turn our slides as we go. Our Catechism question is 74 and it says, what is forbidden in the Sixth Commandment? And what is the Sixth Commandment? Thou shalt not murder. Okay. The answer, if you would read it. Sixth Commandment, absolutely forbiddeth the taking away of our own life or the life of our neighbor unjustly or whatsoever tendeth thereunto. I think I've got the memory verse next. I want to go through Genesis 4, 10 through 11. Since we're on murder and since we're so early in Genesis, what do you think this scripture deals with? Cain and Abel. Okay. And who killed who? Cain killed Abel. Okay. I always got that mixed up when I was young. And Cain killed Abel for what? I believe there was jealousy. His offering was not accepted by God. And he would not listen to God. I mean, you remember God came to him and said, what are you so upset about? I didn't accept your offering, but you can do better, right? And Cain could not overcome the fact that his brother did that which was righteous in God's eyes. and he killed his brother. Genesis 9-6, we actually studied that, I think, last week. That was where God actually criminalized or instituted part of our criminal justice system, that if you take the life of another, then you surely shall die. And in Matthew 5, 21 through 26, I really wanna read this, cause we're gonna do a little bit of discussion on this. This is Jesus talking, And in verse 21 it says, You have heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. And whoever shall say to his brother Raka, and Raka, if I looked it up properly, means someone that's empty or worthless, okay? shall be guilty before the Supreme Court and whoever shall say you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponents at law while you are with him on the way, in order that your opponent may not deliver you to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you shall not come out of there until you have paid the last cent." So Jesus has expounded on this concept of do not murder. Where has he gone with this? I mean, what kind of other sins are we dealing with here other than murder? He's giving you a hint on a couple of them. Okay, so if you have, sorry about that. I'm gonna put, I'm gonna put grievance, is that okay? Toward brother or sister. What other kind of sins are we dealing with? Ooh. Can we put slander, is that okay? If you were a politician, you'd be used to it, wouldn't you? That seems to be all that we hear today, right? What other kind of sins are we dealing with? Okay, what others? I found 20, but I wasn't that smart. I looked in a book. What others can you think of? What about hurting yourself? And I'll put up here suicide if I know how to spell it. Did I spell it right? Suicide, okay, thank you all, great spellers. All right, suicide, that's a sin, okay. Yes, ma'am? Yeah, that's a sin. Why is that a sin since you brought it up? Jesus said, if you got something against your brother, go and get it fixed, right? So if you hold a grudge against a brother, Christ has forgiven you. How is your relationship with Christ? Not very good, is it? Because if you can't forgive your brother, How is your relationship with Christ good? You've got a grievance against him, so your fellowship with Christ is not great, because that's sin inside your heart, right? Okay, these are some sins that I found. This is the first hint. I'm not gonna read them all. We've got 20 of them. Anything stand out there? Necessary defense, let's see, sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge. Those are things that we look at. Taking the life of others. What, not to get political, but what campaign, prominent campaign slogan is out there today for one of our parties that they have just, aired the airwaves with as far as TV and radio. Abortion. Is that not taking the life of another? And I, it baffles me how any party can run on that, but we understand we don't live in a perfect world, do we? I'm not picking on abortion. Abortion is a sin. It's considered murder by God's standards. The world society does not think so. The way they present it is the woman's right, the woman's right to choose abortion, right? Woman's right. Who gave her that right? Who gave women the right to abortion? God didn't, did he? So when something in society does not match up with what God's words are, it's not true. Okay? It's like murder. It's not true. Stealing, it's not true. God says don't steal. Okay? God's word also says if a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat. That's harsh, isn't it? Might make some people go back to work. I don't know. We'll see. But these are things, it's not a right. If it's contrary to God's word, then it is called sin. And we have to look at it in that sense. Now, sin is forgivable, right? If repentance is truly sought by the person that committed the sin. If we don't believe that, then none of us need to be here, because none of us are worthy for our sin to be forgiven, are we? Excessive passions, I would never have thought that would be in the category there, but it is. Immoderate use of meat and drink. I never thought of that one. Recreations. Why would that be classified in the case of murder? I think it is probably both. If it is something that destroys your relationship with God and it's taken possession of you, then you need to give it up, okay? It should not be put first. It may not be that you play a sport. It may be that you are so involved in looking at sports, gambling on sports, I've got some friends that belong to some kind of gambling club. They get flown to different places free, stay in a hotel free. They just have to go and gamble. I'm not sure that is something I would approve of, but there's people that do it. Is that, even if they tithe, is that something that I would want to be known for? So it could be you're sitting in front of the TV all the time watching sports, and you do nothing else. You don't provide for your family. You don't provide for coming to church. You just give up on everything. It just takes possession of your life. Striking or wounding, that's something I would do. Quarreling. Why is that considered something that would be in the category of murder? I'll give you an instance. My wife had, her name was Betsy. She did her hair. She was 83. Her husband and her got in an argument and he took out a pistol and shot her dead. This has, this happened recently. Nice lady, Christian, but he got so mad, he got so angry, they shot and killed her. Quarreling can lead to different sins, can't it? Whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any. And that can be all kinds of things. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure out other things. But these are things that I found that was under that category of the Sixth Commandment, that you should not murder. Yes, ma'am. I think bullying could be under number two. Taking the life of others. People have been known to be bullied and they commit suicide because they can't take it anymore. I think that would commit to that. Yes, we've seen that in some shootings, haven't we? God says that he is the one that will take vengeance, right? So we should allow God to take the vengeance. It may not be in this lifetime, but his vengeance will be done. So we need to remember as Christians that he is the one that's in charge and that he is the one that gives grace and that we are to follow our Savior in the fact that he gives grace and mercy to us and we should extend that to others, right? Any questions on that part? It covers a lot of material. I would never have thought through these here, but I tried to provide descriptors so you could have them. If you want them, I can try and provide them to you a little later. I may have to print them off for you or something, but I can get them to you if you want. Okay. Our scriptures today are taken from Haggai 2.6, our New Testament, which we probably will not get to, and our Sermon Texts, Hebrews 12, 25 through 29. The theme that Brother John had last week is the kingdom of our God is eternal and unchangeable, and our salvation and assurance are found in God alone. I like that unifying statement. Our God and His kingdom is eternal and unchangeable. If it was changeable and God was changeable, we could not rely on Him, could we? But since he's unchangeable, he does not lie. Unchangeable meaning that he does not have to learn anything, because he's all knowing. Unchangeable because he is holy and righteous. I mean, you can apply that to a lot of things. But since that is true, then we don't have to worry about it, because our assurance is in Christ, and that's who we live for. All right. Is anybody at Haggai right now? Who is? Are you? You are Brenda? Would you mind reading that for us? Okay. I looked up a little bit of information on Haggai. He is somewhere around, well, he's over 70 years old. We know that from his writings. And the way we know that is in verse 2. three of that chap of his book, he states that he actually saw the destruction and the exile of Judah. So if he saw that, that would place him well over 70 because he is now writing somewhere around 520 BC. So that alone would put him at 68 years old. So he has to be over 70 in order to have at least remembered that. The time period that he's writing has been 18 years after the Jews had been released by Cyrus. I believe he's, that should be Mead Persian, not Medo Persian. Cyrus allowed them to go back and 539 BC. I'm sorry. He conquered them, but then he released them in 538 BC To go back to the promised land to rebuild a temple and the wall you can find that in Isaiah 45 Haggai was Was a prophet who loved his people and but he loved God more and he wanted his people to understand that if they depended on God and put God first in their life, then God would bless them and he would use them for his glory. The problem that they had is they did not have a lot of food. They did not have a lot of housing. They were having troubles. And the reason why they were having these problems is they did not remember God. Yes, yes. They were just like the people that came out of Egypt. If you remember at Mount Sinai, God gave them the law and the first thing that happened is Moses came down and they were worshiping a golden calf. This same group of people at Kadesh Barnea made a decision that they did not believe God and they rejected God's promises. and they refused to go into the Promised Land, and they all wandered for 40 years in the desert. We know that there was only two people that was over the age of 20 years old that went into the Promised Land. They were Joshua and Caleb. Everyone else was under 20 at the time. At the time that they went over, after 40 years, that would have put the oldest at 60. And then the rest would have been younger. But they were just like these people, they refused to remember God and they refused to repent of their sin. So Haggai Instead of just preaching one sermon, he actually preached four sermons, and Brother John actually broke it down for us in this sermon. Chapter 1, 3-15, it was a call to obedience. Chapter 2, 1-9 was a call to trust and salvation. 10-13 was a call to purification. And the last, 20-23, was a call to recognize God as sovereign. You cannot be devoted to yourself and think of yourself and then be devoted to God, okay? You can't love yourself and love God like that. If you've put yourself first and your desires and your needs instead of putting God first, then you have problems just like they did. The unique thing about this book is that the people actually ended up believing, had I, they repented of their sins, and they did build the wall, which is evidence, at the end of the book. Inside this, in verses seven and nine and eight, It shows the victories over God's enemies were accomplished. Provision, Jews must place God at center of lives in order to receive future blessings God had for them. References of God's previous promises. I put that in there because Deuteronomy 11, 13 through 15, 28, 1 through 14, and Genesis 12, 1 through 3, and can you tell me what this promise was? Especially Genesis 12, 3, most of us should remember that. What was the promise to Abraham? Yeah, he had a promise, one, of the seed, right? And that's Jesus Christ. Two, he, many nations, and we know this to be true because if we look at the Middle East, we see Israel, And then we see Arabs. And I don't know the names of all the Arab countries over there, but every one of them are related to Abraham. Because one of his sin, to Hagar, right? Sarah gave up on God and said, go into Hagar and have a child through her. Ishmael, I think was his name. This is where... And then the one true was to who? Abraham Isaac, right? Okay. The other blessing was what? The other blessing was what? He said, I do have a land for you, which he said he will give. And by the way, the little part that they have is nothing compared to what they did have. And by the way, for those of you that don't know history, Palestine in 1945 was offered land for a country. At the same time, Israel was established, and they rejected it. And the reason why they rejected it is because they hated Israel, and they want to wipe them off the face of the earth. So they could have had their own country and everybody feels sorry for them. It's their own fault Okay, but what was the one promise that God made? Many descendants. Yes, right here. We got many descendants Blessing. Okay. What was the blessing? It was a blessing for Israel and what? A blessing and a curse. He said to Abraham, I will bless those that will bless you and I will curse those that harm you. Okay? He also said, if you will follow my laws and follow my commandments, Then I will bless you, your crops will grow, you will become rich, you will be strong, and if you don't follow me, you will take and be weak, and I will put you in exile." And he followed up on his promises. Okay? So, I don't know what we do here. I've never been here. Okay. How do we get back to where we were? There we go. God looks after... No, God looks after fools and idiots, and I think I've been both, so we're back to here, okay? All right, so any questions on what we've discussed so far? All right. Hebrews 12, 25 through 29. Anybody there right now and wouldn't mind reading that? Hebrews 12, 25. I'm sorry? Yes. 25 through 29. Anybody have that? Mark? Jody, you got it? Okay. In verses 18 through 24, they show the contrast between the old covenant and the new covenant. At the beginning of these scriptures here, it says, See to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven. This reminds you of the time of Israel, and it reminds you of their rejection. So the focus here at the end of this is that God spoke to the Israelites earlier, giving them the law at Mount Sinai. And we know that the generation perished because they refused God's message, and you can see that in Hebrews 3, 15 through 19. You can also see that in Numbers in the Old Testament. And what it should be is a warning to us today that if we refuse God while he is speaking to us through Jesus Christ, right, then how much worse is our condemnation gonna be? Ignoring Jesus's message will bring God's wrath and it will in the end of times Okay Hebrews 12 18 through 14 I already said that it was a contrast between the Old Covenant Mount Sinai and the New Covenant at Mount Zion which is a work that that Christ accomplished on the cross and The focus now is going to shift to two warnings, one on earth at Mount Sinai and one issued from heaven. I threw something in here for just some thought. I found some articles on living Christian lives and some information about this in Hebrews. The church today We have two churches that, when I say two churches, we have what we call a visible church. And then we have an invisible church. What is the difference in these? There is a major difference. Visible churches, those who are in local churches, they're professing to be Christians. They would appear to a lot of people to be Christians. It would be a visible church, or those people who are actually working at it. Okay. We have inside the church two groups of people, just like we got two groups of people in the world today. We have those that have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, and we have those that have not accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. The visible church today is made up of both groups because we live in a world that is fallen, right? Some of those that are professing Christians have either experienced some type of emotional experience, but have not become believers in Jesus Christ. They have a knowledge of God, but they do not know God. The biggest thing is, is does God know you? Okay? That's the thing. If your name is not in the book of life, then God does not know you. So, the visible church is, and Paul had written, and I say Paul because I believe he wrote Hebrews, he's written in a couple of the verses, and we just went through some of them, I think in verse 11, that people that fall away are not true believers. They're like the Israelites that refused to go into the promised land. They were Israelites. They were Jews. They were Jews by birth. Okay. And yet they were not saved because they rejected God. So we have In the church today, we have those that are in the church that appear to be Christians that are not saved because they have not accepted God's gift of mercy and grace through Jesus Christ. So, when you start talking about falling away, Paul is actually referencing those who are not saved, eventually are going to leave the church and they are not gonna be saved. Whereas the invisible church are those that God has redeemed, Old Testament, New Testament, and those are the redeemed that will be in heaven with Him. So they're kind of playing on this because God does bless both groups in the church, but eventually his blessings are not going to be going to those who fall away because they will be condemned because of their refusal of Jesus Christ. The key verb in 25 is refuse, and the object is God, so it is the refusal of God by man that will send someone to hell. Jesus Christ is speaking, I believe here in this particular section. He is originator of our new covenant that we discussed in 18 through 24, and he has been exalted and he sits at the right hand of God the Father. How much time we got left? Okay, I'll try and summarize this pretty good, pretty quickly I hope. The disobedience to the Mosaic Law brought judgment. Let me catch up with my notes. And when he starts talking about in verse 26 and 27, when he starts talking about shaking the kingdom or shaking the earth, God has a way of testing things, doesn't he? He talks about separating the wheat from the chaff in the New Testament. I believe Jesus used that in one of his illustrations. I believe this is the purpose of The shaking is to shake those things out that are not true those things that are not eternal to shake out those things that Are not real and leave it to The Christians to be eternal because the kingdom in which we are going to be receiving, when we are saved, we actually begin that road. Our salvation is eternal. It will never disappear. Our life, even though we may die physically, will never end. Our soul will be going to heaven and we will have a new body. So I think he's shaking out these things to separate the wheat from the shaft. And I believe that's what he's referring to when he starts talking about shaking. The reference in Haggai 2.6 actually is referencing the coming of Christ's kingdom to earth and the final judgment. And you can read a little bit more in 2 Thessalonians 1.7-10 if you want to go through that. Our position that we take is that we are secure and it kind of goes along and conforms to the unifying theme is that God's kingdom is unshakable and is eternal. And we can have that trust and that will help us to endure the hardships that we're going to face. There is coming a time when it's not going to be popular to be a Christian in the United States. It's coming more and more true. And our Christian life may change drastically because being a Christian may end up costing us our jobs, our life, our friends, our families. So we have not had to face that like a lot of nations have, especially in the Middle East, Africa, where Islam has actually progressed heavily into the African continent and is actually inundated into Europe. In France, England, you see surreal law being used in some of these countries. It's trying to take over in some of our towns here in the United States with our progressive leaders. So it's an indication of what's coming. And we have to be prepared to face up to the fact that our faith is either real or it's not real. And if it's not real, then we will give up and surrender our faith. A Christian is one that will live through this and will not take and give up Christ because a true Christian lives for Christ and Jesus said if you are more concerned about your life than me, then that's a big problem, isn't it? Okay? So the question is, is how do we view God? How do we view God? If we believe that he is sovereign, if we believe that he is all-knowing, and that He has promised us, and that we trust in these promises, and we view His promises as true, and we are faithful till the end, then our life eternally with Him is only just begun. Even now, He's preparing us for heaven. He is sanctifying us, right? Hopefully, as we grow each day and as we grow older, we become a little wiser. a little bit more aware of God in our life and what true living for him means. These are things that we have to look at and search ourself internally because it's something we should know. Is my view of God a worldly view or is my view of God a biblical view? And if it's a worldly view, where is your salvation? Because you can't have a worldly view of the things that's in the world and have a view of God from the biblical standpoint because they don't match. Lifestyles don't match. Morals don't match. Does not match up with God's goodness and his mercy and his grace and his justice because justice is important to God. If his son came and died for us, he's gonna be just in his dealings with the rest of the world. So we have to be aware that God is sovereign. And that, for some people, is very hard to accept. It shouldn't be, but it is. John Owen, by the way, is an English scholar, a theologian. Wrote a lot of children catechisms, didn't realize that. He wrote a lot of biblical commentaries. He was basically a non-conformist to society, which is good. The way we should be, in a lot of ways, we should not conform to the world. The world should conform to Jesus Christ, right? But he wrote that not refusing him who speaks is a command to believe and obey God. Anything less than this is refusing him who speaks. It is not enough to give a hearing, as we say, unless we also obey him. Are you an obedient servant or do you profess Christ in name only? Pray that the Lord would lead you into full obedience. So if your view of God is as a sovereign creator of all mankind, then your endurance is tied to that view, and you should be successful as a Christian. Any questions on that? I tried to take a little different approach on some of these, but I think that we got the point across, that God is in control, that our salvation is based on Him and Him alone, and that we should live accordingly. The one thing that I try to remember in Romans chapter one, I don't remember the verse, but it says one of the things that First indication that your relationship with God is either not real or that your life is not living the life that you should be is that they were not thankful. So be thankful. Remember to be thankful every day. I wake up every day and just thank God for his son, Jesus Christ. If I ever lose that thankfulness, I hope somebody will walk up beside me and knock me in the head and say, Bob, what's wrong? Why are you living this way? And why is your life not being lived for Jesus Christ? I hope that somebody would do that. Any questions? Okay, while we have prayer, Jody, you want to dismiss this?