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[00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning, everybody. We are closing the 23rd psalm out this weekend. I hope it's been a blessing to you, as it has been to me. And I hope that you've had the opportunity perhaps to memorize the psalm, or at least big portions of it. I think, if you will, you commit that to memory. You commit that into your heart. The Bible says, your word, Lord, have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you? One of the best ways to keep us on the serrated narrow is to assimilate God's word into our hearts and minds and into our lives, and then appropriate that word each day that we live. So if you'll revisit the psalm with me, let me stir up your minds by way of remembrance. Let's work through it and talk a little bit about what we talked about. You know, they say a sermon could be broken down simply like this. First of all, you tell people what you're going to tell them. And then number two, you tell them. And number three, you tell them what you told them. So part of it is just repetition. I know some of it you've heard before, but I hope that this going through it again will set it in your mind and heart as we prepare to leave the services today. But on the 23rd psalm, we opened, of course, with verse one. And in verse one, we saw the Lord's provision. We said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And we talked about David, the shepherd boy, considering God, watching over him. And because of God, he knew I did not lack for anything. And can I tell you that's true for all of us today? I don't care what your need is, what you brought into the room this morning. If you have him in your life, then he is all you need. When Christ is all we have, he's all we need. You could lose everything in life but still have Jesus, and you have enough to begin again. And so the psalmist said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And so we talked about his provision. Then verse two, we talked about his peace. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters, we talked about the restlessness of sheep and how we are like sheep. And a sheep will not lie down unless they are calm. A sheep will not lie down if they are fearful. A sheep will not lie down if they are full of anxiety. So our shepherd recognizes that and he brings us to places in life, stations in life, where we can rest. And he makes us rest. It's important that we experience his peace. Then, verse three, he restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name sake. We talked about the shepherd's protection, how that our shepherd will restore our soul, meaning that he resets our soul. Everybody in the room and all of you watching online have at some time or another had a soul crushing experience. That's how we refer to it, right? Your heart is broken. We use those terms, crushed and broken to describe what's going on on the inside of us. And when you read where the shepherd restores us, the word literally means the resetting of a thing. It is the idea of resetting of a bone. In Galatians six, the Bible says, you who are spiritual, restore that one that has been broken. And it's the idea of resetting a broken bone. And he's saying, God has the ability to restore my soul. He has the ability to put the pieces of my heart back together again. And so we understood when we follow him, he leads us in right paths. He will keep us on the straight and narrow. We have his protection. Then, verse four, he said, yea, even if, in other words, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. Why? For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. We talked about the Shepherds Providence, that he's with us every step of the way. Even if he chooses to send us through the valley of the shadow of death, we're not going through that experience alone. And the comforting thing for us this morning is for all of us who have loved ones that have had that experience, to know that they did not go through that alone. He was with them and he will be with us. And I like the word through, not into. He said, yea, though I go through the valley. Had he said into the valley, that might lead you to believe that death is an experience you go into and you don't get out of. He said, I'm going to take you through it, meaning you're going to come out on the other side. You're going to come to a place called heaven. And so we talked about his providence in verse five. Last week we talked about the shepherd's presence. Thou preparest a table before me, even in the presence of my enemies. A table was a place of nourishment. A table is a place of refreshment. A table is a place of fellowship. And he said, even in a hostile world, I can nourish you. I can fellowship with you. I can give you what you need so that you can continue to grow. He said, you anoint my head with oil. We talked about in the heat of that sun, in that region of the world, they would come into a home oftentimes and use oil to soothe their skin. And he was saying, I can replenish you. My presence has that replenishing effect. And then he said, my cup runs over. And it reminds me of recognizing seniors today. We're thinking about how full and wonderful and blessed that our families are. And David said, when I consider the goodness and mercy of God, my cup just runs over. I have so much for which to be thankful. And then this morning, verse six, we're going to talk about the shepherd's paradise. The shepherd's paradise. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and ultimately I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now let me first of all give you this to think about. When he talks about this sureness, we see first and foremost the shepherds promise. Here's the shepherd's promise. Surely that word surely means certainly. It means without question. It means without a doubt. David is saying, as he's summarizing this 23rd Psalm, what I'm about to tell you is as certain to happen as the sun is to set in the, in the evening hours of today. He said, this is a certainty. This is surely, he said, surely. Let me give you the confidence that you need. Surely, he said, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Someone said, goodness and mercy are like the sheepdogs that kind of follow behind the flock, the goodness of God and the mercy of God. And again this morning, if we could begin to recount the blessings of God, if we begin to count the ways in which he's been good to us, we would have far more blessings than we have burdens. And I tell you, it's a good exercise to do. Sometimes when you think about all that you've gone through and sometimes you're feeling the overwhelming weight of that issue that you're dealing with this morning, begin to force yourself to consider the goodness of God. Force yourself to consider the health of your children, the health of your grandchildren, for some of us, the health of your job, the opportunities that he gives us, the fact that we woke up this morning is not bad. And so we have the goodness of God always there. He said, not only the goodness of God, mercy, the mercy of God. I love this. Someone as well said, God is too good to do wrong, and he is too wise to ever make a mistake. We sang about the faithfulness of God. Great is thy faithfulness. Jeremiah actually penned those words in lamentations 323. Now, when you read lamentations, it is literally the lamenting of Israel. The word lamentations means to lament. It means to weep. How would you like to write a book just entitled Weeping sorrow? Well, he was writing to people. He was writing to the children of Israel. He was writing concerning their circumstance when they had been carried away into babylonious captivity. And he was hearing the lamenting of the people, he was hearing their weeping. And his point that he made in chapter three of lamentations and the 23rd verse is this, in the midst of sorrow and in the midst of pain and in the midst of weeping, he said, I discovered his mercies are still new every morning. Great, he said, is thy faithfulness. So Jeremiah wrote and said, even though you're going through a difficulty, if you look around, you can find the mercies of God. In the midst of a difficult time, you can find them renewed each morning. So David said, his goodness and his mercy follows me all the days of my life. The 130th psalm. Listen to verse one. The psalmist wrote, if you, Lord, recorded every sin. In other words, if you held me to account for every sin, for every. Can I give it to you? In our vernacular, for every stupid thing I ever do.
If you held me to account for every dumb thing that I do every day. He said, who could stand? David said, if God held us to account for every wayward, the Bible says the wayward thought is sin. The foolish thought is sin. And who among us has not had at least one foolish thought since we've been in here? And he's simply saying, if God held us to account, if he just reached down and thumped us, if he reached down and disciplined us for every wayward thing we ever do, he said, none of us could survive. What is he writing about? He's writing about the goodness and the mercy of God that follows us. I read where in 1935, Mary La Guardia in New York City, he was overseeing night court, and he was the judge in a night court. And there was a case brought before him by a shopkeeper, and it was a grandmother who had stolen bread from the shopkeeper. And her testimony was that she stole the bread because she is the sole provider for her grandchildren. And she said, I just don't have enough to take care of my kids. And the shopkeeper understood her predicament, but said, she needs to have an example. She needs to be made an example of, or other people will steal. And just because she's trying to feed her grandkids, that doesn't give her a right to steal from me. And so Judge LaGuardia had this dilemma before him. He had this grandmother who justifiably was stealing for the good of her family. And yet you had this demand of justice on the other side from the shopkeeper. So what he did, he promptly fined the grandmother $10, which was an enormous amount of money in 1935. And then after he fined her $10, Mayor LaGuardia quickly paid her fine. And not only paid her fine, then he fined everyone in the courtroom, including the shopkeeper, $0.50 for, he said, being living in a city that doesn't take better care of its people and living in a city where a grandmother would have to steal bread to feed her grandchildren. And he raised $47.50 for that grandmother and gave it to her before he dismissed court. Now, what is that example of? It is an example of justice. Yes. And mercy, that grandmother received mercy. And that is a beautiful thing about our God. He said, the soul that sins will die. He said, we live under the sentence of sin, the sentence of death as a result of sin, I should say. But when Jesus went to the cross, the Bible says in psalm, mercy and truth met together and they kissed one another. Well, that happened at the cross. It's where the mercy of God met the justice of God. And Jesus beautifully satisfied both enough where they could say, we kissed, we've embraced, we've figured out a way through this. This is a way this can happen. Justice was secured at the cross and mercy was extended to us all. And so when David was writing, he's writing about these sheepdogs that follow you and me every day of our life, he said, it is goodness and it is mercy. And I love how he said, they follow me. These things follow me. Now, that's not actually a passive statement.
When you think of something following you or someone following you, you think that's a passive thing. Like they're just kind of passively following behind you. Actually, in the Hebrew, the word is very active. It's the same word as saying, pursue.
Goodness and mercy are pursuing me. They're following me, but they are in a pursuit of me. Everywhere I go, they go, and everything I do, they are behind me and they are with me as I go through those experiences of life. So this opens with this beautiful promise of the shepherd, surely goodness and mercy. And then notice. Secondly, you see not only his promise, but you see his providence. He said, they follow me all the days of my life. The providence of God is with us all the days of my life. Think about the days that you and I spend. Some are good days. We have good days. Thank God for the good days. But we have bad days, don't we? Sometimes we go through that paradox of the best of times and the worst of times at the same time. You had one of those days where you're just going through good things and you're also going through bad things, and you're going through those things at the very same time. But he's saying, even in the midst of that, God's providence is there. Let me give you a beautiful psalm. You ought to make a note of this. The 139th psalm. Listen to what David wrote. O Lord, you have searched me. You know me. You know my sitting down. You know my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path, my lying down.
You're acquainted with all my ways. Listen to this. There's not a word on my tongue. But behold, Lord, you know it altogether. You've hedged me behind and before you've laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Listen. Verse eight. If I ascend into heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning, which is the distance of the sunrise as you see across that eastern horizon, it's called the wings of the morning. He said, if I could take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the sea, he said, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. He said, there's nowhere I can go that I do not find. The providence of God.
He's everywhere. No matter where you go, there you are. And no matter where you go, there he is. He's there with you. He's there beside you. Goodness and mercy are following you and his provision, his. I'm doing this for all the days of your life. Regardless of what you go through, happy, sad, good or bad, God will be with you, his providence. When we talked about that word, providence, it's a great word. It's a word that really doesn't belong to us. It's a word that belongs to God. We don't do things providentially now. We prepare and we plan, but we don't know all the variables that involve our plan. We can't foresee what might happen when we plan an event or we plan our day. But God is providential. We said that word comes from two words. Pro video. Providence pro video. It means to see ahead. God has the ability to see a thing before it happens. He can speak something into existence that isn't there. Ex nihilo, meaning I can create something out of nothing. God, I don't have that ability, nor do you. I don't have the ability to see that far ahead. I see it a day at a time, a step at a time, a moment at a time. I see you, you see me. We think about what we're going to do when we leave here. I've got to discover the Met class. That'll happen when we dismiss in a little while with people looking to become a part of our church family. We'll do that. Then I'll do a service. Another one. I hope the message is better for those folks and what you're hearing, but we'll see. It's like russian roulette. You never know. But that's coming at eleven. Then after that, I'm probably going to go to the house, sit out back and stare at those longhorns for a little while. That's kind of my plan. So I'm just saying that we all make our plan, but I don't know what that looks like. Nor do you. We make our plans and we prepare. But only God deals with Providence. He says concerning himself, I am the alpha and the omega. We would say, I am the a and the z. He is the engine and the caboose. He sees all the cars in between. God works with providence. He looks ahead. He sees ahead. And so this providence of God is something that you and I can experience all the days of our life. And then the third thought, and I want to spend a little more time here before we go. And it is the shepherd's paradise. He said, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David said, I know where I'm going. I'm as safe and sure for heaven as though I'm already there. He said, one day I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Can I say to your heart this morning, if you know Jesus as your savior, you can claim that. You can say, regardless of what goes on in your life today, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I heard about two close friends that had been buddies since high school, and now they were well up into their years, and they were wondering one time when they were talking about heaven, they said, I wonder if there's baseball in heaven, right? I wonder if there's baseball in heaven. And one of them said, you know what? If one of us dies before the other one, we ought to see if God will give us some way to notify the other one whether there's baseball in heaven or not. And he goes, that's a good plan. So sure enough, there came a day when one of those guys did pass on, and in the middle of the night, his friend that was left behind had a dream. And in the dream, he hears his friend distinctly say to him, hey, I got good news and I have bad news. But I got good news. Good news is there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is you're pitching Friday.
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now, we all want to go to heaven, right? We just don't want to die to get there. And I've told you before, I'm not looking for the undertaker. I'm looking for the upper taker. I'm ready for Jesus to come back. And wouldn't that be a wonderful thing if he just caught us up together with him in the clouds first? Thessalonians four, wouldn't that be great? We just. We're in this room, and the next moment we're in his presence. It'll happen in a moment. And the twinkling of the eye at the last trump, the Bible says we will then be changed. And so there is this beautiful, beautiful promise of heaven. When you think about the certainty of heaven now, it's wonderful that David wrote about it. It's wonderful that other writers in the Bible had written about it. But can I tell you, the thing that gives me most certainty about heaven is Jesus promised it himself. That beautiful chapter, Roman. I'm sorry, John, chapter 14, where Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. Then he said, in my father's house. He refers to his heaven as his father's house. In my father's house are many mansions. Some. Your translations may have that many rooms, he said, then I go. I go to prepare a place, a place for you. Someone said, well, heaven's a myth. It's a fairy tale. It's a state of mind. Well, Jesus didn't say that. In fact, when he taught us how to pray, he didn't say, our Father, who are in a state of mind.
He said, our Father, who art in heaven. Jesus talked about a place, and I've told you before that that word in the Greek, in John 14 is topos. Place is topos. We get the word topography from that same word. Jesus said, I go to prepare a. It is real.
I am convinced heaven is as real as fort Worth, Texas. And the people in heaven today are as real as you and I. They're very much more alive and vibrant because they're working with all their faculties. And you and I are only using a little percentage of ours. And I'm just suggesting to your heart that heaven is a real place. It is a topos. It is a certainty. Acts, chapter one, verse eleven. The Bible says the disciples saw Jesus at the ascension, taken up into heaven. Remember what the angel said, you men of Galilee, why stand you gazing into the heaven? That same jesus you've seen taken up from you will so come again in like manner as you've seen him go. Where is heaven? Somewhere up. If you're in Antarctica, it's still somewhere up. If you're at the north pole, somewhere up. Somewhere up out there is this place called heaven, a real place, the certainty of it. Jesus promised it. In fact, when the apostle Paul wrote about that vision that he had in two corinthians twelve, where he was caught up, he said into the third heaven. He uses that term. Well, we know there are at least three heavens. There is what we would call an atmospheric heaven. That's where the birds fly. That's where the planes fly. There's an atmospheric heaven. We'll step out and look up into the heavens as we leave this morning. You'll see clouds and you'll see a pretty sky. That's the atmospheric heaven. Beyond the atmospheric heaven is an astronomical heaven. That's where the planets are. It's where the stars are. But somewhere beyond the astronomical heaven is an ascension heaven. It is that place where our lord resides. It is a place, a real place called heaven. In fact, the Bible in Isaiah 1413 says it somewhere north. Heaven is north. It says that in psalm 75, verses two and seven, in John, chapter six, verse 38, the Bible said, jesus came down from heaven. Luke 24 51, Jesus was carried up into heaven. And John 14 said, I will receive you unto myself when you die. When I return, I will receive you unto myself that where I am, heaven is where Jesus is. Somewhere above is where he is. And he said, where I am, there you may be also. You say, bill, what happens to a person if they leave us through this vehicle called death? By the way, the word death means separation. By definition, it means separation. It is separation of our loved ones from us, and we understand that. But it is also separation of the spirit and soul from the body. In one Thessalonians five, the Bible said, I pray that your spirit and your soul and your body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord. We call it, in theological terms, trichotomy. Some call it dichotomy. They believe the spirit and soul are synonymous in the body. Did a spock there, didn't I? But anyway, the spirit and soul are synonymous with the body. But I call it trichotomy because the Bible breaks it down that way. Spirit and soul. And body. Meaning that I have a soul, you have a soul, you have a spirit. I have a spirit, I have a body, you have a body. And what happens when a person dies? The part of me that is temporal, my body returns to the earth. Solomon would say either ashes to ashes, cremation, dust to dust, just normal decay. And the spirit, he said, then returns to God who gave it. And so at that moment, there is death. Death, by definition, separation, spirit and soul from the body, body back to the earth. The body sleeps. The body sleeps. When you read of death as a sleep, always talks about the body. It's a beautiful word, because anything sleeping is subject to be awakened at any moment. And that talks of the resurrection. The body sleeps. It doesn't just die and remain dormant. It sleeps. It is sleeping. And one day the body will be awakened. And when the body is awakened, it will be resurrected, recreated, and then reunited with the spirit and soul that are at home with God. That happens at the resurrection, you say, well, what happens then when our loved ones die? Are they disembodied spirits?
In other words, are they like ghosts? Is that what they're like while they're in heaven? And I understand the question because we can talk to people we can't see all the time. Let me quickly explain that you have a telephone. You're talking to someone on a phone that you can't see. So I understand how someone could imagine that these are somehow disembodied spirits. But when you read Luke 16, where you have the rich man who goes to hell because he rejected Jesus, you have a poor man who goes to heaven because he accepted Jesus. And there's communication between the two. And in the communication, here's what's interesting. They recognize one another. They recognize one another, meaning the rich man in hell recognized this poor man, Lazarus, who was in Abraham's bosom, which is the jewish concept of heaven. He's in heaven. And so they saw him. They recognized each other. And by the way, they even had recall, because this rich man says, hey, would you send someone to warn my brothers so that they'll trust Jesus, lest they come to this place, this place called hell. And then the response was, will they have Moses and the prophets? Meaning they had the writings of Moses and the prophets. They had the Old Testament. In other words, he said, if they aren't persuaded by the clear written word of God, neither would they be persuaded, though someone rose from the dead. Meaning if a preacher standing before them telling about heaven and hell and warning about their need to know Jesus, if that isn't persuasion enough, they wouldn't be persuaded. If I pulled some magic trick out of my hat and did something miraculous or spectacular up here, they wouldn't be any more convinced. So the point is, they recognized each other. They had recall. They had memory of events that happened while on the earth. So people in heaven are not disembodied spirits. Neither do they receive an immediate perfected body the minute they leave us. That body that they are is not immediately perfected, meaning that in one Thessalonians four, the Bible says, at the rapture, they'll receive a perfected body. In fact, the Bible says, in one corinthians 15, it is at the rapture there is the resurrection, that the body will be changed. And until there is a rapture and a resurrection, there's not an immediate change within the body of our loved ones that have already gone to heaven. Here's what it looks like. There is some sort of temporary housing that they're occupying that looks like the form they occupied here on earth. And I use that second corinthians five four as a proof text. The Bible speaks of those who died being clothed. Being clothed. So it's recognizable. It's understandable. It's not frightening. They look as though they're in their former form. It's some sort of a temporary housing that they have in heaven while they are awaiting the resurrection of their bodies. And at the resurrection of the body, that spirit and soul are then reunited, and we will know them. Somebody says, well, will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven? I heard a country preacher say, well, I'd hate to think we'll have less sins in heaven than we had on the earth. Yeah, we'll know one another. Remember when David had lost his baby and he went through that heartbreaking experience of losing his child? Second Samuel, 1223. You know what he said about that? He said, I can't now bring my baby back to me, but I can go to be with my baby. He had the assurance that he would know his baby, he would see his baby again. He would enjoy holding his baby again. And that is the hope that he had at that time of his death. In fact, the Bible says in one Thessalonians 416, when the resurrection happens, when the rapture happens, we're caught up together with them who've gone before in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Meaning that you and I are going to be caught up with our loved ones. We will know them. They will know us. We will have recall of the events that happen on the earth. We'll be able to share things that happen. We'll be able to catch up with one another. And he says, so shall we ever be with the Lord. And so when you read in scripture, you see this beautiful promise time and time again of a literal place called heaven, where literal people now reside. And I would just say, as I close the message this morning, the most significant thing for you and I as we walk out of here is to be sure we're prepared for that day, to be sure that we place our faith and trust in Jesus. Because back to John 14, when Jesus talked about heaven, Thomas was there. He was skeptical. I've never brought a message or a funeral sermon yet that I didn't have skeptics in the room. Thomas said, lord, we don't know where you're going, and how do we know the way? Now, let's don't pick on him. He was curious. He was doubtful. Doubting Thomas, right? He just didn't know. And so he just asked the question. He was brave enough to ask the question. And Jesus says, thomas, let me help you with that. He said, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one can come to the Father except by me. It was a beautiful statement Jesus made because it gives us the assurance that heaven is not gained by the righteousness we do. We cannot be good enough to get into heaven. I'm telling you, if I relied on my goodness to get me into heaven, I would be condemned to hell and I would never make it. I've told you, I wouldn't trust the best five minutes I've ever lived to be good enough to get me to heaven. And so it's not my goodness. It's not by works of righteousness, the Bible said, which we have done, but it's by his grace that he has saved us. And so it's not my righteousness, by the way. It's not my religion.
You can subscribe to any religion you want to choose. You can try anything you want to try. You can be baptized and sacrifice and homogenize, and you can try all that stuff. And I'm telling you, it won't make a bit of difference in your eternity. You can try religion, you can try righteousness, you can try a lot of things. But until you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, in Matthew, chapter 23, when Jesus one day looks at a world that's rejected him, he said, I will say to them, depart from me. You've worked deceit. You've deceived yourself. And then he said, I never knew you. He didn't say I knew you, and you blew it, and I wrote you out of my book. No, he said, I didn't know you. You weren't one of mine. You weren't one of my sheep. You never trusted me as savior. And the only thing that will keep a soul out of heaven is rejecting Jesus as their savior. That's why heaven is a prepared place, but it's for a prepared people. And the best way to prepare for heaven is to know that you know Jesus as your personal savior. To be able to recount a time when you've humbled your heart. And you said, lord Jesus, with all that I know about me, I trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forget my sin. The Bible said it's a childlike faith. Remember when Jesus set the little one on his lap and he said, unless you come into the kingdom as a child, you'll know you'll not enter. How does a child come to Jesus? Trusting, inquisitive, open, teachable being. Child. He didn't say, be childish. He said, be childlike. You come to Jesus as a child. You just say, lord, I'm open. I don't know everything there is to know. I'm open. I remember my pastor who's in heaven today, Adrian Rogers. He talked about when he pastored in Florida having a lady whose husband worked at NASA, and he was literally a rocket scientist, and she had tried to get him to visit church with her. And he said, honey, I'm just not. I'm an atheist. I don't want to go. I'm just sorry. I have my own views about all of that. Finally, with her pleading, she at least got him to come in and talk to Doctor Rogers, and I'll summarize the conversation. But he shared it this way, he said, he acknowledged how smart the man was. He said, man, you're in a very elite group of people with your intellectual educational capacity, and I respect that. He said, but could I ask you something? And you could be very honest with me? He said, with all of your intellect and all of your education, do you believe you possess 90% of everything there is to know in the world? He said, oh, no, I don't think anyone could claim to know 90% of everything there is to know in the world. He said, then what percentage of this world's knowledge do you think you've acquired? Would you say. Would you say 40%? Would you say 50%? How much information would you say you believe you have attained? He said, I think I'd be very generous to say that I've attained maybe, maybe 40% of everything there might be to know in the world. And he said, that's even a pretty big statement for me to say that. And then Adrian looked at him and said, well, let me ask you a question. Is it possible that God could exist in that 60% of that information that you claim you don't have? He said, I've never considered that. He said, maybe you should consider it. And then he challenged him. He said, go home and read the Gospel of John. Read it chapter a day, chapter by chapter, till you finish it. And before you read it, just look up at the ceiling. Since you don't believe in God, just look up at the ceiling and just say, God, if you're there, show me you're there according to your word. And he said, after a period of months, the man called him. And he said, I'm absolutely convinced that Jesus is who he says he is, and I've given my heart to him. And Adrian said, I baptized that man. You see, sometimes we have to get over ourselves. It's the simplicity. We complicate things. God made it so simple that even a child could receive him. So don't complicate it this morning. It's childlike faith where you say, I want to prepare my heart and soul and life for eternity. I want to know that I know I'm going to trust Jesus today. And when you do that, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And one day you and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word. Isaiah said, it never returns void. It always accomplishes purpose. So I pray that your word will find lodging in the hearts and minds of all who've heard it. Bless my friends watching online as well as those in the room. Lift burdens that they carry. Make yourself near and dear to them. Bless our seniors as they are embarking in a new season of life.
And father, finally, I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you as savior, that this might be the moment where they humble their heart. And they say, Lord Jesus, with all that I know about me, I now trust all I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sins. I trust you. In Jesus name. Amen.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
