I can’t get away from the topic I commenced on last week. We who wrestle with God. That is the definition, if you would, of the word Israel. Israel, the name, the definition of that word is we who wrestle with God. Israel was the name given to Jacob on the occasion that it says Jacob wrestled with God.
And on that occasion, God said, no longer do I call you Jacob, I’m calling you Israel because you wrestled with me. You will be remembered as the one who wrestled with me and all of your descendants thereafter. So when we refer to the people of Israel, they are the people who are continuing to wrestle with God, only in different ways. And so I’m going to read to you, and I’m going to be repeating somewhat of what I shared with you last Sunday, hoping that I can get through and introduce you to new material.
But so many of you were not here last Sunday. So allow me to read for you out of Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, God has said indeed, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. It was a question. As God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. That’s like somebody from the press asking you a question, and it’s a trick question. It’s a trick question. Satan is suggesting God’s withholding something from you.
As he told you, you can’t eat any of the fruit of the garden. He’s trying to confuse her with the question. But she says, we may eat the fruit of the tree of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. I take you back to a couple of sermons that I preached recently. The one was out of the Psalms. Blessed is the man who does not walk. Blessed is the man who does not stand. Blessed is the man who does not sit. He does not walk in the way of sinners.
He does not sit in the seat of the scornful. He does not take the counsel of the ungodly. Here, the Lord has said to Adam and to Eve, and she’s saying back to Satan, we’ve been told don’t even look at it. Don’t you dare touch it. Don’t you dare eat it. Don’t even look at it. If you even look at it, you are already submitting to the temptation. Don’t even look at it. Whatever you do, don’t touch it. It’s death to you. I want to drop this in on you just for a moment. Death. That’s the first time humanity heard the word death. And what was Adam’s understanding when God said, you shall surely die? Adam did not have a clue what that meant. He’d never seen anything die. The animals were all vegetarian. The first time that Adam and Eve saw something die was when God killed the animals, skinned them, and gave them covering.
That was the first time that they saw. They never saw the color of blood. So when they were told, you shall surely die, they could not have possibly comprehended the darkness that would come into their soul, the guilt that would now beset their souls. They did not have an understanding. So do we give them a pass because they didn’t really understand? It’s not for us to understand the why that God gives us the rules. It’s up to us to comply and submit. How many times as a youngster did I hear my mother say, because I said so, that’s why. She knew it would be ludicrous for her to tell me the reason because I would just argue and argue and argue.
She’d just say, I said it, and it’s done. And that’s the way it is with the word of God. And this is the challenge that people who don’t know God, don’t know the scriptures, they just dismiss the whole thing. I don’t understand it. And I can’t argue back. I don’t have a say. Everything in here says I’m a bad person. So I don’t even want to talk about it because it’s a very negative book. You’ll surely die.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, looked wonderful, looked good to the eyes, desirable to make one wise, it never made her wise. It gave her knowledge. But her wisdom was very, very limited. She took it, she ate it, gave it to her husband also, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called out to Adam and said, where are you?
It’s not like God didn’t know. He was asking for conversation. He was trying to tell them the relationship is broken. You can’t hide from me. I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree? Where I commanded you that you should not eat. The woman that you gave me, that kind of stupidity still happens.
The policeman pulls you over and says, you’re driving too fast. I just drive following the car in front of me. It’s his fault. I didn’t see any signs lately. So he hands you something and says, well, here’s a sign. Enjoy reading. I’ll see you in court. And the Lord says to the woman, what have you done? The woman says, the devil made me do it.
Everybody passes the buck. So the Lord says to the serpent, because you’ve done this, you’re cursed more than the cattle, more than every beast of the field on your belly. You shall go and you shall eat dust at the days of your life. I will put a war between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his feet. To the woman, he says, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in pain, and you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband. That word, desire, you will be obedient to your husband. I made you equal.
I made you perfectly, perfectly equal. But because of what you’ve done, you’ve been dropped down just a little bit. You will do now in obedience. Your husband is now truly in charge. I want to put, I want to act like a little child here for a moment, not literally.
I just want to take the position of a five-year-old who’s sitting with grandpa. And grandpa is going to tell this story, whether he’s going to read it to the child or whether he’s going to just explain it. And as the child is sitting there, just take the position of a little child, five years old, and it’s a wonderful story. God made those beautiful birds.
They can fly so wonderfully. The elegant giraffe, that cute alligator, all the wonderful things in the garden, all the fruit, everything, everything was so beautiful and delightful. And the little child is just imagining it as it’s going along, sounds exciting. And God made a woman. And then God made a mommy, made a woman. And the child is leaping forward in their mind and saying, like every other fairy tale that Disney showed us, and they lived happily ever after. No. And as the story goes on, where deception has come in, darkness and guilt and rejection, they rejected God and forced God to reject them. They had been totally dependent upon God, totally dependent, totally obedient, and their love for God was unwavering.
And suddenly, they declared, we’re going on strike. No longer dependent, no longer focused with love and adoration, no longer prepared to worship, disobedient, gone, relationship broken. It’s so interesting that when God put them in the garden, they were free to do anything they wanted. He never warned them about sin, never said, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Everything about them was totally, totally free, wide open. Just one little exception, don’t touch the tree. That’s the only thing. Just don’t touch the tree. But the moment they got into it, they suddenly became wise in their own eyes as they now had decisions to make.
What is unacceptable? God originally said, you touch the tree, that’s unacceptable, and that will open up a landscape that you can’t deal with. And the moment they partook of that fruit, they now had to make decisions because they had walked into another whole world of disobedience, darkness, clouded minds. And we’re in that position today where the governments of the world, all of Europe has gone this way. This book is God’s will, gone. We will decide, Europe says. All of Europe has gone this way. We will decide what is good and what’s moral. And the people will have to follow us because we are deciding for ourselves.
Our own country right here is deciding for us what’s moral and what’s not moral. And quite frankly, they don’t even list the immorals anymore because they quite frankly don’t understand. They don’t know themselves. But redemption was on its way. The little five-year-old is lost now in the story. The story completely changes from beautiful and elegant and precious and wonderful to negativity. The first family falls into total dysfunction. And this little child doesn’t like it. Surely the little child doesn’t like it.
When one brother killed the other brother, he killed him. And before long, God has to judge everybody. And this little child is sitting here listening. And it says, and God gave everybody mixed up. Nobody spoke the same language. Everybody’s living in mass confusion. The little child is sitting there thinking, but what about the garden? What about that story? Well, I don’t understand. The whole thing is mass confusion. This is getting so negative. And that little child is learning something about evil and about darkness. And as you go through the prophets, and as you go through the various movements of the people of Israel, you start to see the curtain drawing back.
And you start to realize that redemption is on the way. And I went through this with you last week. Let me finish it this way, that part. The first two chapters of the Bible in Genesis are like a bookend. And the last couple of chapters of the book of Revelation are like another bookend. And what’s between those two bookends is the story, the process of redemption. The Lord said, I’ll put enemy between the two of you. But he says to the woman, your seed will crush the head of the enemy. But that doesn’t happen till you get to this other bookend at the other end. It’s not two stories. It’s one big story. But there’s two major parts. There’s a beautiful beginning, and there’s a beautiful end. But in the middle is confusion and trouble.
Redemption is on the way. But as God is sending redemption to the people, the people continue to live out their guilt, to live out their disobedience, to live out their independence. And they fail to love God. And there were points when God said, I’ve had it with these people. And Moses had to intervene and intercede and say, take my name out, but don’t hurt the people. Surely there’s a way around this. Redemption was on the way. To me, it’s so interesting that the story of Israel doesn’t happen immediately. I’m so intrigued.
I just found this week. The time between Adam and Noah was exactly 1,656 years. And then from Noah to Abraham was another 352 years. Where do we get that? Those boring genealogies. Some years ago, I started studying the genealogies, and I got downright excited. It’s an incredible thing. It’s just this one begat this one, that one begat that one. No, no, no, no.
This is all part of the redemptive process, where we learn each generation, and the years are even in there for us. Why is that important? Because the prophecies of the coming of the Lord Jesus are dead on, the day of his birth in Bethlehem. I mean, it was a signature of a prophetic word. And the end times that you and I are now living in, in May of 1948, when Israel became a nation, that was prophesied down to the hour. It’s important to not skip over the genealogies. You don’t have to dig into them and swim in them like I do. But it’s important to realize that that is not trivia. But it’s God’s majesty at work among us.
So Genesis 12, 12, we know Abraham was 75 years old. Go from your country, your people, your father’s household, to the land I’ll show you. I’ll make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I’ll make your name great, and you will be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you. And I will curse those who curse you. And all the people of the earth will be blessed through you. And that’s still to come. Israel’s blessing us in so many ways. The development of technology, they’ve crafted a river under the desert out there that looks just like scruffy sand.
But underneath, there’s a river. And they keep it moving nicely. And they’re growing fish. They’re feeding their country fish with a river that can’t be seen with the eye. It’s incredible what they’re doing. But they’re going to bless us. Israel’s going to bless us. They’ve already done so by keeping God’s word for us. They’re going to bless us on another day as Jesus starts to break the silence of the sky.We know that Abraham had a son, Isaac. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. We know that God favored Jacob. Jacob ended up wrestling with God. And the people of Israel became known as the people who wrestled with God, the name Israel. There came a day when the Israelites moved into Egypt.
There was a very pleasant time. But during the 400 years that pressed on, the pharaohs changed. And the final pharaoh that we read of the Exodus time knew nothing of the history.
He didn’t go on to know about it, didn’t even hear about it. And so they moved out into the desert, into the wilderness, where they could be free to worship God. But now they had to become totally dependent upon God. They needed to become totally obedient to God. You see, God is bringing them back in line. Let my people go. And for 40 years, they traversed the wilderness when it could have been done in 40 days. Out there, they made a mobile chapel that God ordained that he could dwell among them. And when they got into the land called Israel, there they put down the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, and there they built a permanent temple.
And the temple was still there when Jesus went to the temple that day and went to chase the money changers out. That temple, by the way, has to be rebuilt. That’s a big story behind that one. So from the arrival in the promised land, however, the children of Israel were living like their mom and dad, Adam and Eve. They were continuously disobedient. They were actually adopting with some of the gods that were brought in from other countries. They intermarried with the people that they should not have married. And so God was continuously having to bring them back into line, and the prophets were continuously having to teach and teach and teach. We find two peoples that were influential in the land of Israel at the time that Jesus came along.
There were the Pharisees and there were the Sadducees. There were the scribes. The two, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they were almost enemies because of how they handled the word of God. But the scribes, now they were the friends with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the ones who demonstrated this is how we’re to live before God. And the scribes were the ones, they were the legal tenders of the word, and it was their responsibility to translate the word and to continuously make copies so that the word of God could spread abroad. So Jesus came among them, but he took them on because he said, you’re supposed to be a light to these people, but you’re continuously messing it up. The word of God tells us that he came to his own, but his own received him not. So here’s God’s plan.
It started in the Garden of Eden that Satan is gonna be defeated. You’re my chosen people. You’re gonna be my voice in the world. But when he came to fulfill the promise that was made, he came to his own and his own received him not. I took extensive time last week and talked about Rachel and Leah, how Jacob preferred Rachel. And he said to Laban, I want to marry her. Laban said, you can marry my daughter, but you have to work seven years for her. So for seven years, he stayed away from Rachel and he labored, labored. And at the end, like pretty well at the last day, he came and he said, okay, okay, okay, I did my time.
I wanna marry Rachel. But Laban betrayed him, put a veil over the face of Leah, sent her into his tent. In the morning, he discovered she was wearing a wig. She had a glass eye and three wooden legs. And he said, this is the wrong one. Oh, you wanted Rachel. Well, Rachel’s younger than Leah. You had to marry Leah in order to get Rachel. That’s gonna cost you another seven years. So what I endeavored to show you last week, that Jacob in that story shows us Jesus who’s looking for a bride, but the bride he’s coming for is represented in that story by Rachel. He’s coming for Rachel, but he can’t have Rachel because Rachel would not have him. Israel, he came to his own, his own received him not. And Jesus ends up redeeming Leah, the Gentiles.
This doesn’t bend your wrong, I hope. He ends up marrying the Gentiles, the church. The church is the bride of Christ, not the Jewish people. And it’s a marvelous intermingling. I thought about this yesterday.
My brain got hurt. My brain started to hurt. We, the Gentiles are being grafted into the olive tree. We’re the wild olive branches and we’re being grafted into the olive tree. But the Jews, when they surrender to Christ today, Jews are getting saved. They in turn are being blended together with us in the church. It’s a double-sided thing. They were the receptors of the promises of Abraham. Let me take just a moment to just a sideline to remind you of this.
There is a wicked theology that’s really running rampant in this land and it’s called, another blank in my brain. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. Replacement theology. I just heard another wise voice from the peanut gallery. That’s good. Thank you for helping. It’s called replacement theology. I had never heard about this when I was in college because it was not a big deal at the time.
I was preaching a camp meeting out west, place called Moose Lake, Alberta. And I was saddled up. I was the night screamer. I was the evangelist. And in the morning was a fellow whose name I won’t repeat now. Just doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna call him Andrew. And Andrew was a morning teacher and he loved to teach. And he was hooked up with a church down in the United States and that church was sending out a message all over the world.
It had thousands of churches, thousands of pastors running conferences. And this was the message. The antichrist is Israel. And this man preaches this in a Pentecostal assemblies of camp, Pentecostal assemblies of Canada camp. He’s the morning speaker. I’m the night speaker. I’m sitting there and I’m going numb. I’m thinking, no, no, no, no, no. And I spoke to Andrew over lunch.
I said, how do you ever come up with that? He said, tell me a people that are more against Jesus than the Jews. I said, so where does this go? He said, the church has received all of the benefits and the promises that God gave to Abraham. And he starts quoting scriptures for me out of the book of Romans, Abraham, the father of us all. He said, there it is, there it is, there it is. Abraham’s the father of us over here. The church has now taken the place. It’s called replacement theology.
It’s wicked, it’s wicked, and it’s anti-Semitic. And I will come against anybody who would argue with me. I just won’t stand for this, anti-Semitic. All the nations of the world are going against Israel, and now the church is becoming bewilderly anti-Semitic. This is unbelievable. God made a promise to Abraham, and God will not relent on his promise. Say amen, trust me, I’m good till five o’clock this afternoon, I need to hear an amen. Amen. No replacement theology.
This promise that God has made is coming to its glorious fruition at the second coming of Christ. But I need to clarify, the second coming of Christ is not the same event as the rapture. The rapture is Jesus coming from heaven for his church. The dead in Christ shall rise. This mortal shall take on immortality. The graves will be opened. I’m excited about all of this.
I pray over, I pray over the casket before it’s lowered in the ground, and I say to the people that are there, you’re standing on miracle ground. A miracle’s gonna take place. A horn will blast in heaven. Jesus will descend with a shout. This grave will give up. The question has been asked of me several times. It was asked of me just two weeks ago by a precious friend. Said, I’m thinking that when my wife perishes, I’m going to take care of her remains by cremation. And he wanted to know what I thought about that, and I said, I used to have a strong opinion, and my opinion’s kind of, it’s wavering, it’s softening, because there’s nothing in here that’s truly clear for me. And this is the final word. The question has been posed.
Aren’t we making it difficult for the Lord to work the resurrection and the rapture if everything is just dust? And the verse comes, all we are dust. It’s scriptural. From the dust we came to the dust we will return. All humanity is like grass that springs up in the morning. The weather beats it up. The grass withers, and it can’t be found again. What about people that are buried at sea? What about people that drown and their remains are never found?
Leave it alone. Don’t worry about that. That’s not an issue. The Lord is going to change this body, and he’s going to use it. So the rapture, it’s a secret moment, it’s a removal of Christians from the earth. And we could sing soon and very soon. We’re going to see the king as we sang it this morning. But it gets confused with the second coming because the second coming is all about the Jews. Because we’re gone.
Because we’re not here even during the tribulation. Jesus prophesied that he would return to the earth and deliver the Jewish people at the climax of the tribulation. When you’re reading in the book of Revelation, you’ll see that the people are fleeing. They’re fleeing, they’re running for their life. And a common place they’re going is in the next country, is it Jordan, where there’s an ancient city called Petra, and it says many, many will go there. They will go there. And so here’s what happens with the second coming. First of all, the Jews are going to be so tormented. They’re going to be murdered.
It’s going to be unbelievable mayhem, and they will be fleeing, and many of them will head into the wilderness. Many of them will be hiding out. The tribulation is a time of immense torture and trouble for the Jewish people, and the threat of near annihilation is going to be hanging over their heads. They go to the wilderness. It’s found in Revelation 12 and 13, and also again 17. At the midpoint of the tribulation, the Jewish remnant flee into the wilderness there to hide, and at what seems like the last moment when annihilation of all Jews worldwide is about to happen, suddenly he will appear, and that’s where you will read the verse, every eye will see him, and the word says that the Jews will cry out. They will cry out, Lord, save me. They will believe in Jesus. As I read the book of Revelation, I’m going to confide in you.
I find it challenging for me because, you see, I don’t just read through. I have to understand. In my mind, I have to, in my mind, I store things by pictures. I can’t quote chapter and verse like some of my friends who are sitting here today, but I’m going to tell you what. I’ve got a vivid imagination, the pictures that I store in my head, and when I’m reading the book of Revelation.
I’ve got to store all these, I’ve got to store all of these mental photographs, and when I’m reading through the book of Revelation, I get an awful lot of pictures that I’m struggling to deal with, but as you get right down into it, and as you also couple with your reading of the book of Revelation, get into Ezekiel and Zechariah, and also Daniel, it becomes very, very clear. It becomes abundantly clear. Do you know there’s going to be such a revival that’s going to go on in the world where the Jews will be swept in by the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions? I want to clarify something before I finish today, and that is in Matthew, and I believe it’s also in Luke, where Jesus heals a deaf mute, and because he’s able to do that, the Pharisees and the scribes have never seen anything like this, and they say, we’ve got him now. Nobody has that kind of power.
Nobody has ever had that kind of power, and so they attribute his power to a demonic influence. They say, this man is empowered by the devil himself. Now, Jesus responds to them, and he says, you can defy God, you can do anything you want, you still might have a chance. Grace, mercy is there, but when you attribute something that God does to Satan himself, that’s blasphemy, and what you’re doing then, you’re blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, and that’s the one sin that’s unforgivable, and he goes on to talk about this generation are hopelessly lost. There’s no possibility of redemption. I wanna clarify this, that he was speaking to that particular generation, to those particular Pharisees and scribes, and when he was talking about the destruction that was gonna come upon them, he was talking about a military extravaganza that happened in 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people, the Jewish people, were mercilessly slaughtered. I was reading, just hours ago, the book of Acts. Men and brethren, they cried out to Peter, what shall we do? I’m gonna shake you up, I think I’m gonna do it.
What shall we do? And his reply was, repent, repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of your sins. Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins. At that moment, Peter was saying, you can say, I’m sorry for my sin, and you can be spiritually saved, but you’re still gonna die in 70 AD, because you are the generation that said he is of the devil, and the only way that you can be saved in 70 AD is to be baptized. Stay with me now. Where’s this pastor going? I’ve never heard it said you have to repent of your sin and be baptized to be saved. Well, it’s there, but you gotta understand about what Jesus said, this generation, this generation. In other words, the Jewish people, the lady in the store across the street that owns that store, she’s a Jewish lady.
Is she a marked person because of what happened back there in the book of Matthew when they said he’s of the devil? No, no, no, no, she’s not of that generation. So what was this baptism all about? We know from what we would call the Christian believer’s baptism, that it’s a symbol, I’m pointing at the, there’s a water tank under here. Lucas, I was with you in that water. I was with you in that water. It’s symbolic of separation of the person, separation from the person, the livelihood, the mentality, the bend in your person. It’s a separation from the old life. And it’s symbolical, but it’s not 100% demanding.
In other words, how did I work out in a place called Majimoto? This is in Kenya. I’m preaching out in a desert. I mean, this is a real desert. There was a giraffe went by and there was nothing for it to eat. It just kept on going. It was migrating to find some grass.
I was in a desert and I’m preaching to these Maasai people, Majimoto. When they got saved, where was I gonna baptize them in the desert? Where was I gonna do it? You say, well, just sprinkle them. It doesn’t say that, honey. It says baptized. That means full immersion. Don’t mess with that. Baptism means total immersion. So to the people on the day of Pentecost, when Peter said, if you wanna be saved, it’s a two-part deal. Part one, repent of your sin and ask for forgiveness.
Your soul will be saved. But then be baptized every one of you, every one of you, so that you’re separated from the sinful ways of the generation that you’re a part of. Pastor, how does this work today? Friends of mine were ministering in Thailand. By the way, I’ve been there quite a few times. When I pastored a church out in Vancouver, I was a denominational leader of thousands of churches. I was a general superintendent. I had to go to Thailand to minister to the people. I had to go to Taiwan to minister to the people.
I had churches all over the place. And so what I learned over in Thailand and in Taiwan is this, that those people can give their heart to Jesus, but they are loath to be baptized. And why? Because you see, to save Jesus, I’m sorry for my sin. Please forgive me. That’s an easy thing for them to do. It is. But when they get baptized in water, they are saying to their grandparents who are dead, I’ll have nothing more to do with you. Water baptism is a separation of what I was, who I was, and I’m walking in newness of life.
And the people of Taiwan, my Bible college people, people came off the street, learned English at our college, learned the Bible, gave their hearts to Jesus. We brought a bunch of them to our church in Vancouver because we were the home church. We brought them there. And I said, how many of you have been water baptized? None of them. And I shared with them what the word of God says about water baptism. I said, how many want to, how many people want to be baptized? Of the whole work, I think there were 20 of them, of the whole works, there were three who said I’d be water baptized. So I inquired more.
And he said, I can give my heart to Jesus. I’ll follow him with all my heart. But if I go through those waters of baptize, I have to totally separate myself from everything that I was. My life in this religion I’m a part of is based upon my grandparents and their grandparents. It’s got everything to do with ancestry. I will disgrace my parents. They will turn their backs on me because I’m spitting on the graves of my grandpa. I can’t do that. I can’t do that.
My friend who was ministering in Thailand said that the breakage came when they realized that they had to give up on that part of their lives. And he said, we actually had a burn pile in the middle of these apartment buildings. And he said, they brought up pictures, memories of their grandparents and of their religious. And he said, we had a bonfire. And he said, we did it out so that everybody in all the apartments could come out and see what we were doing because we were demonstrating. We are walking with Jesus and we’re walking in newness of life. We’ve totally relented on our former walk. It was quite a challenge for the Jewish people. For much in the same way, they felt that if they got water baptized, that they were turning their backs on Abraham.
Remember the big story about circumcision? Paul and Peter had a battle over all of this. You see, the Jewish people had been raised so centrifugally in the Jewish traditions. We’re the sons of Abraham. We have to follow the truths of Abraham. And we have to follow the word that was given to Moses. And for us to cut that all off, we can’t do that. And what they were trying to do is they were speaking to the people of Ephesus. And they said to them, you’ve got to become Jews before you can become a proper Christian.
You’ve got to become the sons of Abraham like we were. This is the way, this is the path you have to take. Because they could not let go of that old way. This is how much they were focused on the promises given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the whole thing, the prophet, the whole thing. But they missed the last chapter. They believed in the first bookend, right? The introductory, the first two chapters of Genesis. And like the little five-year-old, they didn’t like to be reminded of everything that happened after Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden. I heard a cute story.
I can’t remember if this happened in my church. It doesn’t happen, doesn’t matter. But the children were asked, here’s crayon, here’s a piece of paper, here’s crayons. Make a picture of your favorite Bible story. And some child drew a picture of an automobile and they put a little funny thing on the top of it. And the teacher got a hold of it and said, is this a picture of your favorite story? Yeah. Is that a car? Yeah.
Are there people sitting in it? Yeah. What’s that thing up on the top of the, oh, it’s a taxi. That’s the, what’s your favorite story of when God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden? We don’t like the story after Genesis two. We don’t like to remember that we were rebellious, that we forsook our love. We refused to adore him. We became totally independent. We became wise in our own eyes.
We learned that we had the privilege because now we know what sin is. And now we have black sins. Now we have gray sins. Now we have what’s called existential theology. Pastor, don’t mix us up with all this. Existential theology is this. It’s a theology. It’s a belief that’s focused on my now existence. Existentialism.
So now you have people who are playing that game and they’re tearing down all the monuments in Toronto. They’re renaming the universities because they believe in existential truth. Existential truth. The truth has changed. What those forefathers of Canada believed, they may have believed it. But this is a new day and this is a modern day. And so now we get to choose what’s morally right. We get to determine what is right in Canada. And those guys were wrong.
The new truth is this truth. And you can listen to some of the talk shows on the radio and on the television. You must have heard this wording. This is my truth. Have you heard that? People be sitting, having a conversation. Well, that’s your truth, but this is my truth. In other words, I have the knowledge that came to me from Adam and Eve. And I have the opportunity to choose what’s gray, what’s white, what’s black, what’s green.
I have the privilege of choosing. And this is my truth. But what about this? This is the truth. And this is the truth of the alpha, the omega, the beginning and the end. And this truth does not change. Thank God for the Jewish people. They’re looking, the ones who are religious and not all that many are religious anymore, but that’s gonna change. The religious ones, the Hasidic Jews, the ones with the cute hats and the curls down here, they’re looking for the Messiah.
And they struggle with the idea of Jesus being that Messiah. And I’ve gone down the road on why they struggle with that. They see that as us putting Jesus as a God in front of Jehovah Yahweh. And they believe that that is a sin. So they can’t handle Jesus because we say that God is a triune and they can’t handle that. They will. They will look upon him whom they pierced. And some will say, where did you get those wounds? He’ll say, I got them in the house of my friends.
He came for Rachel. He said of his own words, I’ve come to reach my people. I’ve come to redeem the house of Israel. And when Israel rejected him, then he turned and pursued the Gentiles. I’m gonna deal with that on another time. I’m gonna talk about the warnings that came through the prophecies of Jonah. There are three of them. The last one was the stoning of Stephen. I’m gonna bring that out to you at some point.
At the stoning of Stephen, that was the last, that was the last chance. Rejecting Jesus, the Messiah. And 70 AD was coming one day at a time. And if you didn’t run for your life, you were dead. This is what I read recently, with this I close. There are those who kept track of things back then. And this is the common understanding. Not one Christian died in 70 AD as a result of the attack on Jerusalem. Not one.
If we rely on the reporters, the writers of that time. That to me is an exciting concept. Repent and be baptized and you’ll be saved. Your soul will be saved, but so will your physical being. Something for you to munch on, hey? Gracious Father, I thank you for the truth. This is not my truth. This is your truth. And I will only embrace your truth.
And I will never surrender to the works of the modern day prophets who say this is a new day. The old laws are passe. They say this is a new hour. This is a new world order.
And the church and everybody else will surrender and give up or there will be retribution.
Father God, we declare to this day, we will not surrender.
We follow Jesus with heart, mind, and soul.
He sent his word, we believe it, it’s settled.
And we would say amen.
