A Colossal Faulty Assmption. Part 2

[0:00] The title of the message is A Colossal Faulty Assumption, Part 2. I would like you to please turn to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation.

[0:19] And this morning we'll be taking a look at Revelation Chapter 5. All 14 verses.

[0:32] So, Revelation 5. Revelation 5.

[1:06] And to break its seals. And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the book or to look into it.

[1:20] Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it.

[1:31] And one of the elders said to me, Stop weeping. Behold, the lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.

[1:50] And I saw between the throne with the four living creatures and the elders a lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

[2:15] And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. When he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

[2:43] And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood, men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

[3:06] You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God. And they will reign upon the earth. Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders.

[3:26] And the number of them was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

[3:49] And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them I heard saying, To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.

[4:14] And the four living creatures kept saying, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped. What an absolutely, utterly amazing scene.

[4:33] You let your mind focus upon that, your mind's eye focus upon that, and try to visualize what is being described there. And it is so completely over the top that it just, it just, we fail to really be able to get into it.

[4:50] It is an amazing picture. And in keeping with that, if you will remain right here in Revelation 5, we'll be referring to it later, but I have some introductory remarks I want to share with you before we go to this text and to one in Zechariah.

[5:08] We are continuing our examination of what we are calling faulty assumptions. These are things that people have believed, and often still believed, that were or are assumed to be true, but they are not true at all.

[5:27] Faulty assumptions are based upon a misinterpretation of Scripture. Faulty assumptions are based on a failure to rightly divide the word of truth.

[5:39] Faulty assumptions are based upon human fallen intellect that causes our thinking to be skewed. And fallen assumptions, faulty assumptions are encouraged and engendered by the adversary.

[5:56] The adversary is all about deception. Deception, death, and destruction. Those are his motives, and he is very good at what he does.

[6:09] Faulty assumptions, even though they are made sincerely, and by people with good intentions, false assumptions can be transformed into doctrine, and then believed and acted upon by those who embrace them.

[6:25] We are exploring faulty assumptions because they lead people astray, and they result in dividing the people of God.

[6:36] We've shared with you in the past, and we will be doing so in the future, that it is the faulty assumptions that leads to erroneous doctrine that causes the divisions that exist in Christendom.

[6:50] And when I say Christendom, I'm talking in very general terms, including Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. And those of you, I'm sure, who are aware of Protestantism having actually been a part of the Roman Catholic system at one time, until they came out of it hundreds of years ago, can understand that.

[7:13] The only corrective to overcoming faulty assumptions is the truth that God has provided in his word. But even that is then subject to interpretation.

[7:27] And we're right back to the core of the problem. Various interpretations resulting in different doctrinal positions divides Christendom, and it remains divided.

[7:40] It keeps the Methodists separate from the Baptists, separate from the Pentecostals, separate from the Brethren, separate from the Presbyterian. And what is this all about anyway?

[7:50] It's all about each of these groups have doctrinal positions that differ from others who do not accept their doctrinal positions. And we present a separated kind of concept of Christianity.

[8:08] Little wonder. People in the world look on who have no claims at all about Christianity, and often have no interest in it, saying, how in the world would anybody know what to believe or what to follow anyway?

[8:20] Because you've got all of these diverse groups out there, and the only thing they have in common is that each one believes that they are right and all the other folks are wrong. That does not present a very attractive front.

[8:33] It presents a kind of front like they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're believing. They can't even get together. They all call themselves Christians, and yet they are so far apart.

[8:46] How would you possibly know? And then some to the conclusion, some come to the conclusion that you can't know. Nobody can know. So it's just this whole Christianity thing, the whole religious thing, is just a big question mark.

[9:03] Nobody knows. So, why get concerned about it? Why bother about it? They can't even agree on what's right and what's true and what the Bible says, and why should we?

[9:15] And I can fully understand they're coming to that position. The only corrective, the only corrective to overcoming that is the truth that God has provided in His Word.

[9:28] But as I've said, even that comes with the need for interpretation. We've looked at the origins of faulty assumptions, and we saw that it actually began in the angelic sphere.

[9:40] It began before there was a creation of heaven and earth with the angels, and then as soon as humans were placed on the earth, Lucifer got right to work with his faulty assumptions and sold a bill of goods to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and it has been downward ever since.

[10:00] We are considering now the Jewish people who had the list of faulty assumptions because as an aggregate group, they were here first, and that's why we are considering them.

[10:13] I can assure you we will not run out of faulty assumptions for a long time. And moving from the Judaism and the faulty assumptions that have been established there that still remain very much intact with the Jewish people today as we will see shortly, we will then move into the Roman Catholic sphere and how faulty assumptions began there that formulated the Roman Catholic Church and it began as early as the first and second centuries.

[10:44] In the 1500s, we have what began known, began, came to be known as the Protestant Reformation and guess what?

[10:58] Of course, it is riddled with faulty assumptions. Is there any way that we can arrive at the truth?

[11:08] And in the midst of all of this, you have every right to ask, well, Pastor Marv, what makes you think you don't have some faulty assumptions of your own?

[11:21] And you know what? I probably do. I'm looking for them. And you're welcome to help me find them. Nobody has all the truth and anybody who says they do is someone to be avoided.

[11:40] But what we are trying to do is sift and sort the doctrine that is recorded here in Scripture and see to what extent and how we may best see how things come together and fit.

[11:56] Because we are committed to the idea that the Word of God is infallible and inerrant and it is true in every way and God does not speak out of both sides of His mouth.

[12:11] The Bible is not a book of contradictions. It is a book of coherence. Everything coheres in this book. Everything ties together.

[12:21] You've heard me often say everything in the book is connected to everything in the book. And what we are trying to do is understand and benefit from the connections.

[12:34] because it is a cohesive, coherent whole. And when you grasp it, begin grasping it, there is nothing like it.

[12:46] It is the most beautiful thing that I have ever experienced in all the years that I have been a believer. And that is what I relish for you and want you to experience it as well.

[13:00] So here in this Revelation chapter 5 passage, we are going to spend just a few moments dealing with the Jewish aspect. And by the way, a point has been made before and needs to be reiterated that you will find perhaps no book in all of the Bible that is as Jewish as the book of the Revelation with the possible exception of the epistle to the Hebrews.

[13:27] That of course is thoroughly Jewish. Revelation is an intensely Jewish book. And if you look at it carefully, especially if you happen to have a New American Standard translation, you will see that all of the quotes that are there in all of the books, if it is a quote from the Old Testament and you're reading in the New, it will appear in capital letters indicating that it is a quote from the Old Testament and telling you where it's taken from.

[13:56] And as you go through the Revelation, you will find numerous verses that are recorded like that in capital letters indicating that it is a quote from the Old Testament scriptures.

[14:08] Our Jewish friends, and I speak of them as friends because they are certainly not enemies. We love the Jewish people and our heart goes out to them because we feel that they deprive themselves of truth that God has provided by ignoring the New Testament.

[14:28] they, of course, do not see what we call the New Testament as being part of the revelation of God. As far as the Jewish people are concerned, historically and to the present, the entirety of the Bible consists of three categories, the law, the prophets, and the writings.

[14:52] Everything in the Old Testament comes under one of those three categories. categories. And they, of course, do not embrace the New Testament at all because they do not believe that it is part of the revelation of God.

[15:06] To us, when you read the Old Testament and finish with the book of Malachi, or if you happen to have a Jewish Bible, you will see that their Bible, their Old Testament, or their completed revelation, as they believe it, ends with 2 Chronicles.

[15:23] They have exactly the same books that we have in our Old Testament, but they are arranged a little bit differently. Yet the content is there. Our feeling is that they deprive themselves of information that God has provided that would provide the rest of the story.

[15:42] Because as you read the Old Testament, especially if you read it from our translation, which ends with Malachi, it leaves you with wondering, so, where do we go from here?

[15:55] What's the rest of the story? Well, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story is the New Testament. That's where it picks up 400 years later.

[16:06] But, of course, they are unable to appreciate that. The time is coming when, as we have discovered right here in the book of the Revelation, that there will be 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes, this is in Revelation 7, it's repeated again in Revelation 14, that will have come to the very firm, solid conviction that the New Testament is part of the revelation of God.

[16:32] And they will use that truth to evangelize the world. There will be 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. But for now, the Jewish nation has been set aside in unbelief until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.

[16:48] That, too, is recorded in the book of Romans. So, where we are going is looking at the faulty assumption of the Jews and how and why they reached it.

[17:01] And let me just state it as clearly as I can right up front because here is where the real difficulty lies. We believe the Bible makes it quite clear that there are two, count them, two appearances on earth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[17:21] There is the first coming, sometimes referred to as the first advent, and there is the second coming. We see these with crystal clarity.

[17:32] Matter of fact, the Old Testament, which the Jewish people do accept, speaks far more of the second coming than it does the first coming.

[17:44] And I am satisfied this is one reason why the Jewish people have a fixation on the coming of the Messiah.

[17:57] Because in the second coming, he comes with splendor and power and great glory and every eye will see him.

[18:10] And the Jewish people say, that's our Messiah. But in his first coming, he came to an obscure Jewish village called Bethlehem to an obscure people who comprise one of the very tiniest percentages of the world population of any people in the world.

[18:36] I mean, this place was strictly Hicksville. It was just inconsequential. And that's where this Messiah, we believe, came for his first coming.

[18:51] And from what we have read already here, and I would ask you to return to it in Revelation chapter 5, I just want to pick out a couple of verses here regarding this book with seven seals. I am persuaded, as are many biblical scholars, that this book with the seven seals actually represents the title deed to planet earth.

[19:16] That's what this book that is sealed seven times is all about. It represents the title deed to the earth. whoever owns the title deed owns the earth.

[19:31] Whoever it is that has the possession of the deed to your house owns the house. And so it is with this book.

[19:41] And no one is capable or able to claim ownership of it. One of the reasons that one might be weeping here, John says, he began to weep greatly.

[19:55] No one was found worthy to open the book or look into it. The earth was already in the possession of someone who was it.

[20:12] It was none other than Lucifer, the son of the morning, who still has the possession of the planet. He is referred to unmistakably in 2 Corinthians 4 as the god of this age.

[20:31] We are told in 1 Peter 5.8 that he walks about the earth as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. This is Satan's world.

[20:43] You understand that? That's why there is so much evil in it. This is what he specializes in. He traffics in evil and deception and death and disease and everything that goes with it.

[20:58] This is why this world has gone and is going the way that it is. When Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, he didn't mean that it wasn't going to be here on this globe, but he meant that his kingdom is of an entirely different order, totally removed from this present evil world.

[21:27] And many people today, of course, simply do not understand that. But if you are a believer in Christ and you have rightly divided the word, the conclusion is inescapable.

[21:39] And when Satan confronted our Lord Jesus, one of the temptations he offered him was, if you see all of these kingdoms, we don't know where they went or how he viewed this, but he showed him the kingdoms of this world and he said, all of this will I give you if you will fall down and worship me.

[22:05] The question is, was it his to give? Did he have ownership of it? Yes, he did. He still does. Time is coming when it is going to be wrested from him, but right now, he's calling the shots.

[22:21] I realize that he is like a mad dog on a leash, and he can go no further than what God will permit him to go, but he has great latitude, and he demonstrated that in the ability that God gave him to harass Job like he did in the Old Testament, and in the New, Paul talks about Satan, and he says, don't give the devil a foothold.

[22:46] We are not ignorant of his devices. We know how he works, and we do not struggle or wrestle against flesh and blood. That's not our true enemy. It isn't flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers, wickedness in high places.

[23:06] Boom, is he speaking there? He's speaking of the demonic, the satanic, and they are in control in large measure of this world. We, as believers, are like troops that have been dropped behind enemy lines.

[23:23] We live in a hostile world. Do you understand that? I'm sure most of you do. Don't expect an even break from the world. They don't have it to give.

[23:34] They dance to a different tune than what the believer does in Christ. We are citizens of heaven. This world is not our home.

[23:45] We are just passing through and we need to keep that perspective in mind. So, in this world that Satan controls and operates, when the time comes and Christ takes charge of it, he is going to claim ownership of this world and he is going to come with the force of arms and take it back.

[24:13] It was his originally. As God created the heavens and the earth, how did he pronounce them? Very good. That was before the adversary was let loose and contaminated it, beginning with Adam and Eve.

[24:31] And when the time comes that it is going to be taken back, it will be taken back by the force of arms, as we have seen before in Revelation 19, and the sharp sword that proceeds out of Christ's mouth will simply be his spoken word.

[24:48] And here, the right to do so is demonstrated and it is clear in verse 9 that the reason he is worthy of opening the book and claiming the property of it is because thou wast slain and didst purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

[25:16] And thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God and they will reign upon the earth. Are they now? Of course not. Of course not.

[25:28] But they will. And therein is where we have this enormous difference with our Jewish friends. We see this as tied to the second coming.

[25:42] The Jewish people see this as tied to, well they don't see it at all in the revelation, but they see the principle, the concept tied to his only coming.

[25:55] They completely deny the reality of the babe in Bethlehem that he was the Messiah. After all, as you read what is considered the totality of the Jewish scriptures, and you find so many references to the coming of the Messiah and what he is going to do, well let's take one.

[26:18] Let's come to Zechariah chapter 14 if you will please. If you have a little difficulty with that, just come back to where the chapters divide, where the Old Testament divides, and then you've got Malachi as the last book of the Old Testament, and then you zip right into Zechariah that's just before it.

[26:39] Look at Zechariah chapter 14 if you would please. Zechariah 14, Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you.

[26:55] for I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, half the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.

[27:12] Then the Lord, whom they believe to be, and we would agree, the Messiah, then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations.

[27:25] This is the force of arms. As when he fights on a day of battle. And in that day, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half toward the south.

[27:53] And you will flee by the valley of the mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach Ezel. Yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake, and let's move on down for time's sake to verse 9.

[28:07] And the Lord, the Messiah, whom they believe to be the Messiah as well, the Lord will be king over all the earth. In that day, the Lord will be the only one, and his name the only one.

[28:25] We see this with what we think is crystal clarity and the second coming. Our Jewish friends believe this verse just as much as you do, but to them, it's the first coming.

[28:43] It's his only coming. time. Therein is where the great disparity lies. And what would we say is attributed to that? Faulty assumption.

[28:56] And the faulty assumption is, on their part, that there is but one arrival of the Messiah. When Christ returns, he is going to complete what he began the first time.

[29:12] And what did he do the first time? As the text just told us, in Revelation 5, he purchased the right to take the earth back.

[29:26] And he will take it back by force. That's the Revelation 19. And what gave him the right to do that was simply the fact that he purchased it as the text says, with his own blood.

[29:45] Jesus Christ bought and paid for this fallen world. And one day he is going to come back and take it from the adversary by force.

[29:59] The adversary will be in vast array with his minions. This will be the Antichrist and the other nations throughout the world that are joining him in this last great rebellion.

[30:12] You know it better by Armageddon. This is the conflict that is going to take place. And what does Jesus the right to do that, the legal and moral right to do it, is that he already bought and paid for it in the first coming.

[30:30] Now, again, for the sake of our Jewish friends, and I do not know if any of them or how many of them might be listening to this, someone might give it to them, but I want you to come to a passage of scripture that is very familiar to most believers.

[30:43] Unfortunately, it doesn't have much familiarity with the Jewish people, but it should have, and I would ask you to turn to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah chapter 53.

[30:56] I have read with great interest a number of the articles that were submitted by a man by the name of Zvi. His name is Zvi.

[31:08] He was a converted, I guess you would say, a completed Jewish man. He came to faith in Yeshua as his Messiah when I think he was about 14 or 15 years of age.

[31:20] He was born in Siberia, I believe, and emigrated to Germany and then eventually to the United States.

[31:35] But he was quite an evangelist among his own people. And you've perhaps read many of his articles in Israel, my glory, and he's always confronting with his Jewish countrymen and showing them the scriptures.

[31:50] And one of the passages that he turned to most often, and he almost always got the same response, was Isaiah chapter 53. And I'd like you to look at it, if you would, please.

[32:02] It's referred to as the suffering servant. Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground.

[32:15] He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

[32:28] And like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried.

[32:41] Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

[32:52] The chastening of our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging, we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

[33:10] He was oppressed, and he was afflicted. Yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so he did not open his mouth.

[33:26] By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due.

[33:39] His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, yet with a rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence, nor was any deceit found in his mouth, the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief.

[33:56] If he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days. And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied.

[34:12] By his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great, and he will divide the booty with the strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors.

[34:31] Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors. You will look far and wide to find a more vivid description of the experience of our Lord Jesus Christ and what he went through.

[34:52] And interestingly enough, when Zvi, who often had occasion to read this passage of scripture to his Jewish friends that he was witnessing to, more than once they came back with, yes, well that does sound like Jesus, but that's New Testament and we don't accept that.

[35:14] That is not part of the word of God. You cannot imagine the shock that was registered when they were shown that it was in their Bible, in the prophet Isaiah, which they fully accept.

[35:32] They scratch their heads and say, I don't understand this. What does this mean? Well, I know what it cannot mean. It cannot be speaking of Jesus as the Messiah.

[35:43] That is completely, I will have to ask my rabbi about this. And of course they do, and the rabbis have no good answers, but the most common objection that they come up with is that this is not speaking of an individual.

[36:00] It is speaking, Isaiah is actually talking about a nation. And the nation that Isaiah is talking about is Israel.

[36:12] Well, now, do words mean anything? On the other hand, can you not see that Israel as a nation has undergone a great deal of deprivation and persecution and vilification from the world?

[36:27] Who would deny that? And we saw the climax. Well, actually it won't be a climax. The climax is yet awaited. But what appeared to be a climax was the Holocaust, only it's going to be even much worse than that during the tribulation period.

[36:43] We saw how the Jewish people were treated then. But when you look at this passage, Isaiah 53, and you try because you don't want it to look like Jesus of Nazareth, you desperately want it to look like this is a nation.

[37:00] Never mind the fact that there is a masculine personal pronoun used repeatedly, he, he, he, and he still insists that that is in reference to Israel.

[37:13] Well, as you read the text, it is, I believe, intellectually impossible to conclude that.

[37:25] Yet, they must. And it is this that is associated with the first coming of the Messiah. When he came the first time, it was that innocent baby in a manger in Bethlehem.

[37:44] Very little press, very little notoriety. True, there were some magi who came from the east because they had heard about it. But by and large, it was pretty much a forgotten thing.

[37:59] Didn't really stir up all that much activity. Not like the second coming. Now, let me ask you a question. If you were looking for a Messiah, a Savior to come, who would deliver you and all of the people in your nation, would you prefer one who would come in splendor and power and great glory and pomp and circumstance, riding on that beautiful white horse with that sharp sword, the spoken word proceeding out of his mouth, decimating all of the enemies of Israel and sending them all into oblivion which they deserve for opposing the one true God, when the heavens and the powers of the heavens will be shaken and the sun will not give its light and the moon will be darkened and all of these cataclysmic things will be happening in connection with his coming and every eye shall see him.

[39:03] who would you prefer be your deliverer? That Messiah or a baby in a manger?

[39:18] Baby in a manger just doesn't look anything at all like he would ever be able to get the job done, does he? Of course not. And as he is portrayed all through the Old Testament in Isaiah 9.6 and Isaiah 7.14 other passages that we've looked at all speak of the first coming of Christ.

[39:41] So easy to overlook because it's natural to fixate on the one who has all of the pomp and glory.

[39:51] That's why it is so easy to overlook the first coming altogether and focus upon the second. But when you read the events that are going to occur with the second coming, their conclusion is Jesus of Nazareth couldn't possibly be the Messiah because look at all the things the Messiah is going to do when he comes.

[40:14] Jesus didn't do any of those things. No he didn't. But he shall. And he shall in the second coming, not in the first.

[40:25] It was what he accomplished in the first coming. shed his blood for the population of the planet. It's what he did in his first coming that gives him the right to do what he will do in his second coming.

[40:40] The first is essential before the second can be realized. And that is a faulty assumption that our Jewish friends have been making for the last 2,000 years.

[40:55] it ties right in there with that one well you are to say that his disciples came by night and stole away the body while the guards were sleeping.

[41:05] That's just one more faulty assumption. And why did they conclude that? Because the only alternative is it's obvious he rose from the dead. Well you can't buy that.

[41:17] You can't believe that because what would that mean? that would mean he is the Messiah. You can't go there. This is the blindness in part that has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.

[41:35] You know we all have this veil over our eyes that skews human thinking and human logic that keeps us from reaching the kind of conclusions that we ought and the only thing that can address it and bring us into accuracy the scriptures that God has provided.

[41:52] That's the only thing that can do it. My mind is no better than yours or anybody else's. It too is skewed with faulty logic and faulty reasoning. I can reach some of the most harebrained conclusions about some of the subjects that I've dealt with over the years and they were simply the result of my own thinking and later I was able to get some truth on the matter and I looked back on it and I said Wiseman how could you have been so stupid?

[42:20] How could you have missed that? Why didn't you see that? What are you thinking anyway? And I was thinking with the gray matter I had it is deficient, it is defective, it is skewed, and it is warped and so is yours.

[42:41] That's part of the fall. When our first parents fell, everything about them fell. not just the physical body, the thinking processes and everything and connected with that, we fell in toto, completely.

[42:57] And the only thing that can make this ship of humanity a right is the infusion of the word of God. And it always comes back to that.

[43:09] Always. So, we conclude by saying authority. It's all about authority. Always has been, always will be.

[43:22] That's where we are. Our Jewish friends' faulty conclusions and faulty thinking leads them to reject what the scriptures say, what their own scriptures say regarding the first coming of the Messiah.

[43:36] Micah 5.2, Thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, who shall be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

[43:49] What? Goings forth from old, from everlasting? Of course. Speaking of the pre-incarnate Christ, the pre-incarnate Son of God, who didn't begin his humanity until Bethlehem.

[44:07] But prior to that, his goings forth were of old from everlasting. Amazing. All of this is connected. You see, it's all tied together once you see how the parts fit the whole.

[44:24] And that's another reason that I'm quite excited about our starting a Through the Bible series in January that will be undertaking the Bible in one year chronologically.

[44:36] faulty assumptions abound out there and we just need to be alert. We are all capable of making them. I've made my share over the years.

[44:46] You probably have made your share as well. But they can be straightened out and they can be corrected once we get the truth. And the truth lies in this book.

[44:59] May we pray together. Father, we recognize that there's much that we've talked about that we still don't understand. And we fully admit that we are capable of creating faulty assumptions of our own.

[45:12] And we look to you and to the authority of the word of God to straighten out our skewed thinking and bring it in line with scripture. For therein lies the only real truth.

[45:25] And we are so grateful that you've been pleased to provide it. Our prayer for any who may be here today who have never really come to terms with Jesus Christ and who he is, what he did, and why it matters so very much.

[45:40] Our prayer is that they may see in him their all in all, that they may come to know him, whom to know aright is life eternal. Our prayer for anyone who is searching and seeking for truth is that they might be willing to open themselves to you and say, I want to know the truth and I'm willing for you to show it to me.

[46:04] Here am I. Convince me. Enable me to see the truth that I long to embrace. That is our prayer for them and we trust it will be their prayer as well.

[46:16] We know it will not go unanswered. Thank you for all that you've been pleased to reveal for this glorious season of the year that we can enjoy in a way that the world is unable to enjoy.

[46:28] We bless you for it in Christ's wonderful name. Amen. Amen.