We will get started now. Back in 1st John tonight, and let's see here. Rob, would you want to open us up in prayer? Sure. Jesus, thank you so much for allowing us to come together and gather and be able to absorb some extreme knowledge about your words, Lord, and what you want us to do in life and what we need to take care of for you, Lord. We thank you each day for all the many blessings you give us, and please be with all those who need your healing hand laid upon them, Lord, and just give us all safe travels home this evening. Amen. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, over the last couple of nights, we've gone through John 1, verse 1 and verse 2. and I'm hoping to get a little mileage under our feet tonight. We did a lot of introduction the first night, got a good idea of where I stand on various things and all, and just basic instruction on how to use the Bible, why God gave it to us and all of that, and kind of rehashed some of that last time we were here, too. But I'm going to read verses 1 and 2, and then we're going to jump right into verse 3 tonight, and then we'll work on that. So first, John, chapter 1 and verse 1 it says that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life for the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the father and was manifested unto us now we want to remember that that which was manifested to them is what they actually physically saw they saw the body of jesus christ And we looked at John 1.14 where the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us. So the body of Jesus Christ was made out of the eternal Word of God. John 1.14 tells us that. And so if you want to know what type of DNA Jesus had in him, was there any bit of Mary that was involved in Jesus at all? None whatsoever. Because the Holy Ghost overshadowed her, and she was conceived of the Holy Ghost. And what the Holy Ghost did was the Father gave the Holy Ghost the Word of God, which is Jesus, in eternity past, placed it inside the womb of Mary. Okay, we have a man in our church that is a farmer and he knows a lot about husbandry. He knows a lot about breeding. He raises black Angus cows for meat and they'll do a lot of the artificial insemination and so he's very familiar that he can have a breeding heifer and they'll take an embryo and place it inside of that heifer and it'll grow up and it won't have a bit of cross-contamination of the blood between the one to the other at all. Not a bit of the mother heifer, not a bit of her blood, intermingles with that calf that's growing inside of her. We have that same understanding with the body of Jesus Christ. There wasn't a bit of the blood of Mary that was involved in Jesus' body. That's God's blood. All right, Acts chapter 20 tells us that, that he bought the church, basically it's talking of God, that he purchased with his own blood. All right, and so that's God's blood that was shed on the cross, that was God's blood. It wasn't Joseph's blood, it wasn't man's blood, it wasn't Mary's blood that intermingled with him, it was only God's blood. All right, so it was a holy blood. And so we see that, but also we understand, we looked at this last week, for the life was manifest. And I talked about this a little bit at our church on, I think it was Sunday night, how you can't see life. We see the effects of it. All right, I'm talking to you right now, y'all are sitting here looking at me, some with confused faces, some with, you know, Eve is just bored and that's okay. No, but y'all, you can see life. You can see the effects of it, but you can't see the life itself. You can't see the thing that is actually animating the being, all right? You see a cat run across the road, you know that cat is alive. You see that cat lying dead in the road, you know that life has left that cat, okay? And so with that, Jesus, when they saw Jesus, it says the life was manifested. They actually saw eternal life. When they looked at the physical body of Jesus Christ, they were looking at eternal life. Now, if we want to understand again what eternal is, the difference between eternal and everlasting, because the King James Bible talks about both of those things. John 3.15 and 3.16 use both eternal and then everlasting life. Eternal life has no beginning and no ending. It's eternal. It's outside of time. Time has no bearing on it whatsoever. This can only apply to God. God is eternal. He has no beginning. He has no end. He's the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. There's no beginning to Him. There will be no end to Him. And when he looks at time, it means nothing to him. A day to the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day. It means nothing to him at all. And so when you're looking at eternal life, you're actually looking at God's life. Everlasting life is a life that begins and then lasts forever. It's everlasting. But there's a fixed point of reference that you're looking from. So that eternal life... I've got to start John 3.14, I've got to start there for my memory's sake. And even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in the name should not perish, but have everlasting life." So the difference between the two is, yes, when you are born of God, you get everlasting life. You have a new life that has begun and will never end. But you also get eternal life. Meaning, when God looks at you, and He looks at the life within you, all He sees is the life of His Son. And that's eternal life. So when you are born of God, you actually get Jesus Christ Himself as your life. The Bible says that He is our life. It also refers to it, later on it says, Oh, our life is hid with Christ in God, right? In the book of Leviticus and in Exodus also, it talks about when Moses is laying out the law that God had given him, the Jews were not to eat blood, right? They weren't to eat the blood. Does anybody know why? Does anybody remember why? Maybe reading that at some point in time. Because the life of the flesh is in the blood. Okay, so that's why they were not to eat blood. They were to drain all the blood out. We still practice that today. You know, when they'll butcher a hog, they'll hang it up and cut its throat and all the blood will run out and so it drains that animal. We'll do the same thing with a deer. We'll hang it and let the blood run out and everything. But the main idea behind that is that the life of the flesh is in the blood. But once you're born again, it's a spiritual birth on the inward parts, okay? Your blood is still coursing through your veins, it's still animating your flesh, it's still carrying oxygen throughout your body, but that's no longer where your life is. Your life is hid with Christ in God. Okay, your life now is Jesus Christ. He is our life. And that's why when you're born again, there is a new life. It is a new creature that takes place. Now, modern Bibles will change that in 1 Corinthians there. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things were passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Modern Bibles will change that to a new creation. But the problem with that is, is my creation didn't change at all when I was born of God. the creature on the inward parts did. It's a spiritual thing that's done. Someday, when either on the rapture or the resurrection, it's the same event, when Christ calls up his church, if you're born of God, you'll go in that. And Romans 8 says that that's when our bodies will be adopted. But up until that point, our bodies are still corruptible. They're still very corrupt. I mean, you just go ahead and not bathe for a week and just see how corrupt your body gets. It doesn't take long for us to realize, yeah, this flesh is very corrupt. Paul even said, in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. So even in the apostle Paul, his flesh was corrupt. He said, it's no longer I that doeth it, but sin that dwelleth in me. And so his flesh is corrupt, but now that he is born of God, he is no longer a servant to sin. He is now a servant unto Christ. He's not bounded by chains to that sin. It no longer drives him. It no longer directs him. But that carnal mind is still there, and it'll still go after the whims of the flesh and everything, but we're to bring those things under subjection. We're to make our bodies subject unto the mind of Christ. We might get into that a little bit later on. We'll definitely get to it when we get into 1 John 3. In verse 9 it says that, "...whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God." We'll get into that when we get down that way. That life was manifested, that eternal life. And we looked at 1 John 5, 20, I think it was, where it clearly lists out that, speaking of Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. I think you said you'd played that one message of mine, the true God, here. Okay, and I went into that in some depth there. So you've got a bit of an understanding just with that foundation there as well. All right, so this life was manifested unto us. Now we're into verse 3. says, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. So those things that they saw, those things that they heard, so they saw the body of Jesus Christ, they saw all the miracles that he did, they saw the storm being calmed on the sea, they saw the miracle of the draft of fishes, they saw all of that. but they also heard the words of God. John himself heard the voice of the Father when he was up on the Mount of Transfiguration. Where that voice came, you know, Peter, James, and John were up there, and they heard the voice of God the Father saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him. All right, he said that. Peter goes on in 2 Peter 1, and he describes that event, and he says, but we have a more sure word of prophecy. And he was speaking of the Bible. He was speaking of the written word of God. And he says, even more sure than hearing the actual voice of God thundering in the heavens. And it says that in other places when God would speak, it would sound like mighty rushing waters. Anybody ever been up to Niagara Falls? hear those roaring, all right? That's the voice of God. That's how the prophets would describe the voice of God. That's how it would sound. It sounds like a thundering in the heavens, okay? A roaring. And so when you're listening to that type of thing and you would hear that come out of heaven, Peter says, even more so than hearing that voice, we have a more sure word of prophecy. the Bible that was given to us. And God has always intended to give his word in one completed book. You see that throughout. Psalm 40, verse seven says, lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. The apostle Paul in the book of Hebrews writes to us in chapter 10, verse seven, and he quotes that same scripture. And he says, that was Jesus speaking. And so it's always been that there was going to be a volume of the book, a Bible. God has always intended to give us a Bible. All the way back, even when Moses was writing the law, writing that Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, when the history books were written, the first, second Samuel, first, second Kings, first, second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ruth would fall into that as well. Then you get on into the prophetic books of Job and the Psalms. And yes, the Psalms are very prophetic throughout. And then you get on into the major prophets and the minor prophets throughout those things. As those were written, they were compiled and they would be placed together. But they were in scrolls. They were held in books. They did have books in those days because, I think it was a hazardous maybe, I might be off on that hazardous, was unable to sleep and they delivered unto him a book and opened up the book and was looking through those things to try to get him to go to sleep. It was the annals of the times and all that. The small details on that might be a little off, but he was handed a book at any rate. But as we look at that, Peter says, because we have a Bible, this is a more sure word of prophecy, even more so, than if God were to break this ceiling wide open, Peel back and roll back the clouds of heaven, and peel back the darkness and vastness of space, and where we can see right up into the third heaven, and see the very throne room of God with our own eyes, and hear the booming voice of God with our own ears. This Bible is even more sure than that. That's what Peter tells us in chapter one of 2 Peter, okay? This is why God gave us a Bible, so that we could know him, so we could know him intimately, so that we could know every bit about him. Hebrews 4.12 says, for the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discern of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And that sword that is sharper than any two-edged sword, which is the Word of God, it divides asunder the Godhead for us. It divides it into the point where we can see in this Bible, in the King James Bible specifically, we can go in there and we can pull apart the Godhead and we can say, okay, who is this that is speaking? Who is this that is working? Who is this that is doing this act or this act? We think of Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And it goes on from there, and he speaks into existence all the things that we see today in those six literal days, okay? When we look at that, we better picture Jesus Christ as the one actually doing the work. Because Paul, in the book of Colossians, I think it's chapter one, verse 16 and 17, says that all things were made by him. So Jesus is the one that was actually making everything. We might picture God the Father doing all of that work, but it was Jesus that was doing the creating. He is the creator, okay? He is Jehovah God in that aspect. And so this Bible is sharp enough that we can divide us under even the Godhead, right? And so that's going off of those things there. That's what they saw. That's what they heard. They heard the voice of God. They saw the body of Jesus Christ, but we get to hear their report. God saw fit to record the report of those apostles and what they saw. John is telling us these things here. This is written by the apostle John. This is the one that laid on his breast that night that he was betrayed by Judas, and he said, Lord, is it I? He was laying there, and just imagine, you know, you've laid your head on maybe your mother's breast at times, or maybe your father's breast at times. You can hear them breathing. hear their heart beating. And if you can imagine John laying his head on the breast of Jesus and hearing the eternal blood of God pumping through those veins. You can just imagine that, okay? And so these are the things that they're reporting to us. And there's a specific reason, and he gives us that in verse three. He says this, that ye also may have fellowship with us. Now this fellowship is a very special fellowship, and we're gonna break it down as we get on down even further, like into verse seven and such. But that fellowship is a fellowship with God that is a oneness with Him. Now, when we talk about fellowship, we might have a fellowship dinner, okay? Quite often, well, whenever there's five Sundays in a month, we have a morning service and we have an evening service, okay? It's 10.45 in the morning is our morning service. We have Sunday school before that, but 10.45 is our morning service. 6 p.m. is our evening service on Sundays. But whenever there's five Sundays in a month, our morning services will be the same, but we'll have a service, we'll have a lunch right after morning church, and then we'll have, at 1.30, we'll have an afternoon service, and then we'll just be done for the day. It's just a little fun thing to mix it up every once in a while. And some will call that a fellowship meal, because we're, you know, we're fellowshiping together, we're talking with one another, and you know, discussing different things and all of that. But that's not what this fellowship is talking about. This fellowship is referring to the fellowship that Jesus Christ has had with His Father and with the Holy Ghost since before time began. There was never a time up until the point where He died on that cross and where He was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin. Up until that point, there was not a single moment when there was not perfect fellowship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. All three of them, one God. I'm sure you're familiar with St. Patrick and how he described the Trinity, using a three-leaf clover, right? There's a bit of a problem with that, though, because he would describe it as three individual leads, but it all makes up one clover. But that's not really the picture we get from the King James Bible. What we see, and just follow my reasoning with this for a bit, what we see out of the Bible is that God is like a big bubble. There are times where God the Father will step out of that bubble and He will act, or He will speak, or He will do something. Then He slips back into that bubble of the Godhead. The word Trinity is not in the Bible, but the word Godhead is. That's how the King James Bible handles that concept. It calls it the Godhead. There are times where the Holy Ghost will step out of that, and in the New Testament is the first place you see that name, Holy Ghost, and it's only recorded in the King James Bible. All modern Bibles change it, just blanket statement to Holy Spirit. But when he is singled out as a person, He is called the Holy Ghost, okay? And when He steps out of that bubble, He will act and He will do, and He has certain things that He does as the Holy Ghost, and He slips back into that bubble, and He is God. And then you see Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, step out of that bubble, and He will act and He will do, and He will do whatever it is that He's doing, and He slips back into that bubble. Never at one time were they ever without fellowship. always one God. There are different times where each individual person, and we can put it in the person of Jesus Christ, the person of the Father, the person of the Holy Ghost, okay? And so, when you look at it like that, there's more oneness involved than having a three-leaf clover, where it's one clover but just three leaves. When you're looking at God, you see the Godhead. There are times where Jesus will step out and he'll take the spotlight as acting in that Godhead. There's times where the Father will step out and he will act in the spotlight in that Godhead. There's times where the Holy Ghost will step out and he will act in the spotlight of that Godhead. But they are always one. Up until the point where Jesus Christ, as I said, was made to be sin for us on that cross. That's what the Bible says. He was made to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He actually was made into sin on that cross. Right? He knew no sin. He had never done any sin of His own, but the Bible also says in another place that He became us. As he died on that cross, I died with him. I am buried with him in the baptism of his death, Paul says. Raised in the likeness of his resurrection. When he died, he died as Phil Seeley. When he died, he died as Rob Thompson. He lived and bore every single human being's sin throughout all of time, from Adam and Eve up until the very last person that is ever going to be born. He became them on that cross. And when God had placed all of that sin, He made Him to be sin for us. It wasn't just that he became sin, he was made to be sin. The Father did that. He took the entirety of the sin of mankind and put it in Jesus Christ. So when you looked at that man hanging on the cross, you were looking at the personification of sin and wickedness. We could go into a whole lot more detail of those things and we may, you know, later on, but at that point, he cries out and he is quoted in Psalm 22, verse one, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And he cries out to his father because at that point he had made to be sin for us. And for the first time in all of eternity, that fellowship was broken. And the reason is, is so that we could be invited into that fellowship. Remember when I said that our life is hid with Christ in God? I'm gonna turn to Ephesians 2. You don't have to tune to it. If you want to, you can, but I'm gonna turn to Ephesians 2. I'm gonna read verse 5 and 6 to you. It says, well, I'll start at verse 4. That's a good place to start, I think. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." And remember, to be quickened is what? To be made alive. Okay? Again, when you cut your fingernails too short, you get down to the quick. You get into the live part. Boy, that hurts. All right, we have a really traumatic story of our son Trevor when we were cutting his fingernails and it got past the quick and right into the finger. Little baby, boy did he scream, but he doesn't remember it now, so it'll be okay. But that's the alive part. That's the same thing that Paul is speaking of in Hebrews 4.12, for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, all right? So, but this. Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. Remember when I said when he died, we died with him? When he resurrected, we resurrected with him? The work is already completed. Everything is already done. It's finished. It's fully taken care of. The only thing left for you to do is to believe it. to believe that that was for you. That's really what God requires. You're not gonna find any place, and you can search through the entirety of the Bible, and the only place you'll find it is man's notes that they've written in his study notes, okay? You're not gonna find one place where Jesus, Peter, Paul, John, James, any of them lead somebody to a prayer to be born again. You'll never find that. You'll never find a place where Peter comes up to somebody and says, well, are you ready to be saved? Well, all you need to do is pray and ask Jesus into your heart. You will not find those words in a Bible anywhere. They're not there. What that is is man's attempt to try to make sense of a miracle. You see, the new birth is a miracle. Passing from death unto life is a miracle. It says in the Psalms that God killeth and he maketh alive. He putteth down and he raiseth up again. Okay, it's God that does those things. 1 John 1 says, he came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, who were born not of blood. All right, so it's not from your blood lineage. It's not because your grandmother went to church that you're automatically in. It's not because you're a Jew that you're automatically in. So you're not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh. There's nothing in your flesh that can want to be saved so bad that it'll convince God, hey, I'm ready to save that one. Can't happen, the Bible says that. It says, nor of the will of man. That's saying you can't even get saved just because you want to. You can't even want it bad enough to convince God, okay, I'm gonna save them. God does it when He sees you believe Him, okay? Salvation in the Bible has always been believing the promises of God, right from Genesis all the way through to Revelation and into eternity. It's believing the promises of God. God has given promises. When man believed those promises, God would deliver them. When you're looking at salvation, what you're looking at is a sinner who is brought to the point of repentance because of the law of God being presented to them. The law was given. Paul said, by the law is the knowledge of sin. That's why we have the law. If the law was not necessary, God would have only given you a New Testament. Okay? It's not there just for history. It's not there just for allegory. It's there to give you the law. The law is there to show you your guilt before a holy God. That's why it's there. That's why the book of Leviticus is there. That's why the book of Numbers is there. That's why the book of Deuteronomy is there. It's when that law is presented to you and your heart rises up against it and says, no, that's not right. That's your wicked heart rising up against the law of God. And God did that to show you that your heart is not right with God, and you need to be born again. That's the whole purpose of God, again, God giving you a Bible so you can see this. And so Paul said, without the law, I had not known sin, for I would not have known lust, except that the law said, thou shalt not covet. Okay, so Paul even said in another place that, as touching the law, he says, I was blameless. Everything in that law that was written, God allowed him to put this in the Bible, to be recorded for all of eternity, that he was blameless before God in that, as touching the law. If you could touch it, if you could do it, if you could keep it, Paul kept it perfectly. But you look at that, and the law is much more than the Ten Commandments, okay? It's much more than that. Jesus even quotes, I think it's in John, is it in John 12 or John 10? I guess John 12. He says that, He's quoting the Psalms and he says, it's written in your law, I said, ye are gods, okay? And that law, he's quoting out of the Psalms. So even the book of Psalms is the law. So if you've had somebody tell you, oh, you don't need the law anymore, you're under grace, that's a lie. Because Paul said you need the law to know about sin. Without the law, there is no knowledge of sin. And so you have to have that. And Jesus even says that the Psalms are the law. So you can go ahead and cut those Psalms right out too. This is what happens when you actually take the Bible for exactly as it's written, exactly as it says, and just believe that God put it there on purpose. I don't believe that you can take a King James Bible and correct any single word and make it a better word. I don't believe that. Peter said that there, oh, how did he put that? Well, it's in 2 Peter chapter. I'm right here. Let me just turn one page over. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. That's how the scriptures were given. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost would come upon a man and he would speak, okay? He would speak through them. Now the Holy Ghost was in them and he was speaking in them. There are times where the Spirit of Christ was in a prophet, and he would prophesy. In every single prophet, Jesus said that in all the prophets, the Spirit of Christ was in them, prophesying of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, telling that Christ was going to die, telling that Christ was going to be made an offering for sin, telling that Christ was going to be raised from the dead. Those things are spoken in all of the prophets, including Jonah, and I can show you exactly where. That prophecy, it says it wasn't given by any private interpretation. And when you take your Bible and you look at a word and you say, well, I know the Bible says this, but I think a better word for that translation would be whatever it would be, okay? That's private interpretation. God has given us a Bible so that we would know his word, and he wants you to know it, okay? We're gonna pause for just a second in what we have been talking about here in 1 John, and I wanna present a thought to you. Is God able to give us a perfect Bible? If God wanted to, would he be able to give us today in the year 2024 a perfect Bible? Is he powerful enough to do that? A perfect Bible. A perfect Bible without any error, exactly as it would be if he had one open in his lap in heaven. Is he able to do that? I think so. It'd be written in the language of everybody. It'd be, because each language is, which we see in our Bibles, in some words, it is not translatable from the Hebrew to English. Right. It would be correct in Hebrew, Japanese, Asian, Brazilian, English. And so what it would be, it would be a Bible of which you could look at it and say, that is the Word of God. If he was able to do that. I believe he is able to give us a perfect Bible. I believe he's able to give us a perfect Bible in any language, like what you said. I believe he gave us one in English, okay? Now, if he is able to give us a perfect Bible, would he want to? Would he want you to know every single word of God? Turn to John chapter 12. Let me present this thought to you. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. We'll go to John chapter 12. We're gonna look at starting at verse 47. And this is Jesus speaking, John 12, 47. If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Now listen to this. He that rejecteth me receiveth not my words. Now those, that word is words in the plurality, okay? The individual words. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. At the very last day, at the judgment bar, when you stand before God, the Bible is gonna be opened. It says the books are gonna be opened. What books do you think that is? says the books are gonna be opened and another book is gonna be opened, which is the book of life. The books that are opened are 66 books contained in one Bible. Because this is where it's recorded the words of Jesus Christ from cover to cover. Remember Psalm 40 verse seven, lo I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. From Genesis all the way to Revelation. It's written of Jesus Christ. He is in this book throughout, okay? And so in John 12, verse 48, he says, he that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. So in the last day, when you're standing before God and he is judging you, based on what you've done in life, what you haven't done in life, if you've believed him or if you've rejected him, if you've believed his words or rejected his words. And he opens up a book that is absolutely perfect, because I guarantee you God's Bible is perfect in heaven. He's not going to have any errors in that thing. The Bible says, forever, O Lord, is thy word settled in heaven. So if it's settled in heaven, he's going to judge you by a perfect Bible. My question to you is, what kind of a loving God would it be if he was going to judge you by a book that he never gave you? What kind of love would that be? It wouldn't be any love at all. If he's gonna judge you and condemn you by words that he never gave you, that doesn't sound like the God of the Bible to me. But yet, in our minds, we try to process that, oh, man had his hands in this, and corrupted this, and did that, and so we can't have a perfect Bible. But my God's bigger than that. My God is able to give me a Bible in a language that my heart speaks. I believe there's a few perfect Bibles in different languages around the world. I believe there's one in English. And as we go into these things, one thing that you're going to continually see about the King James Bible is that it takes Jesus Christ and it elevates Him higher. The Bible uses the word extol, okay? I don't doubt anybody in here has used the word extol. Actually, I did this week, but that was in preaching. But anybody else, to extol is to lift higher than anything else. It's one reason why traditionally church steeples are so high with a cross on the top. Higher than any other edifice in the entire town, and that cross is up there, it has been extolled. That's the mindset behind it. Now obviously in cities with skyscrapers it's different, but that's what we have. And so the idea behind that is, that Jesus Christ is to be extolled. He is to be lifted higher than anyone else. He is to be elevated higher than anyone else. He is absolutely 100% God. He is absolutely perfect, having never sinned. He only has the blood of God flowing through his veins. All of these doctrines you find in a King James Bible. However, with a wording that gets changed and some verses are taken out and some wording is taken out of the newer Bibles, those doctrines are either watered down or removed quite outright, okay? I could take you to 1 John 5, 7 through 8. And I can show you in there how the single most recognizable verse, in one verse, you see the entirety of the Godhead. You see the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and it says, and these three are one. And that verse is one of the most attacked verses in modern Bibles. It's taken completely out. Let's go there, let's go there. We've got a couple of different versions in here tonight, and I want you to understand something. As I go through these things, I'm not attacking your Bible. I'm not doing that at all. My job as a Bible preacher, though, is to preach the Bible and to show you where these things are at, okay? So go to 1 John, chapter five. I'm gonna start actually in verse six, okay? Now, I'm using the King James Bible. Anybody have something other than the King James Bible you've got? You've got something different? You're using the, is it the Amplified Bible? Is that what it was? No, this is the Living Bible and the King set. Okay, so go to 1 John chapter 5. Put that on page there. So let's look at this. Let's start in 1st John chapter 5 verse 6. is speaking of Jesus Christ, verse five says that, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood. I wanna pause there for a second. There's a lot of speculation as to what that's speaking of. But if you take the Bible for exactly as it's written, it says, this is he that came by water and blood. So it's describing how Jesus came, is it not? We came over here tonight by minivan, all right? We got here by our minivan. That's how we got here. We drove on the road, but the minivan is the thing that brought us here. We came by that minivan, all right? This is not talking about his baptism and the blood of his cross, because that's not how he came into this world, is it? This is describing his birth. that he came by water and blood. Now in John chapter three, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and he says, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That spirit is a spiritual birth, being born again, all right? The new creature on the inward parts. That physical birth is described as a water birth. We all know when the water breaks, boy, the baby's coming. Now, I understand there's a certain amount of blood that's involved in that, too. I've been there three times. I've seen it all three times. I know what's involved. But what this is referring to is in Deuteronomy chapter 22. Deuteronomy 22 gives the tokens of a woman's virginity. Now, that woman, if she had gone to the marriage altar a virgin, having never known a man, And in that time, this would have taken place. When they consummated that marriage, a cloth would have been placed under her, and it would have caught the blood that would have been present. That cloth was folded up and was presented to the father of that girl, saying, your daughter went to the marriage altar a virgin. That was called the tokens of her virginity. It was proof that she was a virgin when she went to the marriage altar. Mary would not have had that. Because the birth of Jesus would have taken that out of the way. But what we have here in 1 John 5, 6 is the tokens of Mary's virginity. Because Jesus didn't only come by water, it says, but by blood and water. By water and blood. That blood was present, showing that Mary was a virgin. Okay, so that right there is the virgin birth in 1 John chapter five, okay? So it shows, again, the miraculous birth of Jesus, and you go into the law. That's why that law is there, to show you these things. That's why we need the law, you know? If you get to know the law, the writings of the apostles are gonna make so much more sense, okay? There is nothing in this Bible you can't understand. All right, and you don't need me to teach you. We're gonna learn that in 1 John chapter two, okay? It's the Holy Ghost that teaches you, but it's an anointing on the inward parts that you get from the Holy One. The Holy One is Jesus throughout the Bible. You study that Holy One throughout the Bible in the King James Bible. It is Jesus Christ every single time, okay? And so it says in chapter two, we can turn back there just a second, and we'll touch on this and go back in chapter five. Well, in the Living Bible, Isn't that something? And that's what I mean. The newer Bibles muddy it up. And sadly, it's under the guise of, oh, it's easier to read. But I tell you, once you get used to the meter and tenor of the King James Bible, there's a few principles that you can understand, you know, the these and the thous, those are accurate. Those are accurate pronouns to show singular or plural. We talked about that the first night we were here, you know. All the pronouns that begin with Y, so it'd be ye, you, your, yours. your, those are all plural in the King James Bible. When you look at thee, thy, thine, and thou, that's all singular, okay? So really, that's not hard to decipher. Once you learn it, you look through those things, and oh boy, that makes it a whole lot more clear, you know? And I could go into a couple places with that, but I don't wanna get too much off track. We're already off track tonight. We're not gonna make a whole lot of distance tonight. But look at this, look in verse 20. says, but ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. This is 1 John 2.20. And then down in verse 27, he says, but the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you. But as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. And so, excuse me, right in the Bible, it tells you, you don't need any man to teach you. In fact, Jesus, when he was talking with Peter, he tells his disciples, he says, who do men say that I, the son of man, am? And they answer, and they say, well, some say you're Elias, some say you're Jeremias, or one of the prophets, or that prophet, and he says, but whom say ye that I am? He brings it down from all of the men that were around them to just the disciples. just his close followers. And Peter speaks up and says, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus says this, he says, blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And so mankind, flesh and blood, had not revealed to Peter that Jesus was the Son of the living God. The Father himself revealed that thing to him. Has God lost any of His power? No. Can He not reveal that same truth to us? Yes, He can. Hebrews chapter 1 says, God at sundry times and in diverse manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, but hath chosen in these last times to speak unto us by His Son. And you wonder, okay, well, where are the words of the Son? They're contained in a Bible. So, from the pages of this book itself, you get alone with God, you get yourself in a King James Bible, you get alone with God, and you say, God, I want to know you. I want to know you deeper than I have known you. I want to know just the little intimate things about you. Would you teach me? And you just start reading. And pretty soon, you're going to find the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. He's going to guide you into all truth. And He's going to bring a verse to mind. You're going to look that verse up, and you're going to see the conversation morph. And then you're going to look over here on that page, and there's going to be something that's going to catch your eye. You're going to think about that. And you think, oh, that's also over in the Psalms. And you're going to turn to the Psalms. You're going to see it there. And then you're going to read down a few verses more. And then all of a sudden, something's going to hit you right square in the eyes that you've never seen before in your life. And that is the conversation that God has with you. That's God the Father teaching you with his word, okay? That's how he does it. You may think that sounds hooky. I think that sounds like God, okay? You don't need me to teach you. The problem is is when we take man's words and we say, hey, that's gospel, that's doctrine, that's it. You won't find me do that. You're gonna find me every place, I'm gonna have scripture to back it up, and I'm gonna show you from the scriptures, this is what God says about it. That's why we've gotten in the mess that we're in in America, or all around the world, but specifically in America, specifically in the United Methodist Church, why we are where we're at in these things. It's because we've taken the Word of Man over the Word of God. This book has become just guidelines to live by, and man will look at and reason away the Word of God, rather than take it as, thus saith the Lord. Okay? So that's why we need to get back to this book. Get back to your Bibles. Get to know the Bibles. You know the stories, you know Christianity, you know church. You gotta get to know the book. This is where you're going to find God. This is where you're going to find the deep things of God. You're going to find things in here so far deeper than you ever imagined. It even says in Ephesians that he's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think. If he's able to do that, he's able to do that with his word. Right now I'm taking my men's class over at in church. We're going into a study right now that is over my head, and I have a few verses that we're looking at, and we're comparing spiritual with spiritual, as Paul says to do. And we're taking verses, and we're looking at it through the Bible, and we're seeing what God says about this thing. And the men are accepting it. They're receiving it well. They're seeing some things, and verses are coming to mind. They say, oh, is that what that's talking about over there? And it's like, yes, that's exactly what that is. And that's the conversation that God is having, okay? But this is where that conversation starts, all right? You getting to know your Bible. And again, that's the whole purpose of me coming over here. I want you to learn this Bible. I'm a Bible preacher. There's Baptist on my church sign, but I wasn't the one that put that there, okay? I may be somewhat Baptistic in some of my doctrine, but I'm a Biblicist. I preach the Bible. There's a lot of things that Baptists do I don't agree with. And my church knows that. They know those things. And they're starting to see them on their own. Hey, you know, we used to do that, but that's not in the Bible anywhere. Why do we do it? Again, I personally believe we ought to take our doctrine from the Bible, not from the word of man. Is that logical? Does that make sense? That we would take what we believe about God from the book that God gave us to know him? And so with that, let's go back to 1 John 5. We took a little hiatus there. We're going to wrap this up here shortly. 1 John 5, 6, again, we'll read this again. This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood. And again, that's speaking of the virgin birth. We looked at those things. You can go to Deuteronomy 22, and you can see those tokens of a woman's virginity. and all of that. But, and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. Now, earlier on in the book of John, I think it's in, it's either in 14, 15, or 16, it's somewhere in there, we see that the Spirit of truth is spoken of, and is referred to as the Holy Ghost. And so when you see that capital S Spirit, that Spirit is Truth, it's speaking of the Holy Ghost, because He is the Spirit of Truth. Again, that's how your Bible will put pieces together. And the King James Bible really is the only one you can do that with. The other Bibles kind of, the wording quite isn't as accurate, and it doesn't follow throughout, and it's hard to make those matches throughout the Bible. But that's one of the majesties of this thing, is you can follow a phrase, you can follow a word throughout the whole Bible, and you can find doctrine in those things. You can see where they line up, and boy, it's just like crosshairs on a gun lining right up, and boy, it's just right there. All right, verse seven. It says this, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one. Now, as I said, verses seven and eight, are ones that are attacked in every single modern Bible. Many times they're taken right out. Sometimes it'll be switched around. It'll say something to the effect of, and there are three in heaven. Something to that effect. Just very kind of milquetoast. There's not any power there. But what you see out of this is that there are three in heaven that are bearing record. Now, a record is a written account. We used to have 45s and we had records. And what that was was it was recorded audio that had put grooves all around that thing. You'd drop a needle on that thing and it would turn and it would play back what was put in those grooves. That was a record. It was something that had been spoken or played on an instrument and it was recorded. And there are three that bear record in heaven. In other words, they are there in heaven with the word of God saying, Jesus Christ is the son of God. That's what they're bearing. All right, we're gonna see that here in just a second. There are three that bear record in heaven. It says the Father, the Word, and remember John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. John 1.14, the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us. And then that beautiful parenthetical statement, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father. Now, he says this, and these three are one. So the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are one. Three persons, one Godhead. This is the strongest verse in the entirety of the Bible proving the Godhead. Okay? Now, continue on. There are three that bear witness in earth. Now, to understand this, you've got to understand, in the law, what was spoken of as an earthen vessel. Okay? It would have been like a clay pot that would either carry water, or sometimes the sacrifices were put in that to be brought into the most holy place to be offered, and those types of things. Okay? And that earthen vessel, when it carried the sin offering, was to be broken. Now we think of Jesus' body. It was broken on that cross, was it not? Paul speaks of his earthen vessel, and he's speaking about his body. So this here is referring to the body of Jesus Christ in verse seven. All right, look at this. There are three that bear, in verse eight, I'm sorry. There are three that bear witness in earth. So in that earthen vessel, there are three things that bear witness. Number one is the spirit. Number two is the water, and number three is the blood. Now if you think about this, when Jesus was on the cross, what three things left his body? If you can run the whole crucifixion day through your mind, what three things left his body? At one point he cried out, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, okay? Now this is going a little bit deeper, but in, In my Bible, I have a lowercase s spirit there, and I'm not going to get into the reasons why tonight, other than it's speaking of the personal spirit of Jesus Christ, okay? It says, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. That spirit left his body and went to the hands of the Father. That's where that spirit went. When he then died, it says that, And he gave up the ghost, all right? A ghost is a soul and a spirit without a body. Okay, so he gave up the ghost. His spirit went to the hands of the Father, and his ghost, the Bible says, went to hell. Okay, that's in Acts chapter two, Psalm 16, and Good Night Throughout, Job chapter two. It speaks to those same things, okay? And in that, when Jesus died, there was still water and blood in his body, was there not? Because that centurion came up, was gonna break his legs, but saw he was already dead, so he stabbed his side, and out forth poured blood and water. Okay? So there were three things that left the body of Jesus Christ. His spirit, that he commanded to the heads of the father, and blood and water, when then centurion pierced his side. Do you remember what that centurion said when he saw that? He said, truly this was the Son of God. That was proof to that centurion that that was the Son of God. When he saw that spirit leave his body, he cried out, and the spirit left his body, and he died, and he stabbed that body, and blood and water poured out. Whatever it was that proved that to that centurion, he knew it. That was the Son of God. Now back in 1 John 5, look at this. Verse 9. All those things, they agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, now in verse eight, we saw the witness of men, that witness that saw that blood leave the body, saw the water leave the body, saw the spirit leave the body. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. Now, where's the witness of God? It's in verse seven, where the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are one, and they bear record that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Okay? The witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son. Verse 10, 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. Now what record do we have of the Son of God? What written record do we have? We have a Bible. The Bible tells us right here, if we don't believe the words of the Bible, if we say, ah, I don't know if I can believe that, then we are calling God a liar, because we received not the witness, we have received not the record that God gave of his son. Goes on even further in verse 11, we touched on this last time, and this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. That's what this record shows. From cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, in the volume of the book, it's written of Jesus Christ, that in Him is eternal life, okay? You're gonna find it in every book, and if the Lord gives you a keen understanding, you can find it on every single page. It's in the whole thing, even in the genealogies. I was moved to tears just reading the genealogies Sunday night in Matthew chapter one. I was moved to tears at the end of that thing, okay? That's God. That's God in those books. That's God in those pages, in those very words, okay? And he's bearing record of his Son. He's the Son of God. Now, all that to say, we'll drop back into 1 John chapter one. So 1 John chapter 1. Verse 3, sorry. And so the fellowship that the apostles had With the Father, with Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Ghost, they left us this written record so that we too could have that fellowship. Right? We have something that even the apostles didn't have. We have the entirety of the Word of God in one book. They had the Word walking with them, but we have the Word in our hands. This is the written record of Jesus Christ. This is the Word of God. This is what God has given us to know Him and to understand Him. It's how He speaks to us. We speak to God in prayer. God speaks to us through the pages of the Bible. That's how that conversation works, okay? He doesn't speak in dreams anymore. He doesn't speak in visions anymore. He speaks through his book. Hebrews chapter 1 tells us that. Titus chapter 1 tells us the same thing, okay? That in these last times, he's manifested his word through preaching. And that's why we preach. That's why we preach, so he can manifest his word. Look at verse 4, and we'll close out here. It says this, "...and these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." Now those things that are written will bring you fullness of joy. If you do not have fullness of joy, it's because you're missing something out of here, okay? When you look at the fruit of the Spirit, it's love, and then the very second aspect of that fruit is joy. When you have the Spirit of God in you, when you've been born of God, you've passed from death unto life, the very first thing that's gonna show up in your life is love. The very second thing that's going to show up is joy. Joy is not happiness. Okay? Because happiness is... It depends on happenstance. It's circumstantial. Okay? The other morning, we had to drive to countersport. I was not very happy, because we had to go over the hill, and it was 32 degrees outside, and it was raining. I wasn't very happy, but we had to get there. That was Monday morning, I guess it was. Okay? Yesterday morning. Wow, this week's gone by so fast. Today is Tuesday. Oh man, it might have been, I don't know. No, it was Monday morning. I wasn't very happy about that, but it's still a joy in my heart, okay? When we lose a loved one, God can give that peace which passeth all understanding. You can still have that joy of the Holy Ghost, that joy in the Holy Ghost, actually the Bible calls it, even though you're in a great heaviness, in a great sadness, because that abiding presence of God is joy. He says, at thy right hand are their pleasures forevermore. In thy presence is fullness of joy. So if you're not in fullness of joy, it's because you're not in the presence of God. And John, the apostle John, says that he wrote these things to us so that we could have fullness of joy. So if you take those things, do two things and put them together, in thy presence is fullness of joy, and this record he gave, that our joy may be full. When you're reading the word of God, you're in the presence of God. So what does that tell you about the Bible? God's in it. This is Him. This is His Word. This is what He wants you to know. He wants you to hear His voice from the pages of this book. Okay? Now, we got off track a little bit, but hey, we got through two verses tonight. How about that? Any questions? Any comments on anything? Yeah? So, when did you find joy in that day? On the way back from Cowdery Sport? In Cowdery Sport? Or the next day? You know, on the way to Cowdery Sport. Before you ever got there. Before I ever got there. I was driving and my wife, we had to drive two cars because we had to get our van inspected over in Cowdersport. It's about a half an hour drive from Shingle House to Cowdersport. And it's over a back road and kind of up and down and it can be nasty. 32 degrees and rain, it's not a good combination. But I noticed that I could still hear the water shushing underneath the van, and that's what you always listen for when that goes quiet, you know you're on ice. Remember that when you're driving, RJ. But I was going along, and it was probably maybe quarter to eight, we left the house at 730 and I was driving along and man I was I was just nervous had her behind me and and there was somebody just Driving really close behind her and we were going a little bit slower and they like to fly on that back road You know how they do on Whitney Creek and everything else. Yeah, you do that. Yeah, I do the same You get to know the roads, right? Yeah, but At any rate, so I'm driving along and I'm just nervous. I'm white knuckling that that steering wheel and I just remembered You know what? God made it so that on a Monday morning, at quarter to eight, I could drive my van all the way over to Countersport and get it inspected. And I know there's not going to be anything wrong with this van, because God's given us a good vehicle. Driving along, and I'm thinking, you know, I've got my wife in the car behind me. A lot of men don't have wives. A lot of men have lost their wives. And I just started thinking about the goodness of God in that, and I had joy. I wasn't happy about the circumstances of the day. but I had joy, okay? And it was the goodness of God that brought me joy. It was in his presence when I started. If you remember, it's somewhere in the Psalms, and it's been a while since I've read it, so I might quote it wrong. It says that, he inhabiteth the praises of his people. The praises of Israel, okay? He inhabited the praises of Israel. So God inhabits the praises of Israel. Now, according to Galatians 3.20, we are Abraham's seed because of Jesus Christ. So we are grafted into that. So He then will inhabit our praises. So if you think you're far from God, just start praising Him. He'll show up real quick. Okay. And so I started praising him for his goodness and everything that he's done for us. And you know, that I take the car and get it inspected. I wasn't worried I'm going to have to put $500 in the thing or whatever. And I needed one light bulb. It was like a $1.75. That was it. So thank the Lord for it. But, but yeah, that's, that, that was when, it was in the middle of the thing and it just, it just hit me, Hey, you know what? God is so good to us. And that's when the joy was there, and it was fullness of joy. And then I got to drive home with her, because she hopped up in the van with me, and that was good. So we left the one and came back home. But, yeah. Anything else? Spun circles around your heads a little tonight? I'm trying to keep it... So here's level, okay? The depth of the riches of the Bible is way down here, and it's limitless. And what we're doing is we're barely dipping under the surface right now. We're starting to pull a lot of pieces together. And the more we do this, and the more you look, the more you're going to recognize verses. You're going to recognize words. You're going to recognize doctrine. Hey, we talked about that before. And the pieces are going to start being put together. I like doing puzzles. Anybody else like doing puzzles? I love puzzles. And when you first get them out, we always go around the edge first. We do the edges and the corners and get that all set and everything. And then we start putting major parts together. Maybe there's a mountain and it all looks like one bit. So we look throughout all the puzzle pieces and pull all them together. And we get them in one spot. And then we start arranging them. And pretty soon the image of that mountain starts showing up. And you think, hey, that's what that mountain looks like. It's the same way with the Word of God. Right now, in your hands, you have the Word of God. And it looks like a puzzle that's just all blown to pieces. There's pieces everywhere. And what we're trying to do is put the edges around. We're starting to frame the thing out. And we're starting to show doctrine about Jesus Christ, about who he is, that he's the eternal word of God, what his body was made out of, how he deals with people, how he works in people, how he talks to people. We're putting all those edge pieces in. Pretty soon we're going to start building more doctrine, and it's going to connect into the side, and all of a sudden it's going to drop into place for one of you. And it's going to be just, the light's just going to flash in your soul, and you're going to know, oh, that's amazing, look at that. That's been there all the time, why didn't I see that before? And that's how God does this. And Jeremiah talks about it being, I think it's Jeremiah, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. And the reason is you've got to have precept upon precept to build those things up. And the more you build, it's not a wall you're building, it's a tower. And the more you build up that tower, the farther you're going to be able to see and the more clarity you're going to have. So the things that your head is swimming in right now, you're chewing on these things, just let the Lord take what he gave you tonight, drop it in place for you, and file these things away someplace towards the front in your mental filing cabinet. So when you're at home reading your Bibles, when you're in church listening to preaching, when you're discussing Bible with one another, Those things are going to start coming up, and it'll be like, oh, that's right, we talked about that, and here it is over here, too. And those words are going to start making connections, and those are those pieces of the puzzle fitting together. So that's, if I could encourage you at all, that's what I'd encourage you in. Well, it reminds me of some of the songs from The Methodist Journal. Oh yes, yeah. There's some good old hymns in there. Oh yes. We haven't seen those hymns in a while. That's a good one too, yeah. One of my favorite hymns of all time is, And Can It Be That I Should Gain. Charles Wesley wrote that. He wrote that on the very day that he was born again. How's it go, babe? Yeah, that's the one. And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Died He for me who caused Him pain, for me who Him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? And there's six verses that go down through this thing, and it just unfolds the goodness of God that was revealed to Charles Wesley on the day he was born again. He was on the mission field when he got saved. He went to the mission field, and he didn't know God. And he realized this, and he's reading in the Bible, and he realizes there's a salvation that can be had that is real, and it brings with it assurance that I can know these things. And he wrote back to his brother, and he said, there's a salvation that can be had, and it's there, and it's real. And John thought he was crazy back in England. He thought he was crazy and all of this. And he wrote to another friend over in England, and he said, you know, I found that I don't have the salvation that the Bible speaks of. What should I do? Should I come home off the mission field? What should I do?" His friend was very wise. He said, preach faith until you have it, and then preach faith because you have it. And it wasn't too much longer after that, just a few months later, that God finally broke through, and the chains of his sin were broken off of him, and he believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. He was born of God. And he wrote back home to his brother, John, and he said, I found it. I found it, it's real. And it wasn't just not too much longer after that, John wrote to him and said, I found it. And the conversion of those two men is just, it's a fascinating story. But yeah, those things are precious. Those things are very precious. There's a lot of good doctrine in those hymns. All right, well, it's 747. We're way over. Anything else before closing prayer? We're happy to have you. Well, praise the Lord for it. I'm happy to be here. I love it. I wouldn't have anything more or anything other than this. I'm happy that your sister calls me every week and reminds me. Good. Yeah, very good. Well, do you want to close us in? Sure. Tell me, Father, thank you so much for sending your Son to save us. Thank all of these men who gave their lives to spread your word, to show the goodness that can be had with knowing you. Be with us as we travel back to our homes and prepare for this holy season. In all that you do for us, Lord, that your love has been given to us. Amen.