Episode Transcript
Let's turn to 2 Kings 17 and verse 15.
2 Kings 17 verse 15.
As you're turning there, I'll share with you,
and you probably noticed this about yourself,
that you get more thankful the longer you're alive.
And I'm more thankful for handrails on staircases than I used to be.
I just realized that coming down those stairs a minute ago. I was so thankful.
So thank you, Brother Hensley, and whoever it was that put those up there.
2 Kings 17 and verse 15, where we left off last week with a marvelous truth about God's testimony,
about his witness to Israel.
We learned a lot about those words testimony and witness.
Maybe it took a little mystery out of the word testimony for you.
And now notice in particular the part of the verse that says
we are in 2 Kings 17 verse 15 if you're just tuning in
or if you just now started paying attention in here.
2 Kings 17, 15
And they, that's Israel, rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers
and his testimonies which he testified against them.
Now let's look at that.
Which he testified against them.
God didn't just give a testimony or a witness.
He testified specifically against Israel.
and they didn't like it any more than people like it today.
Romans chapter 8 verses 28 through 31.
Romans 8 verses 28 through 31.
Now this is a passage that is has often been the subject of fiery debate and
discourse between theologians over the centuries
about predestination and so forth.
But there is, in this passage, something that I want you to hone in on,
and you're going to hear it right at the end of the passage.
Listen as I read.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the call according to His purpose,
for whom He did foreknow,
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son.
That he might be the first born among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified,
and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
What shall we say then to these things?
if God be for us, who can be against us.
Now it's evident from that passage,
as we learn about God testifying against Israel,
it's evident by this passage that God is not against those who are saved.
After all, that's what all of those heavy doctrinal concepts and words in that
passage, those words like predestinate and called and glorified and justified.
Boy, that's years worth of teaching right there.
But that's what that all adds up to is those are Christians about whom Paul is writing
in that passage.
And God is not against Christians.
He's for us.
He's not against his people, the ones whom he foreknew.
And those words keep the saved or should keep the saved from wondering if they're predestinated.
They keep the saved from wondering if they were called or if they're justified or if
they were glorified.
And for some it can be a troubling passage, but for me it's a great comfort to know that
Because I have been predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son. God is for me and not against me and
If he's for me does it matter who sets themselves against me it doesn't
Have you put your faith in Jesus finished work for you if you have then you are also
Testinated and called and justified and glorified and God is not
against you and
the remnant of the children of Israel in those days
The remnant of this group were reading about here
Who believed in the coming of the Savior?
Could also make the same claim we do from that passage in Romans chapter 8
They can embrace that promise that God was for them and not against them
But against Israel as a whole
just like against
Mankind today as a whole
Against the majority of them God testified
he testified against them and
And for unbelieving Israel, just like unbelieving people today,
wrath is waiting on them.
But for those who trust in the Lord,
the Bible says we're not appointed unto wrath,
but unto salvation, to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
For those who trust in the Lord,
If they have partaken in some or all of these sins, then they would suffer chastening.
That's punishment.
But not wrath.
They would never lose their place in God's kingdom,
even if they're swept away to another country in captivity because of the sin of Israel.
When God's word testifies against people, as it did Israel, as it does us,
now that doesn't mean God is against us.
That means he's testifying against what we're doing.
He's testifying against our sinful behavior.
But he's not against his people.
If he were against his people, then he would destroy them.
But that's not how God works, Old or New Testament.
He chastens the ones whom he loves.
But when God's word testifies against people,
they respond one of several ways.
I would say one of three ways,
but I'm sure there's a fourth way that I didn't think of.
So I'll say they respond one of several ways.
One, they accept it and they repent.
In fact, that's what a lost person does
to become a Christian.
God has testified against that lost sinner by saying, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
He's testified against that lost sinner by saying, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The wages of sin is death."
That's how God has testified against the sinner and against his sin.
And when a sinner agrees with that testimony, then he is repenting.
Before, he did not agree with that testimony.
He thought he was fine.
She thought she was fine.
A better person than most.
Not evil, never having murdered or committed heinous crimes.
But when that sinner agrees with that testimony,
that he's come short of the glory of God, he's repented.
He's changed his mind.
And he's changed his mind to agree with God's testimony.
And in doing so, then he may put his trust
in Jesus' finished work.
I love the explanation Brother Fulton wrote
for the man on Facebook who was troubled about unbelief.
You see, God testified against that man, and it was bad news.
And that man needed to believe that the bad news about him
could not save him, but that the good news about Jesus
could save him and would save him
if he placed his faith in it.
I love how our pastor and those like him just take the Bible and show people their sin and
what to do about it.
It's so simple.
You may think, "Well, brother Andy, why don't we just close our Bibles and go home if it's
that simple?"
Because most aren't doing it.
Most pastors, most churches, so-called, most religious people are not simply relying on
God's word to tell people what's wrong with them and how to make it right.
They've got all of this pop psychology that has crept into and taken over the churches.
And God is still testifying against man and his sin.
A second way people respond to that is that when God's word testifies against them, they
write it off as man's opinion.
And what they say is, "Well, men wrote the Bible, so it must be full of errors and interpretations
and incorrect assumptions and opinions and all of that."
They are correct that fallible man wrote the Bible, but they're not correct about the Bible
being fallible, being mistakeable.
about this with the Bible and it's approximately 40 human authors or writers,
penmen we'll call them, while all of those penmen were imperfect, their author
was divine and holy and without mistake. The author is infallible and so when
When people reject the authority of scriptures because sinful men were the penmen, they,
whether they realize it or not, are rejecting the power of God to use such men to do His
will.
And therefore, they're rejecting the authority of God.
We covered that same principle when we talked about the seers and the prophets and how they
were given God's Word to give to the people.
And as long as that's what they did, then to disobey what the seer said was to disobey
what God said.
To disobey what the prophet said was to disobey what God said.
That's why it is critical to the nth degree that what we say is what God said.
Then when we explain a passage, we explain it in a way that helps you understand the
truth, not confuse you, not take you away from the truth, not minimize it or dilute
it or add to it, but to simply tell you what it means.
The Sadducees rejected what God's Word said about angels and spirits and the resurrection.
You remember that.
In fact, in 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 21, and this is our argument against people who say,
Well, man wrote the Bible, therefore it must be full of errors.
We believe in God, but we believe there are errors in the Bible.
Here it is, 2 Peter 1, 21.
And this isn't the only place, but this will do us for this morning.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.
There you go right there.
Man didn't just pick up a pen one day and say, "You know what?
I think I'm going to write down some holy divine words, see if I can capture the heart
of God in the essence of my writing and put it on paper and pass it down to men and maybe
they'll listen to it.
No, not at all.
So the fact that God's word, the prophecy, that which was foretold, was not written by
the will of man, takes man out of the picture as being the original author of the Bible.
It says, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
That's how they spoke, and that's how what they spoke was written, and they wrote from
what was spoken.
God moved them to speak, and we're going to see what that actually means here in just
a second.
It's really good.
had prophecy come by the will of men, then critics of the Bible might have a leg to stand
on.
After all, if Otis, five thousand years ago, decided I'm going to write a Bible and I'm
going to make sure it goes all over the world and I'll be famous why we'd have a reason
to question what Otis wrote, wouldn't we?
Otis didn't write the Bible. He didn't think about writing the Bible.
He wasn't, it wasn't his will to write the Bible, it was God's.
Those holy men weren't holy before God made them holy.
They were sinners.
They were born of woman few days and full of trouble just like Job said, just like all of us.
Sin from our mother's womb, lies coming out of our mouth and stealing and anger
and malice and all of that.
These holy men were no different, but God made them holy.
He made them holy by belief in the same savior in the old Testament.
They believed in the same savior we do in the new Testament, as you've
heard many times before, but we're not going to stop saying it.
Those Old Testament believers looked forward to the same thing you and I look back to with faith.
With the eye of faith they said yes, as Moses and the prophets wrote,
"This will come to pass, there will be a Redeemer and he'll come out of Zion,
seated on the colt of an ass."
That's who will come. He'll be brought forth from a virgin.
He'll be called a manual, which is God with us. They believed that that would happen.
They believed all the way back to when God testified to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15
about the serpent bruising that Savior's heel and the Savior bruising his head, the seed of the woman he's called.
And so that's how they're made holy.
They weren't holy because they followed a bunch of rules like the Pharisees said you had to be holy.
They were holy because God made them holy.
So when men are normally unholy, aren't we?
I mean that's how we're born, and if we're unholy, so are our words.
But God made men holy through belief in the salvation His dear Son would one day give
them.
And now, God placed His holy word on those holy men.
And this word that we looked at a moment ago, the word "moved" in 1 Peter 1, it comes from
a Greek word that means "bring" or "brought."
It has the idea of carrying.
In fact, it's normally translated in the New Testament as the word "bring" rather than
the word "moved" or the word "brought."
I'm going to read you that passage from the King James translation and then I'm going
to read you a literal translation.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
Now listen to a literal translation, the Young's literal translation.
For not by will of man did ever prophecy come, but by the Holy Spirit born on holy men of
God spake. By the Holy Spirit it was born on holy men of God and that's how God
spoke. So here's the image that passage gives us. God is holy and so is His Word.
Men are unholy and so are their words. God made those unholy men holy through
belief in the salvation he would provide through his son. And now God placed his
holy word on those holy men, the ones he made holy, and they carried it, they bore
it, and they wrote it down for us. So the people who reject the Bible as man's
opinion don't really understand how God gave his word to man. And as we learn
Wednesday night the scourner doesn't want to understand. The third way people
respond when God testifies against them is by trying to use one scripture to
contradict another scripture.
Now, if you properly
study your Bible and properly understand it,
there will never be a scripture
that contradicts another scripture. It will never happen.
God doesn't contradict himself.
The Holy Spirit doesn't
contradict
God the Son and God the Son, God the Father.
One God
and the word is perfectly
harmonious. Now when
men say well I don't understand it okay that's a different matter you know what
I don't understand all of it
if I knew
what all understanding all of it meant I would probably see that my percentage of
understanding the Bible is very very low
but it's a whole lot better than if I hadn't studied at all
so if someone says well I don't understand these two passages and I and
brother Fulton both
have dealt with people before
who had trouble with passages.
They say, you know, I'm studying this here,
but then over here in this other passage it says this.
They're not saying then God's word must not be true.
The devil's trying to tell them that,
but they're saying I don't, I see,
I'm imagining a contradiction here and I need help.
And so we try to help them.
And we do it by the same way we do it in here.
Rather than honing in on just one part of a verse,
we broaden their horizons and say,
"Hey, look, go back to the beginning of that chapter,
"or go back to the beginning of that paragraph.
"Now read, now read after that verse
"you're having trouble with.
"What does it say about that matter?"
And that usually turns the light on for them right there.
And it's not always as simple as that.
But people who don't want God's word to testify against them,
who don't believe that testimony against them,
We'll try to use one scripture to contradict another
in some cases.
Now religious cult leaders love to do that.
They love to do that, but so does the average unbeliever
who doesn't want their pet sin to be condemned.
Now I talked to you a while back about this church
so-called, the Cathedral of Hope there in Dallas
that's run by a sexual pervert and endorses them
welcomes them and affirms them and all of that. Well, they just had a service, if you
want to call it that's a disservice is what they had, where they blessed this group of
satanic drag queens. I mean, friend, where in the Bible do you ever see anything about
that but you know what that group will tell you? They'll tell you that their doing so
was simply spreading the love of Jesus to people.
And these folks who use one scripture to contradict another, two of their favorite scriptures
to use are in Matthew chapter 7, "Judge not," as if they have any idea what the chapter's
talking about, and they don't.
And the other one they love to use is "Love thy neighbor as thyself" from Matthew chapter
23, or excuse me 22.
Hey, those are both beautiful scriptures.
They come from God's Word, but they need to be taught in context.
They need to be taught in order.
And when you take someone like that who uses a scripture to contradict another scripture,
they won't sit down and listen to you expound the truth.
They're not interested in truth.
They're interested in confusion, calamity, chaos.
They are not interested in order, in truth, in harmony.
That's not what they want.
That upsets their little world.
not going to listen to the faithful exposition of a passage they quoted in
order to see what Jesus really was telling the people. And one thing I can
tell you based on the study of God's Word and based on the character of God
is that no matter what these people say, no matter what their argument is, Jesus
never endorsed sin, ever. In fact, on the contrary, he came to die for it. He shed
his blood for it. In John chapter 8, speaking of that, a woman had been caught
in the act of adultery and she was about to be stoned by the Jews. And Jesus knew
every one of those men who were about to stone her and he knew about their sin,
even though they didn't think he did. And he told all of her accusers let him who
is without sin first cast a stone in her. And we know what they did. They dropped
their stones and then they left, didn't they? Leaving Jesus alone with this
woman. Now had she sinned, she certainly had. Was Jesus endorsing her sin? Some
would argue that he was, but the Bible tells us he was not. If you just read
further down, and in verses 10 through 11, this is John 8 verses 10 through 11,
if you're taking notes, Jesus spoke to this woman. Here's what it says. Now
Jesus had been on the ground stooped down there writing. It said when Jesus
had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, 'Woman, where are
those thine accusers?
Hath no man condemn thee?'
She said, 'No man, Lord.'
And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I condemn thee.'"
Now if you just stop that passage right there, you might say, "I'm missing something."
Do you know what he said after that?
He said, "Go and sin no more."
He said, "Don't do that anymore."
And I assumed this woman became a believer at some point.
And although the forgiveness of her sin was a beautiful thing to behold, I want you to
remember what Jesus told her.
He testified against her.
He said, "Go and sin no more."
What you did was a sin.
You were caught in the act of adultery.
Yes, the other man sinned too, but I'm talking to you.
You were caught in the act of adultery.
Don't do that anymore.
When I say I don't condemn thee either, I'm not saying go ahead and go right back to him
or go find you another man.
He didn't say, "Oh, it's not a big deal," or, "What you do in private is your business,"
or "You're both adults.
Live it up while you're young."
And if Jesus told her to go and sin no more, then why is it when we tell people go and
sin no more they tell us don't judge. Do they also believe Jesus was wrong to tell this
adulterous woman not to sin anymore? This is what happens when a shallow minded person
uses scripture to justify their sin rather than to repent of their sin. When God testifies
against people through His word, He does it so they will repent. Not so they'll try to
justify their sin. How do you justify yourself in God's presence in the first place? The
unclean trying to justify itself to the clean? If you're not coming through the blood of
Jesus Christ, it's impossible. You cannot justify yourself before God. That's why we
We needed to be justified.
Predestinated call, justified, glorified.
It boggles the mind, but it's proof of how strong the pull is from Satan on the minds
of those who are unbelievers, on the minds of those who are shallow and who do not desire
to know the deeper things about the Scripture.
You know, you don't have to be a PhD or have a PhD or be in Mensa or anything else to have
a deeper understanding of the Bible than you do right now.
The first thing I'm going to tell you, and get this, this is the most overlooked step.
Y'all ready for the secret?
Read it.
That's the first key right there.
Read your Bible.
That'll take care of a lot of problems.
It doesn't solve all of them.
There are some words and some ways that the Bible is written or interpreted, translated,
so forth that yield sentences and paragraphs and expressions that we're not familiar with
in our day.
That's okay.
You go back and look in your concordance and find out what that word originally meant in
the original language.
That's what I do.
You can do that too.
I imagine most of you all are better than I am at operating your computer or your iPhone.
I'm in fact, I'm just going to say I'm pretty certain of it.
Israel didn't like when God's word testified against them and they didn't care and people
today who don't like it don't care that the holy men of old who wrote these words and
And the ones who now preach them are bearing those words at God's command, just like the
Levites bore the Ark of the Covenant.
They carried it.
Israel rejected God's statutes, God's covenant, God's testimonies.
And now that we've seen what they rejected, let's see what they accepted or in this case
followed. For you to follow something you have to accept it don't you? Example here
you all know I love the outdoors and when I go fishing I'll park my, now first of
all I get way away from everybody I don't want to be around anybody else
unless they're fishing with me. I'm not the guy who's gonna stand below the tail
race of a dam during the white bass run and stand shoulder to shoulder with
people, that's not me. You're not going to find me there. But when I go fishing,
I'll park my pickup next to the road and then I walk to my fishing holes and
some of them are a long way from the road. That's why they're good fishing
holes. And I'll get in the woods and I'll look down and I'll see a trail that does
that. And it's been last year since I've been there and I'm trying to decide
which one to take. Now once I choose and follow that trail I have accepted that
trail and I have accepted that the trail is going to lead me where I want to go.
And on a few occasions I've begun to take a trail that looked good and I'll
notice that my head starts bumping the tree limbs. They start getting lower and
lower I think. Well it's a good looking trail but it's too low for me. And that's when I
realize I've gone down a hog trail. Now you've got to be a woodsman to know what I'm talking
about when I say a hog trail. I'm not talking about a cattle trail that goes from the barn
to the stock tank and back. I'm talking about a hog trail. And those hogs aren't nearly
as tall as I am. I tower over them. So when I'm crouching down and I say, "All right,
I don't want to crouch down anymore. I don't want to crawl on all fours down this trail,"
then I repent and I back up and I go back to where I got off trail and I take another
road. I don't accept that trail anymore. There's no use trying to go back down it and up it
and down and up it, it's the same trail. It doesn't lead me where I want to go. In fact,
if it's a hog trail, it's probably going to lead me where I don't want to go. Now I hope
that's not all you get out of this lesson that Brother Andy knows how to tell if he's
on a hog trail, but it's at least something, isn't it? We accept what we follow and we
we follow what we accept. Now Israel, look back in your text, we're here in verse 15,
says which he testified against them and they followed vanity and became vain. They followed
vanity and became vain. That word vanity comes from a Hebrew word that means vapor or breath.
That's right, they followed vapor, spiritually speaking.
There was no substance in what they were following.
The gods whom they feared were not real.
There was no spiritual substance in a god that did not exist except in the minds of
the people who believed it did.
of vapor. Listen to what James chapter 4 verses 13 through 14 says. James 4 13
through 14. This is for people in case you believe that worldly gain is what
you need to be striving for at all costs at the expense of everything important.
Go to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue
there a year and buy and sell and get gain. Now stop right there to many maybe
even most people but to many people that is the substance of their life right
there and they think man this is this is the life of Riley. Now y'all don't know
what that some of the little ones don't know what that means. This is the best I
can be, the best I can do to buy and to sell and to get gain. And the act of
getting gain and earning and earning more and more money at some point has
has taken over that type of person's mind. You might ask yourself why would
somebody go from being a millionaire to being a billionaire and still be spending seven
days a week, long days, sleepless nights trying to make more money and more money and get
more property and more real estate and more this and that because that has become the
substance of their life.
So that's what these people are. Now listen to the second part of that passage.
To those people he said, "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow.
For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appearth for a little time and then vanisheth away."
all of you people, all of you children of Israel who think that
worshiping these false gods and these idols and
now you're captive by the Assyrians
That's all vanity all of the things you tried to achieve are useless they're vapor
and
if all you follow are the things that occur between your birth and your death
then your life is a vapor and it's vanity. It's empty. I wish more people
were here in this lesson, this truth from God's Word today. I want you to notice in
that passage I read you from James it said for what is your life. Now that's
That's key, not what is life, what is your life.
Your life, my life is a vapor.
It's vanity, physically speaking.
From birth to death, all that we are in our flesh, all that we produce, all that we receive
and give and endure and hope for are like breaths in the wind.
They're empty.
They're vanity.
The overarching reason that people commit suicide
is that they see no purpose in continuing
with this vain, useless, physical life.
And so their thoughts get turned inward.
And all they know is pain.
Sometimes it's physical, like somebody who's dying of cancer
and just can't fathom another day in that pain.
But very often, it's emotional pain,
which is just as bad to those people.
Sometimes there's a great shame at something they've done
or something that's happened to them or someone they've become.
People have ended their lives jumping off of buildings based on that very passage I showed you,
not because of the passage, but because of the people who say, "We'll go there a year and buy
and sell and get great gain."
You remember during the day trading hysteria, people were buying stocks and then trying
to trade in for them the next day and make money and then they had no idea what they were doing.
And there were people who lost their entire fortunes and who were jumping off of buildings
committing suicide because what they held as substance was gone just like that.
And that's all they had.
That's all they hoped for.
Those were their dreams.
Then why live?
Where is my hope?
How can life be lived with purpose and not in vain?
Well it's not by reading Joel Osteen's book, "The Champion in You."
I'm going to tell you that right now.
That's not how you live a life with purpose.
Or I think it was Rick Warren who wrote "The Purpose-Driven Life."
This is not how you, and not discrediting any scriptures that were quoted in there because
The Scripture is pure no matter who writes it, no matter who quotes it or teaches it right
or wrong, Scripture itself is pure.
But here's how you live a life that's not vain.
Here's what Israel could have done right here.
So they wouldn't follow vanity.
And we memorized this chapter a few years ago, Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 through
4.
stand down here and do we get a little prize for that Nella? That's wonderful.
And those first four verses say, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,
where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above,
not on things on the earth, for ye are dead and your life." Now what did we see about your life
a minute ago, what is your life? It is even a vapor. Talking to those people who say we
will go there and continue a year and buy and sell and gain. Well, for the one who is
dead in Christ but alive through Jesus Christ, it says your life is hid in Christ with God.
It didn't say your life is vain, did it? It didn't say your life is a vapor when you're
hid in Christ. It said your life is hid in Christ with God when Christ, who is our life,
shall appear then shall you also appear with him in glory
there's your answer
to life
with a purpose
that is the same answer
i give a lost person
who is
be bopping along in their lives thinking everything is going just fine
and they have no idea how close they are
to the flames of the lake of fire they have no idea
they don't care
I say that same thing to those people and do
as to somebody who is despondent
over the death of a loved one, over a child,
over losing their job,
over that diagnosis of a terrible disease.
I say the same thing to them.
Your life,
your life, though it be vain,
if it is hid with Christ in God, it is not.
It is full of purpose for the very reason that it's not your life anymore.
It's Christ's life in you.
You have the life of Christ and it's not ever going to die.
And boy, we'll be glad.
I'm not in a hurry by the way for my flesh to die, but when it does, I'm
going to be awfully glad that I don't have to deal with the things that
come with having a fleshly body.
But it's to have that vain, useless, mortal life hid with Christ and God so that His life is now our life.
And to appear with Christ in glory as that Colossians passage teaches is to have a life with purpose and that life is eternal.
The life we live down here is not eternal, is it?
So you can get as healthy, as good looking, as many clothes as you can have.
You can have the plastic surgeon fix you and shape you and reshape you and you can go to
Neiman Marcus and move the shoplifters out of the way and get you a pretty suit.
You can have the fanciest car, you know where I'm going with this, you can have all of that.
And at the end of the day, every bit of that is going to melt because the element shall
melt with a fervent heat, right?
It's gone, except that which is eternal is not.
When we receive eternal life by putting our faith in the finished work of Christ, then
the life we live in the body is no longer lived in vain.
That's another secret right there, isn't it?
The world won't accept that although this fleshly body is destined for the grave one
day, maybe sooner than later, I don't know, but one day it's destined for the grave.
When I became a Christian, the life I lived in the body after that point was not a vain,
useless life.
The life I had lived before was because I lived by the faith of the Son of God who loved
me and gave himself for me.
In fact, I'll close with that passage.
Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, maybe you have it memorized.
Galatians 2 verse 20, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church, "I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I."
Because see if it was just I, I'd have a vain life, wouldn't I?
"Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live.
In the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for
me."
Life lived by faith is a life lived with purpose, eternal purpose.
And what the church needs to learn and what its pastors and teachers need to learn and to teach.
Quit telling people how to be financially wealthy just so they can die and go to hell and leave behind a bunch of money to their children.
Teach them about a life with purpose.
A life in Christ so they will not follow after vanity
like the children of Israel did in our text.
And we'll close with that.
Let's pray and be dismissed.
Father, we know that when truth is taught,
the devil tries to sow tares and seeds of doubt.
We pray today by your spirit,
you will remove those from the hearts of anyone who has heard
and who has had a doubt about your word.
And Father, if anything was said that was confusing
misleading and pray also that you would burn that off just as you do draw us from the fine gold when it is refined.
And Lord build us up in the most holy faith and make us a people who are pleasing to you as we continue to live a life with purpose by faith in Jesus Christ.
And it's in his name I pray. Amen.
