What? We're so long, brother Brad. We'd like to allow the opportunity to be here with each of you and appreciate those visitors who've come to be in the service. We're glad that brother Brandon and brother Allen could each be here. That little Tommy and his wife are going to be with us tonight. I've already mentioned brother Slade and brother Sullivan and dad. They could be here. They've been parents of ours for a number of years. Appreciate them. Appreciate each of you being here, whoever you are and wherever you're from. I certainly desire your prayers tonight. I feel the need of your prayer, and I do appreciate having the opportunity to come and be with you at the church some time ago. They invited me to come this week, and at the time they invited me, I thought it was a long time off, but it's gotten by pretty quick, and it's here tonight. They made mention whenever they invited me that rather than just come and preach, they wanted to study the subject of the church this week, so I just saw your prayers and that, we'll try to look at some of that. And I trust some of the things the house say could be a blessing to us. And then I certainly feel the need to be praying that you sure didn't by any means take the best hand you ever tried to maybe teach along this line at all and do so, but the Lord's help to do what we can. I trust the things the house say again could be a blessing to us. To begin with tonight, I'm going to read from the book of St. Matthew chapter 16. Read some verses here to kind of get us started. Scattering around a little bit in reading, scattering around a bit in thought. I wish I could get with some of what we have on our hearts tonight. But we'll move along as far as we have time. God, I just hold you forever. I know a lot of you have to go to work, a lot of the children have to go to school and whatever, but at least we'll try to get through them. If they quit and don't get through, quit probably is the way it'll be, at least at some point in time. So I'll start this out in your prayers. Chapter 16, the book of St. Matthew. I'm going to start reading with verse 13. I'm going to read down a few verses in the passage and make some comments about the verses and then try to kind of branch out in our thought. Before I begin reading, I want to go to the Lord again and pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for the blessing of life. I know that you're the great God of heaven. You're all-powerful and you're all-knowing. You know the purpose we met here for tonight. I pray you'd help me to say the things that aren't pleasing. I pray that you could make it to the hearts of the listeners, use it to accomplish your purpose, and I pray we could all be blessed by having come this way. I pray that you bless all those that ask interest in our prayer. Above all, be merciful to the unsaved. Bless those that are sick and suffering. Bless people that are traveling, people that are away for whatever reason. Bless people facing trouble for every kind of life. Bless your people wherever they gather tonight. Bless our country. Help the leaders to say and do the things that be right and good. Forgive us where we failed you. Forgive us where we weak. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Verse 13 of chapter 16 of the book of St. Matthew. And they said, Some say thou art John the Baptist, and some Elias, and others Jeremus, or one of the prophets. And he said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. I'm going to cease reading. Whatever I'll read for verse 20 and kind of end the thought there. then charged he and his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. I'm going to cease reading these verses of scripture at this present time. We'll come back and talk about what I've read. Notice there's some statements made in this, and we'll try to deal with it at least to some extent. What Jesus did here, as he was going about in his earthly ministry, no doubt a lot of people had a lot of different thoughts about him, a lot of different things being said about him. And what he did, he called the disciples that came to him Jesus asked him a question. He said, whom do men say that I, the son of man, am? Who do people say I am? And you could, I think you could look at these same, probably take these same questions and go a different route. Maybe put your message to lost people. Maybe something does to save people as well. But ask ourselves the question of today, whose men say that Jesus is? You hear a lot of different things about who Jesus is today. It's amazing some of the things that I've heard different than critics say about him, who he probably really was. I'll leave that be as it may. I'll try to go with all the things I've heard said about him. Then Lord narrowed it down a little bit from this. He got down and kind of personal with it. They answered him and said, well, there's some people who say you're John the Baptist. Well, I think at this particular time, John the Baptist had already been beheaded and killed. No doubt, they might have thought he had been risen from the dead and come back to do great things. It seemed like one of the heralds had that mind, had a mind about Jesus. Thought maybe that was a thing that happened with him. He thought Jesus might have been John the Baptist and come back from the dead. But nonetheless, they said, some say that you're Elijah, maybe Elijah. And others say, maybe Jeremiah, at least others didn't say, just one of the prophets is coming. And there's a lot of different answers to that. Look at all those answers. But then Jesus said, but whom say ye that I am? Who do you say I am? That's what really matters about it, isn't it? That's where it really gets close to home. Who do you say you are? What do you believe about? When you come right down to it, well, tonight I don't plan to deal so much with just this thing about who Jesus is, but we are going to talk about it. Because it is very, very important. If we don't have lined up who Jesus is, we sure don't know anything about the church, do we? We don't really have a basis for a church if we don't know who Jesus is. And so we look at that, and I'm going to take some time looking at who he was. Maybe not just so much time with that, but some time with it. But he comes back, and then Peter answers. It seemed like that Peter was, most of the time, kind of the spokesman for the crowd. And he just responded right away. He said, I like his answer. And I don't think he left anything undone or anything unsaid about it. He said, that art, they crash. He didn't say you're one of them. He said, you're they crash. The Son of the Living God. Well, whenever he answered this, the Lord responded back to him and made this statement to him. He said, blessed are you, Peter. You've learned something. You have something that will do you some good. You have something that's worth something to you. He said, and the thing about it is, he said, for flesh and blood, now, you weren't taught this by men. You weren't taught this in some of the colleges. You weren't taught this in some of the schools to know this. He said, but the way you know this is, he said, it hath been revealed unto you from my Father in heaven. I want to tell you, that's where the real issue needs to come with us tonight. We told them we're going to talk to the church, and that's what we're going to try to do. A lot of different opinions about the church. People have a lot of different thoughts about church and what church is. And we're going to try to spend some time with that this week and look at it. I don't want to be dogmatic about it any more dogmatic than the Bible is. I don't want to be radical about it any more than the Bible is. But I want to be pretty much in line with where the Bible is. If that's radical, I'll be radical. But not just the intent to be radical, that's not the intent. But the Bible's pretty narrow with this. It's not really broad, not a lot of universality in this. It's not very universal when we look at what God has to say about the church. And yet, even for salvation, if you're ever to be saved, the Holy Spirit will have to help you realize and understand that Jesus Christ is the Savior, the Son of God. Men can stand and tell you that forever, but it's gonna take the work of the Spirit. If you'd ever see that, the extent that you can trust Him as your Savior. Not only that, but when we move from there, to understand the church, and to see the church, and to know what the church is, and to grasp that it's a church, and understand that, I guess, the uniqueness of it, how peculiar it is about, we use the term, about us being peculiar, And I've said this a lot of times about the term I've used there. Peter's especially well about it. It's written back in the book of Exodus to a different group of people. But he didn't say you need to act peculiar. He said you are peculiar. You already are. You don't have to try to act like you are. But that's just not some odd kind of some folks that people can't get figured out. That's not peculiar in that route. You're peculiar in the fact that you have been called out and chosen by God, and you belong to him. You're a private possession. You belong to Him. That's how you're peculiar. The rest of the world, they belong to whatever it is. But you that have been saved, those of us that have been saved, we're peculiar in the fact that we belong to God. We're His. It don't matter what they say about it or what they think about it, we're His. Did somebody tell you, I've got the big head. Oh, I've got the big head of Christ. He's the one who deserves the big head. I'm just saved by His mercy and grace. But by God's choosing, though, I am God's child. And I'll forever be his child, and not only forever be his child, but one day I'll get to live with him, and live with him forever. Never to die, have a body, like in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can call that whatever you want to call that, but hey, that's where I am, that's where I stand, I'm a child of God. And the next thing I move from there is, and I believe this with all of my heart, I'm a member of this church. I believe I'm a member of the church the Lord left here. I believe that. And if I didn't think that, that's where I am, I'd be looking for it. I'd be trying to find it and want to be a part of it. I don't believe I'm a member of the only church the Lord has here. And I also understand that when I use that terminology, the Bible uses the term churches. There was seven churches of Asia, wasn't there? Every one of them individual churches now. Every one of them totally independent of the others as far as their ability to function and carry on the work of God. But they belong to the Lord. And there is a term, there's a lot of debate maybe about the church, and I might cross you before I get very far with this. Don't intend to, but that's okay. But all this stuff about a universal church. about one you can't see and one that all the churches make up the churches. And, you know, I guess somebody talked about the universal church. When you say that, well, where is it? Who's pastoring it? What office does it have in it? And what really, when you talk about a universal church, and get through with it. If that's the case, then let's just, since it's universal, you can't see it, you can't find it, locate it nowhere, let's just don't worry about it and just go on through life and let it support itself and take care of it. We'll take care of one here. But universal charge really is nonsense, okay? As far as the word church, and there's a mother church that makes up all churches, there's no more. Let me use two other terms that the Bible uses, very similar to that. It says the husband, the wife. What does it say when it speaks of the wife is to be a subjection to the husband or her husband, the wife. That means every wife. is to be subjected to her husband. It doesn't mean there's some wife somewhere that makes up all wives all put together. Every one of them is individual wives to their husbands. But it's a term that is kind of an institutional term. In the Bible, there's a term used in a Bible in reference to church. It has reference to whatever church, all the churches together, but all churches individually, wherever they are. Having said that, there's a lot of institutions in the world today we use institutional terms for. And all those that have been asked this, where were you? I don't know about today how this fits, but since years ago, all my life, it's kind of been considered this. But I'll still ask the question, what's a safe place to keep your money? In the bank? What bank? That word bank has reference to all banks, any bank, right? There's banks everywhere. That's an institutional sense of that word. learn and get a higher education, where do you send your children? To college. But then the institutional sense of the word, what college? The college you send them to. I mean, it's still that college, right? That encompasses them all. Yet it doesn't lump them all together as one big college somewhere that makes up all the other colleges. Same way with the church. The church belongs to the Lord. A lot of different churches in the Bible use that term. The first church we know anything about is the church at Jerusalem. About the next one I know anything about is probably the church at Antioch. And then we move from there and the church at Corinth. We had the church at all these other churches could be named. And when you got there, what you found was a church. It was a church wherever it was. And yes, it belongs to the Lord. He knew they were all His. And now one day, at the rapture, the resurrection, they'll all stand before the Lord and the Lord's gonna deal with everything and he'll know every one of them and he'll have to go try to get it all figured out and get it all separated out and it might not be and I wouldn't say the Lord's record with all this is gonna match your church roles. I kind of doubt that they will. The Lord's not gonna have to have our roles to match all that up but it's just that's on my mind. We're talking study of the church tonight, looking at the church and we'll try to go further. We don't come back now to go a little bit further than what I've read about. Don't you notice now, as the Lord made this statement to Peter, he went on and said, I say unto thee, thou art Peter. We go to the book of St. John, I think it's chapter one, my memory served me right. There's just something here with John. John, John to read, but talk about Peter. And I'll tell you what I believe about something. He said, I say to thee that thou art Peter. You're Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church. There's a lot of folks in the world, they say that the church was built on Peter. Matter of fact, if you ever hear a Catholic set up the church and do a teaching on where the church came from and how to originate it, they'll wind up. I'll tell you, it'll sound pretty good for a good long while. But they'll wind up with Peter being the first pope before it's all over with. And it's built on him, and the church really, he had the authority for a lot of things, and I'll read some more about some of that in a moment as well. But I'll tell you what I believe. I believe the Lord said, Peter, you're nothing. You're Peter. On this rock, myself, I'll build my church. You go back and study through the Old Testament, everywhere you find that rock, mention that rock was Christ, wasn't it? On this rock, I'll build my church. Having said that about Peter, the word Peter basically comes from a root word. It's a picture come from about the same. And I come back over to the book of first of St. John, which is chapter one, just a moment. Don't you find whenever a Lord has meeting with Peter and some statements he made here. And verse 41, he said, he findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted to Christ. And he brought him to Jesus, and when Jesus beheld him, he said, thou art Simon, the son of Jonah. Thou shalt be called Cephas, which by interpretation is a stone. Peter, that word stone, and I believe when you go back and look at the word, Peter, it's kind of like saying you're a little rock. like a casting stone. But the Lord said, on this rock, I'll build my church. You can look at a rock like a mountain. You're not looking at just a little stone anymore. Peter, you're not much to you. But on this rock, I'll build my church. And he said, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The gates of hell, and I'm going to tell you what I believe the gates of hell has some representation to, all the false religion in the world. and all the devil and all of his power. If you talk about the gates to somewhere, that's the way you enter and get in. What could be greater than the gates of hell and false religion? And really, when I think you go back and look at it, don't go back and start with Catholicism coming out of Rome and all the work of it through the years and everything that is split off of it down through the years. is where I really believe it's going. I believe that's where it's originated. That's where it comes from, the gates of hell. And boy, somebody get upset with you about that, but just hang on. We don't have time to deal with all of that tonight, but we say, well, the Bible has to say it, what it shows us and teaches us. There's a lot of things in there that if we could gather it up, it'll let us know kind of about where we are. But the Lord said, on this rock, I will build. And I'll probably stress this over and over throughout the week. On this rock, I'm going to build. My church. I'm going to build my church. And I'm stressing that. We'll talk about the definition of a church in a moment. But there's a lot of things that call itself church in the world, isn't there? I'm going to just go, hey, they're all his. You say, can you judge which ones he has not? I might not cut it every case. There's some of them, I can pretty well tell you, that don't belong to him. If what they teach, if they leave Jesus out of it, and Him being the very source of salvation, Him being the lawgiver, Him being the source from which it all comes, and the source of salvation, Him and Him alone, when they go beyond that, I'm gonna tell you, it doesn't belong to Him. It'll be somebody else. Now there's some things that I can tell you churches probably could be an error about, and while they're an error about some things, they still might remain a church. But when you come to the very basics of what the church has to be on, it can't be wrong there. When it comes to the basics of salvation, the means of salvation, the source of salvation, it can't be wrong there. That is, it belongs to Him. It won't be His, because you've left Him totally out of where it starts from. He's just not there. So I'll probably stress again throughout the week, on this rock I build my church. And he went on and said this, the gates of hell shall not prevail against him. I'll give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I believe what the Lord gave was really the word of God. Gave it to the church. And we have it today. And you talk about the keys to something, that's the power and ability to unlock it. And to give you the right to enter. The only thing that's going to give us the right is the kingdom of God. Today is going to be how we keep and obey the word of God. We have the word of God. I believe along with this, no doubt, there's some things come through you might find a basis for discipline work along with this as well. And that is, especially when we go by the word of God. There's some things he talked about that's bound in heaven and God said it'd be bound on earth if you bind it, and there'll be things if you bind it. I'll bind it in heaven, if you loose it on earth. I think probably some of that, at least, I wouldn't tell you it's limited to that, but I think the act of discipline work when it comes to church comes in that picture when we do it according to the scripture. If we leave the scripture out, now I don't take God, I don't think God mind it. But when we come to place in the scripture and come to place a person's rights as a member of the church to be bound by church censure and church discipline, I believe God locks it down in heaven too. And if that ever comes to place, if that person makes their business right with the church and they ask for forgiveness and that church forgives them, I believe God forgives it too. I believe it's loosed in heaven the very same way. I tell you, you might go on beyond that, but I'm gonna give you the keys of the kingdom. We have that. The thing that I think you'll help us is it's the word of God and the right and the commission to go and preach his word. So on this rock, I'll be on my church. So I wanna mention this as I move along with this and talk about his church. I'm gonna talk about a definition, some definition maybe. But I wanna go back and look at the Lord's work in general to begin with. The Lord didn't want to do this in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel. But the Lord wanted a group of people that He was going to give His service and His love. And that's what God did when He chose the nation of Israel out, wasn't He? He chose Himself out of a group of people, didn't He? Well, when he chose the nation of Israel out, you had Amorites, and you probably had Philistines, and you probably had Egyptians, and you probably had a lot of other folks. Why didn't God just use one of those nations already out there? He didn't do it. But rather, he called a man that had faith in God, Abraham, and began with him, which is the very basis of the nation of Israel, and from Abraham, Then you had come from him, you had Isaac, and then had Jacob, and then from Jacob you had the 12 sons of Jacob. There you had the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob himself wound up being named Israel. So God chose that. He was ready for a nation of people to give his service to. He chose them out and established his own nation. He built his own nation. He didn't use what was already out there. He could have, but he didn't. One of the reasons I think he didn't, they didn't fit the demands of what he wanted. They didn't fit the criteria of what God had demanded for them to be, to have his service. So just hang on to Israel for just a moment. They can come back and fix it two or three times. Somebody talked about, I've heard the statements made, we shouldn't even worry about the Old Testament, shouldn't even read it, shouldn't even study it. We just go to the New Testament and study it. That's what's given to us. Well, I'm going to take you a little further. I had one man tell me this one time. He said, we shouldn't study the Old Testament. I'm the only father in the New Testament. Well, the study should be Revelation because all the rest of it's already fulfilled. Oh, well, that's Revelation. I'm going to tell you what, if you had Revelation, you'd have none of the rest of the Bible. You wouldn't have a clue what to do with none of it. Because you'd have to have the first part of it and know anything about the rest of it. So the Old Testament was given to us, and the Old Testament, I know this, I told you to start with God, started back with Abraham. And then from Abraham, you follow the lineage, it's coming right on down, and all the way until after the birth of Christ. And through that lineage, you find a lineage that was never broken of the things of which God had promised, of whom the Christ was going to have to come through. If Christ was not the Christ, If he hadn't come through the lineage of which God said he could, it could have been anybody. Anybody could have said he's Christ and you wouldn't have known whether he was or not. We had a lot of criteria to identify Christ by. And actually it was started back really in the book of Genesis chapter 3 when you get right down to it. And then moved along from there. Let me go back to chapter 3. And I'll read something in chapter three. I know the estimate. Most of what I'm talking to you about, discussing to you, things that we already know and things we've heard, but we'll try at least to move along. That'll probably be the way it is all the week. But whenever Adam and Eve had sinned in the Garden of Eden, I'll mention this and I'll try to get back to where I am. The Lord has never left himself without witness. God's always had somebody to witness for him, somebody he's chosen, somebody he's placed in the world, somebody that's had a purpose and had a place where God's with him. The only time that we have any record of in the history of man when God didn't have someone to witness for him was in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were both sinned. God himself come in the garden and witnessed to them himself. I'm going to tell you some things I believe, and again, I'm not going to argue about it. I still believe it. What God did in speaking to Adam and Eve in regard to Eden, He identified Christ. More than one way. One way He first began with this. He spoke to Adam and Eve. He spoke to the woman about the sin. He spoke to Adam about his sin. Then to the serpent. And He said this about it. I'm going to drop down to. Verse 15, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. I believe what God was saying there that whenever Christ come in the world, the devil would be instrumental in bruising his heel, he'd have him crucified. But Christ gonna come back forth, it won't be anything more than just bruising his heel. But when Christ comes back at the surface, he's gonna bruise the devil. He's gonna bruise your head, he's gonna do away with you. That's what I believe is there, and I know you find different opinions about that. And I know then, after Adam and Eve had sinned, we know then that God killed animals there in the Garden of Eden and clothed Adam and Eve with the skin. So God shed blood in the Garden of Eden, didn't He? And He clothed their nakedness with the skins of animals. And as you spoke these things to Adam, I want you to notice that Adam then called his wife's name Eve. because she was the mother of all living. Adam believed it a little, didn't he? Adam had faith in God. And you know the basis that God's always saved people on? The fact they believed it. How did one of God save Abraham? Go back and read everything you can find. Abraham believed God, and God counted unto him as righteous. That's why God saved Abraham. Abraham believed God. He used to believe something about him, but he believed God. Now, having gotten to there with this, let me drop a little further over in the book of Genesis. Let me see if I find the verses of which it's on. Back over in the latter part of the book, we have the time that Jacob called his sons unto him. Jacob was soon to die. He called his sons unto him. He blessed them. Now, we'll drop down in chapter 49 to verse 9. Jacob began to speak to Judah, and he said, Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. Thy name shall be in the neck of thine enemies. Thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah, the lion's will. From the prey, my son, thou art gone up. He stood down. And as an old lion, who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come. And unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Shiloh has reference to rest, peace, or Christ. But even back earlier in Judah's day, Jacob's day, while he was still living, he told Judah that Christ is going to come down through your lineage. And you follow it all the way to the scripture now, and he did. He come down through there. It was through Judah, whenever you go down to this. So, don't go to one of the passages, and I believe Christ, Judah comes in the picture of this as well, and yet it was the Jacob, sorry, the Joseph of whom it's spoken to. I'm gonna drop down to the same chapter, verse 22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by will, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him. And his abode and strength and his arms and hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, whose hands were made strong by the mighty God of Jacob, and then set off in parentheses, which is from the God of Jacob, from hence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. from God, not through Jacob, not through Joseph rather, but from God. That's where that comes from. And again, I think you're going to come back and you're going to follow Christ when you have dealt with all of that. So I've taken some time looking at that and talking about it, seeing where Christ has come. Then Old Testament-wise, we have the Old Testament following all the way all the way through is the information that we have that's necessary to identify Jesus all the way until we get to the New Testament. And some of the first things the New Testament is about is what? The birth of Jesus. So we pick up with the New Testament there. But without the Old Testament, again, we wouldn't know a lot about what to have expected in Jesus when he come. There was a prophecy after prophecy concerning Jesus about his birth and how he would come. We know this, he's coming from the tribe of Judah, that would have to be traced back. He's going to be the son of David, or he's going to be the son of Abraham, and you can trace it all back, and it goes back and ties into him. And to those people, it fulfilled it all the way down the line. We know this, that Jesus would be born. He'd be born in Bethlehem. We had that recorded back in the Old Testament as well. He'd be called out of Egypt, and we find out how that Book of Matthew, how that come about. He'd be called to Nazarene. A lot of different things said about it. that we had Old Testament wives come back and when Jesus then is born, there's no way that he could be born and let's not know that he was the son of God, the Messiah of whom had been promised throughout the Old Testament. You may say, why is that all so important? It's important in the fact that if we don't know who Jesus is, we don't know then about the church he established. So we have to have that part settled and established. Something else that I want us to look at now before I come back and just try to pick up with Jesus and look at him, I want to go back to the book of St. Luke, we can judge in a moment. Chapter 2, I believe it is. There's something else that's imparted here as well. It's chapter 1 of the book of St. Luke. I'm going to drop down to verse 5, and what I want to read about is about John the Baptist being born. You say, why is that imparted? Because he was prophesied as well. And he fit the prophecy of the Old Testament. So I'm going to start reading here, and then I'm going to go back to the Old Testament and read a couple of things about John the Baptist. It's that in verse 5 of chapter 1 of the book of St. Luke, and I'm probably going to do a good little read through this chapter because it covers a lot of material. That was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abai, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. righteous before God, walked in all the commandments in order that the Lord would blame us. And they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both now well stricken and used. It came to pass that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, it was law to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of people were praying without at the time of incense, And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of this altar of incense. And when Zechariah saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. And the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zechariah, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. So here's some things about to take place. Here's the very beginning of this. John is about to be born. He's prophesied now. His birth was announced by an angel. Something, I guess you say, a little bit unique with his birth and also with one other we find. That same angel announced the birth of Jesus Christ before he was ever born and named them both. So is there something there that's full fitting of scripture? Is something taking place that had to be of God? There was no way around it. It had to be of God. It was not something that men just cooked up or something men thought about. So it says, And thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice in his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. But he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall return to the Lord. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias. to turn the heart to the fathers of children, and to disobey to the wisdom of the just, and make ready a people prepared for the Lord." And so Zacharias realized what he was here for. We have the announcement of what John was to come for. John was actually sent as a forerunner to go before Jesus Christ. Let me go back and mention something about that forerunner for just a second. If you go back now, I think it's in the book of Hebrews, speaking about Jesus Christ, he's referred to as the forerunner that went before us, even into heaven. A forerunner was a term that came, it was a mariner term. In those days, the ships sailed the sea, they didn't have all the equipment for how, now they didn't have the radios and all the different things for how. And when they came pretty close to Harvard, now I read this somewhere, I don't remember just where, if it makes sense, I think it's for three, and I see something in it. But when they got pretty close to Harvard and ready to try to come in, harbor the ship and come to a place they could get in and dock and unload and whatever they were going to do, before they brought that big ship in there, rather than bring it in, didn't know where they had moved, didn't know what was going on, they had a smaller boat. They sent in to harbor ahead of the big ship, And it went in there, was called a forerunner. It went in there and checked everything out, made sure everything was right and good, and came back where they were. They told us we'd have to wait a while, check it out, or get information, or it's safe to move in. We move there, and we can dock up, unload, or do whatever's necessary to check out the condition of the water, the depths of the water, whatever's there. Well, John the Baptist came as a forerunner. We use that term. We don't find it often. It's maybe just John the Baptist. But he came ahead of Jesus Christ to prepare the way for him. And he came to announce the coming of the king. Not only that, but also the kingdom as well, and the arrival of the king. John came, he came preaching to Jesus Christ. The anointing of God was going to come. So he came there ahead of Jesus Christ, preparing the way for him. Well, when we stop and look at what he did, now let's go back to the book of Isaiah with you just a second. in chapter 40. I want to drop down to verse 3. Speaking about the one that's going to come, it's going to be the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. Whenever John was challenged, after he began his ministry, people didn't know who he was. Who did he say he was? They come to him, are you Jesus Christ? Are you the prophet? Who do you think you are? And he said, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness. That's what was prophesied of him. You go back and they knew the prophecy, most of them probably did. He's the voice of one that crieth in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert the highway for our God. Everybody shall be exalted in every mountain, and the high hills shall be made low, and the crooked place shall be made straight, and the rough place plain. The Bible spoke of one, it'd be called, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Who wouldn't do that? Well, we find, go back to the New Testament, and you'll find that's how John came. I won't say in the book of Matthew, probably made those statements, but I don't just find it there. We'll look it up in a latter time. But I want to say there, and let me go to, we'll at least go to hit this point with it. In chapter three of the book of St. Matthew, In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, for this is he whom the prophet hath said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare you in the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John, when he first began preaching, the first words came out of his mouth. identifying who he was, identifying who that Isaiah had said was going to come back earlier. Well, let me ask us a question before I go any further. Was it necessary that one came if he fulfilled the prophecy and fulfilled the keeping of the Word of God? If one did come ahead of him, as a matter of the way, somehow it wouldn't fit with him. What about a lot of the other churches that come into existence, their name, their title, where they come from? and go back to the origin of where they ascended from. So you go back and some of them that you can name the, you can name the one that organized it, you can name the one that found it, the one that established it, the one that wrote about, it was named back then, a lot of them are, right on down through the cases. Well, we'll come back, we're gonna talk about that other one that was named back here. We'll find the founder of it. But if you find the one that God set up, he said, Jesus said on this rock, I build my church. That's the part I want to stress. How can we know that? Unless somehow we can come back and prove the details according to scripture about Jesus' church. I also want to go back with you to the book of Malachi, just a second, to chapter 3. Notice in Malachi's body, verse 1 of chapter 3, he said, Behold, I will send my messenger And he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts." We should find another prophecy there concerning John the Baptist going to come. Matter of fact, we notice when John comes, he comes in the power and the spirit of Elijah. It wasn't necessarily Elijah that did come, although Jesus identified him as that in one of the Gospels. We'll try to maybe get to that before the week is out, but Jesus identified him as being that, again, in one of the Gospels. So I'll come back now, and I'll look a little bit further. So we have John the Baptist come on the scene. Go back with me, if you will, to the book of St. Luke, chapter 2, just a second. We'll drop down to chapter 2, verse 1. They came to pass in those days that went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, everyone in his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea. I should be back in chapter 1, but I should be. I had to get the information of which I wanted to read. So let me just back up. But what we have there is given the record of Jesus being born. And what had taken place back in chapter 1, we have the angel come to Mary. to a virgin whose name was Mary, let her know that she was one that conceived from the Holy Ghost, and bear a son, and also his name would be called Jesus, that he would be the son of the highest, he would be the greatest of all, so that what was found given there, it's reasonable to go back to this, is the fact Jesus as well was prophesied, spoken of, his birth was announced by an angel, that angel saw, went further, and also named him, go back to Matthew chapter four, chapter one it is, You'll find where Jesus was named here and before he was ever born, we knew his name. We'll drop down in chapter 1 in the book of St. Matthew with verse 18. I'll read three or four verses here and I'll save time getting away from us. is of the Holy Ghost, and she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which is spoken by the Lord by the prophets, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, God with us. Go back to the book of Isaiah again, you can find that prophecy about the virgin going to bring forth a son. So thus far, what we've looked at, talked about, really not much about the church, except we're looking at the criteria which was used to found the church, and the basis of where the church is going to come from, and it's going to be his church. Something else I want to go back and look at, Old Testament-wise, and we'll come to the New Testament and look at some of this as well. I see we're not going to get too far with the church tonight. Maybe the church itself. I want to go back with you, if you will, to the Book of Numbers, just a second. Numbers chapter 12, and drop down to verse eight, and then I'll go with you to the book of Deuteronomy. The Lord's speaking unto Moses, and he let him know this, and really what happened was, this was the time that Mir and Aaron really got on to Moses about the Ethiopian woman he married, and I guess you kind of use our terminology, they got up in his face about that, and God called their hand about that. And really, he dealt with them pretty straight with it. Now, I won't get into all the details of that. I'll try to move down. The Lord began to speak to them about Moses. Here's what he said about Moses. Let me start with verse 6. And he said, Here now, my word, if there be a prophet among you, if I, the Lord, will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream, my servant Moses is not so. He said, most of the prophets, he said, I make myself known to them. But with Moses, he said, it's different that with Moses. He said, you misjudge how, I guess, mine and Moses' relationship, I think, is what he was saying to them. My servant Moses, not so, who is faithful in all my house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and in the similitude of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? The Lord told them here that Moses is even going to behold the similitude of the Lord. Not only is he going to see him, I think, as they walk by, when he's put in the cleft of the rock, but I think Moses here is going to, if you look at Moses' life, there's a lot of things about Moses you're going to find very similar to the Lord himself. And some of those things, I've kind of briefed those in order to go with your book of Deuteronomy. Let me talk about those two or three things first. Moses was born, again, kind of a unique child, wasn't he? Jesus was pretty unique. Moses and Jesus, not a lot alike in their birth, but Moses was born at a time whenever his people were in trouble. I think you could say Jesus was born at a time when his people were in trouble. They were also born at a time where, shortly after their birth, there was a king that tried to kill them both. put forth every effort they could to do so, to get rid of them, to destroy them. It was the devil trying to destroy, not so much Moses, but he's trying to destroy the work of God, and trying to hinder the work of God. Well, God fixed it where he didn't. Well, the next thing you find is they were both rejected by their brethren, weren't they? They both, in their rejection, married and took a Gentile bride. And following that, they both became deliverers to their people. There's a lot of things that are similar about them, and I think there was something to that. So let me move now to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 18. I believe the Lord used Moses here to really foretell Christ's going to come. In verse 15 of this chapter, he said, The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me. That's what Moses is telling them. God is going to raise a prophet up among you. Don't come from among your brothers. Not on that, he's going to be like unto me. And he said, unto him shall you hearken. He's the one you're going to listen to. He's the one you need to hear. I'm going to drop down on this brother for the sake of time. I'm going to skip the verse. Verse 20. But the prophet, but the prophet which shall presume to speak, I'm getting further than I wanted to. I want to go back to 18, I'm sorry. I will raise up them a prophet among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them that I shall command thee." So we find here there's a prophet that is going to come of whom the Lord let Moses know that's going to come. He's going to be very stubborn to Moses. He's going to come like unto Moses and going to come from among their brethren. Well, that being said, the Jewish people never forgot that. They knew that was part of the prophecy, the Messiah that was going to come, the one that was going to come to them. With that in mind, I want to go back with you, if you will, to the book of St. John, just a second. In chapter 1, remember John, the Baptist now, was already come. He was on the scene doing his work, and people came to him. Let me drop down to verse 19 of chapter 1. And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? Who art thou? They sent people to John to ask him. They knew John was doing this great work, and all the Levites and the priests sent some Jews to ask him, who art thou? But he confessed and denied, and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, what then? Art thou Elias? And he said, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And the answer, no. He didn't say, art thou a prophet? They said, art thou that prophet? They were looking for that prophet, a particular prophet. With that being said, turn with me to chapter six of this same book, to verse 14. And these men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, this is of a truth, that prophet. This should come into the world. Chapter seven and verse 40, I believe it is, verse 40. All this work was being done. Many of the people, therefore, when they heard this, they said, of a truth, this is the prophet. They had in mind that prophet back there that Moses had spoken about that's going to come. Not just a prophet, but THE prophet. Now turn with me if you will, step down at that point, to the book of Acts chapter 3 and verse 22. When the apostles were doing their great work, Peter speaking at this particular time, He said, he reminded him about what they no doubt already knew. He said, for Moses truly said unto the fathers, a prophet shalt the Lord your God raise up unto your brethren like unto me. Him shall you hear in all things and whatsoever he shall say unto you. In other words, Peter said that Moses said, God is gonna send us a prophet. And we're to listen to him. He's the one that we're to listen to. Now turn with me if you will to chapter seven of this same book. what we have here is no doubt Stephen in his defense as he defends himself and he goes back it's Stephen's defense he really went back and started back with the calling out of the nation of Israel and identified it right down and identified Christ and let the people know he's the one you crucified it's basically what he did in this but I find in his in all of this in chapter verse 37 uh Moses sorry Stephen was going back to prayer to Moses He talked about how, first of all, he brought them out of the Red Sea and crossed the Red Sea and the wilderness. He said, this is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me, him shall you hear. So we find they were familiar with that. So let me try again to closely maybe wrap some things up if I can, not just leave it all hanging. But let me mention this for what it's worth. You might make it in your notes if you'd like to. If you want to analyze a religion and maybe find out something about it, if you're talking to somebody and they're really on your case about their religion and trying to show you theirs is the one that's right, and they're trying to down yours, find out what prophet started there. what prophet of God was sent to start theirs. So we're going to come back and say, well, what about ours? The prophet that most of the Old Testament had said was going to come and do this work and start this work and be the author of it was Jesus Christ. identified all the way through the Old Testament, Jesus Christ going to do that. So now that's about as far as we're going to try to get to, but we haven't got very far with it. But if we can't identify where the church came from, and we can't identify how it got started, and then identify something about what it is, how in the world would you know what it was when you found it? And let me tell you something, I'm going to try to close with this. I know I've taken a lot of your time already. Thank you all for listening. But let me tell you this, the church can be identified today. Somebody said, well, the only way you could identify a church today was you'd have to have a continual record all the way back to Jesus Christ or the apostles. Let me stop and ask you a question. Can you produce that? You can't. I'm going to tell you, you can't. Clearing Branch can't do it. Faithway can't do it. George Ford can't do it. Liberty can't do it. Kicker Creek can't do it. Don't go back to Faithway. Faithway came out of Bethel. Where'd Bethel go? That's about how far y'all can go, isn't it? But let me mention something again. I'm getting ahead of myself. Bear with me. Tell you this. Kind of a little crude illustration. something happened to me a number of years ago. I'll tell you this, I had a, this won't mean much till you start off with, I had an 89, a Mercury Grand Marquis car. It was brown and it had a dark brown top on it. I had it coming just a few days, coming just a few days. I didn't buy it new, it was a used car, good car. And I realized right away the keys on the doors didn't all work. Some of the keys I've given me, it wouldn't open every door. Some of the keys would, but some of them wouldn't. But I went somewhere in that car that day, and I came back to Columbia. And my wife and woman stopped somewhere in the store to pick up some things for her. And I'd already stopped somewhere and gotten something. And I remember that was a little bag. I had to sit and see, a little paper bag, wrapped by the, like, I don't know, the console thing. And I got out of the car, and I locked the door and run to the store and get whatever I was going to get. I come back out there in a minute, and I remember when I left out, I didn't pay all that much attention. I parked by a van. And I went to the store, and I come back out there, and here's my card. I went over there and stuck my key in the door. Sure enough, it wouldn't open that door. I'm going to get these keys out. I've got them there. I looked at that bag back on the console, and I wiggled for a little slack in Windows, trying to figure out what I'm going to do. Couldn't find a coat hanger or nothing anywhere. I walked to the other side of the car and tried them keys. Opened the door. I'm debating on what to do. I was wrong to schedule. I'm somewhere else I had to be. I decided I didn't have my phone. I think I locked it up in the car. I looked around to see if I could find somebody to phone. I could call one to see if I could send me some keys or somebody pick me up or something. I walked in that car. Remember, this is how I live in Jefferson Davis County. Yep, and on the other side of that van was still another van, and there sat my car. They were identical, as far as you could tell by just walking up there. That car, there was another that looked a lot like it. But if I know enough details about my car, I can tell my car from that car, can't I? Now, sometimes that distinguishing criteria gets pretty close. Now, just as the Brown 89 Grand Marquis, that wasn't enough. But when I saw the tag number, I live in Jefferson Davis County, that was a Marion County tag. That separated them right away from me. But if they had a Jefferson Davis County tag on it, it still wouldn't have been my car. I'd have had to have a little more criteria. But if I had known enough criteria about it, there's enough serial numbers on the rail end of that car and on the engine and on the dash, if I'd had them to that, I could separate those cars out. But you gotta look pretty close sometimes. But the point I'm making is, That was my car. Nothing happened to the car. I drove it in a good car while it traded and got rid of it. But suppose somebody had stolen my car. And I hadn't seen it now for 15 years. And the insurance company called me and said, Mr. Broome, we have found your car. You reckon after not seeing it for 15 years you could identify that car? It might be somebody's painted it yellow by now. But I'm gonna tell you what, if you have that serial number off that frame, that serial number off that engine, that serial number off that dash, that's my car. Have enough criteria, you can identify it, it doesn't matter if you haven't seen it for years. And it don't matter how beat up it's got, and it don't matter if you haven't seen it for all those years, I can still identify that car. If we can identify the church, the Lord of Alpaca, with enough identifying criteria, though we can't find the record of it for thousands of years, it's going to die. Still, if I know enough about what that church was there, when I find it today, I can still identify that church. And nobody has a continuous line of records all the way down. Another paper record for none of us to go back. But we can still identify the church. And we'll have to do that by having identifying criteria that will distinguish it from the others. And that's what we're going to try to talk about as we move along this week. One of you brothers give us a song, I'll tell you this while I get here. A friend of mine was in the banking business. And again, I went to school together. And matter of fact, he came back to the local bank at home. That's kind of where I banked. And I was up there one day. And what was going on at that time? A lot of counterfeit money got floating around. He and I got to talking about that. And I said something. I said, I guess you all have a good bit of that to come in. He said, well, we do a good little bit of it lately. I said, I guess your folks can identify that pretty good. He said, are they good at it? He said, they hardly ever miss any of it. And I said, I guess to do that, you'd have to do a lot of training, teaching about that counterfeit money. He said, very little. Very little. He said, matter of fact, when we meet, we don't even talk about counterfeit money. He said, we talk about real money. He said, if I could identify real money, the rest of it counts. But he said, the closer it is to real, the more difficult it is to identify. So tonight, we're not going to spend all week talking about false religions and the false churches and what might or might not be churches. We're going to try to talk about the church with the law of that church. If we can identify it, then the rest of them has to fall in whatever category they fall in. And the closer to right they are, the more difficult they are to distinguish. and that's what that's what false religion has done down through the years they have tried to adapt and change their teachings and get as close as they can to the real so that it doesn't look quite so false and it's not so easy to pick out but we can still pick out the church the lord left here there's another crowd here to do it thank y'all for letting me teach with you and be here tonight brothers go ahead We can it's whatever we stand out here if you have something on your heart You've never been a slave Jesus Christ back up the church in the world. We can preach to you Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus, keep me near the cross you