Episode Transcript
2 Kings chapter 17 and verse 37, where the children of Israel were reminded of the statutes,
ordinances, commandments, and law that God wrote for them.
And the text actually says which He wrote for you, which He wrote for you.
And in studying that phrase, we looked more closely at the first part of it, which He
wrote.
And from that we learned about what the Bible calls the finger of God.
It's used a few times in the Bible, that phrase.
And if you were not here or did not tune in for that lesson, then I hope you'll go back
and review it because there are some things you might not understand if you don't.
But we saw the finger of God mentioned by the Egyptian magicians whenever God was executing
those plagues on Egypt, and specifically when they could not replicate the plague of lice.
If you remember just as a quick review, those first few plagues, the plague would happen
and then the Bible said the magicians did so with their enchantments.
In other words, they replicated what Moses was doing.
When it came to the plague of lice, it said they could not.
And because those magicians could not replicate that plague, they made the statement that
that was the finger of God.
We also saw the finger of God mentioned by Jesus when He cast out devils.
And now let's look at another use of the finger of God as we study this phrase which He wrote
for you, speaking of God writing His Word.
And it's found in the Old Testament priesthood, this phrase, the finger of, well, this truth
about the finger of God.
You won't actually see the words, finger of God, but you're going to see that they're
there just as clearly.
And God was gracious enough to let me see that last week in my study.
In Leviticus chapter 4, God was giving instructions to the priests concerning the sin offering.
And if you've studied that before, there are several different types of offerings, but
the sin offering is the one that's being looked at right now.
And in verse 25 of that chapter, of Leviticus chapter 4, verse 25, here's what it says.
"And the priest shall take the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it upon
the horns of the altar of burnt offering and shall pour out his blood at the bottom of
the altar of burnt offering."
Now that's not his own blood, the priest.
That is the blood of the animal.
There's one who poured out his own blood.
And that's who that's pointing to in the first place.
Now you may say, "Well, what does this have to do with the finger of God?"
This is talking about the finger of the priest.
And we certainly know the priest is not God.
Listen real closely to the pronouns in this next verse I'm going to read you.
This is also in Leviticus.
It's chapter 17 verse 11, Leviticus 17 verse 11, where it says, "For the life of the flesh
is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your
souls.
For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."
Now according to that verse, who gave the blood upon the altar to make an atonement
for the soul?
The verse says, "I have given," which is God referring to himself.
And yes, the priest was the one who applied the blood with his own finger.
But the priest was not the one who gave the blood to apply.
God gave it to him.
And in fact, it says God gave it upon the altar, which we'll look at in just a moment.
But in John chapter 6 verse 51, listen to how Jesus, the Son of God, speaks as Jesus,
who is God the Son.
And he takes upon himself the authority, now that's what the high priest had to have was
authority.
Jesus takes upon himself the authority of God to give his life that we may have eternal
life.
And he said in John 6 51, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven.
If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.
And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
You notice in there Jesus said, "I and I and I and I."
The Old Testament priest could not give his life for the life of the world.
The Old Testament priest could not just assume God's authority on his own and say, "I have
given blood upon the altar for an atonement for your souls."
That priest had to receive authority to do any of that because he didn't otherwise have
that authority.
And Jesus, because he is God, and yes the priest, the high priest is a type of Jesus
Christ, but Jesus, because he is God, does have the authority as the high priest to say,
"I will give."
And when he gave his life for the world, he gave his blood upon the altar, not the Old
Testament altar, but the cross.
Where was his blood poured out?
It was poured out at the cross.
Now when the priest applied that blood to the altar with his finger, he was doing it
in God's stead as though God were with his finger putting that blood upon the altar.
And so the priest's finger represented the finger of God.
And remember the finger of God was not an appendage for God's spirit.
But that finger of God represented authority, represented agency, and it represented action,
and we talked about that last week.
And the priest had to receive all of those from God because the priest was a sinner without
any spiritual authority apart from God.
So what's the difference in what the high priest did and what a priest of Baal would
do?
If a priest of Baal took blood with his finger and put it upon the altar of Baal and said,
"This is to satisfy Baal," he's doing the same thing physically as the high priest did,
but he's doing it without authority.
He's doing it without authority.
He's doing it without agency.
That is, God is not going to act through that.
And he's doing it without the action that the blood on the altar, particularly the altar
of the cross where Jesus died, that priest of Baal cannot hope that the blood he is putting
on there will make an atonement for anyone's soul.
There is not that action because he has no authority.
I know that's pretty deep stuff.
You may have to go back and listen to that over or make some notes, but I really encourage
you to do that.
And you look further in that Leviticus verse about what God gave them upon the altar.
I said we'd look at that again in a moment.
He said, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon
the altar."
Now that was interesting to me.
It didn't say, "I have given it to you so that you can put it on the altar."
He said, "I have given it to you upon the altar."
And where God gave this blood was on the altar as though it were already there.
And without the blood on the altar, there would have been no atonement.
So if God would have said, "Here, high priest, here's the blood.
You find a place to put that and we'll see if you get it right."
He wouldn't have gotten it right.
He'd have done something with it he wasn't supposed to do.
God said, "I've given it to you upon the altar.
It's as though it's already on the altar.
All I need you to do is just put it there."
But in the mind of God, do you see how God's mind works, He knows the end from the beginning.
Things that will happen in the future are as though they have already happened in His
mind whereas in our mind, we have to wait on them.
And if the Bible says they will happen, then we know they will by faith even though we've
not arrived at that point in time where they actually do happen.
But for God, it's as though He has already arrived at that point in time where things
future happen.
Mind blowing, isn't it?
Now when Jesus gave His life, He shed His blood.
His blood was God's blood, if you will.
God was the Spirit.
That's why Jesus had to be born as a man so He could actually have that physical blood
that we have.
And live as a man, live perfectly, obey the law completely and therefore become a qualified
or be a qualified substitute.
He was never unqualified.
He didn't have to become qualified, He was already qualified.
But that in every way made Him an adequate substitute, a sufficient substitute for sinners.
And the reason Jesus shed His blood rather than coming as our high priest and taking
blood from an animal and shedding it on the altar is that the blood of those animals could
never actually take away sin.
And His blood did.
The priest's blood couldn't take away sin.
So if an Old Testament priest would say, "I'll tell you what, I'm representing God here on
the earth," and he did.
So I'm just going to cut myself and put some of my blood on there.
What would we have?
We'd have blood from a sinner.
We'd have corrupt blood on an altar.
And it would not only be insufficient to forgive our sin, it couldn't even forgive His own
sin.
That's why those Old Testament sacrifices were insufficient in and of themselves to
take away sin.
Using an illustration Brother Fulton has used in his Genesis to Jesus classes before, those
sacrifices were like credit card transactions that would one day be paid in full by the
blood Jesus shed at Calvary.
So I hope that you'll have maybe a better understanding or a correct understanding of
the finger of God and what our text means when it says, "Which He wrote."
Now let's look at the second part of that phrase in 2 Kings 17 verse 37.
It says, "Which He wrote for you."
All of those statutes, commandments, ordinances, and the law, all of that was not only written
by the finger of God, meaning He wrote it, as we've learned, He wrote it through the
men that He used to write the Bible.
But they were written for you.
That's what He told the children of Israel.
And one thing we learn about this is that if God wrote it for them, He wrote it for
you too.
And that really, I sat there and looked at that.
I said, "For you."
Those words are precious to me.
I hope they are to you.
We don't have a separate Hebrew word in the original for the phrase "for you."
And normally when we don't, you'll see words in italics.
Well, they're not in italics, which means that they weren't supplied by the translators
to help us understand as much as they were actually there because they're apparently
understood in the use of the Hebrew words before and after that.
In other words, the way the verbs are conjugated, if you know a foreign language or if you know
English that you know about verb conjugation, you may say, "Well, that's an awfully big
word."
All that means is take the word "be" and come up with the word "is" or "was," "were."
They're all forms of the word "be."
So what you're doing is you're conjugating that verb.
You're changing it so that it reflects the right tense, whether it be future or past
or perfect or subjunctive or any of those.
And so the Hebrew language is not any different.
Now, I am not equipped enough to tell you in the Hebrew language what one word means
or another.
I depend upon those who have translated God's Word.
But each translation I consulted with agreed that the words "for you" were to be used and
were properly used in this text.
So I'm fairly comfortable with that.
Now, if you think about those words "for you," one thing we know is God had no need to write
His Word down or to cause it to be written down for Himself, did He?
He wasn't writing Himself a reminder note.
We have to make notes for ourselves so we can be reminded about what to get at the store
or what chores to accomplish that day.
And as we age, we forget where we put those reminder notes.
But God had no need to write His Word for Himself.
His Word's already settled.
It's understood by Him because it is His original.
So when God wrote His Word through these divinely inspired authors of our Bible, He wrote it
for you, as He says.
And secondly, if God wrote His Word for us, then there is a strong implication that we
read it.
And when we read it, we are to take heed to it.
Psalm, well this was a typo, I put Psalm 199, no such thing.
There is a Psalm 119 though.
Psalm 119 in verse 9 says, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed
thereto according to thy word?"
That's the word God wrote for that young man in that Psalm.
How else would that young man take heed according to God's Word if God had not written it
down for him or had man to write it down for him?
It's the same thing, by the way, as we talked about last week.
And thirdly, if we should take heed according to God's Word that He wrote for us, then we
should also teach our children to do that.
Deuteronomy chapter 6 in verse 6.
In Deuteronomy, this was the second giving of the law.
This is what Moses wrote as God inspired him.
"And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when
thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down,
and when thou risest up."
Now what did that tell us?
God's Word is not only to be read and heeded and hidden in our hearts, but taught to our
children.
And not just taught to our children when they come to Sunday school, but throughout the
week.
We talk about them when we lie down, when we sit, when we walk by the way.
In other words, that's your life as a Christian is God's Word being manifest in you, being
talked about, being demonstrated, being learned, and all of that.
There's not a time where we set it to the side.
I've spoken with some people this week who were having various types of troubles, as
we all do.
And the thing that each lacked was a proper attention to God's Word.
But each of these people admitted that's what we started doing recently, and that's what
we need to do again to make things right.
And it's true.
You know what happens with most people?
As soon as they encounter trouble, this is the first thing to go.
This is the first thing put under the coffee table or back in its cover up on the shelf,
or to sit there and just not get read at all.
It's the first thing to go.
And it needs to be the first thing we go to.
Years ago I worked a death investigation where a fine Christian man, he had died of a heart
attack in his bed, and his wife found him the next morning, and I was on shift, and
so we got called to the house because it was an unattended death.
Nothing suspicious at all.
He had a heart attack.
And her friends, now this lady was in stage four of cancer, and she had two little girls.
So this family was in trouble.
And so we sealed off the room where he was until we could do our things that we do for
an investigation.
But the rest of her house that morning was occupied with processing this and getting
those two little girls ready for school.
I mean, reality was still there, wasn't it?
We have to get these kids ready.
And this lady's friends showed up, and one of the ladies who showed up took her straight
to the couch and said, "Let's get in the Word."
And she opened the Bible up right then with her husband's body in the other room deceased.
That woman knew where to take her friend to God's Word for comfort because I'm sure this
dear lady was wondering, "Why, Lord?
I'm about to die, and you've just taken my husband and these two little girls we have.
What are they going to do?"
Well, God supplied that need.
I know that from years later on.
These two girls have been raised by the rest of their family, uncles and aunts and so forth.
So their needs were met in that way.
But I thought it was wonderful to see that friend come in, and that was the thing that
stood out to me the most about the aftermath of this man's death, is that woman knew that
God wrote those words for you.
And that was the most important thing she could show her friend rather than trying to
come up with the right words to say because usually those are the wrong words to say.
The best thing you can do is the same thing Job's friends did.
When all that tragedy as we would see it befell him, it's just be quiet for seven days and
sit next to them.
That's what they did.
It worked out real well until one of them opened his mouth, and then it was not good
afterward.
Do you know why Jesus had to send His disciples into all the world to teach all nations?
It was because those nations were full of people who had neglected the word which He
wrote for them.
In fact, let's go back to the first set of parents, Adam and Eve.
One of Brother Fulton's Genesis to Jesus lessons reminded me of something that I think should
be mentioned here in our text.
We know that Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, and apparently both boys were taught God's
word, but one of them said, "I believe it, and I'm going to go by it."
And the other one said, "No, I've got my own way of doing things," which is how we have
the two types of religions that are in this world.
No matter what you call them, the religion of Cain and Abel is really the best way to
understand it.
And after Abel was killed by Cain, we read about Cain's offspring there in Genesis chapter
4, and nowhere in there was there any mention of Cain or his children following the Lord
or calling on the name of the Lord, teaching their children in the right ways of the Lord.
These were mighty men who did A, B, and C. They were mighty men.
And we know that God gave Eve another son, Seth.
And after Cain's descendants are listed there in Genesis chapter 4, we read the following
about what began to happen after Seth had offspring.
This is Genesis 4 26.
And to Seth, to him also there was born a son, and he called his name Enos, then began
men to call upon the name of the Lord.
So we can infer from that that Seth, then Seth began to teach his children the things
which God wrote for them.
And you fast forward from that day, in that time, many years, to the days of Noah.
Now had all of the people on the earth been diligent to teach their children the things
that God wrote or the things that God told them, then we wouldn't have had the scene
that we had in Noah's day, would we?
But Cain's line was not famous for any of that, for teaching God's Word.
Seth, on the other hand, and his children were of the spiritual seed.
So what happened?
Seth taught his children God's Word, and somewhere along the line the train went off the tracks
again.
God's Word got set to the side.
The things which he wrote for you were no longer important.
And the testimony about the people in the days of Noah, which is many days after Seth
and his godly line came to this earth, it says in Genesis 6 verse 5, "And God saw the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually."
And that was a result of people not taking heed to what God wrote for them, and therefore
not teaching their children to take heed to what God wrote for them.
And here we are in the year 2024, and we have the same problem.
But you know what?
This desperately wicked world is going to get worse.
People say, "Oh, this is going to get better."
Well, not before it gets worse.
It is going to get better.
In fact, it's going to get perfect.
But right now it's not.
And in this world it's going to get just as bad, in fact, as it was in Noah's day.
Listen to what Jesus said in Luke 17, and I believe we had this scripture on Wednesday
night or last Sunday, Luke 17 and verses 26 through 27.
Luke 17, 26 through 27, if you're taking notes.
Jesus said, "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the
Son of Man.
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day
that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all."
Now did the flood destroy them because they were getting married to each other?
No.
Did it destroy them because they were having a good time, they were eating and drinking?
No.
It destroyed them because the word he wrote for them, or the word in those days, the words
Noah was preaching for 120 years, the words he preached to them that God wrote for them
in Noah's heart, they rejected it.
They put it to the side.
And the testimony of the people who live in the day of the coming of Jesus will not be
that they took heed to what God wrote for them, but that they took heed to their own
imagination and pleasures, just like they did in Noah's day.
And just like God did in Noah's day, as he shut the door of that ark and sealed it with
pitch within and without, he shut the door of that ark and all of those people were shut
out of that ark which would have saved their lives, so shall it be in the coming of the
Son of Man.
When Jesus takes his people to be with him and he shuts the door and all of those at
the great white throne judgment say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and
cast out devils in thy name and done many wonderful works in thy name?"
And he'll say, "Depart from me, I never knew you."
They didn't take heed to his word.
They rejected the record that God gave of his Son, and the record God gave of his Son
is written right here for you.
Now the reason we hold up God's word here, which the text says he wrote for you, is that
we don't want people to be at that white throne judgment.
If you're there, it's too late.
Don't think, "Well, I'll go there.
I mean, it is a judgment seat, so maybe I'll have a chance with this judge."
You do not, because that judgment will be based in truth.
I don't know what question you'll be asked if you'll be asked anything at all, but the
question is, "What have you done with Jesus, which is called Christ?
What have you done with the gospel that he wrote for you?"
And because this word is written for you and because it's so important that we teach it
to you and preach it, there's not any other text from which we operate in this church.
We love our song books, but you know there are some hymns in there that have words that
don't agree with the Bible, and so we either don't sing the hymn or we skip the verse if
we catch it in time.
But we certainly don't use the song book as our text.
And so everybody turn to page 31, and let's look at verse 2.
Look at these words and try to explain those to you.
No, those words are supposed to be about what he wrote for you.
And if they don't declare what he wrote for you, they don't need to be sung.
They don't need to be read even in the church.
And so the world is in trouble not because they switched from song books to follow the
dot on the screen, they're in trouble because they've neglected the words that he wrote
for them.
The average church is in trouble.
They are.
They may not look like it.
You may think, "Boy, they really have a good time over here or over yonder," or wherever
you may point your finger.
But they're in trouble.
The words that God wrote for us have the message of eternal life.
And those are the very words that these churches have set aside, even though God wrote those
words for them.
When we teach our children, our friends, or the strangers God's word, we need to tell
them that He wrote those words for them.
We tell people Jesus died for you.
Why would we not tell them God wrote His word for you?
It's not a newspaper advertisement that's out there to just be read or discarded.
It is personally directed and addressed to everyone.
It's for you.
In John chapter 8, Jesus was speaking to the Jews, and we know some of them believed on
Him, some of them did not.
And there were Pharisees in that group.
Do you want to know how important God's word was to Jesus?
After all, Jesus was the Word made flesh.
Listen to what He says in John chapter 8 verse 37.
I know that ye are Abraham's seed.
He's talking to these Jews, these Pharisees.
But ye seek to kill me because my word hath no place in you.
These were Jews.
These were people who racially came from the same line He did.
He came, of course, He came through the seed of the woman, but He is from the tribe of
Judah as a man.
These were Jews.
These were Israelites.
These were His brothers in the flesh if you look at it from His standpoint as a man.
And He said, "The reason that you're not the seed of Abraham is not because you've got
the wrong father-in-law or father or mother somewhere up the line.
Your great-great-grandfather married an Ethiopian woman.
No.
The reason you're not of the seed of Abraham is because my word hath no place in you."
He wrote it for them and it found no place in them.
Oh, these Pharisees were doctors of the law.
They had all kinds of words in them.
There were all sorts of things they read and wrote, but they neglected God's word for them.
Never take for granted that God wrote His word for you.
Now let's move to the next part of verse 37 back in your text.
It says, "Ye shall observe to do forevermore."
So ye shall observe to do these laws, ordinance, statutes, commandments which He wrote for
you forevermore.
You shall observe to do forevermore.
That means you should be careful to do them forevermore.
In fact, the word observe, contrary to the way we may use it today, is not a passive
word.
In fact, it's really not a passive word today in the sense that you can observe without
actually doing anything.
The Hebrew word translated observe here is translated as the word keep more often in
the Old Testament.
It's a fairly common word.
And the first time it's used is in Genesis chapter 2 verse 15.
Genesis 2 verse 15, "And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden
to dress it and to keep it."
Or you could say to dress it and to observe it.
Now do you think God intended for a moment to let Adam just sit there and watch everything
grow around him and be on his iPhone and all that?
No, He didn't.
He said he was put there to dress it and to keep it.
And if the current use of the word observe was applied to the command given to Adam,
he would have sat there and watched his garden grow and perhaps learned much from it, but
not done anything.
But he was to dress it or to cultivate it as some translations have and to keep it.
There was no sitting around instead of working.
And with that in mind, the command given to the children of Israel here to observe, to
do all that God wrote for them, was not a command just to look at the commandments or
to read them or even to memorize them, all of which are very good to do by the way, but
to do them.
And not only were they to do them, they were to cultivate the doing of them.
In other words, that's how the ground of their heart should have been prepared every day
is to do God's will.
You can start that when your eyes open, even if you just open one eye at a time in the
morning, start it with prayer.
Say, "Lord, before my feet hit the floor, I want to do your will today.
Help me because the devil's going to fight."
That's cultivating yourself to observe, to do what he said, what his word said.
And they were not only to cultivate the doing of those commandments, but they were to also
provide that atmosphere in their own homes that tended to those commandments.
It's awfully hard to observe, to do the commandments when you consider them to be a burden, isn't
it?
If somebody goes, "Oh, I got to go to church this morning."
No, you don't.
You don't got to go.
We love to have you.
But if you think, "I got to go to church.
They're having something and I'm supposed to be there."
You have not cultivated the doing of God's commandments.
He said, "For Satan, not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some
is, but exhorting one another."
If you don't have any other reason to come here, come here and be an encouragement to
meet Brother Doug, Brother Luke, whoever.
Exhorting one another and so much more as you see the day approaching, that's the day
of Christ.
We come here for more reasons than that, but we do encourage one another.
We come here to study God's Word together, to sing His praises, to pray as a church group,
to share our burdens with each other.
Let me tell you, you already know it.
There are people in this church, in fact, I would say every one of you have a burden,
a heavy burden.
The older you are, the more of those you have because you have kids and grandkids and brothers,
sisters and your parents may still be alive.
You have a lot of burdens, notwithstanding your own burdens that you have that nobody
ever knows about.
John, 1 John chapter 5 verse 3, 1 John 5, 3, "For this is the love of God, that we keep
His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous."
That's what I wanted you to hear.
His commandments are not grievous.
So when you say, "I've got to wrap my tithe out," you ought to, but it's not grievous.
God has given that commandment for you.
You know the best way to keep your finances scriptural is to start off with your finances
scriptural.
You get that paycheck and we all get paid different times, different ways, but you figure
out that tithe, and I mean just let that be the first thing you write.
Get that, set it over there, and when you write it out say, "Lord, thank you for giving
me what you give me so I can give back what I'm supposed to give back."
It doesn't matter how much you make.
It's that the tithe or any other offering you make is not grievous.
So if you think of it that way, you've got the wrong attitude.
And if we know God's commandments are not grievous or burdensome, then we'll be glad
to obey them.
It won't be a burden to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
It won't be a burden to love your neighbor as yourself.
Is it hard?
Oh, absolutely, it's difficult.
But it won't be a burden.
It won't be tedious to read God's Word.
You won't say, "I've got to read my Bible.
I can't go to sleep without reading my Bible."
I hope you don't feel that way, but some do if you be honest.
It won't be tedious to read His Word because He wrote it for you.
When I was a little boy, my parents divorced when I was seven, and it was the worst day
of my life.
And many of you in here have been affected by divorce.
You've either been through one or your parents have had one or you have friends who've had
them.
And so my parents at some point were about 360 miles apart.
So I only got to see my dad on the holidays in half the summer, and I missed him a lot.
And when he would send a letter to me, he wrote that letter for me, to me, man, I couldn't
wait to read it.
And I'd read it again, and I had a little special place I'd put it in my bedroom.
And I'd go back when I got upset or lonely or missing him, I'd read that again.
Now, I know this is strange, but I was a little boy.
I even had him pluck one of the hairs out of his beard, put it on a bandaid and mail
it to me so I could see that.
That's how much I wanted to be around my daddy.
Which I think people ought to keep that in mind before they think about just splitting
the sheets.
I don't want to stay together for the kids.
Well, why don't you do something for somebody besides yourself one time?
Stay together for the kids, if that's what it takes.
I don't know if I'm speaking to anybody who's affected by that or not.
But it was not tedious to me to read my daddy's letters.
I loved it because he wrote them to me, for me, and even greater is God's word that he
wrote for me.
Now how long were the children of Israel to observe to do these things that God commanded
them?
It said forevermore.
But they did not.
In fact, in their flesh, they could not.
Do you know why it's burdensome for some people to try to keep God's commandments?
Because they're trying to win God's favor by just enough obedience while they're in
an imperfect body.
There's two reasons that you in your own flesh cannot keep God's commandments forevermore.
One, you're a sinner.
If you're a Christian, and I know this has happened to you, you wake up in the morning,
you have prayer time, you listen to or read God's word, and you have every intention of
righteously living and avoiding sin that day.
But sometimes before you even finish your Bible study, your prayer, your breakfast,
or even start your workday to cut you off in traffic, or a thought comes to your mind,
you speak an unkind word, you let anger get the best of you, you entertain a sinful thought
or desire, and you realize, "I can't even make it to lunch without sinning."
And so you ask God to help you and you try to wipe the slate clean before you know it,
you've yielded to the flesh again.
That's one reason you can't do the commandments forevermore.
But a second one is this, your flesh will not live forever.
Even if you could keep the law in your flesh, your flesh won't live forever.
That means you can't keep God's commandments forever, forevermore.
The devil tells you, "Just give up.
You can't do it."
He tells you, "God's given you an unreasonable command."
Next week, we're going to see how you can keep God's commandments forevermore.
Some of you already know, but for some of you, it'll be worth tuning in, I promise you.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so thankful for the people who came today, and Lord, we're thankful that
you wrote your word for us and what it means to us, and that it is life, it's eternal life.
The record of your son is eternal life if the people will only trust in it.
And Lord, if there's a lost person today who comes into our congregation, I pray their
eyes would be upon Jesus, that He died for them, that He wrote His word for them, that
they would believe in Him before it's too late.
And bless what we do today in your name, Lord.
May it be pleasing to you, and may the flesh not be involved.
May we be led by the Spirit in Jesus' name.
Amen.
