How to Read the Bible — Lesson 5: Let the Clear Explain the Deep

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE — a short course from Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church • Pastor Chuck Trusty • Lesson 5 of 13 • a new lesson every two weeks

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Last Time

Last lesson you took Matthew 6:24 home:

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." — Matthew 6:24

We handed you an odd word — mammon — and told you not to guess. Did you let the verse frame it? Read to the end, and the two masters are named: God, and mammon. Ask what the verse sets mammon against — God Himself. So mammon is the rival master: money and goods, served like a god — the verse handed you its shape. And do not miss the step you took: no man can serve two masters — and you have a new Master now. Now, one more tool.

The Verse

"Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil." — Hebrews 6:19

The Question

Look at that one word — hope. In our everyday talk it means we are not sure: "I hope it will not rain" — meaning, it might. So is our "anchor of the soul" anchored to a maybe? Is Bible hope a wish that might fail, or a sure thing?

The Tool — walked together

First, bring the tools you already have, and ask your questions — this is a statement, not a command, so we ask what it declares. WHO? "we" — every believer; if you are saved, this hope is yours. WHAT? Our hope is "an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast." WHEN? The verse gives no time — an empty box. It is not telling us when; it is telling us what we hold. WHERE? Read on to the last word, and the verse answers: "within the veil." Hold that word — it is the sweetest in the verse, and the study will open it. WHY? The verse does not say outright — another empty box, and so our shovel — but everyone knows what an anchor is for: the storm.

Every box accounted for. Now run the rest of the toolbox. You read the whole verse to its last word, and it gave up "within the veil." This is no command but a statement, so the address tool rests this time. And when the weight fell on one word — hope — the tool that says let the Bible define its own words sent you looking for it elsewhere; it turns up in Titus 1:2. That brings us to this lesson's new tool — the one that says which verse gets the final say. TOOL #5: when one verse is hard, stand a clear one beside it, and let the plain light explain the deep. (Not sure where the plain verse is? The Helper page shows how to find every verse that uses the same word.) Hebrews 6:19 is deep — anchor, veil. Titus 1:2 is plain as day:

"In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." — Titus 1:2

There is the daylight. Our hope is "of eternal life," resting on a promise — made by a God "that cannot lie." The plain verse settles the deep one: Bible hope is no wish, but sure, because the One who promised cannot lie.

ONE WORD

So take that word HOPE and hold it: in the Bible it is not a wish that may fail, but a confident expectation — a thing certain. The world's hope is a coin in the air; the Bible's is an anchor set in rock.

And what is the anchor made fast to? It reaches "within the veil" — into the very presence of God. But do not assume what that veil is; let the Bible say it. Further on, the same letter tells us plainly: "the veil, that is to say, his flesh" (Hebrews 10:20). The veil is the flesh of the Lord Jesus. So your anchor is made fast to Christ Himself. That is why it holds: an anchor is only as sure as what it grips, and yours grips the Lord. Let the wind blow; the soul anchored there does not drift.

Try It This Week

Here is your verse. Bring your questions, and read the whole thing to its last word — and when a heavy phrase looms up, find the plain one standing right beside it:

"And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." — Luke 9:23

The heavy phrase is "take up his cross." It can frighten a new believer — it sounds like dying. But do not build on the shadow. Stand the plain words next to it, there in the same verse: "follow me." And one plain word more: "daily." So the great, heavy cross is explained by the plain command — follow Him, one ordinary day at a time. Not one grand and dreadful day, but this day, and then the next. That is how the cross is carried: by following.

Your Toolbox So Far

1. Start with the questions — WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY.   2. Read the whole verse — all the way to its last word.   3. Every command has an address — ask who it was spoken to.   4. Let the Bible define its own words — the Book is its own dictionary.   5. Clear explains complex — let a plain verse light up a deep one.

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Next lesson, in two weeks: a verse has neighbors — read the ones just before and just after, and a familiar saying turns out to mean more than we thought.

‹ Lesson 4 — Let the Bible Define Its Own Words  •  The Course Index — all lessons

How God Reveals His Law — the Word and the Spirit

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, September 20, 2026 God’s Law, Lesson 3 of 4 · A3 D11 · John 1:4-5 · John 14:26 · Romans 10:1-3 · Romans 1:17

► Watch this lesson on video (48:26)

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You might want to put your fingers in a few places this morning - John 1, John 14, Romans 10, Romans 1 . . . so John, Romans, and then John again.

Now a couple of Sundays ago we settled the question of WHO it is that makes the law - who came up with the Ten Commandments, if you will. We learned that God owns everything . . . in fact God created everything by His spoken word - and because God is our Creator, God has earned the right, if you want to look at it that way, to set the terms on how everything operates, and to determine how we should behave, how we should worship, the whole of our lives.

And last Sunday we settled the question of WHY God draws a line. Why does God say you need to stay over here and not go over there . . . why does God build a fence around certain things? You remember we said the Ten Commandments were something like ten FENCES . . . well, what does a farmer build a fence for? He builds a fence to protect the things that he values. God built a fence around our lives and our behavior because He values us - and He wants to keep us on the right side of the fence so we will not come to harm.

Now this morning we have one more of these lessons about God’s law left to cover, and this morning we come to what may be the most practical question of the four that will consider. By that I mean - well, we have all these laws, we have all these commandments in the Bible . . . so HOW does a commandment that God put in the Bible get off the page and into our hearts?

Think about the people who make the maps of this state. I am assuming it is somewhere in Little Rock - they have a drawing board, and some engineers drawing lines here and lines there, and they can come up with all the maps they want to which show where every road goes - but drawing a map in some office in Little Rock is no guarantee that when you and I get out and start driving those roads, we are going to go the direction that map says we should go. The line has to get off the paper . . . and into the DRIVER.

So how does God get the words off the page and into our hearts? The answer this morning is that God uses two things. God’s Word, the Bible, tells us where the line is - where the fence has been built . . . and God’s Spirit . . . and I will tell you, we often do not give the Holy Spirit the credit He deserves . . . God’s Spirit is what tells us how CLOSE we are getting to that line. He tells us how close we are getting to the fence that was put up - not as a cage, but as protection.

God’s Word tells us where the line is - God’s Spirit tells us how close we are to it.

The Word Is What Draws the Line

The Bible is what draws the line, or builds the fence, that we are talking about.

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” - John 1:4-5 (KJV)

In Him - that is, in Jesus - was life, and that life was the light of men . . . and the light shines in darkness, it shines among our lives . . . and the darkness comprehended (took hold of) it not . . . now the darkness “comprehended it not” - well, that is us reading the Bible and saying, I do not have a clue what He is trying to tell me here. The Bible is what establishes the boundary - but the Holy Spirit, that we so often ignore and underrate, is what opens our eyes of understanding and teaches us what in the world God is trying to say to us . . . that is what the Holy Spirit does . . . and He only does it if we open our hearts and let Him. What purpose does a light serve if we have our eyes CLOSED?

Now notice that the gospel of John does not start out like the others do. Matthew mentions a baby and a manger the way we might expect - but John does not start with a baby at all. John starts his gospel with “the WORD” . . . and he says that in “the Word” was life - and you cannot separate God’s Word from Jesus Christ. We are very close to beginning a series where we are going to learn firsthand that every book in the Bible points to Jesus Christ.

So John begins with the Word, and he says the Word was life, and this life that is in Jesus Christ is the light of men . . . now think about the picture there. Light does one thing before it does anything else - light shows what is AROUND us . . . and when we see what is around us, we can tell where we are standing.

If we were to turn every light off in this building this morning, we would eventually discover that the walls do not go anywhere. The walls stay exactly where they are when the lights are on - but without a light to show us, we would not KNOW where those walls were - and we would start walking, and bump our shins, and run headlong into a wall and get a few bruises . . . but turn the lights back on, and we would know exactly where we were standing just by LOOKING. We would know which way to go and which way not to go.

That is exactly what the Word of God does with God’s law. The Word of God is the light - it is the light that shows you and me where the line is, where the fence has been built - but without the Word, there is no line for us to SEE.

Now I am not going to chase this rabbit, I am just going to mention it . . . that is part of what God is talking about when He said there was a time when God winked at ignorance - “but now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30). If we are in a room without a light, there is no way to know where the wall is . . . well, in a world before God’s Word was revealed to mankind, they did not know where the walls were - they did not know where the fences were - so they had somewhat of an EXCUSE.

But today we have the Bible . . . now not everyone OPENS the Bible - so when I say “if we do not have the Word,” I do not mean that it is not available to us . . . I mean we are not using it . . . and if we do not use God’s Word - if we do not turn the light on - the result will be that we will be among those who start drawing their OWN lines. We will be a person who builds his own fences, and draws these lines and builds these walls wherever we have decided is best . . . and then righteousness all of a sudden turns into whatever seems right to ME . . . and human nature being what it is - my definition of righteousness is right, and yours is wrong.

Now football season has started, and almost everybody has been to a football game or at least seen one on television. You look at that field and it is covered with white lines - white lines everywhere. There is the sideline, there is the end zone, there is the fifty yard line . . . now those lines are not actually the GAME . . . but the team out on that field cannot play the game without them. They depend on those lines, because the lines tell everybody where the game is being played. On the other side of that line - out of bounds, that does not count . . . that is the scrimmage line - move too soon and there is a penalty.

And notice - nobody called those players out of the huddle and said, “Now where do you think the line ought to be drawn?” Not a single player on that field had any part in drawing the lines anywhere. The lines were laid down - chalk or paint, however they do it - out of a rule book that was written when every player out there today was probably still in diapers.

Well, God’s Word is the rule book of LIFE. You have heard the question, what is the meaning of life . . . it is in the Book. Every boundary of a righteous life - what is holy, what is actual sin, what pleases God and what grieves God - all of these lines, all of these fences, were laid down in the Bible long before you and I were ever born . . . and the lines I am talking about, the rules of life - they are STILL in the Book, whether we open the Book to read it or not, and whether we agree with the rule or not. The rules of life are still there.

God’s Word is what draws the line.

The Spirit Is What Makes the Line Real

Now the Spirit of God - that we so often underestimate - is what makes the line REAL in our lives. The Holy Spirit is what takes the rule, the commandment, off of the paper and puts it into our HEART.

Bro. Ken mentioned this in his Sunday School lesson this morning . . . and you would think the same Holy Spirit is leading in a service, would you not? There is something that those of us who have been in church practically forever need to be reminded of - and Bro. Ken said almost exactly this. A person can read the Bible his entire life. He can memorize whole chapters. He can attend church for fifty years. He can quote scripture after scripture to his friends and his relatives . . . and still not understand a SINGLE word that he is quoting.

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” - John 14:26 (KJV)

That word Comforter literally means one who is called alongside to help. “HE shall teach you.” Our education is not what teaches us what is in this Book. Our years on the pew are not what teach us the meaning of the scriptures . . . and we do not learn what the Bible means because we are SMART . . . it is ONLY because the Holy Spirit teaches us - that we know anything at all about the Bible.

Now the Word of God is like the definition - while the Spirit is like the explanation, how that definition applies to our lives. The Word is like the fence. Think about the Garden of Eden, the most classic example we have - all these trees in the garden, but God built a fence around the one in the middle. Do not cross the fence, do not touch that tree, or you are going to die. God’s Word tells us where the fence is . . . and the Spirit is like the warning light that comes on when we get too close. You know why they call it barbed wire? Because there are little pokey things on the wire. The Holy Spirit is like the barbs on the wire that prick us when we get closer than we need to be.

That is why two people - and I have seen this a million times - two people can sit under the same sermon, and one of them nods off to sleep, and the other one says, “Preacher, I think that is the best sermon I ever heard.” Two people sit in the same pew, hear the same sermon, read the same text - one of them leaves the building cut to the heart . . . and the other one walks out the door wondering what we are having for dinner, and whether the Mexican place has a special today. The Word is not what failed that person thinking about dinner. That second person just was not in any shape to hear what the Spirit was trying to say. What do you think the Bible means when it says, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith” (Revelation 2:7)?

Now Summer and I have a 2013 Expedition, and we both love that car, but it has a few issues - and I do not have a clue why that engine light keeps coming on . . . well, I do know it is missing on cylinder number five . . . everybody tells us that, but nobody can fix it.

Every vehicle that rolls off the assembly line comes with an owner’s manual in the glove box. That manual says what kind of oil to use, it recommends the tire pressure, and it explains what all those lights on the dash are for . . . and every single word in that owner’s manual is TRUE. I have looked at the manual for that Expedition - every word in there is true - but there is a whole lot of that truth that I do not understand. Most of us have read at least part of an owner’s manual, and we still have no idea what is wrong when that engine light comes on, or when that funny noise under the hood starts up.

So what do we do? We call the mechanic . . . and the mechanic takes the very same information we read in the manual ourselves, and he applies the truth in that manual to OUR vehicle - “I know exactly why it is making that noise.”

Well, the Word of God is the manual . . . and the Holy Spirit is the Master Mechanic. The Holy Spirit takes what is already written down in the Book - every word of it true - and He applies that truth to OUR life, to OUR particular struggle, and to OUR particular week. Without the manual, the mechanic has nothing to apply . . . and without the mechanic, the manual - the rule book of life - so often just stays in the glove box, closed and unused.

“Oh, I will open it up . . . I just do not understand it. Preacher, I just do not understand the Bible.” Well, no - and we are never going to understand it with that attitude. Who did John tell us teaches us? HE shall teach you . . . and to be taught, we have to humble ourselves before someone else . . . that is one of the big problems in public education right now - the students will not humble themselves before anybody . . . but that is another lesson. We are committing a grave mistake when we refuse to let the Holy Spirit teach us.

Now understand this - the Spirit of God never says one single thing that the Bible does not already say. The Holy Spirit does not add a new PAGE to God’s Word. There is not a human on this planet who can rightfully claim that God has given him a new revelation that he is now supposed to spread around . . . it does not work that way. There is not a single thing the Holy Spirit teaches us or lays on our heart that has not already been written down in the Book.

When was the last time a verse we had read a hundred times before suddenly had OUR name on it? That was not the page changing. That was not the Word changing. That was the Mechanic teaching us what the manual means.

The Homemade Ruler

Now the next obvious question is - what happens to the person who reads the manual but never calls the mechanic?

Well, it would be like me and that Expedition. I know if I call the mechanic, he is going to want a bunch of money . . . it is going to COST me to listen to the mechanic. “Well, preacher, I do not want to give up my lifestyle. I know I need to join the church, I know I need to do whatever . . . but I am just not willing to give up the things I enjoy in this life.” Well, then we are going to be just like ME - driving an old vehicle with that light coming on every once in a while, thinking, I hope it gets me where I am going, but I have my cell phone, I can call Kenneth if it leaves me afoot . . . that is not the proper way to run our lives. For spiritual problems - we may have the preacher’s number in our phone - “if I get in trouble I will just call the preacher, he will tell me what to do and he will not charge me a dime” - but that is not the right attitude to have toward spiritual things in our lives.

So what happens to a man who reads the manual but never calls the mechanic? Paul tells us . . . and the undercurrent of this whole passage is that what SEEMS right just does not count.

“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” - Romans 10:1-3 (KJV)

To establish - that is to set up, to build . . . now these people were RELIGIOUS. They were sincere, hardworking, and on fire for the Lord - Paul says plainly they had a zeal of God. They were not hypocrites . . . every one of them believed with all his heart that he was right with God - but they were building on the wrong foundation, because they were measuring righteousness by their OWN standard instead of by God’s standard. Once again - what seems right is not the same as what really IS right.

And that brought a picture to my mind of a carpenter . . . now a good carpenter can build really detailed cabinets, all this complicated work, and make it look really good - you cannot even see the crack between the joints . . . so you would think a carpenter who can do all that ornate work could make a RULER, wouldn’t you? They want thirty dollars for a tape measure down at Lowe’s . . . you just make me one, I know you can make it cheaper.

Well, picture this carpenter making his own ruler. He decides an inch is whatever seems right to him. He marks off little notches on a stick, puts marks on a piece of tape, however he does it - and he uses it to measure everything in the shop . . . and he is proud of himself, so he gives you one of the tape measures he made his own self. Every board he cuts measures exactly right by HIS ruler . . . and then you go out and put the house together, and nothing lines up. “Preacher, I did what you told me to do - how come my life is falling apart?”

Now the Bible talks about false teachers and false prophets. These are preachers and teachers who make their own rulers - and the Bible says they make MERCHANDISE of people. The reason they hand a man the ruler they made themselves is that he is going to give them the money instead of spending it at Lowe’s. They are greedy. They want what you have to give them - more than they want to give you the TRUTH.

So you put a house together with boards cut by a homemade ruler and nothing works - but according to the ruler we used, every single thing was perfect. The fact is, the RULER was the problem . . . and man’s homemade righteousness is that ruler . . . “what seems right to me.” It feels right, and it looks right to everybody around us who is using the same kind of ruler. “I am not going to church today, I am going to the ball game - and that must be okay, because half the church I normally go with is at the ball game with me.” We are all using the same measuring stick . . . that does not make it RIGHT.

On the day we stand before God, whose Word actually is the standard, nothing about our life is going to line up with the scriptures . . . so if we are going to live a Christian life instead of a hypocritical one, then God’s Word has to be the RULER we use - and the Spirit of God has to be the One who checks on how we are READING that ruler.

Have you ever worked with somebody with the saws going, and you ask, “How long do I need to cut this board?” - and they say, “Fourteen inches and three little marks.” Are you serious? You are in a carpenter shop running saws and you say three little marks? You can expect to make several miscuts . . . well, that is what the Holy Spirit does when I say He checks how we are reading the Book . . . He does not accept fourteen and three little marks. A man who reads the Bible through his own filter - filtering out whatever he wants to filter out - is going to build a righteousness that fits his life perfectly, and then turn around and call it God’s righteousness.

It reminded me of the little fairy tale about Goldilocks. She went in and tried the chairs - this one is too big, this one is too little, and this one here is just right . . . well, what God says over here, that is just too harsh, too narrow . . . what God says over there, I just do not agree with that . . . so I will come up with something that is just right. It fits me to a tee. I was uncomfortable in daddy’s chair, and I was uncomfortable in the baby chair, but this one is JUST RIGHT.

God’s Word tells us where the line is - God’s Spirit tells us how close we are to it.

By Faith - Not by Feelings

Now hold that yellow flashing light at the intersection in the back of your mind - we will get there in a minute - but first, faith. We live by FAITH, not by feelings. Who cares if it feels just right? If this bowl of soup is too hot and that bowl of soup is too cold, who cares if you pick the one that is just right? That is what hypocrites do . . . that is exactly what Paul was talking about when he said they had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

“For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” - Romans 1:17 (KJV)

From faith TO faith. There are actually two different kinds of faith in the life of someone living a Christian life - and to be a Christian we really need both of them. The first faith, obviously, is what brought us to Christ. We believed the WORD. We believed Jesus when He said we are all sinners in need of salvation - so we trusted in Jesus, and we put our faith in Him to save our souls . . . that is saving faith.

The second faith is the faith we use every day AFTER we exercised that saving faith. We believe what the Book says about how to live. We believe what God tells us to chase after and what to avoid. We believe what the Bible says about how to treat that neighbor across the road who annoys us . . . and we arrange our lives by what God says . . . that is living by faith - or that is the kind of faith we live BY.

The just shall live by faith - not by feelings, not by what seems right . . . and I suppose this is more of a burden for school-age folks than it is for grownups . . . not by what the popular crowd is doing. By FAITH - trusting that what God wrote in His Bible is the truth, even on the day when His Word goes against everything our flesh wants . . . it is like Goldilocks again. “Preacher, that commandment is just too hard - that one is too cold. I am looking for something just right. What do y’all have at your church for the youth? What do y’all have for this group or that group?” If that is our attitude, we are just looking for something that is just right . . . we are not looking for the TRUTH.

Because a Christian who quits living by faith does not quit living. He just starts living by his FEELINGS . . . and every single time, feelings will drift toward whatever is easiest, whatever is the most comfortable, or whatever costs the least.

The Flashing Yellow Light

Now I am watching the clock, and we are about out of time - so I will find a way to fit the rest of this into a later service - but I did mention the yellow light, so let me say this much.

What does a flashing yellow light above an intersection mean? Does it mean stop? No . . . it just means we need to be particularly aware, because there may be something here that could turn into something we did not expect.

Well, when we go through life - especially when we pick up our phones and start scrolling through Facebook or whatever - I have never once seen a blaring red light flash up and say, you just do not need to do this - but Facebook and Instagram are FULL of flashing yellow lights. Am I the only one? “Oh, this looks kind of interesting . . . oh. Oh, I do not need to go there. Okay - do not need to go there.” Those are yellow flashing lights, folks . . . and when we just drive right on through and ignore them, we are making a big mistake . . . and they do not just exist on the phone. They exist all through life.

The whole point of the yellow flashing light is that it is like the barbs on the barbed wire . . . that is God’s Holy Spirit saying, “Now I know there is not a thus saith the Lord, and there is not a thou shalt not - but you are getting close to a line here, and if you are not careful, somebody is going to come barreling through the other side of that intersection. Slow down and be cautious.” To ignore that is to ignore the PROTECTION God is trying to give us through His Spirit.

Please consider what you heard this morning.

Scripture Used

John 1:4-5 · John 14:26 · Romans 10:1-3 · Romans 1:17 · Acts 17:30 · Revelation 2:7 (all KJV)

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Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.

Do I Change God's Mind?

The Bible says God does not repent . . . and then it also says that God repented . . . both are true, and here is how.

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A note on the Scripture in this study: every verse is printed WHOLE. The words set in ordinary type are the ones this lesson leans on and emphasizes . . . the words in italics are the rest of the verse, printed so that nothing is ever handed to you as a fragment with the remainder missing.

Part Two said that God APPOINTED the asking . . . and the minute a man believes that, a hard question walks in right behind it.

If my asking makes a difference . . . then did I move God? Did I talk Him into something? And if I did – what kind of God is it that can be talked into things?

Now this is not a made-up problem . . . it comes straight out of the Bible, because the Bible says both of these things and does not apologize for either one.

Numbers 23:19 — “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”

Exodus 32:14 — “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

God does not repent & then God did repent. Same Bible, and both of them written by Moses.

So we have got to work this out, and we are going to work it out the way we work anything out – by letting the Bible define its own word.

FIRST — THE WORD ITSELF

The word behind repented in our Old Testament is NACHAM. And it does not mean what our word repent means when we use it about ourselves.

When we say a man repented, we mean he was wrong and he turned around . . . that is not what nacham says. Nacham means to be moved deeply . . . to sigh . . . to grieve . . . and out of that (because of that), to turn from a course...

It is a word about feeling and about turning . . . it is NOT a word about being mistaken.

And that matters, because every time somebody uses Exodus 32 to argue that God got it wrong and had to be corrected, they are reading our English word back into a Hebrew word that never carried it.

SECOND — LOOK AT WHERE IT NEVER MOVES

Now let us put down the things that DO NOT CHANGE, because they are the fixed points and everything else has to fit around them.

Malachi 3:6 — “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”

James 1:17 — “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

1 Samuel 15:29 — “And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.”

No variableness. Neither shadow of turning. God's CHARACTER does not move. His purpose does not move. His promises do not move . . . and notice the mercy hidden in Malachi – it is BECAUSE He does not change that we are not consumed. If God could change His mind about us, none of us would be safe for an hour.

THIRD — THEN WHAT DID MOVE?

So go back to Exodus 32 and read the whole thing, because the answer is sitting right there in the text and most of us have never slowed down enough to see it.

Israel is at the foot of the mountain with a golden calf. God speaks to Moses:

Exodus 32:10 — “Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.”

Let me alone. Now stop right there . . . why would God say that? A man does not say let me alone to somebody who is not holding onto him. God is telling Moses to turn loose – which is the same as telling him that he is holding on, and that the holding on matters.

That is not the language of a mind ALREADY SHUT . . . that is an invitation, dressed up as a warning.

And Moses does not turn loose. He argues – and look at what he argues with:

Exodus 32:13 — “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.”

Moses does not say the people deserve better. He knows better than that – he is the one who came down the mountain and saw the calf. Moses pleads God's own promise back to God.

And then:

Exodus 32:14 — “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

So what moved? Not God's character . . . not God's purpose . . . and certainly not God's promise, since the promise is the very thing Moses stood on. What moved was the standing of the people – and it moved because God had appointed a man to stand in the gap, and the man stood there.

✍️ AUTHOR'S NOTE

I once pastored a dying church – I labored – I prayed – I witnessed – but to no avail… The community would simply not move… finally the church died – the members dispersed – the building was sold… and now nothing remains. I cannot explain with a WHY… In regard to our next example – the rope was real – the rock was real – but the boat never moved… — C.T.

THE BOAT AND THE ROCK

Here is the picture that finally settled this one for me.

A man in a rowboat throws a rope around a big rock on the bank and pulls . . . the boat comes in to the rock. Now – did the rock move?

Of course it didn’t . . . the rock never budged an inch . . . but everything about that man's position changed, and it changed because HE PULLED.

And here is the part that matters the most: who put the rock there, and who gave him the rope? God did. God set the rock, God gave the rope, and God told him to pull . . . so when the boat comes in, nobody says the rock was moved . . . and nobody says the pulling did not matter, either.

God is the rock. Prayer is the rope . . . and when we pray, we do not drag God over to where we are . . . we come to where He has been standing the whole time.

Simple truth: God does not move . . . the boat moves . . . and God appointed the rope.

FOURTH — GOD TOLD US THIS IS HOW HE WORKS

And this is not something we figured out and set on top of the text. God laid the rule down Himself, in Jeremiah, and once you see it - you will see it everywhere:

Jeremiah 18:7 — “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it;”

Jeremiah 18:8 — “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”

There it is in writing, ahead of time. God says that when He pronounces judgment on a nation, and that nation turns – He turns too. That is not God changing His mind . . . that is God keeping a rule He published in advance.

A warning is not A FORECAST . . . a warning is a door.

Nineveh is the test case

Jonah walks through the city and preaches eight words:

Jonah 3:4 — “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Flat. No conditions attached…

Jonah 3:10 — “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”

And Jonah was angry about it, and we know exactly why. He had preached destruction and it did not come – and he was afraid he would look like a fool. But God had never been anything other than consistent. He does what Jeremiah 18 says He does, EVERY TIME...

And Hezekiah

Same thing with a man instead of a city. Isaiah walks in and hands a king a death sentence:

Isaiah 38:1 — “In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.”

Thou shalt die, and not live. And Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays and weeps – and before Isaiah has gotten out of the middle court, God sends him back with this:

Isaiah 38:5 — “Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.”

I have heard thy prayer. I have seen thy tears. God did not say Isaiah misheard Me. God said I heard YOU.

📖 FROM THE PULPIT

Well – I suppose that every preacher who has been called to a church in answer to prayer – and then a few years later – is burdened in his heart to leave that church which before had been an answer to his prayers - experiences a sort of “reversal” – or a change in a direction that he had been praying to be secure… But as a servant – God does not promise to keep us in our comfort zone – He promises to strengthen us in times of trial – when we are led to step OUT of that comfort zone… Nothing about service to God – is one and done – but EVERYTHING about service to God is a daily sacrifice… — C.T.

NOW LET ME GUARD THIS

Two things to be careful of, and I want to name them both.

Do not go away thinking you can talk God into anything. You cannot. God is not weighing our arguments to see if we make a good case. Moses did not win because his reasoning was clever – Moses won because he stood on a promise God had ALREADY made . . . there is no leverage on God anywhere except the things God has already said.

And do not go away thinking your praying is pointless because God does not change. That is the OTHER ditch, and it is the one most of our people are actually in. God said let me alone. God said I have heard thy prayer. God published the rule in Jeremiah 18 so we would know how He works. He has gone out of His way to tell us that the pulling matters.

BEFORE YOU LEAVE

So - do I change God's mind? No. And thank God for that – because a God who could be talked out of His promises could be talked out of the ones He made to us.

But does my praying CHANGE anything? It surely does . . . it changes where the boat is sitting . . . and God is the one who tied the rope to it.

God is not a man that He should repent. And He appointed men to stand in the gap . . . both of those are His doing.

TRY IT THIS WEEK

Pray Moses' prayer this week – and by that I mean pray a promise back to God.

Find something God has said in His word about the thing you are carrying . . . then take that verse to Him and say it back . . . not to remind Him – He has not forgotten. Say it back because that is the only ground there has ever been to stand on . . . and it is ground He put there Himself.

For example – God has promised to NEVER leave us nor to forsake us… So – when you are in a valley – when you are tempted to believe that God may have forsaken you – pray that He will give you the wisdom to see the lies that Satan is placing before you – and the understanding to realize that a single set of footprints in the sand does not mean what it looks like – He has not forsaken you – but He is carrying you…

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NEXT — Part Four: When the Answer Is No. Paul asked three times and God said no three times . . . this is the hardest part in the study and the one most of us need worst, and it is not answered with a tidy verse.

Dry Bones and Two Sticks — Ezekiel 37

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Bro. Ken — Wednesday evening service, September 16, 2026 Ezekiel 37:1-28 · Matthew 24:32-34 · Zechariah 12:10

► Watch this lesson on video (35:30)

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Bro. Ken brought the lesson this Wednesday evening. What follows is his lesson written up from the recording — his order, his words, and the places where he offered a thing as his own reading are marked as his.

What the Lesson Was About

Bro. Ken said up front it would be “sort of a rerun” — he had been torn four different ways on what to bring, and settled on going back through Ezekiel 37, the whole chapter, from the valley of dry bones to the two sticks joined into one. He told on himself before he started: a deacon once pulled him aside after a rerun and told him in no uncertain terms he needed to spend more time studying. He said you don’t forget a thing like that.

He also gave the reason he does not mind repeating himself. Paul told the church he would tell them, and tell them again, and tell them again. Some things bear saying more than once.

Before Ezekiel — God Works It Around

He did not go straight to the text. He started with the way God handles the things we set in motion. “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Every circumstance, Ken said — even one committed in sin — God will work around to the good, though we may still have to pay a terrible price in the flesh for what we started.

His example was David. David had Uriah killed and took Bathsheba. When it was settled with God, David asked forgiveness and asked for the joy of his salvation restored, and Ken believes God gave it. But David still went through the repercussions. And out of that marriage came Solomon, the third king over all Israel. God worked it to the good. If we ask forgiveness and mean it, He forgives us and puts our sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12) — but there are things set in motion that we will still have to walk through.

The Nation That Was Dead

Then Ezekiel 37. Ken set the history first. The nation of Israel was wiped out of the land two different times — when Nebuchadnezzar came down, and again under Titus in AD 70 and Hadrian after him — and they were out of the land for nearly two thousand years. He was blunt about the people who now say the six million Jews Hitler killed is a lie made up by America or by the Jews: they are the liars, because it happened. And it was because it happened that the United Nations placed a homeland for Israel in 1948, and Israel began coming back in great numbers, and in 1967, when they took Jerusalem back, in greater numbers still.

Will every Jew get back to the land before Jesus Christ comes? No, Ken said. That comes in the millennial reign, after Christ has destroyed the greater part of the army that comes against Jerusalem. He raised a question there that he plainly likes to turn over, and offered it as his own thinking and not as doctrine. Zechariah says that in that day whoever will not come up to Jerusalem to keep the feast will have no rain (Zechariah 14:17). So if he is sitting in Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the millennial reign with no boats, no ships, no planes, and sharks in the water, is God going to withhold the rain on him for not coming? His conclusion: maybe everybody left in the world will be within walking distance of Jerusalem. When that reign starts, the kingdom of David is set up, Jesus Christ sits on the throne, it runs a thousand years on this earth, and then it goes right on into the heaven age and the New Jerusalem.

The Clock — What Started It and What Did Not

Ken said that ever since he came out of the Marine Corps at twenty-five he never thought he would live to be fifty-nine. When Israel took the Temple Mount back in 1967 — not all of it; the Wall, with the Muslims still on the mount above — he thought the end would come by 2007. “Let’s get it on.”

But the Lord said, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34). Ken’s reading: not the generation of 1967, but the generation living when these things begin to happen — when the king of the north pushes against the king of the south and overruns him. Then the count runs: 1,335 days to start (Daniel 12:12), then 1,290 (Daniel 12:11), then 1,260 — three and a half years, forty-two months — and after that the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled.

So did 1948 or 1967 start God’s clock? Ken does not believe it did. He thinks it started the awareness of the clock — the time we ought to be watching. He put that beside the beginning of sorrows in Matthew 24:8. The word, he said, is odin, and it means birth pangs: harder and closer, harder and closer, until the child comes. And we have been in the beginning of sorrows for a while.

Learn the Parable of the Fig Tree

“Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh” (Matthew 24:32). Ken tied that parable to the fig tree Jesus cursed on the way to the temple — no fruit on it, cursed from the ground up, and the next day dried up from the roots (Matthew 21:19; Mark 11:20). Jesus was not a dummy, Ken said; He knew it was not the season for figs. He used that tree as a picture of the nation of Israel: no fruit on you. Ken believes with all his heart that the fig tree of the parable is the same tree, and that it put forth green leaves in 1948 and for sure in 1967. Did that start Daniel’s seventieth week? No, he does not think so. But we need to watch, because he believes the final clock is going to start pretty soon.

He said what he thinks about who the antichrist is — the church has heard it before — and added, in his own words, that he may just be “dumb as a rock” and not know any better. Then he pointed at the week’s news: Israeli troops in Syria fighting Syrian troops backed by Turkey, a tank brigade at the Golan Heights, and an airport bombed that was being enlarged to take heavy cargo planes. When the king of the north overruns the king of the south, he said, the clock will have started. God will put hooks in his jaws and pull him down, and he will overrun Israel and tread Jerusalem for forty-two months. And when that begins, we will think we know we have about 1,335 days left.

Somebody might say, if I could see the two witnesses go up, I could tell you when the rapture is. Ken said we will never know all that. Communications will be so bad in those days we will not even know what is going on over there. “We’ll not know the dates. But anyway, drive on.”

Earthquakes, famines — has anybody ever seen Arkansas this dry? It would not surprise him, he said, if this country is hungry in two or three years, with a cattle shortage from the drought and crops that will not grow. What will we eat? We will have to depend on the Lord.

The Bones Come Together — But No Breath

Back to the text. “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones . . . and, lo, they were very dry” (Ezekiel 37:1-2). Not just dry, Ken said — very dry. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

The nation of Israel was dead. When God scattered them through the nations for their punishment, they could not force their way back. It had to be a thing of God. Ken believes God was in the United Nations’ vote that gave them a homeland, and he knows God was in the Six-Day War, when Israel was outnumbered fifteen or twenty tanks to one and the Arab crews rolling down the road saw something in the sky, opened their hatches, and walked away from perfectly good tanks. That is an act of God.

“Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest” (Ezekiel 37:3). Ezekiel did not have a clue, Ken said, and there is no shame in it — the prophets did not know everything. Then the command to prophesy, and the promise: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live” (Ezekiel 37:5).

Here is the heart of Ken’s reading. The bones came together, the sinews and flesh came up, the skin covered them — “but there was no breath in them” (Ezekiel 37:8). He thinks the bones came together in 1948 and stood up in 1967. The nation is in place. It has an army that man for man is as good as any in the world. But it is not alive. The breath is still to come.

He does not think Israel will ever be completely wiped out of the land. They will be pushed out of Jerusalem and driven south into the Negev — and here he told the church what he saw with his own eyes when he was over there in 1999: miles and miles of blacktop road through the desert, each one dead-ending at a mountain; the mountains honeycombed with bunkers under the sand; three big pipes running on a track into a mountain that he later learned were carrying water and other supplies inside; and one lucky day, the door of the mountain standing open and Merkava tanks and an Israeli jet in the hangar. Beersheba, he said, grew into one of the biggest shopping centers in the world because of all the troops in the Negev. The Negev has always been their fallback, because every time Israel has been overrun — the Babylonians, the Assyrians — it has come from the north. When they are overrun from the north, they will go south.

Zionism and the Drawing of God

Ken read verse 6 — “I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD” — and then talked about Zionism, which he dates for sure from around 1898. The Jews want to go home, and more and more of them every year. Ken believes that pull comes from God. Why are they being drawn? Because the end is about here.

And what does that mean for us? We need to be faithful. We need to study the Word of God. We need to ask the Lord to help us be ready. Because when it breaks loose, if we have not studied the Scripture and do not avail ourselves of the grace of God, we are going to fall apart. The only way to stand true is to study the Word and apply it to our life and know He will bring us through. What if you die? That is all right. What if you get caught in an earthquake? That is all right too — then, as one of the men had said, you will not have to go through the tribulation.

He read verses 7 through 10, the shaking, the bones coming together bone to his bone, the prophesying to the wind, “and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army” (Ezekiel 37:10). Israel has a great army now. But they do not have enough. When the antichrist leads a ten-nation Arab confederation against them — Ken said he would go ahead and say that — they will be so overwhelmed they cannot stop it. Not bombs from the air; hand-to-hand, so many that it will be like a cloud covering the land, and they will drive Israel south into the Negev.

Whose Bones These Are

“Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts” (Ezekiel 37:11). God tells us plainly who it is, Ken said. When Titus and Hadrian dispersed them through the whole world, there may have been a few left in the land all along — but the nation was gone. It was no more.

Then verses 12 through 14, the opening of the graves and the bringing into the land, and the promise, “And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live . . .” (Ezekiel 37:14). Ken puts that on the day of atonement when Christ comes back. He said there are a good many Jews over there now looking for the return of their Messiah and calling Him Jesus Christ — whether they are born again he could not say — and that when He comes, down in the Negev, “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced . . .” (Zechariah 12:10), and the whole nation is saved, and that is the beginning of the reign.

The Two Sticks

Ken called this part excellent. When David died, Solomon reigned; the Lord had said back in the law that when Israel came into the land they would want a king like the other nations (Deuteronomy 17:14). God appointed Saul, then David, then Solomon. After Solomon, the ten tribes split off from the two, and God gave the ten to Jeroboam on the condition that he be a good king. What did Jeroboam do? He took them straight into calf worship, with one calf at Dan and one at Bethel — “behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28) — so that his people would not go back down to Jerusalem, where God had told them to worship. And the northern kingdom was carried off by the Assyrians. Jeroboam was an Ephraimite; Solomon was of Judah. There was bitter animosity between the two kingdoms, and Ken noted the northern king once made a deal with Syria to go down and kill the king in the south.

That is the split behind the two sticks. “Take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah . . . then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim . . . And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand” (Ezekiel 37:16-17). One in God’s hand, Ken said — the hand of Jesus.

He read straight through to the end of the chapter: the children of Israel gathered from among the heathen, made one nation in the land, one king over them all, no more two kingdoms, cleansed from their idols, “so shall they be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 37:23). Amen.

“And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd . . .” (Ezekiel 37:24). Is David the man coming back to be king? No, Ken said. David is dead. His soul will come back at the resurrection and he will be there in the millennial reign and in the heaven age — but this King is Jesus Christ, David’s Lord, the Son of God, the Son of man. One shepherd. And they dwell in the land God gave to Jacob — everywhere Abraham walked, God gave to him and his seed, and the same land to Jacob — they and their children and their children’s children for ever, with an everlasting covenant of peace and God’s sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.

The Heathen Shall Know

“And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore” (Ezekiel 37:28). Ken said that when this thing happens, the people who have berated Israel, who hate the Zionists and hate Israel and hate us, are going to say, “Look what the God of Israel has done to us.” Not the United States. Not the Marine Corps — sorry to say. Not the Israeli army. Not any army put together. God Himself. And He is going to get glory out of the heathen.

He added a verse he did not turn to but paraphrased — that the heathen will know Israel went into captivity for their own transgressions and not because their God was weak (Ezekiel 39:23) — and illustrated it with the ark of the covenant in the house of Dagon. The Philistines set the ark in Dagon’s temple as if Dagon had beaten the God of Israel. Dagon fell on his face. They set him up again, and he fell again (1 Samuel 5:3-4). They sent the ark home. Why? Because no little god can overrule the big God. “I don’t care what they teach. I don’t care what they preach.”

We have won, Ken said. We have already won. We just have to go through the garbage to get to where we are going to win. God has already defeated Satan. He has defeated everything. And He will defeat these folks.

The Close

He said it may come to dire straits in this country, and it already has in the Middle East and in Ukraine, where six or seven hundred churches have been burned and more than sixty pastors killed by people who hate anyone who names Christ.

Then he told on both men inside him. His “carnal man” — he said “car man” — wants to take a gun and go do something about it. His spiritual man feels sorry for them, because “Fret not thyself because of evildoers . . .” (Psalm 37:1), and because if a man is not a saved, born-again child of God, and does not believe Jesus Christ is God’s Son who died in the flesh, there is only one place he is going to wind up, and that is hell. We need to pray for them. He said he admires the attitude of the Jews over there who say, “Pray for our enemies, that their heart may change” — and admitted, “I’m not that nice. I need to be that nice.”

The recording ends there, at 35:25, mid-sentence.

Scripture Used

Ezekiel 37:1-28 (read through) · Romans 8:28 · Psalm 103:12 · Matthew 24:8, 32-34 · Matthew 21:19 · Mark 11:20 · Daniel 12:11-12 · Zechariah 12:10 · Zechariah 14:17 · Deuteronomy 17:14 · 1 Kings 12:28-29 · 1 Samuel 5:3-4 · Psalm 37:1 · Ezekiel 39:23 (paraphrased, not turned to) — all KJV

Opening the Letter

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday evening service, September 13, 2026 I, II & III John · Series Introduction · 1 John 1:1 · 1 John 2:19 · 1 John 1:4 · 1 John 5:13 · 1 John 5:11-12

Watch this lesson on video (47:47)

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We are going to start a new series tonight, and here is the way I have it laid out - the way I hope it works. Every other Sunday night we will do a lesson from 1, 2 and 3 John, and on a Sunday night we will kind of skim the surface. Then the next time I preach on a Wednesday we will go a little bit DEEPER . . . the first layer of the onion on Sunday, the second layer of the onion on Wednesday. And the Sunday nights in between we will do the Route 66 thing . . . I have got eighteen or so lessons prepared for this, and that may change a little as we go along.

Now, 1, 2 and 3 John - is it a prophecy? Is it just a book? Or is it a letter? It turns out it is a LETTER . . . and it is a letter that has been addressed to US - we will touch on that directly.

There are some names we will run across tonight. Ephesus - you remember that was the city where John pastored as he got older . . . and the seven churches of Asia were the churches in that part of the country. Smyrna - that was the one church in Revelation chapter 2 that had NOTHING wrong with it . . . and two men we have probably not run across before. One is named Polycarp - he was one of the preachers at Smyrna, and he learned from the apostle John firsthand. The other was Irenaeus - a young preacher in one of those churches who learned from Polycarp. Hang on to those names, because the reason I am going through them will show up in just a moment.

A Letter Has Come to This Church

Let us use our imagination for a minute. I said these three books are actually letters - so suppose a letter showed up in the church mailbox this week . . . it was hand-written . . . there was no return address on it, and the reason there was no return address is that after reading the first line or two, it would be obvious who had written it. “Oh - I recognize that, that is Brother So-and-so’s writing. That is what Brother So-and-so always talked about and always said.”

Now suppose the man who wrote that letter was literally the LAST living person on earth who had personally walked with Jesus Christ before the cross. This same John is the John in the Gospel of John who leaned on the breast of Jesus at the supper - he was the John who stood at the cross - he was the John who ran to the empty tomb . . . and he was the John who ate the broiled fish with Jesus after Jesus had come up out of the grave.

Well, that is what 1 John is. It is not a textbook - it is literally a LETTER . . . it was written by the last eyewitness of the “person Jesus” there was, to the churches he pastored in the country around Ephesus. And one of the reasons it was written - was that something had gone WRONG in those churches. Some of the members - members that the church TRUSTED - had been overcome with a particular error . . . and we are going to touch on that here in a minute.

So this evening I am not going to go line by line and verse by verse and actually preach the letter. I am just going to hand you a little bit of information - who wrote it, why it was written, and how he put the letter together . . . the way it is structured. Because there is a HUGE difference between reading a letter that was written to somebody else and reading a letter that was written to us. I could read a letter that was written to Brother Ken . . . but if I read a letter that was written to ME, there is a significant difference in how I am going to look at what is in it - and that is the idea here.

Now I want to point out that this letter was written to the churches in the days of John - but by extension it was also written to THIS local church, here, today . . . if we find a book in the Bible that was addressed to a church in New Testament times, we can add the address of Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church to that same letter . . . literally.

So here is the point of this evening’s lesson, and this is the first time: This letter is addressed to us. It is addressed to Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church.

Who Wrote It - the Last Man Who Touched Him

I have already said the man who wrote it was the last person alive who had touched the flesh of Jesus Christ. Now this is where some of the details start to matter, and when I explain the error that was found in these churches, you will be able to connect the dots. Notice 1 John chapter 1, verse 1.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;” - 1 John 1:1 (KJV)

We have HEARD . . . we have SEEN with our eyes . . . and our hands have HANDLED. We have actually put our hands on Jesus Christ. Now that is not written just to sound nice and give comfort . . . if you look at it, it is a whole lot like a witness taking the stand in a courtroom - “this is what I saw FIRSTHAND,” is what John is saying.

And by the time this letter got written, the number of people left alive on the earth who could say that - I have seen Him with my eyes, I have touched Him with my hands, I have heard Him with these ears - had been narrowed down to ONE man. John was the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, and he was the last one of the twelve still living . . . he was an old man, and he was pastoring - taking care of the churches in the country around Ephesus.

Now here is one of the ways we know that, and we are going to look at a little bit of history. This is history - it is not written to us in the Bible - but according to history it goes like this. I mentioned a couple of odd names at the beginning . . . Polycarp - who in the world would be named Polycarp? Well, this was a pastor the apostle John taught personally, and he was the pastor of the church at Smyrna - the very same church that got the letter in Revelation chapter 2 with not one single word of rebuke in it. Now the oldest records - and when I say records, I mean letters that were written a long time ago, at that particular point in time, and actually survived - one letter of Polycarp’s has survived all the way down to us, and in it he quotes 1 John.

And according to history, at about eighty-six years old they stood that old preacher up in a stadium full of people and ordered him to curse Christ. Polycarp is reported to have said - “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” And right after he said that . . . they lit the fire and burned him alive.

Now Revelation chapter 2 - we are not going to go there tonight - but verse 10 is where Jesus tells the church at Smyrna to be faithful unto death. And one of the pastors of Smyrna was a man who actually WAS faithful unto death - he did it.

Then there was the other man, Irenaeus. He did not know the apostle John himself - but he was taught by Polycarp, and he later wrote, in letters that have survived, that he could still remember right where Polycarp sat when they were in church together . . . he remembered how Polycarp talked about the apostle John, and how he would tell about the conversations he had had with him. And he says plainly, in the letters that have survived, that John the disciple of the Lord had written this letter at Ephesus.

So one man knew John - that is Polycarp . . . the next man, Irenaeus, knew the man that knew the apostle John. You see how this information passed straight from John to a man who knew him, to a man who knew that man.

Now I realize history is not SCRIPTURE . . . what we have just gone over is some letters that survived, and they are not the Bible at all - and we do not build any kind of doctrine on Polycarp or Irenaeus, because the Bible proves itself. But what we have here is a word found OUTSIDE the Bible - agreeing with what the Bible has already said.

So - when we open up this letter - we are reading something the last apostle wrote – and it is not the voice of a stranger . . . it is the voice of one of our fathers in the faith. And I think we would all agree that the apostle John earned the right to correct us - and he did, in these three books, as we will see - and he corrected us with a great amount of tenderness, because he loved us.

Now think about this . . . if the last man alive who had touched Jesus sat down to write one last letter - how CAREFULLY would we read that letter if it arrived in our mailbox?

Why It Was Written - Something Got In

Let us touch on why John wrote it. The letter never names a city . . . and there is a reason for that - it was intended to be passed from one church to another. You remember there were seven churches in Asia, and these churches met in HOUSES. I have actually pastored a church once that did not have a church building. We met in one member’s house one Sunday and a different member’s house the next Sunday . . . we just kind of went around that way - and that is the way these churches operated at that time. Ordinary, everyday people were the members, and they had been saved and brought into the fold ten, twenty, thirty years after the crucifixion . . . and according to history they were living in a world totally saturated with idol gods. If you walked three miles to work, or rode a donkey to work, it would be impossible not to pass a shrine or a temple to some idol.

And one of the problems in these churches was that they were beginning to be POISONED. Now here is the thing - what was poisoning them was not coming from the outside in . . . some of the members of these early churches were in error, and they were spreading poison from WITHIN. Notice 1 John 2:19.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest (shown up for who and what they were) that they were not all of us.” - 1 John 2:19 (KJV)

According to history, certain teachers had risen up from the membership of these early churches, and they claimed to have a HIGHER knowledge of God than the ordinary church member out in the pew. Do you think that is still sort of common? You do not have to look very far to find somebody who claims to be a preacher and has raised himself up - SELF-elevated - above the congregation . . . well, that was beginning to happen in that day. They claimed to be part of a secret inner circle, and they claimed to have knowledge that those in the pew had been denied.

And when they walked out - when they left the church - that is the reference here . . . they went out from us, but they were not of us. And when they left they took members WITH them - there were those who were deceived and believed their lies.

Now one of the things they taught was not something that could be glossed over and ignored . . . it went to the very HEART of what we are as true worshippers. The thinking of that day said that anything physical was dirty - it was down low - and the spirit was elevated high. And their reasoning was, if the things of the flesh are down here and the things of the spirit are up here, then if Jesus was truly divine, truly from heaven, He could not have taken on actual flesh. So they taught that Jesus only SEEMED to have a body . . . the real Christ, they said, never suffered, never bled, and never died.

Can you see the seriousness of that error? If Jesus did not come in the flesh, those people were in the same boat as the Muslims are today - a god with no son, and no savior. If there was no flesh, there was no blood . . . if there was no blood, there was no payment for sin . . . and if there was no payment for sin, there was no SALVATION. You take away the body of Jesus, and you have taken away the cross. Take away the body of Jesus, and you have taken away the settlement of sin - and with it, every single hope that anybody who puts their faith in Jesus Christ has got. You have just taken it all away.

Now go back to the very first verse we read, and after hearing the error that was starting to prosper in these churches, notice the significance of what John says. Our hands have HANDLED . . . our eyes have SEEN . . . our ears have HEARD . . . of the Word of life. John did not come up with some fancy philosophy to answer them - he just gave an eyewitness account of the way it really was. “I was there, people. I saw Him with my eyes” - and you cannot see a spirit. “I touched Him with my hands” - and guess what, you cannot touch a spirit.

Picture that old man in a courtroom. On the one side you have those who say nothing of the flesh can be holy - they are on that side like they are in a court of law - and the apostle John is on the other side. He does not ARGUE with them . . . he simply takes the stand and raises his right hand - “I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” And every claim these impostors had to a higher knowledge just disappears against the eyewitness of the one man left - who had actually touched what they claimed was only a spirit.

Now there are two verses of Scripture it would do us well to write somewhere in our Bible. You do not have to - but these two verses give us the purpose, the reasoning, behind the writing of this letter. Yes, it was written to the churches in Asia . . . but if it is a letter written to a church in New Testament times, it is a letter that has been written to THIS church.

“And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” - 1 John 1:4 (KJV)

Why did he write it? That your joy may be FULL. And 1 John 5:13 - same song, second verse.

“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” - 1 John 5:13 (KJV)

That ye may KNOW something - that it may be SETTLED in your mind and heart that you have eternal life. So the letter was written to fill up our joy, and to help us to know something . . . no fear, no doubt, no guessing, no hoping and wondering all the way to the graveyard whether or not we are going to make it when we finally die and stand before God. Now, if we are not sure whether we have been saved, how is it possible to have very much joy in our life? That is how those two verses are connected.

I have actually heard people who spent the majority of their lives in a New Testament church say, “Well, preacher - I hope I make it. I hope I make it.” Well, 1 John was written to counter that attitude . . . it was written to counter that fear and that doubt. People, we do not have to HOPE we make it. If our hope, our faith, our trust is in Jesus Christ, then there is no doubt - we are saved to the uttermost, and nothing can undo that.

So for the second time, the point of our lesson this evening: This letter is addressed to us. It is addressed to Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church.

How the Letter Is Built - the Lighthouse Staircase

Now I want to take a few minutes and point out how this letter is structured. 1 John does not argue in a straight line the way Paul’s letters do. Paul builds a case like a LAWYER - point one proves this, point two proves this . . . and the proof gets a little more definite every time Paul makes a point. John does not go in a straight line - and he does not go in a complete circle, either. Everything I read as I prepared for this lesson - talks about how John goes in a SPIRAL.

I have mentioned before that it is like a lighthouse. You have a circular staircase inside a lighthouse, and a window on the north side. When you are down at the bottom you look out that north window and you see something. Then you go on up the staircase, and you are still looking out that north window - but you are a little bit higher, you are on the second floor . . . it is the same view, but you can see MORE, because you are higher. That is the way 1 John is put together. He comes back around to three tests, over and over - it is like looking out that north window at three different levels. Every time he goes to a higher floor, he sees things that could not be seen from the floor below.

Now on the surface, if you do not know that, it feels like, “Well, he is kind of going around in circles - did we not already discuss that?” But when a man gets to the very top of that staircase, he sees things from up there - that were simply not visible from the first floor. Keep that in mind when you read through 1 John, because that is exactly the way it is structured.

Let me point out what the three windows are - three windows, three tests - and what they are for. They are there to tell what is REAL from what is COUNTERFEIT . . . bear in mind the error that had been introduced in these churches: Jesus did not really come in the flesh. That is obviously the counterfeit. “Well, I have touched Him - I have seen Him” - that is the real thing. So these tests are designed to separate what is real from what is not.

The first window is OBEDIENCE - do we keep the commandments of Jesus Christ? The second window is LOVE - do we love our fellow brethren? The third window is TRUTH - do I confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh?

And there are three porches, if you will - three landings - and the verses for them are on the handout I gave you. On the first landing the tests EXPOSE what is really there. On the second landing they MANIFEST - they show - what is actually there. And on the third landing the window opens up straight into God Himself. Now this is a picture that will carry through this entire series of lessons. On the first landing, love exposes a liar - did He come in the flesh, or did it only seem that way? On the second landing, love buries the sin of Cain. You remember the sin of Cain? He was jealous of his brother, because his brother was doing it the right way and Cain was convicted in his heart - he just did not have the backbone to do it the right way, and he was jealous and angry at the brother who did. And on the third landing, love opens up the heart of God, and we can see what godly love is really like.

Then you have got 2 John and 3 John, the two little books on the end . . . 2 John is a door we SHUT - we shut the door on error - and 3 John is a door we OPEN - we open the door to what is true.

So as we look out these three windows, there is probably one of them that puts a little bit of dread in our heart. We are not as obedient as we ought to be . . . we do not love the way we know we ought to . . . or, “I know enough truth - I am satisfied with the level I am at. I am going to stay down here on the second floor,” when there are higher floors and better views available.

This Is Not Somebody Else’s Mail

As we bring this to a close, I want to point out that this letter is not somebody else’s mail. It is OUR mail . . . and those two verses - the purpose verses, as we are going to call them - joy made full, and knowing without any doubt at all that we have salvation. Now the tests we are talking about, the windows we are looking out of, are not the destination. They are not the final place we are going to be - they are the PATH we use to get where we ought to be.

You see, John is not writing this letter to make a saved person start doubting his salvation. He is writing it so that normal people, just like you and me, can STOP doubting - and so that those who are counterfeit can be seen for what they really are.

So as we start out, first of all, we need to commit ourselves to the CLIMB . . . there are eighteen lessons, unless I add some more, and we need to commit to climbing those eighteen steps one paragraph, one verse at a time - willing to say, “I am not going to skip any steps. I am not going to skip over something I know in my heart I ought to do.”

Second, it would be good to keep that little handout I gave you. That is our floor plan - the floor plan of the lighthouse, for lack of a better way to put it.

And third, I want to make certain we have settled the question of who this letter has been addressed to. It has not been addressed to some church a long time ago . . . it has been addressed to our specific local New Testament church, TODAY. So for the third time: This letter is addressed to us.

Now if there is somebody here this evening who has never believed on the name of the Son of God . . . if there is someone here who doubts that Jesus actually took on real flesh, shed real blood, and literally rose again with a real body - remember, He ate some fish and a honeycomb, and He said to Thomas, come here, put your finger in these wounds in My hand - then that is something we need to take care of before we ever begin climbing this staircase.

“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” - 1 John 5:11-12 (KJV)

This is the record - the testimony, the sworn word . . . and the day of grace is TODAY. Take the Son - put your faith in Jesus Christ - and then start climbing this staircase, too.

We have been having lessons about a staircase in 2 Peter, and now there is a staircase up this winding lighthouse. And you do not get to the top of a staircase in one giant step . . . one step at a time, people. We do not get to be the kind of Christian we will be later all at ONCE - it takes one step at a time. So, okay . . . I will admit I am less than what I ought to be. I am less than what I could be. But I am going to be one step higher, one step closer to that goal tomorrow. I am still not going to be what I ought to be - but I am going to be closer, and I am going to take another step. And that is a summary of the rest of our Christian lives. One step at a time.

Please consider what you heard.

Scripture Used

1 John 1:1 · 1 John 2:19 · 1 John 1:4 · 1 John 5:13 · 1 John 5:11-12 · Revelation 2:10 (all KJV)

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This lesson opens the I, II & III John series. Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.

The Boundaries of God’s Law

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, September 13, 2026 God’s Law, Lesson 2 of 4 · A3 D10 · Genesis 3:1-5 · Exodus 20:3, 13-17 · Galatians 3:24-25 · Romans 8:3-4

Watch this lesson on video (47:33)

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This is the second lesson in our little four-lesson series about God’s law. Last Sunday morning we talked about WHO makes the law - and we settled it. God made everything . . . God holds everything together . . . God owns everything - so God has the right to set the terms, and you remember the potter and the clay, and how “we” being the clay do not really get a vote in how God chooses to do things.

Now the word for law in the original language is the Torah - and it means to point or to aim. God’s law is God POINTING us - toward the behavior He expects of us.

So this morning we go past WHO makes the law and on to the next question . . . WHY did God draw a line in the sand at all? What purpose does a fence serve? What purpose does this line God has drawn between right and wrong actually serve? And here is where most people get the cart before the horse - because most folks have this one exactly backwards.

God’s boundary is not a cage . . . it is a guardrail.

The First Lie Ever Told Was About God’s Law

We go back to the Garden of Eden, and we find the first lie that was ever told - and it was a lie Satan told about God’s LAW. The Bible tells us there was one boundary in that garden - one tree - one consequence . . . and God revealed the cost of crossing that line right up front. So we have the boundary, which is God’s expectation - He expects us to stay on this side of the fence. We have the tree, the part inside the fence that has been forbidden. And we have the consequence - what happens if we cross over.

Now when we talk about a fence and a guardrail, that reminds me - if any of you have ever been to Haley and Andy’s house, their house sits right up on a bluff, and they have a fence along the top of that bluff. What do you suppose that fence is for? It is a guardrail . . . it is there to keep the ones on that farm SAFE - so what do you suppose the fence around the Ten Commandments is for? Thou shalt have no other gods before me - thou shalt not kill - thou shalt not steal, and so on. It is not there to hem us in . . . it is there to keep us from getting too close to the edge and falling off. You put a fence around a pasture to keep the cows in - well, why not just let the cows run up and down the road? Because the cows will get hit by the traffic - and if we are not fenced out of improper behavior, we WILL be hurt as well.

So what happened after this lie Satan told? Now notice - he did not really tell a lie about God. He told a lie about God’s law . . . “Oh, that fence is not really important. He did not really mean to put the fence there.”

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” - Genesis 3:1-5 (KJV)

Subtil - that is crafty, sly. He was good at tricking - and what he handed Eve was a partial truth . . . and a partial truth is a complete lie. We get into trouble the same way when we read only part of a verse in the Bible. Read the first half of a verse and it says one thing - read the whole thing and we say, oh, oh . . . NOW I see what he was talking about. So do not stop halfway down. “Ye shall be as gods” - you will be your own god. You can build the fence wherever you want it to be, because you will know good and evil just like God does.

Now notice what the serpent DID - and notice what he did NOT do. He never denied there was a fence - Satan knew good and well there was a boundary, and not one time did he tell Eve that God had no right to build it. What he did was RE-DESCRIBE the boundary . . . he planted a seed in Eve’s mind - “the boundary is in the wrong place.” God had said of every tree in the garden you may freely eat - all of it, every fruit in that garden, every bit of it except one. And Satan turned it around backwards and made it come out as though God was keeping Eve away from EVERY tree. Was the purpose of that boundary to keep Adam and Eve away from all the trees - or was it to keep them away from the one tree that was poison? Bear in mind there was only ONE fence . . . in a whole garden full of freedom.

You go up to Andy and Haley’s house and there are some fences here and there to keep the animals in - but there is one fence along that bluff. Just ONE. When we go up there and visit - Wyatt and Claire and the little ones - they can go anywhere they want on that whole farm . . . but they are told, never go on the other side of that fence. Do not get in between the fence and the bluff. That was the idea with Eve in the Garden of Eden - Satan took the fence around the one forbidden tree and portrayed it as a holding pen - he made it look like a cage.

And he has been doing that same thing ever since. “You mean, preacher, if I start going to church down here I can’t . . .” and then they start listing off the stuff in the Ten Commandments. I can’t have my Jack Daniels if I go down there to church. I can’t slip over and see Sally Sue when my wife is out of town. You get the idea. They look at the Ten Commandments as a CAGE - something that restricts their freedom and pens them in - when the whole time the fence around those ten commandments is there to PROTECT them.

Sarah and Mark had a couple of dogs that would run with the sheep or the goats out in their little field . . . and the dogs got through the fence. Well, what is so bad about that? . . . it was not long before an automobile mashed them flat as a pancake out on the highway. Why? They crossed the FENCE. And what do you think happens to us when we cross the fence? The fence is there for our PROTECTION - not to hem us in, but to protect us . . . you build a fence around the things you LOVE. You build a fence around the things you want to protect.

Mount Nebo is close, and it is not so much Nebo as some other places I have been - but you go up on a real high place like that and look off, and you can see so far down it makes your tummy do a turn. And typically there is a guardrail there . . . a fence. Now we come up to that fence and we can have one of two attitudes. “Ah, I am aggravated - that fence is keeping me from going where I want to go, it will not let me get the full view.” Or, when we get a little older and a little more mature about it, we can look at that fence as a good thing - “Well, of all the stuff Uncle Sam gets into that he ought not to get into, I am glad they built that fence there, because it is keeping me safe.” That kind of fence is the exact same thing we see in the Garden of Eden.

And that brings up a question . . . where in our lives are we standing at a fence which God put there to protect us - and calling it a cage?

Every Boundary Is a Fence Around Something God Does Not Want to Lose

Now back a couple of lessons ago - we went through the Ten Commandments one at a time, and we looked at every one of them through eyes of LOVE. This morning we are going to look at those same commandments from the FENCE side - and here is the one question I want to ask at every single one of them - what is God PROTECTING with this fence?

Because it is not normal for a person to go out in the middle of nowhere and build a fence – but when a person builds a fence, he builds it around something he does not intend to LOSE. The fence around those cows is there because we do not want to lose the cows. I had an electric fence around my yard so I would not lose my dog . . . well, he crossed the fence, and something bad happened. If he had stayed on the right side of that fence he would still be alive.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” - Exodus 20:3 (KJV)

God is protecting us from building our entire lives on top of something that is going to fall apart. If our god is anything other than our Creator, we are placing our whole life on something that is not going to last.

“Thou shalt not kill.” - Exodus 20:13 (KJV)

What is God protecting here? He is protecting our lives - and every family standing beside that life.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” - Exodus 20:14 (KJV)

God is protecting marriages . . . and the children caught right in the middle of those marriages.

“Thou shalt not steal.” - Exodus 20:15 (KJV)

God is protecting what men work and sweat to obtain - what a person sacrifices for - what we gain by getting up at four or five in the morning and getting on the road.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” - Exodus 20:16 (KJV)

To bear false witness means to tell something about our neighbor that is not true. And God is protecting the good name of somebody who has not done one thing wrong - “but I don’t like them, so I am going to spread lies.” That fence protects the innocence of other people.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” - Exodus 20:17 (KJV)

Covet here is GREED. I want what they have so bad I will do whatever it takes to get it - I am going to arrange things so their house becomes my house, and their vehicle becomes my vehicle. His ox and his ass - that is his livestock, his living. Now this last commandment is a little different from the others, because it does not just protect the neighbor . . . it protects you and me. It builds a fence around our OWN heart, and the purpose of that fence is to keep poison OUT . . . it will not keep destruction from coming at us from the outside - it keeps poison from starting on the inside and working its way out.

Now look at these commandments - not a single one of them is God being difficult or God being hard on us. You can go look at the other four and see if you can figure out what God is protecting with them . . . but in every one of them you can picture God standing between us and something that is going to hurt us. The fence around the pasture stands between the cows and the traffic.

Now the boundary we are talking about to protect us - is still a boundary - I get that . . . a guardrail is not a suggestion . . . it is there to keep us from going too far. We are not saying the law is soft or something to be ignored. What we are saying - is that the law - the Ten Commandments - is FOR us.

Good Laws Do Not Make Good People

You have heard it said that good fences make good neighbors. Well, a good fence does not turn your neighbor into a good person. A fence does not make wandering livestock BETTER - it does not change their nature . . . a fence keeps bad livestock from wandering.

And here is what surprises folks the first time they think it through - now do not let this go in one ear and out the other. The Bible tells us that no man is justified by the works of the law. Another way of saying that is, good laws do not produce good people. The reason we NEED good laws is because people are not good to begin with. Dardanelle has laws against stealing, does it not? Most folks in Dardanelle are pretty good folks – but some folks in Dardanelle are still THIEVES. The State of Arkansas has a law against murder. Well then, nobody murders in Arkansas anymore, because that law made everybody in Arkansas good . . . no, that is not the way it works.

So if bad things keep happening even where there are good laws - what does a law DO? If a law cannot make me a better person, what is it FOR? Well, a law can do three things. A law can RESTRAIN - it can make the consequences painful enough so that we think twice about crossing the fence. Everybody knows what barbed wire is . . . what are the barbs for? So that when you try to cross it you feel the pain and change your mind. A law can PUNISH - after the fact, after the damage is already done. And a law can EXPOSE - it can tell us exactly what crossing the line looks like, and it can show us our need for something a good deal bigger than just one more rule to follow.

But a law cannot change a person’s HEART . . . it cannot happen. That is one reason the Bible says by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. A law cannot change our nature. A law can tell us exactly where the boundary is - and it can do nothing at all to make us not WANT to cross that boundary. We can look at the barbs on that wire and decide against it . . . but the law has not changed our want-to. We still think, “I wish I could get over there – but it just is not worth it.”

So once again - God’s boundary is not a cage . . . it is a guardrail.

What Happens When We Get Outside the Fence

Now if a fence is protecting something, then getting on the wrong side of that fence is going to COST something. If being on one side is protection, being on the other side is the loss of protection.

But we need to be careful here - because it is easy to hear half a verse, or three or four words of what the preacher says, and think, “Preacher, are you saying God is up there in heaven with a rule book and a pencil, just waiting for us to slip up so He can zap us?” No . . . that is not what is happening with the Ten Commandments at all. Think about this - and it is a pretty good example if I do say so myself. Think about a fish on the bank of the river. A fish was made for WATER. A fish was never designed to live on the bank - and the minute that fish is dropped on the bank and starts flopping back and forth, it starts to die. Now can you see that nobody is punishing that fish? Nobody is standing there beating it with a stick . . . it is dying because it is outside the only place that was ever built for it to live.

I want us to see God’s law as the SHAPE of the life that God built for us to live. When we get outside those boundaries, why are we so surprised that life stops working the way it was meant to work? We do not start suffering because God is MEAN . . . we start suffering because we are a fish on the bank instead of a fish in the water.

Now this does not mean that every hardship in our lives is because we crossed a fence somewhere. Job did not cross a fence . . . the blind man over in John chapter nine did not cross a fence - they asked, why is this man blind, did he do something, did his mama and daddy do something? And Jesus said, none of that . . . this man is blind so the works of God would be seen in him - and then He healed him. So every time we suffer, we should not kick ourselves and think, “Well, I must have crossed a fence somewhere - I wonder which one.”

This goes back to FAITH. When they told me I had cancer, the first thing that popped into my mind was, why? Well, that is not good - asking WHY will never, never, never lead us to a good place spiritually. When we begin to suffer, we need to settle a couple of yes-or-no questions. Does God love me - yes or no? Will God ever leave me or forsake me - yes or no? Will God ever do anything to bring me harm - yes or no? You see where we are going with this. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Now that does not say everything that happens is for the best - it says all things work TOGETHER for good. What is good for us is not always what is comfortable. I have taken medicine that tasted awful, but it was for my good - and I would have suffered more by not taking it than I suffered choking it down. If we have faith in Jesus, that faith is what gets us past the suffering.

So is there any place in our lives this morning - where we are flopping around on the bank - and just calling it bad luck? There is no such thing as good luck and bad luck. God intervenes in our lives every minute of every day, and everything God does for us is ultimately for our benefit.

The Law Walks Us to a Door and Knocks

Last Sunday we said that God’s law is the X-ray. The X-ray shows us exactly where the break is, but it does not set the bone - God’s law shows us where we are BROKEN. Now Galatians takes it one step further than the X-ray.

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” - Galatians 3:24-25 (KJV)

I actually learned quite a bit from this scripture. I always thought the schoolmaster was the teacher - but bear with me, the language does not support that. In Paul’s day the schoolmaster was the household SERVANT whose one job was the young man of the house. He got that boy up in the morning, made sure he was dressed, kept him out of the mud holes on the way to school, and walked him right up to the teacher’s door . . . and then he stepped back. The servant was never the teacher . . . the servant was the one who got the boy there to LISTEN to the teacher.

And that is exactly what God’s law has been doing for us - waking us up, keeping us out of the ditch, walking us right up to the door, knocking on it . . . and then stepping back to see whether we are going to live by faith, or whether we are going to define righteousness for our own selves. Justified – is what it means to be counted righteous - by FAITH.

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” - Romans 8:3-4 (KJV)

The Law is weak through the flesh - it is weak because WE are weak. In the likeness of sinful flesh – refers to how Jesus was in a real body just like ours. So what the law could not do, JESUS did for us. Once we cross that line, the law is not able to carry us back over to the other side . . . so God went and did what the law could not do. God sent His Son.

Have we ever THANKED God for the fence? . . . have we ever thanked Him for loving us enough to tell us the truth about where the edge of that bluff is?

The Line and the Bridge

So let us put the whole thing in one bowl this morning. First - God drew the line clearly and plainly, and He said it out loud to Adam and Eve. He told them exactly what it would COST to cross it. Second - every line that God has ever drawn - is a fence around something that He does not want to lose. Third - even with a fence there to protect us, we cross it anyway. I cross it, you cross it - we ALL have, and we all do. And fourth - God built a BRIDGE back across the line we just stepped over. If it had not been for Jesus, when we crossed that line there would never have been a way back for us. Now we do not come back to find perfection . . . we come back to find FORGIVENESS.

And when I say there is a bridge back, that does not mean God has changed the STANDARD . . . it means God sent Somebody to stand where we could not stand . . . Somebody to do what we could not do . . . Somebody to pay what we could not pay.

So let us hear what was actually said in the Garden of Eden one more time - and hear it the RIGHT way this time, instead of the way Satan told it. The fence on the bluff was not there to spoil the VIEW . . . the fence around the forbidden fruit was there to protect the ones in the garden - and it was put there by Somebody who could not stand the thought of losing us, watching us fall off that bluff.

So for the third time . . . God’s commandments are not a cage. God’s commandments are a guardrail. God loves us, and the fence is there not to hem us in - but to protect us. Please consider what you heard this morning.

Scripture Used

Genesis 3:1-5 · Exodus 20:3 · Exodus 20:13-17 · Galatians 3:24-25 · Romans 8:3-4 · Romans 8:28 · Galatians 2:16 · John 9:1-3 (all KJV)

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