20250105_IWillNotLeaveThee

[0:00] to reiterate why I even study it. Why do we study? John and I were just talking.

[0:12] There are going to be people meeting this morning who are not even going to discuss, they're going to call themselves a church, but they're not even going to discuss the Word of God.

[0:23] I don't know what they talk about, but it's not good. But they're not going to discuss the Word of God.

[0:34] There are going to be people who meet who say the only thing worth reading are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And they're going to decide what parts of what Jesus actually spoke to the crowds in Israel, what parts of that apply to me and how?

[1:04] And they're going to make a decision about doctrine based upon what they feel like. Usually upon what suits me, right?

[1:15] Yeah, I take the Scriptures I like, I put them there, and you notice even in believing, even amongst believers, I tend to rank sin according to what I don't do, what I have control of.

[1:35] I rarely talk about the stuff I have weakness on, right? It's usually the big ones that I have more control of.

[1:45] See, it's always easier for me to judge your behavior than it is to judge my own. That's why, you remember what the Apostle Paul said?

[1:57] It's a small matter that I'm judged by you. I don't even judge myself. Right? So, but nevertheless, there are going to be people who are meeting that are only going to talk about that.

[2:10] And then there will be people that meet who think it's only worthwhile to talk about how I'm different than everybody else. Neither of which is right.

[2:22] I need to focus on why, why do we study the whole of the Word of God? Some have called it, if you're old enough, you remember these words, the whole counsel of God.

[2:37] Why do we study that? That was a real question. Well, let's go back a little bit, and we're going to look at a few verses.

[2:59] If I lived somewhere where I never heard the gospel, am I accountable for sin?

[3:13] That's a real question. Am I? How? I didn't know it. Why are they without excuse?

[3:30] That's the point, isn't it? See, whether or not I've ever heard the gospel, creation says there is a God.

[3:45] Romans chapter 1, you know these verses. What does Paul say? It's in chapter 1.

[3:55] You know where we're going with this, don't you? Why are they without excuse? creation has made it known that, number one, there is a God, and number two, He's not like you.

[4:14] Right? His eternal nature. You see that? Now, most of what we know about God's character and what He is like and what He desires and what He does, most of that we know from special revelation, the Word of God.

[4:37] He spoke through the prophets, and the apostles were the prophets of the New Testament, right?

[4:48] Or the new after Christ came. But, nevertheless, special revelation gives us the most of what we know about God, but that, I don't need to know all that to be accountable.

[5:03] All I need to know is, there had to be a reason for this, and the one who made this can't be contained within it.

[5:22] He has, so, something about the basis of the holiness of God is revealed in nature. The creator of it can't be part of the creation.

[5:35] I mean, that's, even I can get that part. So, that ought to be pretty, therefore, the, you've heard this argument tried to be, it's an absurdity, but it's tried to be raised, nevertheless, could God create a rock too big for Him to move?

[5:56] Right? You've heard that. And the answer is, no. He's not contained by creation. In fact, He inhabits eternity.

[6:13] And He's the only one who does so. So, we know a couple of things just by reason of creation. creation. And that is, He's, He's not bound by time, and He's not bound by space.

[6:30] He's, He's eternal, and He's separate from His creation. That's, what He means when He says, holy. He describes Himself, by the way, most often, as, holy.

[6:45] So, when Isaiah has a vision of God high and lifted up with the seraphim covering their faces, what are they saying?

[7:03] Holy, holy, holy. holy. And, when Isaiah gets a view of God and a view of Himself, what does He do?

[7:20] Woe is me. And woe is all of us, are all of us. Woe are all of us without Christ.

[7:36] are we not? My only hope to face God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay. So, we observe from the cosmos that God exists and that He exists holy.

[7:52] He exists separate from it and that He exists independently. By the way, I opened because Betty went home to be with the Lord.

[8:08] She has the promise of eternal life. We have the promise of eternal life who trust in Christ. Jesus, even for those who are going to listen to the, to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they, hopefully, they'll listen to John a little bit too.

[8:33] But, nevertheless, Jesus said, I, the Father, has life in Himself.

[8:46] That is, He exists independently. And, so has the Son. Jesus said, I have life in myself.

[8:58] Therefore, He can say, no man takes my life, I, I give it willingly, freely. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to pick it up again.

[9:20] Now, I do not have that authority. Only the Son. And, it is through Him that we have that promise.

[9:31] That was a little side trail I didn't intend to go that far on. But, 2 Peter chapter 1.

[9:44] If you look at 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 12, and I'm just going to pick out some highlights on here about why I study. I being us.

[10:03] So, Peter says to them in verse 12, what? I'll leave it unto you to get the whole context, but these are pertinent.

[10:19] What's he doing there? What? Okay, he's, I'm reminding you of these things so that what? What? What? What?

[10:29] What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? So, because you already know them and are established in what?

[10:46] In the truth. Now, it encourages me for what I know to be the present truth because I'm going to study things that happened before and I'm going to see how God brought it to pass.

[11:03] not because men did something but I might say in spite of what man did.

[11:17] He put Adam and Eve in the garden. What did Adam and Eve do? They said they ate of the tree of of the knowledge of good and evil and they were kicked out of the garden so that they could not come into contact with the tree of life.

[11:46] Well, that's a long review. I know we were there a long time ago but and the cherubim with the flaming sword were set there to block the way.

[12:01] Now, did that thwart God's plan? No.

[12:15] So, we're going to get to that. if you jump down to chapter three, beginning with verse one, he says, I'm going to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance so that you may be, what?

[12:33] Verse two. Second Peter, chapter three, verse two. Mindful of what words? That had been spoken before by the holy prophets and the apostles.

[12:56] Okay? And if you jump down to verse five, you see some of what that is. And we studied this in Genesis. That the world that was of old, the antediluvian world, was destroyed by, start with verse five, yeah.

[13:19] The heavens and the earth of old were destroyed by water, they perished. Verse seven, the heavens and the earth which are now, they are held in reserve by whom?

[13:34] By the way? By God. For what? For judgment. Right.

[13:45] He's going to destroy it, not by water, but by fire. Now, am I going to be able to stop that?

[14:04] Are you sure? I'm not. God, what if every man on earth came against God and said, we're not going to let that happen?

[14:20] Is that going to stop it? No. Angelic beings who are far more powerful than humans, man is not actually the epitome of creation, by the way.

[14:37] Why? We're the ones that are redeemed, we're special, but we're not the most powerful or the most opulent of creation.

[14:50] Those would be angelic beings of which we have little knowledge. But we do know they're far more powerful than us. One angel he sent to kill, what, 30,000 at one time?

[15:06] Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown by a couple. By the way, that was destroyed by fire and God didn't need the bombs to do it.

[15:23] He won't be stopped because we say, well, no more nuclear weapons. That's not going to stop what's going to happen. And it's important for me to remember that because it gives me hope.

[15:38] We're going to get to that. So, Romans chapter 15 verse 4. I know you're familiar with this. Whatsoever things were written afore time are written for your learning, that through patience and agitation, encouragement, or comfort, that through patience and comfort of the scriptures, yes, fire away.

[16:28] Yes. Yes. and that's limited.

[16:42] That is, that's a limited known about God. That is, that's what's known by natural revelation. If you look at that, he says, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God has made it evident, for, verse 20, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, and his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through creation, through what has been made.

[17:15] That is, I can look out here and I can say, that was made. Now, I'm going to backtrack for a little bit to make that clear, because we live in an age for some reason where we can say one thing here, and the same person will say a different thing here that are mutually exclusive, and they seem to have no problem in doing so.

[17:46] You will, now I know I'm stepping back a couple of years into 1969, but, or 68, or whatever that was.

[17:59] But in, basically, in general science, you learn the three main laws, or the three basic laws of thermodynamics, right?

[18:11] And those would be entropy. What does that mean? Everything tends toward disorder, unless you add power or energy to it.

[18:27] So, things left to themselves, look at your body. What happens?

[18:43] You deteriorate. You deteriorate. And that's with a lot of effort to keep it not deteriorating. What, what happens to all of nature?

[19:02] It tends to wind down. It loses energy. What happens to the heat in the building when we shut the furnace off?

[19:13] What? Where does it go? It goes out there. It dissipates. That's a law of entropy.

[19:25] Heat goes to cold. So, we know that it deteriorates without an addition of energy. Yet, I will come over here a little bit later and I will tell you that evolution is true.

[19:44] That it started from nothing, but it became everything. And I won't bat an eye about it. Right? And then I'll tell you, you don't believe in science.

[20:02] I mean, I know I'm simplistic, but even I get that part. So, what do I know is going to happen if I roll a ball if I set a ball on the gable of my roof?

[20:20] What's going to happen to that? It's going to go into the air, right? Where's it going to go? Why? it going to go into the air?

[20:30] It's going to go into the air. It's going to go into the air. But then I'm going to tell you that that didn't really exist. Very smart persons will say, well, that may not really exist.

[20:45] exist. I'm going to tell you that a universe exists. Okay? We live in the universe. And then I'm going to tell you, but this isn't really a universe.

[20:58] There are parallel. And if I have enough letters after my name, it's going to impress you. So, that's why we can look out there and we can say, that didn't just happen.

[21:20] Because people who are far, far smarter than me, who can look at molecular DNA, will tell you how much DNA is added after the conception of your baby.

[21:45] No. None. That zygote has all the information that it will ever have.

[22:04] I heard a little clip. Now, the guy is a rascal as far as his morality, and I don't trust him, but he used it like this. You'll hear people say, well, that's not really a baby.

[22:20] Right? That's not really a baby. He said, if I had a cake in the oven and you took it out and threw it across the floor, you'd say, that wasn't a cake.

[22:33] But it would have been had you let it bake. That child has all the DNA. I say that for two reasons.

[22:45] Number one, it irritates me, the argument that they're not people. But the other argument is there will be no new information. So evolution doesn't work because there's no information that goes in.

[23:01] Information can be lost and it can be turned around, but we are not so far removed from agriculture and Roger will verify this.

[23:20] When you get, especially animals, right, okay, when you get a deformation, a, where the DNA, there's a miscoding.

[23:34] They call that a mutation. When you get a mutation, what normally happens to that organism? It usually doesn't succeed, does it?

[23:47] Now, you can selectively breed as you do cattle, for instance. you selectively breed for color and for confirmation and certain characteristics, but that involves a loss of information.

[24:04] It does not involve a gain of information. No one, as much as we have tried, has ever turned a cow into a pig. Have we?

[24:16] and that's with as much manipulation as we can muster. We know it doesn't work, yet I will stand in a classroom and teach that it does.

[24:34] And never bat a nut. that's why Romans chapter one says they are denying God. They are against God because what they know they're denying.

[24:48] Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[24:59] Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[25:09] There's an old statement. I don't know that you can prove it but it rings true for us. There's an old statement you don't find any atheist in a foxhole.

[25:25] Why? Because confronted with that many individuals reprobate though they may be recognize I'm about I very well could meet God.

[25:44] Now everybody's going to meet him. I want to meet him through Jesus Christ. Not when he's sitting on the white throne in judgment and his wrath.

[25:58] wrath. The God who is eternal and complete in love is also eternal and complete in wrath. It won't be pretty.

[26:10] So I don't know that I can say that they want to convince themselves that there is. I'm sure there is. They do. But they also want to convince you that there's not.

[26:22] so that their behavior is more socially acceptable. I didn't this is a long intro but let's get to that.

[26:37] Why? Because all laws are a reflection of what? Morality. They're a reflection of someone's morality.

[26:53] So if I can convince enough people that it is morally acceptable to be perverse in my sexual proclivity and behavior then I can make laws that protect that.

[27:18] if I can convince enough persons that there isn't a God then I can make laws and enshrine it into a state constitution that says you have a right to kill the child.

[27:37] We've done it. We know what that looks like. So I think that's basically the reason. Maybe to convince themselves but consciences can be seared to the point where they're insensible anymore.

[27:59] And we know that to be true. We used to call that sociopathy. Now we call it being yourself.

[28:13] We actually teach it now. that's not boating well for us is it? And it's not working out too well either socially.

[28:27] Okay. Did that they Romans chapter 1 says that I can look out here and I can see that a tree's not a rabbit and I can know there's a God.

[28:43] I can know that that tree is not going to come accidentally. I can know that if I plant a kernel of corn I do not expect to see squash.

[29:01] If I plant a pea I don't expect to see corn. corn. Why? I mean if it's actually random because I know it's not really random don't I?

[29:16] I know it's not. I may say it is but I know it's not. Someone mentioned that at the last place I worked one time and I said would you rather the airplane be designed by somebody with Euclidean geometry or with quantum physics?

[29:39] You want it theorized or do you want to know it's going to fly? Is it really random? No. And everybody knows it's not don't they?

[29:52] They know that if they step off the ladder they're going to fall. They're not going to maybe this time I won't fall. No.

[30:03] No. Anyway back to the point. So Romans chapter 15 through patience and comfort of the scripture.

[30:20] So when I read through Genesis and I see no matter what happens God's plan is going forward. comfort. I can take comfort in that because if I just look around what was your question this morning Roger?

[30:42] How does Roger see the world this morning or something like that? Well if I look around I say this is a mess.

[30:55] It's out of control. hope. And in time and space for me it's going to look that way. And by the way it should look like a mess.

[31:08] but God okay patience and hope right?

[31:19] We through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Let's look at that. Let's look at that. Let's look at that.

[31:31] Let's look at that. Let's look at that. Let's look at that. Let's see has God lost control?

[31:41] That's the big question right? And the answer is no. We read the scripture and we say no. His plan unfolds.

[31:54] Now we understand the plan's mysterious. He did not reveal everything to Adam did he?

[32:05] in fact though he walked with Adam he revealed relatively little as far as we know to Adam about what the big plan is.

[32:18] When he brought the children of Israel to Mount Sinai and gave them the law he didn't reveal the whole plan did he? he kept he kept he kept us secret until the apostle Paul didn't he?

[32:40] As far as the mystery revealed about salvation by grace through faith and the hope of eternal life regardless not because you're righteous but because Christ is righteous.

[32:54] now did he change his mind? No. And there are verses to reflect that but although it was secret that doesn't mean the plan changed.

[33:14] Now I don't I don't watch much in the way of games anymore and it's a very poor analogy but you think of a football play for instance does does the quarterback of the of the offense hold up a big sign and says this is exactly where the ball is going and this is what we're going to do no no now the play may may be a pass but it may be a play action pass and they're going to act like they hand it off to the running back and it's going to go down the field or it's going to go to the tight end now does that mean the plan changed sometimes it does but bear with me on this poor analogy the plan never changed the play always was going to be this but it wasn't all revealed that way so it is with

[34:20] God the plan doesn't change it just wasn't all revealed at once it's all the same plan and that's where I need to remember the plan is not to glorify me is it the plan is to glorify God God glorifies himself in fact he says specifically and I didn't write these down you can search them out he says specifically that he redeemed the church to display his glory the unsearchable wisdom of God Paul described it as okay now another reason we study 1 Corinthians chapter 10 through the apostle Paul he just mentioned and you know the church at

[35:24] Corinth what do you know about 1 Corinthians really quickly describe the church carnal and how did that play out argument menative divisive bad teaching chapters 3 and 4 bad teaching and gross immorality just to describe a few selfishness is described when he when he talks about the Lord's supper when they came together he said you act like heathen you know you get drunk and you eat too much and then some people go without that's not what the Lord suppers for so we know that about the church so Paul says this to them in verse 6 these things are given that is what we read about the Old

[36:36] Testament saints the children of Israel specifically the children of Israel in the wilderness these things are written so that what you will not lust after evil things as they did the results not necessarily going to be the same but he said you shouldn't behave that way right so part of why we study that is to get a grip of what did God say about that and if God didn't like it I ought to pay attention that I shouldn't be doing that he said so that you won't do what they did verse seven neither be idolaters as were some of them verse eight neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed verse nine neither let us tempt

[37:37] Christ as some of them tempted and were destroyed of serpents now by the way how did they tempt Christ and it's important oh by the way another by the way these were Old Testament people who were they tempting God who does he say they're tempting Christ this is a statement of the deity of Christ the Lord Jesus is God now by the way can I you can answer this very freely you already know the answer can I explain to you the trinity can I explain to you the trinity no does that make it not true no

[38:43] I can't explain to you how the electricity gets here and how it's produced but I know how to turn on the light that doesn't keep me from using it does it you know someone who says well I don't understand that therefore I don't I don't believe what I don't believe the Bible because I don't understand that part of it well there are a lot of things I don't understand doesn't keep me from using it I don't understand maybe everything we can know God by the way Francis Schaefer put it this way you can know God truly without knowing him exhaustively you can know truth about God without knowing every single thing about God and I'm glad for that because even the simpleton can know enough to come to

[39:46] Christ can't I so back to this these were written examples in verse 11 I'll finish with this all these things happened unto them for examples and they are written for our admonition or teaching or instruction or correction upon whom the end of the world has come so here you go this is part of why I study and that was not my plan to go this long that was a longer introduction than I had planned and it's not quite finished but we are out of time so have a wonderful day and glory in that promise of the resurrection the the do