The Vulcan Salute. Vulcan Salute. It sounded pretty bad. Okay, sharp, press, eat, and the number two. Rulers persecute me without cause, but my heart trembles at your word. I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws. Great peace. Have they who love your law and nothing can make them stumble. I wait for your salvation Oh Lord, and I follow your commands. I obey your statutes for I love them greatly I obey your precepts and your statutes for all my ways are known to you nice. I always Want to ask you and I'm gonna ask you tonight. What's the seven times a day? What is that? Well, I don't know. I praise you seven times. It's certainly not the Muslim five times a day for... I think he's just making a point that I... Is he? Seven times a day? Yeah. In seven? Yeah. Completion of... Yeah, spiritual perfection. So yeah, it's probably just that. I don't think there's anything more than that. He's just making a point that he's constantly... Yeah. Today must be... it's 9th, 7th, 8th, 6th? 6th. 6th. Okay. Because Sunday is the 9th. So we'll go to the 6th. And... All right, Judson. Adoniram. Yep, Judson. Christian parents often worry about sending their sons, excuse me, and daughters to colleges and universities. They should. Sometimes with good reason. Young people can lose their faith there, but some lose it only to regain it later with added strength. Donnarum Judson grew up in Parsonages around Boston in the 1700s. He entered Brown University at age 16 and graduated valedictorian of his class. While there, he became best friends with Jacob Eames. Jacob was a deist and, in practical terms, an atheist. Ridiculing Judson's faith, he challenged him with the writings of Voltaire and the French philosophers. When Adoniram returned home, he told his parents that he, too, had become an atheist. His mother broke into gentle sobs. His father roared and threatened and pounded the furniture. Adoniram, at 21 years of age, migrated to New York City to establish himself as a playwright, but then he, hearing tales from the American frontier, saddled his horse and headed west. One evening, weary from traveling, he stopped at an inn. The proprietor said, forgive me, sir, but the only room left, well, it's a little bit noisy. There's a young fellow next door, awfully sick, Adoniram, too tired to care, took the key. The night became a nightmare. The tramping of his feet, coming and going, muffled voices, painful groans, chairs scraping against the floor. Adoniram was troubled by it all, and he wondered what his friend Jacob Eames would say about fear, illness, and death. The next morning, while checking out, he asked about the young man in the next room. The proprietor said, I thought maybe you heard. He died, sir, toward morning. Very young. Not more than your age. Went to that brown university out east. Adoniram stiffened. The man continued. His name was Jacob Eames. Well, the West suddenly lost its lure and Adoniram turned his horse toward home. Soon he gave his life to Christ and shortly after devoted himself to missions. On February 6, 1812, Adoniram Judson was commissioned as America's first foreign missionary. He, his wife, and companions sailed for Burma on 18 February. The scriptures say that the Messiah must suffer, then three days later he will rise from death. They also say that all people of every nation must be told in my name to turn to God in order to be forgiven. So, beginning in Jerusalem, you must tell everything that has happened. And that's Luke 24, 46 through 48. Wow, that was the epitome of irony there. I hope his parents were around to see the turn. Oh my gosh, that was just, wow, that was just crazy. Okay, we got some prayer requests. Jackie, I just got an email from her. She and her family all have the flu, except Bruce. Bruce is fine, and he's taking care of all of them, but if it goes as it usually goes, I hope not, but that's, a man would just hope that he doesn't, he can stay strong. Can we help you, ma'am? Owen and Becky are having tough times, and they just didn't specify, but they need prayer. I've got a friend, she's getting a divorce, she's got, quite a few children and I won't give her name but I just feel so bad for this person. You know here we're talking about that on Sunday last. Just you know people just throw the wrong things away in life. So keep my friend in prayer and Mark and Becky have got some things coming up. Becky's got some physical ailments and Mark's got, he had an MRI and now he's going to go into some stages of his cure for cancer so there you go with that some prayer requests and then I got a request this is from Les and he says that this is valid okay so that's I'm reading it because Les says it's valid or I would not read it but it says I have a client at Clarity this is something he sent from somebody else this is for people in Indiana if anybody's in Indiana I have a client at Clarity who comes regularly to get material assistance from us. I have gotten to know her pretty well through the years. She and her husband have four children, five years old and younger. She does not have a support group. I learned yesterday that her husband, when driving home from work, got in a terrible accident. The car was totaled. Police found him unconscious and sent him to the hospital and discovered he has a brain tumor. He blacked out at the wheel. The doctors wanted to send him to Riley for immediate surgery. He refused because he says, I don't want to miss work and let go. I have work to provide for my family. The issue now is they are in desperate need of a reliable vehicle, most likely a van that can hold four car seats. Clients said they can make small payments, but I'm asking if anyone can donate a van to them So if anybody in Indiana has a van, please And you don't need it. Let these people know I can give you all their information. All right, so there you go with that and Heavenly Father how grateful we are to you just for how you tend to us and take care of us and really sad to hear about that guy Jacob Eames but if it turned Adoniram Johnson, Adoniram, now I don't remember his last name anyway, Judson. Thank you, Lord. If it turned him around and he became a reclaimed missionary that was able to lead the way in Burma to people being saved. And you can do all things, and you can even use people that are stubborn-headed like us. So thank you for that, and we pray for our missionaries, Lord. They are out there right now, many of them, doing what they're doing, and they're doing it faithfully, and they are often doing it in very difficult situations. So we lift them up, and thank you for the reminder right from that daily reading. And we pray for this class, Lord, that it would be handled properly and that there would not be something that you feel is amiss. And if there is, we would pray that it would be corrected so that we would never teach something that we feel is incorrect in accord with your word. Thank you for this precious word, Lord. It is such a treasure. Thank you. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, let's see here. We have Oh, 2 Timothy, we're still in chapter 1, I think. Where are we? I don't even know where we are. We're in 2 Timothy 13. Yes, 13, that's correct. Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, I'll do the paragraph before. Good deal. Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me, his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And of this gospel, I was appointed a herald to the apostle and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am, yet I am not ashamed because I know whom I have believed And I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. So nice. So nice. Oh yeah, you've got to read the verse now. Right. What you heard from me, keep as a pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Okay, this one says, hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. That last verse was so exciting. It's such a comforting verse to come to and to read it and to stop and to think. the fact that we, in fact, are kept by Christ. Because, you know, if it was up to me, it would have been saved one day and unsaved for the rest of the walk, I can tell you that. It's just so, so wonderful to be in Christ and to know that He has us. Wow. Okay, hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Okay, 113. Paul now exhorts Timothy to go further than he has thus far. He's been implored to not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. That was back in verse 8. But now he is told that a pattern has been laid down in order to do this. The word is found only here and in 1 Timothy 1.16, which indicates an outline or a sketch. So there's this outline. Thus, Paul is telling Timothy that he has been given an outline already that he is to not deviate from. Now that's kind of interesting because the New Testament hadn't been compiled yet, it wasn't, so he's saying here you've got this outline, but he says this, withhold fast the pattern of sound words. Timothy's ears have received the necessary pattern from Paul, which he was then to follow, as he says further, which you have heard from me. So unlike Timothy, and I think about this from time to time, unlike Timothy, who was given words from Paul, and had to remember what he was told, all we have to do is go back to the Bible and look at it. And, you know, it used to be that you had to think, well, where in the Bible was that? And you had to remember where in the Bible it was because, you know, it's a big book and there's a lot of information in it. Now, you don't even have to do that. As long as you remember one or two words from that verse and you're trying to put it together, you just put in a search engine And up it comes. It's that simple. And it reminds me of how what is the word when somebody, they're without excuse, how without excuse Christians are for not knowing the Bible. And I don't mean to demean anybody that's on a different level, because we're all on different levels. There are people that are just learning to read the Bible. There are people that are just starting Bible studies over in, you know, Taiwan, and there are people that have been reading their whole lives, and they don't have a good memory. Everybody's on a different level, but There is absolutely no excuse to not remember a word or two from a particular verse that you will be referring to at some point, and to say, okay... And then, you know, if you're like me, because I've read a lot of different versions, I've read, you know, this version and that, and so... What I may remember from, you know, my mom gave me an NIV like five billion years ago, and let me make sure I have this on the right page. I dropped one. So anyway, and that's what I read when I first met the Lord. I read the NIV. probably... so many times if you see it back there you won't believe it. The thing is just it's swollen from all my hands touching all the pages and it's just... Anyway, and so that's kind of on my mind. Well, I don't use the NIV anymore. I use New King James Version for consistency. I like the consistency of every sermon and every study having New King James Version. But I also defer a lot to Young's literal translation. So I got a word in my head that reminds me of what I want to do, and I can't remember if it was in Young's, and so that's extra searching as well. I understand. There are people that do that. They read one version, then they go to another, and that's great. I'm glad they do that because you're getting a better and fuller idea of what's going on. But eventually, you should be able to figure out a word and just do a search on it and find it. And, you know, if you want to do a topical study, Right online there are topical studies. All you need to do is a topical study of this particular issue and you'll have a thousand of them. Now I'm not saying they're good. You might have a good one and a bad one. You have to read to check it out. But there are topical studies. There are all kinds of studies out there that you can access without ever leaving your chair. And you are without excuse if you're not using those. in your walk. You have no excuse to be pestering people with questions all the time that you should be able to find out yourself. Now, what you can do is do your study and then say, I'm going to ask, you know, Charlie or I'm going to ask, you know, my pastor or church or whoever you are in connection with Is this a good study? This is the conclusion I came up with, and I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I recommend you do that anyway, because if you're reading one study, you're getting one person's interpretation, which may be wrong. But do your studies. You've got a computer. I mean, I'm probably the only person in here that doesn't use a computer. Well, I won't say who, but anyway, I can't think of anybody else that doesn't use a computer. So do your studies. not sure of something, or if you want to know, you won't find why is Charlie ugly in the Bible. You're not going to get an answer for that, but you can get an answer for almost every Bible question you have right in a study online. So please do that. And once again, I'm not trying to belittle anybody or demean anybody, but you have this resource available to you. forever they didn't have this. As a matter of fact, Timothy was given the pattern. He heard it from Paul. He had to remember that, okay? And then for all these years later, when the Bible was finally compiled, and I've mentioned this many, many times, is that Bibles were so expensive, very few people owned them. Very few, outside of individual churches. Yeah, chained to the pulpit. They were there, and they could not leave because they were that valuable. And very few individuals had enough money to have their own Bible made. And so, once again, they didn't have that resource, and so they had to have what Paul is telling Timothy right now. They had to have something in their head that was able to grasp whatever they were told and to retain it. Okay? And so there wasn't a lot of biblical understanding in most Christian cultures like the Germans and whatever until the printing press. And then it started to get cranked up a little bit. And one of my friends said years ago, and I'm in complete agreement with it, The most biblically literate generation in the world was the time as England was in charge, they were the ones, and we had the colonies, and then the colonies turned into the American colonies. experiment, right in that time frame, from probably the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s, was probably the most biblically literate generation of people in human history. It devolved after that because it broke into so many sects and cults in America because of freedom of religion. There's, you know, we have a freedom of religion in this nation, and that's a good thing, but because of that, bad, bad, bad doctrine was introduced throughout the Americas. Joseph Smith took his cult and he went out to Utah. You have the Jehovah's Witnesses. All these came up within 20 or 30 years of each other. The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists and these cults that came up because of an individual with a presupposition. And if you think about it, I don't know anything about Charles Taz Russell. That's the Jove's Witnesses. I read about him one time and I don't remember. It wasn't exciting. But Joseph Smith, if people knew their Bible, would not have followed him because he was a polygamist and a leader in the Bible could not be a polygamist. It's right there in the books we're evaluating right now, the pastoral epistles. So you could have thrown out Mormonism based on the original person. More so. He had the tablets to Yeah, well, you know, he could say whatever he wants, but if people just stuck to the Bible, they would have known that he wasn't to be followed. And then the second one is, obviously, the Seventh-day Adventists. It's a woman that started the Adventists. And so, just throw that one out right away. You can just get rid of it, because talking about that, Wade posted something on X today, and I saw it. Trump has started a council on religion, and unfortunately put Paula White in charge of it. And so, you know, Trump is not a scripturally sound person, and somebody needs to talk to him about it and tell him what this is inappropriate. Somebody that knows the Bible and has his ear like Franklin Graham could go and say this is just not right. But anyway, throw out the Seventh-day Adventist based on the initial premise of its beginning. And other cults are like that. You can know based on the person that this is not a thing that you should be following. Unfortunately, people weren't doing that. They were trusting in somebody instead of reading the Word. And so you can see about the 1850s, it really started to taper off with biblical literacy. you know, that it's kind of waned and come and gone over the years, but right now we have, and I'd love to remind people of this, you have, we have not just the Bible accessible within one second, we have countless versions of the Bible. Right there, in one second, I can read, I can pull up on BibleHub.com, I can pull up a parallel Bible with 37 different translations on one page. It's only a verse, all 37 of that verse, and then you go to the next verse, and you can read 37 of them if you want, okay? And commentaries of the best scholars in history, right there, within a second I can pull that up. People need to use these resources because it's that important. You're putting your trust in people. but you need to get different evaluations. Charles Ellicott is a great scholar. He's got great insights. Adam Clark is a great scholar. I love what he says sometimes, and yet they have come to exactly the opposite conclusion. Both of them speak Hebrew and Greek, so that is not something that you should use as a basis. That guy speaks Hebrew. He must know what he's talking about. That guy is a scholar in Greek, and so he must know what he's talking about. These people were fully trained in the Greek languages, the Hebrew languages, the Aramaic. They knew them perfectly. well as anybody on the planet, and yet they come to completely different conclusions. So even then you have to be careful, but at least you're getting a full round sense of people's opinions or, you know, interpretations of the Bible. Please use resources, okay? This Word is that important. It is that important that you get into it and that you read it, because I could be wrong, all of those people could be wrong in any given point, and therefore it is up to you. Don't put your faith in any person. Know this Word, and then believe in the Lord who gave it to us, and just ask Him. Every time you open it up, Lord, help me to know your Word better. Okay? Anyway, So Timothy Scott, this pattern was laid out for him. While Paul and Timothy traveled, evangelized, and taught, Timothy learned the outline of sound doctrine from his mentor. He had also encountered the Judaizers and false teachers who would tear the flock away from the simple gospel which is found in Christ. Okay, I don't know if Timothy was there. He probably wasn't. I think this was before Paul met Timothy, but he certainly would have heard about it at some point, just sitting around the campfire on the way to the next city, and they're out in the middle of nowhere, and they're talking, and he's talking about some of the things that have happened in the past, and he says, yeah, you know, these Judaizers are everywhere, and they even swayed Peter. Right? Galatians chapter 2. And I know that he would have heard that and been aware of it. There's no... I can't imagine Paul not saying, anybody can be affected. Anybody can be affected. And even Peter was. And he had to be called out. I can't imagine that not being something that he would have told Timothy. Timothy needs to know those things. What's that? He wrote about it. So why would... Yeah, absolutely. It's in there and... Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, It is very important to toe the line, and it's the one doctrine that I am most opposed to of all of them, is Judaizers. People that say you have to do this under the law, that under the law, that is the single most aberrant doctrine to me. There are all kinds of bad doctrines. You know, people need to be talked out of the fact that Jesus isn't God. They need to be talked out of that. And I find that repulsive, but you can convince people if they are willing to hear it. But reinserting the law is such an insidious thing that people do. They might only insert one or two little precepts, but they are doing that. And it's for whatever reason they have, it may be that they just, you know, they were told when they were young, you can't eat pork. And so all of a sudden that's the one thing they cling on to, and they teach their congregants that. And my neighbor got into that, and she, totally sound in her theology, except you can't eat pork. Well, what about lobster? I mean, the same law that says don't eat pork says don't eat lobster. And yet they'd have lobster dinner. The convoluted thinking that is out there because of people's pet peeves that are taught into other people is almost endless. It's almost endless, okay? So do you remember that, Hedeko? Maybe you don't. When we were over at one of our neighbor's houses and, oh no, we can't eat pork. But then they're serving all these other things from the same log, the same page in the Bible that says don't eat this and this and this. It's all fulfilled. Judaizers and the Hebrew Roots movement is an insidious infection in the church. And I had somebody, I said something to you last week about something, and a person emailed me and said, what did you mean by that? And I don't want to get into it again, but anyway, it was about one of the people that was mentioned and I just said, you know, I gave my opinion on it and went on from there and they emailed me and I gave my reasons. It's because we do not insert the law again. We don't go back to the law, you know, and observe Jubilees. You know, if we are living out this thing with Jubilees right now or the Shemitah, for example, then Christ didn't fulfill the law. It's ongoing and we're all living in the law times right now. So let me clarify that right now because somebody will be confused and then they're going to ask me, why would I be opposed to these people that write about, well, this is the Jubilee year. First, I have seen since I became a Christian, Every single year since I've become a Christian, somebody's come out and said, this is the year of Jubilee, the 50th year. Every year, without fail. And somebody will do it again. I haven't seen it yet in 2025, but somebody will say, this is the Jubilee year. Okay. I know somebody that loves to teach about the Shemitah, the seven-year cycle that applies to America, right? And we're living in it, and we have to observe it, and all this nutty stuff. Those anticipated Christ. If you don't understand that, then I would direct you to go watch the Deuteronomy sermons on the Jubilee. You can type in Jubilee into your search engine. You'll find it in the Bible, and then find the Deuteronomy sermon that speaks about the Jubilee. Do the same with the Shemitah. Those are anticipating Christ. They're not anticipating anything in America today. They're not anticipating a pattern in history that's ongoing. Here's an example. I'm not going to get into it too much, but here's an example so you understand this. The Jubilee was, yeah, the seven-year release. Every seven years, Israel was to provide a release on the Jubilee, which was the year after the 49th year. So it's a special year. Fifty full years, they were to proclaim liberty throughout the land. Everybody had their land returned to them, etc. It applied to Israel, the land of Israel, the people in Israel, under the Law of Moses. Okay? It didn't apply anywhere else in the world, ever. But more than that, They do not have any record that says this is the year that it started. They don't know if it started the year that Joshua went over the Jordan, or if it started seven years later when they subdued the land, or if it started. There's no record in Scripture as to when there was a Shemitah. There's no record in Scripture when there was a Jubilee. None. Okay? They further don't know if they were supposed to observe those when they were exiled. So you have 70 years, were they supposed to continue to count the years or did it stop and then happen again when they returned to the land? and then they're exiled right now. So it can't be that it's ongoing right now because it only pertains to Israel in the land of Israel, nowhere else on the planet, and nobody else has ever been under the law except the Jews. Ever. So if you think it through for two seconds, it ought to tell you that these people are sensationalizing the Bible in order to get rich. Okay, I've said this not too long ago, and I want you to understand this. If I put out one video every week, And I say, the mystery of the kings of Israel, the mystery of the Shemitah of Israel, the mystery, and I keep doing this, and I'm getting between 250,000 and a million views every week. I am making $10,000 to $20,000 a month or more, okay? That's what I'm making, deceiving people, okay? I could do this, Charlie Garrett could do this. I could go out there and I could make enough money where I never had any concern about paying bills again. and I would not do it. I wouldn't do it for the world. The only reason why our videos are monetized now is because Sergio recommended it, because they will throttle your viewership if you don't monetize. He figured it out because of a video he put up one day, and I've explained that before. But monetization is not what gets me going. Handling the Word of God properly is what gets me going. It doesn't mean that I am right, but I believe that what I am doing is correct or I wouldn't be doing it. But when you can make that much money just making stuff up, then you might as well. You write a book about it and you sell a million or two or five million copies like some people do, they're making You make $1 a copy, let's say. How much is that? Well, I just made $5 million. Lying to people. It's that easy to do people, and people just fall for it. Don't. Go back and watch those two sermons if you want to see how it works. It's pointing to Jesus. That's all that's pointing to. He fulfilled them, and therefore they're done, okay? And the fact that they're never recorded again in Scripture ought to highlight to you that those things are untrue that they're saying, because they have no basis in them. There's no basis at all. Okay, I had to vent on that because it bothers me that people get caught up in these things. It is unsound, and it is not helpful to your walk with Christ when you ignore the very one that is being prefigured in those things. The Jubilee anticipates Christ. It doesn't anticipate, you know, the stock market in 1997 or something. that's not reality. Okay, so we'll go on. Let's see here, he had encountered the Judaizers and the false teachers who would tear the flock away from the simple gospel which is found in Christ Jesus the Lord. But Paul seems to indicate now that Timothy himself is susceptible to being led astray. Okay? And it is so. This is not just a warning for Timothy, but for all. It is as natural as breathing to want to include oneself in any such equation. Here's a perfect example. I use it all the time. The equation of the rapture. This is the equation. I want to be included in that. And so I say the Lord's coming is soon. But you know what? They've been doing that. Remember 1988, 88 years that the rapture will happen in 1988? And then you had somebody wrote a book about the rapture in 1962. And people want to be in that generation. Guess what? The Seventh-day Adventists thought that they were the generation in the 1880s, right? At the turn of the millennium, people thought that it was the return of Christ. Everybody wants to include themselves in whatever equation is being equated in the Bible, and that's not a healthy way of looking at it. Now, I will admit this. I'm going to admit this right now, is that because of what the Bible says, completely separate from when we live, but because we're living in this time, I do believe that we are a lot closer to the Lord coming than anybody else has ever been, obviously, because 2,000 years have gone by. But I was listening to Joshua driving to coming out here this morning. I had to come out a little early, 10 o'clock. I did a circle around Sarasota to pick up some stuff. Like, look at this. chainsaw blades, right? Anyway, so I get to go out and cut more stuff down. Anyway, there's a video on that. I know a guy that did a video on that if you want to know. So anyway, what was I? Oh yeah, so I'm coming right here down Mall Drive and I was listening to Joshua and what was the distance that Israel was supposed to stay away from the Ark when they came over the Jordan? I know you remember this, come on now. There was a set distance. It said about 2,000 cubits, the mother measurement. And you know, this is kind of, you could stretch this and say, well, but listen, there was a, everybody should know if you watch those sermons that that is very clearly, everything in those sermons from Joshua 1 through chapter 5 is pointing to the return of Israel to the land. finally receiving Jesus. If you don't remember that, go back and watch the sermons. It is as clear as any typology you will ever see. It is perfectly clear. 2,000 cubits are to stay away from the ark, meaning that there's, and this is just a guess, okay? This is just a guess. I can't say this dogmatically, but there's a 2,000 year span at this point from them rejecting Christ to them accepting Christ and going over the Jordan, okay? The one that really convinces me, though, that we are close is Hosea, I think it's 11.6, where it says, after two days, I will restore you. On the third day, I will come to you. Every day is like a thousand. Every day is like a thousand years. And man, the first time I read that, I wasn't even thinking about our time. I was just simply thinking it is a day equals a thousand years. there's nothing else that makes sense in that except that. So anyway, I do think that we are close, but about 2,000 cubits could mean 2,100 cubits, right? It could be another hundred years. So I'm not one of these people that's saying it's going to happen in my lifetime. I would love for it to happen in my lifetime. I'd love to be out of here right now, but whenever the Lord is coming, I think the pictures in the Old Testament do point to that, okay, without trying to get people overly excited and asking me, well, what day do you think it's going to be? I have no idea and nobody else does, and if they say they do, don't watch the video, okay, and don't go buy the book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Happen in 1988, because I can tell you it's wrong, okay, so don't buy it. Okay, so It's not just a warning for Timothy, it's for all of us. We want to put ourselves in the equation. But the Gospel, from beginning to end, must be about Christ alone. Just like the Old Testament is about Christ alone. The Shemitah, the Jubilee, the, you know, we're going to take, somebody died in between two cities. Deuteronomy 21 is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. You've got this guy lying there dead, they measure the distance to the closest city, they get the people from that city, they go down and they do this ritual, they break the donkey's neck, they confess over it, and blah blah, and the Lord says, and I will forgive them of this death, or I will cover their sins, or however it says it. That's picturing Jesus. If somebody writes a book about that picturing the market collapse of 19 whatever, don't buy the book. That is picturing Jesus. Every one of those little short things in Deuteronomy 21, I think there's four of them, 100% anticipate the work of Jesus Christ, and they are so, so astonishing. When I got done doing that chapter, I was so excited, I thought, I want to stop what we're doing right now and read those sermons now instead of going through the six before it. What a beautiful passage. But anyway, the Bible is telling us about Jesus. It's not talking about us and our rapture other than incidentally. It is about Him. Okay, so Paul's exhortation is a simple but forceful reminder that there is a pattern which has been set and which needs to be held fast to. Now we have that pattern. Here it is. It's set, and we need to hold fast to it. And people don't even read it, okay? We got some workmen at the house right now, and when they're done, I've got a Bible for every one of them when they, the last day, okay? They're all getting a Bible from me because I want them to at least say, I have a Bible. If they don't read it, that's their fault, you know, but every single one of them is going to get a Bible. And I typed each one of them an individual letter with their name on it so that they know that I care about them enough to give them a Bible and to tell them why I'm giving them that. And here's the gospel. and why you should read this Bible. That is what we should be doing, is making sure that we tell people to do this. This is the pattern. There is no other pattern that is going to get you to heaven. Catholicism isn't going to do it. Buddhism isn't going to do it. There's nothing outside of this word that we need, and this word is about the gospel of Christ. And, you know, I felt bad. I actually thought earlier, should I mention to the class that I got Bibles for somebody? Because, you know, I don't want to make it sound like, you know, I'm doing something. But, no, I'm talking about where I'm spouting off and showing, you know, that's not the intent. The intent is to spur you to do it. It's like I say every Sunday, there's tracts right back there. Please take them on your way out and pass them out. And I say it every single week, and no kidding, No kidding. About two months ago, maybe a month ago, somebody said to me, I heard you say that so many times and I just never did it. Now I'm doing it and I enjoy it or something like that. I still have the message somewhere. But no kidding. After all the times. Giving a Bible. Giving a Bible. I said that because I was going, what a great idea. Well, that's why I did. I struggled whether I should even say that because I'm not trying to say what a great thing I'm doing. I want people to feel that it's important to do these things. And you can get a Bible for $2. It's not like they're expensive. I'm not going to go giving somebody a really expensive Bible if I don't think they're going to read it. I'll give them a Bible and then if they enjoy it and it falls apart, they can go buy another one or whatever. They can come to me and I'll buy them a good one. It doesn't matter. But you can get Bibles. We got them right under there. As a matter of fact, the Bibles that I'm giving out are Bibles that somebody sent to me to hand out. And that's what I, you know, I take them to the projects and I hand them out when I can. But more than anything, I try to make sure that somebody is going to get them that will benefit from them. These are Spanish Bibles. We have a whole box of Spanish Bibles back there. If anybody wants Spanish Bibles, pick them up, take them, because all of the people are Spanish. They're all going to get a Bible, and I had them put it through Google Translate to translate what I typed to them, because they don't read English. So everything was done hoping that they will want to know Jesus, right? But do that, okay? This is the pattern. This is the outline, okay? There is to be no wavering from this, no going outside the lines which have been carefully laid down for those of the faith. I brought in Catholicism a second ago. It's because they don't follow the pattern. They follow the church. And I never knew how bad it was. never knew how bad it was until I started, you know, I never would have seen them on... X is Twitter, so when I say X, I mean Twitter, and I go to X sometimes during the day if I have a minute or two, okay, and I never would have gone following these people or knowing what they said, but there's somebody that attends the church here, and most people on Sundays know him. He comes with his wife sometimes to Florida, but he will go when they make a comment, and he will put a a gospel attachment to his comment to him. So that's what he does. And then because he has done that, and I follow him, I see what he's done. So that's the only reason why I know that the things that these Catholics say are absolutely unbelievable. They reject Sola Scriptura completely. That means the Bible alone. They completely reject it. They belittle anybody that sticks to the Bible. They say, we don't need the Bible because we have the church. It is literally demented. It is literally demented, the things that they do. They post these things about Mary. great Mary, saver of the universe and all this kind of stuff. I had no idea it was that bad. I knew it was bad. I've known it all along because of the proclamations from the Pope, which I read, but the followers follow that blindly. It doesn't matter what the Pope says, it is acceptable. Please read this Bible. You've got to stay away from that. They actually do things, and there are these posts that they put on Twitter, they actually do things that are contrary, 100% contrary to the Bible. And I will take the verse, and I'll show them where it's contrary, and then they get angry and say, well, that's just the Bible. You don't have the authority that the church does, and all that. And I'm thinking, Where do they think they're getting their authority from just poof out of the sky? It is it is so bad. I never would have known I wouldn't had no idea how steeped in their Religion they are that they can't see truth when it's presented to them Okay, this is where we need to go right here. Okay. I ask you to read it every day of your life further Paul encourages him to hold fast to it and in faith." That's Paul's words, in faith. One can teach about Jesus without faith. Even a person of faith can do so. The difference is often noticeable to those who hear. Teachers cannot allow teaching to become rote and lifeless. Instead, as with Paul exhorting Timothy, they are to hold fast to the faith and to teach in faith. excuse me, in so doing those they teach will be enlivened by the faith which comes from the teacher who is faithful." Okay, and I said in that previous paragraph that there are people, teachers, Where was it? One can teach about Jesus without faith. And, you know, I've said that before, and I ought to clarify it. I may have even given the clarification in the past, but atheists know the Bible way better than most Christians. They know it very well because they want to defend their atheism against your Christianity. And they know that you don't know your Bible. And so they use your Bible against you. That's what they do in colleges all over America. We were talking about this guy Adoniram. Okay, he went to college and they mentioned that people can kind of lose their faith when they go to college. Man, that is their job is to take away your faith. And those people know the Bible enough to take your faith out of you because you don't know the Bible well enough and you're not grounded enough in your faith. Okay? As well, did you say something I wasn't ignoring? Okay. Thinking too loud. That's okay. The second thing is that not just atheists know the Bible real well, but people that just want to have a good easy living know the Bible real well, okay? You go to many colleges, seminaries, and you will find people that don't believe the Bible, but they know the Bible really well. They were raised in it, they were in homes where it was taught, and they know the Bible really well, they just never accepted Jesus. But they know that they can get a really constant job being a teacher at a seminary. And so, they teach the Bible and they don't have any faith at all. This is as common as rain on any given day, okay? They're just out there. They don't believe. And so, if you talk to them, you can just tell that there's no heart behind. They're not excited about it. They're just there to make their money. And then, of course, you get the people These are probably the worst of them all are the people that they're not atheists that you can tell don't like the Bible at least you can cry can try to mentally Work against them, and they're not like the people that don't care about the Bible the Bible. These are the people that were like the 1960s They didn't want to go to war and so they went to seminary Simply to not go to war and there were a lot of them there were lots and lots of people because if you went to Seminary you were exempt from service And a lot of people knew this, and mom and dad had enough money to send them to seminary, and so they went to seminary. And now they teach false Christianity as teachers in seminaries. They take the Bible and they completely twist and manipulate it. And those to me are the most damaging of all, because you don't really know unless you know the Bible and are grounded in it if what they're saying is true and so you just accept it at face value and you say well this is what and that's why we have all of these theologies out there that are running around woke theology right now. These were people that grew up in the 70s or in the 60s. They were trained in the 60s and now we're getting the second generation of them They are really damaging people, and they have caused a lot of harm in Christianity over the past 40 years. So, you know, if you are not reading this Word, you are making a real fundamental error with your life. I don't care how old you are, or you're going to be in a cafe someday, and somebody's going to say, that guy handed him a track. Let me go show him how wrong he is. You're going to sit down and have a conversation with a wolf. who's sitting there, and you think he's a lamb because of the way he's talking to you. Be in this word, please. Okay, so, they teach, in doing so, those they teach will, oh, let me go back so we get our train of thought again. Instead, as with Paul exhorting Timothy there to hold fast to the faith and to teach in faith. In so doing, those they teach will be enlivened by the faith which comes from those teachers who are faithful." Added to that by Paul is also his word, love, by faith and then love. A message can be mechanical, as if piecing together components of something. A message can be angry, it can be filled with bitterness, or it can be subversive, which I just talked about with these people. Such teachings are not in love. One can be wholly opposed to something like abortion, but can present the message in a stern, but loving way. That is something that you can do. You can say this is completely wrong, and you can be firm about it, and yet not do it in a way which is not loving, okay? And that's what we need to do. That's what we're called to do. You know, Sunday we opened the Song of Solomon. It was the first of the Song of Solomon sermons. And I couldn't help it, but I kind of broke down at one point. And the reason why is because I was thinking, I told Hedecho this, kind of, I was thinking of all the times that I have failed my wife. And I was also at the same time thinking of somebody else in my life that was personally affected by the issue that I was talking about. And then other friends came to mind, all dealing with the same issue, okay, of harming your wife in some way or another. And I was overwhelmed sitting there thinking of all these people rushing into my mind that have to go through what I brought up during that sermon, and it was not easy. and I almost completely lost it, but I was able to recover after a few seconds. But if you believe in what you're teaching, and if you believe that it's the truth, it should make you emotional on whatever level. If it's joy, you should be overjoyed. If it's painful, you should be pained by it, okay? But if you are following a teacher that's doing something rote and mechanical, he doesn't care about what he's doing. There's nothing in there that says he has a passion for it. And you know, One thing about being a seminary teacher is that they get to just do the exact same thing in six months. And so there's no new learning, there's no new challenge to his life, whereas at least pastors every week have to come up with something. They may not write their own sermons, but they at least got to learn what they're going to present on Sunday to some degree. But being a seminary professor, you can see how it's a job for I better not say it, because there are a lot of really good seminary professors. I don't want to demean them, but it is a job for people that want to just have a life taken care of. You know, it's like somebody on welfare. I'm just going to keep getting and getting. I don't have to do anything for it. Well, once you've got your first year done, unless they change the courses, you just keep teaching the same thing. There's no new effort, and so be very careful around these people that are you know, got big heads and big knowledge, but they don't have a love for the Lord. But once again, there are many, many very good seminary teachers out there. So I don't want to say something that will be all-encompassing. That would not be right, because some of my teachers were on fire for what they were talking about. They absolutely loved what they were conveying to people. So please remember that there are good teachers out there, but you've got to just, you've got to watch people and discernment. So righteous indignation does not have to include unrighteous anger. It sounds like something that you guys saw up in Washington, D.C. if you remember a couple people that were supposedly evangelizing, right? To teach in faith and love is then what is proper. But there is already an example to follow. It is those which are in, Paul's words, which are in Christ Jesus. He is the object of our faith, and He is love. It says that right in the Bible. God is love. Jesus Christ is God, therefore He is love. By contemplating His words, by following His example, and by speaking out in a manner which emulates Him, the man of God will hold fast the pattern of sound words in the proper way. And that's why it says you've fallen from your first love. Their church had become easy and complacent and they were just happy to get together and probably have a big dinner on Sunday and, you know, talk about the football game and all that. And he had to tell them, you know, you guys are, you've forgotten your first love. It's fine to do a lot of stuff. It's fine to go out and go to the projects and do this and that and one thing and another. But if you're not doing it with love for Jesus, you have missed the mark of doing it. You need to have joy in your heart for what you're doing. So yeah, I read that, but again, Paul says the pattern is the one you have heard from me. The gospel message to the Gentile-led church is given by the hand of Paul. It outlines our doctrine in Christ Jesus, and it is to be adhered to, and it is to be passed on in faith and love. Okay, now I will probably, I've done doctrine sermons, I've done we'll say 12 of them and they're very fun to do because I know that once I've done a doctrine sermon I'll never have to write a return, you know, think about writing a response and a message again. I just send them the link to it or I send them the word copy and say here. Okay, so that's fun because once I've done the doctrine sermon I don't have to talk about it anymore. But I will probably never make it to the New Testament to do sermons on it. And so this is what you get. This is where the Doctrine, Timothy, and Titus pastoral epistles are coming from. It's this class right here, okay? And so if somebody asks a question about that, I'll send them a link to this class. And you know, Wade Nolan out in Washington, he has started... Man, I get home and they're already done usually. He will, at the end of the class, say we do two or three verses, he will already have the transcript for this class on a PDF file for me. And so I just link it or, you know, sometimes he will link it if there's a reason why he needs to do it instead of me. I just put it on the video and so now they're watching the video. They can click on that link and read along with my comments right there. He thinks of all these neat new things. He's like Maya, you know. Maya's always thinking of something new and interesting for the Bible Bites. Wade, he's got so many neat ideas about how to make things accessible for people. You know, and he causes me extra work, too. What happened today, I did the sermon on where you go after you die, okay? And then we had two specific questions that I mentioned when we took communion, because a couple people asked questions, and I thought, you know, I want to make sure they know and other people are aware of these possible exceptions and why I feel I do." And so I said that, and then he said, what I want you to do is I want you to type that up for me so that I can attach it to the sermon so that in case somebody else didn't see your communion, which they're not going to, and I'm like, You know, I've only got 800 emails to answer, but I did it because he's right. Somebody's going to come and they're going to say, well, what about this verse? There it is. It's attached to the end of the sermon. So he's got these great ideas that will, now that it's done, I don't have to do it again. But somebody will come with that verse and they'll think, oh, I've got to go back and I've got to find the commentary and I've got to put it together. So now it's done. So me and Dr. Bridges back here start in trouble with Nolan. That's all right, that's good, but I just have to now fit something extra into my day when something like that happens. And Sergio, he's marvelous about that. Here, Charlie, how about we do this, and he will do it like five minutes before whatever he's planning. Because I don't plan my life like that. My whole day is, you know what I do, the first thing I do when I wake up every day is I say, this is Thursday. Because now I have to think, what do I do on Thursdays? Or tomorrow I'll wake up and I'll say, it's Friday. And so, and I've actually gotten up and I've said it the wrong day. And I get going and I find out it's, and I gotta rethink the whole day. I'm not like Sergio where, oh, we're gonna have dinner, come over, and when? Well, we're starting to cook right now, and I'm like, I can't do that. Anyway, my mom knows that I will be in my coffin waiting to die when it's my turn because I'm early to everything and I have it all planned in advance. So, I'm telling you, I don't like... surprise this mandate, they frustrate me to no end. Anyway, that's just me. It's my big failing. Well, one of many, but anyway, Hedeko could tell you lots of them. Mom, too, but she'll say it laughing. Hedeko would humbly say, he has no, no faults. Okay, anyway, life application. For sound church-age doctrine, we are to follow Paul's epistles as the outline. Everything else is to be taken in relation to them. Understanding this context will keep the rest of Scripture properly aligned for us as we read it and assimilate it into our lives. What you want to do when you get to Acts and you see something that somebody has said, well, we have to do this because it says it in Acts, is go to Paul's letters and say, does Paul say this? And if he doesn't, then they're wrong. Because 99.9% of the book of Acts is simply describing what happened. It's not teaching anything to you. It's giving you information about how the church was formed. It's not giving you something that you are to do specifically. And if you do that, you're going to have contradiction between Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 8, and Acts chapter 10 on baptism, for example. or you're going to have a contradiction between Acts chapter 15, the council at Jerusalem, and what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. You're going to have a contradiction, and you're not going to know how to handle that because you didn't take Paul as the authoritative writer commissioned by God to give us instruction during this dispensation. Okay? If you get that wrong, you are going to have a problem and you're not going to know how to resolve it. So take everything in its proper context. Go to Paul for Church Age Doctrine. That's not saying that James and Peter and they're not giving you valid information. They are, but they are writing to a different audience for a different reason. Okay? Keep that in mind. 114. That's what we're in 114. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Hold fast. Oh, 14? 13. What are we in? 14. Okay, 14. That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Let me read that again. Hey, have a great night, you guys. Take good care. Good to see you. They have to leave early because one of them has to get up at four o'clock and they live a long way away and they got to eat dinner on the way home. So I said your excuse this time. Okay. Yeah. No, I'm glad they came. They live a long drive away. That good thing which was committed to you keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Okay, 114. The words here Hang on. The words here reflect the same thought as that of 1 Timothy 6 20. Oh Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust. This good thing is the gospel message of Christ and all that is rightly associated with it. It includes proper doctrine, teaching and love, fleeing unrighteousness, and so forth. Paul is imploring Timothy to be a man of God who proclaims the Word of God, which speaks of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul tells Timothy, this was committed to you. Paul had personally laid his hands upon Timothy, along with the other elders, as is noted in 1 Timothy 4 verse 14. and he had entrusted to him the responsibility of the most important treasure any person could ever possess. Having it so committed to him, Timothy is now implored to keep by the Holy Spirit this good thing. Men of God wrote the word of God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. As this is so, it is only right to entrust the Holy Spirit to be the one to secure it rightly in our lives. That's why I said, if you are reading the Bible and you come to something you don't understand, the first thing you should do, I'm not saying not go read commentaries because you'd be silly not to, the first thing you should do is say, Lord, what are you telling me here? Okay, please reveal this to me. And it very well may be that he will reveal it through a commentary. Or, it happens all the time. It happens all the time. I have people email me this all the time. It's happened to me so many times in my life, I could not count it. Lord, show me what you want me to know from this. And it's some obscure verse you've never heard anybody mention ever in the history of the world. And Sunday morning, you turn on the radio on your way to church, and there's somebody preaching, and he preaches on that verse, and he explains to you what you needed to know. That is the Holy Spirit answering your request. Okay, that is him doing that. Or it's a Thursday afternoon and you're listening to an old sermon by Adrian Rogers. And Adrian Rogers stops and he says, let me tell you about this verse from this day. And he starts talking about it in the middle of a sermon that has nothing to do with it. And he ties it in later in the sermon. But that's all you needed to hear was that one thing that you would ask the Lord to show you. That's what Paul is speaking about there. Okay, that is exactly what he's speaking about there. So, keep by the Holy Spirit this good thing. Timothy didn't have the Word at the time. All he had was Paul's letters and whatever else that he may have gotten a copy of that was sent around, but he didn't have the Word of God, per se. But he had the instruction from Paul, and he asked the Lord, please keep this in my head. Paul implored me to do it. I'm asking you to keep it in my head. Remind me of it." And then maybe he'll be somewhere and something will happen. He'll say, well, Paul wrote about just that thing and it'll remind him. Okay, that's what Paul is asking him to do. Anyway, he had laid his hands on him. He had committed it to him. Having it so committed to him, Timothy is now implored to keep it. Men of God, I read that as well, as this is so, as it was received by the Holy Spirit, it is only right to entrust the Holy Spirit to be the one to secure it rightly in ourselves and in our lives. The word keep signifies having an eye on. It refers to the uninterrupted vigilance shepherds show in keeping their flocks. In other words, they're watching their flocks. They're making sure that they're okay. That helps word studies, by the way. The uninterrupted vigilance shepherds show in keeping their flocks. All right. I said that I was going to talk about it, I never did, but I translated Hebrews 12 too because I wanted to kind of know what it was saying. Man, what a great verse, and the word, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, it's a single verb, it's a participle, present participle, and the only word I could find or think of that I thought accurately depicted the meaning behind this word is eyeballing. Eyeballing Jesus. In other words, your eyes are so fixed on him you can't see anything else. Eyeballing. I'll read you the translation if I can find it, because I wrote a little commentary on it, and I said I was going to do it, and I never did, but that's the kind of thing that you have here. The word keep signifies having an eye on, and that's what brought it to my mind, is that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. Now that's a paraphrase. They're taking one word and and they're explaining it in the NIV. Others say, let us look unto Jesus or whatever, but it's a single word, and the word I think that best describes what it's saying is eyeballing. You're literally spending your time with your eyes just searching Him, looking at Him, and getting every detail and every nuance of this Lord who is right there in front of you. How are you going to do that? You're not going to do it unless you're reading the word because he's not standing there. Jesus isn't standing there. There's no way that you can know how to eyeball Jesus unless you're doing it through this word. There's no way you can do it because he is not here. Despite what lots of churches say about, you know, the Lord showing up and, you know, you know, I was watching this video one time. This is about eight years ago. There's a guy in Africa. He's like one of these mega pastors, and he makes a lot of money, right? And the phone rang, and he picks it up, and he is telling the congregation that he's speaking with Jesus. And they're all believing it. They're all believing that this guy's having a conversation with Jesus while he's preaching to him. Well, no wonder he makes millions of dollars a year, because these people think he's got a connection right to the Lord through his telephone, right? No kidding. I mean, my mom's laughing. She's incredulous. But this right there, he's doing it. I'm talking to Jesus, right? Unbelievable. This is how we converse with Jesus right now. This is it. Okay? If people are telling you that they've had visions and all that kind of stuff, Just think of that guy in Africa. That's what you're being told. That kind of nonsense. All right? So, man's mind is prone to wander. His thoughts are corrupted by the sin nature. And his ability to discern what is right is influenced by his character and his presuppositions. That's all of us. We can say, well, I don't have any presuppositions. I come to the Bible with an open slate. That's a very hard thing to do. I'm going to tell you that right now. I try to do that every Monday morning. It is very hard to do. Here's what I've been doing with the Song of Solomon in particular. Others have not been this complicated because the Hebrew is a little easier to understand, okay? But normally you translate and then you sit down and you type your sermon, you say, I'm just going to try to leave all of the things I believe behind. But with the Song of Solomon, I'm doing that as well, but the translating of the verses is, I mean, people can't agree on anything. I'm talking about every scholar that I've read, nobody agrees on anything with the Song of Solomon. And so I translated it, and then what I'm doing is, as I'm going through The verses, I'm actually going back and I'm not changing my translation, but I'm correcting, like in other words, I'm having a conversation with somebody, and where do I put the comma? Where do I put a dash? Because you don't know. It's that difficult to know what these people are saying. It's just words that are strung together, and some of them are so, did you read that yet, that verse I gave you in Hebrew? I'll be interested to see if you do, and what you come up with. And this is what you have to do. But you've got to take, along with doing that, everything that you think you know about the Song of Solomon, because you've read it ten times, and you've got to put it off to the side and say, I don't know anything. I'm coming at this with a blank slate. And that is one of the hardest things for me to do. I'm always wanting to step in and say, okay Charlie, this means this and you don't need to worry about it. And then I have to say no. go back and drop that. I'll read it again. We're corrupted by our sin nature. We're prone to wander. Our ability to discern what is right is influenced by our character and our presuppositions. That's all of us. We all have things that twist how we perceive the world in which we live. Donald Trump, I think, has done a great job in the past three weeks, but his perception of the religious aspect has been corrupted, and now he's appointed somebody that I don't agree with. He's just a guy that isn't a politician, and he's just a businessman, and so he does not understand the nuances of certain things. And that's why he's got a cabinet of advice to him. They are the specialists, and he's very good about taking their advice. I've seen him do it right in front of people. What do you think about this? He's got him on the spot, man. He expects an answer right then and there. But at the same time, if he's getting bad advice, like from Paula White, it's going to affect his interactions with that particular issue. So, there's my duck. Don't worry, there's no duck in there tonight. He almost freaked out at the smell of the duck last week. Well, there's no duck in there and guess what? There will be no more duck because they're closing in two weeks and they're not ordering any more duck before they close so you'll never have to smell duck again. Oh, she's here. Yeah, bring her here. I didn't even... You had that big bag. I didn't see you carrying her and the bag. I'm glad you said that because people online always tell me they want to see my granddaughter and now she's going to cry or something just to be... Hey, how you doing? She's so... Yeah, I know. You did that on purpose. Thank you. She's so funny. Hi, Tangy. Hi. She's only doing that to make Grandpa a miserable old man. Oh, yes, I love you so much. Okay, we gotta get back to study. Here, take her. We gotta get back to my little prayer. She never does this when we're at the house. She does this when I'm in front of eight million people. Okay, maybe not eight million, but. She's not gonna wanna come to church. She's, oh, man, he's gonna mess with me again. No, I didn't mess with her at all. She loves Grandpa. You know what she does? Can't you just, whenever they are watching from home, She reaches for the TV like this. Yeah, that is one great granddaughter. Off switches up there too, don't forget. That is one great granddaughter. No off switches, no off switches. Thank you, Tangie. Have a nice night. You too, love you. All right, love you. Let's see here, so where are we? Okay, presuppositions. In order to keep the gospel pure and untainted, a total reliance on the Holy Spirit is necessary. Like I said, just talk to him. Talk to him. He will give you the answer in his due time, but it is going to come. I'm as certain that he wants you to know this word as I am as certain about anything else on this planet. You know what, this carpet is, I can't even describe the color, so I can't use that. I'm certain that that's a chair. I have no doubt in my mind that that is a chair. I am more certain that he wants this word revealed to you, if you are willing to seek it out, okay? Honestly, Not just so I can get rich or something like that. He wants this word revealed to you. If you're looking to benefit, like I'm going to get rich if I learn this word and I apply the precepts and snap my fingers, he's not going to reveal anything to you. He's going to let you go down that path and that's where you're going to be stuck. You're going to be mired in it. But he wants you to know this word. Whether you're a plumber, whether you're a carpenter, whether you're retired, or whether you're young or old, it doesn't make any difference. Black or white or whatever, it makes no difference. He wants you to know this word. So, when scripture was written, it was done by the direct influence of God. Therefore, the direct influence of God, without all of those limitations of man, is necessary to rightly discern its meaning. And this isn't something which must be sought out and groped for. Instead, Paul says that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Okay? This isn't Acts. This isn't like, you know, a show of the church so that they can confirm that, you know, things were done by God to establish the church. That's not it. This is Paul writing doctrine for the church. He is telling you that the Holy Spirit dwells in you if you are his. Use that resource to learn the Word of God. That's what you need to do. I, you know, some people apply the Holy Spirit in their lives inappropriately. I see it all the time. They think that the Holy Spirit is going to keep them from trouble. They think that they're not going to get in an accident or something. He's not going to do that. He's going to let you live your life and you're going to be subject to all of the forces that are coming in around you. If it was true that you were going to have an easy life because you have the Holy Spirit in you, there wouldn't be missionaries being killed over in Uganda right now or whatever. Just be reasonable. primary purpose of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, besides sealing you for the day of redemption, is to illuminate this to you. This is what He wants you to know. And once this is illuminated to you, then you can take this information that you now know and live the life that you're supposed to live. Don't get it out of order and think that the Spirit is going to do this for you. It's not. You learn this Word with his influence in you and then you live your life according to this word. Okay, people get it always backwards and their lives are, I bring it up from time to time, charismatic churches, you know, friends that I went to high school with, attend these churches, and they have it completely backwards. They go to church on Sunday morning, and they come home, and all they do is talk about how great Jesus is, how filled with the Spirit they are, and how wonderful life is, and on Monday morning all you hear is complaints from them. I've got to go to work. Life is so difficult. My daughter is giving me grief. It just goes on and on and on all week long, okay, because they have it backwards. If they go to a church and they pray, Lord give us wisdom in your word, and they get that word into them, then it doesn't matter what happens on Wednesday afternoon. Whether their house burns down, or whether their best friend dies, or whether they lose all their money in the stock market, they say, you know what, the Lord is in control of this. I love the Lord and I'm not going to let this ruin me. It's a completely different approach, but the approach is because they are not coming to the word and having it settled in their lives. They're going to the Holy Spirit and saying, settle my lives and then I'll live for you. No, you can't do that unless you know the word. He is there to open this word to you and to get you to know it and to apply it to your lives and you will have the life that you want. It may not be a happy one, it may not be a profitable one, but you will have the hope of the future that other people just don't carry around with them because that's not their priority. They want the right now of everything. And I'm sorry. These people are saved believers. I've known them all of my life and yet they're miserable because they will not take the time to sit down and to learn this word and then say, I'm going to take what it says and apply it to my life. This will get you grounded. This will do it. Let's see here. Oh yeah, this has to be taken in the limited sense of believers only. I just said it, but yeah, a person who has not received Jesus Christ does not have the Holy Spirit in him. However, upon belief, the Holy Spirit seals believers. That's found in Ephesians 1, 13, and 14. When you believed, you received the Holy Spirit, which is the gift, which is the deposit, which is the guarantee of our future redemption. There you go. From that moment, we are to grow in fellowship, and this is done by being filled, Paul's words, with the Spirit. It is a passive action. It is not active like they treat it down at those churches. It's not an active action. It is passive. I'm going to open myself up through studying this word, through fellowshipping with believers, through listening to Moody Radio on the way to work, and there's whoever, Chuck Swindoll preaching, and that's how you're going to fill yourself up. It's passively coming in, and it's filling you because you have opened yourself to it, okay? you understand the working of the Spirit, then you will understand that you are doing things right when you do those things. When you do the other things and you actively call on the, fill me Holy Spirit, that's not the way it works. That's not what the Bible teaches, okay? So, I remember I was sitting in a church at a baptism. My friend asked me to come to a church one time and I'd known him, we were in the astronomy class together in high school, right? We sat there and watched astronomy for six months. Anyway, they have a planetarium. It's the only school in America that had its own planetarium, Riverview High School. I don't know if more do now or not, but it was great. It was marvelous. But anyway, we'd sit back there and, you know, it was just great because the teacher didn't expect anything of you except to watch the stars and learn about that. Anyway, he asked me, I'm getting baptized, I went in there, and there was this so annoying guy behind me. And through the whole service, all he kept saying was, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, the whole service. And I come to find out afterward, I said to the guy, I said, why do they allow that? He said, he's the retired pastor of the church. He's the father of the guy that's the pastor now. And I thought, the whole service. That's all he kept saying. It's just, that's not how it works. Okay, anyway, but nice to see his baptism anyway. So 113 and 14, you're filled, it's passive action. We are to yield and the spirit will fill. In this, Timothy will be able to properly keep that which is entrusted to him, and each believer will be able to move into a closer relationship with God. But this process can also be quenched. Therefore, the admonition here is for Timothy to always fan the flame and be intimately connected to God through yielding to the Spirit. In this, he will certainly keep that which is entrusted to him. You know, we have to do our part. If we're not actively pursuing God, then we are actively drawing away from Him. There's no static in our relationship with Jesus. Okay? There's none. If you, you know, we get shocked. when a dog dies and it affects us. It's a dog. I mean I go out and I have a steak that night, okay, and I'm eating a cow that I didn't know. I didn't have any relationship with that cow, but if I knew that cow personally and I petted it every day, I couldn't kill that cow. easily you know what I mean I couldn't just go out and say okay here we go there's a point where you have to go and do it but it's it's something that affects us because we now have an affinity or an affiliation with that cow my aunt had a cow Abe he was the biggest cow I've ever seen in my life and I used to go out when I go up to Massachusetts and I take a rake and you'd rake him and he would drool he'd just drool and drool You know, I loved Abe, right? When Abe died, it affected me. And yet there's how many other cows out there, and when they die, I don't think about it. So what I'm saying is that now that Abe has been gone a long time, I'm no longer affected by it. He's just a memory that I think I remember Abe, right? So you are drawing away as time passes from the source of that pain, or that joy, or that intimacy. So he hears you with God and you are actively seeking God. You're getting closer to him all the time. But when you stop, you don't just stop, you're actually separating from each other just like I am with Abe right now. Abe is going away in me because I am a human being in time and things are slipping away from me. You have your part to do and that is to hold fast to Jesus and to fan the flames and to read the word and to make sure that you are listening to something healthy in a sermon because if you're not you're not being fed properly okay but Abe who is a great cow I don't feel the way I do anymore and every time I lose a dog I think I miss that dog so much and a week later I miss him less and a month later I miss him less and pretty soon I it was a great dog that's all you think he was a great dog and you don't have any pain it's just done so you know we we have to think if I feel that way about a dog Why shouldn't I be feeling that way about the Lord who saved my life? Why shouldn't we do it? Did Abe get eaten? No, Abe, you know what, my uncle always said if we have an economic collapse, the mountain, it's a mountain of 50 families up there, smallest township in Massachusetts, right? But he said the whole town is going to have enough food for a year. Well, they didn't because Abe eventually just died. My aunt, she would have killed Abe. She loved that cow. She wouldn't eat her own animal, but if it was necessary, I know they would have. But no, Abe did not get eaten. But it was the funniest thing. You'd get a rake. They kept a rake right there by him. Somebody figured out that he liked it and every time I'd visit I'd pick up that rake and he'd walk over really quickly Start raking him and he'd be just just coming out of his nose out of his mouth that you just his eyes would glaze over It was just unbelievable Wow what it so is a fun time. It was just anyway. That's all done now Abe is he's back to the earth, but life application No person is immune from quenching the Spirit. In fact, as long as we are in these mortal bodies, it is the default position. We must yield to the Spirit, and in doing so, we will be filled. You know, here's a good example of this. I'll stop right there, because we've got a few minutes. We can't start another verse. Who was I talking to today about this? Let me think for one second. Maybe it was you. You stopped doing something. What was it I was talking... Anyway, but what came to my mind is on the same lines with somebody I was talking to about something. I have seen people that go to Bible studies regularly, okay, and they don't go one time, and then they miss another one, and by the third time you don't see them anymore, okay, because something else fills your life. When you have something you do and then you stop doing it for whatever reason, something else is going to fill your time. It is going to. Now there are times where I can't go to the projects. I mean, I just can't. I have a wedding to do. I've got to do a baptism that day. I've got a funeral to do. That has to be priority. If somebody asked me that, then I'm going to do that, okay? Or who was it that we buried just recently? What was the last funeral we went to? Oh, Burke. No, it wasn't Burke. No, after that we had... Oh, it was Burke because he died, he had his funeral, and then the veterans thing. That's what I'm thinking. So you have to do things and sometimes you have to prioritize. So I don't go to the projects. But if I don't go a second week for some reason, it is really hard to get up the third week and to say, I got to go to the projects today. Your life is now filled with something else. You know, normally what will happen is I'll have something to do and then I get sick the second week and the third week I'm just like, you know, you forget. And it's not that you don't care, it's just that you have filled it with something else. Your mind is no longer thinking in that pattern. If you do that, it was you and me reading the Bible. I'm reading the Bible. I'm feeling that everything's a little off. Everything is off. Two days out and everything starts to go off because I haven't read my Bible. Well, you don't do that for a week and guess what? You're never going to do again. You're just going to stop picking it up. You know what? I'll get it tomorrow. I'll get it tomorrow, right? Of course you make the projects. You've got your reason for that and whatever it is, but that was just it's it's something I can you know I can Oh, big time. Anyway, eventually, if we pursue righteousness, the default position moves closer and closer to a full connection with the Spirit. I'll give you an example of this. Okay, everybody knows him. You've seen him here a couple times on Sunday morning, and you can watch his videos online. I bring them up from time to time. It's Jose. Jose is always keeping himself close to his Missions always and I know that if he said well, you know, I'm gonna take a month off and I'm gonna do this He'd come back and he wouldn't have the fire that he said for 40 years It he would just you get away from things He's gonna have to actively work hard to get back to the place. He is now he may never make it back again But he is always I can't think of a day where I don't see him talking about Jesus and a message group that we have I every day. So, you have your choices to make in life, okay? Whether it's Bible study, whether it's the projects, whether it's, you know, going out handing out tracts, whatever it is. If you find something else to do, your time is going to be filled with that. That's how it goes, and you are going to move away from that aspect of your relationship with the Lord. It sure as the sun is going to rise tomorrow. That is the case. So, if you're working on it, the default position moves closer, all right? But this bond can still be quenched, and so we must always Remain on guard in this matter. Okay, that's just the way that we need to conduct our lives, is we need to be careful about staying close to the Lord and entrusting ourselves to Him daily, daily, daily. And if we do that, we're going to be a lot better off. I can't find my pen, so remind me we're in 115. Oh, thank you. Heavenly Father, we're very grateful to you for the chance to come into your presence and to talk about you and talk about what you have done through the giving of Jesus Christ our Lord, and we're so grateful to you for that. It's something...you made the first move. All we need to do is respond, and then from there, we just need to keep on eyeballing Jesus all the way through and to the end, fixing our eyes on Him, fixing our attention on Him, fixing our thoughts on Him, And how are we going to do that, Lord, without reading your word? Help us to be diligent about studying it every day of our lives. Let us not get into the habit of staying away from this precious word. Thank you for it. We praise you for it. And we do so in his beautiful name. Amen. All right. Let me circle that. I'll get your pen back to you. Whoops. Oh, yeah. I see. I got to do the old twisty thing. Okay. And then we'll go turn the thing back and say goodbye to folks online. That's here. We got to go to break. There we go. Okay, everybody, have a great, great, what is it, Thursday? Weekend, and we'll see you on the, yes, the 6th. We'll see you, and I hope to share the song of songs with you. Be here, be square. Bye-bye. I don't know what I did with that pen. It must have fallen, or where is it? Oh, there it is. I got it. I found it. It just rolled. It rolled. It just rolled. Okay, we got this. We got this. This goes in here. I thought there was going to be a feast tonight for the restaurant. Yeah, oh no, not for the church. I just bought it for the family. I was asking if I could pay for it. Oh, well, oh, okay. We can do it, yeah, we can do it next week if you want, or the week after, whenever. Just let me remind