Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Proving Gold's Will (09/05/2021)

All right. Well, good to, good to be here in person again after missing for a few weeks. And, uh, like brother

Paul said, we'll have to pray when our school doesn't start up until this week. And so when all the kids get together and I've noticed that younger people are catching the

Delta, whereas the first COVID kids just didn't get it.

So now this one, some kids do. So we'll really need to pray as they all come together into this building to have school and that those other two buildings, you know, if it fires up, we may have to go back to, um, online for a few weeks.

So just realize that could happen because I'm not going to pull you into this building if it's got 150

COVID kids here, surely they wouldn't all catch it at once. Right. But, um, you know, we have had a bunch kind of go through town and through central

Texas already. So maybe the wisdom of starting in September rather than early will work out for us,

I think. And I think we'll be just fine. So we'll play it by ear and, uh,

I'll be sure and try to give you plenty of advanced notice if we have to go back to online, but we're praying for the school so that we don't get

COVID going around when school starts, so we have to shut back down again, but kind of, it's gone around already and we had wisdom holding off on starting later.

So, well, that, but you had to agree to it. And so that's both of us, but, uh, maybe that'll work out well because, uh, you know, so much has already happened.

Maybe we're past it. All right. Well, we're, we're in Romans chapter 12. We just finished up, um, chapter 13.

And then last time I think we, we worked on, we started working on chapter 12 a little bit. And really the, the whole chapter to me, if you had to put it in a phrase, which is hard for me to do, because I like to do words and details of the whole chapter, it's hard to put that whole, that much information in one phrase, but I would call it church unity, how to have unity in the church.

There's probably a lot of subtopics in there, but, uh, I'm sure we'll nail just about every one of them. But basically it's about church unity.

And so far I have found about five steps to church unity in this chapter.

And there may be more than that, but that's what we'll talk about this morning. All right. So, um, now the clicker's not working.

There we go. Last time we talked about a couple of them and we got into Romans chapter 12, one and two, but realize that the last half of chapter 11 is what set this up.

Right. It's all in the context of this. So we've spent quite a bit of time talking about that, but let me read them again, since it's been a couple of weeks,

Romans 12, one and two. Um, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God, that you present vice, holy, acceptable unto

God, which is your reasonable service and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

And if you can remember back when we were in Romans chapter eight, talking about what

I think is one of the Lord's greatest teachings on prayer and chapter eight of Romans. We, we footnoted

Romans chapter 12, verses one and two back in that teaching, and they have to do with prayer.

And the reason is that that phrase in there where it talks about proving what is that good and acceptable, perfect will of God, how can you prove the future will of God now you see, but in chapter eight of Romans, it says, that's how prayer works.

God goes, the Holy spirit goes up to the mind of God, brings that into the mind of us so that we know how to pray so that we're working together with God and his family business, so to speak.

And you remember that teaching? Well, that, you know, that phrase, they're proving the good and acceptable and perfect will of God is a big part of the

Romans eight teaching on prayer. So to me, the first step of unity in the church is we have to be a people of prayer. We have to be praying.

We can't just be doing a whole bunch of programs and a bunch of good works and working hard and not spending some time in prayer.

Right. So that was the first step. We already talked about that. The second step was walking God's will, which obviously that brings us now to Romans 12 in verse two.

Right. And, um, how can you walk in God's will? Well, that's a great question.

And I had two different mentors. They both independently told me their view of how to know

God's. Well, it was amazing because they were five steps and they were identical and they independently came up with those, but they had the same

Bible, didn't they? But, um, that is an interesting thing to ask.

So how can we know it? I'm going to ask it actually, last time we taught last Sunday, we asked that question and verse two is, is the key prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

So we don't try to figure it out. You don't try to know it.

How many times have you heard throughout your life where people say, well, you need to, you need to make sure, you know,

God's will don't just jump out. Don't get ahead of God. How many times you heard that phrase? Don't get ahead of God. How are you going to get ahead of a, of an omniscient omnipresent sovereign

God? Only a humanist would think you could do that. And that's our minions. That's the church version of humanism.

But, uh, but it's a phrase you have to throw out because you heard a cool old preacher say it, and it's not a good phrase.

All right. So how about getting into God's will? I got to get in God's will. Well, you don't get in God's will you are in God's will.

So all of these old phrases we grew up with, we have to start throwing them out when they're not true, if they're not biblical, so the truth is we don't figure out

God's will or, or try to know God's will. We prove his will.

You remember that from last time, the Greek word literally denotes tested in battle, which means you got to get out on the battlefield to test, be tested in battle.

Don't you? So the way we phrased it last time, if you look it up, even in Webster's in English, fine to find out by experience.

So what you have to do is take a step. You step into God's will. Now I know there's two kinds of God's will.

There's his reveal will, which is the scripture. And that we, we learned a lot of that in Sunday school this morning, where you're talking about wisdom, wisdom from God comes from the word of God.

I forgot, bring my Bible, keep pointing over here, but usually there's a Bible over there. And, uh, so, but brother

Otis used to call the other, the second form of God's God's secret will, because that's the future and you don't know it till you step into it.

Right. But that's exactly what the Greek word here means is you take a step, you take a step and now you're proving

God's will you take another step? You're proving God's. Will you take another step in our internet? Friends can't see you anymore.

Hello. So that's what we talked about a little bit last time.

All right. Now we found several things here in the passages that we use to come up with this concept of proving

God's will. And one in a lot of it came out of Roman chapter 12, verse one, uh, the first verse in, in this chapter, but we have to live for God.

We've got to be different than other people. That's what holy means. It doesn't mean perfect.

We're never, we're not perfect in this life, but we can be different than the world. It means to live an acceptable life, you know, a good one.

That's acceptable to God. Right. And to not be worldly and to have a new mind.

Now, those are all things that we saw in the passage here, where we were talking about this idea of proving God's will, but all of this is in the bigger picture of how to have unity in the church.

So if you're a church that prays together and you're a church that is proving God's will by living like those five things we've already discussed from the context of where we're studying, then you've got your first two steps of having a church that has unity.

Okay. Now, before I leave that, even though we sort of went through that last time, these five things for,

I leave the idea though, because there's two more points that can go with these five and they're found in Ephesians chapter five.

So if you want to turn there in your phone, so funny to me, I started to realize I've lived a long time because a lots of things have changed in my lifetime, lots of things.

Like I went to college using the slide rule to do physics and actually reading a book called the

Bible. Like had pages, you turn, you turn the chapters, like if you didn't know where it was, you look in the table of contents to figure out where Ezekiel is.

And Oh, page four 52 turned to it. Now it's easy. You just hit your phone and everybody thinks, you know, where the books are.

Cool. Isn't it? Things get better. All right. So turn to Ephesians five or say, or watch this.

If you can see it from back there for you were sometimes darkness. Now in the old

English, that sort of, you could put it this way. Once upon a time before you were saved, you used to walk in darkness.

That's what that's talking about. But now see, I like that little phrase, but now, so there's a big change when you get born again.

Right? I mean, how can you not be different when the Holy spirit comes to dwell in your body and your body becomes a temple of living

God, and it didn't used to be two seconds ago, you got to be different, but now you're light in the

Lord. So walk that way. That's what it says. So walk that way. Then don't be a hypocrite.

You are a child of light. You can't change that. That's the new man.

I know the old man is still there and he ain't right. He's he's the first part. We used to be in darkness.

He's still with us, but he's not us. The real us is the new man. And so we need to walk that way.

So you can kind of see how this, this passage is going to be parallel to Romans chapter 12, verse one, where we got these five things from one and two and three, actually one and two, and it's going to add two more.

So it's talking about the same topic though. It's talking about walking in the light. Now, um, if you want to prove

God's will by taking a step, then you need to be stepping in the light. You need to be walking in the light.

What is, where do we get the light? We get the light from the water and the spirit. That's the word of God and the

Holy spirit. And so now we need to walk in the light for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.

So when we are walking filled with the spirit, we don't have to worry about a list of rules.

We don't have to be legalists, but we do have to walk in the spirit. So the fruit of spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth.

If we walk in the spirit, can you see how, where he said, where the Lord says, walk as children of light, it sort of takes care of that.

Doesn't it? So we're stepping into God's will say don't find it interesting.

Same exact phrases in Romans chapter 12, verse two, proving, not finding, not discovering

God's will to trying to do God's will or trying to figure out God's will, but proving it by stepping into it, you see where it says walk.

As children of light, that's how you do it. And you take a step and now you are proving what is acceptable under the

Lord. That's his will. You're approving the secret will of God for your life. And what we find out a lot of times, when we take a step into it, is we step into a closed door.

This was the plan we thought we would do. We talked over with our spouse, with our friends, maybe our pastor, whoever.

And it's, yeah, it sounds like a good plan. Let's do that. And you step to prove it and you hit a closed door. How many of you ever had that happen?

You just like, you can't do it because this block is here. And you know, it took the better part of my life to get to the place where I don't look at a closed door as a bad thing.

I still do sometimes for a few seconds. And then I have to think that through and say, wait a minute. I know better than that.

That's God showing me his better plan. So then you step to the right or to the left.

If you hit another closed door, then you go back to the left, right? Or left, right, left, right, whatever. Okay. And you finally, when you find the open door, you step.

And now what have you done? You have proven what was the secret will of God a few moments ago.

Now you're in it. That's how it works. It's the same Greek word.

Take a step. Same Greek word is we found in Romans 12, two and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

Do you see these five things? A lot of all of these elements are in this same passage. That's called a parallel passage.

And that's why we're looking at, I'm trying to see if they match because God very seldom puts a truth only in one place.

He weaves it throughout scripture. And you can find so many times that wonderful rule of Bible interpretation, which is let the

Bible interpret the Bible. That one is one of the best points have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

So what do you do when you have friends or family that are, it's amazing how you preach my sermon at Sunday school hours so many times, but you're talking about gaining wisdom from reading books.

Well, we can do that. Can't we, the word, the wisdom of the world is out there. And, and it's for, it's like brother

Otis said, it's God put it on the shelf for us, right, but we can't put it on a higher level of authority than what the word of God.

And that's the mistake. Sometimes intellectual Christians do. And so you'll go pick up a book and read it.

It's someone said, you should read this book. Be more open -minded, read this book over here and you'll read this book.

And if you're not careful, most people that write books that actually get published are very good at logic.

And if they can sneak in a couple of false presuppositions in the preface or the first few pages of the book, and you buy into them and you read the book, it'll be perfect logic and you'll end up with a false conclusion.

And that'll be part of how you live for a while until God slams you into a closed door and shows you the scripture or something that contradicts it.

And then you realize, wait a minute, that I got duped by the enemy, right? We have to be so careful not to fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

That includes, you know, is it, how, how good is it to be open -minded and just read their books on child rearing or on philosophy or on, uh, politics or what else could we name?

How about theology? Sometimes our pride tells us, well,

I can read that book and I'll know the difference and I'll be better educated.

And I won't be so closed minded. I can read that book and I'll be okay. Well, I think you could, if you're reading a whole lot of scripture, right?

Are you hearing me? If you're in the word a lot and you're living in that Bible, you can probably read just about any book you want to read, but what does it actually say?

What does the Holy spirit say? We should do don't fellowship with their unfruitful works.

Now, do you think sitting down and having coffee with an author of a book, that's an ungodly person who doesn't believe in any of the philosophies, the

Bible teaches, but they believe in the world's philosophy and your fellowship and with whoever wrote that book, when you read that book, are you not, so are you supposed to do that?

Yeah. You know what I do? I read books. I'll start, I have started many books and I get to about the third chapter and I chunk it and I'll say, this person doesn't know

God and the stuff they're teaching, I already know this stuff and they don't know

God and their conclusion is going to be false and I chunk it or I'll ride in the front in case when

I'm gone, my kids find it in my library. Dad did not agree with this book. It's in a bunch of them. All right.

So I don't read the whole book. Why? I don't want to be friends with, with darkness.

Think about that. Oh, drives me nuts. When people do this in college professors, you send your kid to college, they're going to be tempted to do that incorrectly to actually fellowship and consider and think about what do you think

Eve did when she met Satan in the garden, right next to the tree, God said, don't eat the fruit of what she just fellowshiped with him, didn't she, she learned some things from him and now look where we are and then

Adam learned some things from his wife, look where we are. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather what does reprove mean?

Point out where they're wrong. How often do we just sit quietly and let stuff be said because you don't want to ruffle any feathers.

I said, well, I'm just trying to have unity, but you're not supposed to have fellowship with unfruitful works.

You're not supposed to have unity with those you're supposed to reprove them. Who can give me a good everyday definition for reprove.

Correct. It's just shard of rebuke, right? It's like a, it's like a soft, correct, soft, but correct answer that proves them wrong, would that be a good way to say it?

If we're here for anything, we're here for that salt and light.

You know, I've told you the story about, I got down one time a few years ago and I was, I was starting to think the old way, like I grew up in church thinking that I'm supposed to be a soul winner.

And I was thinking that's just not very successful. And I got depressed, uh, for a day or two.

And it's like, the Lord spoke to me and said, what's your job, David?

I said, when souls, he said, no, that's not it. Your job is to be salt and light.

Can you do that? And I said, yeah, I can do that. And I was fine. That's all we are salt when it gets in the wound, it hurts it.

So when someone is talking lies, because they got it from where the unfruitful the works of darkness from the world system, they got that.

And they think it's truth because some author said so. And they're talking about it. And you say, you know what? That actually contradicts scripture.

It's going to hurt them. It's going to feel like salt in a wound when you do that to them and you won't want to do it.

But are you going to obey the Holy spirit and the word of God right here?

When you see it in the word of God, you got two things going, you got water and spirit. You got both the Bible and the

Holy spirit telling you to do it as a Christian. So there you have it. You re you reprove them.

It doesn't say when, when it feels like you have an open door or when it feels good to do it, or when the opportunity arises, it says, reprove them.

Can you think about that? Can, can we think about starting to live that way? You ain't got much time left anyway, either

COVID is going to get you. Oh, there's that fear or, or the Lord's coming back, right?

Or it's coming back and he's going to take us out of here. That's the better way. Don't you choose that one? I choose.

I want to step into that one. Keep finding, proving God's will. I'm going to keep walking. If it takes me into a cave or wherever I got to be, that's the one

I want to prove. Of course, my grandmother said the same thing. She went out a different way. All right.

You done camping out on verse 11. I kind of liked verse 11 to reprimand

Oxford dictionary. He says to reprimand or censor. In other words, stop their mouth.

There's actually scripture. I think it's in the book of Jude or some Jude or somewhere where it says, you know, to shut their mouth and that what it means is point out where they're wrong.

Okay. Verse 11 gave us some meat for today. For it is a shame even to speak of those things, what you're done by those people who write those books in their secret lives.

Okay. So pick somebody. Somebody pick a movie star that you like.

You think it's a trick question. I'm trying to find out who watches television, right? Like brother

Roloff called it. Helly vision. Oh, pick an athlete. Then see how holy sick guy.

You see how holy this church is. They don't watch sports or TV. No movies. Hey, yeah.

Give me a sports figure that tiger woods. How about that? Tiger woods. Okay. Tiger woods writes a book on my life and how

I lived it. All right. Now his mom was, um, a Buddhist and his dad was just nothing sort of agnostic.

Probably, probably. I don't know what he, if he believed anything. So it says it's a shame to speak of those things, what you're done by them in secret.

So they're doing things in there. Some of the tigers actually came out in public, didn't it? Some of his secret life came out in public, but why do we read books by people that live like that?

Think about it. I think

Ashton's laughing at me right now. Wherefore he sayeth awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give you light.

So where are we supposed to get our light from the word of God and the spirit of Christ, Jesus said, these are my words.

And he said, my words are spirit and they are life. And they set you free.

See, then that you walk circumspectly. What is that? It's a good English word circumspectly.

What does that mean? When we're taking those steps, proving God's will, what are you supposed to be doing, watching to make sure we're guarding our mind from garbage, false philosophies, not as fools, but as wise.

That's funny. Cause you talked about wisdom, two thirds of your lesson today, redeeming the time for the days are evil.

Wherefore be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is telling us right there, how to know

God's will, isn't it? And you know what it says, verse 10, prove it. That's how you understand it. You prove it.

You step into it and you stay in the word of God and you don't listen to things that are outside of the word of God.

Now you, that doesn't mean you couldn't go to college and learn how to be an engineer or physics professor, uh, because it's like brother

Otis Otis said so many times, he said, God wrote two books, not one. He wrote the word of God, but he also wrote nature.

His entire creation is another book and it will never contradict the word of God if it's true science.

Correct. So it's okay to study, but you've got to learn to chunk. Like I told you a lot of books,

I get to the third chapter and chunk the whole book, but some of those kinds of books, you, you got to read the whole book, especially if you're still in school.

Right. But you don't have to believe everything in it. What if it tells you like 16 gazillion years ago, this was created by this.

You don't have to believe that because the Bible indicates there's about 8 ,000 years old. So, I mean, you don't have to believe that part.

You just have to understand that whoever wrote the book through in a false presupposition that the earth is that old and expected you just to believe it.

And then you accept everything else. He writes, right. But it contradicts scripture. So you chunk that part out.

Now I understand why they think it's that old because when God created the universe, it already had maturity. So to the scientist, it looks how

Bill, roughly if you're like me, you forget. Billion eight and 30 billion years.

And you see, to me, that's not that long. I mean, they, they think that's long enough to create something out of nothing.

I think they need more time. They need like 20 trillion years to do that.

So they're so stupid, but anyway, Oh, they'll make it longer.

Yeah, absolutely. They've done that since we went to school. Yeah. There's way more stars than there were when we went to school too.

So be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. So that whole passage is talking about putting together in the

Greek. It means to put together. Remember the little prefix soon that we talked about so often last year, soon doing stuff together with Christ soon means together with, and so here you see the little, you see the little, uh,

Pre pre fix soon. And the second part of that word E a me means to get, to, to make something happen, to figure it out.

So to put it together, understand what the will of the Lord is and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess that be filled with the spirit, the

Holy spirit. So if you want to figure out how to prove the will of God, now that adds two more things in this passage, redeeming the time, it means you have to study the word of God.

Redeem means to set free by paying a price. So you got to give up some stuff that you like doing to create more time to read the

Bible and study the Bible and contemplate and think about the Bible. You've got to lay aside some time to do that.

That's what redeeming the time means and be filled with the Holy spirit. And if you do those seven things, now you're to a place where you're a

Christian who, when you step, you're stepping into God's will, you're proving God's will in your life.

And if you have a lot of people in the church doing that, you'll have unity in the church. And if you have a small percentage doing that and the majority of the people are not, then you'll have division in the church.

So that kind of covers the first, uh, two points. The result is you put together what the will of the

Lord is when you, when you do it this way, but notice there are things to do to know

God's will. You don't, I don't even like phrase Noah's will anymore. Now, now kind of like prove it.

I like that prove God's will. So there's stuff you have to do, but there's also things you have to stop doing such as fellowshipping with unfruitful works of darkness, the stuff they write, the stuff they think reading all about it, uh, as long as you're in the word five, 10 times more than you're reading that junk, you can read that junk and know it's junk, but if you're not, like you said in Sunday school, there's a danger in it.

Didn't you say that there's a danger in thinking you're smarter than everybody else when in truth, you're the one being duped.

I'll take anyone in this room that reads only the Bible and they read it a lot. I'll take their wisdom over anyone that's read the last popular 50 books that the world has offered in the last five years, that's just truth.

That's how it is. Wisdom comes from the word of God. All right.

So the first step is prayer life. Second step is walk in God's will.

That pretty well takes us through verses one and two and that beautiful parallel passage in Ephesians.

Now let's go back a little bit. We've got some time, not a whole lot. Let's go back just a little bit before we leave this passage and focus for a minute on this part where it says, present your bodies, a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto

God, which is our reasonable service. How do we do that?

How, I mean, if we're not going to have a set of rules, like you got to dress this way, you cannot listen to that music.

You can't read that book. Sounds like I made a rule. I'm not, you can read the book, just read the

Bible more. Well, that's a rule to say I'm making rules. But anyway, so how, how do we, how do we get our place to where we live for the

Lord, we present our body and let him live through us rather than us doing selfish things and living through it.

Do you make a set of rules? Do you, what do you do to do that? Well, I think it's important to ask that question because the scripture says we're supposed to do it.

Well, maybe the scripture tells us how to do it. Right? Well, truth is everything that we read before we got to chapter 12, verse one.

If you take the last half of chapter 11, it's actually tells us how to do it and we already covered it.

So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna talk about that again, but if you wanted to put it into a phrase, the phrase would be contemplate

God's awesome nature and being, because the last half of chapter 11, that's what it does contemplate the awesomeness of God, and you will give your body to him to walk with him.

You just will. And my favorite question is how do you do that? And I have to,

I try to ask that to myself at least once a day to get me in the mode of wanting to do nothing but follow him.

Because when you know, you figure out, well, okay, I know the Bible answer

God's always existed. So I'm not asking where'd he come from? Cause that's dumb. Cause the Bible says he's always existed.

But my question is, okay, how do you do that? Have you thought about that? You have to, if you heard me preach, cause

I bring it up a lot. How did he do that? How did God exist when nothing made him?

And then another great follow -up question, if you want to live for him today is say, well, what if he hadn't been able to do that?

Cause then you'd have no nothing because God created the idea of nothingness. You wouldn't even have no nothing. That's bad grammar, but good preaching.

All right. You'd have no nothing. So the, the odds of you ever having existed or had a thought or experience life would be not even zero because God invented the idea of zero.

Can you even, it's like Matt said, dad, that's a good thing to think about, but not too long.

He said that when he was like five. And so that's kind of what

I'm talking about. Whatever it is that you can think that makes you understand the difference between you and God, that God is

God and you ain't think that thought, and it'll cause you to give your body as a living sacrifice.

Say, look, okay. All I want to do is just, what do you want to do today? Lord, I'll follow you. Where are you going? I'll go with you instead of saying,

Lord, here's what I'm going to do. Will you please go with me? It's just, you hear that all the time. Don't you Lord go with us where we go when we leave this building.

Well, how about we figure out where he's going and just follow him out the building. Maybe he stays in the building longer than we thought we would.

You know what I'm saying? So understanding the awesome nature of God is the key.

And most of the last half of chapter 11, that's what it talked about, but there is another place that talks about it that I wanted to spend a little time in.

And guess where it is. It's where Bill spent most of his time in Sunday school, although I'm not sure it's the same chapter.

What chapter were you in? And Joe good. So I'm going to start in 37.

He probably read from 28 to 37 though. But anyway, so let's, let's just think about this.

Just, we don't have much time, but job had these three friends.

You know, if you remember Joe caught the COVID of all COVID right.

He, he had whelps and sores all over his body so badly.

And he, he just felt like he was dying and he wanted to die. He felt so badly with this disease that Satan had given him because Satan, God said, you can do whatever you want to, to him, but don't take his life.

You may not do that. God said that to Satan. So Satan made, killed all 10 of his children in a tornado.

He left the one person who was ungodly, which was his wife. And she, first thing she told him was cuss

God and die. As a good wife, wasn't it? God, Satan left her with him, took all of his children away, took all of his cattle away, took all of his wealth away.

He's the wealthiest man on the face of the earth, but by the way, when this happened and now he has nothing and he's sitting out there naked, putting sand on him and just miserable itching all over.

And his three wise friends come to console him. You remember the story. If you hadn't read it in a while, go back and read it.

Cause it's really funny to listen to their advice. And they're theologians, right? So each one of those three felt like they totally had

God in a perfect box and that Joe must be sinful or God wouldn't do this to him.

That was their answer basically in a nutshell. Well, that is not why it happened. That's not why it happened to him, but that's what they all thought.

So they had it all figured out. And it's funny to listen to this. Well then, you know, Job knew that wasn't true because he knew he'd been walking with the

Lord. He'd even been praying for his kids who were not walking for the Lord. They were living kind of a worldly life and Joe started praying.

He got a little angry at God. Have you ever done that? You say, well, no. Well, have you ever said,

Lord, why'd you let this happen to me? Maybe even a nice little voice. You said it in your mind, right? It's kind of the same thing, isn't it?

So Joe went off out into that area. The only difference was Joe lived prior to the cross and prior to Pentecost and the church age prior to Hebrews chapter one, verse one through three, where the scripture, the

Holy spirit said, God does not do this anymore. Like he used to before that though,

God used to come and speak to people with a voice. And so God listens to Joe saying, how did you do this to me?

God, I'm righteous. You know, I know your rules and I keep them really well. And I know a lot about science and I know a lot about, you know, your creation and how you do things.

And I just, you know, I I'm not going to curse you and ask you to kill me, but I don't like what you're doing to me and what you have done to me and I don't understand it and it can't be right.

Blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden the Lord speaks to him with a voice and here's some of what he said.

Job, do you know the balances of the clouds? Do you know the wondrous works of him, which is perfect in knowledge?

God speaking of himself using the third person proper. Yeah. He's the third person, proper

English in Hebrew or whatever God was speaking. Do you know the wondrous works of the person who has perfect knowledge?

Do you know that which is God touching the almighty?

We cannot find him out. He is excellent in power and in judgment and in plenty of justice.

Now that's a nice way of saying God does not do things that aren't just. And you're thinking you got these scabs all over you and your kids are dead and all that's happened because God is not just, and your three friends are telling you,

Joe, unless it's because of your sinful life, then God is not just.

Isn't that what they were telling him? And Job said, nothing, but I have, I've been living according to God's laws.

I've been doing sacrifices and he had been, you can read that in the first chapter of Joe, I've been walking with God.

Well, their logic, if he uses his friend's logic, I say, well, then God has to be unjust. Isn't that right? Your only two conclusions is

Joe was sinning or God is unjust. And God is saying, look, I know what you're thinking. You've been listening to your friends.

And you know, they're wrong because they're blaming it on your sinful life. So now Job, the only thing you got left is to say that I'm not just to you.

Isn't that right? Isn't that what you're saying, Joe? And God's talking to him saying, well, wait a minute. I am perfect in judgment and I am perfectly just plenty of justice and so forth.

Men do therefore fear God. He respects not any that are wise of heart.

That's kind of what you talked about in Sunday school. Like God, you can sit there and study every book men have ever written and God does not respect that wisdom.

And you said you came to that knowledge in your own life. You got to a place in physics where you thought you pretty much one of the smartest guys out there.

And after a period of time, God showed you, I don't respect that. I don't respect that wisdom.

And then this man turned his life over to study the word of God, like he had studied physics and it changed everything for himself, but for all of us too.

Right. God says, I don't respect that. And in verse, let's see, where was

I? 30 cents. So then jump up to 38, then the

Lord answered Joe out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge,

God just told Joe, you're saying things that you don't even understand you're saying words that are totally without knowledge.

Because you learned it from your three friends that were giving you worldly advice and they thought they had me in a box and everything they told you was wrong and now you bought into it.

He says, gird up now your loins like a man for, I will demand you to answer me.

Now, how would you like to have that session with God out in your backyard late one night, just you and him?

And he says, I want you to stand. The first thing you would do if you saw God, you'd fall on your face, which

God doesn't do that in the church age, but he did do it. He does say three years, three and a half years into the tribulation.

He's going to start doing this stuff again though. So we may see that happen when our sons and daughters prophesy and all that will come back, but it stopped.

Like Paul said, it would cease. But if you go back in the old Testament times, God could just show up and talk to you and you fall flat.

Every time I've ever seen it happen in scripture, they fall flat on their because they feel unclean in God's presence.

And now God tells him, stand up like a man, look me in the face and tell me how smart you are.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth out of nothing? Now he's going to talk about like, what, what is the earth dangling on?

Is there a string holding it up? How does it just float out there in space? You answer how that works,

Joe. You know, this is the kind of talk God is having with it. Where were you when

I laid the foundation of the earth declare, if you understand that, how that works, let's talk about gravity,

Joe, or let's talk about light. Is it photons or is it waves? And, uh,

I don't think bill would even want to have that talk with God. And, um, or he might like that talk, actually the measures of the earth.

Do you know anyone that can measure how the earth is placed out there in the universe who has stretched a line on it and measured these things whereupon are the foundations of the earth fastened?

What is it that holds the earth up? You remember how the old pagan, she used to think it was on the back of a turtle.

Remember when you studied some of that stuff in school, God saying, well, what does hold it up,

Joe? You don't believe it's a turtle. What do you think it is? Well, Joe didn't have a clue. Or who laid the cornerstone of the earth?

You know, I was, I like these kinds of thoughts and it may have been, cause I'd been preparing the sermon.

I was thinking about stuff like this, but I was just, um, still kind of bad with the

COVID just lay up. Basically all you can do is lay around, right? Pray the Lord just heals you because you just feel terrible when you're laying in there and I pictured myself on this huge ball that's spinning out in a universe where it's going around, dodging the objects that would destroy the earth if they hit it.

And I'm laying here in bed complaining, cause I'm sick. Don't feel good. And God is keeping that earth spinning.

So I don't fly off of it or actually he's keeping gravity so that the spinning doesn't make me fly off of it.

And here I am moving through here, assuming that everything's just going to be fine with Tokyo and China and China and Russia and the

United States. And Biden is going to do a great job. And, and all this stuff, the world's just going to hold together.

The grocery store will still be there. My kids will be okay. All everything like, you know, we'll still have sports.

We'll still have the U S open tennis and all this great stuff. We'll just go on like it is.

And I'm thinking, why am I concerned about all that? I should be worried about whether I'm going to fly off the face of this globe or not.

But wait a minute, God is doing his job moment by moment and keeping it. He's actually doing his pleasure, not his job and keeping all of that working.

Do you ever stop and think about the physics behind it? You go from the largest thing out there, the universe, and you come back to the tiniest thing in your body, that's floating around, grabbing those little spiked viruses and engulfing them in this goopy stuff and carry it out into your kidneys so that you can get rid of it into your toilet and there's other stuff you get rid of when you have

COVID too, right? And God has all of that working all the time where you're laying there.

Thinking everything's just going to keep on working from the microscopic world to the telescopic world.

There's nothing that keeps working without Jesus's hand of power still on it. And once he removes it, everything disintegrates into that nothingness that I thought about, well, where, you know, how do you do that?

Cause there was a time when there was nothing, but God, the Bible tells us that in the beginning, if you go back one second before that, there was nothing, but the father, son, the

Holy spirit, that's it. There was no space. There is no time. There was nothing, but God.

Now, when you let yourself think about those things, and now you come into space and time and he keeps his finger on it and the energy from his finger into it is all that makes it work.

You ever stop, stop and figure out how you can look at a cell under a microscope and it's just quivering with life.

How many of you ever gotten to do that in school? It's amazing. It just quivering with life. And if you could get an electron microscope and see closer down where you could even see one of these viruses, they're so small, they pass right through your mask, by the way.

But if you, if you looked at one of those, it's got some life in it. Sort of it's different weird kind, but I mean, if the

Lord's not holding it together, none of it has anything real in it. And he's doing that all the time.

So when you think about these kinds of thoughts, that's what causes you to give your body over as a living sacrifice to God.

You'll just say, okay, I see what's important now. What are we going to do together today? Right. And that's the whole point.

I mean, you could go, you could just keep going through the book of Job for a whole nother chapter or two.

And God points out everything. I always, as soon as I started reading this, I remembered my wonderful mentor, dr.

Freeman, Rocky Freeman. Who's got great stuff on our website. Cause Ben, thank you, Ben for putting it out there.

But one of the things he wrote a little book called scientific illusions in the

Bible illusions in the Bible. It means where does the Bible allude to scientific facts? It's the most amazing little book.

It talks about PI like PI R square 3 .1. What is it? Seven or one, four, one, four, blah, blah, blah.

That that is in the Bible. It talks about, and then he talked about the water cycle, which started out.

Was it here? Was it in here? It is a late note. It was in the chapter 37 when I put it up there a second ago, where he talked about the clouds.

If you read that whole chapter, God talks about the water cycle in a way that science did not understand it for thousands of years after it was written in the

Bible, you know, where it evaporates from the sea, goes up into the clouds, comes back down as rain, snow and hail and stuff.

And then comes back around. They didn't understand the water cycle for thousands of years after it was written.

So I don't know enough said we just, if we contemplate the awesome nature of God, you'll come closer to walking with the

Lord than if you make a set of rules. Okay. Let's just stop there. And, um, next

Sunday, we've got a little bit of a predicament and I'm trying to work out how we will fix it.

I'll have to let you know via email, but, um, my daughter -in -law, Julie is getting baptized at first Baptist church in my head next

Sunday at 10 15. And my whole family will be there for that.

And I'm going to try to, I guess, to get the technology here. I may try to get bent, talk

Ben into leaving with me as soon as she's baptized. Fortunately, they have an early service. So it's like 10 15 ish to 10 30.

I hadn't talked to Ben about it, but I get him to jump in the car with me and head over here, then he and I can set up the technology and we can, we can have church.

I'm concerned about Sunday school though. We may have to start late and just go for 15 minutes or something for Sunday school.

And then we have normal church. Who's who's he been?

Y 'all already talked about it. Well, then you don't have to rush over with me, but I'll probably come over because I can preach for shorter sermon than usual.

Hallelujah. You'll like it next week because I'll have to end right at about, uh, noon, noon -ish and Charlotte will drive from a, and get here and meet me here.

And we'll leave for the airport. Cause we've got to get on another business meeting. So I think we'll work out where it'll be.

The only thing that'll be a little different. And, and if you can handle the technology for Sunday school, then that doesn't have to be different, but you'd have to use two computers.

So you'll use the church one in yours. Is that what you would do? Or bills? Well, yours do that.

Can you use the church computer in yours? Yeah. Well, you can, you you'll have one.

Yeah. Well, we'll work that out. So maybe everything will be normal, normal from your viewpoint, not from mine, but from yours.

So that's what we'll work that out. All right, well, let's, uh, that's right.

You got to figure out how it works. Well, let's stand and have prayer together and, and we'll be dismissed. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

Thank you for allowing us to be able to come together and study it together. Lord, we see your hand in this

COVID thing. It's no different than biblical times when you sent pestilences to teach your people lessons and to teach the world lessons.

And so thank you for your grace and mercy. As many of us have survived it. We pray for those who in their families have members who didn't, but we know that you said, whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

So actually they were guarded too, by your wonderful hand. And so,

Lord, we just ask you to go with us now into our time of fellowship, bless the meal we're about to have. And we pray in Jesus name.