We've come to the last meeting, December 29th, the last scheduled meeting of the body. Somehow that seems important, that seems to be of significance considering how many that I have personally known who are not here in this life on this 29th of December. The gravity of life is a very real thing. It tells us that it is a vapor. It is a vapor. And we know how quickly the fog burns off in the hot sun. So we are here. Last scheduled meeting. some verses, and I do not do this to punish you. I try to normally avoid too much reading, but today we will read several verses together in order to try to conclude, hopefully, with a point that we can take home. So let us first ask for help. Precious Master, we thank Thee, O Lord, for the opportunity to be in this little place, a place we trust You have surely set aside for the continuance of Your Word. We ask, O Father, for Your kind direction and instruction in the proper use of this time. Master, the correct use of that which you have given upon our heart to share with these assembled in this place. We ask for your kind direction and guidance, Master, and for your mercy. Master, there's a great spirit. May I be absent from this place. It is most necessary. We know our faults and our inability. Conceal them, Master. Let the Holy Ghost have free reign, Father. We know that it's that important, Master. Help us not to be neglectful, nor careless by that which you have given us. And do instruct each other, mercifully, in that which you do give, Father. In Christ's great name, Master, we pray for you. Amen. In high school, I was always the boy who tried to go last in public speaking. It is no different today. If you would like, we'll look at Matthew Chapter 1. Thank you, Chapter 1. We're going to be reading some very, very familiar verses. And I want us to, I would like to, for us to strive to Maintain it as fresh and new in this hour. Barry just concluded a series of the last several weeks of utterances of Christ's last words from the cross. And as I considered some of the things that he brought out there my appointed time here today to the end of the year and to sort of everything coming down to this point here. I believe this is where I am to be. Have you looked at and considered those desperate words from the cross. The importance of re-reading these moments earlier are now magnified in my own mind. If you will, read with me. Matthew chapter 1, we'll start in verse 18 and go down to 25. to begin our first portion here. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found the child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife. For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. Savior. Jesus. Ever since Great Granddaddy Adam failed, miserably, I have needed a Savior. Great Granddaddy Adam was As a man was my best hope. And he did just like I would have done. He failed miserably. Not only did he bite of the forbidden fruit, but then he turned right around and tried to blame it all on God. That's me. That's me. So I need a Savior. I need a Redeemer without whom I have no hope, and there is no one. None. None whatsoever. And ye shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus. For He shall save His people from their sins. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which were spoken of the Lord by the prophets, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bid him, and took unto him his wife, and he knew her not, till she had brought forth her firstborn son, And he did like he was told. He called his name, Jesus. There has to be a Savior. And there has to be a Savior. I cannot get beyond any point as long as I have hope in something else. As long as I can believe in something else, I can trust in something else, I can go no further. I must have a Savior and until I see that, I will cling to everything that I can for a vocation to pass. I will fight like a drowning man to hang on. And anything else just leads to death. It just leads to death, that's all. In Luke chapter one, if you will, we'll read a similar, similar wording, different view. Luke chapter one. This one will be also a few verses. Verse 26 is our jumping off point. And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin and a spouse, to a man whose name was Joseph. of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the son of the highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there shall be no end. He came in that form which we have taken, As John points out, a lot of things take on a different meaning, a different aura from where they started. We have taken it, largely. and so misused it to the point that he is still baby Jesus. He is little, meek, and mild baby Jesus who wouldn't hurt anybody. He wouldn't hurt anybody. So I'll just do as I please, and I'll go as I will. And if I want to give Him two seconds of my time, I'll do that. Because He's baby Jesus. But the fuller understanding of that is that He is no longer a baby. To me, For him to condescend to such a low level is more than my mind can comprehend but it is impossible to understand. He came without argument and he did come He did come. That's the thing. He did come. Because every one of the all that will be His had to have a Savior. Every one of them. had to have a Savior. They were guilty. They were corrupt. Their best stand-in had failed from the get-go. But he grew. From that point, he grew and he developed. And he is no longer a baby. Now, if you will, let's move on to, in that same book, Luke chapter 19. Luke 19, verse 37. We'll start there. He is heading here into Jerusalem. They have taken the coat and put the garments on him. In verse 37, and when he was come nigh, even now, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. Saying, blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. This is the church hierarchy, the Pharisees. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. And when he was come near, he beheld the city. He beheld the city and wept over it. He came in the form of the weakest I suppose if you could choose, he took that phone and he grew through all the stages. Now we find him looking on the whole city and he weeps. And this is what he said, if thou hadst known even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now are hid from thine eyes, for the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee and come past thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, And they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." He came as a child and nothing more than a stall. And the church hierarchy says, Master, make them be quiet. And he says, I can't. If I did, the stones would begin to scream. And he looked over out of the city, and he wept. Because we didn't know the time. We were not ready for the visitation. If you don't mind, we'll go to John chapter 11. John chapter 11. We're gonna start in verse 19. And this one does have a few verses. John 11, John chapter 11, verse 19. And we pick up right after the death of Lazarus. And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as he heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him. But Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection. I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, Yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. But as John was saying, and as this verse ends, Believest thou this? These are very familiar words to all of us here. Do we believe them? Is the question. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which cometh into the world, which should come into the world. And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto Him. Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met Him. The Jews then, which were with her in the house and comforted her, when they saw Mary there, she rose up hastily, went out, and followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hast been here, my brother hath not died. And Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her." Listen now. Keep going. He dwelled only in the Spirit and was troubled. Mankind has to have a Savior. And He has volunteered with me. Yes, Lord, I will go. I will go. And He did. And He came and He experienced all that we know in order to understand us, to feel what we have felt, to understand what we are confronted with, to know. Can I say to know us? And here are those. Lord, if he hadn't waited, if he would have just come on quickly, my brother never would have died. When he gets to the top of that hill and he starts down and he looks on that city, he just weeps. He just weeps. He groaned in the Spirit and was troubled and said, where have you laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. And again, Jesus wept. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, behold, how he loved him. And some of them said, could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? Jesus, therefore, again groaning in himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? May I? May I just stop right there for one moment and just ask myself and you, just what are we doing here? What are we doing here? When I leave, when I leave this place, am I going to be the same person that walked in the door. And then the same again, if there is a next time, the next time I come, if thou wouldest believe, if thou wouldest believe. Just like the misuse of some of the holidays, everything else has been misused. And we don't think God operates in this world. And we don't look for Him to. Go to my brother. If you'd have just come on, he wouldn't have died. Come on now. Who is this God? Who is He? He has done an awful lot, looks like to me. An awful lot. What is my excuse for not accessing Him as I can? Or accessing Him as I ought? What is my excuse? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always, but because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, and he was particular. It was particular that everybody didn't get up. Lazarus, come forward. And he that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with brave clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. I appreciate you listening to the reading. I know it's hard sometimes to be read to a lot. But it seems so important to convey or attempt to what was so impressed on me. He has done I don't want to be disrespectful in any way. So I'm careful to say, but he's done so much. He's done so much. And then this world goes headlong disrespecting him, like the Pharisee. not believing, going on their path. But He has done all these things. If there is any inclination within you, search it out. When I first met The preacher man, most of you know the story, but when I first met him I had no thought. I had promised someone that I would come and I'm such a good and upstanding fellow that I'm going to keep my word and that's going to make me even a better person and the rest of it's history. I found out I wasn't such a good person. Even though we were getting back home one time, I said, I'm not going back. I ought to feel good about myself when I come from the meeting house and I don't feel good. And may I go further and say, at no cost at all, that that little baby Jesus didn't care one bit that I didn't feel good. Because it's not. Everything he went through, everything he went through, We will get a taste of it in some way, some part, somehow. And it can be some hard things. It can be some really hard things. But I conclude, I conclude or attempt to conclude with this thought. We have spoken a number of times here. In fact, somewhere I came upon the 10 closest stars to Earth and called out the names of them and a brief statistic about one or two of them. And we've mentioned them two or three times along the way. But I read something just before I left work yesterday. Afternoon I was reading through some headlines and I saw this about this orbiter. It's passing over the, I guess you'd call it in front of the sun, whatever, wherever it's at. It's traveling at 430,000 miles per hour, I believe they say. And if I recall correctly, I may be wrong, but it was something like three and a half million miles away from the sun. Closest that any object man has ever made has been to the sun. And all of that is astounding. It's got a heat shield that they built it to withstand 2,500 degrees. And so far it has survived. And previously we talked about the stars and the size of them and the distances from Earth and how long that light's been traveling to get to us. And the enormity. How many stars? How many galaxies? How many? We don't know. When it struck me yesterday, as I was driving home, I thought, well, we know how close the first star is, the closest one. We know how far it is. We can measure that. We can measure the brightness. We can measure how you measure that. By mathematics we know the distance and the size and all this stuff. So the next one we know we can finally in time figure out and a lot of these we have. When you get lost think about how large all of this is. But what I came to the conclusion of Richard Mann has constantly told us that the saints will be ever learning Christ. They will be ever learning Christ for all of eternity. And I said, you know, when you think about that, that makes space It makes space a whole lot smaller. Because we can measure where that next star is and the next one. And we can know something about all of these things. But we can never learn. We will never learn all about the Lord Jesus Christ. It would be a constant learning for eternity. Eternity. I hope I have not brought dishonor anyway to the scripture. With this I ask for your forgiveness, my friend. I have not I am not a polished public speaker. But back there many years ago, something began. And when I am called upon, I enjoy trying to relate to you what I have come to know. I have come to know. But I don't know it all. I don't know a little bit. But it's fantastic when you learn something like driving home. Why, that's not really all that big. I thought that was big. No. Learning Christ for eternity, now that's big. All these galaxies and things, they're bound up somewhere. There's an end to it at some place. We'll never learn it all. We'll just keep on learning. If there is nothing else to be added, And we will consider ourselves dismissed until the next Sabbath day.