If you have your Bibles, and I trust you do, open them again with me to the 19th chapter of Revelation. I'm going to finish the other half of last week's sermon. So, I'm going to give you the second part of it, although this second part will be more brief than the first part. And everybody said, Amen. There you go. Listen to that. My sermons are noted for brevity. We're always done before the day is out. We're always finished before we eat. That doesn't give you time, but we're finished before we eat. But I want to read this text again. I want to read it straight from the ESV and starting at verse 1, chapter 19. Listen to the language of the 19th chapter of the book of Revelation. After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for His judgments are true and just. For He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of His servants. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah! smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne saying, Amen, Hallelujah. And from the throne came a voice saying, Praise our God, all you His servants, you who fear Him, small and great. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude. like the roar of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, Write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God. Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, You must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God." and the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth came a short sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, Pig of Kings and Lord of Lords." May the Lord add His blessing to the reading, the hearing of His Word. I took my text last week and I take it again today. From the fourth verse of this 19th chapter, 24 elders, these representative elders and these four living beings, creatures, are there and they're worshiping. They fell down. This is after the defeat of the great prostitute, of the great whore. as recorded in the 18th chapter. The hallelujahs are sung. God's judgments are true and just. And then comes a hallelujah. Talk about the smoke that's going up forever and ever from that defeated one. Then the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne. This is what they said in their worship. Amen. Hallelujah. From the throne following that came a voice that said, Praise our God, which praise the Lord is what hallelujah is. Hallelujah, hallelujah, praise the Lord, all the same thing. It's a universal word of worship when you take it as hallelujah. Anybody can sing that. You can take it any place in the world where God's people gather and they will sing that. because it's not translated. It's just kind of there. Everybody uses that. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Some emphasis a little different, but the word is the same. Praise the Lord. Praise our God, all you His servants, you who fear Him, small and great. And what I talked about last Sunday, what we did in the message last Sunday is begin to look at four notes that kind of come out to be looked at and considered when you look at the worship of the church triumphant in the light of the worship of the church militant. That would be us. We are the church still in the world and we find ourselves still in a battle, do we not? And we war against not flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, spiritual wickedness. satanic opposition to the proclamation of the gospel and the living of the gospel and opposition to the church, opposition to believers, not because we are the main target, but because the enemy opposes God. And we belong to God. So, never get too proud to think that Satan himself is after you. Satan himself is opposing God. There are all kinds of beings and forces under his control or his authority. But all he is, is an angel created by God who rebelled against God and works deceptively in order to oppose God even now. And I've said this so many times before, we come to worship, and I did a whole series where we came every Sunday morning and we opened the service by saying, we are being lifted up into the heavenlies as we open our hearts to worship God. We are part of a church triumphant. We are not yet fully redeemed, the kingdom not yet fully in place, but many have gone before us. And they are triumphant in Jesus Christ. And they see what they couldn't see when they walked where we walked. And they understand what they couldn't understand when they were here in the shadowlands with us. But there is a triumphant people, absent from their bodies, present with the Lord. And I'm convinced, more and more convinced, that their worship has begun. And their worship is of the same Lord that we are endeavoring to worship, although we worship with all kinds of cloudiness because we can't see as clearly as they are seeing in the presence of the Lord. It is a real thing to be lifted up in worship. We open our mouths to sing and we join a chorus. We lift our voices in adoration and we're part of a victorious church as a militant church and we anticipate the same victories in Jesus Christ. We'll see a lot better when we get home. We'll understand a lot better. And I said last week that these two words tell us some things about their worship and make it possible for us to identify with those things as part of who we are as worshipers. Amen. What does amen mean? So be it, so let it be, let it be so, or you might even say, your will be done. So be it. Amen. So anytime, you know, there's preaching going on around here and you want to say amen, feel free to. It won't bother me. I love it. It's just like saying sycum to a hound dog, what it is. So there you go. You say amen and we're on the way. But what you're saying with amen is let it be so. So the time to say amen is when you've heard something that promises something or assures something or convinces you of something so that you're not just doing what some of the people I grew up with did and that's saying amen all the time without thought. That's not what we want either. We want to be able to say with the truth that's been heard, let it be so. When you do that, you become a part of what's happening, what's going on, making a difference. Let it be so. And then the hallelujah. We didn't get to that last week. We just got halfway through the second one out of the amen. The first thing is this. As we stand to worship in the light of the worshipers that have already gone home to be with Jesus, we stand accepting the will of God. How many of you know if you're going to worship God and call Him Lord, you cannot worship God and call Him Lord and then tell Him what He can do. Announce to Him what His will must be if you're going to walk here. Do you understand what I'm saying with that? If we're going to say, Lord, I love You, I worship You, have Your way with me, then what we have to do is accept the will of God. And I have lived long enough in the context of the body of Christ and in the context of a family to know full well that there are things that happen and occur that I don't think are the best choices for the will of God. The will of Dan disagrees with the will of God. Now, I can do that. It just doesn't make any sense if I'm calling him Lord. And I don't believe the Bible teaches that we can receive Him as Savior and forget about His Lordship, because the reality is We get Him as Shepherd of our soul, as Lord of our lives, and we are no longer our own, having been bought with a price, and all we can do is sign up and say, Here I am, Lord, ready for service. Your will be done. Amen. Still here? That's the first thing. We talked about that one in detail last week, the acceptance of the will of God and how it works. By saying Amen, you're acknowledging your will be done, starting with you. I'm real good at this. Your will be done in that church, Lord. Your will be done in my brothers and sisters. Your will be done in those folk that need it. Your will be done in everybody but me, because I know what I like and want. And I'm serving you in a way that pleases me. Now, you have to see if you can register with that, because I'm not a betting man. Grace and I are going to win the lottery one day. We haven't decided how to win it without buying a ticket, but we're not buying a ticket. Never have, never will probably ever buy one. But I'm not a gambling guy, but I will bet you that some of you found resonance with what I said about my own lordship of me. So when we're truly worshiping, we're not trying to figure out what needs to be done. We're acknowledging how wonderful He is, how worthy He is of my praise and we're saying whatever you want to do is fine by me. That's hard. But God is a God of grace and goodness. God is a God of mercy and love. God is love. God is gracious. God is knowledgeable of every single thing. He will take care of us. The second thing we just started on, and I'm not going to spend much time with it because we got kind of into that piece of it that gave us enough of a taste of the second thing. The first thing is acceptance of the will of God. The second thing is almost the same, and that is a commitment to the purpose of God or an acceptance of the purpose of God for your life. It's not a general submission. You know, sometimes when we say amen, it's like a sigh. So be it. Amen. We're agreeing with what He wants to do with us. We're saying amen. There are times though when amen should become and does become a shout. When you know what God wants, it's been declared as to what He's done and you're in on it. And you know that you have a role to play in it. And there's something to do, a way to live that must follow now this understanding. And so with a shout you say, Amen! In other words, you signed up. You're not just agreeing that it's a good thing, you're saying it's a good thing for me. I'm signing up. This is what God wants me to do. I like to read the book of Acts just to get a little inspiration every now and then as to how the early church lived. And when you read the first few chapters of the book of Acts, you know, of course, that the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost in the Jewish calendar year. And there were people from all over the known world at the feast day. And God decided this is what this is all about. This is what was prophesied by Joel. This is what I want to have done. So, I'm going to send My Spirit on the very day that they're all gathered in Jerusalem for this Pentecostal feast. My Spirit is going to be sent and I'm going to birth My church among those My people, descendants of Abraham, physically. in the flesh, but many of them were proselytes to Judaism from other places, a mix of Gentiles, but it was Jewish mostly. Those people who were birthed into the kingdom on the day of Pentecost and then heard the preaching of our brother Peter to get it all started and they just were saturated in his presence. And by the time Peter got through preaching, all they could do was say, Amen! to the call of God to believe in Jesus. And they did. Three thousand were added at the very first sermon. That is not a bad church plant, is it? Not a bad beginning. Three thousand. Oh, what a challenge that's going to be for the boys. But it started. And what I wanted to look at is how they lived from the very beginning. And they stuck with the apostles' teaching. and they stuck with the breaking of bread. I think part of that would be an acknowledgment of the meal that Jesus had instituted with the disciples along with the regular meal. They prayed and they cared for one another. In fact, I'm almost convinced that a lot of those people that were in Jerusalem on the feast day were from other places. And when the Holy Spirit came and they were birthed into this community, they could not go home. And so they all stayed there. And so those who lived there had to figure out a way to feed them and house them and care for them. So they started sharing everything they had. And then finally, a little bit later on, shortly thereafter, they started selling some things in order to have the money to feed the ones that were still there, learning, growing in order to make that life livable when they went back home. And Peter and the others, I mean, they just did what God opened up for them. They didn't strategize. They're going to the temple. They went to the temple every day, staying good Jews in that connection. And on the way to the temple, shortly thereafter, all this beginning, shortly after all this beginning, there is the man who'd been there all of his adult life probably, sitting and begging alms at what is called the beautiful gate, or the gate beautiful, at the temple. And Peter is prompted to say something to him. And he's asking the Peter in alms, and he said, I don't have any money. That sounds like your typical understanding, doesn't it? You didn't need any money. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. It doesn't have anything to do with man's doing it here. And he said, I don't have any alms, but what I do have, or as the King James said, such as I have, I give unto thee. That's King James, isn't it? It is. Such as I have I give unto thee." I love the language. And he reaches down, takes him by the hand and said, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Now, you don't want to do that unless you're being guided by the Holy Spirit to do that. Leave it there. That's what he did. He obeyed. And what did the lame man do? Over 40 years old, lame from birth. What did he do? Well, we like the old scene, went walking and leaping and praising God. Remember that? Oh, man, we could do that, walk and leap and praise God. Might be a lot of practice. I don't know. No, we won't do that. Walking, went walking, leaping, praising God. So get an image in your mind. Use your imagination. This guy never walked and everybody around that town knew him. Everybody who ever went to temple knew him. And he's walking, leaping out in front of these guys and everybody said, whoa, whoa, whoa, isn't that the guy that's been lame all his life? Isn't that Joe? Well, to make a long story short, I mean, Peter begins his instruction to him pretty quick. They're going to give him instruction as to what's happened, who's happened to him. That's the way to say it, who's happened to him. And the authorities are upset. So the authorities, Jewish authorities, gather the guys in, arrest them one evening and keep them overnight, talk to them the next day. And there's really not too much they can do because the testimony is pretty clear. This guy's been jumping around and walking and leaping and praising God since yesterday. And we know that it's a real deal. So what are we going to do? Well, they can't do anything, so they just tell them not to do that anymore. Tell them not to preach that Jesus stuff anymore. But they go right back to it. Those guys are released, those leaders, Peter and the others who were ever with him, and they go back to where their group is gathered, and they pray. Ask God for the power to just make that message alive, transform lives. And they go back to preaching. Go back to it. They're going to end up in jail again. Of course, the angel lets them out. They go down the street preaching while those guys think they've got them locked up. And when they send somebody to get them, they're not there. Somebody said, hey, your fellows are down preaching in the square. Best place in town. So they went and brought them in. And it's Gamaliel that talked them out of doing something drastic to them. Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, who was then Saul. He said, look, guys, there's always been somebody coming up with something that claimed to be this or that or the other. And if you just let it alone, if it's not of God, it'll die. And if it is of God, careful, you'll find yourself fighting against Him. So what do they do to them? They whip them, beat them, the Bible says, and send them on their way. And they go away rejoicing in the privilege, the dishonor of suffering for Jesus. And I think, Lord, That's pretty amazing stuff. They are not responding to the authorities. Now the authorities are responding to them. And I talked about this a little bit in the second statement last week. The gospel is revolutionary. The gospel is not designed to simply respond to the world's action. The gospel is designed when it is preached to transform a human life, to get you right in the middle of your living and make you a brand new creature in Christ Jesus and give you a brand new hope and a brand new direction and a brand new destiny. And that is what the gospel does. The gospel doesn't just make us nice. The American Christian idea is that we're nice, we love everybody, we never say anything that hurts anybody's feelings. Come on. The gospel separates. The gospel transforms us. And my prayer again as we're praying on Wednesday nights and I pray by myself through the days, I'm praying, Lord, do that again. Do it again. You read the history of the church and see the time when revivals came, there was always some Odd and strange things happening that man could not explain. Every time there's been that kind of revival or reformation, that's what happens. Why? Because the Holy Spirit's outside the box. That's why. And He's changing those who didn't even want Him to come close to their house, and He's come right to their heart. He's changing people. When you pray, if you will, on Wednesday night. Pray with me this. Lord, send Your Holy Spirit into Your church again until we believe that when the gospel is preached, that person sitting beside me, lost and undone, is potentially transformed by the power of that message as Your Holy Spirit works there. Say amen to that. That's what changes us. And some of us have seen little bits of that But I look at this early church and they were called, they were empowered, and they walked. No matter what happened to them, they preached and they obeyed. Beat them. They go back and preach and obey. Put them in jail. Kill them. And the church keeps preaching and obeying until it finally had a chance to diminish because other things got in between Jesus and His people. And the power of the gospel was diminished because the Holy Spirit was grieved along the way. So, that's the second part where you shout the Amen. The second is a commitment to the purpose of God. So, when I come to worship, I want to open my heart and I start getting ready about Wednesday for worship on Sunday. inside me, not I'm getting ready all week for the preaching, but in my own heart I'm saying, Lord, we're now halfway, we're past last Sunday, so I'm enjoying the result of all of that, but now I'm looking forward to the next time together. And I'm praying, Lord, show up and work among us in a way that we know you're there. Touch those who battle cancer so that the next time they get up, the next morning maybe, the next week, sometime the next, the next time they go to the doctor, they'll find out something's changed. It's good. I can't guarantee that. That's God's business. But my heart cries that. And yours does too in many cases. You care for your friends, your loved ones. You want them well. You want them well-loving Jesus like never before. You want the testimony of God's touch in their lives, capable of transforming their unsaved friends as they live for Him. That is what we want and what we pray for as we live. Your kingdom come. Listen to that prayer. Your kingdom come. What are you going to say to that? Amen! And you're going to share it as you live. Bless your preached Word. Amen. So be it. Praying that you will just work your work, Lord, in all of this. Make every one of us an instrument of your grace as we live. Make every single one of us missionaries of your kingdom life as we live in church, Jesus. Now, see, my understanding of the life of the church is legitimate living every day where we are. And sometimes we think we're not serving God unless we're signed up in a program to do that. But I don't think that works very much anymore. I think what we have to do in the context of this moment until God pours His Spirit out and then everything works when He sends true revival. But in the process of the daily living that I'm doing and you're doing, I've got to be ready to step into what God opens. and be a witness to that person God gives me the opportunity to witness to today. Today. It doesn't matter who it is, how young, how old, how ugly, how pretty. It doesn't matter. What matters is that He just led me into a place where there is some prepared soil and I get to either plant the seed or work the edges of the crop that started by somebody else or even harvest every now and then. serving Him in this kingdom. Lord, here am I. Send me." You know, the first of these notes that I gave you where we are kind of accepting the will of God, that's what Mary did. Mary. My neighbor in Midland said, Mary. His wife was Mary. He called her Mary. Old, retired Methodist preacher. Lived across the street from us. Beautiful couple. And he said, Mary, when he talked about his wife. I can still see him and Mary in my viewfinder. So I called Mary, Mary in the Bible. Mary said, let it be to me according to your word, talking to Gabriel. What did she say? Amen. To God's word to her, she said, Amen with a shout. Let it be to me according to your word. Now, let's go to the third note because I've got about just enough time to do these next two. These are short. The third note comes not in the Amen, but in the Hallelujah or the Alleluia. Praise the Lord. There's the exuberance of worship. I grew up in a My first church was a kind of a Pentecostal church. It was an apostolic faith church. Apostolic faith, not in the understanding we say apostolic today, usually talking about a oneness type doctrine, not the Trinity. But in the apostolic faith church in Huff Smith, Texas. Anybody know where Huff Smith, Texas is? Oh, Lord, you're old timers around here. Huff Smith, our little white frame church is right beside the railroad track. When the train came through, if it was church time, you just waited because it was right beside you. This church was maybe 20 feet wide and 24 long, something like that. And the Apostolic Faith Movement had had it there for quite a while, and it was dying already. Of course, they started in the early turn of the century, 2001. 1901, I'm sorry. 1901. And I wasn't born then. I was born much later. But the church was still going. And my grandmother lived nearby. She wanted to go to that church. So we went there when she got saved. And Mother took her and we went along. And we went to the Apostolic Faith Church. And I thought, you know, this is as much dead as any place there could possibly be. I don't know if anybody even said, Amen, there. You just didn't. Of course, I wouldn't if I was just a kid. I remember in that service, you know, there's not much going on that we could call worship. We just sang a little bit and we had a preaching, usually about the number 666 and scaring us to death. But anyway, we had all of that. And then later on in a church we moved to closer to our house that was the one in Huffsmith was just going to close up pretty soon. We ended up there. I later pastored it, by the way, but we ended up there as I was a kid. And it wasn't much different. And it was just kind of there. Singing was okay because, you know, all 10 of us could sing. But it was good. All different. But not much joy. You know? And I wonder sometimes, I'm going to ask you this question. How is the joy level inside our hearts, I wonder? How's yours? Darlene's is high. And it probably is, it always is. But the joy of the Lord is what we're talking about. Because I think in worship, and this is a note you got in the heavenly group there, because hallelujahs show up all the time. Chapter 4, chapter 5, all the way into these chapters at the end of the book, hallelujahs are everywhere in the Revelation. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Well, the thing that causes that is the joy of the Lord. And it is in worship, when we open our hearts to Him in praise, that the joy is rekindled as we worship Him in the truth and in the Spirit. The joy is rekindled. My prayer today is that even in some simple song we do, that the joy of the Lord is rekindled in your heart because there are so many things weighing on us right now. There are so many things that if we meditate on them all the time, we just feel pushed down. He sits on the throne. And nobody is going to knock Him off. Nobody will take His place. Our King is in position to establish His kingdom over everything that is. He is the one we worship. He is greater than the enemy, greater than the enemy's work. greater than any cancer, any sickness, any division, any loss. He is greater than all of that. He is able to deliver you. He is able to sustain you in the hard place. He is able to put in your heart a river of spiritual joy. There is a river that flows from the throne of God. The sons of Korah wrote this marvelous prayer hymn That river is God's spirit self flowing in the context of his people in the heart, through the heart, out of the heart to others. We drink and we are satisfied. We live and the river flows from us. Fullness of joy, fullness of life is what the Holy Spirit is always after in us. John said, I heard the worship of the church in heaven and it was amen. But it was more than amen. It was hallelujah. It was hallelujah. There in the presence of the Lord, all their suffering and sorrow has been swallowed up in gladness. No more sickness, no more pain, no more crying, no more loss over there. I've been thinking again about home. I've been thinking again about what it's going to be. This is what we live for our whole life as Christians. This is where we're going. We're going to lay these bodies down, put them in the ground where they'll go back to dust. turn them into ashes, whatever you decide to do in that, the body goes back to what it came from, the house in which we are recognized. I honor that every time I get a chance to be a part of a service, a funeral service. Honor that life lived, that person. Walk them to the place of burial and have some definitive Bye-byes. But one of these days, we'll have a new body, death swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Grave! Swallowed up in the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And I know we're going to have to learn to talk about more and more as we near the end of our journey what it means to anticipate His presence. What it means to enter the gladness of that flowing river. What it means to know literally that in Your presence there is fullness of joy and at Your right hand pleasures forevermore. Oh, we're going to hang on here as long as we can. God made us that way. If we didn't, we'd all be jumping off buildings. I've heard enough people talking about how afraid we are of various things happening in the world. It's God who keeps us here, and it's God who prepares us to leave. What a day it's going to be. In worship, we recapture this joy. Every time, if we're open to what the truth is and what Jesus is doing, battered with suffering, battered from the opposition, that early church sang as they gathered for worship. What is faith? I like what Tertullian said. It's not an official definition, but listen to this. Tertullian in the third century said, faith is patience with the lamp lit. Patience with the lamp lit. Think about it. What does a Stoic see? A Stoic can be patient. Stoicism makes very patient people. They're patient. They take fate by the throat and hang on. They're not happy. They don't have joy. Oh, they just hang on. You know, that's our fate. We can handle it. And then the Cynic comes and stands beside the Stoic. And the cynic says, who cares? It doesn't amount to anything anyway. And the Christian faith in Jesus says, oh man, this is the journey that leads to home. This is the place where God is. I'm right where I'm supposed to be. Let us worship Him. Let us sing praises to Him. Faith, patience with the lamp lit. You look at the early church and they gloried in tribulation. Paul wrote about glorying in tribulation. Those early ones I mentioned a while ago counted it joy to suffer for Jesus. Oh, Lordy. We suffer for Jesus if we miss one meal. We're suffering for Jesus if the TV won't play. It's so easy to think we're suffering for Jesus when we're not really doing anything. We don't like what's happening. I pray that we get our joy back in worship. The whole of the worship service, from the time let us worship God to the final amen, is all worship. It isn't a matter of having praise and worship and then something else. It is all worship. It is the truth connected to what we sing. It is the truth anticipating the life we live. It is all of that together expressed in so many ways. Open your hearts to the present God and let Him work in you as we worship. He'll bring joy, marvelous joy. Amen. Hallelujah. Here's the fourth and final note for those of us who worship in spirit and in truth. And we're going to grasp something from the triumphant church, and that is this. The attitude of the soul of the person who worships God in spirit and in truth is an awareness of the victory of God. It's not that he might win. It's not that he hopes he can get done what he said. There is an assurance. John knows it. He has reiterated this victory all through the book of Revelation, and he bases it on something that actually happened in history. There has been an advent. Advent means coming. How many of you know there has been a coming? The Messiah hoped for and looked for came. That's the first advent. The second advent we're living toward. As we look back to the first one, we're looking for the second one. And this time He's coming unto salvation. Not to judge us, but to finish that redemptive work. Glorify us. Take us home. There has been an advent. There has been a cross. A lamb without blemish has died on Golgotha's Hill. Precious blood poured out. Perfect lamb sacrificed for you. There has been a resurrection. The dead lamb rose from the grave bodily. So when you get to the Revelation in those areas of 4 and 5 and you get into heaven, what does he see in chapter 5? He sees a Lamb on the throne which appears as if He had been slain. That would be this Lamb, the crucified Messiah. God in Christ has encountered the powers of darkness and triumphed over them. Are you here? I said past tense. He has triumphed over them. Satan's authority has been nailed to the cross. His any hope of ever winning anything on his own is done. He works deceptively. He works aggressively. He's defeated. Nothing has been left out. Atonement has been achieved, and death destroyed, and the doors of the kingdom of heaven have been slung open. And we have had the privilege, many of us, to walk through those doors in Christ Jesus. Remember the day you walked through? Remember the day He led you out of the pit, put your feet on the rock? Remember the day He changed your heart? Remember the day that He called you by name, called you His? God has devised for this ruined world a way out of chaos and damnation. And Christ Jesus is that way. And we are fighting a defeated enemy. We are possessing land that he can't hold. Cheer up. The victory is assured in Jesus Christ. Here is an old poet writing a song said, you have redeemed us with your blood and set the prisoners free. You made us kings and priests to God and we shall reign with thee. That's simple but good, isn't it? Fifty years or so after John wrote his book, there was this frightful mortardom in Smyrna. The child of God stands before Proconsul and answers for his faith in Jesus Christ. I finally was able in some reading to find the name of the Proconsul. His name is Statius Quadratus. Don't you love that name? Hey, Quad. Short. Quadratus. Statius was the man in charge. was the Christian. How many have heard the name of Polycarp's church history? Polycarp stood before the proconsul who said, you're to renounce your faith, you're to curse the name of Christ. He said several things. He had this conversation because they first talked about throwing him to the lions and he said, let's go! So he said, okay, if you're going to make fun of the lions, I'll burn you with fire. And Polycarp didn't care about that either. And he answered him right back. But in the end, he said, you know, I'm not going to renounce. I'm not going to renounce Him. He said, four score and six years have I served Him, and He never did me wrong. How then can I revile my King, my Savior? And you know what they did in Smyrna, don't you? They took Him into the amphitheater in Smyrna and burned Him at the stake. Polycarp died a martyr. The young church in Smyrna wrote it down in the annuals of the church, and it was discovered much later what was said. And this is what they put. They put the exact date of the death, and they wrote this, Polycarp was martyred, Statius Quadratus being proconsul of Asia, and Jesus Christ being king forever. That's what they wrote. They knew the victory. The ancient old polycarp and his faithfulness died and the church in Smyrna said, So what? Jesus Christ reigns forever. Life is what He has. Saints, listen. Let us believe what we believe with all of our hearts. Let us believe this gospel, this faith. Sometimes in the New Testament, it's called the faith that we believe, which is the redemption that is accomplished in Jesus Christ, the whole of it, all of it, dealing with what He came to do, what He did, and how it's done. Believe the faith with all of your heart. It's not just a little medicine we take every now and then, and it's not just something to encourage us every now and then. It is the life we have. Listen to some of these things that stir us. Simple things. God so loved the world. You know what the rest of that is, don't you? That He gave His only begotten Son. Christ died for our sins. That's a statement we say. How many know that's true in your life? Christ died for our sins. How about this one? He has sounded forth the trumpet that will never call retreat. I know it's a little bit too military. But when you apply it to Jesus Christ, it is exactly what He's done. No retreat. The kingdom come in its fullness. How about this one? The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Listen to Mr. Handel's work, and you get it again and again. He's the way, the truth, and the life. Whatever our moods, whatever the weight of our day, these things stand impregnable and secure. These truths you can build a life with. We're doing it. This is the Lord's doing. This is His victory. I think we then, the church in the world still, we're struggling. in our journey on earth, finding the battle a little hard, finding it difficult, the road a little rougher than we hoped. In the midst of that, we can lift up our hearts in the shadowlands based on what has been accomplished in Jesus Christ. We can lift up our hearts and join our voices to the church triumphant. the victorious ones on ahead of us, our loved ones across the sea, so to speak, over on the other side who are forever singing praises of their Redeemer. O Jesus King, most wonderful, gathering even now Your kingdom to Yourself, gathering even now Your people, Your will be done. Your praise be sung. Surely we can say it. Say it with me twice. Amen. Amen. Amen. Say it with me twice. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And blessed be His glorious name. Amen. Let's pray. Father, Your Word feeds us, fills us, Sometimes pokes a pretty good hole in what our thinking is. Brings us down to a place where you can deal with us. Makes us aware of how much you love us. Shows us a path we couldn't see. Sustains us when we have no more energy. Your Word does all of that. And we're thankful, Lord, that we are a part of a community of believers. In heaven and on earth, it's one family according to our brother Paul when he wrote to the Ephesians. One family in heaven and earth, the body of Christ. We're thankful for the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We're thankful for the ground that is before us to walk on. We're thankful for the redeeming grace that's evident every day. for the joy that comes to our souls when we worship in spirit and in truth, for the hope that we have, the assurance of the victory that is ours, God's victory in Jesus Christ the Son, and our victory in Him as well. Thank you for blessing your people. Lord, I know there are heavy hearts here. There are struggling lives here. There are struggles in our families. physical bodies and other situations, but You are able to deliver Your people. So work in us, Lord, as we sing this final song. Work deep in us. We need You, O Lord, today. We need You. Work in our lives. Be glorified in the process. In Jesus' name, Amen.