Good morning again. Let's open
this second hour with a hymn again from our hardback tenor,
number 186, The Church's One Foundation. And let's stand together
again, number 186. We'll follow that up with the
hymn on the back of the bulletin, so if you don't have one, you
can slip back there and get one. you The church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water
and the word. From heaven he came and sought
her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he fought
her, and for her life he died. He lacked from every nation ?
Yet one for all the earth ? ? Her charter of salvation ? ? One
Lord, one faith, one birth ? ? One holy name she blesses ? ? Partakes
one holy food ? and to one hope she presses with every grace
endued. Mid toil and tribulation, and
tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore. Till with a vision glorious,
her longing eyes are blessed, and the great church victorious
shall be the church at rest. Yet she on earth hath union with
God the three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose
rest is won. O happy ones and holy, Lord,
give us grace that we, like them, the weak and lowly, ? On high
they dwell with me ? Please be seated. For a call to worship, would
you turn to the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 32, first
four verses. Deuteronomy 32. Verse 1, Give ear, O ye heavens,
and I will speak. And hear, O earth, the words
of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the
rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain
upon the tender herbs, and as the showers upon the grass. Why? Verse three, because I will publish
the name of the Lord. Ascribe ye greatness unto our
God. He is the rock. His work is perfect,
for all his ways are judgment. A God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is he. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, our God, it is our
heart's desire to hear you. But we do confess, unless you
give us ears to hear, Lord, we will not hear you through the
preaching of your word. So we ask, Lord, to be merciful
to us now. Provide us hearing ears, eyes
that can see, hearts to believe, hearts to love, to worship to
give you all the glory for who you are and what you have accomplished,
for salvation truly belongs to you. We're dependent upon you. Pray you would send your Holy
Spirit now in power and enable us, Lord, to see once again your
finished work, what you have established, and Lord, what you
are going to reveal to us very soon, one day when you take us
home. Lord, we ask again that you would be with your men who
are speaking this morning. And for us here, Lord, would
you take what you've given Robert, bless it to his heart and to
our hearts, and together, Lord, we will give you the glory. Forgive
us of our sins, Lord, and our unbelief that so easily besets
us. Cause us to rest now, for we
ask it in Christ's name. Let's stand together once again.
We'll sing that hymn on the back of your bulletin. Great Father of glory, how rich
is thy grace! What wonderful love is displayed
in thy face! In Jesus thy image with brightness
we view, with hope to be formed, in that likeness anew. O wonder of wonders, astonished
I gaze to see in a manger the Ancient of Days, from sin to
release us that yoke so long borne. My God, my Creator, a
woman was born. For unworthy sinners my Lord
bowed his head. For unworthy sinners he suffered
and bled. My spirit rejoices, the work
is all done. My soul is redeemed, my salvation
is won. great father of glory how rich
is thy grace what wonderful love is displayed in thy face in him
our beloved we're washed in his blood with confidence to the
throne of our God. Please be seated, R.G. Michael was right. This is the
first time I've stood here and looked out. This place is big. We're not used to that. If you've
not been here when I preach, there's one thing I need to tell
you. I am going blind. I can't see the clock up here.
I can't read. My wife will waive the program
when I preach 45 minutes. She's not telling me to quit
preaching. She's just telling me that it's 45 minutes. I just
wanted to make you aware of that. The scripture this morning is
Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1. The title of the message is The
First Day. Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and
the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from
the darkness. And he called the light day. And the darkness called he night. And the evening and the morning
were the first day. Now it's unusual in this respect
that there is scripture that tells us how we should interpret
this first day. It's John chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God. All things were made by him,
and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was
life, and that life was the light of men. The light shineth in
darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." That's a commentary
on the first day, and it tells us two things. It tells us that
we can preach Christ from an allegory. And it tells us that
Christ is everything in the scriptures. Preaching Christ from an allegory
is something I think that only gospel preachers do. And we have
a precedent. Paul in Galatians chapter 4,
if you remember when he compared law and grace, he spoke about
Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid, the wife of Abraham. He said,
this Hagar is Mount Horeb in Sinai. with her children that
are under bonding. Well, if that's an allegory,
you can preach Christ from that. And that's what I hope to do
by the grace of God this morning. Father, we'd ask that you'd give
me the words to say, Father, that you would apply them to
our hearts, Father, that you would show us our need for Christ,
that you'd point us to Christ, Father. We ask in Jesus' name,
amen. Now, we're living in a world
right now that has no order. Totally lawless. David said,
that although my house be not so with God, he hath made with
me an eternal covenant, ordered in all things and sure. There is an order that we need
to know about. It's something that we need to
hold close to our heart Something we need to watch every day, something
that's gonna guide us through this life. That's the order of
salvation. And that's what the first day
is. In the beginning God, there is a sovereign God. He is our
creator. He is in heaven and we're on
earth. In fact, we're part of the earth,
Genesis chapter two and verse seven. And the Lord God formed
man from the dust ground and breathe into his nostrils the
breath of life, and man became a living soul. We are the earth. And the earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. We come
into this world, like Michael said, we come into this world
without form and void of the knowledge of God. void of the
understanding of God, without the ability or the desire to
turn to God. That's a darkness that is like
no other darkness. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the water by the grace of God, by the mercy of God. He forms
us again, some of us, the children of God, not everyone in the whole
world, but the ones he has chosen We're born again. There we are,
brand spanking new babies in Christ. And God said, let there
be light. And we see Christ for who he
is, who we are, what he's done. And God saw that the light was
good. We know that there's nothing
we have to add. Jesus paid it all. He said, it is finished. And
then God divided the light from the darkness. That's our new
creation in Christ Jesus and our old nature. One is the day. God called the light day. We're
children of the day. And the darkness he called night. That's the old nature that follows
us through this life, day and night, day and night, day and
night. But there will come a time. When that'll be gone, we'll be
with the Lord. It will be the last day. The
Lord's coming again, whether in our lifetime or whenever it
is, the Lord's coming again. So you see that Genesis chapter
one, verses one through five is the order of salvation. I love verse by verse exposition. I studied after the Puritans
and that's what they do. So we're going to go verse by
verse. Verse one, in the beginning God. Now this is not the beginning
of God. This is not nearly the beginning
because there's a lot of things that took place before Genesis
chapter one and verse one. This is the beginning of time. This is when the clock starts
ticking. The clock will run until the
Lord comes again. When the last name in the book
of life When that child is called into grace, then that'll be the
end of all things. There's no one left to call and
the Lord will come. Our lives are governed by time. If you think about it, it's time
to get up, time to eat breakfast, time to go to work, time to eat
dinner, time to quit, time to come home, time to come eat supper,
time to go to bed. Time to go to church. Our lives
are governed by time. Time, I think, is a blessing
that God gives to His children. When God told Isaiah, go and
preach to the people, Isaiah said, what am I going to tell
them? He said, tell them they're grass. Grass needs time to grow. When God first calls us, we're
kind of don't know what's going on. God knocks all the rough
edges off of us. In time, God will open our eyes
to what he has done for us. He'll open our eyes to that we're
not by ourselves. They're our brothers and sisters.
We don't love them the first day. It takes time for us to
be accustomed to the fact that everyone in the world that I
love, with the exception of my own son, is here in this room
right now. Only time can give us that knowledge. Only time can get us ready to
go on to be with the Lord. That's the essence, I think,
of time. Time is the unfolding of God's
purpose for his children. You see, time keeps everything
happening at once. If it wasn't for time, everything
would be all at one time. Now God knows everything at once,
but we never will. It gives us time to study the
Lord Jesus Christ. It gives us time to look at our
own hearts and know that we're really and truly not worthy of
what he's done for us. Time is a blessing that God gives
us. In the beginning, God. Now, everyone
I think outside of race people have an opinion of God. Opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody has one. The Pentecostal
God, and I know this from personal experience, because an inspector
on one of my jobs was an elder in the assemblies of God. And
he thrown open my office door one day, come in and he said,
you believe in original sin. I said, yes, I do. You're supposed
to believe in original sin. He said, I'm going to tell you
right now. I brought myself in and I can
take myself out. I said, okay. And he said, you
don't even know how to pray. I said, well, why don't you tell
me? He said, you have to put God on the defense. This is a
fact. This is literally what he told
me. You have to put God on defense. If you want a new car, you have
to go and pray to him and say, God, prove you're God. If you are God, give me a new
car. He said, that's being a prayer
warrior. That's their God. The God of
the free will people can be bargained with. You can have a separation
between husband and wife. And you'll say, oh, if you will
just make my wife love me again. If you'll heal this breach in
my marriage, I'll go to church every Sunday. I'll quit drinking
and I'll quit smoking and I'll quit doing all these things.
And I'll love Jesus. If you don't want to, you can
say, no, I don't want nothing to do with you. They have a God
that will take no for an answer. We don't. Deuteronomy 32, 39. See now that I am he, even he,
and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal and there
is none that can deliver out of my hand. I lift my hand to
heaven and say I live forever. Do you think that God's going
to take no for an answer? The Apostle Paul is on his way
to Damascus. He's had some pretty good luck
there in Jerusalem persecuting Christians and killing Stephen
and so forth. He's on his way there to destroy
the church of the true and living God, the bride of Christ. And the light shines around him. And the Lord knocks him clean
out of the saddle. He hit the ground. He's laying
there trying to catch his breath, no doubt, stone blind. And the Lord says, Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord?
He said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecuted. And Saul said, no,
I don't think I'm ready to make a decision for Christ. Maybe
next week. Maybe when things get a little
better and I can clean up myself, I'll make a decision for Christ.
No, he never said that. He said, who art thou Lord? He said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecuted. He said, Lord, what will thou
have me to do? We do not have a God that'll
take no for an answer. We have a God who takes care
of everything for us. Be assured, Romans chapter 8
verse 28, all things work together for good for them that love God,
them who are the called according to his purpose. Things are going
to work out because God is for us. Psalm chapter 48 verse 14,
this God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even
unto death. We don't have any worries. The
worst thing that could happen to us is that they kill us, but
they can't eat us. They'll kill us and we'll go
on to be with the Lord. That's the worst thing that can
happen to us here, but it's the best thing that can happen to
us in eternity. So our God is different from
the God of the world. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Now, the heavens is where God
is, the earth is actually us. We are the earth. Genesis chapter
2 and verse 7 says, And the Lord God formed man from the dust
of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became a living soul. So we really, honestly, and truly
are the earth. He is the creator and we are
the earth. In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and
void. Now how did that come to pass?
If Adam was created upright, and scripture says he was, Adam
was created holy, and scripture says he was, now suddenly we're
without form and void. Adam defied God. Adam deliberately, I mean deliberately
put himself before God and God will not tolerate that. Adam
who was formed upright is no longer that Adam. Genesis chapter
3 and verse 29 says, and the Lord God drove the man from the
garden. and placed at the east of Eden
a cherubim with a flaming sword that pointed every which way
to keep the way to the tree of life. God has placed a barrier
between himself and mankind that cannot be overcome. There's no
way that we can get to God. There's no way we can bargain
with God. There's no way we can make a
deal with God. There's a barrier between us
and God and that barrier is the justice of God. God has been
offended and someone is going to pay because without shedding
of blood is no remission. So Adam is no longer Adam who
walked with God. He's outside the garden in a
creation that he ruined. There's wires and thorns everywhere
now. He's no longer Adam who walked
with God. He's Adam who's lost in the world. He's no longer Adam who named
all of the animals. He's Adam without a God. He's no longer the Adam that
God made a wife for. He's Adam out by himself with
no way to get to God. He's Ephesians chapter 2 and
verse 12. He is an alien from the commonwealth
of Israel. He's a stranger from the covenants
of promise. He's alone in the world. He has
no hope and he's without God in the world. He no longer has
the form that God created him in. He is without form and he's
void of the love of God and the promise of God and the hope of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how we came to be, wasted
and void and without form. And darkness covered the face
of the deep. I think only grace people, only
people that are children of God believe in original sin. That's the darkness that covers
the face of the deep. Adam is not, contrary to what
the Puritans said, contrary to what Reformed religion said,
Adam is not just our federal head. Whenever David went out
to fight Goliath, if David won, Israel owned everything. If Goliath
won, the Philistines owned everything. David was the federal head of
Israel. Adam is our seminal head. Everyone in this room is pinned
to Adam. Everyone in the whole world is
of the blood of Adam. He is the father of the race. Whatever happened to Adam was
passed on to us. Whatever Adam did, we inherited. He's the father of the race. We're all first cousins of Adam. Genesis chapter five and verse
one says, this is the book of the generations of Adam and the
day when the Lord created him in his image. Verse two, male
and female created he them. And he blessed them and called
their name Adam. Adam was created upright and
holy. But this is not Adam in verse
three. This is Adam in time. This is Adam outside the gate
of the garden. Excuse me. This is the generations
of Adam. Adam lived 130 years. and begat a son in his own likeness
and in his image and called him Seth. Now that's what's called
original sin. We inherit that from Adam. This is the darkness that's over
the deep. Now this darkness is so deep. It's so deep that sometimes we
think it's light because we live in it. We don't think there's
anything wrong with what we do. People tell me, oh, we're in
the image of God. Is that a fact? Does God commit
adultery? Does God beat his wife? Does God murder his unborn children? Does God cheat and lie and steal
and run stop signs and cheat on taxis and shoot a one-year-old
baby in a stroller on a street in Chicago? Don't never tell
me we're in the image of God. We're like the Lord told the
Pharisees, we are of our father, the devil, and the works of our
father, we will do. Now if you don't believe what
I've just told you, then that's a first class ticket to hell
because I've not told you anything that the children of God shouldn't
believe, anything that's not in the scriptures. But God is merciful because the
darkness covered the face of the deep and the spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. Born again, new creations in
Christ Jesus. How did this ever occur? We know
how Adam fell and took us with him. This is the product of the
covenant of grace. Before God ever started time,
there was a lot of things that God did. He chose us out of all
of mankind. All of mankind spread out before
God. Everyone that will ever live. And God chose some of them. One here, one there, one there.
Never whole tribes or anything like that. Just individuals chosen
by the grace of God. Now, excuse me, I heard a Reformed
preacher say that it's like God dipped his hands in mercy and
did like that and everyone that a drop hit was chosen. That's
not true. God never does anything by chance. Time and chance and circumstance
mean nothing to God. God made a deliberate choice
of every one He chose, every child of God that He chose out
of mankind. He chose them to be cleansed
and purified by the blood of His Son and to spend an eternity
with Him. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse
3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love. having predestinated
us under the adoption of children unto himself by Jesus Christ,
according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of
the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness
of sin according to the riches of his grace. Chosen, paid for. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
lamb slain before the foundation of the world. And in time, which
is the blessing of God for us, His children will be born. He
created the earth, a place for them to live until He calls them. The Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the water. We're born again. We can see
the kingdom of God now. The Lord Jesus Christ said, except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. We can
see the kingdom of God. Now, there we are, born again. Creation, a new creation in Christ
Jesus. And God said, let there be light. And we see Christ. For the first
time in our lives, Christ is presented to us in all of his
glory. All of his compassion, all of
his strength, he's presented to us as the only way out. He shows us ourselves for who
we are. Selfish and greedy and uncaring
and all of the bad things that men are, that's what we are. He gives us the will to turn
to Christ. He makes us willing in the day
of His power. And I want to tell you right
now, whenever Christ is presented
to us, if we have to crawl on our hands and knees through a
terrible crowd of people just to touch the hem of His garment,
we'll do it. If we can just fall down at his
feet and wash his feet with our tears and wipe his feet with
our hair, we'll do it. If we have to stand on the side
of the road when he goes by and cry out, Jesus, Jesus, thou Son
of David, have mercy on me. I guarantee you, when the Holy
Spirit borns you again and you're called, nothing will stop you
from going to Jesus. Not father, mother, sister, brother,
wife, children, not even the gates of hell will stop you from
going to Christ. Now, Mike was right. We don't
all know when we're saved, but there will come a day when we'll
realize we do know who Christ is. We do know what he's done
for us. We are the children of God and
he has done all these things on our behalf. And God saw the
light and God saw that the light was good. The atonement that
the Lord Jesus Christ made is a complete covering. You remember
when Adam had sinned and he hid from God and him and Eve were
busy sowing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. Fig
leaves don't work. And God gave them a covering. Scripture said, and the Lord
God made the man and the woman coats of skins to cover their
nakedness. That's a very short verse for
such a big, great, big thing to happen. God determined that
they had to be covered. God chose the offering, a blood
offering as a means of sacrifice. This is what's going to make
God happy. Someone is going to satisfy my
justice. God chose the lamb that would
furnish the skin to cover their nakedness. God killed the lamb. Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain." God skinned the lamb for the
offering. He poured out all of His fire,
all of His wrath. God hates sin, and He made Him
to be sin for us. Who knew no sin? that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. And there the Lord
was nailed to the cross, and He had been made sin, and God
poured out all of His wrath, all of His anger, all of His
hatred for sin, poured them out on Christ, and Christ paid for
them. And when Christ said, it is finished,
all done, signed, sealed, and delivered. And God saw that that
was good. There's nothing left to do. What are we going to do to repay
God for salvation, live our lives to make Him happy? We can't do
that. All we can do is pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will cover
our sins. We are perfect in Christ, but
we're surely not perfect in this life. The Lord said that thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as ourselves. And he
added one thing. He said on these precepts hang
all the law and the prophets. That is the law of God. That's
it. And no man can do that, but Christ
did. He lived a life that was wholly
acceptable to God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The holy God chose
the sacrifice, He killed it, He skinned it, and He made the
coats of skin. And He clothed the man and the
woman. You know what that means. He
didn't just make the coat and say, here, put them on. He clothed
them like you do your children and your grandchildren. Give
me your arm, and he put it in his sleeve. And you put the coat
around. Give me your other arm, sweetheart,
and they put their arm around you. You zip up the coat or button
up the coat or whatever. He clothed them. He took every
step of salvation God did And he applied that salvation to
us. And there we stand fully clothed
in the righteousness of Christ. And we didn't give one penny
for it. That's free grace. That is absolutely
free grace. So God saw that the light was
good. And God divided the light from
the day. the darkness. And God does that. Now, I told
you that the darkness is so thick that sometimes you think it's
light. When God separates the light from the darkness, he does
this. Hadn't been that long ago that Greg was talking about a
moral reformation. And I think most of us go through
that. I did. Greg did. Since 1970,
I've preached the five points of Calvinism. I had a church
of my own for, I think, seven years. And I would get up there
every Sunday, every Wednesday, and I would tell them the five,
I didn't say five points of Calvinism, but I brought the scriptures.
First one, total depravity. That means that every square
inch of me is depraved. My will, my body, I'm going to
die. Because wherefore by one man's
sin entered into the world, and death by sin, we're going to
all die. So I'm depraved in every square
inch of my body. No ability, no desire to turn
to God. You. Unconditional elections. God chose me, out of all of mankind,
to be a child of God. Free. Limited atonement. And I really don't care for limited
atonement. I really don't. I'd much rather
have particular redemption. But you can't spell Tula with
particular redemption. So we'll call it limited. Limited
atonement means that the Lord Jesus Christ die only for my
sins. It means that God would only
accept people that he had chosen, and they're covered. Irresistible
grace. It means that when God calls
you, you will answer. Perseverance of the saints. It
means that because God chose me, because God saved me, that
I'm never going to fall from grace. I've just given you five
facts that the children of God must believe. But I've never
mentioned the name of Christ. Only doctrine. I know a man that
had a big wide leather belt with TULIP engraved on the back. He died of AIDS in prison. The scripture is profitable for
doctrine, but only if that doctrine is founded on Christ. That is the darkness that you
would preach all those years and never once preach the blood
atonement, only preach doctrine. And that's what I did. And I'm
sure that's what Greg did. I'm sure that's what most of
us did. But God separated us from that. Colossians chapter
1 and verse 14. He has delivered us from the
power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear
son. He separated us. But it also
means this, that we have to live with the new man and the old
man. It takes a lot of grace, a lot
of grace to know that you're doing some of the same things
you did before God called you, but they don't matter. That whatever
it is, it's been paid for. Like David, whenever Nathan went
to David and said, David, you're the man. David had committed
adultery with his best friend's wife and then killed the best
friend. He said, you're the man, and David said, I have sinned
against God. Nathan said, it's been taken
care of. Now, I'm not recommending anybody to do that, but I'm telling
you that there's no sin so great that the blood of Jesus Christ
has not covered it. for his children. So we have to live with the old
man and sometimes it's a struggle. You sit out there and then a
preacher's going and you're thinking about deer hunting or fishing
or the golf game or whatever, and you're real, what in the
world am I doing? I'm in the house of God. I need
to listen. The old man's always there. He's
never over one breath away from me. The new man's the one that
steers you down through life and sees to it that you don't
get lost on the way. So God separates the light from
the darkness. And the light called he day. That's the good thing. To be
spiritually minded is life and peace, but to be carnally minded
is death. For the carnal mind is enmity
against God. It's not subject to the law of
God. Neither indeed can be. That's
the darkness. That's what we have to watch
out for. I guarantee you if something major or bad happens to me, I'm
going to somehow or another question God. I'm going to look back on
last week or last month or last year and try to figure out what
I did wrong to bring this on me. And time again, the blessing
of God. God opens your mind to the fact
that you don't have to do anything wrong. You haven't been depending
on me. You haven't been looking to Christ
and you need to start doing that. We're the children of God, and
no matter what shape we get ourselves in, God will bring us out. He'll put us on the right path,
the straight gate and the narrow way. He will never, ever let
us get away. So the light he called day and
the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning. were the first day. Now, there
will come an ending of this world. There will come a day when the
Lord Jesus Christ will appear in the clouds with the voice
of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ
shall rise first Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, and so shall we
ever be with the Lord. The clock is ticking right on
down through there. Everything that the Lord had
known unto God, or all of his works from the beginning of the
world, every work that God had planned to do had been done day
by day. It came to pass in the fullness
of time, God will take care of all of this. But we, as children of God, need
to never lose sight of the fact that we are loved. That God loves
us. God loves us enough to sacrifice
his own son as an atonement for our sin. That we should love
the brethren. Everyone in here should make
allowances for everyone else's shortcomings. You're all not
as good as I am. I have to kind of overlook it
if you do anything to me. We need to bear one another's
burdens. We need to make allowances for
one another's sin. We're all in this together. If
we are a child of God, we need to get close to other children
of God. Nevertheless, The Lord Jesus Christ can be
presented with an allegory, He can be presented with a fact
or whatever, but any way you present the Lord Jesus Christ,
you better present Him as the answer to everything. Because
He is. God's done us a tremendous favor.
He's given me enough time in this life to come to realize
who God is as much as a man can, and who I am. He's given me a
wife that he also called, which is a huge blessing. He's given
me a church to go to, to share with other people of God. He's given me something to look
forward to whenever this body puts working. Everything we have,
we owe to God. Father, ask that you give us
a spirit father of thanksgiving that you watch over us father
you touch each one of your children's heart father show them that you
love them give them a feeling of being safe in the lord jesus
christ Be with Greg, Father, bring him safely back. Thank
you for this church, for this town of Orlando, for this day. Thank you, Father, for bringing
us to the point we are right now. We ask, Father, that you
give us the grace to face today and tomorrow. We ask these things
in Jesus' name, amen. Stand together, we'll close with hymn number 37. O Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder consider all the works thy hands have made, ? I see
the stars, I hear the rolling thunder ? ? Thy power throughout
the universe displayed ? ? Then sings my soul, my Savior God,
to Thee ? ? How great Thou art ? ? How great Thou art ? Then
sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee ? How great Thou art
? How great Thou art ? When through the woods and forest glades I
wander, and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. When I look down from lofty mountain
grandeur, and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze, Then
sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. ? How great thou art ? ? How
great thou art ? ? And when I think that God his Son not sparing
? ? Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in ? ? That on the
cross My burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away
my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! ? Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to thee ? ? How great thou art, how great thou art ? ? When
Christ shall come with shout of acclamation ? and take me
home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall bow in humble
adoration and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art. ? Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee ? ? How great Thou art, how great Thou art ? ? Then
sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee ? ? How great Thou art,
How great Thou art!