Hello friends, I'm Wayne Shepherd, inviting you to listen to the following Bible teaching message by Paul Scharf. Paul is a Church Ministries representative for the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, serving in the Midwest. You'll find all of his ministry resources at sermonaudio.com slash pscharf, where he provides new content on a regular basis, including a weekly column that he writes, along with news and updates. Right now, we encourage you to follow along as we open God's word for today's presentation. It's our prayer that the Lord God will use this teaching to bring glory to Himself and to work faith in each of our hearts. Here now with the sermon is Paul Scharf. It's wonderful to be with you here on this beautiful Lord's Day. And we were here with you three years ago, as Pastor mentioned, when we were first beginning with the Friends of Israel. Now, I haven't been paying attention to the news during this time. I've been very busy. Has anything happened since we were here last? Does anyone know? Great to be back with you today. Wonderful church you have here at Word of Grace Bible Church. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I really appreciate it. ability to speak with you today and trust that it will be a blessing for all of us. Let me wish you a belated happy 4th of July from the Friends of Israel. How many are still in 4th of July mode? Anyone like that? Oh, several of you. Okay, maybe you took the whole week off and you're just getting back to things now. We do pray that God will bless our land, but I like the way Dr. Whitcomb used to say that. America Bless God. How about that one? God is blessing America to this day, perhaps for reasons we're going to not spend our time thinking about directly this morning, but they certainly relate, because we have blessed Israel. Now, maybe that's the last reason he's still blessing America. I don't know. We certainly live at amazing times, don't we? We are seeing incredible things happening. That won't be our focus this morning, but I'm sure like me, you are watching the news and watching all these things and thinking maybe, Lord, what if I had lived 100 years ago, you know? But he has put us all here at this time, hasn't he? For such a time as this, maybe very late in the age of the church, perhaps even very late in the history of America. but he has placed us here to serve him at this time and to be a witness, to be a light. in this darkening world. We are privileged to do that through our ministry with the Friends of Israel, as Pastor mentioned. Now in our fourth year, second year of being full-time in this role, as I'm a church ministries representative with the Friends of Israel, how many of you were here last time we were here with you? Many of you, wonderful, great to see all of you, and I've already heard from several of you that that remember that day, and please let me know your name if I've forgotten it, but it's great to connect with you again, and hopefully we will continue to do that, Lord willing. We praise the Lord for our relationship with you here at Word of Grace Bible Church. For those who don't know, the Friends of Israel, we are a worldwide ministry. The sun never sets on the ministry of the Friends of Israel. You'll see in the next slide reference to Ukraine, which was part of our prayer this morning. Friends of Israel has been at the heart of issues in bringing Jewish people. How many knew that before that Before these events began to unfold in Ukraine, one out of every roughly 40 or so Jewish people in the world lived in Ukraine. And many of these have now left. They've gone through Poland, some through Germany, going to make Aliyah back to Israel. And Friends of Israel has been there. We have people who have worked heroically and tirelessly with people coming out of Ukraine and also on the other end with people entering back into Israel. And so that's been an amazing thing and reminiscent of the days in which the Friends of Israel was founded. in December of 1938, three weeks after the Holocaust began, and very similar types of efforts were undertaken back at that time. Our mission is to proclaim biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah, and to bring physical and spiritual comfort and help to the Jewish people as a means to sharing with them about their Messiah. And we do that in many ways and all around the world. And our role is to do that here in the Midwest and primarily by teaching and preaching the whole counsel of God and what it says about these very important issues, which sadly are often in decline in our time. And so we're filling a void, we believe, in the church, reinforcing in places where it perhaps was once strong and is now lax, these issues regarding the importance of Israel. The fact that God still has a future for Israel. I know that you believe that, and that's why the Friends of Israel exists, and we're gonna be thinking about that this morning. He will fulfill every promise he has ever made to the people of Israel, every prophecy he has ever given to his chosen nation of Israel. He has been with them from their biblical past. He is with them today in their strategic present. He will be with them through their prophetic future. God has still a future for Israel. Now, you might say, well, they don't deserve it. They've disobeyed, they've rejected the Messiah. But my question is, how many of us want to go on what we deserve? Rather, we can be confident of this, that He has begun a good work in us. If He will continue His work faithfully for His chosen people of Israel, surely He will also continue the work He's begun in us who've believed in Jesus Christ, until the very day when we see Him. So we invite you to learn much more about our history and our ministry, including the ministry in Ukraine, and constant news and updates, always available at foi.org. Pastor mentioned the magazine, Israel My Glory, and you can get the latest issues at the table in the back. We would love for you to sign up for a free subscription for the magazine. And just by signing on the contact list, you can get a year free subscription to the magazine. We want everyone in the world to read Israel, My Glory. So we'd love to have you do that. And I'll say a couple more things about that sign up sheet in just a moment. We also have a national weekly half hour radio program. My boss, Chris Katulka, is the teacher. You can hear that locally here on WVCY and you can hear it anytime on the website and I'll say more about that again in just a little bit. And we also have with us some copies of the 2021 annual report that's come out last month or so and it's also online if you want to read it there. Lots of encouraging news and just lots of information. Again, if you're hungry for that, for the Friends of Israel, there's lots of things that you can read all about that that are supplied there. And I want to also mention, we're getting some more and more things organized in different ways to bring people in to connect with the Friends of Israel. It's especially been made, you know, shown to be much more necessary in the last couple of years since the pandemic. And one of the things that's really being developed is the Encounter Program. And this is for those high school age and beyond. And something that's been put together recently, these Experience Encounter with the Friends of Israel, going on a trip to Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey area. And you can find lots more details on the website. And if that's something that is of interest to you, we'd love to hear from you about that and you can also just send in your information right there online and learn more about the possibility of taking a short-term trip. It's very short term, but it's packed with lots of information and experiences that you can have in the whole area of just learning about the Jewish people and culture and the potential of ministering to Jewish people. And one other opportunity that I want to share with you this morning is the idea of going to Israel. How many here have ever been to Israel? Okay, a few of you and everywhere we go, there are people who have been to Israel. We have not yet been to Israel. One of the reasons that we likely would have gone during these four years is, but of course, because of COVID, that's hindered that possibility. And so we have never yet been to Israel. We need to go, we hope to go next March. and we would love to have you consider going along with us. So that's another thing you could put on the contact list. If you'd sign your name, and you could put the thing we just talked about, encounter, you could put the word encounter by your name. But you could also put the word Israel by your name and none of that obligates you to anything But we would be able to stay in contact with you and get you the information if you're interested in the possibility of Going to Israel with the friends of Israel and with us included next March, okay, Lord willing And so that's just a little bit going on in the Friends of Israel and we certainly greet you from the ministry of the Friends of Israel and thank you for your interest and support through the years. Just wanted to share a little bit more about me personally and just an update about our ministry. Then we'll get into our message this morning. I may have shared this the last time we were with you. It was relatively new then. If you want to know how we We ourselves got involved with the ministry of the Friends of Israel. I have a blog about that that you can read about our journey to the Friends of Israel and invite you to see that. Pastor read my bio and mentioned Dr. Whitcomb and your connection with Dr. Whitcomb. And since we were here last, that is something that has changed as Dr. Whitcomb went to be with the Lord. I still assist his ministry on a very limited basis, although I can't currently communicate with him about that. He is with the Lord in heaven, and we rejoice in that. He lived a wonderful, amazing life. For those who don't know, Dr. John Whitcomb is credited as the really the co-founder of the modern creationism movement by virtue of writing the book, The Genesis Flood, along with Dr. Henry Morris. And that book sent a tsunami that attacked the sandcastle of evolution, the house built on sand, and just washed away the need for all the billions of years of evolutionary geology. and struck to the very heart of evolutionism. And great was the fall of the whole idea that God could not have created in recent history, in six literal days, that we needed millions and billions of years. But we understand that actually the Genesis flood is the key to understanding the fact that God did create in six days, roughly 6,000 years ago. And everything we see geologically in the world is a record of the remnants of the Genesis flood. And so Dr. Whitcomb was my mentor. He was also really incredibly influential. in American Christianity and the Christian church really throughout the world. And there were tributes after he died. I'll just share one with you, Dr. David Jeremiah, who was, believe it or not, also once Dr. Whitcomb's student. And he said, intellectually, Dr. Whitcomb was in a realm that was high up in the sky, far above everybody else except for a few brilliant scholars. But he also had the gift of teaching, because when he preached, he was able to take these lofty, complex truths, bring them down to earth, and make them clear, understandable, applicable, and exciting to everyone. So I just always enjoy the chance to remember Dr. Whitcomb and know that he is important also to your congregation here, to your pastor, so I just wanted to share that testimony this morning. We have used our time in the last several years well, especially at the very beginning when we were unable to travel. We knew we needed to develop our resources online, which we frankly should have always done, should have done anyway, but we had a time and an opportunity and a necessity to do that. So we used that time to launch our page on sermonaudio.com, And that is where we have all of our resources. I invite you to follow me there anytime. I have a special video that I've done recently. I'm going to be writing some articles based off of it with Stephen Lee, the founder of Sermon Audio, in which we talk about very important issues, things going on right now in our world that I'm sure you're all aware of, cancel culture, and censorship and cyber security and we talk about all that and online ministry in the context especially of sermon audio and what Sermon Audio is trying to do in building what they call the vault, which will be their own secure system, which will lessen their dependence on secular companies that control our ability to communicate. So I invite you to follow all that and listen to that. And I'm also going to be writing, as I said, some columns that come directly from that video. And sort of the preamble to those is this past week. talking about our amazing ability to communicate. One thing I do is write a weekly column. It runs normally on Fridays at sharperiron.org as well as being on my sermon audio page. One more thing about sermon audio, I invite you to join us On Thursday, Sermon Audio has a worldwide prayer meeting every single day at 11 o'clock our time. People all over the world join via Zoom. I'll be speaking for the second time at the prayer meeting this coming Thursday. You're welcome to join there or listen later. Just a couple of other things the Lord has blessed us with and ways that you can connect with us. In recent months, Dr. Jimmy DeYoung Jr. Many of you may know Dr. Jimmy DeYoung Sr. also went to be with the Lord last year, but his son, Jimmy Jr. has added me as a broadcast partner at prophecytoday.com, interviewing me from time to time for his radio programs and running my sermons there online. Also in just recent weeks, raptureready.com, which is kind of an aggregating website, has lots and lots of stuff on it. They've picked up my articles to run there as well. We praise the Lord for these opportunities. One other thing that we'd like to point out as you sign the contact list, and again, Hope you'll do that. Don't forget, don't rush your way to lunch too fast without stopping there first. You'll get a free subscription to the magazine. You can share if you're interested in Encounter or going to Israel. If you would sign also your email. and check the box showing your consent. You'll get the Friends of Israel emails along with the magazine and mailings. But even more importantly for us, you'll be on our email list. We're very excited about the fact we've been able, with the help of a wonderful volunteer in recent months, to begin a weekly e-newsletter. We're sending to over 700 people each week. And we'd love to add you to that. And that's sort of another main hub where people can find everything that's going on and stay closely connected with us. And so we'd love to add you to the list. If you don't do anything else, though, please pick up our prayer card. And how many know where the prayer card goes in your house? Someone tell me. Everyone said it together, on your refrigerator door, okay? And pray for us. Please pray for our ministry with the Friends of Israel. The Lord has given me the opportunity to speak in 10 different states to date for the Friends of Israel, and we are still attempting to raise our support. This is a support raising position, and we are really aiming for the goal of being what is considered at least fully supported. by the end of this year. And we really need to do that. And so we ask for your prayers. If you want me to go into the details or have questions about that, I'd love to talk to you about it personally. And I can explain more what that means and share about it. But we just ask that you would pray for us above all. And we thank you so much for your interest, for your involvement in our ministry.