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Alright. We're on. Hey. Good morning, church family. Good to see you.
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Very good to see you. Glad you're here. Glad I'm I'm thankful every week that we get to worship together. I really am. And I'm grateful for you guys.
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Let me start with a verse here. This one's from Psalm sixty nine thirty. I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. So can we pray and make that our prayer this morning? God, we, we do wanna praise you.
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We wanna praise your name in song, and we wanna to glorify you with thanksgiving. And so I pray that you'd ready us, that you would stir us up toward love and affection toward you, and that we can express that through song. In Christ's name. Amen. Wanna stand up?
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Let's sing together.
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Alright. Before the day. Before the day, before the light, before the world revolved around the sun. Believe you and I will see who we were meant to be. Alright.
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And all we are and all we have. All we are and all we have is all a gift from God that we receive, brought to life. We open up our eyes to see the majesty glory of the king.
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Thank you, Lord. You have made us worshipers, and we are here to meet with you and to worship you again. I pray that as we worship, it would be pleasing to you and edifying to this body. In Christ's name, amen. You can have a seat.
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Order of when we're to see em. So, the first one is a connect hour. That happens between services. So, at 10:00 or somewhere very nearly thereafter. Depending on how long the preacher goes.
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There will be a connect hour down the fellowship hall with coffee and fruit and some donuts and that sort of stuff. Monday nights at first B happens every Monday night and we're happening that now at 06:00 instead of 06:15. If you can get here by six, but it's a really soft start. So, if you have to get here a little later or a little earlier, come on. The band's here anyway.
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Awana happens at six also on Mondays, same same time and we're trying to match the starting and ending times up for Monday night Nawana for kids three years through sixth grade and that's just fun. Having a good time in there. Pouring scripture into the hearts and minds of these young people. This week and there's a little bit blurb in the bulletin about this too. On Wednesday, October 7, it changed.
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The the place changed. It's going to be at the Good Samaritan Mission which is on Pearl Street next to the movie theater. Set back from the from Pearl over the bus side, the twin. Good Samaritan Mission, there will be a time of prayer and fasting as a part of the worldwide forty days of life and that's from 12:10 to 12:50 on Wednesday and that's kind of traveling around churches and different places but it is specifically about ending abortion peaceful, prayerful manner, and this culture would turn from a culture of death to a culture of life specifically is what the deal is about. But there's not any in your face stuff going with it.
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Solid rock stuff.
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Alright. Just a few announcements. This week was a busy week for all the high schoolers for the homecoming week, and it's gonna be a busy week this week for youth stuff. We've got today, we've got cross training. We're doing a wood ministry.
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Will you flip that slide for me?
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Sure. There
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you go. Right there. We're going to give the gift of firewood. We've got a bunch of trees that are down, so we're gonna go gather them up as the high school, middle school youth group that meets Sunday mornings downstairs is going to go grab some wood. We're gonna cut it up, split it, and then find some places for it to go.
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Right there? Boom. You're first. Expect us at your house at about 05:00 today. Go ahead and flip that.
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We'll go to
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the next one. Also, so
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Wednesday night at River Crossing, we have Sean McDonald, Jonathan Tulin, Jeremy Van Aloop concert. That's gonna be an awesome show. That's for youth and family, anybody who wants to come. But the Youth Alliance here in Jackson has brought this concert to town, and it's gonna be a great evening. So the doors open at six.
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The concert starts at seven. So we'd love to see any of the middle school youth group kids out there. And if you are a fan of live music, you guys should also come. It's going to be a great show. $10 at the door is fine.
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And then the big one, this next Saturday on the tenth, we're heading to Idaho Falls for the Newsboys. They look a little different than some of you old timers remember them. They used to be five and there was an Australian involved. Now, I don't know if there's any Australians And they stole someone from DC talk. But it's gonna be a good show as well.
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We're gonna leave here right around 02:00 next Saturday. We're gonna go over, hang out for a little bit, and then go to the show. And that's for middle school and high school, but also youth family as well. I've also got a bunch of tickets for families as well that wanna go together. So if you're interested in going, give me a call or come see me at the sound booth or connect with me somehow.
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But it's gonna be a fun week for youth events.
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Amen. Would you take that to Matt? Put someone right over there.
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Yes, I am.
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It's still fall start up time. It's still fall start up time. So, we've got lots of things that are getting rolling.
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Men's fraternity. I first I wanted just to give a brief what it is and why you should consider coming. First, men's fraternity has been a part in this body for about five years now, over five years, and I'm standing on the on the shoulder of better men who have begun it and participated in it. But what it is basically is a group of of men from the community from a number of churches in the valley, and they've linked arms together, a band of brothers so to speak that have just basically committed to one another to become better men, to become the men that God's called us to be. And the quest for authentic manhood which is Robert Lewis and basically his calling it men's fraternity, we've adopted as as what we call men's ministry at first B, men's fraternity, and basically just that group of men I mentioned.
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But the reason why you should come since we meet at six a. On Wednesday mornings and you're laying your warm bed on a cold winter day, first of all we would be starting with with breakfast so that's a fairly good incentive. But secondly, it men's fraternity provides us with the tools and and this group of men the relationships that we need to become the men that God's called us to be. So I'd encourage you very much to come and to learn what it is to be a real man, a manly man, a godly man. How that you would serve your community, serve your family, your children.
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That being the other reason why you should come is that this community needs us. This country needs us. Our families need us. Our kids need us. So come be a part.
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Thanks. I was closing in on you because we've got one more over here. And that's for the women's fall retreat. Good
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morning, ladies of First Bee. This is the last hurrah. So today is the last day to sign up for the second annual Heart six Women's Retreat. So in six days, we're going to carpool and drive fifty minutes north of town to Buffalo Valley to start a weekend of coming together as a church. The idea is to retreat in order to advance our personal walk with God and with one another.
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So we organizers would like to be as flexible as possible to work with you. So here are some options to accommodate busy schedules. You can come up just for Friday evening and have dinner. You can come for the program on Saturday, which is basically nine to three or you can come Saturday, stay Saturday night and worship on Sunday morning and scholarships are available. So here is what will greet you when you are there for the weekend.
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Five first B ladies will share their hearts and their faith journeys as they teach us about how to be the body of Christ, one with another, expounding on the New Testament one another commands such as, come, let us encourage one another and build each other up. Be kind, tender hearted, forgiving to one another. Don't complain against each other. Tolerate one another in love and there are about 30 more. So, have a wonderful worship team lined up.
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We're going to have small group time to get nourished from God's Word. We're going to enjoy five delicious meals together that we don't have to plan for, shop for, cook for or clean up after. We're gonna have a movie. The weather is supposed to be great, not like this weekend. It's supposed to be wonderful.
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We will hike. We're gonna go outside. We might have Zumba. We're gonna do wonderful things. And then we're going to worship on Sunday and have communion.
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So line up childcare, line up pet care. Set aside your work schedule so you can break free and do church together. Amy Taylor and I are going to be out in the back hall taking your registration, taking your money. We'll let you know all about that. And if you can't go this time, won't you please pray for us that God will be glorified?
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Thank you.
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Thank you. Alright. Y'all would just stand up and greet one another and we'll bring you back together with a song.
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Your power in our same end. Alright. We seek your kingdom. We seek your kingdom
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Yes, Lord, as we sing that change the atmosphere, I do pray. I pray that you would change the atmosphere of our hearts, that you would change the atmosphere of our church, to make it one that is seeking after the things of you, that as we look at people, we see souls. We see souls that are headed somewhere, and we pray that they would be drawn to you and that they would look to you. Thank you. Our mighty strong God, we love you.
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Amen.
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Alright. Who is hell? Who has hell
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Alright. Who's given counsel?
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Alright. And who has felt? Who has
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Amen. God, it's true. We're we're here to behold you and just really to to be with you, to meet with you. I thank you, God, how you fill us up, and you give us life. You give us joy.
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You give us peace, life and breath and meaning and purpose, all these things. Truly, there is nothing and no one that can compare to you. And I pray that you would continue to remind us of these things. We are distracted people, and we get going in life, and we tend to forget we tend to forget our first love. And so allow us, Lord, to come back to you, to reconnect with you.
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Amen. Y'all can be seated. I'm gonna ask Dan Tolson just to stay standing as we participate here in the worship through giving. Just another way to to worship and express praise to God. So, Dan, would you pray for us?
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Heavenly father, we all that we have and all we are is a gift from you. In the busyness of life, it's easy to forget that. And you've seen fit to allow us to be stewards of what you've given, and we wanna please you. So I pray that we would give this morning with open hands and and that you would use it, multiply it, and and grow your kingdom. Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Alright. Amen. Thank you, Keil. What's that? Peak Children's Church is happening downstairs.
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It's starting now. So, I have not all off offended all of the small people in the room at once. They leave by design. So well, this week this week, we're getting to 10/03/2015. It was yesterday.
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October 4 is today. But this picture and a lot of other stuff this week. Actually, the volleyball girls yesterday went in. Like, they had the best three out of five and they only had to play three games. That's great.
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It kinda reminded me of high school and I got a little bit nostalgic. I'd heard that this couple right here is a couple in our church. They come from to the second service normally but they were married on 10/01/1950. They've been married for sixty five years. So, that's that's Jack and Bev Babcock.
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If you see em, tell em happy anniversary. Yep. So, with the nostalgia, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask y'all to indulge me this morning. I'm tell a story before we get to the scripture. I think it, I think it'll make sense in a little while.
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So, today, it's still not October 3. It's October 4, but today is the day. It wasn't yesterday. You didn't miss it. Today is the day.
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Okay? This, when I said I got a little bit nostalgic, I started looking through yearbooks, not just mine, but my dad's. And there was a lady, there was a high school teacher. We have lots of teachers in this church and I I love teachers. So, if it looks like I'm getting on teachers, I'm not.
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It'll turn. These teachers, this one right here had written a letter in this yearbook. I wish I'd put it up there. It said, Bobby. It was online.
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I looked it up and found this online, and it said, Bobby, teaching you was an education for me. That is great. Gladys Barber. That's that's great. This is miss Margie Palmer.
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And that's her picture, nineteen sixty four, sixty five school year. My dad was in the eleventh grade then, and that's a picture of him. And this is the way he remembers her. Not so much like this, but more like that. She flunked my dad in the eleventh grade, or he flunked himself in her class in the eleventh grade.
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And he he loved her because my grandmother played basketball against this lady when she was in high school. My grandmother just turned 85, and this lady played against her competing rival schools. And they they it was back in the time where women's basketball, you could only bounce the ball once, and back court people couldn't go in the front court. That's a long time ago. So miss Margie Palmer, that's the next year or a couple years later, 6766, '67.
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This was the year that my aunt, the goody two shoes, as my dad calls her, of the family, was in her class. And this is the way she remembers her because she did very, very well with the star student, and this was her star teacher. This is miss Palmer teaching. And you can tell she's intense. She is very intense.
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In real life, very intense. People feared her, and I'm not joking. We we respected her, but we it was an awe of reverence. It was a fear. And you can tell she's very into what she's teaching now.
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She taught in nineteen eighty five, eighty six. I was a freshman in high school, and she taught me my freshman year. She taught me I think my sophomore year too. I don't remember it as well as I do the others, but she taught me in my junior year for sure and my senior year for sure. I think I had her all four years in high school.
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This was her, the year I graduated, 8889. So there she is teaching still stalwart Christian educator. At this point, she'd been in the school system since 1950. So, she was going on forty years. She spent six more years there.
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She changed over the last few years. All the awe and reverence and fear and respect and shuttering that all the high school students did for years. The last five years, she switched to an elementary school and they thought she was sweetest woman they'd ever met. That was me from 1989. Yeah.
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Exactly. So she taught grammar, and this is just about, you know, in active voice sentences, I remember those. I remember in passive voice sentences and they come up here. Y'all hear that from me all the time. Objects of preposition, subjects of the sentence, objects and subjects, and objective and subjective, not just that, but objective information reviews many points of view.
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It's intended to be unbiased. This was composition class. She taught us this kind of stuff. Subjective is one person's experience or opinion. The In newspaper, the editorial section is a place for subjectivity.
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It can be based on fact, but it's one person's interpretation. It should give us a test over stuff like that. Examples. Which one of these is objective and which one is subjective? 99% of US households have at least one TV set.
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It's subjective. Right? If if it's based on the facts, it's subjective. It's clear that even though many people are poor, television is more important than anything else. That's subjective.
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Yeah. That's one person's opinion based on the facts. But anyway. She also taught literature. So it's grammar, composition, literature, Oliver Twist.
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I remember sitting through. I barely remembered it all, but these others, Canterbury Tales, was in her class. Grapes of Wrath, I remember reading that for her class. Somebody over here has got a copy of The Pearl with them this morning by John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.
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Sat through that one too. Ethan Frome, I love for some reason, Edith Wharton, as I lay dying by William Faulkner. What beautiful sentences. Oh my goodness. Beowulf, in the old English, for crying out loud, we did Beowulf in old English and sinners in the hands of an angry God.
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Did y'all study this in high school? Do y'all remember doing this? How many y'all went to public school? I went to a public school. This was a public school.
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In 1988 or '89, I'm not sure which. We read this and we reviewed it and I'm going to read it and this doesn't sound like my preaching. This is Jonathan Edwards. It's from a sermon that was preached in '17 I'm not sure what's. He lived 1703.
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Oh, 1741, 07/08/1741. So that thus, it is the natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell. They have deserved the fiery pit. They're already sentenced to it and God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is as great towards them as those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger.
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Neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment. The devil is waiting for them. Hell is gaping for them. The flames gather and flash about them and would faintly hold of them and swallow them up. The fire pin up in their own hearts is struggling to break out and they have no interest in any capital M mediator.
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There are no means within reach that can be any security them to them. In short, they have no refuge. Nothing to take hold of. All that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will of the uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God. I studied that in the eleventh grade.
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That that is the style of preaching. That was Jonathan Edwards. This is the great awakening. He was holding over the very real possibility of hell and I studied that with miss Palmer and she was illustrating it for us. My goodness, we we believed it.
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We really still, I still believe in the real divine consequences to not accepting the reconciliation available in Christ. I still believe that but man, this is hard preaching. That's really hard stuff. It goes on. Your wickedness, everyone, he says, your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead and you tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf and your healthy constitution, your own care and prudence, your best contrivance, and all your righteousness would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.
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Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment. Wow. That takes all the air out of the room when you read that. If you have to grapple with this, I think it's a good thing to grapple with it but she was illustrating it like I said. She also thoroughly familiarized us with William Shakespeare.
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Oh my goodness. Shakespeare. We did Julius Caesar. We did Macbeth. We did Hamlet.
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And then one day was the day. Hamlet soliloquy, act three, scene one. To be or not to be. Did y'all have to memorize that? Anybody?
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Friends, Roman countrymen, anybody? No? So alright. So I was scared of this woman. Really.
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My my grandmother knew her and loved her and she was a friend. And my cousin, Emily, the goody two shoes of my generation, knew her, loved her. She was a friend. But we were all a little bit scared over her. And one day, this day, we got there and it was time for all of us to go around the room and recite our to be or not to be speeches.
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And I had not studied. I did not know it. I didn't have any chance. I knew I didn't have any chance and it depended on mercy for miss Palmer Could I? Maybe do it in another time.
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Could I get sick? No. I sat there. I was in the second row on the left side. I was hoping she'd start on the right side.
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She didn't. She started on the left side. It's pure arbitrary will of miss Palmer. And she started over on this left side and she went and there was somebody absent that day. One, two, three went and then the person in front of me and then it was my turn and when it got to me, said, she said, alright, Ray.
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My my mouth is getting dry right now thinking about it. Said, miss Palmer, I don't know it And she said, what do you mean you don't know it? Go ahead and try it. I said, I don't know it. I don't know anymore than the first line.
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I don't I don't know it. What are we going to do? Billy? She called me Billy. I swear she called me Billy.
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She had flunked him in eleventh grade. Remember that? I was so nervous. And she said, you know this is gonna bring your grade down? Yes, ma'am.
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And I had good grades. I was I was a good student. I had pretty good grades. I was behind I was right there with a couple of other students in the class, my cousin being one of them, the valedictorian, the other one. But this is gonna bring the grade down.
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She's so let me stop right there and get on back to the she was mad, though. And it went two or three more people, and she called me back. Right? I mean, really? What were you thinking?
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I'm like, it's bad enough to stand up by your desk and have to say something like that out loud, but to not be able to say it, it was just shameful. You know? That's the look I got right there. And she bore holes through with through me with those eyes and I did really, I did love her, did care for her. I knew my grandparents and my parents both.
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The other generations all loved her but man, that's what I saw. So, second Corinthians five seventeen through six two. We are going to get to some scripture today. Here it is and I actually, usually, I tear this apart grammatically because of miss Palmer. I look at it.
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I really study these things. I think that the passage is actually fairly simple and straightforward today. I'm still going to tug at it a little bit but try to give you straight up what it says. The what, the how, and the when. So, the what first.
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Starting off in verse five seventeen, we had this last week. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away and behold, all things have become new. The old things have passed away actually is old things passed away. It's an heiress passed.
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It happened once. Old things passed away at the cross of Calvary. All things passed away objectively at the cross of Calvary. Now, subjectively, how you deal with that still matters. It still makes a difference.
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What you do with the fact that Christ has finished his work on the cross to pay the debt for sin. That sin that Jonathan Edwards says is weighing you down like lead. If anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation. All things passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
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Now, that verb tense is perfect and it means it happened in the past but it has continuing effects on into eternity future. Amen. Forever, things are becoming new. For those who have accepted Christ. Now, all things are of God and it's not just God.
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If you're looking at the Greek, it's the one and only almighty God, not to be confused with any other. Now, all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ. Now, Paul is speaking to a group of people that he generally knows to be Christians. So, for the most part, he knows he's writing this letter to Christians. He knows that there will be a few mixed in that are not.
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But he's saying for himself and for his running buddies, he knows that they're Christians for most of them. He's saying, I know that you're Christian. Now, all things are of God who has reconciled us, brought us into harmony, brought us into peace. That's not the picture that Jonathan Edwards was painting. That's the picture of the unrepentant soul.
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Now, all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and he has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. Those of you who know Jesus, God has given you the ministry of reconciliation. Do you remember back in chapter one when he says that praise God, the God of all comforts, the God of all mercies, who has comforted us in all of our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort others. He's given us the ministry of reconciliation. The message of the cross is what Paul preached and that's what we preach.
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That's what we shoot for. It's always preaching that God has made a way to be reconciled. That is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. He says it and then he says it again. Do you get it?
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He's reconciled us. Now, he's given us the ministry to proclaim it. That Jesus saves. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God himself were pleading through us. We implore you and that's about the strongest verb that Paul can use for pleading.
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He's saying, we implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. On Christ's behalf, I'm speaking this out. Jesus taught and Jesus gathered disciples while he was here and he commissioned his disciples when he was leaving and he sent his spirit to empower them to do this and Paul is saying, if you are not a believer in Jesus, we are his ambassadors. We speak for him and we have this message, the message of the cross.
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We're ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. I know that most Sundays when I preach up here, I know that most of y'all are believers in Jesus just like Paul knew most of these folks who would be here in this letter are but I also know just like him that there are some that aren't and so, it's a very very difficult thing to know that I'm carried that message that makes a difference in life or death. It's a it's a heavy message.
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So, the what? Christ reconciles people with God. That's what Christ does. That's what this passage is about. Christ reconciles people with God.
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Initially, in salvation because he has paid the debt for their sin and they put their trust in him. Yes. He also reconciles those who have wandered far away from God. He allows you. Now, I'm coming home.
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Christ reconciles people with God. So, from there, we go to second Corinthians five twenty one. For he made him who knew no sin, who is that? Jesus. It's always the answer, right?
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For he made him who knew no sin, Jesus, to become or to be sin for us and that sin was crucified on that cross at Calvary. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Are we Christians righteous? According to this imputation of Christ's righteousness, yes. Are we really walking around righteous?
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No. We still sin. It's a hard one to deal with but he has made him who knew no sin. Christ knew no sin but he received the punishment so that we could be imputed with his righteousness. He swapped.
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So, the how and it's only one verse about the how right here. Christ reconciles people with God. That's what he does but how does he do it? By Christ's sacrificial death on the cross. There is substitutionary atonement in the Bible.
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We hit it. Every time we hit it, I bring it up, okay? Every single time. By his sacrificial death on the cross, Christ reconciles people with God. That's the that's the how.
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Now, we'll go on. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though we were pleading as God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him and then he says it again, we then, as workers together with him, also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. You're hearing it.
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You're hearing about the grace of God and it is a very free, very real offer to you. It was costly for Christ. Costly for God but he paid the price upfront and he's given you the opportunity to receive. So, Paul tells them, we're pleading with you not to receive that grace of God in vain. Don't just hear it and do nothing about it.
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And then he goes on six two says, for he says, and that's the Lord, capital H. Therefore, he says, in an acceptable time, I have heard you and in the day of salvation, I have helped you. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. That's why I said today is the day.
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Today is the day. Paul is quoting right there from Isaiah forty nine eight. Isaiah 49 is a messianic passage. He's a prophet about nine hundred years or so before Christ and he was looking forward to a time when Christ would come. The Messiah would be here just like we look back to a time when Christ was here.
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Messiah was here. Putting trust in that ahead of time or after time was all in God's time and an acceptable time. I've heard you in the day of salvation I helped you. So, today is the day. Paul says it very clearly.
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That's the win. I told y'all last week, I gave you warning. This was a very evangelistic message. I gave you warning that we would even do an altar call today which we don't do every week. A lot of stuff is to help Christians live their lives but it's all about the gospel.
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It's all about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It always has to come down to that and I'm asking you today to take it seriously, to take it seriously that you stand suspended as Jonathan Edwards. Said. I wouldn't deliver that that way. I'm not nearly as effective as Jonathan Edwards, though, at conversions either.
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It's true, though. And today is the day. I'm calling for it. Calling for those who have not ever trusted in Christ to do so and I'm calling for it. For those of you who have but you've wandered far away from God to come on home.
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Now, that's the most Southern Baptist thing I've ever said up in here. I'm going to stand up front when we get to the invitation. We're not quite there yet and I'll stand and receive anybody who'll come down but also the altar is open for prayer. If you want to come down and pray, please do. I know it's not the culture here.
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I know it is the culture where I grew up. I know that. Who cares about culture? Come on down. If you need a place to nail it down before God and before yourself that this is the day.
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Today is the day, alright? So, let me finish the story about miss Palmer. So miss Palmer, I yeah. Under her gaze. And she was mad.
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She never got sick. She was the Cal Ripken of teachers. She came all the time. She never missed a day ever. I didn't know anything about it when I walked in the classroom that day and when I got in there, I thought, oh no.
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There's nothing that I can do. So, and I didn't ask for mercy. I just said I didn't know it. I expected whatever grade and then I listened to these people. Couldn't say it.
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Listen to these people. When it got about 14 people on the other side of me, I said, miss Palmer, I think I could say it. If you want me to, I'll try. I I just I was embarrassed a little while ago. Go right ahead.
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To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against the sea of troubles and by opposing in them. To die, to sleep no more, and by asleep to say, I can't do it now. We we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. To the consummation devoutly to be wished to die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream.
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There's the rub. For in the sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. We must give us pause. And I said that exactly right. I didn't miss a single one.
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I was like, you know, it was a little bit. It was over there before I got to it. But I had heard 14 people say it. I'd heard these four people say it. Some of them missed this and that, but I pieced it together.
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And I said it, and I did not make a single error. Not one. And everybody in the class was like, oh my. Wow. Now see, if I'd study the night before, I could've done it when she asked.
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If I'd done it on time, have been fine. So afterwards, I was proud of myself because I had just learned this thing and I proved my superior intellect, and I went up afterwards. And I checked the grade book afterwards, and I got a zero. I deserved a zero, right? I deserved a zero because when I was called upon to do it, I didn't know what to say.
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Now, I I I did say it but I said it late and I got a zero. That reminds me of this. It's another passage from Isaiah. It's just one page over from the last passage. Isaiah says, and this is God speaking.
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By myself, I have sworn from my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not turn back or shall not come back to me, shall not return void. To me, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear allegiance. Paul picks it up in Philippians attributes it to Jesus. After that great passage about Christ's humility and the humility that took him to the cross and he endured it and God, therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every and of those in heaven and those on the earth and those under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the father. So, everyone is eventually going to say this.
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Amen. Everyone's eventually going to say it. Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the father. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the father but the question is, when will you do it? Will you do it on this side where you get the 100?
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It's a pass fail situation in this one. Okay. You do it on this side where you get the 100 or you do it at the judgment seat. When all of those Christians have gone in. And you get the zero forever.
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Oh, it makes my mouth dry thinking about miss Palmer. The eternal situation in hand, that's that's hard. This is what Paul ends with. He says, for he says, in an acceptable time and this is an acceptable time. I heard you.
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When you cried out and in the day of salvation, I helped you. That's what he does when you cry out. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. So, the what?
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Christ reconciles people to God, the how by a sacrificial death on the cross and the when is today. He's still doing it today. So, if that shoe fits, please put it on and wear it. It's a good shoe. And that's the invitation right there.
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Behold now is the acceptable time. Will y'all come on up, band? And I am actually gonna hang out right here culturally or not. You're welcome to come visit with me. I'll turn the microphone off and this invitation stays open all week but if you need to nail it down, you wanna come pray.
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If you just wanna come pray for somebody else or if you wanna come pray for yourself, come on down. The altar's open. So, and we're going to sing just as I am.
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Yeah. Would you like to stand with us? Let's repeat that verse for again. Just as
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I
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Amen. Thank you, Carl. Little different for here. Miss Margie Palmer died. 01/02/2009, about four months after her husband of more than fifty years and she is great.
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She was great. She is still enjoying Jesus now and I'm sure of it but I just wanted to say, she had a huge impact on a lot of lives. Very few people that I ever write a letter to after high school is over to say thank you. I think I did it to a coach and I did it to her but missus Palmer, you are a stalwart Christian educator and you have been. From the beginning, it's obvious.
1:00:21
I guarantee you would have more letters like this if people weren't afraid they would get it back in red ink. And she held on to that letter and told my grandmother about it. May the Lord bless and keep you and make his face to shine upon you. May he give you a soft heart to accept the truth and subjectively put it in to practice in your life. Amen.
