Okay, we're live. Go ahead. We are live. Okay. Gimel. Camel. Foot. Gather. Walk. And Charlie has always recommended to read these verses that I'm about to read before you start reading the Bible. True? Yep, there we go. Do good to your servant and I will live. I will obey your word. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. I am a stranger on earth. Do not hide your commands from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times. You rebuke the arrogant who are cursed and who stray from your commands. Remove from me scorn and contempt for I keep your statutes. We'll meditate on your decrees. Your statutes are my delight. They are my counselors. Yes. All right. Let's see. We're going to take this and we're going to go dollop it for next week. And let's see, we've got a couple things here. Ooh, ah, ooh, ah, I got something for Tom Alley here. Don't forget that, Tom. Jesus Film went off very well. I'm just going to give you the short. If you want a copy of it, email me. I'll send you a copy with the photos. But 40 people came to this meeting. Eight people came to Jesus. So he has been doing marvelous things, great stuff. The gentleman, Anyway, I think I read that last week. Okay. So anyway, if anybody wants to copy that, please email me and I'll get that right to you. And we got a couple of prayer requests here. Gordon, we prayed for him last week. He was having a heart surgery and all is good. He wants to thank everybody that was praying for him. And he says, he guess the Lord has a reason for him to be here for a while more. And Silas in Kenya. It's drought season, he has a need for assistance, so if anybody wants to help them with food, you know, he takes care of just tons of children. Orphanage, he's got the church and the people in the community, he tends to. And this happens every year, they have a dry season and they get a little short, so he's asking if anybody wants to help with that. And then, Caden Springfield has leukemia and has taken a turn for the worse. Jim's old high school friend. Okay, sort of like that and he so looking for prayers for Caden as well Let's see here. Then. We've got this to read Today is the 13th Oh Gutenberg's Bible. Hey good stuff John Johan Gutenberg grew up in Mainz Germany he devoured books and Why would he eat books? I don't know. Stomach ache. A lot of roughage. Reading all that his... Oh, devoured reading. I see they're making it... I see. Okay. Reading all that his wealthy father ordered. The volumes were outrageously expensive, sometimes costing as much as a farm. Local scribes copied the text by hand. Illuminators decorated the margins and binders made the covers. Finally, the title was stamped into the leather cover by brass punches. It was the punches that suggested an idea to Johann. Why not make separate metal letters and arrange them into words? Why not set up a page and print it using a press? Johann moved to Strasbourg and set up a secret workshop near an old monastery. Though beset by problems, he toiled for years to get his invention to work. Finally, Johan returned to Mainz, where he was assured an income by inheritance. He set up a printing shop, and in 1450, after 30 years, he was ready to begin. He chose the Bible as his first book. Such a project required he borrow 800 guldens from Johan first, but he wasn't repaid with interest in five years, first demanded all the equipment and materials would revert to him. It took Johan two years to set up workshop. He hired workers, had presses built, and taught laborers to grind and mix ink. Then he had presses built and taught laborers to grind and then he was ready to begin printing. Two more years went by and the invention wasn't working well. Another year passed and two months before the Bible was completed, Fust sued. On November 6, 1455, the judge ruled in his favor. Gutenberg angrily turned over, can you imagine that, 30 years of his life? his presses and almost completed Bibles to Fust. The Bible was reportedly first published on March 13th, 1456, and for many years the credit went to Fust and his partner, Peter Schaffer. But after Gutenberg died on February 3rd, 1469, Schaffer admitted that, after all, John Gutenberg had invented printing. What God has said isn't only active and alive, it is sharper than any double-edged sword. His word can cut through our spirits and souls and through our joints and marrow until it discovers the desires and thoughts of our hearts. Then they give a little footnote down here. Information about Gutenberg is notoriously hard to pin down. The above account is based on Fine Print, a story about Johann Gutenberg by Johann Johansson Birch. Anyway, there you go. So if you want to know about Gutenberg, you can find out a little bit. Yeah, got to do some research. Anyway, good stuff with Gutenberg. Sorry he went through all that trouble. And the thing, I'm reading that, I'm trying to wonder, why didn't he just go to his computer and print it off from that? Anyway, Heavenly Father. We're very grateful to you for people like Gutenberg and James Strong, who gave us the Strong's Concordance, and Robert Stephanus, who broke the Bible down into individual verses. I mean, Lord, people have been pouring over your Word for centuries and centuries to bring it to us in a form that is so easy to understand now, and we've got so many versions, and yet it's so neglected. Lord, what a crime it is against you that people have these copies of the Bible on their shelf and they don't simply pick them up and read them. Lord, forgive us for our failing in this regard and help us to just have a hunger for your word, a desire that goes deeper than anything else in our life. Lord, it is our connection to you and it tells us of Jesus. Why would we not want to read your word? Help us in this and Lord, we lift up the people in praise and petition that we just mentioned prayer requests and we just thank you Lord that we can do that we thank you for this class just so wonderful to be able to teach your word Lord thank you for this word we thank you in Jesus name amen yeah man I made that joke one time and I had people actually fall out of their chair they thought I was serious as I said James Strong did his Concordance of the Bible, it took him 30 years to do Strong's Concordance. And I said, two years later, they can do it on the computer manually and print it off in a week. and he went out and killed himself, and people believed that. I mean, the guy died like 200 years ago, but people were like, what? Sometimes you gotta take my humor and understand I'm not usually serious about things. It's very rare that I'm serious about things. Rarely? Yeah. Like tonight? Like tonight. I'm just not that serious about things. So there you go. Let me close this. Yeah, all right, and then we are in to Timothy 2 and we're in verse 9 today And so you start wherever you want to get into it the beginning of the paragraph, which is 8 Remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead descended from David This is my gospel 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal But God's Word is not chained Okay, for which I suffer as an evildoer, even to the point of chains, but the Word of God is not chained. So that's pretty close. Yeah, anyway, you just think, before I go on, the Word of God being chained, we have the old saying that the Bible is chained to the pulpit, and it just came to mind because we're talking about these people. Imagine that. This guy said you could buy a farm with a copy of a book. They were so precious. Hence, you've got a church with one copy of the Bible, and they had to actually hide it. They had to lock it away or chain it to the pulpit or something because it was so valuable. And now, like I say, you can get a Bible online, and it'd be a cheap Bible, but you can get it for a dollar. I mean, $2 at the most. You can get like 50 different versions. You can get an NASB or an NIV, and they're in different formats. right? These go in columns. These ones go in paragraphs. These ones have offset, you know, like the Psalms, they offset them, and so it's poetry form. We got every possible way to attract people to the Bible, including audio Bibles. It's not like we have anything to do here. These people spent 30 years print a Bible. These guys took 30 years to make a concordance of the Bible so that we can look at it. Now we've got the concordance. Somebody took all that time, they scanned it into a computer, they were able to put all of that onto the internet, and now I can look at a concordance. I can do an entire sermon, every single word, on Monday. And it used to take people weeks to do what I can do in an hour, literally weeks. They'd have piles of books and they'd have to say, where was that? And they'd have to pull out this book. And we have no excuse at all for not reading this word, none. It's just unbelievable. So that came to mind when it said chained in there. And so to me, it's almost maddening. I've got a family member that emailed me. I don't hear from her often. But she emailed me this morning, and this person is on fire for the Bible, and I think how relieving that is to know that there are people in the world that just want to read the Bible. They're not into all the nonsense. They're not into all of the, you know, I'm going to go to church, and I heard today, I don't want to divert too far from this, but now think of this, and I brought this church up in the past, is the church on Mount Washington, the Congregationalist Church. And over the years, they've had different pastors, and they've had, you know, women come in, and they've had, you know, but none of them have ever been great scholars. They've been people that are just going through life getting a free ride. And they go up to, this is a mountain, and that's what it's called. It's called the mountain, all right? Whenever we talk about it, we always say the mountain, even people that live there, the mountain. It's the smallest year-round residence in Massachusetts or it was it may not be anymore But it was 50 people over a big broad area. Okay. It was in the middle of absolutely nowhere Okay, it the nearest town to get to used to be when it had gravel roads like a 45-minute drive now It's probably 15 or 20 because you got quicker traveling but You know, this is in the middle of nowhere. The very first thing you see in the church, in the very middle of the town, I'm sorry, the town is the church. They specifically said, we are going to build this town around a church, okay? And over the years, it's gone downhill like all churches have done. All these congregations and all of these denominations, they've gone woke. I almost was going to throw up when I got the news about this year's pastor. They have a pastor come up for a few months a year, and he lives up in this great, beautiful place. This year's pastor is going to be a trans, you know, a transsexual or whatever. And I thought, that is the end of the line. You can't go any deeper than that unless you have somebody that just comes up and proclaims Satan, right? Unless they're just going to be a Satan worshiper and say that, you know, take down the cross. You can't go any further away from the Lord than what they've done this year. And they, you know, they've got a whole resource. They could go all over the country. and they could hire somebody from anywhere. It's just, you know, it's like a vacation for somebody. I'm going to go up to the mountain. It's probably, this is my guess, it's probably from June through September. It's a very short time they're up there. It's the most beautiful place you've ever been. I'm not kidding. It is, isn't it? Mom will tell you, it is so beautiful up there. The smell, the woods, everything is so beautiful. and yet they're doing this. And now what do you have? You've got an entire group of people that live on this mountain, and that's the only influence that they're going to get, is that. And they've done it to themselves because they selected them. Somebody there had to make a little committee every year and to select this person. and that is what they're going to get. Now there is no way that people will come to the Lord. They will not understand the gospel through what's happening in that church. It hasn't happened for a long time, but when I heard that, it was terrible. So I'm very thankful for people that read the Bible and that are willing to say, I want to know if what I'm being told is true, because otherwise you're putting your eternal future in the hands of a mental deviant. That is just terrible. Anyway, okay, 2-9. To be clear, your family member does not go there. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's good. Yeah, that's separate. The family member I just heard from this morning, and it just made my day. Because his first thing, it was like, I don't know how early it was, but it was early enough where it made my day. And then it got me thinking about Because my family members are up there. I mean, it's got cousins and uncles and aunts and all that, and they're all up there. That's what they get. That's what they've got for themselves, is that. So yeah, no, separate thing there. Okay, so... I've been stewing over that all day long. How could they do that? Anyway, 2.9, the words for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, that's Paul's words, are referring to Paul's proclamation of the gospel, obviously. I mean, he writes about this in many of his epistles, that he suffers because of what he's doing. And, you know, that's not bragging. That's just him explaining to people, and he's making sure that they understand. He knows that this letter is going to go beyond Timothy. Timothy already knows this, but Paul wants to make sure that whoever gets this epistle, if it's saved after Timothy's life, or if it's shared in another church, or whatever, they will understand the person that is writing him that letter. That's why he's saying this. Timothy knows it, for speaking of the only message that can free humanity from the bondage of imprisonment and slavery to sin, Paul is himself held as a prisoner. I mean, you think about the irony there. The irony of the situation just goes on and on and on with Paul in his life. He was a person that was so devoted to the Lord. But we're getting this nowadays, you know. Who was it? I saw something just a little while ago. Something happened in the UK. Oh, a person, probably a Christian because he was telling the Muslims in the UK that the Jesus that's in the Quran is not the same Jesus that's in the Bible. And of course they wanted to arrest him and put him in prison because he says something that's so obvious. It's such an obvious truth. Jesus described here, and you got him described here, and just pick it up and read it and you'll find out it's not the same Jesus. It's not even close, right? And so he points that out to them. They all get upset and they want him arrested now. Then they said they're not going to charge him. Obviously somebody just checked. They just said, okay, well let's make a comparison. Is this Jesus the same as this? This is the world we're living in. The irony that goes on in the world, that you can't say something true without being arrested. How does this happen? How does it come to this point in the world? But that's where we're at. It's because people get offended over the truth. I was talking to Mark here earlier. This has nothing to do with the Bible, but it's the same thought, just so you know what I'm thinking. All over America right now, people are burning Teslas. They're demonstrating in front of Tesla places. They're attacking people that drive Teslas, okay? Because the person that owns Tesla is trying to save the government money. And again and again, he has been accosted by people, and they call them all kinds, and you're a Nazi, you're a Nazi, right? And so he says, can you tell me what you don't like that I'm doing? Can you tell me one thing that I've done that, and you know, these are people that know what he's doing. Not one time have they been able to answer him and say, you've done this. It's just like mass psychosis. And that's what's happening with religion. It doesn't matter if it's politics. It doesn't matter if it's saving money in the government. It is mass psychosis. And once you get to that point, there's no help for people. If they can't see that the Jesus presented here and the Jesus presented here is not the same, that is a problem with people's thinking. That's the core being of the person, because that's who we are. When we think something, that is who we are. And if you're not thinking clearly about an issue, then that's your core being, as you can no longer rationally defend why you say what you say. Anyway, so there you go. Although translator's preference allows any of various words to be selected for a given original word, the use of evildoer is not a great choice, okay? A person can do wrong without actually doing evil, all right? And it depends on what type of wrong you're doing, too. I mean, when you sin against God, God would call that evil. But if you just do wrong against, you know, your neighbor and it's not anything intentional, like your dog runs over there and does something in his lawn, that wasn't anything, but you know, you don't want to call him an evildoer. You might be a wrongdoer because you, you know, you should have watched your dog, but you're not really committing any moral transgression or anything. So that's the point here. Paul is held by the Romans for supposed wrongdoing according to their law. Thus a word such as criminal would probably be better here as a choice of translation to form the proper analogy. What do you have in yours? The verse. What do they call Paul? He says I'm being chained as an evildoer in my translation. Mine is like a criminal. Okay, well then that's probably better. That's the end of it. Yes, that one is a little better. And there are times, I was surprised, I think it was I can't remember. I worked on four sermons this past week, but one of them that's coming up, the only one, the only version that got even close in translation of a part of the Song of Songs was the NIV. Well, look at that. Yeah, it was amazing because, and they didn't get it right. It was still a paraphrase, but they got the substance of it. And so, even the NIV, which is, you know, gone like most churches, it's gone woke, they still had a proper translation, which they've maintained since that original, you know, translation they did all those years ago. This was like one or two years away from when they... Oh yeah, 2004, after that I would not buy an NIV, you know, you couldn't pay me to take your NIV after that, because it's just, they started, it starts always the same with translations. Yeah, so they say brethren because it's masculine in the Greek. And then women get offended and they don't like that. And so they say, well, we need to change it. And so they say brothers and sisters, which is technically not wrong. Okay. It's not incorrect to say brothers and sisters because he's speaking to a congregation, but it doesn't reflect the Greek. Because the Greek, if you have a man in the congregation, then it's a masculine word they use. If there's no men and it's all women, then it would say women, okay? But anytime you have a man, that takes precedent. That's the way the language works. English was that way for a long time. But once you start doing that to accommodate people, we're going to change it to brothers and sisters. The next time they know they've got their foot in the door, they will complain about the next issue. and then the next, and then the next, and pretty soon that Bible is not going to reflect anything that it was originally intended to do. So the best thing to do is if you have a translation and it doesn't have errors in it, you want to just leave it alone. And if you're going to, you know, one thing I've been finding out about translating is that it's very hard to be consistent with words because there's so many uses of a single word you got to go back and you got to look and it takes a long time so it's a slow process of translating and I under what I use a lot of translations but when I'm doing after 2004 I would not use an NIV if right on the copyright you know pick it up and you can get Oh, well, if you got the NIV. There's a preface to the one on your phone. It should be. It should say this copyright. And, you know, one of the things about the most modern NIV, the audio Bible, I got some of them. Some people gave me some. The problem with the NIV audio Bible is that they're so touchy now about pronouns that instead of saying he went to the store with her and they went something. They change it, so every sentence now has got a discord between the masculine and the feminine. Like, he's a good guy, they went to the store. It's so bad that when you listen to it, I listened to it that one time, and I thought, something's wrong with this. And the next time I listen, I'm like, I had to pull it out and stop listening, because it no longer reflects proper English. because they don't want to offend anybody. And so they're changing the English language to accommodate wokeism. Anyway, so that's how you know. I just would be careful. And there's 10 million translations out there. Get the NASB. That's a good one. It's based on the same text as the NIV, but it hasn't gotten woke yet. Anyway. Yeah, Jesus offended a lot of people, and he really didn't care, right? And Paul, I mean, he calls out Peter right in front of everybody. He's like, this is my job. This is my job to call people out. So, absolutely. But people just, it's a touchy-feely world, and thank goodness that it's changing back a little bit in America right now. You brought it up, offending people. About three weeks ago, the vice president went to Germany to give his speech. And all he did was say, this is our stand in America. And if you want to join us in this, he wasn't rude, nothing. And the next guy to speak after him was from Germany. He got up there and he was bawling. He was bawling, and now that's a good representation of a person to lead you, is that he bawls over somebody just speaking the truth. One person stood up and said, this is intolerable, but he didn't say it wasn't true. It was everything he said was true. This is our stand, this is our position, and if you want to agree with us, we will work with you, and if you don't, then you have to do your own thing. And the guy got up there and he was bawling. Some woman had to come up and hug him. To comfort him. He was upset because he was hoping a man would. This is the world that we're living in where you can't even just, like you said, Jesus offended people and all he did was tell the truth. Whatever, anyway. NASB, that's a good one. Yeah, it's a good literal translation. Anyway, there you go. That's not a bad one. If you don't like it, let me know and I'll give you another one. There are dozens and dozens of them. Okay, so we got criminal. Criminal works. It's not a bad translation. It's probably better than evildoer because evildoer gives a wrong sense. Okay? It gives the proper analogy. The meaning here is technical rather than moral. He's criminal to the Romans. He's not an evildoer. Okay? It's not a moral thing that he had done. It is as a criminal that he has held even Paul's words even to the point of chains. This is not a unique occurrence in Paul's life. We've seen it again and again. In Ephesians chapter 6, he asked for prayers from those at Ephesus by saying that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Okay, so you need to speak boldly. Now, here's one thing. I got this question today. how do you approach family members if they you know they and it's hard family members are the hardest people to speak to about because they know all your faults already they know everything that you've done wrong in your life they know and so one they're looking at you like saying well who are you to judge me that that's that's the first thing that happens but secondly If you get angry at your family member because they are not following the Lord as you know they should, all you're going to do is you're going to cause a division and they're going to double down. And so it's very hard. What you want to do is just be yourself. Just live your life. Show that you have changed in your life. And you know, I try to admit, and I try, you hear me say it every Bible study, I mean the most corrupt guy in the world that I know is Charlie Garrett. right? I feel that way. Every time I do something, I feel like, you know, I shouldn't have done that, or I should do this, and I didn't. And so, if you allow people to see that, that you truly care about how you conduct yourself, that's probably the best witness you're going to have for them. You give them the gospel one time, and then after that, don't beat it over their head. And, you know, because there's no point in having conflict with family members. It will not help. You can't push them into Jesus. You may be able to lead them with your example, but you can't push people into Jesus. And division in a family is, I understand, it's the hardest thing to smooth out when you have religious differences. The guy right across the road, you know, Green, Dr. Green, remember? I really don't. Okay, well, yeah, you did. You rode his bike to the hospital every day for 30 years on the island. You know who I'm talking about. He was on Pointer Rocks Road. Okay, she doesn't even remember. Okay, she does. All right, well, one of the sons is a Baptist minister. One of the sons is way opposite, okay? That causes conflict. So they have to, and it's the same thing in my family. You got people that don't believe, and here I'm a preacher. So it causes conflict. Am I gonna do any good at all by condemning them? No, I'm gonna make it worse for them. All I can do is be me, and when they have a need, if it ever arises, I will be there for them. Other than that, all I'm going to do is push them further away from Jesus. And, you know, people can say, well, you need, you know, you find a better way because your approach is probably going to alienate the two of you forever. I hear of that all the time where people end up alienating one another and they never speak to each other again over something that could have been resolved differently. So it's hard. I understand that. I'm sorry that these things happen in life, but they do happen. we have to you know we have to decide what's the best way to approach that person every person is an individual and each one of them is going to respond differently to your example or your instruction every one of them so Let's see here, Ephesians chapter 6, I read that. Paul was bound because of the gospel. It inhibited his ability to get out and to speak. But even in his chains, he still proclaimed the word to whoever was around. He also continued to write letters encouraging the churches he had ministered to. How do we know that? Because we're reading one of them right now, okay? And to providing doctrine for their continued growth. Speaking about doctrine, here's a point. I'd love to bring up what happened in the past week because I know other people have the same questions. Somebody emailed me. I don't think she attends the Bible studies online. She found a sermon that she was curious about. She found me through a sermon. So that's probably the only contact that she's had with the church. It was just an individual sermon, but she emailed to thank me for it. And she came out and she gave me a little bit of background of her life. And one of the things she asked is, is it okay for a woman to be a preacher? Now, if she doesn't know, Think about this. Why would she ask that question unless she was pretty certain that it was wrong? You know what I'm saying? That's not the kind of question that you'll come across just arbitrarily. You know that there's a problem. To ask that question means that you know something is wrong. I didn't get any explanation, but just from the question, it's like, I just want to know, is it okay for, and so I said, rather than answering the question, I said, I want you to go to this chapter of Timothy, 1 Timothy 2, and read verses 11 and 12. You know, you can read the surrounding context, whatever, but I want you to read that. I want you to decide. And I said, I want you, before you do that though, to remember that Paul's epistles are authoritative for the church. He is the one that writes church doctrine. She came back and she said, thank you. I know now the answer to that question. And I thought that is a really nice person because a lot of people will get in there and they'll get right in your face and they'll just, I didn't write those words. She wanted to know and I said rather than me saying it and maybe upsetting, I said let Paul, let the Word of God that was inspired through Paul tell her, and now she knows. So we're talking about doctrine here. These things are important, and people ask them, and I like to get those things out that are in my mind at the time, because this is why we're reading this. This is a pastoral epistle. Doctrine. Okay, he wrote these continued letters encouraging the churches. As I just said, he ministered to the churches and he provided doctrine for their continued growth. Well, that lady now has doctrine that she didn't have a day before, and it wasn't me that gave it to her. It was the Word of God. Okay, and so he next says that even though he was chained, the Word of God is not chained. That's the point of Paul's words here. I'm chained, but the Word of God isn't. It is there, it's accessible to people, and it is not bound by humans. It is written by God, and therefore what it says is authoritative at all times. But once again, it has to be in the proper context. What is the context when Jesus speaks to Israel? What is the context when David goes to battle against the Philistines? You have to take the context into consideration, or if you don't, you're going to have a pretext. You're going to have a false understanding of whatever you were just taught, because that doesn't apply to you there. That doesn't apply to you there. This applies to you. That applies to you. What is the context? Think of that always. Context, context, context. So, doctrine for the growth. And so he next says that even though he was chained, the Word of God is not chained. At times, while chained, Paul will be able to speak forth the words of salvation to others, even to kings and governors. Okay, he did that next chapter. There it is. I wrote it down right here. Acts chapter 26. I was just going to take you there, and my comments took you there. So Acts 26, and I'm going to... It works the same. Absolutely. It just keeps it so well. Agrippa said to Paul, you almost persuade me to become a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me today might become both almost and altogether such as I am. except for these chains, okay? And then who was listening? Felix and Paul and the governor, Bernice, the king, all these people are there watching. They've got all of the royal court there and he's evangelizing them standing there in chains, okay? And so it was a smart thing that he added on. I wish that you were just as I am except these chains because, you know, It would be kind of a slap in the face to say, I'd like you to change with me. But that's their choice for later if they convert. But anyway, there you go, Acts 26. He repeats the sentiment in Philippians chapter 1 as well. And that one did not come to mind, so we'll see what Philippians 1 has to say here. There it is, and then we're going to go to chapter 1. And it says, I'll start in 12, but I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happen to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ. And most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. So here he is, he's imprisoned again, as he's again and again imprisoned, and he's saying that the fact that I'm speaking to these people standing in chains has emboldened them to want to do the same thing who aren't in chains, okay? And here he's saying that the Word of God is not chained. So just because he's in chains doesn't mean that the Word is somehow limited. It's not. Paul found that every possible cunning attempt by devil and by man was made to silence the gospel, but yet it continued to go forth. His unselfish attitude toward his Lord and towards the message of salvation found in Christ Jesus kept the Word going. His letters did so as well, and they, guess what? They continued to do so 2,000 years later. Right? Here we are. I was just thinking that in my head a minute ago. We're reading this, and 2,000 years later, we're still reading what Paul said, and we're arguing over it. Right? That's the thing about it. We argue over, you know, not that many pages of writings from Paul. and one of my friends emailed me today and he said you know he watched the sermon on where do you go when you die, do you go to heaven straight, do you go where do you go and I did a sermon on it and I gave my answer and he heard somebody else that gave a different opinion and he couldn't remember my sermon and so I went back and I kind of explained I said you know, I can't cut and paste the whole sermon. It would, you'd be here, probably best for him to just go watch it again, because I have all the graphics in there and everything. But either one is true or the other is true, and they both can't be true. Now, they could both be false, and there may be a third possibility that nobody's ever thought in 2,000 years, but, you know, doctrine is set. and we can argue over the Word of God, but ultimately there's only one correct answer, right? Last week one of my friends, I told you he'd emailed me about Genesis 1-2, and let me read it to you, the exact wording here, and It says in Genesis 1-2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And I thought, you know, he's emailing me, and I get this a lot with Genesis 1-1 and 1-2. do you believe in re-creationism? And I thought maybe he had read an article on re-creationism and that's what he was thinking. You know, he wanted to know if that was true. And that wasn't his intent at all. He just wanted to know if God created everything good, because the Bible says he created everything good, right? Then how can it be that the earth was without form and void, right? How can that be good? It's like there's chaos, all right? And my answer is, It's rather simple if you think it through. When does it say that it was good? After the first day of creation. At the end of each day. Okay, and here's what we need to think about with this precept. And the reason why I'm saying this is because I want to clear up something from last week that just came to mind. You have something that seems to not be good, okay? But it doesn't say it's not good. It just simply says that God made this and this is the state it's in. But at the end of the day it says it's good. So that's showing us there's a process to get to the end of the day, okay? Why is that important? It's because on day six, it says he created man. Okay? Now in the Bible, things repeat themselves and you're going to see this. Where is it detailed that man has created? It says he did it in chapter one, but where is it actually detailed? Chapter two. Okay, let me read this to you, and this is going to open up your mind, because I've been thinking about this all week, and it's not just these two examples. I could go on and on with this, but listen to this. Here's the chapter two account. It says at the end of the day six that everything is good, but it says during day two, it says, Okay, mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. What was the state of the dust before he took the man and formed it? It was formless and void. The same thing of the universe before the end of the first day is the same. Go out there today and get a whole bucket full of dust. It's just formless and void. There's nothing to it. It's just stuff. But God took that dust and He formed it, just like He formed the universe after the formless and void. He took that dust and now think of that same concept going through the Bible. this week. Go ahead, just think about it. Think about what God has done in Christ. You've got all of these people, for example, that lead to Jesus. They're all through the Old Testament. We know this person led to Jesus. We know this person led to Jesus. What are they? Are they a perfect, cohesive thing? Or are they formless and void? You've got all of these people that don't really form anything. They're just people. They live and they die. And yet each one of them generates another generation. And eventually it says a body he prepared for me. Jesus came from essentially dust that's walking around, this one and this one and this one, and it's not really anything. It's just individuals, and all of a sudden we have the Lord. God took all of these people with their unique DNA, with their unique circumstances, with their unique family line, and he formed, he prepared a body for Christ. Now think about the Spirit in you. Think about this in the week ahead, all of the things that God has done and is doing right now based on Genesis 1-2, and that will tell you how perfect what God is doing in the world even to this day, because what is he forming with us? The next He's forming a church, and the church is the building of God. We've got all of this chaos. We've got people that are sinners all over the world right now that some of them tomorrow will be a part of the church. That's why Jose is out there handing out tracts every day, right? So that this body will turn into something. He is taking welter and waste, vacuacy. He's taking formlessness and void, and he's forming something. That to me is astonishing. I don't know why. Thinking about that this week and think, just think of all the different things in your walk with the Lord that God is doing from nothingness. And I'm not saying that you're nothing. I'm saying that in your cohesion to Steve and to Tom, you know, you're starting to coalesce. But there are other people on the other side of the world that you don't know, and yet God is using them to bring us into something. And to me, that's exciting. My hair's standing up just thinking about it. And then the fact that he knew it. He knew it. That's the wild part. But it's happening right out of us, right? Somebody has a child. The child isn't wanted by the parent. The parent adopts the child, a different parent. Somebody else adopts that child, and that child comes to the Lord. And that child is now... And the Lord knew that that was going to happen. This is the unbelievable thing about what God is doing, is that He knows everything. for the end that it will be. Whatever it is, He knows it already. Man, this is a great God that we're serving, okay? Paul found every possible cunning attempt by devil and by man was made to silence the gospel, but yet it continued to go forth. Think of what I just said, the example of welter and waste, of formlessness and void, and yet God is using His Word that He structured the universe into something with form, by the end of the first day, man, which he formed by the end of the sixth day, he's doing the same thing right here. He was silenced the gospel and continued to go forth. He is forming something out of his spoken word, which is now recorded. That is everything. Just think of that concept. Everything around you, and I'm talking about in religious life, your life in Christ is being formed into something right now. That ought to change your attitude about how you interact with the Lord. That ought to make you say, I want to be a better part of what God is doing. If you think, just think about it. Okay? What am I doing in this life right now that will be a part of that formation that God is forming? Think about it. Keep the word going keep it going his unselfish attitude towards his Lord Paul's and towards the message of salvation found in Christ Jesus has kept the ball Rolling Paul wrote these words 2,000 years ago I'm giving you instruction who knows somebody may click on this this video four years from now and say you know what I Never thought about these things. I never thought that Paul wrote this word, and it's still being presented today I want to understand it more and more you don't know Whatever we're doing, how is that going to be used by the Lord for a better end? Which He already knows is there, but it's up to us to make that happen. He's allowed us to each one of us with our makeup to be a part of what he's doing, okay? Based on his letters, Paul's letters, let's see here, his letters did so, and they continue to do so 2,000 years later. And based on this precious book we call the Holy Bible, which includes these letters, people are willing to follow in Paul's example and speak boldly of Christ Jesus, even to chains or death. There's another great example of what I just said. I could go on like this all day. Think about this, just in the week ahead. Let me pull out any account. Okay, here's one account. Now when you arrive at that place, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, and go in and make him rise up from among his associates and take him to an inner room. Then take the flask of oil and pour it on his head and say, thus says the Lord, I have anointed you king over Israel. Then open the door and flee and do not delay. Okay, Jehu, I just pulled that out at random. What did Jehu do? He became the king and he went in and he overthrew king that was there, including the wicked woman Jezebel, right? Now that's just something that happened in Israel. It's just a part of the welter and waste that's going on all through the world. People kill each other all the time. Happened in Damascus this week. Thousands of people were shot, okay? People that weren't doing anything, women, children, they just shot them all. Okay, that's the world that we're living in. And somebody overthrows a government here and somebody overthrows a government here. so we've got this story about this guy Jehu that is doing something, but he's doing it at the word of the Lord, okay? And then he didn't follow through, and he, you know, didn't pursue the Lord afterward, and so the Lord cut his reign short, etc. But all of this is a part of what is now recorded in the Word. That when people read this, people write sermons about Jehu. And they are able to instruct the congregation based on the life of Jehu. And this is the Word of God. And the Word of God is what is instructing the church to become better. Keep thinking of this concept, because you know what? I thought about it all week long since he came back and he said this is what I was referring to, and I'm so glad that he did, because we're looking at God's hand forming things to this day. Now he's rested, don't get me wrong. He's not actively doing anything, but he has formed everything so that we can now participate in it. and come to the end that he instructed would come about. Okay, unbelievable. Okay, so people are willing even to the chains of death to pursue Christ because the Word of God has not changed. Life application. How important to you is the message of salvation found in Christ Jesus? You know, Sergio messaged me yesterday. He usually gives me some bizarre morning thing, and I give him one way before he gives me. Like, I'm 3.15 in the morning, I'm saying, Sergio, time to get up, and like 9 o'clock, he's like, I'm finally up. Anyway, but the first message I got from him yesterday was, I'm so thankful for salvation. He says, I don't think about it enough. But he was reading his Bible, doing his daily reading, and whatever it was, it just touched him. I am actually saved. I'm actually saved. He said, I just don't appreciate it enough. This is everything. This is everything that I am is geared towards the fact that I'm saved. Everything. Without salvation, you're just gonna, it's over, right? So, How important to you is the message of salvation found in Christ Jesus? What is that going to do to Sergio after he is so thankful that he's saved? What do you think the next logical thing is going to happen? Tell somebody about it. That's what he's been doing all day, okay? He's been talking to somebody about pursuing the Lord because he understood just by his daily Bible reading, you know, I haven't thought about this enough recently, how important this moment in my life was. I need to tell somebody else. Are you willing to proclaim it, even at the expense of your freedom? What about the expense of your life? Is that which is of infinite value worth your finite, temporary proclamation? I would hope so. I mean, this life, I gotta tell you, it's funny, I'll tell you a funny story. Gymnosis is coming. Yesterday, I didn't mean to freak anybody out but I put up a vacation thing on my gmail and I said I may not answer emails for a couple days because I had no idea if I'd be able to work yesterday or not I just didn't know. I got a big dog we got one big dog we got lots of little you could step on him and not know you killed him but I got one big dog and he's a great dog and what he does is he comes in the morning when it's time for me to get up and he'll wrestle me because he knows I need to get some energy to get out of bed so he comes over and we're wrestling we're having a good time and it's waking me up and I'm like okay I'm getting up and he didn't want that so he jumped up and when he did his head the back of his head which is like a brick as he said it hit me right here And I heard a real loud crack. I actually thought it was the bone broke. It wasn't. The skin snapped. And it was like a Monty Python. You know the Black Knight and Monty Python with the blood? It was coming out. My arm was so covered in blood. Yeah. okay it was there was blood everywhere and I'm thinking you know I'm breathing heavy it hurts so bad I actually woke up poor Hidiko and Hidiko's like what's going on I said I'm all right now I'm just oh so there's just blood everywhere and so I went I washed it all off and I'm like An hour or two later, she finally gets up and she looks at and she says, it's still oozing. So I didn't take a shower in the morning. I waited until the end of the day and it turned out to be okay. After all the blood washed off, it's not that bad. Okay, but the head bleeds a lot. The point I'm making is what I just brought up, and I'm going to tie it in right now, is that if I died, if something had happened, you get in a car and you don't know that you're going to go through a windshield ten minutes later. You don't know. You have no idea what your end is. And so when you're out telling people about Jesus, is it not the most important thing that you could do? I'm thinking, can I even type my commentary today? I had no idea when I hit myself and I've got this blood everywhere, am I going to be able to, that's the first thing I thought, I gotta type my commentary. I've gotta get that done for people. And I'm thinking, what do I do? And I'm holding it, it hurts so bad, I'm holding my head like this and I'm typing like this, right? And so finally, after about an hour and a half, I said, ah, BC powder. I took one and my head stopped thumping, but, what is it that's important to you okay that's the question what is important to you in your life because you don't know when your last day is gonna be and if she had come down and I was dead she would have called Jim and she would have said Jim Charlie died and then Jim would have sent out a message and everybody be like well Charlie's dead right we don't know so what are you gonna do with your life on the moment that that happens What are you gonna do until that happens, right? Please think about that. You have no idea what's coming. The last thing in the world I would think is that I'd have my arm just covered in blood playing with my dog. That's the last thing on my mind. But it made me realize that we have priorities and we need to settle our lives each day. We need to be ready for what's coming, and the most important thing until that comes is Jesus. Tell people about Jesus. Do what you can for the welter and waste that this world is, that God is making into something for the next world. Okay, please do that. The what? No, you know what? I didn't even yell at him. He was so scared. I hear him going, oh, he went and hid in his box and I came over and oh, it's okay boy. You know what? It's not his fault. He's having fun. You know, he didn't, he didn't have any blood on him at all. He probably licked it off. Yeah. Oh, anyway, but it's just your head. It bleeds a lot. And I, you know what I was hoping for? I said, my friend out in Washington, I said, I, I, I, He said, you're probably going to get a Shiner. And I'm like, yes, I'm going to have a competition with you. Well, I didn't get a Shiner. All I got is a black spot over here. But anyway, I got no Shiner. And I was going to brag about make a tail, a tail, because he got a Shiner. This guy, you know what happened? You talk about you don't know what's going to happen in life. You don't know this. Last week, he is sitting on the beach. He got up too quickly. And when you get too much blood to your head too quickly, he went down. He was in the ICU for two days. Did you know that, Mabel? He spent two days in the ICU. I was never told. I didn't get to visit him. And we don't know. We have no idea what's coming in our life. This is all relevant to what we're talking about right now. Are you ready to proclaim this message of Jesus? He could have died and it would have been the last time I ever saw him would be the week before. That's it. We don't know. But the Lord was good to him and they got him out. They said that they had to do something with him that they've never done before. He went directly from the ICU to being discharged because he didn't have any beds in the hospital that they could send him to, right? So he's like a prototype human being now. Can we move somebody from the ICU to normal life? Well, in his case, I don't know if it's normal, but what? How'd he even get out? They had to do special paperwork and everything just to get him out of ICU. Step over. Yeah. Oh, anyway, so just pay heed to the lesson that you don't know what your last day is. Tell people about Jesus now. That's the whole point of all of this talking. 210. So, when you look out and you go, it's a bloody rabbit, it might not be. It might not be. Remember that. Do you know when you started, so when you look out, I'm saying that's not this, and then I realize you're talking to him still. Go ahead. Therefore, therefore, endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Okay, that's exactly what I was just talking, and here it is. Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, very similar to yours, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. That is the whole point of Paul's imprisonment, his letter to the life that he lived so that he could participate in that process. And why is he writing this to Timothy unless he wants Timothy to be spurred on with the same thing? And if Timothy saved that, he obviously wanted his church to be spurred on to the same thing. And the Lord knew that that letter should go into the pages of Scripture. And so he ensured that it would so that we would hopefully be spurred on to doing the same thing. Okay, everything ties into the idea that that guy highlighted me to last week. There is formlessness and void, and there's nothing wrong with it. The dust is the dust. It doesn't do anything, but something can be formed from it to make something very good. And God took a whole bunch of dust. He formed it into a man. He breathed the breath of life into it. And it was very good. Man, I'm telling you, what a God we serve. In verse 9, Paul said concerning his proclamation of the gospel, "...for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains." Before that, he gave comparisons concerning the rights and responsibilities of teaching others about Christ Jesus. He spoke of the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. They endured the challenges of their profession in order to achieve a good result. Because of these things, Paul now says, therefore, because of all these things, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. Okay, before I even go on, for the sake of, I'm doing this for the sake of the elect, and he's gonna go on and he's gonna say, let me just read it because I don't want to, waste your time here—for the sake of the elect that they may also obtain salvation. Okay. If the elect are already predestined to be saved according to Calvinism, then why would Paul write these words? Why would he do that? There's no need. He wouldn't have to suffer all these things because God's will cannot be thwarted. And if God says that person is going to be saved, Paul doesn't need to write that. He doesn't need to do anything because that person is going to be saved. It shows you just a simple verse like this without even analyzing it, the fallacy of Calvinism. that you're predestined to be saved, that God regenerates you, and then you're saved and you believe in Jesus. That makes no sense at all based on Paul's words right now. Don't believe that Calvinistic nonsense. Okay, he endures all things for the sake of the elect. His many trials, his physical hardships, deprivations, imprisonments, all of these were for the sake of the elect. He just said to us in the last verse that his word is not chained. He was willing to take this unchained message and proclaim it even if it led to chains. He didn't care about his chains because he knew that the Bible doesn't have chains and he's willing to proclaim it. Even in his chains he was willing to proclaim it. The elect are those who will obtain salvation through Christ Jesus. We know that. This is clearly explained in the words that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus. It's a statement which is similar to what we see in 1 Thessalonians 5, by the way. 1 Thessalonians 5. Now I've gone too far, Charlie. Very small little book. 1 Thessalonians and five and here we'll go down to uh i'll take you to verse eight but let us who are of the day be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love and as a helmet the hope of salvation nine for god did not appoint us to wrath but to obtain salvation through our lord Jesus Christ. Okay, it's basically the same thought that he's saying here in Timothy. Relevant questions to be asked are, who are the elect and how does their election come about? For the Gentile-led church age, and that doesn't mean that there aren't Jews in the church or they're saved differently or any of that nonsense, What it means is that the church is predominantly Gentile. Okay? That's what that means. Gentile-led church age. Paul shows in Romans 15 verse 29 that a certain number of Gentiles will come in before the partial blindness of Israel is lifted. Okay? God has a plan. He knows this many Gentiles are going to be saved before the nation of Israel has its blinders removed. Okay? In the meantime, Jews are being saved. They're hearing the same gospel you and I are, but there is something going on. He made, did he make the covenant promises in Jeremiah 31 to us? No. He made them to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. We are not the house of Israel and the house of Judah. We are graciously grafted in to what God is doing. It is the new covenant to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. but it extends to Gentiles. The fact that Israel rejected it doesn't nullify that the covenant stands for them. It just means that while that rejection is going on, God is doing something to keep the world going in the right direction, and that is called the church. The church is predominantly Gentile-led. And someday the church will be taken out of here. Israel is going to have its eyes opened up, and they will come into the new covenant that was promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. Okay, that's what's going to happen. If you disagree with that, you're disagreeing with what is clearly revealed in the pages of Scripture. You've taken and you've spiritualized so much of the Old Testament that it no longer says anything of value. Okay, that's what happens when you have people take and say the church has replaced Israel. you have now spiritualized it to a point where it no longer has any real meaning at all. And it also means that everything that you say is just your choice, your pick, your choose. If you're going to take the Bible literally, you need to take the Bible literally. And that takes me right back to what we talk about all the time is creation. Am I going to accept what they're teaching in school today, or am I going to accept what the Word of God says? I may look stupid to the people that teach that in school, this, you know, evolution, but I gotta tell you what, it doesn't bother me one iota. I believe, because this Word says that God created in seven, six literal days, and He rested on the seventh, I believe that that happened. Okay? I believe that. I don't understand all of the mechanics, but I believe it. I believe that there was a literal flood on the earth that destroyed everything except Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, and the animals that were on that ark. Plus all the aquatic animals that were eating all the things that, you know, floated in the water. Man, that must have been a real feast. I'm telling you. The what? Well, I'm saying, I mean, you know, the sea creatures were out there just going at it. Okay, yeah, mom's leaking our lips right now. Anyway, so here we go. Okay, Romans 19, the Gentiles will be gone. The partial blindness of Israel is listed. Elsewhere, the church is equated to a building. That's what I'm talking about. God is making us into a building. For example, that's found, and I'm not going to read them to you, but 1 Corinthians 3 verse 9, Ephesians 2 verse 21, and Peter speaks of it as well. Okay, a building, a temple, you're being built. A building is a structure with a set size. I love to give this example. I give it from time to time so that you can Think of the meticulous nature of what God is doing, okay? You want to build a new house. You found a nice piece of property, okay? You know that it's kind of a flood zone, but not the whole property because we know that oaks will live in water for a while. okay whereas the pine trees don't and so you say this has got a nice spot with pine trees that's the better part okay and you know maybe I still want to build it up some more for a contingency so all that has to be figured in and then you go to somebody and that person says well I can sell you a dirt and I can bring it in and I can have it leveled for you for this much that's just the beginning because after that then you have to get somebody that knows how to pour a foundation and you have to have a person and this is the job of a engineer architect that's right and he comes in he says what do you want I said well I want portico and I want windows here and I want some you know awnings over here and you know this is what I want so he draws it all up and he says do you like that yeah he says okay this is how much copper you need copper wire I mean he knows exactly and he says there's going to be waste because we need you know you just have a copper wire that's 300 feet long and this is 292 feet so there's going to be 8 feet of waste. He knows, they know exactly how much this is going to cost in a real world where people are competent. He knows how many tiles go on the roof if you have a tiled roof. He knows how much concrete you need, how many cinder blocks. He knows everything that is going to take place to build that building. Okay, now that's just a guy that went to school and he figured this stuff out and he's got other people he can call if he's not sure about this or that or you know what is the going rate for wood at this time. They got all that information. Listen, God is infinitely smarter than that guy, infinitely. If he is building a building, Do you think that he doesn't know everything that is going to go into that building? every single thing. Just like when he took all that dust and he said, this is the perfect dust to make this man. He knows exactly how many specks of dust it's going to take. And he makes a man. And he uses it to make hair. He uses it to make a nose. He uses everything. I mean, this is an unbelievably great God. God is building a building. He knows when he's going to build it. He knows where he's going to build it. He knows every single aspect about that building. everything. Okay? So, a building is a structure with a set size. Therefore, there are a set number who will obtain salvation in order to form this building. He says until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. What is the fullness of the Gentiles? I don't know, but he does. He knows the last person that is going to say, I believe And when that happens, we are out of here. Whatever moment in history that will be, and he already knows when that moment is. He knows every single thing that is ever going to happen, okay? Which is why the elect was known from the beginning. That's right. Known from the beginning. Not that you Yeah, not that he chose you, it's that he knows the person that's going to make that decision. He knows everything. That's exactly right. So the how of the process is explained by Paul in this verse and elsewhere. It is through his proclamation of the gospel and of any others who proclaim it. Without the gospel being proclaimed in Papua New Guinea, there would be no people from Papua New Guinea going to be in the church. It wouldn't happen, because nobody's there to tell them. And that would be like saying, well, God doesn't care about the people of Papua New Guinea, and so he just had people sail around it, right? That's not realistic, okay? And he said people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, okay? So we know that God has got a plan, and he's including everybody. He knows that Ray Willett is going to go to Papua New Guinea, and he's going to start evangelizing people. This guy's going to raise his hand and Nazir in Pakistan is going to ask a question about the Trinity. He's going to realize how marvelous this God is and he's going to start telling people all around Pakistan about Jesus. And we got eight from this town, we got ten from this town, we got three from that town and they're just being built into a building and he knew this. He knew this. It is the proclamation of the gospel, and it's not going to happen any other way. As this is so, there is necessarily to be an active part by those already saved in order to get this word out to others. If you don't take those tracts off of that wall and hand them out to people, those tracts are not going to get anybody to know about Jesus. They're never going to hear about Jesus from that tract if you don't give them that tract. It's not going to happen. They may hear from somebody else or they may not. I don't know how to explain that any better, but the fact is that if you're not handing out tracts, you're not telling people about Jesus that you could otherwise tell about Jesus. Okay, so Paul and others actively wrote the epistles, and that effort led to some being saved. We know that. We know that it happened. Paul and others actively proclaimed the message, and that effort will lead to some being saved, and so forth. I've known people, I heard a story about a guy. I was in Alaska. I went up there one summer to mine gold. I quit my job down here because the government took over the wastewater plant and I didn't want to work for the government. So I went to Alaska. I was there for three or four months on the 40-mile river in Alaska. And I worked with a dredge underwater. So I'm working underwater and I'm dredging up gold. And while I was up there, I heard a story about a guy. Actually, it wasn't while I was up there. It was after I came back and I was telling about my time in Alaska. My friend told me about another guy that was up in Alaska and he found a Bible. doing the same thing I was doing. He's out in the middle of nowhere. There was an old gold thing and he was out there. I don't know how he was getting his gold, whether it was panning or whatever. But he found a Bible in his old shack and he picked it up and he read it. And he came to know the Lord through reading the Bible. Okay. And he also came apparently to a really good understanding of doctrine. which ought to tell you something. If he had never read the Bible, he didn't know Jesus, he had never been to a church, but he read the Bible and he understood proper doctrine, he didn't get it from a pastor. He got it from reading the Bible, the living word, right? Okay, so that tells you to Read your Bible, because I may be telling you something that's not true right now, but this guy got basically good doctrine because he was saying, this is a great book, I want to read it again, and he's reading it up there out in the middle of nowhere. I can tell you, there is absolutely nothing to do in Alaska. You go in the 40-mile river, and other than mining gold and processing the gold at the end of the day, there's nothing to do. I mean you can sleep or you can go walk around with a gun and maybe hope to find something and shoot it. I mean and when you go to the we had an outhouse up there and you had to carry a can with rocks in it and shake it with because the bears don't like that sound you know and you had to carry a 45 because a big gun is too long they say don't carry a big gun you know a rifle or a shotgun because you won't be able to move it in time to kill the bear. You've got to have a .45 or bigger because if you shoot him in the head with anything smaller, it'll bounce right off of his skull. So, these are really tough beasts out there. So, take your can, shake it on the way up there, and carry a big gun, okay? So, this is, other than that, there's not a lot to do. So, the guy read the Bible. and he came to know the Lord, and he got some good doctrine in the process, right? I'm sure to this day he's still refining his doctrine if he's alive. But that was a great story, which I just wrote about. There are people that come to the Lord through the epistles that are written. There come to people, people that come to the Lord through people that explain the Lord. There are people that come to the Lord through tracts out at the, you know, the Super Bowl or the presidential, what do you call it, inauguration. There are people that do these things, okay? This is how the word gets out. This implies, every one of those that I just gave you, like that guy picking up the Bible, it implies free will, okay? On the part of those sharing the message and those receiving the message. The whole process is free will. Am I going to go to Papua New Guinea and be a missionary? That's my choice. Nobody's going to make me. okay do I have free will to go to the movies today or am I gonna go to church because my wife said I should go to church I'm not treating her right that's my choice God's not gonna make me go to the movies he's not gonna make me go to church okay but I just okay I'll go to church she said she go to church I go to church and I get saved That's how it happens, okay? So, this implies free will. The people that are out evangelizing could say, today I'm not going out to evangelize. I'm just not gonna go, right? It's their decision. And if it is, then there are some who will miss hearing the words necessary for them to be saved. If I don't keep the tracks in my truck, I got them right there, you know, in between the two things. You got that one thing where you put all your stuff and it gets all piled up. That's where I keep my tracks, right? I used to keep it in the door, but this one doesn't have a door pocket. it's got this teeny little door pocket for my oil you know my wd-40 and the other oil i have and that's that's it so i can't get anything in the door pocket so i got to keep it up here all right but it's better because i actually see them then it convicts me if it's in the door then i kind of forget sometimes so anyway um Let's see here. But anyway, let's see. Where was I? Okay. Endured hearing the words necessary for them to be saved. His words also apply free will on the part of those who then hear that message. He says he endured all of these things. His words here that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus. Free will was involved in the process. Free will was involved in the hearer, okay? But he says that they may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus. This is why he's doing it, and this is a part of what God knows. Are we going to spend our day doing this? Are we going to spend our day doing something else? It's your choice. God's not making you do these things. He doesn't make me, okay, Charlie, you got to go to church and preach on Sunday. That's not it. I could say, well, I just don't want to do this anymore. That'd be the end of it. I mean, people do it all the time. They say, I just don't want to preach anymore, and they go do something else. He doesn't interfere with that. But if I'm not preaching, then maybe you're not going to hear the message or whatever, okay? If people are saved apart from free will, then there would be no need for Paul to even say the things that he is saying. If the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation is true, Paul wouldn't need to write these things. People wouldn't need to print off Bibles. They wouldn't need to print out tracts. They wouldn't need to come to Bible study. None of this would be necessary. None of it. Because God's will cannot be thwarted. And if God says, that person is elect from the foundation of the world, he's going to be saved, and we don't need to do anything. Okay? The whole process collapses, logically. Okay? Now, they'll argue against this, and they'll give you sweet-sounding arguments, but logically the whole process collapses. Okay? And God is a God of logic. He's not a God that just makes stuff up on the side and says, um, every time I read the account of Enoch, I think the same thing. Okay. All it says, it doesn't give us any more information. This is all it says about Enoch. Let's go there and read it. Genesis chapter 5. Okay. It says there in Enoch. All right. It says, I'll start with his life. Jared lived 162 years and he begot Enoch. After he begot Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had sons and daughters. So that's not a lot about Enoch so far. So all the days of Jared were 962 years and he died. Enoch lived 65 years and he begot Methuselah. So there's still not a lot of information about Enoch. after he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. That's pretty much the most detail you're going to find out about Enoch, is that he walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. And then it says, so all the days of Enoch were 365 years, and Enoch walked with God, which he already said once, and he was not, for God took him. That's it. That's all we know about Enoch. Enoch was a guy who walked with the Lord. Okay, so doesn't say anything about God choosing him. It just says that he walked with God. That was his choice. This is what he did, and God decided. Now, you want to have a little more explanation of that. You can see it in Hebrews 11, and there's a little bit about what Enoch said in Jude, but that's it. There's not a lot about Enoch in the Bible, okay? But from Genesis chapter 5, you come to the conclusion that Enoch voluntarily walked with God. Okay, if that's the case, then why would God change that pattern in the New Testament? Why would he say, okay, Mabel's going to be saved and so she doesn't need to do anything. She didn't need to walk with me. I've already saved her, so she didn't need to do anything. That's ridiculous. Okay, let's see here. If their decision is, okay, Yes, his words imply free will on those who then hear the message. He said he endured all of these things. Okay, so if somebody must share, and there must be a response to the message which is shared. Just because God knows the number of people in advance of completing the building, which you were saying a minute ago, and just because he knows who will accept the message, that in no way negates free will in the process. In fact, as Jesus and the apostles all show, free will is a necessary part of this equation. Believe, call on, receive, and so forth are all active words requiring a person to respond to what they have been presented. Okay, that's the process. We hear a message and we have to respond. We have to read it again. We have to believe. call on the name of the Lord, receive. All these things are things that we do. They're not things that God does in us. They're things that we do in response to what we have heard, what God has done for us. Okay? Once responded to, Paul says that this salvation comes with, his words, with eternal glory. To be saved implies from. I've talked about that before. One is saved from something bad and unto something good. I'm in the middle of the ocean, I'm going down for the third time, and somebody comes and rescues me. That's being saved. I've gone from something bad, at least for me, and to something good. All right, I'm in a house and the house is burning down around me. All right, somebody comes in with that grapple stick and he's pulling beams out in front of me and he finally gets to me and he grabs me and pulls me out of the house. I'm saved. That's salvation. Salvation isn't going to heaven. Going to heaven is a result of salvation. Salvation is not going to hell. That is salvation. Salvation is not getting what you deserve. it implies from if a person here it is if a person is drowning in the ocean that person must be saved from that that's all there is to it there's no way around it if someone is I just gave these two examples. How funny yeah burning house firemen will go in and save so I gave those two examples. Did I give a third one I don't think I did anyway whatever okay so you got the ocean you got the firemen that ought to be enough there's something going on that's bad in your life and you're saved out of it. That's what salvation is. Salvation is meant to bring about a rescue. Heaven is the result. It's not why we're saved. We're saved because we're on the way to hell. He who does not believe in the Son of Man is condemned already." Adam took care of that for us. We don't need to do anything. Thanks a lot, Adam. No, we can't blame him. It was appropriate that he did. It's a part of God's plan. When I see him, I'm not going to go up and ask him why he did what he did, okay? I'm going to say, you know what? You're my first father. Nice to meet you. Okay, that's probably about it. But people love to say things like that, you know, when I get up to heaven, I want to know, ask God why he did this in my life. But that's not going to happen. We're not going to question God about why something happened in our life. However, in salvation comes something extra. eternal glory. That's what Paul is writing about here. We are saved unto eternal glory. We are just saved to live our eternity in these fallen corruptible bodies which get sick, get tired, get cancer, and so forth. That's not our destiny, is to live forever in this. A guy down the way that makes us the pizza, he's got a scrub oak in his house. He bought a new house. In Florida, if you buy a new house, the cheapest thing they can put in for yard decoration is a scrub oak. I mean they're they're the worst plant aren't they Tom will tell you they're the worst plants in the world but they're cheap they grow quick and so they put them in new houses and the people don't know it and next thing you know you've got this giant scrub oak which is just absolute trash okay it's not a live oak it's a scrub oak and if you try to cut them they're brambly and they get it and you get stuck in them you can hang like Absalom from there you know you're just stuck in them so anyway he's like I want to I want to uh... get that out of there he says i hate this thing and i said well i think that i can cut it out for you in two seconds as i can do for just a mere just he said well i want to get the stuff that i said i'm not helping you with that I got a hernia last year I'm living with a hernia and I am not getting into stumping. I said you can do that if you want and I'll tell you there's three ways you can get out of stump. Okay here are the three yeah the first one is to call somebody and they'll grind it out that's the simplest but it's expensive. The second is that you get water and you hose around just keep hosing it and the water eventually come out and then you cut the things out and the third one is dig and start digging and eventually you're gonna get there and you do the same thing you kind of but the water is a lot easier and it just but some people don't want to waste water or whatever okay but those are the three ways that I know to get out of stump that is quick and effective or you could you know you could go rent a horse and put a thing on it pull it out but you know there are ways of I'm talking about you doing it yourself or Whatever, okay, but I told him I'm not gonna do that. I am in a corruptible fallen body and I have pain. Cutting that mango tree down, I could do that all day. I wear a thing for a hernia now. I got it on Amazon for 30 bucks and it's taking care of it. I can lift up 300 pounds and it's no problem, but you get me down trying to pull out a stump, I can't do it. She knows the things I can and can't do now. And there are some things I simply cannot do anymore. And so, before I would have been like, yeah, let's take out the stuff. I'll show you how and we'll have a party, right? That ain't happening anymore. So, I told him, you're on your own, buddy. corruptible body can't wait to get rid of this rather we are destined to receive new and incorruptible bodies read 1 corinthians 15 good news it's a long chapter take you three or four minutes to get through it and you will be very happy when you get through it it's a great chapter there is glory for the redeemed and it will be eternal in salvation thank god for jesus life application we are right on time today um paul was willing to suffer great great deal in order to get the only saving message for fallen men out. With his and others efforts, which has continued on now for 2,000 years, there can be no salvation without that, without his efforts and those others. person who does not hear the message will not be saved, despite what Calvinism teaches. This is the means of salvation which God has chosen. Why would God tell us to do these things? Why would he go through this long plan of coming up with the gospel if there's another way to be saved? It's like the Mary thing. Why would he send Jesus to the cross if Mary can do it for you? It's the all paths lead to heaven thing. Why would he say that if you can get to God through Buddha. I'm going to open with that this Sunday. That's exactly what I open with. It's not going to happen. God has set a process and we are a part of that process and if we don't follow it, those people aren't going to be saved. Hey neighbor, how you doing? You see him every day for 40 years, he dies, you go to his funeral and he never saw Jesus because you didn't take two seconds of your time to say, can I tell you about Jesus? Okay, it's not going to happen. All right. A person who does not hear the message will not be saved. This means a salvation guide is chosen. He will not violate that by doing an end around the labors of his people. And that's why I get so offended when people say, well, people in the Middle East are having dreams and they're coming to Jesus through dreams. You know what that does? That means the gospel doesn't need to be proclaimed. That's exactly what that means. People lie because it's sensational. And that story gets passed on from one person to another and pretty soon everybody believes that people are having dreams in the Middle East and coming to Jesus. And I do not believe that because God is not going to do an end around his own program for salvation. Paul makes this clear. Faith in the message is what saves, and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If that is not true, then what Paul said is a lie. And if Paul lied, then this isn't the Word of God. That's all there is to it. We are told that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It's not going to come any other way. any. Okay, so what effort are you willing to exert in order for others to be saved? That's the big question for us, because there is nothing else in Scripture that says you're going to be saved in another way than by hearing the Word of God, and that must come by somebody who is... how beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim the message of the whatever, Romans 10, 17. Heavenly Father, thank you that you have allowed us to participate if we're willing to. And there are a lot of ways we can participate. We can help people like Nazir to get the message out. We can actually go out and hand out tracts. We can tell people about Jesus. We can bring people to church who need to hear about Jesus. We can recommend that they go to a church. Whatever we do, Lord, we can include getting people to know Jesus in the process. If we're not eloquent enough to remember or speak about your salvation, then we can direct people to somebody who is. Lord, help us to be responsible with our time so that the welter and waste that is this world right now can be formed into something beautiful through our efforts as well as others. Thank you for that opportunity that you've allowed us to participate in. Thank you for the message of the gospel, and thank you for Jesus, who is that message, who is the one that makes it all possible. And it's in his name we pray, amen. Ah, hooray for Jesus. Thank you for salvation. Oh, oh, thank you for salvation. All right, let me put this on break.