Romans 15:16-21 - Our Offerings to God, Pt. 4 (08/21/2022)

That was amazing. Thank you guys. Lord often renames people,

Brother Ron. You're just being godly. You did a great job,

Brother Ron. You always do. Your humor has lifted me from the day I met you and your encouragement to go do something.

Go do something! Ron can get you to kick it into another gear.

I've always appreciated that. Wonderful. Good to see all of you today. I think you can turn it down just a hair,

Ben. It's ringing just not much though, just a little. Did I get that centered okay? Yeah, I moved it a little.

Is it all right? Oh wow, Sam did a great job today on that guitar and Maddie always does a good job.

Good job again, Maddie. Thank you. Good to see all of you today.

I want to jump right into this. I've got so much amazing stuff. It's always good material, right?

I mean you can't miss with material like this, but you can dive deeper and deeper into what it means to be a believer priest.

We're going to do that and it'll take longer than today, but we're definitely going to do it until we see.

I want you to see everything the Bible says about it. Charlotte's going to have a very important birthday coming up in a few days.

She's going to be 25 and so we're going on a little trip to celebrate that important birthday.

We will have Dave Huber bringing messages.

We'll have Ben Mitchell bringing messages and swapping up for Sunday school and Paul Davis might be.

He hasn't confirmed, but I know you'll have it ready for a Sunday school lesson, right?

Put you on the spot. How many of you want Paul to teach a Sunday school lesson? All right. The trip like this afternoon, prepare it and then you won't have to worry.

You won't have to worry next week. He'll have it. He's got a thousand of them.

I've snuck in and listened to him teach devotions before and this guy is a preacher.

He just won't admit it. He won't admit it because an evil old independent

Baptist wouldn't call you an elder and I do call you an elder. So this church has, he was called to be an elder in this church, but he already was one.

But anyway, if you seriously, he's got so much starting the

Monday after that Sunday. If you can't do it, let me know. I'll just stay home from the trip.

Let Charlotte go by herself. I'll do it for you. Don't worry about it. All right.

So Romans chapter 15, verse 16 is sort of the diving board that launches us up into our swan dive here into the scriptures.

But Romans 15, 16, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the

Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable being sanctified by the

Holy Ghost. So we've been talking about how Paul had to convince the Jews that the

Gentiles offerings would be acceptable and why. But then it brings the question, well, what are the offerings?

We don't offer goats and lambs and little pigeons and things anymore. What do we offer? So that's kind of what we're talking about.

And we've covered nearly all of the points on the first, like the top level.

Like the milk level. And we're starting to get into the meat in a minute. But I got one more milk point.

So let's talk about what we discussed already. We talked about, number one, our bodies can be a living sacrifice to the

Lord. So that's one. That's Romans 12, one. Love offerings, money that we give to help the church and to help those in need.

That's Philippians 4 .18. That can be a sacrifice that we give that's acceptable to the Lord. Praise is a big one.

And we're not done talking about that. It just weaves its way through and through all of this. Hebrews 13 .15, we talked about praising

God as a sacrifice. Doing good works is number four. Number five is giving.

And that can be other than tithes and offerings. That can just be when you see someone in need out there in the world where you're walking and you see someone and you help them.

That's a sacrifice to the Lord. And those are found in Hebrews 13 .16. And then the one we talked about last time was worshiping

God in a sense of spiritual sacrifices is specifically what it calls these.

And we found that in 1 Peter 2 .5 and other places. And sorry, that wasn't the last one.

The one we covered last week was number seven. And that is giving thanks and praise and sacrifices of joy.

Remember that one? Sacrifices of joy. That's in Psalm 116 verse 17, Jeremiah 17 .26,

Psalm 27 .5 and 6 and so forth. So then we talked a little bit right at the end about the ultimate sacrifice that makes all this possible.

What is it that makes our sacrifices acceptable? It's because we're bathed in the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus removes our sins.

It doesn't cover them. It removes our sins. So therefore we can walk into the holiest of places, the holy of holies, which was a picture in the wilderness tabernacle.

It was a picture of the place where God the Father actually dwells, which is not even a place.

He doesn't need a place. He's a pure spirit being. It's outside of space and time, bigger than all that.

As big as the universe gets, because the bigger the telescopes and the farther in space we put them, the bigger it gets. So we don't know how far it goes out to the edge of it, if there's an edge of it.

But well, I say if there is an edge of it, because God the Father is outside and beyond and above all that, surrounding all that, within all that, and so forth.

So we talked about the ultimate sacrifice that made that possible in Hebrews chapter 9 verses 8 through 15 and quite a bit of that material.

I want to just pick that up because we sort of ran out of time. So go to Hebrews chapter 10 verse 9 and read it.

I'm going to read you just a little bit more about that. Hebrews is one of those books that if you were stuck on a desert island, couldn't have all the books of the

Bible, you just have one. Hebrews might be the one you would pick. It could be Romans. It could be Ephesians.

It could be Revelation. It could be Genesis. It's whichever one you're in now that you'd pick. But Hebrews 10 9 says,

Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He has taken away the first that he might establish the second.

That's talking about the Old Testament and the New Testament. I want you to notice there's all kinds of wonderful rabbit trails in this thing that we're talking about, spiritual sacrifice, but there's wonderful rabbit trails everywhere.

Guess what that means? It's very important to notice he has taken away the first. That means legalism shouldn't be found in a church anywhere in the world, but it's everywhere.

All the world religions other than biblical Christianity are legalistic. They're all about building a stairway to heaven and trying to find

God on your own by doing good stuff. None of that works because you don't understand how holy

God is if you think that works. It just may be Buddha. You might reach him that way, but you won't reach

God that way. All right. So I hate it when I see churches going that way, but they all do. There's a cycle every church goes through.

It starts out where your first love is Jesus. It's all about the blood and salvation is by the blood plus nothing, and it rotates around.

The history of every church group has been the same, and every individual church is the same. It'll end up and get a little bit more where man is more important.

It becomes legal. It becomes humanistic, which the religious term for that is Arminian, and then it becomes to the point where you have to bring legalism in if you're going to add man.

So you start making rules that you can keep better than the other people so that you're the big dude in the church or dudette if you're a woman.

I have to always remember to be correct by the day's length. Actually, you're just a they, like there's no sexes anymore.

You're just they. So until they all get there, then you keep adding rules that they can't keep that you can, so you're the big spiritual person.

That's what legalism is all about. Paul is always battling that. Any good pastor is battling it, and if you've been in a church that has it, then you're free today because you're not in one like that.

You're just free. You're free to let the Holy Spirit make you dress like he wants you to dress. Listen to the music he wants you to listen to.

Go to the places he wants you to go, and when you don't do that, he just gives you a spanking, and it takes care of it, and I don't have to tell you those things.

So here he took away the first, the Old Testament, the law. The law of Moses in particular is removed.

It's taken away. Now, some people say, oh, no, no, it's just like there's three forms of the law, and this is what they'll tell you, the

Judaizers today, and you still have them, and usually they'll claim to be part Jew, and they'll tell you, no, there's three components of the law, and he only removed one and not all three.

Well, here it says he took away the first. That means the First Testament. That means all of it's gone.

There's many other proofs. I don't know. I wrote a 50 -page paper once to prove to a friend of mine who's a

Judaizer why he was wrong. There's just so much more I could tell you about that, but this is just a rabbit trail this morning.

So he takes away the first that he might establish the second. The second is fully established, and it was established at the very moment that Jesus dropped the first drop of blood to the earth when he was on the cross.

He established it. It's done. It's finished. It's what we've got. It's called grace. It's called your sins being removed by the blood plus nothing else, by nothing you did, and Dave, where's

Dave? You tell him that I said this. That was the most magnificent Sunday school lesson. I think what happens when

Otis goes up in a chariot and Bill watches it, he gets that anointing, and then when Bill went up, Dave must have been watching or something because he's got that anointing, and Ben Mitchell's got it too, and others of you that can teach, but it's marvelous to watch, but this has been established, and you can't undo it.

You can't do anything better than it. It is the gospel. Everything in the Old Testament was just a picture of it.

It was a model. Now we've got the real thing. Why would you go back to the model? But that's what they do.

They go back to the model, and they look at that thing rather than God, and it's so idolatrous, but it's everywhere.

So look at verse 10. I can't spend as much on every verse, or we're not going to get anywhere. Number 10, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, how many times?

Once for all. So you can't re -crucify Jesus. So if you get saved, and you know that the

Holy Spirit called you and made you love Jesus because you didn't love him before that, now you do. You're saved then at that point.

So if you're saved, and then you go out and you sin, which you will, because the Lord said he put this treasure, which is your new man, in earthen vessels, which is this old man, and he did it because he wanted to, to glorify himself, which means he did it on purpose, so you are going to sin again.

And when you do, you don't quit. You go to 1 John 1 9. Mark it in your

Bible. If you don't know it, memorize it, because he says when you do sin, if you confess your sin, which means if you if you agree with him that it's a sin, doesn't even say ask forgiveness, you can,

I mean it's okay to, but it doesn't say you have to. You just agree at sin with the Lord as the Holy Spirit convicts you, then he is faithful, which means he'll do it every time, and just, which means because he died for you, it's right for him to do it, to remove, to forgive you from all sin, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

That means the ones you forgot to ask forgiveness for. All, means all so you're clean, and the devil comes to you and say, oh you just sinned, you're probably not saved, or you wouldn't have done that.

You have got to understand grace has nothing to do with what you do anyway. It, all of the stuff you do is in effect, and anything that you get right is the glory of God.

The Holy Spirit did it in you, and with you, and you got one right, and God gets glorified. Stuff that you do to try to bring attention, or like Otis asked me a question sometimes before the other day.

If you know that you did a good work, did you act, was it a true good work? That was a good question at breakfast that morning, and the discussion was, you know, he thinks,

Otis, brother Otis thought that most of the time when you actually do a Holy Spirit led good work, you don't even know you did it.

You know, I'm thinking of it as if you did something, and he did it through you, and who knows if Otis was right on that one, but he wasn't wrong on much, so I would sure consider it, and pray about it, and look for it in the scripture.

All right, so that means that he died once for all. He doesn't, you can't re -crucify him when you sin.

You don't need to. His death covered the future sins too. In fact, every sin you will ever do in your lifetime has already been taken by God the

Father, who is outside of time, back in your timeline 2 ,000 years ago, and placed in the body of Jesus.

That's called imputation, and he died with all of your sins in him. He died for it. Before he died, he said, it's finished, which means your sins were already on him when he said that, and then he died with your sins.

He was buried with your sins, and when he rose again, that pictures your new man without sin, and that's why you can walk into the presence of God.

This whole thing about believer -priest means you have to be able to walk into the presence of the Father, which only one man could do once a year under the model, but now you can do it any moment you choose to with your will.

Any moment you choose to, you can go into the presence of the Father. Jesus himself said, you don't have to pray in my name.

You can go straight to the Father. He said that, so you can. That's what being a believer -priest is, but listen, there are some requirements to be a good believer -priest that will be of any effect in God's hand, and that's what we're going to be talking about, and these are sometimes called imperatives in the

New Testament. It means where God says, okay, you are a believer -priest. Now act like one, and here's the 22 things you do to act like one.

Here's your duty. Here's the things you do, and we're going to be talking about some of those. So anyway, not unless I go faster.

Now look at verse 11. Every priest, see this is a picture of you. This was an

Old Testament model of the real priest, which is you. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices.

Look at this, which can never take away sins. Legalism can never make you more righteous in God's eyes.

Not one rule a man can make that you would go do can make you any more righteous in God's eyes. It doesn't work.

It's a model, and it was a picture, and verse 12 says, but this man, that's

Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.

You notice he sat. Isn't that what the father did on the seventh day? He rested. The work is finished.

The work to save you and keep you clean is finished, and Jesus sat down at the right hand of God, and anything that you do need, by the way, he's still your intercessor, and that work is continuing.

He's at the right hand of the father. Satan comes and accuses you. Jesus says, he's innocent.

He's covered by the blood. Please depart from me, and you're covered.

I just can't get over Hebrews. It's just amazing. Drop down to verse 14.

It emphasizes it again. By one offering. How many? One offering he has perfected.

For how long, then, that are sanctified by that offering? Forever. How long is forever?

When can it stop? So how could you lose it? First John, book first John says, he that has a son has everlasting life.

In the Greek, that means you already have it. All right, and so if you already have it, and it's forever, which means it can't stop, how could you lose it?

So these guys that teach this in churches all around the country and all around the world, they listen.

Some of them are lost as a goose, because like the book of Jude says, they were placed in there to take away people's liberty, but others are just young preachers that don't know better yet, because you hadn't corrected them, which you need to do.

You hadn't corrected them yet, and maybe God will bring them around where they understand grace. I was a legalist as a young man.

I'm not one now. So some of them are like that. They're actually saved, but they're just misled, and they need to study more.

So you got both all over the place, but Paul said, I won't endure one of them for even an hour.

So if you can't convince them in about an hour, you need to show them the door over here. The side door.

Just let them go and get in their car. You go to Church of Christ. You can go to the Pentecostal Church.

You can go to the Methodist Church. You go to the Catholic Church. There's plenty of places to go. If you want to think that you're going to get saved or even helped to be saved by stuff you do, but you can't do it here.

Well, I'm here anyway, or my kids, or my kids, or my grandkids, and in your kids and your grandkids.

I mean, you got to train in the whole school. If we train them right, which we are, there's a lot of people that won't let that in here.

All right. So that's good. It's God. It's God has to root it out by his spirit, by his word, the water and the word.

Now, for by one offering, he is perfected forever. That totally eliminates losing your salvation.

He perfected. You didn't perfect anything. He perfected forever. Them, that's you, that are sanctified.

What are you sanctified by? One drop of his blood is all it takes. One drop of his blood is all it takes.

And he gave all of his blood. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness. So listen, if you don't believe me, and you don't believe this

Bible, which like I think I mentioned last time, this one little lady got saved one time when all

I did was to go through and showed her about 200 eternal security verses she had never seen because she was Pentecostal. And she came the next

Sunday and said, I got saved right after you left. I just gave my life to the Lord because I never knew the Lord saved me like that.

Well, listen, some people don't even believe that when you show it to them, right? They don't even believe the

Bible. But look what this says. The Holy Ghost also is a witness. He can convince people too.

For after that, he had said before, this is the covenant. Now, you remember a minute ago where he said,

I took away the first that I established the second? This is the second. This is the covenant we're under now.

It's the new covenant. New Testament, by the way, means new covenant. This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days.

After what days? After the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is one that. And then it also has a future fulfillment for the

Jews and Gentiles that are saved later in the millennial kingdom. It'll be the same way there, but it's all because of grace.

Grace is the only thing that makes this possible. But he says, I will make with them after those days, saith the

Lord, I will put my law into their heart, in their minds, and I will write them and their sins and iniquities will

I remember no more. Now, where remission, that means total removal of the sins is, there is no more offering for sin.

He died once. Everybody got that? How can you read just that small portion of Hebrews and not get that, but millions of people don't get it in churches around the country where they don't get that.

You got to get that or you got nothing. Paul said, if you get circumcised, and that's just a picture of any good work you could do, if you get circumcised to think you're helping yourself save yourself, he said, then

Jesus avails you nothing. Now, how many, how are you going to get to heaven if Jesus avails you nothing?

So it's either works or it's Jesus, it's not both. It's with regard to the cause of salvation.

Now, once that cause has taken place, and that blood has cleansed you, there are many effects, and the effects are written about in the book of James, and we're going to talk about a lot of them today.

It's the stuff we're supposed to do because we love him, but none of that stuff adds one iota to our salvation.

It's a result of it. An effect can never be the cause of the cause. So there you have it. Now, there is no more offering for sin.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness, and here we are, listen to this, as you believe a priest, therefore means you got to go back and reread everything we just read in Hebrews if you didn't get it, but if you got that there's just one offering, if you got that, and then it takes away your, every sin you'll ever do your whole life is already removed, not covered, but removed.

It's not atoned for. That's an Old Testament model thing. Atoned for means covered.

It is removed. If you got that, then this therefore refers to that knowledge, and here's what it says.

Brethren, you have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, plus nothing.

I added that. By a new and living way.

It's not like the first way. It's the second way. The first way has been removed. The second way has been laid down by Jesus Christ.

It's the second covenant, and it's a new and living way, whereas the

Bible says the letter does what? The letter killeth, but the spirit does what?

Bringeth life. The letter killeth. That's legalism. It'll kill a church. It'll kill a person.

It'll make you focus on how you dress, where you go, all that stuff. Instead of on God, it kills your soul.

Makes you feel unhappy. The women take the brunt of it. They got to wear the collars up to here, and the dresses down the floor, and the men run around their

Bermuda shorts, and play golf all day, and look at the other women that aren't dressed that way, and that's what a legalist does, all right?

A Christian man, what he does is he may look at the woman that didn't dress that way, but the

Holy Spirit says, okay, you need to gather yourself. That's your old man, and you say,

Lord, give me the mind of Christ. Let me look at her as a soul that might need saved. Let me look at her as a human being, not an object.

Let me look at her as a dear child of God. That's the new man. Old man, it's not going to cut it.

Legalism will never cut it, and so here we have a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh.

He had to give his blood and his body to save us and get us to this new way, but he's done it, and having a high priest over the house of God.

Now, so now the reason, the first thing you have to be able to do to be a believer priest is to walk into the holiest place where a father is in his presence.

How are you feeling there right now? Because that's what you have to do, and if you think there's one work that can make you clean enough to walk in there and live, think again, but if you understand that the blood of Jesus and his body that was given once and for all and forever and bought you with a price and sanctified you and now you can walk into the presence, now that's the first step you can do to ever help anyone else, and if you read,

I don't know if I'm right or not, but when I read about Jesus, it seemed to me it's all about people. It's just all about helping people.

You can't help one person if you can't do this. Now, the eighth milk part of like what a sacrifice is that we can do is called the sacrifice of service, so look at verse 22 there.

Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance. That's still talking about going into the holiest place where the father is.

You don't get there unless the son introduces you to him. You don't get to just walk into the king's presence unless the child of the king takes your hand as your friend and takes you and says,

Dad, here's Sharon. I want you to meet her, and Jesus says, God the father, here's

Sharon. She's yours. Now, she's going to come in here all the time and get the power to do the stuff she needs to do to help brother

Raymond be a better man. Big job. Big man.

Let us draw near. This means going into that holy place. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, and what does that mean?

Your flesh will doubt that you're clean enough to go into that place. Tell me

I'm not right. When you need to pray the most, you don't feel like praying because you just sin.

You feel dirty. When you need it the most, you don't want to go in there. You're like Adam and Eve.

You hide, but let's guess what about Adam and Eve. That happened before the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

Their sins were only atoned for by that offering that God taught them how to that Cain got wrong because he didn't shed any blood, but they didn't even have that yet, so it's different.

You don't have to hide from God. You are his dear child. You were known as his child before the foundation of the world, before anything was made, when all there was was a triune

God and nothing else. No space, no time, no stuff. Just love within the

Father, the Son, Holy Ghost for each other, and that was it, and that was sufficient, and that's why God doesn't need anybody.

He doesn't need us. He doesn't need anything, but he wants us. He desires us. We are the apple of his eye.

How do I know? Because we're here. We are here, and we find ourselves with a magical book that couldn't really exist if God hadn't ordained it and made it to be so.

Written by sinful men, penned by sinful men, and yet it's perfect to the cross of the and the dot of the eye, and Jesus said that.

He said not one jot or tittle will be unfulfilled in this book. Jesus said that, so he believed it.

Jesus believed this book is preserved and perfect, and we have that. We have each other.

We have the Holy Spirit that reassures us. We have the water of the word that tells us exactly how it is, and we know that we didn't get here by ourselves.

We didn't come from a monkey which came from amoeba, which came from nothing. Nobody can explain what that was and where it came from without God, and they said, well, you can't tell where God came from.

Yeah, I can. The Bible tells me where he came from. He's always been. Well, that's not fair.

Yeah, I know, but it's how it is because nobody made him. He doesn't have a cause.

He's the great cause. He is the cause of everything. He's not an effect. God is the cause, the first cause of everything, and so we can draw near to him with a true heart and full assurance.

Now, what does that mean? Get back to that. It means you don't think you can do that because you feel dirty. Well, listen.

Go to 1 John 1 9 and believe it. Test your faith. Test your faith next time you sin because you will probably before lunch.

Test your faith and recite 1 John 1 9 to the Lord and say, okay,

I believe you just did that because what does it say again? Let's review. If we confess our sins, which in the

Greek means if we agree with God that we just did is sinful, that what we just did was not right. We don't try to rationalize.

We don't try to make excuses for it. We just say, okay, I messed up. It was a sin. I got one coming down the altar right now.

Oh, she's going the other way. Okay. She's getting lunch ready, so I'm not going to mess with her.

You go right on ahead. All right. I forgot where it was. That was too good. I couldn't let that one go.

Yeah. Thank you. Let me confess mine first. Lord, forgive me for picking on her.

Anyway, so you confess your sins and what is it? He's faithful, which means he'll do it every time.

How many? Every time and just, which means what? It's okay for him to do it because he died for you.

It's just that he does it to do what? To forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from what?

All. How many is that? The ones you forgot to ask forgiveness for too. I heard a preacher once said, you got to remember them all.

He must've been brilliant because I can't remember all the sins I've done, but if you can remember one of them and go to him and admit that it's sin, he'll cleanse you from all the rest of them.

Now, a nanosecond, that's my favorite word. Paul thinks that because I say it in our stock market stuff.

Nanosecond later, but anyway, a nanosecond after you've done that and he's done that to you, how clean are you?

You can't get more clean. You are in Christ. The father is pleased with him and you can go right into the

Holy of Holies, but look what it says. You have to do that in full assurance of faith. You have to believe that God's not lying to you in 1

John 1 .9. Can God lie? You have to fully believe he really does take the sins away, but you know why it's hard to believe?

Because your conscience is still hurt by it. See, when we sin, it harms our soul.

It hurts your soul. It wars against the soul. Any sin of the flesh that you do, it wars against the soul.

It's going to damage your souls in your brain. It's going to damage your mind. Your mind needs to be renewed again.

You got to get that removed again, but the thing you got to understand, that's painful. That's part of the flesh.

It's part of the old man and the new man. Part of your whole person has to sort of be renewed a little bit and that may take some time, but the forgiveness was instantaneous.

The cleansing was instantaneous as far as your ability to walk in the Holy of Holies. In fact, the best place you could go if you just sin is to go directly into the presence of God.

He's already removed it. Listen, let me say this. It is not the praying of 1

John 1 .9 that removes it. It is merely a reminder that it was removed 2 ,000 years ago because the

Bible says your sins were in him in his body when he was on the tree. Check that out. It says it. Now, that's only from the

Father's viewpoint. We can't figure that out because we weren't born yet, right? All the sins you'll ever do because God went forward in time, took all of your sins, went back in time, put them in Jesus's body when he was on the tree, and when he died, he died for all of them.

It's not like 1 John 1 .9 doesn't really even bring the forgiveness. That's why it didn't say that you have to ask him to forgive you.

He's already forgiven you. You get that, right? It's your conscience that needs to be healed because you just messed it up when you sin.

That might take three or four days for you to feel better about yourself, but this full assurance of faith, you've got to believe that God has already removed it and that you're clean and go into his presence or else you're worthless as a servant, as a believer priest.

You can't help anyone else because you're still licking your own wounds, right? But think about that before we sin.

Do you think it's worth it to damage your soul for that thing your flesh is wanting to do or not?

If you decide not, then just don't do the sin because the Bible said he's given a way of escape for every temptation you ever have.

You can always say no. When you do, you're a better believer priest because now you're fit and ready and you don't have that conscience thing to fix for a few days and you're ready to help other people.

So stay ready. The best that we can, ask the Lord to make me better at it. I pray all the time, make me a good man,

Lord. I don't want to be a bad man. I want to be a good man, and by that, I mean a Christ -like man. Women, I don't know how you think.

I'll let you deal with that. All right. So, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.

Man, I loved what David taught in Sunday school this morning. King David had all these enemies, which picture three that we have, the only three, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

And they're all totally surrounding him, going to annihilate him, and they're calling him the son of Belial, like he's demonized.

They're saying to them, he was the apple of God's eye, calling him the one. They'll tell you that too. This whole world, if you tell them what you really believe, you're going to be the devil in their view because they worship the devil.

So God's the devil to them. So here you see that this has happened for thousands of years, going back to the time of David.

But at the moment that we have our hearts sprinkled in pure assurance of faith that this has removed the sin problem in our own life, they can call you anything they want to, and you don't believe them anymore.

You believe that God called you son or daughter. That's all you have to remember. And once you figure that out, that our heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience, you see that coming into play.

Our bodies are washed with pure water. This is a great bath to take after having sinned.

Get into the word, read it, ask for strength. Let us then hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised.

So who does it put the role of keeping us in their hands?

Us or God? It says he that's promised is the faithful one. He knows we're not faithful.

We, all of us in this room, are like a straying wife. All of us in this room are like that.

And God married us. Jesus married us knowing that's how we were because he loved us and love covered the multitude of sins.

Man, there's so many great rabbit trails of this. Anyway, so let us, then it comes in here and says how we behave together as a church, as believer -priests towards each other.

Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. So that is the sacrifice of service.

We serve in the church together in the community as a unity and as individuals and provoke one another to continue to love people and to do good things that help other people.

Not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together. That means because I'm preaching to the ones that are here, right?

It means you don't skip church. You come to church and look at this. As a matter of summit, there are some people that skip church, right?

As a matter of summit, and I say that while I'm about to skip the next three times, and that's what you're thinking about.

Sharon's saying, well, you're going to miss the next three Sundays. But I mean, I'll have church somewhere. All right.

So forsake not the assembly of ourselves together as a matter of summit. And look at this. Exhorting one another to come and be together because we need each other.

We need the strength of that. And so much the more as you see the day approaching. What day is the day?

That's the rapture and all the tribulation that has to happen before it. Wow. So church is more important now than it ever was.

And then Romans, you don't need to look this up, but Romans 15, 17 says, therefore, I have, this is

Paul speaking, and I'm taking it full circle back to where we started out in Romans 15, where in verse 16, where he said, look,

I am the apostle to the Gentiles. So don't tell me they can't get saved. And don't tell me that their sacrifices don't reach the throne of God, because they do, because they're in Christ.

And then he says this, therefore, I have, therefore, whereof I make glory through Jesus Christ and those things which pertain to God.

For I will not dare speak of any one of those things which Christ didn't work in me.

So he's talking about the good works he's done in his own life to help the Gentiles see that they can be saved and all the converts that he has in cities around all of the

Bible areas in that part of Europe. And he says, but I'm not going to brag about any of them, except the ones

Jesus worked in me and through me. He did it through me. Using me, he did it with me and through me.

That's the stuff I can boast about. And it says it all happened in order to make the

Gentiles obedient by word and deed. It's so interesting that that word translate obedient in the

English New Testament. If you go back to the Greek, now this one you can check, Dave, if you were senior, because it's not always.

Usually it comes from pisteuo or some form of that, which is the word that's translated faith and belief.

See if that one is, Dave, I don't know. Writes Romans 15, 18. To make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed.

So they talk about being a Christian, but they also live it, right? Through mighty signs and wonders.

See, that's where becoming a believer priest changes, is when you learn to go into the

Holy of Holies and spend time with the Father, with Jesus as he holds your hand to go in there and introduce you again.

Say he's back, she's back, here we are. And you make that request known for another person that needs help in whatever way, then you can do signs and wonders.

You can, by the power of the Spirit of God, accomplish things you never thought possible.

Now I don't, I believe there are sign gifts that you can't do until you get to the second three and a half years of tribulation, and then they're coming back.

So it doesn't hurt to talk to your kids about it, because they'll be the ones doing it, probably. Our sons and daughters will prophesy again someday when you don't have any

Bibles left, because then you'll need that. Some of those gifts will come back into operation.

They never went away. They just became where the Father just chose not to use them for a while during the church age, because guess what he uses now?

The water and the Spirit, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, and all kinds of closing of doors and opening of doors and ways he can move us along.

But you still have power when you're in the presence of God to help people in the way that God himself wants to do it.

You will see people healed, but you don't have to touch them anymore. All you have to do is pray for them, and you'll see them healed.

So it's not you, like the Apostle, can actually touch them and heal them. The Apostle can lay down on their dead body, and life come back into them.

You cannot do that, because you're not an Apostle, and you don't have the sign gifts that they needed to authenticate their brand new message.

Remember how it said the first is gone away now that we're going to establish the second? Part of the establishing was

God had to authenticate the messengers so the Jews would believe them. Gentiles don't need signs. That's why it's so funny to me that most of these churches that have these sign gifts going on are

Gentiles. They don't need sign. The Bible says they need knowledge. That comes from here.

You need good sound Bible preaching for Gentiles. Jews every once in a while need to see a sign to believe anything.

But God gave those signs to that first group, that first century Christians, and they slowly ceased.

And you can read early church fathers as recent as 270 AD that said, I don't know what these things really mean, because they don't happen anymore, like speaking in tongues.

He said they don't happen anymore, so I've never seen it. I don't know what it means really, but I know that God made it possible for them to speak in languages they didn't study in school, so that people could get saved back then, so that that person would be authenticated, and they believe his message.

It goes back to 270 AD. Christ Austen, I believe, said that. Might be a different man, but I think that's him.

So that from Jerusalem and roundabout unto Elysium, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

That means you preach the whole Bible, not just parts of it. Yea, and so have I strived to preach the gospel not where Christ was named, where other apostles were preaching, lest I build on another man's work.

But I tried to do it where no one had ever been before, like Rome. But as it is written, to whom he was not spoken of, they shall see.

That's the Gentile. To who he was not spoken of, the Gentiles, they will see

God. And they that have not heard, with an ear that can understand, will be able to understand.

So it all fits full circle. It all talks about the Gentiles. Now I ran out of time there, because I got too excited about some of those verses, but Lord willing, when

I'm back, we're going to start with 1

Peter chapter 2, if you want to review it. You got a few weeks to do that, and we're going to go back into now.

Now we know that the power of the believer priest comes from the throne of presence of the Father, being in his presence.

So that you, because what is a priest in the Old Testament, since what did it picture so well, is that the people, the

Jews out here in the outer, the Gentiles in the outer court, and the Jews in the middle court, even the guys doing sacrifices, could not go into the

Holy of Holies, which symbolized the presence of the Father. Only the high priest could do it once a year.

So that priest, his role was to go in there and see the Father, talk to the Father, glean power from the

Father, get a message of what his purpose is, and come back out and then share all that with the people. So as a believer priest, your job is to go into the presence of the

Father, find out what he's doing, what he is about to do, what's going on in the world around you, and what you need to do to help people, and then come out and help.

So it's like with one hand you take the people's hand, and I'm talking about people don't even know him, and half that's half of those are church people, right?

I mean most of them don't even care they're in church, they don't know a thing about this Bible. So you take their hand, and your hand's over here with the

Father, because you've already been in there with him that morning, and you're the priest, you're bringing them together. And we're going to talk specifically about how you have to equip yourself to do that well, and what your role is, what the benefits are for you being one, and what happens to people that aren't like that.

And we'll do all that next. Wish I could have done it all today, but we're out of time, and Jeannie's got lunch ready, so let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for your word, and thank you for how it encourages us, and energizes us, and teaches us the truth about how things really work, including your plan of salvation, but also your plan for our lives, and our ministries.

And Lord, help us to spend more time at your throne, and less time worrying about the world system, and the enemies, and all those things.

But just to come in, and spend that time with you, and do just like King David did in the story in Sunday School this morning, and as soon as he spent time with you, and knew that you heard him, he just went right to sleep, and slept like a baby that night.

Help us to be that way, and then to get up the next day, and go take the hands of as many people as we can, and fulfill our priestly role of bringing them to the

Lord, and to knowledge of God. Lord, empower us to do that. Go with us into our time of fellowship now.

Bless the meal in Jesus' name. Amen. I will miss you for a few Sundays, but you'll be in good hands, and take care of one another.

Hold down the fort. We shall return. You're dismissed.