Apologetics Session 18 - Theology - Part 3

Cornerstone Church

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Apologetics Session 37- Origins and Evolution - Part 4

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Father, we're thankful that we can come together tonight and talk about you. And we are so grateful, Lord, you revealed yourself through your

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Holy Word and through your son, Jesus Christ. And Father, through the revelation of who you are,

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Lord, we can know you, we can enjoy you, Father, we can walk with you. And Father, we just pray that tonight,

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Lord, we would learn some more things about you and have a better relationship with you. And we thank you,

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Father, for all the guys who are here tonight. We pray, Lord, if anyone is on the way or they don't feel well tonight or whatever it may be, please be with the guys we don't see tonight.

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And we know Phil's in Oregon, so we pray for him, pray for safe travel while he's on visit with his parents there.

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And Father, just for the other guys who might be on their way, Father. We thank you,

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Lord, for tonight, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Okay, guys, this is a third session on theology, proper.

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And what I'm gonna do, since we do need to move a little bit to get through this, I'm not gonna read as many verses tonight, which, you know, you can read them later, that's fine.

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But we're happy to be on a topic, and I'm gonna see if you can guess the topic tonight. Because we already talked about God's omnipotence,

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His omnipresence, His justice, the fact that He has life within Himself, that He's loving,

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He's a loving God. And that's where we left off with love last time. So we still have a lot to cover.

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Let's see if you guys can figure this out. You don't have to turn to any of these, I'll just read them.

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So, 1 Samuel 16, seven says, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

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For God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the

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Lord looks at the heart. So that was in context with Jesse, who had his sons before Samuel.

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And Samuel was saying, oh, well, which one's gonna be king, right? And the Lord said that He sees men differently than the eye.

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He measured by the heart. So, Jeremiah 17, 10 says,

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I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind, even to give each man according to his ways.

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Matthew 6, 8 says, therefore, do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.

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Okay, and let's see. I'll read

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Isaiah 46, 10, and then we'll talk about this. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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And I will read one more, Acts 2, 23. The man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

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And there's many other verses here I have. I hope it was kind of clear where I was going with that.

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But the attribute we're talking about is, what would you guess? God's omniscience.

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God's omniscience is right. And which means what? All knowing. He knows all things.

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So, that's why He can read the hearts of men. That's why He can know the end from the beginning.

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That's why there's nothing that men are going to do that is going to be hidden from His eyes.

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Everything is gonna be open and laid bare for Him whom we have to do. So, God's omniscience, all knowing.

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If we think about that, we talked about His omnipresence, which is somewhat related, because that means

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God is everywhere and sees everything. But omniscience goes a little further than that, right? In a sense that, well, if you see something, you can observe what's going on.

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But omniscience goes further than that, right? In a sense that, you can't know their thoughts if you're omnipresent.

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The thoughts, the intents of the heart, are all open to Him. And He can see all of these things.

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And then when it says that the Lord knows the end from the beginning, it's not just that He knows what's going on now, or what has gone on in the past.

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From all time. He knows everything from all time now. So He knows what's gonna happen in 10 minutes.

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He knows what's gonna happen in 100 years. On throughout eternity. So, when we think of that as a believer, what does

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God's omniscience mean for our lives? How can we look at a

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God who is omniscient and say, Lord, this, because you're omniscient, this means?

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He knows our lives completely from the beginning to the end. He knows before the foundation of the world. So He knows us perfectly.

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Perfectly. He's omnitemporal. Which means for all time.

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For all time. Yeah, you're not going to feel something.

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You're not going to think something. You're not going to be fearful or anxious about anything without God knowing what you're going through.

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He knows exactly what you are going through. He knows when you feel like you're abandoned by your friends.

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He knows that very well, because He knows what it's like to be abandoned by friends, right? And because He's all -knowing and He's all -wise, we are not, right?

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We worry about all kinds of crazy stuff. Even just simple stuff sometimes. You know, like what's going to happen with my car?

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Should I buy a new car right now? Should I not buy a new car? Do I need to change the oil? Yeah, well, you should change the oil, right?

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But should I change jobs? Should I not change jobs? Should I marry this girl? Should I not marry this girl? You know, blah, blah, blah.

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You know, all these decisions we need to make. If God is omniscient, what should that say to us?

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We should pray all the time. We should ask the one that has all knowledge how to direct our lives, right?

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Because what does it say in James about he who asks for wisdom? If he likes it,

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God will give it to him. God's going to give liberally to those who come to Him. As long as they don't doubt. Yeah, without doubting in your minds or your hearts.

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But do we do that? I hope we do. I think we do for the big things.

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You know, we say, oh yeah, big things, yeah, we're going to go to the Lord. But sometimes for the mundane, we would say, the little things in the day, we think, oh, we got this,

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Lord. You know, no worries here. And that's when people fall off the roof of their house and break their neck or something.

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No, you should have prayed probably before you got up there. Or get hit with a golf ball. Right, before you go golfing.

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That's right. Or pray after. It doesn't count.

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But we need wisdom all the time. We really do. I know I need it. I mean, I've been doing the same job for 30 -some years.

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But I need wisdom every day. Things come up and I just, you know, even if you've done the things before a million times, like,

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Lord, just please guide my hands today. Please guide my thoughts. And just lay it before Him, because He's all -knowing.

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And He's all -wise too. And we could all use some wisdom and some knowledge.

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Anything else about the Lord's omniscience that's encouraging or, in a sense, maybe convicting or a little bit, you know?

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I just remember the story from Nehemiah. When he met the king, he prayed before he spoke to the king.

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He knew he lacked the wisdom he needed to ask the king to let him go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall.

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Mm -hmm. And that was a man who quickly knew that his dependency was on the

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Lord. So that's a good thing to know. Now, what about the unbeliever,

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God's omniscience? Good news, bad news for the unbeliever?

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It's terrifying for them. Yeah. Yeah. For the most part, right?

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Because He knows every thought that's ever been thought. He knows every word that's ever been spoken. And they're all going to give an account.

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And I think in one way, it's comforting because He knows what it takes to prompt a heart to get a response to.

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So, you know, all those times when you're an unbeliever, and I'm not sure when folks in this room have made a commitment to Jesus, where I was later in life, right?

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So all those things I saw when I was in my teenage years and my 20s and all these things, all these things

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God prepared the steps so that at 26, my heart was ready to receive

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Him. And I can see Him working through all these things that happened in my life. And I don't doubt

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He's doing that for every unbeliever because that's the kind of God He is, preparing their hearts to receive

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His grace. So that's good news in one sense. They need to respond though.

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Because the Lord will reveal Himself in many ways and allow folks to hear the gospel.

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But at some point, they need to respond. Okay, so let's tackle faithfulness.

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So let's, for this one, could I have, Dave, could you look up Psalm 105?

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And Jack, could you look up Joshua 21 .45? And while you guys are doing that,

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I'm going to read a couple other ones. So we're talking about faithfulness now, God's faithfulness.

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First Corinthians 1 .9 says this, God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our

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Lord. So it just declares His faithfulness there. But I like that verse in particular because it talks about our relationship that we have with Him through His Son, Jesus.

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And then in Revelation 19 .11, it says this, and I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse.

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And he who sat upon it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and rages war.

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Okay, so Dave, do you have 100 verse five?

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I thought you said 105. I'm sorry, Psalm 100 verse five.

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Oh, Psalm 100 verse five, okay. Yeah, let's have Jack read Joshua 21 .45.

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Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed. All came to pass.

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Does everyone know that verse? There's a couple of verses like that in the Old Testament. It says, every good thing that the

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Lord has done and everything that the Lord has promised has happened just the way He foretold it.

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Back in Deuteronomy, He's talking about back in Deuteronomy and before that in Exodus and whatnot, all of the law, but also all the promises.

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And at the end of Joshua, Joshua's saying everything the Lord said happened exactly the way

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He drew it out. He's faithful to His word. So Dave, do you have that? Yes. For the

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Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations.

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His faithfulness is not gonna end. It's never gonna end. He's always gonna be faithful.

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I think it's in 1 Timothy. He says, even if we're faithless, He's gonna remain faithful because He can't deny

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Himself. So even in our lives, if we have Him in our lives and we are unfaithful,

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He's still going to keep us on track as His children and straighten us out because He's faithful and He's a good father.

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Faithfulness is a beautiful characteristic and we'd like to all think that we would be faithful too, right?

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As God's children, we should reflect His character in all these ways too. Obviously, we're not omniscient, so we're not gonna reflect that characteristic, but faithfulness, we can reflect.

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So what sort of people ought we to be as far as keeping our word, being dependable at work, being a good friend, you know, that kind of thing, not being a quitter, not bowing out on a task because it's too hard, but being faithful to the end.

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And those are the kind of folks that are God's children because we reflect who our

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Father is and that's a very good thing. You know, it's funny because I, if you think about faithfulness,

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God's faithfulness, and you think of a particular Bible verse that might stick out like a sore thumb,

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I actually don't have it in here, the one I'm thinking of. Do any verses stick out in your mind like something about faithfulness that you would think of when you think of the

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Scriptures and the Lord? Like you quoted it in 1

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Timothy, even though we are faithless, He remains faithful. There's a lot of great ones, right?

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Like I said, I have 20 of them here, but the one that I didn't put down is in Lamentations 3, which is

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God's mercies are - Are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.

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That's where we get the song from. And it's in, I think it's in 3, like 11 and 12 in there, but I actually don't have that in there.

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So there's, you know, when we look at these, this document after we're all done and I populate it out to everyone, it's just a subset really of all the wonderful things that it says about the

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Lord. And I just gave a sampling that, you know, I picked and chose Jews from, but there's so many verses we could point to.

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And for the unbeliever, you know, his faithfulness, again, the unbeliever even, you know,

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I think so many, so many people when they hear God's word and they hear about, well, you can have eternal life and, you know, he's never gonna leave you nor forsake you.

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And I think a lot of people think it's just a hoax, but it's just, that's not true. But to the unbeliever, they hopefully one day are gonna realize that no, everything

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God said is true and he's faithful to it. So thankful that God is like that.

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So let's turn to the next attribute of the Lord. And to say this is one of my favorite, well, sure it is, but all of them are, right?

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I'm gonna have Brad, could you turn to 1 Samuel 15, 29?

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And Bob, could you turn to Psalm 102, 26 and 27?

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1 Samuel 15, 29. Yeah, and I'm gonna read a couple before you guys settle in there.

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So I'm gonna read Malachi 3, 6, first off. Malachi 3, 6 says,

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I the Lord do not change, therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

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And that was a very encouraging statement because Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. He's talking about impending judgment, but he's also talking about the forerunner who would end up coming.

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He is going to preserve his people Israel. He hasn't given up on them. And why? Because he is a faithful God, we just said that, and he does not change.

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Therefore his purposes are not going to be thwarted or changed. He is always going to be the same. And I'm gonna read

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Hebrews 13, 8.

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And I think somebody quoted this last week. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and yes forever.

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Brad, could you read 1 Samuel 15, 29? And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret for he is not a man that he should have regret.

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Changes mind as it was in the Bible. Bob, could you read

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Psalm 102? No, it was 26, 27? 26 and 27. They will perish, but you remain.

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They will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing, you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same and your years will never end.

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So what is the attribute we're pushing at here? Immutability. Immutability.

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God never changes. And that ties back, yes, again into faithfulness and it ties back again to all his promises.

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It ties back again that we can trust him, that he's not going to pull the wool out from under us and trick us in some sort of way.

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His promises are true and right and they're always going to be upheld. But it also means the world doesn't like it because when there is a sovereign righteous

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God who has decreed that these things are right and these things are wrong and these things are never going to change, people in the world do not like to come under that kind of strict, well,

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I'll say strict rule observation because they want to be in control.

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They don't want to be subservient to the Lord and they shake their fist at it.

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Psalm 2, why do the nations rage? Has a lot to do with truth.

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Truth has a lot to do with their truth versus the truth. You sound like somebody

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I heard a couple weeks ago. Yeah. She didn't take kindly to that.

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No. Truth is not relative. Truth is bound up in the Lord. And He doesn't change, so all the things that He has declared, all of His character, all of everything that He does in the world, it's all going to come to pass and He's not going to change

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His mind. He is good, He is true, and He's always going to be good and true.

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We're not at the mercy of a mercurial God who, and I think some of the philosophers felt that way about trying to define

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God, and I think that was the way Descartes would try to define

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God. He was like, well, how do we know there's not some cosmic trickster out there who's just putting these images before us and we don't even know if it's all reality or not?

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How can I know anything? Then he said... Coach, don't irritate them. I think they're...

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He said, that's the only thing I can know. Well, we can know a lot more than that because a loving and wonderful God has revealed

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Himself through His Word and we can trust it and He is not going to change. He's going to stay the same.

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And as I said, for the unbeliever, that grates, that grates on them because they don't call the shots, they don't ever have a hope that there's anything going to be different coming down the pike.

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Societies change all the time. What's right and wrong in a society changes every decade or so.

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We see that in our country for sure. But the Lord has everlasting commandments and everlasting judgments.

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And that's great because we can rest in all that. It's not going to change. So, let's turn to the next one.

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And Dan, could you read Psalm 11, verse 7? Bill, could you read

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Psalm 119, verse 137?

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Rich, could you read Psalm 145, verse 17?

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So, you guys could all set up with that. And then I'm going to read, yes, I've said this before, but one of my favorite verses in the

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Bible. Thank you very much. Let's see if I can quote it. I'm starting to not believe you.

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Yeah, well, you have a lot of favorites. I should have all these memorized, by the way. That should be an encouragement to me.

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It's not like one of my grandkids. Everything comes up. Oh, that's my favorite. Favorite candy. That's my favorite candy. That's my favorite cereal.

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Well, this one, Deuteronomy 32, 4. The Rock. His work is perfect, for all

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His ways are just. A God of faithfulness and without injustice. Righteous and upright is

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He. Now, there's a lot of words in there. We're trying to pick a category here, but let's see if the rest of the verses will make it a little more clear.

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So Psalm 11, verse 7. For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness. His countenance doth behold the upright.

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And Bill, 11. Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules.

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And Richie, the one I gave you. They shall utter the memory of your great goodness and shall sing of your righteousness.

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The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy.

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You actually mentioned the word I was looking for, the word is righteousness, but 145, 17.

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Are you close to that? You said 7 and 8 or 17, 18? 145, 17.

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Oh, I read 7 and 8. I'm sorry. I thought you said 7 and 8. That's OK. You found another verse that matched anyway.

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The Lord is righteous in all his ways. This is 17. The Lord is righteous in all his ways, gracious in all his works.

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The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.

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Amen. So as I said, we're just doing a sampling of what is in the scriptures that describe the

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Lord's goodness and his righteousness. There's so, so many more verses we could look at.

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And we could just really look at what he has done and then say, OK, the

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Lord did these things. And then we could say, look at the righteousness of who he is, just based upon what he did.

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It might not say righteousness in that particular passage, but based upon his actions and his faithfulness to somebody, we can still obviously pull the details of his characteristics from that.

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So what can we say about the Lord's righteousness? What's it like?

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It's perfect. I'm reading a book by John MacArthur. John MacArthur wrote a book called

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None Other. And what he said is, whatever God does is righteous because God does it.

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And we think about our lives, because we want to walk righteously before the

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Lord. We talked about that before. Some of these attributes God wants to see reflected in our lives, as we're created in his image.

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And he desires us to be conformed to the image of his son, Jesus. He wants us to walk in righteousness.

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But when we think of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, in a sense that he fulfilled all the law when he walked on this earth, and he was tempted in all ways, yet without sin.

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What does that look like? We can go through a day and we think, you know, we did pretty good today.

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I didn't yell at anybody. I didn't think evil of anyone. It was the hope

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I didn't. I don't remember it. I was faithful at work. I tried to work hard. I didn't get frustrated.

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But yet, even in all these things, like we're still, you know, not measuring up in so, so many ways, because there's positives, too.

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Like, you know, did we acknowledge the Lord? Did we glorify the Lord in all of our thoughts and our hearts?

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Did we love people as Jesus would have loved them? And he came and brushed up against them each and every day.

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And there's so many things when we start stockpiling up, like what we did right and what we did wrong, we can think like, oh my gosh, like I'm not even close.

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And that is true. But God walked as a man and did everything exactly right.

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And from all eternity back, God Almighty, everything he has ever done has been right and will be right, because he is the

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Lord and he is righteous. And there's nothing that he has done that is of unrighteousness at all.

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And it's hard to imagine it really is. And the beautiful thing is, is when we're conformed to the image of Jesus, we're going to be walking like that, too.

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We're going to be walking in purity. When the scriptures talk about, you know, us being presented before him as holy and blameless, it is as if we had walked as Jesus walked, because his righteousness is imputed to the believer, meaning giving credit to the believer.

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And then when we are perfected and this mortal flesh puts on immortality, we're going to walk in a way that is totally righteous before the

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Lord. And that's a tremendous, tremendous comfort. And we're not going to be weighed down by this flesh anymore.

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And we're going to be pure before him, just as he is pure. So, incredible to think about these things.

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It really is. And we can't wait, right? And in the meantime, as we do struggle in the flesh, we need to submit our lives to him.

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We need to ask him for the strength to walk every day and to do the things that are pleasing in his sight.

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And he's faithful about that, too. And of course, for the unbeliever, the righteous standard of God isn't going to change.

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So in order to obtain a presence before him, a person has to be totally righteous.

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And an unbeliever is never going to reach that on his own merit at all. It has to be through Jesus. And that's the only way.

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Okay, that's righteousness. Let's go to the next one. Can I say it's my favorite?

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No, I can't say that. I can't say that again. Can I? Sure you can.

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Okay. Who am I up to? Matt, how about reading, why don't you look at 1 Chronicles 29 11?

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That matter. That matter. I'm sorry. I did skip over you. It's fine. No, you can come right back around.

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I'll give you one. It's fine. It's okay. Psalm 115 3 for you. And John Isaiah 46 10.

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And I'll get back to all you guys in a second. And this is the one I'm going to read.

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Daniel 435 and all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.

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But he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

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No one can ward off his hand or say to him. What has thou done? Okay, it was first rifles 1411 first rifles.

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I thought it was 29 29. I'm sorry. I'll wait. We'll wait for you.

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Yours. Oh Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth yours is a

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Dominion over and you exalt yourself as head over all. Okay. I think

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Matt Psalm 115 3 our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases.

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And Isaiah 46 10 46 10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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So what am I driving at here? God's will will be accomplished in time and eternity.

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So if he has all authority and no one can thwart any of his plans is sovereign sovereignty.

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He is sovereign. He is sovereign overall. It's complete authority and you know, you can kind of like bleed into the mittens a little bit but you know complete power.

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There's no one who's going to thwart any plan of the Lord the Lord's plans are going to be established.

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He's going to do whatever he desires and thankfully because of all those other things we said about the

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Lord that he's loving he's faithful. He's righteous. The fact that he's sovereign is a very very great comfort to all of us because any being with that kind of power would be extremely scary.

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If like I said before they were mercurial and we couldn't trust them and they were just doing anything that the you know, treating us like little puppets that kind of thing and you know, we would just be at the whim of whatever this you know, unstable

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God would do but that's not our guy. Our God is all -powerful, but he is all -loving and he is sovereign overall his authority reigns overall.

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And we've talked about his sovereignty over a lot of things before when

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Matt was talking about you know, salvation and is he sovereign?

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What I see in the scriptures. Yes. Is he sovereign over the affairs of everyday life?

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Does he you know work things out to the counsel of his will? Yes, he does.

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And the thing is is we can trust him in that and we can rest in that because when we see things going on in this world like we have especially in these

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I mean, I mean growing up everything was so stable as it when I was a young boy, right?

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It was no big deal. I did we heard about Russia, you know, they might drop a bomb on us or something everybody hides under their desks for little drills, but there was nothing really scary back then.

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Gas lines in the 70s that kind of thing, you know, it's not that big of a deal.

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And then the 80s, you know, things seem to be going real good in the 80s and kind of 90s. Although we were selfish and we're just getting bigger and fatter and enjoying, you know, our wealth in this country, but but it hasn't been like that in the last several years.

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We skipped the 60s. It was a little a little perturbation. I was a little bit before my time. But yeah, you know, maybe a little bit of perturbation there.

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I don't want to date you Bob. Yeah, but yeah, your point is well taken.

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It's it seems different actually though. It seems different. But even in that if things really go off the rails and maybe there are other sicknesses that we can't get a handle on or the financial stuff just falls through the bottom or yeah, one of the big powers in the in the world do drop a nuke or something like that.

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God's still sovereign. Always going to be sovereign over all of these things. And I like what

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R .C. Sproul said one time he was he was in a bad train accident actually. And several people died on the train and he was he was saved out of that.

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And the the the interviewer that the newspapers wanted to interview him afterwards.

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It happened a while ago. So there were newspapers back then. And the guy said, well, you know, are you are you comforted in the fact that your

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Lord saved you out of this train wreck? And he said my friend the

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Lord was sovereign before that train wreck and the Lord is sovereign during that train wreck and the

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Lord is sovereign now and I rest in him no matter what happens in our lives.

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And that's a good attitude to have. Sometimes it's hard when things are going off the rails per se using the train wreck analogy, but we can trust him when things look like they're going off the rails because he is still in control.

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So is that a comfort for believers? Yes. And we have the assurance of eternal life.

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Even if we do die, we're going off to heaven. Right. Better absent from the body and present with the

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Lord. Right. Okay. We have a couple more to go here.

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I think we're going to make it Jack so we can get to your get to your lesson. So if someone could read

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Psalm 86 11 or not, not somebody I need to pick up Jacob. Could you read Psalm 86 11?

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Jeff, could you read Revelation 15 3? And Dave, I'll give you one more here too.

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So Psalm 43 3, I'm going to read 1st

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John 5 20. This is 1st John, not John's 1st John 5 20. And we know that the

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Son of God has come and has given us understanding in order that we may know him who is true.

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And that we are in him who is true. In his son Jesus Christ.

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This is the true God and eternal life. Okay, Jacob Psalm 86 11.

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Teach me your way Lord that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name.

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And Jeff. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the

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Lamb saying great and amazing are your deeds. Oh Lord God the Almighty just and true are your ways.

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Oh King of the Nations. Dave, I'm back to you.

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Yeah, Psalm 43 3 send out your light and your truth, but let them lead me but then bring me to your

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Holy Hill and to your dwelling. So what was the word the attribute of the word

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I was focusing on on this one? True truth. And by the way, if you if you remember the oogella first thing, we're down the

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T now. Yes, you know, it was true. Do you remember that? That was oh now the thing about God being truth not just truthful or containing truth or making statements that are true.

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We talked about God being the truth. Because he defines himself that way.

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He is the truth. And when we were back in the philosophy epistemology class, we talked about truth in a sense that you know, we held an apple in our hands and we said this is an apple.

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The Apple is red. We said something. So, okay, that was a true statement.

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But then we talked about well red is really the red the redness of the Apple really isn't in the

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Apple. It's a reflection of the light that hits the Apple. So I was like is the Apple really red and we talked about all the philosophical discussions of that.

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But we also talked about the fact that that Apple in our hand would not always be there.

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Why? Because we are deteriorating over time. The Apple is deteriorating over time.

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That statement was true for that moment in time. But God saying he is the truth means this.

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The Old English Dictionary states that truth is this it is in accordance with fact or reality accurate or exact loyal or faithful.

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That's what the bio or excuse me. The dictionary says is true. Truth and that would be true about the

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Apple. But there was a greater definition that we pulled out that said truth is that which is constant and unchangeable.

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We get back to immutability again. When God says he's the truth means not only.

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Yes, is he saying things that are not false. They're not lies.

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They are going to be true, but he's going to be that way forever and ever and ever and that is why he is the truth.

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He is never going to change and that ties again into immutability. But because of that, you know, everything that he does is going to stand everything that he that he does is going to be true for all times that that Deuteronomy 32 four verse, you know, righteous and upright as he and a

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God without injustice and the rock his work is perfect. All of those things are for all time and eternity.

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And it's nice to know that we can trust God because he's always going to be truthful with us.

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You know, it gets back into faithfulness to but God will God says he is the truth and we can count on that.

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So if we think about that for us, again, he wants his people to walk in these ways, right?

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He wants us to be truthful people. He wants us to certainly never lie lying in the scriptures is an abomination.

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He wants our word to be yes, yes, or no, no, and nothing else anything else is is of evil.

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He wants us to be people of our word that people can trust what we say and and walk in the truth that we don't follow things that are that are untruthful meaning that in the

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Book of Romans, for example, where it says let love be without hypocrisy. Love what is good cling to what is good, but abhor what is evil.

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So in order for that to happen, we have to cling to those things that are true. If we see something in this world that is false and is evil and is wrong people of the truth.

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You know do stand up against those things and obviously we do so against things that would exalt themselves against God or anything that adults themselves against God's law or anything that would where we see you know, the innocence innocent people being harmed or exploited by others.

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You know, we people we people of the truth. We're going to stand up for the truth for God's truth in this world. Sure. So Matthew 537 let your yes be yes and your no be no anything more than that is from the evil one.

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Yeah. And as I said, you know, we're only doing a sampling of verse. I didn't say

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John 14 6, right? That's in my little notes here, but there's many many other verses that talk about the truth, especially the

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Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit is going to guide us into all truth. Right? The fact that not only is the

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Lord true. He wants his children to be true, but he has given us of his spirit to guide us into all truth so that we may know the things that are of him and how to walk in his ways and be truthful and know the truth.

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But yeah, I didn't even go through some of those verses. There's you know, just a ton of but knowing the truth it's going to set us free and that's in here obviously as well.

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Anything else come to mind as far as God's truth? Usually I set up the questions better than that.

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That's just kind of an open -ended kind of thing. Trying to think about living in the Republic. The trip marches on.

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You know, for some reason, you know, I'm doing this like what does this mean to the believer? What does it mean to the unbeliever?

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We already talked about lying lips being an abomination to the Lord. I think is it, you know, in Proverbs chapter 6 where it says six things are an abomination to the

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Lord. Yeah, seven. I think two of them have to do with lying. Lying lips and a false witness.

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I think there's two of them actually in there. They talk about lying. We know certainly what the Lord's word says about lying.

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Lying has become a just more than an acceptable way of communication.

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These days are expressing yourself. It is just it is just what you do.

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It's the operative principle in politics. Operative principle. That's a good way to put it. I think in everyday life too.

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Yeah, Richie. It's just the way it goes now. Here is the quote six things the

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Lord hates seven that are distasteful to him haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict.

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Yeah, so why is this false witness? Right. So liars get in there twice and I didn't write the verse down but does anybody remember exact verse in in Revelation where it talks about those who are going to be outside the city outside the city gates says those are going to be dogs and those who are liars.

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Pastor's looking it up. He's probably get a hand on it in a second. But it's amazing in that particular setting that the

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Lord would specifically emphasize lying. Go ahead, Jack. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

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What verse is that? Revelation 22 15. He sums it up with anyone who practices falsehood and you know in this day and age like people are almost proud of the way they spin stories and you know bring about a you know, some kind of a a new angle on something without clearly you know stating things the way they are that everyone can plainly say we're intentionally distorting facts to bring people to your side.

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Right just limiting the facts or giving facts that you want to tell your story or whatever it is, right?

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You see why God hates the lie because he is the truth and is directly opposed to who he is.

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I mean in society we just I mean sometimes people just want to be identified as a girl even though they're a boy.

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I mean that's not I mean and everybody knows that that person is lying but they all go along with that lie because the culture says that it's good to lie with those type of lies.

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Even the American Medical Association now, they don't want to put on the birth certificate whether it's boy or girl because they say you can pick that later.

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So when it's so ingrained in the culture that lying is it's whatever it's kind of like when we went to the the

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Andy Kim thing and the lady doctor said, well, that's your truth and you know, you're entitled to your truth and our truth.

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And so when you live in a culture where there it's so it's so bendable and pliable.

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It's just you know, it's good to know that that God is sovereign over truth and that it's you know, there is no there is no gray area in God's world.

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You know what I mean? And what people don't understand is there is tremendous safety and there is tremendous sovereign protection when you obey what is true.

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When you step outside of those boundaries you end up in a lot of trouble and that's where our culture is right now.

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So the truth so that is the is sort of the last attribute individual attribute.

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We we were going to go over and now what we're going to try to do is summarize God Almighty and we're going to do so by well,

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I'm going to quote a couple of you. That's what I'm going to do. I need to find

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I need to find this great. This is going to be a test. This is a test.

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I'm going to read a quote and we're going to figure out where it came from. Okay. Is Rich allowed to participate?

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He's allowed to participate. The holiness of God is the sum of his attributes.

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Isaiah 6 3 and Revelation 4. To be holy means to be set apart.

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God is set apart from all creative things because he exists in a uniqueness of his incommunicable attributes and the perfection of his morality.

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That's a famous quote by someone. You might know that quotes from what is he school?

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Oh better than that. It's Jeff Cleaver.

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Yeah. I didn't even know it was for this book better. Yeah. Jack's default is the sum of the

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Lord's attributes. He's so unique. He is so beyond anything that we can think or even imagine in our lives certainly beyond anything in creation.

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Let me read another quote. Actually, this probably is from R .C. Sproul. It's not this other one.

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Yeah, it is. Okay. It says typically most Christians think of righteousness as ethical purity when they hear the term holy.

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After all God's Word in many passages associates holiness with righteous living and being cleansed from sin.

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Nevertheless holiness in the scripture while associated with moral uprightness is not chiefly about doing right things to be holy is first and foremost to be set apart from what is common.

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It is to be different and unique in comparison to all others all other things. So that's our that's our friend

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R .C. Sproul. Different and unique. No one like the

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Lord. And if you summarize all the things that we have tried to go over to define or describe a sovereign infinite limitless

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God. Those are the best words we can come up with. He is holy holy holy.

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So let's read a couple of those verses. Could someone turn to Isaiah 6 2 and 3.

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Oh, I said someone again. I should pick somebody. Jack, I think you're next. Isaiah 6 2 and 3. Brad, could you go to Revelation 4 8?

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Those are the two verses that Pastor had mentioned by the way. Revelation 4 8. And Bob, could you go to Isaiah 45 5?

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Isaiah 45 5. And we'll do a couple after this too. Jack, do you have that?

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Verses 2 and 3. Yes. Above him stood the seraphim each had six wings and with two he covered his face and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew and one called to another and said holy holy holy is the

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Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of him. All of his glory. Seraphim are pretty amazing beings, but when they see

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God they fall to earth. They cover themselves up and say holy holy.

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Brad, how about yours? And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings are full of eyes all around and within and day and night.

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They never cease to say holy holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

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Four living creatures are amazing beings too. Don't think it's the seraphim.

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Maybe more like the cherubim possibly. Black people think it's the cherubim. They fall down.

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They say holy holy holy too. Bob, how about the verse that I gave you

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Isaiah 45 5. I am the Lord and there is no other apart from me. There is no

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God. I will strengthen you though you have not acknowledged me. I am the

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Lord. There's no other. There's none besides him. Jeremiah 10 6 says this. There is none like the oh

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Lord thou are great and great as thy name in might. Exodus 9 14 says this for this time.

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I will send all my plagues on you and your servants and your people so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.

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Of course, he's speaking to Pharaoh. There's no one like the

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Lord. So what do we do in response to a God who is awesome and almighty or a flag?

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We do. I mean, we've learned that from this the seraphim the four creatures.

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So what are we going to do? Let's turn to Dan. Could you turn to Revelation 5 9 and Bill could you turn to Revelation 5 13 and rich you're going to find out to finish this up with Psalm 150 verse 6 very end of the very end of that everything that has a breath praise the

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Lord. Well, if you have it memorized, you don't even need to turn at Dan.

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How about laying the Revelation 5 9 on and they sung a new song saying thou are worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof for that was slain and has redeemed us to God by the blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation and 513 bill and I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the land be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever and rich you can finish this up.

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I think that's right. Right? Yes. You have everything that has breath praise the

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Lord praise the Lord. You said it again. Why not say it again, right?

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Right. You know, I should have brought the handbooks in because it was who we can sing ahead. But maybe we can figure one out while we're sitting here.

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But this is it. What up? What do you do when you try to explain or describe or wrap your mind around a

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God who is so you know, so beyond description. We sit here in prison and we make songs, you know,

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I feel so badly for the musicians. I'm having a bad enough a hard enough time describing in words the magnificence of God, right?

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I'm trying to do what I can but I'm mostly quoting Scripture. So now I'm pretty safe there, right? But if you're a musician and you're trying to write songs that exalt the

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Lord in musical notes and in words, I thank God for the people who are able to do that because I think to some degree, you know in our limitations.

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It's like well, we'll do the best we can but you know, it's not going to be enough to praise the

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Lord Almighty. As a matter of fact, Jeff brought that out the other day. He said there's that one song where if all the oceans were ink and every stalk and every stick was a pen and all of the sky was paper we could write on, there still wouldn't be enough to praise the

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Lord with all the things that we could imagine. I'm reading John MacArthur's book,

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None Other, and one quote he says, I can never forget. He says, he didn't just save us you know, to have eternal life.

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He saved us so that we will worship him forever. And for us as believers, you know, really being created to worship is really, it should be the most comfortable place for us to be.

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It should be the most joyful place for us to be. It shouldn't be like a burden to come and worship before the

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Lord. It should be a joy. And if we think about all these things that we have spoken about, whether it be his justice or his omnipresence or any of the things we've spoken of, these things are healthy for us to think about.

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in the book of Philippians when it says that we should think about the things that are true and the things that are right, the things that are noble and of good repute, these are the kind of things we should be thinking on because that's who

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God is. Philippians 4, 8. Yeah, another favorite verse.

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Another favorite verse, probably my favorite verse. Again. So I think that's all

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I'm going to say tonight. Unless you guys have some more things that you'd like to say about just the magnificence of the

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Lord. I just want to share one verse, Romans 8, 29. For whom before knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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He wants us to be a brother. Yeah. Yeah, when you think about those kind of things, that's, that just is off the charts as far as you know, that he wants the fellowship with his creation that he does.

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That's just amazing. That's amazing. And the high priestly prayer,

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John 17, the high priestly prayer. Jesus prays. He says the father loves us now as much as he did the son.

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That's awesome to think about. Right? And he says if we love him and he keeps his commandments, he's going to disclose himself to us.

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If you draw near to him, he'll draw near to us. Just the promises of the Lord and the fact that he desires, even though he is so magnificent, and he desires a relationship with us.

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It is just incredible. With us. Yeah, with us is great. With us. Would somebody like to close us in prayer tonight?

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I will. Go ahead. Sure. Well God, I just thank you for this day. I thank you for all the blessings that you've bestowed upon us,

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God. I just thank you for these men who've come out to learn more about you and all the aspects that make you the holy and righteous and all -powerful

01:00:07

God of the universe that created us and that seeks to reconcile us all to himself, God.

01:00:13

Thank you so much for sending your son to die on the cross for us so that we can have a way to be reconciled to you,

01:00:18

Lord, and that we can spend eternity in heaven worshiping you. I just pray God that you would continue to bless these men, bless this church, bless our pastor, give us boldness to speak out against the darkness of this world.

01:00:31

Lord, I just pray that you would give us safe travels home. And that we could all get back together again this