Who You Can Trust About Jesus

Let me invite you to turn your Bibles if you have one to Galatians chapter one.

We will we're gonna do this a lot as we're going through Galatians, is we're gonna back up a little bit and just get like ahead of steam into the next section.

So we're doing a little bit of that today.

We're gonna be looking at a different topic.

And uh to set this up a little bit for you.

Let me tell you about uh something that happened yesterday.

Is uh Rebecca came to me with her phone in hand.

She doesn't know I'm gonna tell the story, but hey Rebecca, I'm gonna tell that story about that thing.

Okay.

So she came to me with her phone and she she showed she's got this doctor that she really likes on Instagram.

So he's he uh has he has a unique forehead like mine, and uh he has unique complexion.

You would recognize him if you saw him, and uh he's so helpful.

He does, he talks about sleep issues, he talks about you know mental health and body, all kinds of things, and it helps Rebecca to help me.

So um she came to me with her phone last night and she said, I want to show you this.

And so she showed me this video of him, and when she finished, she kind of said, Did you see it?

I was like, Yeah.

She said, No, did you see it?

So she said, This is AI.

This is not him.

So she showed me the doctor, and it's it's true.

It's like the doctor is unique, and one of the things he does is when he speaks, the corner of his mouth kind of goes over a little bit.

AI was a little too perfect.

And so the AI thing is talking, and here's the big difference between the two is the helpful doctor online never sells anything.

He doesn't offer a product or anything like that.

Guess what AI bought doctor did?

He was selling stuff, so that's what's the punchline of the whole thing, not to help people, but to get you to buy a particular product, right?

But sometimes it's hard to know the difference between things online, and that's not a new issue.

The online part is, but not it's hard to know who's who you can trust and rely on.

And this is helpful as we step into what Paul is saying here because it makes what he's dealing with in Galatia a lot more relevant, is because there are people who come saying, We are representing the true gospel, we're representing the true Christians, we're representing the true Jesus, but they're giving them a different Jesus than the one that Paul preached to them.

And so it's helpful to know that.

Now, the reason this becomes super helpful for us in the modern world is, and the reason we're spending so much time in Galatians is we deal with that too.

Not just with other religions, but with people talking about Jesus in a way that as you listen, you realize, I don't think that's Jesus the way that he is talked about in Scripture, and that's not the Jesus that was preached to me by a pastor so-and-so years ago that I believed in.

This is different.

And so one of the things that's helpful for us as we go through is it's highlighting who is Jesus?

Who is this God of grace that would save us completely apart from anything that we do just by believing and trusting them?

So hopefully, as I said before, studying through Galatians this way may be one of the most important studies that some of you have ever done in your life.

So if you're able, let me invite you to stand.

As we look this morning, backing up a little bit, but going a little bit more forward, Galatians chapter 1, starting with verse 6 and all the way through verse 17.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Or am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel.

For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

For you've heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.

And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age, among my people.

So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

But when he who set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone.

Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.

But I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

Now the latter part we're going to deal with a little bit more next week.

But that this ends the reading of the word for this week.

Let me pray and ask God to bless us as we talk about it.

I'm a limited, finite person.

I always have been and always will be.

But you do.

And you are trustworthy.

You've given us your word, you've given us your spirit, and we ask this morning that by your word and spirit you would clarify trust some of the questions of our hearts.

We're living in an age where there's so many difficult faith on what it means to believe in God, to trust in Jesus, and to walk by faith.

So we pray that you would bless us, that you would pour out your spirit on us here.

We want to know you more fully.

Some of us want to be convinced that we are we're here seeking answers.

We pray that you would give them this morning.

We pray that you would bless all of us here by meeting us where we are this journey of faith in you and towards you.

Would you bless me?

I have to handle holy things.

I have grubby little paws.

I pray that you would be pleased to use somebody who is weak to talk about things in a way that is strong and healing and powerful.

Bless us and be with us, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please have a seat.

Between uh AI bots, uh biased news, fake news, hot takes, all the things that we deal with daily online and in our lives, uh, how do we know who to listen to?

Now that's not a new question, that's an old question.

Uh, you know, the question may come up: why should you listen to me?

Why should you listen to me?

I'm a product of my culture, I'm a product of Casey Caseum, I'm a product of Steven Spielberg, I'm a product of John Madden, I'm a product of Madison Avenue, Main Street USA, the Palmetto State, the Speaks family, all the things that have influenced me.

So that means when I stand up here and you're getting a unique snapshot into a human being's life and other things.

So why would you trust me on these things?

I'm just as finite as any other human being.

But then why should I trust you?

Because as I look at you, you know, we look around the room, it's like we've been shaped by all sorts of things.

You you've been, you're the product of a generation, many of you.

All of you are a product of some generation, but you're a product of a generation.

You're a product of social media, you're a product of curated news, you're a product of all these things that we face on a daily basis.

So why should I listen to you?

And then there comes up this really fascinating question that interests me a lot, and that is, why should you listen to yourself?

Why should you listen to you?

Because the more we're around and the more we live life, we realize there are things in our heads and hearts that are there that are not true.

And they lead us to interact with people and grasp for things in the world that aren't real.

Some of us have deep hurts in our lives, and we make decisions based on deep hurt, not on health, but on deep hurt.

So why would you trust your own inner life knowing that your thinking is distorted on a lot of matters?

So, you know, when we come comes to it, it's like we're shaped by our culture, but why would we be shaped from something beside us?

And then even the internal voice that we have, the inside voice, we can't trust that.

So who are we going to trust?

If we can't trust what's outside, and we often can't trust what's inside, who are we going to trust?

We're going to trust a voice that is from above, that is not hindered by any of these things that hinder us.

So who do you listen to and why?

We listen to God.

How does God speak to us?

Becomes the next question.

If we listen to God, is that the inner voice or is it something else?

And the Bible says that God has given us his word.

But then we deal with this big question of, like, okay, well, a lot of people claim to speak for God.

How do we know who actually is speaking for God?

How would we know that?

And that's the question, the recipients of Paul's letter to the Galatians.

They're dealing with that question.

It's like Paul said this, then these other people come in, and it seemed like they made a pretty good case for why they're right and Paul's gospel may have been incomplete.

So who are we going to believe?

And there's this tug of war that's taking place in their community regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul taught in the gospel of Jesus that God did not give us a set of rules, he gave us a savior.

God did not give us a path to follow, he gave us a person to trust and to believe in, a person to follow.

And this is what Paul is telling them, and it's what the gospel tells us.

These are Jesus' words in John chapter 14, verse 6.

John 14:6

I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me, and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.

So faith in Jesus is the way that any of us are saved.

And we know that, but we still hear these other voices.

A group we now refer to as the Judaizers taught something different than what Paul taught to the Galatians.

They said, Jesus alone doesn't save.

No, it's faith in Jesus plus your works, because God gave us a whole Old Testament with all sorts of laws and rules in it, and those you're supposed to keep in order to be right with God.

You have to keep all the rules to be made right with God.

So on the cross, Jesus said, It is finished.

It's accomplished.

I've paid for it.

But the Judaizers were saying, it's not finished.

There's still a lot for you to do for God to accept you.

So the question arises, is it up to Jesus or is it up to me?

Does Paul have it right or did the Judaizers have it right?

And that's a great question.

It's just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

How do we know who has it right?

So Paul begins the section that we're looking at in Galatians 1, 11 to 12, this way.

He says, For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel.

For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

In other words, he's saying, I want you to know that I did not receive my gospel from a human agent.

This comes directly from God.

So when Paul is telling us that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus alone, Paul's saying that's not his take.

He's saying that's what God said.

And that's what God told me to tell you about the gospel of Jesus.

It's not a voice from within, it's not a voice from beside, it's a voice from above who's telling us these things.

So let's kind of enter into this.

We we live in a world full of ideas about God, a world full of ideas about Jesus.

There are an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 religions in the world today.

That's a lot.

Uh there were many in Paul's day, but the Bible is clear that there's only one true faith and that salvation is found in no one else besides Jesus.

And the question becomes, well, why just Jesus?

Of all these religions who are saying, here's the way to God, there's just one way, and it's this Jesus alone restores our relationship with God.

How does the Bible say that he does that?

Well, the Bible says that the penalty for rejecting and disobeying the God who gave us life is for God to bring, uh God to judge us and bring the penalty of death.

So we die not because it's the end of a biological life cycle, we die because it's the penalty for rejecting the God of life who gave us life.

And so when we look at the penalty of sin, the Bible says that Jesus, when he died on the cross, did not die for his sins because he had none, but he died for our sins, because we have multiple.

And so when he died, he died for all who believe to pay that debt.

So in Galatians, Paul corrects first century Jewish misunderstanding about Jesus' saving gift.

He says, We receive it by faith and faith alone.

So why?

God forgives all sinners who come to him fully, freely, continually through faith in Christ.

Why does faith alone save?

It's because faith is the thing that was broken in the garden with Adam and Eve.

They said, I don't believe what God said about the tree.

I believe what the serpent says about the tree.

So the relational faith that they had with God for whichever they were made, they said, I'm rejecting that and I'm now siding with the serpent.

That's why faith saves.

It's not because we don't have evidence for it, which is what our culture says.

Faith biblically is not simply cognitive.

Like we say, faith is what you have when you don't have proof.

That's not what the Bible says.

When the Bible's talking about faith, it says you're convinced it's true, you're captivated by that truth, and you're compelled by that truth.

You believe it, and it becomes part of you.

So faith biblically is not simply cognitive, it's relational between us and God.

And so when the Bible talks about what faith is, faith is sincerely saying to God, I trust you.

I believe you.

I love you, and I'm gonna live my life in accordance with what you're saying.

So faith in the Bible is a positive, internal, whole soul disposition towards God.

I believe you, and I love you.

Unbelief in the Bible is different.

It's not simply saying, I don't have enough evidence.

Unbelief in the Bible is a negative disposition towards God, which at some level says, whatever you say, I'm not going to accept it.

That's faith and unbelief in Scripture.

Now, we're all of us are on these kind of like spectrum of these different things, and that's okay.

But the generally speaking, that's what the unbelief says.

I don't trust what God says, I don't love him, I don't want him in my life, I don't want what he wants for me.

I want what the world tells me I should be pursuing.

And this is why the message of Jesus is simply believe.

The relationship's restored.

I believe you.

I trust you.

That's all you need.

You can be the biggest screw up ever and saying to Jesus, I love you, I trust you, and I want what you want for me.

I believe you.

That is what the Bible says saves us.

We're saved by grace through faith.

Now the competing voice is multifaceted.

One of the competing voices says it's morality that saves you, the other one says it's immorality that frees you to live an authentic life.

But what we're dealing with here in Galatians is really that first one, the morality, that the gospel, the good news, is for worthy people.

And that God's uh their relationship with God is earned by precise acts of minute obedience.

God is forgiving, but only to those who don't have too much to forgive.

God is loving if you show him that you're really sorry.

But there's something that you have to do.

So in all religion, everything says here's a path that you have to follow.

Here are the steps that you have to take, you have to do these things, and God will accept you.

And that's alive and well in the modern United States in Christian culture.

It is.

And I'm gonna share a story that happened years ago.

I was uh when I did campus ministry, I hung out in the student center a lot and met with people, and there was a day where I didn't have, I've had about two hours where I didn't have a meeting, and I tried to go and find a quiet place to sit down and just read for a bit.

And I went and sat down, and as was common on Clemson's campus, a Bible study just happened to be forming, like right in the next little area next to me.

About 15 guys uh were seated around and they were beginning to get out their Bibles and study.

And I said, This is gonna be fascinating to kind of sit in and listen to this.

I was really curious.

And it was amazing because the guy who was leading the study, he did a fantastic job of leading them into the passage, helping them see Jesus in the passage.

And I was saying, this is really cool.

And he and so I was really encouraged by listening to this.

And then as he continued to talking, I said, I thought, where is he going with this?

Because as I was sitting there, I was like, lead him to the altar, baby.

Come on, bring it home.

You know, bring them to the cross of Jesus.

This is gonna be fantastic.

You know, trust in him fully for your works, but that's not where he went.

Where he went is right to that point where it's like you trust in Jesus fully and completely for everything that he's done for you on the cross.

He asked this question So what have you done for Jesus today?

I was like, whoa, that is a stretch, like go from that.

That's not the that's not the direction I think that the gospel would have taken you.

Um the Judaizers were doing that kind of thing.

It's like it's absolutely Jesus.

You have to have Jesus, but you have to do all these other things as well, or you have to be worthy, you have to keep the Jewish Old Testament laws to be worthy of God.

And Paul knew this was wrong.

This is not what makes this acceptable.

And how did he know?

Uh, how why should the Galatians have accepted what Paul said?

Why should we as modern people accept what Paul said?

And this was exactly the accusation the Judaizers in the first century said.

So why would you accept what Paul says?

I mean, it's so different from what we've heard elsewhere.

And it's because of what Paul says and addressed in this question.

He said, This gospel that I'm preaching is not mine.

It didn't come from Jerusalem, it didn't come from the other apostles, it came from Jesus himself through revelation.

This came from God.

I received it from Jesus.

So why should we accept Paul's account?

Several reasons.

One is this He was changed by what he heard.

Verses 13 and 14 talk about this.

We tend, and it matters because we tend to explain things according to the belief system that we already hold.

We instinctively incorporate what we agree with or dismiss what challenges what we hear based on what we already believe or want to believe.

And this is why I think debates are rarely helpful.

And I've been I've been to debates, I would never be able to do a debate.

I was talking to somebody earlier about that.

I'm like, too insecure, I couldn't do a debate.

And uh but I think often when you go to a debate, people have already chosen sides before they go in.

And they there come to cheer on the home team.

It's like, did my person do well or did my person not do well?

Did the other person win or did my person win?

And uh, if my guy didn't win, it's like, well, we need to find somebody better to go in for the debate.

Uh you weren't going into debate open to being convinced.

You weren't there to cheer for your team.

And we have a set of values already placed at color how we look at the world.

And this is why Paul's story is so important.

Paul changed sides completely.

Paul had a position.

He was an inwardly rigid proponent of first century Palestinian Judaism.

He was the poster child for first century Palestinian Judaism.

And we don't get what a big deal that is, that Paul changed from that.

Because in the United States, we are, we believe this thing called expressive individualism, that people should be able to express themselves as individuals and what they believe and just kind of live that out.

And your children should be able to choose something different than parents, everything else, it's just you choose, it's up to you.

That's the exact opposite of Palestinian Judaism in Paul's day.

In Paul's day, life was not about choosing for yourself, life was about conforming to the beliefs and practices and systems that had been in your family for hundreds and for thousands of years.

And so for him to come to believe the gospel, you know.

Paul wasn't an American deciding for himself.

He was not on a path to find himself.

He was not struggling to find fulfillment or meaning in life or any of those things.

He said, I had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus, and this changed everything.

And he explains his life before that.

He says in Galatians 1.14, I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

So, in terms of performance and sincerity, no one in Paul's generation equaled it.

Paul looked at Jesus through this lens until he looked at Jesus and saw Jesus and then looked at everything else from a different lens.

And so he now says the exact opposite.

God is a God of grace and love and compassion, and he has rescued us in Jesus Christ because none of us could ever save ourselves.

So the complete turnabout happened because, and you can read about this in Acts 8 and Acts 26.

The resurrected Jesus said to Paul, you have it all wrong.

You have it all wrong.

And so Paul walked away from that, completely changed by what Jesus was communicating to him.

So Paul's foundational belief changed instantaneously because he encountered a reality that didn't fit his pre-existing belief system.

He had an encounter with Jesus, and Jesus didn't squeeze into the old box anymore.

Jesus burst out of the box so that Paul couldn't avoid what he was saying.

And so in Galatians 1.12, he says, What I told you about Jesus came from God.

It didn't originate with any human.

And Jesus said to tell everybody.

And that's the second reason.

It's not simply that Paul was changed when people don't really change.

The second is he was actually called to be an apostle.

An apostle is an authoritative spokesman, an approved biographer, someone who speaks on behalf of another person.

And they had to have that in the first century when Paul.

He wasn't the only apostle.

There were other apostles.

That was kind of an office that, you know, kingdoms and kings and others would also call people to go and speak on behalf of them because they didn't have telephones.

The president couldn't say, give me the Kremlin on the line.

They had to have somebody who was authorized to go and speak on behalf of the kingdom to the people they were speaking to.

And so that's really what an apostle was.

Paul was speaking on behalf of the kingdom of God.

So he's not speaking from beside, he's speaking as one who's been called from above to speak to us.

And he performed miracles to verify that, that he was speaking for God.

And this is pulled all the way through the Bible, it's pulled all the way through, is this message that we're looking at God's message to us.

So when we read in the book of Galatians that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus, that's not Paul's take on the gospel.

It's God's word to you because he wants you to have that and to know that he loves you, that's paid for Jesus has paid for all of your sins, that you're fully accepted, and that believing in Christ is that you're worthy because of Christ, not because of anything you do.

So there's a moment in high school for some of you that when we talk about sin in the church, that's the thing that comes into your head.

For some of you, it was in your 30s.

For some of you, it was something that happened in your 50s.

And every time somebody brings up sin, that's the one that you go to in your mind because you think, yeah, I'm just a really messed up person.

I'm still not sure God can accept me.

And God is telling us here in the scripture that yes, that salvation is by grace, through faith in Jesus.

That's it.

Paul was going to kill Christians.

Now I I did some things in high school that I'm not going to tell you about, but I didn't do that one.

In terms of what the gospel is telling us, Paul is saying, I was doing the worst thing.

I was opposing Jesus.

And Jesus forgave me and brought me in and made me a spokesperson.

So what is the Bible?

This thing that we have, that we read.

It's a lot of different things.

One thing it is, is it's an alien artifact.

It's an alien artifact.

What do I mean by that?

Paul says, I received it by divine revelation.

So the Big Bang, we talk about the Big Bang in the modern world.

The Big Bang, everything we know, we have access to here with us as a product of the Big Bang.

Planets, penguins, physics, the laws of nature, everything came from the Big Bang.

Everything.

Now, if you want to say Big Bang is Genesis 1, the creation, all that, that's fine.

That's what I'm talking about too.

It's the same thing.

I don't uh uh just how all things came to be, as far as we know.

And what that means is everything that exists is a product of the creation, however, God did it, whether it's the Big Bang or something else.

And as far as we know, the rules within this sphere, the laws of physics, don't apply outside of the Big Bang.

Because the laws of physics appear to be something that took place inside of our world as a product of the Big Bang, but they don't seem to be pre-existing conditions for the Big Bang necessarily.

And so when we talk about time, space, matter, and energy and all of these things, this puts it way beyond the question of science.

It's a metaphysical question.

And so God is not a part of this cosmic ecosystem, the way that we're a part of this cosmic ecosystem.

He's not a product of this cosmic ecosystem.

He's not bound by it as we are, and we do not experience or have access to the things that are outside of it.

But the Bible insists there is a heavenly realm that's not a part of this physical creation, the way that we are part of this physical creation.

And what that means is that God, to make himself known, is not known the way that you would know everything else in this world.

Not by going into the jungles and investigating, not by going into the tundra, not by getting out of microscope and looking in.

God is not known that way.

God reveals himself to us as a person reveals himself to others.

There are things you can't know about me unless I reveal myself to you.

God reveals himself and has revealed himself to us.

And the Bible is a record of the times when God has stepped pointedly into our world to interact directly with people, specifically to make known his intentions and plans and salvation for us in this world.

He's communicated to us, he's entered into it.

And the Bible is the record of that.

So in that sense, it's from someone who is not a part of this the way that we're a part of this.

It is an alien artifact coming in from outside, speaking into our world, into where we live.

So in that way, God is not known the way that we would know other things here.

It's like a piece of music by Mozart.

Every page of music that you look at with Mozart, you're going to find Mozart in it, but you're never going to find Mozart in it.

He's the author of it, but he's not on the pages.

God is the creator.

He made everything.

He's made himself known to us, but we don't know him the way that we would know anything else or everything else.

Because he's not a part of it the way that we are.

And so when Paul is saying, I received this from Revelation, he's not saying it was a drug trip or anything else.

He's saying, God himself spoke from beyond to me and appeared to me.

So when we're holding in our hands our Bibles, it is a divine artifact telling us about the nature of reality and the God who has loved us and sent his son to die for us.

It's a special, incredible thing that's unlike anything else in our world.

Beautiful.

Second thing.

It's a beloved keepsake.

Paul says, I received this, I'm giving it to you, I'm preaching you what I preaching you what I heard.

So in this way, what we have in our hands is a keepsake from someone who loves us.

My my dad passed away in 2012, and my sister wanted one thing a shirt.

Not because of what was on the shirt, but because when she picked up the shirt, she could smell my dad.

My dad had a unique smell.

It wasn't just sweat, but he worked in an AMICO oil company, like trucks and things.

And so he smelled like oil and sweat.

And for her, that was the smell of daddy.

She wanted that.

Just to smell him and remember.

My mom wanted something different.

She wanted to hear his voice.

And I managed to find at one point a small recording of my dad's voice.

Probably like a voicemail or something, where my dad always said hello in a unique way.

He would say, hello.

Like a like a Y in it.

Hello.

Um she just wanted to hear his voice.

Our Father, what did our Father give us?

A shirt, a voice recording.

We have the Word.

He gave us a book.

It's His Word, it's the voice of God.

It's the physical keepsake of the spiritual relationship we have with Him.

It's a keepsake until He comes again.

Until Jesus comes again and brings us home.

And then the third thing this is the Bible says the Word of God is living and active.

And there's this amazing thing, and some of you, if I if I had a show of hands, some of you would say, Yep, hands up.

There are times when you're reading your Bible and you have a sense that the ceiling's blown off, the walls are blown off, and all of a sudden you're in the presence of the God of the universe.

I've had that, you've had that, many of you.

This sense of this place where I am right now is holy ground because God is here with me in the midst of it.

That happens.

Because this is God's word.

And just like you're having an experience of me right now, we have an experience of his presence as we're in his word.

Not every time, but sometimes.

That old song, sometimes a light surprises the Christian.

Sometimes the light surprises the Christian.

We have a keepsake, something from outside of our world, and it's something by which we encounter our God.

I have a picture.

Ben, would you put up the picture for me?

That was an Ethiopian mission strip I did years ago before I grew a beard.

I think I was maybe 10 in that picture.

I don't know how old that was.

And the lady who's beside me, she was the custodian for the church who took care of everything.

And when we did the missions conference, uh, everybody who was on staff of the churches around, they kind of came, and she was one of the ones who came for the missions conference, and she was just excited to be there.

It was beautiful.

Like she just sat in the front and just took it all in.

I didn't know when we started the conference until maybe the day before it happened, but we uh the people who were doing the conference, these American investors, they had they were giving all of the participants in the conference a copy of the ESV, the Ethiopian Standard Version of Amharic.

And uh it was actually the study Bible, like we have in English, they were getting one in Amharic in their language.

And so they were all going to get one.

So about two days in when the news spread that they were getting it, the conference doubled in size.

And so people were like, I want to get this Bible.

But I remember her.

I remember her because she had been there for the whole conference, the whole time.

And on the last day of the conference, uh, we were handing out Bibles, we ran out.

Five people did not get Bibles.

She was one.

And she was just devastated.

And the pastors from the area, we they said, let's give them our Bible.

So they had been given free Bibles too, and they went and gave it to the five participants who weren't.

And I remember her sitting on the front row holding this as this treasure, almost like she was holding a t-shirt and smelling.

I've got this.

I have this treasure in my lap.

I have a Bible.

I in fact I have a whole theological library at my fingertips to know this God better.

So that's her picture.

A sister in Christ uh in Ethiopia.

You'll meet her someday.

Get to talk to her about her experience.

So when we talk about the Bible, Paul's saying, I received this from Revelation.

Peter received it from Revelation.

Matthew, Luke, all these others that are writing, they're there are these revelations, they're they're writing them down, they're they're receiving these things.

It is God's word.

So what are you holding in your hand when you hold your Bible?

It's a love letter from the lover of your soul.

It's a set of sure and certain promises.

It's an expansive explanation from God of the lengths he would go to in order to make sure that you were eternally saved.

The roadmap home.

It's a promise, sorry, note that when your time on earth is done, he will meet you at the door.

And all of this comes through Jesus Christ.

He didn't, God didn't give us directions, he gave us a savior.

He didn't give us a path, he gave us a person.

Someone who would pay for our sins to make sure that we would get home.

It's not in my hand.

My salvation is not in my hands.

Jesus has accomplished it.

And I believe him.

Salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus alone.

This is not a message from inside, it's not a message from beside.

It's the message from above that God has given to his people because he wants us to know.

Let me pray.