Gospel—Dean Rule
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Mountains and it's not. It's unusual actually, a day I don't see a dead dog along the road.
The thing that made me even more sad than to see the dead dog is that there was another dog lying on the side of the road.
Peering to this dog that was on the median strip.
And you can tell by looking at that dog that that dog was sad because his friend was dead.
You know when a dog dies and it's sad if you like dogs? I've cried when our dogs have died.
Because you know you'll never see him again, but you also realize that they're.
Have one life and that's it.
Is there anyone here tonight?
That if your family were to meet up in heaven.
You'd be missing.
I'm looking forward to a family reunion in heaven with our four children.
You may say, Well, I thought you only had three.
A little over a month into my wife's first expectancy.
It was a difficulty with pregnancy and miscarriage and we went to the hospital.
So after the Lord Jesus, the first person I want to meet in heaven is our first child. I know he's he or she is there. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl.
Will your family be complete?
Well, everyone in your family be there together to have a family reunion in heaven.
Before we pray, I'd like to read one verse in the Book of Revelation.
Very near the end.
I can't read hearts. I've been fooled a lot of times.
I think there's going to be some surprises in heaven as to who's there, and also some surprises as to who's missing.
I hope there's not a single person in this room that's going to be missing.
We'll look around for you.
But then.
I hope you don't think it's cruel.
We're going to forget about you.
Because the fact if you've rejected the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Is not going to spoil our eternity.
If there's someone here who says no, or someone here who says tomorrow, you might as well say never, because you have no guarantee that you're going to be around tomorrow. Revelation chapter 21, verse 4.
And God.
Shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.
One of the things you find with advancing age, and I think others can agree with it. It takes a little longer sometimes to remember names.
Other things, memories become a little more difficult.
But in heaven, God is going to give us a selective memory.
Is going to allow us to forget certain things.
So that's why he's given an opportunity tonight so that we don't have to forget about you.
Let's pray.
In Jesus name, Amen.
About a month ago.
On a Sunday afternoon.
We didn't get the news until Monday.
Alegria.
A close friend of.
Our youngest daughter.
Got the message to our youngest daughter.
That on Sunday afternoon.
Jorge Miguel.
Her boyfriend had been killed.
On Tuesday afternoon, my wife and I were at the funeral.
And I went up behind the casket because there were other people standing there.
The casket was opened.
I look down in the face that, if I remember correctly, I've seen Alegria many times. She's come over to the house to dog sit and been friends and for meals and everything else.
But I saw the face of someone who I wonder if I will ever see that face again.
Riding his motorcycle at that point in time, we didn't know. They didn't know what had happened and Uncle paid.
Some investigators and found out that a drunk taxi driver.
Had hit him.
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Crushed him. Bones crushed. Dead instantly on the side of the road, the pictures in the online newspaper, you could see a puddle of blood.
He had no time, absolutely no time. If he was not ready, he had absolutely not one minute.
To make a decision.
To be saved.
Many years ago arriving in Madrid, Spain, with Gastonia and Milka Villegas a couple.
We were going from the Madrid airport to the flat, the apartment where they lived.
And then a dangerous curve.
Where now it's very clearly marked.
The vehicle went into a spin two or three times and then rolled up on its side.
I can't figure out why to this day except an Angel pushing it back. It should have gone upside down. We should have been in a water viaduct ground.
The vehicle flipped back on the road.
Total couple of us went to the hospital.
Some staples in the head and that sort of thing.
Again, the lesson that I learned out of that little accident is when it comes time to die with, the best advice I can give you is make sure the only thing you have to do is die because you may not have time to do anything else.
I don't know where he is.
And so when I think, yeah, it was sad to see the dog, but it was even sadder to say probably we'll see. I'll agree with you. This week our daughter came home and working from home in Ecuador and one of the one of the things, the primary purpose is to be with Alegria.
I'd be able to give any comfort to her.
I didn't hear anything.
You know when you go to a funeral and you listen to the person who speaks?
No one gets up and says wait, this was a rotten person. No, they're they're all.
Become practically proclaimed for sainthood by actions at the funeral.
But I'll tell you something if it's your job, if the Lord Jesus doesn't come first.
To speak at my funeral, you're totally free to get up and say he's a rotten Sinner.
But I know where he is.
Not because he's any good, but because he has a savior who loved him.
And died for him, and worked in his heart that he would repent. Think again about where.
Worry what's done, what was done for him, and believing on the Lord Jesus, you're totally free to say that, because that's the truth.
You don't have to proclaim any good things or anything because there's nothing good to proclaim. But there is a savior. And when I we were listening, my wife and I to the person who was speaking at that funeral.
You'd think that.
Manuel was sitting there and just staring down at all of us that were there. You know, he's watching the whole thing. Well, as far as I could tell, his eyeballs were in his head when they closed the door of the casket, and I have no indication at all. There's no indication that that.
That that's what's happened.
So when the time comes, you better be ready, because if you're not.
It's forever.
I'd like to look at a verse in Psalm.
Book of Psalms.
Psalm 103.
Verse 15.
As for man?
His days are his grass.
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. It flourishes.
I went outside before this meeting and I grabbed some graphs.
Very unusual plant.
Because when we go out and see most plants.
When you go and prune it when you cut it off, you're cutting off the youngest part of the plant.
Not a grass.
Everything in the grass family, including Bamboo, the biggest member of the grass family, when it grows, the leaves, they grow from right here.
And so this is the oldest part. And so if you cut the lawn today and you cut it again in a week.
The part of the grass you cut off is.
The oldest part.
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And so a lot of times, what's left there may be only a week old.
People think that they're going to be around for a long time.
You live to be 100 years old.
Put that over Infinity and it's absolutely nothing.
The decisions made for forever are made while we're here on this earth.
I know I've told this story many times, but I'm going to tell it again. My father-in-law had someone with whom he shared the gospel many times a man named Joe.
And Joe lived to be past 100 years old. And Joe's comment when my father-in-law would speak to him is I'm going to go be with my friends. We're just going to shovel coal on the fire in in the lake of fire.
Joe's in hell.
He's not shoveling coal.
No friends there, because friends are something that God provides. There's not a friendship in.
The Lake of Fire.
If you choose that, you're choosing eternal solitary confinement.
You won't need eyes because it's absolutely black.
You won't have friends to talk to.
Romans says the goodness of God leads to repentance. You will not repent because you're going to be in the one place in all of the universe.
Where God's goodness does not reach.
A lot of people try to worm their way out of it. They say, well, maybe for 50,000 years an annihilation and it's all over.
No, it's forever.
My father-in-law.
Had a statement that I've repeated many times because it really struck me.
He would talk about a person that when they went into when they died, he said. They woke up dead.
Yeah, the body's there.
But their solar spirit are in one of two places. In friend tonight you are going to be if you die before the Lord Jesus comes back, you are going to be in one of two places.
You're either going to be in paradise with the Lord Jesus.
Waiting to have your body transformed or you're going to be in hell. Waiting for your body to be.
Functional, if I could put it that way.
And where you go, you're going to spend eternity.
Barry Eisenberg, A fellow student, worked in the same laboratory under the same professor when we were doing our thesis in the university.
When I talked to Barry Eisenberg about this, he said everything in my life, I've made the decision. When I've come to the situation, I've made the decision then.
It very hasn't changed his mind.
When Barry's dead.
It's too late.
No one makes a decision when they're in eternity.
About eternity. The decisions about eternity are made now. You have no guarantee. I have no guarantee that we're going to get to the end of this hour.
So our days are like grass.
I want to read one more verse, and then I'm going to do something differently than I think I've ever done.
But the verse I'd like to read first is in Psalm 1, Psalm 18.
Psalm 18 verse 30. We know it as it is for man, but let's ask about how about God?
As for God, his way is perfect.
The Lord Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. That's God's way. It's through his Son.
Through the finished work of his son on Calvary's cross, it says the word of the Lord has tried.
Everything else you read and everything else I read, everything you see, everything you hear, apart from the word of God. We have to examine it on the basis of what this book says. But this book?
His White examines everything else.
And this book tells me that I'm a Sinner. It tells me that I need a savior. But it tells me that God, in his perfect way, sent his son to be that savior. And so, As for God, his way is perfect. He is a buckler. To all those that trust in him, a buckler is a small shield.
Because I wanted to protect us from all the attacks that there are.
As we talk about what we're talking about tonight.
I'm going to tell you the formula to gain 3 instant enemies.
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You gain 3 instant enemies the minute that you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
The rotten, the worst enemy I face is my own flesh. This rotten flesh that hasn't gotten any better and all the years I've been alive.
Sometimes I think at the Rapture it's going to be easy to fly when I can leave that behind.
You've got an enemy and Satan.
Satan's number one goal is to get as many people into a casket as possible, because he knows that once they're in a casket, they cannot decide about eternity.
This world. This system of this world.
Was like that table we saw this morning.
Looked good and nothing was wrong with those snacks, but it was something far inferior to the value of that coin.
Tonight, this is a change in thought.
I'm going to.
If liberty.
I'm going to take a notebook out that I made some notes.
And I would when I was teaching in some sciences in a school in different places.
One of the things that I had the students do because I knew it made it almost impossible for them to cheat.
Was to write things in the first person.
And so.
I had one student who she had such a habit of cheating that when I would take attendance, I called her Xerox.
Because she was always trying to copy.
Well, tonight.
If I could have the liberty, I'd like to take you and I on a journey.
Many years ago, when I was a child, I really liked reading biographies. And so I'd read the biography of Abraham Lincoln and the biography of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington Carver. And I thought, this is really interesting. How could these biography they. Because this is what he said to his teacher, and this is what he said to his father and his mother and everything else I said. Who knew it was important enough that they would be someone there writing down what he said.
Well, they found out later that the dialogue was made-up.
But what we have in this book is not made-up.
So if we could go back and we could take a journey.
If we can imagine if take the liberty of.
Taking a journey of the two weeks or so before the Lord Jesus.
Went to Calvary's cross.
And we're going to assume, and I know they didn't have paper like this, they wrote on a scroll. We're going to assume that.
There was a reporter assigned by the Jerusalem Times to follow the journey and then write a report later.
And that reporter was making notes as he went along.
And after.
The first day of the week when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, there's and this, if I can say imaginary story, a man who comes up from Hebron, South of Jerusalem, and he says, you know, went to this person and said, I understand you reported that, you know what went on the last couple of weeks. And he said something very unusual happened last Friday. I was down in Hebron and right around noon everything went absolutely black, dark.
Couldn't see a thing.
We looked up and said was that the clouds? No, it went really there wasn't a cloud a day. We looked up there were no stars and that lasted for about 3 hours and and can you explain to me what happened on that day So, well let let me take you on the journey.
I want to take you on a journey.
That.
Where my assignment was to meet up with him.
Up in Galilee, up north of Jerusalem.
You know, you know what that is. You know there's this C and this C is actually fresh water.
And you know this this person that I was assigned to cover, They call him Jesus. You've heard about him. This first thing that I was assigned to cover. He spent a lot of time up there.
And.
So I was assigned to cover him and I, you know, I wrote down notes of the things that I heard him say.
And I was assigned to follow him up through the Passover. And so so you know, the one of the first things I heard him say is that the Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him. In the third day he shall be raised again.
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He's talking about himself.
I heard him say that.
And it was an unusual thing because, you know, usually if someone knows that they're going to be killed, they they go the other way. They get out of there. I mean, they they could head up north towards Syria or or head east toward Jordan or something like that, but not him. You know, he wasn't going to, he wasn't going to avoid anything of what was happening.
And so there was a group of people that were heading down to Jerusalem with him.
That joined him. They were on their way for the Passover that was going to take place in Jerusalem. And you know that's not a short.
Little jaunt. That walk is about 90 miles.
And he didn't have a horse to ride on or he didn't. There wasn't any carts or anything. So you can imagine what that would have been like. You know, I think we, that journey took us a good five days to walk at about almost 20 miles a day.
And along that journey, here's another thing I heard him say. It says, except ye be converted and becomes little children, you shall not are enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
So people said, well, what do you mean by being converted? He said. Well, he told him you need to have a change. There has to be a change in you.
And so you know, one of the there was a young man along that road, and he he asked him a question. He said, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
I may have eternal life.
You know what, a lot of people that I met along the way, they were thinking that you know that what what can you do? You know, here's a man who we've observed what he's like. And I said, well, what can he do to get eternal life? What can he do when he said.
He looked at me and he said, why? He looked at this, this man. Jesus looked at that young man. He said, Why call this thou me good?
And then he listed off a list of things which I don't think that young man was capable of doing.
So we went along in the road. And so another thing I heard him say is, behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed into the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and they shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and discourage and crucify him. And the third day shall rise again said, It's the first time I've ever heard in all my years as a reporter.
That someone was telling the future. Well, I wrote it down. I wrote it down because I was going to examine if what he said he completed.
Because a lot of people make predictions, but I wanted to see if this man, what he said, he was actually going to happen, because that was pretty specific about what he said was going to happen.
Well, another thing he came and said along the way is that the Son of Man?
Came to give us life as a ransom for many.
There's only.
One man has ever come into this world with the purpose of dying the Lord Jesus Christ.
He said he came to give his life as a ransom for many. And you know, the question is.
How could he could pay it? I'm going to have to ask some of those who are closely following him.
Well, when we got close to Jerusalem.
And we came up before we hit the Dead Sea.
We started up the road and part way up the road there was this town called Jericho.
Along the side of the road.
There were two blind men.
The Lord Jesus had been helping people along the way, but he said.
Have mercy on us, O Lord son of David.
These two blind men.
Had no way to see.
They couldn't go to a Doctor Who was going to put some salve in their eyes to allow them to be able to see.
But these two blind men asked for mercy.
And so the Lord Jesus, I wrote this down. He said. What shall I do to you?
And he said that her eyes may be open. And you know what happened in that moment?
Those two blind men that we saw along the side of the road got their sight.
Never seen anything like it in my life.
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So.
When we got to.
Jerusalem.
On that Sunday, there were people.
Who when he went into the city.
I observed that there were people who took their actually clothes, their robes and things off. They put them in the middle of the road, they cut palm branches down.
They said Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna is the highest. They gave him praise here, here's someone who's coming in to die, and we watch what happens on that Sunday and they're they're praising him.
You think he's going to be dead within a week? Well, we didn't know what was exactly going to happen.
Well, Monday.
Monday went into the temple.
When he went into the temple on that Monday.
He was the maddest I've ever seen him.
And tried to understand what was happening when he was in the temple on that Monday.
He inquired about how things were being handled.
And you know, there were people coming up there with a turtle dove and some coming with bigger animals and when they got to the door of the temple.
The inspector there looked at it and said this ones no good. You're not going to use this as a sacrifice. I can see a fault in it. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can change your shekels into temple money.
The exchange rate wasn't very good, he said. But if you'd buy some temple money, you exchange their money when you get into the temple. With that temple money, you can buy an animal that's certified. It's already approved.
Upset because he was upset. He took those tables and flipped them on their side because they said what have they done to the House of my father?
Well, during that week he went back and forth. He walked to the east. He had several friends there. The House of.
Mary and Martha and Lazarus.
Good friends.
Not the first time he'd spent time with him.
You know, Lazarus was that man.
That.
He'd been dead and buried for four days. And you know, if you have a body that's buried for four days, then there's no embalming. Then the body starts to stink.
But he didn't, you know he when they said why can't you come in time to save him, he didn't do it. He wanted to show something else and so when he went into that, that family.
They were upset.
But he did something miraculous and they were telling me about it.
When he went into that family.
He raised that man from the dead.
No one had a doubt that that man was actually dead, but that man, Lazarus, But he raised him. And when they got him out, you can imagine he was all wrapped up in the cloth that they wrapped around him and so they helped unloose him.
And so he, you know, the Lord Jesus. He would he'd go some of these nights into Bethany. He walked E out of Jerusalem and spent the spent with those families, those friends. You know, he was a man who made friends wherever he was.
So when people ask.
As he was coming into Jerusalem.
The town was stirred up.
With this man that came into Jerusalem.
And so they ask, who is this?
Who is this?
And you know what? He said? This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.
This man's coming to town.
We've known about him for a long time. We've seen the miracle, We've heard about the miracles that he's done.
He's now, he's now coming to town.
And he told people, he said, whatever you ask in my name, believing you shall receive.
He kept giving messages as he went along.
Umm.
Then he encountered the religious men.
The Pharisees.
These guys who thought they were above everyone else, that they were in a special class of themselves, that they thought that they could sit there and they acted when they were talking to him like they were the judges, and that he was some common man.
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And he he asked him a question. He said, What think you of Christ? What do you think about Christ?
Whose son is he?
And sometimes he left him speechless.
Well.
As that week went on Thursday night.
He got together.
It was an unusual sight to see.
He was going to have his last meal and so I wasn't invited. I couldn't go along, but I was observing it and and then that night he.
He followed a man.
Carrying a pitcher of water, they went into house. They went up to the second floor.
And so I asked some of them that were there, Well, what happened? What did he do when he said, well, we went up.
There was a loaf of bread on the table and there was a cup and.
One of the things they said for this is the my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
You know, that night was kind of a surprise for us as we were, as these people came out because.
I saw 13 people go in.
One of them came out instead of the others and we said what happened? They said, well, you know, we've been walking together with this man called Judas for three years and it turns out he's a fake.
Is a fake.
Well, if we go on.
That night.
He went from where they had that supper.
He went part way up the Mount of Olives and you know, there's this Grove of olives that he spent a lot of time. He sometimes would go spend all night there.
And.
Those who were with them when they were awake.
Heard him say, Father.
Oh my God, if it would be possible, let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless not as I will, but as thou will.
In the darkness.
Was sweating, but it wasn't typical sweat. It wasn't the sweat that you get when you're exercising and you're hot. It was threading drops of blood. You know, maybe that happens when you have high blood pressure. I can't imagine what the what the pressure was on him that night, but.
After a while.
A man, Judas, came back and came with some soldiers and they arrested him. They took him away.
And you know, he went through.
Some pretty bad stuff. That night he spent time taking to Annis and the high priest and the Caiaphas the ex high priest and and you know he was by now he'd been up for at least 24 hours. It was early in the morning and and they said, you know the high priest with the report out of the Sanhedrin out of those 70 men was.
That high priest ripped off his clothes. And you know, I understand that in in the old, in the Bible that we have in those books that it the high priest was never supposed to do that. But those people seemed so determined to put that man to death.
They wanted to make it official, so we understood that they got together at about 6:00 in the morning.
They put their stamp of approval.
On putting that man to death.
You know, he said, that night. Hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power.
Coming in the clouds of heaven.
And it's just pretty upset about that.
Here's this man that we want to put together and he's telling us this is what he's going to do.
You know, he's he's competition for us. The people want to follow him instead of following us.
This, this really is something that that bothers us a lot. We've got to carry through with this.
And so.
Yes, if you go down from the Garden of Gethsemane.
You went to work, Caiaphas's house was and Anise and everything else. And then then he.
He had some time before Pontius Pilate.
The ruler.
Designated ruler for Judea, sent there by Rome. And you know Pontius, you know, if you know, you know, I I understand that he really was not very happy about having to come up to Jerusalem.
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He said. I really would rather hang out down in Caesarea Maritime, you know, the the Caesars had built these towns around and the Roman Empire, Caesar's towns.
To give them the best taste they could have. Rome away from Rome.
If you go to Caesarea, there's the leftover tracks of where they would have the races around. There was a kind of like a little stadium where they could observe different things. They could maybe eat some of the best food brought from Rome.
It was his obligation to come up to Jerusalem, but he wasn't really very happy about it.
He came up with his wife.
And.
He started.
Ask questions of Jesus.
He asked a number of questions.
In most cases he waited for the answer, but I understand that the last question he asked him was what is truth and he walked away.
Now, if Pilate really wanted to know the answer to that question, he wouldn't have walked away. He would have stayed around and gotten the answer to the question. But he didn't.
Umm.
He got shuffled over to Herod. He said, well, you know you're from Galilee and that's his jurisdiction. And so Herod, for his curiosity, spent some time with him and and then he sent him back to Pilot.
And as a typical politician, you know what they're like this report, you know, you know, they they bow to the pressure of the people. So he bound to the pressure of the people. And he said this man hasn't done anything wrong. He's done nothing worthy of death.
And the people, you know, when I listened, they were crying out, Crucify him, crucify him and nothing worthy of death. And he, his wife even warned him, he said, have nothing to do with that, just man. For I've suffered in a dream because I'm in this day.
He would have been a lot smarter to listen to his wife than to listen to the crowd.
But to listen to his wife? No. He listened to the crowd.
And so he was a coward and I don't understand why, but you know, we watched and so.
They started up.
From where the brick of Kidron is, they started up Calvary's Hill.
As a man, Simon, who helped carry the cross, and they went up to where they put that cross in the ground.
Nailed him there at 9:00 in the morning.
He was there with the crown of thorns on his head. His back had already been beaten. They were spitting in his face.
They were mocking him.
That were speaking out against.
And I'm sitting, you know, if you can imagine, it's this report. I'm sitting there watching. So what's happening? This man was a Goodman. He he'd done so many good things, and yet this is what they were doing to him.
And then suddenly.
At noon.
Everything went dark.
Absolute black darkness.
You might have looked up in the sky and said is there a solar eclipse? No, there was number solar eclipse. It went absolutely dark at noon.
And it lasted that way until 3:00 in the afternoon.
And these are some of the things he said.
And said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they said, you know, that really surprised me. How could you be there when you were being so cruelly treated and see this man that was up there on the cross and asking for forgiveness for those who were doing it. So they don't, I don't understand that very well.
You know, he was there before.
Before it went dark, he wasn't alone. There were two other crosses and there was this discussion going back and forth between the people on either side. One of them, those guys, you know, they were bad men, so that's why they were there. But I have but the one one-on-one side said.
You know, if you're the Christ, you can get down from here and you can take us down.
And.
You know, he said. You know you've got the power. You've shown it with what you've done during your life.
The man on the other side.
Said This man's done nothing wrong, this man's done nothing amiss, so we deserve what we're getting. But he hasn't done anything wrong.
And he spoke to the Lord Jesus. In that moment, you know, we could hear him say, Remember Me.
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And the words we heard coming out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus for today you'll be with me in paradise.
It was pretty hard to understand because I knew that by the end of that day, we'd all be buried in a grave. They were going to make sure that this was done before 6:00 at night. They were going to make sure that this was done before it would interfere with anything in the Passover. But you know what? That's what I heard him say.
And then?
He looked down.
From that cross he saw his mother.
Woman, Behold thy son.
Tender moment showed love to his mother.
To a mother who had been questioned before he was born, as to how she could be expecting a child when she'd never been with a man, never been with Joseph yet.
He asked.
John to take care of her.
Then, as it approached the end of those three hours of when it was dark, getting close to 3:00 in the afternoon, we'd lost track of time because.
We didn't. The sundials wouldn't work in the darkness.
We heard him cry out. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Can't imagine the pain that it was going through.
And he said, I thirst.
Then he said, it is finished.
In thy hands I come in my spirit, and the light came back on.
When the men that were around there looked and they said, well, what shall we do? Do we need to break his legs? Why do they break legs? Because the way that a person on the cross stays alive as long as they stay alive as they push up with their legs so that they don't asphyxiate.
But when they wanted to finish things up, they wanted to wind this process up that afternoon. And so I saw that they they didn't break his legs because he was already dead.
But I saw one of the soldiers take a spear and Pierce it in his side, and out there came blood.
And then?
They took him off.
Wrapped him in.
Cloth up the hill. They put him in a cave, which was offered.
And then they put a stone in front of the door. They put guards there.
You know, I understand that they were afraid that that body was going to be stolen, it was going to be taken away, so they put the guards that were there.
You know now it's late afternoon.
On Friday.
So it counts as a day.
And then from 6:00 PM till 6:00 PM the next day, day 2.
From 6:00 PM on Saturday to early in the morning on Sunday, maybe it was a total of some 40 hours.
There were some women.
Followers his who were.
There.
The stone was rolled away.
When they went into that tomb, I understand that when they went into that tomb, it wasn't like Lazarus. When Lazarus was given life, they had to unwrap him.
When they went into that tomb, it was like he just stepped right out of that cloth and it was there exactly as the shape of a human being. He didn't have to be unwrapped.
And so.
They took him to.
Well, he was out walking around.
And the rumor is that some of the people who had been following him.
The people have been following him, have seen him alive and we haven't. No one's been able to convince him of anything other than that because this wasn't any fake. He was, but he hasn't been seen of any of the people that he wasn't.
They weren't following him before, but they've seen him alive.
And so that's all I can tell you.
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I would say to this man from Hebron.
That's all I can tell you.
We'll try to keep you updated as to what happens.
The Lord Jesus did that for you.
He did that for me. Why? Because he wants you, and he wants me to be with him.
Forever.
And so I'd like to read in just a couple more verses before we close.
Psalm 55.
Verse 15.
As for me?
I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save me.
He's listening tonight.
Sometimes you try to call to solve something that you need to solve to a number that's on a web page, and it's functioning from Monday through Friday Central time, from 8:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night. And on the Saturday it's until noon. And on Sunday there's no attention. When you call upon God, when you call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, it's 24/7, always available, always ready to hear. And if you've never called upon the Lord Jesus is your savior, now is the opportunity you can call on him.
Psalm, Chapter 17.
Verse 15.
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake with I likeness.
My father-in-law would talk about waking up dead.
I haven't been at the I've seen a lot of dead people, but I have not been very many times where very seldom where I was there at the moment that someone passed away. I think my brother Don will remember when we were at the foot of the bed of my mother, 96 years old.
And we were there the moment she went into eternity.
I didn't cry.
Why? Because I said this is absolutely the best moment she's ever had in her 96 years. She's with the Lord Jesus. She's left behind all of those pain, all of the the, you know, the the, the the being a widow for over 30 years, the the, the, the struggle with the loss of memory, the the all the physical things, everything else. She is in the best place.
The best moment for 96 years?
I look forward to being with her, but I don't want her back because it's far better for her.
How about you?
When you wake up dead.
Is it going to be?
In hell, waiting to be in the lake of fire forever. Or when you wake up dead, if it's before the Lord comes, are you going to be with the Lord Jesus?
Yeah.
And one malefactor was put in a grave, and the other malefactor was the other evil man was put in the grave. One of them evidently to spend eternity separated from God in the lake of fire, and the other to spend eternity already that day. Yeah, they left their his body in the grave, but he was going to be in paradise with the Lord Jesus. What an absolute, marvelous promise that is.
Forever.
You know, I I look forward to the day where I can be with.
Perhaps billions of people.
And know everyone by name.
Without ever having to learn their names.
I look forward to the day where, as I said, I'm looking forward to that family reunion.
With the child that we don't know if it was a boy or a girl, but.
He or she is there.
I look forward to the day when you know my little list in my mind to the people that I want to meet there. And I put second on the list. My my wife's mother went home to be with the Lord before I knew her, but I want to thank her for what a special daughter she has.
Marvelous daughter. There's other people I look forward to meet, but you know, I'm going to have forever to do it.
And that's what you're going to have and we're going to, we're going to be in.
This marvelous place. That's only one house, because God's made the biggest house there ever is.
The Lord Jesus, when he said I go to prepare a place for you, I used to think that was some construction project that he was going back to heaven. But I realized what he went to prepare was what he did on Calvary's cross when he went and died for a rebel Sinner like me.
00:50:02
When he went and died, suffered what I could pay the debt that I could never pay for all eternity.
That's what he did.
So first and foremost is to be face to face with him and with our Father in the glory we're going to have forever.
Never get tired of it.
No boredom or anything like that.
But if someone tells you that if God is a God of love.
He won't send anyone to hell.
You know, God's prepared everything but one thing. One thing he left out of his preparation. The Bible never says that He prepared a place for those who refuse to accept the Lord Jesus Christ to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. He made heaven, and he prepared a place for the devil and his angels.
Ever says he prepared a place for those who refuse his offer of salvation, but he has no alternative.
He has no alternative.
Someone said to you tonight that instead of going and sleeping in a bed like we're going to sleep in in different places, that you're going to spend the night in a pigsty in the slop along with pigs. You'd say, hey, wait, no, that's not for me.
Well, the lake of fire wasn't made for you either.
So be sure that's not where you're heading. Let's pray.