I wanna start things off a little different this morning, but if you have your Bibles, turn with me to 2 Timothy 2. We'll finish this up, 2 Timothy 2. I'm just gonna read one verse, verse 26 of that chapter. 2 Timothy 2 and verse 26. Again, we're thankful for each one. Appreciate, I do appreciate the holidays we set aside to honor and celebrate certain things and certain people. Appreciate those that have died for this country, who serves now, currently, and continue to, voluntarily. And we're thankful for that. And I'm thankful for those that have given their life for us to have what we have in this country. And it's been said, I still love America. No, I don't love what she has become. I never thought about that song. I listened to it from time to time, and she mentioned it this morning, Brother Morgan. By the Steels, if you never heard that song, if you have any smartphone or computer literacy at all, you can go to YouTube and just type in We Want America Back, and that song will come up. It is worth hearing. C.T. Townsend did a remake of it and changed just a few things in the middle when they do a little rendition and kind of modernized it a little bit, but it still certainly, when I say modernized it, he didn't change it. He just made it more relevant to our day than when this song was recorded. But truly, we're headed down a road, folks, that I don't, I don't want to say it scares me because I know God's in control, but it certainly concerns me. I'll tell you that. Some of the things you see our country doing, our leaders wanting to do, it astounds me. I'm just amazed sometimes, and some of our famous people in the spotlight, some of the statements they make. But anyway, so this morning, when you find this, you know what, please sit down and read the word of God. And when you stand, we're going to turn and pledge allegiance to the flag. I feel like that's appropriate, but today is Memorial Day. And we'll do that real quick, and we'll get into the message, OK? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. if you can remain standing just for a moment. I know it's a habit to sit down after the pledge, I do get it. 2 Timothy 2, verse 26, there's gonna be one verse I've read down through that, I felt like I've explained it the last couple weeks. And as they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. Father, we thank you again for this day, for this time together, for the opportunity to call on you, God, for your love and your mercy and your grace, Lord, truly without your grace, God, I don't know where we'd be at this morning. But God, I thank you that you loved us enough, God, that you saw fit, Lord, to send your son to die for us. And God, I still think of this country that we live in. Thank you, God, that you established this country, Lord, based on your word. And Father, there have been more missionaries sent out from this country than perhaps maybe anywhere in the world, in the history of the world, and I thank you for that and I praise you for it. God, I pray that we continue to do that. God, continue to spread the word. Pray for our country this morning, God, that they would turn to you and realize, God, we need you, Lord, we need you. God, we thank you for your word, for its instructions about you and about us. God, go with me now through this time. Lord, I need you. God, use me as you see fit. Give me the words needed. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you, may we be seated. Believe this or not, The act that we just performed is under attack in this country in certain places. There are school systems that has tried to outlaw the pledge because it's offensive. I'm still trying to comprehend that. I don't understand that. But nevertheless, I don't want to forget that. And certainly the words under God, Lord forbid we said that out in public, but it is under God. and it is the fact that God established this country and he established it on this Bible. But let me get into the message, and I said it'd take me three weeks to do this, this is the last part of it. As I mentioned, a lot of times in our lives, we've asked God to help us with things, we've asked God to do things for us. One of the things we often do is say, God, take this from me. And I mentioned that God doesn't work that way. When you look at the definition of take, You understand this and Satan gives things to us to take things from us. He will give you something. I believe he's given us Hollywood to take things from us. Thanks for the one amen. I believe he's given radio sometimes. There's so many things he has given us, and in the end result is to take things from us. He gave Eve a choice. He gave her ability to think good and evil, to be like God. She chose wrong, obviously, and he took from her something that was extremely dear. She did not understand or realize how precious it was. Now the word take means to get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially to capture, physically seize, take an enemy fortress. You all remember this before this message, don't you? To seize with authority, confiscate, to kill, snare, or trap. And so a lot of times we'll say something is struggling with us, we're struggling with it, and we're bothered by it. We'll say, God, take this from me. If you look at the definition of the word take, you're asking God to come in by force and capture you and seize, and tequila and snare trap you to do that. That is not how God operates. That is not how God works. God does things on our submission, then he receives it from us as we hand it over to him. The Bible says in Peter, said, casting thy care on him for he cares for you. That means you take something and you think fast, and you take this, I'll do it so everybody can see it, There it is, you give it to God. You take and you cast it from you. I don't have control anymore, I turned it over, I gave it, and it is now mine, it is now God, thank you. God's possession, that's what we are to do with the things that bother us. If you see, I didn't ask God to take it, I gave it. When the Bible says cast, it means you take and cast your cares upon him. But too much of the time, we fight with him. One of the reasons why is we don't want to give it up. We say we do, but we don't. There's something there that's called fear. And I'm going to do one of these days, I'm going to do an in-depth study on fear because we all deal with it, amen? But we fear what might happen because we feel like if we give up control, then we're afraid of what will happen because we are not in control. We don't feel like we can control the situation when in reality, you don't control it anyway. but the very thing we need to do we fear the most and that is giving it to God and surrendering it all to Him and letting Him handle what He can. Now the Bible here, I think it's interesting, the words that it chose, the translators that the Holy Spirit led them to use is that they may recover themselves out of the snare. or the devil. The word snare means a trap that's fastened by a noose or notch, figuratively, a trick. So Satan will trick you, he'll hang up something that looks pretty and dangled out in front of you, and you'll think, man, yeah, this is all right. I gave you the same illustration last week. A guy I work with, the way he would snare coyotes, and I heard too many other people doing it. Some people said it's cruel. Maybe I'm cruel, I don't know. He gets a big hook and takes a piece of meat, hangs it on that hook, that coyote jumps up to grab it, and then he is snared. That is his last meal. And friend, that is what Satan wants to do to you and I. He wants to offer things to us that looks appeasing, looks appetizing, looks great, and he wants to snare us and take us captive. You see, once you're saved, he can only get your soul, so now he wants to destroy your life. That is what he sets out to do, so he puts things out in front of you to destroy your life, and it happens in ways and times we don't even see it taking place because it is a trick. He's not gonna come out and say, okay, here it is, come on in. It's not how he works. I saw a video. It went around a few years ago. I forgot. It was somewhere maybe in New York. I don't remember. People go through this. I don't remember what it was. And they was in front of a video screen, and it was so lifelike. They would show a car coming at them and had the sounds. And you could see people. I mean, they was positive they was getting run over. They was confident, they was getting ready to get run over, and the reactions on their faces was astounding. If people knew that when they walked in, guess what it wouldn't do? It wouldn't surprise them. You see, Satan is not going to bring himself out and expose himself to you, so you see the trap or the snare. You know one of the reasons Kodos are so hard to trap? They would go around the trap, and I know one guy that was using the wrong kind of traps. The coyote could tell it was a trap, so he stayed away from it, even though it was a fresh piece of meat that he wanted. They were so intelligent that they wouldn't fall into it. He had to change his traps. Trappers had to take whacks. probably come up with a message on this, and melt their wax, put them on their traps so you can't smell the human scent that the animals can sense on that trap, and then they will stay away from it, even though the animal's there, even though it's hanging, wherever it's at, they know it's a trap. God has given us his word so we can smell out, if you will, a trap from Satan and see these things coming, but we don't use it because we're not in his word. And so then what happens is, is he takes us captive, and he makes us useless for God, and poor examples to what a Christian should be. And let me say this, I probably should preach on it more. I have in times, and just God's been dealing with me on it. Then on top of that, he gave me advice from someone to it. But we must be leaders in our home, men. It's up to you to decide what takes place in your home, and it's up to you to dictate what happens in your home. If you're not leading your home properly, trust me, Satan is setting a snare for you. He's setting a trap for you, and you will fall prey to it. Next thing you know, your family is torn out of pieces. I know people, someone who said, well, summertime's bass fishing time. So I'm thinking, so you're teaching your son that bass fishing is more important than church. Good luck with that. That's a trap, that's a snare. And you've got to see, man, it's up to you and I to lead our families by the word of God. And if you say, I don't know the word of God, then it's about time you start finding a little bit about it. I'm mailing, let me just say this one more time in mailing and I'll move on. I've said this many times here, you all have heard this. If I want to know something, I'm going to have to study it. Now most of you in here, at one point in time or another got your driver's license. Am I correct? For those of you that drive, I hope and pray you didn't get a Kmart and buy them. I hope you got a legitimate driver's license. And what did you have to do to get that? You had to study a little booklet to teach you the laws of driving in our land. If you didn't study that, guess what you would not pass? Your learner's test. So we are more concerned about a lot of things in life than we are about the word of God and that is our guidepost, that is what is leading us and directing us, and that'll keep you from getting snared, and you wonder why sometimes we get our life in a mess, it's because we're not following the word of God, what it says, and we allow Satan's trap to come upon us, and it's like, whoa, here I am. It's too late. So, I said the title of this was Satan takes, we give, and God restores. Now the last point I wanna make is God gives back and restores, but under this I got some sub points. Now a lot of times, not all the time, but sometimes God will even replace what Satan and sin has taken in our lives. Sometimes things are gone. Sometimes a marriage is gone. Sometimes a job, there's consequences to our sins. Sometimes there's things that happens, but God can still bring those things back and replace it with something better, but you have to submit to his will. As a quick little search, five times the Bible says these words, God is able, in that exact order. Other places it says the Lord is able, but I just put God is able. Five is the number of? Grace. Amen. I need all the grace God has, for sure. 2 Chronicles 25 and nine, it says, and Amaziah said unto the man of God, but what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And he got swindled here and he's worried about it. And the man of God answered, the Lord is able to give thee much more than this. You must realize, whatever Satan is baiting in front of you, whatever he's offering you, God is able to give you so much more than that. He's able to give you a great home, he's able to give you a great place. And let me tell you something, don't put it all on money. That is where we go wrong. We think in our America, we think that God's blessing comes because we got a 4,000 square foot house, a brand new, three brand new cars in the driveway, whatever else, that's not it, folks. That's not it. I know people that's given up great jobs to serve God and they said, I've never regretted it, I've never looked back, and most of the time, all the time, if you follow God and do what he says, I promise it'll turn out better. He's able to do much more, but you've gotta trust him and go God's way. Don't look at Satan's bait so he can snare you and take you captive at his will. You understand, he's a hard taskmaster. What you're doing, you think you're enjoying, you think nothing bad's gonna happen, you think what could happen from this, I'm gonna tell you something, he's setting you up right now to destroy your life. You better get a hold of that. I've preached the message a few times. either usually to youth or prisoners. The pain of sin will never change. It's not gonna change. The sufferings of sin is not gonna change. It's been like that since Adam and Eve, and it'll stay like that, I gotta move on. No one God replaces. You see, Adam and Eve was driven out of the Garden of Eden because of their sins. A place if you call the most heaven on earth that's ever been. It was perfect in every way. The only thing is God said of the tree of good and evil, don't eat of it. He didn't say anything about leaving it alone. He said don't eat of it. He said not to eat it or touch it. So Satan got lying to her, got her mind thinking, twisting around. And so what happens is because she followed his trap and he took her captive by his will, instantly, The fellowship she had with God was broken. Do you know there are only two human beings that's ever seen God face to face? That's Adam and Eve. because they was perfect, they could look at God in the eye, and they was there for, but when the moment she ate of that, there was no longer, that fellowship was broken, and God had to drive them out. They looked and they saw they was naked, they understood something was different, and they didn't know for sure what it was, but they knew they had messed up, because they had to cover themselves. How much of the time do we try to cover something up, rather than bringing it, surrender it to God and say, God, I need you. and God will replace Genesis 3 and 24, so he drove out the man and placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword was turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. If they had aided the tree of life, we'd have been trapped in these bodies forever. Thank God he's done, changed that. Woo! Could you imagine waking up all the time knowing he's gonna get another virus every winter? For eternity. Bad. John's Gospel, chapter 14, verse one. It says, not your heart be troubled. He believed in God, but he also in me. My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. This is Jesus speaking. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also. You see, God replaced the Garden of Eden with something so much better. He gave us heaven. He gave us an eternal home that he built with his own hands, that he prepared for us. I don't know what kind of place I got in heaven, but I got a place there, and it's not complete until I'm there with it, but I thank God that he has given me a place in heaven with him where I can see him as he is, and I can be his son, and he'll be my father, and we'll live for eternity outside of this sin-filled world. Thank God for that. Number two, God restores. You see, he restored Job and Peter in a mighty way. Job, as you know the story, I've used it throughout this whole message. Satan come along, challenged God over Job. God said, okay, fine. He said, you can take everything he's got. Then he come back, he didn't curse God. Satan said, yeah, but let me touch his body. God said, fine, but don't kill him. And he did, and he still didn't curse God. He said, blessed be the name of the Lord. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but Satan's the one that took it. God didn't. He allowed Satan to. But you see, even in our mindset there, Job didn't falsely accuse God, but he still, he had to take in the wrong place. You see, Satan wants us to believe that God is the one that's taking. If God takes something from you, it is because he's trying to help you. But the things that are bothering us, we must surrender. So in Job 42 and 10, the Bible says the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. Also, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. In Job 42 and 12, two verse down, says the Lord blessed the latter in Job more than his beginning. You see, God restored him in a mightier way. If Satan woulda knew what God was gonna do with Job in the end, he wouldn't have touched him. He'd let him run because he lost twice as bad. Job had twice as much of everything as he had before this happened. So you look and now, man, he really is somebody now. He was somebody before, but now he is because God restored him because Job surrendered it to God and trusted in him and didn't look at what all was happening to curse God foolishly, but he trusted God. In Acts 2 and 14, the Bible tells us about the day of Pentecost. Here's Peter, we look at Jesus was on trial. And Jesus told Peter what he was gonna do. He said, before the cock crow tries, you shall deny me. And so we know that had happened. And the Bible said Peter went out and wept bitterly. And he even went back and he said, I'm gonna go fishing. He went back to fishing. He said, I'm just done with this. He said, I don't know about all this. And he took some more with him. And they was there fishing and the Lord come out of the sea. On the seashore. Let me slow down. I got a lot I'm trying to say. On the seashore, come walking along, and he looked and said, do you have any fish? And he told him to cast a net to the other side, and the boat, the nets break, and the boat began to sink because of it, and John looked and said, it is the Lord. And Peter, because he was sunbathing in all of his birthday suit and all of his glory, had to take a coat, throw it over him, and jump in the water and hide from the Lord. So even after he denied him, even after he went out and wept bitterly, and I believe he sincerely was sincerely sorry for that, I believe he repented to God for what he did, and was truly sorry, he still didn't get it right. You know what? Neither will you. Neither will I. That doesn't make it okay. But here's the part of the story that I want you to see. Jesus comes to Peter, pulls him along the side of him, Starts talking to him, said, Peter, do you love me? He said, yeah, Lord, you know I love you. And I know there's, I know this is different meanings of the word love here and those things, it builds each one, but I don't have time to go into all that. But he asked him three times, fine third time, Peter said, Lord, you know I love you. You know I love you, you know everything. When's the last time you've looked at God and said, I know you know everything, I know you know how I feel about you? When's the last time you was honest with God? One of the wisest statements I've ever heard, but one of the wisest preachers I know. I don't get to talk to him that often. So when Ricardo leaves from the Bahamas, he said, don't ever try to hide anything from God. That sounds so simple, but it's so profound because that's exactly what we try to do all the time. Try to hide things from God. So in Acts chapter two, verse 14, after all of this, the day of Pentecost, realize the modern church, if you will, and I know there's debate on this, I'm not getting into the debate, I'm just saying this was the first message preached after Jesus ascended. Let me say it like that so nobody can, this is when the church got her start in the way we know it as of today after Jesus ascended. And who did God choose to put out in front of thousands of people? He chose Peter. I'd say that was pretty good restoration, don't you? There have been times I've failed God miserably. Been on my face, cried, broken, but I blew it. This is it. Didn't think life would ever take another step. Some way, somehow, and I don't know how, God picks me up and puts me back on my place. In Acts 2 and 14, it's about Peter standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them, you men of Judea and all you that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you and hearken to my words, and Peter preached that message and we know that at least 3,000 people got saved on that spot that day from all kindreds of tongues. They said, how can we hear in our own language when this man doesn't speak our language? How will we understand this? Because God put his hand upon the moment and a hand upon Peter and gave that ability there for them to hear in their language and all these people saved and Peter was the one who preached that message, the one who said, I don't know the man. God restores. But again, we gotta submit. We gotta submit. You gotta surrender. Number three, God reborns. You know that nothing on earth has the power to do this? I realize that speaking to Israel applies to us. We've read it many times. Ezekiel 11, 19 says, I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within you and I will take the stormy heart stony heart out of their flesh and we'll give them a heart of flesh. He gave us a new heart. He gave us something that was real. I don't know of anything on earth that ever changed people the way that God's spirit will. The spirit of God will change us once we allow him to come into our lives. We believe on the finished work of the cross of Calvary. I know people that's basically atheists that had to admit, said yes, I've seen people get saved and they definitely changed. Atheist, I've heard say that. They knew there was something about it. I've told this story, Robert Ingersoll, a man from years ago who was a famous atheist, wrote a book and things. He was hard-headed when it came to that thing right there. He would debate anybody and finally an old preacher said, I'll debate with you. And they got up and Robert Ingersoll used all these big words and all these big fancy terminology and stuff about evolution and all this nonsense. And finally, the old preacher got up and he said, you know, I can't compete with you on an intellectual level. He said, you're way smarter than I am, you know more than I do, but I'll tell you what you do. He said, you go find me 10 people who your teaching has changed, and I'll bring you 100. He said, no, I'll tell you what. He said, you bring me one that your teaching has changed their lives for the better, and I'll bring you 10,000. The challenge has still been accepted, by the way, because it's yet to do anything. John's Gospel three and three, Nicodemus came to Jesus. By night said Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time to his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You must be born again. If you're sitting here this morning and you don't know for sure without a doubt that you're saved that if your last breath was taken right now, that if you died, you would go to heaven. Friends, you need to make sure. It's not, first John tells us that he wants us to make sure. He wants you to know. He gave you something that you can know that you're saved. Do you know that you're saved? I know my name's Craig. Do you know that you're saved? I know I'm saved more than I know I'm standing here in a gray suit and a blue shirt. I'm saved. If you're not that sure, friends, you need to come to the altar. We'll take the Bible and pray with you. It doesn't matter what you've told somebody. It doesn't matter what is in the past. It doesn't matter what I have. Hey, what about right now? Can you say that with all certainty that you've been born again? Lastly, and I'm done with this, with number four, God regenerates. I could give you so many more, it's just the ones that God gave me to give. Titus three and four. It says, but after the kindness and love of God, our Savior, toward me and appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. See, God will regenerate us, and he'll renew us. It's amazing when you think about it, the story of the gospel. I don't know of anything else on earth that comes close to it. Do you know that Shakespeare's writings, if you could find what few that goes back are worth, I don't know what they're worth, thousands I assume. A Stradivarius violin, I think I pronounced that right, am I halfway close? I had a couple educated people say yes, so I'll go with it. One that is in mint conditions worth, I guess, millions. Because there's so few of them. And we want to argue that this Bible is man-written. Do you realize if somebody was this smart to write that, what those would be worth? You know why people fight it tooth and nail? Because it shows us what we are. And it's not man-made. It's alive. I don't have another book on earth that'll do what that Bible will do. There's books I've read that man has wrote and I don't doubt a bit that was inspired of God to write them. But they're not what that Bible is. I've let people borrow books, Christian books, that I recommend to anybody, good books. Just, I don't know why, just a couple names popping through my head right now is Andrew Murray. If you want a good book to read on Christian, how to walk as a Christian, read anything Andrew Murray wrote, you won't be disappointed, I promise. A.W. Tozer, he was an all-Millennials, but I'm telling you, the man was a genius. I heard he scored higher than anybody else in the history of the ASVAB test. Had a brilliant mind. But those books, one book he's got, it says, I Talk Back to the Devil. It's a very good book. It said he was on his knees when he wrote a lot of it, praying to God. Said he felt like he was almost hand-to-hand with Satan himself at times writing that book. And he doesn't say it in a pious and arrogant way. They won't do what that Bible will do. They can't. Now if God changed your life from a lost person to a saved person, and made that much difference. Don't you think he could continue to make that kind of difference in your life now that you're saved? And we're walking with him after we are saved? But you see, here's the thing. Just as you had to kneel to God and ask him to save you, you gotta kneel to him and ask him to help you and surrender whatever it is you're struggling with to him, the same as you did your sins when you got saved. I was talking to a preacher this week He said, we've destroyed the plan of salvation ways. He said, we've muddled it up. He said, we say it this way, we say it that way. Sometimes I use those man-made phrases, but I've tried to train myself to speak biblically when it comes to that. Because so much of the time, we say this, we say that, and it's a simple fact that you must realize you're a sinner and you've sinned against God. The Bible says, we've all sinned and it comes through the glory of God. See, that covers everybody, all. Tell me who's outside of all. No one. He said, but God commended his love toward us and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In other words, he proved his love for us in the sinful state we was in. He showed it, he proved it. We know that the wage of sin is death. So because we have sinned, we will die and go to hell without Jesus Christ, plain and simple. It's just that cut and dry. There is no middle fence. Jesus said, either you're for me or you're against me. There's no middle ground. Then in Romans 10 and 9, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. So you must believe in your heart and confess it with your mouth and you're saved. But you have to be seen repenting, not situation repenting. There's a big difference. I know I had situation salvation at times growing up. God get me through this, God get me through that. I wasn't serious about it and I knew I wasn't. So did God. So whatever it is this morning that you're struggling with, whatever it is that you're battling with, why don't you get up out of your seat and bring it to God this morning and surrender it to Him and let Him help you. You know one of the biggest things we got that we struggle with? I'm going to say it could be number one. You ready? This is earth shattering. R-I-D-E. Pride. Because we're afraid of what somebody will think, and we don't want to admit that we're not as good as the person sitting beside of me when they're just as bad a shape as you are. Because of our pride, we won't bring it to God. I could go on for a hundred reasons why our pride gets in the way. Maybe you don't have that much pride. I'll tell you what, I meet up with it at times. I don't like to admit it, but I'm just being honest. Heard a message preached years ago, and I'm done. The guy titled it, My Need Is Greater Than My Offense. He recognized he needed God more than the offenses that he had in his life. Towards God, toward anything, towards anything or anyone else, he needed God more. So whatever it is you're struggling with, you must realize there's things in your life Satan is giving you so he can take from you. And you're asking God to protect this. You're asking God to do this and do that. And all along, Satan is just wooing you in. Wooing you in. There's people that came to this church regularly when I first started coming here. I don't see them this morning. I've visited them. They've been called. They've been talked to. You know why? You know what happened? Satan offered them something. And they took it. and then he's took from them. This morning, he has you as a target right now. He's got you in his sights. Just as God's got a plan for you, so does he. But we must surrender to God. If you don't, you say, well, I'm saved, preacher. Praise God, I'm thankful to hear that. Yes, thank God for that. But Satan wants to take you captive. by his will and render useless to God. As a royal line he walked about seeking him who may devour. Are you the one that's devourable this morning? Go ahead, brother. As we stand.