go through November the 16th, so remember that if you do the shoeboxes. Our mission in gathering will be through December. So in giving to that, the Annie Armstrong, Lottie Moon, and Margaret Lackey offerings, those will go through December. So remember that also. We'll have the budget. The budget, if you want copies in the foyer back here, The budget will be presented in the third quarter business meeting on November the 9th at 6 p.m. That will be a week from this coming Sunday. Also remember that next Saturday night or Sunday morning to set your clocks back as we come to that time of year. I was hoping they had done away with that. I thought they had, but they have not. I thought that that was one of the things Trump wanted to do. So I remember sitting in my office at four o'clock and it was getting dark outside. I always hated that because it seemed like I should have already been home. But anyway, the days will have more sunlight in the morning and less in the afternoon. Also, our prayer meeting on Wednesday night at 630. Remember that also. As we come tonight and we begin to pray, let's pray that for our services tonight and the things of this week and let just a reminder to pray for Brother Kerry. He will be hopefully home next Saturday. So remember that as he He travels and remember the rest of the conferences there. Well, let's pray and we will begin our worship service tonight. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this time that we can come to you and praise your name. Lord, we praise you, Lord, for your grace and mercy that you've given us. And we praise you for your word that you gave us to guide us and to lead us. into life itself and the things of this life. And we praise you for that. Lord, we pray tonight, Lord, that you bless each one that's here. Thank you that they are here. And Lord, we thank you for our church here at Bethlehem and the things that you've given us here. And the word that we understand is the central part of our worship here. Lord, we just pray you bless it tonight. Bless the reading, the preaching of it. And we pray, Father, for the singing of your word, Lord, as we sing here in a minute for the ladies as they play and Jamie as he leads us. Just pray for your blessings. Pray for your blessings on each one that's here. Pray for our pastors there that you bless him. And Lord, that you speak through him there, we pray, to lead these pastors that are there closer to you and they can go back and preach more doctrine and the things that they need to preach, Lord, to their churches. Bless us tonight and bless our service as we pray. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Well, let's stand as we worship in singing this evening our first hymn, number 79, My Jesus, I Love Thee. My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine. For thee, all the volleys of sin, I resign. My gracious Redeemer, my Savior ♪ If ever I love thee ♪ ♪ Like Jesus didst love me ♪ ♪ I love thee because thou hast first loved me ♪ ♪ And purchase my pardon on Calvary's tree ♪ ♪ I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow ♪ Jesus did say, I love thee in mind, I will love thee in head. ♪ And praise thee as long as the land is deep red ♪ ♪ And say when the death-dew lies cold on thy brow ♪ ♪ Will I love thee, my Jesus, tis now ♪ ♪ In mansions of glory and glory evermore ♪ ever adore thee, it happens so proudly. I'll see Oh, I love thee, my Jesus, tis now. And 353, our offertory hymn, Victory in Jesus. I heard an old, old story How a Savior came from glory How He gave His life on Calvary To save a wretch like me I heard about His groaning, of His precious blood's atoning. Then I repented of my sin and won the victory. O victory in Jesus, my Saviour forever! He sought me and bought me, His redeeming light. He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is to Him. He plunged me into victory, beneath the cleansing flood. His healing, of His cleansing power revealing. Now we've made the lane to walk again, and caused the blind to see. And then I cried, dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit. And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory, the victory. In Jesus I say more. forever. He smote me and bought me with his redeeming blood. Above the air I knew him, and all my love is to him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. I heard about a mansion He has built for me in glory, and I heard about the streets of gold ♪ Beyond the crystal sea ♪ ♪ About the angels singing ♪ ♪ And the old redemption story ♪ ♪ And some sweet day I'll sing up there ♪ ♪ The song of victory ♪ in Jesus my Savior forever. He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood. Below the air I knew Him, and all my love Let's pray. Our kind Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us all back here again this evening. Lord, we thank you you for sending Jesus to pay the price for our sins, which is where that victory comes from, for a chance, Lord, to spend our eternity in heaven with you forever. I thank you for the rain you bless us with today. I pray for safety for all of us as we go home this evening. Lord bless Mike as he brings a sermon tonight. Thank you for his service. And we pray for your blessings on Pastor Kerry as he finishes up his ministry. and please bring him home safely. Please bless this offering now and bless wherever it will be spent. In Jesus' name, amen. you ♪ ♪ As we come tonight to pray for those, an intercessory prayer that we pray for those They're on our hearts and that we know have needs. We have many in our church that we know have needs and Jim Williams and his family and the loss of Sharon this week, we need to remember them in prayer and there's been no decision made as far as when the funeral is going to be. So we're waiting on them and the family, probably Jimmy and his sons, two sons will make that decision as to how it's going to happen. And when Brother Kerry gets back and they get with him to determine when that's going to happen, but we need to remember that family. Jim was right there with her. the last week of her life. As far as I know, the only time he went home was when he had to go home to do something that had to be done, feeding his dogs and things like that, and he would come right back. But he was broken. And for the ones of you that has known Jim for a long time, like most of us have, that was something you didn't see very often. with Jim, but in the loss of Sharon has really taken a toll on him. And he's not healthy himself. We need to remember him in prayer because he has cancer. You know, tell people all the time that old age is not what it's cracked up to be, and certainly it's not. And seems like every decade that we get past, things just seem to get worse. And it's that way we need to remember Sidney Hosey also, who is sick, who has bronchitis and is at home. We need to remember him. We need to remember Michael and Robin and Rhett and Alice. And I know there's many others we need to remember, our pastors there in Africa. And, you know, I don't know if y'all have been watching the news, but trying to remember the exact number, that was on Fox News today, see if I can pull it up right quick, of Christians that are being killed there in Africa. And it's really a shocking thing. You think, well, maybe we need to do something about this. And certainly, I think that's probably the truth. But it's, I believe it's not Sudan. I cannot remember off the top of my head. Yeah, Nigeria. Thank you, George. Said there has been around 150,000 Christians killed. That's over several years. 125,000 Christians massacred in Nigeria. So it's something that we need to pray about. It's not in South Africa exactly. If you look at it on the map, it's kind of in the eastern part of Africa. But still, something that needs to be on our heart. It seems as though when revival begins in a country like the nation of Africa, it seems as though that Islam just goes wild. And that seems to be what's happening there. So we need to remember them in that, the people that's there. You know, it's something that none of us have ever been through. I know Michael and Robin were in Morocco many years ago. Actually, Kayla was born there. They faced and saw the Muslim influence there. We don't know that here, but yet we're seeing it now in some of the big cities here, especially in Detroit and some of the other northern cities. We're seeing this great Islamic influence. And, you know, I remember a time that you never saw that here in our country, but now, I mean in the south, but now it's coming even to the south. And not only Islam, but many other cults. So those things are on our heart. We need to remember our pastor that's there preaching. He's about six hours ahead of us, so he's asleep right now. But they're preaching the gospel and teaching these pastors there to be better pastors. And that needs to be on our heart also. And we need to remember Brother Naphtali Ogalo his family and the loss of his mother. It's been a couple of weeks now, but him and his mother were very close. We need to remember our church there in Latin race Mexico with all the problems that's going on there and Pastor Pedro that preaches there. And we know there's many, many others that and people on your heart. I know that you have that need prayer and we could mention those and If you come on Wednesday night, that's one of the great things about Wednesday night is we mention a lot of those and we have more time to do that. But it should be that we're praying constantly for these. So let's have just a, I'll give you a minute to pray silently and then I will close our prayer. So if you would pray with me as we begin this prayer. Heavenly Father, we pray, Lord, that you hear our prayers. Each prayer that's mentioned here tonight, Lord, and Lord, we're just a group of sinners coming to you, Lord, for answers to prayers and answers to needs that we have. And even in our own families, Lord, we know we have those that need you and need salvation. Lord, we just come to you humbly before your throne tonight, lifting these up to you, Lord. Lord, there's many that we can call, and even many that we can't remember all the names. But Lord, we lift them up to you, Lord, the people that's on our prayer list that we pray for, that's on our heart. Lord, the Carpenter family and the loss of Miss Marion. And we pray, Lord, for them and this loss. Lord, we just pray for your blessings, pray for Jim and his family and the whole Williams family, Lord, and the four children and the grandchildren. We lift them up to you, Lord, and Lord, even for his grandson that's there with him now, TJ, we lift him up to you, Lord, and we pray that he can help Jim and comfort Jim during this time. Lord, most of all, we pray by your grace, you comfort him And Lord, that he knows that as a church that we are praying for him. And Lord, we lift up many others, Lord, for Michael and Robin. Pray your healing mercy in their lives and, Lord, for their girls as they take care of them and take care of Michael. We just pray that you bring him back to us one day able to walk again, we pray. And pray you bless them and their family. Pray for Rhett and Alice also. And pray for Rhett that your mercy on him. Man, it's been faithful to you all of his life. Been a deacon most of his life here in this church. And we lift him up to you, Lord. Lord, we know there's many others that's on our hearts. And Lord, we lift these up to you, Lord, and pray for your mercy and your grace. Pray for our pastor as he'll be traveling at the end of this week. Pray for safe travel that you bring him back safely to us, we pray. Lord, just bless this time together and bless your word tonight as we read it. And Lord, we just pray that you speak through it to each of our hearts. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. Going to be back in Matthew chapter four this morning in the last temptation of Christ. In the last temptation of Christ, there was three temptations that we've gone through And there's almost, every time you read through it, there's more there and it's a very deep passage of scripture, an important passage of scripture, the things that Christ went through in these temptations. And we need to take these temptations in relation to ourselves because Satan is constantly, he never relents and he never stops coming at the church, the people of God. And certainly, you can see it very plainly in this passage of scripture. Let me begin reading there in the first verse of chapter four, and I'll read down through verse 11. First 11 verses. Then went Jesus up, or then Jesus was led up of the spirit unto the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward and hungered, and when the tempter came to him, he said, if thou be the son of God, command these stones to be made bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and sitteth him on the pinnacle of the temple and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus answered and said unto him, it is written again, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up to an exceedingly high mountain and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them and saith unto him, all these things will I give thee if thou wilt bow down, thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, get thee hence, Satan, For it is written, I shall worship the Lord thy God and him only shall I worship. Then the angels or then the devil leaveth him and behold the angels came and ministered unto him. So here again, this temptation and these temptations of the devil, they're coming. And you can see that in this, the devil never stopped. Again, the Bible says in verse eight, he came to him, he taketh him up to this exceedingly high place. Now, all of us know, and we love the Smoky Mountains, but if you go and you could see all the Smoky Mountains, if you go up to Clingmans Dome and it's not foggy, which most of the time it is, but if you happen to go on a clear day, it's amazing what you can see. But he didn't just see that. He saw everything. He saw the whole world. Now, to us, that would be a great temptation. But the thing you have to understand here is that Christ created what Satan is tempting him with. So this temptation, when it comes to Christ, again, the scripture that we read this morning is, Christ had the ability to be tempted, but he had no ability to sin. So we always have to keep that in mind. There's no ability for him to sin. And one of the things that just amazes me about people today, and I'll just say Baptist people today, is they take Christ as some sort of a lucky charm. or something that they think they can get or that they can actually make him decide, or by their prayer, they can persuade him to change his mind. Well, see, that's not possible. You're not going to change the mind of God. What people don't realize is, is the prayers that's on the Christian's heart, he lays on our heart to pray. See, it's that important that we understand those things, the things of God when it comes to this, but he's not a lucky charm. I told you all a couple of weeks ago that Vaughn and I knew this lady. She was a teenager at the time, and she slept. She lived a very promiscuous lifestyle, but she slept with the Bible every night under her pillow. It was like a lucky charm. Well, see, the Bible is not a lucky charm. Matter of fact, if you look at these scriptures, you see Christ defeated the Satan with the Word of God. Three times he said, it is written, it is written, it is written. See, the most powerful thing that we have, that we possess as men of God, is the Word of God. See, he's given us what we need in order to live this life. But see, Habakkuk 113 says this, and I will ask you to turn there. But he said, thou art of pure eyes than to behold evil. In other words, the eyes of Christ are so pure that he cannot even, and God, that he cannot even behold evil. And can it not look on iniquity? See, we don't understand that because we're sinners, we see sin, we see ourselves sin, But yet Christ and God is so pure, so holy, and so righteous that he cannot even look on sin. He can't even behold it. We don't look at God that way a lot of times. Even as people of God and Christians, we don't look at him that way a lot of times. But he has no iniquity, has no ability to sin, but yet the scripture says here very plainly, It is written. See, it is written, this written word, and Brother Kerry said it, just like in John 1, John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Christ is the word, it goes on to say. Well, he expresses himself, he gives us He tells us who he is by his word. He's not just some lucky charm. And if you turn to Acts, turn to Acts chapter one, and Brother Kerry preached many months on the book of Acts, and Acts chapter one is a very important verse when it comes to the sovereignty of God and understanding who Christ is. Acts 1.6, and I'm gonna read down through verse 11 here, it says, When they therefore will come together, they ask of him saying, Lord, will thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel? Now this is his disciples. They had been with Christ, lived with Christ for three years. And look what they're asking. Are you going to come at this time? and set up this earthly kingdom. See, they had been taught that all of their lives, but here they still didn't understand. Says, and he said unto him, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the father hath put in his own power. But you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up in a cloud, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they were looking steadfast toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. which also said, you men of Galilee, why stand you gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up for you or from you into heaven, shall all or he shall come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven. See, he's God. See, from now on, you'll never see Christ in the flesh again. You will see him as the one who has the risen savior, the one we sing about. He's the one that we will see. So when you look at these things, you'll understand. He's not some lucky charm. He's not something that somebody can build up in their mind. Here's what John Gill said. He said it's vain and sinful as well as fruitless to indulge in curious iniquity into these things. Now, notice what he said. Fruitless. It's sinful. It's iniquity. Or into the times and seasons of what is the future. Sinful, he said, for us to look into the sinful things of our own minds. Now, here's what you'll see probably in many pulpits this morning, today. You'll see preachers preaching on that, hey, the times are here. Christ is about to come back. And they may read prophecy or they may read something of prophecy and dispensationalism that they may use to try to prove the fact that Christ is about to come back. John Gill, who wrote in 1800, said that's sin. and we should not go there. And I agree with that, we should not go there. Well, we just saw that here, that these disciples of Christ could not grasp the fact that he's not going to set up an earthly kingdom. See, this is not what Christ ever came for, but he came to redeem us, to shed his blood as a perpetuation to be able to go back and present it to the father for our sin. That's why he came for no other reason. At the transfiguration in Mark 9, here's what this voice from heaven said again. This is my beloved son. Hear ye him. See, we're commanded to hear him and we hear him through this word of God. It's amazing. this word of God. So Satan took him up to this high mountain. And in this high mountain, see, many people have used this to say, well, this is not true. The word of God is not true. This is false because this could not happen. Well, we don't know how it happened. We don't know how the Lord saved us even in our own personal lives. We don't know how he saved us. How did he cause us all of a sudden to see him and desire him? and want him. Well, see, that's the works of God himself in our heart, the works of the Holy Spirit, but we can't explain how it happened. We can't explain that at all. Well, here it is, this word of God. Brother Kerry preached on this word, and he preached on the 1689 in the word, and I just copied some excerpts here from the 1689 about the word of God. Here's what it says. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. So look at what it said, just briefly. The Scripture is all sufficient. It's certain. It's infallible. See, there's no errors in it. But it's the rule for the saving knowledge and faith and obedience of us. So if we're going to be obedient to Christ, how do we do it? It's by his word. Christ taught us that here. If we're tempted by Satan, how do we overcome temptation and not fall off into sin? By the word of God. That's what it says. Well, the next phrase from the 1689 says the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory. Now listen to this. What is necessary that we need? His own glory, the glory of God, man's salvation, faith in life is either expressed, set down, or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture. Everything that we need is supplied by the Scripture, by the Holy Scripture. See, salvation, for us to be able to glorify God. We read it in the Bible, throughout the Bible, for faith and life. Everything that we need is contained in the Holy Scripture. And see, as Baptists, how blessed we are that these men, decades, I mean, centuries ago, wrote this down and were able, I believe, led by God to write this stuff down so we would have it and understand how important the Scripture is here. It's the most important thing that we hold. But yet, what you find, and even in my own life, I never understood how important it was to read and to memorize and understand or try to understand and study the scripture until I was in my probably late 20s. And we had a pastor that taught us that. The more you study it, the more you understand. It's like my brother said. Died in his 80s. He was called a preacher at a young age. Went to seminary. Spent most of his life in college, I think. Most of his young life, anyway. Here's what he told me one day. He said, Mike, let me tell you. He said, every day I get up and I open the Bible. And he said, even though I've studied it all my life, it's a brand new book. And see, that's the way it is with us. Every time we open it, it's a brand new book because it's the book of life. It's the book that gives us life. And see, it's the thing that moves us along in our Christian life and teaches us how to live, as we see right here in this book here, in the book of Matthew, as Matthew proclaimed this gospel, this word of God. Here again, the thing that we see here is this, that he not only here overcame Satan in these temptations, but he totally defeated Satan here. Because from this point forward, even though Satan never stopped coming, because if you look in the book of book of Mark, it says here at this point that Satan left him but for only a while. He came back. He constantly came back. And there were many temptations of Christ. If you look at what Christ, what he stood for and the things that he stood for, he never did anything. There's a book that, and it's always amazed me that there's books that just seem to get in my path that I that I come upon, and a lot of times it's in sales somewhere, in a rummage sale or something, and you see a booth there, and it may not be but a few cents or a couple of dollars. But there was a lady that was a neighbor of ours, and I'm sure Jamie remembers her. Her name was Miss Tress. And Miss Tress got sick, and she had to go in a nursing home. Well, she told the neighbors, Her sisters didn't want anything in her house because she didn't have anything fancy in her house. She was a great artist. We have a picture of a beautiful magnolia hanging in our hallway that she painted, perfectly painted. But there was an old book, and you could see that obviously the rats had chewed part of the side of it off, and Vonda took it and she had it a birdcage using it as decoration for many years. Well, one day Vaughn decided to take that out and I thought, well, what is that book? I opened it up and it was a book written by Presbyterian James Snowden about putting how the New Testament was all put together and he described the things and he had done a great study on all the gospels all the people that wrote the New Testament, an amazing book. And here's what James Snowden said about this temptation. He said, Christ was ministered to. If you look at that very last verse, it says the devil left him and the angels came and ministered unto him. See, he was still hungry at this time. He'd still not eaten. They came and ministered to him. And obviously, they did not minister to him, even though some people say that. Obviously, to me, they did not minister to him during this temptation time. Because if the angels had ministered to him, it wouldn't have been a temptation. But they ministered to him at the end. Well, why only at the end? Well, that's very important because, like Snowden said, he never used any of his power during this temptation because it was not the will of the father. Remember what he said at 12 years old? I'm here to do the will of my father. He said that throughout the New Testament. Well, here it is. He did not use any of his power. He could have turned those loaves to bread. He could have taken any part of the temptation. He could have even ended this temptation prematurely, but he did not do that. So why the now the angels come and minister to him to tell us that he used none of his godly power? Because if he had, it would have been seen. So it's important that we realize just those minor things that we take as minor but are major things that are in the gospel here. But that's what we see. The devil fled from him. The devil left him when he said, get away from me, Satan. Get away. Get the hints. Get away from me. And Satan left him. But now here's the other thing that we have to understand in these scriptures. Christ was tempted in more than just these ways. If you look back at Mark chapter 1 in verse 35 through 39, here's what we see in that. We see more temptation there by his own disciples. Mark chapter 1 beginning in verse 35. It says, and in the morning, Rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. And Simon and they that were with him followed after him. And when they had found him, they said unto him, all men seek thee. And he said unto them, let us go into the next towns, where I may preach there also. For therefore came I forth. See, he came forth to preach the gospel. He did not come forth for the praise of men. But see what the disciples said? Men seek thee. Men desire thee. Well, men were desiring the miracles that he had done. not for the son of God's sake, not that he was the Messiah. They sought him for the things. And I said it this morning, and we have to be careful of that as Christians. Satan offers these great high things that as men, we think may be the most important things that's ever happened in our life, but the end may be destruction. See, as Christians, we have to be aware of that. What did he offer Christ? Great things. You can be ruler of all. You can rule from the temple there in Jerusalem as the Jews taught. You can be the ruler of the whole world. Here it is, you can have all the kingdoms of the earth, these beautiful mountains, these beautiful valleys and beautiful lakes and rivers. That's what Satan promises. But see, he couldn't even furnish those things. If Christ had yielded to this temptation, see, that's all he wanted was for him to doubt the word of the Father. But see, this was determined in the Godhead before the world began what was about to happen here. That's the reason Jesus went through these temptations is because it was the will of the Father. So when we read these things, we must understand this, is that we can only conquer Satan and the demons that are his. by the word of God, there's no other way. Matter of fact, the book of Ephesians tells us that. It gives us the warfare there, the instruments of war to stand against Satan and his temptations, the fiery darts of Satan there that the book of Ephesians that Paul wrote about. So we have to understand, he came to Christ, he tempted him, and he's coming to us. It's just a matter of time. He's with us. He comes to us every day to tempt us in every way that can be imagined. He comes to tempt us. But how do we overcome that? Just like Christ, for it is written, the word of God. That's the only way we can become. That's the only way that we can be the children that we need to be to our parents. The only way that we can be the spouse that we need to be to our spouse. is by the word of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word and the strength that it gives us just to understand that the most powerful temptation that we're going to have is from Satan himself, even though we still deal with the flesh and the world.