Turn this evening to the book
of Genesis chapter 1. When we read, we have a tendency to almost
skip over or just fly right by all the little words, the little
one, two, and three-letter words, and recently, Brother Gabe read
this portion of scripture in Acts chapter six that Brandon
read. And it struck me that in four
short verses, the word and, A-N-D, appeared 13 times. And I went
home and I kept looking at it and looking at it, and I got
to looking at the word and. Now, I'm not gonna give you a
grammar lesson, but that's a conjunction. A and D is a little word that's
a conjunction. And that's a part of speech which
connects two words or two phrases. And here's an example. It was
a warm and a sunny day. That connects those two. It was
a day, but it was warm and it was sunny. That distinguishes it, it connects
those two, warm and sunny, but it distinguishes it from a warm
and a cloudy day. It distinguishes it from a cold
and a rainy day. Do we see how the little word
and is important in there? And this little word is vital
to seeing and understanding what is being said in Genesis 1, the
first five verses. That little word appears 13 times
in these verses. And if you go to the first book
of the New Testament, in Matthew 1, the first 17 verses, the word
and appears 43 times. I was amazed. How did I not see
this before? And what do all these ands mean? Well, the answer is pretty simple. All of God's word, it's connected. This truth is connected to this
truth. This thought is connected to
this thought. This parable is connected to
this truth. There are no isolated truths
in the word of God. Every word, the whole word, is
connected. And it's to be proclaimed, and
it's to be declared, and it's to be acknowledged, and it's
to be bowed to, and it's to be agreed with. Every truth in God's
word is connected to every other truth. If there appears to you
and I to be a truth that's not connected Let me tell you, the
problem is not that they're not connected. The problem is we
don't see it yet. God's Word is more than a stated
body of truths. God's Word is truth. Why? Because God is truth and
it's all connected. God the Father and God the Son
and God the Holy Spirit. They're one. They're all connected.
When we go from this truth in Genesis to this truth in Psalms,
to this truth in Matthew, to this truth in Hebrew, and on
and on and on, God the Holy Spirit reveals to His people that they're
all connected. And here's the point of it. Just
as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all
connected, they're all one, if we're His people, we're connected. We're one with Him. and we're
one with the truth. We're one with the word as Jesus
Christ is one. The Bible is not a series of
isolated words or stories or historical events. The Bible
is truth revealed word by word and phrase by phrase. This word
goes with this word and all the other words. They all agree and
they're all connected. Now you see here in Genesis 1,
Let's look at these first five verses. In the beginning, God
created the heaven and the earth. Those are connected. That's not
hard to see, is it? I mean, we can walk out here,
we're standing on the earth, and we look up in the heaven.
Boy, they're connected, aren't they? Verse two, 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 water,
And God said, let there be light. And there was light. Boy, that's
connected, isn't it? God said, let there be light.
What are you supposed to happen? And there was light. And verse four, and God saw the
light, that it was good. And God divided the light from
the darkness. And God called the light day
and the darkness he called night and the evening and the morning
were the first day. You say, that's a lot of ands.
Do we? Does anyone understand all that
was said just here in these five verses? Let me tell you, eternity
won't be long enough to understand just these five verses. It'll
be one day, oh, and look at that. And there'll be another day,
and there'll be, oh, and look what that says. And look what
that says. And look what that says. And
then we'll have covered the word in. and we'll have another million
years with the, and so on and so forth. That's why eternity
is eternity. It won't be long enough for us to understand God,
but boy, the light will be enlightened. And you see, God is the beginning,
period. And God made everything. And
something went wrong without form and void. I don't know what
that means, but it's connected. And God's spirit moves. And God
created light. And God separated darkness and
light. And God gave things names. Light was day, darkness was night. And do we understand? No, but
we understand that it's all connected. We believe that. Tonight, let's
look at just a few of the principles of God's word that are magnified
by this little word, and. Turn a few pages over to Genesis
6. We know that God created Adam and Eve, perfect and upright.
But Adam disobeyed God and things changed. Sin entered in. God
recorded here in Genesis 6 his observation and his conclusion
about Adam and all his descendants. We all do realize that it's only
what God concludes and what God observes and what God says that
matters. Doesn't really matter much what
we think about it. And please don't be deceived. What we think
and what we observe or we conclude does not now nor never will matter
one bit. God knows. He knows the truth. God speaks the truth because
God is the truth. And what does God say about us?
What's he say about us in his word here? Look at Genesis six,
verse five. It starts out. There's that little word. And
everything that's gone before this goes with what he's saying
now. And what went before this was the recorded creation of
Adam and the fall of Adam and how Cain killed his brother. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination, does
it say some of the imaginations and thoughts? No, it says everyone.
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And
it repented the Lord that he made man on the earth, and it
grieved him to his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy
man whom I've created from the face of the earth, both man and
beast and the creeping things and the fowls of the air, for
it repented me that I made them at all. But Noah, but Noah, after
all these ands, But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord,
which gives us hope there. But turn over to Isaiah chapter
1. You know, if we ask most folks
to describe mankind, here's kind of a summary of what they'll
say. They'll say, well, man has ascended from the hunched over
Neanderthals to these upright geniuses. and he's put men on
the moon, and he's made medical advances saving untold lives,
and he's written beautiful music, and he's split atoms, and we
just go on and on bragging on ourselves, don't we, about all
we've done. Well, what's the truth? Well,
the truth is what God says. And God says we have descended.
We're not ascending. We're descending from the perfect
being God created in the Garden of Eden. And we despise God,
and we despise one another, usually without a cause, and we invent
terrible machines to kill one another, and our desire to sin
goes on and on and on and on. You see here in Isaiah 1, verse
5, it says, why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt
more and more and more and more and more. The whole head is sick. That's the problem. And not just
the head and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the
foot even unto the head, there's no soundness in it, but wounds
and bruises and putrefying sores. You know, it's enough to be wounded.
Boy, have it being putrefied, have it being infected, having
it being bruised all around too. You see, it's not just, we're
not wounded, we're dead in trespasses and sin. They have not been closed,
neither bound up, neither mollified or unmet. Our condition before
God is that we're sinners without hope in this world, without hope. Our propensity or our desire
for sin goes on and on and on and there's no end to the ands.
Do we understand that? You say, how bad can it really
be? Let me show you. Turn over to John 19. When man is involved in sin,
there's always an and. Man's boundless and endless desire
to sin. Here's where it culminates. when
it reaches its highest point, when the Son of God is for one
time on one occasion put in the hands of sinful men. You see
in John 19 verse 1, Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, that's
the first thing, they took him, and they scourged him. We know
what the scourging is, that's why they took a a cat of nine
tails. It's a whip with nine leather
strips, and they poked holes in the ends of those strips,
and they put pieces of metal or bone in there so that when
you whip the guy, it didn't just make marks on his back. What
happened was that you whipped him, and the bone and the metal
stuck in the back. And then the guy would yank it
back out and tear big pieces of flesh off somebody's back.
And then he'd do it again. What is it, 38 lashes save one,
or 39 save one? 40 save one. 39 times they did that to our Lord. We just can't imagine what his
back must have looked like. It says they took him first and
they scourged him and the soldiers platted a crown of thorns and
they put it on his head and they put on him a robe of purple.
They stripped off his clothes. He was naked there and they just
threw him on the floor, walked on him, whatever. Then they took
a piece of purple cloth and threw it on him and then They said,
Hail, King of the Jews. And they smote him with their
hands. Pilate therefore went forth again and said unto them,
Behold, I bring him forth to you, that you may know that I
find no fault. There was no, he didn't deserve
any of this. He didn't do anything. And yet they did this, and they
did this, and they did this, and they kept on. Turn to Matthew
chapter 27. Turn back a little bit to Matthew
27. We ought never to think of sin
as an isolated incidence of something I did. No, it's a condition we
have. It's a disease we have. You see
here in Matthew 27, here's another account of this same situation
in Matthew 27, look at verse 29. And when they had plaited a crown
of thorns, And have you ever seen somebody with a cut? My
son, Luke, one time was playing soccer and rammed heads with
somebody, and the blood just ran down his face in rivulets.
He's had this little bitty cut on top of his head. But if you
ever get cut in your head, you'll bleed like a stuck pig. I mean,
it just goes on and on. And our Lord, they pushed, I
don't know how many thorns there were, but the blood just flowed
all down his face and all over him from this. And then it says,
and they put it on his head, and a reed was put in his hand,
and they bowed the knee before him, and they mocked him saying,
hail, king of the Jews. And this mocking thing, it's
not just young people that hate to be mocked. Being mocked is
an unusual and cruel thing. And I'll just illustrate it this
way. It's one thing if I say you're
Dickie Osborne. It's another thing if I go, hail,
hail, Dickie, king of the broken truck axles. Doesn't feel too
good, does it? Or if I go, hail, Megan, queen
of the dirty diapers. I mean, all of us got this. Aren't
you glad I'm not going to mock you guys? Don't want to be mocked,
do you? No. And I, Lord, sat there, and
here's a room full of soldiers. And I wish I have spent a week
with this on my mind and with this just all over me about what
happened here. I'm an old man now, but there
was a time when I was young and I was a soldier. And I was in
a foreign land. I represented the most powerful
country in the world, the United States of America. Buddy, we
had power. We had inventions you can't imagine. We could blow apart things and
do things people can't imagine. And here in this room, was a
room full of soldiers, big rough men, and they had power. They represented the Roman Empire.
They did what they wanted to, to whom they wanted to, however
they wanted to, and they got their hands on the Son of God
for one time, and what they did was first they just beat all
the flesh off his back, and then they put this crown of thorns
on his head, and he bled down his face, And then they made
fun of him. And they put him, they sat him
down somewhere and put this piece of purple cloth over him. And
they took this reed, a hollow rod, and they put it in his hand. And he sat there without protest,
without saying a word with this reed. And they made fun of him
as being the king of the Jews. And they mocked him. And one
fella came up and as Scott Richardson said, he cleared his throat and
spit in his face. And they smote him in the mouth
and beat him and hit him. And this finally, and I have
seen myself and my part in this as the guy who came up and finally
one of them just grabbed that reed out of his hand and just
went, won't you say anything? You say, stop, stop. Oh, if it
were just that easy to stop sin. You say, when's it going to stop?
Only two times. When God puts me in a grave,
it'll stop. Or when I come before him and
he says, My son took care of your sin. It stopped right there. And that's what happened here.
Do we see it? It says in verse 30, and they
spit upon him. They took the reed and smote
him on the head. And after that, they had mocked him. They took
the robe off of him, put his own clothes. They trampled on
him. Then they put him back on him and led him away to be crucified. Oh my, oh my. Turn back to Matthew 4. The sin of man is truly boundless,
isn't it? It is we sin and we sin and we
sin and we sin. If God takes his hand off of
us, there's no end to it. But however, but Noah found grace
in the eyes of God. That means the mercy of God is
truly boundless. There's some ands with our sin,
but there's some ands with His mercy. Have you got Matthew 4?
You see, all men and women, we're sick with sin. We're diseased
with sin. Is there any help for it? Look
at Matthew 4, verse 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee. God sent Him to this earth. He
went all over Galilee. And what did he do? Number one,
teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and healing all
manner of diseases among the people. Do you see that all manner
there? I don't know what your peculiar pet saying is. I've
imagined mine all week, taking that read. and beating our Lord. It grieves me. It grieves me. And there's so many more to talk
about. All manner of sickness and all
manner of disease. You say, what's the difference
between no twos? Sickness is the general malady of sin. Disease
is my specific sin. Don't look at sin just as this
big category of stuff that's bad. No, no, I got plenty. There's a book. where they could
be written down one after the other. And it goes, the pages
can't be counted. Oh my. But what specifically
does the Lord Jesus Christ do? What did he do when he came here?
He taught first of all, and you know what he taught? He taught
his people who they were. He taught them who he was. He
taught him what he did, what he was doing here. He taught
him why he did what he did. And he taught him where he was
going to go after he finished here. And he was, it wasn't just
that he taught, and he preached. What did he preach? Good news.
Good news. He taught, I know who you are.
I know what you think. I know what you feel. I know
what you do. I know what you've done. But I'm here for mercy,
to have mercy, to heal the sicknesses and the diseases. No matter what
it is, my Lord has the cure. He has an and for you. He has an and for me. Turn to
Matthew 8. Our Lord always does more than
we need or ask or even think. I know you've heard this scripture
so many times, I want to read it to you. I don't want to have
you look it up, but I want to read it to you very quickly. We think
of ourselves, God's people do, it's revealed to us that we're
sinners. And we think of ourselves, oh, my sin, my sin. There's no
end to it. There's no end to it. And yet,
in Ephesians 3, we read this. Now unto him that is able to
do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according
to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the
church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world within. And what
that is telling us is that we know we're sinners. We know there's
just so many of them. It says He can take care of it.
He's able to do exceeding. Your sin's exceeding? He can
take care of that. Your sin's abundant? Oh, He can take care
of that. It's above what anybody else knows. Thank goodness nobody
knows here what we've done, each of us. He's able to take care
of that, too. He's able to do exceedingly,
abundantly, all that we ask. Ask Him. Ask Him. Even that what
we think. And now we've got Matthew chapter
8. And the word is full of examples of what our Lord can do. Our
Lord came to Peter's mother-in-law, and notice he came where she
was, and that's what we all need to happen, is to come where we
are. In Matthew 8, have you got verse
14? And when Jesus was coming to
Peter's house, the first thing he did is he came where this
sick woman was. And he saw his wife's mother laid there. She
was laying there helpless. And she was sick of a fever.
Boy, the fever of sin's a bad disease to have. And what did
he do? Then look what he did. And he
touched her hand. First thing he did is he comforted
her. He said, I know you're sick. It's all right. It's okay. I'm
here now. It's all right. And what happened
the minute he touched her, the fever left. If the Lord ever
touches us, you know what? Our sin's gone. It's gone. Can't be found. And she arose. She was restored. If the Lord ever touches us,
if he comes where we are, he touches us and takes care of
the sin. Then we're restored. He lived here for 33 years perfectly. What did he do? He was righteous
and good. What do you do with that righteousness?
He gives it to his people. He restores us. And then notice
the last thing he did. And he touched her hand and the
fever left her and she arose and she had ministered unto him,
unto them. You know what we'll do if God
ever comes where we are and does for us what we need? He'll comfort
us. He'll put away our sin, He'll give us His righteousness, and
all of a sudden we'll be kind to one another. We'll love God's
people. I don't know if your experience
is like mine or not. I've never loved anybody but
me, in my whole life, until the Lord Jesus Christ came. And suddenly,
I didn't even know I was sick! But He comes, He comforts us,
and He does these things for us. Now there's lots of You know,
illustrations of this. There's never a circumstance
where we need to be fearful that our Lord, well, there's my case
is too hard. And maybe somebody thinks I've just, I've gone too
far. I'm over the hill of sin. I can't be helped, but that's
not the case. I'm going to read you right there.
And, um, Matthew eight, look at verse 24. And behold, there
arose a great tempest in the sea in so much that the ship
was covered with the waves, but he was asleep. And his disciples
came to him and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us, we perish. And
he said to them, why are you fearful? O ye of little faith. Then, what did he do? He arose,
he rebuked the winds and the seas, and there came a great
calm. But the men marveled, saying,
what manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey
him? Don't underestimate the ability of our Lord to save the
worst of us. He's able to. A little further
over. There's so many of these, but
I turn to Matthew 14. I'm going to skip some of the
ones I had. In verse, in Matthew 14, we all know the story of
how the multitude was hungry and they had only five loaves
and two fishes. And look in verse 19 of Matthew
14. And our Lord commanded the multitude
to sit down on the grass. That's the first thing he did.
And when he comes to a center, the first thing is to sit down
and listen. Sit down, listen, I'm going to teach you, I'm going
to preach the gospel to you. And he said, sit down on the grass.
And he took five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to
heaven, he blessed and break and gave the loaves to a disciples
and the disciples to the multitude. And they all did eat and were
filled. And they took up the fragments.
You see what he came to a first is just sit down, be comforted,
relax, sit down. I'm going to sit down, I'm going
to teach you, I'm going to preach to you. And then what he did was he fed them.
He performed a miracle in doing it. He fed them. They were all
filled. They ate all they could stand
and it was more left over. I don't care how bad our sin
is. He can take care of this. He's got more than enough grace
and enough mercy to deal with this. And you all know the story
of the man in the tomb of the Gadarenes. This man was crazy. He was wild crazy. They chained
him up. He'd break the chains. He'd throw himself in a fire.
He was just totally out of his mind. Sounds like me. Sounds
a whole lot like me. And yet it says, our Lord came
to him where he was. And when the folks that, you
know, all the devils in this man, he put him in the pigs and
the pigs ran off and died and everybody ran to town going,
they killed all our pigs. And they all came out there to
see. And the first thing they saw when they got there was this
man, you know, he was doing. They found him with the devils
departed. Boy, I need that. And they found him sitting at
the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where God's people will
be. And they found him fully clothed. We got a righteousness
now. And he was in his right mind. For God's people, there's
always an end. You know, in Luke 18, a blind
man was asked by the Lord, what were you that I should do? And
his answer was, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And immediately
he received his sight and he followed him and he glorified
God. Alright, what is there that the Lord Jesus Christ is not
prepared to do for his people? And even more, our Lord is all
and in all to his people. He can do for each of us exactly
what we need. Now, look at Matthew chapter 1. You
recall my saying that there was 43 times in Matthew 1 here, 43
ands here. But the important ones, there's
the genealogy here and the family tree of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and there's a lot of those ands. You say, well, all those people
saved, I don't know. I don't know who was. I don't know, you
know, we don't know those things. It's not revealed. But it finally
says in verse 16, and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary,
of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations
from Abraham to David, and then jump down here to verse 21. And
it says of Mary, and she shall bring forth a son and thou shall
call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins.
Now, all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was
spoken to the Lord by the prophet saying, behold, a virgin shall
be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call
his name Emmanuel, which is being interpreted God with us. Our
Lord is able to take care of our sin, whatever it is, whatever
it is. All of these people, you know,
we don't know whether they were saved there or not, but what
we do know is that all that the Lord Jesus Christ did in obedience
to God's law was done to this end to create a righteousness
for his people. And all that was done to him
at Calvary was done to this end to put away their sin. It doesn't
really matter what sin or how many sins I've committed, Jesus
Christ has paid for them all. And I hope this will bring this
together for you. No matter what accusation is
laid to the charge of God's people, our Lord has a reply. You know,
here's this child of God that says, Oh, I have these thoughts,
these terrible thoughts in my mind. Her head is full of these
thoughts. You know what our Lord says?
And my head bore the crown of thorns for you. And then here's
this child of God who admits, I've said awful things. I've
said wicked things. I've told lies and blasphemies
and curses and so on and so forth. And our Lord replies, my mouth
was smitten, my face was slapped for you. And this child of God
confesses, my heart desires evil continually. And our Lord replies,
and they put a spear through my heart for you. And this child
confesses, I've made fun of God's people and mocked godly, holy
things. And our Lord replies, and they
mocked me as I died for you. And I like this one. This child
of God says, I've done terrible sins with my hands. I grabbed
the reed and I smoked thee with it and I hit thee and I've done
these things with my hands. And our Lord says, he replies
to that accusation, and they drove nails through my hands
for thee. What is there we've done for
which he has not paid? To the woman taken in the very
act of adultery. He says, woman, where are your
accusers now? One day, we may go thinking,
oh, I got a lot to answer for. And he'll say, where's your accusers?
There's nobody here to accuse you now. And then our Lord said
to her, there's nobody here to condemn you, and neither do I.
I paid the price, so you don't have to. The Lord Jesus Christ,
you remember that phrase, He died for all manner of sinners?
That pretty much takes in me. He died for all manner of sinners.
And I want us just to know this. Chronologically in the Bible,
chronologically, I jump to the end of Matthew and John where
he suffered. But I want you to notice this.
Before he ever suffered in those books, he had already done all
these marvelous things. He already had performed miracles
and he comforted his people and he cured them of all that was
wrong with them and given them peace and done everything they
needed. Then he went and died. And that's the case for God's
people. Before the foundation of the world, God chose the people
and said, y'all are perfect. You're perfect. And then Christ
came and died for them. There's a peace to be had in
that. Enter into it. Call upon Him
and He'll have mercy on us. All right, let's stand together
and we'll be dismissed.