Amen, she has such a good voice. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, I hope you do, turn to 2 Kings 1 and verse 10 with me tonight, please. Get that in one hand, Luke 9 the other. 2 Kings 1 and verse 10. And then Luke chapter number nine and verse number 43 and the other. In second Kings 110, the scripture says, and Elijah answered and said to the captain of 50, if I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven and consume thee and thy 50. And there came down fire from heaven and consumed him and his 50. Father bless this book in your holy name. Amen. You can be seated. Now that is an historical event took place. And if you notice that Elijah is the one who called fire down from God on the top of Carmel. Elijah did. Here he calls fire down on this captain of 50. Three times they came for him. The third time, the man said, please, Elijah. We don't want to get burned up out here. Would you please come with us? Elijah said, since you put it that way, I'd be glad to. And he went with them. So in 2 Kings 1 and verse number 10, Elijah calls fire down from heaven. So there's not much mercy and grace going on here, is there? Not much patience. But if you look at Luke 9 and verse number 43, they're all amazed at the mighty power of God. And while they wondered, every one, at all things which Jesus did, He said to his disciples, let these sayings sink down into your ears, for the Son of Man shall be delivered in the hands of men. But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them that they perceived it not, and they feared to ask him of that saying. Obviously, they were completely ignorant of the atonement. So the Bible said, then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest. And Jesus perceived the thought of their heart, took a child and set him by him and said to them, whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me. Notice the progression for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great. And John answered and said, master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name and we forbade him because he followeth not with us. Jesus said unto him, forbid him not for he that is not against us is for us. There's an awful lot of that going on. You don't belong to our church. You don't belong to our fellowship. You're not part of our movement. You know, there's no way in the world you can be working for God. That's the kind of junk that goes on out there. But notice what he said in verse number 51. It came to pass when the time was come that he should be received up. He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem and sent messengers before his face and they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him. And they did not receive him because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. You remember a time he went through Samaria and met the woman at the well. And when his disciples, James and John saw this, they said, Lord, will tell that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias did and remarkable. They're quoting the Bible. They've read the scripture, they know the historic of account, and they're saying, why don't we just do what Elijah did? Let's just consume them. Now watch his answer. But he turned and rebuked them, saying, ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And that's a key for the whole New Testament. There's two things that mark off a Christian, two things, so very important. Number one, they're people of the book. Our faith is by the book, by the Bible. Anything outside the Bible that supports the Bible, we appreciate, but the authority is still the Bible. It will judge the thing. But the second thing that we are as Christians is that we are people of the person of Christ. That's what we're about. That's who we're here for. He's the one that matters. He's the gauge, the judge, the weight, the scales. He's the line, the beginning and the ending. He's everything that makes us who we are tonight is the Lord Jesus Christ. Bottom line is he's the answer for everything. The answer may not be obvious, the answer may not be understandable, but he still is the answer. But here's the thing, you know not what manner of spirit you're of. The Bible said the law came by Moses 1,400 years before Christ. The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by the Lord Jesus Christ. Was there grace in the Old Testament? Yes, here and there. But don't ever let anybody get up and tell you that the Old Testament was preaching grace in scripture like the New Testament. Grace was present. God manifested grace. Yes, he was. He was gracious. But he also had a man stoned to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. Remember that? Not a lot of grace there, right? But the problem is that they're under the law. And now here we are in the grace of God. The Bible said the grace of God that bringeth salvation appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should look soberly for his coming. For the Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. That's the motivation and direction of what we're about, right? It certainly is, folks. And you'll have a great burden lifted from your soul once you step off of the judge's bench and get on the mourner's bench. Amen. Amen. You will. You will. You will. You'll be more greatly used of God. That doesn't mean you condone anything, but what it means is that you have some grace about you. the grace of God. We're here to help people, not to hurt them. We're not here to make them conform to whatever standard you think they need to conform to. Confirmation has nothing to do with salvation. A person is salvation. He that hath the son hath life, and he that hath not the son hath not life. It doesn't say he that hath the doctrine, or he that hath the church building, or the catechism, or whatever. No, he that hath the son hath life. And so the son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. So let's stop the calling of the fire down from heaven. That's what he said. Forget that. That's not what we're here for. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. He, he says it this way in Matthew 11, come unto me. all you that labor in a heavy laden, I'll give you a rest." Notice what he said. He said, come unto me. I get questions and I'm gonna read some of them for you in a few minutes. You'll see what I'm leading to. But notice it's simple. Come unto me, he said. Come unto me. And that's a simple invitation. John 7, verse 37, the last day, that great day of the feast, he stood and cried and said, if any man thirst, let him come unto me. There's something about coming unto Christ. Now that's simple enough and it's on the face of it, but what does that mean to come to Christ? What does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? What does it mean that he that hath the Son hath life? What does it mean that we are people of the Lord Jesus Christ? When Pilate's wife said to her husband, have nothing to do with this man. I've had a dream. God has warned me. I'm a pagan Roman, and yet he saw fit to come and warn me. Pilate eventually said, I find no fault in this man. I'm gonna wash my hands of this. You Jews, you take it now. They said, let his blood be on us. Has been. It has been, and that's sad because I don't do that. I don't wish any ill on anybody. I would that every soul in this house, when you leave out of here tonight, you leave out of here better than you were when you came in. But the only way for that to happen is for it to come for the grace of God from the Lord. Two women came to him, the woman that washed his feet with her tears and dried with her hair. Think about it. The Lord Jesus bowed down and washed the disciples' feet. You remember that? She washed his feet with her tears. In plain words, the tears came from the heart. She washed his feet with her tears, and then she dried it with her hair. A woman's hair is her glory. That's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10. In plain words, she says, here's my glory. Here's my glory. I'm gonna wash your feet, I'm gonna dry your feet with my glory. Isn't that something? Oh yeah. In other words, I don't deserve any praise, any glory, even any acknowledgement. It's all for you, Lord Jesus. That was her attitude. Mary sat at his feet, and the Bible said she chose the better part. We'd do well to sit at his feet. To this day, she sat at his feet. There wasn't anything wrong with what Martha did. Fact is, what Martha did needed to be done. But it's the order, see, it's the order. It's what comes first, what takes priority. That's what's important. You have to prioritize things, that's a fact. Matthew 28, verse eight, they departed quickly from the sepulcher with fear and great joy. They ran to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them saying, all hail. And they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. Then said Jesus unto them, be not afraid. Go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee and there shall they see me. These were the women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that came to the tomb and they grabbed him and they worshiped him. It's always good to find somebody who knows who to worship. Luke 8 49. Here's religion when it comes in and tries to organize stuff. Now here's religion organizing things. Luke 8, 49, while he yet speak, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house saying unto him, thy daughter is dead. Trouble not the master. It's no trouble for him. That's why he came. See, we want to sanitize things. We want everything to work perfectly. See, we want it to show the hand of man how organized it all is. Well, sometimes it's not organized when the Spirit of God begins to do something. Mark chapter number 10, verse 46, they came to Jericho, went out of Jericho with the disciples and a great number of the people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the wayside, the highway side, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out. Now, I love this scene, this is beautiful. And say, Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace. Well, they weren't the blind one. Said, you're causing a disturbance over here. We've got a nice parade going here into Jericho. Just shut up and get out of the way. Well, what did he come to Jericho for to begin with? Why did he come into this world? He didn't come in here for stuff. He came here for people. And people need him. And you know, I like Bartimaeus. I like him. Shut up, they said. Watch me. And I mean, he let it fly, boy. He did. He did. He sure did. But he cried the more, a great deal. Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, commanded him to be called. And they called a blind man, saying to him, be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, what wilt thou that I should do unto thee? If you'll just read those passages in the New Testament where he said, what would you have me do? They're in there more than once. What do you want me to do? What do you want? What do you think? If the Lord Jesus Christ came and showed up in your life tonight, what would you say to him? What would you like to have? What do you want? You remember Solomon? You remember Solomon? What was it that Solomon asked the Lord for? He said, give me wisdom. He said, I can't lead these people. He had enough sense to understand that it was above him and beyond him. So he asked for wisdom. God said, I'm gonna give you wisdom because you didn't ask for riches and all, I'm gonna give you that too. That's God, that's the way He operates. He's a gracious God. The blind man said unto Him, Lord that I might receive my sight. This email came from England. We have one from England, we have one from Ireland. We're starting to get quite a bit of emails from British Isles. Ireland. Of course, Ireland's split in two. You've got Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland. Northern Ireland, for the most part, is Protestant. Southern Ireland is Catholic. President right now, I think, was it any Belfast? Belfast, I think that's where he was, Belfast. And his great, great grandfather was an Irishman. And a lot, a lot, a lot of Irish people settled in this country, an awful lot. And Senator Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, was of Irish descent. These people, they are, they're strong-willed. They're survivors. Ireland's been through some tough times. But here's this email from England. Listen to this. I really am in desperate need of help and prayer. I'm from England. I was a drug addict, and me and my husband were both saved and pulled out of a life of crime, prostitution, and darkness by our Lord and Savior. And we was on fire for the Lord for seven years. When out of the blue, our marriage hit the rocks, and before I knew it, we both gave in to one smoke, and a year down the line, we are both back in the darkness we once knew, and our hearts are yearning for God. I assume she says by one smoke, that means marijuana. And now listen to this. She says, I'm so desperate. None of our family knows because we have hit it well and we're living relatively normal lives. I'm crying out to God and I just can't get the strength to go through the withdrawals. I've tried three times this year and as soon as they kick in, I weaken and then I'm in the morning afterwards. I want my life to honor and give glory to God. I love him so much, and I'm in deep sorrow for how I betrayed him in letting this happen again. Please pray. Can you hear the heart? And can you hear the guilt? And now can you hear the defeat? And she's about to give up hope. So what would you say to this lady? Would you give her a 12-step process, some kind of a deal, this and that? And I'm not saying some of these things can't help people, but that's not the answer. That's not the answer. The answer is not dealing with your problem. The answer is the one who can settle and take away your problem. She's got to be appointed to Christ. He must become so very, very near and real to her. You think about him. You pray to him. You talk to him. You love him. He's with you day after day, 24-7. You know in your heart, deep down inside your soul, that He saves you and forgave you and He loves you and He'll go with you and He'll never leave you. And people will, they'll fail you, but He never will. There've been times I've thought He departed from me, but then later on I realized He just took a different route to show me the way to go. It takes time sometimes. Have you ever heard of what's called the fog of war? Yeah, that's a real thing. The fog of war. Well, sometimes you get into spiritual warfare. You can get into, into the fog of spiritual warfare. But the truth of the matter is there's hope for these people. There's hope for them. I believe she's a real believer. There's an awful lot of preachers out there that wouldn't allow that somebody could backslide or fall back into something like that. Drug addiction is a horrible thing. It's a horrible thing. So what should the church do when you're dealing with a drug addict? Have patience. Patience. God's long suffering to usward. How much patience did he show to you before you ever got saved? long suffering to us. How many times did you, you know, you, you might've, I don't know how many times you might've been convicted, but you heard, you heard an altar call or something moved in your soul and you said no to God. And then finally you said yes to him. Was it more than once? Well, of course, most people are like that. You know, but you hear an awful lot of preaching that, that says, well, thank God, when God saved me, he took the desire for drugs. That's good. Hallelujah. But there's other people out there who have problems. Like this one said, it came back. For seven years, they lived for the Lord. That's a long time. Seven years. And look what they were brought out of. Prostitution, drug addiction, darkness. And all it took was one smoke, and that was brought on because the marriage was on the rocks. Things started falling apart. The family starts falling apart. Your children rebel, or your husband has an affair, or your wife has an affair, or something happens and it just blows up in your face. And what was at one time such a happy, you know, joyous salvation, just all of a sudden just turns to darkness. And sometimes people do things that they wouldn't normally do. Most of the time when it happens, people think God's abandoned them. They do. They feel like God has abandoned them. Why would the Lord allow something like that to happen to my marriage? People say. And of course you live in a culture today that nourishes it. You have to have special grace today. The church has to have grace to be able to deal with people that live in this culture, folks, not 1950, 2023. Right. The sad thing is that we've got, and they're good men. A lot of these, they're good men, but they're back in 1950. They need to come up to the present day and start ministering to their generation. Yes, yes, people don't see things today the same as they used to. An educated master's degree from Alabama, University of Alabama, he takes an AR-15, walks into a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, and he streams, he live streams murdering people. Now what is that? I can't wrap my head around that. That live streaming part, this is a production, folks. There's an audience out there. And then he murders these people, murders them. I don't know if the killer down there in Nashville, did she live stream? He, she, it, I don't know. Up to this day, I don't know if it was a male or a female or what. They've said both ways, but does anyone know tonight? Did they live stream? Don't think so, okay. That's something to think about, though. I think about stuff like that. How do we minister to this kind of people, to this kind of generation? How do you minister to people like that? You know what I mean? The same old sins are always the same old sins, but we've got an element today that's just, it defies definition and explanation from the old way, or the old way of looking at things. How do we deal with this? What causes from otherwise an intelligent young man? I mean, he's got a master's degrees, he works in a bank. I think he's making a six figure income or something. I don't know what he was. And then for some reason, we don't know the reason yet. I don't know that they have manifesto, whatever. We don't know. Turns into a murderer. There's a spirit out here today. There's a spirit. There's a spirit in this country and in this world that was not here 50 years ago. Not like this. No, sir. No, sir. So this is how we have to minister. We have to minister to these people, help them. Son of God did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. This is from Ireland. Hi, Pastor Lawson, my church family, Temple Baptist. I first want to thank you for the wonderful truth of our Lord you bring to the saints, sinners, faithfully and daily. Be encouraged that it meant so much for me to know that there are brothers and sisters in Christ who's speaking his truth. I love his truth. My soul soars hearing his truth preached faithfully. Thank you. I've been following your sermons online since I was born again, March, 2019. I'm eternally thankful for all you've taught me about God's word and your faithfulness to God's word. After a life of trauma, that is abusive family situation, unstable parents, mentally and physically, from childhood, followed by a marriage that was a continuation of the same pattern of narcissistic abuse, I turned to alcohol. Weed, promiscuity, looking for love, acceptance, always wanting to please, giving myself completely to others and being trodden on and rejected. I never knew anything different. Trauma was my identity. There was no acceptance in any of these futile and destructive things. I reacted to the abuse in a very negative way, and the alcohol and drugs contributed to me being in trouble with the police, And again, being rejected by my friends and family, I cried out in agony. I cried out in agony to the Lord four years ago to save me. I reached rock bottom and was numb, literally numb with grief, completely broken, severely depressed, so much as I couldn't even wash myself, daily tasks were insurmountable. I couldn't think or function, just drank, slept, repeat, I cried out to Jesus Christ to save me, lying stoned on my couch, taking a nap. And when I woke up, I was a new creation. Now, a lot of preachers won't accept that. That doesn't fit the pattern. But I'm not going to deny. No, no, no, no, no, no. Everything was different. I hated sin. Everything I knew before was alien to me. I got a deep, deep hunger to search for Jesus. Now that's good stuff right there. It was like a download of truth poured into my soul and the world as I knew it was never to be the same again. Being newly born again, I was not familiar with God's word and was deceived by internet so-called prophets and the Lord exposed these wicked liars to me." Now there's a lot of that. Babes in Christ. And folks, the internet's got everything. Oh man, it's got everything. Everything. There's one on there that is blatantly lying about me. He's blatantly telling a blatant lie. No question about it whatsoever. And he will stand before God almighty and he will be judged. Make no mistake about it. He's a liar and he knows he's a liar, but I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep on. You can't let something like that stop you. Ruffle your feathers every once in a while, okay, but you won't let them stop you. I got deep, deep hunger to search for Jesus. It was like a download of truth was poured into my soul and the world as I knew it was never to be the same again. Being newly born again, I was not familiar with God's word and was deceived by internet, so-called prophets. The Lord exposed these wicked liars to me, which left me absolutely heartbroken as I took everything they said as truth. Such betrayal I felt. Once Jesus taught me his word, and that his word, he was the only truth I needed. A love for truth poured into my heart. It's more than that. I am consumed with a desire to know him, not someone else's testimony, but the insatiable desire for Jesus. That's good. His presence, his heart, the closeness to him, like I want to be in his presence, I just want him. I'm struggling desperately with acceptance from Jesus, constantly feeling rejected, severely depressed, doubt, fear, not a day's joy in my life. Have I had no peace? I'm crying out for him. I just want him. I'm still numb and heartbroken and all I want is him. He's all I want and need. I know nothing or nobody will fill me and satisfy but Him. I just want Him to embrace me with His presence and lift this unbearable burden and depression from me. Now listen to this. Would you please, please pray for me? And she gives her name in Northern Ireland. I'm not gonna give the name out on mine. Please, please pray for me. That's battle. See, that's reality. That's a real person, a real believer, but she's having a battle. She's having a real battle. Satan will come at you in a thousand different ways. We're not ignorant of his devices. Yea, hath God said. That's one of his primary, you know, put confusion in your mind as to what God said. Christ did not come to confuse us. His words, very simple. Come unto me, he says. If I could speak directly with her, I'd say to her, go to him. Don't worry about how you feel, how much conviction or guilt you might have. Don't worry about what people might say about you. Don't worry when people start picking out your sins and hanging them over your head and trying to drag you down with them. Just come to him. because He died for all sin. God made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin. He literally became the essence of a spiritual thing that there's no way we can truly know the full essence of it. Only God can look sin in the face and say, I know you from head to toe and everything there is to know about you and I defeated you at the cross and no lying or deceiving, deception, whatever you may come and throw against anyone, I've already beaten you and it's been paid for. And when we come to Christ and we get on our knees and ask him to forgive us, however you may do it, you accept what he did for you. He died for you, for me, for you. And he offered up one sacrifice for sins forever, never to be repeated. Never will it ever be repeated. The other day, I think out loud a lot of times and I get caught for it, but I do. Sometimes I'll say things up here and I'll think, good night, did I say that? But let me tell you what I've been thinking on here in the last couple of days. I've been praying over this and working over it. And I want you to just take it with you tonight when you go home. When Christ died on the cross, his body died. No question about it. His spirit went back to God the Father. His soul went down into the heart of the earth. Acts chapter number two. All right. But when he came back up, he raised that body up again and entered into that body. And when he arose from the dead, he was declared to be the son of God by the resurrection of the dead. And the apostle Peter says he hath begotten us unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, born because of that. The scripture says, this day have I begotten thee in reference to that event where he was raised. But here's the question that came to my mind. And I just wanna mess with you tonight and let you go home and I want you to think about it. I started asking myself this question, could his body die again? And do you know what? God took me straight to the Bible and showed me the answer to that. Now I knew the answer, but I wanted to see the Scripture give the answer. Do you know what it says in the book of Romans? It says, death hath no more dominion over him. Now think about that for a moment. Satan did not kill him. Nobody killed him. He laid his life down. Okay. But the dominion meant that the body that he came into this world and was incarnate into was subject to death. That's why it could die. But it has no more dominion now. When that body came forth from the dead, death can no longer touch it. No more, no more. In plainer words, that body cannot die. It is utterly impossible for that body to die, which brings up another thought. The Lord Jesus Christ, nowhere in the world could he put that body to death. Something changed from that first body, same body now, I don't wanna mess up, from the body that died on the cross to the body that he's in now, something has changed and that body cannot die. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? And when you were born again, you were born again of that resurrected body. a life that is never ending, eternal life. And my friend, I've said before, when he came into this world, he came to this world as the second man, the last Adam. When he arose from the dead, he is the last Adam to give you life. If that doesn't give a man security in eternal life. I don't know what can. There's no way in the world because my life is not outside of Christ. I don't live outside of him. My life is hid with Christ in God. I live in him now and cannot die. Hallelujah to God. Amen. Father, bless your word tonight. The time we have in the house, I pray for our folk. I pray for those that are watching. I pray for these that I read about the one in England, the one in Ireland. God bless their soul. Maybe they can get what I said tonight. The answer is Christ. The answer is not what some thing somebody may tell them or something they need to do. No, the answer is the son of God. Come to him, come to him, come to him. He will not reject you. He will receive you just as you are. In Jesus name, amen. All right, amen.