All right, if you would open
your Bibles to the 110th Psalm. Psalm 110. We'll read the entire
Psalm of seven verses. Psalm 110. The Lord says to my
Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool
for your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty
power from Zion You will rule in the midst of your enemies.
Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in
holy majesty from the womb of the dawn, you will receive the
due of your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not
change his mind. You are a priest forever in the
order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings on the day
of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping
up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He
will drink from a brook beside the way. Therefore, he will lift
up his head." The Apostle Paul, in one of his
letters, spoke of those who would preach
another Jesus. In Galatians, he spoke of those
who preached another gospel, which was really no gospel at
all. And the reason it was no gospel
is because it was a message about another Jesus who really was
no Jesus at all. And why do I say he was no Jesus? Well, the name Jesus means Jehovah
is salvation, or is my salvation. It just joins together the two
Hebrew words for salvation and for the name of God, which is
Jehovah. The Lord Jesus Christ was called
or was named Jesus for this particular reason, and the angel said so. He said, because he will save
his people from their sins. When the angel came and said,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, that is, good news, the
word normally translated gospel, he sent them, those shepherds,
to see Jesus, an infant, whose name means Jehovah is salvation. When Jesus was taken into the
temple, not many weeks later, A man named Simeon, a very old
man, devoted to God, and who'd been looking for the consolation
of Israel. The Lord directed him to the
temple that day. I don't know how clearly He directed
Simeon to the temple. I don't know whether it was an
audible voice or if God just providentially arranged that
he should be there. But God was going to bless this
old man by showing him a really, really young man, about 40 days
old. And Simeon saw our Lord Jesus
there in his infant form, and he took him up in his arms. And
he said to God, he said, now let your servant depart in peace. For mine eyes have seen your
salvation." Now nobody delivered to Simeon
a plan of salvation. Nobody said to Simeon, now here's
how God's salvation works. You do this and God will do that. He saw a little child that looked no different and
any of the other children who may be coming or being brought
to the temple that day, in order that the right of purification
of the mother might be fulfilled. But the Spirit was in Simeon,
and he identified for Simeon who this child was, that he was
the promised one who would come. And he did not say, Lord, now
I see the way you are going to bring about salvation. He did
not say, I have seen the Savior. He said, I have seen your salvation. Salvation is so wrapped up in
a person, that's what his name is. Salvation. Therefore, whether or not we
preach the gospel is utterly wrapped up in whether or not
we set forth the Lord Jesus Christ as He really is. Most people,
most religions do set forth another Jesus. And it's not difficult
to determine that or to discern that. You've just got to listen
to them. If you have within your heart an understanding of what
Jesus is really like, and then you go and listen to them, you
say to yourself, Well, you might say, that message wasn't about
any kind of Jesus, because there's a lot of messages that aren't
about Jesus at all. No Jesus of any sort. But then
they start speaking to you of a Jesus who has tried, who has
ventured forth, who came to earth and did all he could to save
everybody. And now he's gone back to heaven
and he's waiting to see How many people are going to accept his
work? Now, if you know the real Jesus,
you're going to say, that's not the Jesus I know. That is not
the Savior the scriptures speak of. It is not the one to whom
I trusted my soul. Such a Jesus can't save anybody. Such a Jesus can't do anything,
at least not anything more than what he's already done. And there
are many preachers who will go as far as to say that. They say,
God's done all He can do. Now it's up to you. Boy, aren't
you glad that's not true. Aren't you glad that God has
not done all that He can do? Because if what you see before
you, this preacher, is an example of the best that God can do,
You and I are in a pitiful mess, aren't we? When we look out into
this world of rebels, rebels against every kind of authority,
but most of all, rebels against the authority of God, they hate
His law. And when you come to tell them
that He has granted forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ,
they hate His gospel too. And you wonder, Well, if God's
done all he can do, what hope is there that anyone will be
saved? Our Lord told the apostles, the
disciples one time, he said how hard it is for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of God. It'd be easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of God. And the disciples rightly said,
well, then who can be saved? And our Lord Jesus laid forth
the gospel principle. He said, with man, it is impossible. But with God, all things are
possible. Camels can be put through an
eye of a needle and rich men can be made to enter the kingdom
of God. But that's only if there is a Savior, such as our Lord
Jesus is set forth in the Scripture. And that's what this book does.
Now, the fall of man ruined the whole man. Henry Mahan used to
say, and he said it many, many times, if you're wrong on the
fall, you're wrong on it all. And that's true. We cannot begin
to understand what kind of gospel you and I need if we don't first
have an understanding of just how desperate our condition is.
The reason that people are quite willing to follow these forms
of religion that put them on doing good things is because
they believe they have the capacity to do good things. That the problem
is they've just been making the wrong choices in the past, and
if they'll now just start making the right choices, then everything's
going to be okay. Well, that proves they don't
understand what happened way back yonder in the Garden of
Eden. When man sinned in the person of Adam, and you say,
what do you mean by man sinned in the person of Adam? Adam was
the first human being created. And he is a unique human being. For lots of reasons, but this
reason most importantly, God set him up as a representative
of all of us. And he says, I will deal with
the human race according to what Adam does. And Adam, I don't know how long
he obeyed God. Adam had no natural tendency
to sin. So apart from some external temptation,
there would have been no desire on his part to eat from that
tree that had been forbidden to him. He was, for who knows
how long, perfectly satisfied to live there in the Garden of
Eden and be blessed with all the many things that God had
given him. But the day did come when God's great enemy, and I
say great enemy, not as though he really causes any special
trouble to God, but he is likely the most hateful being in all
the universe, so totally absorbed in himself, he wants to be God,
he tried, he failed, and being cast to the ground, the first
thing he did was try to ruin God's image bearer, man. And he convinced Eve, and through
her, convinced Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit. And by sin,
Adam was brought into a condition that has been passed on to all
of us. Adam was immediately rendered
ignorant of the things of God. Imagine this, that the day before,
He had walked with God. He had communed with God, fellowshiped
with God, talked with God, saw God, rejoiced in God. And today, he thinks he can hide
from God behind a bush. Do you see? This thing of understanding
God is not a matter of intellectual capacity. I don't think that
Adam's intellect was suddenly, I mean, like he became a dunce. But the knowledge of God is spiritual
knowledge and Adam died spiritually. And therefore, he was left only
with what his reason could tell him about God. And his reason says, I saw God
yesterday. He kind of looked like me. I
know what? I'll hide behind this bush and
he won't be able to find me. And you might think that's silly
and you'd be right. But look at the things people
hide behind now. They'll put a cross around their neck and
try to hide behind that. They will go behind closed doors
to commit their acts of wickedness and think God can't see. They
will try to hide behind their church They will rebel against
God all week long and indulge themselves in every kind of act
of rebellion against Him, and then get up Sunday morning, put
on their Sunday go-to-meet-and-clothes, go to church, sit down, sing
the hymns, listen to the sermon, and build themselves what they
think is a religious hiding place, thinking, if I cover myself in
this stuff, God won't see what I really am. We became ignorant. of the things
of God. Utterly ignorant of the things
of God when Adam fell. And then when Adam fell, man
was estranged from God. What does estranged mean? Well,
if you hear the word in there, strange, it doesn't mean we became
oddballs, though some of us may be, but that's not what it means.
The old word stranger meant someone from somewhere else. An alien. We became alienated
from God. A breach was made between us
and God. A gulf, a chasm that we could
not cross. We were brought into condemnation,
all of us, for it says, as in Adam all died. Through Adam sin
entered the world and death came by sin and therefore death passed
upon all men for in Adam all sinned. Now, even if you could convince
me that you had done some good things in your life, and that
maybe those good things would earn you some benefit from God,
I would simply say this, that according to the Scriptures,
before you did anything good or bad, Adam, your representative,
rebelled and died. He came under condemnation, and
you did too. And until you can go back in
history and change what Adam did, it's not going to matter
what you do. That's why we say that when people
are born into this world, they come born dead in their trespasses
and sins, and under condemnation. And we look at those sweet babies,
and we call them that. We know what they're going to
grow into. They're going to grow into us. But it sure looks like
they're innocent. They look sweet, we love them,
we cherish them, we'd do anything for them. If they smile at us,
we think heaven opened up. But here's what we got to keep
in mind, as much as we love them, as much as we would open heaven
wide to them if we could, our dear children came into this
world alienated from God. They came into this world with
the same nature as the children of wrath. They came into this
world with our nature. What other nature could they
have come in with? They are our children. And if we confess ourselves to
be sinners, then we must acknowledge that they are too. And if we
confess that we were in ourselves incapable of joining ourselves
to God, of fixing our problem, that we've got to confess the
same thing about our children as much as we love them, as wonderful
as we might think they are. And we must be honest enough
with them to tell them that. Spurgeon relates hearing his
grandmother, he lived in his first few years in his grandfather's
home, I believe it was the grandmother he was speaking of, listening
to her pray for him. And hearing her say, Lord, I
know he's a sinner worthy of everlasting hell. He said, my
own grandmother was willing to testify against me. Not that
she hated him. She just knew it was the truth.
And he said her prayers bored into my soul. And I grew up understanding I
was a sinner in the sight of God. Worthy of His condemnation. We were estranged from God and
we became both a captive and willing colleague of God's enemies. In particular, that great enemy,
Satan. He holds us captive and yet we
love our captor. People don't want to think they're
held captive to anything. We like to say, I'm free. Gives us a sense of dignity.
Well, it is right to be free of the needless restraint from
other people. But we are not now nor have we
ever been free. Absolutely. Today, right now,
everyone here is being held captive by Satan or has been led captive by the
Lord Jesus Christ. One or the other. Right now, you are either choosing
the path of destruction and you feel like you're choosing that
path freely, you may not even think it's a path of destruction,
but you're choosing it and you think you're choosing it freely,
but in all reality, you are being held captive. Not only that,
we are all, by nature, willing colleagues, collaborators with
God's enemies, and so much so, the Bible says we are enemies
of God, by nature. You might say, well, I don't
have anything against God. I mean, you know, I don't cuss. You know,
I don't do this, that and the other. We're all enemies of God by nature. All of us by nature want to be
God. You say, well, I've never thought
I wanted to be God. Did you ever try to disobey your parents? You know what that is? That is
just simply the general spirit of rebellion. That we want to
do what we want to do. And no one should get in our
way. When we were children and didn't
get our way, we threw temper tantrums. And our parents dealt
with it as they thought wise. And hopefully we keep most of
our temper tantrums on the inside now. The fact is, everybody who
has not been born again by the Spirit of God is right now engaged
in a temper tantrum against God. So the Lord Jesus Christ came
to fix all that. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John,
and we know that Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of
the devil. What did the devil do? He made
us ignorant, he brought us into condemnation, and he led us away captive. And Jesus Christ came to destroy
that work. He came to destroy that work
in the office of what the Bible calls Messiah or Christ. It's the same word, just coming
from different languages. Our Lord Jesus Christ came, and
in fulfilling what it means to be Messiah, He destroyed the
works of the devil with regard to his people. The devil made
us ignorant. Jesus Christ comes as the prophet. See, that word Messiah means
anointed one. And all the prophets of the Old
Testament were anointed with oil to demonstrate or kind of
symbolize that God had anointed them with the Spirit of God so
that they could truthfully tell the Word of God. Jesus Christ
came, anointed with the Spirit of God and the Spirit of truth. And He got rid of our ignorance. by telling us the truth, more
than that. Not just by telling us the truth.
He says, I am the truth. Men love degrees, don't they?
I mean, you know, we, and there's a value in them in this world,
but our children, you know, we send them off to school. And
finally, after however many years it takes now, 12 years or whatever,
they get a diploma. And then we, Think, at least
for most of them, they ought to go get a college education.
So another three, four, depending on their profession, maybe even
more years. And finally they walk across
that stage with their flat cap on and they get that piece of
paper and they now have a title in front of their name or some
letters after it. Trying to prove that we know
something. But we don't know anything. We
don't know anything about God until Christ tells us. Jesus
Christ did not just come to bring information. He is the information. But men love their degrees and
they brought that into religion. And now you can go to school,
after you get your high school education, you go off to Bible
school, you get your bachelor's degree, you go off to seminary,
you get a master's degree, and if you want to go some more,
you can become a THD, a doctor of theology. And you can wear your robe, and
everyone thinks you're really smart. And people love to be
hailed as being intelligent. And what they do is turn right
around and then act as though salvation comes through the accumulation
of true doctrine in the mind. Salvation comes through a knowledge
of the person of Jesus Christ. And the most ignorant can be
made to know Him. That man born blind, The Lord
healed him, and it created such a stir. The
Pharisees asked him lots of questions about who it was that gave him
sight. And they said, well, we know
this man's a sinner. And that blind man says, well, he wasn't
blind anymore. He says, well, I don't know whether
he's a sinner or not, but I do know this. I was blind. Now I see." And they threw him out of the
synagogue. They got all mad at him. And
they said, well, we don't know where this guy's from, meaning
the Lord Jesus, and this man had just been healed from native
blindness. You can just see him scratching
his head and he goes, now here's a wonder. You all are amazed
that he gave me sight. I'll tell you what I'm amazed
at. He gave me sight and you don't know where he's from. He
said, that's the most amazing thing I've heard all day. Who else has ever opened the
eyes of one born blind? I know who this man is. And later
Jesus Christ came and spoke to him. And he said to this blind man,
do you believe in the Son of God? And he said, who is he that
I might believe him? And the Lord said, I am, I'm
him. And he believed him. You don't see there some carefully
organized theological system. Christ set himself forward. He
came as a great high priest. He represents our case to the
judge. And by his life, he proved himself
a worthy sacrifice. By his death, he entered in once
to the holy place, not made with hands, the one in heaven, into
the very presence of God, and offered himself there, and obtained
eternal redemption for us. Now, did you hear that? I was
stringing scripture together there. Those aren't my made-up
words. Those are phrases right out of
Scripture. He obtained eternal redemption. He didn't try to
redeem. He didn't make redemption possible.
He did not offer redemption to us. I believe that this is the point
at which our Lord Jesus Christ is most attacked in the world
today, maybe forever. But they want to set Himself,
or excuse me, want to set Him forth as someone who merely made
something possible. And why is that? Because if all
that He did was make something possible and leave it up to us
whether or not it actually accomplishes anything, then once we decide
for Jesus and make His work successful in us, well, who's going to get
the credit for that? The Bible says that salvation
is utterly the work of God for this very purpose that no one
would be able to boast in His presence. He says, I will not
share my glory with another. And therefore, Jesus Christ,
God in human flesh, when He offered Himself without spot to God,
the Judge of all, He did not merely open the door to heaven. He bought the souls of His Father's
chosen people. He paid their debt. He utterly
cleared every charge that had ever been laid against them. They were redeemed. And here's the thing. God is
just. God is just. And as Brother Mahan
once said, At least once, but once that I remember with absolute
clarity. If Christ paid my debt, I don't
owe it. Brethren, that's the gospel.
That's the priestly work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And He is our King, our Lord
over all, because of His willing submission to His Father. And
his success and all the work that he was sent to do, he was
exalted to God's right hand as the King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. And he uses that universal authority to rescue his people,
defeat their enemies, and make them to dwell in peace and safety. You know, that's what a king
is supposed to do. I realize most people want to become kings
so that they can rule everything for their own comfort and advancement.
Jesus Christ was made King of kings and Lord of lords that
he might rule all things for the benefit of God's elect to
bring them to salvation. They had been brought into captivity. He, by power, releases them from
that captivity. Nonetheless, their enemies still
pursue them. He defends them and keeps them
safe from every harm. They had impoverished themselves
and engaged themselves in warfare against Him by their sin. But
He brings them into peace and into prosperity so that they
don't lack anything they need and have all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Him. That's why He's called the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. No King, no Lord like Him. Every subject of His kingdom
will live forever in peace and prosperity. Now, Jesus Christ is Messiah. He is the Christ,
the Anointed One. And Psalm 110 sets forward to
us two of these offices that I've spoken of. I said He's our
prophet, priest, and king. You know, no one in all of the
Old Testament ever occupied all three of those offices. In fact, no one in the Old Testament
ever was able to combine within themselves the offices of king
and priest. Now, there were some priests
who were also prophets. There were some kings who were
also prophets, but there never was a king who was a priest. God kept these offices separate. Why? Well, I think one reason
is this. He understood full well that
powers needed to be separated among sinful men. That's one
of the aspects of our form of government, actually. It's some
divine wisdom. And they have taken the various
functions of government and have split them up and spread them
out over three branches of government. And each one of those branches
has lots of people in it. Why? So that no single person
could ever gain enough control legally to make our lives miserable. And the Lord did that back in
the Old Testament. And He made it so that the king who went
to war, never had the power to withhold forgiveness from anybody. It was the priest who gave or
withheld forgiveness. He did not allow that power into
the hands of the king. Why? We know why. Men hungry
for power, if they could ever combine that executive authority
of a king and the religious authority of a priest, what do we get?
We get things like what's happened in the Middle Ages when people
had to live, they lived in spiritual darkness and spiritual tyranny. It was awful. But there is one man in whose
hands can be entrusted every authority. The authority of a
prophet, the authority of a priest, and the authority of a king.
When our Lord ascended to glory, what did he say to his disciples?
All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me. I'm the truth. I have the authority
to tell you what's true and what's not. I am the priest. I'm the
one that will bring you to God or keep you from Him. I am the
King. I can do all I please and will
do all I please. No one else can be trusted with
that, but He can. And this psalm speaks of that
very thing. The Lord says to my Lord, and
we'll look at a couple of things here briefly. and see this truth. The Lord, Jehovah, that's his
name, says to my Lord, that word there means a master. This King, the Lord Jesus, we
say he's our King, but he's God's King, God's chosen King. He is
not King because he came and made himself King. It says, wherefore
God hath highly exalted him. In Revelation chapter 11 verse
15, the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our
Lord and of His Christ. I tell you, you read the news,
there's plenty to be troubled about, isn't there? Sometimes I just shake my head.
I can't believe the foolishness going on. And as we see, and
this is an example known to all of us, but if we see that barbarity
being committed by, we aren't even allowed to just
say Muslims anymore, we got to say radicalized or something
like that. But whatever they are, and for whatever reason
they're doing it, barbaric people, butchery, And they're coming here. And what I mean by that, I don't
mean just this place in particular or even the United States. They
are leaving where they are and trying to spread their tyranny
everywhere they go. And it seems like our culture
doesn't know how to answer it and deal with it. And I'm thinking,
it's insane what's going on. And it would be easy. In fact,
it happens. I get roiled up in that and really
feel down. I forget this. The kingdom. of the world has been given to
Christ Jesus. And those barbarians are doing
exactly what He wants them to do, to bring about His purpose. And they shall slaughter as far
as He says, and no farther. Now that doesn't mean that those
who've been given political power shouldn't respond better. That's
another issue. What I'm saying is this, you
and I, who are under this King, and who look to Christ, have
no cause to fear. Those butchers are not out of
His control. They are part of His Kingdom. It's been handed to Him. And
He is sending them out, I suppose, for purposes of judgment. For
the nations have forgotten the God who prospered them. I mean, let's face it. If God were to wipe this nation
out, who of us could stand up and say, well, that's not right. But while we watch all this going
on, we have this confidence that our King has them in his
control. And even if in his process of
using them for judgment or whatever, some of us get killed, it'll
be all right. Because what happens when they
kill us? We go directly into the presence of our King to everlasting
joy. There's nothing going on right
now that the Lord Jesus didn't ordain and bring to pass and
is now presently controlling. When they had those shootings
this past week, people were saying, well, our prayers are with the
folks in San Bernardino, I think, yeah, and I guess there were
some papers that got an outrage about it. He said, God's not
going to do anything about this. And I just wished I could have
answered him and said, what do you mean he's not going to do anything
about this? He did this. He doesn't react to it. This
is him. coming with bearded faces and pipe bombs or whatever to
work His sovereign will. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
ruling and reigning and bringing all of His enemies in subjection
to Him. The Lord said to him, sit at
my right hand, O our King. He sits in the place of favor. And God gives Him everything
He wants. He says, ask of Me and I'll give
you the nations for your inheritance, the whole world for your possession. The Lord asked and He got it. Now there is a way in which His
elect belong to Him that doesn't apply to the whole world. But
know this, Jesus Christ owns the whole world. It's all His.
Everyone. You. You belong to the Lord Jesus
Christ by right. He is our universal King. He
rules everything. God says to him, sit here until
I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. We get all alarmed by things
going on when we see the forces arrayed against God and against
His Christ. And we get worried. Oh, what's
going to happen? And you know what our Lord Jesus does? He
uses all those rabble-rousing enemies as a place to rest His
feet. He says, I think I'll just lean back here a little bit and
put my feet up. And He puts His feet up on them. You know something? If our King's
not worried, we shouldn't be either. Those folks in Washington, when
we send up there with our votes, we grant them some authority.
Boy, when a bomb goes off or somebody gets shot, yeah, it's
right for them to get concerned. They need to wake up if they're
asleep and tend to it. God, He's not alarmed. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not
in the least troubled by the things He sees. He rules all. And I'm going to have to cut
this short, but that's alright. I assume we have some more weeks
we can cover these other things. I want to look at verse 3, because
this talks about you and me who believe Him. Your troops will
be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy majesty from
the womb of the dawn, you will receive the due of your youth. We, who have been born again
by the Spirit of God, and have been enabled to see Christ in
His glory, see Him for the King that He is, and willingly bow
at His feet, we've been made willing. Now,
we believe that salvation is by the will of God, and not by
the will of man. But here's the thing about the
will of God in salvation. He makes his people willing. It says God works in you to will
and to do of his good pleasure. You say, I believe the gospel.
Yes, you do. And if you do, it's because of
this God. this savior that rules everything,
including you. And he made you willing. Now
here's the thing, you know, when God will something, it happens. We will things and rarely does
our will ever find complete satisfaction. But when he says here, your troops
will be willing on your day of battle. What this says to me, and it's
a word of comfort to me anyway, I feel like I'm not really all
that good of a soldier. I don't feel I'm very good at
confronting the enemy. The enemy is so easy, or so easily
distracts me. I don't know that I've done any
exploits for the Lord Jesus Christ. that has caused any progress
within His kingdom. But I'm willing. I sure wish
I could. Let me give you some examples
and see if it doesn't apply to you. I don't think I understand
the things of God very well. But I sure wish I could. I don't think that I worship God
very well. Sure wish I could. I'm willing. I don't think I preach all that
good. And when I say that, I simply mean this. I tell what the truth
is, but you know, there's a hundred years from now, they're not going
to have a series of my sermons on their bookshelves. I will die and likely go into
utter obscurity. But I sure wish. that I had the
power and the ability to preach in such a way that the spiritually
dead would be made alive, the spiritually blind would be made
to see, and the spiritually lame would get up and come to the
Savior. I'm not very good at doing what's
right. I'm really good at doing what's
wrong. But I sure wish I could do what
was right. I sure wish I could stand as
an example of what a man saved by the grace of God should be.
I'm willing. And if you're in Christ, you
are too. Isn't it nice? Isn't it a blessing? That all it said is, well, we're
willing. We're willing. We'll line up. May not fight
very well, may not march very good, may not look very good.
We're willing, wish we could be wonderful, but we aren't.
But here's the thing, we're willing, but look at him, arrayed in holy
majesty. He doesn't need good soldiers. He's good enough all by himself.
Out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should
smite the nations. He shall rule them with a rod
of iron. And He treads out the winepress
of the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God. And then it
says this, And all the armies that were in heaven followed
Him. You notice it doesn't say, And all of them went out when
He said, Charge! And they fought Him. No, they
just followed Him. They just followed Him. He goes through
the world with that sword of His gospel. And with the truth
of who He is and what He's done, He rules and reigns. And we're just coming marching
behind Him. We're willing. Oh, what a Savior then. If somebody's going to rescue
me, I want it to be somebody big, and strong. When they go
to hiring firemen, in order to become a fireman, particularly
I'm talking about like in your big cities and stuff like that,
paid fire departments, you got to pass the test. You got to
be able to prove your strength. You got to be able to prove you
can lift so much and carry it so far in so amount of time.
Because if you can't, Well, we appreciate you wanting to do
good, but you're not going to be able to do what's needed in
the middle of a fire. You've got to prove that you
can unroll those hoses, that you can handle that nozzle with
all the pressure. You've got to prove that you
can go into a building, pick up a full-grown human being,
throw him over your shoulders and walk back out. And maybe
do that several times. You've got to prove you're strong.
And if you're not strong, all your intentions will mean nothing.
We have a strong and mighty Savior. He does as He wills in the armies
of heaven among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can stay
His hand. No one can question His authority.
And if our souls are in His hands, we cannot be lost. Period. Amen.