Good morning, welcome to our Sunday school hour. I invite you to stand as we sing hymn number 223, Springs of Living Water. Number 223, stand as we sing this morning. ♪ Drinking at the stranger living bar ♪ ♪ Drinking at the bar, so dissatisfied ♪ ♪ Drinking at the stranger living bar ♪ ♪ Drinking at the bar, so dissatisfied ♪ ♪ Drinking at the stranger living bar ♪ ♪ Drinking at the stranger living bar ♪ I'll be with you every day. I'll be with you when you need me most. I'll be with you when you need me most. I'll be with you when you need me most. Amen. Please remain standing for prayer this morning. And thank you, maybe see unless you celebrate her birthday or an anniversary as you at this time. All right, birthday brother George. All right, let's sing happy birthday. ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ Happy birthday God bless you ♪ Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see everybody this Sunday morning. It's a beautiful day, isn't it? A little warm, but it's beautiful. Please be in prayer for Pastor as he's off on vacation. So he'll be traveling back today, be in prayer for him. And of course, we have our guest speaker, Brother Dave McCracken here with us and his wife as well. They'll be speaking for us. He'll be speaking for us all day. And we're excited to hear what the Lord has in store for us today, for sure. Again, remember, tomorrow's Memorial Day. Today, we get to Remember and honor all of those who gave their life for our country, for our freedom. And even though the world seems to kind of want to forget all about that, we're not going to forget about that. So remember to pray for those families and just honor those. There's some other announcements here as well. You can go ahead and look through that whenever you'd like. We'll make highlights of that as the day goes on. But Brother Steve is going to come lead us in another song. And then Brother McCracken is going to come and do our Sunday school hour. Stand once again, we'll sing hymn number 30, Well, Nancy and I are happy to get to finally come back and be at Shawnee Baptist Temple. The pastor's gone, so I told him he was supposed to be here when I first, we talked about me coming. I saw him a couple of weeks ago, and he said, I'm not going to be there. I told him we might vote on some stuff. If you've got some things on your heart that you'd like to vote on, I want you to think about it, because tonight, we're going to do the vote. I've got some things on my mind. I'm glad you're here. Nancy and I are glad to be here. Before you're in the hallway back there, I have some books. There's only two of the blue ones called Getting Ready to Leave, and then there are I think there's enough of the other books. One's Still a Baptist, and then another one is my sister wrote a book called Rest, kind of a devotional workbook thing, and it's a real blessing, trusting, resting in the Lord. And then I have another book back there called Why Pro-Life? And the first three books I mentioned, they're $15 each. Why Pro-Life is free. And I think I'll go ahead and tell you now, and then tonight I might re-mention it. I'll mention it in the other service that they're free, but I won't tell the testimony. There's a friend of mine that, pastor's wife out in Oregon, that every time we see each other says, you got any new books you've read? Got any new books, got any idea? And so we trade titles and sometimes books and so on. And so she's now working for a pregnancy life crisis place. Anyway, she said, have you ever read this book? I said, no, but David Alcorn is the, Randy Alcorn is the author, and I've read one of his other books, and it's a blessing. But anyway, why pro-life? So most of us in here would be pro-life, and we just go, like Miss Cindy just said, it's kind of obvious. We don't need a whole book on it and so on. We're pro-life and that God created life and we bark about it and we go, hey, God created life, don't kill it. And we hardly know anything else. But anyway, biologically and scientifically, there are reasons that back up pro-life. And so I read the book, and I got under conviction about the book. I've never stood, like I just read, a fellow in UK got a ticket this past week for standing in front of an abortion clinic with his head bowed. And they said, why are you here? He said, world peace. Well, that's vague. He said, well, they gave him a ticket for having his head bowed across the street from an abortion clinic. Isn't that weird? That just means it's coming here, too, is what it means. But regardless, I've never stood in front of an abortion clinic to even bow my head. I've never held a protest sign. I've never given any money to anybody who is pro-life that has an organization trying to get the information out and trying to help that. I've never done that. I occasionally, occasionally mention abortion and preaching or teaching that, you know, what the Bible says and that it's killing and murder, so on. Mr. Alcorn, he pastored in Portland, Oregon. And one of his high school students went to a public high school. And the teacher in the school had a pro-choice person come and give a talk. And after it was over, the girl asked the teacher, would it be OK if we have someone to come and give a talk about pro-life? He said, sure. So her pastor, Randy Alcorn, went there to give a talk. When he got there, the teacher, I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing the teacher is somewhere near 40, and that they have a master's degree because you're a public school teacher in Oregon, Portland. Anyway, so when he got there, the teacher said, well, I just want you to know I took a survey before you came, and 23 students are pro-choice, one is pro-life. Okay, Mr. Alcorn gives his talk and after it's over, the teacher said this. If we took the survey again, I think it would be different. Then here's the part that convicted me. The teacher said, I have never heard the pro-life position. somewhere around 40 years old, supposed to have a master's degree, and he's never heard. All he's heard is Christians say, you can't kill the baby. God made it. God made its life. And that's about all they've heard. They don't hear any biological or scientific things at all. And so I got a conviction because that means the majority of the people out there that are mouthing off, they don't know. Any data, any science, they don't know. So that's what convicted me that I called pro-life, the people who wrote the book, or Randy Alcorn's office. And I said, hey, I want to get these books. How much are they? And then how long will it take to get them? I tried to order them on Amazon. They wouldn't let me order 500. So I called the office. They said, well, we don't have that many in the office. But if you want to order that many, we can order them for you, get them to you. I said, I do. So what my participation is in the pro-life awareness is to buy those books and give them away. And so I've already bought 1,000 of them. The first 500 I've given away. We're in the second 500. I have another 500 on the way. And I'm not wealthy or anything, but I'm so burdened that I've not done anything about it except occasionally preach. Out there, those people don't know. And I thought, if I could help you know information that I have now from pro-life book, and then there's like one thing I didn't know, the moment of conception, I did not know, at the very moment of conception, that baby has its own DNA. Not the same as mom or dad, it's its own DNA. to life. And there's other things. And so you could make a little cue card, or you could just memorize five or six things that you could tell others and have a intelligent conversation about it other than just that, well, don't you know God created life? And we know that's true. But they're not going to listen to that. But they might understand that. Really? It's got its own DNA? And so on. Anyway, so those books are free. I thought I had 100 of them. I do not out there. So who should get it? Everybody. Some people go, just give one per family. No. The girls in here that are teenagers and college-age girls, they need their own book. Because I already know, if mama reads and goes, here, read this book, they go, yeah, sure. Put it on the dresser and not read it. But if you pick it up, you're making a commitment to me, you'll read it. It's free. Who else should read it? Well, I think teenage boys ought to read it, because they're part of the problem. They need to know about it and talk about it. I thought young married people. Couples ought to read it because they've got babies and they need to know how to talk to others about why they don't believe in abortion. I thought grandparents ought to read it so they know how to talk to their kids and their grandkids and talk to others in the neighborhood. Or whenever the conversation comes up, ought to know something about it. So I believe everybody ought to get it. That's who I believe. Now, you have to make an agreement with me. If you pick it up, you're going to read it. You're making an agreement with me. And here's what my prayer is. If you pick it up and don't read it, that God will cut your arms off. So don't pick it up unless you're going to read. But they're out there as long as they last. I think there's somewhere around 40 of them or something. I'm not positive. But anyway, they're free. So that's the testimony about those books. That's why they're free. So thank the Lord. All right. Let's turn to Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. One of my favorite subjects to talk about in church in front of you is faith. And I am certain, and I didn't look in my records or anything, but I am certain, and I've talked to you about faith before if I've ever taught Sunday school, I talk about faith almost 80% of the time or so. And so if I've talked to you about faith, the first part of this, I probably have gone over, which repetition's really good. The second half of this, I know I haven't gone over with you before. So anyway, talk about faith a bit. Verse one, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So we're just gonna try to gather that up and then. So we call this, it's the definition, it's the Bible definition of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. So one of the things that is valuable, important, is that faith is the substance. It is substantive. A lot of people, even inside our groups of people here, faith is almost, it's You're trying to have faith. You want to have faith. It's like you can't really get a handle on it. I use the word ethereal. I'm pretty sure I have faith. I'm trying to have a lot of faith. I think my faith's good enough. And it's almost faith becomes mystical almost because we feel like it's this intangible thing out there. But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says it's the substance. It's the substance of things hoped for. So if it's substance, that means it's an ingredient. If it's an ingredient, that means it is something that is knowable. For instance, if I was going to make some brownies from scratch, and I made the brownies and put them in the oven, there might be, there's possible, there's some of you that could look at the pan and go, you left out something. Maybe. Some of you could take a bite of it and immediately know, oh yeah, you left out the eggs. Many of us men would go, oh, I can eat it. I can still eat it, so it's OK. But eggs are an ingredient, a substance of the brownie. It needs to be in there for it to have all that it's supposed to have to be a correct brownie. And so it's an ingredient. Watch. Faith is an ingredient truly of salvation, of Christianity. We in this room know that the only way a person can get saved is by faith. That is it. For by grace are you saved through, say it out loud, faith. And so faith is the ingredient of salvation. Now, what's this? It's the substance of things hoped for. If it's hoped for, that means it's still in front of you. You don't have it. It's something you're interested in. You're looking forward to it. You might even be longing for it and excited about it. But you don't have it. Easy illustration is heaven. We don't have it. We know it's there. Streets of gold, walls of jasper, and so on. We know that. And we're looking forward to it, even excited about it. But we don't have it. So I say it like this. If you have it, you don't need to hope it. So if you have it, you don't need faith. You already have it. So faith is the substance of something you don't have yet. It's the ingredient. So when we use the word hope, we use it as uncertain. I hope there are some brownies left. That means I don't know. When the Bible uses the word hope, it's not uncertainty, it is certainty. In fact, the scripture, if you boil it all down, the hope in the Bible is a person, and his name is Jesus. He is our hope. But the idea of faith is that I don't have it yet, and so I am hoping for it. I am believing. Faith is belief. Faith is trust. I like to add the words, faith is confidence. Faith is assurance. True faith has confidence and assurance. So watch. Faith is the substance of something you don't have. And then it says, the evidence of things not seen. So it's not only substantive, it's evidentiary. You could use it in a court of law. You could bring the evidence in to prove to the court, this is your reason for this particular decision or belief. What is it? It's faith. Wow. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. So if God did what I call the Star Trek miracle, if God beamed us all up to heaven for 15 seconds, bing, wow. And then, boom, we're back. That's too bad. If we went to heaven, there's no way we'd want to come back. It's the evidence of things not seen. If we went to heaven for 15 seconds, we wouldn't have to faith it anymore. We've seen it. If you can see it, you don't need to faith it. Anybody hear me? If you can see it, you don't need to faith it. So heaven, I've never seen it, I've never been there, but I know it's there. So you and I are supposed to watch salvation happens by faith and faith alone, amen? You can't add anything to it. If you add something to faith, faith ceases to be faith because you're adding something to it. So the faith and works don't go together to establish faith. Faith is seen, and I'm going to show you that in a minute, by works. But faith alone is what causes salvation. If you say, I'm going to live good enough, you say, I'm going to give money, I'm going to get baptized, I'm going to do catechism, whatever, if you add anything to it, well, then it's not faith alone. So you're helping Jesus save you. You're helping him realize, hey, see there, I'm doing good, too. You ought to do this for me. I ought to get to go to heaven. And so we make a big issue about salvation is by faith and faith alone. Amen? All right. Once a person gets saved, according to the Holy Bible, we're supposed to live by faith. The just shall live by faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. So, our Christianity is established and received and known by faith. So since I'm talking about by known by faith, I'll go ahead and do this. When you know that you're saved, you know. If you don't know, well, there you go. You don't know. Well, how can a person know? The only way they can know is by That's what this scripture says. We all love one John, where it says, hey, these things are written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. And so believing on the name of the Son of God is faith, and is when you have faith and believe on the name of the Son of God, then you know. It's like it says in Romans, his spirit bears witness with our spirit. that we are the sons of God, that we know. I love to tell people, if you don't know, you don't know. But if you do know, you know you know. And people that know, they really know, they know. And then I love to say this, you can never know until you know. That bothers people. Some people think it's circular reasoning that, well, that's stupid. How can you know until you know? You won't know until you know. But it's true about almost everything that you know, you don't really know until you know. Well, how can I know until I know? Well, you can't know until you have faith. But as long as you're trying to exercise faith along with something and take something with you, it's not faith. And then you're always scrambling going, well, did I pray long enough? Did I pray enough words? Did I pray the right words? I don't know if I did it right. Is my faith good enough? And you're always in turmoil because you don't know because you're trying to. Some people, that's the whole argument. The whole problem is that they go, I really think I believed. And then they try to prove their belief to God and to themselves. And so you can't prove your belief, because if you try to do something, it's called self-righteousness. And self-righteousness is not accepted by God. So that's why people don't have peace, because they're trying to help alone. All right. So after we get saved, let's just all agree. I want you to say amen if you agree with this. We get saved by faith. All right. Now, I'll just say it. You can say amen if you agree with it. We're supposed to now live by faith. All right. So after we got saved, the only thing that got saved, the only thing that got born again, the only thing that was made alive, born again, was our dead spirit. Flesh did not get saved. But the Bible says, hey, hey, hey, if you're saved, you're supposed to live by faith. If you want to please God, you're supposed to live by faith. But this, we do everything we can not to live by faith. We have to figure it out. If we can't figure it out, We ain't doing it, because that would be foolish. But if you can see it, you don't need to faith it. Amen? But our humanity just refuses to live by faith. We don't want to do that, but we're supposed to. And in fact, if we want to please God, we have to. So the battle between the flesh and the spirit are constant about living by faith. So I want to bring up a couple things. In our Christian walk, our Christian life, to live by faith, There's two elements of Christianity. Now, I already lost what time I'm supposed to be done. Is it 15 after? OK. Yay. OK. And it's the weirdest thing. My memory is somewhere around, I don't know, 30 to 60 seconds. Anyway, I was talking about faith. So faith, how do we get faith? Doesn't the Holy Bible say, faith cometh by hearing? And hearing by what? So it says, faith comes by the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. So if we want to strengthen our faith, exercise our faith, if we want to know that we are walking by faith, it comes from the Word of God. So the two practical things of faith are you get faith by hearing the Word of God, but then you must obey the Word of God, do the Word of God. If you hear the Word of God and you don't do it, then you don't really have faith. You can tell yourself, oh yeah, I got a lot of faith, I know a lot of stuff, but if you're not doing it, then you're not doing it. So here's the Holy Bible way to say it. The book of James, faith without works is dead. If it's dead, that means it's not effective, it's no account, it's not any good, kind of useless. So faith without works is dead. And we just make a big, I just made a big deal, the only way you get saved is by faith. You cannot add anything to it. But here's the, here's the, Awareness, watch, faith without works is dead, so if faith does not have action, it's really not faith. It's not effective faith. Because a lot of people believe a lot of stuff, they just are not going to do it. And that's one thing about us believers inside here. Once we get saved and we know that we know, and it's awesome, we're going, praise God, I know, this is so exciting. I've got peace, I've got contentment, I've got certainty, I have assurance, this is so good, praise God. And then God wants me to live by faith. Well, that's a different story. I know I'm saved, hallelujah, but now I'm supposed to walk by faith. So how would I do that? Well, here we go again. You got to hear what God wants, and then you obey. You do what he asks you to do. All right. So I have just a little reminder, illustration about that. So I thought this was fascinating. I didn't know. Someone else pointed this out to me. And God said. That's like hearing the word of God. And God said is in the Bible 365 times. It's like almost one a day. That's awesome. All right. Elijah, in 1 Kings, the word of the Lord came to him and said, get thee hence and turn eastward. Hide thyself by the brook Cherish that is before Jordan. So Elijah is involved in this miracle at Mount Carmel, and a bunch of prophets of Baal are dead, and now Jezebel's mad and all that. And so God says, OK, I want you to go down and hide. You go down here by the brook Cherish, as the Bible says it two different ways, Cherish and Cherish. So anyway, go down here and hide. And God says, I'll take care of you. Now once Elijah heard those words, get down there, go, how do we know he believed it? He went. Him no go, him no believe. Pretty simple. Once God impresses on his heart, once God gives him the instruction, then he needs to do it. So he obeyed what God said. Then the Bible says this in the same passage. He said, and the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there. And that's what God said. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. Elijah leaves the brook. He goes to Zarephath. And he gets to the place where the widow woman is. This is fascinating. He goes there, and she is gathering some sticks. And he goes, hey, make me a cake. And she goes, I don't have enough. I've got enough for me and my son, one more meal. We're going to eat it, and then we're going to die. I don't know what we're going to do. That's what she said. I don't know if you just heard. God said, I commanded a widow woman to sustain thee. She doesn't know it yet. Because if she knew it, she'd go, I've been looking for you. He says, make me a cake. And she goes, I can't do it. We're getting ready to eat it and die. It's over. And he tells her, no, just go ahead and make the cake. It's odd, but she believed he was a man of God. That's the only reason that she would do it. And she makes the cornbread or whatever the cake and so on. And then when she looks back in the little bowl where the meal is, there's still some in there. The cruise of oil still has some in it. And it lasted about a year. Isn't that incredible? It's fascinating, though, Elijah believed God, and when he sees the widow woman and she's getting ready to die, she's at her last meal, and he says anyway, no, you need to go ahead and make it for me. That takes faith. Elijah didn't know that it's going to never run out. He didn't know that. He didn't know how God was going to do it. It doesn't matter, does it? In fact, if you know it, then you don't need to faith it. Isn't that wild? So all he did was he heard the word of God, and he obeyed the word of God, and he did what God said. That's how we know that he had faith. The faith, substance of faith, the evidence of faith is that he did what God said to do. Before you could see it, before you have it. Incredible. There's another illustration in the scriptures. It's in the book of Acts. His name is Philip. There is a revival going on in Samaria. It's incredible. People are getting saved, and people are working with each other, giving their goods away to take care of each other. And it's just awesome. And Philip is one of the deacons and so on. And here's why God came and he spoke to Philip. Let's see if I have it written down. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, and to the way that goeth down from Jerusalem into Gaza, which is desert. All right. Now, think about that. Philip is in the midst of a revival. Things are exploding. It's exciting. Everything is wonderful. And God says, I want you to go to the desert. Now, where would you rather be? and the excitement and the thrill of all the action and everything's happening, or go to the desert? Philip heard the word of the Lord. Did he faith it? Yes, he went to the desert, amen. So he goes to the desert, and he's down there. God didn't tell him in advance. He just said, go down there to the desert. And then he sees a chariot going by. And it's as if the Lord said, I think this is fascinating, the Bible says, joined, join thyself to this chariot. But anyway, here's what the Bible says. It says he ran thither. So the chariot wasn't dead still. The chariot was moving fast enough that he needed to take off running. Some of us old people are going, I'm glad I don't have to run nowhere. Anyway, Philip ran to the chariot, and the chariot stopped. And this Ethiopian eunuch, this is fascinating, too. He has a piece of scripture. We know he doesn't have the whole book, but he's got a piece of scripture out of the book of Isaiah. And he's reading it. Why would an Ethiopian eunuch have part of the scroll of the Bible? That's fascinating. That's another story. Anyway, so Philip says, what are you reading? He goes, well, I'm reading this right here. And he goes, what's it mean? He said, well, how do I know? Tell some man, show me. I don't know if he's talking about himself or somebody else. And Philip showed him that he's talking about Christ and what Christ did. One of the joys and the precious things about God's work, even though there's a revival, a lot of action going on, God is still interested in one person, one soul. And it could be you. He's interested in you and what you're doing. The other half of that, if you're already saved, he's interested in you to give you leadership in what he wants to do with you and who he would send you to and how he would get you there. Are you willing to live by faith and listen to what he says to you and do what he says? How do you get faith? Well, it comes out of the Holy Bible. And then you've got to obey and do what he says. Philip leaves the revival and goes after one, and the Ethiopian eunuch gets saved. How do you know that? Well, I think it's fascinating, too. Philip was with him long enough to tell him about baptism. And the Ethiopian says, well, here's some water. What doth hinder me from being baptized? And Philip says, oh, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. So to be baptized, you're supposed to be saved. You've already believed, and so on. Anyway, so Philip does what God asked him to do. So they heard the word of God, and then they obeyed God's word. Their obedience is proof of their faith. Their obedience signifies that they are walking by faith and not by sight. The same for us today. Our obedience proves to us, proves to God, shows God that we believe. You can say it all you want. But if you don't do it, you haven't proved it. So I like in the book of 1 John, if we say that we're fellowship with God and walk in darkness. If we say, you can say anything you want to say. A lot of Christians say stuff all the time. They're not going to do it. Because we know what to say to each other. We know how to talk in front of everybody at church and so on, or most of us do. We've been around long enough. But saying it is not enough. And watch. Think about this with me for a minute. It's about, I didn't know what time it was. Oh, man. I want to get to the other part. It's kind of like where I was going. Let me do this real quick. I forgot what I was doing about this thing. Which decision did you and I tell God? Well, that was not a big decision. God's saying, why didn't you pray? Why didn't you ask me? Why didn't you search for scriptures? That was not a big decision. So in heaven, which are the big ones and which are the little ones? In God's eyes, which are the big ones? Do you know that every decision has consequence? Oh, shucks. Turn to Joshua 1. Let me do this real quick. I'll just go ahead and ask you. How often do you really get done at 10, 15? Every week? Does it happen every week, or sometimes it goes a little over? He's such a liar. He said they get done at 10.10. All right, here we go. Yeah, here it is, verse 8. This book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and thou shalt have good success. That verse is loaded. First of all, the book of the Law is God's Word. He said meditate therein day and night. Why? If you meditate therein day and night, you have potential to have faith. You have potential to hear from God to know what He wants you to do. And then it says that thou mayest observe to do according to what's written therein. That's the little word mayest. A friend of mine, I didn't even, he's the one that brought this up and so on. EST on the end of the word. At Thou Mayest, well, that means you can do it now. But EST is the idea that at the moment that you need it, when you need it, at that moment, you will have what you need. That Thou Mayest observe to do. Often, we don't know what to do. But in the moment that we need to know what to do, if we do meditate therein day and night, if we do make the Word of God part of our life, and God knows we're making it part of our life, at that moment, we need to know what to do, God will give us the instruction that thou mayest observe to do, that you'll know what you're supposed to do. And then thou shalt have good success. When we hear the word, good success, we automatically think of, whoa, I need, I'd like to have some more, this would be awesome. We think of money, bigger house, all that business. Success in the Bible is not always about money, so wouldn't it be a blessing? I think good success would be to have a happy family. An atmosphere inside the home, atmosphere in relationship with the family, that'd be good success, amen? Have good relationship with your husband, even though he has brain damage. I know he's kind of weird, but having good relationship with him and fellowship with him, that'd be good success. Same, same the other way around. Fellas come home, they actually want to talk to you, No, that'd be like a miracle. That'd be good success, amen? That thou mayest observe, that you'll know what to do, that I gotta make a decision, I need to make a decision, I need to make a decision, I need to make, the big ones, oh yeah, oh the little ones, I need to know, that thou mayest at this time, at this moment, you'll know what you're supposed to do. Fascinating. Let me pray. Dear God, thanks. Thanks for the Holy Bible. Thanks for truth. Thanks for instruction. Thank you that you allow us to live by faith. and then you instruct us, you give us steps, you order our steps, and then we just say yes. Thank you, Lord. I sure do love you, looking forward to what you're gonna do. I do ask you to be with the Metsingers, Pastor, Cindy, give them a good trip, safety, and be a blessing to them, a help. Thank you for this congregation that loves you, loves your word. I pray that today you'll be honored and glorified. Looking forward to what you'll do. In Christ's name we pray, amen.