Brother Jim was talking about leading the scene. He said, Well, it's time. My prayer isn't answered. And I said, Yes, it is. It's you. You're Moses. And he spoke of the few. And again, I came out with a saying of wisdom. My wife can tell you that everything I say is blind. The scriptures doesn't say we have to preach to a large crowd. When Jesus preached, he usually started off with a big crowd, and by the time he got done, there were just a few left. Remember in our study of John 6, he started off with thousands, and when he got done, there wasn't but twelve. We've got more than 12, so we're blessed. Of course, one of those 12 was the devil, but he was still there, so I don't think any of you are devils. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, our gracious Lord, we're sitting this morning before the open Bible. Lord, give us wisdom and understanding as we simply look into some of the truths of this wonderful book. Even though it is simply written in plain English, without your Spirit's guidance, we will never understand the fullness of it. And no lifetime is long enough to even accomplish that. But, Lord, we ask you to open our hearts and minds this morning to it, that we may see the wonderful things that it says about our Lord Jesus Christ. For it is in His name we pray. Amen. That is what the book is about. It's about the Lord Jesus. Now, you listen up, because I don't feel like being loud this morning, and I know that makes you happy that I'm not going to yell, unless I see you dozing off. Because, as usual, this is the hottest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, and it's hot in here. But this is a little different sermon. I'd like it to be more of a conversation, not that you want to answer me, but I just want to simply talk to you, and I'll tell you in a minute how. It falls to the preacher on Sunday or Wednesday or whenever he has the privilege to preach to stand before a group of sinners as a sinner to talk about sin. Now, no preacher whose worth is weight in anything thinks himself better than the people he speaks to, because if he spends any time in the Word of God, he understands who he is. And so I preface what I'm about to say with that to tell you that with all humility of heart, I present what I do to you this morning with no insinuations whatsoever, with no predetermined judgments upon anyone, knowing that I speak to myself more than I speak to you. Because I haven't heard this yet either, and I'm interested to find out what I'm going to say. And I say all of that for this reason, and I want you to take this as humbly as I can present it to you. You listening to me? I'm going to give you a minute to think about this, because I want you to answer this question to yourself, okay? I don't want you to answer out loud. Going back to last Sunday through yesterday was a full seven days, a full week. How much time in that seven day period of time did you spend alone reading your Bible? When the speaker gets quiet, it seems like a long time. That's the reason I prefaced what I did, because I want you to answer that question to yourself. How long did I spend reading the Bible? Not studying. I want you to pardon me. Pick up a frog somewhere. I don't know where he came from. Not looking ahead to what the preacher was going to say. Just reading the Bible. Not analyzing Greek texts. Not trying to find out and study Hebrew words. Just reading the Bible. Now, a lot of Christians We spend a lot of time doing a lot of things. We spend hours watching sporting events on television. We spend hours in the evening watching whatever program we watch on television. We spend hours at leisure reading or whatever our hobbies are. But when it comes to the Bible, It's hard to find 10 minutes a day to sit and read it. Now, you know the answer to the question I ask you in your own heart. I've made no predetermined decisions on what you said, because I don't know your heart. Now, if the Lord Jesus was standing here this morning, you would all be in trouble. Because he not only saw the crowd, he understood their hearts. I don't. But you can answer that question for yourself. Because as Christians, the wealth of what we know, the sum of all that we know about God, the fullness of all that we know about the Lord Jesus Christ is in the pages of this book. Nobody, no one living And this day has had a private revelation from God that is true. Everything you're ever going to know about the Lord Jesus Christ is in this book. And all the activities that I just talked about, we could do for hours on end, but we can't find 10, 15, 30 minutes, an hour a day to sit and read the Bible. We get squeamish in our seats when the preacher approaches an hour on a sermon, but yet we have no trouble sitting for four hours watching a football game. Our priorities should be where they belong. And as Christians, if we're going to grow, if we're going to understand, if we're going to know anything about our Lord, our God, our Savior, our conduct, our lives, our birth, our death, our well-being, anything, we're going to find it within the pages of this book. How much time do you spend reading it? I've got to ask myself that question. I've got to tell you the truth. I'm as guilty as anyone now, okay? Don't think that I'm I'm an example. I'm not. And then I got on this program that I'm going to read the New Testament five times a year. So this year, in January, I have an app on my iPad, and I listen to it and follow along. It's the English Standard version. The new American Standard that I use doesn't have the recording on there. So from January 1st to the first week of March, I read through the entire New Testament. And you know what I determined when I got through with that? What did I accomplish? Because it's not how much of the Bible you read. It's how much time you do it. So now I'm on my second reading of the New Testament. And I've read the first three Gospels in a month. Because you read slow and meditate upon what the Word of God says. And when you do, marvelous things you see. But Jim, there's no way you even know how many times you've read the New Testament. But I'll bet you The next time you read through it, you're going to see something you've not seen before. And you've probably been reading that book for 40 years or more. And we read and we meditate and we pray. Do you pray while you read the Bible? And you begin to see things. I saw a saying not too long ago, I want to hear twice as much from God. And the answer was read your Bible more often. Everybody wants to hear from God. Everybody flops around some kid or some person who says they've gone to heaven and they've seen heaven and they write books and they have them on the morning television shows and You walk up to someone and say what the Lord Jesus said here in John chapter 3 and they'll say you don't know what you're talking about. Here's what he said. No one has ascended to heaven. That's the end of the argument. Except the Son of Man who came down from heaven. But people will go for all of those things. Why? Because they don't read their Bible. literally thousands, and this is a continuation of the series I started back in January about the false teachers and all of that, and it's rooted really in the Ephesians text where Paul says, take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. What is a sword? It's an offensive weapon, and it's a defensive weapon. You've got a shield, but the sword can defend you as well. And what does it defend you against? It defends you against error. Because everything you hear taught by any preacher or teacher should be verified by what's in this book right here. And if you remember, I told you 25,000, 30,000 people even this morning stand or sit in a church in Texas and listen to a man named Joel Osteen and they hold up this book and they testify and they say they know what's in it and they're going to be taught by it and they sit down and they listen to a man who knows nothing about it and doesn't teach anything about it and teaches contrary to what it says and they accept it. Why? Because they haven't read the book. Now you as a Christian are susceptible to all the error there is in the world if you haven't read the book. And not only read it, but absorbed it in your soul. Walter knows this because he's being preached to as well. I, me too. All of us. And no one gets mature enough to where they finally can say, well, I have exhausted the scriptures. I told you about my little 92 year old grandmother. She read her Bible two times a year for 70 years. And when she was dying with cancer, She couldn't read it anymore, and I went down to my mother's and I read it to her. And it was the old King James. I mean, the old version from the 30s and 40s. I couldn't hardly read it. It's really changed a lot. But that's what she was used to. And I was reading it, and Granny was in a hospital bed, and she couldn't even open her eyes. But as I was reading it, you know what I noticed? Her mouth was mouthing the words. She couldn't even open her eyes. But the Word of God was so soaked into her soul that at 92 years old, she could mouth the words that I was reading. And I just picked the spot in the New Testament and started reading. And that little woman never preached a sermon. She never did anything. But she did one thing. She read the Bible. OK, Luke, in his introduction to his gospel this morning, Brother Jim read, he's writing to a man named Theophilus or a group of people. It could be either. Excellent, Theophilus, and he says this, and I will reread it because I want to comment on it as I go through it. And as much as many have undertaken to compile an account of things accomplished among us, so he wasn't the only one, a lot of people had done that, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Now, Luke is not mentioned anywhere in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, but he was a close associate of Paul. Paul had been in the presence of the Lord Jesus. He also was closely related to Peter and all the others. So he said that he wrote based on eyewitnesses. Well, he made a decision that it seemed fitting for him, he says as well. having investigated everything carefully from the beginning to write out to you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus." Now, what does he mean by consecutive order? Does that mean chronological? No, because in Luke, there are some things that are out of chronological order, but if Luke compiled a two-volume set of writings, it was the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. He went right from one, right into the other. Sometimes when you have the opportunity, read the Gospel of Luke and then go straight into Acts. So what he's done is he's wrote a sweeping account from the birth of John the Baptist that's foretold prior to the foretelling of the birth of the Messiah, all the way through his ministry, his death, burial, resurrection, then into his ascension and in through the first century church up until the Apostle Paul is in Rome, imprisoned in a house. And that's the end of the book of Acts. So he has written a sweeping account of all of those things. And he's written it to Theophilus so that you may know, look at verse 4, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. How did Theophilus know it? Because he read the book. And Theophilus or the group of believers, whomever that Luke wrote to, had no better, more advanced access to the truth of God than you do. They read the book. And if you read the book, you'll know what they knew. And if you don't read the book, then you're not going to know. You're going to be a weak Christian. And you're going to have all kinds of problems. And listen, people walk around waiting for God to speak to them. This is how God speaks to you. And you're not going to hear otherwise. I saw a cartoon, a little cartoon character. God, I want to hear from you. And it was an arm out of a cloud with a Bible in its hand. But this isn't enough. I'll never forget a saved ministry down here in the London local church. Pastor, remember one of his famous sayings was the six last words of a dying church. We have, we've always done things this way. And for a long time, I believed that, but I don't think that's the way it is anymore. To me, the six words of a church that is about to die is, what we need is something new. No, you don't. What you need is this old book right here. And you need to stay loyal to it. And you need to stay dedicated to it. And you need to preach. from it, and you don't need to add anything to it, and you don't need to take anything away from it. Now, a church that deviates and takes on that attitude, what we need is something new, may fill a building, but they fill it full of people who don't know what's in this book if you don't stay loyal to this book. Now, you've seen churches before that had a pastor. Did very well. Church grew. Parking lot was full. All of a sudden, he finds a job. God calls him somewhere else. Never does he call him to a lower-paying position, though. You ever notice that? Always to a higher-paying job. And when he leaves, it's not very long until you start seeing empty spots in the parking lot. and empty seats in the church. Why? Because so many people, not everyone, but a lot of people follow a man rather than what is taught out of this book. Do you want to be a strong Christian? Do you want to know what to do when adversity strikes your life like lightning It's in the book. Do you want to know how to handle situations? How to testify them out to Lord Jesus Christ? Do you want to know what your requirements are in the gospel? It's in the book. Do you know you are required in the book to live the gospel? But do you know there is no requirement on you whatsoever whether anybody believes it or not? That's God's business. How do you know that? Because you read the book. And sometimes we get so sophisticated in religion and church, we outgrow the Bible. But there is no other source of vitality in the Christian life than the Bible, because that's how God speaks to us. He does not zap us with information from nowhere. Case in point, in the book of Acts, there are two men. One, we don't know his name. He was an Ethiopian eunuch. He was reading Isaiah. You remember Acts chapter 8? And the Spirit told Philip, get on up there beside that fellow. He heard him reading the book. And he said, you know what you're reading? And the Ethiopian man says, Hathena. Somebody don't tell me. So you know what happened. You're familiar. He talked to him. He embraced the Lord. He baptized him. And that was all Philip had to do because he was whispered away by the Spirit. But my point of case is, the Lord didn't just supernaturally zap the Ethiopian man full of knowledge. What was he doing? He was reading the book. And Philip explained what's in it to him. And he was redeemed. And he went on his way and never hear from him again. But I'm sure he had a wonderful testimony like the shepherds we talked about a few weeks ago around Christmas Day. There was a man named Cornelius who was a very religious man. And the Lord told him to send for a man named Peter, who was staying with a fellow that was a tanner, you know, a tanner. And Philip, I hope, I mean, Peter, I hope, took a bath when we went there because that's a stinking business. But he went there two, three days, preached the gospel to his whole household saved. He wasn't zapped with knowledge. God sent a preacher to him. And what did he preach? He preached to him, Jesus. And where do you find Jesus? You find him in the Bible. Will they hear, Paul says, without a preacher? And how will the preacher preach, this is not in there, without the Bible? And there are thousands of good commentaries, I'm sure Brother Jim has read hundreds of them, more than me, by wonderful men who have great things to say. And they are an excellent help for studying the scriptures. But they're not part of the scriptures because there's errors in them because human beings wrote them. And none of them, I don't care how many you find, will ever take the place of this book. Now you may have never read a commentary in your life, but this is the one This is a book about the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a book about the Savior who went to the cross and poured out His blood and suffered the agonies of eternal damnation in your place and particularly called you at the right time and saved you. How do we know that? It's in Ephesians chapter 1. God sovereignly chose you from Whenever eternity is he is always known, so it is never a time when he didn't know you. But when the time was right. In the book of Ephesians chapter one, you heard the gospel and you repented and you were believed and you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. We know that because it's in the book. And we read the book. I'm listen, I am. You might get tired of hearing me say that, but that's just tough. You're sitting here and I'm talking and you can't get up and walk out because if you do, you embarrass yourself. Because I am convinced that most Christians let dust settle upon this book. How do I know that? Because I have allowed that to happen myself in my life. I'm no better, no different. We all have our periods of time. But I'm going to tell you, Pam, you may have seen it. I put on Facebook a video that impressed me. I wept over it. I wept over it. I watched it 10 times. I showed it to Robin. I put it on Facebook. If you're not familiar with Facebook, you put things on there and other people can see them. It was a short video of a group of Chinese young people, looked like in their 20s, some of them older maybe. It was from China. And they were in a room similar to this one, no pews or anything. They were Chinese Christians. Someone walked in with two very large suitcases, looked like, and laid them on the floor and unzipped them. And each one was filled with Bibles. And none of these Chinese Christians, none of these people had Bibles. It will bring tears to your eyes when those suitcases were opened. They rushed. They picked them up. Each Bible had a black cover and had plastic covering over it, a very loose type plastic covering. They each picked up the book and they began to weep. And they began to hold it to their breast and they kissed it. And they began to pray. I don't know what they said. I don't speak Chinese. I didn't have to. I could tell by their face they were holding a Bible, something they had never touched, never had. And they wept over it and they prayed and they hugged it and they thanked God for it. I know they did in whatever their language is. When you and I have 20 or 30 of them laying around our house. To some people, it means something. And maybe it won't mean as much to us until it's taken away from us. What would happen today if you were put in a place where you couldn't access your Bible? How much of it is in your head that you could rehash over and over again to comfort your soul? I don't mean memorize it. I mean, how much can you remember Would the passage come to mind, the peace of God which passes all understanding? Would the passage come to mind, for God so loved the world? Would the passage come to mind of the Apostle Paul when he said, I want to be found in him, not having a righteousness that is of the law, but by faith in Christ. I want to know Him and the fellowship of His suffering from Philippians. Maybe you would remember the passage that in second chapter of Philippians, and without turning there, just paraphrasing, where He set aside His glory. And He was obedient to the point of death, even the death of a cross. Would that be what it would take to encourage you? You know how you know that? Because you've read it in the book. And you've read it, and it's enriched your soul, and it means something to you. And then maybe you come in, encounter something in life with yourself or whatever, a tragedy or a shocking event. And you've prayed and you've prayed and you've prayed and nothing's happened. Lord, take this away from me. Don't you know I'm suffering? And then you read in the Gospels where John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to find out if he was the one and John was in prison about to have his head cut off. And in reading that, you realize Jesus made no effort whatsoever to go and rescue John. Nothing. He never mentions it. Read it. It's in the book. Why are you telling me that, Walter? Well, because maybe you're where God wants you. Maybe John was where God wanted him to be. And you know, so much of modern day Christianity, so to speak, is about me. You hear sermons by people who fill up arenas and it's about God has a wonderful plan for your life. God intends on you to have success. God intends on you to have help. God intends on you. All of that promotion is just around the corner. You don't find that in the book. Let me tell you what you find in the book. And this is the, this should be the attitude of every Christian. It's another saying by John the Baptist. Okay. And it's only six words, but here's what he says in John chapter three, verse 30. He must increase, but I must decrease. That's seven words, not six. That's the sum of the argument. He must increase and I must decrease. You don't have to have a whole chapter of commentary on that. It's in the Bible. That should be the attitude of every one of us. Should I be the one seeking to glorify myself and have my satisfaction And have my desires met? Or should I be focused on the things of Christ? Do I really want to decrease so He can increase? That's what the book says. How do I know that? Because I read it in the book. And let me tell you something. I'm 62 years old, almost 63. I had this book in my possession a long time, and I just noticed that the other day. Just what I was saying to men to go about. Let me tell you something else you'll notice. If you read the Gospel of Luke and the other Gospels, in the Gospel of Luke, you'll come upon it in Chapter 5. And I'm going to tell you about it. You remember the story of Jesus was teaching and the house was so full of people that the guy was bringing this paralyzed fellow. He couldn't even walk. He was on a bed. I mean, so he was just very bad. And maybe he couldn't even speak. And they couldn't get him in. You remember? Now, a lot of this is understanding. You know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to read it to you necessarily. So they moved all the tile on the roof and dropped this man down. That didn't surprise anybody, because to remove all the tile and open that hole would have made a noise, and dust would have fallen, and they were sitting there, so this all kind of happened. And they put this man down in front of Jesus, and there Jesus sits, and there this man sits, or lays. Jesus looks at him and He says, Son, your sins are forgiven. He answered the deep desires of the man's heart and the man never said a word. What was the man's desire when he got in the presence of Jesus? Did it matter to him that he couldn't walk or was he hungry for forgiveness of his sin? He never said a word to him. Jesus said, Son, be happy. Your sins are forgiven. And as a bunch of Pharisees, you know, they were always around. And Luke says, they began to reason, and that's reason within themselves. Think. They were thinking. Who is this man who speaks such blasphemy? Only God can forgive sin. And here's my point. Jesus was not this weak, passive lover of everybody. preacher that the world today says he is. But he was a confrontational Messiah who confronted false religion and hypocrisy to its face. Because these Pharisees were reasoning these things in their minds, and Jesus, the Scriptures say, was aware of their reasoning. And then he asked him, why are you reasoning in your heart? Then, you know, the remainder, what's easier? He said, get up, take up your bed and walk. Immediately, the man got up. The man never said a word to the Lord Jesus. But Jesus understood what the Pharisees were reasoning in their hypocritical hearts, and he confronted them about it. He did not let it pass. They were thinking it in their minds. Nobody else there had any knowledge of it, but Jesus didn't let it pass. He was not a passive, weak Messiah. He was a confronting, preacher of the gospel who confronted false and confronted error and confronted false teachers to their faith. One of the first accounts in the gospels when he goes into the temple and runs everybody out. That's not weakness, that's strength. And if you'll read the gospels, you'll find that Jesus encountered the Pharisees more than they encountered Him. Because of their hypocrisy. You don't have a weak, milquetoast Messiah. You have a Lord and Savior who is God. And He did not come in weakness. He came in humility as a servant. But not to compromise the truth. How do you know that? You read it in the book. It's in the Bible. I'll tell you something interesting, too, that I read and everything I'm talking to you about this morning, I deliberately this, I've been thinking, I've been going over this in my head for a month, okay? And I deliberately did not sit down and do any commentary reading or no word studies. Everything I'm talking to you about this morning, I'm talking to you about what I just read. I wanted to do it that way. I wanted to read and then tell you what I saw, because some of these things I've never seen before. Now, I will correct that. I am in the middle of reading or toward the end of reading a book by John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can't Ignore, and this section that I just told you was in there. So I will correct that. I didn't read in preparation for this. But if you read the Bible, you'll see that Jesus was authoritative. And other things will show up. If you read the account of his temptation in the book of Matthew, something very interesting I saw. This week I noticed it. I read it a hundred times. If you'll remember, he went out and was tempted by the devil. If you remember, the first temptation was turn these rocks into bread. Jesus said you will not live by bread alone. The second temptation was that he took him to the pinnacle of the temple. He said, throw yourself off, he says, because it's written he will Command his angels concerning you and Jesus said you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Then the third temptation was he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and he said these I'll give to you if you'll fall down and worship me. You remember what Jesus said. Worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. But if you will notice very. The way the Holy Spirit has it laid out here. That The acknowledgement of Jesus on the second temptation to Satan, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Apply it to Satan as much as it did to anybody else. You'll realize that Satan has a God, too, and he's the same God that is God. And it's not out of place here that that second temptation reminding Satan that you shall not put the Lord your God to the test comes before Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world. Satan is under God's sovereign control too. But if you really want to understand this a little deeper, go to Luke's account and read the same encounter. And what you'll find there is that the sequence of the temptations are different. The first one is for the bread, but the second one in Luke's account is where Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. Then the third one is where he takes him up to the top of the temple. Why is it out of sequence? It doesn't matter why it's out of sequence. But the important thing is that Luke confirms what I just told you in Matthew, because in Luke chapter 6, the devil said to him, I will give you all of this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me. What does that mean? A sovereign God has allowed him to have control, but it's under the control of the sovereign God. So scripture interprets scripture. How do we know? Because we read the Bible. And Satan goes on to say, I give it to whomever I wish, but it's under the sovereign control of God. There's many other places we could go. We could go to Isaiah and read the four Psalms of the Messiah, written 700 years prior to the birth of Jesus, prior to the events of the cross. We could read all about who the Messiah is in his sufferings in Isaiah chapter 53, Isaiah chapter 42, 49, 50, and then again in the latter part of 52 and 53. The exact sequence of events that took place over 700 years later are perfectly laid out in the book of Isaiah. Confirming the authority and accuracy of the Bible. Bolstering our confidence that we can understand and we can trust what it tells us. And then we could go to Matthew chapter 1 toward the end and chapter 2 about the birth of Jesus Christ and see five examples of the fulfillment of Scripture that is six to seven hundred years old that was fulfilled exactly in the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perfectly. And we can have confidence. We can go to the genealogies of Jesus, and the genealogies in the book of Genesis, and the genealogies in Chronicles, and everywhere else that it shows up, where all the kings are shown their genealogies in the book of Kings, and 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Samuel. And what you'll see is the Bible is saying very detailed, precise, exact information is put in the Scriptures, and there's nothing left to chance. You ever looked at it that way? So-and-so begot so-and-so begot so-and-so and his brothers. So-and-so begot so-and-so so-and-so begot so-and-so and his brothers. You ever know what that is? That's the Bible telling you this is accuracy. This is the full genealogy of Jesus from Joseph and Mary all the way back to Adam. Perfect. Because the Bible tells us what was to come, what came and what is to come. What was to come, the Messiah. Not only Isaiah wrote about him, he's written about in the Psalms, chapter 22 and 23. What came was the glorious Messiah, the humble servant, the confrontive preacher of the gospel who confronted error, but who preached to the as he told John's disciples, tell him that the gospel is preached to the poor. And all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You'll see a confident Messiah in John chapter 6 who's dealing with discouragement as the crowds leave him, because remember, he was human. And over and over again, he reassures himself that all the Father gives me will come to me. All that the Father gives to me will come to me. The one that comes to me, I won't. No one can come to me, but the Father gives them to me. The Father draw them over and over again. And you see a victorious Savior who goes to the cross at the time He specifies, not at the time the Pharisees said, well, we're not going to do it now. That's exactly when it happened. and who died and who rose from the dead. And you see men who rose up in the Acts period and wrote these things down. Like Luke, you go to 1 John 1. You can see he wrote these things. John's Gospel toward the end. And you can see all the marvelous things that they've written in the New Testament. And then the things to come in the book of Revelation and other places. The summing up of the purpose of God. For all of creation from time eternity to eternity. And how do we know it? Because we read it in the book. Read the book. Absorb the book. Soak your soul in the book. Have you sinned? Go to Isaiah chapter 55. Let the one who has sinned call upon the Lord, because he is compassionate to forgive. You suffer from self-centeredness? Go to Philippians chapter 3. I'll let you go there on your own. Well, there's just, I mean, there's too much to talk about. There's more than I have time to tell you because I'm done now. Don't start shuffling around. Because I've been up here about 50 minutes and I know we're tired and I'm going to quit, but next week I want to continue. And I don't know that there's a good commentary on the fullness of the importance of the Bible other than Psalm 119. I went through it three times this week, and I want to talk next week on Observations from Psalm 119, brother. That'll be my title, if the Lord wills it. Observations from Psalm 119. Now, between now and then, please go and read Psalm 119. It'll take you a while. It's a long one. And all but three or four verses, the word of God is mentioned. Okay, but I want to close with one thing and I want to, I just want to close with this. And I want you to just listen very carefully. How do we know this book is what it is? How do we know it's authoritative? How do we know we can trust it? Because Jesus did. Now, obviously, the New Testament wasn't written when Jesus was here in his ministry, but the Old Testament was. And you know, there's about a thousand references to the Old Testament in the New Testament. It's a commentary, sort of. But I want you to listen to what Jesus said in the last chapter of Acts. He was walking down a road to a place called Emmaus. with some guys, and it says in verse 27, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures. Moses and the prophets. Well, that kind of lays out some of it. Jesus don't leave out anything, because if you go to the upper room, it says in verse 44, these are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that in all things that was written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms will be fulfilled. Then he opened all the beautiful, oh, so beautiful, so beautiful. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scripture. Oh, beloved, you want to know more about your Lord. It's in the book. You want to understand it's in the book. And don't we let complacency get us sometime. Bury your soul in the The Word of God. When you come back next Saturday, next Sunday, I'm not going to ask you the question again. But know in your heart, I spent more time this week in the Bible than I did last week. Find time just to read it and meditate. Maybe you're one sitting, you only read one chapter of one gospel. But absorb it. Because Jesus went on in Luke's last chapter to say, and he said to them, thus it is written. So Luke starts off his gospel to a man named Theophilus, saying that I wrote these things that you may know, and Jesus sums it up at the end of Luke's gospel. Thus, it is written, what? That the Christ would suffer, rise again from the dead on the third day, and forgiveness, repentance, and forgiveness to Him, proclaiming His name. Where was it written? It was written in the Old Testament, because that's all they had. But now, you and I have a New Testament that is a fulfillment of the Old. Go home and throw the dust off your book. OK? Put your heart in it. You know what you'll find? You'll become so hungry for it that you'll look forward to that time in that book. And you'll wake up in the morning and a verse of the Scripture will go through your head. And you'll smile. And you may even chuckle because of the grace that the Lord gives you. Alright, thank you for your time. I'm done, brother.