Before we read, let's pray. Gracious
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to gather in the
name of Christ. We thank you for hearts willing
to do so. And as we have just mentioned,
Lord, I so appreciate the young people that are here. And I pray
that as the gospel is preached today, that the seed will be
planted and someday you'll cause it to grow. A new life, spiritual
life, shall arise from it. Bless all who have gathered here,
all those who gather with us via live stream, any who may
watch later. Lord, bless them through your
word. Lord Jesus, you said in your
prayer to the Father, sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. Lord, let
your word be spoken today that the people might be sanctified
by it. It's in the name of Christ we pray, amen. Just gonna read one verse to
begin with. Verse 49. And just as we have borne the
likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness
of the man from heaven. Now there comes a point in a
person's life when they take notice they're not what they
once were. Age has its effect on the body. I remember when I was a kid,
and maybe even up into my mid-20s. I could take off running. I was
never a long-distance runner, but I could do a decent 100-yard
dash. But as a kid, I'd run and play
all day long. And now, I try to do an hour's
worth of actual physical labor, maybe two hours, and I think,
well, I've got to go in and sit down. Well, I like my riding more.
I can ride that and it doesn't wear me out. When I was a kid, I could sleep
anytime I wanted to. And I could stay awake virtually
anytime I want to. And now it seems like neither
one is under my control anymore. When I was a kid, my mind was
pretty sharp and quick. Not so much anymore. I get forgetful. This morning as I was doing the
adult Bible class, twice I read 1 Kings as 1 Corinthians. I didn't do that when I was young.
Now, I'm not saying this to complain, I'm just making an observation
here. We all know this is the pattern, even though in our youth
we probably, oh yeah, I know, I can see granddad, you know,
he's kind of stooped over or whatever. But, you know, they
don't take it to heart. But here's the thing, there comes
a point when you realize we are on a one-way road. And we may
look back and long for those days, but we know there's no
way to go back to them. We may like the times of extra
energy and the times when the cares of the world seem much
less imposing as they are at present. We wish we could go back to the
times when less of our attention was put on doctor's appointments
and when we're supposed to take our meds and things like that.
We wish for that. But we know you can't go back
there. But we who believe, we can see this in a different
perspective. Yes, there is a reality to the
decay and corruption that is a natural part of this life.
But thanks be to God, this isn't the only life we have. Our hope
does not lie in this life. Nothing that we truly hope for,
if we are believers, nothing that we're really looking for
is ever going to be found here. Abraham pictured this for us. God called him to a land He didn't
know which land, he just said, go. And so Abraham started going
and the Lord led him to the land. And when he got there, he was
a foreigner in the land. And even though God said he would
someday possess the land, he never really possessed it in
his time. And it says in the book of Hebrews,
what this proved was he was looking for another country. His eyes
never were really set on that area now called Palestine. That wasn't what his heart was
set on. He looked for a city that had
foundations. He didn't, you know, he was considered
a wealthy man, and I'm sure that there was kind of a family compound
wherever he went. You know, there was his tent,
and Isaac's tent, and tents for servants, and all this. And if
you came up there, you'd say, well, there's a wealthy and influential
man. But it says, Abraham, he sought
a city with foundations whose builder and maker is God. We're
looking for something else. C.S. Lewis. And I'm not going
to try to figure out whether or not he really understood the
truth or not, but he said some awfully wise things. And one
of them was this. He says, does not the fact that
I can never find satisfaction here prove the point that I was
made for somewhere else? We can learn to be content here,
but we'll never be satisfied here. Someone else put it this way.
He said, we are not worldlings, citizens of the world, trying
to make our way to heaven. We are citizens of heaven trying
to make our way through this world. Our hope lies elsewhere. Verse 49 contains a strong promise,
a powerful promise. One rich with meaning. And in
those few words encompasses, in reality, it encompasses everything
there is about salvation. Just as we have borne the likeness
of the earthly man, referring there to Adam, so shall we bear
the likeness of the man from heaven. That's our Lord Jesus
Christ. Henry Mahan used to say, from
God's viewpoint, there's only been two men, Adam and the Lord
Jesus. And there's a very real sense
in which that's true. While all of us have sinned, and all of
us fall short of the glory of God, while all of us are guilty
of our own personal transgressions, the fact is, death spread to,
passed upon all men, not because every man individually sins,
but as is clear in the way it's stated there, and I believe that's
Romans 5.12, death passed on all men because all sinned. And that's written in the Greek,
it's written in a language that we don't, excuse me, in a tense
that we really don't have in English, but it refers to something
that happens at one particular point in time. How did we all sin at one point
in time? When Adam sinned, we were in
him. And we all came under the judgment
of that sin. And the death that Adam earned
by his sin spread to all of us. We all sinned. Now that doesn't
spare us. We can't say, well, you know,
That's not my fault. Well, we have all given the hearty
amen to Adam's rebellion. So we can't excuse ourself from
that. But the fact of the matter is,
we were all condemned before we ever drew a breath. And in similar manner, Jesus
Christ came, the last Adam. The first Adam failed, the last
Adam came, he succeeded. He succeeded not only in his
own personal obedience to God. He succeeded not only in always
doing the will of him that sent him, unlike Adam, who at one
point decided he would do his own will as opposed to the will
of the God who made him. Not only did our Lord Jesus Christ
do that, he then went further and performed what was necessary
to rescue us natural descendants of Adam from the sin that Adam
had done and begin, as it were, a new
race of human beings. And we were born into this world,
children of Adam. That was our nature. When our
parents gave birth to us, they gave birth to someone that was
just like them. And they came from people just
like them, who came from people just like them. And on and on
back you go until you get to Adam. We all bear his nature. And that nature is going to be
with us until it dies. We'll never be rid of it. Some
people seem to think that somehow or another the fleshly nature
improves. It doesn't. If we are children of God, If
the Spirit has called us and given spiritual life, then there
is also a spiritual nature within us which does battle with our
inborn Adamic nature. But that nature of Adam does
not grow weaker. We strive and we pray that by
the help of God, we can somehow subdue the worst outbreaks of
that horrid nature. But I have yet to meet anyone
who understands the gospel of grace, who as the years went
by said, you know, I'm getting better. I'm reminded of Brother Scott
Richardson, who has been with the Lord now for quite some time.
He said, you know, I thought when I got older it'd be easier.
He said, it's harder. It's more difficult. And that's, I find that to be
the universal confession of those who know God. But we do have a better, or a
different perspective than the world has on this life. because
we realize there is another one to come. Now, let's try to hurry
through some context here to understand why Paul made that
statement we read in verse 49. The whole discussion has been
about the resurrection of the dead. And the reason that there
that Paul spends a significant portion of this particular letter
setting forth the resurrection of all God's people is because
some people were denying it. I mean, people in the church
were denying this. We read in verse 12, but if it
is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can
some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Now, let me make a little side statement. One thing this shows
is just how far off the track a church can get and still be
a church. Paul never told them they were
lost. Now, he might've wondered, He
might've thought to himself, how can anybody that believe
God not believe the resurrection of the dead? But here, once again,
we're confronted with the fact that churches in this world are
filled up with people who are of two natures. And there's this
struggle going on. And just like in any wrestling
match or boxing match, who it looks like is winning changes. My dad loved to watch boxing.
And of course, this was in the days of Muhammad Ali and Joe
Frazier. I can't think of the other guys'
name right now. He's the one that had the grill.
But George Foreman. But you'd watch those matches,
and you'd see some guy, and it just looks like he's getting
pummeled to death. And you think, man, he's not going to be able to
last another round. That guy's going down. And then suddenly,
out of nowhere, he explodes, and the thing turns. I remember
when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fought the second time. Ali, you know, he studied George
Foreman's ways and how he boxed. He was kind of, you know, get
in there and really slug it out. So Ali devised what they later
called rope-a-dope. Round after round, he just leaned
up against the rope, kept his hands up to protect his head,
and George Foreman just kept going after him. People were
kind of stunned. They'd never fought that way
before. He was a champion, you know, and all that. I can't remember
what round it is, but he kept letting Foreman rough him up
like that until he saw that the punches were getting weaker and
Foreman's arms were coming down because he couldn't hold him
up. He's wearing himself out. All at once, boom, Ollie came up
off the ropes. I think within like a minute,
the fight was over. George Foreman was on the mat.
That's what it's like in a believer's life. Sometimes the flesh will play
rope-a-dope with us. And we think we're making advances
and we're punching away. Look at us, I'm doing great,
I'm winning. And all at once he explodes. And the next thing
is we're laying on the mat, looking up at the bright lights. How'd
that happen? We bear the image of the first
man. And we will till we die. But
this resurrection here, How can some of you say there's no resurrection
of the dead? Well, they can say that because
sometimes the flesh gets the upper hand, even in matters of
doctrine. And we can be led astray for a time. The shepherd will
rescue us. He'll bring us back. But anyway, there were some who
said that there is no resurrection of the dead. Maybe these were
some, and some of the Gnostics had infiltrated them. I don't
know, because the Gnostics denied the resurrection of the dead.
But it was no small matter that this was being done. He goes
on to say, in verse 13, if there's no resurrection of the dead,
then not even Christ has been raised. And if you're gonna deny
the resurrection of believers, then you must, with that denial,
deny the resurrection of Christ himself. And then he goes on
to say, and if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is
useless, and so is your faith. Now think about that. If there
is no resurrection of the dead, why are we bothering with this?
If this life is all there is, why do we give so much attention
to these things? Why do we preach what we preach?
Why do we believe what we believe? Verse 15, more than that, we
are then found to be false witnesses about God. For we have testified
about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not
raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. Here's what he's
saying. He said, we've been going around
saying God raised Christ from the dead. But if that means,
or if in the end, believers are not raised from the dead, then
we've been lying about God. Because if believers aren't raised,
neither is Christ. And we've been saying that God raised Christ
from the dead. Verse 17, if Christ has not been
raised and he, You know, he reiterates this, he said, your faith is
futile. You are still in your sins. In the book of Romans, it says,
if you shall confess with your mouth Jesus to be Lord and believe
in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. Now really that is to confess
and to believe the same thing. Because the fact that he is Lord, that came about for the very
same reason that he was raised from the dead. In fact, I've
said to you on several occasions that our Lord's resurrection
was merely the first step on his way back to the throne. It
was not so much an event in and of itself, it was the beginning
of his ascension to the right hand of the Father. there to
be declared by God to be Lord of all. And so we're confessing with
our mouth, he's the Lord and here's how we know it to be so.
He was raised from the dead and he was raised from the dead because
the work that he did on the cross was successful. All the sins
that he bore have been put away and they shall never be brought
up again. I was talking to my sister. a
couple weeks ago. Of course, both of us were raised
in the same church. And they used to try to scare
us into acting right, saying that when Judgment Day comes,
they're gonna play a movie of your life for all the world to
see. It never occurred to me to say,
well, y'all said we can't go to movies. So I'll skip that day. Really, we weren't supposed to
go, not even Disney movies. And she was worried about it. She
says, I'm just worried. I said, well, what would they
have to rate that movie? It's probably going to be at
least rated X, isn't it? I said, but here's what God said.
Your sins I will forgive, and their iniquities I will remember
no more. And that word carries the sense
of I'm not going to bring it up again. Why would God punish
the Lord Jesus Christ for your sins and then when you die or
when judgment day comes or whatever, you got to sit there and watch
a movie while the rest of the world watches and be shamed by
the way you lived. Is that the way salvation works? Brethren, our sins are gone or
they're not. God remembers them. He brings
them up or he doesn't. If he brings them up, we're lost.
We got to give an account. What kind of account can you
give? The only account I can give, brother, guilty. I mean,
if they've got the video, you know, here's the video. Yeah,
I did that, you know. Well, what do you got to say
about it? Well, I shouldn't have done that. No, Christ died. He died under
the penalty of sin. And the reason that he was raised
again is because all those sins that he bore, were put away and
will never, ever be brought up again. People think you have a good
conscience if you go around feeling condemned all the time. But the
Bible calls a perfect conscience a conscience that's free from
condemnation. Let's move on. In verse 19, he says, if only
for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more
than all men. When I got here this morning,
I opened up the mailbox to see if any mail had come in the last
few days, and there was just an advertisement, and I don't
know what church doing it, or even if it's a church, but it
was some kind of religious thing, and they were advertising this
guy was gonna come, He was going to preach on three things that
begin with the letter P, and the last one was profit. Not like a prophet that preaches.
Profit is in making money. Now, I've got nothing wrong with
making money. I mean, nothing wrong with being
a good businessman. It's all fine. But that's not
what we're about. That's not the hope we have. Our hope is not in this life. If only for this life we have
hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. Why is that? Because we have
put our hope in empty promises. The promises of Christ are not
found in this world. Now, let me qualify that. I wouldn't want to live any other
way. I wish I did a better job of living as a believer. I wish
I didn't love the things of this world as much as I do. But what I'm saying is this natural
life, we do not find within that life the fulfillment of the promises
of Christ. That's why we yet hope. Paul says, who hopes for what
he already has? We're looking for something else. Well, Paul confronts this denial
of the truth in verse 20. But Christ has indeed been raised
from the dead, the firstfruits of them who have fallen asleep. Now, he doesn't try to prove
the resurrection. I don't have a problem with people
doing apologetics. That's okay. Apologetics, which
if you're not familiar with that word, you kind of hear apologize
in there. Well, we use apologize in the
sense of saying you're sorry, Actually, it just means from
words. That's what apologize means, from words. And it's to
make an argument from words to defend a position. Well, apologetics,
as it's practiced in what they call Christian apologetics, it's
trying to go outside of the scriptures to prove the things that are
written in the scriptures. Well, that's fine as a defensive
statement. If they say something like, and
they used to say that, you know, the only place Jesus Christ is
ever mentioned is in the Bible. We can't even be sure he existed.
Oh, wait a minute, bud. Josephus mentioned him, and you
can go down to other people in that time period that mentioned
him. He existed. Now, that doesn't tell us that
everything the Bible says about Jesus is true, but it shoots
down one of their false accusations. If they say there's no way there
could have been a worldwide flood, well, even if I couldn't find
proof of it out there, so to speak, I'd say, well, absence
of proof is not proof of absence. Just because you haven't found
it yet doesn't mean it's not there. And if they did find it, it wouldn't
make it more true, would it? But there's nothing wrong with
answering false statements. But Brethren, Paul does not argue
against this denial. He just says it. Christ has indeed
raised from the dead. That's something we take on faith.
Believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead.
Would I like to be able to travel back in time and sneak out to
that garden tomb and watch it happen? Sure, that'd be great,
wouldn't it? But that wouldn't make it any
more true. And here's the thing, Christ
indeed has been raised from the dead and the result is, or how
that's described is, and he's just the first fruits. He's the first fruits of them
that sleep. What does that mean? Well, the first fruits were considered
a guarantee of a full harvest. That's why they had, you know,
the feasts and the sacrifice associated with bringing in the
first fruits. And they were rendered unto God. But the first fruits
are a promise of good things to come. And Jesus Christ being
the first fruits from the dead means that the whole harvest
is coming. There won't be first fruits without,
you know, next to first fruits and middle fruits and last fruits. The day will come when everyone
whom God chose and for whom Christ shed his blood, and for whom
he raised from the dead, and for whom he rose on high, every
last one of them are gonna hear his voice. When he descends from heaven
with a shout, and with a vowed voice of the archangel and the
trump of God, they will rise, and the full harvest of God's
Christ shall be brought in. Not one grain of wheat will be
lost. How long is this gonna go on
though, what we see now? He says in verse 23, but each
in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits, then when he comes, those that
belong to him. Then the end will come. I was
raised in that form of religion that they got this really complex
scheme of things or what's gonna happen between now and the real
end. I can tell you what's going to
happen, what's going to go on between now and the end. The same things that are going
on right now. The same things that were going on when Paul
wrote this. You're going to have people rebelling
against God. The gospel is going to go out.
There's going to be people believe it. There's going to be people
that don't believe it. And there's going to be people living and
dying. There's going to be people getting
married. There's going to be people, there's going to be wars
and threats of wars. All of this is just going to
keep on going on until Christ comes. And when he comes, and he's only
doing this one more time like this. Now he comes spiritually
speaking and delivers his people from the persecutors. He's done
that over and over and over again, but there's coming a time. Paul
said he's appointed a day in which he will judge the world
in righteousness by Jesus Christ. And he's testified to that by
raising Christ from the dead. Until then, Everything is gonna
keep on going just like it's been going ever since Adam took
a bite of that fruit. Sin, sin, sin, grace, all mixed
up. The kingdom of God, not of this
world, but in this world, and it's doing its thing, and the
world's going on doing its thing, and Christ is ruling over all
of it. And when everything the Father
has determined has come to pass, Christ shall come. And he will
put an end to this world as we know it. Then the end will come when he, Christ, hands over the
kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion,
authority, and power. I guess it was inevitable. Here
a couple of weeks ago, I saw a headline. Is Putin the Antichrist
for today? And part of me, I said, why is
everybody so interested in figuring out who Antichrist is? It'd be
much better to find out who Christ is. Because Christ is the remedy
of Antichrist. You don't have to worry about
Antichrist, but they don't even know what Antichrist is, and
that's why they can't figure out who he is. He's all over
the place. He's been here since Christ was
first promised. That's spirit of Antichrist. And the word doesn't mean against
Christ, it means in place of Christ. And that spirit is in
every form of religion that puts in place something or puts in
a place something that should never be occupied by anything
other than our Lord Jesus Christ. Any, and this is always in a
religious context. Antichrist is a religious figure.
He's not a political figure anyway. Every antichrist. the many that
had already gone out into the world in John's day. They were
in a religious world. John said, they went out from
us. They were among the company of preachers that were accepted
at one time, but they went out preaching a different Christ,
a substitute Christ. Christ means the anointed prophet,
priest, and king. That's what the word means. And
anytime, You put in a theological authority in the place of Christ. That's the spirit of Antichrist.
Anytime you put something other than Christ between the sinner
and God as some kind of mediator, that's an Antichrist. I don't
care what it is. I don't care if it's a person.
I don't care if it's a baptistry. I don't care if it's a cup of
wine. I don't care if it's a bunch of angels. I don't care if it's
somebody in the church. You know, people say, well, you
know, when you get to heaven, put in a good word for me. I
can't. And even if I did, it wouldn't
do any good. There's one God, one mediator,
one priest that stands between God and me and the man Christ
Jesus. And if you put anything or anyone else in that place,
that's antichrist. He's the king. One of the reasons we try to
keep things rather informal around here And we're not real big on
structure. Men love structure, they love
hierarchy. And the higher up the hierarchy
you can go, and I know it's not spelled like hierarchy, but that's
what they're looking for, getting higher and higher, you know? No, there's only two categories
of God's people. There's Christ and there's everyone
else. That's true. There is no authority
apart from Him. He's the King. There's no one
in this world to whom we swear allegiance. We'll give them their due respect,
the authorities that God has put in place to manage the affairs
of this natural world, but there shall be none put over us in
spiritual matters who in their person has the authority to rule
what we believe. In one sense, I have some authority
as a pastor of this congregation, but my authority goes only this
far. Open up this book, and to the best of the graces God has
given me, tell you what's in it. I cannot bind you to anything
else. And really, if I bind you to
this, it's not me binding you. I'm just telling you the Lord
has bound you to this truth. He has said, this is what's true. But I can't come up with what
I think is a good idea and say, now, you're gonna have to hew
to this line. No. And anybody that does, that's an antichrist. But Christ
is going to get rid of all of them. He will have destroyed
all dominion, authority, and power, for He must reign. Oh, I love that. I was told as a kid, you need
to make Christ Lord of your life. And of course, when you're a
kid, you just, you know, you believe what you're told. And
then somebody says, God beat you to it. Christ has been Lord of your
life all along. You may not have liked it, Your life is in His
hands, and it's following the course He determined for it.
Now, you can acknowledge Him as Lord, and I suggest you do
that. And I suggest you do it with
joy, because who else do you want as Lord? Somebody's gonna
be Lord. Somebody's gonna reign. You got
a better idea? Well, I wanna determine my own
fate. Don't do that. Don't do that. Much better to fall into the
hands of God. David sinned, and the Lord presented
him with, I believe it was three options for punishment. And he
said this, let me fall into the hands of the Lord. Because he knew this, if he chose
his own way, it'd be wrong. But if he submitted himself to
the hand of the Lord, whatever happened, it would be gracious. Well, I need to hurry along. One of the reasons I'm sure that
this question came up is people couldn't figure out how the resurrection
could happen. Verse 35, but someone may ask,
how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they
come? And then Paul says, how foolish.
Now that's a rebuke. And I don't think he would have
rebuked them if these were honest and sincere questions. These
are those mocking questions that high and mighty theologians put
forward, you know, because they're so smart in their philosophy
and everything, you know, and someone mentions a resurrection,
yeah. Now, how are they going to be raised from the dead? Tell
me, what kind of body are they going to have? They're questions for which they
think there is no answer. And they think that by posing
those questions and you not being able to answer them, you will
have proved that what you believe isn't true. Brethren, you don't
have to have the answer about the how. The Bible is not about
how God does things. The Bible is about what God does.
Some things he's explained, but not everything. But he goes on to say that what,
just like when you plant a seed in the ground, the plant is different
from the seed. He says, so it is. in the resurrection,
when you see someone die, that's not what's gonna be raised from
the dead. Yes, their bodies will be raised from the dead, but
it won't be like that one. Now, let's just take a few minutes
on verse 49. We'll be done having laid this
foundation. And just as we have borne the
likeness of the earthly man, how so? Well, if you look back at verse
42, the body that is sown is perishable. Oh, isn't it? We look at children, and we all
love children. And I think one of the reasons
we love children is they look so alive. Their skin is so soft
and pretty. And you know, when they smile,
it just seems like everything's wonderful and all of that. But
we know what happens to children. They become adults. And then
they start to look like us and they start to get wrinkled up
just like we did. And they start to get weak in the body and they
start to gather diseases. We're perishable. We can't avoid
perishing. We bear that image. It is sown
in dishonor when we bury someone, even a believer. Now, the undertaker
does all he can. And I don't want to be mocking
or anything, you know, but, you know, they have this thing, they
go by, and a lot of people say, oh, he looks so natural. And I look and think, not really.
I mean, the undertaker did a nice
job, but he looks pretty dead to me. I realized it was a long
time. I was probably almost 40 before
I ever saw someone who was dead and had not yet been to the funeral
home. And yeah, they look deader than the guy in the casket, all
done up. But friends, they don't look
alive. And I used to think that what
the undertaker did lasted for years and years. It doesn't. You say, wow, the Egyptians,
boy, they were marvelous. I mean, you know, they unwind
those mummies and it's just wonderful what they did. Have you ever
seen what one of those guys look like? If you saw someone walking
down the street that looks like what's underneath those things,
would you say, oh man, you're looking good today. You lost
weight. They look ghastly. And that's
the best men can do to try to preserve a dead body. Oh, it's sown in dishonor. It's sown in natural body. Once again, he said, a body naturally
generated from Adam. And Adam is one of the names
given to man that indicates he comes from the earth and ties him to the fall. Oh, we've borne that image, haven't
we? And we still do. And what a burden it is. Paul
said, who will deliver me from this body of death? We aren't living. We're dying. But oh, can you lay hold of this? As assuredly as we have borne
the image of the first man, the man from earth, so shall we bear
the image of the man from heaven. I read this and I thought, I
need to quit complaining about old age woes. Now most of the
time I do it, I'm doing it for a joke, but I can do some serious
complaining about it. The child of God. And this is
only for children of God. It's only for believers. But
do this. Every testimony to the corruption
of your body, remember this. As surely as that corruption
is in you now, so shall you be like Christ. Not perishable. Not dishonorable. Not natural. All the motions of sin and all
the death and stuff that it brings, gone. Say, what's that body going
to be like? John says, we don't know. We
just don't know. It's not been told, but we know
this. It'll be just like Christ. Therein is our hope. That's what
we look for. So when you feel all the emotions,
not emotions, all the motions, all the workings of that old
nature, as you watch yourself do like Isaiah said, we all fade
as a leaf. The grass is withering, the flowers
fading. As you feel the aches and pains
come on, Remember this, as surely as you
now bear the image of the man from earth, so shall you bear
the image of the man from heaven. And what should that move us
to do? Verse 58, therefore, my brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Why should we be moved? Our hope
is in an unmovable reality. The old hymn writer wrote, Death and decay in all around
I see, O thou that changest not, abide with me. Stand firm. God's not moving. Christ is not
moving. No reason for you to move. Oh,
but the doctor just told me I've only got this long to live. Well,
you came into this earth with so long to live. Do you think
you're gonna live forever? Your life's not here. But I just don't like this. The
sickness that I'm enduring, I don't like the weakness I'm experiencing.
I understand that, I don't like it either. But it's testimony
of this. As surely as we are like that,
so shall we be like him. Don't give up. Don't bail out
at the last minute trying to find some other way to gain your
hope. Stay the course.