Notice this phrase, saying no other things, plural, than those which the prophets and Moses said would come. Now when he says the prophets and Moses, what is he referring to? The Older Testament. He's saying the Older Testament has been telling us this. This has been the theme. This has been the sum total of what the Older Testament has been teaching us. Something would come. What would come? Now there's three woods that he's gonna highlight. And if you've got a pen or a highlighter or something, I would just encourage you to underline, underscore, notice the three woods that he talks about. Why? Because they are fundamentally important to remind us of what, as Matthew 1.22 said, all this was done that it might be what? Fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying that's the pattern If it's going to be done, and it has grace upon it the Lord's got to do it If it's going to be done if it's going to be spoken if it's going to be fulfilled The Lord must do it. Now he used a prophet in the old days to tell us this. But the same principle, what was a prophet? A prophet was a servant of God. Was Jesus the servant of God? Yes, he is. Are you and I servants of God? So if we're gonna do things according to the grace of God, that is for the glory of God, it has to be what? By the Lord through his servant. We wanna remember that. By the Lord, through his servant. By the Lord, through his servant. Everything that is accomplished by the Lord, God done it, but he's always gonna do it through who? A servant. If he does it, it's gonna be through a servant. Aren't you glad you could be a servant of his? You're glad you could be a co-laborer with him. That if God's gonna fulfill it, he's gonna do it through his servant. Specifically, through his son, and then every servant that is connected to him. And praise God for that, amen? So even you and I, when we go out and do his work, we don't wanna take that lightly in no means. Why? Because whatever God's gonna accomplish on this earth today, he's gonna do it through a servant. He's gonna do it through his people. Can I show you another passage that can draw on this? It's in another book, but we'll highlight it and draw it out because this is the pattern, by the Lord, through his servant. Go to Acts real quick, Acts 26, Acts 26. Yeah, Acts 26. This blesses me when I ponder this thought because everything we're reading about, you know, every time Jesus or John the Baptist would preach the kingdom of God, that kingdom that they're preaching is the kingdom that God promised was coming and would be ushered in through his Christ or his Messiah. So therefore everything that Jesus does is gonna be connected to this promised kingdom and how this king would operate. We read a passage in yesterday's reading that will tell us how the king functions. What will he look like when he works? What will he look like when he is touching people's lives? What does it look like when he's teaching his ways? What does it look like when he's preaching his message? So Acts 26, look in verse number 19. Let's just start there to kind of get the setting of it. If you're there, say amen. Amen. Verse 19 of Acts 26 says, therefore King Agrippa Paul says, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Okay? He had a vision from God and therefore he was living that vision or that aim, that ministry, he was living it out. That's what had him before King Agrippa. Verse 20, but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should, what? Repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance. Remember that phrase, by the Lord, through his servant. This repentance would be by God, this turning to Him would be by God, this doing works of repentance would be by God, but it was always gonna be what? Through a servant. God's gonna do it through people. Verse 21, for these reasons, the Jews seized me in the temple and they tried to kill me. Verse 22, therefore having obtained help from God, now ain't that a precious thought, amen? How many of y'all need help from God? How many of you need help from Him when things are ugly and bad? I mean, you need him when things are good. Man, we need his help, don't we? Remember, if he's gonna do it, it's gonna be by him, through his servant, through his people. I obtained help from God to this day, witnessing both the small and great, notice this phrase, saying no other things, plural, than those which the prophets and Moses said would come. Now, when he says the prophets and Moses, what is he referring to? The Older Testament. He's saying the Older Testament has been telling us this. This has been the theme. This has been the sum total of what the Older Testament has been teaching us. Something would come. What would come? Now there's three woods that he's gonna highlight. And if you've got a pen or a highlighter or something, I would just encourage you to underline, underscore, notice the three woods that he talks about. Why? Because they are fundamentally important to remind us of what, as Matthew 1.22 said, that what God spoke he fulfilled and accomplished by him through his service. Verse 23, that the Christ, somebody tell me what that word means, the Christ. If we was to use an Old Testament word, what would we say? The Messiah. It's the idea of being a servant, a servant, an anointed servant, one who had a purpose placed upon his life. You could rest assured in here today, if God's going to help you, He's going to help you because He's got a purpose on your life. Paul said he had a purpose, what a vision. And what did God do all the way through up to this point? He helped him. Is Paul's life going to come to an end? Will our lives come to an end? Yes, they will. Ain't nobody escaping that in here today. All our lives are gonna come to an end. But you know what? Our lives will not come to an end until God is done with us. Amen? You and I, as servants of the Lord, are indestructible until God's done with us. That's a great comfort, isn't it? Man, in the day that we live in and the times we live in and the things that are still yet to happen upon the face of this earth, it's a wonderful thing to know that nothing can happen to me apart from the God that I serve, the God that I love, the God I'm committed to, who's committed to me. Nothing happens apart from Him allowing or working it out to happen. Amen. He will help me and He will help you and He will bring you through whatever it is and you can count on when He leads you, He's always gonna lead you in triumph. He's always gonna shepherd you in victory. So these are the three woulds. Verse 23, that the Christ would what? Suffer. Did He? And all God's people said He did. Why did He suffer? Because He was born to die. Why was He born to die? Because He was born to live a life that we couldn't live. To die a death that we couldn't die. So that we could receive the life that He lived through the death that He died and by faith He could live His life out of us. Amen? That the Christ would suffer, that's the first would. The second would, of the senses of the Older Testament about the Christ, that he would be first to rise from the dead. And all God's people said, if he's the first, Rusty, that means somebody else is coming behind him, amen? And I know who they are. Now, the Bible teaches us that everybody's gonna rise from the dead one day. Now, the problem with that is, is that everybody's gonna spend an eternity with him. Bible talks about two different depths. The death, the first death when a man dies, but the second death is when God takes those who never trusted Jesus with their life and he cast them into the lake of fire. He calls that the second death. That's a death you wanna avoid. And the only way to avoid that death is you gotta have two deaths. What do I mean by that? You gotta die before you die. How do you die before you die? You give your life to Jesus. That's how you die. When you give your life to Jesus, you've heard that saying before, what do I say? If you don't die before you die, you won't live when you die. Die. You gotta die before you die. How do you die? Before you die, you give your life to Jesus. You die with Him when He died. And you buried with Him when He was buried. And guess what? You get raised with Him when He was raised. And Jesus lives His life in us. That's where the third would. Notice the third would. Not only would He suffer, not only would He rise, but He would do what? He would proclaim the light to the people, the Jewish people, and to the Gentiles. Now ain't that a word there? The three woods. He'd suffer, he's gonna rise, and he's gonna preach. Well, how in the world can a Jesus that no longer lives on this earth because He's at the right hand of the Father, how in the world does He still preach and proclaim light to the Jew and to the Gentile? How does He do that? Through who? Through His servants. And that's exactly what Matthew said in 122. By the Lord, through His servants. Servant amen so all preaching that is done from heaven is preached by Jesus Through his people so you are a Messenger that he gets to preach his message through then that's a wonder isn't it that he would take somebody like me how many y'all It does it still amaze you that he'll use you that it still amazes you that He would proclaim His light through you? I mean, you know yourself better than anybody else, amen? Have you ever really thought about yourself much? That's a bad deal. Don't do it too often, because it only will what? Cripple you, won't it? Who do we lie to more than anybody else? We lie to ourselves more than anybody. I'm telling you, it's ugly, huh? Man, it looks like an old man, but he really ain't an old man, huh? What's the scripture say? The old man's perishing, but the new man is being what? Renewed and refreshed every day. How many of y'all's mind still thinks like you were young, but your body won't let you do what you used to do? And you don't have to be that old to do that, right? How many of y'all look in the mirror and say, man, I can't believe I've gotten this old. But in your mind, you still feel what? Fresh and young, but your body just don't work in coordinates with your mind anymore. But your body tells you every once in a while, hey, mind, you can't do what you used to do, right? It don't take long to get that fix. Some of the young people ain't got there yet, but it's coming, amen? It's coming. Karen, is it coming? Greg? It's coming. Jimmy? It's coming. Brother Shannon? It's coming. But if it's going to be preached, Christ is going to proclaim it if God's in it, but He's going to do it through His servant. Amen? By the Lord, through His servant. Now how will Christ do it? He told us how He would do it. How does He do it? He does it through who? The Holy Spirit. He said, I'm going to give you another helper, another comforter. My Father and I will come and live within you. How does He come and live within us? By the Spirit of God, who is God, living within us. And now He proclaimed, that's in John 14. And as Jesus said in John 15, apart from Him, we can do nothing of an eternal value. We gotta be connected to Him so that He can what? Work in us, work with us, and work through us. So if it's gonna be, it's gonna be by the Lord through His servant. Now what is the servant's responsibility? What do we do? Number one, we must trust the Lord. We trust Him. We trust His life. We trust His death. We trust His resurrection. We trust our shepherd as He leads us. His name is Jesus because He's going to save His people from their sins. Number two, He says He's going to be a governor. He's going to be a ruler. He'll rule over His people and He will shepherd My people, My servants. He will shepherd them. So we see That we're His, that we're the Father's, and as a result, we are a people together who get to do His work. We've got to trust Him. We've got to trust Him. Is He trustworthy? And if we take Him serious, does He take us serious? Yes. If we commit to Him, does He commit to us? Yeah, y'all know that proverb, and I share this everywhere I go, I try to, because I want to help people realize that when we commit to Him, entrust ourselves to Him, He entrusts Himself to us. Proverbs 16, 3, y'all ought to know what it says. What does it say? Commit your works unto the Lord, and He shall what for your thoughts? He shall what? Establish your Thinking your thoughts. I need that you need that. We all need that. We need God to establish our thinking But what's the basis of it when you entrust yourself Marcus? What are you doing? You you putting yourself you committing yourself to the Lord and when we do that God knows us more better than anybody else. He then commits himself to us. You take him serious He'll take you serious So the more serious you are with the Lord, the more serious the Lord is at work in, with, and through you and I. So we trust him. So to trust him, what then will I do? I will follow him. And all God's people said, I will follow. Everything we see Jesus doing as this trusted teacher, they followed him. and they walked with him. They trusted him, they followed him. They trusted him, they followed him. Jesus went about all the cities and villages doing these three things. What three things did he do? Teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Messiah, the kingdom, the reign of the Messiah, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. So what's the three things we see him doing? Teaching, preaching, and healing. Let's think about it like this. Let's start with the healing side. What would he do when he healed people? Number one, He was tangibly serving them in an affliction that they had. He was serving them. He met a need in their life that they had. So, tangible service. Just remember that. If I'm going to follow Jesus, one of the things He's going to use me to do is have a tangible service to people. He's going to use me to touch people. He's going to touch people through me. by this tangible service. Now, we're not gonna be able to heal all the diseases that he healed. What was this healing about? This healing was to authenticate him because the Messiah's kingdom, his reign, when he come, these are the evidences that you could trust him because he would do what no other person could do. That is, he could heal the diseases that nobody else could heal. He can take a man who had leprosy that there was no healing from. It was pretty much a sure sentence of death that over time their fingers and their noses and their ears and their face would eventually just rot off of them and they would rot from the inside and die. That's what sin does to us all, right? We rot from within and it kills us. We're just dead and our trespasses and sins, but he came to tangibly serve them. So if I'm gonna do the work of the Lord, now something I also wanna remember that he's gifted each one of us with the spirit for the work in the kingdom, amen? So I may not be able to heal brother Shannon of an infirmity, but I can serve brother Shannon tangibly. I could be a blessing to it. I could help him when there's a need. That's what he was doing. The scripture says he was meeting immediate needs in people's lives. So as a representative of the kingdom, if I'm going to trust him and follow him, I want to be able to just be a blessing to people wherever God leads me. How many of y'all can go through a store in Meridian or Alabama or Scuba or whatever it may be? Scuba may be a little bit different because everybody's small, everybody pretty much knows one another over in DeKalb, a little different setting, but if you ever been in the Meridian, anybody ever go shopping in Meridian? Have you ever been through the store and nobody engaged you or talked to you? Happens almost every time you go, right? You can go to Winn-Dixie or you can go to Walmart. You can go to the, mall, which I don't know who goes there anymore. It's hardly anybody goes there. Or you can go to any of these places and you don't even have to talk to the cashier today, right? Matter of fact, you can check yourself out, can't you? But even if you don't check yourself out, a lot of times you don't even communicate with people from that perspective. So just being kind to people will stand out in our day. engaging people in a parking lot or on the highways and the byways with every intent to what? Be a blessing to them. A tangible touch from the Lord, an instrument in his hand who wants to help people out. I want to tell you kindness goes a long way, doesn't it? Every Joe flow out there is looking for somebody to push them today. They just want somebody, waiting for somebody to push them, push a button on them. Like test me, try me. Y'all notice how people on edge? They're just on edge. We'll be a difference, but we can be difference makers in our community, among our people, among the people of this world. Just be gracious and grateful and kind and thankful. You don't have to get into all the hoopla with the politics that are going on around the country and what's happening and not happening. Bring a breath of fresh air to the situation and just be kind and love on people. Just be a blessing to people, amen. How many of y'all do Facebook or Instagram? Man, it can get ugly on there, can't it? People just seem like they got a lot more confidence behind a computer screen than they would if they was looking at you eyeball to eyeball, right? I mean, they will. So don't take all that personal. Don't take all that personal. And don't join in with them. Don't join in with them. You can be a difference maker in this day. Give them something tangible that can be a help to them right where they are in life. Everybody needs a helping hand. Everybody needs somebody to help lift them up. He touched them tangibly. What's another way that he touched them? He touched them personally. By what? Teaching them. He taught them. He taught them. Why did he heal? So that he could teach, Karen. That was his objective. I heal, I touch them so that I can teach. Did they need to be taught? Do you and I need to be taught? This world we live in still needs to be what? Shepherded and taught a way of thinking and living that runs against the grain of this world we live in. Now, understandably, when Jesus taught, he said people were going to kill him because he revealed to them that their ways were evil. So when he would teach without being even pointed in Getting involved in somebody's life, just his teaching revealed a way of thinking that was contrary to that. You know what he was doing, Rusty? He was taking the truths of his kingdom, the truths of his father, who had been misused, mistaught, and misapplied, and he was bringing his light. He was teaching the people how to see his father, how to see his kingdom, and how to live totally different in this world. That's what He did. He tangibly served people, touched them so that He could what? Teach them personally about Himself, about His ways, about His kingdom, and how we can live for Him. Amen? That is what He's going to use you and I to do. To serve people tangibly. Practically, just keep, use that phrase there. I'll give you three Ps. Practically, in a practical way. Somebody has a need, what do you do? You try to step in and meet that need practically. It may just be, man, they need somebody to pray with them. Pray with them. They need somebody to smile at them. Smile with them. They may need somebody to hand them an extra resource that God puts on your heart to bless somebody with. Bless them with it. Just be tangible to help people out. People are hurting right now. Groceries are expensive. Are they expensive for y'all or y'all found a better place to shop? Expensive to live in this world. Everybody's under the pressure of it. You're not in it by yourself. We're all seeing the effects of it, amen? So look, let's be kind to one another. Let's help one another out. Hey, dogging it out, complaining about it, going on the negative ain't gonna help them, amen? What we want to do is what? Like Jesus did. He helped put their attention on glory. He said, yeah, I know what you've been told, and I know how it's been taught, but I want to say to you, He had an objective to teach us. To teach us. Personally. If you want anybody teaching you, you want Jesus teaching you. Now, will He use you and I to help teach one another? Yes, why? Because it's by the Lord through His servant. We're the servants now that belong to Him. So He does it practically and He does it personally, but this is the ultimate end of it. He wants it to be done permanently. Permanently. How does that happen? It happens when He what? He taught them and He preached. What did He preach? He preached the good news of His kingdom, His rule, His reign over us. That was to have a transformational permanent effect upon us as individuals. And that's what we're in the business doing. We're doing what He did. What? To meet needs practically, to meet needs personally, and to meet needs permanently because we're in the King's work. And the King's work is to Interrupt. and to invade in people's lives so that we can see transformation take place, so that we can see teaching take place, so that the tangible, practical service will have an impermanent effect on people's lives, amen? And that's why Jesus healed people and met personal and practical needs in their life to have an impermanent effect upon them. And that's why we do it as well. That's why we wanna get involved in people's lives. Our nation's in the ditch. We recognize that. But remember that story in Luke chapter 10 with that man that had been beat up by those robbers and they took everything from him and they left him for dead in the ditch and two religious people came by and they wouldn't do nothing about it. But then a Samaritan come by and he got off of his beast of burden, went down and worked with the man, cleaned him up, put him on his beast, brought him back to the end. Instead of beating him up, instead of passing him up, he got off the course and helped him up. He made a difference. Look, people in our day are in the ditch and we need to be practical, personal, and permanent in their life to make a difference, amen. So they trusted Jesus. They followed Him. They learned from Him. They learned from Him. Every time He would do these things, what was He preparing them to do? He was sending them out. Jesus did what? He commanded them. He sent them out and He gave instructions just after watching Him what? Teach, preach, and heal. Teach, preach, and heal. Why? Because that's what He was sending them to do. To be practical, to be personal, to be permanent. When we trust Him, when we follow Him, because we're learning from Him, you know what we get to do? We get to fish for men. Amen? We get to go fish for men by this simple objective. Just being a blessing to people. Knowing why we're being a blessing to them. and knowing we don't have to do it alone. He promised he would do it, what? In us, with us, and what? Through us, amen? So you don't have to go out on your own. You're going in his name with his power to be practical, to be personal, to having a permanent effect upon people. Aren't you glad somebody was practical with you? Aren't you glad somebody was personal with you? and shared their life and story with you. And was permanent by sharing the gospel of the kingdom. Amen? Man, they singing about the light back there. Y'all hear that? They singing about the light. Man, let's go let his light shine. Let's go let it shine.