"Faithful Unto Death: Build on Faith" by Levi Word

Mike's going to get your hand out. What? Mike is going to get your

hand out. Okay.

Am I on? Can you hear me?

Mike's got my handouts. I think probably

I made some typos on

this, the handout. I've at least

found one after I'd already turned it in. So if

I If you find some typos, I'm sorry. I was

cutting and pasting and going back and forth

on that computer. I hadn't done that in years. So please

excuse me. While it's being

handed out, some of you may not know me.

Brenda and I came here when

University Heights came, group came

here. Harry and some

others, Bob and some others came here at the same time.

My name is Levi Word, and I've

been around a while, 30,

83 years, which it was 38 years.

And there's many of you in here probably older than me.

While they're going ahead and finishing handing them

out,

when Neil asked us, a group of us, we had group

of us meet up there in front with Neil, and Neil asked us

to develop some lessons that

had to do with what we

have learned throughout our lives, we old guys have

learned throughout our lives that

has kept us faithful.

Now, I don't claim to

be having been faithful all the

time, but I've tried.

And immediately when Neil asked me that, I thought about

1 Peter, the 1st

chapter. And in there,

Peter is warning the Christians that he's writing to,

that they needed to not just stop when

they were baptized. When they heard the word preached,

they believed it, faith, and they were baptized,

which made them Christians. Not just stop,

they had to grow. And the reason this group especially

had to grow was because of what was happening to

his readers. And what was happening was that

a group of men had

crept in and were teaching

things that were, as he said, heresies.

Now it wasn't just Peter that was warning. The little

book of— why

do I forget things? Jude, the Lord's

brother. That little book, which is just one chapter,

is teaching the same thing. Apparently the church, the early

church during the time of Peter's latter

part of his life, The people

had come in and teaching things that were just awful.

I'll read you some of the things that

they were saying.

Well, I've got my notes mixed up.

Oh, they were— said

they were false teachers, evil men that had crept in teaching

things that were against Christ.

They were teaching things that if

the Christians adopted it

caused them to forget where

they were coming from, to forget the fact that they were Christians

and had been baptized, and they were falling away.

And in the latter part of the book, he says that

it's— they would have been better off

if they had never heard the Word of God preached.

That's an awful thing. To say.

But truly, these people would have been better off if

they hadn't ever heard the Word preached to

them. He compares it to dogs

returning to their vomit, a sow washed clean

returning to wallow in the mire.

And such things as

that.

There are— I

had all my notes,

I thought, straightened out.

Another thing that's important about this is that he had— he

knew he was going to die. The Lord had told him that he was going

to die. And he apparently preached

to these people before. He had written one other book to them.

And so he said, I'm writing to you to stir up you,

stir them up by way of reminder he was

going to die. Do you think when we go through the scriptures

today that they'll stir us up by

way of reminder? Is it okay if

we just stop, stop studying the scriptures?

Maybe by going through these things that

Peter gives to us, that it'll

stir us up by way of reminder. It gives us 8

things including faith, the very

first thing that we have when we're

baptized and become a

Christian. These things are moral excellence,

knowledge, self-control, perseverance,

godliness, brotherly kindness, and selfless love. I learned

everything. Pretty well I know about the scriptures

through the old King James. So if anything I might

accidentally quote here, it'll be in the King James.

I think Peter says, and add to your

faith knowledge and knowledge virtue, and add to virtue

knowledge and knowledge temperance. He calls it,

and we'll call it something else.

And then he says, patience,

godliness, and brotherly kindness.

I want to read here something to get us started.

And I have to hold this thing away

from me. Grace and peace be multiplied

to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus

our Lord, as his divine power has given

to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge

of him who called us by glory and

virtue, by which have been given to us excellent,

great, and precious promises.

That through these you may be partakers of

the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that

was in this world. That's his introduction. And then he goes

on and says, you need to add

these things I've already named. And we'll, at the

end of this lesson, we'll discuss his

conclusion. In all of it.

So I won't get into that right now.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about faith.

Bill talked about the

fact that God is faithful to us. And I'll mention

that a little bit later on. But what does the

writer of Hebrews, whoever he was.

What does he say about faith in chapter 11? He says,

faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence

of things not seen. And he goes on

and says that

by faith we understand the worlds were framed

by the Word of God.

So that the things which are seen were not made of the things

which are visible. I think whoever

wrote that would not have understood

what we understand today, that that piece

of wood there and this carpet and this stand and

your automobiles are all made of something

that we don't see. Little molecules

make them up. God made that.

The writer said that faith is

the substance of things hoped for. The things

that we don't understand how they're made by God

are the very things that— it's the

substance that makes us have

hope. It is the evidence of

things not seen. And I think we— that's one of the best definitions

I can come up with about faith out

of the Scripture itself.

I want to read Ephesians 2:19-22.

Ephesians 2:19–22

I have a lot of Scriptures here I didn't mention. I forgot to

mention that there are a world of scriptures all

through the— especially after

Acts 2 that

would be extenders of

what Peter is saying here.

Virtue. Knowledge, temperance. There's all kinds of scriptures

that back that up and expand

on it. And I think that helps us understand. And I've gotten

a few, and this is one of

them. Now therefore you are no longer strangers or

foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of

the household of God, having been built on the foundation

of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself

being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being

fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord,

in whom you also are being built up together for

a dwelling place in the faith.

I think it was Neil used that last

Sunday. Or close to it.

So this is what has brought us to this,

that where we will actually be a

part of the Church of God.

Christ being— picture this— a stone house

We're the stones, but the chief cornerstone is

Christ himself. We're built

on Christ. What's our goal in

faith? And this is all I'm going to say about faith until

the very end. We should, dare we have to,

build on the faith that caused us originally to become

a Christian. Galatians 3:26-27.

Galatians 3:26–27

To grow and in order to make our election sure,

2 Peter 1:10.

2 Peter 1:10

So what do you think? Anything can

you add to faith, our beginning as

Christians? Again, should we just stop

there? Not grow?

Comments, objections, motions,

rulings. All right, virtue.

When I looked at that word, I thought,

how in the world am I going to define virtue?

I think we all know what it is.

So I looked in a, of course, in a book,

And virtue is a traditional Greek philosophical

term meaning excellence

of moral character. So we'll just call it

moral excellence. So what is virtue?

It's moral excellence, isn't it? Can you think

of anything else that would describe it?

Okay, Paul may have been thinking about—

you remember Paul went to Athens,

and I had the privilege of seeing Athens one time.

Won't get into that. But Paul went to

Athens and he spoke to the Greek

philosophers, And you know good and well they wouldn't

believe this character who comes in.

He's a Jew, and he's seen one

of their altars to the unknown God, and he speaks

about that unknown God to them. And he

may have had this— remembered

the Stoic,

Greek Stoics, their idea about moral excellence when

he wrote in Philippians 4:8,

Philippians 4:8

whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is

gracious, if there is any virtue,

If there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

Doesn't that kind of describe a virtue,

moral excellence? What you put in— notice he

says, think on these things. What you put in your mind makes

you what you are. Is that true?

What you think about, makes you

what you are. If you've got trash

in, garbage in up here,

garbage is going to come out in many ways.

One of them's right here. Jesus himself said,

I believe, out of the abundance of the heart

the mouth speaks. Did you ever know somebody that every other word

was a Because I have known

plenty and come in contact with plenty like

that. What does that

say about their mind? Would you say that they are

developing virtue,

a moral, a sense of moral excellence?

I don't think so. What do you think

about that? Then there's other scriptures

in there. And one of them I think we'll get

in a few minutes about what's in the mind makes

a person. Go ahead, Bill. Somebody, I believe it

was, said it's a man thing. And that can go in either direction rather quickly.

You know, how you think about yourself is the way that

we act. If science says we're an animal and you're going

to think about that, that's what you're going to be. And we're not. We're created

in God's image. So when we think about that, our minds need

to be— have the same mind as Christ. That's right.

Now there's many verses that emphasize the

importance the importance of your

mind and what you put in your mind.

You know, if we sit around all day and look

at pornography or we

read things that are just awful,

we're developing something in our mind that It's

not good at all. And there are

people that are hooked on these things all

over the world.

And we don't need to— we need to guard our reputation

for one thing. That has to do with moral

character. People can see you for what you are.

Now what's our goal in this? What do you— what would you think would

be our goal in developing

this quality of a Christian

virtue? What would be a goal?

I've got one here written down. I might have written it in

the handout. But what I wrote down

was our goal is to develop our mind So

that our life is defined by whatever

is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,

whatever is pure, whatever— pure,

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is gracious and virtuous.

Any comments, objections, motions,

rulings? I've always thought— I can't

hear very good. I've always thought that Philippians 4:8

Philippians 4:8

is one of the most beautiful descriptions of God,

his character, everything about him. And thinking

on those things that is mentioned in Philippians

Philippians 4:8

4:8 brings me right to God. It makes

me think about the Lord because he's described there in a way,

to me, that makes sense.

Yes. The psalmist in Psalm 1 said, Blessed is

the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,

nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the

seat of the scornful, but his delight is

in the law of the Lord, And on his law doth he

meditate day and night. And he goes on to describe

how that good person who meditates on

the way of— on the law of the Lord and

how his end will be and how the

end of the ungodly will be.

Okay.

Knowledge, I think, is the next one.

Let's look at it.

I've written here that the knowledge is the accumulation

of information.

This, I think, came from Webster's It's the act

or state of understanding,

clear perception of truth, or cognition.

And I can't beat Mr. Webster on that

definition. We know what knowledge is.

Why did Peter think that knowledge was important

as one of the qualities that makes a

Christian mature?

We've already talked about that to some degree.

How do we know about God in the first place? Did you

ever ask yourself about— ask that? How do we

know about God? I knew about God because

my mother told And grandmother taught me about it,

about him. But after,

you know, I got on up in my teen years,

I didn't question that, but I thought, well, how do we know about this?

Well, there's a couple of ways that we know, and the Bible tells

us this.

The psalmist in Psalm 19,

I believe, says the

heaven— he says that actually the

things that God made speak to us.

And think about that. When I was in Ethiopia,

Back in the 1960s,

I worked the 4 to midnight shift almost

entirely, entire 18 months I was there.

I got off at midnight and the other crew came in

and it took us a few minutes to get all

unbound by what we were doing and getting them started

on what we were doing.

We would go out of the building. There was

a little parking lot out there. They would

send out a little bitty bus

to pick us up.

We were 7,500 feet up on a mountain.

It is clear, We were in a part of Africa

called the Sahel, which is a desert area.

And the night would be clear as

a bell. Walk out there, look up in

the sky, no artificial lights around,

black as it can be. And you see the pantheon

of stars and Milky Way and just

millions of stars. And many times

I thought of that about Psalm

19 when I looked up and saw those stars.

The psalmist says, the heavens declare the

glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, night unto night,

showeth knowledge, and there is no speech or

language where his voice is not heard.

Do the pantheon of the stars

speak to you? There are

many very

bright scientists mathematicians

today that are believing that,

astrophysicists, and they're actually

believing that. I believe it.

I believe it completely.

So God's creation actually

does speak to us. Also, the Apostle Paul

wrote, about this in the first chapter

of Romans.

He said that mankind is without excuse because

God is clearly shown

in the things that are made. And he says

that yet mankind as a whole in

his day And I can say in my day too,

our day, mankind has rejected

God, hasn't he? Haven't we as

a whole? He says,

for since the creation of the world,

his invisible attributes are clearly seen,

being understood by the things that are made,

even his eternal power and Godhead.

So they are without excuse. And he goes on and he talks about

the— they made gods,

you know, out of wood and all this stone,

metal, worshipped them.

And how they made their gods out

of the things that God had made. And they

weren't gods. So they were without excuse.

Now it's good to

know that we can know God through the

things that he's made. But how else do we know?

The second thing, how else do we know about God?

And without this, we would not fully

know about God. How else do you think?

What's this thing right

here? Do you ever think about— I think there's 40

different writers.

I didn't think about this until just now. 40 or

about 40 different writers.

Of this whole book, 66 chapters,

and they all fit together.

That's absolutely amazing.

When we were in Israel, we went

to a place called Qumran.

Some of you all, if anybody ever visit that

place, Qumran? Well, I thought there was a

bunch of people here that had been in Israel. Well,

anyway, it's south of Jerusalem down toward

the Dead Sea, right really close to the Dead Sea.

And they were led by a group

of people. Scholars think it was

the Essenes, but we really don't know. For sure.

Well, it was a group of people that

wrote their books,

wrote scriptures, copied scriptures from older manuscripts,

wrote some other books. They even had a copy of Enoch.

Did you know that? They had a copy of Enoch there.

And this is a group of people that lived that

went there before the

time, before the time of Christ,

but also they were there during the time of Christ, I believe.

Probably the Romans ran them off

or killed them all. Nobody knows. They're the ones that hid

their manuscripts in the caves.

The scriptures that they found in these jars that

preserved them. For instance,

one of them is almost

the complete manuscript of the book of Isaiah.

And I was privileged to see that in

the the Museum of the Book in

Jerusalem. And I mean,

just to see things like that makes

you— helps you believe wonderful things.

But what I was going to say, they had a scriptorium there

and they copied the scriptures. And the point I'm trying to make

The man that led us, led our group said,

and I guess he was a scholar,

he said that the men that worked

in the scriptorium, you can see it, you can walk through the walls

are partially still there. They found hundreds of pens

and inkwells. So that's what they were doing.

And said that the men that copied

those scriptures, when they came to the name of

God, Adonai,

Yahweh, other names

of God, Elohim, when they

came to one of those names, they would stop.

They would go wash themselves,

cleanse themselves, come back because they felt

like they had been dirty, too dirty to copy the name

of God. Then they'd copy the name of God

and they'd go on. Now think about if you're copying down Exodus,

think about how many places,

how many times in the book of Exodus is the name of God

going to be listed? And Exodus,

the 3rd chapter, we find the first

time the name YHWH.

And by the way, the Jews wouldn't pronounce that.

It was so— they

revered it so much that they would not pronounce

that particular name of God.

So again, the point I'm trying to make,

can we believe these scriptures here if

there were men writing them out and copying

them to that extent with that much preparation

and devotion to what they

were doing. Can we read these? Now we

do know that we have found some old

scriptures. I just mentioned one,

the book of Isaiah. And you know,

scholars read that book of Isaiah and

they say that it is the book of Isaiah, It's what we've got

here in the Old Testament. Same thing.

There were numerous other little pieces of scriptures

from the Old Testament. I think

it may be all little

pieces of scriptures from every book except Esther.

Now, You can check me on that. I'm not sure

about that. But anyway,

I believe we've got the scripture. I believe we've got the Word of God here

so that we first know, first know about

God through nature, don't we? The things are made.

Secondly, we really know,

truly know about God by reading this thing right

here. That's how we know it. And Paul

goes on to say, we can fully, we can fully

know about God and His will for

us through the scriptures that were delivered by

the Holy Spirit to the writers of the

Bible. In order to grow The

main point here, in order for us to grow in the

knowledge of

God and build on

our basic faith, is to devote our life,

isn't it, to the study of

the Scriptures? Is that right?

Questions. I can't hear, but— and

I'm asking for comments, and then when you make a comment, I can't hear it.

So you might as well not make a comment, or it'd be

comments for other people. I can't hear.

All right, I've got another scripture here.

1 Corinthians 2:7, 12 through 13,

1 Corinthians 2:7

Colossians 2: 2-3. According to Paul,

the Christian can truly know God,

is known by God. That's Galatians 4:9,

Galatians 4:9

excuse me. And God can only be known

by the Spirit and Christians who have

the Spirit. We receive the Spirit

at baptism. And if we study and

we have the Spirit, we can know God.

God reveals this mystery of salvation

through Jesus Christ. I know that was something that Neil talked

about last Sunday morning in class.

What's our goal? Of course, it's to build knowledge

and understanding of the scriptures so that we can continue

to grow. And there's a second thing,

so that we can pass on to other people,

at least talk to other people about Christianity,

being a Christian, at least on a personal level.

Okay, self-control. I look at

these,

qualities. Like we're going from faith and we're climbing up steps,

going up toward maturity. I guess that's a good way

to think of it.

Self-control is temperance, same thing. I think King James calls

it temperance. Paul says to

Timothy, God did not give us a spirit Not a spirit of timidity,

but a spirit of power and love and

self-control. Self-control is one of the hardest

things, I think, thus far in

what we've talked about, isn't it?

It's hard to control oneself sometimes.

Somebody yells at you.

If we're a young kid,

what's the— what

is in us that it makes us want to yell back, don't we?

Of course, as we grow older, we learn that's not

the best thing to do. What about somebody

actually threatens you?

Do you just go to pieces or fly off the handle?

What do you do when somebody threatens you? I was— some

of you in here knows that I was a police officer in Bowling Green for

32 years.

Not all of that time I worked the street, but a

good portion of it was I was out on the street. And you

meet all kinds of people and you never know what's going to happen.

And what if somebody threatens you?

What if somebody threatens a police officer?

I'm going to just knock your head off.

Well, what does a police

officer— and, you know, the guy don't really do it.

What does he do? Doesn't he have to exercise

some self-control there? Police officers— and

they're not always this way, and I was

not always this way. Police officers

are human. But you

get into all kinds of situations where people

are just out of control. And Jase

knows that as a first responder.

And first responders, including police officers, have to

be the ones that are— that

keep their calm and know what to do.

What if the police responds

to a call or chasing, responds to a

call, and they just go to pieces. I don't think

people would respect very much

or actually do what

the officer would have them to do.

Okay. Yes. And say it.

Yeah. Self-control seems to be one of those virtues that

this world has lost with the advent of social media?

Oh, yes. Everybody feels like, boy, I get

to attack so-and-so. I'm not face-to-face with you, so I can

make up— Yeah, I didn't think of that, but that's true. That's so

true. And if you think about I'll

say back in the 1940s or '50s in our country,

I'm sure there were bad things that happened, but did people just

go around just throwing fits and burning places

down and this sort of thing, rioting all the

time, tearing things up? No. Look what

our society has come to now.

Oh, I've got to hurry up. Self-control, as I said,

this is one of the hard ones. Let's get to— we could talk about this

for days. Perseverance.

Perseverance is another one of those things that's hard to do.

Peter's trying to keep these people from becoming Christians and then falling

away. Perseverance would be Steadfastness,

that's another word used in the Bible. It requires

watchfulness, to watch for the wiles of

the devil, Ephesians 6:11. And the

Ephesians 6:11

Apostle Paul, I know I'm wearing out Apostle Paul, but I like

the scriptures from him.

He says that in Ephesians 6 chapter, of course,

when you think of perseverance, you go to Ephesians 6.

Goodness. Be strong in the Lord.

Put on the whole armor of God.

Put on the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod

in the preparation of the gospel. We have to prepare ourselves.

How can we fight the devil if we don't know the Scriptures?

The shield of faith, the helmet of salvation. And of

course, the sword of the Spirit, what's that?

Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. And of course,

if we read Hebrews

Hebrews 4:12

4:12, for the Word of God is living and powerful

and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to

the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow,

and discerners of the thoughts and

intents of the heart. Now,

I added to this,

we must— in order to have perseverance, we must

develop a daily prayer.

Paul again says, Praying always with all prayer and supplication

in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance

and supplication for all the saints. We must

add to this, I added,

that when inevitable things happen,

Neil called them storms of life, they're going to

happen. We gotta remember Romans 5:3-5.

Romans 5:3–5

Suffering produces endurance,

that's perseverance.

Endurance produces character and character produces hope.

Our goal is to put on the whole armor of God,

abhor that which is evil,

be not overcome by evil, but with evil,

But overcome evil with good.

Godliness— I'm running out of time.

Let me— I want to get

to the last one, which will really

cover all of these, and that's love.

Paul gives us an outline. Of love

and tells us what love is, or the characteristics, in 1

Corinthians, the 13th chapter.

Neil will be covering that later on, on Sunday morning.

What is love? It's patient and kind, does not

envy and boast, is not arrogant or rude, does not rejoice in wrongdoing,

rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believeth all things,

hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never

faileth. Romans 13:7-8.

Romans 13:7–8

Our goal, of course, is to practice those things.

Now I want to say a little bit about God's eternal love

for us. Bill talked about this. I'm not going to read these

scriptures, but if you want to write them down. God is

love, 1 John 4:7. Galatians 4:4

1 John 4:7 Galatians 4:4

talks about God's eternal love for us. Of course,

1 John 4:9-10,

1 John 4:9–10

and of course, John 3:16,

John 3:16

for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not

perish but have everlasting life. Now,

conclusion. The last part of what Peter

says here, here's his conclusion is, for these

qualities, and that's the New King James,

not New King James, New American Standard Version.

He calls them qualities. If these things be in you and abound, they make you

that you're neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of

the Lord. Jesus Christ. And if we don't have them, he says

we're blind, short-sighted,

having forgotten the purification that we

had. Now, what does all this mean to us today?

I see 3 things. It goes without being said that we

should guard against false doctrine. Number 2, no matter

what age you become a Christian,

at that point you should immediately begin to growing in the

faith Let me— I

got it. Let me— one other little thing,

if I can find it again.

Oh, I've got them all mixed up.

Oh, here it is. At the end of our life,

in the twilight of our life, I think all of us should

be able to say this. And now the

end is near, and so I face the final curtain.

My friend, I'll say it clear, and I'll state my case

on which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full.

I've traveled each and every highway and more,

much more than this. I did it his

way. Yeah. Regrets, I've had a few,

but again, then again, none of them, none that I want to

mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through with

a few exemptions and more, much more than this. I did

it His way. I've loved, I've laughed, I've cried,

I've had my fill, my share of losing, and now

as tears subside, I find it so amusing

to think I did all that, and may I say,

not in a shy way. Oh no,

oh no, not me. I did it his

way. For what is a man, what has he got,

if not his Lord? Then he has not to

say the things he truly feels, and yes, the words of

one who kneels. The record shows

I took the blows and did it his

way. Thank you.