like any excuse to think that our prayers are effective. Because they are. We just don't, sometimes, often enough, pray for things, realize God answered those prayers, and then publicly tell others about it, to encourage them to pray. Because look at, I prayed this, and God answered my prayer. I'll give you a great illustration. One of the first revival meetings I ever did, it was in Texas. As was the custom, this was like a four or five day meeting. The custom was for this church on the Sunday morning before the first service, they gathered all the men in a room to pray. And there was a circle of about 20 of us. And I just so happened to sit to the left of the pastor in this circle. And the person to the right of the pastor started the prayer. And we went around. And each person prayed for a minute or so. And I heard some serious prayers. And they're all about finances and health issues. You can imagine that prayer request you'd normally hear. When it got to the pastor, one of the things he prayed for is, Lord, would you please help us figure out a way to fix the hot water heater in here so that the Ingushaths can have hot water when they take a shower? At that time, we were traveling in a van, we had no running water, so we were totally dependent on the church for all that stuff. And I felt, I was almost embarrassed by that prayer, because I thought, Lord, why is he praying something meant something to me and my wife, but to everybody else. And I was wrong to think that way. Because you know before that worship service is over, God answered that prayer. He touched someone's mind or whatever, and the guy figured out a switch he could bypass. They've tried everything else, but somebody got a little insight on another way to do it, bypass a switch or something like that, and sure enough, we had hot water. You know, another guy prayed that his employer would change his schedule so that he could make the evening meetings that week. He was confessing before he prayed that, sure enough, the guy scheduled inventory this week, and it was kind of unusual, because they don't normally do it at that time of year. That's another prayer that got answered during the week. My point is this. If that pastor would have never prayed about that, and all of a sudden we figure, there's this guy sitting out there in the congregation. Oh yeah, he figured out how to do it. Well, why would we give God the thanks and the glory? We didn't know somebody prayed for that, but we did. And so that made an effect on me. And I share that with you because I want you to know prayer does work. The Bible says what happens, you have not because you ask not. And sometimes our prayer, we give up on prayer or whatever. But I want to tell you, prayer is powerful. So that's part of the message I want to get across to you. Listen, think about Manasseh's father. He has a kaya, pretty good king. And then who followed after Josiah? He had one son that lasted about three months, but the main son that came after him was Jehoiakim. He was almost as bad as his great-grandfather. Let's see, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, yeah, almost as bad as Manasseh. You can read about him in Jeremiah 36. And he's got someone, some scribe there is reading for him some copies of the Bible, some sheaves. He says, cut those things up and throw them in the burning fireplace. You know, you go to Matthew 1.11 and you read about the messianic line, the line that Christ came from, and you read about these kings, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Ammon, Josiah, and it skips right over Jehoiakim as though he wasn't part of that lineage. And that's God snubbing Jehoiakim for his failure to honor the words of God. Here's my point. In prayer, I don't care if your father or grandfather was a pastor of a church. That's got nothing to do with you. I don't care if your father, grandfather, whatever, teaches Sunday school. That's got nothing to do with you. I don't care if all your relatives for 12 generations have been saved. That's got nothing to do with you. We need to be praying for our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and then you younger people, you need to be praying for your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents, all right? Because prayer is powerful. Really good king. Terrible king, worst king of Judah ever. Bad king, one of the best ever. Bad king. Your salvation, as well as whether or not you live for the Lord, is your decision, your choice. You gotta make that for yourselves, young people and old people. All right. The words of God, they're very convicting. They're also very correcting. Well, let me give you a couple other convicting examples. I got to work on the spout here. Think of Peter at Pentecost. Preaching the convicting words of God, what happened? Upwards of 3,000 souls got saved because of the convicting words of God. I think the best example is in, you don't have to turn there, but in John chapter eight, that's where the scribes and Pharisees bring to Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry a woman caught in the very act of adultery. And they come up to Jesus and they say, you know, Moses in the law says that she should be stoned. What sayest thou? Jesus kind of just ignores them. I think he bends down and writes something in the ground. They persist. Moses in the law says she should be stoned. What sayest thou? Again, this time Jesus Christ says something like, let him that is without sin first cast a stone at her. And then he bends down and writes something in the ground. Now, if the Lord Jesus Christ wrote something in the ground, chances are, in my book, that would be scripture. if it was words, unless he was drawing a picture, I don't know. But the Bible says he wrote something in the ground. It could have been something from Deuteronomy 22 or Leviticus 20. Those are the two places in their Bible at that time where they had the exact penalties for adultery were laid out. And those exact penalties were to stone both parties. If you're familiar with the passage, as far as we know, they only brought the woman. Now the man might have been one of those in that circle of men. Well, anyway, when Jesus said what he said and or wrote what he wrote, after those two things happened, the Bible says that those scribes and Pharisees were convicted by their own conscience. And one by one, they left till there was none left to condemn her. Well, their conscience was repricked by the convicting power of the words of God. You and I need to be convicted from time to time. I've told Pastor Forshee probably, I tell a lot of people this, I'm the worst member that Pastor Ron Ralph has ever had at his church, because I'm just never there. But there have been periods of time when I have been there for several weeks in a row. And I will tell Brother Ron, half joking, that I got to get out of here, because I can't take it. He's a hard preacher and he hits me every time. And that's good for me, I recognize that. But sometimes it's hard to take. Grin and bear it. We need it. We need to get convicted. You don't have to sit under hard preaching to get convicted, although it's a good thing. But I'll tell you what, spend time in those words. They're a discerner of the thoughts and intents of our heart. And they should convict you if you're spending time in them. Well, they also are correcting. That's one of their powerful effects. They can correct. And I'm gonna take a little liberty here. I mentioned it this morning, something you already know, that the word of God likens itself to a mirror a hammer, a lamp, light, all kinds of things we eat like bread, honey, milk, apples, water. I want to talk about their correcting effects and I want to liken those words of God to a wooden ruler. So the first thing I want to say about this wooden ruler is that With this wooden ruler, I can use it as my correct standard if I'm asked to draw a line, a straight line especially, four and one quarter inches long. I need a correct standard to go by. So I got this ruler. What about you and I? Don't we need a correct standard if we're asked a Bible question? Why should I get saved and how do I get saved? This Bible has the correct answers for that. Should I get baptized? Why? How? Immersion? Sprinkling? What's that all about? The answers are in here. It's our correct standard. What do they say? It's our final authority for all matters of faith and practice. I don't know what the faith and practice is all about. It's our final authority for everything. And it's just not Bible decisions, Bible questions. If you know the principles contained in this book, it will tell you, should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I join this church? Should I look at that? Should I listen to this? Should I put that in my mouth? This thing covers every decision that you and I have to make. There are principles in here. They may not spell out those exact things, but when you are aware of the principles, you will know or have a better ammunition to make the right decision. It's just a question if you're gonna make it or not. Sometimes having the ammunition to do it isn't gonna tell the whole tale, right? We still gotta deal with our flesh and our desires. Well, as far as correcting, this wooden ruler can correct in another way. And I bet some of the young people are familiar with that, because when I was in grade school, long time ago, this was the method of correction. They had something like this, and you get banged on the knuckles or behind with this thing, and guess what? It corrects your behavior immediately. And unlike Ritalin, there's no drug effects. This does not turn your child into a drug addict. Okay? And it works immediately. And it's inexpensive and effective. What about the words of God? You're in the book of Psalms, I hope. Psalm 119, did I tell you that? Psalm 119, we're gonna look at four verses because this Bible, this King James Bible, one of the powerful effects of its words is it will correct our behavior. So in Psalm 119, we'll start in verse 71, the Bible says, it is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. Now, why would the Bible say that? Well, I'm really butchering my spout here. Okay, it's all right. We'll look down at verse 67, backwards. Verse 67, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept thy word. It's almost as though the Lord put those verses in there for me, because that's my personal testimony. It was in 2003, having been a professing Christian for 30 years, that he put me under a tremendous physical affliction, but he combined that physical affliction with a childlike understanding of the judgmency of Christ, and the combination of those two things, at that time in my life, were so convicting that it corrected my behavior. All right? He got a hold of me. And it was like Paul on the road to Damascus. Lord, I'm waving the white flag of surrender. What wilt thou have me to do? And you know, just like that verse says, but now have I kept thy word? He wanted me to learn his words. And that's why he directed me to go to Bible school. And I went, and the rest is history. I didn't know I'd be here doing this tonight, but he did. Hard to fathom all that. Look in verse 75. The final piece I'm making is going to be the body of the teapot. I got a little too much clay here. Verse 92, unless thy law had been my delights, I should have been perished in mine affliction. I think some of the things we can learn from these last two verses there that we've read tonight in Psalms is the fact that when you or I, if we are afflicted, we're going through an affliction or someone close to us is going through an affliction, I think we should always seek the Lord and find out if he's trying to show us something. I think the Lord knows in my case that he might better get a hold of me and get my attention if he afflicts my wife. I think sometimes the Lord can get our attention if he afflicts our children or our parents. But it should be the same thing for a church member or a church family member or an employee or just a neighbor or any kind of distant relative. The closer someone is to you, the greater the chances that the Lord is working on them and you through that affliction. And you should seek the Lord's guidance in that. And Lord, is there something I can learn from that affliction? The Bible says, whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth. God's gonna correct us for our own good sometimes. We need to be sensitive to that correcting, asking him, are you trying to correct me through this affliction? The words of the God, they're convicting, they're correcting. Turn to Psalm 51. Those words are also very cleansing. It says in Psalm 51, verse 2, this is King David after he'd been confronted about his sin with Bathsheba. And King David says in Psalm 51, verse 2, wash me throughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He said in Psalm 51, verse 10, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. You know what King David knew that you and I should know from having the verses that we have? Keep in mind, King David didn't have the Bible that you and I have. He didn't have a lot of the things Christ said that, like, now are you clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Christ said, sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. You know what King David had? He had the first five books of the Bible. And he had the principles that he got from those first five books. And I think it's in Leviticus where it talks about a couple times, if something dead touches an earthen vessel, you don't just wash that thing, you break it. It says if a sin offering is sodden in an earthen vessel, you don't wash it, you break it. Now if a sin offering is sodden in a brass vessel or something like that, go ahead, wash it under running water. King David knew that only God can clean an earthen vessel, and that's a great picture for you and I. Because we are an earthen vessel, and we have this treasure in an earthen vessel, that's you and I. And only God can clean it, and he does it through those words. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word. Christ said he would love the church, gave his life for it, that he might sanctify it and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word of God. The whole thing I did last year on partaking of God's divine nature of virtue was about allowing those supernatural words to soften and cleanse our hard, contaminated heart. Now, when we talk about the sanctification process in 2 Peter 1, we're talking about being partakers of God's divine nature, in this case, his divine nature of virtue, by being clean. Is that a word you use in your daily conversation? Partake? I don't. But it means exactly what it says. It means to take a part of. And we get a picture of that in Luke. It's Luke chapter 8. You don't have to go there. And that's that series of verses about the woman that had the issue of blood. And that woman knew that if she could but touch the hem of the garment of the Lord Jesus Christ, who happened to be passing by her way, that she would be healed. It said that she had that issue of blood for 12 years and that she spent all her money on physicians and continued to grow exceedingly worse. So in my mind's eye, I picture this woman maybe on her hands and knees between throngs of people, and reaching up and maybe between a couple of legs or whatever, and just touching the hem of the garment of the Lord Jesus Christ, who immediately said, who touched me? And his disciples are kind of, what are you talking about? Everybody's bumping into you, you're thronged about by all these people. But the next thing Jesus said is, I perceive virtue is gone out of me. So how did she partake of his divine nature of virtue? She touched him. You say, boy, I wish we could do that. You mean you don't know you can? Right here. You and I have the mind of Christ manifest in a book. You can touch him anytime you pick this up and open it up and start to allow it to go into your heart, mind, and so forth by spending time in those words. We have the mind of Christ manifest in a book, and it's powerful, and it has powerful effects. It not only will convict us, and correct us, and cleanse us, but it will also comfort us. You know, I think I've been talking to different people this week, a couple pastors, and some individual church members as well, And I think it was someone this morning, I think we were talking about Gail Ripplinger's book, In Awe of Thy Word. A must-have book, have you read it or you've got it? Is it in your lending library? Okay, but it is an amazing book. It's big, it covers a lot of stuff, but it is really well done. In Awe of Thy Word. And one of the things Gail Ripplinger came across in her study for that book is the fact that there's this science called computational linguistics. And what scientists did, secular scientists, they took all kinds of manuscripts, one of which was a King James Bible, all of Shakespeare's writings and other famous works of art, some of them are works of literature, very old, some of them new, whatever, very famous poems that were, had a, you know, a nice rhythm to them and so forth. All of these manuscripts plugged into a computer. with a program called computational linguistics. Only the King James Bible had a mathematical rhythm and meter to it where you could literally predict which way the thing was going. I don't know how best to say it. She called this, I think she's the one that came up with the term, the heartbeat of God. So if you've ever been in a hospital room or seen a TV show that involves a hospital room, you've seen an oscilloscope, I think it's called, and it's got something like this on it, like a heart, and it's like a math, you know, if everything's good, it's got a mathematically predictable rhythm and meter. The King James Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, mathematically predictable rhythm and meter. So figure this out. You take the word unto, and you take the word to. And I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say that the word unto has 31, I'm making these numbers up, but they're significant. Let's say unto has 31 different usages. And let's say to has 17 different usages. And let's say a total of eight of those overlap. So there's like eight times, eight instances where you could use either one of those. And you realize that the translators in 1611, if they chose the two-syllable word instead of the one-syllable word, they would have destroyed this mathematically predictable rhythm. How did they do that? Man couldn't do that. That's the whole point. Only God could do that. And she explains it a whole lot better than me. So get the book. There's so much in there. In awe of thy word. Those words are comforting. Not just that, I mean, what does the Bible say? Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. We need to know these words enough so that we can use them to comfort other people. Now look at the words of God. I've talked about four powerful effects that they're convicting, correcting, cleansing, and comforting. I got six more points I'm not gonna get to. They're also very critiquing, confirming, controlling, clothing, confounding, and conquering, and there might be some other there. All I can say is those words are so special, they're so powerful, that on average you could take the other 25 letters of our English alphabet and on average come up with 10 of each of those letters, 10 powerful effects of those words. That's how special they are. So let's move on to the teapot here. Go to Ephesians chapter 4. Paul in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, I would say the theme, if I had to draw one out, has to do with unity. It's going to take me a minute to get there, so take your time. I want to at least kind of work on this a little bit. I'm sure some of you have, if you've ever watched TV at all, if you've ever watched a baking show or anyone is doing something on television that has to do with preparing food, oftentimes they'll put all the ingredients together and they'll stick them in the oven, you know, set that thing at 450 and put it in there for an hour or whatever, where you don't just sit there and wait for an hour, right? What they do is they pull out another dish that's been in there for an hour already. Well, in order for me to assemble these pieces of the teapot, they're so soft, I can't really do it. So earlier today, I made five similar pieces, and those are the ones I'm actually going to assemble. Let's see if I don't tip all this over. So I'll find those here somewhere. I might have spent a little more time on these. They're not quite as distorted. And they're just similar. There's a body, a spout, a lid, a thumb rest, and a handle. And those are the ones I'll put together in a minute. So Ephesians chapter 4, talking about unity. This is how my Bible gets wrecked. Getting close. Ephesians chapter four, verse one. I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you are worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. Now, do you see that word down there that begins with the letter V? Look real close in your Bible, because in my Bible, the second letter in that word is not the letter A. All right, how about your Bible? You and I have not been called to a vacation, but a vocation. Yes. Now, I'm not sure what the NIV says, because I haven't really looked there, but I think it might be the letter A. What is a vocation? Because this is the only time it's used in our Bible. It tells you right there, wherewith ye are called. Your vocation, my vocation, is our calling. Now, especially some of you men with young families, you probably have a, you're probably employed, and that's your occupation. And there's a good chance that your vocation is within your occupation. And your occupation, as important and as necessary as that is, it's still not as important to God as your vocation, your calling. So like I say, if you are gainfully employed for many hours a week, Consider looking within that occupation for your vocation, your calling. Now he tells us how to perform that in verse two. With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Oh, skip down, look at the end of verse eight. Verse eight, last five words, and gave gifts unto men. And then he tells us what those gifts are in verse 11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the context of Ephesians four there, but this is what I'm about to tell you, you can verify by going back on your own if you don't already know this. When he says I'm giving gifts unto men, he's not saying I'm gonna give you the gift to be one of those men we just read about. I'm not giving you the gift to become one of those things. I'm going to place one of those things in your midst, and he is a gift to you. And at the risk of embarrassing your pastor, I am going to preach on the gift of a pastor teacher that this group has been given. Let me first start back on this teapot. He's your gift. I don't know if you'd even have to say more than that. Do you treat him as a gift? He's a gift from God according to God himself. What's the first thing the potter has to do if he's gonna make a teapot once he's made all those pieces? Well, he takes that body. It's nice to have it on a turntable of some kind. I just use my potter's wheel. And he takes the spout. Now these things, because I made them several hours ago, are not super soft. They're what we call leather hard. I can still bend them if I want to, but they're not easily bent like you can imagine this stuff is. Real flimsy, hard not to bend. So I figure out where I'm gonna put that spout. And you might say, wow, that looks kind of awkward on that thing. And it does because it's too gigantic. I know that when I make it. So I could use a knife and cut part of it away, but I like to use this sharp wire up here instead. And I'm gonna cut this at an angle. and remove a big part of its bulkiness, and here's what I've done, okay? Now I'm gonna take this part, I'm gonna position it somewhere about like that, and then keep in mind, when I put a handle on the other side of that, it's kind of gonna balance the whole thing out. Now, if you're gonna make a teapot, very important, do not forget this step, you have to put a hole here. Very important. I'm not going to confess to you whether or not I ever forgot to do that. Don't ask me, okay? I don't want to relive it. I could cut a big hole where this goes, or I could take a little tool that I have. It's nothing more than, in this case, a piece of brass tubing that's been cut at an angle. And instead of making a big hole that might weaken the vessel, I can use this little brass thing to punch these little holes in my vessel. I get two benefits. Number one, I'm not weakening the vessel hardly at all. And number two, I'm actually creating a strainer for some of those bigger tea leaves that you might be using to make your tea with, if that's what you're using your teapot for. Lo and behold, some people do. Okay, now, in order to join clay to clay, there's a technique potters call scoring and slipping. I need to find my brush here. This one will do. Scoring is where you take a sharp tool. I usually have a needle tool somewhere, which I probably can't find. It's what, here it is, just like it sounds. It's a very sharp tool, like a needle. And you scratch the areas to be joined. So I'm going to scratch the spout where it's going to be joined. I'm also going to score or scratch the area around this opening that I'm making. Now look it, when I had my studio and I needed a teapot or two, I wouldn't just make one teapot. Even if I had ten teapots on the shelf, if someone came in and said, I like your teapots, I want you to make me one, only I want it in this other color, I want it smaller, bigger, whatever. I would make a teapot for them, a custom order. But I wouldn't make just one. If I was making teapots, I'd make at least ten. Because there's economy when you do the same thing over and over and over again. So I want you to think about how much scoring that would involve. By the way, if I made 10 teapots, by the time I'd made the 10th set, the first set I'd made had already set up long enough. It'd take me hours to make all those. And it would be leather hard and I could get right going to start assembling them. But think about all the scoring and how much time this would take. I was very fortunate. Unbeknownst to me, but early on in my professional career as a potter, I came across a guy who had invented this tool for scoring. And I think it was only like $29.95 and some shipping back then. It wasn't much. And he said, it increases your scoring capacity by 400%. I thought, hey, I got to have that tool. So I sent away for it. And I thank the Lord for the man that invented that tool. It has absolutely streamlined my whole production capabilities. So that's what I use to this day. Matter of fact, I was so afraid I might lose it, I ordered a couple more. But I still haven't lost them. I don't know. I think they keep multiplying now. They've got a life of their own. So that's the scarring. What is the slip? The slip is a sticky clay, watery clay that potters create a ton of it in this little catch basin or this thing I put my hands in to bring water up to here, and I'm continually washing my hands in here. This bucket I've got here has probably got four inches of this slip or slurry, we call it. I took a little out, put it in this thing, and now with my brush, which I lost again. Here's another one. It's a mess up here. And everything's colored in clay, so you can't find anything. So you score and slip the two areas to be joined. That's the key. You know, when I first started selling my own pottery there back in the mid-70s, 1976 to be exact, I'd have people would come in and say, oh, is this handle gonna fall off? And I said, listen, it's pottery. You could break it. But it's never going to break where I joined the two together. That's what they were worried about, the handle falling off. Because when you do this, and if you men have ever glued wood to wood, and you glued it correctly and maybe used clamps on it and all that, you try to rip that thing apart, you'll rip that wood apart. You won't rip it where you glued it and joined it. This is the same thing. Now, I could do a really fine job of pressing these two things together, and if there was a little void, I could add a coil of clay and kind of blend one into the other. But another technique some potters use from time to time, I'd use it once in a while, is to actually use your fingers to press these pieces together and actually leave those impressions in the clay as part of the decoration. Kind of shows how it was done. I'm just doing that because it's faster. Okay? Let's get back to Ephesians. You've been given the gift of a pastor teacher. Are you taking advantage of that gift? Maybe you're not sure what I'm talking about. Well, I know you're in church on a Sunday night, and I'm gonna assume you've taken advantage of the gift of eternal life. Let me ask you that. What are you doing with that gift? You still don't know what I'm talking about? Well, let me ask you this. Are you experiencing on a somewhat regular basis the love of Christ that passeth knowledge? Are you experiencing on somewhat of a regular basis the peace of God that passes all understanding? Are you experiencing on somewhat of a regular basis, maybe a continual basis, unspeakable joy? Because if you've taken the free gift of eternal life and you're using that gift to please and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, then you should be experiencing those things on a regular basis, the love, the joy, the peace. And listen, his love is so unfathomable and it's so unconditional that we can't totally appreciate it, how big it is, okay? That's why it passes our knowledge. That peace is so all-encompassing and so immeasurable that it passes our understanding. It's beyond our understanding. And that joy that's so sustained and unexplainable and supernatural that it's beyond our vocabulary to express how special it is. You know, if you have taken advantage of the free gift of eternal life, you should be experiencing those things, and that's why the Apostle Paul referred to the Lord Jesus Christ as the unspeakable gift And I should be experiencing unspeakable love, unspeakable joy, unspeakable peace, if we're taking advantage of that gift and allowing God to use our surrendered, yielded vessels for His purpose and His pleasure. By the way, those fruit of the Spirit, Those nine different fruit, those are the things we experience, we grow in love, joy, peace, but also in long suffering and goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance. Those things are growing in us. That's the fruit that we benefit from. We always think of doing something for the Lord and bearing fruit. As you are out there bearing fruit in the form of lost souls getting saved, you should be bearing fruit in your own life, in your own being. And those are the positive things we get with trying to live for the Lord. Well, let's get back to your gift of a pastor teacher. You know, there's a principle in our Bible. It's from the book of Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation. And the principle is this. God speaks to a man and then through that man, he speaks to you. God has given you the gift of a pastor teacher, and your gift is praying for you, and he's praying to God that God would give him the things that God wants to say to you. So don't you think it would behoove you to spend a lot of time in prayer? for your pastor. I truly believe, we'll find out when we get up to heaven one day, I truly believe that every minute you spend on your knees praying for your pastor is like spending 10 minutes on your knees praying for yourself or somebody else. Because he is your umbrella of protection. And you wanna make sure that the Lord doesn't get to you through him, by knocking him out, okay? Which brings up a whole couple, a bunch of other points, which I hope I get to. Listen, you show your appreciation to him by respecting him, by trusting him, by submitting to him, and taking advantage of the wisdom and the knowledge and the understanding he has been given by God on your behalf. Now, I know this man here is younger than a lot of you, but that's got nothing to do with nothing. I know who he is, and I think after three years, you know who he is. And the Lord is using him as a gift to you. Take advantage of that gift. How do you take advantage of him? Well, you come to church. You pray for your pastor. I mean, I'm talking about not just, you should be praying for him Sunday morning on your way to church, but hopefully you're praying for him Saturday night, and maybe Saturday morning, maybe Friday night, maybe Friday morning. Praying that God, give him the words that you wanna say to me. I need to get something from you, Lord, on Sunday, and I know I'm gonna get them not from you directly, you're gonna get them through my gift of a pastor teacher. That's how he works, that's the principle of the Bible. God speaks to groups of people through a person, a man. He is God's gift to you. Take advantage of that gift. Are you not only attending when the doors are open, are you inviting people to church? Are you volunteering to do ministry unconditionally? You know, he poured out, it might not sound like him pouring out his heart to you this morning, but he did, and asked somebody to step up to the plate and maybe take on the ministry of that sign. And I think that's a wonderful opportunity for somebody to take advantage of. But how many other little ministries like that do you think are around here that this man is already doing? I know he cuts the lawn from time to time. I know there's other things that need to be done in this facility, you know, painting, cleaning. And I don't know, he hasn't told me anything about what he does or doesn't do. I just happened to see him on the mower the other day. You know, and hey, and he knows the situation in your church and he's willing to help out and stuff, but if his main responsibility is to feed the sheep and lead by example and declare all the counsel of God, then you want to make sure he's got time to hear from him. And you hear from him through spending time in these words. And I know he's praying for you. You need to be praying for him. When you show him your respect and your trust and you submit to him, you're just showing respect and trust and submitting to God. That's what it amounts to. I mean, think about it when Moses, I forget where they were murmuring against Moses in the wilderness, and the Lord said, hey, they're not murmuring against you, they're murmuring against me. And that's the truth. I hope from the messages that were brought forth today, that if you are not already involved in some type of vocation, that you would seek the Lord's guidance on that. There's all kinds of little things to be done around here. I mean, I don't know who cleans the church, and I don't know what any of you do. You know, we don't talk about stuff like that. But I'm just, I hope you're doing something for the Lord, and also something for this church as you are able. You know, listen. You know, maybe, just an example, maybe there's someone in this church or another church, maybe there's someone in a church that's really well-to-do, and he gives a lot of money to missions, and that's a wonderful thing to do. But if he's called to actually go to the foreign field, I don't care how much money he gives. He's not being obedient to God. You know, so search and seek, and that's what he's talking about on Wednesday night. Get to know God, get close to God, and allow him to speak to you through these words, and he will show you what he wants you to do day by day. You know, when I was in Bible school for three and a half years, I never thought about what I was gonna do when I got out. I really didn't. Once I got out, I thought about it. And then I don't think too much about what I'm gonna do next week. Because I know, you know, I might schedule meetings ahead of time and so forth like that. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm totally trying to be flexible to His will all the time, because He can change your ministry. And by the way, God's got a unique ministry for every single person in here, and he baby steps you through all kinds of other ministries on your way to that perfect ministry, okay? So you can't kind of try to figure out the end picture. What we need to do is, Lord, what wilt thou have me do today? and let tomorrow take care of itself, and it will. If you're doing the God's will today, and then when you wake up tomorrow, you ask for God's will that day, that's eventually gonna lead you down the perfect path that God has for your life. and it has to do with you taking advantage of your gift of a pastor teacher. His responsibility, although he does it, is not to win people to the Lord. His responsibility is not to build a big church and to oversee a Christian school or clean the restrooms or maintain the building or any of those things like that. And he may do a lot of those things, but you and I are gonna come across all kinds of people he will never cross paths with. Our responsibility is to invite others to church, knowing that this is a good thing for them to do. Our responsibility is to hand out tracts and to witness other people and not be offended and not give up when they don't respond the right way. If you think church is a good thing, you should be inviting other people on a regular basis. Go out of your way to hand somebody a tract with the name of your church on, okay? Leave the results up to God. Leave the results up to the Holy Spirit. All right. Verse 11, Ephesians 4.11, and he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. Why? For the perfecting of the saints. That's you and I. For the work of the ministry. That's our vocation, our calling. For the edifying of the body of Christ. That verse 12 is like a three-step process. This man can help you become more thoroughly perfected so that you can more effectively do the work of the ministry and eventually edify the body of Christ. Verse 13, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man under the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Skip down to verse 16, speaking of Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working and the measure of every part maketh increase of the body. Now I skipped more than half of that sentence, which encompasses about five verses there, but this is basically what that Bible is saying. You saw me make five different pieces up here and then take five very similar pieces and assemble them into this teapot, okay? This is an example of something coming together, fitly joined and compacted. It maketh increase of the body. What are you going to do with this all by itself, nothing I can think of. I mean, if you run out of gas or you're baking a cake or whatever, you need a funnel, you might wanna use this, not to bake a cake, but maybe there's some gas in your car. And could you make a jar out of the lid and, yeah. But what about this is, I mean, this is one of the ugliest teapots I've ever seen. I don't like that. Yeah, that's bad. The spout's all wrong. Anyway. This is a special thing. It's a unique thing. It's a picture of coming together, fitly joined and compacted. The world has a saying, and that saying is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Now, when it comes to mathematics, that's not true. But when it comes to Ephesians 4, that's a good principle. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, okay? Come together, fitly joined and compacted, it maketh increase of the body. So, now I've told you already that I didn't join these things together because of how soft they are, but I would like to demonstrate that real quickly. I had a studio for, my own studio, I made my living selling pottery for, quite a few years, over 30 years in South Florida. And I never had the wherewithal to make teapots that weren't functional. And boy, did I miss the boat, because now I'm not gonna cut a hole in here, I'm just gonna show you, even when I put this on here, it's so, the clay is so soft that you can't, I'm not gonna show it to you, but this thing is no longer round, it's not gonna accept the lid properly. And the more I press this on here, the worse it gets. And of course, if I took the handle, attach that, what I've come to learn after doing this message a few times is, boy, I could have made a lot of these and sold them. Because people that collect teapots, they got all kinds of functional looking teapots, but they don't have a cool teapot like this. You might think, what the heck? Why would anybody want that? I would love this. I think this is cool. If you don't like that side, let's look at the other side. Yeah, you seen those guys with the baseball cap on backwards? That's kind of like this. I love this. Matter of fact, I can cut this right down the center, hang it on the wall, and I have two totally separate, I mean, I can think of all kinds of, get the handle out there where it belongs, yeah. I like this 100 times better than that. Now, this is functional. I got a functional teapot that's been finished and glazed, and my wife took this out of our studio many years ago, and we've kept it. And if I ever come off the road, this will go in our house somewhere. But it's got a little different handle, but it's the same idea. You know, I spent some time on it, and I blended this out, and I think that one's balanced. I like this thing. This one's kind of odd to me, really bad. This I like. This and this, if this was finished in a pottery studio, you're talking about $150. But this, $250. This is art. Yeah. And look how quick it was. I missed the boat. I really missed the boat. Go to 2 John 8. Let's wrap this thing up. Second Johnny. You know, my ministry has, always comes back to Christians preparing for the judgment seat of Christ. So to tie this into that a little bit, I would say this to you. When you stand up there one day, I hope you're not what I would call a what if Christian. And think about Moses, for example. You know, there's a time while he was wandering through the desert that the Lord asked him to speak to a rock. And instead of speaking to that rock, he struck the rock. And because of that, Moses didn't get into the Promised Land. It was time during his reign as king that David sat out a particular battle, which he probably shouldn't have. Found himself on his rooftop in the cool of the night and saw Bathsheba down there bathing herself. And what followed from that was adultery and murder and a big mess. There was a time when Paul in Acts 26, I think, giving his personal testimony to King Agrippa, and he did a very thorough job of that. And King Agrippa at the end of that says, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. So think about those three men that I've just mentioned. What if Moses had spoken to the rock like he was supposed to? He would have got to go into the promised land, which he didn't. What if King David hadn't sat out that one battle? Well, he probably wouldn't have had the adultery and murder and the things that followed with that, and the consequences that followed from that sin. What if King Agrippa had been persuaded? to be a Christian. As far as we know, King Agrippa is in hell right now, soon to be cast into an eternal lake of fire, as far as we know. Don't be a what-if Christian at the judgment seat of Christ when God shows you the opportunity he gave you to pass out a trot, to invite somebody to church, to read your Bible through that year, to pray for your pastor, to get involved with a lay ministry outside of your normal daily routine, to give to the foreign field, to go on and on. It's an inexhaustible list. What if? Look at 2 John 8. I hope I've got the right verse here. Does that say, look to yourselves that we loose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward? First time I ever read that verse, I thought it said, look to yourselves that you lose not those things which you have wrought. I know it doesn't say that, but that's the way I kind of understood it. It's saying, look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. You guys don't know this, but when a potter forms the spout of a teapot, he takes particular attention as to the shape of that end of that spout, because he knows if he does it correctly. When that spout is used to pour some liquid out into another container, and then that teapot is uprighted, instead of that last drip going down the outside, because he's done it correctly, the last drip will go down the inside and work perfectly. Will it still work? Will it still function if he doesn't form the spout right? Yeah, but just not as well as it could. What if you're part of the body of Christ, the part of this little local body, and taking advantage of the gift you've been given of a pastor or teacher, what if you're part of that big part is that little shape right at the end? Or you could be maybe the bulge in the lid, the knob of the lid that allows you to grip it better. Or you could be part of that slurry, that slip that attaches the handle and secures it. I mean, it really doesn't matter. All I can say is every single person in this part of the local body has a function. God says all that in the book of Corinthians. We're many members of the same body, but different members have different functions. But they're all necessary. Don't discount what you could do to contribute to the functioning of this local body, just by doing the part God asked you to do. Look to yourselves that you lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. To end this on a positive note, I'm gonna say this. You need convicting, you need correcting, you need cleansing, you need comforting. God wants you to experience those powerful effects. Make sure you're spending time in those words. And then, to not be a what-if Christian, instead of looking at the negative side of that, let's look at the positive side. If God could hang the stars on high, could send the sun across the sky, could paint the clouds that drift on by, what could he do through you? If he can send a storm through space, can dot with trees the mountain's face, if he the sparrow's way can trace, what could he do through you? If he can do such little things as count our hairs or birds that sing, control the universe that swings, that's a little thing for him. What could God do through you? I'll go further and I'll say this. If you and you and you and you would yield your bodies of clay to be shaped by the Lord in His perfect way, you're sure to bring glory to Him on that day. I'm talking about the judgment seat of Christ. So won't you allow God to work through you? Amen. Heavenly Father, Lord, again, we thank you for the time you've given us tonight. And I know this message kind of went a little long and maybe rambling, Lord, but I pray you'd use it in spite of my shortcomings and sort of my inadequacies. Lord, take something that was said tonight and help your people to better be used of you to be used closer to their fullest potential, that you truly would get the honor and the glory that you alone deserve. Lord, and I thank you for allowing me to be here this week, and I thank you for each and one of these souls that has been here, many of them for all three sessions, Lord, and I pray just bless them for their sacrifice of their time and their attention. And Lord, help us all to glorify you better during the days of our salvation. I ask it all in Jesus' name, amen.