Well, it's good to see you all out this morning. One of those who requested prayer birthday this week, Peggy Hill. Remember her? Add these folks to your prayer list, Joel Johnston's family. That was the man that trained. field of expertise. And then Juanita Harris, she's got cancer. Any other prayer requests you need to know about? You heard anything about that baby, that heart situation? They're waiting for a heart. Yeah, I'll go do a heart transplant. Okay.

Begin our worship service with hymn number 242, Jesus I come. Have I punished the harbinger? Jesus, I come! Jesus, I come! Here in Thy freedom, let me stand by! Jesus, I come to Thee! How I long and yearn to die there! How I sin and yearn to rise there!

Jesus, I come to Thee! Out of my shame, comfort, fear, and loss Jesus, I come! Jesus, I come! Into Your glorious name I come Jesus, I come to Thee I saw Jesus, I come to Thee! Thou don't rest, and never can cry! Jesus, I come! Jesus, I come! In Thy blessing will do abide! Jesus, I come to Thee, have mercy on me, fill my life, have mercy on me. Jesus, I come to Thee. Thou of whom fear and dread are due. Jesus, I come. Jesus, I come. Jesus, I come to Thee. Out of the midst of cruel told, in Thy peace of my sheltering fold. After scripture reading and prayer, we'll sing hymn number 449. Now your Bible is telling me to 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. verses 14 through 19. We also include verse 13. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.

Paul says, for this cause also I thank, we thank God without ceasing. Because when you received the word of God, which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as, in truth, the word of God, which effectually was also in you that believed.

For you, brethren, became the followers of the churches of God, which are in Judea and in Jesus Christ. For you also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews. Both killed the Lord Jesus Christ and their prophets and have persecuted us And they please not God and are contrary to all men Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins always For the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost But we'd rather being taken from you for a short time in presence not in heart endeavored the more abundantly to see your face with great desire. Wherefore, we would come unto you, even I, Paul, once and again, but Satan entered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ that is coming? For ye are our glory and joy. Let us pray.

Our Father in heaven, Most gracious Lord of all, you who reign and rule in absolute power over all elements that you have created, moving and guiding, manipulating, employing, discarding as you see fit. Father, we thank you. that you have revealed to us who you are. It gives us great peace and comfort to know that you sit on the throne. You have given us a sense and some understanding of what we are. It made us to realize that nothing we can do is of value or of eternal merit. We flounder about here on this world Know it full well that if you do not keep us, we will fall and utterly fall. And we thank you for your power. We thank you for your promise. You promised to keep us and never leave us, even to the end of the world.

Father, we pray for those who are sick and going through trials. Remember these who've been added to the prayer list. and the Johnson family, and Ms. Harris, I ask for your help for them, for those who've lost loved ones. I ask you to be a comfort to them, and give us thankful hearts, full of praise, ever reminding us that had you left us to ourselves, we would perish eternally, but you interfered in our career, stopped us in our tracks and showed grace and mercy to us and revealed to us the great salvation that our Savior had wrought for us.

Help us to rejoice every day in the knowledge of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. And let us this day rejoice in who He is and what He's done. We pray in Christ's name, amen. In number 449, I give you the glory of great things He's done. In Yahweh glory, great things He hath done So loved in the world that He gave us His Son praise the lord O come to the Father, to Jesus the Son, and give Him the glory, great things He hath done.

O earth, and heaven, and earth, and heaven, and earth, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven, and heaven Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear His voice! ♪ Praise the Lord, let the people rejoice ♪ ♪ O come to the Father, to Jesus the Son ♪ ♪ And give him the glory, great things he hath done ♪ ♪ Great things he hath done, great things he hath done ♪ And greater rejoicing will teach us thus far The purer life and greater will be Our wonder, our transform in Jesus we see Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear His voice! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

Let the people rejoice! O come, Jehovah, to Jesus, the Son, and give Him the glory, great things He has done! where a father gave the approach in the name of Christ, our majestic Savior and Lord, who freely gave himself, laid down his life for the sheep. No man took it from him, laid it down freely, this commandment he had received of the Father. He is that blessed, unspeakable gift, that with him came grace and mercy and faith, redemption, righteousness, to honor your name, and to see that the gospel is preached here and in other places throughout the world. We thank you for such an opportunity and such a privilege.

In Christ's name, amen. so so so I invite your attention back to 1 Thessalonians. Paul in this letter to the Thessalonians is writing to a church under great persecution. Much like those in Philippi and Colossians and Galatians who were under the assault of the Judaizers. which Paul calls in Philippians 3 the flesh cutters and the concision and dogs. And Paul is writing this letter as a comfort to them. And the first thing he comforts them with is in chapter 1, when he tells them though they are under great persecution, constant threats from the Judaizers, forbidding them to preach, especially to the Gentiles who these Thessalonians were.

He says, I know you're elect of God. Because our gospel came to you, not in word only, but in power, and much assurance of the Holy Ghost. You became followers of us. You turned from idols to serve the living God. And in chapter 2, he deals with this persecution that they're dealing with. He mentions that he's persecuted as well as the church. They're like Philippi, he says. And this portion of this chapter that I've just read to you is a record of the consequences of hearing, believing, and preaching the truth of the Word of God.

We know that the Thessalonians, according to Paul, when they heard the Word of God, and remember, these were not Jews, they were not raised in Judaism, they had no understanding of the law. They didn't have any knowledge of the ceremonies or anything like that. What Paul did was preach the pure gospel to them of what Jesus Christ had done to accomplish their salvation. And that's what they heard, and they thought that was just the finest thing that ever come down the plank. They were idolaters, and their idols required much of them, much sacrifice. Their idols told them how to live and what to do, just like Moses' law did to the Jews. And here's a message that says, this is free. It's a free salvation, and it's accomplished by Jesus Christ. And if God has given you faith to believe, it's because you're one of God's elect.

These men heard the truth from Paul and others. And they said, this sounds just like God speaking to us. This sounds just like the Word of God. Such unshakable confidence does not sit well with those whose religion is based on works and steeped in tradition and the doctrines of men. The words of this passage reveal two things.

First, they are a reiteration of the effect that the Gospel has on the people of God. It has a wonderful effect on them. They're a recollection of the often hard price that the believer pays for believing the gospel and for preaching it. At the same time, the believer has the unconditional love and support of other believers, along with the indignation and hatred of those who do not understand what the believer is declaring. And that's just the way it is.

Paul first reminds those in the faith that part of the proof that they were the elect is that they became followers of the churches in Galatia, or rather, Judea. In verse 14, he says, for you, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. For you also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews. He speaks of those churches in particular in reference to the fact that they suffered for the cross of Jesus Christ.

This was the bailiwick of the early church of God. Problems existed everywhere. False teachers were everywhere. Every epistle deals with that. The book of Revelation deals with that. False teachers everywhere. And Paul had to deal with it in everything he wrote. The book of Ephesus says very little about false teachers. But we know from 1 Timothy that Paul left Timothy at Ephesus to make sure that nobody preached any other doctrine than what had been preached.

So these things are common and they cause suffering. The word followers carries with the idea of being equal or being like men. This was an indication that the Church of Macedonia were in the same footing as those who suffered before them. And they were.

It says in verse 3, for our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor of guile, but because we allowed God to be put in trust with the gospel, even to speak not as pleasing men, but, God, with trying hearts. One of the things that is a comfort to the believer is that he's not alone in the tribulation. The scripture says if we are to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to suffer for his name's sake. It says that in Philippians chapter one.

It's also a reminder of the church that the world is aware of it. The world is aware of it. Paul speaks not of the entire aggregate church, the entire mystical body of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's speaking here to a local body of believers, like this body of believers here in Cherokee, which is a microcosm of the whole church. It's a picture. Each one, each local assembly that the Lord has assembled here and there, scattered remnants throughout the world, is a picture of a greater church.

There's a body and there's a head or a leader, and that's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. reconciled to God. The concept of state or national churches or gigantic denominational conventions are inventions of men and are intended to acquire power and influence by sheer numbers. I remember many years ago, back in the 80s I think it was, I was in Henry Mahan's office and he was reading a letter from a group of sovereign grace preachers who wanted to start a sovereign grace Southern Baptist Convention. Well, it was about, we knew of about 90 churches in the United States that preached the gospel. Paul and Henry wrote the letter back and said, well, it'd be 90 against 5,000 churches.

And he said, you're looking for power that you'll never get, and I don't want to be a part of it. Because conventions of men are just, it's like a bureaucracy. It never works out well. You see where the Southern Baptist Convention Methodist Convention is gone now, they've just gone hog-wild into the world and care nothing for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The church in the world has always been insignificant pockets of believers, small remnants, little scraps of redeemed humanity, and therein by the gospel resides the power of God You mean that little scrap over here in Cherokee, and they would ask you, how many people y'all got? How many people y'all running, they'd say. How many y'all running on Sunday? Why do they ask that? Because they believe that if you have numbers, you have power. But our Lord said, where two or three are gathered in my name, I'll be in the midst of them.

And what we have as the Church of the Living God is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. We have the gospel, the true gospel, the one that's spoken of in Scripture, not the one that man has made up over the years. This little group of people, these tiny dots of humanity, what a day will be with the harlot church Babylon, and that's a big church, the great whore, who despise the day of small things we made to do reverence to the Lord and his numerous little bodies of believers when they are gathered to judge this ersatz colossus of natural religion. These churches that Paul is writing to have suffered both from within and without. They suffered at the hands of their countrymen because they saw the gospel disallowed their gods, disallowed their industry, read the book of Acts and how these different places like Ephesus and places like that rebelled against the gospel because they knew it was going to hurt their economic situation.

That's what they were worried about and they would take down their gods, like Diana. Diana was a major god in Ephesus. She was a god that had many breasts because she fed many people. She had breasts all over the place because she was the feeder of the nation. And they made little statues of her and people had them in their houses and little nooks and crannies of their houses all over because they believed that.

And when the gospel came through, business got bad. And they wanted to kill Paul. But he wrote one of the sweetest letters to that little group of people called the Epistle to the Ephesians. They also suffered at the hands of the Judaizers, who believed that Gentiles had no place in the economy of God. Though the Bible had clearly said throughout, from Genesis all the way through to Malachi, that God was going to save Gentiles. They were about the business of trying to get believers to convert and become proselytes by diminishing the gospel with the institution of the law and circumcision.

Paul describes these Jews And if anyone might understand the psyche and arrogance of Jesus Paul the Apostle, he describes them when he describes himself as a Jew and what he was and what he thought of himself over Philippians chapter three when he described his merit or assumed merit in the flesh that he had as a Jew, a member of the Sanhedrin, a Pharisee. He said some things. He said, this is my resume. in the flesh, he says in verse 4 of chapter 3 of Philippians, though I might also have confidence in the flesh, if any man think that he has whereof he might trust, I have more reason to trust than anybody else in the flesh. And what he's talking about is his religion, what he was born in, what he was raised in, and what he believed so much so that he was willing to kill members of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, I was circumcised the eighth day. I kept the law before I even knew what the law was.

I was of the stock of Israel. You can trace my bloodline back and you'll not find anything but Israelites. I was of the tribe of Benjamin, a tribe that stayed the longest with the And Hebrew of Hebrews, what does that mean? Everywhere I was accounted as one of the top dogs in the Hebrew religion.

As touching the law, well, I was a Pharisee. Pharisees held the law, they kept the law, they made everybody else try to keep the law, so they said. Concerning zeal, you wonder how sold out I was? In my flesh, in this religion, I persecuted the church. I persecuted the church. Touching the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. How y'all gonna stack up? Paul knew what it was to be a Jew. He knew what Judaism was.

In this passage of Scripture, we look at it first of all, it says they killed the Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks of intent as if that is the same thing, because that's murder in your heart. Christ didn't die at man's hands, nor did he die at God's hands. He died at his own hands. We looked at this on Wednesday night service. He said, I died by my power. Think about that. Those things seem ironic, doesn't it? The power to die. He died by power. He stopped his own life. by his power, and then three days later, by his power, he raised himself from the grave. So men didn't kill him, though Paul says men killed the Lord. In other places, he said men slew the Lord.

And what he's saying is that this was what their desire was. They wanted to kill him. Our Lord said, murder your murderer already in your heart. Christ died of his own power and volition, but the Jews instigated the lynch mob. that included Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the Jews, to call the collective rioters to this bloodthirsty mob that would have cried, actually, let his blood be on our head. He said that out there in the court. Let his blood be on our head.

They had actually killed their own prophets. He says that. They killed their own prophets. Verse 15, who killed the Lord Jesus Christ in their own promise? Our Lord accused them of that. He said, you killed the prophets? Killed everybody that came in the name of the Lord and persecuted us?

We look at the life of Jeremiah, in our studies of Jeremiah, we see that he never had nobody like him. He was the most unpopular man on the face of the earth, and yet he was the only man that was telling people the truth about what God said. They killed the prophets. Paul also said that these Judaizers had persecuted him. They had actually chased him out of town to prevent him in his ministry. Though the Judaizers earnestly believed that they were doing God's bidding, Paul makes it clear that in everything they were doing, they did not please God.

That's how he puts it. The way that this is phrased is important. It brings out all the things that are to a glorious singularity. Though they had committed heinous crimes against the people of God, their crime was first and foremost unbelief, which is the mother of all sin. Adam ate of that fruit because he didn't believe God. That's why he ate. It's that simple. Our Lord said, when the Holy Ghost comes and convicts men of sin, the first thing He convicts them of is unbelief. It's unbelief. This was the bailiwick of the Jew in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had not faith, and therefore they did not please God, because only by faith is God pleased.

And not only this, it's further added that they were contrary to all men. He said they were contrary to everybody. This is a verse to all believers and all who have received faith through the gospel. Likewise, all Gentiles to whom Paul ministered in the gospel, they were contrary to him.

We used to use that as a word about people that didn't get along with anybody. There used to be a common word, well, they're just contrary to Jesus. You know, they're contrary. That's what these were, they were contrary. The Gospels mentioned they were contrary to Him.

Their contrariness was proved by the fact that they forbade Paul to preach to the Gentiles because they didn't want the Gentiles to get saved without whatever salvation Paul was preaching. They didn't want that. Look at verse 16, "...forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved."

They don't want them saved because they see these people. Say, I don't need the law, I don't want anything to do with the law, I don't want anything to do with Judaism, I don't want to do anything with idolatry, they've left it. Verse 10 of chapter 1, they've left their idols to serve the living God. I don't want anything to do with any of that. And they don't want that.

Joy, confidence, assurance, peace. This is always the case among legalists and the reason for their contrary attitude toward those who love the gospel of grace. The Jews believed that the word was theirs, it was theirs alone, and that the Gentiles had no right even to read it. They had no knowledge that the thing that they forbade to be preached to the Gentiles was actually the revelation of the Messiah they were looking for, the Jesus Christ and his accomplished work. They didn't know that. Our traditions held that if a Gentile read the law, this is the tradition, wasn't the law of God, it was the tradition. If a Gentile read the law, he would be put to death. he would be put to death.

Though legalists do not have the death penalty to back them up in this day and age, though I might say they probably would like to have, one of their performances back in the 70s or 80s, I can't remember when it was, was quoted on national TV. This guy was so supposedly sovereign of the race, but a legalist, he was a reformer, led a big group of people in the United States.

He said this. The death penalty would be employed for those who did not convert. Now he believed that his church should become the government of the United States. And you want to know how that worked, just look at Asia. Governments, which are theopracies on this earth, never end up well. They end up killing people who don't agree with them. The old phrase, the past is prologue, still holds true.

The legalist cannot stomach the fact that salvation, from pole to pole, everything involved in it from those poles, and between those poles, the legalist cannot stomach that it's by the grace of God, and that holiness has nothing to do with works, conduct, or character, but is entirely based on Christ and His Word. They can't take that. They can't take it. Likewise, the Jews could not and would not accept that the Law of Sinai had nothing to do with salvation.

So they said, you must be circumcised, you must keep the Law of Moses. They, after all, had proof that they were God's people. They had the Law, they had the Ceremony, they had the Circumcision, the Oracles, the Fathers, the Promise, the Messiah. They had all of that, but they didn't believe the gospel. God had delivered them time and time again from their wickedness, and all those Gentile believers had was faith.

They didn't have no history with God delivering them out of Egypt and from different hands They didn't have the battle of Jericho. They didn't have the rolling loaf of bread coming down the hill. They didn't have any of those wondrous miracles that happened. They didn't have this part of the Red City Gentiles.

But listen, we got history. God's been with us. We know we're right. All you got is this thing, faith? You just believe something? And that makes it so? It does if God has given you the faith to believe it. All you have is faith, and that flies in the face of every religion in the world, save for one. The Jews could not believe. It would cost them everything. It would cost them everything.

They could not question the fact that the gospel had brought joy and freedom to the Gentiles. in what they referred to as their salvation. The Jews desired to discount this real consequence of the gospel and forbid the apostles to preach the gospel so that no more riffraff would be saved. They didn't want any of that. This is no new behavior among the leaders of the Jewish religion. They won't let anybody in or in. He said that in Matthew, chapter 23, verse 13. In Acts 13, the Jews discounted the gospel.

They said they were unworthy of eternal life. They grew angry when the apostles took the message to the Gentiles. They were contrary. They didn't want it. The apostle says, okay, so you think you're unworthy of eternal life? We're going to the Gentiles. That made them mad, because it is contrary. They despised the gospel. He did not want it to go to their enemies. I gather from that that on some level they knew that the salvation of the Gentiles was declared something else about them. This is the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've never told anybody that you're not saved. The person says, I believe in Jesus, I just take him at his word. And I don't watch his life, but I do listen. to find whether or not they actually believe the gospel. But I've never told a person that.

Here's what they hear. Had it said to me, had it actually said to my face by several people over the years, after I preached the gospel, that salvation, all of it, is absolutely accomplished by Jesus Christ on Calvary Street. Not that we can be saved, not if we do something, but that he has saved. This is what we hear. Now if a person has spent his life believing that his decision And he said to him, well you said I'm not, that's true, I'm not saved.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If you don't believe the gospel, as is set forth in this book, clearly set forth in this book, and you come up with some other way, Christ says you're a thief and a robber trying to come in from another door, then you're not his sheep. This is typical.

These people could not even countenance. So their venom was vehement and forbidding the preaching. Don't preach that to them. They were typical of the legalists. They feared freedom as much as they redeemed fear of bondage. They cannot believe the gospel because it would disallow all their heritage, all their works, and all their righteousness, and what they feel about themselves.

Paul called their attitude and what they were doing, filling up their sin. That's what he called it. Verse 16, to fill up their sins with the wrath that has come upon them to the uttermost. This statement is used by our Lord, the Pharisees, in Matthew 23, verse 32. He says, fill up your sins. Fill up your sins. This means that their sins were compounding and abounding against the truth.

It's also in the word fill, a suggestion of a predetermined amount. A thing cannot be full if it's not contained. So here we have the sovereignty of God. One cannot assume to know the specifics, but can discern the hand of God in what these Jews are doing. They're going to fill up the container. And God evidently made the container. So this is determined, it seems.

They, like those at Calvary, were fulfilling their purpose and will run this course until they have reached the appointed place and their sin will be reached and are in capacity. All that started at Eden with Adam's sin worked through men all the way through history, through centuries and centuries and centuries until it came to Sinai and then the Jewish religion was created and all this was, and they got to this place because before the world began. In the annals of eternal glory, there was a lamb slain. the foundation of the world, and all this has got to come to that. All of this that follows in human history and events are going to come to that place. The cross, the crux, the nail upon which all things hang is going to be found right there.

So all of this works with that. And here we have the Jews, fine folk, the Gentiles, a bunch of dogs, have Herod the Next, under the Caesar, all of a sudden, their minds congeal and come together against God and against His Christ. The Jews and the Gentiles were gathered together against God's Christ. Why? To do whatsoever had been aforeordained to be done." What was that? That Lamb's Name.

The foundation of the world. This is the culmination of their hatred. This passage speaks of the glorious sovereignty of God in all things. The consequence of the truth for the Jews is anger and hatred for the gospel and those who preach it and believe it. But there's a far more sweet and glorious aspect of the gospel, and that is that it creates new men and new women who are thanking God and are loving a lot.

Paul makes this clear in the remainder of the chapter. Verse 17, but we brethren being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, our hearts are with you, endeavoring more abundantly to see you face to face with great desire. Paul expresses his desire to see his brethren face to face. He's in prison now, you see. It's a mark of the believer that he desires to be with the brethren.

J.C. Rowell, though I don't agree with everything he said, he wrote some good stuff. One of the things you've heard about is when you love somebody. First thing is this, when you love somebody, you want to be with them. I can speak personally on a natural level that I'd rather be with her than with anybody on earth. That's the truth. As long as I got her by my side, I'm as fine as a frog hair split three ways. Why? Because I love her. That simple. You love somebody you want to read about. Then you love somebody. You love somebody you want to hear the voice. He wrote nine things. If you get a chance, look it up on your Google. J.C. Robb. Nine things about love, it'll tell you what he said.

It's great. It's great. And this group of people is a loving people. He said, I want to see them face to face. They're in that sweet communion and fellowship of the gospel. Brethren feel safe and free and does not fear judgment. Blessed is the man who thou choosest, causes to approach him, and he will make well in thy courts. Thy courts.

I can remember well how I dreaded going to church in my days of useless religion. Since the Lord had given me faith in Jesus Christ, there's no place I'd rather be than with God's people. He knows that he has homes, the believer does, and mothers, and fathers, and brothers, and God has privileged him to minister.

I don't travel much anymore. I give all kinds of excuses for not preaching places now. Too old, crippled, can't drive, blind in one eye, can't see out the other. And blaming something on Debbie's back. So I don't travel. Why? Because I'm going to be here. Cherokee's my home. My beloved place. God has given me the privilege, and I mean privilege, to minister to, to work with over these years. I ain't, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. At all. At all.

In verse 18, Paul says, Wherefore, we would come unto you, I even Paul, once again, but Satan hath prevented him, or inhibited him, hindered him, he says. Who is Satan? I know people talk a lot about it today. I hear preachers talk about Satan. People talk about the government, you know, and stuff like that. They say this is satanic and that's satanic. That's silly. You know who Satan is? Satan is the shining Satan is a minister of righteousness, a preacher of a false gospel, the one that's a catapult that's so close it would deceive the very elect if it was possible.

And not only that, he's a minister. Did you know that? He's God's minister. According to Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 13, he's one of the angels who are ministering spirits to those who will be heirs of salvation. So he's in the business of being employed by God to bring sinners to salvation.

He just doesn't know it. He hates it and hates the thought of it. But the Lord says, Here's Peter. He's getting a little uppity. He needs to be sifted. Satan sifted Peter. I'm going to pray that his faith won't fail him anymore. Go ahead and sift Peter. Here's Joe. He's righteous and good.

Satan says, well, if you give me everything, why wouldn't you be? Don't you want to take everything from me? So he did it. All that trouble. What did he do? He brought Job to the place where he prayed for his friends. This is Satan. He's not got horns or a goat's head or carries a trident. telling people that they can accomplish enough to stand accepted before God without Jesus Christ. That's Satan, and he's good at his job. Don't go against him. He's handled silly little people like us for 6,000 years. He won't have any trouble with us. You fly to Jesus Christ.

Satan hindered him. God suffered Satan to go after Job and to sift Peter. Though Satan was acting according to his will, he was doing his deeds under divine permission and limitations. He stirred up men to thwart the will of Paul and cause Paul to have to go from this place to that, but Satan never thwarted God's will. In true salvation, Satan's efforts were just other ways of ensuring the gospel would reach the places to preach elsewhere.

He was used. Satan always does God's bidding as God allows him to participate in the salvation of his elect, the thing that Satan most despises. That's what he does. God employed Satan here to make Paul even more desirous to see and be with the brethren. Also, often when the scriptures speak of Satan hindering a believer, it refers to those whom Satan stirs up against the truth.

Imagine verse 19 reveals another consequence of the truth. It says, For what is our hope, our joy, our crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye in that capacity are our glory and our joy. He says they are recipients of the grace of God through the gospel that he preaches. Paul often refers to those who are saved under his ministry as his children. His greatest joy and glory actually has nothing to do with him, but rather with the results of the gospel. He joys in the brethren because the Lord has saved them. He said, I rejoice because you're in the Lord. Because you're in the Lord.

He ends this chapter with the same sentiment as does every pastor in God's church. It's not about numbers, it's not about money, it's not about fame. The glory and the joy of a pastor is the people that God has given him to minister to that are in Jesus Christ. I wish in my heart I could be like those two characters.

The bride of Christ, gospel preacher, robed in Christ's righteousness. The bride in her beautiful robe says, oh, how beautiful you are. And she sees him robed in Christ's righteousness and says, oh, how beautiful you are. Y'all are beautiful. I know you never see me that way. But one day, I'll be able to look at old Stan Crowe, and I'll say, man, you are beautiful. You know what he'll say to me? So are you. Why? Because we stand in Jesus Christ. This is my joy. Some of it's hard. Some of it is sweet as honey. And the honeycomb. Father, bless us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen. By the way, we're not going to have an afternoon service because I preached almost an hour this morning. Thank you very much.