In this sermon, the speaker focuses on four important aspects of his life that have deeply impacted him. He emphasizes that God chose him and liked him, and that God has given him blessings. The speaker also highlights the importance of seeking God and warns against forsaking Him. Towards the end of the sermon, the speaker discusses the story of David, who experienced success as a king under God's guidance. The speaker emphasizes the need to persevere and "do it" in our faith, drawing from the example of David's reign.

Well now, if you turn to 1 Chronicles chapter 28. Now that's the easiest Bible, book in the Bible, to find. You just shut your Bible, look down the outside edge and open the clean bit and you will be at Chronicles. I once said that here and Stuart Briscoe was sitting on the platform behind me and laughed and when the meeting was finished he marched up to his office and took his Bible off his desk and just for a laugh shut it, looked down the outside edge and opened the clean bit and he was at Chronicles. Some people think that that's why they called it Chronicles, because it is chronic. But I find that it has a tremendous value to the Christian experience. Now I'm hoping that by the end of this week you'll begin to get a rather funny idea that the Old Testament can be of a value to the Christian experience. You see, one occasion I went to a college and stepped onto the platform to do a week of Bible readings to discover that everybody took out of their pockets very slim editions of the scriptures. And so I leaned across to one of the faculty members on the platform and there was about three or four thousand students in this college and all the faculty were on the platform and I asked if I might borrow his and I found that he was holding a special edition of the New Testament and it began at the Acts of the Apostles and went through to Revelation. And I had anticipated ministering that week from the New Testament but being as I am a rebel I then stood and announced that I wanted them to turn to the book of Chronicles. And so one of the gentlemen sitting next to me sort of put his hand to his mouth and whispered out the corner of his mouth, you mean Corinthians? And I said, no I didn't, I meant Chronicles. And so we actually before we began our first message had to stop and have a little bit of debate with the audience because he got up and said, well I'm sorry but we can't really allow that because that's in the Old Testament. And I said, yes I know. And they said, well you see we are under the day of grace and we are in the message and the dispensation of the grace of God and really the scripture for the church today starts at Acts and goes through to Revelation. And it's what brother Paul says that's of more importance to the believer today than any other word because he is the one that's been entrusted with the doctrine of truth for the establishment of the body of Christ. I said, I see. And they said, yes and so really any gospel begins with the commencement of the church. I said, that's most interesting. And I asked them if they would care to hear what the apostle Paul had to say to the Galatians. And I read them Galatians chapter 3 in verse 8. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham saying, in thy seed shall all nations be blessed. I said, now what does that verse tell us? Oh he says brother Paul says that the gospel was preached to brother Abraham. I said, where do we find brother Abraham's story? In the first epistle of Paul to Timothy. And he said, the Old Testament. I said, I see. And what were the words that brother Paul said to Timothy? He said, don't you know that in the latter days we're going to move into some of the most troublesome times in the world's history. And he says, the only way you're going to be able as a believer to combat that, and remember Paul wrote those words nearly 2,000 years ago. He said, the only way you're going to be able to stand in your faith through the error of the seducing spirits that will create upheaval in the household of faith is as you continue in the things that thou hast been taught and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned that as from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction that the man of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works. I said, now what scriptures was he talking about? The Old Testament. And what did he say about the Old Testament? That it could lead you to salvation in Christ Jesus. What more? That it was profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped unto the purposes of God. So do you know that if a foreign force entered this nation tomorrow, or even some of the subversive elements in the nation suddenly took over and said, right, the Christians may no longer have the New Testament, but we'll allow them to keep the Old Testament Hebrew history, so there's nothing in that, they've left you the best. Because they've left you all that which is profitable enough to bring about in your life the quality of Christianity that you need to be effective. You see, you show me a Christian that just sticks to the New Testament and you'll show me a Christian that's imbalanced. Show me a Christian, Revelation 3.20 and Galatians 2.20, such wonderful little titbits, the caviar of scripture. You'll find that they are totally imbalanced. Because very often in the New Testament where it takes one verse to explain to you a divine doctrinal principle, you find that the best way of understanding that one verse is by seeing it in picture form in Old Testament story. You could safely say that your Old Testament is the picture book of New Testament truth. You can also say of the Old Testament that the old is in the new explained, and the New Testament is in the Old Testament contained. You try to fathom Revelation without Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, you'll drive yourself up the pole. You try to understand Daniel without the aid of Revelation and thou shalt likewise go nuts. It's just an utter impossibility because the whole thing becomes a unit, a unit. And I find, for instance, that in the course of teaching the person in ministry of the Holy Spirit some 20 to 30 hours in the winter school, that some of the folks who prefer to hear mention of the Holy Spirit in every meeting or it's not a meeting, get rather upset when after maybe 10 or 11 hours or 12 hours of lectures we're still looking at the Holy Spirit in the first half of the Old Testament. And you know they'll come to the office and knock the door and they'll say, when are you going to get into Corinthians? Because they only know about three parts of the Bible and that's Acts, Corinthians, and one verse in Ephesians. And I've said to a pupil like that, now just sit down a minute and tell me how much of what we've discovered about the personality of the Holy Spirit, his ministry within a believer, and his divinity that we've looked at from the Old Testament thus far, how much of that did you already know? They've said, oh well of course, I mean the Old Testament's been a closed book to me and I must admit that I've never heard anything like we've been hearing about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. In fact, I never even knew the Holy Spirit was active in the Old Testament and that people could be filled with the Holy Spirit before Pentecost. And I said, well that's wonderful, well just let me tell you this, that we're going to be another five hours before we even reach Matthew. And generally they find that we're on to our last four or five lectures before we ever hit Corinthians. And so you see there's an awful lot that you can glean from Genesis to Revelation, the whole thing's a unit, and the sooner Christians start treating the book as a unit, the more stable their faith is going to become. Because I'm going to be quite honest with you, most young Christians these days have a salvation and a savior of their imagination. Not according to the book. You see, this is the written word of God that's meant to lead you through its words and inspiration to the living word of God, Jesus Christ. That's why it's possible for a theologian to get up and to preach and know and talk and debate about the written word and never, never find it being blessed or leading anybody to Christ. Because he never takes them past the documentation of fact, the academics of scripture and theology through into the living person of Christ that it's declaring. That's why Jesus said to the theologians of his day, you search the scriptures, you actually spend your life in them because you're convinced that these words are the words that have eternal life. He says the only problem is you won't come to me. Because this written word is supposed to lead you to the living word of God, Jesus Christ. Now that's one error, but the other error is that we know Jesus is the living word of God, our Savior, and many of us receive him in evangelistic campaigns and meetings as the living word of God, the living Savior into our experience. But then we never go back to the written word to find out from the documentation and theology and facts of the book the details about this living word that we have received. And that means that we then live on a Jesus of our imagination, not a Jesus according to the book. And that's why it's fatal to find people running around just simply claiming to know Jesus, and then they have all sorts of wooly fuzzy ideas about what Jesus is like, and everything is according to their imagination. They have no concrete understanding of who he is, what he wants to do in the Christian's life because they've never read it. They live on meetings and verses, texts, cliches, and don't get down to the basics of discovering who he is, what he wants to do, and how he's going to do it. And you see it's one thing to get married, it's another thing to go away and get to know the person you've married. And it would be a fatal marriage if you said yes at the altar and then went away and lived on your imagination and pretended you knew your wife or your husband. You've got to take the person, get to know them, live with them, find out. And that's why it's really necessary if never before in your life that you begin to consider the Old Testament. And so in that particular college I lectured the whole week on the Christian life from the Book of Chronicles. And they just had never thought that you could glean anything from it. And so I make no apology for opening at Chronicles this morning. And we're going to look at chapter 28 of 1 Chronicles. And here we have a king. I'm sticking to our theme because it's here in the Old Testament that we're going to see kingship at its worst and kingship at its best. Those who fail to reign and those who are successful in reigning. Now we've had a really hard look in the first two sessions at those who didn't make it in their reigning in life. But now we're going to have a look at the one king that God said of him prior to his being anointed as king, he is a person that has a heart like unto mine. And I want you to keep that in mind as we take a little look at this fellow David because there's no history of any other Christian or man of faith in the Old Testament term recorded as long as his is. He's recorded in scripture from his youth right through to his death. Chapter upon chapter upon chapter upon chapter about David. And we have one of the most complete records of any person's life when we look at the life of David. But now in this chapter he's nearing the end of his pilgrimage on the earth and he's coming to the place where he knows he's going to leave the earth. And as a king he used his authority to call the whole nation to Jerusalem. I've often wondered what they thought they were going there for because he brought the army, he brought everybody. And the funny thing is when he got them there he stood up and gave his testimony. That's leadership, that's kingship. And David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes and the captains of the companies that ministered to the king by course and the captains over the thousands and captains over the hundreds and the stewards over all the substance and possession of the king and of his sons with the officers and with the mighty men and with all the valiant men unto Jerusalem. Then David the king stood up upon his feet and said hear me my brethren and my people as for me I had in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the coven of the Lord and for the footstool of our God and had made ready for the building. But God said unto me thou shalt not build a house for my name because thou hast been a man of war and has shed blood. Howbeit the Lord God of Israel chose me before all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever. For he hath chosen Judah to be the ruler and at the house of Judah the house of my father and among the sons of my father he liked me to make me king over all Israel. And of my sons for the Lord hath given me many sons he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the over Israel. And he said unto me Solomon thy son he shall build my house that I have chosen him to be my son and I will be his father. Moreover I will establish his kingdom forever if if if he be constant to do my commandments and my judgments as at this day. Now therefore in the sight of all Israel the congregation of the Lord and in the audience of our God keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God that ye may possess this good land and leave it for an inheritance for your children after you forever. And thou Solomon my son know thou the God of thy father and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind for the Lord searcheth all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. If thou seek him he will be found of thee but if thou forsake him he will cast thee off forever. Take heed now for the Lord hath chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary be strong and a few words from last night's reading do it Do it. Obedience. Now then here we have this fellow David who really knew what it meant to reign and to be a king and to enjoy success under the hand of his God. And towards the end of his life you see it's easy to have a good beginning but it's towards the end of his life that he stands up and gives this testimony and there are four statements that I want to pull out of this reading that to me seem to be the things that stagger him in his old age. The four issues that seem to strike him as really important of all that he could have said from his life these four things are the things that stagger him. In verse four the Lord chose me chose me. Number two towards the end of that verse he liked me he liked me and number three the Lord hath given me hath given me and in verse six he said to me four things that were paramount in his experience that he expressed to the people he chose me he liked me he gave me he said to me. Now what's so important about these things well let's take the choice first. Now what David is not doing here is setting up a platform for hyper-Calvinism and if you don't know what hyper-Calvinism is blessed art thou amongst many people and so we shall not disturb the grave that thou dost not know but David is not trying to put over here the idea that God looked over the battlements of heaven at all the myriads of people on the earth and then suddenly says I'll have him. He'll do. No David's not staggered by who he chose but the place of choice the place of choice. Now if you want uh an indication of that being so if you look in psalm 70 let's try that let's try psalm 70 verse 71 let's see it might be the wrong one is it the wrong one now then I'll look that up for you later it's just escaped my frame of reference right at the moment uh it's one of the psalms and it's verse 71 where he says this the Lord chose me and took me from the sheepfold the Lord chose me and took me from the sheepfold that's the place where God got him at a sheep pen now 78 verse 70 we've been told he chose me from the sheepfolds and that's the place now a sheep pen and I know all about sheep because we kept the beggars here for a while some 200 of them is not one of the most pleasant places in the world to have a holiday and I'm glad that it's the Holy Spirit that inspired the picture of human beings like sheep all we like sheep have gone astray you don't really understand that verse until you've had to look after the rotten things but you know if you have 200 sheep in that parkland there and they're all up at this end of the park and yet down over the bridge round the corner one guest left a gate open they knew it and you just saw the whole 200 in single file going straight for that hole and out through the gate and if you gathered them to dip them for foot rot and cram them into a pen if once you dip them you let the first one out and it ran five paces and jumped over nothing do you know the other 199 took exactly five paces and jumped over the same nothing you never sound like talk about conformity and copyism you have to see sheep to believe it but here is this kid and he's sitting there in the sheep pen that's where he spent his life now they didn't have doors on the sheepfolds the shepherd actually sat down in the gap to keep them in so it's a place of dirt because if you rope off a piece of that parkland out there and cram sheep into it it won't take them half an hour before the stiletto heels have made it into a mud bath and you won't find a blade of grass under their feet and the place stinks you could safely say that david was looking back through his life saying just think here i am a king of a tremendous kingdom and you know where god got me he got me in a smelly old hole now i'm positive that if you had been able to walk up with the information you now possess about david looking back through history if you'd been able to get into dr who's uh police box the tarbis it's a british television program and you were able to go back in time to the sheep pen and came up on this youth remember he would just be a youth in his teens sitting there strumming away on his lyre and making up one of his new poems and songs it's not modern you know they think the present generation think they're the only ones that discovered poetry and verse and music bunk david was doing it away back then and you go up and say to him man aren't you really rejoicing this morning he took one sniff at the dung and all these bleating sheep and he'd say what have i got to rejoice about well man when you think of what's going to happen to you in your life my life yeah you're going to be a king he would have looked up into your face and he would have simply said knots i couldn't me this is my lot sheep i know the routine i'm fixed for in life dirt smell and sheep and the contrast of the news that you've brought me this morning is ridiculous it is an utter impossibility for me ever to become a king and i know that feeling because i know now after 19 or 20 years of being a christian if you'd come to me uh 20 years ago and said to me billy do you know that one day you will be ministering in different parts of the world and that you will be lecturing on the bible to students of the word of god i would have only had one comment to make to such a piece of news and you would have had a flea in your ear and sent packing because i would have been able to say quite honestly at that time that is as far removed from the truth as it is the world to the outside of the universe it's impossible it's an utter contradiction in terms to say that my life could ever be different from running around the streets of the suburbs of glasgow six of us living in one room survival of the fittest and with the kind of life i live you're going to tell me that from being the kind of person who three times before he was 20 was on the verge of suicide and finally came to christ on the third attempt that i could ever be different and the answer is yes you can i have never seen nor ear heard the things that god has prepared for them that love him you could never imagine what god's got for you and i want to tell you this morning that if i said to you take a page out of your notebook and write down what you think god will do with your life in the next 20 years i'll tell you this even if you let your imagination run wild and put down the most fantastic picture imaginable when you're finished i'll tell you tear it up it'll be nothing like it nothing like it you could never imagine what god's going to do with some of you never you could never write it david could never have imagined it that god could pick you up in your sinful condition and without any pretense you know exactly what you are inside you know the mess you're in you know how stinking you are in your own personal experience your inhibitions your fears your frustrations your torments your habits your thoughts you know that you're in a pig pen you know that you're in a sheepfold a rotten filthy dirty condition and you could never believe for one minute that god could pick you up and let you reign in life by one christ jesus and make your king but take heart from david david could look back through his life saying god you said you would and you did and the scripture in the new testament tells us that faithful is he who calls you who also will do it and he that's begun a good work in you will complete it till the day of jesus christ god has his program for you and he's going to fulfill it but there are certain things that you have to remember in order that you can enjoy that the second statement david made here is this he liked me now this is the one you've got to get right god chose david from a filthy hole to make him a king and now david says another thing that staggered me all my life was the fact that he liked me now get this one right he's not saying david you are a good little boy and you know you're just the kind of guy i need for a king david now knows looking back through a mess not a good life a mess that the day he came to him at the sheep pen and picked him to be a king god knew that day because god knows the end from the beginning i am going to make you a yet in spite of all my love for you which is perfect and never alters you are going to grow up as a man of faith to commit adultery you're going to grow up as a man that prays to me to commit murder by proxy you're going to grow up to be a person that will oppose my will and bring death and plague upon your nation and i know all that right now as i pick you at that hole but that's the nature of my love i know the worst about you and i know the best about you and i still love you and i want you to know that i like you not for what you are but for what i'm going to make of you that's the liking that's attached to david that david discovered by the end of his life god liked me not for what i was and am but for what i am being changed into by the grace of god now you've got to get this clear too in your christian experience if never before settle down for the fact that you're not going to get better i hate to be despondent you know upsetting you like but you know you're rotten and you're always going to be rotten and this is the tragedy too many of you want to get away from what you are and you never get around to accepting yourself for what you are and so you equate spirituality with getting away from yourself getting away from what you are and that is not going to happen because god has already made his verdict upon you and i by telling us that we are just fit for death and that there's no good thing in us well please accept god's verdict you see one of the most fascinating characters i find in the bible is rahab the harlot the prostitute you'll find in the book of joshua that when joshua sent spies in to spy out the land those two soldiers took time off to go to the house of a prostitute men have always been the same right down the line and they went and hid in this lassie's house and in the course of their visit she suddenly revealed to them that she knew god was going to come and conquer the land of canaan and that she wanted to be saved and uh she was saved and she was a prostitute who had faith and she was a heathen prostitute not with even even within the the paul of the israel the jewish hebrew nation and when you turn to your new testament all those hundreds of years after she'd gone off the face of this earth you find in the first chapter of matthew's gospel that she is in the royal line of descendancy from adam to jesus christ god can pick up a prostitute pagan outside of israel and fit her into the royal line and she became one of those who gave birth to a son and we find that from that son david came through that line but when you turn over to hebrews you find in hebrews and also in the epistle of james she's referred to by the holy spirit who's inspiring the word as the harlot rehab and so what do we find in the scripture from the old testament sixth book joshua to nearly the end of the new testament the holy spirit only sees her as she is a prostitute you're always what you are to god but the fact that you've been fitted to be a queen and placed in the royal line and become one of those mentioned in the great household of faith is what god liked about you because that's what he did with you now too often we think that when we become a christian what we wear disappear and this is where we get into all sorts of dangers you see if you're a liar you'll always be one so get used to it and if you're an immoral person recognize that you're immoral and you're always going to be one if you're an alcoholic you have to recognize that you're an alcoholic and you're always going to be one you never tell lies to become a liar you tell lies because you are one you're never immoral in order to become immoral you're immoral because you are immoral and you see if you don't grasp that fact that sin as a principle within you manifests itself in a particular fashion it makes you what you are when you become a christian you'll expect not that jesus frees you from the dominion of sin but that he takes that away from you and that's why when you believe that doctrine you get shocked after your conversion when you find you've done things that you never even did before you were converted but that was only because you had assumed that you'd become a new person that you had basically changed you don't change and you've got to remember that and it'll help you to have a little bit more compassion than people who found sin manifest itself in various fashions for instance you take a homosexual or a lesbian they find it very difficult to find fellowship in the church of jesus christ why well they're christian they shouldn't be like that where do they get that doctrine you see there's a difference between being a homosexual and committing homosexuality there's a difference between being a lesbian what you are and what you practice lesbianism there's a difference between being a liar what you are and practicing lies when an alcoholic wants to be rehabilitated to normal manhood a male alcoholic has to make the first step of coming to the place where he says i am an alcoholic and every day of his life throughout his remedial training to normality he gets up looks in the mirror and says good morning alcoholic that's what i am but today through my training and my faith in god i will not practice what i am i'll be what god likes me to be and it's the same in anything in your life if you're a glutton you're always a glutton and the only reason you won't overeat today is if you don't practice what you are gluttony but you are what you are and that doesn't change and god knows what you are and he wants you to know what you are if you're a person that just can't resist passing a shoe shop without buying another pair of shoes and the wardrobe's full of them already yes it even comes down to that you see we get people who who just can't resist buying new clothes and will condemn the homosexual will condemn the lesbianism and say i don't know how they can do that how filthy how disgusting and they're totally intemperate in the control of their money and the purchase of clothing and what they spend on themselves or what they eat or what their mind's like and it would stagger you the number that maybe haven't perpetrated the acts of immorality but live in their fantasies and uh they hide it because they think that shouldn't be there rather than come to the place of recognizing as david did i am what i am god knows what i am so it's time i got to know what i am but realize that i don't have to practice what i am if i will allow god almighty to change me to the extent that his power day by day released in my life prevents me from being what i am and i personally don't bite the angel bit and i can say to you people here this morning that if it wasn't for the presence of jesus christ in my life i could go out today and do everything i ever did 20 years ago i'm convinced of that because i know what i am and god knows what i am but the only reason i don't is because he's broken the dominion of the control of that in my life and by his daily power that i have to totally depend upon if there's a minute of the day that i don't i'm in danger but by his daily power he gets about manifesting to the world the billy striking that he likes which is only through the power of christ controlling so that i don't do what i am by nature and that's the person that god likes and that's the person god not what you are but what he wants you to be but you can only be that as you allow god to produce that in you but if never before try to settle down to the realization you are what you are and you're not going to get away from that you're not going to get away from that and you'll be as capable of committing sin after 50 60 years of victorious christian living as david was capable of doing it and at last he wept and he says god and sin did my mother conceive me and against thee and thee only have i sinned at last i see myself as i really am rotten through and then do you know what he said to god create in me a new heart oh god now that word create in psalm 51 is only used in two other places in the whole of the bible and it's a special word create that's only attributed to an original creation that god alone can create it's in genesis 1 1 god made the heavens and the earth that's the word create there an original that god only made the next time it's used is when god created man in his own image an original thing that only god could do and the only other time it's used in the bible is when david shouts up create in me a new heart that's something only you can do god now the next thing he says here that has impressed him all his life is the fact that god was going to fulfill all these great promises by giving him a son by giving him a son now of course david was quite misunderstanding standing in his um receiving of that communication from god because god didn't say solomon god never said solomon he surmised it would be solomon but god didn't say solomon he said he'd give him a son that would build his house forever and the reference was to jesus christ not to solomon who perished for his marriages to outlandish women in all his adultery and the fact that he cooled off in his faith after having had a great start no god gave him a promise that he would bring this fulfillment of his kingship to an eternal kingship through a son that he would give which is jesus christ and this is still the same thing for us god picks us as sinners from our sinful whole to make us what he wants us to be and he brings all that to pass through his son jesus christ now all the old testament saints lived in anticipation of christ coming to do it we live knowing that he came and so now it's possible for us and our lives in nature are just the same as the old testament saints rotten and they knew they were guaranteed to be failures because they could never have the permanent indwelling presence of christ through the holy spirit in their lives the holy spirit only filled and came upon certain people in the old testament times for service and then withdrew but we in the church are actually sitting here this morning with everything that david longed for and couldn't get and he was guaranteed to be constantly in a mess but we're not it's unnecessary for us to be in a constant mess because we have what david didn't have the presence of the son that god has given we have actually got jesus christ in us in our lives and you realize this morning that just exactly where you're sitting jesus christ is sitting in you and yet for some of you you still seem to think he's so very far away you're always looking out and beyond for indications of christ rather than accept what the word has said i've given you a son he's in your heart he's there to stay he's resident within you take my word for it even if you're in a mess at the moment he's there he's there and he's in and he never leaves he may not be being allowed to have control he may not be being allowed to change you and to uh so occupy your life that you're not expressing yourself for what you are but for what you want to do i mean you may not be allowing his life to be through you but he's right there and you're complete and if there's one thing i would like you to gather more than any other this week and that is you have to stop searching for more and start enjoying what you have the presence of jesus christ in your life for the word of god tells us in colossians 2 9 and 10 that the fullness of the godhead bodily dwells in jesus christ and you are complete in him now how much more can you get than that if you are complete ephesians 1 4 3 and 4 you have a repetition of the thing in this in another fashion blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ who hath past tense who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in christ jesus in other words god has taken all the blessings that there are in heaven and he's compacted them into his son and he's put his son into you and you have within you everything you ever need or ever will get and you see if you occupy yourself looking for what you've already got you won't enjoy what you've got for looking for it it's as simple as that and too many people today are looking beyond the cross for more instead of being at the cross you see that's a tactic of the enemy the minute an unconverted person begins to turn to face the cross of jesus christ and what he did for them the devil says hey what about evolution you don't believe that genesis stuff do you and he turns them away from the cross back to the creation of the world and adam and eve problems cain's wife and he gets them all screwed up on the foundation of the earth and all the rest of it as long as you keep away from matthew's gospel and christ and a cross but when we come by faith to the cross of jesus christ and receive him as our personal savior and accept the word we find that the genesis business doesn't become all that big a problem because we know the god of creation and although we don't know all the answers we know that he doesn't one day he's going to tell us when we sit in these mini bible school in heaven see and so it no longer becomes a paramount issue but the funny thing is that satan then knows he's lost you drat they've become a christian i've lost them now all i have to occupy myself doing now is making sure that they don't reign in life by one christ jesus or other people are going to join them so what i'm going to do now is get those christians by another subtlety away from being effective so what i do is i make them look beyond the cross and i keep saying to them in their hearts soon the king is coming are you ready for him coming have you been a big blessing have you got everything is your lamp full of oil are you all ready and you know the little heart panics and we say oh god am i ready have i got enough blessing am i ready am i ready for your coming am i deep enough am i sanctified enough am i secure enough am i holy enough and you keep stretching for more and more and looking for something great to happen to make you super spiritual and the devil says that's right keep on with the hobby and as long as you're stretching beyond you're not standing there viewing that cross and saying it there it was finished i died there and the only life that i'm going to live now is by the risen christ from that cross in me let's get on with the job and reach others and as long as you're on the hobby of getting yourself more spiritual you never reach one person for jesus christ you're occupied with yourself that's all there is of this recording