Please turn your Bibles to the book of 2 Samuel chapter 23. 2 Samuel chapter 23. I didn't plan. How should I say it? Let me explain it this way. I'm going to preach today, continuing the theme of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And last week we talked about the sufficiency of his word. Today we'll speak on the sufficiency of his promises. And so I took my After putting my sermon together, I took up my list of songs, which, you know, Sharon picks these out like a quarter, like they're done three or four months in advance. And I said, I'm going to make a switch and sing Standing on the Promises. And I looked down and it was already on the same service. So I planned, I tried to switch it, but it was already there. So sometimes we leave things up to God, it's even better. Look at chapter 23. Let's read the first five verses and then we'll ask God's blessing. Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel said, the Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His Word was in my tongue. Amen. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun rises, even the morning without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain." Now, pay attention to verse number five. Although my house be not so with God, He says, we're really not anything. Yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, For this is all my salvation and all my desire, although He make it not to grow. Father, I pray that You bless this message. Give me wisdom in Jesus' name. Amen. What a promise from God that David had. And he considered it above all the things that he had, the kingdom in Jerusalem, his little city on the side that he had built called the City of David. He was not from Jerusalem. Remember, he was born in Bethlehem. that was the city of his origin, but he called that little spot on the side of the Temple Mount the city of David. It became the place of the kings of Judah. And he had all this greatness and the great things that he had done. I mean, after all, this is the one who fought the bear and fought the lion, and the one who caused that Goliath would have that little stone in his forehead and die. Chopped it and carried off the head of Goliath to the king. He's the one who wrote the Psalms. Almost all of the Psalms are written by David. He was a great man, but he says, the most important thing that ever happened to me was the promise that God had made to me. So read verse 5 again. Although my house be not so with God, yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although He make it not to grow. The point at the end there is, it's all up to God. So we look at the promises made to Him. Go back to chapter 8, if you will, of 2 Samuel. And the Lord had made a prophecy which is going to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As God is right now, Jesus rules and reigns in His kingdom, the kingdom of David, but He will come again physically one day and rule in Jerusalem. The everlasting Son of David, The prophecy is given in the first part of this. But notice in verse 18, David's reaction to the great promises of God. Then went King David in and sat before the Lord and he said, I deserve all of this. Right? No, he said, who am I? O Lord God. And what is my house that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing in Thy sight, O Lord God, but Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant's house for a great while to come. And is this the manner of man?" He's saying, O Lord God, who else experiences this? It's a humbling thing when we really nail down and examine the great promises that God has given to us as His believers. In chapter 23 in that original text, David says, Thou hast made with me an everlasting covenant, and the Lord certainly has made an everlasting covenant with all those who have put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The promises of God are in the Lord. They're not wrapped up in man. Like David said, even if He make it not to grow, even if there's something in it that I don't see, God's promises are still true. He said, they are sure. They are sure. I can trust in that, he said. I may not be able to trust in my kingdom. I mean, Absalom had a chance. He ran away with the kingdom. He said, I don't even know if all my counselors around me are really sure. but I do know the promises of God are very sure." And when he received that everlasting covenant, his response was, Oh Lord God, who am I? I wish our heart could look at the promises that God has for us, realizing the sufficiency of Christ, that He is our shepherd, I shall not want, that God is the God who is the provision of every Christian for eternity, that we could sometimes humble ourselves and sit down and say, Who am I, God, that I could have salvation? And that I could have the promises that You have given us in His Word? Tonight, I want to be an encouragement to you, individually, that these promises and some of these, and the list could go on and on. We speak of them in 1 Peter as great and precious promises. Great and precious promises. And we could look up to God then at the end of the sermon and maybe carry that thought all week long as we seek to surrender to the Lord every day. But we could go and sit before the Lord. Sometimes we rush into His presence and we do all the talking. Sometimes you need to go into the presence of God and just sit for a moment. And after your heart is humbled, after the fear of God is upon you, and you sit there in your quiet place and study, look up with your heart prepared to call unto God and say to God, who am I that I could have such great promises from You? The promises of God. Salvation is a promise that's unconditioned. Jesus paid it all. The salvation that you maybe don't have yet if you're here and you don't know Christ as your Savior is found and all wrapped up in the cross of Christ and paid for and delivered to us in His Word, given to us so that we can comprehend it, turn from sin unto this salvation and be eternally secure. There isn't anything that is conditioned upon the person except to stop rebelling against God's free gift and turn to Him for salvation. But there are other promises And we find these promises to have within them the conditions that God expects for us to meet. Like the promises of prayer, as we've talked about those incredible promises that God gives us that when He says, whatsoever ye ask, that you have all things that you have sought. And those probably five different locations in Scripture, each one has a characteristic condition that we need to meet in the name of Christ, praying in faith, praying in the will of God, praying, as the Bible says, persistently. And the promises that are given to us there of God's answer come in the response to our meeting His great conditions And in the promises of God that He provides, He does have conditions. Let's examine some. First, the promise of peace. Go over, since we're in the Old Testament, go with me to Psalm. Look at chapter 29 of this great book, the book of Psalm. The poetry of Christ, we never need to leave the Psalms. I think you need to be in the Psalms constantly. I had a friend that I grew up with in high school, and she's told me she had some very difficult times going on in her life. And my wife and I have talked with her some years ago, a couple years ago, three years ago now, at the 30th reunion of my high school graduation. And she texted me that she's having a lot of difficulties. And I texted back and said, when in problems and when in trouble, I bury myself in the Psalms. It's like a heart learning to cling unto God. Learning how to speak with God. You know, that's what the Psalms do. It's like when you can't find words and you turn the faucet of prayer on, and there's nothing left coming out of your own soul, that you have to borrow the vernacular of God's Word, the Psalms, in order for us to cry unto God. And Christian, you ought to cry unto God. Your prayers can't really advantage anything unless you really know what it is to cry unto God. I believe that's why God gives us sometimes these difficulties or some of the circumstances or some of the trials that we go through simply that we might learn to cry unto God. But the great promise in chapter 29 of this book, if I can get to the right page here, verse 11, the Lord will give strength unto His people, the Lord will bless His people with peace." The promise of God that we would have peace. Now we're talking about, in a New Testament dispensation, we're talking about the promises not of physical peace. We could have a war. We could have great problems. I was reading some about the Civil War, and it's actually reading through a Baptist history book and reading on how the Baptists came to confront the issue of slavery long before the country divided over it. The Baptists have divided over it. But you could imagine what it was like to fight in that enormous war that was all of our country and not across the ocean in some way. And you can imagine how it felt like a lack of peace, knowing that over 600,000 men in our country gave their lives in that great war. That's not peace. But amidst those very places of fighting were revivals that broke out among the soldiers. Revivals that broke out with the preachers among the slaves. Revivals sent from God because man stopped being so self-consumed. I read of a missionary that was sent, I'm thinking from Wisconsin, I need to restudy it, to California. Said we have a need to get over to California. And so they sent a man over, they went down to Panama, and he left right before the news came of somebody discovering gold in California. By the time he got to Panama, there was just a waiting. They crossed the Isthmus and they're waiting on the one side of the Isthmus for the boat to come. And they're standing there with hundreds of people trying to get on a boat and they're all lusting after gold. He told of the story of lack of labors and the worldliness and the greed of even the Baptists that moved over to California. And that 40 preachers who were ordained of God got off that boat and not one of them showed up in church. They all ran straight to the mines to find gold for themselves. I wonder if they're among those many who shall in that day profess that they know God and they don't really know Him. We could be in the midst of the turmoil, living and working and in toiling, but in the heart of the believer is a calm, quiet, settled peace that doesn't come because you have control, but comes because God is present in your life. God is present in your life. Turn to the 119th Psalm, that great Psalm about the Word of God. And you'll find a very important verse for a Christian in the verse number 165. This is the longest chapter, of course, in the entire Bible. And in verse 165, it says, Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. To be offended, the word means a stumbling block, an obstacle. Something that would be an enticement, like an idol. like these that were in Israel, always enticed to go and worship the idols of the people that were around them. And great peace have they, the condition is that you love God's law. Do you love the law of God? I hope you do. I hope you think of it more than just a flowery thought that, oh, I love the Word of God, but do you love the law when it forbids you to do something that you've made a practice of your whole life? Do we love the law when it forbids you to, and it causes you to recognize a change that needs to be made around you? Say, well, I just don't like what that person said. You always blame the preacher. I don't like that preaching. Why don't you say I don't like the Word of God? And you're gonna have great peace, not because you, in your own self, demand your own way. Do you know, some people ask me, I was talking recently about this issue of modesty. And I've said this before, that wherever you draw a line, I mean, you have to make, the Bible says modesty and distinction are His way. That a woman should not dress like a man and a man should not dress like a woman. Say amen. And then you ought to be modest. And it's absurd what people are permissive today, run around in those little, I remember when I came back from Belize the first time, and during that time that had been made popular to wear those exercise yoga pants in public. And literally I was embarrassed. I said, oh my goodness, that person forgot to put their skirt on. She's running around in her underclothes. And I can't imagine how anybody in their right mind can justify that those form-fitting pants like that are anything but immodest. And that if you wear those, you are exposing the curvature of your body that, I hate talking about these things, that ought to only be seen by your husband. And no matter where you draw the line, but you know, Christians today are, well, you can't tell my wife what to wear when she goes to work out. No, I don't intend to, but God ought to. You say, well, it's so inconvenient. What are we gonna do? How far are we gonna go to be very, very full of sin is the point. and say, well, everybody draws their line different and I just draw my line a little liberal. Pastor, aren't you just too strict? I'm just gonna tell you what I think. When I look into the perfect law of liberty, I think when we get to heaven, God's not gonna say, oh, you could've been more worldly. You could've been more immodest. I would've been okay with that. I think I'm in for a scolding that we allowed anything like that in our lives. And the world is getting so worse, so bad and so gross that Christians are like, if you don't at least come this far, pastor, you're a strict, absurd person. And I'm saying I'm not answering to what anybody thinks. I have to stand before God. And that God's gonna say, I demanded holiness. and you instead put frivolousness, you put compromise, you put immodesty, you put wickedness in your home. And then you put even far worse, immorality on the television and you took joy in it. I believe that these permissive things like R-rated movies or movies, I think that movies I think we get to heaven, the Lord's gonna say, but didn't you see the innuendos about how they were cussing and swearing, how they were just worldly? And you permitted that? And just because there's no wicked, wicked words, and no stark nudity, you said it was okay? I think we're all, I don't know that we'll even have a chance, because I think we get there, we fall before the Almighty, and our eyes have seen Him. I think we're gonna repent. We're gonna say, oh God, can I just go back and relive it? I would be much more separated, much more holy, and I wouldn't care what the society says about it. I wouldn't care what the people in the church, especially the women who are in this society, listen to me, saturated by feminism. Saturated. Your thinking is all about feminism and not biblical thinking. You're taught from a little child that nobody ought to tell me what to wear. Well, you ought to let God have your heart. Because it's not a problem with what you have on the outside, it is strictly beginning with a problem of your wicked fleshly heart that's looking at God saying, I will not! And God says, I have so much more for you. So much more peace if you don't let the law be an offense to you. He says an abomination for a man to wear what a woman wears and a woman to wear what a man wears. Deuteronomy 22 five. And the abominations, careful, are God saying this is what I hate. And we're just like, well, that pastor, he's so strict. And I think when we get to heaven, we're gonna be looking in the eyes of a savior who died for our sins that we permit and demand in our lives. You ought to fall before God. God, I want your peace. Help me to embrace your law. Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. Going on then, Isaiah chapter 26. We believe that Isaiah is actually divided by these statements. Chapter 26 in verse number 3, Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusted in Thee. Most of what we do, we think about what we're doing before we do it. The problem with our actions is our thoughts processes are worldly. We're thinking incorrectly. And the Lord says, hey, I've got peace for you like you wouldn't understand. He says, I've got peace, not in the middle of an easy life. We've had peace as a nation for so long, and I'm not talking about a foreign war, I'm talking about domestically. We've had so much peace and not any persecution. I was just reading about the Baptists among the black slaves in South Carolina that met, and 40 of them were regularly beaten just for preaching. We don't even have that kind of commitment to God. that you'd come 40 services in a row just to be faithful. Our peace has made us lax in the things that God has asked us to do. And if we can't worship right and serve right and think right and obey right in the good times of peace, I'll tell you what'll happen when the problems come. And you'll be running to a psychologist. Well, I just tried the Bible and the Bible couldn't overcome my mental, my emotional difficulties. I need a pill. No, you need Jesus. The great promise is I've given you peace because you have your mind stayed on Him and because you trust in Him. We trust in our credit cards, we trust in pills and doctors and experts, and we trust in everything else, even to the point where we complain about the present government, but we're trusting in the present government. And I'm saying, great peace have they if their mind is stayed on Him. Not on this other stuff. The promises of peace. And when we think about what God has offered to give us in this promise of peace, we ought to, like David, go by and sit tomorrow morning in our quiet time wherever you serve and pray and you have your time of fellowship with God. And you ought to say, oh God, what did I do to deserve such peace in my heart? Who am I? What is my family that thou hast offered me this promise for a great deal of time to come? Second promise is the promise of supply, or what we'd say promise of plenty. In Romans it says, chapter eight, I want you to go back to Psalm 37, if you will. I'll just read Romans 8.32. It says, He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? All things. And the Lord says, I have a supply for you. I will take care of you. Sometimes we don't like what God gives us, or we want it all right ahead. Don't we complain about the generation that has to fill their houses with furniture before they have a house to put the furniture in, right? We complain about the attention to things. But the Lord says, I have it all planned out for you. Read verse 18 down to verse 25 in Psalm 37. It says, the Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. That's an eternal inheritance we have with Him. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. You know, I'll bet there's some Christians over at southern Zambia, in the middle of this famine, who have made the Lord their stay, And the Lord reaches across the entire nation of America to a small church out in the middle of Pocatello and says, hey, touch that heart of this family and give to supply the need so that these Christians are standing over there as you see that picture. looking down at the food that they have, and their hearts are humbled, and they want to know, who is that church? They haven't even met you, and one day, in glory, you're going to stand, and they're going to say, hey, it was God using you to fulfill His promise that I will not forsake my people, even in a famine. Praise God. Think about your place in this eternal atmosphere of God. Oh, it's amazing. Go with me to verse 19. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time and the day of famine. They shall be satisfied. Do you remember I told you that during the COVID time, when food was real scarce in Belize City, and you know, they're just, they're starting to steal. There was a lot of theft and a lot of people getting killed for whatever they had on them. I was there during that time, and at one point, I dropped off two young ladies from church, and they were walking just two blocks from the main street to their house. It's what they do every time. They meet, they walk out, and then we get dropped off there. and they got held at gunpoint. After I left, they got held at gunpoint because they had a necklace around them. Just a little gold necklace that wasn't even a real gold necklace. And they came to the place where food was getting scarce, but the Lord touched the heart of a Muslim man who owned a series of grocery stores. We'll talk about this, Publix. And he went to a Catholic man and said, I have a desire to help. I want to give 25 families $50 per week of free food during this whole ordeal. Do you know a place?" So this Catholic man, I think he thought of it himself, or maybe do you think the Lord did, said, I think I know who I need to talk to, and he goes and finds Pastor Blanco. And for the entire time, of COVID shutdown in Belize, 25 families in the little church that's there that are all professing believers, Baptists, barely surviving, and getting $50 of groceries was more than some of those families ever spent to begin with. So in the middle of a famine, God says, I'm gonna touch a Muslim man's heart to give to a Catholic man to feed 25 families that are Baptists for an entire three years. because God made a promise that he'll supply your need. I love it. Look what he says, and go down to verse number 20. But the wicked shall perish. So this is the issue. They're not gonna play games with you. You live for God, you get the promise. You live for self, you're on your own. The wicked borroweth, and verse 21, payeth not again, but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth for such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth, and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way, though he fall. Though we run out of food, he said, he's not forsaken, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. I have been young, and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. Every blessing if you just stay close to the Lord. You know where to be? I mean, it reminds me, have you ever been down to the Alamo? And they got there, they have marked in that brass on the ground where Colonel Travis marked that line, and said, if any of you don't want to die for your cause, the cause of liberty of the Lone Star State, cross over that line, and they would not to a man with the exception of one. I wouldn't want to be that one. and every one of them died. I would rather be in the danger zone trusting in God than to be one who compromises with the world. My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Not only that is for the righteous, it's for those who labor. In chapter 28 of Proverbs, you don't have to turn there, in verse 19, He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that followeth after a vain person shall have poverty. You see, the Lord is a God who knows how He made us. He made us to labor. He didn't make us to be idle. He tells us, hey, don't steal from others. Hey, get up and go get a job, he says. Let him that stole steal no more, but let him labor with his hands. What did he say? Go get a job. So the Lord rewards those who do their part, and then also the Lord rewards those that honor Him. Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first fruits of thine increase. The Lord has been good to our church. We're going to have a financial report next week, and we're going to pay off all the extra spending we did on this particular project. We'll get all that figured out. But we have been super, super blessed. I've never seen a church start, and in only six years, this is like the third year that we've reached $50,000 in the black. I keep raising the budget, and the money coming in keeps going higher. You say, Pastor, why don't you double the budget? I just go pray. I have to pray. I have to get God's guidance. And I can't imagine it continuing ad infinitum, but hey, we're gonna keep serving the Lord. We're gonna keep on making this the best place to come and worship. We're gonna keep on doing the things that ought to be done to get the gospel out to other people's homes and disciple the believers that we have. But he says, I'll take care of you if you take care of me. He says in Proverbs 3, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. You honor God, God will take care of you. the promise of God supplying your need, even in famine, even in trouble, even in the lack of safety. He says, I'll give you peace in your heart. I'll provide your needs. And that ought to drive the Christian, like 2 Samuel 8, where David says, oh God, why do I deserve this? I know I don't. And you ought to go away tonight saying, God is good to us. The promise of peace. The promise of plenty. Can I dwell a moment on the promise of His preservation? His preservation. In chapter 37 where you're at, if you look at verse 28, For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not His saints. They are preserved forever. But the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. I don't know where these people get that you could lose your salvation out of the Bible. If you're a saint, that means you've come to Jesus for salvation. That's the Bible word for somebody who is saved. And the Lord doesn't forsake those that He has given His righteousness to. And they are preserved forever. Say amen. Sometimes I need to tell you to say amen. You ought to be excited. You say, well, that's just boring Bible doctrine. Not when you're about to die. Not when you're about to die. I don't want anybody here to have to need that this week, right? Please don't get sick and die on me this week, right? Okay, but I'll tell you this, if it happened, we're gonna come to that deathbed and we're gonna say, oh God, we're so glad that you preserved the saints. the promise of knowing that you're saved, and once you've crossed over from the old life to the new life, and you say, I have put my faith in Jesus Christ, I've been born again, and you know how long you're preserved? You're preserved not for just today, not for five minutes, not till you make a mistake and fall into sin, but we are preserved from this day and forever because we are the children of God, and God will not forsake His own. What we talked about today is that God will not forsake His Bible, You can be more sure about that, and we spoke on that in Sunday school this morning. Even read the verses from Psalm chapter 12. I went on a little tirade this morning in Sunday school. If you haven't heard it, you probably should get it on sermon audio and listen to it. But it has to be that we look at God's Word and say, we're going to believe God's Word even though my feelings say otherwise, because you can't trust your feelings. Have you ever thought somebody was upset with you, and then later you found out they're not? Anybody ever have that happen? Raise your hand if that's happened to you. Aren't we foolish? Doesn't that feel foolish? Like I'm sitting up at night, I can't sleep because I'm afraid that so and so is upset with me and they're gonna be upset with me because of, I don't know, I just make it up. The devil whispers in our ears, right? And man, our feelings go crazy. And then we find out, nope, they actually were ready to invite you over for supper. They actually like you. Can you trust your feelings? Right? You cannot. But you can trust His Word that the Bible says that He has preserved. Thou wilt preserve them, O God, from this generation and forever. So the saints are preserved. Hence, Scripture is preserved. And what would we be without these promises of God, of God's eternal preservation of God's saints? And we come before Him and we say, O God, who am I that I should deserve such wonderful promises? As these, also the promise of His protection, go back to chapter 34 of Psalm. Verse number 7, The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them. Glory to God. Look at chapter 91. Go to the 91st Psalm. I wish there were 300 psalms because I miss the preaching from week by week of what God has pocketed in every one of these psalms. I think we could do it all over. I might throw away all my old sermons and start over and see again what God would have. 91 verse 4. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings thou shalt trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the error that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence, that sickness that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. In other words, I think six in the commentary, like in the Greek, which is this is the Hebrew, it says you don't need a mask. Anyway, verse seven. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee." Why? Because God says, I'm going to protect you. The promises are beyond our expression, and they go on. Psalm 125, just write the reference down. Verse number 2, as the mountains are about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even forever. He is on your side. He said, but it doesn't look like, if you look at my finances, it doesn't look like God's on my side. Hey, you might need to get some things squared away. I'm talking about, sometimes we bring those kind of things on ourselves, amen? You know, we live in such a way that we haven't saved a dime, and then we have a problem, and then all of a sudden everything's haywire. Sometimes we bring that on ourselves, and the Lord lets us reap a little bit, but he will deliver you, even from those problems that you bring on yourself. If you go to him in humility, But it's amazing the protection of God that he is on your side. You say, but I can't overcome sin. God wants you to overcome sin more than you do. God wants the success of your family and the success of your marriage more than you could ever really desire. I don't understand why God is so good. So I sit back in that quiet place and I contemplate the promise of God's protection. I read these verses and I'm almost brought to tears. Why are you so good to me? I look back on my life and I think of everything God's allowed for me to see and to do and the tenderness of being part of people's lives when they've turned back to God and watched God do some things that I I can't explain it humanly, it's just what God has done. And I said, God, why are you so good to me? Why has God, so many times we're looking at why we don't have what we think we should have. Why circumstances aren't perfect. Why opportunities aren't thrown at us like an abundance, like we really deserve opportunities. Why aren't we living in the multi-million dollar mansions? Probably because we're supposed to set our affections up there. Supposed to not be comfortable. Sometimes the Lord says, I know what you can endure before you'll stop calling upon me. Like the three Hebrew children, they didn't have very much, but they have a story to tell, don't they? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We're not gonna, they thought they were gonna die that day. We're not going to bow to this wicked idolatry. I wish we would all have that heart. And they said, well, throw them in there. They heated it up seven times hotter so that the men, their strong soldiers that bound those men and cast them in there were overcome by the flame. But there are those three Hebrew children. No more bounds, binding around them. No more problem. And they're looking in the fire. I thought we cast in three. But there's one there. Now this is Old Testament. There's a fourth one and he looks like God. I wonder why Nebuchadnezzar thought that he looked like God. And I think we look at our lives and we can say, I don't have a whole lot. I've been torn from my natural desires, my home, anything. And we come to this place where we're made to stand for what's right. By God's grace, we do. And then we find out God is here. The world can keep their fame. They can keep their money. Compromising Christians can have their way of life that they demand of God and refuse to give into God. They can have it all because we have God. What else do you need? Glory to God, the promises. So I sit down and I say, I don't deserve to be a Shadrach or a Meshach and a Bendigo. Who am I? Right? Put your own expression in there, but I always say a cop's kid from Cleveland. Just a cop's kid from Cleveland. Who am I? But you've spoken about my house for a great many years to come. The promise of the Holy Spirit is the last that I'll spend a moment on. And we find in John 14-16, and I will pray the Father and He shall give you another comforter, right? That word comforter in the Greek is the word parakletos, paraclete. So the promise of the paraclete, if you wanted it all alliterated in your outline. But this promise, But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, it says in chapter 14, verse 26, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. What a promise. 1526, but when the Comforter is come, whom I will send from the Father unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. John 16, verse 7, nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. The Comforter is God's presence with us right now. One who is called alongside. In 1 John chapter 2, verse number 2, Jesus is called the Paracletos. And he says, if any man sin, I think it's actually verse number one, let him know that he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Only God could die for our sins and then still be righteous. take all the guilt upon him, and still rise from the dead, having conquered sin, left it in the grave, and left it with the devil, went gloriously to heaven to offer his spotless blood to Christ, to God in the temple of heaven, and he remains forever sinless. Only God. He's not Lucifer's brother. He is God. It'd take more than just man to do what he did. It's amazing. But this God says, I'm not going to leave you by yourself. He says, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. You know what that in the Greek is? Because the Greek does double negatives. And it is like five negatives. It's something like, I will never, know not, never know how leave you. If we were to translate it into English the way it's written, it wouldn't be grammatically correct. But that promises so many negatives. I will never, no, never, not ever, no how, ever leave you. And God says, I'll go with you no matter where you go. Wherever you go, he's there. Whatever you see, he sees. Whatever you hear, he hears. Whatever you think, he knows. Whatever you do, he is there because he loves you. So I go to that place and I say, God, I don't deserve for you to be with me. I mean, after all, haven't we felt the burden in our heart from time to time of sin, crawled back to Jesus and say, oh God. Turn to Psalm 119 again. Go to 119. Notice what David's lamentation is in verse number eight. I will keep Thy statutes, O forsake Me not utterly." You see, in the Old Testament, they didn't have the promise of God's parakletos. That didn't come of His permanent indwelling, did not come until after Acts 2. It is a promise to our dispensation that at the moment you get saved, according to Ephesians 1, 13 and 14, the moment you get saved, you are given the Holy Spirit as an earnest payment on the rest of our inheritance in heaven. And David looks with lamentation at times when he has sinned, and he thinks about those awful nights where he indulged himself in the pleasures of sin, and he's reaping, and he comes back to God, crawling on his face, Oh God, forsake me, not utterly! A prayer that we don't have to pray. because he promises to never forsake you. Oh God, I don't deserve this, but yet you've said some promises about your servant for a great while to come. Conditions, yes, to God's promises, but all of his conditions make sense. Why would he give plenty to somebody who was going to use it to sin? That doesn't make any sense. Why would He protect us if we simply refuse to obey the law of God? Why would He give you peace? In fact, He might even pull the rug out from peace if you're starting to trust in yourself and say, hey, hey, hey, forget about trusting in yourself. Come back and trust in me. True Christianity has to be lived in a dependent relationship with God. I'm gonna wrap this up with this. Standing on the promises of Christ my King. Through eternal ages let his praises ring. Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing, standing on the promises of God. Standing on the promises that cannot fail when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. By the living word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God. standing on the promises I cannot fall, listening every moment to the Spirit's call, resting in my Savior as my all in all, standing on the promises of God. His promises are everything you need and so much more. Would you stand with me as we have an invitation time? Time to think about how this applies to your life. Are you living, breathing in the promises of God? Do they mean this to you? Are you spending time in that humble place where we look up in awe and say, oh God, I don't deserve this great promises. Father, bless this invitation. Turn our hearts away from this old world up to You. Give us that which we need in Jesus' name, Amen.