In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of being a soldier and the importance of putting on the whole armor of God. He uses the example of Moses, who spent 40 years in the desert after being a trained soldier. Despite the hardships and regrets, Moses obeyed God and led the Israelites to deliverance through the Red Sea. The preacher emphasizes the role of faith in taking risks and resting in God's mercy, using the story of Moses' mother who placed him in a basket and trusted God's protection.

Again we're going to look into the same chapter, Hebrews 11. Right, Hebrews 11 and read from verse 23. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land which the Egyptians are saying to do were drowned. As I mentioned the other night, I think there's nothing more profitable than reading how God makes men, either in the word of God or biographies, which are not always very sound. I think writers are very often biased, but autobiographies, if we can get them, are certainly much, at least to me, more convincing. And it seems that in all these characters here and elsewhere, that in some period of life there's a trial by fire. Not always literally fire, but sometimes so, like in the case of the Hebrew, three Hebrew children. Now this is a day in which it seems the preachers are attempting to pull down all the hills and lift up all the valleys and make all the crooked places straight, and bulldoze all trials out of the way, and you know, we're marching to Zion, but it's all on level ground. I think if the Lord answered all our prayers, most of us would be like jellyfish. We wouldn't have any backbone, we wouldn't have any character, we wouldn't have any strong, vigorous faith. We want to leave it all with God. Now what proportion of responsibility is yours to come to maturity, and what responsibility is God's? It's not all God's. Because it says there in the, again in the epistle of Jude, you're to keep yourself, you're to keep yourself from idols. John says, keep yourself in the love of God. Again, having these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves. I don't care how filled with the spirit you are, he won't lift you out of bed in the morning at four o'clock to pray. You've got to do something about it. And I think the greatest possession in the world is self-possession. That is self-possession under the authority of God. I think we often forget the last verse in the 16th chapter of John, in which Jesus says, fear not, in the world ye shall have tribulation. Now that's a promise as much as anything else. Fear not, in the world ye shall have tribulation, but fear not, I have overcome the world. Before that, Jesus had told his disciples he was going to leave them. And that was something they didn't want. He was going to send somebody better than himself, or greater than himself, and that was something they couldn't believe. Reminds me of the pastor who announced his resignation, and one of the faithful old members of the church wasn't there, and someone said, well you should go see her tomorrow. She'll cry, oh she'll be very distressed, she just loves you so much. And so he went and drank his cup of tea, and gradually maneuvered till he thought it was safe, and then he said, well I guess you didn't hear the news. No, I'm resigning from the church. Oh no, oh we can't do without, oh no, no, no. He said, listen, I'm resigning, but a far better man is going to succeed me. Oh no, she said, yeah, yeah, he's a much better preacher than I am. He's a much better man of God than I am. And the lady said, I can't believe that. That's what the last pastor said when he was leaving. Well Jesus says, you're going to have somebody better. I'm with you, but he shall be in you. He said he'd give them the the comforter, which is the Holy Ghost. The comforter, that word doesn't mean he's a nursing mother for spiritually sick children. The word comforter comes from two Latin words, comfortus, with strength. You shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you all. In other words, he'll come with strength upon you. And Jesus says, don't be afraid. You think if I take the hub out of the wheel, well the the spokes will collapse. But if I go, somebody else is coming in my place. And he says, you should not be afraid to go into the world. It's a world of tribulation. It's a world of opposition. It's a world that's so hostile to you. But don't be afraid because I will be in you. And then he says, my world is going to fall apart in the end of that 16th chapter. And he says, I'm not afraid because the Father is with me. Now if I can face Gethsemane and trial and judgment because the Father is with me, you should be able to face the same things because the Holy Ghost is within you. That's why he comes with strength and power. And be sure these characters we've read of, again it says of Joseph, as we mentioned yesterday, he begins up here and he goes down to Dauphin to take food for his brothers. They put him down in prison and then he goes down into Egypt. Then he goes down in prison again and there he's left for years. And yet, thank you, and yet God is with him. And it says elsewhere, his feet were hurt in the stocks. They mauled him, if you like. And then again you have the three Hebrew children. They went to the burning fiery furnace. Shakespeare once said, it's easy for, it's easy for you to bear the other man's toothache. Well it's easy to sit down and say to somebody else, all his grace is sufficient for you. What about when it comes to yourself? Are we, are we just as courageous? Are we absorbing truth like we kind of throw it to other people? The three Hebrew children went in the fire. What happened? Well all that happened was the fire burned off them what the world put on them. They needed a fire to get rid of the bonds and fetters. And by the same token, when we get into certain situations of life, certain fetters begin to break off. It says of our Lord Jesus Christ, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered. Now we'd all bypass it, I'm sure we would. Nobody goes looking for suffering. But by the same token, it's a period of testing, a period of trial, which comes on different levels to different people. Now here we have one of the most amazing characters, I think, in the whole of the Word of God. The Jews still think that Moses is the supreme character of all history. And here we have this situation. I see a great parallel here between Moses and the Lord Jesus. Moses was born in a slave hut. Jesus was born in a slave system. Moses was born the son of men, and he was adopted as a prince. Jesus was the son of God and a prince of glory. And he came down to earth and lived in this style that we have. Moses went on to the mount and he was transfigured because his face, they couldn't dare to look on his face. He had to veil it. Jesus went on to the mount of transfiguration. Moses was tested for 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus was tested for 40 days in the wilderness. Moses went up on the mount and he gave us the sermon on the mount, his sermon on the mount, in 10 commandments. And Jesus went on the sermon on the mount and preached the greatest sermon ever preached. It's still the answer to all our problems. The only reason we're in the mess we're in is because we've rejected the prince of peace. And with all our so-called ideas of pursuing peace, we're still trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. You know, you and I, we recited that Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and, you know, all those classics. And if your children ask you, who's Humpty Dumpty, what do you say? I think Humpty Dumpty is a satire on the fall of man. Humpty Dumpty was supposed to be an egg on the wall and he fell off. And as you say, anybody can scramble eggs, who can unscramble them? Nobody's ever put the egg together. Nobody can put the human race together. Why, I, I'm, I'm not just old, I'm antique. I can remember World War I. Two years before World War I, we had what was called the Fabian Socialist Society, which was made up of so-called intellectuals, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells and, I don't know how many others, maybe not more than a dozen. But they were so superior, you see, it was a sleepy period in English history. Britannia ruled the waves. We still had a complete British empire. The sun never set on the British empire. Kipling was the great champion who warned us, lest we forget, the tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart. Still stands an ancient sacrifice, a humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget. And he goes on to remind us of, of, of the fall of Nineveh and Tyre. How they boasted of their security as the Roman Empire did. The Roman Empire was never destroyed from the outside. Every orator finished his speech by pointing to the distance and saying, Carthage must be destroyed. And men reached for swords they weren't wearing and tried to run over bridges that weren't there to get to Carthage. But Carthage was the enemy of Rome. They wanted Carthage to be destroyed, but, but Carthage did not destroy Rome. Rome destroyed itself. Nobody will destroy America. We're doing a good job ourselves. We're corrupting, we've legalized abortion, we have homosexuality. Go on, tell us what. And there's this horrible deterioration inside. I noticed even, uh, when, uh, before the presidential election, the, the, the suggestion, will you pray 15 minutes a day until the election? So what? Is God our errand boy till the election and then do what we like afterwards? Let's have a moral majority. God never had a moral majority. He had a holy minority. A moral majority was something that, um, who was a man had, I've forgotten his name for the moment there. Um, in the Old Testament, he had 300,000 men. What was his name? Gideon. Thank you, Gideon. And it was reduced from a moral majority. It was reduced to, what, 300 men eventually. I'm sure that 500 brethren who saw Jesus in the resurrection, I'm quite sure that they were invited to the upper room, but only 120 made it. Where were the other 380? It's like the children of Israel, they came out of Egypt and they came to Kadesh Barnea and it was intended to be a stepping stone, it became a stumbling block. It was intended to be a thoroughfare and it became a terminus. It was intended to be a gateway, it became a goal. We don't have to sweat in Egypt, we don't have to get up, we don't have to make bricks, nobody's going to lash us. So why not settle down here? Ah, but the promised land flowing with milk and honey. The most amazing, a place you can't even dream of. Like you and I can't anticipate the glories of heaven. How nobody knows how many millions died, all we know is that only two out of the whole mob, at least the older one, went into the promised land. I think the church is stuck now between Egypt and the promised land. She's stuck between the resurrection and the upper room. We're afraid to enter into that land. Now sometimes, I think sometimes that we mess up this idea of being filled with the spirit, as though once you get filled with the spirit that ends all your problems. It does end them, it's the beginning end. Somebody asked the pastor one day, have you a real Pentecostal church? He said, yeah, I pastor a real Pentecostal church. How do you know? He said, I have all the problems they had. Well, they're not going to avoid problems. They had lots of problems. As soon as they got into the fullness of the blessing, many of them had to go to jail. These people got out of the promised land, the hazel land flowing with milk and honey, and they didn't make it. Do you ever, not long ago, do you remember about three or four years ago, there was a marvelous play on TV. It drew more crowds than any other Roots. And it certainly was very fascinating. It opened a lot of wounds, surely enough, about slavery and what have you got. But somebody asked Alex Haley, fairly recently now, you became a wealthy man, you put on that amazing show in Roots. Do you have any ambitions? What's your next goal? And quite kind of laconically, without, you know, so give me a few minutes to think about this, immediately he responded with this, before I die, I want to know why I've lived. That's pretty smart, isn't it? Are we here to come to the earth? Are we Christians just here between the womb and the tomb to live and do your best and live in a bigger house, get a bigger car and some father? Or are we here to live the kingdom of God on earth? Are we waiting to go to heaven or as, um, I was going to say Shakespeare, not Shakespeare, but Spurgeon said, a little faith will get you to heaven, a little more faith will bring heaven to you. Now all these idealists, sure, Fabians, they scorn the Bible. They said we don't need the Bible, we don't need Jesus Christ, we can revolutionize society by, uh, well, what they call intellectual and biological problems or methods. Uh, put the weak out, you know, and get stronger people physically, get stronger people mentally. They didn't talk about repentance and forgiveness, they talked about the adequacy of materialism, the adequacy of materialism and the sufficiency of man. That was two years before World War I, then World War came and messed everything, it was the war to end wars, remember, there's never going to be another one after it. The adequacy of materialism, the sufficiency of man, the inevitability of progress. They were saying two years before World War I, we're not beasts. Well, we've really advanced now, haven't we? We are the only generation that can barbecue a whole city in 60 seconds. And many of you are blessed in the fact that you've never been in a war. Some of you may be older men, went to a war in Europe, but America's never had a war, not on her own territory. She'll have one, sure enough. You see it maybe on TV screens and it's pretty horrible. I went through two World Wars, it's worse than horrible. Wake up in the morning, your neighborhood's gone. Go down the street, there's a baby's head in that tree, and there's somebody's legs here, and there's a piano here, and somebody crushed under it. And the streets are running with blood and smell of burning human flesh, and what is all the hellishness that comes out of war. And we don't get better, we get worse, we're the most cruel generation, as an ungodly man said, we're the most cruel generation this world has ever known. Another one, Tonio, says the dance of death goes on round about us endlessly. Somebody else says it's not microbes and so forth that's the danger to mankind, it's man himself. All because of what? Because we rejected the Prince of Peace. We'll never have another World War. Two years after they said it, we had one. 1939, 1919, war ended, there was a peace pact, a peace pact. Remember it was a, it was an armistice, it wasn't an end of war, it was an agreement to lie down and lick our wounds till we could get strong enough to fight again. And 1919 passed, and the end of World War I, we came to World War II in 1939, 20 years in which the Church had the greatest opportunity since Pentecost, in my judgment. And again we muffed the whole thing, fumbled the ball. 1939 came more cruel than ever, with all the devilry. H. G. Wells wasn't quite as smart now, he had written his world, his book, World History, he'd written his book Crux Ansata, got him into trouble with the Roman Church. But at the end of World War II, the man who said that the millennium is round the corner without Jesus Christ, the man who talked about the inevitability of progress and the sufficiency of man and the adequacy of materialism, at the end of World War II, he's saying, he wrote a book called Mind at the End of its Tether. And he says there is no hope for the human race, there's something corrupt in man. Pity he didn't find that out a bit earlier. The founder of socialism in England, whose name escapes me for a moment, but one of the men who was in with the Fabian socialists, actually. 30 years after he'd given his life to socialism, he said, if God would give me my time back, I would have stayed in the Methodist Church, and I would have become a preacher, and I'd like to become a preacher, though it's rather late. You see the idea of lifting humanity was born in prayer meetings, it wasn't born in taverns. And by the way, atom bombs were not conceived in prayer meetings, and because men get more intellectual, they don't get more spiritual by far. Saying that, to say this again, that we rejected the Prince of Peace, the greatest sermon ever preached. The Sermon on the Mount is not only too difficult for the world, it's too difficult for the Church. We stumble over it, it's too demanding for us. And that is the only answer to our individual peace, to a peace in the home, peace in the city, peace in the world. All right, you don't look too happy, so let's change it a bit here. By faith Moses, when he was born, well Moses, Jesus had tribulation, the early Church had tribulation, Joseph has tribulation, three Hebrew children have tribulation. This little fellow is born in the midst of the tribulation. Now again, Christianity was not born, it was not served up to the world on a silver platter. Christianity was born in a sophisticated totalitarian society. Moses was born in a slave camp, Jesus was born in a slave state. The order of the government in the days of Moses was this, if your child is a male, it must be handed to the government and the government will destroy it, they throw it in the river or something. Now what did the parents of Moses do? Well, you obey the government, don't you? Doesn't Romans say you obey the government? You only obey the government when it doesn't contradict the word of God. We don't think much of our boy. If your boy wants to go to the mission field, you'll lay almost every reason why he shouldn't go. You know, you know, you've got this weakness and you've got that and you've got something else. And besides, I won't see you maybe for 10 years. My boy went to the mission field, I didn't see him for 15 years. I've got three boys on three different fields. We've met together once in about 17 years for a family reunion that may maybe never happen again. I rejoice in it. They could have gone to a battlefield and died. They've gone to the mission field, they still live. Oh, but if my daughter's going to the mission field, I mean, you know, she, she went to the Juilliard School of Music and she's a first-class violinist. Well, I don't remember any crowns in Revelation for first-class violinists. Let me just look a minute here and see. No, there's no crowns for third-class violinists. There are crowns for martyrs. There are crowns for people who suffer and sacrifice. But again, the order is, here is a child, he's a male child, and it says that at three months, when he was three months old, he was pretty vocal. Either going to be a preacher or an auctioneer or something. He shouted and he disturbed and the parents said, this is dangerous. Now, we said the other day that faith does three things. Faith reckons and faith risks and faith rests. One chapter is given to faith resting. There remaineth a rest for the people of God. And nearly everybody, even Baxter, has referred that to, to eternity. That one day we're going to quit everything and we're going to rest. Well, I don't think we're going to rest forever and ever. It says this servant shall serve him. And I think there's a lot of things we're going to do in heaven. Where is heaven? Well, right now it's called Fort Worth and Dallas. Well, aren't we going to live on a cloud? Not according to the scripture. There's a new heaven and a new earth and we shall reign on the earth. God never destroys anything. He's going to purify the earth, make it a new garden of Eden, and we're going to reign on the earth. You'll be able to go to into eternity for the weekend, maybe if you want, but there's an undreamed of glory that God has reserved for them that love him. And it's never going to pass away. It's not for the weekend. Now, here is this child and because they saw he was a proper child, they were not afraid of the king's commandment. So faith, what? It reckons that God is. As we say, Hebrews 11, 6 is the key to the whole thing. He that cometh to God without faith, it is impossible to please God. So obviously with faith, you can please God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. So they say, hey, we've got our little treasure. This child was born of prayer. This child is given to God. Are we going to feed the crocodiles with him? No. But the government says, hand him over. Now I say, we don't think of anything. If your boy wants to go to the, wants to go to mission field, or your child very often, you say, now look, I want to remind you of this and remind you of that, remind you of the other. I've trained you. I wanted you to take the business over. I've, you've some reason why I shouldn't go. But if he doesn't want to go to the battlefield, you'll push him and say, oh, oh, oh, don't refuse that because you bring shame on it. Now, supposing the government did what I understand happened in the days of Hitler. He said every girl married or single must bear a child. And so girls 16 years and so forth were shipped off and they became pregnant and they came back and they yielded a child for the fatherland. Would you yield your daughter like that? Very easily. She's dragged out of your arms screaming and you say, darling, don't worry, you're going to bear a baby for the government. Would you like it? We think that's gross immorality, but we don't think killing is gross immorality. Even Spurgeon says, I've got to get Baptist backing here, see. Spurgeon said that no man of God should kill another under any circumstances. Now that, you think that's getting into politics or is it, is it getting into morality? Is it saying that we are different from other people in the world? Anyhow, okay, here's the baby in question. Faith what? Reckons, faith risks, faith rests. God created what? For six days and then the seventh day he rested. Could I suggest to you, he's still resting? He's never made a thing since then. He finished all his work. And where to enter into his rest? Not when we die, even now. What was the first sermon of Jesus? Matthew 11, 28, come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. There you are. Wait a minute. Then you cross the bridge to the second half of the text. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me and ye shall find rest. But why do you need to find rest if you've got rest? Well, you've got rest here from fear of judgment and fear of death and fear of sin and fear of man. At least you should do if you got saved, right? But there still remaineth a rest for the people of God. Uh, Wesley called it that blessed rest from inbred sin. Not me, not only comfortable because my past is forgiven, but getting this monster of self controlled or carnality or the old man, call it what you like, that getting all the works purified so that the rest of God, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding and all misunderstanding, can abide in it. I wonder if your neighbors see you as fretful and worried and anxious as they are. They ought not to. They ought to see a difference. When my mother died, I was away, I'd married and I was far away. And when I came back, the whole neighborhood, people would stop me and say, the queen of the neighborhood has died. Your mother had a peace, had a serenity. When she walked down the street, there was something about her. Well, I'm glad of that. I've known that for years. I'm glad of a godly mother. I'm glad she wasn't running to coffee breaks every other morning and sitting around gossiping, which often they are. Coffee breaks might be good, I don't know. But I never came in and found her watching TV, because it didn't exist then. But whenever I came in the house, she was singing something, Blessed Assurance, or Take Time to Be Holy, or something of that caliber. You can never, never, some of you, you remember the influence of your home. Why, one of the miracles of the house was to go in and, hmm, mother's baking bread. Your children never had that miracle. You women don't know how to make it anyhow. But anyhow, many of you couldn't make a loaf of bread if you tried. It would be like a slab of concrete, I'm sure, when you finished it. But all those blessings have gone, you see. They, they look old-fashioned. Oh, there's something so lovely about the old-fashioned home. I don't know how mothers got through those days. I don't know how women do today. End of Monday, they're dead tired, pressing buttons. You know, put it in to wash, spin dry, put it in here to dry, bring it out. No ironing, sheets that don't need ironing, shirts that don't need ironing. What do you do with your time? You take time to be holy, speak off with thy Lord. What is it? Has getting time made us more spiritual? A lady took us into a place a while ago, and the man had about four, pardon me, about 400 clocks. Oh, I like clocks. He had every kind of clock. Grandfathers, grandmothers, grandchildren, and alarm clocks of every kind, electric clocks, quartz clocks. What does he got? Marvelous! And as we came out, the lady said, well isn't that a wonderful day? Hasn't he got a lot of clocks? And I said, suddenly I realized something. She said, what? I said, he's got more clocks than anybody I've seen, but he has no more time than I have. My goodness, if you've got more time, I'd have my, my house, I'd have every wall covered with clocks, and the ceiling as well, if it gave you more time. It doesn't. Time, this precious thing that we have, what do we do with it? Hmm? Only one life to assume be past, only what's done for God will last. But that's not what the poet wrote. The poet wrote, only one life to assume be past, only what's done for God will last, and when I am dying, how glad I shall be if the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee. Now, don't you get the idea that all Christians die happy? They don't, a lot die miserable. Oh, I do wish the Lord would heal me and let me live a bit longer. You said that after your surgery. You said, if ever I get on my feet again, I won't say too much on my feet, I'll get on my knees. I won't read the news so much, I'll read books. I read, books, I read the Bible. I won't watch TV, I'll take time to behold it. But it's all dissipated. Lots of people die with regrets. If only, if only, if only, if I could get my time back, what I would do? If I could have the money I wasted, what I'd do? It's the only one life. Well, here's little Moses, he's got nothing to say about his life. His mother and father should give him to the government. Instead, Faith, what? Reckons, risks, and rests. She makes a little basket. And she puts a little fellow in it. And she sends a treasure to the Nile and pushes the little baby out. No, no, no, no. The stream would have carried it away. But she had it wedged there in the, in the rushes. What does Faith do? It reckons and it risks. Faith is at risk. How do you know a crocodile won't come and eat it, take it for lunch, before the little girl's left it? Or after she's left it? How do you know the wind won't blow the lid off the thing and the little child be scorched, barbecued in the heat of the sun? What about somebody coming and stealing it? What about a flash flood to take it away? It, Faith reckons, Faith risks. He is faithful, he's just. It's out of my hands, it's in God's hands. It's safer in his hands than my hands. I can't see it, he can't forget it. I don't know where the child is, he knows where the child is all the time. And the child is there, secure. It's in a little, little basket. And here comes along the princess. Comes down to bathe and says, hey, what's in there? Open it. Oh, it's a baby. Oh, bring it here. What did you say? Oh, look at this gorgeous baby. It's a child of the Hebrews. Drown it. You should have done that for the daddy's death. But the scripture says that the heart of the king is in the hand of God. And she's a pagan. And she knows her father's terrified of the rising power of the Jews, because they've been in captivity all those years. And they've become very strong, and he's afraid that somehow they'll override the country and get rid of all the male children. What are you going to do with the baby? She says, take this child and nurse it for me. She says that to the mother. When the little girl comes along, Moses' sister and says, would you like somebody to take care? She says, yes, I really would. Somebody who could really, really breastfeed that baby, you know, that's what they used to do. That's the best way. That's the real way. That's God's way. Women get smarter than that. We feed them on cow's milk and then wonder why do they become little beasts. But anyhow, she fed the child. What did the princess say? If ever I dedicate children, which isn't very often, they won't take the risk. But anyhow, if I dedicate children, I always quote this scripture, take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. The first day I was born, my mind was, you know, quite fuddled that day. I couldn't remember clearly. But the first day I was born, my mother put a hand on me in bed and said, make this boy a preacher or don't let him live. Phew! Glad I didn't hear it. I'd have been scared, I'm sure. But from my birth or pre-birth, my mother prayed over me. As I said the other day, this woman, this woman that's in the country now, she, I don't know, she looks a foreigner, she's married to an American, she has four girls who are all in the genius class. Well, how is it? What's the biological secret or what's some other thing, psychological? Nothing to it, she said. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I read to them the classics. I played to them the classics. I read psychology to them, I read history to them. As soon as the youngsters around, the girl's only 14, she takes the entrance exam to university and sweeps through like that. The other three girls are in the same, same classification. Believe it or not, well, but it would go in ripples, believe it or not, maybe. But the fact is, she's raised four children who are geniuses and says it's because from the first day she knew she was carrying a child, she read to the child, she talked to the child, she instructed the child, she explained the music to the child, she read philosophy, she read history. Rather wonderful. Well, if they don't have that, uh, if some of your women were not as smart as that, uh, the fact is, you've got them now. What do you do with them? What's the atmosphere like? And I, I like to rub this into men. If you've got children, you should, whether you have or not, you should be the king in the home and you should be the priest in the home. And every day that bible should come out and you should instruct them. You shouldn't leave it to the school, even if it's a Christian school. Some of the Christian schools are not too Christian right now. It's your responsibility. Even grandparents. I'm a grandparent. I'd spoil some of my children, but I know this, if I spoil them, when they're spoiled and they're away with their parents, it's no good saying the parent, the grandparents spoil them. They say the parents don't know how to control them. Well, he didn't come for instruction on children, I'm sure. But here's Moses, here he is in this basket and then he's taken by the, to, to the castle. And you see what God does? Because he trusts God, he gets the super education. It says in the 7th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And they were pretty smart. I don't know when they built the pyramids. Nobody knows how they built the pyramid. Some of those stones were about 350 tons. And now it's suggested they were lifted by demon power, unless of course they banked dirt up and rolled them. And that doesn't seem possible, get those stones up there. They certainly didn't have all the modern gimmicks that we have. You see them building skyscrapers here so easily. And they sure don't put 350 pound stones, 350 ton stones way in the sky like that. I think it's incredible that maybe they lifted things like that with demon power. They still do that in some, some countries now. Miracles are not tied into Christianity alone. I know of a man who was out in a Buddhist temple, talking to a man. And the man said to him, well I have to go. He said, where are you going? He said, well I'm due at a monastery in, it's about 70 miles away. I'm due there in about 15 minutes. You can't make it. He said, I will. And he said, he just vanished like that out of his sight. And lots of things you can't explain in the spirit world. Maybe those stones were put there that way, maybe they were not. But at least Moses gets a super education. It says in the seventh of Acts, he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was mighty in word. He wasn't an auditor because he stammered. He was a statesman. He made laws for the nation. He was mighty indeed. He supervised some of the greatest projects that they had. And he was there for 40 years. Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Living like a king. All the delicacies. He didn't have air conditioning, so they fanned him at night with ostrich feathers, those big fans that they make. He lived elegantly. He lived delicately. He had all the protection he needed. He had all the honor. Everybody saluted his excellency. He was to be, what shall we say, Ramesses III. And then one day, somewhere, somehow, I don't know how, I like to think maybe he was at a banquet with all the so-called society. And he's gazing away in the distance. And somebody says, you know, Prince Moses doesn't seem to be with it today. He's been gazing in one direction all the time. Because afterwards you get this statement about him, that Moses, in the scripture that we read, by faith, Moses when he was come to years, 40 years. A time of maturity. He's accomplished. He's intellectually developed, personally developed. He can, he can address the government. He can do all the big jobs that they need. He's there at 40 years of age. The very pride of life when God uses him. No, that's when God dumped him. And he dumped him for an equal number of years. Took 40 years for him to dry out on the back side of the desert. But remember, it wasn't arbitrary about this. His parents were not afraid of the King's commandment. And I think that that same fearlessness was in him that was in them. I think that same faith. Because it says that by faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused. Now there's your problem. There's so many things you have to refuse. Other people do it. God says, you can't do it. He's making you, not them, refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And after his refusing, there was choosing. Choosing rather to suffer. And in the choosing there was suffering. Now it's refusing and choosing and suffering. Well, well, who's going to embrace suffering? Why should he suffer? He can ride down main street in a chariot, drawn with black beautiful horses and Nubian slaves. He can live in a palace. Why not say, I'll use these things. I'll ask God to sanctify them and I'll use them. God says, no, you make a break with all the, all the worldly system. You get from under the protection of the government. You get away from all this idolatry almost that you, you, you create when you go around. You get away from all this bowing and scraping and honor. And he chose rather to suffer affliction with the children of God, esteeming the reproach of Christ. Now this, this slays me kind of thing. He's in, he, he's in Egypt and idolatrous, superstitious people. They, they studied astrology, they work with the stars, they work with demons and all the rest of it. And there he is in that, that horrible environment. And there he chose to suffer affliction with the children of God, esteeming the reproach of Christ. Where did he get his revelation of Christ? This must assure that once you have a vision, whichever way God gives you that vision, it will completely change your life. As I said yesterday, if I could do what John did when he says, I saw a door open in heaven, if I could open that door one inch in heaven, you'd never backslide. You'd sacrifice to the nth degree. You'd say, God almighty, give me a bigger burden than someone else, not less. Give me more. Take me to the hardest place, not the easiest place. I'm not looking for a nice little pastor so I can raise my wife and children and live in comfort. Give me some hell hole in the world. Take me if you like to Calcutta or Bangladesh or somewhere up the Amazon or somewhere in some other distant area of the world, maybe still in Central Africa, up a vaulter or somewhere. You see, half the reason we get stale and backslidden is we made the choices and think because we, oh well, we've been to seminary, we haven't, now I'm an equipped preacher and what an honor if some church gets me, you know. The real difficulty, nobody knows my talent and my ability and so forth. Here is a man that's loaded with everything and somehow I think he had the same revelation of eternity that John had on the Isle of Padmas. I think he had the same revelation that Paul had when he was lifted into the third heaven and once it's seen the glory of God, once it's seen that kingdom that shall never pass away, what in the world is the Egyptian empire? What are golden thrones? What are all the delicacies? He should make an easier way for you. Moses chooses rather to suffer affliction with the children of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ's greater riches and all the treasures in Egypt. For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. So he must have seen the judgment day. He sees the day when he goes to the eternal tribunal and everybody is rewarded, every man is going to receive his own reward. We won't all be the same in heaven, there are degrees of punishment in hell, there are degrees of rewards in heaven. Surely you don't think the dying thief, he may be as the poet said, rejoice to see that fountain in his day and God, Jesus says, you'll be with me in paradise. You're not suggesting he'll have the same reward as John Wesley for instance. Wesley was converted at 35, turn 35 round makes 53, add the two together makes 88 when he died. My trouble with John Wesley was, I never knew him personally, but my trouble with him is this, that he was more spiritual when he wasn't spiritual than I am when I am spiritual. He rose at four o'clock in the morning to pray when he wasn't spiritual. He fasted two days a week, Wednesdays and Fridays. They were scorned as being Methodist, the name stuck with them because they were so methodical or disciplined. Who's disciplined today? How many guys in the seminary are disciplined? Do they get up at a certain time, go to bed at a certain time? Do we discipline our bodies? No, no, no, no, we're the most easygoing folk that ever existed. But John Wesley at 35 disciplined his body, disciplined his mind, died at 88 years of age. Do you know what he left? He left six silver spoons. I guess some old lady must have given him those. He left six English pound notes worth about five dollars each, that's thirty dollars. He left a handful of books, a small collection of books. He left the Geneva gown he used to preach in, that's all he left. Six silver spoons, handful of books, Geneva gown. No, let's see, something else. What was the other thing he left? Oh, I know, the Methodist church, I knew there was something. He could have died rich, he put all his money into books and Bibles and building churches and building orphanages. He came to Georgia as a missionary when he wasn't even saved, slept and he says, I woke up frozen to the ground, I struggled to get one arm free and I pulled the other arm out of the mud and then I gently pulled my hair out of the mud, it was frozen and then I got my body out of the mud and then he says, I brushed off the frost and I raised my hands and sang praise God from whom all blessings flow. And he wasn't a saved man yet. He came out of pity and compassion for the Indians. Amazing what men will do. Isn't it amazing how little we do? Our creature comforts have become our snare. Our beauty rest mattresses, we can't get out of them, they got us into bondage. I think of a missionary who came, an old veteran missionary not long ago, came from Africa and he went to a church one night and it was a pretty raw night, the wind was blowing and there were snowflakes and it was terribly cold and the pastor was, oh he was thrilled, look at my congregation tonight. And he complimented them on coming to the church, a cold night like this, a wintry night when you could be at home by the fireside and so forth and so. Then he introduced this battle scarred old warrior from Africa and he said, well friends I do appreciate your sacrifice tonight. You got, came from your warm homes, in your warm cars, you turned up the heat and your church is very warm and you've got padded seats and you've got warm carpet on the floor. Oh I just think your sacrifice is marvelous, would you excuse me while I go and throw up? Pretty rough. You see our creature comforts, we get more and more and more and more comfortable. New churches don't have pills, they have these deep seated movie seats so you can relax and you go back and oh you get to sleep ever so easy during the sermon. The idea of being a soldier somehow has passed away, put on the whole armor of God. This man is trained, he knows some of the hardships of being a soldier and then God takes him and puts him on the back side of the desert. Mercy, mercy, mercy. 40 years of glory, 40 years looking after stinking sheep. Egyptians despised a shepherd. You go out west, cowboys despise a shepherd. If a shepherd comes in a tavern, get out of here you stink of sheep and he becomes a shepherd. Well typical again of David who became a shepherd, typical again of Jesus who was a good shepherd. And uh he's 40 years on the back side of the desert. Do you think you ever had any regrets? Hmm? Get it clear, not 40 weeks, not 40 months, 40 years. Do you think when he said uh when he was 60, oh I missed it, I missed it. Uh I must have had some kind of hallucination. I could be retired on the banks of the Nile, I could be floating in a gondola, I could have servants bowing down bringing me seven course dinners, perfuming the room, waving palms over me so I'll have a comfortable. And here I am bitten with bugs and looking after these stinking crazy sheep. They insist in falling over the rocks and I get my legs all torn. And do you think he went up and down like that? Do you think when he he spit some of the dust out he thought hmm, no a long while since I had a decent meal. I used to drink pure water or other things and he said here I am I can't, I have to drink sheep water almost, the water from down the hill. Do you think there were a pind? Do you think he grumbled? I don't think he did. He says he endured as seeing the invisible. No, no, no, no it doesn't say that. He says he endured as seeing him who is invisible. When people say to me uh I've tried Christianity, there's nothing in it. I say you're dead right, that's right. Well don't you preach it? No I don't preach Christianity. What do you preach? Christ. I preach Christ. It's very different from the accepted standard of Christianity. He has seen the invisible, he's seen the glory of God, he believes. You see I don't get visions like that. You don't need them, you've got more than he had. As I reminded you, you've got the whole revelation of God. Again the people in Hebrews 11 subdued kingdoms wrought righteousness obtained promises stopped the mouths of lions and not one of them ever had a bible. Well how much have you done with it? Don't don't grumble about them. What have you done with the total revelation of God? God hasn't anything to say to the world if it lasts another million years. He said everything. Give him the final amen. And yet without a bible they could subdue kingdoms, stop the mouths of lions. Subdued kingdoms wrought righteousness stopped the mouths of lions. That's an incredible story. And a lot of those people aren't even listed. What what's it going to be in glory when all the rewards are given out? Moses says listen my investment here is a decimal, a decimal. It's like in uh it's like putting a dime down and receiving a thousand times a billion dollars. That that's no exaggeration. If we knew what eternity is going to be, if we did everything in the light of eternity, if you thought and bought in the light of eternity, if you got up in the light of eternity, went to bed in the light of eternity, prepared your Sunday school lesson in the light of eternity, it would revolutionize our lives. It's 40 years on the back side of the desert. And at the end of 40 years when he might be, he's 80 years of age now. Why? Now we say if you're over 40 you're over the line. And yet God takes a man 80 years of age, 40 years climbing up, 40 years in which he's a social figure, he's an intellectual figure, he's got everything going for him, and then God puts him down here to stinking sheep, all mercy. Well he ran away from the royal palace you know, he went and I don't think he changed, maybe he took his garment with him and I can imagine him looking after those sheep in a royal robe and in 40 years it'd be a bit of a mess. Now I think here's one of the bravest things that's ever recorded in the Bible. We pass over it equally. God says you go back, you go back to Pharaoh. He's going to walk into the jaws of death. How is he going to get in the royal palace? He goes there smelling of sheep, he walks right in to pass the guard. And he goes to Pharaoh and says, let my people go. And Pharaoh looks at him and says, who are you? Oh he's changed now, he's bearded, he's older, he's 80 years of age, maybe gray and white hair. And there he goes and stands in the face of the adversary. And he says, I've got a mandate from God you're to let my people go. And you remember what happened? He put pressure on and pressure on and finally, if you don't yield God's going to put pressure on until you do yield. And what did he do? He killed the firstborn. God said he'll destroy the firstborn. If you don't sprinkle the blood over the doors and the lintel, the angel of death will come. It's no good having a bowl of blood in the house, you must fill all the commandments. If the blood was in the house, the angel of death would still destroy it. You have to do what God says. We want God to do everything. Jesus says, there's some water pot, fill them with water and I'll turn it into wine. Why didn't he just say, don't bother, there's the water pot, there you are, water, there you are, wine. There's a part that we have to do. He says, Lazarus is dead, you roll the stone away, I'll raise him to life. There are people that God would reach if you'd only fill some, put somebody in the back seat of your car. Maybe the back seat of the car will rise up in judgment against you one day. We don't need bus services in any of our churches. All we need are people with compassion. You can get rid of the insurance, you can get rid of a, just let everybody fill up their, their cars, their automobiles and you could fill the church. Now maybe somebody will leave a few fleas in the back and children may wee-wee on the floor and whatnot, but what's that if you get them into the kingdom? Let somebody else do it. No, you do it. You do it. Moses goes there and he's brave and he tells the king and finally, what happened? Does God kill all the babies? No, he doesn't. He kills the firstborn. He killed all the young men. What's Pharaoh want to destroy the little ones for? Because they'll grow up to be young men, they'll have an army and there'll be an insurrection and they'll overthrow the Egyptian empire and so God pays them back in their own coin. Now here is a man of faith. He's raised in faith. He made his choice by faith. Moses, when he was come to years, by faith Moses, when he was come to years, by faith he forsook Egypt. Through faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. By faith he went, you see, as I told you the other day, faith, if it's going to be trusted, it's going to be tested. That faith grows, just like you tie yourself out with chopping a log, but at the same time you build up your muscle. Well, there's the test of faith and you go from one degree of faith to another, one degree of victory to another. See, we do everything if we have the cash. That troubles the church more than anything, uh, where we would get the money. Never troubled the early church. I don't believe they ever paid, prayed for cash in the early church. They prayed for the presence and power of God and he brought them through every trial and every opposition. So here is Moses, he comes to the Red Sea. Children of Israel are told to borrow what they could get and so they went and borrowed silver things and borrowed gold and took it all with them. You say they stole it. No, they didn't. They got all the wages. They've been working there 400 years, they didn't get even all the wages then. And the Lord even let their enemies give the servants gold and silver and all they needed and so off they go on their journey. And then they come to this barrier of the Red Sea. Oh, oh, oh, this is something, isn't it? Can you see Moses there? He has his staff in his hand. Well, he'd already used it once, hadn't he? He threw it down. It's called the staff of Moses and afterwards it's called the staff of God. He takes his staff and just like that he passed the Red Sea. The only thing was some people murmuring and complaining as they went down and the sea hadn't divided and the enemies coming thundering behind them and down they go. Now Moses tried to clean the nation up. You remember he went to slay an Egyptian. He was going to do it, but the arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own. He thought everything was all right. He made a hole in the sand and he smoothed all the sand out with his feet and he said, nobody knows that. And somebody the next day said, don't get mad with us and kill us like you killed a man yesterday. Oh, huh? We say to children, be sure your sin will find you out, but we interpret it as, be sure your sin will be found out. That's not true. They used to use a story of a little boy with some jam on his face. Mother said, did you go in the jam jar? And he says, no, I did not. What's that on the side of your face? Yes, I did. His sin was found out. That's not what the Bible says. It says your sin will find you out. There's many a man who murdered somebody in this country and other countries this morning that never got found out and his murder finds him out every day. Every time he hears a policeman behind him, he wonders if a hand will go on his shoulder. It's the mercy of God that some of these men, of course you can say your conscience, I realize that. I'm talking on the law of everything. Moses divides the Red Sea. Just that staff and he obeys God. The children of Israel cried by reason of their bondage. God says, I'll come down and see. And he used this instrument, this servant, and they got deliverance. What did they do? Were they grateful? No. God has to keep saying to them, remember thou was the bondsman in Egypt. David kept looking back and he said, I remember that I was in a horrible pit and he lifted me out. I'm afraid very often we forget our past. You say, well I wasn't a drunkard and I wasn't a sex pervert and I wasn't a blackguard and I wasn't a on drugs, I wasn't this that and the other. Friend, what you're trying to tell me that you didn't live in hell. Well maybe you didn't, but let me tell you something, you were going to hell if he hadn't saved you. And you needed the grace of God as much as that prostitute and folk that used to come to us when I worked in Teen Challenge nearly 20 years ago in New York. Poor messed up kids, got into drugs, their brains had blown, the bridge in the nose here they'd snuffed up so much it had destroyed it and they lived with hallucinations, they lived with all kinds of things. And one of the outstanding men in New York, I could give you his name, I won't, he came to our office one day and Dave Wilkerson called me over, he said, Len come in we've got a big shot here. And this man was arguing. He said, I've just seen a record where you say that 46 of these chronic cases, incorrigible people, have been converted. And almost all of them are in Bible school. He said, I don't believe it, you're lying. He's a Christian too. David said, well brother Len, what do you say to this? I said, well you say that their brains are so blown that they'd never study. One of the worst boys we had came in with a girl, her hair was stringy as though it was as though it had some car grease in it. The teeth were rotten, she stunk like a skunk. He was about six feet two and I said, can I help you? He says, this is my wife. I got her on drugs, I can't get her off. I said, she's your wife? Well, at least we've lived together for three years but she's, she's in a terrible mess on drugs. To cut a long story short, I said, well she can stay. She goes in the girls section, you go in the men's section. She went in a prayer meeting two days after. Same old dirty, smelly, ugly-looking girl. Well, she'd had a bath maybe, but she still looked a mess. She went in that prayer meeting, he waited outside. It was a, he didn't want to go in the prayer meeting. He waited outside, that girl came out with a face as radiant as a, as a light. She'd just run up to him and hugged him and said, I, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free. Something's happened. I, I feel all clean. I feel as though somehow all these things have left me. And he turned to me and he said, will it last? I said, yes, because God did it. We'll see. Two days after, he went in the same prayer meeting and he got marvelously liberated. They had a crime record about this length. They'd been in murders, they'd been in muggings, they'd been in, oh, everything you could mention. Dave says, now you need to get married. And they, I think he married them and he gave them some money to have a, a night in town at some hotel and come back tomorrow. It's a risk. People said they won't come back. They came back all right. That boy went to school. He became, he was on the dean's list by the end of the year and extracurriculum work. He taught himself Greek. And by the end of the year, he was confusing the professors when they said this word is in the Aorist tense or in some other tense. And he would say, yes, but this word is used like the two words for flesh, sarx and soma. And he'd say, but they're interchanged in this epistle and that epistle. And he got them bamboo. Do you know, at the end of the year, they asked him to leave the school. There's the grace of God. Lifts a beggar from the dunghill and has him confusing all the Greek scholars in a year. There must be something wrong with your dedication. I mean, your Greek confuses you. You're not confusing the, no, no. I'm just saying this, that God put him on exhibition. He lifts the beggar from the dunghill and makes him a prince unto God. He takes Joseph from being the boy in the slave he was and he makes him a prince. He takes the Prince Moses and makes him a slave and puts him on the backside of the desert and leaves him homeless and defenseless. And then he's educating him. God is never capricious. God doesn't work tricks. His own son was lonely for 30 years. Have you ever thought of the loneliness of the father in heaven without his son for 30 years? Have you thought of the loneliness of Jesus on earth, the loneliness of John Baptist for 30 years, preparing for a six months ministry? See, this is the way that God deals with people. He's got this man for 40 years. This man has not wilted anyway. His faith is a stronger, stronger when he comes out of this wilderness than it was when he went in. And now God says you're ready. You're ready to take on the whole of the Egyptian government. You're ready now to deal with this people who, even when they get out, are going to say, oh, they're going to come one day and say, were there no graves in Egypt? If I'd have been leading them, I'd have said, yes, you could have all had one each if you'd asked for them when you were there. You didn't ask for graves in Egypt, you asked to get out. You've got out. Then they grumbled about the meat and God sent quails. They grumbled and said, we're not having enough. He said, I'll send it till it comes out of your nostrils. Exactly what he did. He doesn't pay to grumble. Doesn't pay to give God advice. Much of our praying is giving God advice, isn't it? Lord, do this or will you do that? Will you do that? Not, not make me ready for your will, not make me ready to carry some burden, not ready, not make me ready to, to do something nobody else wants to do. Well, of course, we skipped the most important thing, didn't we? No. End of 40 years, he's transferred over to another section. He goes to what I call Bush University. Somebody asked me once, have you been to a university? I said, yes, I went to Bush University. And the lady said, do I know anybody that went? I said, well, Moses. She said, Moses who? Well, it's a good university. It's the university of silence. And at the end of 40, not the beginning, God didn't say, now I'm doing this to encourage you. You've laid a lot down. You've made a supreme sacrifice. You're willing to be a living sacrifice. And I'm going to pay you some bonus right now. You'll keep your head above water and all your doubts and difficulties for the next 40 years. He was tested and tried for 40 years. And at the end, the, uh, he had that experience of the burning bush. And God appeared to him. And the Lord says, take thy shoes from off thy feet, the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Do you think he ever forgot that? Hmm? When the going got rough, don't you think he looked back and said, I remember where God met me? Discouragement, but he said, I remember where God called me. And you know, the same thing happens in our lives. You come to a crisis. Maybe you wouldn't seek it. Maybe you'll go through a barren patch. Dr. Tozer said to me once, he said, Len, if you, if you find some Christians saying they never have a dry spell, don't believe them. Everybody has them. Faith that is going to be trusted is going to be tested. You don't need faith when you can see every turn in the road. You need faith when there's a thick fog there, when you don't know whether it's uphill or downhill, hardly. When you don't know who's hiding in those circumstances, or what's hiding in those circumstances. But as the old hymn says, faith, simple faith, the promise sees and looks to God alone, laughs at impossibilities and cries, it shall be done. You know, you and I have enough examples in the book. My, we're going to be in trouble when we get to the checkout counter, which is the judgment seat. We haven't, you don't have an excuse. You don't, as we say, you don't have a leg to stand on for doubting God. Every conceivable situation somewhere is revealed in this book. That's why faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Moses puts up with not only difficulties, he puts up with a squirming, dissatisfied people. They could have entered in immediately. They could have got from Egypt to the promised land in 11 days, and they didn't even make it in 40 years. They wandered round and round and round and round. Years ago, I guess it must be, I don't know, I think it would think maybe in the 1890s or somewhere, an old Nazarene preacher, they had some great preachers. And one of them wrote a book, The Possibilities of Grace, Dr. Lowery. The Possibilities of Grace, isn't that a gorgeous title? What are the possibilities of grace? We've never measured them. I have the book, I haven't read it yet. I looked for it for about 30 years, and then I got one, and you know what usually happens? If you get one, you get two. I got one, and then somebody sent me another one, so I think I gave one to my eldest son, who was a missionary. The Possibilities of Grace. The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred streets, before we reach the heavenly fields or walk the golden streets. You know, you, you, you, and you, and you, and you, you're just as spiritual as you want to be. The throttle's in your own hand. Your bible is as big as John Wesley's, it's as big as Finney's, it's as big as any man that ever walked the earth. The only thing they appropriated, what you and I perhaps have not appropriated. There's so much land ahead to be possessed. I don't believe we've seen the best, I don't think God went off production when he said, well there I've shown you a super evangelist, the greatest evangelist maybe ever lived, George Whitefield. I don't think you have the greatest scholar in Wesley or Calvin or somebody, I don't believe that. I believe in these last days, God's going to do a super miracle. He's going to pour his spirit out on all flesh according to Joel 2. And your sons and your daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions, old men will dream dreams. And on my servants and handmaids, not on my bishops and presidents and professors and preachers, on my servants and handmaids. Isn't that what he did when he came the first time to earth? Did he go to the Sanhedrin and knock on the door and say, I'd like to see your dean's list? Hmm? Did he go to the temple and say, who's the most prospective preacher you have? Oh with a young man called Saul or somebody? No, no, no, he didn't say that. He passed a whole vast system with all its ritual, with all its beauty, with the priests in their garments, the word of God calls them garments of glory and beauty, and their breastplates with the names of the tribes on, and all the ritual. And Jesus just, remember at the, in the 17th of John he says, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And then two or three chapters away on the cross he said it is finished. Well why did he say it's finished here and then it's finished there? Because he said, I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do, and after that he did no miracles, and he didn't do any teaching, he'd done, he had nothing to say. He'd poured his life out, he poured his instruction out, he'd exhibited miracles, he'd shown the superpower of God. I have finished the work which thou gave us me to do. But then on the cross when he said it is finished, he meant that all the so-called redemptive work, or all that had happened in, through the law, and through the prophets, and through the various sacrifices, it was finished. And the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom, so nobody could say it was split from the bottom upwards, somebody did it. No, it was split from the top to the bottom. It was rent. And from that moment all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give no guilty conscience peace and wash away no stain, but Christ the heavenly Lamb took all our sins away. It is finished. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. The Hebrew, epistle to the Hebrews, is saying, it's exalting Jesus all the time and showing us that he is the center and the circumference, he is the first and the last, he is the light and the life of the gospel. It's showing us that the priest in the Old Testament could die and be replaced by another priest. You see, that's why it says here that you're to go to the people, the Hebrews at that time were very nervous. They'd left all the ritual, they'd left the establishment, they were persecuted for it, and they're meeting up back streets and worshiping somebody called Jesus, who they saw crucified. Nobody's ever seen him alive since, except disciples, but not the world. And they were still unconvinced. And so the writer to the Hebrews says, you go strengthen the hands which hang down and confirm the feeble knee. Here's Jacob on the street, he meets Isaac on the street. Jacob says, Isaac, you haven't been to the temple of lake. I don't go to the temple anymore. Oh, you meet with that gang of the back street, that little despised group? Yes, sir, I do. Well, I'm really surprised. I thought you were really fundamentally in our faith. I mean, oh, there's a priest right now. See, he's going in the temple. Look at his garments of glory and beauty, which God designed for him. He's got a breastplate with a 12 stones, different stones, different tribes on them. As God said, he's doing everything according to God's pattern. There's a high priest. You don't have a high priest. Wait a minute. And he sheds blood today and you don't have any sacrifice. And he's going in the temple and you don't have any temple. And he goes on and on. And then finally, uh, Jacob says, well, listen, I listened to you, Isaac, you listen to me. You say that I don't have a temple. Yes, we do have a temple. He says, where? He says, you're looking at it. What do you mean you're looking at it? I'm looking at you. That's what he says. I'm the temple of God. You're the temple of God. That's what the word of God says. And your body is the temple of the living God. Christ lives in you, not outside of you, not in heaven. He lives, he lives there, he lives in us. You say, I don't have a high priest. Your, your high priest will die and you'll replace him. My high priest ever liveth to make intercession. You have to renew your, your, your blood vow. You have to kill the blood of bulls and goats. My priest, he was both the priest and the sacrifice. And he, he appeared once and he sacrificed once. And it's terminated all your priesthood and it's terminated all your sacrifices and it's all complete in him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he ever liveth to make intercession. Now you can go on your way and take your sympathy. I don't need your sympathy. I have the indwelling spirit of God. My body is the temple of God. My mind is the mind of God. He's given me his wisdom. Why should I be envious of anything that you have? Then remember in this epistle, over and over, seven times, it says today, if ye will hear his voice. In the Ephesians, you see the church as one and Christ the head. Here you see all the different members in the body and it says, let us do this and you do that. It's all to us. We, we. There's not a word in the epistle to the Hebrews to the unsaved. Except in this one case where it says Moses was in the Passover. That's the only reference to it. He's dealing with Israel after the 14th chapter of Exodus, not the 12th. It's an exposition of the first five books of Moses plus the Psalms. You know, we've no, we've no excuse for our unbelief. We've no excuse for our weakness. God has anticipated every, everything that we may try and dredge up. So we've got obstruction. So we've got Egyptians. So we've got all these other people that obstructed Israel. We've got them now, Malachite, Sittites, but we call them Jehovah's Witnesses and what have we got. But we still got them, but yet faith triumphs over all of them. We've got the Red Sea, you cross it by faith yourself. It's all here in the finished work of Christ. Easy to quote, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Oh, Romans 8, 37 there. We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. We're not more than conquerors by our zeal or our knowledge. We're more than conquerors through him that loved us and through him that lives in us. And as we abide in him and he abides in us, there's that continuance of strength and that continuance of wisdom. And he makes us adequate for today. That's all we're living. Yesterday's dead, tomorrow isn't born. This is the day you've got to get victory in. And as you get victory today, you'll be stronger tomorrow. The more you prove his faithfulness, the more you want to prove his faithfulness in the days that will come. So read this amazing book and read particularly this 11th chapter and remember again the 6th verse, without faith it is impossible to believe God, without faith it is impossible to please God. He that cometh to God must believe that he is. And that he's everything he says he is. Father we thank you for your word. Thank you for preserving it over the centuries. How many times men have tried to destroy it, burn it and ban it. And yet you've preserved it for us for this day. Oh Lord we pray, may we be men and women of the book. May we be temples where you abide and where you live and rule and have your being in us. Pray for your presence and power in that meeting tonight. Fill this place with your glory and we'll give you praise in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you.