The title of today's message is, The Word of God in Our Hearts and in Our Mouths. Deuteronomy 30, 11-14 says, It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it. But the word of God is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. Lord God, we do thank you that you've given us your perfect preserved word, God. Please help us to hear it now. Help us to hide it in our heart. And Lord, above all, let us do thy word. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. So we say that the Bible is the word of God. But do we ever stop and just meditate on that a little bit? Think of what that actually means. Look how the Bible starts out in the very first verse. In Genesis 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Think about that. God made the heaven and the earth, not just the heaven and the earth, but everything that's in them. Everything we see in the heaven above, the sun, its beauty as it rises and sets, the moon and the stars, the sweet light that they give us at night, the clouds and storms, lightning, sound of thunder, birds as they fly in the sky. And then there's the earth, the people on the earth, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, little precious newborn babies. God made them all. He made everything. Do you know that God, who created everything, He has words for us? Words that are written to each of us. We all get texts or electronic messages of some kind. We all read something that someone wrote to us. But God has words for us. If you got a message on your computer or on your phone, that was directly from God, would you read it? Would you take heed to it? Remember, we're talking about the God who made everything. We are talking about the God who loves us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die for our sins. Romans 5, verse 7 and 8 says, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That God who sent Jesus Christ to die for us, wrote to us. And it isn't just a short message, it's a whole book. The Bible talks about days that are coming when people are starving. not starving for food, but they're starving for the word of God. In Amos 8, starting at verse 11, it says, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord, the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north even to the east. And they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it. We are in days like that today. It's not because we don't have the words of God. It is because we don't know we have them. Or if we do know, we don't bother to listen to them. Consider what our Lord said in Matthew 24, verse 35. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. And listen to what he said in Mark 13, 31. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. And listen to what he also said in Luke 21, 33. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Our Lord, the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose from the dead, and sits on the right hand of God the Father, He who is coming back soon to take fiery vengeance on all his enemies. He that created the heaven and the earth. He said that heaven and earth shall pass away, but his words shall not pass away. And they didn't. We are reading and hearing them right now, nearly 2000 years later. God promised us that he would preserve his word. I cannot overstate the importance of this promise Without the Word of God, we have nothing. We have no lamp for our feet. We have no way to cleanse our way. We can't know or do or be sure of anything God says if we do not have His Word. God's Holy Word, the Bible, consists of 66 books, from Genesis to Revelation. There are no extra Roman Catholic whore books included in our Bible. There's no apocrypha. There's no book of Enoch. The Bible itself testifies to this fact. In the book of Isaiah, we read in chapter 8, verse 20, to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. If you read that passage in the immediate context, it's warning not to listen to wizards and such like. We could open up our Bible, read this verse, and take it to apply to our Bible itself and compare any other book to it. Any book that contradicts the Bible is not the word of God. It is not a light to our path. So does the Bible, the real Bible, have 66 books? Well, the 40th book of the Bible begins the New Testament. It's the book of Matthew. It reads so very different than the Old Testament. Now whether New Testament or Old, it's all the Bible. It's all true. It's all written by the same Holy Ghost. But the difference between the Old Testament and the New is striking. You can't help but notice the difference. This is not surprising because God himself is the one who made the division. Now the book of Isaiah is interesting because it has a flow to it that also changes abruptly. If you start reading the book of Isaiah from the beginning, when you get to chapter 40, it also sounds very different. Here's how it starts. In Isaiah 40, verse 1 to 3, it says, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Did you catch that last verse? Where did we read that before? Well, in Matthew three, verse one through three, it says, in those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. The 40th book of the Bible, Matthew, is when John the Baptist shows up. The 40th chapter of Isaiah is when John the Baptist shows up. There are 66 books in the Bible, and there are 66 chapters in Isaiah. Consider also the last chapter of Isaiah. In Isaiah 66, 22, it says, For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. Now the last book of the Bible describes the new heavens and the new earth more so than any other book. In Revelation 21.1, for example, we read, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. Isaiah, with its 66 chapters, provides evidence through internal consistency that our Bible has 66 books. Internal consistency is just one line of evidence that helps us to know that God wrote our Bible. There's much more we could say on that, and there's many other lines of evidence. God willing, we'll go over some of these in the future. But for now, Many Christians still understand that there are 66 books in our Bible, no more and no less. Though the number of those that understand this fact is quickly diminishing, what most believers do not understand today is that the same God that ordained, inspired, and preserved his word exclusively in the 66 books of our Bible also ordained inspired and preserved his word exclusively down to the very words he chose in English. Just like he does not allow us to pick and choose whether the phony book of Enoch, for example, really belongs in our Bible or not, God does not let us pick and choose which specific words or verses appear in our authorized Bible. But before we talk about that some more, consider no other books are the word of God. the writings of the Watchtower Society, those people that still go door-to-door around here and call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses, their writings are trash. They don't witness for Jehovah God. They teach doctrines contrary to the Word of God, like Jesus is not God Almighty come in the flesh, or that there is no place of torment called hell. Their phony Bible states Jesus was a God in Jod 1.1 instead of saying the word was God. Now, most believers recognize the fact that that book called the New World Translation is not the word of God. But sadly, most believers do not recognize that the other non-authorized translations also denigrate the deity of our Lord and are not the word of God either. There's another cult that often goes door to door, sadly, sometimes witnessing more diligently than believers do, and that's the Mormons. They have their own book, Another Testament, it calls itself. From its title page, it says, The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ. But it's not another testament, it's another gospel. In Galatians 1 verse 8 it says, Now there's a lot of things wrong with the Mormon gospel, but one is that in this gospel, according to the Mormons, Jesus is a created being. Such a Jesus who's created, who's not the creator. He's not able to die for our sins. He cannot provide that sacrifice. It's a false gospel. Here's the second title page from the Book of Mormon. It actually has two. The second one says, Book of Mormon, an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. And here's a quote from the Book of Mormon in Mormon chapter nine. Starting at verse 31, it says, And now behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us according to our manner of speech. So now listen very carefully to this last verse in this phony word of God. And if our plates had been sufficiently large, we should have written in Hebrew, but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also. And if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, you would have had had no imperfection in our record. As an aside, I don't know if I've ever heard anything that just sounds so fake as the Book of Mormon. Really, they didn't have large enough plates to have written a perfect word of God? But in any case, did you hear what it just said? The Book of Mormon admits it is an imperfect record because it was not written in Hebrew. Ironically, this agrees with most of modern Christianity. Most churches you go to anywhere will say that the real Word of God, that is the inspired, perfect Word of God without error, is not found in English. Instead, they say the infallible Word of God is found only in the original languages, the Hebrew and the Greek. But they didn't get this idea from any Bible, from any translation. They simply, for any number of reasons, don't want to admit that God preserved His Word in the King James Bible. So they deny the fact that the Word of God exists today and has been preserved, just as God promised, and instead follow unknowingly foolish Mormon theology. But the Word of God is not bound by any language. God can speak His Word in any language He chooses. Notice in Acts chapter 2, the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, gave his men and women words to say. He gave them these words in many different languages. In Acts 2, we'll read 4 through 11 and 16 through 18, and it says, talking about his disciples, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven, Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthenians and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia and Pontus and Asia Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. Peter then says in verse 16, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass in these last days. In the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. Notice from that passage that God is the one that gave them the words to say. These men and women didn't even know these languages until God had poured his spirit upon them. These men and women were speaking the very word of God. The language did not matter. Nothing was lost in translation. They didn't need to understand Hebrew. They would not have had any more light or wisdom or knowledge if these Various people had heard the word of God in another language other than their own native tongue. Now, as we mentioned earlier, the Bible teaches that God preserves his very words for us, each and every one, in fact. Matthew 4, 4, the Lord, when he was being tempted, said this to the devil, but he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. In Luke 4, verse 4, he also said, Some, in addition to saying God can't or doesn't speak English, say that we only have copies of the scriptures. It is the original scriptures that were inspired because copies always get corrupted. But that idea didn't come from the Bible either. If you search out the Proverbs like a king would, you could see in Proverbs 25 it says, these are also Proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter. The original of Proverbs 25 and following were copies made by the men of Hezekiah, according to our Bible. God doesn't care about the original piece of paper or the original language. He is God. He preserves His words. If someone destroys them, He'll just resurrect them. Did you know Moses destroyed the original Ten Commandments when he got angry, when he saw the people worshiping a golden calf? In Exodus 32, starting at verse 15, it says, And Moses turned and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand. The tables were written on both their sides. On the one side and on the other were they written. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. So he goes down there, he sees this, and it says, And it came to pass, as soon as Moses came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. And Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands and break them beneath the mount. But God then rewrote the Ten Commandments on new tables of stone. If we read later in Deuteronomy 10, Moses speaking, At that time the Lord said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood, and I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark. And I made an ark of shittum wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and went up into the mount having the two tables in mine hand, and he wrote on the tables according to the first writing, the 10 commandments which the Lord spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them unto me." So although those new tables of stone are gone today, we still have the 10 commandments, and they are just as certain for us today as they were for God's people back then. That is because God promised to preserve His words. In Psalms 12, verse six and seven, it says, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. This promise that God made to preserve His words was made explicitly in Psalms 12 and in many other places. But the entire Bible is filled with this promise of preservation of His Word implicitly. Do you know that every time the Bible says, thus saith the Lord, it implies that His Word has been preserved? The prophets would say, thus saith the Lord, and everyone in the Bible assumed this is what the Lord actually said. Here's one example. of many, many examples where it's the Bible says, thus saith the Lord. In Jeremiah 26 too, it says, thus saith the Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord's house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them, diminish not a word. Jeremiah was told to speak all the words that he was commanded. He was told to diminish, not a word, not a single word was supposed to be diminished or removed or not spoken or not preached. Most modern preachers disregard this entirely. They don't say, thus saith the Lord, or at least they don't really mean it or believe it. because although they will call the Bible the word of God, they don't believe that God really spoke the words, or if they do, they don't believe God has preserved them or translated them perfectly for us today. Again, the whole usage of the phrase throughout the Bible of thus saith the Lord implies that God spoke, and that he is still speaking to us today through the scripture. This idea that God's word died or expired is without any biblical foundation. It is a form of deism regarding the preservation of God's Word. For instance, if you were to open up your King James Bible in 1 John 5, 7-8 and say, Thus saith the Lord, how would most so-called Christians, especially the leaders, receive that? In 1 John 5, 7-8 it says, For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one. This is the quintessential passage on the Triune Godhead. To talk about the Godhead while ignoring this passage would be like ignoring Matthew 18 when discussing putting someone out of church. or ignoring 1 Corinthians 7 when talking about divorce and remarriage. Listen to what the pulpit commentary, even as far back as 1880 through 1990, or 1919, which is when it was written, had this to say. It will be assumed here, without discussion, that the remainder of this verse and the first clause of 1 John 5, 8 are spurious. Words which are not contained in a single Greek uncial manuscript, nor in a single Greek cursive earlier than the 14th century, the two which contain the passage being evidently translated from the Vulgate, nor are quoted by a single Greek father during the whole of the Trinitarian controversy, nor are found in any authority until late in the 5th century, cannot be genuine. What I just read, sadly, is a representative sample of the view of hundreds and thousands of believers. both back then and now, today. These same believers would usually have no hesitancy in saying, oh, the King James Bible, yeah, it's the Word of God. But they just have an equivocating spirit in regards to defining just what the Word of God means. What does that phrase mean, Word of God? If 1 John 5, 7 through 8 is not genuine, then the King James Bible is not the Word of God. The word of God contains nothing that is false or spurious. God doesn't say things that are false. He doesn't write his word and put false or spurious things, things that don't belong in there. That's not God. The word of God itself proves this. In Proverbs 30, verse five and six, it says, every word of God is pure. He's a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. If someone added a verse or clause to our King James Bible, they would be a liar, and the book would not be the word of God. Any book that has errors or mistakes in it is not the word of God. Anything that is missing things that God said is not the word of God. Any book that adds things God did not say is also not the word of God. Remember the verses we read at the very beginning of this sermon? Deuteronomy 30, starting at verse 11, it said, For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. In our King James Bible, we have the very words of God. We don't need to listen to doubting scholars tell us about some dead language on a crumbling scrap of paper found in a cave by the Dead Sea and how it overthrows the living words of our living King James Bible. These words are in our mouths and in our hearts. The words are as alive as our Savior is. Our Savior himself says so. In John 6, 63, it says, It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. If we recognize this, we'll understand that these are not just mere words of men. When we believe that God wrote these words to us, individually, personally, it will effectually work in us great and mighty things. In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, Paul was writing, and he said, Earlier, we read the very first words of the Bible in Genesis. As we close, let's read the very last words. in Revelation 22, 17 through 21. And the spirit and the bride say, come, and let him that heareth say, come, and let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. We have the book of this prophecy. It's right here either printed in our hands, stored on our phone. Consider these terrible warnings to those who would add or take away from the words of this book. Don't let anyone add to it or take away from it. Warn those that do. God's words are not going to pass away, including these warnings about corrupting God's word. Although many people have forgotten this today, there are people in these coming last days that will know exactly what the Word of God is and where it's found. In Revelation 6 verse 9 and 10, it says, And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God. and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? These blessed martyrs knew exactly what the word of God was, and were willing to stand up for it, even unto death. Right now, we could go stand for the word of God, we could go preach, we could tell people about the Lord, We went there this past Friday and we didn't die. We didn't lose our job. That particular day, I would say I didn't suffer any persecution at all. I had people telling me, you're doing a good job. That's what happened for preaching the word of God. If we can't go out and preach the word of God in this time, when it's still so relatively easy, are we gonna be able to do it when It's gonna cost us our job, our lives, our children's lives. Very soon, if we stand up for the word of God, we might have to pay for that stand with all that we hold dear. Like these martyrs in the book of Revelation chapter six. Are we ready for that? Lord God, we do thank you for inspiring your word, God, for preserving it, for allowing us to have it today, God. Please, Lord, we do ask you and pray that you'd fill us with your spirit, that you would help us to remember every single day that you wrote us these words, that they're for our edification, God. Help us to remember that thy word is very pure. Help us to remember, like the psalmist in 119, that we know God, that of thy testimonies, thou hast founded them forever. Lord, help us to remember that. Help us to live by it. Help us to be strengthened by your word. Help us to preach your word to others. Help us not to fear, not to fear man, God, but only to fear you. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.