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Bro. Bill Nichols
So, I guess we can go ahead and start. We're not expecting anyone else to come right away. Okay, we're going to begin this morning looking at the opening of Jesus' ministry, which began shortly after His wilderness testing and lasted until His ascension 40 days after His resurrection.
Go to Matthew 4 .10 and we'll begin and we'll read a little bit and then we'll pause to pray. This is Matthew's account of Jesus right after the wilderness testing. Matthew 4 .10. Then Jesus said unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Then the devil leaveth him. Now in Luke, it's recorded this way. And when the devil had ended all the temptations, he departed from him for a season. Okay, the immediate testing is now over. And behold, the angels came and ministered unto him.
That's back in Matthew. The devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him. We talked about that last week. So now, the ministry of Jesus is about to begin. Verse 12. Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee.
And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphthaleum, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphthaleum, by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people which sat in the darkness, saw great light.
And to them which sat in the region and the shadow of death, light is sprung up. Isaiah, or actually Luke, is speaking of, Matthew is speaking of the Messiah. So Matthew is speaking of the Messiah. The great light that is sprung up in the shadow of death, that's the Messiah.
From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And immediately in Matthew's account, Jesus begins calling the first of his twelve disciples. Verse 18. And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.
And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightaway left their nets and followed him. And going on from thence, he saw two other brethren, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.
And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed him. And Jesus went about Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. I highlighted that, preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
And healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria. And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with diverse diseases and torments, and those that were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had palsy.
And he healed them, and there followed him a great multitude of people from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, for Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. Now all of this that took place in the first several chapters of Matthew, probably took about a year to accomplish.
From the time of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Now we're going to skip the rest of chapter 4, all of chapter 5 of Matthew, and go into chapter 6, verse 9. Matthew 6, verse 9. Just go down a couple of pages.
And it will talk about what's in between. There's red letters where Jesus is teaching various things. And toward the end of his message, he comes to this. Matthew 6, verse 9. Now it's interesting, at least to me, to note that Jesus gave this model prayer to his disciples almost a year later than he was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted of Satan.
And what was in his prayer? Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We talked about that last week. It was kind of half of that prayer was granted. The Holy Spirit did lead Jesus into the wilderness to be tested.
But he also did deliver Jesus from the evil one. So let's begin this morning with a prayer. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. And thank you for giving us this place to come together to study your holy word.
Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to guide us and your written word for us to read and find the message that you have for us, the good news of the gospel. Thank you for the Lord's prayer that tells us, ask for him not to lead us into temptation.
But if he does, we know that your ways are higher than our ways. And we don't understand it all, but we do know that even if we're led into a period of testing, he and you will be able and willing to deliver us from the evil one.
Bless us and keep us. Go through all the services today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All of that was setting up to look back quickly at verse 1 of chapter 4. I'm just going to read it and look at the condition that Jesus was in after he comes out of the baptism.
Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from the Jordan, he came up out of the river before he was baptized, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted 40 days of the devil. So what was Jesus' condition this time?
He was full of the Holy Spirit. He was not simply indwelt. That's our condition. We're indwelt. We're always indwelt of where he is. And we're sometimes full, or sometimes close to being full. But I don't think any of us are ever as full as Jesus was, and therefore none of us are ever totally full of the Holy Spirit.
Luke in Acts speaks to our condition. And I'm just going to start with verse 1 of Acts 1 and read it, and then we will look at questions. The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do, both to do and to teach.
Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them 40 days, and speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
So his teaching, Jesus' teaching, lasted from the time he came out of the wilderness, after his temptation, until 40 days after his resurrection when he ascended into the heavens. And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem.
This is Luke talking about the commandment that Jesus gave to the apostles. But wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he, Ye have heard of me? For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence.
When they therefore come together, they ask of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power, but ye shall receive power.
He's again speaking to the apostles. After that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all of Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Okay, the apostles will be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, or they are at this time indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And they will be given power, power to be God's witnesses at the beginning of the church age.
Power that is no longer, I believe, available to us. But they were given great power. I don't believe there are any apostles anymore, because there's not any need for apostles anymore. Paul in Ephesians speaks to us, the redeemed.
Not to the apostles, but to us. And what he says is, in Ephesians 5, verse 14,. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepeth, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. How can we be understanding of what the will of the Lord is? How can we be that? How can we be understanding of what the will of the Lord is?
We're under His will, but how can we understand what His will is? Okay, and where do we go to know Him better? We go into the Scripture. We have the Scripture written, and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us and show us what the Scripture says.
So it is evident to Paul that we cannot be unwise. We can be understanding, because we have the Scripture, and we have the Holy Spirit telling us what the Scripture says. But be understanding of what the will of the Lord is.
And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, how full will we be filled? We'll be filled as full as we need to be filled. But I don't think we'll ever be filled totally full as Jesus was filled totally full when He came up out of the wilderness testing.
He was more full then even than He was when He went into the wilderness to be tested. Okay, Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit when He was led into the wilderness. And if you can be more full than full, He was even more full when He came out.
He was tested, a test that unlike Adam, who had some Holy Spirit in Him, was not full of it. Jesus passed. Something to consider is this. If Jesus, even when full of the Holy Spirit, could have been led into the wilderness to be tested, so can we.
And it should not surprise any of us that we would be led into a time of temptation. That doesn't mean we have to fail. We can pass. We have all the tools necessary. We have the understanding provided by the Scripture and the Holy Spirit.
We have but to take advantage of reading it and studying it and knowing what the Scripture tells us to do. And then we need to be prayerful. And we need to ask the Lord, what should we do? We can be successful as Jesus was successful and not a failure as Adam was a failure.
Okay, now we're going to pick up where we left off last time. And when the devil had ended all temptation, he departed from Him for a season. What's clear is that Satan did not abandon his attack on Jesus.
He simply withdrew it to resume it at a later date. How long has Satan been at war with Jesus? Okay, I'm going to take that. I like that one even better than what I was going to say. I was going to say from the time God cursed him in the garden and said this to him.
The Lord God said unto the serpent, Satan actually fell sooner than that. And his hatred for Jesus was sooner than that, which is what led him into the garden to test Adam and Eve. But in any case, this is what the Lord said.
We know at least now. Because thou hast done this thing, curse thou art above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
And I will put enmity, I will make an enemy of you and he between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He's talking to Satan. Satan's seed and Eve's seed. Who's Eve's seed? Eve's seed is Jesus the Messiah.
So from this point on, there is enmity between Jesus and Satan. And everything that Satan does in all the years that pass from the garden right on up through Jesus' birth, through his death, through his resurrection, and even up until now, is Satan trying to bruise the head of Jesus.
And he will be successful only in bruising his heel. Only creating some pain for Jesus. Not in destroying him. But what will happen to Satan is, the Lord will bruise his head. And that will be the end of Satan.
But it hasn't happened yet. Luke 14. And Jesus returned in power of the Spirit into Galilee. And there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues. I didn't highlight that, but I should have.
So what's he doing when he goes throughout all the region? He's teaching in all the synagogues. And he's being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read.
Now Jesus may have been and probably was in Nazareth many times before this particular incident. This particular occasion. But he was certainly here for this. He was in Nazareth now. And furthermore, Jesus was in the habit not only of attending the synagogue on the Sabbath day, but teaching there as well.
So he may have taught several times in Nazareth. And he certainly taught, as we read earlier, in the synagogues throughout all of Galilee through Capernaum. The normal procedure was the teacher would stand up and read the predetermined scripture.
Then he would sit down and he would call his disciples or listeners to sit around him. And he would begin to expound upon the text. On this particular Sabbath day, the preselected scripture was taken from the book of Isaiah.
I'm going to read the portion that Jesus read and that Luke is going to quote. But I'm going to read Isaiah first. It's Isaiah 61 .1. And I need somebody to linger on this page after we get through. Because we're going to line by line compare what Isaiah said to what Luke says.
And see where they are alike and where they are different. So here we go. Luke 61 .6. Verse 61. Verse 1. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek.
He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim the liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Verse 2. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of the vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn.
Those are the first two verses in Isaiah 61. Now, verse 17. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. What place did he find?
Isaiah 61. Verses 1 and 2. Before I read the rest of the passage in Luke, I want to ask you this. I'd like for you to notice that these two passages track very, very well. Especially considering the originals were written in two different languages.
Isaiah was written in Hebrew. And the Hebrew was later translated into Greek. Whereas Luke was written originally in the Greek. So one was written in Greek, one was written in Hebrew and translated into the Greek.
So there's going to be some minor differences, but there's going to be a major difference as well. So we're going to look for the minor differences first. Now, who's going to read from Isaiah for me as we go through?
Okay, thank you. From Isaiah 61. Let me read Luke 4 .18 first. And when I stop, I want you to read what Isaiah said about this. Out of verses 1 and 2, and just kind of start when I start and stop when I stop, okay?
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. Perfect balance, right? Slight different words, meaning the same things, only because of the translational differences.
Let's go on. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted. So far, so good. To preach the deliverance of the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind. Okay, we got two kind of out of order, didn't we?
To set at liberty them that are bruised. That's the one that I had you read too early. Alright, that's verse 18 of Luke's account. We're now going to go to verse 19 of Luke's account. That would be verse 2 in your account.
Okay, here we go. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Period. Keep going. Alright, what's left out in Luke's account? What's left out in Luke's account? The day of vengeance of our God. That's what's left out.
So what did he do? Verse 20. And he closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And all the eyes of them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. I don't think just like you guys eyes are out now kind of partially fastened on me.
I think every eye was peering directly at Jesus, waiting for him to finish the sentence. That's why they were looking at him so intently. All eyes of them were fastened on him. Why? He stopped in mid-sentence.
And so what does that tell us? There's more to say. There's more to see. There's something mentioned in Luke, I'm sorry, mentioned in Isaiah 61 that will not take place at the time that Luke is reading it now.
In fact, it hasn't even taken place yet. More than 2 ,000 years after Luke recorded this account. And what is that thing that hasn't taken place yet? The Day of Vengeance of the Lord. Now, I can tell you now that this is an example of absolutely great news.
We didn't want the Day of Vengeance to be then. We don't want the Day of Vengeance to be tomorrow. We want to wait a little bit so we can get our houses in order. If we can. We certainly don't desire for the Day of Vengeance of the Lord.
Maybe we do, because we know what goes along with it. A vote. How many desire for the Day of Vengeance of the Lord to come? Okay, Brother David, I think I'm in agreement with you. But on the left-hand side of me, I say, not really today.
Wait until tomorrow, Lord, please. But what do we do? We have this kind of mixed feeling. We know the good that's going to come that is even greater than the good that's given us now. We can't have any imagination of the good things the Lord has laid up in store for us.
We can't even imagine it. The things that we're given on earth, the good things we're given on earth, kind of hint at what the good things might be. But it's only a hint. Okay, so Jesus goes on to say,.
And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Not what Isaiah wrote, but the portion that he just quoted. Down to the Day of Vengeance. Now in this verse, Jesus answers two implied questions.
Number one, of whom is Isaiah writing? Who's he writing? He's writing of Jesus. The Messiah. I've heard people say, Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. He did. And when will this happen? Okay, the word I said is now, but not really now.
Now 2 ,000 years ago. When Jesus read this passage, that's when the now was. Sir? The moment he read it, that's the now. And all bear him witness and wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth.
What made them so gracious? He left out the Day of Vengeance. Apparently, Jesus continued to speak on the theme just mentioned. And he did it with words that were literally full of grace. They sensed the goodness and the grace of God in the announcement that the ministry of the Messiah was now present.
The good news of the gospel. That's what they were amazed at for a while. Didn't even finish this verse. Just goes to show how fickle we are. They're amazed at the graciousness of his word for half a verse.
And they say, is this not Joseph's son? After their initial amazement, they began to resent the fact that someone so familiar, Joseph's son, could speak with such grace and claim to be the fulfillment of such a remarkable prophecy.
Well now, all they said was, is this not Joseph's son? And Jesus answers the question that's on their mind. Because he does maintain a lot of the, I forget what we called them last week, properties, qualifications, ammunition of the Godhead.
He is God and he resources, is what we called them last week. Kept his resources for when he needs them. And he said unto them, You will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
Apparently Jesus had been doing some remarkable things in the year that he was traveling around through Capernaum. We talked about it as we read it. Healing the lunatics, casting out demons, healing the sick, all sorts of wonderful things.
They wanted some of those same things done here. Now here's what Spurgeon said. They no doubt argued, he is a Nazareth man. And of course he is duty bound to help Nazareth. They consider themselves being in a sort his proprietors, who would command his powers at their own discretion.
They wanted to call on Jesus' powers to do the things they wanted to do, where they wanted them done, when they wanted them done. That's what Spurgeon is saying. They want to be the owners of God's power, Jesus' power, to do the things they want done at the time they want them done.
And he said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. Now Spurgeon goes on to say this, I have learned from this incident in our Lord's life, that it is not the preacher's business to seek to please his congregation.
If he labors for that end, he will in all probability not attain it. But if he should succeed in gaining it, what a miserable success it would be. I couldn't help but underline that. What a miserable success it would be.
So Jesus is going to go out and do all that he can to win them over, right? That's not what my scripture says. I just made that up. But I tell you a truth. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah.
I'm just going to read these names in the English account that we have, rather than as Luke read them. He said Elias, but that's Elijah. When the heavens were shut for three years and six months, three and a half years it didn't rain, when the great famine was throughout the land.
So Jesus now begins to tell the Nazarites, they do not have because of their place of birth a special place with him. Only his called ones have that. And he will begin with two accounts of Gentiles being blessed when there were plenty of Jews to go around with similar issues to be cured.
So here's what he says. But unto none of them did Elijah send, save unto Serippa, a city of Zion, unto a woman that was a widower. So Elijah wasn't sent to any one of the hungry widows in Judea. Just to one, just to the widow in the Gentile city of Serippa.
And now he goes to a second example. And there were many lepers. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha, the prophet. And none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. So what did he say?
He says, there were plenty of hungry widows in Israel in Judea at the time that Elijah was sent to the widow in the Gentile city. And there were plenty of lepers in Israel at the time of Elisha. And none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.
Well, if you thought they were not happy before, when they were just trying to claim the powers of Jesus to be delivered to them, rather than throughout the Gentile world, now they are explicitly angry.
And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath. Chuck Missler said in one of his commentators, anytime we have a mistake or fail to understand why the Jews acted like they did, look at what the Pharisees say and do.
So he is telling them about two people, a widow that has been saved from the famine, and a leper that is being cleansed. And instead of being happy, they're full of wrath. Their anger boiled over. They were no longer amazed at his gracious words.
They forgot about the good news. They were full of wrath. So the question is, why? Why were they full of wrath? Well, I'm going to disagree with that, John. I'm going to say because he did heal somebody.
And that God will heal, cleanse, whom he chooses to. And who did he choose to in these two instances? Two Gentiles. To their point of view, they would have been happier with Jesus had he healed no one.
And if he had healed all of the Jews that had any issue at all, and had healed two Gentiles, they would have been angry about the two Gentiles. Because in the eyes of the Jews at that time, in the eyes of the Pharisees, his two examples were both Gentiles.
They were lower than a dog. They were not worthy of mercy. I'm going to ask another question. Who is? Who is worthy of mercy? No one. No one. That's why it is such a gift of grace. No one is worthy of it.
Romans 3 .9 says this. What then? Are we better than they? He's talking about the Jews and the Gentiles. What then? Are we better than they? His answer. No, in no wise. For we have before proved, both Jew and Gentile, everybody, that they are all under sin.
All the Jews and all the Gentiles are under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way.
They are all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. So there you have it. All of the people that are worthy of salvation. So what did they do? They rose up and thrust him out of the city and led him unto the brow of a hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
Their intent was to push him over the cliff, over a small cliff, and then go down and stone him. To them it was sacrilege to offer the blessings of the Messiah to the Gentiles. That's why they were so angry.
And for that, Jesus must be stoned. Well, was he stoned? And I thought this was so funny. But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way. Remember what they had asked back earlier? They wanted a miracle.
They wanted some of the miraculous things that Jesus had done in Capernaum, done there. He could have done a thousand things. When they tossed him over the cliff, he could have flown around and landed on the temple and proclaimed that he was the Messiah.
That's what Satan asked him to do. Fly around and land on the temple and declare that you're the Messiah and they will know the Messiah. He could have done that. He performed a subtle miracle. He simply passed through the mob and left.
I don't know how he did that. I don't know whether they just lost vision of him, whether he disappeared, or whether he just walked down through the middle of them and left and there was nothing they could do about it.
All I know is this. But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath day. So what did he get? He got a rejection in his hometown.
No prophet is accepted in his hometown. He knew that already. And so now he goes to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. Who does he teach there? He teaches all that attended the synagogue, the Jews and the Gentiles alike.
He excluded no one because of what they were. He included no one because of what they were. He included only those that he called. Okay. And they were astonished at his doctrine for his word was with power.
Well, that's it for me for today. Any questions or any comments? Yes, sir. Yes, and in fact, all of the book of Isaiah was in the scripture at the time of the Septuagint. And that was like 400 years before.
I think it's 400 years earlier. It was in their scripture in Greek for 400 years. So they knew it or should have known it. They knew. Yeah, they knew that the... In fact, he read from the passage that said Isaiah 53, the day of vengeance of the Lord.
They saw that. They knew he left it out. That's why they were so astonished when he stopped reading in mid-sentence. We know that Isaiah 53 was there. They say it's about Israel. And I want to emphasize that so everybody can hear it.
That's what is so dangerous about various translations. They need to be precise, proper, so that we are not like the Jews teaching from paraphrases. Their targums were paraphrases. They're things that the scholars said the prophet meant.
Well, to the extent that they understood what the prophet meant, that's good. To the extent that they misapplied what the prophet said so that they would make him say what they wanted him to say, that was bad.
We can't really tell the difference unless we have the Scripture and we have the Holy Spirit to help us along with it. And that's what we have to have. We have to have the Holy Scripture. We have to have an accurate account of it.
And we have to have the Holy Spirit to guide us. Because even the most accurate account, which I think we all in here agree is the King James Version, even the most accurate account has mistakes in it.
In fact, we see here in these two lined up versions slightly different words in one than in the other. Well, that happens. The Holy Spirit will guide us to clean those up if we start with the right thing.
If we start with the targum, we'll never get it cleaned up. I didn't mean to step on you, Brother David. I just wanted that to be on the record because you're a long way away from the mic. Anything else?
Yes, sir. Well, the Lord tells us in Psalms that He will preserve the Scripture. And there were many ways that they did it. And one of the things that we have to do is start with a version that is reliable and then work our way through and pray for help in understanding what the Scripture is saying.
Yes, sir. They have a history to say that it's always been accessible there. Translations. And you showed us this. They actually just omit verses. I mean, you might be in something like 525 and then 26 is not there.
And they skip 26 and it says 27. But if you don't go look at that... We've been studying Romans 8 and 1. Many of the verses leave the second half of verse 1 out. Say it's a mistake. It shouldn't be there.
And as I repeat, the same thing is going on now.
I don't know if that really answered your question or not. But we do believe that the Lord will make available His Word to those that seek it. And we'll find it in the Scripture. We'll find it when we read the Scripture prayerfully and call on Him to help us to understand it.
That's the best I can do. And it's always going to be a challenge. There's always going to be a challenge because Satan is still the king of this world. Satan is still the prince of this world and he's going to put stumbling blocks in front of as many people as he can.
And the first thing he will do... We talked about this last week. His first thing is to create doubt. He told Eve, Hath God said? And she said, Oh yes, He said. You can't eat it. You can't even touch it or you'll die.
And we can just imagine him picking the apple up, tossing it up in the air and asking Eve, Why am I not dead? The Lord didn't tell Eve, didn't tell Adam, that if you touched it, you'd die. He said if you ate it, you'll die.
So Satan will try to create doubt. And that's the only thing I am totally certain about. Satan will try to create doubt. And his second thing that he will do after he's created the doubt, he will offer you a different possibility.
He tried to do that with Jesus. If you jump off of this building, the angels will come and are off the cliff. The angel will come and bear you up that your foot won't land on a stone. So do that. Fly around and land on the temple and proclaim yourself the Messiah.
And you won't have to go to the cross. That's what his intent was for Jesus, to tempt Jesus to offer salvation, offer the kingdom, offer the power without the cross, without the suffering. And had Jesus accepted that, he would have had his glory for a while and we would not have been redeemable had he chosen not to follow what he knew to do because he was full of the Holy Spirit.
He was full of the Scripture. He knew it all. He knew it all better than Satan did. And by the way, he is the only one, I believe, that knows the Scripture better than Satan. I don't think I do. I don't think Brother David does.
I don't think John MacArthur does. I don't think any man understands the Scripture better than Satan. And the other thing I know about Satan is he will use his knowledge of the Scripture to try to create doubt with you and me.
Any other comments? I think we're now running into Brother David's time. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all our many blessings. Protect us and keep us. Go through the services today and give us strength and understanding.
Give us wisdom. Give us courage. Lead us not into temptation. And if we are led into temptation, give us the strength to withstand it. We know that it's all there for us in your Scripture, in your Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Of course, though.