- 00:00
- Let's see. You know what I don't know is if we're recording. Can you tell Matt? Okay. So anyway, here's what
- 00:09
- I want to do for Sunday School this morning. And we'll be back with you about 10 minutes after 11 for the main service as well.
- 00:15
- But I want you to participate. So let me see if I can remember how to share the screen. And I'm going to play a video for you.
- 00:23
- I guess I better get the video. All right. You guys can send Matt. He's back there watching you guys and send him a chat if this isn't working.
- 00:32
- And we'll try again, but I think it'll work. All right. Now I want everybody to watch this.
- 00:39
- Get where you can see it. And here's what I want you to do. How many of you heard me talk about Brother Otis?
- 00:47
- Gentleman who taught for 13 years before Bill did. And he could have been a seminary professor's professor.
- 00:54
- He knew God so well, but he knew theology. Just an amazing man. I talk about him all the time.
- 01:00
- I think about him every day. And he was one of my mentors. But I remember when
- 01:07
- I first met him, he just walked in to visit. And I thought I knew who he was because I'd heard about this teacher that had been teaching for years that had four nights a week in his home, people from all different denominations and different cities coming.
- 01:20
- And I wanted to meet him anyway. And here he walks in the church. And three Sundays later, they joined. And so I went to his house, to his
- 01:29
- Bible study to check him out, make sure his doctrine was okay before I would let him teach here, obviously. So I went to his
- 01:35
- Monday night Bible study for weeks and weeks and weeks before I asked him to be our main teacher. But it blew me away the very first night.
- 01:43
- And I remember what he would give out. He used the Socratic method. So he taught by asking questions. But I remember the first, he gave us an assignment the first Monday to come back next
- 01:52
- Monday with. He said, I want you to, all right, class, I want you to think about all the different ways that a fence post pictures
- 02:01
- Jesus Christ. Okay, good night. And you're going, what? A fence post? Well, at least we're
- 02:07
- Texans. We know what a fence post is. But can you list all the ways that pictures Jesus Christ?
- 02:13
- So most of us had, you know, three, four, five or six little things we could think of. Well, my dad had, we had prayed for my dad for years.
- 02:22
- He was a like a baby Christian his whole life. He was an amazing man. My father was, could do all kinds of things.
- 02:32
- He was an FBI agent for 17 years. He worked for J.
- 02:37
- Edgar Hoover. Then he quit and started running the family oil business. And he could sew, he can make dresses.
- 02:43
- He could sew dresses. He had a feminine side too. But you wouldn't tell him that because he knew how to put you down if he needed to.
- 02:52
- But he was such a great guy and a wonderful man, but he didn't grow in the Lord much because he never found men that he respected much.
- 02:59
- He just didn't respect men much, especially pastors who didn't know how to run a business, didn't know how to do anything but study.
- 03:07
- And he didn't like that. So he wouldn't listen to him. So my mom and myself and Charlotte prayed for him for years.
- 03:13
- And then brother Otis walks in that day. Well, my dad, one thing he did like to do is greet. He liked to greet people.
- 03:19
- He'd wait at the door and grab them and love on them and bring them and sit them somewhere perfect. And he did that with Otis and Bea and put them right there.
- 03:25
- And they sat there for 13 years on that second pew right there. And it's like he and Otis just went like that the first time they locked eyes.
- 03:35
- And so my dad started going to his Monday night Bible study and he started growing. So for the last decade of my dad's life, he grew in the word.
- 03:44
- And so he comes back with 26 ways that a fence post is like Jesus. And Otis had never seen anybody do that.
- 03:51
- He went, whoa, brother Fred, I'm proud of you. That sort of thing. Well, that made my dad just want to do more.
- 03:58
- So he grew and grew and grew for 10 years before he went to be with the Lord. That was such a blessing to see. So today's lesson is kind of like the fence post, except I want you to use the ocean.
- 04:08
- So I want you to look at the ocean. If the sky shows, I don't remember if it does in this video. This is something
- 04:14
- I took this video on the ship here because one of the things I like to do is there's a deck really close to the water, but it's outside.
- 04:22
- And I'll sit there and watch the water because in the Caribbean, it's a different blue than you've seen anywhere in the world.
- 04:28
- It's just amazing. But the ship makes these resplendent white bubbles, foam.
- 04:37
- It's just so bright. He almost had to put sunglasses on, contrasted with that dark blue water.
- 04:43
- And I'll sit there and I call it watching the bubbles and I'll do it for hours. Charlotte thinks I'm nuts, but I mean, I just, because I think like Jesus, all things are made by him and everything's held together by him too.
- 04:56
- And I'm thinking every bubble, he's holding those things together somehow. How does he do that? I'm thinking about the Lord. Lord, this is beautiful.
- 05:02
- Thanks for letting me see it. Your creation's amazing. So, I do that every time, but this time
- 05:08
- I started looking at stuff and thinking, I thought about the fence post and I said, well, I wonder how many things I can think of that this right here reminds me of God.
- 05:17
- And so that's what I want you to do. And so I ended up spending a whole day writing stuff down and finding the scriptures that backed it.
- 05:26
- So we're going to look at some of those this morning with the little time we have. But first I want you to make, start making your own list. Okay.
- 05:32
- So let's see if we can make the tech work. I think we are sharing, right? Watch that for hours, right?
- 05:41
- But I mean, this, as far as you can see, there's nothing out there.
- 05:49
- As far as you can see, the circle of the earth all the work.
- 06:01
- So you had that up there too. All right. Let me show you one more. Did you guys see it?
- 06:09
- Okay. Oh, that's good.
- 06:16
- Let me see if I can get rid of this one. All right. This one's got more bubbles.
- 06:42
- Those are like two feet under the water and they're all together like a jellyfish with the bubbles and it'll float by and stay together.
- 06:49
- Those are the things I want. See down here at the bottom. All right. So be thinking now, what, what can you learn about God by looking at that?
- 07:00
- Oh, there's a little bit of Texas clouds, see them up there. And that gives you a little bit of depth of it, but not the breadth.
- 07:07
- There's no way I can capture camera. So let me fix this right quick.
- 07:15
- Turn this off because it's echoing. All right. So have you got your list made?
- 07:25
- All right. Find my list.
- 07:41
- I think we can turn that off now, probably. Look at that.
- 07:58
- See how it turned off the TV. Not bad. Yeah. I can do that at home too.
- 08:06
- Sometimes every once in a while it works. All right. So who wants to tell me a couple?
- 08:16
- Who thought of something that reminds you about the character of God or something about God that it teaches you?
- 08:22
- Hmm. What?
- 08:29
- Oh, vast. I thought you said fast. How vast? Vast and wonderful God is.
- 08:35
- The vastness of God. That's good. Hey, can you turn that down just a hair, Matt? I don't want to,
- 08:41
- I don't want to look holy, just normal human. There you go. All right. Um, the vast, the breadth of God, infinite, infinity, maybe the infinity of God.
- 08:55
- Okay. Who else? Yes. And that word consist means held together, right?
- 09:17
- Yeah. Including those bubbles. What else? Oh, see, there's one
- 09:24
- I picked was I thought about under that water. There's probably stuff that would freak us out down there, right?
- 09:30
- Where we were in that picture, it was 7 ,000 feet deep. So it's over almost a mile and a half deep right there.
- 09:38
- So, you know, who knows what's down there? And there's some places you go out there where you cross a trench and it's, you know, eight, seven miles deep or 10 miles deep out there.
- 09:48
- And, uh, so there's some creepy stuff God made and put down there that we don't even know about. But I, so, so it made me think about life that I made me think about the life he created, but it made me think this, it made me think about his eternal nature that he is life.
- 10:05
- And, uh, he's life in and of himself, which no one can figure out how he did that, but he, he did do it.
- 10:16
- Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Just all kinds of beautiful creations. Yeah.
- 10:28
- Yes. I mean, there's times when you just see a million little diamonds sparkling where the sun's hitting it just right on top of that blue with that white next to it.
- 10:38
- It's crazy, but not to mention the fish. How many of you snorkel? I mean, you know how to snorkel. So you've seen the colors on the fish and the, the huge numbers of species.
- 10:49
- It's just incredible. So what else? Who can think of something else? Yeah, he could take it with that ocean.
- 11:00
- Couldn't he? I thought about that every night. I went to sleep on that stupid ship, but I'm always thinking about those tankers out there.
- 11:07
- And it's not so bad until it gets foggy. Then you wonder where the tankers are. What else?
- 11:19
- Exactly. I've thought about, to me, water is his greatest creation almost.
- 11:26
- I mean, I know there's greater things, but when you think of, well, if you think of the
- 11:33
- Genesis account, everything pretty much started with water. It's an amazing creation.
- 11:40
- And it's just so vast and so beautiful. And it's a gift,
- 11:47
- I think, to his son, but through him and because of him to us as well.
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- Do you ever think about like when you're experiencing something like I was watching that, do you ever ask the
- 12:00
- Lord now, I know you can, you know, you're, I'm not present, you're omniscient, you're, you can see everything everywhere.
- 12:09
- But are you watching this through my eyes? Because you live in me. Have you ever had that thought? Like, are you experiencing this life in my body with me?
- 12:19
- Because he is. And so that's pretty cool. But yeah, a gift, the gift of water is amazing.
- 12:26
- What else you can think of? Yeah, all the new things.
- 12:53
- Yeah, exactly.
- 13:02
- We learned so much about God through our children and grandchildren. It's got to be one of the reasons he gives them to us other than the fact that he uses us to create his own children, his new children.
- 13:13
- Have you ever thought about that? You know, I've taught so many years now about the idea of the family business and how it has an ancient precursor.
- 13:20
- And that is that God started the first family business, so to speak. But we all grew up with these strange thoughts of God that we just hear.
- 13:30
- And before we start getting into the word, you know, we just hear stuff about what God is from parents, grandparents, friends at school and all this before you ever get into the word.
- 13:38
- And then it's kind of contorted by the time you get into the word and you sort of filter the Bible through that junk.
- 13:44
- And we get it wrong a lot of times. But now I forgot my thought. I was going to tell you.
- 13:53
- Yeah, something about that. Yeah. OK, now I remember my thought. So you think about one of those bad ideas is we were taught to say,
- 14:03
- OK, Lord, go with me all day. Go with me and be with me. It's like he's the disciple.
- 14:09
- Right. He's going to follow me. Right. That's what we're taught to think. And then we start reading the scripture. We find it.
- 14:14
- Wait a minute. I'm a disciple. So we change our prayer and we say, Lord, let me go with you today. Where are you going? Let me go with you.
- 14:22
- And so it's interesting as you start to flow out in scripture and you start to understand, does
- 14:28
- God need us? No, I guess if you want to be ultimately truthful about it, he didn't need us.
- 14:35
- Did he want us? Yes. So in that sense, he needs us. So but he can do anything and everything without us.
- 14:43
- And he did one of the things that bothered Brother Otis. I hope I don't forget my first thought because I'm going into a second one now.
- 14:49
- A lot was he said, Brother David, have you ever thought about what God did before Genesis one one?
- 14:55
- And I said, I try not to. And he said, well, good, Brother David, because it will bother you.
- 15:04
- But because there was nothing at that point but him like you had the father, son, spirit, that's it.
- 15:10
- No stars, no nothing. There was no space, no time. One of the things we study in theology is and I don't like it.
- 15:17
- I was talking to Charlotte about it yesterday. She doesn't like it either. But they call God simple. Have you heard that expression in theology?
- 15:25
- It just means he's not made of parts. He's pure spirit, whatever that is.
- 15:31
- No man really knows what that is, but it's not stuff. It's not stuff.
- 15:37
- It requires no space, no time. It's not made of anything. It just is.
- 15:43
- And that's God. And he's simple in the sense that he doesn't have parts. He's one God. And some people misunderstand the
- 15:51
- Trinity. They think that's three parts of God. But in reality, it's not. That's a kind of a bad understanding of it.
- 15:57
- But there's no way to understand it very well. So we think that way sometimes. But this is really not how it is because God is one
- 16:03
- God. If you want to put it theologically, the way you can word it, which won't help, but this is how it's worded is he is one
- 16:12
- God who subsists in three distinct persons. But then when you think of a person, it's not like persons like us.
- 16:18
- It's not like that because he's one person, right? But what it means is the
- 16:24
- Holy Spirit has the things that people have. Like he has a conscience, he has a will, he has all these senses and things he can love.
- 16:34
- And then Jesus is the same way and the Father is the same way. So in that sense, they're three persons, you see. But just by saying three persons, which is how they've said it for 2000 years, it's confusing because it's not like three different people.
- 16:46
- See? But then you look at Jesus, he said, when I leave, I'm going to send another comforter who is like me.
- 16:53
- So that to us means a different person. But it's not like it is if I said,
- 16:59
- I'm going to send my friend here who's like me and he'll help you. It's not quite like that, but it's the best we can understand it.
- 17:05
- So we have these interesting conceptions. But the thing about God that we do know from scripture is he prefers to work with us, not just by himself, at least this side of Genesis 1 .1.
- 17:19
- Well, we should get into the sixth day where everything's great, including man.
- 17:25
- From that point, he likes to work through us. So it's funny how when you reread things, you say, oh,
- 17:32
- I don't remember seeing that in scripture. And I was rereading the creation story on the ship.
- 17:41
- It's interesting how you read it. But in chapter two, it gives a broad general discussion of it.
- 17:47
- Chapter one is detailed. So if you ever read chapter two account first, it's interesting because it's broad in general.
- 17:54
- But he said, well, you know, he said, it just says God created everything it is.
- 18:02
- And then it says, and the seed before there was a plant, something like that.
- 18:08
- I'm paraphrasing too. Kyle, I do that all the time. I can't remember the details. But the seed before the plant, and this before there was that.
- 18:17
- And it said, and nothing, there were no trees because there was no water on the earth.
- 18:25
- And because there was no man to till the soil and keep the garden.
- 18:31
- So that's why there were no trees yet or fruit or anything yet. And that's in the chapter two account.
- 18:37
- Now think about that. God would not even create the fruit trees and have the fruit be on them yet until man was ready to keep it because he didn't want to do it.
- 18:48
- He's going to let do it with man. He's going to do it with Adam together with him, not Adam by himself because without me, we can do nothing right.
- 18:56
- But with Adam and God together, we're going to keep the garden. Isn't that cool? So it's that way with us.
- 19:02
- Everything is together with us. So I got a little time left. Let me share some, a couple of other ones that I thought of.
- 19:13
- In fact, I haven't quite decided. I thought I might switch topics and preach on this for a few
- 19:19
- Sundays, but I don't think I'm going to do that, but I might. I'm not going to today, but here's a few that I thought of.
- 19:26
- When I looked at that blue, the blueness of that water, when you think of royal blue biblically, that speaks of kingship, which would picture the deity of Christ and the godness of God.
- 19:40
- The fact that he is king of heaven and earth. He's king of kings. He is sovereign. So the blueness of that water pictures the sovereignty of God.
- 19:49
- Secondly, the white, just the stark contrast of that white bubbles or whatever you want to call them, the foam that the ship makes from the water.
- 20:01
- To me, that white color pictures the righteousness and holiness of God, especially the holiness of God.
- 20:10
- And then if you think about the ship having an anchor, there's a lot of amazing stuff about that Jesus is the anchor of our soul.
- 20:16
- Have you ever thought about what that even means? Because when a ship is anchored, it's not moving through waters.
- 20:22
- It's stationary. It's steadfast. It's positioned in a certain position. It doesn't move. That's how we're supposed to be.
- 20:28
- We're not supposed to let the winds of doctrine that blow out there on the sea move us around, but without that anchor, it blows us everywhere.
- 20:36
- So I saw that in there. And then the color of the sea, who can tell me why it's blue sometimes and why it's not blue sometimes.
- 20:46
- Sometimes this looks really dark, like almost dark gray from the sky.
- 20:53
- So if there's not many clouds and the sun is directly shining, it's got that awesome blue color, which is what
- 20:59
- I look for every day when I go out there to see if it's doing it. And if it's doing it, I'll go to deck five and hang over there and just watch it for a long period of time.
- 21:07
- So that color comes from the sky. So what does that teach you if you think about it from God is that a lot of the things on the earth are models, so to speak, of the realities of heaven.
- 21:23
- Like you think about the wilderness tabernacle and the Holy of Holies that was in that was not the real one.
- 21:29
- Although the Shekinah Glory was there, it was a resemblance of God. I don't know how to say it since he simply doesn't have parts, but he let some of his glory shine through there.
- 21:40
- But it's nothing compared to the true one that's in heaven. There is Shekinah Glory is actually the
- 21:51
- Father's presence in heaven. All of the Father can't be there because it would destroy everything.
- 21:56
- He cannot come into space and time. He's outside of everything he created. But Jesus and the
- 22:02
- Holy Spirit come into space and time, obviously. That's why Jesus was known as God with us.
- 22:09
- But so when you think about the real things in heaven, and the
- 22:16
- Lord told us that while we're here, we do not even have the ability to imagine what that's going to look like.
- 22:23
- He said your mind can't do it. You can't just forget about it. You're not going to imagine what you're going to see when you come here.
- 22:31
- The other stuff he's created, right? So it made me think about that. The rainbow, sometimes on that foam that was up here, if the sun's in the right place when it threw that,
- 22:41
- I mean the spray from the ocean, you'd see a rainbow in that spray. So that sort of pictures the faithfulness of God.
- 22:51
- And then he got some seaweed floating around out there. So that sort of pictures all the plant life that he created.
- 22:57
- And the sea creatures, they discuss that, the vastness. Both of you guys did. The vastness of everything he created under there just pictures life itself.
- 23:08
- Sometimes we call that the aseity of God. It's a Latin word that means from self.
- 23:16
- So he has life from himself. He's the only being that has that. But we could just call it his eternal life.
- 23:25
- It pictures that. Let's see here.
- 23:35
- And then the depth and breadth. I think, Dave, didn't you mention that? The depth and breadth of the ocean. That pictures his omnipresence, which is an interesting discussion we could have today.
- 23:46
- But I'm not going to choose that one, I don't think. And then it made me think of a water cycle, because it would rain out there.
- 23:52
- You could see it raining way out there somewhere. And then it's going back up. And Job is the most ancient book in the
- 23:59
- Bible. And it discusses the water cycle before science figured it out. I mean 2 ,000 years before science, maybe three or four thousand years before science figured that out.
- 24:08
- The Bible was already talking about it. So those are just some of the things. But with the little time we got left, I want to talk about the royal blue color of that water.
- 24:16
- And it pictures that God is the king of heaven and earth.
- 24:22
- He is the king of kings. He is the deity of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and the
- 24:27
- Father. It pictures all that, and the sovereignty of God. So if you have a Bible, turn to Daniel 4, verse 34.
- 24:35
- And I want to show you some scriptures that sprung forth from my phone while I was sitting out there watching the bubbles.
- 24:44
- And so as I would think of that list of things I just read, I'd start looking up scriptures for each of them. And I got about 30,
- 24:52
- I don't know, 35 pages of scriptures from these things where I saw God in the water.
- 25:00
- It's a lot more than you come up with on a fence post, I'll assure you. So let's talk about that blue water and the royalty, the kingship of God.
- 25:10
- In Daniel chapter 4, verse 34, it says, Nebuchadnezzar, let me move this over here, it says,
- 25:21
- Nebuchadnezzar lifted up I, sorry, okay, now
- 25:27
- I see where it starts right here. And at the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven.
- 25:34
- Now this was the most powerful king on earth who had been humbled, if you remember, and ate straw like an ox or whatever, and then got his senses back.
- 25:44
- And he said, I lifted up my eyes unto heaven and my understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most high.
- 25:52
- Now he called God the most high. When Abraham offered to Melchizedek, he said he was the priest of the most high
- 26:02
- God. And so the same thing Nebuchadnezzar calls him because he's a king, he's the most powerful king on the earth, but he calls
- 26:10
- God the most high king. He is the king of kings is what he's saying when he says this.
- 26:15
- He says, I bless the most high and I praise and honored him that lives forever. So that is the aseity of God or the self -existence of God.
- 26:26
- He's eternal nature, his eternal nature. And then it says whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, whereas Nebuchadnezzar knew his kingdom would end someday.
- 26:38
- God's kingdom is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom is from generation to generation.
- 26:43
- Now this was a man who didn't know God first, a Gentile, a pagan man, and God revealed himself to this man and he is praising him is what he's doing here.
- 26:56
- And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing in God's sight.
- 27:03
- And he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
- 27:08
- Now it would do well for the modern church to read this about once a week because in modern theology, man is the king of kings.
- 27:17
- And I call it Arminianism, you know, the world would call it humanism. Arminianism is humanism in the church and there's no place for it.
- 27:27
- But the problem with it is that man does not understand that he is repute, he himself, man himself, including all the inhabitants, the animal kingdom, the plants, all the beautiful creation we just saw is reputed as nothing by God.
- 27:45
- Now you and I had an interesting discussion on that last night, didn't we? Because she gets out on the internet and gets in some of these groups and she tries to correct their theology with patience and it takes a lot of patience.
- 27:59
- There are some real nutcases out there and I'm not talking about you guys, all right? You guys got it right. But there's some nutcases out there on the internet and you do it mostly through Facebook, yeah?
- 28:10
- And all right, so she'll, you know, she'll throw out a comment and they go into like piranhas, like a frenzy, and she'll throw like God created evil and they go into a frenzy.
- 28:20
- God is not the author of evil, you know, he can't create evil. She throws a verse up there, we'll read it. Yeah, but wait a minute, read the scripture.
- 28:29
- See, you're trying to get involved with your philosophy of who you think God is, but what does the scripture say?
- 28:35
- And they won't do it, will they? Usually, they just won't do it. Yeah, they call her a
- 28:42
- Calvinist thinking that's a bad thing, you know? It's really weird. Have you ever read Calvin? If you read Calvin, I challenge you to do it.
- 28:48
- Read Calvin like you will go into a higher level of consciousness reading
- 28:53
- Calvin. He was that good at writing about God. He knew God that well. The great
- 28:59
- Charles Spurgeon counted him as his mentor, even though he was already in heaven. And he got to preach from his pulpit one time and wore the robe and everything, which he said for Baptists don't preach in dresses.
- 29:11
- They said, well, sir, you don't have to wear it, but he wore it. If you want to wear it, he said, let me have it. And he put on that robe and he preached from his pulpit.
- 29:18
- He said it was the highlight of his life. And he talks about how he never held back the word
- 29:23
- Calvin. I mean, I've got folks that don't want me to use the word Calvinist or Calvinism because they think it closes mind.
- 29:30
- And it can, can it? It can close the mind. Yeah, it can close people's minds.
- 29:35
- But I'll tell you what, Charles Spurgeon mentioned Calvin's name in almost every sermon. So it's not wrong to mention his name because he didn't invent it.
- 29:41
- He was just a teacher who, who was a very good teacher of the Bible. So anyway, anyway, so, but what that, so what they were asking you, well, you said, well, why,
- 29:53
- I don't know how it came into some other scripture you gave them about God can create things and he can destroy things.
- 29:59
- You know, there's a verse that says that very clearly. And yeah, exactly.
- 30:06
- And you're probably thinking a thousand reasons, like, well, have you heard of hell? You know, there's a place called hell.
- 30:12
- You believe in that, right? That's eternal destruction. And then we're talking about, have you heard about the thing about the earth?
- 30:20
- You know how it goes away with a loud noise. All right. From whose perspective we'll hear that loud noise, right?
- 30:28
- Well, we'll be in the four square city listening to it. We'll hear it. It'll be a shock wave, I'm sure. But yeah, can
- 30:34
- God destroy anything? Well, his whole entire creation to his own self is reputed as nothing compared to him.
- 30:41
- And people don't like that. And I understand why they don't, because we're humanists. We're God, you know, before you got saved, you were
- 30:49
- God, you do know that, right? You ran your life, you ran everything and you knew you did. And you liked it that way.
- 30:54
- And that's why you did not get saved the day before or one second before you did, because if God hadn't called you, you'd still be lost as a goose.
- 31:01
- And so would I, because you just didn't want it. You were God. It feels pretty good to think you're God until you get on this side and you go, man,
- 31:08
- I'd be afraid to die. I would be scared to death if I thought I ran everything or anything. If I thought I ran anything by myself,
- 31:14
- I'd be scared to death. But that's after your eyes are open, right? So all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing and he doeth according to his will.
- 31:26
- Now, what about that aspect? Okay, is it okay for God the potter to mold certain clay into something that was created to go to hell when it dies?
- 31:35
- Read Jude if you don't understand what I'm talking about. Is it okay for him to do that? Is it okay for God to mold some human beings into something that will never be saved because it won't want to?
- 31:45
- It could be if all it would have to do is cry out and say, Lord, save me. And he'd save him in an instant, but it won't want to.
- 31:52
- But God created the human race with their propensity to sin, didn't he? And this whole idea that the sin nature came because Adam and Eve sinned, that's a theological concept that's false.
- 32:06
- It's not biblical. The fall didn't create the sin nature. It was there already.
- 32:13
- Scripture teaches that God created us that way with vanity in our hearts.
- 32:20
- If you ask the question why, it's because you never would have had a cross without it and you never would have known
- 32:26
- Jesus Christ without it or the love of God or the grace.
- 32:32
- The whole idea of grace would never be known. It would all be just works salvation. And if you weren't as good as the good angels, you'd go to hell forever, right?
- 32:41
- So there's lots of reasons, but people don't like to think about that stuff. So notice what it says is that he, and this is this pagan king talking about God who he met through this experience.
- 32:54
- And he says, well, you know, what's interesting is that God does according to his will.
- 33:00
- He doesn't, you can't influence his will. You're not going to change what he wants to do.
- 33:07
- And now can you influence Jesus's will? Yes. Why? Because that's God with us.
- 33:12
- He's in time and space, but not the father you won't. Not even Jesus could.
- 33:18
- He said, Jesus said, look, I don't do anything or say anything unless I saw the father do it. He does not try to change
- 33:24
- God. I mean, the one time he did try to change him, he said, can you figure out a way? I don't have to go to the cross and still make this work.
- 33:31
- Nevertheless, thy will be done, right? And because he put that last phrase, his prayer was answered.
- 33:37
- I mean, it was answered no, but it was like part of his prayer.
- 33:43
- So it was okay. He did nothing other than the father's will. And that's where he's so different than we are.
- 33:50
- And in reality, we don't do anything other than his will either. In reality, once we do it, it wouldn't have been done if it hadn't been part of his plan, but people don't get that either.
- 33:58
- Anyway, there's so much great stuff in the water. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing.
- 34:06
- And he does according to his will and the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stop his hand.
- 34:12
- So you can't like, once God determines he's going to do something, you cannot change that. Man thinks he can.
- 34:19
- We had a group of people leave this church, four families when brother Otis came and I'd already checked him out for weeks, maybe months, a couple of months before I let him teach.
- 34:29
- And he taught and they all left. And I went to visit him three times because I loved him.
- 34:34
- One of them was my church secretary, his family. And he taught that our prayers don't do anything.
- 34:40
- You can't change God. Our prayers are meaningless. And I said, I've got the tape. Will you let me play it?
- 34:46
- He didn't say that. Nope. Nope. We're leaving. I said, now go visit him a second time.
- 34:53
- He taught that our prayers are meaningless. I said, he did not say that. I've got the tape. Can we listen to it? Nope. We're gone.
- 34:59
- See, see, because they're like, they're almost like liberal politicians. They just want to feel, they just want to feel the way they want to feel.
- 35:06
- And it has nothing to do with knowledge or the way things are or truth. You see what I'm saying? So I, you know, it's sad, but you can't reach people that are like that.
- 35:15
- All right. So all the inhabitants of the earth reputed as nothing, he does according to his will. None can stay his hand or saying to him, why did you do it that way?
- 35:24
- But people do that all the time. And I'm out of time. So let me close with this. I've had the opportunity to preach stuff like this all over the entire country and every major market through Tradeway to hundreds of people, much bigger crowds than our crowd.
- 35:39
- But this crowd is the backbone of all of that entire ministry. And they will come up to meet me at the breaks.
- 35:47
- And when I throw some of this stuff into a stock market seminar, it's interesting to them for one thing, but sometimes they disagree with it and they'll come up to me at the break.
- 35:56
- And I said, well, I have to disagree with you on that. You know, I don't think God would, whatever, you know,
- 36:02
- I don't think, I just don't think God would do that. And I said, well, let me ask you something. I'm talking like they're right here and I'm looking right in their eyes.
- 36:09
- I'll say, let me ask you something. What if I showed you in scripture that God does do that in the scripture in this plain and simple language, and you saw that, would you still love that God?
- 36:22
- And I have seen them go stone dead quiet, staring right in my eyes, saying nothing for long minutes, and then just walk away.
- 36:33
- Because they knew the answer was, no, I don't love a God that's like that. And I just showed him he was like that.
- 36:38
- So now they don't know what to do. Now, you know, if they're going to get saved, they'll keep thinking about it, right?
- 36:46
- And they'll keep, they'll study and research. And we've had, we've had people that hated me for it and went home and studied and ended up driving here and going to church here.
- 36:57
- And some of them work for us now like that. So, but I mean, you think about that. God is not how we grew up thinking that he is.
- 37:04
- He's different. And so people that want to stay in that mode, they've created a different God, which is idolatry, and they're all of our job, when
- 37:16
- God opens the door, when you think their mind is open, to say a few words to try to bring them around to think properly.
- 37:22
- All right, we're out of time. We will race to get the technology ready for the 1110 -ish service.