God Is Light — Three Lies and the Truth

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday evening service, October 11, 2026 1-2-3 John · Unit 2 · 1 John 1:5-10

► Watch this lesson on video (40:58)

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Three Lies and the Truth

This is the lesson the way it was preached on Sunday evening - near word for word. The “uh”s and the starts-over are taken out; the sentences are left the way they were said. Bible verses are printed exactly as they read in the King James. Anything marked GOING DEEPER was NOT preached on Sunday evening - it is extra study for anyone who wants to dig further.

Well, it is good to have the opportunity to be here again this evening. This is the second lesson on First John - and you remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about the Apostle John and how he was an eyewitness there in Ephesus. He kept talking about how he had literally SEEN Jesus with his eyes and touched Him with his hands. And we learned why John wrote this first letter: its purpose was so that those who read it would have the same kind of fellowship with God, with Jesus, and with one another that the Apostle John had with God, with Jesus, and with his fellow worshippers . . . and also so that our joy in Christ might be FULL.

We talked about fellowship - and when we hear that word we think, “Oh, we are going to go drink a cup of coffee, we are going to go eat a meal.” Well, in the days in which this was written, the word actually referred to PARTNERS who own something together. The example we used was this: it is supper time, and I am acquainted with the family, I am acquainted with the cook . . . and the door is cracked open and they stick me a plate out through the crack in the door, and I sit out in the yard to eat. As opposed to - they open the door and invite me in, and I sit down at the table with the rest of the family. Now that is two types of fellowship, and one is quite a bit closer than the other. And that is the idea here, people . . . we can be a saved, born-again child of God, just as saved as the Apostle Paul, and have a DISTANT kind of relationship with the God who saved our souls - or we can have a very close fellowship with the God who saved our souls.

The Message John Heard

This evening we are going to begin with chapter one and verse five, and notice that verse five mentions “the message.” Now he is talking about the message that he is reporting.

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” - 1 John 1:5 (KJV)

So John is telling us that the message he is putting down in this letter is not something he sat down and thought of, and it is not the result of his studies over several different years. The message he is giving is something he HEARD - these ears heard it directly from the mouth of Jesus Christ. This is coming directly from God.

Now “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” - well, what exactly is that supposed to mean? If Jesus is light, then, “Preacher, what about people like me that have a lot of shadows, to put it politely? What about people like me who possess a lot of darkness in my life? If God is light, what kind of shape does that put me in? Does that mean I am lost? Does that mean I have to keep doing something in order to drive the shadows away so that I will not become lost?”

Well, we are going to read all of these verses - one John one, five through ten.

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” - 1 John 1:5-10 (KJV)

Notice here there is an “if we say . . . if we say . . . if we say” - and an “if we confess.” Now the one point of our lesson this evening is this:

GOING DEEPER · THREE LIES AND TWO TRUTHS

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

Look at how these verses are built. Verse six is a lie . . . and verse seven is the truth. Verse eight is a lie . . . and verse nine is the truth. And verse ten is a lie - and then the chapter stops. That is three lies and two truths, and John answers the third lie in chapter two.

God is not asking for a perfect record - God is asking for an honest walk.

God is asking that we avoid these three lies, and not say these untrue things in an effort to build ourselves up in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.

In God Is No Darkness at All

Now we are told here that in God there is no darkness AT ALL. This is significant in the language this was written in: John uses “no” twice - he doubles it. John doubles the “no” he uses in this verse, and I will tell you what that means in just a second. According to the source I looked at, John used the strongest way possible for the language to say NONE. There is no darkness in Jesus Christ or in God at all. And if we go to James one and seventeen, we read where there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

“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.” - James 1:17 (KJV)

Now the significance of this - think about the difference between light and darkness. Light shows what is actually THERE. If God is light, doesn’t God’s word show us what we really are? You see the connection there. Light shows us what is actually there. A lot of times, especially with kids in the house, we play pretend a lot - that is just something Grandpa and the kids do. But when you turn the light on and everything in the room is clearly exposed, you cannot pretend anymore. You cannot pretend there is a boogeyman over here in the corner when the light is on. “Grandpa, there is no boogeyman in the corner - I can see.” So light takes the pretense completely away.

Darkness, on the other hand, is the opposite of light - and it does the opposite THING that light does. Light exposes . . . darkness hides. It is easy to pretend something that is not true in a place of darkness. So walking with God - notice the way this scripture words it: “If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” So walking means that if we follow God’s will, if we allow God’s word to expose what we really are, then we are walking out in the open . . . we are walking where there is no place to hide. If we are not walking with God, then we are walking in the shadows - we are walking in darkness.

GOING DEEPER · WHEN THE POWER GOES OUT

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

For you little ones - when the power goes out at night and the house goes black, the first thing Mama does is find the flashlight. And when that flashlight comes on, whatever is on the floor shows up - the toys, the shoes, the dog. Well, God is a light that never goes off, and nothing in God’s house stays hidden.

Now why would we choose to walk in the darkness instead of in the light? There is a scripture - I think it is John chapter three, you can correct me - that says they avoid the light because their deeds are evil. I am not quite sure where that is. Is that John third chapter or not? I do not know - the preacher is not the only one that does not know about it. But you see, if we choose to point our lives in that place of darkness, we do so because we are trying to HIDE what we are. If we choose to walk in the light as He is in the light - in other words, walk so that the truth shines on our life and shows us what we really are - well, then we are not trying to hide anything. Notice what this scripture says: if we confess our sins, if we agree with God that we are sinful, we are not trying to hide anything.

It is like the Apostle Paul talked about the law being our schoolmaster, drawing us to Christ. If God’s word did not expose what I really was, then how would I ever become aware of my need for God? When I got sick with my cancer - if I never felt bad, if I never suffered, I would never have gone to the doctor and I would have died. So pain and suffering, we do not like it . . . humility, we do not like it . . . shame, we do not like it. But without some of these negative things we would never be aware that we were in need, and if we never understand that we are in need, we would never seek a Savior. I mentioned this morning about the mountaintops and the valleys - you sort of see what I am getting at. It is just impossible for us to always remain on those mountaintops, and the valleys are just as necessary, or even more so, than the mountaintops.

“Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” - Hebrews 4:13 (KJV)

Naked - that is, completely exposed - and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

A Shadow Needs Something in the Way

Now think about a shadow. In Him is no shadow, neither variableness or turning . . . in Him is no darkness at all, not even any dim places. A shadow is the result of something standing between an object and the light. And you will notice, just the way it is by nature, a shadow ALWAYS points AWAY from the light. A shadow never points toward the light. You see the significance of that in our lives? If we are walking in darkness, if we are looking for shadows to hide things, we are going in the complete opposite direction of the light.

And the sun never casts a shadow on itself. Well, “Preacher, that is kind of a duh.” But again, that is an example teaching us there is no darkness on the truth. In fact there are no DEGREES of truth . . . there is no such thing as a half-truth. If God is light, God is truth, and in God there is no darkness at all. That means there is no half-truth, and there is no “well, this is true under this circumstance, but under this circumstance over here the truth can change.” It does not work that way.

The Bible tells us there are three that bear record in heaven - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Well, “in him is no darkness at all” teaches us that there is nothing in between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that blocks the light of the Father from reaching Jesus Christ . . . nothing that blocks the light of Jesus from ever reaching the light of the Holy Spirit, and then all the way back around.

Now you remember there were some individuals in the churches in the days of John, there in Ephesus. These individuals were promoting the error that Jesus was not here physically - He only SEEMED to be. Their reasoning was that the physical part of the world had to be dirty, and there was no way anything physical could be clean and righteous. So Jesus, being God - being God in the flesh - could not have been here in the flesh, because the flesh is sinful. Well, these individuals claimed to walk with God. They claimed to be in the light . . . and while walking in the light of God, they also kept a hold of their darkness. They put their hands tight around the error they were promoting. And what John is simply saying is this: you can say what you want to, but darkness and light cannot exist in the same place. They cannot exist together.

GOING DEEPER · WHOSE WORDS WERE THESE?

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

The false teachers in those churches taught that sin belonged to the body - to the low, physical world - and that the ones with the “higher knowledge,” or the saved soul, had gotten above all that. So “we have no sin” was not something John made up. That was their SLOGAN. And when John says “if we say . . . if we say . . . if we say,” he is quoting their own words back to them, one at a time, and holding every one of them up to the light.

Three Things People Say

Now there are three things people say in the verses we were looking at, verses five through ten. “If we say we have fellowship but . . .” and then they give an excuse. “If we say we have no sin” - that is a lie. And “if we say we have not sinned” - that is also a lie.

So notice first John one and six, the first one we look at.

“If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:” - 1 John 1:6 (KJV)

What these individuals are doing is putting the label of Christianity on their lives and DIVORCING the label from the life. They are pretty much saying, “My being a Christian really does not have anything to do with my behavior or my manner of life.” Well - duh. Can you not see the inconsistency in that mentality? Now the walk they are talking about, to walk in darkness - once again, the purpose of this evening’s lesson is that God is not looking for perfection, He is looking for basically honesty. There is not a one of us who can honestly claim that we never walk in darkness, or places of less light, or places that are shadowy. What this is talking about is not sinless perfection . . . it is talking about the PATTERN of our life.

I have been walking for over sixty-eight years. There has been an occasion or two when I have stumbled, scraped my knee, fallen flat on my face. But the pattern of my life is that I am walking upright on my feet. That is the pattern of my life - my life is not defined by the few times I have stumbled. That is the idea here: the pattern of our life, not the fact that we stumble.

You ever go to the supermarket and stand there in front of the magazine rack and pick out a magazine and look at it? Well, how is that different from SUBSCRIBING to that magazine and getting it in the mail regularly, once a month or twice a month? There is a difference between a subscription and “I am just going to look at this magazine one time.” There is a difference between patterning our life after our pet sin - subscribing to whatever it is - and just a one-off. Folks, none of us are perfect. We have all been guilty of picking one off the rack and looking, just one time. Well, to walk in the light is to subscribe to RIGHTEOUSNESS.

So the pattern it is talking about is not just a bad day. It is not talking about the individual who stumbles and says, “Oh, man, I hate that I stumbled.” It is talking about when you WALK in darkness - the individual who has a paid subscription for the foreseeable future to whatever it is.

Then verse eight - the second lie.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” - 1 John 1:8 (KJV)

Now the second lie fools the person who is telling the lie. The first lie is intended to fool OTHERS - to make me appear different from what I really am. With the second lie, I am actually deceiving my own self. It is like this: “Brother Kenneth, I have not subscribed to this magazine - I just borrowed yours.” And just because I borrowed it and did not really subscribe, that is not the same thing - that is different. You see the pattern? I am patterning my life after error, whether I borrow that error or whether I subscribe to it . . . but in my own mind I am deceiving myself, because I justify it. I have not officially bought into whatever sin it is that is leading me astray. A classic example of that - I remember a past president we had who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and he just redefined what sin was and made the problem go away - or at least tried to. That really does not work.

And the third lie - and this is really the worst one of all - verse ten.

“If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” - 1 John 1:10 (KJV)

Now notice what it says: we make Him a LIAR. Who do we make a liar? We contradict God. We can fool others, we can fool ourselves, and we can contradict God by subscribing to this way of life that is in error.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” - Romans 3:23 (KJV)

Romans three and twenty-three pretty much nips this in the bud. Every person who has ever been born could put their name right there - erase “all” and put their name there - and it would be one hundred percent valid. “For Fred has sinned and come short of the glory of God.” “For Bobby has sinned and come short of the glory of God.” You get what I am saying? To say otherwise is to tell God, “You were mistaken.”

I have got an example here that I thought was kind of cute - I was kind of proud of it myself. A pretend FENCE. Let’s just get a herd of cows and pretend that there is a fence around those cows. Do you think the cows will stay in that field? Well, I am going to live my life and just pretend that I am righteous. Do you think that is going to do any good? The only one I am deceiving is me. And the way to realize we are just pretending the fence is there . . . if we go out at midnight on a new moon and walk where we are pretending that fence is, well, we can convince ourselves that the fence is really there. But if we go out at noon in broad daylight and walk in that same place, the pretending will not work. God is light. And if we look at God’s word, we will see ourselves exposed as we really are - which may not be comfortable, but it is NECESSARY, because if we never see our sin, we will never seek a Savior from that sin.

So God is not asking for a perfect record . . . He is asking for an honest walk.

The Truth - Walk in the Light

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” - 1 John 1:7 (KJV)

First of all, if we walk in the light - if we pattern our life after God’s truth - we will have fellowship with one another, at home and in church. And the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from all sins. Now on the surface you may say, “Well, preacher, that sounds like after we get saved we have to do good stuff to maintain our salvation.” The idea here is that you have to understand this is talking to the FAMILY. Now you remember what the purpose of the letter of First John was. The gospel of John, I am going by memory here - “that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” And then First John - and I may have my Johns mixed up, forgive me if I do - is so that his joy in you may be full . . . so that your cup will be full and STAY full. Well, how does that cup stay full?

GOING DEEPER · THE MASK WE WEAR IN THE CHURCH DOOR

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

Walking in the light gives us two things. The first is fellowship with one another - not just fellowship with God, but with each other, at home and in the church. And fellowship means partners who own something together. Well, nobody can be partners with a MASK.

Suppose I walk into the church with a smile on my face and anger in my heart. When we go into business with someone, when we put our name on the title next to our partner, we expect them to have skin in the game - just like we have something to lose. People, if I am unwilling to practice in my life - or at least TRY to practice - what I preach from the pulpit, how can our partnership in this church be genuine? And if we are wearing a mask of hypocrisy - and I am not talking about an occasional stumble, I am talking about a subscription to one of the three lies - then we are not in fellowship with God, and we are not in fellowship with each other, and we will not be until we CANCEL the subscription.

All right, I have always been kind of bad about this - I will dip my spoon into the soup and I have to concentrate really hard, because I have always had a little bit of a tremor, and if I am not careful I put as much food in my mouth as I possibly can. I am a horribly impolite eater. But I have got this spoon, and it is holding all the liquid I can possibly put on it. Well, if I start trembling, that liquid comes out of the soup. For our joy to remain full - if I take my eyes off of Jesus Christ . . . you remember what happened to Peter. He was sinking in the water until he did what? Until, “Lord, save me.” Jesus reached out, and when he saw the Master, he quit sinking. Well, when we take our eyes off of the truth, this cup of joy starts shaking, and what was a full cup, some of it starts splashing out.

Now I want to correct a possible misconception. The Bible is not telling us that if our joy ever gets full, it is going to stay full no matter what. It is telling us that we CAN have a full, complete joy. And if we walk in the light, that cup will remain full . . . it will not spill over, empty out, and we will not get the tremble. It remains topped off.

So if we walk in the light we will have fellowship one with another, each other, at home, and also His blood will cleanse us from all sins. The blood KEEPS ON cleansing. Now we are not talking about our salvation - this is addressed to the family, and it is talking about fellowship, not sonship. So if we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus constantly cleanses our life, so that if we are a Christian today and choose to walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ will give us the strength and the motive to be a Christian tomorrow. That kind of thing.

The Confession

Now one John one and nine. I want to say this is really important scripture - but what scripture is not important?

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” - 1 John 1:9 (KJV)

To confess does not mean to pull out a list and name everything we did wrong. The first thing wrong with that is that it is not possible - we cannot possibly know all the wrongs we do. We sin ignorantly. We sin in ways we do not even realize. To confess is to SAY THE SAME THING that God says about our sin. “Well, preacher, I just made a mistake.” It was not a mistake - it was a sin. “Well, preacher, you just do not know what I was going through. I was sort of justified in that.” I do not have to know what you were going through. No, you were not justified in that - God says it was a sin. “Well, preacher, I am not as bad as they are.” Well, you may not be, but that still does not excuse our sin. Confession is when we stop hanging a “but” on the end of an excuse.

The kids mess around in the kitchen, and they come in the living room with chocolate all over their face. “Mom” - or Sarah, or Granny - “have you been in the cookie jar?” Well, why would you ask a kid if they have been in the cookie jar when it is so obvious they have? It is to get the child to realize, “Well, maybe I should not have done that. I probably should have asked permission for that.” That is pretty much what David did. We are not going to go there and read it, but in the Fifty-first Psalm, David pretty much got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. We cannot get our hand out of the cookie jar until we ADMIT that it is in the cookie jar. We cannot remove our hand from where it should not be until we realize, “My hand should not be there.”

GOING DEEPER · DAVID JUST AGREED WITH GOD

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

God already knows - and confession is us finally saying what God has known all along. That is exactly what David did. Psalm 51:3-4 - “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.” There is no excuse at all in David’s confession. David simply agreed with God that he had SINNED.

And it says that God is faithful and just, if we confess our sins. To be FAITHFUL means that you can count on God to keep His promise - if we agree with Him about our sin, He will forgive us. And to be JUST means that the price for that sin we committed has already been paid. First Peter two and twenty-four - there is a little comment I want to make.

“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” - 1 Peter 2:24 (KJV)

It would not be right, it would not be proper, it would not be fair, it would not be according to the law for God to hold you and me accountable for sins that have already been paid for. He is faithful - He will keep His word and forgive - and He is just. He is not going to hold me accountable for a debt that He already paid on the cross.

GOING DEEPER · ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS - THROUGH THE WHOLE HOUSE

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

And notice what God cleanses - “all unrighteousness.” God does not just cleanse the one sin we named in our confession. The named sin opens the door . . . and the cleansing goes all the way through the entire house, the complete life.

So not to confess our wrongs does not mean that we become lost. It means we are still saved. But what it is telling us is that we have stopped minding our Heavenly Father. And once again, first John one and nine is written to the FAMILY. If we confess our sins - who confesses? The family confesses - He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Now one John two and one:

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:” - 1 John 2:1 (KJV)

Oh, he is writing us this letter so that we can live perfectly sinless lives? No, he is writing it so that we can AVOID sin. If we do not avoid sin, we have an advocate - a go-between that will take our sins and argue on our behalf, so that we can escape judgment, because that sin has already been paid for. Now that does not mean we are going to avoid consequences, because we set things in motion - that is just the way life is.

GOING DEEPER · FELLOWSHIP KEPT OPEN

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

A guard here, so no one misreads it. Verse nine is written to the family of God. Verse nine keeps FELLOWSHIP open . . . it does not buy back being His child. A child who sins is still a child - 1 John 2:1. And neither is verse nine a formula for the lost to say in order to get saved - or “re-saved.” The lost come to salvation by repentance toward God and faith in the Son, not by some act of naming their sins.

The Operating Room

I will leave you with this thought, and try to be honest. In terms of confession - “Well, I did this, but . . .” - is there a “but” hanging on the back end of our confessions? Now this is not a threat so that we have to be afraid we are going to become lost. It is an INVITATION to step into the light, to see what our problems actually are so that we can go to Jesus for forgiveness. What this is designed to do is to show us that our hand is in the cookie jar where it has no business. And once we admit that, once that is exposed to us by the light of God’s word - “Oh, my hand should not be there. Oh, thank You, God, for showing me. Forgive me” - that is what God is looking for.

I have asked the musicians to come forward as we prepare for an invitational hymn this evening . . . but one other example, talking about God is light. I suppose most everybody has either been in an operating room or knows a little bit about one. An operating room has lights that will just blind the fire out of you . . . just real bright. Well, why is that? So the doctor can see to cut out every little bit of what is wrong. We understand that you would not want a doctor operating on you in a dark operating room, would you? Well, why are so many so intent on living their lives in the dark? God’s word is the light, and the light is intended to expose what should not be there - not so that we can reach in and cut ourselves, but so that we can take that to God in prayer and ask Him for forgiveness, and ask Him to remove the cancer of sin - or however you want to phrase that.

GOING DEEPER · THE QUESTION TO TAKE HOME

Not preached on Sunday evening - extra study.

God already knows we do not have a perfect record - His Word says so: “For all have sinned.” God is not waiting for us to get everything right before He forgives us or before we start following Him. He is simply looking for somebody who will agree with Him. I am only going to ask one question tonight, and I do not want you to answer it out loud: is there anything we are still keeping in the dark . . . and not calling a sin?

Please consider what you heard this evening as we stand and sing.

The Fear of the LORD Is the Beginning

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, October 4, 2026 Route 66 · The Great Staircase, Landing 1 of 13 · Proverbs 9:10 · Job 28:28 · Ecclesiastes 12:13 · Song of Solomon 8:7

► Watch this lesson on video (47:21)

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This morning we are starting a new series of lessons - and it is going to take a while, but we are going to go through all sixty-six books of the Bible . . . and I want us to use the picture of climbing a STAIRCASE to help us through it, the same kind of staircase Peter described for us in Second Peter chapter one.

“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” - 2 Peter 1:5-7 (KJV)

Each step builds on the one under it - and we have had several lessons over the past month or two about that staircase. But here is the idea I want us to see - the sixty-six books of our Bible were not just tossed in there at random . . . there is a PURPOSE for where every one of them has been placed.

Now some staircases are small and narrow - no big deal. And then there are those staircases we see on TV, out of Hollywood - great big, wide, GRAND staircases. Think about the difference between a plain piano and a GRAND piano. Men have come up with all kinds of philosophies - and some of them are kind of sharp, and some of them have some good points - but not one of them is to be compared with the grand staircase that the sixty-six books of the Bible represent. It is not just a way to live a little better - it is a way to live a WHOLE lot better. And I am not talking about the physical things of this world - I am talking about our relationship with God . . . because if we do not have a good strong relationship with God, the circumstances of our life really are not that important. We will see that when we get to King Solomon - he walked up every staircase there was, looking for happiness and contentment, and at the end of it all he told us the conclusion of the whole matter - “Fear God, and keep his commandments.” That is what we were DESIGNED to do.

There are sixty-six books in the Bible - but there is only ONE story. The Bible tells us of a good and a perfect God . . . it tells us of a people who keep drifting away from that good and perfect God . . . and it tells us of a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who comes DOWN the staircase in order to carry those of us who have drifted back UP it.

Now I want to clarify something before we go any further - I am not talking about losing our salvation and God coming down to restore it. I am talking about the FELLOWSHIP we have with God after He saves us. Am I the only one whose life is a constant series of ups and downs? Today my relationship with God might be spot-on . . . and tomorrow it may not be as close as it is today. I am constantly drifting - and what does God do? Every time I humble my heart and repent, He comes down that staircase and takes hold of me, and He carries me back up to a closer relationship - not to restore my salvation, but just like David, to “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.”

So where does a staircase like that begin? On the surface we might think - “Well, preacher, it is probably going to begin with KNOWLEDGE.” No. “Then it must begin with some kind of Holy Spirit power - I got really close to God and I finally managed to pray through,” like some religions teach. No, that is not right either. It does not even begin with LOVE. God’s Word says that the bottom step of this staircase - the step that every other step rests upon - is the FEAR OF THE LORD.

And this morning we are going to stand on that first step, the bottom step, and look at the fear of the LORD from four different directions . . . the foundation is LAID in Proverbs, the foundation is TESTED in Job, the foundation is PROVEN in Ecclesiastes - where Solomon tried every other staircase in existence and none of them gave him what he was looking for - and the foundation is CROWNED in the Song of Solomon.

Every stairway to God begins on the same first step - the fear of the LORD.

The Foundation Is Laid - Proverbs

“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” - Proverbs 4:7 (KJV)

Now if wisdom is the most important thing - the FIRST thing - then wouldn’t we agree that the wise thing for us to do is to lay the proper foundation for wisdom, so that we are building on something that will hold wisdom up?

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” - Proverbs 9:10 (KJV)

Now the word “beginning” here does not mean the first thing in a long row of things . . . it means the CHIEF thing - the foundation stone - literally the part that everything else rests on. I watch the grandkids - Wyatt and Claire and Brett - building their little towers out of blocks and Legos, and that one piece on the bottom that they started with, the one underneath all the others . . . that is the BEGINNING. And if that first Lego was not there, there would be no tower, because that is the one every other piece is resting on.

So if there is no fear of the LORD, there is no wisdom - there is no nothing - there is not much of a relationship with the God who saved our souls.

And the word “fear” does not mean running away from God with our hands over our head in surrender, saying “I give up” . . . it means standing before God with our HAT in our hand. It refers to reverence. It refers to awe. It refers to the settled understanding of who God is, compared to who we are. The fear of the LORD is taking God seriously - as GOD.

Far too often we think - “Well, God saved me, and I believe in the security of the believer . . . so God is over yonder someplace, and now I can pretty much do as I please, because I know I am not going to lose my salvation.” That is not taking God very seriously - and that is not fear, reverence, awe, and respect for God.

“Is the beginning” refers to the FOOTING. Now on the surface, when I was looking at this, I thought - well, that is just the first lesson of many I need to learn to get wisdom. But it is not talking about a first lesson we learn and put behind us . . . it is that first Lego we started our tower with - the ONE thing that everything afterward is built on, and without it there would not be anything to our building. We might think, “Well, I am a Christian” - and we may be saved - but if we do not have a proper fear of the LORD, we have not built a Christian LIFE, because a Christian life is built directly and specifically on a proper fear, love, respect, and awe for the God who saved our souls.

“Of wisdom” refers to the skill of living a life pointed in God’s direction. “And the knowledge of the holy is understanding” - this is not some kind of book knowledge through an advanced education . . . this is knowing God HIMSELF - knowing His character, knowing His holiness. Knowing God personally, having a close relationship with God, is what lets a person see life clearly - so that we live with our life pointed in the RIGHT direction. And the right direction is God’s will . . . the wrong direction is my will, our will.

Most everybody here is married - and we know our spouse, we are personally acquainted with our spouse, and we live our lives letting that knowledge point us in the direction they prefer . . . so that there will be PEACE in our home. We have all heard it said - “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Well, if God is not happy with the direction of our life, it does not matter what we try - we will never find the happiness we are searching for until we live in a way that lets God be happy with our lives.

When we build a house, what is the very first work that is done? It is not the walls. It is not the roof. It is the FOOTING - the foundation. The first work on a house is not done with a hammer . . . it is done with a SHOVEL - digging down past the loose topsoil until we get to something that will not move. That is the first Lego - and everything built afterward, whether it stands or falls, is sitting right on top of that buried, invisible foundation.

Now nobody drives by a new house and says, “Oh, look over there at the footing on that house - isn’t that wonderful?” But if the footing is wrong, it does not matter how pretty the house is - the shutters, the pretty curtains, none of it matters if the footing is wrong.

The fear of the LORD is the footing of the entire Christian life. And we should beware of light-houses that give out an uncertain kind of light - “Let your light so shine,” yes . . . but the world offers dozens of different kinds of salvation, dozens of foundations, and every one of them has been poured, not in a deep footing, but on top of loose ground - sometimes even on top of a sand pile.

So here is the lesson for us this morning - if life keeps cracking down the middle like thin concrete, we need to check the FOOTING. Forget about the outside, forget about the appearance - look at the foundation.

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” - Proverbs 3:5 (KJV)

Wisdom does not begin with information - wisdom begins with REVERENCE. A man can know his Bible from cover to cover and still be a fool if he does not properly fear and respect the God who wrote it.

So when our life cracks - when things are falling apart and it did not go the way we wanted it to - do we check the beauty of the shutters? “Well, I am doing this, and I am doing that, I am going to church” . . . the outward stuff? Or do we look at the footing? The first thing we need to check when things start falling apart is - “Do I have a proper fear of the LORD in my heart, in my life?” This might be God trying to get our attention, to teach us to reverence Him properly and point our life in the right direction. That is the foundation of wisdom - and without wisdom we are just wandering around hopelessly.

Now yes, if we are saved we will go to heaven - but I think we underestimate the badness, for lack of a better way to say it, of being saved “yet so as by fire,” as opposed to being saved and hearing, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

The Foundation Is Tested - Job

The second direction we look at this foundation from is the book of Job - this is where the fear of the LORD is TESTED.

Job chapter twenty-eight is the MINER’S chapter. Job describes how men will tunnel under the earth in the dark places to look for silver . . . they will dam up rivers and turn the mountains over to get at the gold underneath. And after all that digging and searching, he asks the question of the whole chapter:

“But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?” - Job 28:12 (KJV)

Wisdom is not found down in a mine. Wisdom is not found out in the sea. Wisdom is not for sale at ANY price. And then verse twenty-eight gives us God’s own answer - and by the way, it is the very same answer we found in Proverbs:

“And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” - Job 28:28 (KJV)

Now that is fine and dandy - but notice WHO is saying this, and pay particular attention to WHEN he is saying it. This is not a proverb spoken from a comfortable place in life. This is Job - and Job did not just lose one child, which would have been awful enough . . . Job lost EVERY one of his children. That is the worst part. And to add to his misery, he lost his livelihood - his cattle, which was how they made a living, that was their wealth. He lost all of his servants, so he had no support at all. And then he lost his health. He lost it ALL in a matter of a few short days - while one man was still telling him about one bad thing, another came in and told him something else bad had happened . . . one right after the other after the other.

That reminds me of the storms of life. A storm came against Job’s house in the Old Testament - just like the storm described in Matthew chapter seven . . . the rain came down, the floods came up, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell NOT, because it was founded upon a rock. Now the house we are talking about is not a physical house, and not his circumstances - his circumstances were BAD. The house we are talking about is Job’s relationship with God. He went through all of that - and the Bible testifies, “In all this Job sinned not.” What mattered most survived the storm.

Now it is interesting - I never could find where Job found out WHY all this happened. To the best of my knowledge he never did understand his suffering . . . he never got the explanation he was asking for. But in spite of not knowing why, the first step of the staircase HELD firm under his feet - he had a proper fear, respect, and awe of the God of his salvation. Now how many of us could say this one?

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” - Job 13:15 (KJV)

“I am going to keep serving Him just like I always have.” So the fear of the LORD is not a fair-weather kind of wisdom. And even though you and I are not being tested to the same extent Job was tested, I know the testings we go through are not pleasant at all. But here is the lesson of the TESTED foundation - we do not need the explanation of WHY as long as we have this foundation of fearing the LORD. God has it in His control. We look at all the chaos going on in the world - God has it . . . He has not lost control.

Job had three friends who showed up - you can go read it for yourself, we are not going to this morning - and they had a FORMULA for how to solve Job’s problem. But Job did not need a formula . . . he needed a strong foundation that would stay firm. And the fear of the LORD holds - in EVERY circumstance and in every situation. That is what we see in the book of Job.

Every stairway to God begins on the same first step - the fear of the LORD.

The Foundation Is Proven - Ecclesiastes

Now in Ecclesiastes the foundation of the fear of the LORD is PROVEN. If anybody ever had enough money to test every other staircase that existed, it was King Solomon. If the answer was wealth - Solomon had it. If the answer was pleasure - Solomon tells us he tried it, everything under the sun. If the answer was learning - the Bible tells us Solomon mastered it. He built things, he did the music, he had vineyards, he had fame.

When we go back and read Ecclesiastes, it is like a lab report - a complete summary from a man who climbed every ladder this world has ever leaned against a wall . . . and Solomon found out every one of them was leaning against the WRONG wall. “Vanity of vanities . . . all is vanity” - a waste of time. Solomon tells us that all those other staircases - wealth, pleasure, learning - are no different than chasing the wind, no different than trying to grab a handful of fog. It cannot be done.

Now here is an illustration that struck home with me. Picture somebody sinking in quicksand - we have all seen it on TV - and there are a few bushes scattered around, and he is frantically grabbing at every branch he can reach . . . “If I can just get this branch, I can pull myself out - if I can just get that one, I can pull myself out.” If I could just get more possessions . . . if I could just experience a different kind of pleasure . . . if I could just get the praise of other people - you get the idea. And then when we finally do get those things, it is like every branch we take hold of breaks off in our hand, and all we have is a handful of LEAVES - and things are no different than they were before. And the deeper we sink, the more frantic we get, and the more attention we pay to the branches and the leaves . . . and we become BLIND to the hand that has been stretched out to us from the very beginning. We are concentrating so hard on what we think will make us happy that we do not even notice the hand of God stretched out right over here - and all we have to do is take hold of it.

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” - Ecclesiastes 12:13 (KJV)

This is not the opinion of somebody who missed out on things in the world. This is the VERDICT - the conclusion, at the end of his life - of a man who quite literally had every single thing this world had to offer.

Now there is one thing I want to point out in this passage - the word “duty.” If we look in our Bibles, the word “duty” is in italics, and that means it was not in the original language. That is not a mistake, and there is nothing wrong with it . . . but it makes a point that is easy to overlook when we just read right over “the whole duty of man.” Fearing God and keeping His commandments is not one of several different responsibilities we have as children of God. The Hebrew says, “this is the WHOLE of man.” Fearing God is not just a piece of our life - it is the whole of our life, which means this is quite literally what we were MADE for. People, the Bible is teaching us here that to fear God and keep His commandments is intended to BE our life. Period.

So the lesson for us this morning is that we should not spend thirty or forty years of our lives testing the same branches King Solomon already tested. The report has been made. The conclusion has already been published. We can benefit by BELIEVING the report - or we can be wounded in life by ignoring it.

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;” - Ecclesiastes 12:1 (KJV)

Now if youth has already passed us by - and youth has passed most of us by this morning - then remember our Creator TODAY . . . because our day of grace, our day of mercy, did not pass with our youth - our day of grace is right NOW.

There are things we simply cannot know in our youth - we get a little older and think, “I wish I had known that when I was twenty.” Well, some things we CAN’T know at twenty. But what we can do at twenty is BELIEVE things we do not understand. We can open the book of Proverbs - and we cannot understand all the sayings in there, but that does not mean we cannot believe them. We can get the general gist - King Solomon tried to find happiness in all those things that are tempting me today, and he said it was all a waste of time. We can put our arms around that, even at a young age.

The Foundation Is Crowned - the Song of Solomon

The last one - the fear of the LORD is CROWNED. The Song of Solomon is a love song, and its title in the original literally means this was the BEST song King Solomon ever wrote. And we might naturally ask - “Well, preacher, what is a LOVE song doing at the bottom of the staircase, next to Proverbs and Job and Ecclesiastes?”

Well, the answer is that the fear of the LORD does not end in trembling, or even in awe . . . the fear of the LORD ends in LOVE. Fear is the first step - but fear is not the last step. The same Bible that tells us to fear the LORD tells us in Deuteronomy chapter six to love Him:

“And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” - Deuteronomy 6:5 (KJV)

Reverence - fear - is the ROOT of the tree . . . love is the bloom found on that tree. And the Song of Solomon tells us what that love looks like when it is fully grown - after the bloom has turned into fruit:

“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned (despised - laughed at).” - Song of Solomon 8:7 (KJV)

Many waters cannot quench it. Floods cannot drown it. And it is not for SALE - “I am going to give you all my possessions to get your love” . . . it is not going to happen. We cannot buy love - love can only be GIVEN, and it can only be RECEIVED.

And speaking of love - there is one thing no flood has ever taken, and no flood ever will. At the cross of Calvary, many waters came against the love of God . . . the mocking, the scourging, the nails in His hands, the darkness when the sun refused to shine - it all came against Jesus on the cross, wave after wave after wave. And when the water finally went down, what was left? The love that held Jesus on the cross was still STANDING there.

“Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” - John 13:1 (KJV)

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” - Ephesians 2:8-9 (KJV)

The staircase that begins with the fear of the LORD ends with us in the ARMS of the LORD.

Taking the Hand

So this morning we are in the quicksand of life - the rat race. Everybody wants to find happiness . . . that is just universal, we ALL want to be happy. So what is our definition of happiness? Is it - “If I can just get one more branch . . . one more dollar . . . one more whatever”? Or is it - “God, forgive me for not seeing Your hand stretched out to me - it was there all the time” . . . and in our heart we reach out and TAKE that hand?

And then when we do this – we realize that circumstances have nothing to do with our happiness - that is something we eventually learn, if we do have a proper fear of the LORD.

Every stairway to God begins on the same first step - the fear of the LORD.

Scripture Used

2 Peter 1:5-7 · Proverbs 4:7 · Proverbs 9:10 · Proverbs 3:5 · Job 28:12 · Job 28:28 · Job 13:15 · Ecclesiastes 12:13 · Ecclesiastes 12:1 · Deuteronomy 6:5 · Song of Solomon 8:7 · John 13:1 · Ephesians 2:8-9 (all KJV)

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Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.

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

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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Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.

The Authority of God to Make Law

Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas

Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, September 6, 2026 God’s Law, Lesson 1 of 4 · A3 D9 · Genesis 1:1 · Colossians 1:16-17 · Ezekiel 18:4 · Romans 14:11

Watch this lesson on video (43:51)

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This morning we start something NEW. Over the next four lessons - just a little short four-lesson series - we are going to look at something most people think they already understand . . . but most people have never really thought it through carefully. We are going to talk about God’s LAW. Now when I say God’s law, I do not mean just the Ten Commandments, and I do not mean just a list of dos and don’ts . . . because before we can understand WHAT God has commanded, we need to understand WHO is doing the commanding - and why God’s word carries the kind of weight that it does. In other words, the most important words we know of are what? God’s words. So the one point of our lesson this morning is this:

The God who made everything has the right to make the law.

In the Beginning God

The Bible opens with four words - “In the beginning God” - and that is the FIRST and the most important fact we will ever come across.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” - Genesis 1:1 (KJV)

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” - Colossians 1:16-17 (KJV)

Now the first sentence in the Bible starts with a FACT - and it is actually the most important fact in the entire universe... We talk a lot around here about wisdom – knowledge - and understanding . . . so which one of those three does a fact fall under? “God created everything” is classified as KNOWLEDGE... We always say them in that order - wisdom, knowledge, understanding - but that is not necessarily the order they come in - because we have to have knowledge of a thing - before we ever gain wisdom or understanding about it. So - the most important piece of knowledge we will ever learn or hear is this . . . in the beginning God.

And notice the Bible does not say God created SOME things… It says all things - visible and invisible… He made the trees and the rocks that you can see… He made the stars . . . He made the wind - anybody ever seen the wind? We see what the wind does - but nobody has ever seen the wind… God made that… He made gravity - you cannot see it either - but you can sure see the effects of it - and magnetism - and all these invisible things… They are not just freaks of nature… God created every single one of them.

Then Paul says all things were created by Him and FOR Him - and that by Him (through Him, because of Him) all things consist... What does that mean? It means God is HOLDING everything together… The universe is not holding itself together . . . God is the power that holds the universe together… Now I understand the laws of physics - and gravity - and the earth going around at just the right speed so it does not fly off into the outer parts of the universe… I understand it is all put together- like a fine watch… But that is not by accident - and it is not holding itself in one piece… It was DESIGNED that way by a Creator - and it stays in one piece by design…

Think about a man who builds a house - a carpenter . . . the man who builds the house has the right to set the RULES for that house… A builder does not have to walk up to a 2x4 wall and explain why he is putting a door here instead of there - or a window here instead of over yonder… He owes that building no explanation at all . . . because the building did not exist until the carpenter built it...

Well - God built EVERYTHING… God is CREATOR - He brought everything into existence - literally from nothing… It was spoken into existence - not evolved into existence - and I am not going there this morning - but if you stop and think about it - believing in evolution actually takes more faith than believing God spoke it… God is SUSTAINER - He holds all things together by His power… And God is OWNER - everything that exists belongs to Him.

Now I have heard all kinds of explanations… “Okay preacher - I will compromise a little bit - God spoke everything into existence - and then He just sat back and let the chips fall where they may…” No . . . God is not some politician making rules so he can look important... This is the God who MADE us - who SUSTAINS us - and who KNOWS us - better than we know ourselves…

God’s Authority Is Not Assumed . . . It Is Absolute

God’s authority is not something that is assumed... God’s authority is absolute - which means no argument allowed.

“Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” - Ezekiel 18:4 (KJV)

Every person who has ever drawn a breath - belongs to God - by right of creation . . . and that means God has rightful authority - over ALL of our lives.

“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” - Romans 9:20-21 (KJV)

Do we not think God has the right - to put a door or a window wherever He chooses? He is the one putting the building together . . . a lump of clay does not NEGOTIATE with the potter - and the clay does not have the right to question the potter’s decisions.

Now some of you kiddos may not know what a potter is… A long time ago you could not go to Walmart and buy a vase or a glass or an ashtray… There was a man called a potter - and he had a wheel that he pedaled with his foot - and he would take a lump of clay and set it in the middle of that wheel - and as it spun around - he would wet his fingers and form that clay into a shape… He actually MADE the vase . . . that is a potter. And the potter is the one who decides what that lump of clay is going to be . . . the clay does not get to say - “Now don’t make me into a commode - make me into a cereal bowl.” One vessel unto honor and one unto dishonor - and the potter decides which.

That is our relationship with God - we did not make ourselves… And the Creator who made everything has the right - the absolute - unquestionable right - to define the terms under which His creation operates.

Somebody might think at first, “Well - that seems a little harsh . . . a little narrow-minded.” It is not harsh . . . it is JUST - and we are just being honest... The potter looks at this lump of clay and says - “That one will not make a very good chair - and it will not make a very good bowl . . . but it will make a perfect vase.” Do we not believe God loves us enough to give us ONLY the things that are best for us? And are we naive enough - to think WE KNOW what is best - better than God does?

Without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God - and faith requires us to humble ourselves before Him - and accept the decisions He makes - because if He loved us enough to die for us - He loves us enough to say NO when a thing is going to hurt us in the long run… I have said it before . . . He does not ask for our understanding - He simply asks for our obedience.

So - when God makes a law - when God says “this is right, and that over there is wrong” - God is not overstepping - and He is not being controlling - He is simply exercising His rightful authority as Creator - as Sustainer - and as Owner of all things - He is putting the doors and the windows where He wants them... After all - it is HIS house.

And here is something to slow down and think about . . . if God made us - and if God is the one holding us together this very minute . . . what claim could we possibly have to run our own lives?

Now freedom is a WONDERFUL thing - one of the most precious blessings God has given us - but let us not push that idea of freedom further than it ought to go... It is true we have freedoms - and I suppose we even have the freedom to rebel . . . but that is not a wise thing to do. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap… We can let our freedom run right up to the edge of God’s will and stop there - and that is a good thing. Or we can push a little further - “I am going to set God’s will aside on this one - because this is important to me - and I am going to do what I want regardless” - and yes - we have the freedom to do that... But understand there are CONSEQUENCES when we take our freedom further than it was meant to go.

A Law Is Not a Suggestion

God as Creator is a fact - that is KNOWLEDGE… How we USE that fact is what decides whether we are walking in wisdom - or walking in foolishness. And connecting ‘pride and disobedience’ with the consequences of rebelling against the laws of our Creator . . . that is the beginning of understanding. Understanding is basically knowing there is a price to pay for a particular action - connecting the dots. “Oh, THIS consequence is tied directly to THAT behavior.” Knowledge is what we should do . . . understanding is knowing what is going to happen if we do not do it.

A law is NOT a suggestion... A suggestion is something we can take or leave - and nothing much happens either way… A law is a rule that carries consequences - and the consequences come - when the law is ignored - when it is forgotten - when it is disobeyed - or when it is rebelled against…

Think about driving on the interstate . . . the speed limit is 75 I believe. Now that speed limit was not set by US… Nobody ever called this preacher up and said, “Preacher - what do you think the speed limit on the interstate ought to be?” Anybody ever call you and ask your opinion on it? No . . . so if we are running 90 or 100 and the blue lights come on - what happens when we tell the officer - “Well - I never did agree with that speed limit anyway”? We still get the ticket - because our agreement was not required. And what happens when we say, “Oh, I am sorry – officer - I did not know it was only 75”? We still get the ticket - because ignorance is not a defense against the law. A law does not need our awareness or our agreement to be valid. A law requires our OBEDIENCE.

God’s law works EXACTLY the same way . . . “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” That is not a guideline and it is not a suggestion . . . it is a LAW. The law has a rule about sin - and the law has a consequence when sin is practiced - and that consequence is death. And this law applies to every person in every nation in every generation - whether they have heard it - agreed to it - or believe it… The law is not going to change - and the consequences are not going to change either… That is God’s PRIMARY law - universal and unchanging - and every other law God ever gave - is built on top of it.

Now to die in sin is to be separated from God in hell for all eternity - that is another fact of knowledge - and a pretty important one - would you not agree? So let us connect the dots again… Knowledge says, “If I die in sin - my eternal destiny is hell.” Understanding says - “Then I need to avoid that - and let Jesus save my soul.” A man who is void of understanding - will never make that connection - and he will never turn to God and ask forgiveness of his sins.

Go back to the traffic stop . . . we are pulled over for speeding - and here comes Jesus - who was NOT speeding - and He pulls in behind us - and agrees to pay our ticket for us. That is what it means when we say Jesus paid for our sins. To keep us from the consequence of spiritual death - God sacrificed His Son as payment for our sin.

The Garden - Where Authority and Consequence First Met

Let us go back to where authority and consequence first came together - the first time knowledge and understanding ever met.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” - Genesis 2:16-17 (KJV)

The first law God ever gave a human being was SIMPLE - it was clear . . . and you would have to admit it was generous. God said - “You can eat from ANY tree in this whole garden . . . except one.” One boundary - one rule - one consequence . . . and the consequence was stated plainly - in advance - before anything ever happened. God told Adam exactly what the rule was and exactly what it would cost to break it.

That brings up a property line. When you buy land they put up survey markers showing exactly where your ground ends - and the neighbor’s begins. The line is clear - the boundary is set - no problem . . . UNTIL the day somebody decides that line does not apply to them. “I am going to plant my corn across that line - because the dirt over there does a little better than the dirt over here.” Put the fence up on the wrong side. Claim ground that was never his to claim. And that is when the conflict starts - not because the line was unreasonable - but because somebody decided to cross it.

The Garden of Eden had been surveyed . . . God set the markers - and God told Adam EXACTLY where the line was. And Adam crossed it - not by accident - but by DECISION. And the consequence was real because the law was real.

Let me say it again. The God who made everything has the right to make the law.

“It Seemed Right to Me” Is Not a Defense

Now this next part has human logic written all over it.

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” - Proverbs 14:12 (KJV)

I sat and thought about that - and I believe that this is one of the most DANGEROUS ideas we will ever run across - the idea that every person has the right to decide what is right for himself. That was the ORIGINAL sin back in the garden. “Don’t you want to decide right and wrong for YOURSELF?” That was Satan – and that is basically what he told Eve.

Here is why it is so dangerous . . . the Bible says the soul that sinneth shall die. Well - who decides what sin IS? If God has pronounced death on the soul that sins - then it stands to reason - that God has to be the one who defines sin. Because if I were allowed to define right and wrong - I would look at my own life and - naturally - everything I do would be right. Then I would look over at Brother Kenneth and say - “Well - you do most of what I do - and that part is right . . . but you deviate here and there - so you are wrong. You are going to die and I am not - because I am right.” If God did not define sin - every man would define his own righteousness - and draw his own boundaries. Nobody would ever sin . . . and there would be as many “right ways” as there are people.

Last time I checked - how many truths are there? “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” One truth - not many . . . seems right is not the same as IS right. That IS WHY God does not let man define righteousness . . . because every man would declare himself righteous - and every man would be wrong. We could all be driving at different speeds and every one of us think we were right - but only one speed would actually BE right. God defines the speed limit - God defines the boundary - God defines SIN. And “it seemed right to me” will not hold up in a court of law in this land - and it will not hold up in the court of God’s law either.

So - let us get PERSONAL . . . I do not want anybody thinking about Brother Ken right now, or about Sister Annie Mae. Think about SELF - Where in my life am I still driving at a speed - just because it seems right to me?

The X-Ray Shows the Break - It Cannot Set the Bone

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” - Romans 3:23 (KJV)

“The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men.” - Proverbs 24:9 (KJV)

Paul hands down a universal verdict - ALL have sinned . . . not most of us - not just the bad ones - not just the ones in this country - ALL. And then Solomon goes further… We usually think of sin as bad behavior - but Solomon says even the THOUGHT of foolishness is sin - not the act - the thought - an attitude we should not have - a leaning toward something God does not approve of… Even THAT is sin . . . which tells us God’s standard is set so high - perfect holiness – sinlessness - righteousness in God’s eyes – set so high that nobody can reach it alone. If that kind of perfection were a physical height - we would not need a ladder - we would need a SPACESHIP. That is how far out of reach it is for every one of us.

Now think about an X-ray . . . if I break my arm - we go to the emergency room and they take an X-ray - and that is a wonderful thing - it shows exactly what happened. “Preacher, there is your crack right there in the bone.” But nobody ever healed a broken arm with only an X-ray. The X-ray shows the break . . . the X-ray does not heal.

God’s law is the X-ray - the law shows us EXACTLY where we are broken . . . but the law cannot set a bone any more than an X-ray can. That is why God gave the law - not to make us righteous - but to teach us two things. ONE - where the boundaries are - so we know what sin actually is. TWO - that we cannot keep those boundaries on our own - so we know we need His mercy and His grace - and something a good deal taller than a ladder.

The law is not the cure - the law is the DIAGNOSIS . . . and the X-ray points us - to the only Physician who can heal what the X-ray reveals. The Bible says plainly - that no man is justified by keeping the law . . . by the law is the knowledge of sin. The law shows us where we are broken . . . have we ever THANKED God for the X-ray? Have we ever thanked Him for loving us enough to show us - where we are broken?

Four Things God’s Authority Settles

As we come to the end this morning, there are four things God’s authority ought to settle in our minds and hearts.

One - God has the right to make laws. He is the Creator - the Owner - and the Sustainer. In the beginning God.

Two - God’s laws have consequences. Let me say that again. God’s laws have CONSEQUENCES. They are not suggestions and they are not guidelines. God is not mocked . . . whatsoever a man soweth - that is exactly what he is going to reap - and maybe worse.

Three - we have ALREADY crossed the boundary. Do not sit there and pat yourself on the back - “Well - I got close a time or two last week – preacher - but I never went over the line.” That is pride… If we say we have no sin - we make God a liar - and His truth is not in us. We have crossed it - not because we are especially bad people - but because we are human. The Bible says straight up - there is none good, no, not one.

Four - the law points to God’s GRACE. God did not give the law to condemn us and leave us lying there . . . “You are broke - too bad.” He gave the law to show us our need for a Savior - to show us we need more than a tall ladder - and more than a set of rules. The X-ray leads to the Physician - and the Physician is Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world that He GAVE His only begotten Son - to heal the broken bone - the law shows us is there - in every one of our lives.

Closing

“For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” - Romans 14:11 (KJV)

Every knee WILL bow . . . that is not negotiable, and it is not a maybe.

God’s law is not His way of being cruel to us. God’s law is His way of being HONEST. He tells us the truth about who He is – Creator – Owner - and Judge. He tells us the truth about who we are - sinners who have crossed the line. And He tells us the truth about what He offers – mercy – forgiveness - and a Savior who has already paid what we owe. The authority of God to make law - is not a burden. That authority is a gift . . . because a God who tells us the truth about our condition - is a God who loves us enough to point us to the cure. God made the law - God revealed the sin - God provides the remedy . . . because that is who He is.

So the one point of our lesson this morning was this: the God who made everything has the right to make the law. Are we willing to submit to His authority?

I have been guilty of this - BIG time. I will submit to about 97 or 98 percent of what God says . . . but there is this one little corner over here - I want to keep for myself. Willing to submit to ALMOST everything - but not quite everything . . . well, that does not count. God wants all or nothing. I am not talking about salvation - we are not going to lose that. I am talking about our relationship with the God who made us - and serving Him after we are saved. God wants TOTAL commitment. And if it is not total commitment . . . it is not commitment at all.

Scripture Used

Genesis 1:1 · Colossians 1:16-17 · Ezekiel 18:4 · Romans 9:20-21 · Genesis 2:16-17 · Proverbs 14:12 · Romans 3:23 · Proverbs 24:9 · Romans 14:11 (all KJV)

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