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What Is Man? – Jacob Kennedy – Jan. 18, 2026
In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated a judge by the name of J.K.
or J.B.
rather, J.B.
Jackson to the Supreme Court.
There was a discussion held between this judge and a senator of the United States by the
name of Marsha Blackburn.
And in this discussion, Senator Blackburn asks this judge, what is a woman?
to which the judge says, I can’t say.
I’m not a biologist.
I’m not a doctor.
I can’t tell you.
We have a problem in this country of people not knowing who they are.
We have men who can’t tell you what a man is, women who can’t tell you what a woman is,
and nobody seems to know what a human is.
But God’s word is very clear.
God’s word has told us very bluntly, very clearly what it means to be a man, what it means
to be a woman.
And when we look at Psalm chapter eight, when we look at Psalm eight, we find the beauty
that exists in being created by God.
The glory that exists, the honor that it is to be a human.
And so for a few moments this afternoon, we are going to consider what it means to be a
human, what it means to be man.
Now I know it says what is man on the screen behind me, and that’s how the psalmist
references it, but in this context, the word man is referencing that of mankind, all of us
as humans.
We start, number one, by noticing that man is recognized.
and the clicker appears to not be working.
There it goes.
Man recognized.
Look with me at verses one and two of Psalm chapter eight.
Psalm eight verses one and two.
I will rather, Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.
Who has set thy glory above the heavens?
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings has thou ordained strength because of thine
enemies.
that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
First and foremost, when we consider what man is, when we recognize what the psalmist is
recognizing, he begins by noting God’s place.
And brethren, it is truly a blessing as humans to be able to understand God’s place in
this world, to be able to understand who God is as he has revealed who he is in his Word.
We know that God is personal.
At the beginning of the Psalm, David writes, Lord, our Lord.
That personal relationship, that personal possessive pronoun used there of closeness, of
that connection that exists with God.
Brethren, the Lord is not far from anyone.
Acts 17 27 tells us this very plainly.
The Lord is not far from anyone.
Anyone who is seeking the Lord, he is able to be found.
God is always near at hand if we would but extend our hand to him.
He wants that closeness with us.
He wants that relationship with us.
He wants there to be no separation, there to be no division between man and God.
He wants us to be with Him for all of eternity.
Now, to which animal did He say that?
what other creature exists in this world that God said, love you so much that I am willing
to be called your father.
I love you so much that I want you to be with me for all of eternity.
There is not another.
And so in that sense, mankind is truly blessed by understanding who God is.
Well, we also notice in 1 John 3, look with me there at 1 John 3, the idea that we are the
children.
of God.
1 John 3 verses 1 and 2, behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that
we should be called, note this, the sons of God.
Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.
But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him.
as he is.
Brethren, in this text, John is looking forward to the day when the Lord will return, when
we as Christians will be called up to heaven to be with him forever.
The world passed away, the physical universe gone, to be with the Lord forever and
eternity.
And he says, there’s not going to be anything separating us from God.
Yes, God is greater and we’ll notice this more as we continue, but there is a mindset
here.
We will be in a similar state being able to look upon the glory of our God.
Up until that point, no one is able to see God in all of His glory.
No man has seen God at any time in His full glory, in His full essence, truly beholding
all that He is, but in heaven, when we are with the Lord forever, we will see Him just as
He is, in all of His majesty, in all of His glory.
Now you show me,
a creature on this earth that is blessed like that.
Truly man is wonderfully blessed by understanding God’s place.
We also notice not only is God so amazing in this regard of having that personal
relationship, but he’s also, we note the fact that he has an excellent name.
In Exodus 20 verse 7, one of the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not take name of the Lord
thy God in vain.
Now we understand that there is a difference between the laws of the Old Testament, the
laws of Moses, and the laws that we are under as Christians, but the point that he is
driving home in that is still true today.
Jesus would say as he teaches his disciples how to pray, hallowed be thy name.
As he begins his prayer to the Lord, he says, hallowed be thy name.
That word hallowed is somewhat archaic to us today, but it is this idea of to make holy,
to venerate, to glorify.
There is glory in the name of God, and His name is to be held in reverence.
But yet, how many times do we hear in this world, in America specifically, God’s name
taken as some flippant expression.
He deserves more respect.
God’s name is to be held in greater esteem, greater reverence than that of a simple
exclamation point.
We ought to have that kind of love and respect for our God, the one who made us, by the
way.
The one who wants there to be no separation between us.
The one who wants us to be with him for all of eternity.
He deserves respect.
We’ll also note that the Lord is transcendent.
This idea of transcendence is having to do with the fact that God is above this material
universe.
He’s of a different nature than this physical material world.
Jesus would mention in John that he is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth.
But what we understand by this is that God is something, he is someone who is
almost undescribable, if you will.
His nature is something that we can’t experience as humans.
We cannot experience what it truly means to be transcendent like God is.
But what we understand by this is how high and how holy God truly is.
In Acts 17, 24, Paul notes that he is standing with on Mars Hill that God does not dwell
in temples made with hands.
Keep in mind at this point that the Greek culture and the Roman culture as well had an
emphasis on this pantheon of gods.
And if you take a look at the gods, they’re very humanistic.
They’re very materialistic in nature.
And one thing that always has struck me as interesting about them is that their power
depended on who worshiped him, who worshiped them, and how much they worshiped them.
So let’s say for instance with Zeus.
If people stopped worshiping Zeus, well then Zeus loses his power.
But not so with God.
not so with the true God, the one and only God, the God that we read about in the Bible,
and that’s the point that Paul makes.
Paul is making the point that these Athenians are very religious, but he’s going to tell
them about the true God, the one that they should truly be serving.
One final note on this idea of God being above us.
can be found in Romans 11.
Romans chapter 11, look with me there.
Start in verse 33.
O the depth and the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are
His judgments and His ways past finding out.
For who have known the mind of the Lord, or who have been His counselor, who have first
given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again, for of Him and through Him and
to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever.
Amen.
Brethren, our God is truly amazing.
He is truly so far above what we can fully comprehend.
But after having noticed God’s place, we next turn to looking at man’s place.
What is the place of man in this universe and society in looking at our relationship with
God?
Well, the psalmist comments on this.
Verses three and four, Psalm eight.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou
hast ordained, notice this question he asks.
What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?
Man, it’s just a speck in this universe.
when you truly consider how vast the universe is, when you consider that there are some
100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, that’s not counting other
galaxies, but the Milky Way galaxy alone there are 1 to 400 billion stars.
We have to take a step back and say, why are we so special?
Why is man so special?
Because God said we are.
Because we were created differently.
Man is in the mind of God.
That’s what’s noted as the psalmist says that thou art mindful of him.
Did you ever stop and consider that while we might go about our day and never once think
about God, He does not spend a moment that He doesn’t think about us.
that he doesn’t care about how we’re doing, that he doesn’t care about what’s going on in
our lives.
The Lord cares about us.
He is mindful of us.
In Genesis 2, 18, we know that God was thinking about Adam.
He looks at man and he says, it’s not good that man should be alone.
So I’m going to make him a help me.
I’m going to make him someone who is just what he needs.
The completion, if you will, of man.
and we look at the idea that God had a plan for man to save man’s soul from the very
beginning.
Man has been in the mind of God since before man was on the earth.
Before the beginning, God had a plan for how he was going to save us from our sins.
We learn this in Ephesians 1, 4 and 1 Peter 1, 20 in which we are told that
There was a plan that we, the church was foreordained.
He knew what was needing to be done, what would have to be done to establish salvation, to
establish his church, his kingdom.
He knew this before he even said, let there be light.
Man is in the mind of God.
But man is also cared for by God.
We know this says, the psalmist says that thou have visitist him.
That term visitist has the idea of that close relationship, that I’m reaching out to see
how you’re doing.
I care about you.
And that’s exactly what Jesus expresses, or what God expresses to us.
In Genesis two and verse seven,
We learned that man was formed by God.
That God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life.
and man became a living soul, there’s care that was shown in the creation of man.
With everything else, God merely spoke it into existence, but with man, he said, hold on,
I’m going to take my time on this.
I’m going to form man.
I’m going to breathe into his nostrils the breath of life.
There is care shown, care shown from the very first breath that a man took.
There is no other being, no other part of creation that has that same care of God.
There is no other being that God cares for more than man.
Look with me at Matthew chapter 10.
Matthew chapter 10, starting in verse 29.
Jesus expounds upon this idea very explicitly as we continue reading from verse 29.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not therefore, ye are, what does this say?
More valued.
of more value than many sparrows.
There are those today who try to regulate man or degrade man as being on par with the
apes.
Just a little bit more advanced than the apes.
But we’re still just animals.
And doing research for an assignment for school, I came across some different
environmentalist groups.
And one in particular that was noticing the fact that, the, I shouldn’t say the fact
because it’s not a fact.
But they were holding to the idea that since,
man is just an evolved species, then we should treat animals the same way we would treat
our children.
I’m sorry, but there’s a difference.
There’s a big difference.
Jesus explicitly says you are worth far more than many sparrows, making the point that if
God knows when one sparrow falls, do you not think He cares so much more about you?
About what’s going on in your life, about what struggles you are facing, about what you
need?
as we consider God’s place and man’s place and what God has done for man, are left with
one realization.
Truly, man is honored and that is the next point we will discuss today.
Man is honored.
Looking back at Psalm chapter eight, we know.
Note verse 5.
uh For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory
and honor.
Man is honored by being a little bit lower than the angels, being made a little lower than
the angels.
Now this word angels is very interesting because if you were to look up the word, it’s
actually the word Elohim.
Now for those who have done a little bit of dabbling in Hebrew, you’ll know that Elohim is
a word for the nature of God, for the divine nature.
The psalmist is not saying we’re a little bit lower than the messengers of God.
No, he’s saying that we’re a little bit different in nature, a little bit lower in nature
than God.
And does this not tie in exactly with how man is described as being made in the image of
God?
Now, of course, don’t get me wrong.
There are differences, very key differences between man and God, and that’s why the
psalmist says lower than.
We are not the same as God, nor will we ever be the same as God in terms of His power and
might and authority.
But the point remains that man has an immortal soul.
Man was given free will.
Man is finite, however.
Instead of being finite, God is infinite, infinite.
He is eternal, not having any beginning and not having any end.
Man is limited in power and in knowledge, but God has all power, all knowledge, all
authority.
But nevertheless, man is honored the same.
It is an honor for a man to have even a semblance of the nature of God.
The man is also honored by being crowned with glory and honor.
Did you know that you share a special relationship with Christ?
Despite being divine, despite being deity, Christ chose to humble himself.
Philippians 2 tells us that he became as a man.
He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking
upon himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in
fashion as a man.
Notice this, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross.
We sometimes sing the song, if that isn’t love, the ocean is dry.
There’s no stars in the sky and the sparrow can’t fly.
If that isn’t love, then heaven’s a myth.
There’s no feeling like this if that isn’t.
We share a very special relationship with Christ as he came to earth to live like a man,
unfortunately to die like a dog for our sins, for the guilt, the sins that I deserved
punishment for, that we deserve.
He took our place.
John 316 tells us, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
We noted in Bible class this morning in the new converts class how that the theme of the
Bible is Christ.
Start in Genesis and end in Revelation and what do you see the entire way through Christ?
The Old Testament says Christ is coming.
Salvation is coming, it’s on its way.
The New Testament says, here he is.
Now what are you going to do about it?
Christ not only robed Himself in flesh and died for a man, but He also serves as our
advocate.
1 John 2, 1 tells us this very plainly, that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous.
But it doesn’t stop there.
He also, and this is something that is so powerful, the fact that in Hebrews chapter 2 and
verse 11, Christ says that He is not ashamed.
Call us.
physical, weak, mortal man, his brethren.
That’s powerful.
That is love.
but we also note that we have glory and honor because we have a home prepared for us.
John 14 tells us this very plainly, that Jesus left this earth to go and prepare a place
for us.
Not on this earth, not on some rejuvenated, renovated earth that some people are claiming.
No, he went to heaven to go prepare a place for us in heaven where we will be with God for
all of eternity.
unshackled from this physical world, no longer held to the issues that come with being in
a mortal existence, but to be with God forever and rest.
Truly, man is honored.
But you wanna know the wonderful thing?
The psalmist doesn’t end there.
We note next that man is ordained.
Look with me at verses 6 through 8.
Psalm 8, 6 through 8.
Thou made us him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.
Thou has put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the
field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passes through the
paths of the sea.
Man was given dominion by God over this earth.
And some of them will ask the question, well, what does it mean that man has dominion?
What does dominion mean?
The term that’s used dominion here has the idea of to reign, to be superior in power,
authority, and dominion as a governor.
In other words, God gave us rule over this earth
but with an asterisk, if you will.
While we are to have dominion over this world, we have one to whom we will give an account
the Lord.
The earth is the Lord’s, we are told very plainly in Exodus 9.29.
He created this world.
It belongs to Him just as the fact that man was created by God and belongs to Him.
The world was created by God and it belongs to Him.
But He gave us authority as a king would give a steward.
in times of monarchies and things of that nature, you would have a king who would go away
maybe to war, maybe uh for some other reason, and he would leave the kingdom in the hands
of a steward.
Well, that steward had the authority that the king possessed.
As long as the king was gone, he had that authority, but when the king came back, he had
to give an account for how he had used that authority.
He had to give an account for what he had done, and the same is true for us today.
2 Corinthians 5 10 tells us very plainly that we will be giving an account of the things
done in our body whether they be good or bad whether they be worthless or useful
We have to make sure that what we are doing is honoring God, no matter if we’re dealing
with this physical world or if we’re dealing with our own selves and our spiritual state,
we need to make sure that what we are doing in this body is God honoring, is glorifying to
our Lord.
But we ask the question, I forgot to advance the slide.
We ask the question, was the earth given to man or was man given to the earth?
Now, you might be saying, what on earth are you talking about there, Jacob?
We have many today who try to claim that we need to bow to the whims of nature.
We need to bow to the changing of seasons, to the…
In other words, man is the problem, to put it simply.
While I won’t bore you with the quotes that could be given,
of environmentalist groups and others.
I do want to note one particular quote, and this is from Bill Gates.
He says, first we’ve got population.
Now keep in mind he’s talking about the idea of excess carbon emissions.
But notice what he says.
First we’ve got population.
The world today has 6.8 billion people.
That’s headed up to about 9 billion.
Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare, reproductive health services,
we could, know what he says next, lower that.
We could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15%.
This was said on national television in 2010, February of 2010.
He was advocating to kill man, to quote, save the planet.
We cannot allow that thought to enter.
and to gain any kind of recognition, especially not within the church.
Yes, we are to be good stewards of what God has given us, absolutely.
But ultimately, the earth was given to man to be used to help man, to benefit man, but
also to point us back to God, to show us as we look around at this wonderful creation that
God has blessed us with and say, truly there must be a God who made this earth.
who made all that we see before us.
When we look at the Bible, we note very plainly that God provided for us in this world of
what we need, and He’ll continue to provide for us.
Matthew 6 verses 25 through 34 tell us this very plainly, that if we trust in God, if we
live for God, if we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things,
all the necessities of life will be added unto you.
Note also that man cannot kill the earth.
The humanist will tell you otherwise.
The humanist will say that the earth is being destroyed by man and man is the only one
who’s going to be able to save it.
No deity can save us, we must save ourselves.
Humanist manifesto two.
But Genesis 822 tells us that see time harvest all the seasons they’re going to continue
until God says for them to stop.
Not man.
Man doesn’t have that authority.
And in 2nd Peter 3 verses 10 through 12 we are told that the world will be destroyed when
God says for it to be destroyed.
And despite what some say, it’s not coming back.
we have an awesome responsibility to be good stewards, to live for the Lord as best as we
can, to serve him as faithfully as we can.
But in that responsibility, there is a great and wonderful expression of God’s love and
his care for man.
What is man?
Man is recognized as being lower than God, yet he is honored by God.
He is ordained by God.
Mankind is such an amazing creature.
Despite being so small in comparison to the rest of this world, God cares deeply for us.
And when we examine how much God has blessed us, when we examine what we are to God and
what God and who God truly is, we are left with only one response as the psalmist
concludes in verse 9, Lord, our Lord.
How excellent is thy name in all the earth.
Is His name excellent in your eyes today?
We ask the question as we began, what is a woman?
What is a man?
But you know, there’s a more important question than that.
The most important question that we can ask is what must I do?
What must I do to be saved?
As you see behind me, it’s very simple.
God didn’t make his plan for salvation complicated.
But the choice has to be yours.
No one can force you.
question that comes to each of us, the choice that each of us must make is will we stand
ready to receive our God?
Will we stand ready to be called up to heaven with Him?
To meet the Lord in the air and thus shall we ever be with the Lord.
Are you ready?
meet your God.
If not, then please let us help you.
Let us assist you in becoming ready to meet the Lord and becoming ready to face Judgment
Day.
If we can assist, please come forward.
Mark 13 (Lesson 1) – Aaron Cozort – Feb. 04, 2026
Good evening.
It’s good to see those out who are able to get out and hopefully by next week we’ll be
done and rid of all this and not starting another round of it.
But take your Bibles if you will and open them to the book of Mark.
So we close out Mark chapter 12 and into chapter 13.
We’ll begin with a word of prayer, then we’ll get into our class.
Our gracious Father in heaven, we come before your throne, grateful for the day, for its
blessings, for the sunshine that we had and for the clearing of the roads that has
occurred, though we know many still are uh struggling to get out and do so safely.
Lord, we pray that you be with all those who have been impacted by the storms.
especially those who have lost power, those who have had damage to their property and to
their homes as a result of the winter weather.
Lord, we pray that you give them the things that they need and the helping hands around
them and the support that they need in order to recover and to do so fully.
Lord, we pray that you be with those who live with far worse conditions on a daily basis
and struggle through the difficulties of
weather and natural occurrences around them.
We pray that you give them strength and pray also that they might have peace and uh safety
throughout their days.
Lord, we pray that you be with this congregation and with its works, with its labor, with
its evangelism.
We pray that we might always strive to stand for the truth, to speak the truth, to declare
what your word says in sincerity and in truth with love.
Lord, we pray that we might be loving enough to always tell the truth and speak your word
exactly as you gave it.
Lord, we pray that you forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.
We pray for those who deal with the difficulties and the struggles of this life in the
physical sense.
But we pray especially for those who are dealing with the struggle with sin.
We pray that they might have a mindset and a heart willing to repent to come back to you.
and to stand firmly in the truth and in the salvation and the grace that you would have
them to walk in as they walk in the light as you were in the light.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
As you get into chapter 13, remember that you’re dealing with a discussion that in every
record of that discussion, there’s a precursor, there’s initial discussion that happens in
front of it.
You have Matthew 24, which is following of course Matthew 23.
In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus gives a series of woes against the Pharisees.
He pronounces those woes against the Pharisees to declare them to be exactly what the Old
Testament prophets said they would be.
You go to Ezekiel’s prophecies and declarations concerning the evil shepherds in Israel
and the
Good shepherd that God would bring as a result of the evil shepherds in Israel and you
look at the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus points to in Isaiah chapter 29 The entire
context of that is Isaiah 28 29 30 31 in that series of woes where Isaiah pronounces a
series of woes against the leadership in Judah the leadership in
Samaria, that is the leadership of the southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom of
Israel.
pronounces woes against both of them to declare that they are doing that which is evil in
the eyes of God because they are substituting their pride for reliance on God.
They are substituting their doctrines for the Word of God, and they’re substituting all of
these things because they do not want God.
involved in their lives.
They want religion.
Let’s be clear about that.
They were very religious, but they had substituted God for idols.
Or, sorry, idols for God.
And as a result of that, God is, through Isaiah, to pronounce a series of woes, the middle
of which Isaiah says that they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, as Jesus gives
it in the Greek.
They teach for doctrines the commandments of men because they have substituted God’s word
for their teachings, their traditions.
And so they cause people to fear God, not because of what God says, but because of what
they say about what God says.
And if there’s any greater condemnation of denominationalism than that, I don’t know what
it is.
Because denominations,
regularly make it an active uh thing to substitute God’s word and instead put in their
teachings, their traditions, their creeds.
You don’t need to learn what the scripture actually says.
Go learn what the catechisms say.
Don’t memorize the text of scripture.
Go memorize this creed book and go fear God because of what
you read in the creed instead of reading what God actually said and then doing what God
actually said.
Jesus in Matthew chapter 15, Mark chapter 7 draws this point out with a singular example
of you don’t even take care of your own parents.
in spite of the fact that God in the very first Ten Commandments said, you don’t do this,
I will bring judgment on you.
And yet you don’t even take care of your parents, and then you claim you can’t because of
what I say?
When I’m the one who told you, I would judge you if you didn’t.
Now, in Mark chapter 13, Jesus is going to talk about the destruction of Jerusalem and the
destruction of the temple, and every record of that declaration of the destruction of
Jerusalem is set with a precursor of the fact that Israel had denied their allegiance to
God.
And what Jesus is saying is, because you have held on to men’s doctrines instead of God,
because you have actively denied what I have told you to do, because if we use Matthew’s
terminology, I desired as a hen desires to gather her chicks and you would not.
then Jesus makes it clear you chose your judgment.
when God is going to bring judgment on Israel in the form of Rome in AD 70, Jesus
foretelling this before it happens.
God has made it clear this wasn’t God’s decision.
This isn’t what God wanted.
This is what Israel decided because Israel decided to go back on their covenant with God
and to deny his authority over them.
Fulfilled in, pictured in the parables, Jesus describes the wicked vineyard men, the
wicked keepers of the vineyard.
kill even the son of the one who owns the vineyard to try and keep it for themselves.
There, Israel’s the vineyard.
The nation is the vineyard.
God planted it.
God said, this is mine.
God said, I will be your God and you will be my people.
And they came along and said, we can co-op this and we can keep it for ourselves.
And we can kill the son to keep the inheritance.
And God said, no, can’t.
because this is what’s gonna happen.
Okay?
So we get to chapter 13, and you notice as Jesus has spoken concerning the prophecies
concerning the son of David, he says, the Lord said to my Lord, verse 36, or chapter 12,
sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.
That is a direct application.
not to the foreign nations, not to the people who had denied the existence of God that
Paul writes about in Romans chapter one.
That is a direct application to Israel.
They made themselves the enemy of the Son of God.
And God says, you wait, you sit in your seat, you sit as the head of the kingdom.
and you wait and watch and I will bring them down.
Okay?
Now, does it mean that God will ultimately do that to all the enemies of Christ and his
kingdom?
Sure.
Israel’s ultimate fate is not gonna be different than anybody else’s that tries to war
against Christ.
They’re all going to fall.
That’s the point of the book of Revelation.
is that Israel fell.
God prophesied it.
Rome’s gonna fall.
God prophesied it.
Guess what?
The point is everyone else who does the same thing, all gonna end up the same way.
And yet, the direct application to the prophecy of David is in some foreign nation.
It’s not what Israel imagined.
They saw that.
They read that in the Old Testament.
thought Rome is going to bow to us.
And God says, no, you are going to bow to me.
So we find here in chapter 13, then as he, Jesus, went out of the temple, one of his
disciples said to him, teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here?
The disciples…
Had the nature that a lot of us have, if you’ve ever traveled much, but you grew up in a
rural or poor environment, you grew up in a very different way than maybe very opulent,
very rich places in the world, and you go and you walk to some of these places, or you
travel to some of these places, and you start looking at the structures.
You start looking at the opulence.
You start seeing like gold just laid over everything, just sitting there.
You start seeing all of the things that men can construct to declare their own greatness.
And you start going, wow, look at this.
Now, modern days, you would have probably had the disciples with the camera phone with the
temple in the background going, hey, look.
And they’re from Galilee.
They’re fishermen.
The gold they interacted with every day was the little they could get to pay for their
food for the day.
And yet, here they are standing in front of this temple.
And so, I imagine the way I think about this, and this isn’t the text of scripture, this
is the way I think about it.
I think about the disciples probably going, hey, you remember what we read in Exodus about
how the…
uh the tabernacle was made and about the carving and the things that were done with the
tabernacle and then we read in the Old Testament about Solomon and his intricate work in
the temple and that which he built and this may not compare but look at what you have here
that Herod has done for Israel to try and gain favor with Israel and he built this temple
and it was spectacular!
It was the closest thing they had to the Old Testament Scriptures.
And I imagine that probably the disciples had it in that frame of mind, not just glorying
in the temple, but this is what they had been taught about.
This is what they had studied about.
And here they have the closest thing they have to it.
Because they’re showing the stones, the things that make up the temple.
That’s their heritage.
That’s their connection to the Old Testament.
We should probably not just assume that they’re like, wow, look at this, this must be
worth so much money.
oh That’s not the perception you ever get of the disciples.
That’s not the idea of the type of person that Jesus said, hey, you’re gonna walk after
me.
by the way, we’re not gonna have a place to lay our head, we’re not gonna have this, we’re
not gonna have that.
That’s not the description you read about the disciples.
So in my mind, I think we’re there looking at this from Old Testament, the connection to
God and the intricacy of the things that were done, which are even in a sense glorified in
the Old Testament text.
They talk about the skill of the workers and the people who were able to construct these
things and they did it out of a desire to glorify God.
don’t think that’s necessarily why Herod did it, but they see, teacher, see what manner of
stones and what buildings are here.
And Jesus answered and said to him, do you see these great buildings?
Not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.
as they are focused on the skill and the craftsmanship and the tradesmanship that were
able to construct these glorious structures.
uh You can bet that these type of structures didn’t exist in Galilee.
When Philip said, can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
He wasn’t saying anything, but they got great tradesmen.
This was unlike anything that they had at home.
And they’re looking at it and Jesus said, don’t glory in that.
Don’t glory in the construction.
Don’t glory in the grander of the temple.
Because what I’m telling you is not one stone will be left upon another.
And there’s this reminder that what we see as solid and safe and guaranteed in this life
is that which God says, yeah, there’s no safety there.
There’s no assurance there.
If you put your hope in that, you’re putting it in the wrong place.
Turn back to Isaiah chapter 30.
Hmm
woe to the rebellious children,” he says in chapter 30 verse 1, says the Lord, “‘who take
counsel, but not of me, and who devise plans, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin
to sin.'” Now, there’s a thought pattern here that is worth considering.
When David determined to build the temple,
who decided that it was a good idea?
David did.
Now David ran the idea past who?
Nathan the prophet.
And who determined and told David that it was a good idea?
Nathan the prophet.
Do you notice the connection?
Here’s a national leader talking to a religious leader, neither of which is talking to
who?
God.
Now, the difference between David, Nathan, and the people of Isaiah’s day, the national
and religious leaders of Isaiah’s day, is that Nathan and David both had a heart willing
to be obedient to God when God spoke.
but you move forward to the days of Isaiah, and they’re committing the same transgression,
not caring what the Lord says.
They don’t have a heart to repent.
Notice what he says.
He says that they may add sin to sin who walk to go down to Egypt and have not asked my
advice to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of
Egypt.
Therefore the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame and trust in the shadow of Egypt
shall be your humiliation for his princes are at Zohan and his ambassadors came to Haines.
They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them or be help or benefit, but a
shame and also a reproach.
The burden against the beasts of the south through the land of trouble and anguish, uh
from which came the lioness and the lion, the viper and the fiery flying serpent.
They carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys and their treasures on the humps of
camels to a people who shall not profit.
for the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose therefore I have called have called
her Rahab Hemshebet.” Now, as you go through this text Isaiah is talking about what’s
going to happen when Nebuchadnezzar brings the Babylonians down from the north
and Israel is going to turn around and go, let’s go to the south and make an alliance with
Egypt because the Egyptians hate the Babylonians and we’ll get them to fight one another
and the Egyptians will protect us.
God’s telling Israel, you see that structure down there that looks real sound?
You see that nation down there that looks real powerful?
elsewhere in the text here in this context he says they’re going to be like a reed that
when you lean on it it shatters and punctures and goes right into your hand.
injures you instead of helping you.
You were looking for a walking stick and what you got instead was an injury because what
you saw looked like strength until you leaned on
A lot of us who perhaps at times in our lives have gone hiking in the woods or in the
mountains and thought, you know what, I need a good walking stick.
And so you grab the nearest thing that’s laying on the ground that looks stout, it’s big
and it’s thick and it looks like it’ll hold you.
And then you put your weight on it and it just crumbles.
Cause what?
It’s rotted in the inside.
Okay?
Here’s the picture of what Christ is saying about Israel.
You see the stones?
they look strong.
They’re rotted on the inside.
They are rotten to the core spiritually.
And because of that, all the assurance that you have in this grand structure that looks
like it will stand the test of time, it will be here until generation after generation
after generation comes because they’ve…
It’s been standing for generations.
Surely it will continue.
Crisis.
You go over to Mark chapter 9 and verse 1, and Christ will tell them that some of those
people right then would not taste death till they see the kingdom of God come with power.
But there’s more to that context.
There’s a judgment of Israel in view in the kingdom coming to power.
And here Jesus says, in essence, you’re going to still be around.
You’re going to be able to walk right here.
and you won’t see a temple.
He goes on to say,
Now, or verse 3, now is he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple.
So, in your mind’s eye, imagine here’s the temple mount, then there’s a valley, then
there’s the Mount of Olives.
And as you’re staring from the Mount of Olives, you can see across to the temple.
So, here they are, before they, initially as the scene open, as the chapter open, they’re
right there next to the temple.
Now they’ve left the city, they’ve gone out to the Mount of Olives.
Jesus is now looking back on the temple.
And Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately.
You kind of have the core group among the disciples.
Peter, James, John, Andrew.
By the way, how are these people related to one another?
physically speaking.
Peter and Andrew, brothers.
James and John, brothers.
And by all indications of the scripture text, cousins.
eh Their family.
They also make up the core of the disciples, of the apostles, where Jesus quite often when
he goes off by himself, three of them, excluding Andrew, are quite often the ones who go
with him.
eh
So they come to him and they ask him privately, tell us when will these things be and what
will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled?
Their direct question, by the way, Mark only includes two of the questions, but their
direct question is about what he said when they were standing next to the temple.
And he said, not one stone.
will be left upon another.
But furthermore, you cannot separate that discussion from the prior discussion of the
Pharisees being judged and Jerusalem being judged.
This was a direct prophecy of judgment against the religious leadership, against the city,
against the temple.
They want to know ah when, how, why is this going to occur?
Jesus answering them began to say, take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come
in my name saying I am he and will deceive many.
Jesus first addresses the authority.
The discussion about when doesn’t matter until you realize that you’re not allowed to
listen to everybody who comes along thinking they know when.
that you don’t go with every new idea that gets spouted by someone who thinks they’ve got
some insight into what’s going on, let alone the ones who come saying, I’m the Christ and
I’m coming and here we go.
It is worth realizing that as the days of 87 approached, 8068, 8069, and even prior to
that back in around 8066, you would begin to see Jewish riots.
You would begin to see, because Rome is, that period of time, Rome is in upheaval.
from around AD 63, Nero dies around AD 62, from 63, 64, 65, you have a period of about two
years where you have, I think, four Caesars that come to power and are gone in two years.
And finally, you have Vespasian who is going to come to the throne, the father of Titus,
and he is going to come to the throne in the midst of quelling
Jewish riots and rebellions.
Leading up to these events, the Jews are going to have people coming forth saying, we’re
leading a rebellion against Rome and we’re going to be victorious.
And Jesus says, oh no they’re not.
Don’t throw your lot in with them.
Do not join their party.
Do not give your strength to them.
because they’re not me.
And ultimately what is going to occur is while it looks like Jerusalem and the Israelites
are going to begin to get their own control over their own nation, ultimately what’s going
to be is their own destruction.
So Titus and Vespasian are going to come with the Roman army.
They are going to come to the gates of Jerusalem.
They are going to besiege Jerusalem and then another emperor is going to fall.
Vespasian is going to go back to Rome to take over the empire.
Titus and the army is going to pull back from Jerusalem during which all the Christians
leave.
And you’re gonna see why.
in the text because as Vespasian gets control over the civil war going on in Rome, he is
going to redirect all of the attention to the Jews.
Because if you have a war at home, the best way to get civil rest at home is to find a
different enemy to fight and get everybody together to go fight that enemy.
Titus is going to come back in AD 70 and he is going to, as the son of Caesar now, he is
going to wipe Jerusalem off the map.
Okay?
Keep that in mind as you’re reading these words because every bit of this is Old Testament
terminology couched in the fall of a nation.
And these are the words that tell you what the Old Testament prophets had said and what is
ultimately coming to pass in the form of Jerusalem in 8070.
But Jesus first warned them, be careful of the authority you follow.
Anybody claiming to be me, anybody claiming to be the Messiah, anybody who’s leading a
revolt saying we’re going to overthrow Rome and we’re going to again establish national
sovereignty, don’t follow them.
They’re not me.
He goes on to say, for many will come in my name saying I am he and will deceive many.
But when you hear of wars,
and rumors of wars do not be troubled for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.
Now, when you come to this text, you’re going to find people, especially if you listen to
general popular opinion, you’re gonna find people going end means end of time.
And you must be insistent on letting the text dictate what the text means.
Wait a minute, did it say end of time?
Or did say the end?
Now the end of what has previously been discussed in the direct context?
Jerusalem?
What else?
There’s three things.
The temple?
and the authority of the Pharisees and the religious leaders.
Okay?
The religious leaders, the temple, and Jerusalem.
Those three things are the immediate context.
And until you find something in the text that redirects the attention away from the
immediate discussion to something else, you must interpret the end to be in view of the
immediate context.
and the end of time is not in view.
Certainly not in the book of Mark.
We’ll leave the discussion of Matthew for another time.
He says, but when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled for such things
must happen, but the end is not yet.
For nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be
earthquakes in various places.
and there will be famines and troubles.
These are the beginning of sorrows.
Now you can go back to history, we could outline every single one of these, but we won’t
for the second time, and you can see in the 8060s a series of events.
You have national troubles inside Rome.
You have earthquakes going on that totally disrupted many of the things in the Roman
Empire.
You have event after event after event all wrapped up right there.
in the 80s, 60s and beginning leading up to 80, 70.
Which by the way, have you heard of any earthquakes in the last 20 years?
Any massive ones?
Any nation affecting ones?
Is that terribly abnormal?
No, not in history at all.
It’s not abnormal at all.
I tell you what, I know what’s been terribly abnormal.
All the wars, right?
You know, I think back to my childhood and every war that I heard about on television and
every war we were never told about on the news that now only as an adult you start reading
history and you start going, wait a minute, the ones that we were told about were smaller
than the ones we were never told about.
Like, I don’t remember all the times Mao showed up on the news.
There’s a number of people that Mao killed in China just dwarfed everything that ever
happened in Vietnam.
But where was it on news?
It wasn’t on the news.
Why?
didn’t affect.
We weren’t there.
We weren’t party to it.
But what’s the point?
This is the normal state of humanity.
But when people start listening and they start seeing and they start…
interpreting the times, they’re saying, wait a minute, look at this.
Wait a minute, look at this.
Well, what about this?
And they start trying to formulate some sort of grand idea about the end of time.
Jesus said, people are going to start telling you things and they’re going to start
troubling you with ideas and they’re going to start giving you indications that they know
what’s coming.
So I’m arming you in advance.
I’m telling you in advance what’s coming and what to pay attention to and what not to.
Walker.
Absolutely.
We are incredibly myopic in history.
Every time that we’re living through it, it’s different than every other generation that’s
lived through the same thing.
This happened in the 1910s when World War I was occurring.
You can go back and look at the religious writers of the time and they’re saying end of
times coming, end of times coming, end of times, Christ is going to return any moment now.
And then you skip forward 20 years and in the 1930s and Hitler rises, end of times coming,
end of times coming, all these things.
They’re always pointing back to the book of Revelation and the Matthew 24.
And they’re saying, look, look, it’s happening.
When in reality, Jesus is saying, what I’m telling you is to ignore all those people.
pay attention to who I tell you to pay attention to.
Now notice what else.
He says, these are the beginning of sorrows.
And this terminology here is birth pangs.
Okay?
For the person in the room who’s recently had a child.
When those physical tremors start occurring, you start realizing that
The time is approaching.
Jesus says, yeah, you’re gonna see it.
You’re gonna know what’s coming, but you’re going to know because God told you what’s
coming.
Not because of all these rumors and all of these things that are going on around you and
being spread.
He says, these are the beginnings of sorrow, but watch out for yourselves, for they will
deliver you up to councils and you will be beaten in the synagogues.
You will be brought before rulers and kings for my sake for a testimony to them.
Jesus tells his disciples, in between now and this time of judgment that I’m talking
about, you’re coming under fire.
And you’re going to come under fire from the exact same people who are going to claim that
they are the salvation for Israel.
You’re going to be brought under judgment.
You’re going to be brought before the Gentile kings.
You’re going to be brought and you’re going to be beaten and you’re going to be…
and all of this is going to happen to you at the hand of Israel.
when you go look at Paul’s missionary journeys.
Was it the Gentile soldiers who were constantly trying to kill Paul?
No.
It was the Jewish religious leaders.
Paul in Jerusalem, having been arrested, found refuge among the Gentile soldiers from the
Jews who wanted to kill him.
And that’s exactly what Jesus tells them is coming.
All of this was a picture to help the disciples realize Israel is not your future.
that when Christ came to establish a kingdom, it was not the kingdom of Israel.
When Jesus came to establish His kingdom, yes, He is the Son of David.
Yes, He is going to reign on the throne forever, exactly as the Old Testament prophesied.
but not on national Israel’s terms.
Not on a nation of Israel.
So Paul will write in the book of Romans, they are not all Israel who are of Israel.
His emphasis, his point is, if they would be obedient to God, they would be Israel.
They would be the descendants of Abraham.
They would be the children of Abraham.
They would be the ones who inherited not only his flesh and his blood, but his faith.
but they’re not.
Paul would write over in Romans chapter 10,
Romans chapter 10 and in verse 1.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” Now,
Paul’s writing this maybe around 51, 52 AD, 20 years before Jerusalem’s gone.
And Paul says, I cannot express to you beyond saying God is my witness, if you go
throughout the rest of the text, that my desire for Israel is that they might be saved.
He says, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge, for being ignorant of God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted.
to the righteousness of God.
and that phrase in chapter 10 verse 4.
tells you Jerusalem has to fall.
The temple has to crumble.
Nothing will be left.
Notice what he says, for Christ is the end of the law.
Would the law end if the temple remained?
Would the priesthood end if the temple remained?
No.
Paul is foreshadowing this, making it clear that the Old Testament had declared that this
was going to happen, that this should not be a surprise.
because as Israel is judged the question is going to be, well wait a minute, I thought
Israel was God’s people.
Is God gone?
Does God not care about his people anymore?
Do remember what Moses argued to the Lord when the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai that he
needed to get down from the mountain because God was going to wipe the people out and
start over again?
What did Moses argue?
On behalf of Israel.
Absolutely.
Moses made the plea before God, if you do this, the nations around are going to look at
this and say you were powerless to deliver them, so you killed them.
Moses argues that the world is going to observe this action, and the world is going to
declare that either God is not just, or God is impotent.
while God is saying, know, Moses from these rocks, I can raise up another people like
Israel.
all these centuries down the road, you find God saying, that rebellious people that never
would submit to me, never would be faithful to me.
their time has run out and my long suffering is over.
All right, we’ll pick up here in Mark chapter.
Revelation 5 (Lesson 2) – Aaron Cozort – Feb. 08, 2026
Good morning.
m
Take your Bibles, if you will, and open them to Revelation chapter 5.
Feels kind of like it’s been two months since we were in this study, though it hasn’t been
quite that long, but it’s been close due to travel and then snow, ice, and all the other
things.
But it is good to see everyone here this morning.
Good to have our visitors with us.
We appreciate your presence.
We’re going to begin ah with our class on the book of Revelation right after we open with
a word of prayer.
So if everyone will bow with me, we’ll go to our Heavenly Father in prayer.
Our gracious Father in heaven, bow before your throne.
grateful for the day that you’ve blessed us with, for the life that you have granted to
us, for the opportunities that we have, the strength and the energy that we have to be
able to come out this morning and to assemble together with people who are faithful to
you, obedient to your will, willing to speak the truth and hold and stand fast and firm
with the doctrine that you have given to us in the New Testament.
We pray we might always
provoke one another to love and to good works.
We pray that we might be willing to allow your word to dwell in us richly, that we might
have all things to enjoy.
Lord, we pray that you be with those who are dealing with the loss of loved ones and those
who are mourning and grieving, those who are seeking to recover from illness or from
injury or from surgery.
Lord, we pray that you be with each and every one of these individuals.
We also pray for those who deal with chronic issues that
have no real significant hope uh of being cured or changing.
We pray that you give them strength each and every day that is a challenge in front of
them.
Lord, we know that the greatest thing that we struggle with in this world isn’t illness,
it’s not death, it’s sin.
And Lord, we pray that you will forgive those who are willing to repent of the sins that
they have committed, those who are willing to be obedient to your word and do what you
would have them to do.
we thank you for your Son who came and died on the cross for our sins that we might have
the salvation that is found in His blood and the hope of the resurrection for those who
overcome this world.
We pray that you be with us as we go throughout this study.
May the things that we read in this book be those things which we can understand and apply
to our lives that we might be encouraged and convicted and brought forward to an
understanding of your Word and what you would
us to do with it.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
just to review a little bit.
Book of Revelation.
Is it primarily a straightforward book written in normal, ordinary prose language, or is
it a highly figurative visual book written in visionary language?
All right, it’s a visual book.
written in visionary language and we don’t have to guess that because the text tells us
that.
because John introduces the text by writing that the things which were given in this book
were given and they were signified.
They were, as my teacher always used to it, they were signified.
And he would use the term signified instead of signified, number one, because that’s just
the way it’s spelled, but because when we drive down a road, we see a sign and it has no
words on it.
You know, down in the south, we’ve got this sign where there’s a picture of a deer
leaping.
You know, we all know what it means.
Now, not everybody who’s not from here knows what it means.
There was a comedian years ago who said he moved here from California and the first thing
he saw was a sign with a deer jumping onto the road.
He’s like, why don’t you build a wall?
Build a fence.
Keep them off the road.
But we see a picture on a sign and we know what it means.
But.
We don’t know what it means because it says what it means.
We know what it means because we interpret the picture and understand the picture, okay?
Also experience, prior knowledge, all of those things come into play to understand the
picture, okay?
Now, it’s a visionary book.
Does that mean that every statement, everywhere in the book is visionary language?
Not at all.
ah It means that we should.
we should default to visionary language unless the text clearly tells us in the context
that the statements that are being made and the area around that statement are intended to
be understood literally.
So when you’re dealing with the text of scripture in general, this is how you do it.
You assume that the text is literal.
in the majority of the Bible unless the context tells you it’s figurative.
Except for in visionary portions of the Bible, of which there are numerous ones, for
instance the latter part of Daniel, some of the passages in Ezekiel, some of the passages
in Isaiah, some of the passages that Jesus gives by way of parables or prophecies, and the
book of Revelation.
In those passages, you do the opposite.
You assume that it is figurative, visionary, unless the text tells you it’s literal, okay?
You just flip-flop.
And we do this all the time in ordinary language.
When you open up a book of poetry, you quite often are going to start the poem assuming
that it’s primarily a figurative language scenario because of the nature of poetry, all
right?
won’t beat that horse too much to death.
When we get into chapter four, we’ve had the introduction to the book, Jesus has told John
what he’s doing with the writing, Jesus begins to deliver the messages to the seven
churches of Asia Minor, and then we get into chapter four and John is invited into heaven.
He is invited into the vision and he is shown a door.
and he goes through the door and he enters into the throne room of God.
Now, he doesn’t enter into heaven, the throne room of God, as experienced by a spiritual
being in eternity.
He enters into a vision that a fleshly person could understand, okay?
Because that’s who it’s written to.
John is going to be the one who tells us over in 1 John chapter 3 that when we get to
eternity we don’t even know what we’re going to be like.
We just know we’re going to be like Christ, for we’ll see him as he is.
So the same writer that writes Revelation is the same writer that, inspired by the Holy
Spirit, says, I don’t know what heaven’s going to be like.
That tells you that the vision is not to be interpreted as this is a description of the
experience of heaven.
It tells you that this is a vision that is to communicate something to people who are
alive and still in the flesh.
So he sees the throne.
He sees the one who is on the throne, though he doesn’t describe him.
He sees the glory and the power emanating from the throne of God.
And then he sees before the throne the seven spirits of God.
He sees before the throne the sea of glass.
He sees before the throne
the 24 elders that are surrounding the throne on their thrones and they have on their
heads the crown of conquerors.
And all the time, as he also sees four beasts before the throne, all exhibiting the power
and the judgment of God and the all-seeing nature of God.
He sees that anytime the four beasts decry or cry out, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who
was and who is and who is to come, that those twenty-four elders cast their crowns down
before the throne of God and they praise God together with the beasts and they say to God
who is sitting on the throne, You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and
power, for you created all things and by your will
They exist and were created.
I don’t know that I mentioned this when we were in this text.
But if anyone were to throw out the book of Genesis and its creation record, you got to
throw out the book of Revelation.
And you also have to throw out the testimony of the elders who are described as sitting
around the very throne of God because they declare twice that God’s the creator and that
He created everything that exists.
exactly as he said he did and because he is the creator he’s worthy of worship.
So not only have you declared that God’s wrong, that Moses was wrong, that John was wrong,
that the 24 elders around the throne were wrong, but you’ve also declared that God’s not
worthy of worship.
Seems to be a problem.
If you want to deny what the Bible says about creation,
Chapter 5 opens, and we mentioned at the beginning of chapters 4 and 5 that this really
could be summed up in what Jesus says in John chapter 14 when he says to the disciples,
you believe in God, believe also in me.
That’s really the testimony of Revelation 4 and 5.
God is on the throne.
He has not ceded his power to Rome.
He has not given his power over to those who are going to persecute the church.
And Jesus Christ
is worthy of the same glory, the same honor, and the same praise as the one who sits on
the throne.
Because he is not dead, he is not in the grave, he was slain, but he is alive forevermore.
So we begin in chapter 5 verse 1, we’re just going to read through to get down to the text
where we were at, grab the context.
I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the
back, sealed with seven seals.
Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll
and to loose its seals.
And no one in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the scroll or
to look at it.
So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at
it.
But one of the elders said to me, Do not weep.
Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed to open the
scroll and to loose its seven seals.
And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and
in the midst of the elders stood a lamb, as though it had been slain, having seven horns
and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.”
Then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne.
So the picture, John has been looking at the throne, he’s been seeing the vision, and this
helps you understand.
John sees things in a sequence in the vision.
Because John’s going to see the entire throne in chapter four, he’s gonna see all the
things that around the throne in chapter four, suddenly chapter five opens and they’re
looking for somebody who can open the scroll.
but he didn’t see the scroll in chapter four.
He sees the scroll in chapter five, something new has shown up.
Then, looking around and he witnesses in just the idea, in a moment, in a flash of eye,
they search heaven, they search earth, they search the realm of the dead, they search
everywhere for anyone worthy to open the seal.
There’s nobody.
John begins to weep.
One of the elders comes to him and says, John, don’t weep, we found him.
He looks back at the throne and now right there at the throne where he’s already looked,
not only is there a scroll, but in the midst of the four living creatures there’s a lamb.
And the lamb looks like he’s been slain.
He looks like a dead lamb except he’s standing up,
but he also looks like the lion of the tribe of Judah.
And yet, when he describes him as the one who takes the scroll, he doesn’t say it.
He doesn’t use a pronoun to describe an animal.
He says what?
He.
The lamb who was slain and is alive.
The lion of the tribe of Judah is a person.
And yet when John sees him, he sees him as a lamb who has a head with seven eyes and seven
horns.
Now, when they offered the sacrifice in the Old Testament of the atoning lamb on the Day
of Atonement…
Did it have any horns?
No, was the lamb of the first year.
But this lamb has some attack and defense ability.
And this lamb sees everything.
Now, by the way, have you noticed how many pictures you see of the Holy Spirit without any
description of the Holy Spirit?
You have the Spirit being represented as the seven candlesticks before the throne of God.
You have the Spirit represented
in multiple different occasions all throughout these chapters.
Now you have the spirit represented as directly attached to the work of the lamb because
he’s the eyes and the horns of the lamb.
What’s the point?
The function of the Spirit is to act on behalf of the Lamb.
The function of the Spirit is to act on behalf of the one who sits on the throne.
It doesn’t mean that the Spirit is any less uh lesser of a being, any lesser in the nature
of its deity, but that it functions in the vision on behalf of the Lamb, on behalf of the
one who sits on the throne.
Now that’s not news to us.
In John chapter 16, Jesus told his disciples that he was going away so that he could send
who?
The comforter.
And specifically tells them it’s the Holy Spirit of God.
And he says, if I don’t depart, he can’t come.
He says, so I’m going away, but I’m not going to leave you alone.
The Spirit acts on behalf of the Lamb.
The Spirit acts on behalf of the one who sits on the throne.
Verse 7 says, then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the
throne.
Now when he had taken the scroll, remember the spiritual beings in the vision had searched
everywhere, everywhere in heaven, no one worthy to open the scroll.
Everywhere on earth, no one worthy to open the scroll.
not the greatest king, not the greatest prince, not the greatest orator, not the greatest
apostle, none of them were worthy to open the scroll.
They searched the grave.
No one from Adam and Eve forward who had ever lived and died was worthy to open the
scroll.
David wasn’t worthy to open the scroll.
Abraham wasn’t worthy to open the scroll.
Noah wasn’t worthy to open the scroll.
Moses wasn’t worthy to open the scroll.
Moses was a lawgiver and he wasn’t worthy to open the scroll.
Not Isaiah, not Jeremiah, not Elijah, none of them.
lamb was.
So notice now when he had taken the scroll the four living creatures and the 24 elders
fell down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of the saints.
There’s a long-standing discussion that I don’t want to divert off into a rabbit hole, but
I think the book of Revelation settles the discussion.
Are we only authorized to worship God the Father?
Or are we authorized to worship, God the Father, and Christ the Son?
Are we also worthy to worship, God the Spirit?
The book of Revelation tells you the answer.
Because if the beings in heaven are authorized to worship the Lamb, and they do.
And if John is told specifically that he can worship the Lamb, but he must not worship an
angel, and he must not worship an elder, which in the vision twice he sees himself doing,
but he is worthy to be praised as the Lamb, then the discussion is settled.
The book of Revelation testifies that Jesus Christ stands equal with God the Father,
therefore he is worthy of praise.
And in Revelation 5, notice what’s going to happen.
They sang a new song saying, are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.
for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood.” We know exactly who this
is.
It’s the Redeemer.
It’s the one who shed His blood.
It’s the one who died for us.
It’s Christ.
Notice they say, “‘Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation and have made us
kings and priests to our God and we shall reign on the earth.'” And then I look.
and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the
elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of
thousands.
If you’re going to run the math on that, you take the ten thousand, you multiply it by ten
thousand more, then you multiply it by thousands of thousands.
How many you got?
An innumerable number.
That’s the point.
You remember when God tells Abraham to go look at the stars of the heaven?
And he says that your descendants will be as the stars of heaven as is the sand of the
seashore.
He’s not suggesting that Abraham take up a new hobby of counting the stars.
He’s not suggesting that he take up a new hobby of counting the sand.
He’s saying, just trust me, you won’t be able to number them.
How many did he have at that moment?
Zero.
God says, I’ve got this.
To the Christians.
God says, you’re not alone.
and the testimony comes from an innumerable number.
that the one who you serve is alive and reigning right now.
Okay?
Now notice what they say.
Those 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands say with a loud voice, worthy is the
lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength.
and honor and glory and blessing.
If the lamb who was slain is worthy of all of those things, how could you categorize in
one word all of those things if you couldn’t categorize it by the word worship?
That’s exactly what they’re doing.
They are praising Him who is worthy of worship.
and every creature which is in heaven or on the earth or under the earth and such as are
in the sea and all that are in them I heard saying blessing and honor and glory and power
be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.
Everything the Old Testament tells us declares the glory of God, Psalm 19.
And Revelation is far more specific when it says everything.
Every creature, everything that is created declares the glory of Christ.
And then the four living creatures said, Amen.
And the 24 elders fell down and, whoa, wait, what?
What’s the text say?
worshipped him who lives forever and ever.” Now which of the two does that apply to?
Both.
That’s the point.
You worship one, you worship the other.
And by the way, lest we leave it out, when they worshiped the Lamb, what third person in
the Godhead was represented in the picture of the Lamb in both His eyes and His horns?
Spirit.
Jesus will say in Matthew chapter 28, all authority has been given unto me in heaven and
on earth.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit.
They have the same authority.
They have the same nature.
They are worthy of praise.
Now, here’s what I don’t think we should do, then I’m leave this topic alone.
I don’t think we should spend a whole lot of time differentiating them in worship.
Why?
Because the text of scripture doesn’t.
When creation opens, what do we read?
In the beginning,
Elohim, plural, created the heavens and the earth.
Now throughout the text of scripture we have told to us and differentiated to us,
especially in the New Testament, once Jesus comes on the scene, the part that the second
person in the God had played in contrast to the part that the Father played.
In Hebrews chapter 1 we read that God created all things through
Jesus Christ!
So God spoke, the Son created.
the Holy Spirit recorded.
But when we worship and we worship God, that’s enough.
but we should understand that when we read in the beginning, God, we’re reading about all
three.
Chapter 6 opens.
Chapter four, God is on the throne, God the Father.
He’s on the throne.
He hasn’t moved.
He’s not going away.
His power is universal.
Christ is before the throne.
He’s at the right hand of the Father, exactly where he was when Stephen was stoned.
Exactly where he said he was returning to.
Exactly where the book of Daniel said he was going back.
in Daniel chapter 17 verses 13 and 14.
He’s right where he said he would be 600 years before he was born.
And now there’s a revelation from the very hand of God the Father who sits on the throne.
The only problem is it’s sealed.
You go back to the book of Daniel.
Daniel’s given these visions.
Daniel doesn’t understand.
And Daniel’s told, seal up the visions.
The time’s not yet.
John is told the time is at hand and now the vision, the seals, are about to be opened.
There’s this revelation.
John wants to know what it says.
Jesus says, hold on a minute, I got you.
and he begins to open the seals.
Now, if you were to, I don’t know I’ve got a picture this, if you were to break up the
book into an outline form, and I don’t have a picture of the outline, but I’ll get you one
probably by next week, you would see seven seals being opened.
Then you would see a series of judgments, of which there are seven.
Then you would see another series of judgments which are really the seven previous ones
except the seven previous ones were partials and now these are complete judgments.
And what you have is the events being transpired of the seal, first seal, second seal,
third seal, fourth seal, fifth seal, sixth seal, seventh seals open and everything else
that takes place in the book happens inside the seventh seal.
Then you have the partial judgments being transpiring, and when you have the pouring out
of the last partial judgment, you have the final judgments commence.
The book is given in an outline.
Preachers ought to love it.
The only problem is it’s not given in a three-point outline.
It’s given in a seven-point outline.
And the majority of the book is in the seventh point, because we’re gonna deal with the
first six seals in this chapter.
Alright, chapter 6 is the first six seals being opened.
We begin with chapter 6 verse 1, now I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals and I
heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, come and see.
You’re read that terminology again and again.
John is being shown these things.
So, if you were to think about it in a literal sense, what’s on the scroll?
in a literal sense, what would we say would be on the scroll?
Words, handwriting.
Except the words are turned into visions because the moment the scroll is open, John is
told to look at what happens.
Kind of reminds me of uh what was the uh kids’ show back when I was growing up with the
dog that would
you know, escorts you into a story book, right?
Or reading Rainbow.
You start, you begin it with somebody reading the book and then it goes into some animated
version of the book, right?
John is going to hear it, but he’s going to see it.
Because it’s a picture, all right?
So, he says, or one of the four living creatures says to him, come and see.
And I look.
and behold a white horse.
He who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and
to conquer.” Have you ever heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse?
What is the apocalypse first?
We covered this way back at beginning of the book.
It is the Greek word for the book Revelation.
So they’re saying the four horsemen of the book of Revelation.
Except usually when you have pictured the four horsemen of the apocalypse, all four of
them are evil.
You should not take too many of the world’s ideas about the book of Revelation and give
them any credit whatsoever.
because the first one of these horsemen is not evil.
16 times in the book of Revelation the color white is used.
15 times.
It’s definitively used to describe holiness.
If we were to interpret the first horseman as being an enemy of God, we would be saying
that this is the one place in the entire book where white is used to describe something
and is not holy.
Now, is there anything in the text that tells us that white here does not represent
holiness like it does everywhere else?
No.
The only place you’ll find that is in the figments of human’s imaginations.
This is a holy person going out to conquer.
Furthermore, when you go over to Revelation chapter 19, you will find a picture of Christ
and He is riding a white horse.
And He is followed by many who are on horses.
But when the forces that oppose God go out to fight, they are described as going out to
fight Him who rides on the white horse.
Now, over in 19, he’s pictured with a sword.
Here, he’s pictured with a bow.
you might go, why above?
Well, I think Jim McGuigan’s concept on this actually holds some water.
There were some enemies of Rome that by and large, Rome didn’t fear very many nations.
Rome didn’t lose to very many nations.
But there was one nation that they did.
One of the generals in the time of Julius Caesar went out and lost 20,000 soldiers in one
battle.
and this nation was represented and pictured throughout history as horse riders with bows.
John looks into the vision.
And we can have lots of discussion about what all of it means, but remember, we’re
supposed to back up and look at the picture.
And the first thing that happens in the scroll.
is a picture of Christ going forth conquering.
Now let’s see if we can find that in the New Testament.
When Jesus Christ ascended back to the Father, what did Jesus tell his apostles was going
to happen next?
He said they needed to wait somewhere.
Where did they need to wait?
Jerusalem, until what happened?
till they were in dude with power from on high.
Then he said they will become witnesses where.
He says, you will become witnesses of me in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to
what?
The uttermost part of the earth.
For three and a half years, Jesus has been ministering and teaching and preaching inside
the nation of Israel.
Very little time spent going outside, very little time spent with the Gentiles, a little
bit of time spent with the Samaritans, but by and large, inside the nation of Israel.
when Jesus Christ sends to the Father, that’s all about to change.
Now it’s going to take persecution to move the Christians out of Jerusalem.
But once the persecution begins after Stephen is stoned, then what do you see?
The Christians go what?
Everywhere preaching the Word.
And even while the apostles remain in Jerusalem, Christians start going out.
And then Paul, Saul of Tarsus is converted, and so then Saul begins to go forth.
And what happens?
The Gospel that was once in this small little place starts growing, and growing, and
growing, and growing.
And did Satan
just stand back and say, well, it’ll fizzle out.
Not at all.
Everywhere it grew, persecution came.
But everywhere the persecution came, it grew more.
Chapter 6 opens.
First seal opens.
And the Holy One who’s sitting on the throne is conquering.
he’s going out and he’s winning okay
Back in Revelation chapter two and three.
John writes to those churches.
and he tells them you’re about to go into persecution.
You are about to be put through the wringer.
But don’t you worry, your master’s already won.
As the seal begins to open, master’s winning.
Then notice, he says, a crown was given to him.
Now again, we’ve already differentiated in the Greek, there’s two different words for
crown.
One is a diadem, that’s the crown of a king.
The other is a crown of a conqueror.
This is a conqueror’s crown.
It’s not saying that he’s not the king.
It means he went out, he conquered, he was victorious.
And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, come and
see.
And another horse, fiery red, went out, and it was granted to one who sat on it to take
peace from the earth, that the people should kill one another, and there was given to him
great sword.
Here comes another horse, this one fiery red.
and war and destruction comes on the earth.
Does it tell you who it came from?
No.
It just tells you it comes.
Does it tell you that it’s the Russian army invading?
No.
It tells you that war comes.
Okay?
when he opened the third seal.
I heard the third living creature say, and see.
So I looked and behold a black horse.
And he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.
In this day and time, what were scales used for?
Trade, monetary transactions.
You had a pound of butter on one side and a pound of something else to measure it on the
other.
You had gold on one side and some measurement for the gold on the other.
This is economic disruption.
You’ve got war disruption.
You’ve got economic disruption.
But notice what else.
He heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a
denarii and three quarts of barley for a denarius.
And do not harm the oil and the wine.
Prices going up.
affecting everybody.
But not everything is affected.
All right?
The picture here is there’s economic disruption, but not extreme economic disruption.
This isn’t people dying in the streets in famine, economic disruption.
This is disruption.
So when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying,
come and see.
So I looked and behold a pale horse.
The idea in the word in the original is a greenish, sick color, okay?
It’s not like a pale horse like we think of today, like a pimento or something like that.
No, no, no, no, this is a sickly looking, like you look at this horse and you go, wow.
That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.
everything about it looks disgusting.
That’s the picture.
He says, uh I lost my spot, verse 7, when he opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of
the fourth living creature saying, and see.
So I looked and behold a pale horse and the name of him who sat on it was Death.
And Hades, that is the grave, followed with him.
and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth to kill with the sword with hunger,
with death, and by the beast of the earth.
So here’s what you’ve got.
You’ve got a holy one going forth.
He’s conquering.
But after he goes forth and begins to conquer, then you’ve got war and disruption coming.
Then you’ve got economic pressures coming.
Then you’ve got
Partial killing.
Why do I say partial killing?
What does the text say?
One fourth, okay?
The idea here is not an exact measurement of the people who died.
When you get in the book of Revelation, whole numbers mean something.
Partial numbers mean something.
They’re a portion of the whole.
So you have death coming forth.
Now you’ve just had chapters two and three where Christ has told the Christians some of
you are going to die.
Some of you are going to be persecuted.
Some of you are going to be tortured.
Some of you are going to be thrown into prison.
What does some mean?
Not all.
So here’s the picture.
Christ goes forth conquering, then wars come, then economic pressure comes, then
persecution comes.
We’re gonna see when we open the fifth seal next week who’s being persecuted and who’s
dying.
Okay?
We’ll leave it here.
What Do I Do When I Hurt – Jacob Kennedy – Feb. 08, 2026
appreciate Aaron leading that song.
It gives us a great reminder.
We all suffer.
We all face hardships and difficulties in our lives.
We all encounter loss and pain.
And it is a comfort to us to know that God didn’t leave us without an understanding.
He didn’t leave us without a plan to deal with grief, to deal with loss.
And so today we want to ask the question, what do I do when I hurt?
How do I respond?
How do I go on with my life when I have lost someone so dear?
From Genesis three and on, mankind faces suffering, faces pain.
This world is no longer a world where there is no suffering.
As a result of man’s sin in the garden, we face loss, we face hardship.
And until the time that the Lord returns, we will face such difficulties.
And so what do we do?
Very, rather, we want to consider three points on this line of thought.
Three ways in which we can deal with hurt, we can deal with pain.
Number one, mourn.
Take the time to mourn.
We must feel this pain.
There are times when we wish to just go on and not feel.
the emotions not feel what we are dealing with.
but we need time to process.
Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 4 we are told there is a time to mourn.
There is a time that needs to be set aside to mourn.
There’s a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to
celebrate, if you will.
In life we face these different times but we need to not shortchange ourselves from taking
the time to
grieve, to feel those emotions, to process what’s just happened.
When we look at 2 Samuel chapter 12, we see David doing just that.
In 2 Samuel 12, starting in verse 15 and going down to verse 23, we have the results of
David and Bathsheba’s sin.
The immediate result is we have Nathan the prophet coming to David and he tells him,
you’ve sinned.
He tells him you’ve done wrong.
And David repents of his sin, of his wrongdoing, but the consequence remains the same.
The consequence of his sin is that his son dies.
And as his son is sick, as his son is dying, David is fasting and praying.
He is grieving and hurting.
He took the time to mourn.
Brethren, we need to understand that mourning looks different for everyone.
Not everyone deals with grief in the same way.
Not everyone faces loss in the same way with David after having his son just died.
After mourning and praying to God and fasting and hurting so deeply, when his son finally
passes away, David gets up.
He rises, he washes himself, he cleans himself up.
He gets presentable as we might say.
And don’t forget the fact that he worships God.
the God who he had as the world would see it every right to blame for his son’s death.
But David understood that the consequence of his sin was that death.
It wasn’t God’s fault.
and David worships the Lord.
He chooses to worship the Lord and to eat.
Keep in mind, as we said, he’s even starving himself.
He’s been fasting and praying, but he takes the time to eat.
But David’s not the only example of mourning we have in the Bible.
In Genesis 37, we find the account of Jacob as he mourns the supposed death of his son,
Joseph.
Look with me there in Genesis 37.
Genesis 37, starting in verse 31.
His sons come to him with uh the tattered remains of Joseph’s coat of many colors.
And they took Joseph’s coat and they killed a kid of the goats and dipped the coat in the
blood.
And they sent the coat of many colors and they brought it to their father and said, this
we have found.
Know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.
And he knew it and said, It is my son’s coat.
An evil beast must have devoured him.
Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
Notice how Jacob mourns here.
And Jacob went rent his clothes and put on sackcloth upon his loins and mourned for his
son many days.
And all his sons and all his daughters rose to comfort him.
But he refused to be comforted.
And he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning.
Thus his father wept.
The example that Jacob sets forth is one of assuming.
He assumed his son was dead.
while his sons are to blame for misleading their father, Jacob shouldn’t have assumed.
And that assumption brought upon him this immense grief, this immense hurt, this immense
pain, and he expresses it by tearing his clothes.
He expresses it by wailing and weeping.
Notice also that it’s prolonged.
That it’s not for an hour, it’s not for a day, no, but it’s for many days.
In fact, Jacob even says, I will go to my grave mourning the loss of my son Joseph.
and he refuses to be comforted.
Jacob shows us an example of one who grieves without hope.
One who is hopeless in his mourning, in his pain.
And then there’s Joe.
If anyone that says that they lived the most difficult life that could ever be lived has
suffered the most pain that could ever be suffered, I would challenge them to put up
against Job.
Job suffered immensely.
And Job, one, alone, he loses his wealth, he loses his family.
Job, two, he would also lose his health.
But at the end of Job one, notice what is written.
Job one.
starting in verse 20.
Then Job arose and rent his mantle and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and
worshiped and said, Naked came oh I out of my mother’s womb and naked shall I return
thither.
The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
Now we understand as we read Job chapter 1 that Satan is the one loving these
persecutions, loving this pain against Job, but Job doesn’t know that at this time.
He thinks that God’s taking this away.
But when faced with this realization or assumption really, Job still worships God.
Yes, he expresses his grief.
He rinses his clothes.
A common Old Testament expression of grief, of mourning.
But he doesn’t stop there.
He worships God.
How many of us in our times of pain and our times of suffering would think about worship
as the last thing on our minds?
Think about God as some far-off thought of, I’ll get around oh to reaching out to God.
I’ll get around to praying.
I’ll get around to worship.
But Joe worships God immediately.
We need to take the time to mourn, yes.
But in so doing, we do need to neglect the God who is the God of all comfort.
We do not need to neglect the worship of our Lord.
When I hurt, I need to take the time to mourn.
But number two this morning, when I hurt, I need to take the time to pray.
Prayer is an essential to life of a Christian.
It is essential to our lives as how else are we going to communicate with God?
Prayer is an open door to the Creator of this world, to the one who has all power, who has
all authority, to the one who is all knowledgeable, to the one who loves every one of us.
Prayer is an open door.
And in James chapter five and verse 13, James says, any among you afflicted?
Let him pray.
Is any merry?
Let him sing, Psalms.
When we are afflicted as Christians, when we face persecution, when we face pain, when we
face suffering, when we face grief, our first response should be to pray to God.
To reach out to the one who can do something about it.
To reach out to the one who wants to comfort us.
The greatest example that we have of prayer in response to grief is that of Christ.
In Matthew 26, verses 36 through 44, we have recorded for us the scene of the Garden of
Gethsemane.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is preparing to die.
He knows that the end has come for Him.
that the time has come for him to be put on the cross, to suffer that brutal and agonizing
death.
And as Jesus is preparing himself, he prays to God.
He begs him, please, if there be any other way, let this cup pass from me.
Some three times he prays this prayer and yet when he concludes it, he says, nevertheless,
not as I will, but as thou wilt.
Part of praying in response to grief and response to pain is saying to God, I understand
that your will might be for me to remain here a little longer.
As Christians, we need to be okay with God’s will.
We need to be okay with not understanding God’s will at times.
But we need to pray.
when looking at this idea of prayer.
Prayer takes different forms.
There are different prayers recorded in scripture, one of which is a prayer of
thanksgiving.
In Philippians 4 and verses 4 through 6, we are told to rejoice in the Lord always.
And again, I say rejoice.
Let your moderation be known unto all men, the Lord is at hand.
Who wrote this?
Paul did.
The Apostle Paul, the one who was, as we’ll note later, suffered great affliction.
The one who was persecuted time and again.
The one who at this time was in prison for preaching the gospel.
He says, rejoice in the Lord always.
in Ephesians 5 20 he speaks to the fact that we are to be people of joy that we are to be
always giving thanks
being thankful to God.
Suffering is not fun.
Pain and grief are not fun.
but often they are great instructors.
Often they are helpful to us.
If nothing else, to simply learn that this world’s not our home and that life is short.
But how will we respond?
Recently, as many of you know,
friend of mine, Matt Paschal, passed away.
He was 30 years old.
And if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.
A prayer of thanks that we had the time we did with Matt.
when we face loss and grief.
We need to be thankful to God for the time that we did have.
for those moments of joy we did have.
We need to be thankful to God for the good times and thankful to Him for the instruction
we learn in the bad times.
We need to be thankful in our prayers.
But sometimes we pray prayers of confusion.
As we’ve already noted, we don’t always know what God’s exact will in a situation is.
We don’t have a direct message from God saying, you should take…
uh you should turn left instead of turn right out of a parking lot today.
We don’t get that direct message like that today.
And so there are times we are confused, in our confusion, we should trust God.
Look with me at Psalm chapter 13.
Psalm 13, the Psalmist writes, How long will thou forget me, O Lord, forever?
How long will thou hide thy face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and hear, O Lord, my God, lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest mine enemies say,
I have prevailed against him and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
Notice verses five and six.
But I have trusted in thy mercy.
My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
I will sing unto the Lord because he hath dealt bountifully with me.
David writes in this moment of sorrow.
in this moment when his enemies are around him and he’s confused as to why God’s not
answering him, he’s not delivering him from this situation, David says, nevertheless,
despite the fact that I don’t know why I’m still here, despite the fact that I’m
questioning whether or not you’re even listening to me, God, I’m still going to trust in
you.
I’m still going to trust in your mercies and rejoice in your salvation.
rather than that’s faith.
That is the faith that we as Christians should emulate.
in the book of Habakkuk.
Habakkuk is a prophet who questions God.
In chapter one we see this very plainly that he spends the majority of the chapter being
confused, questioning God, why are the Babylonians the one, the ones that you’re choosing
to use against Israel?
Yes, I understand Judah is wicked and sinful, but the Babylonians?
God, don’t you know how wicked they are?
God, don’t you know that they’re idolatrous?
And God answers him in chapter two.
And chapter three, we have a realization from a back end.
A realization that relies on trust.
Look with me in a back at 3.
Habakkuk 3.
starting in chapter, in verse 18.
Habakkuk says, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
I will join the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength and He will make my feet like hind’s feet.
And He will walk and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.
at the end of his conversation with God.
At the end of the prophecy that he is given by God, Habakkuk says, I’m going to rejoice.
There are times when we will be confused.
There are times when we will look at God and we’ll say, what’s your plan here?
Why am I suffering?
There are times when we see a faithful brother, one who is on his way to being a preacher,
on his way to doing great things for the Lord and is currently doing great things for the
Lord.
We’re tempted to ask the question, God, why him?
Why not those who are wicked, those who are living the base life?
Why not those who are not following you?
But even in our times of question, even in our times of confusion, we need to trust in
God.
We need to pray to God.
and rejoice in His salvation.
When I hurt, I need to take the time to pray.
And finally today.
We need to serve.
We must take the time to serve.
Romans 15 one.
We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the week.
Now in context, Paul has just been talking about differences of opinions about how there
are those who view something this way and view it as a matter of conscience and some and
other Christians view it this way.
But neither one of them are right or wrong.
And he begins for chapter 15 by saying bear the infirmities of the week.
Bear with one another.
As Christians, we need to have a heart of service.
A heart that says, I care about you.
A heart.
that follows what James 1.27 says.
Pure religion.
And undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows
and their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Even in our times of grief, even in our times of mourning and sorrow, we need to take the
time to serve.
Look at me at 2 Corinthians, Chapter one.
2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4.
As Paul opens his second letter that is recorded for us to the Corinthians, he says, bless
be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of
all comfort, Who, notice this, comforteth us in our tribulation, that we may be able to
comfort them which are in trouble.
By the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
Brethren, we are not comforted out of some selfish desire.
We are comforted so that we can serve.
God sees us through trials so that we can serve others who are going through the same
trials.
God aids us so that we can aid others.
The focus of a Christian is never on himself.
The focus of a Christian is always to be on God first and others second.
We are to be people of service.
People who look out for each other.
And the fact is, when we’re busy helping others, when we’re busy serving others, it’s hard
to let grief overcome us.
It’s hard to, as we will sometimes say, shut down due to grief because where our focus is
not on ourselves and on what we’ve lost, our focus is on how can I help others who are
experiencing loss?
How can I help others who are hurting just as I am hurting?
In Mark 10 and 45, we are told that Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve.
Brethren, if our Lord and Savior, deity in the flesh, came not to serve Himself, not to be
served of men, but to serve others, where do we get the idea that we are to be served?
Where do we get the idea that it’s all about us?
We are to be people who will emulate the example of Christ, even in doing something so
menial as washing feet.
In John 13 we see that example of Christ that he does the task that was reserved for the
lowest of the low of servants in the house.
He does something that you would never see a king do.
because he was a servant.
Because he wanted to show his disciples that we are to be servants.
We are to care for one another.
And part of service is empathy and sympathy.
In Romans 12, 15, we are told to rejoice with those that do rejoice and to weep with those
that weep.
When someone is in the middle of mourning, when someone is in the middle of facing a
terrible sorrow, a terrible
pain in their life, not the time to say, hey, by the way, I just got a new car.
It’s the time to mourn and to weep with that brother or sister.
It’s the time to mourn and to weep with that person who just lost someone.
Galatians 6 and verse 2, we are told to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law
of Christ.
As Christians, our focus is always to be on others around us and not on ourselves.
Our focus is service.
And when I hurt, I need to take the time to serve.
One final passage before we close.
Look with me at 1 Thessalonians.
First Thessalonians 4.
versus 13 through 18.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that
ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them also which sleep in Jesus
will God bring with him.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto
the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep, for the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven.
with a shout and with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God and the dead in
Christ shall rise first.
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” Notice verse 18.
Wherefore?
Because of all these things that we have just said, because of the fact that we have hope,
because of the fact that we are not going to be left alone.
because of the fact that we will be reunited with the faithful, because of the fact that
we will be with God for all of eternity, Paul writes, comfort one another with these
words.
Brethren, we face pain, we face sorrow, we face grief, but we don’t face it as those who
have no hope.
We face it as those who understand what God has done for us.
We face it, yes, taking the time to mourn, taking the time to grieve.
but then praying to God.
reaching out to the Father, asking comfort of the one who is the God of all.
and then we serve.
That’s what we do as Christians.
when we sang the song, Tempted and Tried.
We won’t understand everything that ever happened.
God won’t give us an accounting of saying, on this day, at such and such time, this
happened for this particular reason.
God’s not going to do that.
But the point of the song and the point that we as Christians need to learn and appreciate
is that when we get to heaven, we won’t care.
When we get to heaven, we won’t care what happened on this earth.
We won’t care about the suffering that we face because it all be worth it.
But if you’re here today and you find yourself not a Christian, You find yourself outside
of the body of Christ, you find yourself without hope.
But praise be to God that He didn’t leave you without a plan.
He gave us a way to be saved.
And the more important question than what do I do when I hurt is what do I do to be saved?
What must I do to be saved?
God’s plan is simple.
You see it behind me.
There is no reason for anyone in this world to not be saved.
God has given us the message.
He’s given us the plan.
And as Christians, our job is to share it.
And if you find yourself here today as a Christian, but realizing that there is sin in
your life.
Realizing that you have not been who you should be.
Don’t wait.
We don’t know the day of our death.
We don’t know when our time will come.
And so we must always be ready.
If we can help you today, be ready to meet the Lord.
Do not hesitate.
Come now as we stand and
The Process For Biblical Success – Aaron Cozort – Feb. 08, 2026
Good afternoon.
There are times as you’re studying scripture, at least if you’re me, where
start to think about a text and you suddenly realize that text after text after text
allude to a truth, in this case, a process.
I wanted to spend a little bit of time discussing the process for biblical success.
This is not a framework drawn out by any
any academics, any scientific analysis.
This is just simply an observation of what God has done and what those who have been
successful in Scripture, in certain tasks, some short-term, some longer-term, have done in
order to achieve that success.
And I believe there are some truths and some insights
in this for us as a congregation, for our work in evangelism, but just even in our daily
lives.
As you consider the idea of the process for biblical success, notice first that it begins
by seeing the vision.
It begins by understanding and having clarity as to where something needs to go.
Proverbs writer speaks concerning the things that occur when there is no vision.
And as you look at time and time again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament,
you’ll find that those who were successful, those who were obedient to God, those who
achieved the things that God set in front of them, they saw what God wanted them to do.
So as we consider this idea of one needing to see the vision, we’re not talking about some
miraculous vision, we’re not talking about an epiphany in the night, we’re talking about
the fact that they see the desired result on God’s behalf.
They see the will of God.
In Ephesians chapter three.
Paul, as he’s writing to the church at Ephesus, will write to them about what God was able
to do through them.
You’ll notice there in Ephesians chapter 3, and I wrote down the wrong verse references,
it’s verses 20 and 21.
We find in verses 20 and 21, now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all
that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.
Amen.
Notice first that Paul points out that it is God who is doing the thing.
It is God who is achieving His will.
He is doing it through us.
If you turn over to Ephesians, just one page over, at least in my Bible, you’ll find in
Ephesians chapter 5, Paul will write to the church about
walking in the light.
will talk to them about walking in love, but he says down in verse 15 of chapter 5, he
says, then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time
because the days are evil.
Therefore, do not be unwise, but notice, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Paul presented to the Ephesian brethren that they needed to instill in their hearts and
their minds and their lives the work of God, the nature of God, the heart of God, so that
when they understood the commandment of God, they would fulfill it.
They needed to see the vision that God had placed before them.
When you turn over to book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, you have that hall of faith
there in that chapter.
And so many of those passages, so many of those accounts begin with that idea by faith.
But notice that the definition or the description of faith that originates in that passage
in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 is now
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
The Hebrew writer tells us that faith is intended to be that which accepts the testimony
of God and sees the unseen by faith and belief and trust in God.
Scripture will speak to those who had never met the Messiah and will describe that those
who had never met the Messiah, those Gentiles, loved Him having never seen Him.
Why?
Because by faith they accepted the testimony of God.
Therefore they could love Christ
who they had never met.
But you consider in this text as well that you see in these passages a process again that
by faith in the example of Noah, in the example of Abraham, in the example of Sarah, in
the example of Moses, in the example of Enoch, in the example of uh Samson, you find there
is a trust
first.
A trust in God that what God has said He will do, He will accomplish.
Having that trust, there is a determination to obey the command.
Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 5, we read, by faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not
see death and was not found because God had taken him
for before he was taken he had this testimony that he pleased God.
There is not a chance in the world that Enoch received the testimony that he pleased God
because he stumbled into it by accident.
There’s not a chance in the world that Enoch received a testimony from God that he pleased
God because he just happenstance determined to do what God said.
No.
Much like you find in the Old Testament with Ezra, you can imagine that Enoch was one who
prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it.
There was trust, there was determination, and then there was clarity.
when God tells Noah to build an ark, God doesn’t just say, I want an ark.
God tells Noah exactly how to build the ark.
And as we consider our lives, as we consider the things that God would have us to do, we
need to trust God that we can accomplish them.
We need to determine that we’re going to obey, and then we need to clarify how we’re going
to obey.
Because if we don’t clarify the how, if we’re not on board with the process, we’re not
going to accomplish what God puts in front of us.
Every time you look at those New Testament examples from the Old Testament, you find those
three steps, either alluded to or brought out specifically.
But then turn over to Matthew chapter 9.
Matthew chapter 9, you see this point of seeing the vision just beautifully encapsulated
here in the life of Matthew.
In Matthew chapter 9 and in verse 9, as Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named
Matthew sitting at the tax office.
Now here is a man who we have no prior knowledge of, but the general
perception that we get from the rest of scripture is that many of the apostles were those
who were already disciples of John.
We know that some of them were, we don’t know about all of them, but it’s a good
indication because what was John’s purpose?
He was sent to prepare the way for the Messiah.
He was sent to point out the Messiah.
He was sent to point people to the Messiah.
And so the likelihood is that many of these individuals were disciples of John before they
became the disciples of Jesus.
But as Matthew is sitting there at the tax office, Jesus said to him, follow me.
So he arose and followed him.
We’re not to get from this text that Matthew would have done this to any random stranger
that happened to walk by the tax office and say, follow me!
That Matthew was kind of like a little stray puppy.
Anybody who said follow me, he just went along.
No!
Matthew knew who was talking to him.
And Matthew did not know where he would end up going.
He just knew that he would follow Christ wherever he went.
We’re going to be successful from a biblical perspective.
We’re first going to share God’s vision for success.
We cannot substitute human success for God’s will.
We must understand what the will of the Lord is.
But then, as you look at these texts, as you examine the scope of Scripture,
You also find that the next step in biblical success is you have to build with patience.
Some of us, I won’t mention myself by name, but some of us like to just make decisions,
make it happen, be done.
And that’s just not exactly how life usually works.
If you turn over to 2 Peter, 2 Peter chapter one.
Peter will write to the Christians and he will speak to them concerning their actions,
their faith, their obedience, and what God has done for them.
In 2 Peter chapter 1, beginning in verse 5, he says, but also for this very reason, giving
all diligence add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to
self-control
perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly
kindness love.
As Peter writes to these Christians, he layers these things in on top of one another.
He says there is a process.
And if you will follow the process, if you will add this to this to this to this, and by
the way, if you really get the point of what Peter’s saying, you realize that when you
achieve that top tier, that level of charity, of love, of agape love, you’re going to
start all over.
And you’re going to continue the cycle.
You’re going to continue to grow and to achieve more.
But he goes on and he says here in verse 9, he says, for he who lacks these things is
short-sighted.
even to blindness.
Let me go back to verse 8.
For if these things are yours and abound…
Notice he doesn’t just say you need a little bit of this, you need a little bit of this,
you need a little bit this.
It’s not like a recipe put in a dash of this and a teaspoon of that.
No, he says these things be in you and abound.
You will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For he who lacks these things is short-sighted even to blindness and has forgotten that he
was cleansed from his old sins.
Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you
do these things, you will never stumble.
as Peter writes these things to these Christians.
He tells them, you’ve got to add this, you’ve got to add this, you’ve got to add this,
you’ve got to add this, and when you’re done, you’ve got to go back and do it again
because you need to abound in these things.
And if you continue to take that diligence to do these things, give even more diligence to
continue to do these things, he says, you will not
fall.
Now Peter is not saying that you’ll never be tempted.
Peter is saying you’ll be ready.
Peter is saying you will have built a foundation to withstand what Satan brings against
you.
If turn over to Ephesians chapter 6, Paul as he writes to the church at Ephesus,
will share a similar concept as he speaks concerning the whole armor of God.
Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 10, finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the
power of his might.
Notice it is not your strength.
It is not your might.
It is you allocating to yourself God’s strength.
It is you utilizing God’s defenses.
Notice what he says.
He says, on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers.
against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in
the heavenly places.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and having done all to stand.” As he goes on and enumerates those principles and
those concepts of the armor of God, his point is God has allocated these things for you.
You must put them on.
Now you don’t do that if you don’t see the vision.
You don’t do that if you don’t trust the Word of God.
You don’t do that if you haven’t made a determination to be obedient to God, and you don’t
do that if you haven’t clarified what it is God expects of you.
But having done those three things now, you can begin to build with patience.
Or as Peter says, with diligence.
Over in 1 Chronicles chapter 22,
There in that text you find a record of David preparing to build the temple.
David has been told that David was not allowed to build the temple.
That his son, Solomon, would build the temple, the one who would rule after him, because
David was a man of war, David was a bloody man as God said.
But God did allow David to prepare the things for the temple.
So you’ve noticed there in 1 Chronicles chapter 22 that David starts to gather the things
that Solomon would need.
He starts to gather the lumber, he starts to gather the timbers, he starts to gather the
skilled workmen, he brings all of it together.
He begins to build before the building begins.
because he knows the necessary components.
building of the temple was going to be quite a process in Solomon’s day.
It is going to allocate workers from all over the nation to come in cycles, to come and to
build that temple, but it began long before the first timber was ever laid because David
started to acquire the necessary materials before Solomon ever sat on the throne.
You see, if we don’t build with patience, if we build and expect it to just suddenly be
perfect, if we start and expect it to not take very long, if we expect sudden success and
overnight success, we’re fooling ourselves.
Because biblical success is always painted with patience, with endurance.
back in Hebrews chapter 11.
We find here in verse 7, by faith Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen.
He got the vision.
moved with godly fear.
He had a determination.
He moved with godly fear, prepared an ark.
It was clarified exactly how to do it.
He prepared an ark for the saving of his house by which he condemned the world and became
heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
And we know from Genesis chapter 6, 7, and 8 that he spent a hundred years doing it.
He wasn’t going to start building that arc and be done tomorrow.
And neither will we.
If we understand what the will of the Lord is, we will make a determination to begin
building and we will have the patience to endure.
One of the things that every congregation needs
if it is to achieve all the things that God has in mind for it, are strong, faithful
elders.
But you know what you can’t get in a day?
You can’t get in a week.
You can’t get in a month.
You can’t get in a year.
Men prepared to be elders.
It takes time.
It takes someone who sees the vision and sets their mind to being prepared to do the work
and puts in the time
and the sweat and the hours to be able to accomplish that, let alone the righteousness and
the qualifications.
So many things about a congregation requires this level of patience.
But then consider as well that you need adoption and resilience.
Now, some of the passages of Scripture, some of the events of Scripture show us success
stories.
and some of them show us failures.
Some of them are like Israel.
They started off determining to be obedient to God and they lasted a month or two and then
they turned back and then they’d rebel.
They didn’t have resilience.
Over in Joshua chapter 25 or 24, Joshua will say to the people,
choose you this day whom you will serve.
And he will point out to them that they have a choice.
They can either serve the gods who they served on the other side of the Jordan or they can
serve Jehovah.
They had to choose.
And they as a people said, we’ll serve the Lord.
And he warned them.
that God would pay attention to what they had said and that God would bring them into
judgment if they didn’t keep what they said.
In Acts chapter 5, you find in the early church some examples of people who saw the vision
and some examples of those who did not.
In Acts chapter 5 and verse 1, in the midst of a time where there were those who were in
need, there were those who had come to Jerusalem,
They had been converted while they were there on the day of Pentecost.
They had remained in Jerusalem.
They hadn’t gone home.
And now there were those who were in need of physical needs, physical possessions,
physical caretaking.
And we read in chapter 5 and verse 1, a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife,
sold a possession, and he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it,
and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to
keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?
While it remained, was it not your own?
And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?
Why have you conceived this thing in your heart?
You have not lied to men, but to God.” Notice that there was a vision
for what needed to be done.
you go back into the prior chapter, you will find men like Barnabas who sold their
property and they gave it so that it could be dispersed to those who had need.
They see an example.
What they didn’t do was adopt the motivation and the heart behind it.
They wanted the recognition.
They wanted to be seen doing the thing that Barnabas had done, but they needed to keep,
they had taxes to pay maybe.
They had another piece of property that needed to be paid off maybe.
Maybe they just needed some extra income for a few months.
We don’t know why.
By the way, as Peter points out, it’s also wouldn’t have been a problem had they kept back
a portion.
The problem was they wanted the success without adopting the obedience.
And so, Ananias and Sapphira will both fall down dead through a series of events before
Peter.
And notice what the text says if you go down to verse 9.
Then Peter said to her, Sapphira, as she is before him, How is it that you have agreed
together to test the Spirit of the Lord?
Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry
you out.
Then immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last.
and the young men came in and found her dead and carrying her out, buried her by her
husband.” So notice verse 11, so great fear came upon all the church and upon all those
who heard these things.
Suddenly there were a whole lot more people within the church who were adopting the right
mindset.
they finally saw the vision.
They finally understood the gravity of obedience.
You turn to Acts chapter 6 and just a few passages over you find the Grecian widows are
now being neglected in the daily uh provision.
And so what does the church do?
The church at the instruction of the apostles gathers out men from among themselves who
are able to faithfully
fulfill the need.
You go to chapter 6 and verse 12, “…then the twelve summoned the multitude of the
disciples, and said, It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve
tables.
Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the
Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.”
They saw the need, they knew there was something that needed to be done, and they put it
in the hands of those who would be faithful to complete the process.
They wanted those who were willing to adopt the end goal.
They didn’t want people who were ready to be recognized.
They didn’t want people who were ready to be popular.
They didn’t say everybody find the person who you like best and nominate them.
They said here’s the qualification.
They had to have adopted the determination to obey God.
But notice what we read, verse 6, when they had set them before the apostles and when they
had prayed they laid hands on them, then the word of God spread and the number of the
disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to
the faith.
Through the work of these seven men, they had an exponential growth in the church because
these men had adopted the vision and they performed with resilience.
They chose day in and day out to do what God told them to do.
But then consider as well, in order to actually achieve success, you must remain
in that state of being successful.
You must continue in these things and abound as the passage says, but at times when that
doesn’t happen you have to be determined to restart.
It is not enough to say, I came, I tried, I failed, too bad.
God says, no, that’s not going to work.
Not for me.
In Isaiah chapter 1, God will speak through Isaiah to a nation.
that had.
forgotten Him that had departed from Him.
We read in chapter 1 verse 1 the vision of uh Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw
concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of
Judah.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and
brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know.
My people do not consider.
Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are
corruptors.
They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have
turned away backward.
Why should you be stricken again?
You will revolt more and more, the whole head is sick, the whole heart faints.
From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores.
They have not been closed up or bound up or soothed with ointment.
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire.
Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by
strangers.
So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of
cucumbers, as a besieged city.
God says because you won’t keep my word, because you won’t obey my command, because a
donkey could understand my and you won’t, you refuse.
you will not choose to adopt my commandments.
You will not choose to build what I have put before you.
He says, I have brought you up out of nothing.
I raised you from nothing.
And yet you will not even recognize me at all.
But verse nine says, unless the Lord of hosts had left us a very
small remnant.
We should have become like Sodom.
We would have been made like Gomorrah.
Isaiah looking forward to the judgment that was to come against Israel and against Judah
will tell them,
God’s going to bring His judgment.
God’s going to bring His condemnation against you as a nation.
And there’s going to be a sliver that’s left.
And had God not given you that, you would have been gone.
You would have been no more.
You would have been a thing of the history books like Sodom and Gomorrah.
That same passage is quoted by Paul in Romans chapter 9.
Romans chapter 9, Paul will write beginning in verse 29, and he will say this, and as
Isaiah said before, unless the Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed, we would have become
like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah.
What shall we say then?
that Gentiles who do not pursue righteousness have attained to righteousness even the
righteousness of faith, but Israel pursuing the law of righteousness has not attained to
the law of righteousness.
Why?
Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for they
stumbled
at the stone of stumbling as is written, behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a
rock of offense.
Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.
Sometimes as we start building, sometimes as we start working, sometimes as we start
seeking to achieve the will of the Lord, we’re going to get down that path and something
is going to waylay many of the people who are on the path.
It’s happened to congregation after congregation after congregation through history.
It was happening even in the first century.
Turn to Revelation chapter 2.
In Revelation chapter 2, John, as he writes to the churches of Asia Minor, will begin his
letters addressing this book, and he will begin with the church at Ephesus.
To the angel of the church at Ephesus write, these things says he who holds the seven
stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, I know
your works.
your labor, your patience that you cannot bear with those who are evil and you have tested
those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars and you have
persevered and have patience and have labored for my name’s sake and have not become
weary.” Notice what they’ve done.
They saw the vision, they trusted the Lord, they made a determination,
They started acting, they built with patience, they adopted his principles, they were
resilient, they were steadfast, they were testing, and then they lost the vision.
Notice what he says, nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first
love.
He says, remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works or
else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place unless you
repent.
But this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to him who
overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise
of God.
As Christ through John writes to the church at Ephesus, he tells them it’s time for you to
restart.
It’s time for you to go back and do the first works.
It’s time for you to go back and see why you’re doing these things, because right now
you’re just doing them.
as we consider being successful.
In the work of God, we should consider there’s a process.
We cannot start by doing our own will.
We must start by doing His.
We must see His vision and trust and determine and clarify what He would have us to do.
We must begin to build and we must build with patience.
We cannot get off halfway down the road.
We must build with patience.
We must adopt His methods, His actions, and how He would have us to complete the task.
And we must have resilience.
We must be willing to endure through the hard times, through the difficulties, through the
troubles and the trials, through the times where there is betrayal, through the times that
there is disappointment, through the times where there’s disruption.
Sometimes we’re going to have to look at what remains when something has come along and
decimated all the work that we’ve done.
And we’re going to have to be like Josiah was when Josiah was presented with the law as
they found the law in the temple and he read what they had been commanded to do and had
not been keeping.
And Josiah said, it’s time to do what the Lord said.
And we restart to once again be obedient to God.
This applies to congregations, but it also applies to individual Christians.
Sometimes we start with the vision of what we need to do and who we need to be and how we
can be faithful and sometimes we lose the vision.
Just like the church in Ephesus.
When we do, this is what the Lord has told us to do.
He says, repent and do the first works.
Go back to where you started and pick up at the beginning.
Because somewhere along the way, you started layering those principles from Peter into
your life and you left one of them out.
Go put it back and start again.
To the Christian who has not remained faithful.
We are grateful that the Lord has offered a way home, a way to return and be faithful once
again.
The opportunity to repent and have those who are faithful pray for you.
The text of Scripture is clear in the end of James.
It’s clear in the book of Acts.
It’s clear elsewhere in Scripture that when one has fallen from faithfulness,
They can pray and repent of those things and God is faithful and just to forgive them of
those things and that they can ask those who are faithful to pray on their behalf and they
will be forgiven as well.
If you’re outside the body of Christ this morning though, you’ve got to first be obedient.
You have to see the vision and determine to be obedient to God’s will.
If you have need of the invitation of Christ,
Knowing that it is those who are faithful until death who will receive a crown of life if
you have need of the invitation of Christ this very afternoon Why not ask questions?
Why not sit down and study with us?
Why not determine what you need to know in order to be biblically successful?
Jesus said, in my Father’s house are many mansions.
If it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
If He’s gone to prepare a place, then we need to be ready when our time is over, when this
life is over.
If you have need of the invitation, why not come now as we stand?
The God Who Gives Life – Aaron Cozort – Mar. 1, 2026
Last weekend, the Nesbitt Church of Christ had a lectureship, or yeah, lectures series,
dealing with the tabernacle and the typology between the tabernacle and the church and
Christ and the Christian age.
But as one of those lessons was being presented, I got to thinking about something as
If you talk to many preachers, you’ll find they often do while they’re listening to
someone else preach.
And it dawned on me that I don’t know that I’ve ever presented a lesson describing God,
the one who gives life.
Take your Bible, if you will, and open to Genesis chapter 1.
as you consider all of the things that this world has advanced in, as you consider all of
the wonders of technology and medicine, the procedures that exist down to the ability to
rewrite the genomic structure of a person.
One of the things that is a great separator
between man and all of his ingenuity and God is man is very adept at reordering what God
created.
but man can create nothing.
and yet God creates out of nothing.
Genesis chapter 1 and in verse 1, in the beginning we read,
The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep and the
Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Then God said, let there be light.
And there was light.
Out of nothing, God created light.
If you go down through the remainder of this chapter, you will find over and over and over
again.
and God said.
And then God creates something out of what had never existed.
Turn over to Hebrews chapter 1.
In Hebrews chapter 1, the Hebrew writer as he is beginning to present the argument that
Christ is
better than Moses, that the new covenant is better than the old, that the new sacrifices
are better than the old, that the gospel is greater than the law of Moses.
He will write God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the
fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has
appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.
Turn to Psalm 19.
you find in Psalm 19 that the psalmist writer will point out
that the heavens declare the glory of God.
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
when you look at the world around you, you observe the universe, when you give insight to
everything that exists, you are looking at the handiwork of God.
And when God created it, go back to Genesis chapter 1 and you’ll see everything He created
in its created state as He finished it was very good.
It was not the imperfect picture you see today.
It was not the degrading version that you look at in the mirror each morning.
It was very good.
we consider number one, that out of nothing, God created life.
not something that humanity can do.
You might say, well, Aaron, humanity can do this or that, yeah, with a machine running on
electricity that only exists because there’s gravity, that only exists because there’s a
planet, that only exists because there’s a sun.
Trust me, we don’t create anything out of nothing.
Because everything we’d use
To create it, we’d have to use God’s stuff to do it.
We don’t create anything out of nothing, let alone life out of nothing.
But then consider as well as we track forward in the Old Testament that God also created
life out of a body that was good as dead.
The text tells us, turn to Genesis chapter 18.
Through the course of the Old Testament, God will promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12
and reiterated in Genesis chapter 15 and elsewhere that Abraham or Abram as he was known
at the time and Sarai would have a son.
That he would come from Abram and Sarai.
That he would not be born of someone else but from Abram and Sarai.
And yet when the promise is made, Abram is seventy-five years old.
When the Son finally arrives, Abram’s a hundred years old.
In Genesis chapter eighteen and in verse nine we read, then they said to him, Where is
Sarah your wife?
So he said, here in the tent.
Now as this event is unfolding, God has manifested himself in the form of a person and
together with two angels he is visiting with Abram.
and they ask, where’s And he said, I will certainly return according to the time of life.
And behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.
Sarah was listening in the tent door, which was behind him.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age and Sarah had passed the age of
childbearing.
Therefore Sarah laughed within herself.
saying, “‘After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure my Lord being old also?’ And the
Lord said to Abraham, “‘Why did Sarah laugh, saying, “‘Shall I surely bear a child, since
I am old?
“‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’ “‘At the appointed time I will return to you,
“‘according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.'”
out of a life that was beyond the point of childbirth, out of the body of a person who was
beyond the point of bearing children, God says, I will bring forth a son.
If you turn to Genesis chapter 21, Genesis chapter 21 and in verse 1, and the Lord visited
Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had spoken.
For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God had
spoken to him.
And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him whom Sarah bore to him Isaac.”
If you turn over to Hebrews chapter 11, you’ll notice that the Hebrew writer has something
to say concerning this event.
The Hebrew writer writes to us and he says, beginning in verse 11, by faith Sarah herself
also conceived strength, or received strength.
to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him
faithful who had promised.
Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, the text says, were born as many as the
stars of the sky in multitude innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.
Out of one who was as good as
dead in his body, in the physical function to be able to give life, God created a nation.
And not just one nation, but as the text points out, a number as innumerable as the sand
of the seashore in direct fulfillment of the promise of God.
When you think about God, He’s the one who can create life out of nothing.
He’s the one who can promise life out of a body that is dead.
but then consider that God can even create life out of a dead stick.
Turn to Numbers chapter 11.
in Numbers Chapter 11.
as Israel is.
going through some tumultuous times.
I’m sorry, it’s Numbers chapter 17.
If I could read my own writing it would help.
Numbers chapter 17, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and
get from them a rod from each father’s house.
All their leaders, according to their father’s houses, twelve rods.
Write each man’s name on his rod.
and you shall write Aaron’s name on the rod of Levi.
For there shall be one rod for the head of each father’s house.
Then you shall place them in the tabernacle of meeting before the testimony where I meet
with you.
And it shall be that the rod of the man whom I choose will blossom.
Thus I will rid myself of the complaints of the children of Israel which they make against
you.”
So Moses spoke to the children of Israel, and each of their leaders gave him a rod, a
piece.
For each leader, according to their father’s houses, twelve rods, and the rod of Aaron was
among their rods.
And Moses placed the rods before the LORD in the tabernacle of witness.
Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses went into the tabernacle of witness, and
behold, the rod of Aaron
of the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and had produced blossoms and yielded
ripe almonds.
Then Moses brought out all the rods from before the Lord to all the children of Israel and
they looked and each man took his rod.
And the Lord said to Moses, Bring Aaron’s rod back before the testimony to be kept as a
sign against the rebels that you may put their complaints away from me lest they die.
Thus did Moses, just as the Lord had commanded him, so he did.
So the children of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, Surely we die, we perish, we all perish.
Whoever even comes near the tabernacle of the Lord must die, shall we utterly die.
In this text, you have those who are arguing against Moses and against Aaron that they’re
taking too much power to themselves, and God says, I’m going to end this discussion.
Gather up a rod, one from every tribe.
For the tribe of Levi, you gather a rod from Aaron, you put his name on it.
You go put him in the tabernacle in the testimony before the ark, and you put them there
where I commune with you.
and I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen.
You’re going to lay down a pile of sticks and one of them is going to come to life.
So they take the rods in, these are just normal everyday walking sticks, rods like a
shepherd might use.
They take the sticks in, they lay them down on the floor of the tabernacle, they go out.
They come the next morning and here’s all the sticks.
And all of them are exactly the way they were the day before, except one.
And you know, we talk about Aaron’s rod that budded, but maybe that’s just a little bit of
a misnomer, because it wasn’t just Aaron’s rod that budded, it was Aaron’s rod that
blossomed, budded, flowered, and brought forth almonds without being stuck in the ground
and in one night.
Now if you can do that, that’s impressive.
But what’s the point?
Out of nothing, God gives life.
Out of a dead body, God gives a son.
Out of a dead stick, God can create life.
But we’re not done.
Turn to 2 Kings chapter 5.
In 2 Kings chapter 5
we’re told of a man.
His name was Naaman.
We read verse one, now Naaman commander of the army of the king of Syria was a great and
honorable man in the eyes of his master because by him the Lord had given victory to
Syria.
He was also a mighty man of valor but a leper.
If you know much about leprosy you will know that it is a disease whereby the flesh
dies and decays while it is still on the person.
And this man had a body that was full of it.
Notice the text, the Syrians had gone out on raids and had brought back a captive, a young
girl from the land of Israel.
She waited on Naaman’s wife.
Then she said to her mistress, if only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria,
for he would heal him of his leprosy.
And Naaman went in and told his master saying, and thus said the girl who was from the
land of Israel.
Then the king of Syria said, Go now and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.
So he departed and took with him ten talons of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and
ten changes of clothing.
Then he brought the letter to the king of Israel which said, Now be advised when this
letter comes to you that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of
his leprosy.
And it happened.
When the king of Israel read the letter that he tore his clothes and said, am I God to
kill and to make alive that this man sends to me a man to heal him of his leprosy?
Therefore, please consider and see how he seeks a quarrel with me.
The king of Syria, not knowing any better, he sends Naaman with the gifts to the king of
Israel, not realizing the king of Israel and the Lord are not exactly on good terms.
So, Namban arrives before the king of Israel with all the gifts, with all of the great
things that he brought and a letter that says, from the king of Syria, please heal my
servant.
that to be an opportunity for the king of Syria to cause a war and start an argument.
He says, am I God?
How am I going to do this?
But then notice verse 8, so it was when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of
Israel had torn his clothes that he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your
clothes?
Please let him come to me and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.
Then Naaman went with his horses and chariot and he stood at the door of Elisha’s house.
And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and
your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean.
But Naaman became furious and went away, and said, Indeed I said to myself, He will surely
come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over
the place, and heal this leprosy.
Are not the Abana and the Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than the waters of
Israel?
Could I not wash in them and be clean?
So he turned and went away in a rage.
And his servants came near and spoke to him and said, My father, if the prophet had told
you to do something great, would you not have done it?
How much more then when he says to you, wash and be clean?
So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan according to the saying of the man of
God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child.
and he was clean.
Naaman came with the perception, with the mindset, you know what?
I’m going to arrive with all the gifts, with all the treasure, I’m going to arrive and
they’re going to recognize my glory, they’re going to recognize my status, they’re going
to perform some great ceremony, and then I’m going to be healed.
And God proves again that God doesn’t do things the way humans think God ought to do
things.
He does them his way.
Elisha doesn’t even go out to talk to him.
He sends a servant.
Go dip seven times in the River Jordan and you’ll be clean.
Neyeman is furious.
starts back towards Syria.
Can’t imagine why he would dip himself if he wanted to get a bath.
He could go back to the rivers of Damascus and get a bath.
but his servants come to him and question his reasoning.
If the prophet had asked you to do some great deed, would you not have done it?
So he turns around and he goes to the Jordan River and he dips himself in seven times.
Time one, still has leprosy.
Time two, still decaying in his flesh.
Time three, still dead in his flesh.
Time four, still has leprosy.
Time five, six.
You know, sometimes when we are commanded by God to do something and it doesn’t work time
one, even though God never said it would work time one, we start to wonder, does God
really know what he’s talking about?
And then it doesn’t work time two and we start to wonder some more.
And time three and we start to wonder some more.
Time four and we start to wonder some more.
Time five, by the time we get to the fifth or sixth time and it hasn’t worked yet, even
though God never told us it would, we start to think maybe I should just adjust it a
little bit.
Maybe God didn’t know what he was talking about.
Maybe we should just do it our way instead of God’s way.
had Naaman stopped after the sixth dip, gotten up and said, you know what, the rivers of
Damascus really could do better than this.
Went back home, plunged himself in the rivers of Damascus for seven times, what would he
have been?
Dead, decaying, and in leprosy.
But he didn’t.
as a soldier, as one who understands the execution of orders.
He did exactly what he was told to do.
And the seventh time, he plunged himself into the Jordan River and he came up and his body
was not just healed.
It was like he had just been born.
And if anyone in the world, in any corporation, could package that up and deliver it and
sell it to females, they would make all the money in the world.
but Naaman understood that it was God who could give life.
then consider, if you will, John chapter 12.
Sorry, John chapter 11.
In John chapter 11, there was a certain man who was sick, Lazarus of Bethany.
The town of Mary and her sister Martha.
It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair,
whose brother Lazarus was sick.
Therefore the sister sent to him Jesus saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.
When Jesus heard that, he said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.
Then after he said, after this, he said to his disciples, let us go to Judea again.
The disciples said to him, Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone you, and are you going
there again?
Jesus answered, there not twelve hours in the day?
If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.
Then he said these things he said, and after that he said, Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but
I go that I may wake him up.
Then his disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well.
However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was speaking about taking rest in
sleep.
Then Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was
not there, that you may believe.
Nevertheless, let us go to him.
Then Thomas, who is called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, let us also go, that we
may die with him.
So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles away.
and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them
concerning their brother.
Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him.
But Mary was sitting in the house.
Now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.
Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.
Martha said to him, know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.
And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this?
She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to
come into the world.
And when she had said these things,
She went away and secretly called Mary, her sister, saying, The teacher has come and is
calling for you.
As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to him.
Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but he was in the place where Martha met him.
Then the Jews who were with her in the house and comforting her when they saw that Mary
rose up quickly and went out followed her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there.
Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him,
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
Therefore when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in
His spirit and was troubled and said, Where have you laid Him?
They said to Him, Lord, come and see.
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, See how he loved him.
And some of them said, Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept
this man from dying?
Then Jesus again groaning in himself came to the tomb, and it was a cave, and a stone lay
against it.
Jesus said, Take away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there is a stench,
for he has been dead four days.
Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory
of God?
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was laying and Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me and I know that
you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they
may believe.
Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And he who had died came out bound hand and foot.
with grave clothes and his face was wrapped with a cloth.
Jesus said to them, lose him and let him go.
Out of
a four-day-old carcass.
Jesus called back his friend and gave him life.
The point was made, and maybe appropriately so, by Brother Marshall Keeble years ago.
He made the point that there’s a reason why Jesus said Lazarus’ name.
Because the power of God is such that had Jesus not specified who was to come forth, he
would have said come forth and the whole graveyard would have come forth.
out of the tomb came life.
But you might already know what comes next, right?
Turn to Luke 23.
Luke 23.
beginning in verse forty four
We read, now it was about the sixth hour.
And there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
Then the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was torn in two.
And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit.
Having said this, He breathed His last.
So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, certainly this was
a righteous man.
And the whole crowd who came together to that site, seeing what had been done, beat their
breast and returned.
But all his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance
watching these things.
Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man.
He had not consented to their decision.
Indeed, he was from uh Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the
kingdom of God.
This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the
rock where no one had ever lain before.
That day was the preparation and the Sabbath drew near.
And the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the
tomb and how the body was laid.
Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath
according to the commandment.
Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women
with them came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.
But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold two men stood by
them in shining garments.
Then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, Why do you
seek the living among the dead?
He is not here, but is risen.
Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be
delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
And they remembered His words.
Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the
rest.
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them.
who told these things to the apostles.
And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them.
But Peter arose and ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the linen clothes laying by
themselves.
And he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.
Jesus Christ.
God in the flesh.
went to the cross.
and there He gave up His life.
that the glory of God might be known, that the purchased pardon might be enacted, that the
blood of the sacrifice might be shed.
But as he was taken down from that cross, as he was wrapped in that linen, as he was laid
in that tomb, for many of us, that would have been the end of the story.
but his father is the God who gives life out of nothing.
Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
Paul would write in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 and in verse 1.
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preach to you, which also you
received and in which you stand, by which also you were saved, if you hold fast the word
which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures.”
and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.
After that he was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part
remained to the present, but some have fallen asleep.
After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles, then last of all he was seen by
me also, as by one born out of due season.”
Paul will write, our Lord is an innu-grave.
Our Lord is an innu-tomb.
He’s alive.
And because He’s alive, there is a message to be preached.
Because He is alive, there is a message to be heard.
Because He is alive, there is a message that gives life.
turn to Romans chapter 6.
Paul as he writes.
Romans chapter 6 verse 1 says, what shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
Certainly not.
How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into His death?
Paul, as he writes to the church at Rome, will ask them, do you not realize that if you
are a member of the body of Christ, if you are a part of the church for which he died, if
you are a saved individual who was once dead in your sins, there was a moment when you
died with Christ and you were buried with
Christ.
But Christ didn’t stay in the tomb, did he?
Notice what he says.
He says, Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of
life.
For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also
be in the likeness of His resurrection.
knowing this that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done
away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin.”
Some will tell you, if you’re lost, pray and God will save you.
The only problem with that is there’s not a passage or a command anywhere in scripture
that commands it.
And just like Naaman in the days of old, when Elisha told him what to do, Naaman didn’t
have a say.
Rather, Jesus said in Mark chapter 16 verses 15 and 16, he that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved.
He that believeth not shall be damned.
And Paul will write in Romans chapter 6 that the individual who is one who has died with
Christ, has been crucified with Christ, has been buried with Christ, and has been
resurrected with Christ is the person who has life.
Paul was intimately familiar with that because Paul had been met by Jesus on the road to
Damascus.
Paul revealed in 1 Corinthians 15 that he had seen Jesus as well there on the road to
Damascus and he had been told to go to Damascus and after he had seen Jesus, after he
believed in Jesus, Paul spent three days praying to God.
And yet when Ananias
Acts chapter 22 verse 16, Ananias says, Saul, Saul, why tarryest thou?
Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of Lord.
Ananias arrived and Ananias was not under the mistaken assumption that Paul was now saved
because he had been praying.
Rather, Paul, sorry, Saul was being told to obey the command.
to die, to die to sin, to be buried with Christ and be resurrected to newness of life.
Turn, if you will, as we close to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
Paul as he writes to the church at Corinth.
We’ll write this.
Verse 12, “‘For we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to
boast on our behalf that you may have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not
in heart.
For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.
If we are of sound mind, it is for you.
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus, that if one died for all,
And then all died, and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for
themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
Therefore from now on we regard no one according to the flesh even though we have known
Christ according to the flesh yet now we know him thus no longer.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature.
Old things have passed away.
Behold all things have become new.
Now all things are of God.
who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of
reconciliation.
Paul writes to the church at Corinth and he says, you know what God’s been doing?
God’s been giving life through our message.
God has been giving life to those who are willing to receive that message, who are willing
to be saved by that message because guess what?
God’s the only one who can give life out of death.
If you’re here this morning and you’re outside the body of Christ, if you haven’t been
obedient to the gospel call, to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, to repent of
your sins, to confess the name of Christ and be immersed in water, to die to sin because
you’re already dead in sin, to be resurrected with Christ out of that watery grave of
baptism.
to rise in newness of life because it is in obedience to God that God says He will make
you a new creature.
If you’ve not done that, maybe today is the day where you begin asking the questions you
need to have answered to be ready to do it.
If you’re outside the body of Christ, why stay there?
Why?
continue to be dead.
Naaman’s servants asked him, if God had asked you to do some great thing, wouldn’t you
have done it?
we ask the same question.
If God had asked you to do some great thing, wouldn’t you do it?
but he simply asked you to die to yourself, to be immersed in water for the remission of
your sins.
And Ananias asks, what are you waiting on?
If you have need of the invitation, why not come forward now as we stand and as we sing.
Mark 16 (Lesson 3) – Aaron Cozort – June 24, 2026
Good evening.
Take your Bibles, if you will, and open them to the book of Mark.
We’re going to be closing out our study of the Book of Mark this evening.
I am open to suggestions on what we might study next on our Wednesday in our Wednesday
night Bible class.
and uh if you have thoughts or suggestions, I don’t promise to do what you suggest, but I
do I am open to suggestions.
And we we’ll take a look at that uh by way of consideration.
Um but uh I’m kind of feeling like uh so we we were in Timothy, then we did Mark, uh
feeling like it might be a good opportunity to jump back to the Old Testament and grab an
old testament book for a little while.
But anyway, I’ll leave that to your to your thoughts and and perusals uh this weekend.
And if you do want to send me a text or uh have send me a suggestion be
Happy to to receive that.
Let’s begin with a word of prayer and then we’ll get into our class.
Gracious Father in heaven, we bow before your throne, grateful for this day, for its
blessings, for all that you do for us on a daily basis.
We’re grateful for the Richardsons being able to be with us and the safety in their
travel, and we pray for safety for all those who are traveling to the area for
foundations.
Pray that the week the week of camp will go well, and that uh many will be taught and
edified and encouraged during that week and be
More prepared to serve in your kingdom as they grow up and as they move away from home.
Lord, we pray that you be with us as we go through uh this period of study.
May the things that we say and do be in accordance with your will and right in your sight.
Lord, we pray for our nation and we pray for the nations throughout the world.
May they make choices and may they pre im implement policies that are beneficial for peace
And for the furtherance of your kingdom.
Lord, may we always have a boldness to speak the truth and never be afraid, no matter what
a government may say, about teaching the truth and preaching the gospel in sincerity and
in its simplicity.
Lord, we pray for those who are seeking the truth and pray that they might find that for
which they’re seeking.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
As we close out the book of Mark, uh we are in Mark chapter 16, and verse 14 says, Later
he appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table, and he rebuked their unbelief and
hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
The apostles
Have much of the same difficulties that sometimes you and I have.
And that is that as Christians, there’s a difference between knowing intellectually,
knowing the truth, and operating our lives based upon it.
They knew everything that Jesus had taught.
Now I understand that at this point in time, at this moment in time, they did they were
not receiving the miraculous reminder through the work of the Holy Spirit concerning the
things that Jesus taught, but they were present.
They lived the things that Jesus taught.
They had been part of those discussions.
They had been hearing for months now that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem and was going to
be betrayed and was going to die at the hands of their enemies.
And yet.
In spite of everything that they knew, in spite of everything that he had said, in spite
of everything that they had been told, they’re operating in their life as if they don’t
know any of those things.
That they’re they’re not implementing the truth of the belief that they had.
And it’s not just that they lacked knowledge or they lacked understanding it because Jesus
does not fault them for their lack of knowledge.
He faults them for their failure to believe.
They knew intellectually the truth.
They were not operating in their lives upon.
The truth that they knew.
And that’s a challenge to each and every one of us.
Because we we have this book.
We have the knowledge right in front of us.
Now, first, we are accountable to study the book.
Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.
But there’s two aspects to that statement that Paul makes study, that is, give diligence.
But there’s also the workman part of the message.
You’re supposed to add knowledge to your understanding of the Word of God so that you can
do something with it.
Uh
Eric knows this about me.
I have a tendency to buy tools.
We’ve done a number of projects through years, and if there’s a tool that we need, just
buy it.
Let’s go.
You know, there are a lot of tools that may sit for a couple of years.
Haven’t touched the tool.
There’s a difference between owning a tool and being a workman.
There’s a difference between having the ability and actually doing it.
Here are the disciples, and they know.
Everything they’ve been taught, they’ve lived through it, but in the circumstances they
found themselves in, they’re no longer operating on their faith.
They’re no longer living out in their daily lives the trust that they should have had in
God.
If you had asked them a week before.
Will Jesus reign in his kingdom?
Their answer would have probably been the exact same thing that Peter’s was in Matthew
chapter 16.
That you are the Son of God.
And Jesus said that he came in order to establish his kingdom, and he was going to give
them the keys of the kingdom, and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it.
And yet are they operating at this moment in time a base?
about sorry, uh upon that exact same understanding?
A week ago if you had asked me they said, Jesus is gonna rain.
A week later, Jesus is dead.
It is not when things are going well, and as we expect, and as we had planned, that we are
challenged to make our actions be equal with our understanding and our faith.
It is when nothing is going well, and nothing is going as we expected, and nothing is
going as planned.
That we are now challenged to operate based not upon what we see, but what we know to be
true.
Turn to Hebrews chapter eleven.
Hebrews chapter eleven.
The Hebrew writer begins with, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.
In other words, it is the the substance th there the the Greek idea is it is the
substrate, it is it is the support system.
if you were to think about those ancient buildings in Roman times and the Colosseums where
they had those.
Massive stone pillars that held up the the ceiling and the roof.
Without those stone pillars, what would happen to the to the ceiling and the roof?
They’d come crashing down.
So in the the picture here is faith is the support that holds up that which we hope for,
but that we have not yet seen.
Now he then goes through a list when he begins down here in verse four by faith Abel
offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness
that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still
speaks.
The Hebrew writer says, First example, look at Abel.
We don’t know much about Abel.
What do we know about Abel?
We know Cain killed him.
What did he do for a living?
He’s a keeper of sheep.
Okay.
We know that he offered his sheep as a sacrifice to God.
Those are basically the three things we know about Abel.
Other than he’s the son of Adam and Eve.
So we don’t know much.
But the Hebrew writer draws in on this.
We know that he offered an acceptable.
Sacrifice to God.
Because he offered it in accordance with God’s commandment out of faith.
By faith.
And by the way, you say, well, wait a minute.
I I don’t I don’t read in in the Old Testament, I don’t read where God told them what to
offer.
Well, if you were to go through the book of Hebrews, you will find out that you cannot do
something by faith unless there has first been an instruction or a statement by God.
The Hebrew writer does not mean by faith as in I hope or I believe.
No, he means by the instruction of God, someone obeyed.
That’s what faith is understood to be in the book of Hebrews.
So
In order for Abel to have offered his sacrifice by faith, there had to have been a
command.
There had to have been an instruction by God.
Go down the rest of the list and you will find that over and over and over and over again.
So Abel, by faith, offers a sacrifice, trusting that when he does what God says, God will
do what he said.
Enoch.
By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God
had taken him.
For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God.
Can you be pleasing to God if you don’t know anything about how God expects you to act or
live?
oh So was there instruction, was there was there communication from the Lord in order for
Enoch to be pleasing to God?
Yes.
By faith.
Noah, verse 7, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear,
prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world, and
became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Here Noah is presented as an example, being warned by God of a coming destruction of the
world.
Now, where in Noah’s
History in the 500 years that he had been alive till that point, did Noah have experience
with worldwide destruction?
Nowhere.
There’s no indication that Noah had even witnessed it rain before.
And yet God says, This is what I’m going to do and this is how I’m going to do it.
And because of the testimony and the instruction of God, together with Noah’s trust that
God would do what he said, Noah operated his life.
You find Abraham.
Verse 8, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he would
receive as an inheritance, and went out, and here the Hebrew writer even draws it out, not
knowing where he was going.
It is not when everything is going as planned, as expected, as we desire for it to do,
that our faith is going to be challenged to operate.
It is when it is not.
Now that is combined with an understanding of we need to be watchful when everything is
going right.
Because as we talked about, I believe it was Sunday or recently at least in Deuteronomy
chapter 6, Moses doesn’t warn the people that in the hardship, in the hard times, they
need to remember the Lord.
He warns the people in the good times when you’re fat and when you’ve eaten and you’re
full.
Now you need to remember the Lord.
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord.
Okay?
So we need to be careful, we need to be watchful that our faith is being lived out when
things are hard and when things are easy.
But then he says, verse 15 of Mark chapter 16 Go into all the world.
And preach the gospel to every creature.
What is the gospel?
What does the word mean in the Greek?
Good news.
Jesus says to them, Go preach the good news.
So Paul in First Corinthians will tell those Corinthians, when I was present with you.
I determined not to know anything but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
He says, I wasn’t going to preach to you the wisdom of men.
I wasn’t going to preach to you the wisdom of the Jews.
I wasn’t going to preach to you the wisdom of the eloquent individuals.
I preached a stumbling block to the Jews.
I preached foolishness to the Gentiles because I preached a risen Savior.
One who had died, one who had been crucified, and yet had done that for your salvation.
When Jesus sends forth Peter, he tells him to preach the gospel.
When Jesus sends forth Paul, he tells him to preach the gospel.
Did they preach the same gospel?
Yes they did.
They preached the same gospel.
They preached the same method whereby someone accepts and obeys the gospel.
Yet there are many today who will argue that the gospel of Peter is different than the
gospel of Paul.
That the gospel of Peter was one of keeping works and the gospel of Paul is one of grace
and faith.
Nonsense.
All you have to do is go through the book of Acts and look at what Paul commands people to
do, and go to the same book of Acts and look at what Peter commands people to do, and
guess what?
It is the exact same thing.
They preached not Paul’s gospel, not Peter’s gospel, but Christ’s gospel.
Who is to be a recipient of the gospel?
Everyone.
Doesn’t matter what historical background they come from, what country they come from,
what nationality they come from, what uh religious background they do or do not have, what
their current belief system is, whether or not they’re currently living in sin or in
iniquity, because if they haven’t been obedient to the gospel, they are.
Jesus commands the apostles to go and preach the gospel to every creature.
Now, are the apostles going to understand the full extent and depth of that command the
moment it’s given?
How do we know?
All right.
Number one is they still think Jesus is here to provide an earthly kingdom.
Number two, who do they take the gospel to for the first eight chapters of the book of
Acts?
The Jews.
And it is not until Acts chapter 10 where the Holy Spirit will communicate and tell Peter,
go to this man’s house.
And he goes to the house of Cornelius, and there, through the uh through the work of the
Holy Spirit, the house of Cornelius begins speaking in tongues to identify that they as
well should receive the gospel.
That’s not Aaron’s interpretation, by the way.
That’s what Peter says.
Having witnessed them speaking in tongues, he says, Can anyone deny them the gospel?
And so he preaches to them the gospel and they are immersed in water that same hour.
So as you look at it, he’s going to give a command.
They’re going to understand the command as they framed it to begin with.
But God is going to keep pushing the boundary of their understanding.
God is going to slowly but surely get the apostles to where they needed to be.
Now, is that because they were ignoring?
God’s commands, or was that God’s plan?
It was his plan.
Go over to Acts chapter one.
Acts chapter one, verse four, and being assembled together with them, he commanded them
not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit, which he
said, You have heard from me.
For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not
many days from now.
Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this
time restore the kingdom to Israel?
And he said to them, It is not for you to know the times nor the seasons which the Father
has put in his own authority.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be
witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
God had a plan for how the church was going to grow.
God had a plan for how the gospel was going to proceed.
God will
cause them to enact the plan.
How is God going to move them out of Jerusalem?
Persecution.
The the Book of Acts is one of those scenarios where we pause for a minute and go, you
know what?
Sometimes when things aren’t going well for us, that oughta be an a time of examination.
What am I not doing?
What what not everything that is bad is a lesson to be learned.
But there are times in which we should be taking the bad things that it we experience in
life and going, This is a good opportunity for me to be doing some self examination.
Because they didn’t cause the persecution, did they?
Did the church cause the persecution?
That did they riot against the government?
Cause the government to start cracking down on them?
No.
As a matter of fact, they were feeding the widows, they were caring for those who were
being neglected, so much so that there were priests whose responsibility were the widows
in the Jewish society who were being converted because of what the Christians were doing
with the widows.
They were going about doing good, and their popularity among the people was growing and
growing and growing.
And it was because of the good that they did that they suffered.
But er there was still an opportunity for them to grow further in obedience to God’s
commandments.
And so as they begin to be persecuted, they go everywhere preaching the word.
It wasn’t a lack of faith, it was a lack of understanding.
It was a simple desire to be together, to not be separated from all the other Christians,
but rather to be together with all the other Christians.
You know, one of hardships that you find among missionaries is they’ve already accepted,
but they don’t get to stay in the same place.
For many missionaries, they go from one location to another, to another, to another.
Now, there are some missionaries that are in the same city in the same location for for
years, and that’s that’s fine.
But many who are missionaries, they’re going from one place to the next place to the next
place to the next place.
continuing to do their work and they know part of the uh if we can use the modern
vernacular part of the gig is they’re gonna find a loving congregation that they want to
spend the rest of their days with and they’re not going to get to.
They’re going to be there for a period of time and then they’re gonna get up and they’re
gonna leave again.
And that’s a challenge.
That’s what the church of Jerusalem didn’t want to do.
They were just right there, one city.
We’re not going anywhere.
God said, Y’all got to get out of here.
So the apostles remain, but Christians start going back home.
They start going everywhere preaching the word.
But then after the gospel goes to the Gentiles, you still see a bit of a stagnation,
right?
The gospel’s
Been allowed to go to the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit has authorized it.
He’s demonstrated that this is that which is in accordance with his will, but you don’t
see this flood of missionaries going out to the Gentiles until Jesus prompts Saul of
Tarsus to go.
So Holy Spirit will call forth Barnabas and Saul and send them out from Antioch.
And they will go to the Gentile cities preaching the gospel.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well the the uh the apostles and elders, it seems as though the apostles were on board,
but not not all the congreg not all the elders and not all the apostles were were fully
understanding the situation.
Um That’s right.
Yeah.
So Acts chapter fifteen draws out uh both what Peter says, what James, the half brother of
Jesus, says, and what Paul sa says there at that gathering where they’re pointing out,
listen.
We don’t get a say in this.
The Holy Spirit’s already decided.
Um, so verse fifteen, he says, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature.
He who believes and is baptized will be saved.
There is a promise there.
There is a statement of fact there that he who believes and is baptized will be saved.
It is important to realize.
that when God makes a promise, he will keep it.
That does not mean that there’s not a requirement on the promise.
When God told Israel, if you will go into the land and if you will do what I command you,
then I will give you all of these things.
Was his promise factual?
Was it guaranteed?
Hundred percent.
They could operate.
Out of faith and trust, knowing that God was going to do exactly what he had promised.
But did God also say what would happen if they stopped doing what he said?
absolutely.
He said, if you stop doing what I tell you to do, if you stop keeping my commandment, if
you stop keeping my covenant and my statutes and my testimonies,
Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to run you out of the land.
He who believes and is baptized will be saved.
True statement.
Can a person who is saved lose their salvation by failing to keep the covenant agreement
they’ve made with God?
Absolutely.
You say, Aaron, uh wh where do you read that?
Well, let’s let’s jump right over to the writings of Peter.
Peter will point out
In Second Peter chapter two.
Verse 18, he says, For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure
through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from
those who live in error.
Who are the people who have escaped those who live in error?
Christians.
He says, Here are these false teachers, and they speak these great swelling words of
emptiness.
You ever watch a little kid use one of those wands and the soapy stuff and blow a bubble?
How big can some of those bubbles get?
Pretty big size.
What do they got inside them?
Not much anything.
That’s these false teachers.
They look impressive.
Inside, nothing.
He says, but you have allured, you have enticed, you have seduced those who have escaped
the living in error of the world.
To now operate upon the lust of the flesh, to operate through lewdness.
He says, While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption.
For by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome.
The latter end is worse for them than the beginning.
Peter makes it clear.
Not only can you go from being lost to being saved, but you can go from being lost to
being saved back to being lost.
And that the end of that is worse than if you’d never heard the gospel.
And yet there are those who will argue that once you’re saved, you’re always saved.
That there’s no possibility of ever being lost once you’re saved.
Therefore, they would argue, and I’ve even heard some within uh the body of Christ argue:
well, we should understand that uh he who believes and is baptized should be saved.
The King James translates it.
That’s not the statement.
That’s not what the Greek holds.
This is an assurance.
As much so as the book of Hebrews assures that if we will do what God said in accordance
with how he said, and we will operate upon faith and obedience, God will deliver his
promises.
But God’s promises are conditional.
They are conditional upon faithful continuance.
And they always have been.
Were Adam and Eve’s promises based upon faithful continuance?
Yes, they were.
Uh let’s let’s let’s find out since that’s you know that’s Genesis, that’s the beginning
of the of the Bible.
Let’s find out if the end of the Bible holds up to that same ideal.
Turn to Revelation chapter 22.
Verse twelve And behold I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to give to every one
according to his work.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the uh and the end, the first and the
last.
Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life,
and may enter through the gates into the city.
Who does the book of Revelation tell us will have a right to the spiritual blessings
afforded by God?
The faithful who do His commandments.
Many in the religious world will argue that the Church of Christ preaches a works based
salvation.
There are two senses of the term works in the New Testament.
One of them is works of merit.
Whereby when a person works, they earn something.
The only works of merit involved in salvation are found in Romans chapter six, verse
twenty-three.
For the wages of sin is what?
Death.
When it comes to works of merit, what we deserve.
is judgment from God.
And there is never a point, the scripture is very clear of this, there is never a point in
which you can obtain and do sufficient works of merit to which God owes you salvation.
He owes you judgment.
He owes you punishment.
But there’s another use of the term works, and it’s the one used prevalently throughout
James and Romans.
And it is the works of obedience.
It is not the work of merit.
It is the work a person does because God told him to do it.
And in Acts sorry, uh in in Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve, Tend the garden and keep it.
Did Adam and Eve deserve the garden?
No, the garden was there before they were.
They were placed into the garden.
They didn’t earn it.
But they were given conditions that they had to follow in order to keep access to it.
So works of merit versus works of obedience.
The operation of our faith.
James says faith without what?
Works is dead.
Now, Revelation says blessed are those who do his commandments.
It might remind us that Jesus said the one who hears these sayings of mine and does not do
them.
What does he liken that person to?
Person who builds his house upon the sand.
A person who judgment is coming for, because he hears and has no works that accord to
obedience.
What’s the contrast there?
The contrast is to the person who hears these sayings of mine and does them.
He obeys out of faith.
Now, in Revelation he says, But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and
murderers and idolaters and whoever loves and practices a lie.
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you of those things that are written in the uh
those things in the churches.
I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star, and the spirit
and the bride say come, and let him who hears say come, and let him who thirst come,
whoever desires let him take of the water of life freely.
An invitation offered right here at the end of the book of Revelation.
From the church, from the Spirit, saying, Salvation is available to you.
All the blessings of this book are available to you.
All of the good things that God promises are available to you.
So when he talks about those who are outside, being dogs, sorcerers, sexually immoral,
murderers, and idolaters, those are just all people who’ve never been obedient to the
gospel, right?
The answer is no.
Rather, it is those who have never been obedient to the gospel and those who once were
obedient and have turned back.
Pay attention in the book of Revelation as we’ve been studying through it about all of the
people and even whole congregations that Jesus confronts and says, If you don’t repent,
I’m going to make war with you.
And you will have no part to the tree of life.
You will have no part in the book of life.
But then he says, This, verse 18, for I testify to everyone who hears the words of the
prophecy of this book.
If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this
book.
And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take.
What’s that word?
Away.
God shall take away his part from the book of life, from the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book.
Genesis makes it very clear.
If you do not continue obeying God, judgment awaits.
And the scripture is clear from Genesis all the way to the end of the book of Revelation,
where John will write not to the non-Christians about adding to or taking away from the
Scripture.
They have no part in the book of life.
They have no part in the holy city.
They have no part in the things that are written in this book.
He’s not warning the non-Christians, he’s warning the Christians.
He says, you add to this book, you take away from the things written in this book, and I
will take your name out of the book of life.
Can you lose your salvation yes, you can.
Now, does that mean that we operate every single day being, oh, one moment I’m doing
what’s right, I’m saved.
One moment, oh, I did something that was wrong, I’m lost.
Going straight to hell now.
Is that what the New Testament teaches by way of salvation?
No.
What’s one passage somebody can think of that maybe explains what the New Testament
teaches about the confidence of the saved?
All right.
First John chapter one.
Kinda had a feeling one of the preachers in the room was gonna come up with it.
First John chapter 1, verse 5, this is the message which we have heard from him and
declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth.
John says if you claim to know God and be in fellowship with God, and you walk in,
continue in, operate in on a continual basis, darkness.
He says, You’re a liar.
But then he says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie
and do not practice the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
He says, For the person walking in the light, if you have deceived and deluded yourself
into thinking that you are sinlessly perfect.
You are wrong.
He says, Rather, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The Bible does not teach, nor does Christians teach.
That a person who is a member of the body of Christ is in one moment, out one moment, in
one moment, out one moment.
You better hope that you die when you’re in.
Otherwise, you’re going to miss heaven.
That is not what the New Testament teaches.
The New Testament teaches that we are to live by faith.
Walking in the light, that our direction of life is to be in accordance with the word of
God, and that as we operate in that way, we will sin, we will fall short, we will make
mistakes, some of them knowingly, some of them unknowingly, and God will forgive us of
those things.
But if you turn around and go the other direction, if you say, I know what the Bible says,
but I’m going to do it my way.
If you operate in rebellion against God, notice what else John said.
As he closed out chapter one of first John, first John chapter one verse ten, if we say
that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
If we look at what the text of Scripture says and he says, I know that’s what it says, but
I’m telling you something different.
John says, Word of God’s not in you.
Now, Jesus will say to them in verse 16, He who believes and is baptized will be saved,
but he who does not believe will be condemned.
And these signs will follow those who believe.
In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues, they will take up
serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.
They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.
So true or false.
We should be looking for the signs that Jesus said would accompany those who preach the
gospel, and we should be looking for people to perform miracles and be able to be saved
from deadly serpents’ bites.
And that that’s how we can uh know that they’re speaking the truth now, right?
No.
Why not?
All right.
Because the things that are described here are assurances that God was doing what he said
he was doing.
And they were there to confirm the word.
If we could use an Old Testament analogy, when Moses was on the mount and God spoke to him
through the burning bush and said, You go to Pharaoh, did Moses ask for confirmation that
he was supposed to do that?
He did.
And what did God do with Moses there on the mountain?
He put his hand into his cloak and it came out and it had changed.
Put it back, came out, it was back to the way it was.
See, God offered signs to Moses to confirm the word.
Did God continue to offer those signs to every generation of Israel all the way through
their history?
Or rather did He give them a written word to follow?
He gave them a written word to follow throughout their history.
And he gave it through Moses, who had received the signs.
Same thing happens in the church.
God performs those signs through the apostles and prophets of the first century church,
and then he delivers through the work of the Holy Spirit written revelation whereby the
church could continue to operate without the need of the miraculous signs.
Absolutely.
So he says, these are gonna be the signs to guarantee that the message you’re preaching
originates with God.
And by the way, every single one of those signs you see you see historically uh referenced
somewhere in the book of Acts or in the early church.
Every single one of them.
They occur at some point where God fulfills what he said was coming.
But then we read verse 19 and 20.
So then after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven and sat down at
the right hand of God.
Mark references the uh the prophecy of Daniel in Daniel chapter seven.
And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the
word through the accompanying signs.
Amen.
So Mark concludes.
His record of the life of Christ by introducing what the church did.
He said, He told them to go, they went.
He told them to go everywhere.
That’s where they went.
He told them signs would accompany it.
That’s what happened.
And now you know how it all started.
Okay?
Thank you for your attention.
The Church – O.C. Woodlee – Feb. 15, 2026
Good afternoon.
Thank goodness I finally got that right.
I’ll be completely honest with you all, I get so nervous before I get up here and I
apologize sometimes if I say things that…
are not exactly what I’m supposed to be saying.
that’s, I’m glad I finally got that out.
But good afternoon.
Thank you all for being here.
If we have any visitors, thank you for being here also.
And I hope that today that you feel encouraged, that you feel loved, that you feel valued.
People talk about the church all the time, but very few people truly understand what the
church really is.
If you ask 10 people what they think about the church,
You might get 10 different answers.
Some will say that it’s a cult.
Others will say it’s a denomination.
Some will say it doesn’t matter what church you attend as long as you believe in Christ,
that’s OK.
Some would even say the church is man-made altogether.
If every, and the problem with that is with, when people start using the church for
everything, eventually the word stops meaning anything.
If every religious group with different doctrines, different plans of salvation and
different authority structures uses the word church, then truth becomes impossible to
understand.
The church is not something man built.
The church is something that God designed.
The world today has cheapened the idea
of what the church is.
Men have divided it.
Men have remodeled it and renamed it until it hardly resembles the church that we find in
scripture.
Many have turned the religion into entertainment, preaching into storytelling and worship
into performance.
And the tragedy of it all is that souls are being lost every single day because people no
longer have a good understanding of what the church, of what the Lord’s church truly is.
So as we begin this afternoon, I want to ask a question.
Is the Church of Christ a denomination?
On the nationally televised Nancy Grace program, a Baptist preacher, Tom Rakula, well, the
Church of Christ is relatively a new church.
It was started about 150 years ago by Alexander Campbell.
Now, he is not the first to level such a claim, and he certainly will not be the last to
say such.
that if this is true, if what he said was true, then the Church of Christ is just another
denomination among denominations.
But is this true?
A couple passages this morning I want us to look at, and if you turn to Matthew chapter 16
verse 18.
tells us, upon this rock I will build my church.
Here he was not talking about a denomination or an earthly organization.
Christ was declaring that he would build something eternal.
Christ was declaring that he would build something divine, something that was bought with
his own blood.
Did Christ promise to build his church from this passage?
Yes.
When Christ built this church, to whom would it belong?
Would it not belong?
to church the what it not belong to Christ who built it if it belonged to Christ would it
not be the Church of Christ furthermore did Christ ever promise to build his church and
where do we find that where did he build it I invite you now to turn to Acts chapter 2
Peter
convicted to cry with the people and they said, shall we do?
And Acts 2 37 Peter answered, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Acts chapter 2 verse 38.
Approximately 3000 souls were gladly welcomed this message and were baptized upon their
baptism.
They were added.
What were they added to?
Acts 2 41.
To what were they added?
The Lord added to the church daily.
such as should be saved, Acts chapter 2 verse 47.
But wait a minute, to whose church did the Lord add them?
Did he add them to a denomination?
Was it the church which Christ promised to build in Matthew chapter 16 verse 18?
If not, then whose church was this?
On the other hand, if the church which Christ promised to build is the one here in Acts
chapter 2, then those added to it were in the church of belonging to Christ.
Acts chapter 20 verse 28 tells us, to feed the church of God which he had purchased with
his own blood.
The church exists because Christ died for it.
It’s not man’s idea, it’s God’s.
Before the foundation of the world began, before man was ever
everything before sin entered into the garden, God had already had a plan to save mankind
from their sin and the church was part of that plan.
You can see this in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 10 through 11 where it says that to the
intent now and to the principalities and powers and heavenly places might be known by the
church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he proposed in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is not enough to just wear the name of the
Church of Christ.
We must understand what that name truly represents.
It’s not enough to just say we attend worship service.
We must realize what kind of worship that we are a part of.
When we gather here on the Lord’s Day, when we partake in singing and when we pray and
when we study and we partake of the bread, we are participating in something that is far
greater than ourselves.
That’s why Satan tries so hard every single day to confuse people about what the church
really is.
If Satan can get people to believe that any church will do or that the church doesn’t
really matter, then he can lead souls away from the truth.
But there is only one church that belongs to Christ, and the Bible makes that clear.
In Ephesians chapter 4, verse 4 through 6, it tells us there is only one body, one spirit,
and even as you are called in one hope of your calling.
One faith, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all
and through all and in you all.
That one body is the church.
Not many bodies, not many faiths, not many baptisms, just one.
And if there is one body, and that body is the church, then there’s only one church that
belongs to Christ.
The church is too important for us to treat like it’s not that important.
When a man builds his home, and one day I want a beautiful cabin in the woods,
Separate it from everywhere else.
I don’t want no neighbors.
I just want I want a nice place So I’m going to design how I’m going to build this home
Now if a man comes up to me and says you know what I like your cabin But I think I’m going
to change how it looks I think I’m gonna come in and I ain’t gonna make it wood.
I don’t want a cabin.
I want a brick house You know what I would look at that man say get off go on somewhere
That’s exactly what people have done today to the Lord’s church, is it not?
They have made it to where it hardly resembles the church that we see in scriptures.
If we truly love Christ, then we’ll love His church.
And if we truly honor Christ, we will honor His design.
And if we are part of Christ’s body, then we will follow his authority and not our own.
In John chapter 14 verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments.
So today I want us to take a good look and a serious and loving look at the church.
We will see its foundation.
We will see its authority and we will see its identity, its faithfulness and its mission.
And each of these truths will remind us not only who we are, but who we belong to.
So as we begin, let’s look at the
the church’s foundation.
If a man wants to know the strength of a building, he does not look at the paint on the
walls or the decorations of the place.
He looks at the very foundation of the building.
If the foundation is strong, it’s going to stand, but if the foundation is weak, that
house is going to completely fall over.
When Jesus said in Matthew 16, 18, upon this rock I will build my church, that statement
is the foundation of everything that we believe.
That statement is the foundation of everything that we preach
everything that we are.
The church is not built on man, the church is built on God.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 11, other foundation can no man lay than that
which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
There is no other name, there is no other authority, no other power that can support the
weight of salvation.
Christ alone is the foundation and everything apart from him will fall.
We find in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19 through 20 where it says,
you are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and the
household of God are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets Jesus Christ
himself being the chief cornerstone.
The Apostles and the prophets laid the foundation through the Word of God.
They taught it, they preached it, and they wrote by inspiration.
But look back at that verse at the end of it where it says that Jesus Christ is the chief
cornerstone.
In high school, in ag class, we took classes that was, we’d work on uh small engines.
We would work on plumbing stuff, welding.
But one time we worked on laying block.
If you’ve never laid block, it is the most annoying thing ever.
And it is so annoying.
And one day I was in there and I failed it to be honest with you, I did.
uh We have to lay the mortar on the block and then you got to make sure it’s level and
then you put another block on that corner and you keep doing it and you got to make sure
it’s level.
m
If it’s not level, it’s gonna flop over this way or it’s gonna go on this side and it’s
just not gonna look good.
It’s not gonna be even and you will never be able to build a house on it.
The people that built this church or this laid the wall for this, I don’t know how they
did it, but props to them.
But how important it is to see that Christ is the chief cornerstone.
That means that no matter that he has to be the authority, has everything that we do must
be measured by Christ.
Now the world will come along and try to shift that cornerstone.
They’ll try to say, well, you know, the Church of Christ should adapt culture or we
should, we need to modernize religion.
Well, brethren, when you remove the cornerstone, you destroy the structure.
You can’t have the Lord’s church without the Lord’s foundation.
And think for a moment,
how great and what it means that Christ is the foundation.
It means that the church rest upon his authority, not ours.
Jesus said in Matthew 28 18, all power is given to me and in heaven and in earth.
That means he alone has the right to rule what?
His church.
It’s not the preacher’s church.
It’s not the elders church.
It’s not the members church.
It’s his church.
He built it.
He bought it and he governs it.
And when men come along and start
making their own laws and inventing their own way of worship and their own plan of
salvation, they are no longer standing upon God’s authority.
They’re standing on traditions of men and men’s opinions only.
Jesus warned us in Matthew chapter 7, verse 26 through 27, where he tells us that everyone
that hear these sayings of mine and do with them not shall be like a foolish man who built
his house upon the sand.
And the rains descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon the house and
it fell and
great was the fall of it.
That’s what happens when we forget the Lord’s foundation.
People start to build something that looks strong, something that sounds religious, that
even uses the Lord’s name.
But without obedience to the Word, it amounts to nothing.
That’s why we teach the same Gospels that the Apostles preached.
Because the moment we leave the foundation is the moment we leave the church.
If Christ is the foundation of the church, then everything that we do must rest on Him.
The church is not a business, the church is a body.
It’s not about pleasing people, it’s about pleasing God.
Acts chapter 2 verse 42 and they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and
fellowship and breaking of bread and in prayers.
That’s what faithfulness to the foundation looks like.
They didn’t drift from what Christ had established.
They didn’t go and create the wrong way of worship.
They didn’t run after a new idea.
They simply followed what he commanded and we must do the same.
If you want to find the Lord’s church, you have to go back to the Lord’s blueprint.
If we lose sight of the foundation,
and we lose everything.
Because without Christ there is no hope.
Without Christ there is no salvation and without Christ there is no church.
That’s why it’s not enough to just wear the name Church of Christ.
That means nothing if we’re not standing upon the foundation that that name represents.
The church will stand firm and it will only stand firm on Him and only then.
Now that we’ve talked about the church’s foundation I want us to move on to our next
point, the church’s identity.
Once you understand the foundation of the church that rests on Christ, the next question
becomes even greater.
What is the church itself?
Now take this with a grain of salt.
I am not uh a Greek person at all, but the Greek word for church is ecclesia, which means
called out.
Now that’d probably be the only time that I will use a Greek word in any of my sermons,
but it means to be called out.
And that word tells us everything that we need to know about its identity.
church is made up of those who have been called out, called out of sin, called out of
darkness, called into this marvelous light of God.
1 Peter 2, 9 tells us, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of Him who have called you out of
darkness into His marvelous light.
That is who the church,
Random group of people who happen to meet here on a Sunday morning at the same place each
week, but a holy people who have been set apart for God’s purpose.
When you and I are baptized into Christ, we are not just forgiven, we are added to
something.
We find that what we just read in Acts 2, 47, that the Lord added to the church daily such
as should be saved.
That means if you are not yet in the church, you are not yet among the saved.
Because the same blood that saves you is what places you into that body.
We find in Romans chapter 6, 3 through 4, know ye not that so many of us were baptized
into Christ, were baptized into his death.
Therefore we are buried with him in baptism, unto death, like as Christ was raised.
up from the dab out the glory of the Father even so we should also walk in newness of
life.
When we obey the gospel we are baptized into his death and that’s where the blood of
Christ is found.
The blood adds us to his body which is the church.
Ephesians 1 22 through 23 and have put all things under his feet and gave him to be the
head over all things to the church which is his body.
So we have figured out so far by reading all this is that the Church of Christ is not a
denomination.
It’s the body of Christ.
That’s why the Bible never speaks of many different churches and really many different
faiths or different teachings.
It speaks of one body, one church, and one people.
That one body
is the church.
If you don’t get anything else out of this lesson, know that the one body that we find in
scripture is talking about the church.
So when someone asks, well what church do you go to or what denomination do you go to, the
answer should never be about belonging.
It should be about I belong to the church which Christ built and what he promised to
build.
The church of Christ is not a man-made group with a man-made name.
It’s a blood-bought family of God.
In Romans 16, 16 the churches of Christ salute you.
That phrase that we read here is not just a title, it’s an identity.
It means the churches that belong to Christ.
Now think about how precious and how great that truly is.
You and I are part of the same body that Jesus died for.
The same body that began in Acts chapter 2, the same body that the apostles served in, and
that’s the same body that we will be presented before God on the final day on judgment.
That is our identity.
That is who we belong to.
But with that identity, it comes with something.
It comes with responsibility.
If we belong to Christ, then we must reflect Christ.
The world learns who Christ is by looking at his church.
When people see us, do they see Christ?
When people see us, do they see love?
Do they see patience?
Do they see uh purity and truth, or do they see division?
Or do they see compromise?
The church’s reputation in the world depends on the faithfulness of its members.
Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, 14 through 16, You are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but under a candlestick.
And giveth light to all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, which glorify your
Father, which is in heaven.
The church is not called to blend in, it’s called to stand out.
to shine not for our own glory but for whose?
God’s.
Every member of the church represents the body and when the church forgets the identity it
starts to lose its strength.
When we forget who we belong to we start acting like we belong to the world and not of
God.
So our third point now is the church’s faithfulness.
When a person knows who they are, it changes how they live.
And that’s true for individuals and it’s true for the church.
If the church is the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the family of God, then the
church must live in a way that honors the one to whom it belongs.
Faithfulness is not an option.
It’s the very heartbeat of the church.
When Jesus spoke to the seven churches in Revelation, He didn’t praise their numbers.
He didn’t praise their wealth or their reputation.
He praised their faithfulness.
Revelation 2 10, be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
Faithfulness is what God requires even when the world misunderstands us.
The church must be faithful in three main areas.
It is in doctrine, in duty, and in devotion.
The church must hold fast to that truth.
Truth is not something we shape just to fit the times.
something that we cling to no matter what the times become.
Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, 2 through 4, preach the word.
Be instant in season, out of season.
rebuke, exhort, and all long-suffering.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own loss
shall she heed the ears.
James said in James chapter 1 verse 22, be you doers of the word and not hearers only,
deceiving yourselves.
Faithful Christians take what they learn and live it out daily in their workplace, in
their school, and in their homes.
Doctrine and duty both matter, but they mean nothing without true devotion to the Lord.
Now the final point for this afternoon is the church’s mission.
Every great work that God has ever begun, it had a purpose.
When he made the world, he had a plan.
When he sent his son, he had a reason for doing that.
And when Christ built this church, he gave it a mission that would stretch far beyond time
itself.
The church’s mission is not to entertain the world, not to impress the world, not to blend
in, but to reach the world.
When Jesus gave that great commission in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20, he
said, all powers given to me in heaven and earth, go ye therefore, teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to
the end of the world.
Amen.
This is a heartbeat of the church’s mission, to take the gospel to every creature.
If you look at the early church in Acts, that’s exactly what they did.
They didn’t have the buildings or the programs or the money, but they had faith and that
was all they needed.
They didn’t have anything that they could go to.
Acts 8, 4 says, therefore they were scattered abroad everywhere preaching the word.
They were scattered by persecution, yet they still preached.
Why?
because they understood their mission.
They understood their purpose and we need to understand ours as well.
We may not all stand in the pulpit, but we can all share Christ in some way.
We can all pray for someone.
We can always invite someone, encourage and speak the word of truth to those who are
searching.
Paul said in Romans 1, 16, for the power, for I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for
it is the power of God into salvation.
The power is to say,
is not in us.
We have no power at all.
The power is in the Word of God and our job is to carry that message faithfully and sadly
there are souls today who will never know the truth unless the church moves.
There are hearts waiting for someone to show them what real hopes looks like.
If we stay silent, that mission suffers.
The church’s mission doesn’t end with reaching the lost, but it continues to strengthen
those that are saved.
And the Great Commission says after it says baptizing them.
It continues and says teaching them to observe all things.
That means once a soul becomes part of the church, our mission is to help them to continue
to grow.
Galatians 6-2,
fulfill the law of Christ.
That is the mission and motion a family working together to stay faithful until the Lord
calls us home.
And above all, the mission of the church is to bring glory to God.
Ephesians 321 tells us in the hymn, be the glory by the Church of Christ, Jesus Christ
through all the ages, world without end.
Every act of worship, every word of truth, and every soul that is saved, all of it points
back to the glory of God, not us.
That’s why this mission matters so deeply.
Because it’s not about building a name for the church, it’s about lifting up the name of
Christ.
Once the Lord returns, our mission is going to be finished.
And the only results of our faithfulness will remain.
That’s why the church cannot be idle.
That’s why the church cannot be silent.
The church cannot be content just to exist.
The church has got to move, work, teach, and love, and serve while there is still time
because the world needs what only the church can give,
the truth.
There’s so many other opinions out in the world.
There’s too much of that.
The world needs the truth and the church is the only thing that can give that truth to
them.
That that’s the church that we want to be a part of.
The one that has the truth, not just opinions, not what somebody says or can get up and do
a lesson without any verses in there at all.
We want to hear the truth.
We want to hear what the Bible has to say because that is our ultimate authority and
nothing else should come, should we say other than that.
The church is not man’s invention, it’s God’s.
And it’s His plan for us.
And if you’re not yet part of the body, you can become part of it today.
God gives us a plan.
tells us we must hear the word, Romans 10, 17.
So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
He tells us that we must believe, Mark 16, 16, he that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.
He tells us we must repent of our sins.
Luke 13, 3, I tell you nay, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
We must confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Romans 10,
10, 9 through 10, that if thou shalt confess with our mouth, the Lord Jesus shall believe
in that heart that hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
For if the heart of man believeth in the righteousness and with the mouth the confession
is made into salvation.
In Acts 2.38 he tells us we must be baptized for the remission of our sins.
Repent and be baptized.
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
1 Peter 3 21, the like figure, whereunto even now baptism doth also now save us.
And finally, Revelation 2 10, be thou faith one to death and I will give thee a crown of
life.
This afternoon, if there’s any way that we can help you, come now as together we stand.
Do We Really Believe – Aaron Cozort – Feb. 15, 2026
Good morning.
this morning.
I wanted to spend a few moments considering the question, do we really believe?
The Bible is incredibly clear on the impacts of true belief, the impacts of true faith.
the things that it alters in our lives, the things that it changes in our day-to-day
actions, the determination and the choices that we make as a result of believing.
Now, there are many within the world who believe in many different things, and it alters
their actions.
Many have firm conviction about things that may or may not be true, but it alters their
actions.
But you know, there are times where we believe in things and it just doesn’t alter our
actions.
Imagine a coworker comes to work and he works next to the same guy every day.
We’ll call one of them Carl, one of them Bob.
Carl walks up to Bob.
It’s about time for work to begin and he says, I’ve always wondered, do you believe in
aliens?
And Bob goes, well, you know, I really, I always have.
And I’ve always thought that the UFOs and all the sightings, that they’re aliens.
And so, yeah, I believe in aliens.
Okay.
Carl thinks about it for a moment.
says, Bob, how has your belief in aliens changed anything about your life?
Bob says, you know, it really hasn’t.
Don’t do anything different every day when I get up in the morning because I believe in
aliens.
I’ve never gone to New Mexico to go look for them.
I believe it, but it really hasn’t affected my life at all.
And so our question is, do we really believe in a biblical sense?
Or do we believe, kind of like Bob believes in aliens?
We’re going to begin looking at these two texts.
In John chapter six, Jesus has been interacting with those of the
5,000 men that he had fed the day before on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.
And as they come and they find Jesus the next day having eaten of the bread the previous
day, Jesus will speak to them concerning the bread of life.
He will speak to them concerning things that they should have known about the Messiah, but
Jesus will begin to give them detail and information.
in a way that they begin to resist the very beliefs that they have.
In John chapter 6, in verse 60, we notice this text.
As Jesus is speaking to them, read, Therefore many of his disciples, when they heard this,
said, This is a hard saying.
Who can understand it?
Jesus has been talking to them about the fact that they will consume His flesh and drink
His blood, that they will do so because the living Father sent Him and He is alive because
of the Father.
So notice when Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to
them, Does this offend you?
What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?
It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing, the words that I speak to you
are spirit and they are life.
But there are some of you who do not,” notice the phrase, believe.
He says, the statement and the teaching that I have given you concerning my flesh and my
blood bothers you, then what is going to happen to you when you see me leave?
The problem is…
You don’t believe.
Now notice, Jesus knew, verse 64, from the beginning who they were who did not believe and
who would betray Him.
Then we read in verse 65, and He said, Therefore I have said to you that no one can come
to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.
From that time many of his disciples
went back and walked with him no more.
Jesus as He was walking the earth, as He was teaching in the synagogues and in the temple,
as He was going from city and village to town in Judea and in Samaria and into Galilee, as
He would cross the Jordan and then cross back over the Jordan, as He would teach in the
wilderness, as He would go into the region of Tyre and Sidon,
everywhere he went as he was teaching there would be people who were listening and some of
said, believe, and some of them said, I will follow you, and Jesus knew as he was teaching
which ones did and which ones didn’t.
and he didn’t judge it based upon their actions.
He didn’t judge it based upon whether they followed him or not because he knew even some
of them who followed him still didn’t believe.
John chapter 20.
John, as he is nearing the end of his record of the life of Christ, will say in verses 30
and 31, and truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are
not written in this book, speaking concerning the miracles which Jesus proclaimed.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that believing you may have life in his name.
Do not miss the incredible significance of outcome between believing and not.
The result of true biblical believing is life in the name of Christ.
The outcome of failing to believe or refusing to believe is not having life in the name of
Christ.
So we are challenged to ask ourselves, do we really believe?
But while Jesus exhibited and tells us and John informs us that Jesus knew the heart of
the individual as to whether they believed or not, the text of Scripture helps us to
realize that that’s not how we judge ourselves because we don’t have miraculous knowledge
and miraculous insight into the heart of an individual.
Rather, we judge ourselves by whether or not we live out our faith.
and our belief, and that the world around us judges us the same way.
So as we ask the question, do we really believe, let’s examine two specific aspects of
believing.
First of all, do we believe in God?
Do we really?
You know, some, they believe in God.
They believe in God like Bob believes in aliens.
It doesn’t affect their life in any way, shape, or form.
It doesn’t determine their choices.
They don’t sit and ponder because of their belief in God, I should do X and I should not
do Y.
But if you ask them, do you believe in God, their immediate answer is yes.
But is that the biblical concept of believing?
No.
Let’s examine the biblical concept of believing.
Let’s turn to Hebrews chapter 11.
As we go through some of the verses of this chapter, we find the Hebrew writer painting
for us a picture of what does it mean to believe.
We’re gonna start in verse six.
In Hebrews chapter 11 verse six, the Hebrew writer says, but without faith.
It is impossible to please Him, that is God.
For he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who
diligently seek Him.
The Hebrew writer leaves no margin, no wiggle room, no exceptions.
He says if you’re going to be one who comes before God and is rewarded by Him for your
life,
You must believe that He is.
Hebrew writer in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 will tell us, now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
What does he mean?
He means that based upon their belief something changed about their life.
and the Old Testament Scriptures exhibits for us that God approved, approved, approved,
approved, approved.
of their life that was a result of their belief.
So examine a few things that changed in the lives of the elders or those who lived in the
Old Testament times as the Hebrew writer presents them.
In verse 3 and verse 4, we read, By faith we understand that the world were framed by the
Word of God, so that the things which were seen are not made of things which are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he
obtained witness that he was righteous.
God testifying of His gifts and through it He being dead still speaks.
Consider from the very earliest chapters of the book of Genesis, the very earliest record
of the lives of humans on this planet, the very earliest example of those who would
descend from Adam and Eve, God
exhibit that belief in God is exemplified in worship to God.
And it is worship that comes to God not out of self-interest.
It is worship that is presented to God not out of personal preference.
There are so many people today in our culture and across the world who are
the opportunity, who joy in the opportunity, who are enthralled by the opportunity to
worship God as long as they do it the way they prefer to do it.
as long as they get enjoyment out of it, as long as they get a feeling out of it.
You’ll notice that Abel did not receive a good testimony from God because of his emotional
reaction to worship.
Rather, Abel is approved of by God because Abel worshipped by faith.
Now, some might argue that faith is just simply the hope of something, the belief in
something without evidence, the conviction of something with no certainty.
That is not the biblical concept of faith.
Rather, the Hebrew writer here has already addressed what faith is.
It is that which is informed by
revelation.
It is that which is informed by the testimony of God Himself.
So when Abel offered those sacrifices by faith, he offered them by command from God.
And Cain, his brother, if you go look at Genesis chapter 4, offered sacrifices that were
not by command of God.
And the difference?
One set of sacrifices were accepted and the other set were rejected.
When we ask ourselves, do we really believe?
We must then ask ourselves if we say the answer is yes, I really believe in God, then do
you worship Him in accordance with His instructions and commandments?
Or do you worship Him in accordance with your preferences and your feelings?
because the answer to that determines do you really believe in God.
But then consider as well that the text is not finished.
Go down to verse 7, by faith Noah.
Being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for
the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the
righteousness which is according to faith.
If you really believe in God, then you are going to experience the daily battle of whether
or not you continue in men’s ways of living or you defy men’s ways of living and obey God.
Genesis chapter 6, the pages of Scripture open up, God reveals to us that every thought of
every imagination of man’s heart was only continually in the days of Noah.
There are times in life where you will go places or you will have traveled someplace and
you will just walk in and you will realize there is not a single thing around me that
represents anything wholesome, true, or godly.
And if you’re a Christian, you’re looking for the exit.
You’re ready to not be there.
And that was the entire human race in Noah’s day.
but Noah believed in God.
So Noah declared by his very life, by his words, and by his work for 100 years to build
the ark that the world was wrong, that they were in sin, and that they would be judged.
You see, if you really believe in God, you will defy men’s ways.
It doesn’t mean you go about saying, you know what, you told me to walk on the right side
of the walkway when you’re going up the stairs.
I’m gonna walk on the left.
I’m gonna get in everybody’s way, because I believe in God.
No!
when the world tells you to cheat, to lie, to defraud and to steal, to gain for
yourselves, to take pride in your life.
to look at all the world around you and realize that you are just here for a time and then
that time will be over and you need to go for everything you can get and you need to be
concerned about you and you need to live life to the fullest and you need to have fun in
every moment and you need to take pure joy in everything that you have so long as you
selfishly are satisfied.
do you say?
No.
uh
I believe in God.
To then consider verse 8, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the
place which he would receive as an inheritance and went out not knowing where he was
going.
By faith he dwelt in the land of promises in a foreign country dwelling in tents with
Isaac and Jacob the heirs with him of the same promise.
For he waited for the city which had foundations whose builder and maker is God.
By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when
she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky
in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,
were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims
on the earth.
For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, and truly if they
had called to mind that country from which they had come, they would have had opportunity
to return.
But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac,
and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said
in Isaac your seed shall be called concluding that God was able to raise him up even from
the dead from which he also received him in a figurative sense as ah Abraham and uh Sarah
are pictured here
They’re pictured in event after event after event in their life where God tells them to do
something and doesn’t say, here’s how it’s going to turn out.
God gives them a command and they carry it out and they live in expectation that God will
provide.
Do we believe in God?
If so, we trust God no matter the circumstances, no matter what we enter into in life, no
matter what we encounter in life, no matter the direction we’re going.
Now, be careful,
because Satan has deceived many into believing that because they trust their own
instincts, they’re trusting God.
They’re looking every direction for some sign and some indication of which way they should
go and what they should do and everywhere they look there’s another that’s another sign
that I’m doing the right thing.
There’s a phrase in our current culture, at least here in the South, that drives me nuts,
when people say it’s a God thing.
It’s a Jesus thing.
You know what I to know what that means?
That means I’ve not opened the book and I don’t have a clue what it says.
So I’m just looking at life and thinking I’m getting signs one way and this way and that
way about what I should be doing.
That is not how God communicates with us today.
This is.
You want to know what you should be doing?
Open the book.
You want to judge whether you made a good decision in business or not?
Open the book!
You want to determine whether you should take that job or not?
Open the book.
Now what you’re not going to read when you open the book is, Aaron, take that job.
Aaron, move to that house.
Aaron, move to this city.
What you are going to read is principle after principle after principle whereby you can
say, I doing what believing in God demands that I do?
Because guess what?
It didn’t matter where Abraham’s tent was.
That’s the point of the Hebrew writer.
The Hebrew writer tells you had Abraham sincerely desired having come to the land of
Canaan to go back to the land of Ur, he would have been allowed to.
I don’t think we appreciate that.
that God, having called him out of Ur of the Chaldees, said that it would have been
possible by the revelation of the Hebrew writer for him to go back.
But he didn’t.
Because having come out of the Ur of the Chaldees, having come out of his nation, having
come to the land that God said he would possess, he said, I’m not interested in going
back.
He wanted to dwell rather as a sojourner.
m
and be in the land of promise than to dwell in prosperity and in solace in earth.
And here’s what we do quite often in our modern world.
We take the job.
We move to the new house.
The house is bigger.
The job pays more.
Oh, it’s a God thing.
This is what I was supposed to do.
because we’re blessed, right?
Because we’re more prosperous, right?
Because the bank account’s getting larger, so we must be being blessed by God.
Abraham went from all of those things and dwelt in the tent.
And Abraham knew he was blessed.
Why?
Because he was doing what he was told to do.
Now, consider as well that if we believe in God, we’re also going to reject a life of sin.
personal cost.
Many in the world are willing to reject a life of sin as long as there is no personal
cost.
But the moment that it’s going to cost them something, well, I’ll just do, I’ll go along
to get along.
Imagine what would have happened if Moses had done that.
Hebrews chapter 11 verse 23, by faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by
his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid of the
king’s command.
By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s
daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the
passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures in Egypt.
For he looked to the reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him
who was invisible.
By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, lest he who destroyed the
firstborn should touch them.
By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians attempting
to do so were drowned.”
over in the life of Moses.
Moses is commended.
Moses is recognized.
Moses is held up because he chose to obey sin because he did so at his own personal cost.
and he would not turn back.
There’s appreciation that should be had for when Moses is leading Israel.
We don’t find this out until the book of Deuteronomy, but we find it out there that as
Moses is leading Israel in captivity, out of captivity,
into the wilderness, sorry, at Mount Sinai, out of Mount Sinai to the land of promise and
then failing to go in, then into the wilderness and during 38 years of wandering in the
wilderness, Moses provided for his own self.
He didn’t accept any pay from the nation.
40 years of leading a people and he didn’t accept a thing from them.
He did what He did at His own personal cost, not only in the rejection of sin, but in the
work of God.
Why?
Because He believed in God.
So do we believe in God?
Consider the second question.
Do we really believe in Jesus?
All of these examples from the Old Testament point us to the fact that if we believe in
God, we’re going to worship.
We’re going to do what He says.
We’re going to dwell in accordance with His commandments.
We’re going to be those who defy the world and its ways.
We’re going to do so even at personal cost to ourselves.
But if we believe in Jesus, we recognize
that He is the very Son of God.
In John chapter 8, Jesus will make the statement,
that this very idea, the belief that He is deity is required of you.
Verse 23 of John chapter 8 says, He said to them, you are from beneath, I am from above.
You are of this world, I am not of this world.
Therefore I said to you, you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”
Jesus’s terminology there is the terminology of the statement to Moses in Exodus chapter 3
when Moses asked the question is he is being sent back to Egypt who will I tell them has
sent me and God says I am that I am has sent you the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob
And Jesus says, you will die in your sins if you do not believe that I am.
We need to understand the dramatic difference in results between believing in Jesus and
not.
And Jesus says the difference is you don’t and you’ll die in your sins.
But then consider in John chapter 12 and in verse 48, Jesus will further point out that
believing in him is not some
ethereal concept.
It’s not a vague emotion.
It’s not a conceptual belief.
It’s not a pie-in-the-sky thing or a feeling you have in your heart.
It is rather obedience to His commandments.
In John chapter 12 and in verse 48, Jesus says, who rejects me and does not receive my
words has one that judges him.
The word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.
Jesus says, you don’t believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.
And if you don’t do what I say, you will die in your sins.
But do we really believe in Jesus?
In Matthew chapter four, you see exhibited in the life of the disciples as Jesus has been
baptized by John, has gone out in the wilderness, and then comes back and begins his
ministry, you see in the example of the lives of the apostles the life of someone who
believes in Jesus.
Because as Jesus begins his ministry, he will go…
towards those who he is going to call to be his apostles and he will say, and follow me.
And every single one of them will drop what they’re doing, will leave their job, will
leave their home, will leave their family, and they’ll get up and they’ll follow Him.
Leaving in Jesus means that we are going to dismiss our former priorities.
that all of the things that this world says are the priorities in life will cease to be
our priorities.
we will finally realize that this world is not our home.
And it doesn’t matter how much your bank account holds when you die, and it doesn’t matter
the number of deeds that your name is on when you die, and it doesn’t matter the size of
the house that you live in when you die, and it doesn’t matter what your name is when you
die, and it doesn’t matter what people remember about you when you die.
What matters is you will die.
The Hebrew writer says, is it appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment?
So for the apostles, as they are called by Christ, they leave behind their former
priorities.
Then considering Colossians chapter 3, Paul is writing to the church at Colossae.
He writes to them and says, if you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are
above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above and not on the things of the earth, for you died.
Why is it that someone who believes in Jesus and does so in a biblical sense no longer has
the priorities of the world?
Because they’re already dead to the world.
They’re already dead to this world.
Notice He says, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth.
fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience in which
you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
Paul says, I know what your life used to be like.
Now it’s interesting to note that the church at Colossae, there’s no record or recognition
that at the time of Paul writing this letter he had ever been to the church at Colossae.
It’s not on the list of the places that he visited.
Much like the book of Romans, he writes to them not having been with them in person.
And yet as someone who did not yet even know them in person, he says, I know what your
life was like.
I know what you used to be because you’re not that anymore.
Because that person died.
He says, because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience
in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them, but now you yourselves are to
put off all these.
Anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put
on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.
where there is neither Greek nor Jews, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,
slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.
It should go without saying, but we’ll mention it anyway, that Paul is very clear as to
when you die.
Paul will write in Romans chapter 6 that when an individual hears what God has said and
believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and repents of their sins and confesses the
name of Christ and is baptized into Christ’s death in a watery grave of baptism, they rise
to walk in newness of life and they go from being a dead sinner
post-baptism to being an alive Christian.
But as a Christian, ask yourself, do I really believe in Jesus?
And is it exhibited in the life that I live because I no longer live like a dead sinner,
but rather a obedient servant of God?
And you can look at the list and you can see, is this my life?
Does it look like I’m still dead?
or do I look at my life and I see Christ living in me?
Paul will write in Galatians chapter 2.
I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Paul says, when you believe in Jesus and you obey His command to die to sin, to be buried
in a watery grave of baptism and be raised to walk in newness of life, and you rise up as
a new creature,
You have relinquished control.
You have relinquished your say on life.
You have relinquished your decision-making process to His.
and you have said, all right, Christ.
You point, I’ll go.
You tell me what to do, I’ll do it.
sometimes.
It is unfortunate, but it is true that what we really have said is, all right, Christ, you
tell me how far to go, and if I’m comfortable enough going, I’ll go.
If it’s not too far outside my comfort zone, I’ll do it.
As long as I have enough experience and it fits within my talent sphere, I’m right there.
In the moment it’s uncomfortable.
In the moment we can’t see ourselves doing that.
In the moment that we say, know what, just, that might just be just too much for me.
we grab back that control from Christ and say, sorry, I’m going to control my life.
John chapter 7.
Jesus will also point out that the very doctrine that we speak and teach will also be
affected by our belief in Him.
John chapter 7 and verse 16, Jesus answered them and said, my doctrine is not mine, but
his who sent me.
If anyone wills to do his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from
God or whether I speak of my own authority.
He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory.
But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in
him.” Jesus said, you can look at my life and you can look at my speech.
and you can look at my words and you can judge the fact that I’m not speaking of myself.
Because I’m not seeking my own glory, I’m seeking the glory of the Father.
If turn to John chapter 17,
There’s supposed to be a seven in that scripture reference.
In John chapter 17.
Versus seven through 11.
We read, now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you.
For I have given to them the words which you have given to me, and they have received them
and have known surely that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them, I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for
they are yours.
And all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
Now I am no longer in the world.
but these are in the world and I come to you Holy Father keep through your name those who
you have given to me that they may be one as we are
Jesus said, didn’t come to teach my doctrine.
I came to teach the Father’s.
And when He says in that prayer before He goes out to the Garden of Gethsemane to be
betrayed by one of His own, as He says in that prayer, I didn’t give them my words.
I gave them yours.
And they have kept them.
He’s going to point out that they will then take the Father’s words and they will deliver
it to the world and the world will hate them for it.
See, when you believe in Jesus, you don’t get to control the doctrine.
You don’t get to say, well, I don’t believe that because that’s not what I want it to be.
You get to submit in worship, in life, in action, in speech, in attitude, in direction, in
future actions, in hope, in expectation.
and in docs.
Because if you don’t, you don’t believe in God.
You don’t believe in Christ.
Because you don’t believe that one day you’ll be judged for whether or not you’ve obeyed
their instructions.
If you’re here this morning and you’re outside the body of Christ, we encourage you to
believe in God.
We encourage you to believe in Christ.
We encourage you to take them at
their word that there’s coming a day when this life will be over.
And you’ll give an account for your actions, for your decisions, for your words, for your
doctrine, for your worship, and for your life.
And if you’re not ready this morning, we encourage you to ask this question.
We encourage you to sit down with us and open the book.
and study it and see what God has said.
because what you’re not guaranteed is tomorrow.
If you have need of the invitation of Christ, why not come forward now as we stand?